Earth Day Anniversary

Twenty years ago today we scattered my mother's ashes.

I put my two Japanese Chins in the car and stopped for my girl friend who was giving moral support. She was waiting for me on the stoop of her Boston townhouse and was dressed in sneakers and jeans. "Emily Post couldn't tell me what to wear to an illegal scattering of ashes of a women I didn't like on Earth Day."

I seldom write poetry, but that day produced this

Scattering Her Ashes

Clumps of sodden earth
cling to our boots.
The forest whispers,
whines.
A brook, too full,
complains,
falling over itself.
A bird,
trills a prayer for
no more rain.

My brother, carrying the
cardboard carton,
goes first.
As he pushes through brush
he forgets to hold a branch.
It hits me like another one
forty years ago
in a different wood.

We come to a meadow with
last year's grass
engraved in mus.
He lays the carton
on the ground.
"Here."
Inside a plastic bag.
We each take a corner.
The wind catches the powder,
lifts and plays creating a mini cloud
too close to earth.

I think
how much power
that powder once held.
How little power now.
Done.
We walk back
trapped
in our ancient silences.

home again, home again

Home again, home again
jiggerty jig jiggerty jig jiggerty jig jiggerty jig jiggerty jig jiggerty jig jiggerty jig jiggerty jig jiggerty jig

Okay, so last Thursday I couldn't get back to Genève from Argelès because of the train strike in the South east of France. Even had I wanted to drive it all rental cars were long gone. The option to have someone drive me to the border take a train to Barcelona then fly back to Genève also wasn't an option, thank you very much Iceland.

Now, I wouldn't dream of comparing my situation to those at an airport, with no room left on their charge cards and no idea how they will get home. I was cozy in my apartment, eating tapas at Les Flowers, sitting in a café, writing as normal. And compared to having to get to a sick relative fast missing some of the Visions du reel film festival doesn't even begin to register on the tragedy scale.

However, when a neighbour with a second home in Argelès let me ride with her to the train station in Mâcon, where the TGV comes through twice a day and is not on strike I jumped into the car and the 600 km. flew by as fast as the bright spring scenery.

The train was at 16:46. We arrived at the gare at 16:31.

There was a line but by 16:40 I had arrived at the window.

Fermé. The sales clerk closed the guichet.

The train pulled in.

My friend rushed from the car with my computer and suitcase. I ran up to the conductor.

"I don't have a ticket because the man closed the window. I got stuck in Argelès with the strike." I knew my French was perfect for once in my life. Glory! Glory!

"Do you have your old ticket."

My pocketbook has multi pockets, I fumbled and fumbled and fumpled some more. I think someone was adding pockets, but finally I found it.

The conductor took it and scribbled something on it. "There's a place in car 2. The train is full because of the volcano."

My friend followed me and we waved goodbye and I was on my way to Genève. At last.

Jiggerty jig.

silver linings

I am leaving for Geneva. Although the trains in the South of France are still on greve, a neighbour here with a second home is heading for Macon. From there I have a chance to catch the TGV to Geneva. They are not on greve, although they may be crowded between the end of vacation and no planes flying.

The alternative of flying out of Barcelona is obviously not an option. Of course there are share a ride choices, which would have been the next alternative.

Compared to people stuck in airports and out of money, I have nothing to complain about. I suspect the airports who are saying they may open in half a day, tomorrow, etc. I wonder if they have looked at the volcano that it is still spewing ash. I wonder what would happen if like during the last eruption i8t goes on for two years how it will affect the world. It will change it as we know it.

Not being able to get to the States for family emergencies is admittedly uncomfortable, but the silver lining came from my friend Barbara--what if you were visiting the States and couldn't get home...?

Silver linings abound.

Greve

If I believe in the value of workers' strikes then I must be prepared to put up with the inconvenience...

Thus I am in Argeles and not on a train to Geneva today, because of the train strike. I won't be going to the film festival...(hopefully will makeit by next week)

A neighbour is going to Macon on Saturday, and there's a chance I will be able to catch the TGV to Geneva Sunday or Monday in time for an Indian education fund raiser Monday night.

Am I upset...?

Not really... I will enjoy the extra time in Argeles, get caught up on my newsletter, do a bit on the novel...

And although I would prefer to be in Geneva, all I have to do is to think of the people who were killed in China, are homeless in Haiti, are unemployed and I realise that a greve is not a problem at all, maybe just a minor inconvenience.

Defying?

On Meet the Press yesterday David Gregory asked why U.S. allies and friends are DEFYING us?

Defying? There are 190 countries give or take in the world. Why should any of them obey or defy us?

How arrogant.

Maybe

Today I was overswept with feelings of contentment, almost a tsunami of contentment. And it is more than ignoring the S word (see blog below).

Maybe it was the wonderful lunch at Flowers of magret de canard in banyuls sauce... or the walk in the sunshine afterward past my favourite purple flowers.



Or maybe it was wandering around the marché talking to misc. friends or stopping in Barbara's store and seeing a happy Ptah II recovered from the removal of his cement hairball in his intestine surgery. Or talking with the two young Belgian girls who have fallen in love with Shakespeare...



Maybe is was gazing at the river (with water still), clothes outside the washing shed and the mountains. I have my usual I-don't-want-to-leave-Argelès-I-can-hardly- wait-to-get-to Geneva dichotomy. Living two wonderful lives in one is happiness plus.

or or or

Or maybe it doesn't matter and it is enough to be happy...

Things I'd rather to do than write a synopsis

OK. Murder in Argeles only needs a synopsis before I send it to my publisher Five Star. What I would rather do than write a synopsis.

1. Go to my dentist.
2. Go to my Gynie.
3. Wash the tile floor on my hands and knees without a pillow under my knees.
4. Drive in Paris at rush hour.
5. Go without chocolate for six months.
6. Recite French verbs for three hours.
7. Recite German verbs for three hours.
8. Get drenched in the rain.

I thought about saying spend the summer in Florida, but the synopsis wins out on that one.

Certain age??? Me???

“You women of a certain age do well,” Anja said.
We were sitting in the sun in a café: the Danish journalist who started the migration of Danes to Argelès, her daughter and husband and me. It was after Easter dinner, after theIR family had played miniature golf. We were all trying to see as many people as we could over this weekend when some of the summer crowd was here.
Although my daughter keeps saying “My Mom, retired? Hah!!!!” I find it hard to think of myself as a woman of a “certain age” but I am.
I look at my friends who vary from their 20s to 90s, but those in my bracket indeed do fit that term.
It is not derogatory at all. Most of us think this is the best time of our lives. Oh yes, there are aches and pains, but they were always there in some form: a cold. Flu, measles, a fall ice skating, etc.
My friends are busy painting, singing, learning new things. Two have walked a pilgrim trail, one is helping war victims in Bosnia.
I think of the time I have to write, to develop my business, the freedom to go where I want, when I want with only financial limitations, which were worse when I was younger.
And if there are problems helping my mother at the end of her life, it is also a privilege to pay her back for all the support she gave me (I must remember I wrote this when I am banging my head against a wall).
We women are lucky to live in a time that we can do so much. And we are lucky to be able to share it with each other. Certain age? Certainly!

Review of my new novel

Family Value. Nelson, D. L. (author).

Apr. 2010. 324p. Gale/Cengage, hardcover, $25.95 (9781594148736).
REVIEW. First published March 2, 2010 (Booklist Online).

The house at 392 Chestnut Street is a duplex occupied by the DiDonatos and the Marshes. Life isn’t perfect for either family. Jay Marsh, an attorney, is dealing with his dying, estranged adoptive father. Jay’s wife, Carol, a probation officer working with juvenile offenders, oversees a kid who has become a neo-Nazi, and Carol’s whole family is put in harm’s way. Tony DiDonato, an unemployed college professor, has turned to salvaging and refurbishing furniture. His wife, Laura, a safety engineer, has found out that her company’s dangerous chemicals violate the law, but if she turns the company in, she’ll lose her much-needed job. Nelson has painted a sympathetic portrait of families with problems and issues—many of them major. Her keen eye for detail makes this novel a richly textured, realistic view of the modern American family.

— Shelley Mosley

The saying just ain't so

One housemate relaxes on her holiday

There is a saying that fish and guests stink after three days, but in the week-long visit of my Geneva housemate, it is definitely not true. Despite my tiny flat we had the same ease of doing what needed to be doing between good meals, laughter, DVDs and a serious conversation or two. Maybe because although we spend far more time in Geneva, she could never be a guest, just a valued friend.

Storm damage

The plan was for a Sunday without budging, staying in sweats, reading, writing, listening to music. But when May called and suggested lunch at a restaurant, I was out the door almost immediately.

We went to the beach which gave us a chance to see storm damage, house-high piles of tree branches, waiting to be carted away. Compared to Haiti, Chile or Fiji this is minor, but the poubelle container speared with a palm I found amusing. I wondered how many poubelle containers it would take at one branch per can?

A great day...

"Tu est belle, comme toujours," Joel, my olive dealer told me as I bought several types for the impending visit of my Geneva housemate. Joel is full of it but fun. The marché stands were set up between the melting snowbanks.

At La Noisette, I saw several people I hadn't seen for a while and there was no choice but to have a chocolate chaud with them. Good thing, because one of my friends is off to Sarajevo for a third time. She donates her massage services to war victims, which has proven to help with the aftermath of the hell they lived through.

Then there was the women's film festival: four films and dinner.

YELLA: A German film about an ex abused wife in east Germany seeking work in west Germany.
So-so.

RACHEL: A documentary made by a French7Israeli Moroccan about the death of Rachel Corrie, more meaningful because of the civil process starting in Israel this month and brought by her parents. The debate was not, mainly because the audience was solidly on the side of the Gaza and Palestine.

Dinner followed by A musical interlude honouring the life of Jean Ferrat who died that day.

CAFE TRANSIT: An Iranian film. A widow refuses to follow the custom by marrying her brother-in-law and opens a wonderful café.

Sunday is the fourth film and international effort about a Somalian nomad girl who runs away rather than marry.

The dinner served at long tables where people, all strangers, quickly included me in their conversation. The man next to me wanted to make sure I knew exactly what I was eating and the history of the wine.

Apero with a white wine sangria, olives, chips etc.
Endive, apple, cheese, walnut salad
Beef Burgundy (melted in the mouth) with pasta
Mousse chocolate
wine
water
A second dessert was offered after the last film but I did not go.

All this was put together by our local film association made up of volunteers. The total cost 23 Euros (US$31, CHF33)

Although there's many ways to celebrate a day in March and just being alive this was a great one.

Corporation Running for Office

I wish I voted in Maryland where Murray Hill, Inc. is running for office.

Yup, Inc. Murray Hill is a corporation. Since the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have the same rights as people, isn't this the next logical step.

Would the Honorable Junior Senator from Texas, Mr. Exxon please take the floor?

Great video of our carnival etc.

http://www.argeles.tv/videos/carnaval-2010-3-21/-

And this week is our feminine film festival four films from different countries including one on Rachel Corrie, an Iranian, a German, and Somalian plus dinner for all of 23 Euros.

Doctors are on strike...they want to get 13 Euros per appt. in place of 22. And of course that is covered by insurance for everyone.

The snow is melting but there are still many unplowed streets.

It's going to snow tomorrow

My Swedish and French neighbours were sitting around my table, the remains of a raclette in the centre as we finished our dessert.

Sylvie announced the meteo for Monday. Her partner Alain shuddered. He had lived in Haiti for years and is definitely a warm weather person. The two of them and their dogs had been gone a year, taking their boat across the Atlantic and back.

Bjorn and Kristin, were no happier, having come down from Sweden to work on their future retirement home and to escape their own too-long winter.
When the rain pounded on my roof, Alain, the ever hopeful one, "It is too warm too snow."
Sylvie placed her faith in the meteo report she had heard.

Thus, this morning, when I woke, the roof across the street was white. Now compared to living in New England, nor my daughter's recent imprisonment in her apartment in Washington DC with dwindling supply of ice cream, the snow is nothing. But for the south of France, it is a big, big deal.

Thus today will be a writing day. I have some corn chowder on the stove, the score from the Double Life of Veronica is filling my flat with haunting music, and my New England/Swiss soul is happy.

Note: The angels are for you Rose.

New book cover

I have the cover for the book that will be published in the fall. My first mystery. It does capture the New England feel.

"I was born in that house"

I was ambling down the street with one of the mamies, one of the Catalan grandmothers. We ambled because she had a cane to help her poor hip. Even the word amble might convey more speed than we were making. It was a bit of shock for me to discover although I thought of her as an elderly woman, a grandmother of the old fashioned rocking-chair type, she was only a couple of years older than I was.

The mamies have always been a part of Argelès for me. They are old women in house dresses and aprons, gray-hair pushed into buns. They often put their chairs on the street, knit and talk in fast Catalan. Sometimes they gather on benches near the beauty salon to share their lives.

One by one, the mamie told me the history of the house. Where the Swedes are now redoing their house, a fisherman with a long beard lived. Soldiers of all colours occupied the house next to where Jean-Pierre and Babette operate the little grocery store. The Danish journalist's house was very tiny, she said, still is and a man lived there all alone. He wasn't friendly, but he had a long beard too. I learned who was great with a needle, and who had well-behaved children, who taught and who lost children during the war.

When you live on a street with houses 400 years old, there is a lot of history that will never make a history book. The street is very international now: Danes, Swedes, Swiss, English, French, Catalan and a German.

The mamie pointed to another house. "English bought this one. They might need friends. You should say hello."

I will, not because they are English, but because this is a village where we know our neighbours. For years, the Catalans were not sure about the newcomers, but once our flamboyant Danish film director threw a street party the atmosphere changed. Mixing varies, but it is impossible not to share something with everyone be it a cup of tea at La Noisette, a move at the theatre around the corner, or a conversation with another woman as we amble home with our baskets of vegetables we bought for lunch. I doubt, despite the demographic change, if if is that much different then it was in this woman's childhood or 40 years ago when some of the houses were built.

I love having my moment on this street.

High Noon or 09:38

John Wayne was no where to be seen and do not forsake me oh my darling did not sound, just the street cleaners horn, loud enough to disturb the rest of those in the cemetery 10 blocks away.

The houses on my street were built between 1400 and 1700 and although the facades have been done and the insides probably changed a few times each century, the street is still narrow. Built to allow space for people and sheep, there is space for only one vehicle at a time, and not a wide one at that.

Argelès is fanatic about cleaning its street, and thank goodness it no longer uses the vomit-producing lemon scent that clogged the sinuses and made chocking the only alternative. Still the machine comes around regularly.

The car belongs to my neighbour Yian, a young man despite having a bit too much testosterone, has a very sweet side. We have a sugar-borrowing relationship, although he is more apt to borrow and I am more apt to use his muscle for lifting stuff. I have noticed it is only the locals that will park on the street. The others will drive up to deposit packages then take their cars to the river or the library parking lot, a short walk away.

Yian was in no hurry.

The street clear was.

More horns.

More raised voices.

Horns, voices, horns, voices, horns, voices and a growl or two.

The street cleaner inched the machine towards the red car.

Yian gave in.

Cut and print.

hmmm

So much confetti on the street, the pavement isn't visible
Kids in costume
Floats, loving made locally
Bands
Horses with riders
It must be carnival.

I do love these local fêtes, locally arranged and just part of the joy of living in my village.

No big thing

But there was something wonderful about wandering out this morning for fresh baked bread, beautiful broccoli, a nice chat with the butcher and the green grocer. Such a sensible way to live and eat.
The village is the middle of carnival with its costumes and parades as well.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The Reading

http://www.hotel-templiers.com/gb/sommaire.htm Les Templiers, is a restaurant in Collioure, with paintings lining the walls, some from impressionists who had no money to pay for meals, or so the legend goes.

Last night I got a chance to read from my novels to a lovely mixed-language group, but I also got a chance to wear the T-Shirt my daughter gave me for Christmas. In case you can't read it from the too dark photo, it says, "Be careful for I'll put you in my next novel."

Maybe Llara thinks that because in The Card, there is a smart mouthed blond teenager, and she was once a smart mouthed blond teenager.

Or should I stay smart fingered? There was the time back on The Riverway in Boston and I was busy writing. Finally, I was ready to get my hero and heroine into bed after constant delays.

The phone rang.

I answered it. When I came back, I found on the computer screen, the smart-fingered blond teenager had added the line "Not tonight dear, I have a headache."

Fortunately no headache at the reading.

Changing Lives Again

Here I go again changing from Geneva to Argeles,
From chai lattés to Franck's chocolate chaud,
From lunches at Mikado and Manno to Cayrou and Les Flowers,
From buses to walking,
From roaming a country to roaming a village,
From spending more times with writers to spending more time with artists,
From a lake to a sea,
From Alps/Jura to Pyrenées, Corbieres and Alberes,
From a large cozy house to a tiny cozy studio
From shopping at Migros to marchés

But what stays the same is writing (although Experiment is not going well) be it fiction or newsletter, sharing with others and loving it all.

Someone stole the lake

As I do every morning, I wandered into my housemate's room to look at the lake and the mountains from her balcony. One of the typical views above I snapped when I first came back from Washington. The houses are always static, but the trees, flowers the face of the lake and the mountains vary.

However today there was no lake, just a sheet of gray after the houses. Whoever stole the lake, please bring it back.

Play/work balance

With the newsletter out of the way having worked all day Monday, I scheduled a play day, starting with appreciation of the rocks that my housemate uses in her vase. The tulips had dropped their petals and the rocks were in the sink. What a pleasure to see the shades of beige and brown, feel their smooth surfaces. A last sushi trip before I go to sushi-less Argelés, and discovered I had left my money at home. Fortunately No. 2 son bailed me out.

I ambled into Sherlock Holmes only to almost walk out, probably the second worst movie I've seen. Song of Norway wins the worst movie. It was so bad I enjoyed its badness. Ah well, I will get an espresso brownie, I thought, but as I left the theatre the No. 27 bus was there, a miracle. I hopped on and planned to get the brownie at Rive. At Rive, the bus was there. The universe was against me having a brownie. I can live with that.
Over the weekend My housemate and I escaped the Geneva cold and grey. We trained through postcard perfect snowy mountains to Lugano. We are used to bilingual French-English living. However, our Italian is limited to raviolo, risotto, lasagna, prego. Her German is fluent, mine is mini-functional but we managed with lots of laughter between all the languages. We took boat rides and bus rides...we explored an antiques mini marché, we meandered through a park admiring all the statues. The blue skies and above freezing temperatures were wonderful. The picture above is a gate to nowhere, and I got a chance to add to my cow photo collection. Click to appreciate the originality.

So tomorrow I face paper work for dumb stuff like taxes, and setting up an email account for the woman serving as my associate editor with the newsletter and and and...

Not a complaint...I like the play/work combination.

Reprinted from Tom Dispatch--a bit of sanity

Hold Onto Your Underwear: This Is NOT a National Emergency

by Tom Engelhardt

Let me put American life in the Age of Terror into some kind of context, and then tell me you're not ready to get on the nearest plane heading anywhere, even toward Yemen.

In 2008, 14,180 Americans were murdered, according to the FBI. In that year, there were 34,017 fatal vehicle crashes in the U.S. and, so the U.S. Fire Administration tells us, 3,320 deaths by fire. More than 11,000 Americans died of the swine flu between April and mid-December 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; on average, a staggering 443,600 Americans die yearly of illnesses related to tobacco use, reports the American Cancer Society; 5,000 Americans die annually from food-borne diseases; an estimated 1,760 children died from abuse or neglect in 2007; and the next year, 560 Americans died of weather-related conditions, according to the National Weather Service, including 126 from tornadoes, 67 from rip tides, 58 from flash floods, 27 from lightning, 27 from avalanches, and 1 from a dust devil.

As for airplane fatalities, no American died in a crash of a U.S. carrier in either 2007 or 2008, despite 1.5 billion passengers transported. In 2009, planes certainly went down and people died. In June, for instance, a French flight on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared in bad weather over the Atlantic, killing 226. Continental Connection Flight 3407, a regional commuter flight, crashed into a house near Buffalo, New York, that February killing 50, the first fatal crash of a U.S. commercial flight since August 2006. And in January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549, assaulted by a flock of birds, managed a brilliant landing in New York's Hudson River when disaster might have ensued. In none of these years did an airplane go down anywhere due to terrorism, though in 2007 two terrorists smashed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with propane tanks into the terminal of Glasgow International Airport. (No one was killed.)

The now-infamous Northwest Airlines Flight 253, carrying Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his bomb-laden underwear toward Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, had 290 passengers and crew, all of whom survived. Had the inept Abdulmutallab actually succeeded, the death toll would not have equaled the 324 traffic fatalities in Nevada in 2008; while the destruction of four Flight 253s from terrorism would not have equaled New York State's 2008 traffic death toll of 1,231, 341 of whom, or 51 more than those on Flight 253, were classified as "alcohol-impaired fatalities."

Had the 23-year-old Nigerian set off his bomb, it would have been a nightmare for the people on board, and a tragedy for those who knew them. It would certainly have represented a safety and security issue that needed to be dealt with. But it would not have been a national emergency, nor a national-security crisis. It would have been nothing more than a single plane knocked out of the sky, something that happens from time to time without the intervention of terrorists.

And yet here's the strange thing: thanks to what didn't happen on Flight 253, the media essentially went mad, 24/7. Newspaper coverage of the failed plot and its ramifications actually grew for two full weeks after the incident until it had achieved something like full-spectrum dominance, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. In the days after Christmas, more than half the news links in blogs related to Flight 253. At the same time, the Republican criticism machine (and the media universe that goes with it) ramped up on the subject of the Obama administration's terror wimpiness; the global air transport system plunked down millions of dollars on new technology which will not find underwear bombs; the homeland security-industrial-complex had a field day; and fear, that adrenaline rush from hell, was further embedded in the American way of life.

Under the circumstances, you would never know that Americans living in the United States were in vanishingly little danger from terrorism, but in significant danger driving to the mall; or that alcohol, tobacco, E. coli bacteria, fire, domestic abuse, murder, and the weather present the sort of potentially fatal problems that might be worth worrying about, or even changing your behavior over, or perhaps investing some money in. Terrorism, not so much.

The few Americans who, since 2001, have died from anything that could be called a terror attack in the U.S. -- whether the 13 killed at Fort Hood or the soldier murdered outside an army recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas -- were far outnumbered by the 32 dead in a 2007 mass killing at Virginia Tech University, not to speak of the relatively regular moments when workers or former workers "go postal." Since September 11th, terror in the U.S. has rated above fatalities from shark attacks and not much else. Since the economic meltdown of 2008, it has, in fact, been left in the shade by violent deaths that stem from reactions to job loss, foreclosure, inability to pay the rent, and so on.

This is seldom highlighted in a country perversely convulsed by, and that can't seem to get enough of, fantasies about being besieged by terrorists.

Institutionalizing Fear Inc.

The attacks of September 11, 2001, which had the look of the apocalyptic, brought the fear of terrorism into the American bedroom via the TV screen. That fear was used with remarkable effectiveness by the Bush administration, which color-coded terror for its own ends. A domestic version of shock-and-awe -- Americans were indeed shocked and awed by 9/11 -- helped drive the country into two disastrous wars and occupations, each still ongoing, and into George W. Bush's Global War on Terror, a term now persona non grata in Washington, even if the "war " itself goes on and on.

Today, any possible or actual terror attack, any threat no matter how far-fetched, amateurish, poorly executed, or ineffective, raises a national alarm, always seeming to add to the power of the imperial presidency and threatening to open new "fronts" in the now-unnamed global war. The latest is, of course, in Yemen, thanks in part to that young Nigerian who was evidently armed with explosives by a home-grown organization of a few hundred men that goes by the name al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The fear of terrorism has, by now, been institutionalized in our society -- quite literally so -- even if the thing we're afraid of has, on the scale of human problems, something of the will o' the wisp about it. For those who remember their Cold War fiction, it's more specter than SPECTRE.

That fear has been embedded in what once was an un-American word, more easily associated with Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany: "homeland." It has replaced "country," "land," and "nation" in the language of the terror-mongers. "The homeland" is the place which terrorism, and nothing but terrorism, can violate. In 2002, that terror-embedded word got its own official government agency: the Department of Homeland Security, our second "defense" department, which has a 2010 budget of $39.4 billion (while overall "homeland security" spending in the 2010 budget reached $70.2 billion). Around it has grown up a little-attended-to homeland-security complex with its own interests, businesses, associations, and lobbyists (including jostling crowds of ex-politicians and ex-government bureaucrats).

As a result, more than eight years after 9/11, an amorphous state of mind has manifested itself in the actual state as a kind of Fear Inc. A number of factors have clearly gone into the creation of Fear Inc. and now insure that fear is the drug constantly shot into the American body politic. These would include:

The imperial presidency: The Bush administration used fear not only to promote its wars and its Global War on Terror, but also to unchain the commander-in-chief of an already imperial presidency from a host of restraints. The dangers of terror and of al-Qaeda, which became the global bogeyman, and the various proposed responses to it, including kidnapping ("extraordinary rendition"), secret imprisonment, and torture, turned out to be the royal road to the American unconscious and so to a presidency determined, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others liked to say, to take the gloves off. It remains so and, as a result, under Barack Obama, the imperial presidency only seems to gain ground. Recently, for instance, we learned that, under the pressure of the Flight 253 incident, the Obama administration has adopted the Bush administration position that a president, under certain circumstances, has the authority to order the assassination of an American citizen abroad. (In this case, New Mexico-born Islamic cleric Anwar Aulaqi, who has been linked to the 9/11 plotters, the Fort Hood killer, and Abdulmutallab.) The Bush administration opened the door to this possibility and now, it seems, a Democratic president may be stepping through.

The 24/7 media moment: 24/7 blitz coverage was once reserved for the deaths of presidents (as in the assassination of John F. Kennedy) and public events of agreed-upon import. In 1994, however, it became the coin of the media realm for any event bizarre enough, sensational enough, celebrity-based enough to glue eyeballs. That June, O.J. Simpson engaged in his infamous low-speed car "chase" through Orange County followed by more than 20 news helicopters while 95 million viewers tuned in and thousands more gathered at highway overpasses to watch. No one's ever looked back. Of course, in a traditional media world that's shedding foreign and domestic bureaus and axing hordes of reporters, radically downsizing news rooms and shrinking papers to next to nothing, the advantages of focusing reportorial energies on just one thing at a time are obvious. Those 24/7 energies are now regularly focused on the fear of terrorism and events which contribute to it, like the plot to down Flight 253.

The Republican criticism machine and the media that go with it: Once upon a time, even successful Republican administrations didn't have their own megaphone. That's why, in the Vietnam era, the Nixon administration battled the New York Times so fiercely (and -- my own guess -- that played a part in forcing the creation of the first "op-ed" page in 1970, which allowed administration figures like Vice President Spiro Agnew and ex-Nixon speechwriter William Safire to gain a voice at the paper). By the George W. Bush era, the struggle had abated. The Times and papers like it only had to be pacified or cut out of the loop, since from TV to talk radio, publishing to publicity, the Republicans had their own megaphone ready at hand. This is, by now, a machine chock-a-block full of politicians and ex-politicians, publishers, pundits, military "experts," journalists, shock-jocks, and the like (categories that have a tendency to blend into each other). It adds up to a seamless web of promotion, publicity, and din. It's capable of gearing up on no notice and going on until a subject -- none more popular than terrorism and Democratic spinelessness in the face of it -- is temporarily flogged to death. It ensures that any failed terror attack, no matter how hopeless or pathetic, will be in the headlines and in public consciousness. It circulates constant fantasies about possible future apocalyptic terror attacks with atomic weaponry or other weapons of mass destruction. (And in all of the above, of course, it is helped by a host of tagalong pundits and experts, news shows and news reports from the more liberal side of the aisle.)

The Democrats who don't dare: It's remarkable that the sharpest president we've had in a while didn't dare get up in front of the American people after Flight 253 landed and tell everyone to calm down. He didn't, in fact, have a single intelligent thing to say about the event. He certainly didn't remind Americans that, whatever happened to Flight 253, they stood in far more danger heading out of their driveways behind the wheel or pulling into a bar on the way home for a beer or two. Instead, the Obama administration essentially abjectly apologized, insisted it would focus yet more effort and money on making America safe from air terrorism, widened a new front in the Global War on Terror in Yemen (speeding extra money and U.S. advisors that way), and when the din from its critics didn't end, "pushed back," as Peter Baker of the New York Times wrote, by claiming "that they were handling terror suspects much as the previous administration did." It's striking when a Democratic administration finds safety in the claim that it's acting like a Republican one, that it's following the path to the imperial presidency already cleared by George W. Bush. Fear does that to you, and the fear of terror has been institutionalized at the top as well as the bottom of society.

9/11 Never Ends

Fear has a way of re-ordering human worlds. That only a relatively small number of determined fanatics with extraordinarily limited access to American soil keep Fear Inc. afloat should, by now, be obvious. What the fear machine produces is the dark underside of the charming Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover, "A View of the World from 9th Avenue," in which Manhattan looms vast as the rest of the planet fades into near nothingness.

When you see the world "from 9th Avenue," or from an all-al-Qaeda-all-the-time "news" channel, you see it phantasmagorically. It's out of all realistic shape and proportion, which means you naturally make stupid decisions. You become incapable of sorting out what matters and what doesn't, what's primary and what's secondary. You become, in short, manipulable.

This is our situation today.

People always wonder: What would the impact of a second 9/11-style attack be on this country? Seldom noticed, however, is that all the pin-prick terror events blown up to apocalyptic proportions add up to a second, third, fourth, fifth 9/11 when it comes to American consciousness.

So the next time a Flight 253 occurs and the Republicans go postal, the media morphs into its 24/7 national-security-disaster mode, the pundits register red on the terror-news scale, the president defends himself by reaffirming that he is doing just what the Bush administration would have done, the homeland security lobbyists begin calling for yet more funds for yet more machinery, and nothing much happens, remember those drunken drivers, arsonists, and tobacco merchants, even that single dust devil and say:

Hold onto your underpants, this is not a national emergency.

Checklsit for weekend in Lugano

Escape cold of Geneva CHECK Lugano was 6 degrees warmer and sunny
*Enjoy scenery from Train CHECK, snow covered fields and mountains
Eat in dining Car CHECK yum
Explore city CHECK
Take boat ride CHECK
Check out Last Supper by DiVinci pupil in old church CHECK
Watch Olympics CHECK (and to see Garou sing CHECK CHECK CHECK)
Eat Risotto CHECK
DO NOT TURN ON A COMPUTER CHECK
Come back mega content CHECK



*thank goodness I am back where train, buses etc make cars optional.

The raclette/chestnut solution

My daughter who has been house bound by record snowfalls in her Vienna VA flat since the weekend, would scoff at our paltry couple of inches of snow cover, but with the temperature plummeting to -6° centigrade it is cold. With the bise it turns the temperature to (OH MY GAWD!!!)

Still layered, I ventured out today to meet up with a writer friend over a chai latte and a blueberry muffin and the conversation was worth every shiver. Then there were errands to run leaving me bone cold.

Solution? Hot roasted chestnuts. They warm the hands and tummy. Then tonight it is perfect weather for raclette...

Cold weather does have its good side.

DL

Garou ahhhhhhh

I am far too old to be a crazed teenager screaming for a star. I never did it. I didn't scream for Elvis or the Beatles. Not that I didn't like them. The term bobby socker (teenagers who screamed for singers or actors in the 40s and 50s) is long gone, but there are two men I would like to sit down and talk with. One is George Clooney and I do mean talk here.

The other is Garou, whom I have adored since he lumbered across the stage as Quasimodo in Notre Dame de Paris. Videos of his singing "Belle" and the other songs from the musical are all on youtube.

For Christmas I was given his new CD Gentleman Cambrioleur (gentleman robber). Gone is much of the Joe Crooker gravel and in its place is almost a piano bar singer. He would stand up to the late Bobby Short http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bobby+short&search_type=&aq=f, Sandler ahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAGrItMPC2ond Young http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtl-we32QOw&feature=related or Bernadette Peters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gl40NIfA_I&feature=PlayList&p=1112C8FE8E61FCBD&index=0&playnext=1

A combination of songs and interview is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=LljQM5fK6G8&feature=PlayList&p=90DC4DBEADDEB6C0&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=34

Maybe I could manage a little scream, but definitely a long ahhhhhhhh when I listen.

Loading teh DVD for fun

Everwood, the latest series of choice for my housemate and me. We settle in with goodies (shrimp, veggies, dip, me in my snuggie, she in her flanket. Munchkin, the cat selects her lap, which is good because I am knitting my afghan which should be ready by next winter.

The disc finishes, and my housemate uses the remote to open the DVD.

Aha!!! Munchkin jumps down and looks.

For the fun of it my housemate closes it.

Fascinating Munchkin thinks.

For several minutes, the cat is more entertained at the opening and closing of the DVD door than we were in the series itself.

triple whammy

In my beloved apartment at 394 The Riverway in Boston I did not have an electric blanket but an electric undersheet that turned on before bed time in winter took snuggling under the covers to an Olympic gold medal high.

I never even thought to look for such a thing in Switzerland.

Coming back to Switzerland imagine my delight to discover that my housemate had not only found them, but had purchased one for each of our beds. But it offers two more joys.

Put PJs flat under the duvet and over the sheet and turn on the heating mat. Not only is the bed toasty, but when you change in the cool air of the house, the warming both physical and psychological starts immediately.

When my back hurts (yes Mighty Mom the exercises do help and I do them regularly), it acts as a heating pad.

It's triple whammy...

Plash

One question James Lipton always asked famous actors on the Actors’ Studio is “What is your favourite word?” Not that I will ever be talking to Lipton, but should the 80+ year old actor/writer/director/teacher drop in to Corsier or Argelès and he asked I would say “plash.”

I first ran into plash at university in the poem Pattern (see below). I always loved story poems like Browning’s Last Duchess. Being at university during the Vietnam War, when certain rigid dress codes and other rules didn’t make much sense, the poem resonated that life didn’t change through the centuries, same old, same old.

Plash has more or less been replaced by splash, so much so when I used it in a novel, my editor changed it. I changed it back and the next editor changed it again.

Fast forward to Italy over two years ago in Collodi, the Medieval town where Pinocchio was written. I walked in the garden with a former neighbour. And the waterdrops were plashing in the marble fountains and I said, “And the plashing of waterdrops In the marble fountain…”

Patterns, he said.

“You know it?” I was amazed. For all our conversations when we each had a condo at 394 The Riverway and some visits after he and his wife moved to Maine and I moved to Europe, I had never seen his poetic side. Friends, who have peelability those who after years and years you discover new depths in them, are really valuable.

I have not run into the word since then until this week, when waking early I started to read Alice Hoffman’s The Story Sisters, there it was. Snow fell outside the window, not plashing or splashing, but slipping softly to the ground.

Maybe I will try and work the plash into my next novel.

From Webster’s
Main Entry: plash
Function: verb
Date: 1542 (Splash appeared 1715)
intransitive verb: to cause a splashing or spattering effecttransitive verb : to break the surface of (water) :
Patterns
I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon –
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

Mixed feelings

I miss my rose bedroom in Geneva, I miss my studio in Argeles, and beginning Monday is the month where I will be in both. I miss fruits and vegetables that taste like fruits and vegetables.

I want to be back in a bilingual environment.

I want my normal (whatever that is) schedule back.

I want to see my housemate, her son, her cat, and friends I haven't seen too long in Argeles.

I don't want to leave my daughter now knowing when I will see her again. Yesterday we went to Mt. Vernon, ate TexMex and watched a Chaucer documentary. We joked about me not wanting to walk to CVS (not true) and role reversal of her picking up after me (he he he revenge).

I am grateful for electronic communications where we can keep up with the small details of each other's lives.

I have been accused of being a cake eater. I want it all. I get more than most.

Howard Zinn 1922-2010

Thank you

Feline Fountain

My daughter's almost coon cat, the Lady Guinevere, AKA The Lady Gwen, refuses to drink still water. No, we don't have to buy bottled fizzy water. A dripping faucette used to solve the problem, but that can add to the water bill and the drip, drip, drip is crazy producing. Plus the Lady Gwen no longer thinks to check out the sinks. She is a specialist in beauty not brains.

Then my daughter found the solution, a kitty fountain. It rotates water silently.

My daughter left for work leaving the fountain off. The Lady Gwen would walk by the fountain and stare it. The water did not starting running. She sat by it and either had a real mini-simulated asthma attack or a real one, hoping to produce a guilt trip. By now she shuld know our family doesn't do guilt trips.

No matter how thirsty she was, she was not about to take sip, although I am sure she was wondering if I would believe her if she fake-fainted from thirst.

I tried to turn the fountain on. I ran my hand over inch of it. Nothing.

As soon as my daughter walked in the door, I asked my daughter. There was tube that had slipped out of sight. She attached and the Lady Gwen took a long drink.

An encounter

My daughter had dropped me at the Vienna VA library while she took her cat Gwen to the vet ($300 to confirm that the cat's asthma is worse). I browsed around and then headed back to the house about 1.5 mile walk.

The houses in the area could just as well be in Reading MA where I grew up: Cape Cods, ranches, split levels with front lawns, some landscaping, trees and sidewalks.

My sense of direction is minus zero. I had no cell phone and I wasn't sure I was walking the right way. Unlike when I was growing up there were no children outside playing although it was a beautiful day.

I saw a man, probably in his sixties come out of a house.

"Am I going in the right direction?" I asked.

"I don't know. I live in D.C."

"I live in Switzerland," I said.

"I am Swiss," he said. "From Canton Vaud."

We finished the conversation in French and he went inside to ask his daughter for directions.

He was the only person I saw on the street for the entire walk. It felt good to speak French and see a countryman.

Penguin Day

"Hi – if you are on-line right now and can turn on a TV, turn on channel 4. It is national penguin day and they have penguins on the set. " A message received on email today.

Now that is a good friend who tries to alert me to something I enjoy.

Goodbye Spenser

Goodbye Susan Silverman
Goodbye Hawk
Goodbye Jesse
Goodbye Sunny

I will miss walking the streets of Boston with you.

My mecca

A DYI fanatic friend used to kid his mecca was Home Depot. As a news junkie that checks news sources all over the world, I have now been to my mecca, a place I wanted to visit since it opened--Washington D.C:'s Newseum. www.newseum.org/

In every gallery there were volunteers to give in-depth information. Thus I did not miss the highlights, although one could spend months there and not see it all.

Highlights...

A 1500 newspaper which was in paperback book format.

The newspaper reporting on the coronation of James I in England in 1603.

Tom Paine's case where he held his writings.

Papers showing the hunt for Lincoln's killer.

I was taken into the studio where ABC broadcasts its Sunday interview show. The TV cameras have come a long way since I took television production courses in grad school.

Even the women's rooms were interesting with tiles with double-meaning headlines.

Even comedy news such as Jon Stewart and Jay Leno monologues were shown a stark contrast to the bullet-ridden news truck from the Iraq war.

Walking through the galleries, let me relive history and gave credence to the words on one of the walls..."News is history's first draft."

My daughter and money

When my daughter was still pre kindergarten, and we were struggling financially, shopping was a nightmare of "I wants." (My babysitter had trained her to keep her hands behind her back so we could walk through the most expensive crystal with no worry of breakage).

One payday I brought home my meager paycheck in $1 bills and put them on the table. Her eyes lit up. "Let's go shopping."

"Not so fast I said. First we need money for rent." I took out the weekly portion towards the rent. I continued with food, lights, telephone, daycare, my big allowance of 25 cents per day for a Coke to go with my home-packed lunch and bus fare into Boston where I had my first professional job as an underpaid copywriter. We had something about $1.32 disposal income.

From then on she never asked if she could buy, but if we could afford. As the years went by and my salary went up so did our disposal income.

I always thought I was good with money. However, my daughter is wonderful with it. And I was really impressed when she did the food shopping this weekend. Her $107 purchases came to a total a $57 outlay between coupons and buy one get one free deals. Nothing in her bag was unneeded or unwanted.

Some of it may be because of those early days of tight money, but I suspect more is just wisdom on her part.

The Ballad of the Green Berets

In Pat Conroy’s new book, which I am reading, he mentions “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” a song I hadn’t heard since the Vietnam War. On www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH4-tOqLH94, Barry Sadler stands in his uniform, his arms at his side, the Green Beret logo beside him, singing.

Fighting soldiers from the sky
Fearless men who jump and die
Men who mean just what they say
The brave men of the Green Beret

He is ramrod straight. My country has been at war most of my life. I’ve two memories of WWII.
The first is that if I were good I could push the red circle in the package of Oleo making the table spread yellow. Only later would I taste butter, what the Oleo replaced.
My other memory is my family being more joyful than I ever remembered telling me that the war was over. I didn’t know what a war was, but I was happy everyone was happy.

Silver wings upon their chest
These are men,
America's best
One hundred men we'll test today
But only three win the Green Beret

“Old Soldiers Never die, they just fade away.” My parents were glued to the small screen, black and white set. Solid Republicans, they hated what Truman did to MacArthur. Eisenhower got us out of Korea.

Trained to live, off nature's land
Trained in combat, hand to hand
Men who fight by night and day
Courage deep, from the Green Beret

I jump out of my car at the Seventh Army headquarters in Möhringen, Germany where my husband is the Army band.
It is 17:00 hours.
“Taps” is playing.
The flag is being lowered and I must stand by our Spitfire until it is over.
My German Shepherd pup escapes from the car, and a young soldier in pressed fatigues, spit-polished boots watches,but can do nothing during the daily ceremony. As the last note dies away he helps me catch the dog. I don’t question anything.

Silver wings upon their chest
These are men, America's best
One hundred men we'll test today
But only three win the Green Beret

Vietnam, which tore the country apart, was our next war. In D.C. there is a long, black wall with 50,000+ names of dead boys unlike Sadler, who lived to glorify war. One of those names belonged to a boy I went to kindergarten with. My mother later dated his father.
Now I am questioning.
The boy’s remains were found years after the war ended. A friend in California called me to tell me she’d read an article in paper where a few pieces of bone has been found where his plane had gone down. They were later identified. I called his father to express my condolences. I was in Europe and could not attend the Massachusetts funeral where those bones in a tiny box were buried. His family finally knew what had happened, but what was lost was a very intelligent man, that could have given much to others. Yet this young man believed what his country had told him.
I had an answer to my questions. Vietnam was for nothing. It created death and war profits.
The US has had lots of military actions, some like Granada in the open, others covert in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Back at home a young wife waits
Her Green Beret has met his fate
He has died for those oppressed
Leaving her this last request

I wonder what has happened to Sadler. Wikipedia tells me the song was a number 1 hit for five weeks in 1966. Sadler was a high school drop out and that he was a good solider.
That clean-faced young man became a writer, shot and killed someone in 1970s, was sentenced to four+ years in prison, suspended.
He dies in a taxi in Guatemala City with a bullet to the head in 1989.
My thoughts drift to the young soldier on leave from Iraq and travelling on the same Geneva bound train in France as I was.
“I’m making the streets of my country safe by fighting on the streets of Baghdad,” he tells me proudly. I know he’s sincere, and I feel sorry for him because of the mantra he is espousing. He has not questioned.
I think of the patriotic claptrap of CNN at the beginning of the Iraqi War, Operation Freedom flashed on the screen under green skies alit with bombs and music playing to arouse the spirit. It does not show the people dying underneath or those quaking in fear. The attacks do not last the few minutes of 9/11 but for night after night after night after night after night after night after night after night after night after night after night…

Put silver wings on my son's chest
Make him one of America's best
He'll be a man they'll test one day
Have him win the Green Beret

As I write this Michael Scheuer, Former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief (1996-99), talks about the wars that we are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen and our foreign policies. Other young men, like Sadler are out there, giving there lives, as others did before them. For nothing.

I am crying.

Nothing special

Everything special...

When one is separated from their kid by the France and the Atlantic, spending a weekend hibernating against the windy cold, watching DVDs, eating welsh raebbit, popcorn, etc. being able just to talk was the greatest weekend I could have had.

I am sooooooooo guilty of liking my kid.

Was it worth it?

As of 2:45 Jan 2nd the cost of our two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was $949,657,921,321 http://costofwar.com/ and growing by the moment. I don’t know if our attacks on Pakistan and Yemen are included.

US Soldiers Death in Iraq 4372 http://icasualties.org/

US Soldiers Death in Afghanistan 949 http://icasualties.org/

Deaths of Iraqis have been estimated from 30,000 to 655,000 www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/11/iraq.deaths as of the end of 2006\

Estimates of the number of Al Quaida members is impossible to obtain but they have shown up in most countries. Will we attack Germany, England? Even if there were 1 million in the world that means we have spent $94,965 792,132.10 to catch each one.

Only we haven’t caught and/or killed 1 million terrorists. We have killed many innocent people and more of our own people than died in 9/11. This sounds like a bad deal.

I don’t think it was worth it. Do you?

Resolutions

1. To do for my Mom all I can without destroying myself.
2. To continue to try and be a good and supportive daughter, mother, friend, housemate and hope that they all have such a good year that they don’t need support just friendship
3. To bring my German level up to functional
4. To continue to improve my French
5. To submit Murder in Argelès, finish the Experiment and begin Murder in Geneva which is playing more in my head than Murder in Damascus which will be next.
6. To continue to develop www.cunewswire.com .
7. To be prudent financially
8. To be less anal about neat…but not completely.

Swiss Cows Live it Up

I love the way they use Swiss Cows in advertising. Above they are exercising. The posters are around Geneva, but I caught this one on the train to Zurich.

Here's some more examples:

They've swung through bushes www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIpOTS_rW54&NR=1

They've sung www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WfcKIJVeQk

They've danced the flamenco www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljlTolG5M-8&feature=related

They've beaten chess experts www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Ib6XKMmE4&NR=1

I don't care how they advertise milk, just the idea of thinking about maybe trying to swallow a mouthful makes me want to gag unless it is doused in black, black chocolate or in a renversée.

Boxing Day

Thumbelinna, which was what we named this years turkey, came wrapped with a big red ribbon from our butcher. Strangely she took longer to cook than the turkey at Thanksgiving which was almost double the size. In frustration we shoved her into the microwave at the end or maybe she would still be roasting.

Boxing Day conjures up thoughts of English drawing rooms, sherry and mince pies. Ours was a little more mundane involving a meal with English neighbours just back from Romania where they are advising for a new business school. But then again the lively conversation when people automatically know the significance of the Treaty of Westphalia, history backwards/forwards/sideways, the politics behind the politics of many different countries, was anything but mundane.

It has been a wonderful holiday as will be the rest of the week. None of the after Christmas shopping frenzy when many stores, restaurants and shops shut for the week. Some companies totally close down as well. Not all, but some. I plan to go to Zurich to see an old friend, her St. Bernard, husband and new baby.

This Christmas like all carry the ghosts of Christmases past. I can still feel my father’s arms as he lifted me up to see Dancer’s and Prancer’s, et.al. foot prints on the sloping roof outside my window.

It’s Sam singing rum te tum tum to the “Little Drummer Boy.” Or the tree not being decorated until a 1957 Styrofoam Sputnik was added to the decorations.

As an adult each year my Dad and Step Mom, whom I call Jim and Norma, sent oranges, the size of grapefruits from Florida to my office where it was guaranteed someone would be there to receive them. The year after my Dad died, the box arrived with a note. My assistant asked me why I paled when I read the note. I handed it to him to read the message “Love Jim and Norma.” In a way I felt my Dad reached beyond the grave one more time to bring me love at Christmas.

And there were Cousin Christmases in Garmish, and our "forced hikes" that left my Japanese chins leg feathers covered with tiny snow balls while the meal cooked slowly back at their flat that ovefr looked the Olympic Ski Hill. Once we started with Apfelkuchen on a sun filled terrace before walking back down the mountain for the main meal.

There were the formal Swiss Christmases in Payerne, and the less formal in Geneva with my Syrian, Swiss, Czech and Indian friends. There was the year that we had Llara, Yara, Tara and Sara, or the year we belly danced through the holiday as storms raged outside.

This year was quieter, housemate, Sons no. 1 and 2 and Italian friends for dinner. The food from fois gras with figs to homemade cranberry sauce was appreciated. The fire in the fireplace burned warming our bodies on the outside as the champagne and food warmed our insides.

I missed having my daughter near, but Inshallah, I will be with her next week at this time not just for a few days, but for the month of January.

Happy Holidays

Penguin Bowling

Or confessions of an accidental Penguin Collector

Did you know penguins can filter salt water through a gland for drinking? I didn't until I got a miniature penguin bowling set for Christmas that included a booklet about penguin habits, traits, jokes, etc..

I never meant to collect penguins. It started as a joke when my uncle in Florida and I were exchanging penguin items. My friends, thinking I wanted penguin items for myself, had an AHA moment and started buying them for me. Before I knew it I had penguin everything from beautiful glass blown art works to tacky penguin slippers.

In the flat I lived in on the other side of the lake, an eight-year old neighbour, who used to give tours of my apartment to her friends, always included a stop at the penguin display. That and a prism, which once belonged to my grandmother and where we would shoot rainbows at each other were considered the highlights

My daughter each year comes up with a penguin gift and her originality in finding things is a tribute to her imagination, diligence and intelligence. Likewise now my housemate has started. Thus this penguin bowling set now adorns my bookcase, the photo taken next to the CD Player where Garou's* new album is playing. I couldn't resist having only the lead penguin looking toward the approaching ball. I hope he alerts the others.

*Very different less Joe Crocker and more Bobby Short with both French and English songs. I could picture Fred Astaire dancing to his "I Love Paris."

Ellen Goodman

What a shock. After all the Chrismas festivities I slipped upstairs and checked The Boston Globe only to read the last column by the retiring Ellen Goodman.

Fridays will not be the same without her words. Sometimes it was like she was in my head. Her column on her only daughter leaving for college captured my feeling when my daughter, the same age for had left for Germany a couple of weeks before. When she talked about the passing of the ritual holiday meals from the older to generation to us, it was if she were talking to me. Her description of birds and peace on her Maine vacations match my joy in the small natural things.

As for her politics -- I felt she was saying what I wanted to say, but she had a wider audience.

The letters posted on the internet about her column equally shocked me. Of course, there was the you'll-be-missed. However, the viciousness and the hatred of others, accusing her of being a baby killer because of her pro-choice stance, of helping to destroy the country because of her feminism. She was labelled the horror of horrors, a LEFTIE.

When did the level of discourse descend to such a level? I couldn't help compare it to our Christmas conversation with me as a far leftie and a guest as a far right. So many statements began with "you probably won't agree..." Amazingly enough we often did.

Yes, I will miss Ellen's political voice. I could say Goodman's voice, but after so many years of her being part of my regular weekly reading, she seems more like Ellen. I will equally miss her insights to regular life. Unlike many male political columnists, perhaps like a Mary Cassette painting, big ideas can trickle down to the small details of daily life and up again and that is what I will miss the most.

Sneaky Solstice

Usually the winter solstice is my most important and holiest of days. It represents the rebirth of the earth when the days start to get longer making way for new growth. I want to bring a real tree into the house as a reminder of life.

This year so bogged down with family problems it came and went with out me even being away. I can't say it is my busy social life, because I have gone to ground so to speak, keeping engagements to a minimum. Fortunately I have friends who understand.

On the other hand, this holiday at home will be simple and warm without the glitz but with the sharing and caring. On Dec. 31 (Inshallah) I will be in D.C. with my daughter, which is the greatest gift of all.

And maybe missing the solstice if I took the time to solve one more problem is as renewing as the earth turning towards the light.

A tale of Two Gardens

Snow from the balcony in Corsier Port overlooking the lake and the Jura

Snow through the screen taken in Long Island.

It was the best of times it was the worst of times.

Okay, maybe Charles Dickens wasn't talking about snow. Geneva had snow most of the weekend, small amounts in comparison to how the US East Coast was zonked in. The two pictures show the respective storms. If it were a contest on who has the most snow, my girl friend in Long Island would win hands and shovels down.

The worst part of a storm is the shovelling, the slippery driving, the cold.

The best part is the beauty and being snug and cozy inside. And although the storms were three thousand miles apart it was fun sharing the information about them with a friend so far away, although there were moments of fantasy about chatting and chocolate in front of a chimney fire in the same place rather than an ocean apart. On the other hand, each of us could enjoy the chocolate and chimney(s) with the chatting being by email.

Blog Challenge No. 8

This is almost cheating, because it is about people I know and care about, but the evening was so special, I am hoping it will fulfill my housemate's challenge that within four weeks I do eight blogs observing people and situations.

Snow fell softly outside the small city flat. Inside it was warm in temperature and feeling. One wall was painted terra cotta that set off the exhibition-quality enlarged photos of sunsets.

We were there, my housemate, her No.1 and No.2 sons and me for dinner and to look at the photos No. 1 son took on his recent trip to Madagascar. I felt as if I were back in my childhood avidly absorbing other worlds from the National Geographic as I looked at the red clay, the houses, the sea.

Fondue bubbled in the kitchen. The viande seche was topped with the traditional pickles and onions. The white wine was as crisp as the air outdoors. Our talk was of Christmas, who would sleep where and how the dinner would be. For the last few weeks, Santa lists have been circulated along with check backs between us to make sure that everyone is happy. The desires are modest, the gifts few but selected and wrapped with thought and caring.

At the end we broke the Escalade Marmite, Son No. 2 and me, the youngest and oldest as tradition decrees (there is an advantage to aging)

I marvel that what had been a stop gap measure to live here temporarily while awaiting my Swiss nationality and until I could find another place in this apartment-short area, has become such a joy. Over the last few years it is not only the fun things like fondue and photos, but a sharing of the mundane and sometimes the crisises, the chores and the small things that just make life richer.

As we went back into the cold, my heart was anything but cold but beat just a bit faster with happiness.