Cookie contest

My housemate and I stopped off on our way home where a group of her friends were gathered and we walked smack dab into a cookie contest. Each of the women had baked cookies and now it was time to rate them.

Samples of each were nibbled then rated one to five on a sheet.

Comments were made about texture, the history of Toll House cookies, oil vs. butter, recipes gleaned from the internet

One contestant admitted using a package mix.

Despite being math challenged I volunteered as a neutral party to tally and announce the results.Drum rolls and a bit of drama and the first place winner took her bows.

Who came in last? The maker of packaged cookies.

No comments on sugar highs.

No Buy Report

The first month of my no buy year has ended with only two temptations.

1. the pastry cutter (which I would never use)
2. A down filled coat on sale. Although this is my favourite style I have two perfect satisfactory winter coats.

I have found I have eaten out less this month not from any conscious attempt. Each time I don’t eat out on a day I considered I put 1 CHF in the little silver canister.

My housemate adds money for when she doesn’t go for coffee.

We both add money based on bets lost, disagreements about who owes what (this is usually the case when both of us want to pay for something so rather than split it, one pays, the other adds to our fund.)

And what do we do with the money?

When there’s enough we head for Marrionier, our favourite restaurant in the next village and feel we have a free dinner. (We also eat there when the funds do not come from the little canister).

Having not bought one single material thing this month do I feel deprived?Nope, nada. Niet, non.

Has my standard of living gone down? Nope, nada. Niet, non.

Am I unhappy? Nope, nada. Niet, non

But then I never related possessions and happiness. It goes to my three rules of ownership.
1. Is it useful?
2. Is it beautiful?
3. Does it have a memory?

If something can't meet one of those three criteria, why should I clutte up my life with it.

Wish I could apply the rules to the paperwork in my life, but it is impossible to have everything.

Buying Candles

The people from Gaza broke down the wall between them and Egypt and poured into the country. Those that had money bought supplies they were unable to buy because of the blockade. Besides food and fuel, one of the common purchases, was candles. Not the pretty kind like in the photo, but anything that would let them have light at night.

Meanwhile the US is blocking a UN security resolution that requires Israel to let humanitarian aid through because it doesn’t include language against the rocket attacks from Gaza.

There is also no language about the attacks by Israel on Gaza, but that is not a US concern.

Reading the blogs of those suffering there is painful.

“We happen to be sort of be in the eye of the storm as it were. Fierce battles employing mortars, RPGs, and heavy machine gun fire were raging all around our house today, at times only a block away, interdispersed with the thuds of Israeli gunships bombing areas of eastern and northern Gaza.” http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/2007/05/as-gaza-burns.html

The people of Gaza democratically elected a government in an election far cleaner than the last two American ones. They hadn’t learned the rule that not only do you have to have democratic elections, you have to vote the way the American government wants you to.

Meanwhile most of us sit in warm, heated houses, with enough food and when we buy candles it is to make things pretty not for light at night.

Gus comes a callin'

For three years I thought his name was Goose, based on everyone’s pronunciation. It’s Gus like Gus Gus the mouse in Disney’s Cinderella.
He belongs to a neighbour, and is a friend to the house’s cat, Munchkin.

I only learned the correct pronunciation last November, after I wrote to my housemate telling of his great agitation after he witnessed Munchkin’s accident. It took a while for her to figure out Goose and Gus were the same.

Gus is shown here having climbed a tree to sit on the roof over the entryway and peeking in my bedroom window. He knows a recovered Munchkin sleeps on my bed and I am sure he is asking her to come out and play. Truly a Peeping Tom.

Grey's Anatomy

Popcorn and champagne, comfy clothes and two seasons of Grey’s Anatomy: what a great Friday evening. Not only that the telecommand INCLUDING THE BACK, has been located. Now that’s a reason for champagne in itself.

Hat doffing

Ledger a tiré son chapeau, the headline in Bleu Matin read read under a photo of the dead actor in cowboy hat. Ah ha… another way the francophone press writes around the fact people have died. My housemate explained to doff’s one hat is far more polite and poetic way of saying kicked the bucket. Although I continue to collect poetic ways of explaining peoples’ death, the winner is still is “Arthur Miller has joined his Marilyn."
At what point will I know enough idiomatic French? Probably never and that's okay, because discovery is fun.

A day of contrasts

The news from Gaza is not good. I picture mothers trying to eek out a meal, but having no fuel to cook with even when they glean together rice and a vegetable or two. I see a family putting on extra sweaters when they have them because there’s no heat. I see them going to bed early because the electricity has been cut. Somewhere there’s a mother with a sick child, her hand on his fevered head, but there’s no way she can get medicine. The Israeli blockade is nearly complete. The Palestinians are suffering the same was the Warsaw Jews did in the early stages of WWII. The abusee has become the abuser.

At Davos Condi defends America. The country is the piano, the other countries the players, but she doesn’t say that most of the guts have been ripped from the inside leaving only a few discordant chords playable. She doesn’t talk about the damage the country has done, the millions dead or consigned to poverty all over the world through policies that support the few and sacrifice the many. When she blathers about democracy she doesn’t tell of it being destroyed at home with the suspension of habeas corpus, the spying, the media driven election.

Before dawn my housemate gently taps on my door and tells me I have to see the setting moon. She is right. It’s a huge circle occupying a good portion of the sky. Its reflection is a long silver ribbon crossing the lake. As the sun rises it turns the snow that yesterday looked like the thick white icing on an English fruit cake, Barbie-doll pink. Slowly the moon changes places with the sun.

When I settle in the winter garden to write the sky is brilliant blue. Words, that escaped me in the other eight drafts of Triple Decker, fly from my fingers. My blessed roommate is doing a final proofing, and still catches errors and weak points on this what I hope is the final final final draft.

On the Germanic broad carved desk in the living room, dark ruby red tulips promise spring.

From the kitchen comes the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking.

I don’t feel guilt but gratitude that I have been given so much, that I am not the mother in Gaza or Iraq. I am not dodging bullets and machetes in Africa.

I email with a buddy, another Swiss-American who cares as I do that the country we grew up in no longer exists. Although we exchange political news, I also tell him about my being woken to see the moon, and he tells me I live with people who have their priorities right. He is correct.

He sends me a poem. It summarizes the contrasts of my day.

The Answer
by Robinson Jeffers

Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.

New plantings

The new vines are planted and protected with green plastic from the elements. In a way I keep thinking of white crosses in a graveyards.

Le Renard et L'Enfant

Animals outnumbered the actors in Le Renard et L’Enfant close to fifteen to one and in the credits the most prevalent job was dresser (trainer). There were dressers to the wolves, bears, foxes. Even the snake had a dresser. The filming was beautiful, done in the Jura mountains in Eastern France not far from here. Take a look at the entire clip… http://www.lerenardetlenfant.com/ As for the story of a friendship between a wild animal and a wild child, that too was beautiful. The director was the same one who did March of the Emperor Penguins.

Clouds sleeping on mountains.

When I first moved here, I thought I would get tired of the scenery. WRONG: almost 18 years later, I am still entranced by new views.

Today it looked like the clouds blocking the view of the Alps were settling in for a nap.

Fire in the Sky

I looked up from my computer where I had been tweaking my novel Triple Decker all day as well as making sure the English and the American versions were the same except for spelling and punctuation while cutting 5000 words.

The sky outside of the winter garden was on fire.
I
sounded a sunset alert to the rest of the household and there was a stampede to get cameras. This was shot off the balcony.

Afterwards we marvelled at what a gift we had been given at the end of the day.

Build vocabulary

www.freerice.com I don't know if this is on the up and up but it is fun and if it is true we are feeding the hungry...

I gave up at the 44 level because I had other things to do.

C'est important la Potence

We celebrated a friend’s birthday at Grizzly’s in Grand Saconnex, my old stomping grounds, with a Potence. Potence is French for "Gallows", and consists of a fascinating blackened iron contraption, covered with long narrow spikes, hanging from a chain. Meat is skewered onto the spikes, set over a bowl of rice that welcomes the drippings, taken to the table and flaming brandy poured over the top. Various dips and garlicky butter are along the side to enhance the flavours.When all the meat is eaten, it would not be unreasonable to expect a Knight in armour to swing the device unseat his opponent in combat, that is if he weren’t too stuffed from all the eating

Christmas is really, really over.

There are many endings to Christmas. Some people think it is Christmas night, others consider it New Year’s Day and others still end the season on Three King’s Day, especially here when they bring out the special cake with favours baked inside and the person who finds it can wear a crown provided by the bakery.

In my neck of the woods, I decided Christmas was over when the opthamologist undecorated his cow that had lit up its neighbourhood for many weeks. However, the cow still wears its oversized glasses during the day.

What would Jean Calvin say

My writing projects this year include finally getting Triple Deckers, the anti-war novel to market one way or another, get Family Values to my current publisher, tweak my mysteries Underground Railroads and Murder in Argelès (part of a series) to my publisher (which doesn’t mean they would be accepted) and finish researching the next two Murder in Geneva and Murder in Damascus.

Researching life in Calvin’s time became a dream. I was meeting my housemate and the people who occupy my old flat for lunch when I walked by the used book marché downtown. To my right was the lake, to my left was the fountain de Molard. And there it was nestled in a carboard carton, La Vie en le Temps de Calvin. I picked it up. Everything I needed had been written almost fifty years ago by a UN diplomat from France: what people wore, medicine, the names of the streets, etc. (this was last year and not

part of my no-buy year, but had it been this year I would still have bought it).

Consider how dreary and restrictive life, I wonder what Calvin would think of his city now, especially like the Route du Rhône with its designer shops Yves St. Laurent, Gucci, etc. And what about the mannequins with so much of their bodies exposed.

In a way I wish I could bring him back just to watch his face as he walked down his city streets.
A friend of mine, Dinah Lee Kung wrote a wonderful book A Visit From Voltaire…(When an American mother-of-three finds herself overwhelmed in her new home in Switzerland, a visitor pops up offering to cure her son's asthma, her husband's growing indifference, and her own resentment of life. Is he the village nutter or - as he claims to be - the greatest mind of the eighteenth century? This talkative character wearing kneebreeches and wig is the last straw. Though she begs him to go home, he unpacks his mouldy trunk instead. Slowly V. becomes her warmest friend as they laugh and quarrel, and he teaches her the best lesson of all: how to live life to its fullest.)

I wonder if she would be willing to do something similar with Calvin.

Flock

Knut is no longer a cuddly little polar bear at the Berlin zoo, but a lumbering teenager. However Flock is the new star and in this house we point out the latest video or newspaper shots of her. My housemate even bought her son tissue in a box decorated with polar bears (and me a box with penguins). We even have polar bear toilet paper which makes routine chores worth smiling about.

Fortune Bananas

“I don’t like black marks on my bananas,” the young man of the house said, which worked out fine because I like the well ripened ones making banana division simple. But I couldn’t resist writing on one almost totally green banana “Black Marks”. This led to the idea if you can have fortune cookies, why not have fortune bananas?

Apero

The school gym was decorated with oriental rugs, pillows and other accessories typical of the Middle East. The Mayor bedecked with a wide yellow and orange ribbon (of his office ) running from his left shoulder to his waist, greeted each person as they entered the gym for the annual village apero and update of activities. He spoke to the villagers about the accomplishments of 2007 and the plans for 2008.

Then all the youngsters of the village who had reached the age of 18 were presented certificates of maturity. Several children who had excelled at sports were recognized and the villagers gave the appropriate applause.

The apero this year was Lebanese dips, local wines and hot mint tea served in traditional glasses as people milled around chatting with neighbours that they hadn’t seen for a while although the noise level made repetition necessary.

Several of the neighbours had gone together, people who had lived in the community for a couple of decades or more. I was definitely the new kid on the block, but that's okay. Everyone is new at some point.

Newsbreak

I know this will be hard for people who know me to believe but I am taking a newsbreak until Monday…It was Kucinich not being allowed to debate that put me over the edge. Not that I think he stands a ghost of a chance but the media so far seems to be dictating who the top candidates will be by their choices of questions, etc. And how do we get all the issues on the table if only mainstream candidates are allowed the floor, which I am sure is the point in keeping Kuchinich out in the same way Nader was kept out.

I am sure there is a Ph.D thesis in their somewhere. One source has already examined that questions about the environment have been in the single digits. Looking at transcripts or getting the bits and pieces that I can glean from C-span I haven’t heard a lot about habeas corpus being restored or the crumbling infrastructure either in the debates.

On Monday I will go back to scanning papers from the US, Canada, UK, France, Switzerland, Israel (Palestine) and whatever other country is making headlines. I am sure the world will survive without my monitoring but will I?

The pot of gold at the end of the...

“I’m surprised there isn’t a rainbow,” I said as my friend pulled out on the Route d’Hermance on the way to lunch. The sun, which poured though the rain, created a silver grey sky.

“But there is.”

I turned and looked and over the lake was a rainbow that spanned the road up and beyond the village at the top of the hill, and it was one of the fattest rainbows I’ve ever seen.

A January rainbow is unusual. I think of August as rainbow season. When I was still working many times I’d emerged from the office to summer sunshine and before I could complete a 20 minute walk home, violent rain would leave me drenched. Still I would go to my balcony and watch the rainbow or rainbows appear over the château across the street.

And of course there was the night I took the evening commuter bus into France. The other passengers were serious-faced, tired after a workday in stuffy unair-conditioned buildings. They ignored the sudden rain storm that had started during the few second we were in the border tunnel.

Then someone exclaimed “Regardez. Attention.” On the left side of the bus was a double rainbow and then a third appeared. Passengers standing scrunched down to look out the window and soon people were chatting and smiling…the rainbow cure to grumpiness.

Once again I was caught without my camera (I will never learn), but my friend and I joked about the pot of gold and we did find it...or two: A parking place where parking is almost impossible and a Thai restaurant that we passed by accident.