Signs of fall

Never mind that the autumn equinox has come and gone.

The temperatures have dropped, but not enough to go into fall clothes, but sleeves feel good.

We can eat on the patio without melting.

Showers are warm to hot instead of cold to lukewarm.

It is time to make relish.

There are fewer tourists and the marché is no longer crowded.

Leaves fall.

We know there are more signs of fall in Geneva where we will go to the end of the month and we are really looking forward to a New England autumn.

And it is time to make relish and apple pies.

Complaining well

In the 90s when CD players were new I bought one. It was a dud. Over the course of the next year when the warranty ran out it spent 11.5 months being "fixed."

Then the dealer refused to fix it even though it never was fixed. They refused to replace it.

I wrote the president of Sony in Japan using the best Japanese format. I:

• talked about the weather
• said I loved Sony products
• knew this was an aberration
• knew he would want to know
• asked what he wanted to do

A new DVD player that worked beautifully, arrived in the mail.

I had less luck with Laura Ashley wall paper where only part of the roll was printed.They ignored my plea(s).

More and more there's shoddy products and shoddy service and complaints usually leave clients and customers frustrated.

Today I came across an article in The Guardian on going to the CEO for a complaint.

They give a place one can find the CEOs contact.

And they even link to The Complaining Cow blog. Her logo is the top today's blog.

Of course some companies don't care. No matter what one does, there will never be a resolution, but for those that do, there's hope.

At the same time when I receive exceptional service, I call attention to that employee, maybe not the CEO but at least the next level up.

Magic nights

One of my favorite friends arranged a dinner, an end of summer get together.

Not your usual local restaurant

It was a little bit up a mountain in a vineyard.

Tables were set out.

Food was prepared in a shack.

The wine was the local Banyuls, a bit like porto and rosé. The liquid in the glass was once growing if not this vine, one close by.

There were 18 of us and unlike the previous hot, hot days and yesterdays downpour, it was refreshing (read windy and cold but that didn't diminish the magic of the setting or the company).

When the moon came out, it was time to wend our way down the mountain and home.

A lovely end to the summer season.

Mary's paintings

The artist was never a professional artist but the wife of a former boss. After she lost her son in an accident she painted furiously. When he asked me if I wanted two of here works, I jumped at the chance.

Although she never had been a close friend, we had talked at any number of times, even went out to eat on our own more than once. As women we could bond within minutes.

She developed cancer twice, the last time being fatal.

My daughter carried the paintings from Boston to France. Rick and I drove the paintings three hours to Toulouse to a trusted friend who is a framer.

Yesterday we hung them in the kitchen. One serves as a window against my 400 year old stone walls. The other looks as if she belongs there, preparing our meals over my antique French wooden table.

Both of them are reminders of a courageous woman, one of the most honest I have ever met.

Standing out

It is too easy to get lost the crowd.

And it is lovely to offer something different.

Every time I walk by this long stone wall, which is functional and interesting, I stop to admire this one pink quartz rock.

On the other hand, a piece of trash stuck in another stone wall in another village, it is far less pleasing.

I admit I like being the pink rock but that makes me still a rock. Trash is not a rock. It is trash.

symbols

Merriman Webster defines symbol as an act, sound, or object having cultural significance and the capacity to excite or objectify a response.

America has been going nuts over symbols: the flag, the national anthem, the pledge of allegiance even the color of a Starbucks coffee cup. No one give thought behind the symbol as blind patriotism almost causes people to froth at the mouth.

Think about the pledge that people want kids to mouth every day. Yes, it is good to say you are loyal to your country. BUT...

• Are those kids being taught the history of the US from several perspectives so they can become good critical thinkers and intelligent voters? 
• Do they know how their local, state and national governments work?
• Do they know who their leaders are?

If not the pledge means nothing. 

Absolutely nothing.

They might just as well make a pledge to quantum physics, which they probably don't understand any better than the country that they might be asked to die for.

A flag is nothing but a piece of cloth. 

• How many people who pledge to the flag know its history? 
• Do they know that the stripes represent the thirteen colonies? 
• Do they even know about the colonies? 
• Do they know there is a star for each state?

As for the national anthem, it celebrates war. There is a third stanza that reflects slavery. A black descendant of slaves might not feel as warm about standing for that.

Blacks experience of America has been far different from whites, poor people's from the middle class and up.

This is not a pun but so much black and white hysteria about issues.

Black lives matter. It is wrong to shoot an unarmed black person in the back even if you are a cop. It is also wrong to shoot a cop. Not an either or. Wrong!

One can be pro police but want the police to protect not kill, not steal money and do the other bad things that they have been reported over and over and over. Likewise to condemn the many police that are doing their jobs to the best of their ability.

To castigate those who fight back against the symbols when the symbols represent not only the good but the bad, makes it impossible for the bad to be corrected. If the same energy was used to solve the problems, than the symbol would have real meaning.

When blindly reacting to symbols, hoards of people who can be manipulated are created. 

It is good for the manipulators.

It is bad for the manipulee.

The song lies

The song says "rainy days and Mondays always get me down."

It lies.

I love both.

Today after months of no rain, it poured. The marché was reduced and people rushed from stand to stand while vendors huddled under their umbrellas.

There is nothing like a rainy/snowy/blustery day to make me feel alive.

As for Mondays?  It is a new week, a new start...

Correfoc

First there are the drums beating, beating, beating.

Then the sounds of fireworks exploding.

The dancers move closer as the drums continue. We can make out the devils costumes.

Then they are upon us, twisting and turning.

Some of the dance spit fire into the air.

And the drums beat and beat and beat. The sparks rain down but people from the crowd rush out and dance with the devils.

They circle and pick up more fireworks for their final dances. The fireworks are extinguished and the drummers march away.

The Catalan correfoc is over, some 45 minutes after it began. No one is hurt and this tiny French coastal village is restored to calm.

Where is Emil?

As long as I can remember this painting has been on the door of a garden on the way to the beach. The subject was in Catalan costume drinking from the traditional Catalan bottle in the traditional manner. The mountains, sea and church tower all screamed local Catalan scenery.

Periodically the painting was refreshed by Emil, the artist.

He was almost a caricature of a Catalan man, dressed in blue with his beret. He sat across the street on a bench almost every day. In later years his hands rested on a cane.

Other people would sit next to him and talk.

As my French improved I chatted to him although our different accents made it a struggle for both of us, but he was always smiley, always made the effort to understand and be understood.

I haven't seen him for a while. I am hoping sometime when I walk by Emil's bench, I will see one of his friends and can ask.

But part of me doesn't want to know if it is bad news.

surprise

A pot of tea and a book at La Noisette.

A light breeze.

Miscellaneous friends walking by exchanging greetings.

Then a woman stopped at my table.

I looked.

She looked.

"Louise," she said.

I jumped up and we hugged and hugged.

I hadn't seen her for ten years. She was one the daughter of one of the summer people. The house she rented was across the street from mine. Her son's bedroom window faced mine and we exchanged good mornings and good nights every day they were there.

She was one of those people where our minds clicked despite age and nationality differences.

She is only here until tomorrow.

She was late but still had time of a noisette before more hugs and her rushing off.

We'll meet up for champagne at La Côté Place tonight with our new men in tow.

Life's surprises are truly gifts.

The quilt

When I was a little girl, I had a red dress with a black dog.

My grandmother "Dar" used a tiny square as the start of a quilt with a rainbow pattern alternating squares of solid color and pattern and dark and light.

Every stitch was done by hand much of it when she barely had any eye sight at all. She finished it when I was in university.

I treasure it, but time has worn some of the fabric.

There is a retouch person in town. He told me if I could find fabric he would replace the worn pieces.

I know I won't get the identical pieces, but I am on a fabric safari.

I became the woman I am because of Dar who will always be my moral compass, my role model for courage even 47 years after her death.

She is not my sewing role model. Thank goodness for the man who will be able to make the repairs.

To Rosalie

When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.

When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.

When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.

When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.
When I make a date I will give the time AND the day.

Writing Exercise

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Saturday Marché along with breakfast at La Noisette. 

Rick wanted the full English. I was happy with the continental.

We each had our notebooks. I just wanted a warm up exercise, he was looking for people descriptions, easy with half the village and the tourist strays from the summer walking by.

My target was the vendor across the street. My free write is below the photo.

-------------------------
Calamar farci 15 Euros
Paella 10 Euros

The bald-headed cook stood under the umbrella tht once might have been yellow or brown but was now a lack-luster beige.

Three cast iron pans, wider than a new born baby is long but not as thick were brimming with shrimps, clams or crevettes as the French call them made pink waves.

The food was kept by a gas canister below.

Next to him, a much younger man shoveled moules/clams from a yellow laundry basket.
---------------

I stopped there. Sitting at La Noisette means everyone we know talks to us.

But this could be the start of any number of short stories.

• The paella vendor was a lawyer and fed up with the drudgery made a career change
• His wife, whom nagged him all the time made the paella. Selling on the marchés was the only peace he got
• He was just filling in for his father who was in the hospital
• The moules/clam vendor next to him was really his son and . . .
• He'd been part of the mafia and was hiding out in this little French village
• He had once been very successful, but thanks to coke, lost everything. He's rebuilding
• He just does this on weekends to supplement his retirement income
• He doesn't keep the paella hot enough and someone gets food poisoning
• He's allergic to shrimp and is looking for something else to sell

Free writing for a few minutes is like priming a pump.

Good thing

It happened again. Someone lashed out at me for being English, only I'm not.

My summer home is Argelès-sur-mer, normally a wonderful little village. Yet after the Brexit vote a woman told me to go home. I told her I was Swiss. She didn't care. I could go home to Switzerland.

Then this week we were having a farewell apéro at La Côté Place. Across the Place the band for that night's dance was warming. They were ear-breaking loud. I liked the music, but the volume was awful.

I went over and told them I liked the music, but could they lower it a bit. The drummer, a man about my height (read unimpressive) and a white pony tail, jumped from the band stand and started ranting at me.

He belonged there, I didn't. He didn't like the English anyway, he said.

"I'm not English, I'm Swiss."

"They're just as bad, blah, blah, blah." He waved his arms. "If you don't like it you can leave."

Had I thought about it, I should have asked him why he felt the way he did. I should have complimented him on something (that really throws an angry person off track) but I didn't. I admit it is harder for me in French but not impossible.

"Go away, I'm staying," he said. And although it was unlike me, I did.

In reality he did not play much longer and we could chat with our friends.

As a white, older woman this does not happen often, but I can sympathize with blacks, Muslims, Latinos or any group being rejected for their category. For me it is a rarity. For them it can be a regular event.

In a way that this has happened to me is a good thing. I am more aware of the problems of other people who do not have the advantage that I have of being the majority in most of the places I am.

I  do not understand xenophobia. We are all part of the human race and to dislike another part for some geographical or pigmentation reason makes no sense. It is a rejection of ourselves.

Sweet Tooth?

Another recipe from my mother's, Dorothy Sargent Boudreau's cookbook called Stove Stories. She was a firm believer that food was part of family history. The candied orange peel makes good Christmas gifts for people who have everything, your concierge, postman, etc. A bit early, but make a note in your agenda for December.

Candied Orange Peel

Mine was a sweet-toothed family, no doubt of that.

Mother had been known to put down a book she was reading and go out and whip up a batch of fudge or possibly penuche.

Her brother could go through a pound of chocolates in record time and adores the very sweet double-boiler pudding you'll find here.

Dessert was a must at our house and often mother would announce, "Tonight there is apple pie, but there's also one serving of chocolate pudding and two pieces of orange cake left over from yesterday. What will you have, Walter?"

And my father would say, "All three," and proceed to finish the last morsels. He also subtly scrutinized each dessert plate to be sure his was the largest portion.

About the candied orange peel, which is a bit of work, but well worth it. This goes back to the days of the extended family when every home harbored a grandma, grandpa, maiden aunt, widowed uncle or some relative.

Indeed, at one time our home had a paternal grandfather, a maternal grandmother, a paternal uncle and a maternal cousin.

But back to the orange peel, every Christmas for years, mother would make up sweets to fill one-pound boxes for what she referred to as "as the nice little old ladies in the neighborhood." The boxes wrapped in silver paper and with a piece of pine tucked into the red ribbon bows were duly delivered by my brother and me. They contained dates stuffed with fondant, dates stuffed with walnuts, chocolate fudge, divinity fudge, penuche and candied orange peel.

The ladies were delighted.

Ingredients
6 thick-skinned oranges
4 1/2 cups sugar for the recipe

1/2 cup extra sugar for rolling
1 1/2 cups water

Directions

• Peel the oranges saving the fruit for another use.
• Cut the peel into strips at least 1/4 inch.
• In a an cover with cold water and bring to boil at least twice, maybe three times.Mix the sugar and water and simmer 8-9 ins.
• Cook the peels. They should be translucent. The time might vary, but figure about 45 mins.
• Drain and roll the peels in sugar. Leave on a rack at least 4 and maybe 5 ours until they are dry.

Place in pretty tin boxes and deliver to your recipients.

I survived summer

Even if it is still hot, there is a smell of autumn in the morning air.

Here in Argelès-sur-mer we will never see the red and yellow colored leaves of New England or the yellow leaves of the Alps here but there are other symbols of the changing of the seasons.

Family by family, people are heading home to the UK, Ireland, Northern France, Germany, Holland, Denmark. 

Children are wearing backpacks as they start school. 

The streets of the marché are no longer back-to-back people.

The tourists who are arriving are older or have non-school age children.

Tuesday was the last street dance of the season.

We too will head out for some of the autumn--home to Geneva, but we also have trips planned for Boston, Montreal, Up State NY, Long Island, Paris, Strasbourg, Berlin, Prague and maybe Vienna.

Autumn is my favorite season. I love that I may need to grab a light sweater when I go out in the evening. I'm dreaming of heavier clothes, hot chocolate, Geneva Writer Group workshops,
seeing my Swiss friends.

I survived summer.

Beetle blessings

Our bathroom beetle met his end the other night "accidentally" under Rick foot.

I will miss him scuttling into hiding. Were he a cockroach, his demise would have been under my foot and not accidentally or "accidentally." Cockroaches bring too many friends.

Reading up on beetles many are revered in other cultures. Some are kept as pets. Here's some of the qualities and symbols of beetledom in different cultures.

• Time
• Strength
• Structure
• Creativity
• Recycling
• Cleanliness
• Adaptation
• Community
• Uniqueness
• Metamorphosis
• Transformation
• Resourcefulness

Sadly our bathroom beetle cannot represent any of these things anymore.

Maybe I should have named our beetle Franz Kafka.

Poetic death

Once again the Francophone media has waxed lyrical about the death of a celebrity. Marilyn Monroe didn't die, she went to join her beloved Arthur. Lions ceased their roar when a well known lion tamer died. And so on.

The latest poetic death is Sonia Rykiel.

She has gone to design clothes for the angels.

I hope they like their new styles and their wings do not create too much of a design problem.

webs

A typical market day meeting with friends at Coté Place for coffee, tea, juice or whatever and much conversation as the marché buzzed around us.

One of the regular group had just come back from the UK where she had stayed with others whom she knows because they have second homes here. It was much like Rick and I did recently with a couple we adore and they are now ensconced in our nest, there own home having an overflow of people.

We talked about how Argelès was different in the summer with the tourists than in the winter but it had its own magic all year round.

Magic is the right word. People arrive tired and spent and the quick turn around time to relaxation is seen on their faces. 

We are from several countries.

Friends gather and share with those that live here all year round. There is an undertone of caring and support for the bad times and a joyful acceptance of the good.

We know each other's children and cares. We try and help one another if not in person at least in moral support. 

My personal experience thru my recent cancer challenges (over hopefully) was I had a cheering team from this group.

In a way the relationships are like the spider web on the wall behind the table where we were sitting. Unlike the spider web, the network keeps growing.

They are delicate and beautiful friendships, but more lasting than the spider spins because we build them that way.

PMS

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www.donnalanenelson.com

Back in my pre-menopause days, I never suffered any pain. What did happen a couple of days before was overwhelming energy. I would use the energy for mega projects. In fact I kept lists for things to do during those periods.

This morning, I woke up with a similar attack of domesticity. I woke early. Before lunch I had...

• Cleaned the fridge
• Ironed (yes I iron normally because I prefer the feel of the clothes)
• Mended clothes
• Made raspberry muffins (recipe below*)
• Delivered muffins to friends
• Misc. cleaning chores

Hopefully the attack will pass and not happen in the near future.

RECIPE*

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 cup oil
• 2 eggs lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 cup minimum fresh raspberries

Sift dry ingredients including sugar. Beat eggs, milk and add oil and add to dry ingredients. Fill greased muffin tins or paper muffin cups and bake at 350/190° for about 20 mins.