Posted by mofembot
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:40:00 GMT
This morning we brought the trappings of an “American breakfast” up to Jim and Claudia’s — a Dutch/German couple who speak English to one another, and who have bought a condo in an old farm complex up on the Plateau de Valensole above Quinson. Claudia’s parents are visiting until Tuesday from Greater Frankfurt, and it was somewhat at the instigation of Claudia’s dad that this event transpired. (He’d mentioned in the course of our going with them for an impromptu drink at the local bar the other night that he and the missus loved, loved, loved American breakfasts, especially the breakfast buffets with all the bacon and eggs, etc. I/we offered to make them an American breakfast; however, given the fact that our tiny eat-in kitchen could not possibly accommodate seven adults, we prepared everything and took it up to J & C’s gracious and spacious place.)
Despite his fears that they would not turn out well and thus embarrass him, Mr Mo made pancakes and they were delicious as ever. We also brought with us our waffle maker and made Norwegian rice waffles, and I made scrambled eggs and bacon (cooking the bacon here at home ahead of time so as not to perfume J & C’s kitchen; as Claudia is vegetarian these days, I wasn’t sure if she’d find the bacon-waft offensive. Turns out she’s a recovered bacon-a-holic from her Boston days, during which she and her roommate apparently would eat entire packages of bacon — as in the family pack size — in one sitting.)
I had my bacon-with-breakfast for the 4th quarter of 2009 last week. I have now had my bacon-with-breakfast for the first quarter of 2010, though I suppose it’s possible that I’ll have some bacon and eggs at the quasi-American-style diner in Heidelberg this coming weekend. (Yes, I’m going back to Germany for about a week and a half, unless I wind up in Paris for the last part of my time away from home instead. When in Germany, I usually eat muesli in yogurt for breakfast on workdays — eating at my desk, since I leave for work at a time that is impossibly early to eat anything. Here at home, I often have cold cereal, but sometimes just a couple of pieces of toast and a fruit cup with my one daily cuppa joe… mostly without Bailey’s these days. Sigh. Mr Mo makes pancakes mostly on a weekly basis.)
I always have enjoyed an American breakfast. I was going to write that it is my favorite meal, but there are too many non-breakfast dishes that please my palate as much or (gasp) more than the breakfast spread. Growing up, my mom had a very regular schedule: we’d have some form of eggs on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; cold cereal on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays (except for the first Sunday of the month when we fasted as a religious observance), and then often something a bit more elaborate on Saturdays (pancakes from a mix being a frequent feature).
A noteworthy breakfast “accomplishment,” if one can call it such, was the Ward Breakfast (on the Fourth of July)… in particular the one at which I ate 65 (yes, sixty-five) little breakfast sausage links — and who knows how many scrambled eggs, but I lived for those links. We never, ever had them at home (my mom was strictly a Bacon Woman). My ability to eat in such astonishing piggish quantities has thankfully diminished with time.
Living in a land in which breakfast (for adults, at least) tends to consist of a measly tartine (toasted bread with butter or jam or spreading cheese) and coffee is a continuing source of disappointment, especially when paying for a “breakfast-included” hotel or guest room. I utterly refuse to pay 7+ euros for a most euphemistically-named “continental” breakfast (as mentioned, toast and coffee — and if one is lucky, maybe a yogurt or the possibility of a semi-stale bowl of cornflakes or “factory floor sweepings-style muesli)”, but that’s what they often charge at hotels in France and some other benighted parts of Europe. I don’t mind paying for a more robust breakfast, such as one finds — or usually can find — in Germany, the UK, Spain, and so on.
One would think, given France’s overall gastronomic reputation, and the French Health Ministry’s apparently futile effort to promote breakfast, that some chef somewhere would figure out a way to get the French to pay more attention to the first meal of the day. The overall effect of the health ministry’s push has been the expansion of supermarket aisles laden with sugary-crap kiddie breakfast cereals. I do not blame French adults for (a) not eating the sugar-shit themselves and (b) caving into the marketing for their kiddies.
As for me, bacon and eggs (scrambled, fried) notwithstanding, I think the traditional breakfast I most enjoyed during our travels was in… Turkey: hard-boiled egg, tomato, cucumber, a kind of feta-like cheese, and bread. (And often some kind of muesli-esque cereal would be available as well.) For reasons that quite frankly escape me, I have not ever tried to adopt this and other healthier-seeming breakfasts into my daily routine. But maybe I should. And maybe I’ll give it a go when I get back from Germany in mid-January.
NORWEGIAN RICE WAFFLES
(Corrected per Mr Mo’s comment)
3 cups soft-cooked rice
1.25 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tsp ground cardamom (best to grind these up fresh from the whole seeds if possible; feel free to add more cardamom than the recipe calls for)
Prepare as per usual in a waffle iron. Serve with butter. (FIne, you can top it with jam or powdered sugar or maple syrup or whatever if you must, but the cardamom-y flavor of these waffles is great with just butter.)
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Posted by mofembot
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 10:28:00 GMT
As with 2009, I’m off to a roaring start with my resolution to blog more often. I think the few people (family members) who follow my blogging should start a pool right now about how many days I will manage to blog (a) in a row; (b) for this month, and/or (c) for 2010.
Yesterday we (Mr Mo, Middle Daughter and I) spent a little time driving out a bit past Montmeyan toward La Mouchotte in a vain effort to find a tumulus (well, a pair of tumuli) — that is, two human-made mounds (but not tombs) from the neolithic period. We were impeded by a road that was impassable by car and by weather that was anything but conducive to walking the remaining ~kilometer to where we think one or both mounds are located. (I personally wanted to go to Salernes’ Tholos Lauve — another neolithic site featuring a well-defined round stone foundation, a bit reminiscent of some of the Anasazi ruins in Arizona, only here the rock is limestone, rather than sandstone, but by the time we made up our minds to do anything, going much farther than Montmeyan in the fading light seemed… impractical.) Though the outing was fruitless from a paleontological point of view, I now have two more great Scrabble words at my disposal. So not a total waste.
Today we are going to see “Vieux Bras,” a hilltop collection of mostly ruined houses overlooking the Asse River. (This is my favorite river in all of France, and yes, that’s the scatological streak coming out in full force here. Bizarrely, however, the short little Asse doesn’t even figure on what I think is France’s official hydrology maps, even though there are several towns — Bras d’Asse, St Julien d’Asse, for example — that have been situated along this legitimate river flowing down from the Alpine foothills as a feeder to the much-larger La Durance since the Middle Ages or earlier.) The two central structures in Vieux Bras are a château and a church, both of which have been largely restored (or very much well underway as of the last time I stopped by sometime last year).
I am curious to see if the Belgian couple who owns much of the property there have made more progress on their overall project: not to restore all of the houses and structures on the hillside under the château and church, but simply to clear away the brambles and under- and overgrowth to allow (potential) tourists to stroll around the alleys of the old village. This hilltop location was abandoned around the turn of the XIXth/XXth centuries for Bras d’Asse down below on the river and for La Bégude Blanche (the “blanche” part is new to me, visible on google maps but not on the entry/exit signs on the main road) across the Asse. The Belgian couple (whom Oldest and I met in the chapel last year) said that the abandoned village was used for artillery target practice sometime before World War I.
We are getting ready now to go, stopping first in Riez for lunch. Thence to the ruins, thence perhaps to some tiny villages (via a most circuitous route back to Riez and its Intermarché), then home again. I am a bit interested in seeing St Jurs: it is easy to think of Quinson, with its 350 residents as a tiny village (which it is), but St Jurs has only 80 permanent residents (swelling to ~150 or so in la belle saison). Now that is truly tiny. I’ll be surprised if there’s a bar or a bread depot or anything (beyond, perhaps, a few closed-up artists’ galleries and the obligatory church/château). St Jurs once had 500+ residents at its height in the XIXth century, while its 5 gypsum mines (for plaster manufacture) were in full flower. The mines and mills are shut down and in ruins. I personally would like to find a nice chunk of alabaster there, assuming we go. As Middle Daughter is prone to carsickness, and as the roads are windy (as they always must be in Upper Provence), the odds are not good that we’ll make this detour. But we’ll see.
En avant, les gars!
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Posted by mofembot
Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:59:00 GMT
Well, two out of three ain’t bad.
Back in the days of my hyper-religious youth, I would “celebrate” New Year’s Eve/Day by writing down a list of all my faults and bad habits and symbolically burning it at midnight. (No, really, I did this for several years running during my teens. No snide remarks about my social life, s’il vous plaît.) I am not so obsessed by the never-ending pursuit of perfection as I once was, that’s for sure, but I’m still a Goal-Oriented Person, at least on virtual paper, so here’s what I’d like to accomplish over the next decade, and hope to get a good start on in 2010 itself:
• Lose Weight. The tonnage is hard on my hips, knees, and feet, and I don’t need to read any more articles on how bad “belly fat” is for women, thanks very much.
• Blog More Often. Off to a roaring good start on this one, I’d say. (But then, I would say that.)
• Finish Writing the Damn Book. And deal with the several other book ideas I’ve had floating around in my head and on bits of paper for decades (literally). Publish the Damn Book (online or some other way). It would be nice if the writing and publishing were followed by fame and fortune (and movie rights and all that). I guess I might be willing to settle for not getting sued and/or kicked out of France, along with some kind of cathartic effect, but I’d frankly rather have the money from a mega-bestseller.
• Learn the ins and outs of shooting in RAW. This means buying a camera that shoots RAW. This means paying attention to the content more than the form and language and syntax of my Paris client’s website (dxo.com).
• Get back into music.
• Master certain technologies that I have shied away from up until now. I have Serious Doubts about social networking, twittering, and the rest. But I should at least reject them for reasons other than my own fear of and ignorance about how they work (procedurally, I mean). I guess this means using my iPhone “better” as well. But by “certain technologies,” I’m also referring to music notation and art/illustration apps and so on.
• Get back into serious art much more.
• Deal with memorabilia/scrapbook stuff (as in sort, organize, etc. … see final item below).
• Find a way to be able to use the same time-slots over and over again. I mean, seriously, doing everything I’d like to do requires time. I recognize that hitting “refresh” over and over again while online (reading, say, DailyKos) has become a Huge Time Sink. This needs to stop. Discipline, discipline, discipline. (Good luck to that. But I will try, regardless of what Yoda thinks of trying. What a stupid philosophy, come to think of it, brought to us by a fictional creature out of George Lucas’s head. Given Star Wars 1, 2, & 3, it’s hard to imagine giving any credence whatsoever to anything coming out of Lucas’s head.—But I digress.)
And finally… after an entire lifetime, I think I need to do something about how poorly I sleep. Given sleep’s role in memory creation, it’s a frickin’ miracle that I can remember anything at all, but the scary/sad thing is that I have huge gaps in medium-to-long-term memory. The kids ask me if I remember thus-and-so, and depending on how expectantly the question is asked, I may respond that I do remember even when I don’t. (Saying I don’t remember often provokes such distress and disappointment and incredulity and so on that I find it’s easier to pretend that I do remember. Fortunately, further discussion/verbal clues often actually awaken the deep-down, deeply-hidden memory fragment. But sometimes it’s just a blank. I probably can’t do much about that except perhaps refresh my mind via memorabilia and such. … Sorry, kiddies. Sorry, Mr Mo.)
But I’d like to be able to sleep better for its own sake as well. Losing weight will help, as should following such advice as “don’t read in bed,” and so on. Do I have apnea? Unknown. But it’s been longer than I can remember, quite literally, since I had what I’d consider to be a truly good night’s sleep — when I wake up feeling refreshed and renewed physically as well as mentally. (I dream well, I just don’t get enough of the deep, dreamless, restorative sleep.)
Such are my thoughts as we head towards 14h00 on this, January 1, 2010… the Aughts over, and marked particularly by our Becoming French (but more on this at another time).
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Posted by mofembot
Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:42:00 GMT
Monday, November 9th will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Twenty years. I remember when it happened, I remember what an astonishing, unexpected, earth-shaking and totally miraculous event it was. And twenty years is a long time ago.
We were in a very different place then than we are now — not just geographically, either. Mr Mo and I were both still active Mormons, clinging to the comfort that discovering Sunstone and Dialogue and lds.net and mormon-l and so on had brought us. There was still hope in liberal circles for significant changes with regard to women’s place in the church, among many other things.
And we still felt stirred by the possibility of modern revelation, of “the stone cut without hands” filling the earth. So when the Berlin Wall came down, we saw it as a fulfillment of a never-quite-officially-articulated (or at least not ratified) prophecy about God moving in mysterious ways to allow the gospel to be preached “to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.” The church sent missionaries into all areas behind the former Iron Curtain as quickly as it could (only to find, not too far down the line, that the Orthodox church was not especially welcoming)….
Um.
So the stone rolls forward a bit more slowly these days, helped along by an above-average birthrate, but impeded by attrition cutting into the true number of converts. Given recent events — the mormon church placing itself squarely yet again on the wrong side of both history and overarching moral justice with respect to gay marriage (just as it fought against the ERA and civil rights for blacks in the U.S.)… well.
It has been at least 14 years since I last considered myself an active member (it’s been longer for Mr Mo). CA Prop H8 (and most recently Maine Prop 1) is pushing me much closer to making my disaffection both complete and official. Quite honestly, one of the only things keeping me from sending in an official letter of resignation is that then Salt Lake would know where we are. (They seem to have lost track with our latest move.) That said, I am somewhat, but only slightly less concerned about parental feelings in this matter: still, it was a genuine shock to see at least two siblings’ names on the list of big donors to Prop H8 (and I suspect the 3rd active sibling contributed, though not enough to make the list); it was a shock to see a cousin’s name on the list; it was a shock to see the names of at least two other old friends (the saddest one being that of the sister of a fine young man who committed suicide because he was gay).
I think of my friend Steve (not his real name) and his partner of 20+ years. —No, let me correct that: I think of Steve and his now-husband (his California marriage having been upheld), and I keep waiting for a cogent response to the question of how their marriage in any way, shape, or form devalues or damages or threatens my marriage or anyone else’s. I find the church’s willingness to shake down its members for cash and time to destroy what Steve and his husband have despicable, the moreso because of its bankrolling of fear tactics and reliance on flat-out falsehoods to do so. The homophobes at the top of the hierarchical heap have dialed back even the slight bit of rhetorical progress the church had made some years back re: homosexuality not being a choice, as Bruce Hafen’s recent crap-science talk (posted on the church’s official website) makes all too clear. (While I prefer fingering Darth Packer as the instigator of all of this, Monson seems still functional enough to blame as well. The bigger disappointment here is Dallin Oaks, Jeff Holland … they, at least, should know better.)
I don’t have much in common with the politics of the current church, and see little hope for significant change along those lines. Too many US active mormons (such as my parents) are outright teabaggers or strong sympathizers, filled with fear and in some cases hatred of President Obama, of Democrats, of access to health care for everyone, and (ironically and painfully enough) of the rule of Constitutional law. Too many think W and Cheney were right to approve of torturing detainees (never mind that the vast majority were innocent and never charged with anything) — and this despite both U.S. and international law (and never mind that torture does not work). And far too many are blown about by every teabaggy, conspiracist email that circulates, convinced that these are The Last Days.
(I have postulated before that getting caught up in this sort of Last Days excitement helps people feel more important — adds some zing to their otherwise mundane lives. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, were the consequences of their ignorance — their sheer lack of logic, discernment, and critical thinking skills — so grave.)
—But I digress. (This post, it seems, is one long series of digressions.) What I am coming around to saying in my circuitous way here is that my personal wall is coming down. Can resigning be more wrenching than choosing to no longer pay tithing to the church (following the “September Six” debacle)? than ceasing to wear temple garments? For me, personally, no— and yet I think — no, I know my parents would be crushed were I to resign, and were they to find out about it: formalizing my disaffection would be a real blow. Further, were I to do this (having read plenty of messages — not directed at me, btw — encouraging people to “teach mormons/catholics” a lesson)… I know very well that my parents would not learn any positive lessons at all from such an action. I wouldn’t be shaking them up to such a degree as to make them reexamine their commitment to the church. Instead, they would (continue to) hold me up as an example of “intellectual pride,” of where too much education, too much exposure to the world leads the unwary (and ultimately, the “non-valiant”). They would be in mourning over their lost child for the rest of their days.
The same is true for my active siblings. “I’m quitting because you paid good money that could have been spent helping the poor on denying equal rights to gay people”… Yes. But they were “following the prophet.” Making a financial sacrifice to “save marriage” because their church leaders told them to. If I still had “the Spirit,” I would have done the same thing. It is only my pride and hard-heartedness that has led me down this path away from celestial heights.
Still. My wall is crumbling like that in Berlin 20 years back. How long will it take for it to fall away entirely? (“Falling away” being synonymous with apostasy.) I would prefer to wait until my parents have passed on, but we are a long-lived family. My head says, “Tear down this wall!”, but my heart is not yet fully reconciled to the damage it would do to my already too-tenuous relationships with my parents and siblings.
A place and time very far removed from where I was 20 years ago, indeed.
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Posted by mofembot
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:31:00 GMT
Given my background, coming up with memorable and pithy 140-character messages should be a breeze. Without sacrificing spelling. Here’s one.
I have hesitated to plunge in, and still hesitate: seems to me that I should develop the habit of regular blogging first. Am I being silly?
Given that I do not follow anyone who tweets — and that doing so seems like a huge waste of time — I hesitate to join the ranks of tweeters.
Would my potential tweets be original and funny and profound enough to attract a following? And why the hell would I want followers?
I further suspect that my tweeting would appear as regularly as posts on this blog. With the same number of true followers as true comments.
Still, I cannot bear the thought of never having tweeted once, especially after having gone to the trouble of making “#mofembot” mine.
This said, I do not know precisely when I will take the plunge. I do know, however, that it’s time for me to get out of bed and get going.
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Posted by mofembot
Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:15:00 GMT
…And I only found out about it this past Monday, November 2nd, after our letter carrier came by with the mail.
When I saw the three envelopes from the French Ministry of the Interior (one addressed to me, one to Mr Mo, and the third to Youngest), I have to say that I steeled myself against a refusal: surely we were being informed that, sorry, there was something wrong with the (mountains of) papers you submitted, so you can’t become French, try again.
Mr Mo heard my whoops and hollers as I tore open my envelope and saw these words: J’ai le plaisir de vous faire savoir que vous êtes Française depuis le 22 octobre 2009. — “It is my pleasure to inform you that as of October 22, 2009, you are a French citizen.”
Mr Mo guessed what had produced my unusual cries even before I got up the stairs with the letters.
Well then, hot damn — dual nationality. The news reduced our Youngest to tears of joy and more than one skype-based panegyric (if such a thing can be thus described). And I, too, have felt misty-eyed off and on since receipt of my letter. (I’ve been too busy with work up until now to say anything.) My French friends have been congratulatory, and it is possible that we will be honored at a village ceremony (which will have to wait until December at the earliest, given our schedules; but I rather suspect this may be put off until all of our official papers are ready — see below).
Yes, the advantages of French citizenship are manifold: we can grow old(er) and retire here without worry, if that is what we choose to do; we can legally work anywhere in the European Union without difficulty; and Youngest can go to university here without it costing a fortune. But I have also been reflecting on the responsibilities that come with having requested and been granted French citizenship, and these go rather beyond simply being able to vote in the next election.
The same letter that conveyed the Ministry official’s pleasure at informing me of my French naturalization also informed me that it will take about six months before all of our French documents will be ready; among these are our French birth certificates (!), identity papers, a letter from Monsieur le Président de la République, and a booklet (I assume it will be a booklet) explaining about how the French government is organized, our rights and duties, and so on.
With respect to this last — the booklet — I expect to read it more than once so that I will thoroughly understand what is expected of me, and what I can expect from the country we have called home for the past eight years.
I doubt very much that I would ever run for office on any level. And while I will most certainly vote, having now seen a glimpse of the unseemly side of even our local political landscape here in tiny Quinson, it’s not clear to me how actively involved I want to be in terms of joining a particular party. We’ll see. But I have an interest in certain French and European issues, as does Mr Mo, not the least of which has to do with the ghastly “Hadopi” law. We now have the right to make our voices heard now as citizens of the European Union as well as of la belle France.
And I’m still having a hard time believing that we actually managed to be accorded French citizenship. It will probably be easier to believe after we have all of our papers in hand, including a French EU passport to add to our American passport.
Youpie!
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Posted by mofembot
Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:52:00 GMT
Okay, I know the answer to this one, especially after having spent part of today wallowing in a sea of receipts, museum and movie tickets, birthday and anniversary cards, brochures, maps, photos, and other potential/real memorabilia. Not to mention Papers That Must Be Kept for tax purposes for a minimum of seven or ten years or whatever the current French or American statute requires. (In reality, of course, such papers may abide with me eternally.) I have a respectable box-full of papers that will go to the recycling bin tomorrow. But the box barely makes a dent, as certain Family Detractors will no doubt point out with a mix of glee and exasperation.
Andy Warhol kept a lot of papers as well, with each year’s worth of invitations and programs and suchlike deposited into its very own large drawer. It is the stuff of dreams from a researcher’s point of view, or at least a biographer’s, I suppose. I don’t know if Warhol’s collection includes anything quite so pedestrian as receipts from Carrefour or Hyper U or Intermarché or ATAC (okay, I suppose the U.S. grocery store equivalent would be something like Giant Eagle, not like they have those in NYC). And if Warhol did obsessively keep such low-level evidence of daily life, is there any researcher out there who is going to analyze his purchases on such a minute level? (“In his mid-thirties, Warhol bought more and more boxes of high-fiber cereal, to the ultimate exclusion of Frosted Flakes, his favorite cereal since his late teens.”) Um. I’m guessing that that’s not high on anyone’s list of things to write about even if Warhol kept his receipts (unless muesli figures into his later works, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t).
So why do I (thus far) keep mine? I know what the act of keeping the receipts signifies: a compulsion, an obsession. But what would I hope for anyone (including me) to learn about me via these receipts? That I generally bought the same kinds of foodstuffs over and over? Will the occasional forays into exotica provoke cries of consternation or delight or puzzlement? (“Then there is the matter of the entirely inexplicable purchase of quail eggs in 2003, which apparently was never repeated.”)
If the grocery store receipts are supposed to act as some kind of prod for my faulty mid-term memory, well — good luck to that. My trips to the grocery store (to any of the supermarket chains) both here in France and in the USA have mostly melded into one Archetypal Food Shopping Experience, beginning with finding an appropriate coin or token with which to take possession of the cart, ensuring that it’s a decent cart (i.e., has no squeaking and wobbling or drag-to-the-right/left wheels, comes with a working “seat”), and then (if I’m not just ducking inside for an item or two) going roughly aisle-by-aisle for a Full Shopping. (I add a preliminary step or two here in France: trying to remember to bring the grocery bags with me into the store, assuming I’ve remembered to put them into the car in the first place.)
So little tends to happen outside of the norm — slogging through the aisles, consulting my list (I often have a list, and oh yes indeed, I even have some Saved Lists in my paper pile!), saving the frozen food selection until last, and then getting in line, paying and bagging and then … home — there is so little variance that it makes very little sense to have these slips of papers detailing the What I Bought. One might argue for the When and the How Much Spent, I suppose, and possibly even the Where, but would anyone want to try to count up how many bottles of low-fat milk I’ve bought over the past eight years in France?
Perhaps one might if I could guarantee that I had retained all of our receipts. But I can’t guarantee that at all, and not just because of all the chaotic forces of entropy that swirl about me. I have subversives in my own home who throw away receipts. (Not consistently, but enough to deep-six any potential social-scientific value of the collection.) And there is the little matter of time — as in some receipts have faded almost to the point of illegibility, and somehow I think I’m not going to manage to scan them and enhance them back to legibility again. (It just seems unlikely, truth to tell.)
I am (in case you hadn’t guessed) working up the nerve to toss a lot of non-business, non-tax-related receipts. This is very hard. But I think it will get harder and harder to justify keeping them, given how I’m drowning already.
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Posted by mofembot
Sun, 19 Jul 2009 07:28:00 GMT
The weather is better in southern France than in Hamburg. (“No duh,” I hear you say.) Actually, I think the weather is better in pretty much any part of France, including Paris and Le Nord/Pas de Calais, than it is in Hamburg. Even the weather in more southerly parts of Germany (think Heidelberg, where I work on-site from time to time) is better than the weather here.
The reality is that I will have to pretend that any “brightening” illuminating the sea of clouds covering the sky is the equivalent of unveiled sunshine, or I will succumb to a gloom to match the heavens here. That must be how the Hamburgers survive. They are far enough north, of course, that the days of winter, dreary though they be, are shortened almost to match nearby Scandinavia’s. And as with Scandinavia, the “summer” daylight (such as it is) extends far into the evening and pops up far earlier than down south in France. I wonder, therefore, if Hamburgers are afflicted with seasonal affective disorder at the same rates as their even-more-northern neighbors.
—Seasonal, schmeasonal: the seemingly unrelenting cloud coverage, day after day, is enough to spread the SAD far beyond the bounds of winter.
So as a survival tactic (given my frailty owing to growing up mostly in smoggy-but-sunny L.A.), I’ve decided that “good weather” by Hamburger standards is simply not actively raining. Or raining only a little bit. “Not raining” will have to become my new definition of “sunny.” I will label a real sunny day a “miracle,” because the chances of having a full day packed with sunshine are exceedingly rare, as is the chance that the temperature is going to make its way upward of 70ºF. (Today’s high is supposed to be 18ºC = 64.4ºF. And it’s the middle of frickin’ July — you know, “summertime.”) Yesterday’s high might have broken 70ºF, but by late afternoon, only a few hardy souls downtown were still parading about in their Ts or tanktops. Almost everyone was wearing at least a sweater… a sweater at 5 p.m. In mid-frickin’-July.
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Posted by mofembot
Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:31:00 GMT
President Barack Obama in Normandy today paid eloquent tribute to the many who sacrificed so much to liberate Europe from the grip of the Nazis so long ago. President Nicolas Sarkozy, Prince Charles, PM Gordon Brown, and German Chancellor (“Kanzlerin”) Angela Merkel were also in attendance.
The “greatest generation” is dying; the youngest vets are now in their 80s. Poignantly, one very ill veteran made the trip to Normandy and died in his sleep last night after visiting the graves of his buddies in one of the huge American cemeteries near Caen; President Obama acknowledged his passing in today’s address.
It was a quiet day here in Aix-en-Provence. In between spasms of work, I am in the midst of reading Paroles du Jour J—”Words from D-Day,” a collection of first-person accounts and letters and diary entries from French, U.S., British, Canadian, and… German soldiers.
The cover photo is of a young Canadian man, Robert Boulanger, the youngest in his company, just barely turned 18, who had joined the expeditionary forces against his parents wishes. He was shot in the head as he hit the beach during the Allies’ disastrous attempt to return to the continent at Dieppe in August 1942. (Nearly 60% of the 6000+ Allied soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured during this raid, which occurred while the Nazis were at the height of their strength.) Robert’s last letter was an apology to his parents for causing them such grief by enlisting. Utterly heartbreaking.
Several other entries were written by young (oh, so very, very young in too many instances!)—by young men in transit from England to one of the bloody beachheads on D-Day, and… who were killed before the ink had dried, so it seemed.
The entries from the German soldiers were enlightening: they were so very afraid of the invasion to come: they knew they had no more air defenses. One such soldier who manned a machine gun at Omaha Beach wrote of his astonishment — he and his company very efficiently mowed down wave after wave of allied soldiers coming ashore, and yet — still they came! And more of them! He and his comrades couldn’t believe it. He was finally wounded and sent to the back of the line.
The casualty count for Le Débarquement (as D-Day is referred to in France — “the disembarkment”) was… oh mon Dieu, staggeringly high. As were so many battles in WWII: the daily count in some cases far surpasses our total casualty count for Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We civilians born after simply have no grasp of unimaginable scale of the carnage, the devastation, the horror.
So many casualties occurred because of error—in part due to lack of technology. I think of how many lives would have been spared had GPS been invented: so many of the parachutists (for example) were dropped in the wrong places behind enemy lines, simply because the instruments were too imprecise. These brave men were cut off from support and supply lines and huge numbers among them were killed or captured.
The French looked forward to D-Day with impatience, and when it arrived, they both cheered and went into mourning: yet another hideous war to be fought on their already blood-soaked land. The book has civilian accounts of the endless bombing and shelling, of homes destroyed, neighbors and family killed, of the stench of death. A 14-year-old French boy wrote in his journal of coming across the bodies of American soldiers, some crushed by Nazi tanks.
Last month I read Le Cahier Rouge du Maquis — “The Maquis’ Red Notebook,” the diary of “Lieutenant Vallier,” the nom de guerre of one Gleb Sivirine, a remarkable hero of the Resistance who operated in the Haut Var just across the Verdon River from where we live. D-Day for Provence was August 15, 1944 — the Allies’ southern landing was awaited with acute impatience and distress in a part of France that had suffered huge deprivations and starvation and oppression. In the days just before the June 6th D-Day, French Resistance units here in Provence were finally allowed to go into full battle mode to distract the Germans and deplete their ammunition and supplies. (By this point, the German occupation policy was to kill 100 civilians for every German soldier killed by the Resistance: the reprisals were ruthless, yet the Resistance still had overwhelming popular support.)
Would to god that we would actually LEARN something from these tragic wars.
On a family note: My father is nearly 81. He joined the navy the instant he graduated from high school, but by then the war in Europe was over. He was shipped to California to prepare to get sent to the Pacific theatre, but it was over before he could be assigned to a ship (he never served aboard anything, as it turned out). He spent his time in the service doing clerical work. I honor him for his willingness to go: he never saw combat, but as with millions of other young men and many women, he was willing to do his duty.
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Posted by mofembot
Sun, 24 May 2009 10:39:00 GMT
As it was on his List of Gift Suggestions, and as I am more and more incapable of coming up with decent presents that I think up all by myself, I bought Consider the Lobster for Mr Mo for Christmas. I just finished reading it last week, so when dirkster42 cheered books in a comment in Cheers & Jeers the other day, I sprang in and chirruped my satisfaction to the world (as it were):
Just finished David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster. His review on the American usage book was utterly brilliant and amazingly funny. – In fact, all the essays were, though I (who still struggle with prudishness because of my conservative Mormon upbringing) thought it would have been better not to have put Red Son as the first entry. (It’s about the Porn Industry’s Academy Awards, and is, um… gosh. Blush. Titter. Swoon.)
But then someone asked a question in response to my comment, and I googled for the answer… which is when I (re)discovered that David Foster Wallace, this incredible writer, one of the very best writers I have ever read, had killed himself last September after losing a lifelong struggle against depression.
When I expressed my profound dismay, Mr Mo asked if I’d been “under a rock” to have been unaware of Wallace’s death. Well, the answer is no: I did in fact vaguely recall seeing some tributes on DKos and elsewhere when he died last year. But, see, until now I hadn’t really read his work, hadn’t until now made any connection as a fellow SNOOT,* hadn’t had any reason to know why his death (among so many deaths) represented such an enormous loss for the literary world (and also for the world at large: his was a truly moral and honest voice).
Even at this late date, some 8 months later, learning anew via Rolling Stone of his death now that I know him… hit me viscerally and hard, not the least reason being that depression was his killer, and I do indeed understand depression so deep and malignant that it draws death closer.
As I seek out more of his work to read, I know I will finish each story, each book, each essay with tears in my eyes, no matter how hard I will laugh and how delighted I will be at his deft use of language as I am reading: I was lucky, very lucky, and David Foster Wallace was not, and the world is much poorer for his passing.
*”SNOOT” is Wallace’s acronymic term for people who deeply, genuinely, and anal-retentively care about correct and effective language use, per his essay “Authority and American Usage” in Consider the Lobster. If you want to know what SNOOT stands for, I encourage you to read the essay.
(Cross-posted at DailyKos.)
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