Happy New Year (and a look back at Christmas)

Only at Vashon does it seem perfectly reasonable to put up a Christmas "tree" made from recycled New Yorker magazines cut into tree shapes and sewn together with brown paper twine.

Moving on from there, Leah and Drew cut more magazines into paper chains, and strung them across the kitchen and living room. It was all done as a surprise, when they went to the cabin two nights before everyone else arrived.

Add presents, a couple of visiting cats, and an unexpected burst pipe that flooded out the bunkhouse. Thanks to Ian and Zanne's quick action, Drew's giant shop vac, and dry sunny weather, the damage was containable. After cleaning up as much as possible, we settled down to the fun of Christmas, followed by a festive dinner (complete with Christmas crackers.)


Tonight we celebrate an anniversary, take leave of the past year, and look forward to the one ahead. In spite of gloomy news from everywhere, I wish everyone a happy 2010, and hope for a good one for myself.

Almost the end of the year...

...and it's one I won't miss. Suddenly a lot of the blogs I read are offering "farewell to the 00's - what a ghastly decade" posts. Not sure I'm that down on the ten years we've almost lived through, though I definitely would not want to repeat any of them.

Especially this year, in which a broken wrist forced cancellation or rearrangement of far too many plans, and major surgery last month has so far left me almost inert for the run-up to Christmas.

Instead of the "5-7 days" in hospital optimistically predicted by the surgeon, I spent 19 days there, coming home the day before Thanksgiving. As I remind myself several times a day, things are going to be ALL RIGHT, but meantime, just moving around can be a challenge. When I finally went out for a walk, I moved carefully, like a very old person, swathed in layers of hats, jackets and scarves!

(Still, I was out. And walking. And enjoying it!)

I'm lucky to have family and friends close by, dropping in to keep my spirits up, and doing all manner of errands large and small. Thanks to everyone!

One more fall picture...

Of trees whose leaves are now probably all gone, after today's heavy rain and wind.

Time to hibernate for a while. I have books - including A.S. Byatt's latest, The Children's Book.

That's a real ink-and-paper book. On my new iPod, I've downloaded a couple of audio books, and now am investigating, via the Kindle application, miniature classics. So far an inexpensive version of Emma is quite readable.

Tomorrow I have surgery, that will keep me in the hospital 5-7 days afterward. Then begins the coming-back process - somewhat familiar, but not a favorite thing to think about.

The other day, a friend and I agreed that, in spite of our continuing health issues, we are very healthy people.

What you are able to choose is your attitude.

I like Halloween, but...

The decor is getting out of hand. In my neighborhood, most confine themselves to a pumkin or two or three, sometimes carved, sometimes not.


With a ghoulish touch, sometimes.


Then there are the others. Every October something new is added to the mix at this place. This year it's giant (I mean King Crab-size) artificial spiders splayed across the house front.


(They could have saved money just by asking for one or two of the arachnids that found their way into my third floor living room this fall. Even the ferocious feline, terror of flies, moths and small birds, was intimidated.)

About 25 years ago, Halloween seemed to morph from a children's holiday to one fully embraced by adults of a certain age. Before then I don't remember seeing bank tellers and store clerks in costume - now they're everywhere, especially if October 31 falls near a weekend.

Now the costume (and yard display) season seems to begin as soon as October chills set in.


(Though, as a friend pointed out some years ago, there are parts of Seattle in which Halloween appears to last most of the year.)

Last Sunday before the return of Pacific Standard Time...

Something I thought about when rising early this morning to get ready for church. Choir gathers at 8:15 on Sunday mornings, and even when there's no traffic it takes at least 20 minutes from here to there (30 when I figure in a stop to pick up an essential double short latte at Ladro) so I was up in plenty of time to enjoy a sunrise that ranged from orange to coral to rose to every imaginable shade in between.

And that was before the sun was actually visible.

Today we sang Schubert ("Wohin?) and a contemporary setting of a section of the "Song of Solomon" ("Set me as a seal upon your heart - as a seal upon your arm - for love is strong as death") and the two have alternated as my ear worm all day. The simple, lovely, Shaker tune with which we ended the service should be the one that sticks, but I had to work harder to get the tricky parts of the Schubert, and it does not want to let go.

I love the Song of Solomon setting, though I'm not sure I agree with its sentiment. Love IS strong, and it does go on well past death. My beloved ghosts float just out there, ready to gather round whenever I'm open to a visit (and sometimes just because THEY insist on being heard.) I go with Hemingway, who said, "No one you love is ever dead."

Terrestrial life continues. The ghosts remain in place.

For a year or so after my husband died, I used to imagine catching him up on everything that had happened since. Eventually things shift so drastically that no summary is possible.

This fall the leaves are brilliant. I think it's because of our long dry summer, and some cold nights during an essentially dry fall. Even the leaves fallen onto the street are exceptionally colorful.

A nice weekend to be on Maui...

But I'm not the one enjoying beaches and palm trees. It's Ian and Zanne who flew off to Maui on Thursday, just in time to miss several days of heavy rain. After our almost endless summer, it was a big shock last week to have to deal with rain and puddles and slippery roads and early darkness. It's good weather for the living room fireplace.

I mean to post more often, but distractions abound. This week the main one(s) include the new computer, new (first) iPod, and newly-installed high-speed internet (including a wireless router.) The speed and power of the new machine dazzle me, after all those years of limited memory and dial-up. And the iPod is a seductive toy.


Sparky's current passion is the plant by the front door - a gift from the neighbors who left for their winter home a couple of weeks ago. When she hops up on the railing to nibble one of the long fronds, it's jungle kitty time.

Tonight I have the computer on my lap, and she is stretched out in front of the fireplace, quite content to be out of the rain.

All your ghosts are welcome

Nearly every year since 1995 my son and daughter-in-law have hosted a gathering they call "The J. Peter Adler Memorial Wake and Weenie Roast."

J. Peter, a college friend of theirs, was killed in a traffic accident two hours after submitting his thesis for a master's in theater. Only a few of the college friends were able to attend his memorial service. Later that summer, my son organized the first "Wake and Weenie Roast," for San Francisco friends who had not been to the East Coast memorial.

When my son and his wife moved to Seattle, the Weenie Roast came too. Now the gathering consists mostly of people who never met J. Peter, but who are happy to gather in his memory and bring their own ghosts to remember and celebrate.

A proper wake offers good food, good drink, and good talk. When so many at the gathering are theater people, the talk is even better. J. Peter's mother and step-father, who live on the East Coast, provide good Scotch (J. Peter's favorite libation) and always call sometime during the party.

And the ghosts come out to dance. Tonight we toasted a grandmother who taught her grandson to laugh; high school friends who died twenty, thirty or fifty years ago; a friend who flirted with the EMTs in the ambulance carrying her to what turned out to be her last hospital visit.

We also celebrated Bucky, a four-point point buck mortally injured in a Vashon Island road accident. On a night of pouring rain, three people who had never before field-dressed an animal helped to send Bucky humanely on his way, then, after hanging the body under a deck, successfully gutted, skinned and butchered him.

A minister described a memorial service for John, a parishoner who died after many years of living with HIV. Because he had overseen church flowers and decor, he left specific instructions about flowers for the service, and asked a friend to make sure a favorite piece of red silk was used in a certain part of the church.

Although it wasn't strictly necessary, both ministers decided to wear their robes and red stoles. But when all four pallbearers, the reader and the communion assistant turned up in outfits accented with red, John's favorite color, the minister telling the story said, "I knew he was there, coordinating everything."

It was a Day of the Dead celebration, with food and drink and tears and laughter. I look forward to it every year, and cherish the people (and the ghosts) that I meet.

Black Cat Month

I don't know if this is something dreamed up to add to Halloween hype, but I found it - where else? - on the Internet.

Depending on your outlook, black cats can be bad luck or good luck. When not associated with witches and witchcraft, they are favorites of designers and advertisers, who have used them to sell all kinds of products. Years ago I found a book called The Black Cat Made Me Do It, filled with old advertising, like this:


So, as the temperature drops outside and leaves begin to turn, consider offering your favorite black cat a place of honor in front of the fireplace (or on your bed.)

And don't forget a small treat - some fromage, perhaps?

A good week for magpies...

No, I don't have unusual new birds visiting the deck or carrying on in the big maple.

But if magpies, known for their attraction to all things bright and shiny, could see what has been catching the eyes of internet users, they would be perching on my shoulders to see for themselves.

This is what is getting the most play - an amazing hoard of gold sword hilts and horse harness, thought to be battle trophies.

I prefer the collection in the picture - jewelry found in the grave of a Saxon princess, in NE England. Check it out here.

Anniversaries of all kinds

1939 was a big year.

I wasn't around, but as soon as I could read (probably even before) I knew that year brought major changes everywhere.

Just past: the 70th anniversary of the beginning of WWII. (For my family, that led to a move from B.C. to Saskatchewan, which led to an after-the-war move to Idaho, very likely the reason I'm in Seattle today. Not to mention some hairy war stories from my mother's cousins, who toughed it out in SE England.)

And then there's "The Wizard of Oz," which celebrates its 70th very soon.

I have never seen the movie. That probably puts me in the bottom 2% of the entire population of the planet.

Furthermore, I never took children to see the movie, which means I'm in the top 2% of bad mommies. (They have survived nicely, and I don't know to this day if they ever saw the movie - does that move me up to the top 1%?)

I read all the Oz books (some of them in those colorful early editions, enticingly shelved in a garret-like bedroom in a wonderful old cabin in Snoqualmie Pass.) And in about 1948 I was taken to see a stage version, at what was then Washington State College. (In the last scene, Dorothy disappeared off-stage on a wheeled dolly, after clicking her heels three times. It was, after all, a student production.)

My husband and his cousin, both serious Judy Garland fans, were aghast that I had missed this seminal experience. Reminding them that I grew up in a small town, where the movie may have shown up once then disappeared forever, didn't get me off the hook.

TV clips didn't help. Perhaps it was the closeups of Judy Garland, stuffed into a too-small gingham dress to disguise her budding adolescence.

Or the Munchkins. Even in a brief clip it was possible to cry and to cringe, all at the same time. Didn't anyone think, "exploitation?"

Perhaps I just didn't want to surrender the pictures in my mind to the ones on the screen.

This morning on NPR Scott Simon interviewed the president of the international fan club - and one of the last surviving actors, a 92-year old who played the Munchkin coroner.

He sounded like a wonderful person, and I'm glad he has survived to bask in the fame of the film.

But I still don't want to see it.

"Everything that rises..."

Last night I saw a fascinating, almost mesmerizing movie.

Called "Seraphine," it is based on the life of Seraphine de Senlis, a reclusive, highly-talented but unschooled painter whose work came to light in the 1920's thanks to a German art historian and dealer.

Seraphine worked endless menial jobs, living close to the bone to finance her obsessive desire to paint. Using her own formulas to make brilliant, intense colors, she painted flowers, leaves, insects, grasses and trees, creating dense compositions that all seemed to rise toward the top of her large canvases. An article about her work suggests her original inspiration may have been the stained-glass windows in the cathedral of Senlis. Her continuing inspiration came from the fields and woods all around her.

The film features Yolande Moreau, a Belgian actress who has worked as a clown, traveled with a couple of her own one-woman shows, and appeared in a number of films. Here she gives an almost silent performance that is marvelously eloquent in conveying Seraphine's intelligence, persistence, weariness, and elusive charm. Eventually the artist's visions lead her over the edge, but not before her paintings have brought her a significant amount of comfort and recognition.

The movie moves slowly, in no hurry to finish its story, and features long, ravishing sweeps of green French countryside or endless leafy woods. The director incorporated a great deal of natural sound into the film, which adds to the authenticity of the period setting.

Don't forget the bumbershoot(s)

After the longest, hottest, driest summer ever, it was almost inevitable that Bumbershoot, the annual end-of-summer festival, would be soggy. As soon as everyone is safely back at work or school, the sun will come out again, for a while, but in the meantime it feels as if we have gone from summer to winter in a couple of weeks.

Coming up: choir, committee things, playing flute again. Now that the cast is off my wrist, all that hand motion is good rehab. Long past when the doctor said it was OK to drive, I avoided my car's stiff 5-speed shift, but last Friday it was time to get out of the garage and back on the road.

I made it as far as a long line of cars waiting for the Fremont Bridge to close. When traffic began to move again, I turned on the ignition - and got steady, ominous clicking. I was able to get the car out of the way, and the Triple A rescue truck came promptly - but by the time the car was fitted with a new battery, I was ready to start the day over.

Always listen to the wise neighbor who suggests trying out the car before you need to take it somewhere. (But your mishap will give her such a good laugh!)

Thinking about Julia

Last night a friend and I went to see "Julie and Julia," a thoroughly enjoyable movie.

On the way home, I told her the story of the copy of Mastering The Art of French Cooking that came my way in 1966. My husband's aunt, a savvy devotee of rummage sales, found it for $2 in Decatur, Illinois - in mint condition except for a missing title page.

"I think someone got it for a wedding present and got scared!" she wrote.

Tonight I took the book off the kitchen shelf for the first time in ages. It falls open to recipes I used to cook - quiche, cheese soufflé, Carbonnade Flammande, Boeuf en Daube, Coquilles St. Jacques (I even owned a set of scallop shells for serving.)

It has been a long time since I made any of those dishes, and I have no desire to emulate Julie Powell's year-long slog through the book. Still, after an hour or so paging through it, I started thinking about dinner parties, wondering if I still have the right pots & pans...

Go see the movie - but be sure to eat before you do!

Last Day of Summer

Never mind the equinox - August 31 always feels like the last day of summer. It's time for school to start, for foggy mornings and earlier darkness, and a rush of family birthdays and anniversaries.

In ordinary years, some of our best weather arrives in September. This year we have had almost nothing BUT good weather, since May. If next summer is anything like this one, people who sell air-conditioning equipment will make a fortune.

City of Seattle public libraries are closed from today until September 8, for budgetary reasons. No book drops, on-line catalog - or library fines for anything that was due this week.

Last Friday, in search of escapist reading (I'm interested mostly in escapist reading at the moment) I ventured into the central downtown library, our Rem Koolhaas-designed showplace. ("A waste of good steel," according to the metal workers in the family, but spectacular nonetheless.)

The library's huge interior spaces are soothing in a way I did not expect. Normal noise and hubbub from numbers of people engaged in customary library activities just rises up to the high cantilevered ceilings - and dissipates to whispers. There are thousands of books on shelves, and enough space for thousands more, a reassuring feeling.

A few months ago, I had planned to be on my way to Transylvania this week, but it's a trip that will have to wait. Fortunately, someone else from the partner church group is able to attend the international Unitarian-Universalist conference in Kolozsvàr this week, so we'll get a first-hand report when she returns.


We'll also get a report on life in the partner village, where the minister since 1997 is leaving, and we don't yet know when someone new will be appointed to the pulpit. At the end of the conference, a whole group of American attendees will journey to Torockószentgyörgy for a festive dinner in the new pension (one of the many changes to happen in the village since I first visited in 2001.)

"There's opera -- and then there's Wagner"

That's a quote from the man who sat near my two friends and me during "The Ring" last week.

Since 1975, "The Ring" has been a quadrennial phenomenon in Seattle. This most recent production (first presented in 2001) just gets better on repeat viewing. Many of the same singers have returned time after time, digging deeper into the story and the music for each new cycle.

That said, "The Ring" is as exhausting as it is exhilarating. The shortest of the operas is 2-1/2 hours long, only because it runs without an intermission.

Last night's finale, "Götterdämmerung," began at 6 p.m., with a first act that lasted almost 2 hours. Two acts and two intermissions later, we staggered out of the Opera House, at 11:30 p.m.

When "The Ring" is on, Seattle becomes a truly international city. The opera cycle attracts people from all over the US and the world - this year there are visitors from 49 states and 23 countries. I love hearing all the accented English and foreign languages.

The international audience also lifts the general standard of dress at Seattle Opera. Here in the Northwest we're casual to a fault, and jeans and shorts(!) crop up where you hope they would be least expected.

At "The Ring" the holdouts may still turn out in REI chic, but the visitors (and determined locals) dress up. There were women in long gowns, men in full formal dress - and lots of sleeveless, backless and/or very short dresses. The range is great - my two favorites were a 70-something woman, blonde and charming, turned out in full, authentic dirndl; and a tall, white-haired man in formal kilts, complete with jacket, knee socks, and sporran.

Those horn calls are still running through my head.

Centennials of note

For a couple of years now, the Sousa Band has been a go-to musical group for centennial celebrations.

Seattle was a bustling, bumptious, fast-growing place during the first decade of the 20th century, and many of the events and locations of that era are worthy of commemoration. Sousa (along with Henry Fillmore, Carl King and a number of others) wrote marches that were some of the most popular tunes of the day, so the band is a perfect fit for a musical look back.

Two years ago the band played for centennial celebrations for the Pike Place Market. (That is the proper name for the Market, and if I hear one more person talk about "Going to Pike's Market" I will say something intemperate, even if I AM on a bus.)

The band also played that year for the 100th anniversary of the Good Shepherd Center, which started life as a home for wayward girls and now serves as a busy community center (and the band's practice space.)


This year's big event is the commemoration of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, which took place 100 years ago on the site now occupied by the University of Washington. (More information here.)

In July, the band helped welcome a group of vintage cars (Model T's, mostly) re-creating a cross-country race that was part of the original AYP festivities. Among the tunes that day was a march written especially for the exposition (Washington State's very first World's Fair.) It was appropriately titled "From Alaska to Panama," but written by an eccentric composer from Pennsylvania who probably never set foot in the Northwest.

Yesterday a beautiful lakefront park celebrated its 100th year. Although the casino, shown in the picture, is long gone, Leschi Park still occupies choice acreage on the shores of Lake Washington. In 1909 people reached the park on a cable car, and in 2009 you can still get there - easily - by public transportation (one change of buses from my house to the park.)


The band played for an hour, entertaining a good crowd, coping successfully with a stage set on ground that sloped slightly backward. (That had to be the reason the Sedentary Majorette accidentally tossed her baton among the clarinets.)

Greening up

This evening we had real rain, along with enough lightning to make the radio crackle, and a couple of thunderclaps.

In spite of the long drought, the grass is reviving. From my window, I can see a tinge of green on the slopes at Gasworks Park, as if the dry grass had been lightly misted. After a few more showers, the park should green up, as if this summer had never happened.

And in spite of an August date on the calendar, it's already fall. This morning there were 17 geese floating in formation on the lake, first I've seen since early spring. They took off in a rush, swift and vocal, intent on arriving somewhere not visible from here.

It's raining!

After 26 dry days. I have never seen parks, lawns and roadsides so completely dried out as they are this summer.

This area always gets a dry spell in the summer, when the grass dries out and the trees get grayish. This year the dry weather has gone on so long that I wonder if everything can come back. By next spring we could see many dead trees - but I hope to be proved wrong.

On Sunday the Sousa Band played at the Ballard Locks, everyone's favorite gig. The time and weather were both perfect - 2 p.m. on a suddenly sunny summer Sunday - and the crowd was the largest I've seen for any of these concerts.

This year I was in the audience, wishing all the while I could be up there playing.

If you missed this concert, think about coming to Leschi Park next Saturday, when the band plays for its centennial celebration. (Liz, the band director, said on Sunday that the Sousa Band has become Seattle's favorite centennial celebration band - ever since 2007 we've been playing for various commemorations.)

More information at the Sousa website: www.sedentarysousa.com

At large in my own city

From time to time something new in Seattle is so different or so longed-for that it brings on a classic "Wait, where AM I?" moment.

Almost eleven years ago, we got a beautiful new concert hall, in the middle of downtown. Not only does it offer two fabulous performance facilities (large and small halls) but the three-story atrium-lobby is one of the most spectacular venues in the city. On a summer or winter night, its curved glass facade facing the lingering twilight or glittering city lights, it is a wonderful place to be.

And almost every one of my friends had exactly the same reaction to the hall on their first visit - "Is this really Seattle?"

Today I had another of those moments, when I rode the new Link Light Rail. In town, the sleek train cars run in the bus tunnel that has been part of life for 20+ years (if you subtract the two when it was closed because engineers discovered it would not, after all, support train tracks without major refurbishing. Oops.)

That's all in the past. On July 18 the trains started running, and finally, 42 years after a former mayor urged the city to develop a light rail system, we have it. There is only one line so far, and it won't reach the airport until December of this year, but it's a major step forward.

So today I checked it out, riding from Westlake Station to Tukwila. For much of the route, the train tracks follow a couple of major streets, but one section of the route is a tunnel, that emerges into an underground station that's all curved steel walls and sculptural glass panels.

That's when I had the "Where am I?" moment. I've been in other stations like the one at Beacon Hill - in Copenhagen, Vienna and Berlin. Here is an architecturally breathtaking place, half an hour from home.

There's nothing quite like playing tourist in your very own city.

Temperature drops! At last!

Only in the Pacific NW? On Wednesday the 29th Seattle recorded its hottest day ever - 103 degrees.

One week later, August 5, it was 40 degrees cooler, and cloudy - but by evening the sky had cleared enough for a clear view of the full moon.

Today it was gray and cool, and I didn't hear a single complaint.

It's a good time to read. Last night I stayed up far too late, finishing another Dan Fesperman novel - The Arms Maker of Berlin. Germany, WWII, spies, counter-spies, Cold War machinations, fallout from German reunification - it's a great read.

(But I really should have turned out the light before 2 a.m.!)

Lovely weather - for flowers

But it's still too hot, especially at night. Years ago a colleague of my late husband's said that people in the Northwest are like house plants - unhappy if the temperature goes much above or much below 65.

Just by luck, I replanted the deck pots the day before I broke my wrist, and the cast does not get in the way of watering or deadheading. Petunias respond to good weather and regular attention with a bounty of blossoms.

The Blue Angels roared overhead for the last time today, the finale of Seafair. The planes are so loud and so fast that it's a trick to spot them, because they are always far ahead of the sound.

The other major weekend noisemakers were the hydroplanes that race on Lake Washington. Although their turbine engines seem loud enough (we could hear them all too well when we lived on the east side, several miles north of the race area,) an article in the Seattle Times said some old-timers miss the real "thunderboats" - the first, post-WWII hydros, powered by airplane engines! (Think B-29 with a roostertail.)

I'm ready for rain. The grass is brown everywhere, and even the broad-leafed plants are drooping.

August already?

And I'm typing with all ten fingers, though five of them still protrude from a fiberglass cast. Until August 21, after which I'll have a removable Velcro thing, which presumably will free my hand up enough to get back to the flute.

When the cast first went on, I worried about looking vulnerable. Then I took another look at the rigid fiberglass enclosing my entire forearm, and thought, "What a weapon!"

And OF COURSE I get a seat on the bus, especially when wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

If I had a garden, I'd probably be working in it this morning, because the weather is finally back to something comfortable enough to enjoy. For more than a week we have had temperatures in the 80's and 90's, and on Wednesday it got to 103. That's too hot in a place where most people do not have air conditioning.

On the hottest day I landed briefly at the Ballard Library, which DOES have AC - and felt lucky to find a seat! At our corner store, the proprietor periodically hosed down the sidewalk, aimed a fan INTO the building during cool morning hours - but said he couldn't complain, because the heat was good for business (ice, beer, ice cream...)

Last night I alternately smiled, laughed, sniffled (and fumed because the theater was 80% empty) while watching "Blue Window" at Driftwood.

Craig Lucas' play demands a small skilled ensemble cast. This group did a fine version of the play in February, working in a tiny performance space that barely qualified as a black box theater.

The current production is a fund-raiser for Driftwood - and a chance for the actors to spread out, on a real stage. The actors appreciated the chance to revisit the play and their characters, and the audience stayed right with them all the way. Congratulations again, everyone.

Now if some people will just COME TO SEE THE PLAY! It's on tonight and tomorrow afternoon - Wade James Theater, in Edmonds.

Ten-fingered typing again...

Although the (small, neat, but still awkward) cast doesn't make it easy.

When I got the present cast, on the 6th, the doctor said, "Keep those fingers moving," and I was delighted that typing was an approved activity. With knitting out of the question for a while, I can housekeep or read or use the computer - cheered by e-mail and Facebook.

(I've considered trying to learn to knit Continental style, but so far haven't made the attempt.)

The flute is also living in its case for a while, which is a shame, because so many of the good Sousa Band gigs are outdoors in the summer. I hope to be back to playing by mid-August.

Here in the Pacific NW we've had certifiably summer weather for weeks now. There was a brief interruption for thunder, lightning and rain last Sunday, followed by a couple of gray days, but now it's back to sunshine (with an occasional foggy morning.)

To no one's surprise, Chase Bank announced, soon after the 4th, that it will not fund the fireworks next year. That gives organizers a year to find a new sponsor - and as my pragmatic son pointed out today, during its 21-year history the fireworks show has had several underwriters.

Recommended reading: Anything by Dan Fesperman, especially his two books that cover the period of the Balkan wars (1990's) - Lie in the Dark and The Small Boat of Great Sorrows. Either one illuminates so much of what we heard on the Danube trip last year, as we floated through Croatia and Serbia. After a lecture by a Croatian woman in Vukovar, our Serbian tour guides made sure to tell us that "there IS another side to this story," and subsequent Serbian lecturers sketched out an interesting array of conspiracy theories.

Eastern Europe is full of people who live side by side while remaining deeply suspicious of each other. The first time I went to Transylvania, people in our (mostly) Hungarian partner village said they watched on TV as Croats and Bosnians were driven out of their homes and towns, sure that the same thing would happen to them when the Romanians got around to ethnic cleansing. What kept the lid on in Romania was the government's overwhelming desire to become a member of the EU (a goal achieved in 2007.)

The party's over...

For another year at least. Last night Chase Bank sponsored a truly spectacular fireworks display over Lake Union, perhaps to reassure Seattle that they are at least as civic-minded as the late WaMu. (Now if they will just think about renewing that office lease agreement with SAM...)

Today an acquaintance reported on a conversation with "the most pessimistic person you can imagine," who ranted about what a waste of money a fireworks display represents. We agreed fireworks are a luxury we can handle - we may even deserve the show!

As usual, people in this building have the luxury of watching from the front porch, so to speak. I and Z made a delicious dinner for me and one of my neighbors, and we enjoyed a lovely gift bottle of bubbly (a thank-you for loaning out extra parking places.) After making sure her cat and mine had dark quiet places to feel safe, we moved to the neighbor's deck, because her view of the lake is just a bit wider than mine.

Fireworks here don't start until 10:15, because the sun doesn't set until well after 9 p.m.

Ready for big bangs...

...and learning to type one-handed. Yesterday, on the way up the escalator to the Pilates studio, I put my right hand out to break a fall -- and broke my wrist in two places.

Good news is that I don't need surgery. Bad news is the bulky splint (my arm looks like something ready to be unwrapped after 3500 years in a pyramid) which will be replaced with a proper cast on Monday.

The best news is that I have wonderful children, who did all the necessary transport, shopping, and most of all - THE WAITING. Their reward (I hope they think of it that way!) is to come back for mega-fireworks over the lake tonight.

I'm looking forward to touch-typing again.

More about airplane books

As if 950 pages of carryon reading (see previous post) didn't convince me to look for something a little more portable, I succumbed to the lure of a previously un-read classic and bought a paperback copy of The Count of Monte Cristo the day before leaving for Las Vegas.

At 1452 pages, the book weighed down my purse, but it was worth the trouble - I read about 250 pages during the flight, and got through another couple of hundred during the weekend, without being rude or anti-social. (My sensible sister-in-law was reading a truly pocket-sized book. My brother rolled his eyes when I brought out the Count.)

I don't know how I had missed reading the book all this time, because Dumas' other best-known classic, The Three Musketeers, was my favorite read and re-read in junior high and high school.

Having at last encountered Edmond Dantès, I recommend him to everyone. In spite of the Victorian English of the translation, the book is, as they say, a "ripping yarn." Lorenzo Carcaterra, who contributed an excellent introduction to the Modern Library paperback, describes the book as the ultimate revenge fantasy, but Edmond is driven as much by his desire to right the wrongs done to his friends as by a thirst for vengeance.

Because Dumas wrote for serialization, he could take time to describe, to develop character, to set the scene. The book is cinematic - no wonder it has been filmed many times.

And if the story sometimes requires too much suspension of disbelief, remember that it's a fantasy, peopled with scheming villains of both sexes, a mysterious mute Nubian servant, a beautiful Greek slave, lovers parted by dreadful circumstances, illegitimate children who discover their true parentage in improbable ways - and a hero who overcomes every obstacle that comes his way, no matter how formidable.

And its most stirring underlying theme is the power of education to enlarge the world and mitigate desperate situations. Edmond survives 14 years in the Chateau d'If not only because of his dreams of revenge but also because of knowledge imparted by his fellow prisoner, the Abbé Faria.

I just wish I had discovered the book before visiting Marseilles. Now I have to go back, to see the landmarks that remain.

Airplane reading

For me, the most important thing to pack for a flight - long or short - is a good book.

If only I could keep the book to a reasonable size. Even on a long flight it's almost impossible to finish an entire book - and yet I persist in carting along reading material the size of a doorstop.

For example, Sacred Games, an absolutely fascinating read. I actually bought the book in 2007, soon after it came out in paperback, and read about half of it before getting distracted. A day or two before leaving for Paris, I picked it up, decided it was reasonable to start from page 1 again, and stuffed it into the carryon.

"Stuffed" is the operative word here, because the book is 950+ pages long. You need two bookmarks - one to mark your place, one for the glossary of Hindi words (lots of expletives you probably haven't heard before) liberally sprinkled throughout the text.

The book is - loosely - about cops and robbers in Bombay (Chandra's preferred name for the city known as Mumbai.) There's a hardworking Sikh police detective, a Hindu gangster, a guru in a wheelchair, a movie star, a madam, a love story, a mystery, a terrorist plot - and a time frame that ranges from Partition, in 1947, to the present. It's as Bollywood-influenced as "Slumdog Millionaire," but far more intricate and thoughtful.

Well worth checking out, even if you're not planning a long flight. (But it's a good argument for investing in a Kindle!)

Brief visit to another planet...

Otherwise known as a weekend in Las Vegas, first time I'd ever been there.

I flew down on Thursday, invited to spend a few days with my brother and his wife, who were attending an "owners' party weekend" sponsored by their vacation resort company. It was a good chance to catch up in person, as we don't often get together.

"Of course you'll have to listen to the sales spiel," he reminded me.

But the spiel came after a couple of days in which we had attended a party at the condo complex, a buffet dinner and this show at the Mirage, and checked out as much of the Strip as we could before heat and sore feet wore us down!

We're gawkers, not gamblers - and what a place to gawk! At the Mirage, I could happily have spent part of the evening just watching the tropical fish in the aquarium that is the wall behind the lobby desk.

And there's nothing nicer than swimming outdoors during really hot weather. The condo pool was pleasant at the deep end and almost too warm in the shallow, and once out, I barely needed a towel to dry off.

I didn't buy into the resort plan (though my brother was able to pick up a considerable number of shares very reasonably - deals abound these days if you're able to take advantage of them.)

Nicest surprise of the weekend came Thursday morning in the Seattle airport, where I encountered two friends (who are among my seven or eight loyal readers!) at the check-in area. Their flight was leaving for California, ten minutes after mine, from the next gate, giving us time for a pleasantly serendipitous visit.

In Seattle, we've had 26 days without rain. Astonishing.

Back to real life...

Which is, of course, not a bad thing, especially now that the weather has returned to normal daytime temperatures (70's instead of the 80's and 90's we had last week.)

But I went to meetings and Pilates, managing not to yawn too much anywhere. Jet lag takes about a week to go away completely.

It was eerie to listen to the news of the Air France crash and to be able to picture so vividly the interior of the Airbus 330 - it's exactly the same plane AF uses on the Seattle-Paris flight.

The heat wave broke with a rush of wind through the house on Thursday night. Sparky, who had spent most of the week stretched out as flat as possible, in any cool or dark space she could find, suddenly came to life, dashing around like a kitten.

Because everyone was free for the weekend, we went to Vashon Saturday morning, for a fix of island peace and quiet. Though our usual pattern is to do all meals at the cabin, this time we went out to dinner, at La Boucherie, a small (the deck is bigger than the seating area inside) meat shop/restaurant that is an extension of a thriving organic farm. Leah is cooking and baking there on weekends, and she alerted us to a special event scheduled for Saturday night - a true carnivore's dinner.

We're up for trying just about anything - just as well, since the many small dishes presented included both pork heart (delicious) and pig's - ahem - testicles (interesting to try - once.) My mother, the daughter of an English butcher, served organ meats of all kinds when we were growing up, but I had not eaten so many different parts of an animal since attending a wedding feast in Transylvania a few years ago.

Just to keep things in balance, there were vegetables, a palate-cleansing green salad, as well as a very interesting tiny glass of grapefruit juice infused with basil.

The point of the restaurant is to make a feast from food grown on the island, and the variety of tastes was fascinating. Even the wine was semi-local -- produced on the island, from grapes grown in drier and sunnier places.

A hundred years ago, Vashon was the site of several large fruit-growing and canning operations, and jams and jellies were among the first new local products to emerge in the 70's and 80's. Now at the busy Saturday farmer's market, you can find island fruits, vegetables, fish and meat - and these lovely chocolates!

Home again -

And still waking up very early (not to mention longing for sleep at 8:30 p.m.!)

Unusually early morning hours are great for wading through accumulated mail. Because of all the bad economic news, I was amazed to find so many invitations salted among the bills & advertising. Came home too late to accept any - no regrets.

Seattle continues in full good-weather mode: few clothes, goofy expressions. After all, this could disappear overnight (just as it does in Paris!) Rhododendrons are glorious. I don't know if they are more opulent than usual this year (because of the cold winter?) or if it's just that I am hyper-aware, since I left town before most were fully in bloom.

I'm still a fan of the Air France flight. Even when the plane is packed full, the service is good, and the food in tourist class is just fine. We landed in Seattle exactly on time Wednesday, and it was possible to watch the landing on the tiny back-of-the-seat TV screen. This is not guaranteed to make me want to fly a very large airplane (or even a small one) but it was fascinating.

No, the picture isn't my favorite Seattle coffee shop - it's the restaurant where I had lunch in Paris on Monday. I could not resist the impulse to add one more Paris picture to the blog.

More Paris promenades -

or, "How do I make the sunburn go away??"

Paris is another place where, if you don't like the weather, you should just wait a bit. Because of the up and down nature of this month - a good day followed by rain or overcast - I wasn't surprised to see clouds this morning after yesterday's clear warmth.

The real surprise was that the clouds quickly burned off, and the day turned seriously hot. Even the natives complained (although they quickly retrieved summer clothes and sunglasses, and most women seem to have tans already!)

Welcoming any stray breezes, I walked along the Seine from the Gare d'Austerlitz to Notre Dame, then on to the Cluny museum. After the museum, I walked further into the 6th, first for lunch, then to find a bus that would take me back to the 17th. Some Parisian buses are air-conditioned, but this one made do with a vent that opened in the roof.

The Cluny, home of the "Lady and the Unicorn" tapestries, seems more beautiful and well-organized every time I go there. Because of large corporate donations, the museum has developed a number of new exhibit areas, and redeployed some of its smaller treasures (ivory coffrets, enamel pieces) to better advantage. And it's always interesting to see how the excavated parts of the huge Roman bath house that first stood on this site continue to be incorporated into "The Museum of the Middle Ages."

Here's a fragment of stained glass, mounted along with many others on a lighted wall in a dark corridor. I like the red feet on the patridges ("perdrix.")

Playing tourist -

Yesterday Paris reverted to gray windy weather, with heavy storm clouds piling up in the afternoon. Rain never happened, but the threat was there.

Today, by contrast, a hot sun came up. I got into full tourist mode by taking the Metro to Bastille, closest embarkation point for the boat trip up the Canal St. Martin. After last year's trip down the Danube, the locks on the canal looked pretty tame, but the long tunnel the boat goes through at the beginning of the trip was attention-getting.


The trip is worth doing, especially on a hot spring morning just before full tourist season. Because some neighborhoods along the canal figure prominently in French mysteries (Inspector Maigret lived on the Blvd. Richard Lenoir) and movies (Marcel Carne filmed "Hotel du Nord" in 1938 in a building that is still called Hotel du Nord, whether or not it actually figured in the movie) canal boats are evocatively named. The boat I was on was the Arletty - the one we passed, about halfway through the trip, was, of course, Marcel Carne.

Boats go all the way to Parc de la Villette, a huge, elaborate park that began to take shape more than 20 years ago, on the site that was formerly the stockyards/abbatoir of Paris.

In 1990, Terry and I took the Metro a long way out of the usual tourist circuit to see the park, which he had read about in Landscape Architecture magazine. We had it almost to ourselves that late October day, because crews were still at work, planting and shaping, and many of the buildings that now draw people to the site were still under construction.


He wanted to come back, to see the trees grown up and the park full of people. He felt sure it would be a hugely important place, and it is - that entire area of Paris continues to transform because of the park.

Across from the end of the boat ride I lucked into a "Brocante" market - antiques and collectibles, rather like the Fremont Market on steroids - or a giant "vide grenier." There were lovely things, but I resisted them all - a small suitcase is a powerful dis-incentive to shopping!

Although the commentator on the boat made sure to direct passengers to the nearest Metro so they could go directly back to Bastille, I just wandered, eventually ending up at a cafe on the corner of Rue de Lafayette and a couple of other streets. Excellent "salad cantalou" - a sort of enhanced potato salad, with prosciutto and a couple of kinds of cheese.


Then I walked on as far as the Gare de l'Est, where I got on a bus that I knew goes somewhere near my neighborhood. Fascinating ride, through some areas I've never visited, and a roundabout entry to this part of the 17th. Without being exactly sure where I was, I managed to get off at a stop that was a short walk to a street that leads directly to Rue de Courcelles, a block from Villa Monceau.

Although it's probably dangerous to think one actually knows a part of Paris, the thought is there!

With the best of intentions...

This is about traveling we DIDN'T do - and why it was perfectly all right.

On the 19th, I posted while people got ready to depart for one excursion or the other, ready to put away the computer whenever it was time to leave for Saissac, Montolieu and points in between.

And then we never made it farther than Soreze, about 3 km from Durfort. With one errand and another, Cathy and I found ourselves looking for a parking place there about 11:30 a.m., long after we had planned to be on the road. One of our tasks was to find a place for a group farewell dinner that evening, an endeavor complicated by unannounced closing days and impenetrable voice mail messages.

Without a lot of discussion, we decided it was a day to stay close to home. After picking up a loaf of bread, we went back to La Cascade, where we put together a satisfying lunch for ourselves and Carolyn, from an assortment of tasty dinner leftovers, cheese, fruit and vegetables. It was warm enough to eat out on the terrace, and we had some excellent wine to make it a celebration.

After lunch came an invitation to visit the house of another expatriate artist, as it was being readied for visitors. Later, since we were already in Soreze, Carolyn suggested we try to visit Mme. Fontanilles, who, at age 97, is still painting portraits, making elaborately-costumed collectible dolls, and writing stories based on their imagined lives.


Her favorite subject is Anais, a little Soreze girl of the 1860's, whose portrait is on the sign above her shop.

Madame and her young home helper were at home, and pleased to have company. We were entranced by her energy and liveliness. She has lived in Soreze her entire life, but now has family scattered through Europe. From Carolyn we learned that during WWII she participated in the Resistance, and occasionally hid downed Allied pilots in her house.

That night we had a festive farewell dinner at an elegant restaurant located in a building that was once an abbey, then a military school, and now contains two hotels and a conference center.


Next morning I had time for a few more Durfort photos, including this one, of the fountain where everyone in town gets drinking water that comes straight down from a protected source in the nearby foothills.

Back in Paris...

Where the weather is clear and warm and it stays light until 10 p.m.

Cathy and I left Durfort Wednesday morning, in time to drive into Toulouse before traffic got totally impossible. We made one or two extra circuits of "Centre Ville" before figuring out how to get the car back to the rental car lot at Gare Toulouse Matabiau, but once we squeezed into the correct lane, everything went well.

Toulouse, called the "rose city" because soft red brick is the building material of choice, is a lively, crowded, multi-racial city that is definitely southern, and definitely more laid-back than Paris. After settling into a formerly grand hotel that we picked for its convenient location - across from the train station - we set off for the main square, where sidewalk cafes and a busy market compete for space. To me the city felt like Southern California, in its heat, its plant material, and the mix of people. We particularly liked the market booths where women in long bright cotton print dresses and matching head wraps sold a kaleidoscopic variety of printed African fabrics.


With only part of a day to explore, we stayed close to the center, but did see the inside of the town hall (impressive 19th-century public building) and visit St. Sernin, a huge, austere Romanesque cathedral that incorporates bits and pieces of numerous earlier churches built on the same site.

After visiting the church, we enjoyed a "citron presse" (fabulous fresh lemonade) at a nearby cafe, where large trees in full leaf gave welcome shade. Later that evening we experienced true Toulousain weather, when a strong wind sprang up, followed by rain showers. By the time we finished dinner, the wind had died down and we dodged only a few sprinkles as we walked back to the hotel.

Next morning we took the train to Bordeaux, a much larger - and more self-consciously elegant city than Toulouse. Bordeaux, where all that lovely wine comes from, has been a port city since Roman times, and has impressive stone buildings dating back many centuries. It's a UNESCO World Heritage city, now busily reinventing its old downtown core into a pedestrian-friendly area that draws big crowds. The taxi driver had to insert a special card into a machine in order to drive us to the front door of our hotel, which was located just inside one of the old city gates. We were there on the Ascension Day holiday, "en vacances" along with hundreds of other people. Again we had only a brief time to explore, and there is much more to the city than we saw. (And all these photos are borrowed from the web, because I somehow never got out the camera.)

Thanks to some friends of Cathy, natives of Bordeaux, we were recommended to a wonderful restaurant for dinner. Although the menu was full of tempting items, we both zeroed in on "risotto avec coquilles St. Jacques" - a creamy risotto topped with five sauteed scallops. Special dessert of the evening was an assemblage of four flavors of Creme Brulee - lavender, rose, violet and "orchidee."

This week Cathy is off to a week's retreat at Thich Nhat Hahn's Village des Pruniers, probably a better way to decompress from a lively week in the Southwest than coming back to Paris. But I'm enjoying being back in the apartment - and definitely looking forward to coming home next week.

Further adventures in Languedoc

On Monday, under clear blue skies, we set off again to explore. This time our eventual destination was Albi, where the two main attractions are the medieval cathedral and the Toulouse Lautrec museum.

However, we also wanted to visit Cordes sur Ciel, a "bastide" (fortified hill village) north and west of Albi, and it made sense to go there first.

Although Rick Steves says to avoid Cordes because it is full of boutiques and shoppers, we found it delightful, because it's still a bit before the season. After a long lunch (longer than we wanted, but c'est la guerre) we climbed up the steep streets, looked in some of the shops, admired the view - and decided Albi would have to wait for another trip!

Today we hope to visit Saissac and Montolieu. Almost ten years ago, I spent a week in Montolieu, a "book village," on a writer's workshop. It will be interesting to see how - or if - it has changed.

Travels in Languedoc

Because we have a car, we CAN travel through Languedoc. (Name comes from the old language here, in which "oc" meant "yes." In old French, "oil" meant yes - later it became "oui.")

OK, no more linguistics. Sunday we drove on tiny twisty mountain roads to a place called Ausillon, where we checked out a "Vide grenier," ("clean out the attic") the French version of a swap meet. Nothing we desperately wanted to bring home (well, there WAS that small green enamel stove, but I can't think of a way it would fit in my suitcase!) but it was fun to look. The new town of Ausillon is nothing special, but the medieval village, up a hill from the vide grenier, was really interesting. We climbed the steep streets and staircases to get right up to the top for a panoramic view of the countryside.

After a wonderful Sunday lunch, at a small restaurant we found simply by driving into a nearby town, we returned to Durfort in time to go to tea with a friend of the household, an American woman who lives in nearby Soreze. Her house, which consists of three rooms, one above the other, is remodeled from a 14th century building, and she assured us that everything in it had come from vide grenier sales.

Here's a look into her kitchen (half of her ground-floor space):