"Your blog should be purple..."

(Perhaps to match the grapes in this picture.)

Taking a "blogthings" quiz is one way to know it's the middle of winter and you're seriously understimulated. How else would you find out how kissable you are (I didn't) what your word is (ditto) or how evil you are? (26%. No comment.)

Outside it's a dry moment between storms. In two weeks we've gone from a foot of snow to flooding, mountain passes blocked by avalanches, and a section of the main north-south freeway closed by high water for the second time in 14 months.

You can still get out of town on an airplane. The other day I made reservations to go to France in late April (a week in the Pyrenées followed by 2+ weeks in Paris.)

Meanwhile, there is artificial sunshine in a performance of "The Pearl Fishers" on Sunday. In many ways it's the perfect opera: melodramatic plot, a highly imaginary setting, and captivating music, including a tune you can hum as you leave - the duet for tenor and baritone, "Au fond du Temple Saint."

Bizet wrote the opera when he was 25. How intimidating.

Reading - Paris 1919, an absorbing history of the peace conference that followed World War I (and in many ways precipitated WWII.) Eighty years later in Transylvania you can still see graffiti saying "Down with the Treaty of Trianon," (which took Transylvania from Hungary and gave it to Romania.)

Cities of Salt, a novel about the beginnings of oil exploration and exploitation in Saudi Arabia, takes place in the early 1920's. (I hope to work my way up to the 21st century by the end of the year.)

Happy Thanksgiving, continued

I was tempted to reference Christmas in the heading for this post, but resisted - never mind that it's now less than a month away.

Soon the Christmas ships begin four weeks of evening parades, a welcome brightening of our dark season. Many participating boats live in marinas along the lake below this building, so we get extra chances to check out their colorful decorations. Grand finale happens December 23 at Gasworks Park, at the north end of the lake. That night so many boats crowd close to shore that it looks, from here, as if you could walk right across the lake without getting wet.

Listening to NPR on the aftermath of the carnage in Mumbai, I realize that since 9/11 I've grown used to hearing an interesting group of international commentators from the Middle East and elsewhere. A few speak the measured, precise English that most Americans can't manage any more - others are more difficult to follow. It's all good ear training.

In Transylvania, we become de facto English tutors for our interpreters (especially for the ones whose English teachers give them time off because "you'll learn more from working with the Americans.") It's true - we correct past participles, tangled syntax and pronunciation when we can, all the while complimenting these ambitious 17 and 18-year-olds on their proficiency. I think English must be a fiendish language to learn, but our Hungarian/Romanian speakers just laugh and assure us that French and German (which they also study) are MUCH more difficult.

Thinking about travel, and holidays

On a travel blog I follow, a recent thread was, "If you could go right now..."

Answers ranged from walking in Italy to a weekend in Las Vegas to Christmas markets in Europe.

I would probably have chosen Paris, since I was there last November. Today I even found this picture (blurry, but evocative) of the 2007 Christmas lights on the Champs Elysees.



This is the view from any bus crossing top of the boulevard, near the Arc de Triomphe. The hanging blue lights were long tubes, that contrasted with thousands of tiny white lights wrapped around tree trunks and branches. At the far end of the grand boulevard a tall Ferris wheel glittered on the Place de la Concorde.

Northern Europe has long dark evenings this time of year, but Christmas lights begin going up as soon as the All Saints/All Souls holidays are over. No Thanksgiving turkey to get in the way.

There are plenty of places a homesick American can find a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in Paris (biggest one is the celebration at the American Church) but I was quite content with roast lamb at the local bistro. Although I like Thanksgiving, I have never been locked into a prescribed celebration.

My Canadian parents never fully accepted a late November celebration of a holiday they had always observed in October. "Turkey is for Christmas," my mother said - so we sometimes had pheasant or ham.

My husband had no desire to replicate his family's traditional Midwestern Thanksgivings, so our celebrations varied widely. Sometimes we went to the movies before dinner, sometimes we were at Vashon, sometimes we gathered with other families.

The Thanksgiving everyone remembers most fondly was the year we took Chinese takeout to Makapu'u Beach on Oahu, sitting on the rocks to eat after a couple of hours of swimming and body-surfing. Hawaii was digging out from the first hurricane in many years, and on the way to the beach we passed more than one family making a barbecue Thanksgiving in the yard of a roofless house. The sun was shining, the water was warm, electricity was on for most of the time - all good reasons to celebrate.

I like Thanksgiving in Transylvania, which falls the last weekend in September. It's a harvest festival, celebrated in church, and one of only four times a year that Transylvanian Unitarian churches include communion in their service. Afterwards everyone gathers for a dinner that, if you're lucky, will consist mostly of food grown locally.