Random musings about snow and winter

What can I saw about snow? It's cold and wet. Falls from the sky and may be either powder or packing snow, good for snowballs and snowmen. Powder, I guess is a skier's term, and the skiers are happy to see a big snowfall. However, the people who got marooned at the Denver airport because of 18-20inches of snow, for 5 days! Weren't happy. Camped out on the floor of the airport, and apparently the first ones to leave when the airport opened were first class passengers on a Frontier airlines, which left the peasants grumbling. Snow and the subsequent snowmelt provides much needed water for us folks here in the high desert, so we'll all be grateful come dry hot summer. Snow caves—the guys who got lost in the Cascade mountains of Oregon built themselves snowcaves for protection from the elements. I don't know how they did that. One guy was found alive in a snow cave and one body was found inside one, but the other two were never found and I think they're just about ready to give up the search. So, snow, that sweet, gentle, pure thing can also be treacherous and deadly. Curtis said something about how it purifies the air, etc. Ha! I remember snow in Chicago, sitting on the ground for a few days, becoming crusted with ice and soot particles, as if someone had sprinkled ground black pepper on their snocone or ice cream. And slush as it melted into puddles. Slippery. In need of galoshes, a wonderful word. There was a TV news reporter who go the name, Jeff Galoshes. Can't remember his real name now. Chicago, snow drifted high enough to bury a VW beetle. A side cross cut of the car when the plow came through, but then the owner had to spend a few hours out in the frosty cold digging it our from the front and back and the other side, so he could use his horseless carriage. At least when they really were carriages, they were kept in the barn with the horses. After a big snow during those three bad winters before I left Chicago, the heat from the apartment building would melt the snow on the top, causing it to run off the roof and form icicles. I still have photos of six or seven foot icicles hanging from the gutter, next to my postage stamp sized backporch on the third floor. Of course, going down those outside steps was pretty dangerous. Good thing the front steps are inside in Chicago apartment buildings, and it's the janitor's job to shovel the walks up to the street. But then one has to dig one's own car out. I remember people putting folding chairs in the space after they pulled the car out onto the street, so no one else would park in the space they worked so hard to clean. Then there were fights when someone broke the unwritten rule, and I even heard of gunshots being fired in such disputes. Ursula Le Guin's novel, Left Hand of Darkness, there's a whole society on the planet of Gethen that's built around the never-ending winter season, where the snow piles up so high that they have to build houses with doors up at the roof level so they can get out. Other social features related to development in a land of winter and snow, but I can't remember them right now. Maybe you, dear reader, would care to make a comment if you can remember them. I did go out on the street and take photos of snowtrees, so I'll upload a few for your perusal.

My Last Days in Paris (back in September)

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

1:25pm:
I'm sitting in a creperie near Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, eating a crepe with apricot jam. Lots of tourists milling around. I took the Monmartrain up from Place Pigalle. I don't know where I should go from here. This tourist stuff is getting tiring. As I was mounting the steps of Sacre Coeur, it occurred to me that I should have asked
Peggy R or her daughter Jill what their favorite places are, since Jill used to live here. A car with a chauffeur just drove by, the
man in the back on his cell phone. That's one way to be a tourist.
Then a Smart Car drove by. I can see that they'd be popular here,
where the streets are narrow and the parking spaces hard to find.

On the tourist train down from Montmartre, I met a couple from
Australia. They recommended the Musee Picasso, so I decided to go
there. I knew the two subway stops near there, but I couldn't figure
out the best way to get to either one, because neither line connected with Pigalle. I asked at the Metro ticket office, which is also marked "Information." The young woman looked it up in her information book and directed me to Champs Elysees, which is really nowhere near either Chemin Vert or St. Paul. I showed her where it
said those two stops on my map of Paris, so she had to call somewhere
before she would agree with me. Finally, I got the right connection,
much simpler than I would have figured out. When I exited from the
Metro at Chemin Vert, there was a sign right there that took me past
a Supermarket as well as a park.

Back at the apartment: The boys are here so now I've met Tom, too.
He's studying Spanish in school and is a fencing champion. I'll get to
stay here at least one more night because Tim agreed to sleep with
Tom in his room. We're waiting for Henri's nephew from San Francisco
to arrive for dinner. Elizabeth is reading a book titled Dressed for
Winter, and Henri is preparing the food. The boys are playing video
games.

The dinner guest was Antoine, Henri's brother's son. Antoine currently lives in Mammoth Lake, California with his wife and two little kids. He's been in the U.S. about 12 years, formerly working as a translator in the movie business. Now he has a crepe business, doing catering and branching out to hotels in ski resorts, etc. it was very interesting to hear him talk about it. He made a lot of effort to include me in the conversation, speaking in English for me from time to time, making sure I understood what was going on, especially when telling his own life story. Freely translated and summarized, it follows below.

His mother took him and left his father when he was about seven or eight years old, and he hasn't seen his father for 30 years, although he has tried to contact him several times. His mother died when he was 19 and his grandparents on her side died within the same year. He was studying to be a lawyer, and for a while lived on income from his mother's share in a business, until his stepfather, who was also sick, ran it into the ground and suddenly Antoine had is "first bankruptcy" and $100,000 in debt. I guess the debt got resolved legally, but now he really was on his own. He traveled to Israel for a couple of months, and some other places, and eventually to California, where he lived with his first wife, Kitty. He is married to his second wife now. She is French and her parents live in Strasbourg. That's where they've been staying since July, planning to be in France for four months, although he said he may have to go back to the States early because of some new business possibilities that have come up. He came to Paris to see some friends and family, and is rollerblading through the streets as his main form of transportation. Sounds like an ideal plan for someone who knows the city. He avoids getting stuck in traffic as well as not having to make one's way through the mazes of the Metro.

The other guest for dinner, unexpectedly, was Gautier, Henri's oldest son. (He has five boys in all, from two different relationships, and the oldest and youngest were present at dinner.) Gautier is a lawyer who works for some big company (I heard words like patrone and facture in the conversation), but I gather that he's essentially independent of the company, but does their legal work, and the clients are his clients. I think he said that he sets the fees and I guess his boss gets a percentage. There was something like 4000 euros for the office but I didn't get the specifics. He came in wearing a suit and tied, but soon became decravate, i.e. he took off his tie. He's youngish looking, so I assume he's in his 30's, with dark curly hair, and handsome and boyish-looking.

For dinner, we had Henri's homemade squash soup (his own recipe), made from a large squash he had bought at the farmer's market when we went on Saturday night. The main course was sliced flank steak with herbs rubbed on the outside, lightly grilled on a stovetop grill on the fancy stove, accompanied by meat ravioli that Henri bought ready made and heated up. The meat was barely cooked, brown on the outside and pink, then red, in the center. It was eaten with dijon mustard or mint sauce by some. Red wine was served, of course. Dessert was little cookie/pastries, round sandwiches with flavored cream in the middle and frosting on the top, in caramel, coffee, chocolate, strawberry and pistachio I sampled several, for research purposes, of course.

I exchanged cards with Antoine and also with Gautier. Antoine expressed interest in meeting again in the U.S. he didn't leave until midnight, while Henri was falling asleep in his chair.

Thursday, September 14, 2006


My main task today was to buy some flowers and deliver them to Sylvia, Henri's secretary, who succeeded in finding the number of the Bordeaux cell telephone office and getting my passport back. It may not have been necessary if I had listened to the message myself or read the text message but what's done is done, and I didn't have cell phone reception in either Plum Village or in St. Remy. As Henri said, "if I could put Paris in a bottle." Since Henri's office is near the Eiffel Tower, that was my destination, except that it was overcast for a good part of the day and not worth the money to go up. The other idea I had was to go to Ile St Louis where Notre Dame is, but go to Saint Chapelle instead, avoiding the long lines, advice from the Aussies I met yesterday. I almost feel like this is forced tourism—how could I be in Paris and just hang out in the apartment? After stopping at the office to drop off the potted flowers I bought at a florist near the apartment (apparently, florist shops don't deliver in Paris), I went across the Place (tried crossing without a light, but that's taking one's life in one's hands) to the Musee de L'Homme. The tickets were reduced price, because some of the rooms were closed, and I should have taken that as a hint. The exhibits were a lot about genetics and how people around the world turn out different, but basically very pedantic and boring. So I left the building and walked out on the Place (I want to call it a plaza, Spanish style) and took photographs of the golden statues with the Eiffel Tower in the background, and tourists sitting and strolling. There were some breakdancers entertaining the crowd, with a boombox for music. As I walked down the steps toward the tower, I recognized the place as one I had been to with Mary and Richard in 1989, but we came from the opposite direction. At the bottom of the steps was a carousel, also good for some photos. After I crossed the street and walked around the base of the tower, I stopped for some ice cream at a refreshment stand near the river. I decided that I was too tired to go all the way to Sainte Chapelle, another long subway ride, and instead took a boat trip on the Seine. There were only three other passengers, a grandmother, mother, and child, if yo don't count the pigeon that alighted on the bench that I sat on. It was very calming and peaceful; I always enjoy boat rides. After it was over, it was sun was going down and I figured it was time to return to the apartment, a trip which took 45 minutes to an hour.

I just started reading one of Seth Grodin's books that are on the "coffee table" in the living room—Henri has piles of books and paper on it, like he did in St. Remy. I guess it's his style and one that I feel comfortable with. Anyway, this book is
All Marketers Are Liars. His first book was Purple Cow. The one I was reading is very simply written, in language any idiot of CEO could understand, and somehow compelling reading. I must have spent 15 minutes with it before I forced myself to stop so I could start writing in my journal.

The rest of the evening was spent packing up my suitcase, getting ready for my departure the next morning. When Henri came home around midnight, we tried to figure out how to get to the bus that went to the airport. Henri thought there was one in the quarter where the apartment was, but according to the information line, the only one left from near the Opera. He tried to order a taxi for me at the right time in the morning, but was told to call back in the morning.

Friday, September 15, 2006

The last morning was something of a disaster. Henri tried twice to order a taxi, and was told both times that there were none available. So the only thing to do was for him to drive me to the bus stop at the Opera. We struggled to get my suitcases down the stairs—he referred to the large one as a dead elephant—and he had to walk to where his car was parked and meet me at the corner, so he wouldn't have to ride in circles around the block on the one-way streets. Driving in rush hour traffic in Paris requires daredevil courage and a good dose of assertiveness, as other cars cut in on roundabouts and traffic is heavy all the way. I finally reached my destination as the bus was boarding, and I was on my way. I suspect that Henri was glad to see me go, after all the aggravation. Charles de Gaulle airport is a good way out of the city, and the ride took about an hour. The rest of the trip was routine. I didn't cash in my euros, thinking that either my friend France could use them on her next trip, or I could use them when I went to Spain in 2008 for the next International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women.

Benefit for El Salvador

Tonight I attended a benefit dinner at a Salvadoran restaurant in Albuquerque's South Valley. The benefit was to raise a scholarship for a campesina from the northern mountains of El Salvador to attend the National University. The informational leaflet distributed read as follows:

"Few young people of the Segundo Montes Community and neighboring communities of northern Morazan, located in one of the poorest areas of El Salvador, have the possibility of attending university. There are no government scholarships and few families can afford tuition. Most universities are private and there is only one national university with two branches.

"Morazan was one of the areas of El Salvador that showed incredible resistance to military policies of genocide during the war years of the 1980's. the children of those parents, who survived the war by embracing and sustaining comunidad as a source of hope and liberation, carry forth that commitment by continuing to organize through the Los Quebrachos Youth Center. A 30 member scholarship committee from this organization selects applicants for a scholarship. We have requested that the scholarship be given to a young woman because of the need to develop future women leaders.

"Because the student must travel to San Miguel to attend university, room and board is necessary. Therefore the scholarship for each year costs $2,200."

Besides a tasty Salvadoran dinner served to the benefactors, there was a program of poetry and music. The music was provided by Chuy Martinez on guitar, and his companero on the harp. The poets who read their work were Demetria Martinez, Margaret Randall, and Renny Golden. It's interesting how people's paths cross again. I knew Renny years ago when I lived in Chicago, and encountered her earlier this year in Albuquerque, when we both attended a peace march. She lives here now.