Philae

"The stars, like all man's other ventures, were an obvious impracticality, as rash and improbable an ambition as the first venture of man onto Earth's own great oceans, or into the air, or into space...
Missions from the station explored the system, a program far from public understanding, but it met no strong opposition.

So quietly, very matter of factly, that first probe went out to the two nearest stars, unmanned, to gather data and return, a task in itself of considerable complexity.  The launch from station drew some public interest, but years was a long time to wait for a result, and it passed out of media interest as quickly as it did out of the solar system... It was a scientific success, bringing back data enough to keep the analysts busy for years...but there was no glib, slick way to explain the full meaning of its observations in layman's terms...

The press grappled with questions it could not easily grasp itself, sought after something to give the viewers, lost interest quickly.  If anything, there were questions raised about cost, vague and desperate comparisons offered to Columbus, and the press hared off quickly onto a political crisis in the Mediterranean, much more comprehensible and far bloodier.

The scientific establishment on Sol station breathed a sign of relief..."

Downbelow Station:  The Company Wars (1982 Hugo Award)
C.J. Cherryh

As much as we laugh today about the foolishness of our ancestors who believed that Earth was the center of the universe, our attitudes about space and space exploration have not really progressed much:  we believe we are still the center of all that matters in the universe.  Our egos probably couldn't take the truth which is that we are pretty darn insignificant.  Long after the nation-states, the politics, our gods, the monuments to human hubris and all our petty feuds and feelings are dust, the sun, the star around which we orbit,  will still be shining in the sky until it too burns itself out.  This is the real longue durée.

The exploration of space is something that captures the public's imagination for short periods before it sinks back into obscurity.  This is probably a good thing because in a world of national budget problems, the reaction that comes after the awe that we walked on the moon or that a shuttle returned to Earth  is something along the lines of "Well, shouldn't we have used that money for balancing the budget/better schools/saving our retirement programs?"

To which I would retort that NASA's and ESA's budgets combined  are such a low percentage of the overall budgets that cutting them (which they do often) would barely make a dent in the deficits. Personally, I would rather my tax money went to probes as opposed to drones.

This very week, Philae, the European Space Agency probe, landed on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.  And I find that unbelievably cool.  They shot the Rosetta mission out into space in 2004 and it's been quietly hurtling toward its destination ever since while we here on Earth have watched parties and politicans rise and fall, fought wars, winced over a near meltdown of the world financial system, and agonized over the trials and tribulations of globalization.

Rash, improbable, and impractical?  Well, as Cherryh points out, past human endeavours have certainly been all that and more.   But the day we, the human race, stop being curious and no longer dream of space, we will have lost something precious - it would mean that we were in such deep despair that we could no longer conceive of a future for ourselves or for our descendants.

Here is a wonderful video from ESA with the first reactions to the landing.  I confess that I watched it and I was cheering, too.



I also recommend to you this a lovely animated sketch called Landing

More to come - landing on the comet was a beginning, not an end, right?

A suivre and let's brace ourselves to be surprised, open ourselves to wonder, let our curiosity run riot and our imagination take us to ever more stimulating flights of fancy.  For as Haldane once said:

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

New Digs for the Flophouse in Osaka

Before I show you  the new digs for the Flophouse, I want to clarify something in yesterday's post.

That shopping street I mentioned?  The one that is covered and had so many small lovely shops (not to mention a McDonald's AND a Burger King)? I learned last night that this is a very well known street called Shinsaibashi-suji. Who knew?

The two most important features we were looking for in apartment were proximity to spouse's place work and an environment conducive to creativity.  Or, to put it differently,  this is a space where I will be spending a lot of time writing and working alone and so I need a home that won't exacerbate the feelings of depression and isolation that often come with crossing cultures and  living in a completely new place.

After two days of looking at different buildings and apartments, we decided that this one would do.  It's on the 14th floor of a tower in the heart of Osaka so it has a lot of light and (be still my heart) a view of the city and the mountains around the city.  It's not big by American standards, it's perfectly OK by French standards, it's positively spacious by Japanese standards.  It's located in the Chuo Ward and it is within walking distance of the Osaka Castle.  There is a lively district just one block away with places to shop for food or just to have a cup of coffee and it's about 2 minutes away from a metro station.  Honestly, I don't think we could have done better.

Here are a few photos (yes, I am a terrible photographer but bear with me).  The apartment is unfurnished and we will need to purchase a refrigerator, an oven, and a washer/dryer.  I see a trip to Ikea in our future...

This is one of the two bedrooms.  The other is a little bit bigger.

This is the living room.  The balcony is L-shaped and there is a lot of light.  I'm thinking two chairs here for reading and a small round table for writing.

This is a "Japanese room" which is right off the living room.  Note the mats on the floor and the sliding doors.  Just lovely.

And here is the view on one side.  During the day you can see mountains (and for my stepfather who is interested in such things there is also a clear view of several transmitter sites).  At night the city is all lit up and very beautiful.

Flophouse Milestone: 400,000 hits

A few days ago the hit counter on my blog dashboard reached 400,000 hits.  (That is the total number of hits received over the years the Flophouse has been in existence.)

I started the Flophouse back in 2008 for reasons that seem rather vague today. I knew I wanted to write, but I couldn't muster the effort to publish more than a few posts a year. That changed in 2011 when all of a sudden I found my voice and started posting nearly every day.

Something that year just clicked and I think it had everything to do with getting sober and realizing that I had, more or less by accident, become a Lapsed Agnostic. I know that we all dream Hemingway dreams but, for me, any creativity I possess was only unleashed after I put the genie back in the bottle and set it aside for good.

2012 was, depending on your point of view, my annus horribilis (terrible year) or my annus mirabilis (year of wonders). I was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer (three tumors and it had spread to the lymph nodes). But, oh miracle, I got through the poison and the rays and came out on the other side with my sanity intact. The blog was a big part of that. I couldn't even walk at one point but I could always write no matter what. 

 Today there are nearly 900 posts on this blog on a wide range of subjects:  Crossing Cultures, Cancer, Citizenship and, of course, the American Diaspora Tax War.  Two of the most popular posts are about two very different topics:  bi-cultural marriages and my Godin woodstove.  Go figure.

I'm told (often) that I would get many more hits if I just focused better. I'm sure they are right.  The only answer I can give is this:  I was on my way out of this world and for some inexplicable reason, I am still here - more time bestowed on me by a benevolent universe.  I don't think that this was for my benefit (and it sure as hell wasn't a reward for virtuous living). I think it's because I still have work to do.  Discerning what that work is and getting out there and doing it is my purpose.

So I don't plan what I write and there is no publishing schedule. I just get up every morning and have at it. If it's meant to be then something will present itself as the topic of the day.  If not, I gently let it go and go about my day.  I believe that this impulse does not come from me but from something outside of me.  Dante Deo.

Certain posts and some topics get more hits than others but that's completely irrelevant. It's like "sharing" at an AA meeting. There is structure - you raise your hand, the speaker gives you a nod and you have so many minutes to talk without interruption - but what you say is up to you and comes from the deepest parts of your soul. This exercise is not only good for you (gets things off your chest) but it's also good for others. What you have to say just might be exactly what just one person in that room needs to hear that day. It's service. I hope that this blog is like that. Whether a post gets 5 or 5,000 hits, it doesn't matter as long as it has served.

Some days I still can't believe that I have readers - I just don't have enough relatives to account for  400,000 hits. Some of you I've come to know over the past couple of years through your comments, emails and snail mail letters.  More recently, I've walked into meeting rooms, restaurants and halls and met some of you in person. You have no idea how much joy I get from those encounters or seeing your missives in my mailboxes.  I am so fortunate that you came into my life. Whatever you may get from this blog, believe me, you've given so much more - the gift of your time and your attention. 

Thank you. 

What if?

I'm almost finished with a really good book by Alan Weisman called The World Without Us.  It's a thought experiment:  What if humans vanished tomorrow?  What would happen and would might the world look like in 10, 100, 1000 or 10,000 years?

I can't vouch for the science but it does support a suspicion I've had since I was a kid growing up in the Pacific Northwest of the US:  the human race's grip on this planet is a lot more tenuous than we think.  I was raised in the western half of Washington state which is temperate rain forest and I did a lot of hiking in my youth.  Here's a video that will give you a good idea of what that looks like:



In order for anything human-made to last,  it has to be maintained with great effort.  In a few short years, that old field or house or road starts to deteriorate.  I saw this with a plot of land that my family owned back in the 1970's - we cleared an area and just a few years later had to get out the chainsaw to clear it again.  This is not an argument for humans doing whatever they want;  it's simply a recognition that there are forces that will take back what we make, much faster than we might imagine.

As I was reading the book and thinking about that, it occured to me that I had an even more recent example of this.  I spent part of my summer in Brittany, France where my mother-in-law owns an old fisherman's house.  I've been going to the same area for over 20 years now and what I see every time I visit is less and less land under cultivation (fewer farmers).  Some of the land was sold and there are new houses (or people trying to save old ones) but a lot of it has simply been abandoned.  In some places the only way you know that there was a farm and fields is because you'll see a little part of what was a stone wall peeking out from under the moss, ferns and trees.  Then you look closer and see that on the other side, there is forest but it's not that old (less than 100 years).  From field to forest (albeit a kind of scruffy forest with a lot of brush and shrubbery in addition to the trees) in one lifetime.  Even the stone walls, which in some places come up to my shoulder are being covered with vegetation and I've seen trees growing in these walls around those old fields, slowly tearing them down.

During dinner one evening this year we looked out the window and saw a chevreuil (European deer).  In 30 years my mother-in-law said that she had never seen one before that day.  Here's what they look like:



I really recommend the Weisman book and I'll leave you today with some pictures I took during our month in Brittany. Have a great weekend, everyone.

Old stone house which is occupied - in the foreground is the old stone wall

Four à pain (oven for baking bread).  It's not that old (probably 19th century).
The owners of this property are keeping the brush away from it but look at the roof.

Typical dirt road in the area.   You can still see the outline of the stone walls on one side.
Brush and trees growing on both sides which get hacked back to keep the road clear. If you
go off the road, wear high boots - there are snakes.

And finally, one of my favorite local spots and an example of two very old things that that have lasted up to the present day:  La chapelle Saint-Philibert in Trégunc.  It was built in the 16th century and is beautifully maintained.  The chapel however, was built next to a fountain which is ancient.  When I went one year on their annual pardon, I was told that it was definitely around in Roman times (pre-Christian era) and may date to earlier than that.

To Breizh and Back

In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit points out that nomads "contrary to current popular imagination, have fixed circuits and stable relationships to places..."

I first visited Breizh (Brittany), a region in Northwest France in the mid-1980's.  It was that region and another, the Limousin, that shaped my very first impressions of France, long before I had any intention of actually immigrating here.  Of the two, only Brittany has been a constant - primarily because my in-laws bought a summer house there over 40 years ago.  A modest stone house built in the early 20th century by a Breton fisherman, it has no heat, bathrooms which were added very late (and improvised), and a dampness which is a result of not being occupied for most of the year and having windows only on one side which doesn't allow for much air circulation even when it's very warm.  I fondly refer to it as Moldy Manoir.

And I am fond of it and the area which is called Finistère Sud which you could translate in various ways:  Land's End or the End of the Earth (South).  It is, as Solnit says, part of fixed circuit in my nomadic life which has allowed me to see changes over time, and to be pleasantly, happily surprised every time I go there.

So many changes over 25+ years.  It used to be that the collection of houses of which my in-law's house was one of two or three was simply called lieu-dit kervaillet.  The street now has a name and the signage in general is much improved.  The farmer across the street who sold his cows and built a campground now has his fourth star and does a brisk business renting chalets and camping spaces to a mix of French from other regions and Brits.  The other farmer, the one we used to buy our milk from, sold his cows, too and has gone into the cider business.  The beach, called Raguenès Plage, or Tahiti (a rather over-optimistic and not quite accurate appellation), has toilets, a shower, recycling/garbage bins and is swept every morning by a fellow on a tractor so that the sand is perfect and the beach is clean, clean, clean.

Up the coast near Concarneau, a castle that is privately owned and was being restored is now open for visitors. Le château de Keriolet is so ugly and so strange that it's actually rather alluring.

The best parts of the visit this year?  Definitely the very limited Internet and cellphone access.  Yes, I think cutting oneself off from the pacifier on-line world from time to time is a Good Thing.  I generally read a lot in any case but this trip I brought along some sci-fi/fantasy novels:  The Mistborn Series and the Paladin's Legacy series.

I recommend the first wholeheartedly and I have to say that it's been a long time since I've read such a fine fantasy writer with a story that was so beautiful that I wanted to go back and read it again right away.  


And the walking.  The area is filled with wonderful trails and roads that go everywhere and nowhere.  Nothing is more agreeable than setting out in the morning with a map that lies.  Losing yourself, and then finding your way, over and over again...

Simon Anholt and the Good Country Index

When I was studying for my MBA I had a great Marketing teacher, Professor Marco Protano.  He teaches all over the world - China, Morocco, Scotland, France and many other places.  If he is ever in your corner of the planet, and you have a chance to take a class from him, do it.  It was one of the best classes I had at ENPC because he is an energetic, euridite, and really funny guy.

Yesterday I found myself trying to recall some of the information he imparted to me as I discovered the fellow who created the term "nation-branding".   Simon Anholt is the author of a number of books, one of which I read yesterday:  Competitive Identity: The New Brand Management for Nations, Cities and Regions.  I am now in the middle of another, Brand America.

The latter is clearly the better book.  The one on identity is really just a collection of essays that needed a better editor.  Between the two books, and what I watched yesterday on TED and Youtube,  it gave me, I think, a decent grasp of his overall pitch.

Using the language of marketing when talking about nation-states, regions, ethnic groups is very clever.  He's able to say some very profound things by relating something everyone recognizes - brands - to something that people are unsure about - identity.  It's a trick, a little like when you can't solve a problem using your first language so you shift to your second, and suddenly things look a little clearer.

But as I've said before, People are Not Products, and I stand by that.  The notion that all people, cities, regions, nation-states are in this competitive struggle to survive in a globalized world is probably partially true but not always in all places.  I think opting out is alive and well.  There are consequences to that surely but most of the time they are not catastrophic. I do not buy into the Get On the Global Road or be Roadkill mantra. (You might think differently and if so, please say so.)

I'll let you watch Anholt in action for yourself so you can make up your own mind.  The first video is a talk he gave at the European Conference on Public Communication in 2011.  The intro is a long but interesting lecture worth watching but not to be confused with the heart of the matter.  It's when he gets past that he really shines as he poses and answers the question: What does Europe Have to Offer the World?  Quite a lot, he says, and I agree.



The second video is a recent TED talk he gave that has gone viral.  He took his Nation Brand index that he'd been working on and created another that he calls the Good Country Index.  Now, the idea is sure to raise some hackles, especially among Americans because the US is not even in the top 20 here.

His point, which I think is an important one, is that there are some small countries that do quite a lot of good in the world, and there are some big countries that don't do nearly as much good as they think. If looking at the rankings makes folks drop their idées reçues - those one-dimensional negative sterotypes of places like Switzerland or Kenya, then I think it has served a useful and important purpose.

Which Country Does the Most Good for the World?

Fly, you fools!

The elder Frenchling mentioned this on the flight from Paris to Montreal.  I hadn't seen it and so we watched in in our hotel room this morning.  I thought it was a scream (and a very creative way of getting folks to pay attention during the flight safety briefing.)  Enjoy.

The Flophouse Painting Project Phase II

"It begins in the imaginations of the people who built it and is gradually transformed, for better and for worse, by the people who occupy it down through the years, decades, centuries.  To tinker with a house is to commune with the people who have lived in it before and to leave messages for those who will live in it later.  Every house is a living museum of habitation, and a monument to all the lives and aspirations that have flickered within it."

David Owen
The Walls Around Us

Been doing a lot of that "communing" this past week.  Phase II of the Paint the Flophouse Project kicked off a few days ago.  (Phase I was the garden walls so ably and beautifully painted by Mike, our favorite Ikea technician from Dax).

Brick (or stone) houses still have a lot of wood in them:  under the eaves, certainly - under that tile roof are wood supports that hang over the house and protect the sides and hold up the gutters - but also decorative wood around the porches.  At least I assume they are decorative and not holding up anything important. Guess we'll find out, won't we?

 I don't know much about brick but I'm a girl from the Pacific Northwest of the good old US of A and I do know wood.   Go outside the house, stand right next to an exterior wall and look up. You'll see is peeling paint, holes and boards that look loose to me.  Not something to ignore because wood doesn't like to be naked.  It rots when exposed to the elements. Happily, this is something we can fix ourselves.   And that's precisely what we've been doing this past week once we had the obligatory meeting with the city architect and got authorization for the color (RAL 8012).

So far the back porch is done and the eaves on the north side of the house. So far, so good.  No rot and while we were up there we cleaned out the gutters and fixed a huge fissure in the cement. Actually, we didn't do the last - the French navy stopped by (a friend of ours who brought along his son) and lent a hand.  All I can say is that those sailors sure know a thing or two about this kind of work  because everything he did is absolutely perfect.

I am now working on the front porch and here everything David Owen said in the above quotation becomes evident.  There are about 6 layers of paint on that wood in a delicious variety of colors:  off-white, blue, green, red, dark brown, light brown.

As I threw on application after application of that horrible product and scraped,  each color, each layer, became visible and I stopped and tried to imagine what the entire house looked like when it was that blue or that green.  All the way back to a time when the neighborhood looked like this:

Or later.  More specifically in the World War II period.  I have friends here in town who are old enough to vividly remember those days.  One even recalls the house since she passed by it every day when she went to school.  And when I rest and pick up the latest book I'm reading, What Soldiers Do by Mary Louise Roberts, how odd to think that this house and its inhabitants lived through those times - the Occupation and the replacement of German soldiers by American ones (Madame G remembers that all too well).

I feel a bit like an amateur archeologist here and it occured to me that the restoration work I'm doing right now is also an act of destruction.  I am erasing traces of the past. Once I have scraped the last bit of paint from that wood, and people like Madame G pass on, there will be no one to remember the color of the house in the 1940's.  Only me, the latest (and mostly likely not the last) inhabitant of this funny little house.

And that's a tragedy (albeit a very small one that counts for nearly nothing in the larger scheme of things) which leaves me with a strange sense of guilt. Why?  Most likely because I am product of a time that regards preservation/restoration as something of a secular religion (Chris Wilson). Did the previous owners of this house have the same concerns?  I doubt it.

So to salve my conscience and to document (because really what else can we do?) here is what it looks like.

And now, having genuflected in the direction of the altar of "restoration" it's back to the present - my own aspirations and the traces I will leave for future owners to ponder.

Sailing Away

"On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale."
Alexander Pope

What do I miss the most about the U.S.? A trick question because when I lived there I didn't travel much in America. The farthest east I ever got was Sandpoint, Idaho (and if you live there or in Spokane and your  last name is Heath then we might be related). The farthest south was a trip to California (Disneyland). And the only foreign country I'd ever visited before I left for France was British Columbia, Canada and that didn't feel all much different from Washington State (we went up there to see family).

Better question is what do I miss about the Pacific Northwest? That is an easy one to answer: the sea. I miss living by the water.  The sound of the seagulls and the smell of salt water in the early hours of the morning. There is nothing quite like it. I also miss being out on the water. The Puget Sound region is a world of watercraft: houseboats, ferries, tugboats, big container ships, and sailboats. Some of my best memories as a young adult are about being out on the Sound in a relative's fishing boat or a friend's sailboat.   The one I remember best was a 26-foot yawl built by Bobby Allen.  Talk about passion - I used to watch him leave the office every day to go and work on it and it took him years to finish.  Her name was the Harriet Spicer and she was beautiful.   

Since I've been in France I've sailed exactly once.   I was working for the Compagnie Générale d'Entreprises Automobiles (CGEA) at the time and they had an annual sailboat race for employees in France and from abroad.  So my colleagues and I from the office in Nanterre went down to Toulon and had a fine time out there on the water in our rented sailboat and way too much wine. We lost but I did get to see one of France's aircraft carriers. 

A few days ago someone on Facebook sent me a link to a website and said, "Have a look at this, Victoria"   The site is called  Skûtsje Zonder Zorg. 

Meet Edi and Michael from Vancouver, British Columbia.  From 2009 to 2012, they sailed from Vancouver all the way down the coasts,  around Cape Horn and then back up the coasts on the other side.  They blogged about it (and apparently the blog was quite the sensation) and later wrote a book.

They are now in Europe travelling on the rivers and canals in a 105-year old skûtsje called the Zonder Zorg.  Their lasted post is dated April 21 and they are in France right now (Toulouse) going along the Canal du Midi and through the locks and into the city.  It's quite a tale and the photos and commentary on what they see and do as they cruise along are pure pleasure to read.  

The saddest part about it for me is that in twenty years here it has never occured to me to take a boat out on the canals. Sure, I knew it was possible but....   

Somebody give me a good slap to the side of the head.  I was wasting my time grieving over the lost waters of home and then I see  a couple of short-timers  from my part of the world taking advantage of the waters here and having a great time.  

Attitude adjustment accomplished.  

Idleness is the Enemy of the Soul

"Idleness is the enemy of the soul.
Therefore the sisters should be occupied
at certain times in manual labor,
and again at fixed hours in sacred reading.
To that end we think that the times for each may be prescribed as follows.

From Easter until the Calends of October,
when they come out from Prime in the morning
let them labor at whatever is necessary
until about the fourth hour,
and from the fourth hour until about the sixth
let them apply themselves to reading.
After the sixth hour, having left the table,
let them rest on their beds in perfect silence;
or if anyone may perhaps want to read,
let her read to herself
in such a way as not to disturb anyone else."

Regula Benedicti

Chapter 48, On the Daily Manual Labor

For me the perfect life would be some combination of the above.  A mixture of manual labor, reading and contemplation.  Last week was all that and more.

Mike came up to Versailles from Dax and we scraped, sanded and painted every garden wall here at the Flophouse.  Our work accelerated after a quick look at the meteo (weather report) that predicted rain for Versailles later in the week and so we scraped, sanded and painted even faster.  It was an all out effort but we made it.  Here are the before and after pictures:

What I like about this kind of work is that it is perfect for contemplation.  I get a lot of thinking done in the garden - it's as if working the muscles frees the mind.  On my mind was a book I read a couple of weeks ago called Aftermath:  Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora by Daniel Kanstroom.  Your mileage may vary but it made my stomach hurt.  What he describes may be in complete accordance with the law but certainly does not culminate in what I would call justice. Victor Hugo's words sum it up quite beautifully:  "Le droit et la loi, telles sont les deux forces: de leur accord naît l'ordre, de leur antagonisme naissent les catastrophes."

Whatever the intentions (and it should be noted that with this law and policy there is complete continuity between George Bush and Barack Obama) this catastrophe has had terrible consequences for American immigrants and citizens alike. 

Now that I've had time to reflect on it, I will write a longer review of the book and we can discuss. Easy to point out the injustices of any system - harder to come up with solutions, but Kanstroom tries and what he proposes seems sensible.  Of course, it is too little, too late, for about 13 million people...

Saturday we rested (sort of) and went to the garden store, Truffaut.  I had a list of plants I wanted:  creeping thyme, astilbe and another ornamental tree for the front courtyard.   There was the list (and I did find everything on the list) and then there were the deals I just couldn't pass up:  flats of vegetables for the potager and two huge black plastic pots marked down to 10 euros each.  These are perfect for fulfilling a vision I've had for the front courtyard:  a small fountain just under the bedroom window to cut the noise from the street and add some whimsy.  Here's what it looks like so far:

I'm still filling the pot with water - I just turn the hose that direction when I go out to water and let the rain do the rest.  The next step will be to get a small floating solar water jet - something like this, for example.

This morning we are off to visit the King's Kitchen Garden near the castle and I will end this post with this prayer I read silently to myself as I was sitting in the pew at St. Michel on Easter morning waiting for the services to start.  A good one for all exiles everywhere...

Mon Dieu, sur la terre où je m’exile, où sont les chants de ta maison ? Dans le pays qui veut me perdre, où donc est le festin ? Dans les déserts où je m’enfonce, où sont les eaux de mon baptême? Viens me secourir : assoiffe encore mon cœur et ma chair, pour que je me souvienne, dans ma nuit, et que je te cherche, dès l’aube. Alors, de toute mon âme, je m’attacherai à toi, je lèverai les mains et je te bénirai. 

My God, in the land of my exile, where are the songs of your house? In the country that wishes to lose me, where is the feast? In the deserts where I sink every deeper, where are the waters of my baptism? Come to my aid: make thirsty my heart and my flesh so that I remember in my night to seek you in the dawn. And so with all my heart I will bind myself to you, I will raise my hands and bless you.

Learning to Like Washington

I think I mentioned in another post that my last visit to Washington, D.C. over 20 years ago left me with a very poor impression of the capital city.

I'm now in a position to make a more nuanced evaluation.  Here's what I like and don't like so far about the city.

I'm not fond of the gray.  All the buildings around the the Hill are certainly imposing but rather stark.   Now I'm someone who thinks that the Versailles castle is a gaudy monstrosity but the architecture around the capitol left me cold and yearning for color.

Perhaps it all looks better in the spring and summer when the trees bloom, turn green and give the eyes some relief from the monotonous gray stone.

The security is also a real pain.  Every door at every building had the same drill:  run everything through the machine, including yourself.  Fortunately there are tunnels that run under the street from one building to another so if you don't care about sunshine and fresh air, you can avoid the security hassle by staying underground the entire day.


I do like the neighborhood we are staying in:  Adams Morgan.  It's a residential area that looks to be gentrifying.  Some lovely houses and apartment buildings. Lots of color - a real relief from the Hill.  The apartment we are renting for the week is lovely with hardwood floors, a kitchen and two bedrooms.  Here are a few pictures:

Apartment/houses in Adams Morgan

Senator Patty Murray's office

This morning we had a meeting with the American Bankers Association and then we returned to the Hill for a few more meetings.  I had a chance to meet with someone in Senator Patty Murray's office (Washington State).  The senator's offices were really something - wood paneling on the walls and nice cushy chairs to sit in.

There was also a stunning sculpture by Calder in the courtyard of the Hart building.

After that meeting we had to be over at Treasury in the late afternoon so we decided to walk and finally I found something to love in Washington:  the Botanic Garden.

I could have stayed there all day but the last meeting of the day was a must (Treasury) so we left, walked past the Washington Monument and arrived at our destination with enough time to sit on a bench, rest our feet, and have something to eat and drink before entering the building.

And the day ended with a debriefing and a drink at the Old Ebbitt Grill.

The Sick Helping the Sick

Every Wednesday I leave the house around 11:30 and walk over to my church, St. Elisabeth de Hongrie, for the 12:05 Mass.  In my purse I have a small, round, gold box called a custode which I put on the altar with a communion host inside.  After the high point of the Mass, Father closes it up and hands it to me saying "Take this to our sick brother or sister."

The role I'm playing here is called an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion and it's part of the larger parish service to the sick and homebound.  In an ideal world it would be done by a priest or a deacon but lay members of the Church can fill in when the circumstances require it.

I was asked to do this because it wasn't so long ago that I was the one who was sick and stuck at home.  When I was going through chemo I simply didn't know that I could ask for my local parish to do this.  Yes, even us cradle Catholics are completely clueless sometimes.

My assignment is a 90+ year old Frenchwoman who is sharp as a tack but had a really bad fall a year or so ago and is now stuck at home.  In all honesty she's probably done me more good then I've done her.  The visit has a framework but it's also an exchange.  I've learned all sorts of things about Versailles and about her region, Auvergne. She has lived in Versailles most of her life but she still says that she is from Chaudes-Aigues, a small community known for its station thermale (thermal spa/hot springs) which has been around since the 14th century.

Yesterday I was complaining about my arthritis and the joint pain caused by my cancer meds.  Madame G. urged me to head south for a cure.  Book a few days down in my hometown, she said.  It's beautiful there and really will help your arthritis.

Who am I argue with experience?  I checked the Net when I got back home and the water there is supposed to be around 82 degrees Celsius (180 degrees Fahrenheit).  Sounds like heaven to me.

As I said she's lived most of her life in Versailles and she's been in the same apartment since just after World War II.  The neighborhood is, well, not a great one.  Versailles does have "cheap seats" and this particular one is called Chantiers. There is a big regional train station smack in the middle of the quartier and the surrounding area has seen better days:  lots of run-down buildings, peeling paint and crumbling stonework. Tourists are unlikely to be found here since what interests them is the castle, of course, and the neighborhoods that are directly adjacent to it.

Her apartment building, however, is just gorgeous and well-maintained.  It was probably built in the late 19th/early 20th century by, according to her, an American investor.  The apartments are very small but they have big windows that overlook a lovely courtyard.  And above the big double doors that one goes through to get the courtyard there is a stunning ceramic decoration by A. Bigot.  I think this is a work by Alexandre Bigot, a French céramiste (1862-1927).

I'll leave you to go about your day with a few photos I took of the building as I was walking out yesterday.  Have a lovely day, everyone.

Old Houses are Still the Best Houses

"A building properly conceived is several layers of longevity of built components."

Francis Cuthbert "Frank" Duffy, architect


If you are about my age and had hippy, soixante-huitard parents, you may remember The Whole Earth Catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972.  I believe that a dusty copy is still to be found in my parent's library in Seattle along with Lorenzo Milam's Sex and Broadcasting.

It was completely by chance that I stumbled on a book Brand wrote back in the 1990's called How Buildings Learn:  What Happens After They're Built.

A delightful book.  In it he turns the whole business of architecture on its head.  Instead of thinking of building projects as an attempt to capture the perfect house, office space or monument, he looks at these projects as just the beginning of the building's life and he asks how they be constructed to last and to evolve over time.  A dynamic, as opposed to a static, process.  New eras, new owners, new uses.

Brand has a rather jaundiced view of architects and he quotes Marvin Minsky who said, "The problem with architects is that they think they're artists, and they're not very competent."  I'm not qualified to agree or disagree with that comment but Brand's examples of bad buildings (or ones that in retrospect haven't aged well)  are well chosen.  The Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou (The Pompidou Center), for example, is one that when it opened in 1977 was a very impressive, exciting, modern structure.  Looking at it now in 2013, it  appears rather shabby and a bit dated.

Moving from monumental architecture to something a bit closer to everyday life (from art to craft, one might say) the best houses, he says, are old (or new) ones that start simple and are robust and built to last. He favors the "house as box" - a design that has been around forever and is still, in his view, a good one, "because it is profoundly adaptive."   Like the Saltbox which was a very simple U.S. style built between the 17th and 19th century. Or these two examples from my archives: an early 20th century stone house in Brittany, France and a small dwelling in our old neighborhood, Shirokanedai, in Tokyo, Japan:

Brittany, France

Tokyo, Japan

These are houses, "vernacular buildings", that can grow depending on the owner's wishes and needs.  They can be bumped out or up.   The "skin" can be changed and porches, verandas and extra rooms added.

It's not just the outside that can be changed but the inside, too.  The interior is very simple in these houses and is usually constructed with a corridor (or staircase) in the center with rooms on either side. "Let there be," says Brand, "a central passageway and stair hall, say, with roughly identical pairs of rooms on each side upstairs and down."

In the Brittany house, that is exactly what one finds:  a hallway with a very steep staircase and rooms (and stone fireplaces) on either side going up 2 floors.   The owners (my in-laws) didn't have to spend much to recuperate the attic space and turned it into bedrooms with windows and a small bathroom, thus making a four-bedroom vacation home out of a very basic two-bedroom fisherman's house. (House still doesn't have heat, though.)

Another good example is the house I live in now - a 1929 brick house that was previously owned by a laborer (a tiler by trade) and his wife.   We think there were remodels in the 1950's and in the 1970's. They clearly went down and dug out the basement to create a laundry room and bedrooms for their two sons.   Since water and sewer didn't start being installed on our street until 1929, we strongly suspect that what is the bathroom (salle de bains) today was something else when the house was first built.  Perhaps a second small bedroom for children or maybe the kitchen was bigger.

What we can see from the plan (and the size of the lot) there are an almost infinite number of changes inside and out that would be relatively inexpensive to make.  Not a lot of work frankly to make the kitchen larger, to grab the space that is today the front porch to make the living room bigger, or to tack a veranda onto what is called the salon in the plan. (Provided, of course that the architecte de la ville agrees.)

We are thinking about the last but we're taking our time.  The house was well-maintained for many years but the tiler's widow had to let some things slide and it seems prudent to tackle things like the leaking gutters, the rotten railings, and the peeling paint first.  Anything more complicated than that will have to wait because, to be honest, we have more will right now than wallet.

And that, according to Stewart Brand, is a Good Thing.  Why?

For one, Brand agrees with David Owen (The Walls Around Us) that all houses suffer a nervous breakdown when new owners move in.

"A few days after the deal is closed, water begins to drip from the chandelier in the living room, a heating pipe bursts, and the oven stops working.  The house is accustomed to being handled in certain ways.  Then, suddenly, strangers barge in.  They take longer showers, flush the toilets more forcefully, turn on the trash compactor with the right hand instead of the left, and open windows at night.  Familiar domestic rhythms are destroyed.  While the house struggles to adjust, many expensive items...unexpectedly self-destruct.  Then, gradually, new rhythms are established, the house resigns itself to the change of ownership, and a normal pace of deterioration is restored."

For another, Brand argues that the enemy of good preservation and prudent remodeling is money.

"Form follows funding."

Too much money and the owners do tout et n'importe quoi.  They indulge their fantasies and the results are often quite ugly, impractical, inflexible, and go out of style in just a few short years. These then become the nightmares of future owners who say to themselves, "What were they thinking?"  Too little money means that basic maintenance isn't done and the house suffers serious structural damage that new owners must try desperately to fix.

Music to my ears since that describes us perfectly (at least until the Frenchlings finish university). And here I was feeling guilty because there is so much to do and there just isn't any way we can do it all right now.

I'll buy Brand's argument that makes a virtue out of a necessity.  Fantasies cost nothing and,  “if dreams were thunder and lightning was desire, this old house would have burned down a long time ago.” (John Prine).

And if you're interested Steward Brand did a How Buildings Learn series for the BBC in 1997 which is up on Youtube.  Very well done and you can learn more about what he really thinks of the Pompidou Center:

Old Friends

I once joked that I knew more people in the French military than I ever did in the American one. Looking back over the past 30 years or so I see that this is not entirely true.  It's just that some experiences loom larger in my memory than others.

Years ago, through my father-in-law who was a retired French army officer who served in Europe, Indochina and North Africa, I often met other retired military at lunches or other family events and sometimes papa would read letters to us from the men he had served with and who were still on active duty.  It made for interesting listening, especially during the First Gulf War.

One gentleman I remember well was a retired colonel who was serving in French North Africa (World War II) when the Brits/Americans landed and he told me that they didn't really want to shoot Americans but, hey, orders were orders, right?

On the American side the only veterans in my family were my grandfather who served in the Aleutian Islands and my great-aunt who was in the Navy during World War II .  Grandpa was a medic and had this deep furrow in his forehead where he'd been shot in the head during his service.  He miraculously survived to come home and marry his sweetheart, my grandmother, from Naches in Eastern Washington. My great-aunt died before I knew her but I still have her rosary and a pin that belonged to her that says "Pistol Expert."

When we moved to Japan I met Americans serving in or retired from the U.S. Navy.  And it was after we'd moved back to France that I realized that the story of Americans abroad all too often does not include retired U.S. military.  Everyone seems to know (or think they know) quite a lot about American creatives in Paris but no one talks about about the men I met in Asia who were long-term expats (10+ years).  These were veterans who, after retiring and marrying local women or exploring business opportunities, just never went back to the U.S. to live.  You run into them occasionally in books written by Robert Kaplan, for example, but that's about it and that's a shame.
 
Returning to the French side this weekend we had some old friends over for Sunday lunch and as we talked and joked it came to me in a flash that I had known the gentleman sitting next to me for around 25 years now.  I first met him in Nantes in the late 1980's.  He was one of several room mates that my French spouse was living with at the time while they suffered their way through engineering school.  At that time France still had the draft and so when they finally graduated they had national service to look forward to.  My spouse did his service in the U.S. but this fellow decided to go into the French navy.  At the time I moved to France in 1989, he was on a ship, the Jeanne d'Arc and seeing the world (or at least a part of it).

http://www.netmarine.net/g/bat/jeanne/campagnesmod.htm

I know this because I remember vividly when he came back and stopped by our apartment to tell stories and give us a Jeanne d'Arc 1989-1990 campaign medallion which I still have.

He liked the Navy so much that he stayed and made a career there.  Over the years it was not easy to stay in touch because he was a submariner (yes, folks, France has subs including nuclear ones) and because they and we were on the move. Nonetheless, we were at his wedding and he had a special place at ours (he was the Best Man).  We had a very memorable visit with them when they were living in the south of France.  We went to Japan and they went to Noumea in New Caledonia for a couple of years.  

Not too long ago we discovered that they are living not too far from us - a rather rare occurrence. It just seemed right that we take advantage of the opportunity to get together and so we invited them for lunch. 

It was so good to see them.  So much to talk about and it turned out that their eldest daughter was in Quebec at the same as the elder Frenchling.  Ah, if we had only known that a year ago...

For every emigrant/immigrant there are two essential questions that are always asked:  "Why did you leave?"  and "Why did you stay?"  The second is, I think, more important than the first but the answer one gives changes over time.  What said at 25 is not what I would say today now that I'm nearly 50.  Today my rationales have to do with people.  Not just those who are alive but also those who have passed away. In my memories the countries of my heart and the people I have known are a tapestry where these experiences are not disconnected, but ones woven into a whole cloth from which I can extract threads and follow them back into the past. 

And that makes the present very rich, indeed.   

Versailles - les Maisons en Meulière

Versailles is so much more than that gaudy gilded monstrosity at the other end of of town.  Take the road from my house to the Montreuil train station, for example.  Walk up past the community center, take a left away from the Sainte Geneviève high school, and then slow down and start looking at the houses on both sides of the boulevard de la République. Really look because each one is unique and a feast for the eyes.  Do this a few times and you'll start to see common elements that unite them all and make this one of the most charming streets I have had the pleasure to walk. Most of them are what are called maisons en meulière.

What is meulière?  It's a type of stone that is pretty common in this area and it was used for two things:  millstones and houses.  Unlike the smooth cut stones (pierre de taille) that grace many of the grander buildings in the Paris region, meulière is irregular, multi-coloured, and rough.  It has holes like Swiss cheese and every time I get close to it, I want to run my hands over it.  (If there is a geologist reading this, please jump in and give us an expert view.)

The houses built with this type of stone on the boulevard de la République were constructed in the early years of the 20th century.  In contrast to the roughness of the meulière they used brick, cut stone,  faïences, and iron and woodwork to give each house a touch of something special. "Art Nouveau" decor says one of the articles I read. On some of them you can see the name of a very well known Versailles architect "Leon Bachelin" on a little discreet plaque somewhere on the facade.  Bachelin is credited with the invention of the typical "maison bourgeoise versaillaise".  One source I found said that he designed these houses for wealthy Parisians who wanted houses in the close suburbs.  Apparently a hundred years ago Versailles qualified as "the country" for these folks.

Most of the buildings are set back from the street with a little courtyard in front and, I assume, a much bigger garden in the back. Today you can't see as much as you might like because some of the owners past or present have put metal plates over the classic wrought iron fences separating the front garden from the street.

I am a terrible photographer and I couldn't possible do these houses justice but I did find this Flickr site that does.  I invite you to have a look.  There is also this very fine documentary (about 10 minutes) from France 5.


Immobilier a Sannois par immobilier-2

I love these houses.  However, if we had gone looking for one to buy two years ago, we would have suffered instant sticker shock.  They are very expensive, especially in the Montreuil neighborhood.  Here is a link to one that is one the market right now for the princely sum of 1.5 million Euros.  Some nice pictures though and, hey, one can always dream, right?

Maps, Maps, Maps

This one just came up on my Facebook feed.  This post is from A Sheep No More offers 40 maps to help you (and me) make sense of the world.

My favorite?  The flashy Map 10:  Global Internet Usage Based on Time of Day.

If you have time this weekend to read after you've caught up on your sleep I recommend Simon Garfield's On the Map:  A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks.  This was a quick but fun read.

For something equally enjoyable but a bit more challenging, try Kaplan's The Revenge of Geography.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

The Flophouse Godin

Mail and quite a few hits in response to my posts about our Godin wood stove. Here is the story - all the posts I wrote last year about it in chronological order:

A "Petit Godin" for the Flophouse (January 2013)  Why we decided to get a wood stove for our house here in Versailles and a nice video I found that shows how a top-loading Godin works.

The Search for the Perfect French Wood Stove (May 2013)  All the different models we looked at when we went to the Godin showroom in St. Cyr.

 

Tempus Fugit at the Flophouse (June 2013)  The month we finally got the mason to do the work of raising the chimney.  He did great work.  Before and after pictures.

Flophouse House and Garden Fall Projects (September 2013)  The story of how we came to buy our odd little house in Versailles and how the installation of the wood stove by Godin went.

Settling in for the Winter - le Petit Godin (November 2013)  A report on how well we liked our stove once we actually started using it.

People have sent stories about Godins in places like Vermont and Quebec.  I've also heard from folks who either want one and want to know if they are still being exported, or from those who are thinking about it and have questions about how well they work and if it's really worth it.

One wood stove does not make me an expert but, hey, I live to serve.





Finding a Godin:  From what I am hearing (and if you have other information, please correct me) Godin still exports but not everywhere.  I found new stoves for sale in the UK, for example.  I did not find any resellers in North America BUT I did see more than one used Godin on Ebay under "vintage wood stove" or "antique French Godin" so that's one place to look.   Craigslist might be another - they have sites all over the world.  There are other forums and boards you can check out like this one which gives you a good idea of the prices (used) - I see one in Tacoma, Washington for 300 USD (about 220 Euros).   These stoves are downright indestructible and last forever so it makes sense that there would be used ones out there.  

On the Godin website they have a catalog request form and apparently they have an English language version.  So for you anglophones out there just put in your address and check "Anglais" and "Particulier."  You can also have a look at their on-line catalog.  I'd suggest checking one or the other of these sources to get a good idea of the range of stoves available and then start looking for a used one in your area if there aren't any Godin resellers in your country.

How Well Do They Work?  Well, I haven't received a single comment or email from someone who doesn't love their Godin.  As for us, we are very pleased so far.  Be aware that it's not that cold in Versailles yet.  Early January temperatures are hovering just above freezing at night and there's almost no wind. Depending on how much wood I feed it, I can keep the main floor of our little house between 21 and 23 degrees Celsius ( between 70 and 73 degrees Fahrenheit).

We are using more wood these days and we are now confronted with the problem of picking it up, storing it, and keeping it dry.  We don't have a truck so we have to use the car and we can only fit about 3/4 of a stere in the back per load.  That amount of wood lasts us about three weeks.

Last week we made two trips to Viroflay and Mr. Treps' woodlot and packed 1.5 steres on the front porch.   This is the side of the house least exposed to the wind and rain.  I've learned that it's easier to get the stove started and continuously burning throughout the day if I stack a day's worth of wood and kindling in the house in the evening before I go to bed.

We could get wood delivered and we've looked into it.  But we don't have a driveway and there's no place for a truck to pull up and dump the wood.  Also, we like buying locally and Mr. Treps' prices and service (he always helps us load) are good.  What we may do next summer is build a shelter on the side of the house with room for roughly what we would need for the winter.  Then we would make a series of small trips each month while the weather is good until we fill the space.


Yesterday I got a call from Caldeo, the fuel company (another place with great service) asking if we needed the tank topped off.  Last delivery was 1000 liters in October which brought the counter up to 1200 liters.  I went down and checked and we still have about 800 liters left.  So we are using a little over 100 liters (26 gallons) of fuel a month.  That's about what you would put into an SUV if you took one down to the local gas station and said, "Fill her up."

I think we can do better but it will never be zero because our boiler provides heat and hot water.  I'm an old lady with arthritis and I'm not giving up my hot baths nor will I wash my dishes in cold water. There are limits and il ne faut pas exagérer...

I've set up a spreadsheet and I will be tracking how much wood we use and the rate at which we are burning fuel.  This will give me a baseline for next year.

The Final Grade:  5 Stars.  Two thumbs up.  20/20.  A++.  It really was worth all the trouble and the expense.  I have no idea when we will get a return on the investment but we are clearly using less fuel.  There are also a number of indirect benefits that we didn't think of when we first got the stove installed but have become apparent with time and experience.

Dry heat:  The heat from the wood stove is dry heat and feels better than the heat that comes off the radiators.  Versailles is really humid and cold - it was built on swampland and a few hundred years ago there was a pond where our house sits today.  We get that stove going and we can feel the house getting warmer and drier.  It's great for my arthritis.

Cooking:  I'm not kidding.  I hauled out my grandmother's (great-grandmother's?) cast iron skillet which fits beautifully on the top of the stove.  I've made beef stew, reheated roast chicken and defrosted vegetables from the freezer.  I'm sure I could do much more.  Right now I am looking for a cast iron tea kettle at a reasonable price so I can have tea water on demand.

Fertilizer:  There is a little tray for the ashes in the bottom of the stove.  Every morning I take it out and either dump it in the garden or I mix it into the compost pail in the kitchen (keeps it from smelling).  I used our fireplace ashes in the garden in our old apartment and it made a huge difference - the flowers and vegetables just loved it.  I think this garden will love it too.



Less waste:  We used to take out the recycling bin once a week and it was always full.  These days it's more like every two or three weeks.  This is because we use paper for starting fires.  I'd never realized just how much of our recycling was paper products.  That was an inspiration and now we are looking into just what else is going into that bin that we could reuse.  Here's one example and, yes, I'm going to try it.

That's the bilan so far.  If you know other resources or have stories to tell about Godin wood stoves old or new, antique or modern, please share them.  I can attest to the fact that there is interest out there.

And for the next big Flophouse project?  Right here.