Chateau de Hac
Built in 1440, this castle is a listed French heritage monument, yet is one of many in our area that remain a private residence. Restored in 1684, the castle is flanked by 5 turrets and it is furnished with a collection of medieval tapestries, stained glass and trunks from the 12th to 15th centuries.
Honey Bee Island hits the big time!
Wow! This is a big month for the Bee. Last summer we were introduced to a new friend on the river. Shortly thereafter, she told us she was a reporter for a local newspaper and was writing a series of articles on island life in the Thousand Islands. Kim said that she was always looking for new material both to continue her series and for a book about the Thousand Islands she hoped to write. Having heard of our schizophrenic lifestyle she asked if she could visit and interview us at the Bee and my agent... eh… I mean Janice made us all lunch. Originally slated to be published in April, the article was killed when Kim was among 600 reporters throughout Canada laid off from the newspaper conglomerate when the economy went truly, pants-wettingly, oh-my-god wrong.
As a reporter, she is no slouch. She is an award winning Canadian journalist and former national correspondent for some of the largest newspapers in the Canadian metropolitan areas. Her work has appeared in numerous national publications including the Readers Digest. Looking to spread her wings in new directions she began to write for the ‘Thousand Islands Life’ magazine and did a really sweet feature article on Honey Bee that appears this month. You can read the online edition by copying and pasting www.thousandislandlife.com into your browser.
That being a done deal, we were asked if the Bee could be featured in an upcoming glossy regional magazine called ‘Island Treasures’. It is slated to be published in June and will feature 10 islands in the area. With any luck, we will negotiate the movie rights, royalties and residuals shortly thereafter...:)
CH2-0209-2858
There was a very exciting development in the aviation world this month. While I have soldiered on with my online ground school, the time came to take the plunge and buy a set of floats and order my…eh…Janice’s airplane. There could be a 3 month lead time in ordering the components from the factory before they can be delivered to the Bee when we arrive in June. Over the past 25 years they have manufactured and shipped well over 3500 airplanes of this model and another similar to it around the world. That is all well and good but I am beside myself with joy that CH2-0209-2858 will soon be mine.I mean hers.
Is life in Europe really that different?
Last month I got started on some of the differences between daily life at home and here in Europe. One of them involves gas stations. Like at home, many of them here have multiple pumps to serve several clients simultaneously. Makes sense, right? Here though, the fueled cars are then funneled into a single line of vehicles to drive by the attendant’s station to pay for their purchase…one at a time.
The attendant won’t reset the pump until the gas has been paid for, so the end result is that in spite of having 10 pumps only one customer is served at a time. Why don’t they pay at the pump with a credit card, you ask? By and large this is not a credit society. Credit cards are virtually non-existent here and are quite expensive for those who use them. Other than their mortgage or the purchase of their cars, they usually pay cash. It minimizes efficiency, but you don’t see the same level of personal financial meltdown that you see from the fiscal irresponsibility at home.
One of the little traditions here in Brittany is to lay your spoons and forks backward (tines facing down) when setting your table for company. The story goes that people with family crests would have the emblem embossed on the back of their utensils then turn them backward so guests would be sure to notice it. Although these crests are rarely seen today, the tradition is kept alive. While here, we play along.
Most milk sold here is of the UHT variety. (Ultra High Temperature sterilization) The boxed product is kept at room temperature (until opened) on store shelves like cans of soup and has a shelf life of 6-9 months. It took me a long time to be willing to try it fearing that milk that had been kept at room temperature for who-knows-how-long would kill me. To think that this is from the same people who cringe at our genetically altered foods.
In France, just like at home, the major banks have branches all over the country. Any similarity ends there because in many important ways, they all operate independently. Yes, you can withdraw cash from an ATM with your debit card at any branch, but if you attempt to make a deposit to your account from outside of your area, they seal your money in a pouch and use a bank courier to forward it to your branch. This process can take up to 10 days.
Recently we have all heard a lot of fuss being made of developing alternative energy sources. Wind, solar, geothermal….everything seems to be in the mix. Yet another first for our little backwater is the La Rance tidal power plant near St. Malo in Brittany. It is the only utility-scale tidal power system in the world and has been operating without a problem for 42 years.
Finally, I was in the hardware store recently, looking for a manual stapler but the one I saw was $80. And you wonder why we carry 250 pounds of ‘stuff’ with us when each time we fly over…..
What, me work?
Every month, I have some smarty pants, tongue-in-cheek comment about my being unemployed. You’ve seen it, right next to the ‘THE EPISTLE’ masthead at the top of the page. Not wanting my kids to think I was a total slug, I almost applied for a job. With the economy in shambles, our investments evaporating into thin air and home values dropping like a rock, I thought that prudence would call for a greater effort and flexibility on my part to keep the wolf from the door.
Recently, when the Queensland Australia office of tourism published an opening as caretaker of Hamilton Island, I thought that I found something that would reasonably compensate me for my efforts and would fit in with our chosen lifestyle. The job which paid $100,000 for a six month stint, involved 12 hours of ‘work’ each month. Duties included swimming, fishing, snorkeling, producing a blog extolling the area’s beauty and fetching the mail. I mentioned that I ‘almost’ applied for it since my application could not be submitted because the agency’s website crashed after receiving over a million applications in the first 3 days. Still, I am open for similar opportunities.
Taking a stroll down memory lane
Everyone has their own memory of the time they left their childhood home for good. That is, the very first night that you knew you were completely on your own and there was no going back. For some it is when they went to college or when they got married. For others it is when they joined the military. Some perhaps were runaways. God forbid that you were kicked out.
I left at 18 under… well… ‘difficult’ circumstances. We did not agree about some important issues in my life and I supported my parents position that while living under their roof I should abide by their rules.
So, we had a little ‘regime change’ and being fiercely independent, I left with only the clothes on my back. I spent my first couple of nights at a flop house for homeless indigent alcoholics and derelict drug addicts. I would have gladly slept in my car but I didn’t have so much as a bus ticket so my tab was ‘comp-ed’ by a local church. I looked and felt like a fish out of water and I remember sleeping with my clothes on and with my shoes under my pillow as I feared not finding them in the morning. Thinking ahead, I had lined up a week-end job as a sales clerk in the mens clothing department of a large store to get a little start up money.
I was within two weeks of finishing my first year of University while in the mist of my final exams. Kicking my accommodations up a notch, I talked my way into being able to sleep on the sofa in the recreation lounge of an on campus men’s religious fraternity (I was attending Loyola). Not having a place to cook, I bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and ate sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. When I got really sick of them, I had another peanut butter sandwich.
Being me, I thought this would only need to last a few weeks before my parents came to their senses, realized the error of their ways and begged me to come back. 40 years later, I’m still waiting. In fact, my father did contact me. We talked but there was too much daylight between our positions and we were unable to come to an acceptable understanding. So, I figured they needed to be convinced that I meant business and I was not like a sibling who had been a serial runaway. “This might take a couple of months” I thought, so I dug in.
I got a summer job which allowed me to get a room off of someone’s basement garage and frantically started saving for next fall’s tuition… just in case. In spite of the fact that I was completely self supporting, I was denied any student loan because my parent’s income was too high. I had no dishes so I would heat and eat soup right out of the can. I kept thinking that surely I would only have to hold out a little longer and I would prevail. After about a year I realized that the jig was up so I had better man-up, get a grip, figure out what I wanted out of life and just do it.
It was not my intention here to bore you with the story of my life. Nor to whine about how tough I had it. You might well have had it much harder. It is also not my intention to disparage my parents because I know that they have always seen things differently. While they didn’t intend it, I have believed that in the end they did me a huge favor.
I also know that my own kids often thought that we were born at 50, never had a life and always saw us live comfortably from the day they were born. But on March 27th, I will sit in front of the fireplace with a glass of Champagne and remember that first night 40 years ago. Some things have a big impact on a boy’s life.
Menhir de Pergat
This month we visited the Menhir de Pergat, a 10: 30 meter (Over 33 foot) tall standing stone we are told was erected in 5000 BC and is the 4th tallest in Europe. Standing stones are fairly common in Brittany and were hewn from local rock and erected by the pre-Celtic people of Brittany during the Neolithic period. They were raised as part of a larger Megalithic culture that flourished in Europe.The purpose of Menhirs has provoked a great debate. Over the centuries they have variously been thought to have been used by Druids for human sacrifice, used as territorial markers or elements of a complex ideological system, or functioned as an early calendar. This particular one is only 14 miles (23 Km) from our door. The tallest one in Europe is in Carnac, Brittany, a few hours from here where we have seen it and over 3000 more aligned in a 2 mile row.
(RED) Face Book
A couple of weeks ago I got a request from someone to accept him as my ‘friend’ on Face Book. Anyone who has not been under Taliban rule knows it is a social networking site which I had pretty much written off as a place where 14 year old girls brag about many boys they know. Not wanting to be unfriendly I went to the site to ‘accept’ him thinking that some people just have too much free time and really need to get a life. Unfortunately, when I clicked on ‘I accept’, I failed to notice the default setting where I had authorized Face Book to contact E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E in my email address book to ask them to be my 'friend' also.Crap.
Within hours I began getting dozens of ‘I accept you as my friend too’ notices from people I thought should know better and I was amazed at who I knew who had a page there also. Fair enough, to each his own. It got awkward though when I realized that my ‘please accept me as your friend’ requests had gone out to everyone from my proctologist to my mechanic, insurance agent and the IRS. To all those who did respond, thank you. I am glad you reaffirmed what I hoped was the case all along. For those who did not, I hope you will accept my apology and not think less of me for unintentionally asking. As for the IRS and my proctologist, I hereby officially recind the offer altogether.
