April 2011

Ploumanach Beach on a spring day Double click on the image for a screaming vew

Deutschland or Bust!

Last week Janice and I drove half way across the continent to Aachen, Germany to help Mandy and her guy Markus move into their new apartment. Mandy is finishing her advanced Masters degree in Stockholm, Sweden and is due to graduate in May. She and Markus will then live in Germany while he completes his studies in Aeronautical Engineering and she decides if she will begin her doctorate in Arbitration Law.

The Bayeux Tapestry

We loaded the car with every tool I own here and stopped in Bayeux (France) along the way to see the 224 foot long (68 M) embroidered tapestry displayed in the Museum. Completed in the year 1077, it tells the story of William the Conqueror in a visual display for what was an illiterate population. A few miles (Km) up the road, we also stopped to visit the Pegasus Bridge. I had always believed that the WWII liberation of France and Europe began on June 6, 1944 with the Normandy invasion. It turns out that it actually began on the night of June 5th, when 3 gliders full of British commandos landed 200 feet (75 M) from the bridge and overpowered German guards.

The Pegasus bridge

The mission was to secure the 150 foot (50M) long bridge for allied advances and to blow up other bridges in the area to prevent German reinforcements. They succeeded and thus the first shots of the invasion were fired and the village liberated was one you may have never heard of. It is Ranville. Continuing on, we spent the night in Paris where we picked Mandy up while she was visiting mutual friends from California. We drove across Belgium, the Netherlands and finally arrived at their place in Aachen where we hit the deck running. Together with Markus’ father, we moved stuff from student dorms to the new apartment, picked up load after load from Ikea and other businesses to bring back to the apartment to assemble and go back for more.

Mandy and Markus' new apartment

In Germany ( like most of Europe), when you rent an apartment, you get the 4 walls, floor and ceiling. If you want a light, you either bring your own or buy one because all you will find are two wires hanging from the ceiling in each room. Kitchens have no counter tops, cabinets, sinks, stoves, refrigerators or lights. The previous renter installed his own and took them with him to his next place, so now you need to start the whole process all over at your expense. Since you are installing your counter tops, you obviously need to cut the openings out for your sink and cook top. When you move out, you must return the apartment to the landlord freshly painted. This being their first ‘all grown up’ apartment, they needed tables, chairs, dishes, desks, sofas…..you get the drill. We acted as transportation (they have no car), assemblers ( chairs, tables, bed, cabinets) and installers. What they put together is an incredibly cute starter apartment. For most of our stay we were generously received at Mandy's host parents home (when she was an exchange student in High School) an hour away.

Honfleur

After a week, we packed our tools and set off for home, stopping to visit the city of Le Havre. We chose to see it because it is listed as a Unesco World Heritage site, the 93rd such site I have visited. This however, is the first time I was disappointed. For us, it was a bust as the architecture was was simply not our style. What was a delight was the nearby city of Honfleur, one of the most beautiful medieval towns in Normandy. This one is a keeper.

Bits and Pieces

We want to welcome Gabrielle Alexia Laprade to the family. Born on March 25th she is my brother Marc and his partner Grace Delos Santos’ brand new baby girl. Both mom and Gabrielle are doing fine. As for Marc, better you than me, buddy! We learned this month that both daughters Mandy and Kami have been granted Canadian citizenship and are now dual citizens. This as a result of Mandy sussing out a new Canadian law granting citizenship to first generation progeny of a former Canadian parent. (Name withheld to protect the guilty party) Now we are told that daughter Cassie is applying also. As to your obvious question, no I am not.

Janice's artwork in Mandy's new apartment

Janice has been hard at work on her art classes, loves it and has threatened to fill all our children’s homes with her paintings. Say but the word and she will probably fill yours also. As you can see in the photo, her hair has begun to grow back so she has stopped wearing her wig. She refers to this time as her poodle look with the super curly hair phase lasting about 6 months. She is down to two treatments to go with the last one a day before we fly back in May. This was the month where a couple of friends and I traditionally return to our cider bottling task. This was a light year as we only filled a little over a thousand bottles in two days. We were also invited to a wine tasting event. Complete with restaurant dinner, we were educated by the vintner who grew the grapes and bottled the wines we drank as to the composition, soil types and other peculiarities of the various wines. Good fun! Last fall Janice spent a good part of 5 weeks at the ‘Sarah House’ in Syracuse NY while she was receiving radiation treatments. When we left, Janice wrote a letter of support which became part of a successful grant request. Then, we offered our house in France for a week to be auctioned off as part of a fundraiser they had this month and the week raised $5,400. Nice! I wish every week we rented out would do as well!!!

Projects of the month

Last winter I had brought a paper template of our fireplace opening at the island to France in order to forge a set of doors that acted as a fire screen to prevent sparks from landing on the carpet. As you know, we had to return to the US earlier than expected, so I did not get a chance to start it. So, I have spent a good part of this past month in our village forge, getting on the J - O - B. We did as we often do, that is search the ‘price is no object’ web sites to find pictures of our favorite models and simply copy them. That makes them rather affordable. Friends on both sides of the pond marvel at our lack of propriety in packing slabs of metal in a suitcase, or worse by simply wrapping the steel in cardboard. The airline agents do look at us askance but have no recourse but to accept the package as luggage as it is not in violation of any airline rule. We are rather pleased with the result and we will have a little ‘show and tell’ once I install it at the Bee in June. The thing about this forging gig is that it is so not like woodworking. Over the years, I have done a fair share of building stuff including some exotic hardwood furniture. It was no walk in the park but with wood, if you cut it the right length, width and thickness, then shape it the way you want it you are pretty much home free. Metal is a beast. You start much like above but the shaping part is a whole other world. It bends, tweaks, warps, twists and curves. Then it vaporizes. It is a given that when I heat metal in the forge and begin shaping it, it will immediately bend in an unintended manner. This is expected and requires some tweaking. The latter immediately causes the piece to warp and calls for further corrections. Once done, I can see curves that I don’t want so I put it back in the forge to heat it up, soften the metal and work on it some more. This, of course will introduce a twist requiring…well you get the idea. Occasionally when I have spent a lot of time getting it almost perfect, I will put it back in the forge for one last heating to work out the final details. That is when I get it just a tad too hot and it…eh…vaporizes. Get a new piece and repeat. Whatever love was shown me by my mentor is long gone. There was a time when if I simply did not set fire to the building, I was doing fine in his eyes. As time has gone on he has become as demanding as a wife. Now, I occasionally have some minor flaw in a piece I am working, figuring it will give it ‘character’ and ‘charm’. Besides I figure, that old goat will never see it anyway. (My mentor, not my wife!) But no, he takes one look and says “I didn’t know you wanted that twist in just one place. It stands out like someone in an evening dress on a nudist beach”. Fine. “What do you expect, perfection?", I ask. “Not from you…”, he says. This is a tough crowd. What we did get around to putting the finishing touches on this month was a new front entry door. Again, planned for last year but put on hold due to our quick departure, we scoured the internet for a design we liked and commissioned a local artisan to build it for us. Now before you get all over my case for actually hiring someone to do something, it would be good to remember I have no workshop here and limited hand tools.

Thin, cheesy, warped and plain Jane Other than that, it was fine

Besides, friends who have been so generous with loaning me all manner of their tools simply didn’t have the equipment needed to do this project justice. We have needed a new entry door since we bought the house but abject poverty precluded doing anything about it until now. Of course personal pride required that I forged the decorative metal bits myself.

New and improved! Better sound and heat insulation, more light in the house and simply screaming looking.

Personal observations of life in Paris

Motorcyclists in Paris are as numerous as flies, comprise about 20% of all vehicles in the city, travel barely across but in the oncoming lane of city traffic, weave between vehicles at every opportunity and reposition themselves in front of the first car at all traffic lights. At night they travel with their emergency flashers on at all times to have a better chance of being seen. There is no question that they can navigate the city streets quickly but at great risk to their safety. Parisians hate them with a passion and authorities have made a feeble attempt to rein them in but the motorcyclists reacted by blocking traffic for hours all over the city. The city fathers relented and the result was the bikers feeling empowered and are more arrogant than ever. Now they demand that car drivers make way for them and if you fail they are likely to pound their fists on your car roof or kick your door as they drive by. In an accident they will invariably blame you for causing it. Faced with this challenging moral dilemma, I believe that if I were to find myself in such a situation, I could find it in my heart to back up and finish the job. With some exceptions, black people (or is it more PC to refer to the folks as ‘people of color’?) in Paris seem to be better assimilated into the larger population than African Americans are at home. It still seems weird to hear them speak perfect French but not a word of English. The exceptions seem to be blacks that are not from former French colonies but (some) illegal African immigrants who are only looking for work. One of the things we have seen when traveling on the RER (local commuter train service around Paris) are female Middle Eastern panhandlers who will board the train with a young child in one hand and a portable amplifier and power supply on a little cart in the other. Once the doors close on their captive audience, they begin to belt out songs that sound like the Arab call to prayer. Everyone looks annoyed but dares not say anything fearing being labeled as Arabphobic or something. Before the train pulls in to the next station, she then passes the hat in a usually unsuccessful attempt to collect anything. Hey I am just a tourist here so I take it all in. As a resident, I would surely have to begin practicing my yodeling skills.