Château de Combourg

Combourg, we like.  Gabriel is on vacation now, and we get to go to Combourg almost every day because that is where the swimming pool is; in Combourg, is the notary’s office where Jane’s house officially became hers on October 23 wahooo!!! and also, the Château de Combourg.  There’s a legend that there was an underground tunnel between our chapel and the Château, so regardless of the fact that the muddy earth of Le Maffay and the 12 kilometers which separate the playgrounds of the Princes de Combourg and our crib render the reality of a tunnel near null, it seemed like a good time to go and visit the château and see if we saw any tunnel entrances.  Or not.

We did see lots of beautiful leaves, a Countess, and a dessicated cat.  We explored the gardens and the little fronttoothless cowboy found two mushrooms and lots of room to run, and was even knighted by Timothy down by a lake.  I was fascinated with the gutters and practical workings of lightning rods, zinc and waterspouts, and even found a dusty window through which to peer, with an old dusty bottle of some elixir lit by the sun.  We asked two people who work there, the guide and the ticket lady, whether or not they knew of the availability of any historical documents about underground tunnels to consult, but no one knew anything about it.  You’re not allowed to take photographs inside, so you won’t see any of the inside here, you’ll just have to go and visit the inside yourself.  Even if you’re not a fan of Châteaubriand, it is very interesting and the guide is a very kind lady who has visitor’s pamphlets in English.  Here are lots of (way too many, dixit Seanie) pictures, among which is a study for the future stained glass window that we’ve begun collecting bottles for, a possible study for the chapel ogive.  Collecting bottles is hard work; first, you must empty them.  Please come and have a drink with us and help our stained glass project come to life.

ps. one of these images was photoshopped; which one?

Moteur de batteuse L. Becquart-Lille

A vendre.  C’est le même qui a fait les batteries ici au Maffay pendant longtemps et selon les dires de nos amis, peut encore faire si besoin.  Voici l’annonce (cliquez s’il vous plaît pour ouvrir).

Peter Simpson

Peter Simpson, friend of many, Pat’s love and eulogist of Port Townsend’s past, a man who opened up the world of art to generations of people on our little end of the world, died two weeks ago.  He was a good friend of my father and mother’s, and he and Paul were on the PT Arts Commission back in 1987…  Paul found these pictures that he took at the time, and now here they are for you, from the past, in fond memory of a great man.

Peter Simpson

PT Arts Commission (dixit Paul: Lainie Johnson, Bertram Levy, Barbara Gemberling, Lucy Vane, Me, Stephanie Lutgring, and Peter in the back.)

Peter in his kitchen

Peter and Pat Simpson

Peter and Pat, cooking

all photos © Paul Boyer

more reading:  Peter’s book with James Hermanson, Port Townsend, years that are gone

J’ai dû rêver trop fort

Alain Bashung s’est éteint hier, et éteindre s’emplit de tout son sens à son égard.  RIP.

la nuit je mens

Shot of the day

Cipriano Armenteros proves his derring-do by climbing up on the Renaissance grill covering the window of the manor house.  He managed to get himself back down, as well.  That’s a duct tape repair job on our electrical line hanging on the bottom of the grill; always so classy, ze Americans, with their shiny tape.  Duct tape is called ’scotch américain’ over here, incidentally.

Revue de presse internationale

This morning on France Musique, the revue de presse internationale highlighted the editorials of major newspapers around Europe, and everyone seemed to be in accord that last night’s investment speech was the discourse of ‘No We Can’t’ and a complete reversal of the messages emanating from his campaign. And i have the feeling that they must have heard a different speech, or a poorer translation; saying that the first presidential address to the world is a message without hope or ‘negative’ or contrary to Obama’s campaign has profoundly misunderstood the Protestant nature of the American people (i think, but i’m an American a bit removed). In the speech there were references to pulling up shirtsleeves and getting to work, and the fact that there is nothing more satisfactory than the feeling of a job well done. Do not these august editorialists know of the protestant work ethic and our effective guiding phrases like ‘pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps’ and ‘ the early bird gets the worm’ and ‘buy oh buy the bioquant, and get your ass to work?’ and ‘any job worth doing is worth doing well’ and ‘just do it’ and ‘early to bed, early to rise’ and ‘if it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger’ and on and on? For an american ear, it was a very motivational speech; hope, at least for this maffaienne, is in the pragmatism of what gets done every day, and if the international press was hoping for arcing discourse about ‘we’re going to solve every problem in the world in the next 10 hours,’ sorry, he’s not going to lie to us just to make us happy and feel uplifted. He’s not going to lie to us. This hegemony of truth and work is very inspirational, and highly puritan, but this is no happy-go-lucky accident of a presidency.

Beau jour

20.01.2009: listening to my chouchou Patrick Chamoiseau on France Inter this morning saying that Barack Obama is the fils du gouffre, which is Glissant’s realm if i recall correctly, and joy lit up his voice and i love the way the word ‘individuation’ sounds in his mouth. Then a day of work, then later, listening to the investiture driving home from Angers, as charcoal rainclouds presented a solid front across the widening sky, i took at photo of the rond-point i traversed while listening to Barack Hussein Obama become the 44th president. Our red car drove solidly north to home, dividing the raindrops as he spoke the words that we’ve all been able to re-read now, on yahoos or other websites. A french translator’s voice was laid over the top of the President’s words like an old holey quilt, and you could tell the man was overcome with the emotion and import of the words that he was given to wring into french, and there were gaps and dropped articles and florid inventions, like when he said something about ‘the electric lines that will power our industry’ when Obama referred to digital lines to link commerce together. The plain architecture of Obama’s speech was napped with the wispy old-world lace, the power of his words contrasted and emphasized by the flounderings and valiant attempts of France Inter’s finest, like looking through cobwebbed windows to see solid beams reaching into the aether. I had to read the speech to understand its elegant simplicity and reach, uncomplicated by the overlay of the other man’s voice. It was a valiant effort, but I wish he had forsaken his task right when Obama mentioned humility.

And then at dinner tonight we had american food (polenta and sausage sauteed with apples and onions) and sang ‘oh say can you see’ and after i finished Gabriel said, oh, can i tell you how i love that? And i thought, oh he must be carried away by patriotic sentiment and my voice, and then he said, the cheese, the mont d’or in the polenta. So we looked at pictures on Yahoo of the investiture, and he wondered at all the people crying, and we talked about how you can cry sometimes for joy, because sometimes things happen in life that are so improbable, and so long-awaited, and so true. I still cannot believe that my parent’s generation has lived through the civil rights movement, to see today. And that older generations still have suffered through invisibility and ignorance older still, to live through today. And i don’t know yet if Gabriel understands when i try to explain it to him, feeling like that noble translator from France Inter, but i hope someday that he will.

For sale

The news of the past week on the left side of Maffay: tiling the kitchen counter, cleaning out the mobile home, getting paint up and carpet down, selling it so that we can look unimpeded out to the farm, and the meadow stretching out between us and the road to Sens.

I’ll put up some pictures of the renovated mobile home soon; either it was the paint fumes or general fatigue, but while working in it yesterday before the first potential acquirers came to visit, i began to have feelings of nostalgia, and thought: perhaps we were actually quite happy in here. And i believe that we actually were, especially in the summertime, or even at winter tucked in at night in our wood-panelled little room. One of the things that we learned from our experience is a very pragmatic tip that we would like to share with you all: if you ever have the chance to live in a mobile home, make sure you don’t store things in cardboard boxes, because they absorb humidity and everything inside, if it is fabric, will smell like Miss Havisham and you will find yourself making many trips to the dump with a carful of moldering, mildering ex-clothing.

The other, better news, is that wine is a surprisingly resilient resident of a mobile home, through the upper ranges of summertime, and the freezing temperatures of winter. Cleaning up, i found a bottle that Jacqueline and Jean-Pierre had given us before we left rue Frédéric Sacher. The bottle had rolled underneath a kitchen cabinet, and survived 13 months in a wooden box (our mobile home), in a French meadow. We drank it last night with Karin, Jean-Jacques, Malin, Simon, and Mathieu and it was actually, not bad. It was actually good. And i remember now, many years ago in Port Townsend, that when the red house burned, the workers who came to reconstruct its innards after the fire found my father’s wine cellar, and tested the bottles in it, and found that the wine was actually very, very good. I’m not saying that i’ll start storing wine bottles out on top of the fröling, but i am saying that if anyone is every about to toss out a bottle of mobile-home dwelling wine, i will gladly help dispose of it.

Also, this is for sale: it is a motor, found in the recesses of our barn. It is a 30watt motor, and used to turn the batteuse, or thresher, at the farm. It probably still works. It is very heavy, and its price is as follows. You must come and pick it up, and then you must see if you can get it to work, and if you can, please invite us over to see what you’ve made it do.

Also, a small remembrance of the history of Maffay: Hélène said that the barbed wire fences came only after the Americans, and the war. As a child, she had to go every weekend and after school, to watch the cows, because there were no fences. Kids had to go out and cowsit in all their spare time, which i actually think would be very appealing to Gabriel. Also, M. Roullier said that at Christmas time, he has the memory of the chocolate that his mother would make only at that time of year: the bar of Christmas chocolate, shaved in razor sharp slices into a warm bowl of milk. That, and an orange, was Christmas. There was also a man who would ride down on his bike from the coast at St Malo with a bag of clams, bringing them to Feins for Christmas. M. Honoré used to ride his bike to get back and forth to Rennes, and Pierrette says that she remembers that people would walk to the market in Combourg from Feins, making the round trip during the morning. This makes me feel very lazy and makes me think about perhaps riding the bikes to school with Gabriel.

Oh, and Cip is probably blind in one eye, because of a scratch or other proclivity to impair himself (this is double entendre in french: you’ll remember that Cip is our cat, who has only one testicle, rather than two). This is what happens when you name a cat after a mythical bandolero; he’s dealing well will his new infirmity and i’m thinking of making him a little eyepatch, for formal occasions, once i get a little more work done in the house, and enough space cleared to make room for the sewing machine.

Le pommier (suite)

Vous vous rappellez peut-être du pommier, qui était la première chose à tomber ici côté gauche au Maffay, en fin novembre, le premier jour du terrassement. Si vous avez du courage, plongez tout à fait en bas du blog et vous l’y trouverez, le pommier. Pendant quatre mois ici il se trouvait au fond du jardin sous le calligraphie des pruniers, couché dans l’herbe.

Aujourd’hui, Monsieur Roullier père est passé en tracteur avec une fendeuse et une tronçonneuse, pour effectuer une taille finale au pommier et le convertir en bois de chauffage. Mais en voyant le bois je suis intervenue, et ai négocié, et nous sommes sortis avec un très beau tabouret (en devenir même s’il pense que je suis un peu folle) et un petit tas de bois et un petit tas de sciure pour les fleurs. Et même une chaise pour le jardin, jusqu’au moment où il pourrisse sur pied et devient lui aussi, hébergement pour quelque chose de plus fleuri.

Le bois du pommier sent le cidre et se pare d’un beau rouge orange, et cela me rend heureuse à penser à tous ces couchers de soleil cachés en leurs écorces brunis dans ce pays de pluie.

En travaillant, Monsieur Roullier père m’a raconté que pendant la Guerre, les allemands occupaient le chalet en face, jusqu’à la fin de l’Occupation, où les américains y habitaient à leur tour. La Plaine, où Pierre Yvès ne plante pas de maïs transgénique, était à l’époque un verger de pommiers, et les américains atterrissaient dans leurs avions entre les rangs d’arbres. Sa femme se rappellent de l’arrivée des alliés, avec leurs chewing-gums. L’école était réquisitionné, et les garçons devaient alors transporter les tables d’école d’étable en étable pour faire leurs cours en cachette, et ensuite il fallait aussi déplacer les tables des filles, et ils étaient contents parce qu’ils rataient ainsi les cours, en déménageant les tables. Il m’a dit que les agriculteurs à l’époque n’avaient droit qu’à la taille des arbres tous les neuf ans: ils taillaient les chênes en têtard, et neuf ans plus tard répétaient l’opération, et les fagots ainsi récupérés étaient leur bois de chauffage. Les paysans payaient leur fermage avec les pommes qu’ils récoltaient. Lui a commencé à garder les vaches à cinq ans. 9ème sur 10 enfants, ses parents n’avaient les allocations (toutes neuves en France à l’époque) que pour les trois derniers, il fallait travailler; il travaillait pour une famille qui n’avait pas d’enfant, à garder leurs vaches, débarbouiller les poules avant d’aller à l’école le matin. J’étais content d’avoir du pain pendant la guerre, il m’a dit, la famille étant boulanger il a pu rammener du pain à sa famille le jeudi. Du pain et du lait, et beaucoup du cochon, et aujourd’hui il ne veut plus jamais manger de poireau, tant il a en a mangé à cette époque. Et le lard, on gardait le cochon jusqu’à ce qu’il avait une épaisse couche de graisse comme ca, ah, les gens ils disent qu’ils aimeraient bien retourner en arrière vers les vieux jours mais lui, n’est pas d’accord. C’était du travail.

Il m’a montré comment faire marcher la fendeuse. J’aimerais qu’il me montre comment se servir de l’herminette.

Unshrill shill

Two found pieces from winter, into spring: Patricia’s book was published in early 2008, and for everyone who doesn’t have it yet, you can of course find it on Amazon or from Lost Horse Press (www.losthorsepress.org)

Also Casey Charles’s chapbook available at Fact and Fiction in Missoula among other places I hope, is dedicated to Patricia. I’m not sure where to categorize this post, in history, construction, destruction, garden or neighbors, but it’s possibly a mix of all of them. Read these books.