Happy Birthday, Blog!

In honor of this blog's birthday, here's a beautiful image I found, which is the cover to a book called, Le géant de la grande forêt. 

The book looks awesome!  

My intention for the coming year, maybe after Easter, is to try to do some more writing here.  Maybe focus on some responses to the Lectionary readings each week.  That's ambitious, I know. 

Thanks for reading!

Facebook & my "French Brother"

So, something happened on Facebook this week that has me re-living and re-thinking my time in Nantes. I found my "French brother" on Facebook - one of the siblings in the family I stayed with in France during my year in Nantes - and "friended" him. [As I told my neighbor, Ed, I only use my web-sleuthing/stalking powers for GOOD!]

Anyways, he accepted me as a friend. Then yesterday, I went to look for him, and my French sister, and another brother, who I really wanted to catch up with, and he had blocked me. And the sister, I think, has blocked me too. It makes me sad. I really liked her, and the brother I haven't been able to connect with, named after my favorite saint, I haven't been able to connect with. I miss him and think about him often. He was my age, still lived at home, gave me tips on how to deal with faculty and exams at the Université de Nantes and generally put up with non-stop harassment from his siblings.

As an American visitor, it was a strange family. They had an aristocratic family name, and lived in a huge apartment in the centre ville. They had a 3 foot tall statue of the Virgin Mary in the hallway, similar to the one above, but with a big "Sacred Heart" and a light shining on it at all times - I'll get back to this point in a moment. They are Monarchists, and know about a distant Bourbon relation of the Louis-Philippe who could come back and sit on the throne in France at a moment's notice. And Monsieur believes that slavery in America was a good thing for African-Americans because that's how they learned to read. "Would any of them move back to Africa now?" he would ask me.

I had talked to myself, in moments of panic before leaving home and starting on this adventure, through my anxieties by asking, "What's the worst that can happen?" I decided the worst thing would be to be placed with a family where there was sexual or physical abuse going on. "What's the second worst thing?" I continued with myself..... "to be stuck with an ultra-conservative family." Well, my worst fear did not come to fruition. My second-worst did.

But, I also learned a LOT from this family. I learned that the French don't handle the American way of emoting. They don't like "working through emotions" with crying and the desire for comforting in the form of hugs. Instead, they try to "build up character and emotional strength" through repeated pronouncements to "snap out of it!" I learned that there are still people who believe that getting a blessing from a priest, or getting demons cast out, can really make a sick person healthy again. [I had a cold that lasted for pretty much 3 months because I refused to stop smoking. Camel Lights, at that! If I had switched to a French brand I could have at least saved some money! Once I quit smoking, the cold went away. Imagine that!] I realized the fluidity of the French language. If you were a frequent visitor to Le Bar Marlowe, you could say, "On va Marlotier." Amazing, right!?

Most importantly, because I was surrounded by it, I came to appreciate Religious Art. I was raised in a "low church" family, and had attended a New England Episcopal church with minimal stained glass or other decoration. Walking past this statue every time I went to the bathroom, or to the kitchen for breakfast, made the presence of the Virgin Mary real in my life. Her image was there every single day. Of course, being in France, and traveling around Europe, also gave me an appreciation for religious art in situ. I mean, you just can't avoid Christian images there. Impossible. I am grateful for that immersion. And to live with people who believed in the power of these saints (they were not idol-worshipers, don't get me wrong) was eye-opening.

When I got back to college, I did my anthropology thesis on an Armenian Catholic church community. I chose it, in part, because of the icon of Mary that is over the altar of the church. It just felt right for me to be there - sort of like home.

Guerrilla Gardening in the News

Boing Boing quotes an LA Times article. Apparently Guerrilla Gardening is catching on! Not just MY friends are doing it.

Which made me think of re-working La Marseillaise just a tad, enjoy:

Aux graines, citoyens !
Formez vos bataillons !
Bêchons, bêchons !
Qu'un soude impure
Abreuve nos sillons !

To seeds, citizens!
Form your battalions!
Let us dig, let us dig!
May tainted soda
Water our fields!

With apologies to Delicatessen.

A Karmic Hodge Podge

Americablog had a beautiful set of travel photos from a Roman site in Tunisia - check it out!

And then I found Tangled Webs' description of how REALLY bad the oil situation is:

These are from John Mauldin's newsletter in a piece written by the oil analyst David Galland. Galland's take on Saudi Arabia is the most optimistic. I personally think that the Saudi's are hiding the fact that they are at, or very near, peak oil themselves. Then, add this to the equation:

"If you look at the situation in US presidential terms, looking at fossil fuels plus nuclear, the world burned through the equivalent of 10% of all oil ever consumed in Bush's first 4-year term. And, in our model, we're going to burn 10% of all remaining conventional crude in the second 4 years of Bush's term.

Whoa! That's some incredible increase in consumption!

You may have read such analysis before. But you will not often read it coming from a highly mainstream, very conservative market analysts.

If you like $4.00/gal oil, you're going to absolutely love $10/gal oil.

Hopefully, MY candidate for President will help reduce all this crazy consumption!

But, again, and as usual, Bob's Art Blog lifted my spirits - I love Rousseau's works. Did anyone else out there have the Muppets Calendar with Zoot as the "Sleeping Gypsy"?

And then there's Rob Breszny's ALWAYS inspirational horoscope, and general wisdom for this week:

"By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers . . . This palpable world, which we are used to treating with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association, is a holy place."
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):

A professional dominatrix I know says that many of her clients are men whose jobs give them excessive authority over other people. When she's bossing around these honchos, she sees herself as an agent of karmic correction, counteracting a dangerous lopsidedness in their psyches. I bring this up, Pisces, because you're in a phase when you should rectify any imbalance of power that exists in your own sphere. If you're a swaggering alpha male or female, put in a stint as a humble servant. If you're normally a timid soul, flex your willpower with feisty abandon. If you're neither a control freak nor a doormat -- and thus have no karma to balance -- spend quality time meditating on how to gain more power over the wild ebbs and flows of your imagination.

"Let the body think of the spirit as streaming, pouring, rushing and shining into it from all aides."
- Plotinus

So, isn't it an amazing coincidence, that, in keeping with the Karmic message above, my friend, Clarissa, told me this story on the walk to work today about a lost pencil? I had to share!

When Clarissa was in elementary school she had a blue pencil she absolutely loved. She used it every day, and wore it down so that it got to be small after all the sharpening, you know. So one day, she dropped it while she was riding the bus. She looked for it, couldn't find it, and figured it was lost forever. About a year later she was riding the bus and all of a sudden, HER little blue pencil rolled out from under one of the seats. She picked it up and checked, and indeed, it was hers. Feels karmic, doesn't it?

Finally, from Bris de Mots:

"Toutes les choses de la terre
Il faudrait les aimer passagères
Et les porter au bout des doigts
Et les chanter à basse voix
Les garder les offrir
Tour à tour n'y tenir
Davantage qu'un jour les prendre
Tout à l'heure les rendre
Comme son billet de voyage
Et consentir à perdre leur visage"

Anne Perrier, Oeuvre poétique, 1952-1994, in Pour un vitrail, préface de Gérard Bocholier, L'Escampette, 1996

Great Proustian (?) Green Idea

I'm basically going to cut & paste a whole bunch of Blogfish's post on the genesis of one's environmentalism and Proust. But really, you should go over there yourself and check it out. Great ideas abound!

Conservation, sensuality, and Proust

What was your first taste of conservation? Love of nature? My guess is that your senses were involved before your brain.

Maybe you saw something fantastic, or had a blissful time soaking up nature in a beautiful place.

Then what happened? You saw a threat and got worried or even angry about harm to nature?

If you're like me, you fell in love with nature first, and only later had your brain awakened to threats and the need for conservation action. You started with a loving connection to nature, and only later got all thinky and brain-centered about saving things.

This is well-said by Justin Van Kleeck over at sustainablog, where he writes

environmentalism is mostly about the amazing power and glory of nature. Indeed, environmentalism means luxuriating in the abundance of beauty lying just beyond your door. It is like a life lived within a Proust novel: every thing, every moment, is just dripping with sensuality.


I think there's a better solution, and it's found in Justin's "living community" that's "green with a heart." Rather than telling people to "grow up," we should invite them to feel connected and live their lives with a consciousness and a celebration of the connections between people and nature. That's the way to explode the myth that environmentalism is costly, gloomy, and smug.

Catacombs

So, the photo of the skulls in the Paris Catacombs might not be the most comforting image in the universe, I grant you. But I really am fascinated by the Catacombs, both those in Paris, and those in Rome. And that interest morphs into appreciation for regular cemeteries also. Some people don't like graveyards and think I'm morbid. But I think they are such a tangible, and beautiful connection to our past. They are pleasant places to spend some time, have a picnic even, as our ancestors from the 19th century did.

My first introduction to catacombs was in Rome when my cousin and I did one of the tours along the Appian Way. The Roman catacombs were more a place of clandestine worship and meeting for the early Christians who were persecuted in those days. They knew they could gather under the radar, underground, and keep out of the way of the authorities, so this is where they met. And when their few members died, they could bury them there as well. Some of the catacombs had previous spiritual significance from the earlier Pagan practitioners, so the two uses sort of blended together. I felt a little claustrophobic inside, and was so relieved to be able to step out on the Appian Way afterwards and get some fresh air. Though, that was another mind-blowing experience in itself, to be standing on paving stones that had been there for over 2,000 years, and used as a road pretty much their whole existence. Amazing!

Later I got a chance to see the Catacombs of Paris, which was pretty amazing. These were not as old, dating only as far back as the 1700's. The Parisian catacombs were the new resting place for thousands and thousands of displaced bones moved from other, older, over-crowded Parisian cemeteries. It's a pretty gross idea what the workers had to do that moved all these bones into the new "ossuaries" ("bone depositories"). They had to dig up the old graves, clean out the bones, move them to the catacombs, sort of keep track of where they were from (in a general sense) in the old cemetery, label them, and then organize them into sturdy, somewhat decorative patterns in caverns that may or may not have been sturdy. There became a brotherhood of these workers. And they began to have initiation rites into the brotherhood, emphasizing that once you were accepted, you would not be left behind with all these already-dead people. The work conditions were not great, of course. The caverns they were filling in with bones had once been quarries for stone for all the magnificent buildings around Paris. But that meant that some of the cavern rooms were not that strong and could collapse. There was also the danger of getting some kind of disease from the "fresher" of the skeletons. So the workers built these little chapels where the initiations could happen. The tour guides say they were pretty religious ceremonies, based on Catholic blessings. And I wish I could remember if there was a patron saint invoked or not. But these chapels still feel safer (and drier!) than the rest of the place.

One of the things that drew me to one of my favorite movies, Delicatessen, (besides the wicked dark humor) was the scenes in "les egouts" or the sewer system that also runs under Paris. I really want to take a tour of the sewers, or at least check out the museum. Apparently the guidebook, Paris Secret, is excellent.

All of this leads me to my appreciation of cemeteries. I've been to Père-Lachaise and admired the graves in New Orleans, both of which have magnificent grave markers. I like that there is so much emotion in the carvings and inscriptions (check out the AWESOME virtual tour of Père-Lachaise!). That there is such a presence of and reverence for death. It's comforting in a way. That these people in these tombs won't be forgotten, even if we don't actually know who the people are inside them. I like the cemeteries in Philadelphia. They also have the grand monuments and the feeling of the closeness of death since they boomed in the 19th Century as well.

I could go on and on. Maybe more to come in a future post.

Mi-Carême

Bon Mi-Carême! Apparently in Catholic Francophone countries, the mid-point of Lent is celebrated by parading, a version of caroling, and boozing - sounds fun if it's not too cold! * I found this image at Idle Speculations (which crashes my browser each time I go, bummer! Terry's images are just too awesome, I guess.) I like the idea of celebrating the mid point.

Now, if you are better at math than me, you will realize that we are not just 20 days into Lent, which started on Ash Wednesday, February 6th, this year. But something I just learned last year is that you don't count Sundays in the "40 days of Lent." They are considered Sundays IN Lent, not Sundays OF Lent. So, those Sundays are days OFF. Easter will be 3 weeks away, March 23rd.

I hope you all are having a great Lent.

Narco-Santo & Photography in 1960 Algeria - It's All About the "Gaze"

Saw this great article about the renegade santo - Jesús Malverde - on Hasta los Gatos Quieren Zapatos, which was originally from the NYT.

Religious art is a fascinating thing to me, hence the blogging. It amazes me that even mobbed up thugs want a little divine intervention on their behalf. And they will resort to buying art - and possibly giving themselves away - to feel secure in that aid. We all want to be comforted and feel that the Higher Power is on our side. Even the crooks.

"People say Malverde helped me do this or that; mostly it's people into drugs who think he'll shield them from the police," said Raul Gonzalez, owner of a botánica called Mystic Products in Compton, Calif. "It's the power of the mind, you know. They believe it, so they take chances and get away with it, but they will eventually get caught."

Indeed, drug enforcement authorities in Mexico and the United States said Malverde statues, tattoos and amulets can be tip-offs to illegal activity.

"We send squads out to local hotel and motel parking lots looking for cars with Malverde symbols on the windshield or hanging from the rearview mirror," said Sgt. Rico Garcia with the narcotics division of the Houston Police Department. "It gives us a clue that something is probably going on."

Courts in California, Kansas, Nebraska and Texas have ruled that Malverde trinkets and talismans are admissible evidence in drug and money-laundering cases.

"It's not a direct indication of guilt, but it would definitely be used in combination with other things" like piles of cash, baggies and scales, said José Martinez, a special agent with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

Last month, Cervecería Minerva, a Mexican microbrewery in the central-western state of Jalisco, introduced a beer called Malverde. Company officials said they chose Malverde's name and image for its label because he was the most recognizable and admired figure in focus groups.

"Drug smugglers drink it like holy water," Sergeant Garcia said.

Bris de Mots was also thinking about religious imagery this week, talking about the photography of Marc Garanger in his book, Femmes Algériennes 1960.

Apparently, Garanger's job was to photograph Algerian women without their veils for the French occupying/colonial authorities who were making identity cards. The book sounds like it is a study in culture clash, on many levels.

But the most intriguing idea from Bris de Mots was (if my French isn't too rusty!), "the reference to the judeo-christian aesthetic in a civilization which does not have the worship of the religious image occults [maybe occludes?] the dramatic reality."*

So the artist, and the French/Western/Non-Muslim viewers have a MUCH different reaction to these photographs than Muslims, or, especially, the sitters who were photographed. I've never seen this book in real life, but the cover photo shows a young woman in traditional Algerian garb - does she look saintly to you too? or is it my fascination with religious art and saints' images that gets in the way? Food for thought.



* The original text says: "la référence à l'esthétique judéo-chrétienne dans une civilisation qui n'a pas le culte de l'image religieuse occulte la dramatique réalité".

Nantes... more

Thanks, Angie, for this link to a recent NYT article about Nantes' revitalization efforts! You can see a slideshow here. Je vourdrais bien y voyager. Je manque que les sous!

Aaah... Nantes!

All this talk about the Tour de France, its history, and the fact that it still goes through Nantes, makes me nostalgic. It was such a strange time for me when I was there - missing Josiah, dealing with daily rain. But, it was a great way to learn French, and how to tie a scarf!

Not only does the Tour go through Nantes, but, the World Cup of Rugby will be there in 2007. Wow! The tourism board has entered the "scrum" so to speak, and has all kinds of articles about how great the city is.

The tourist stuff is OK, in my opinion, but what I love about Nantes are the little out of the way corners. The LU biscuit factory (and of course factory store!). Walking past the

Théâtre Graslin, and seeing La Cigale. Or eating at the Creperie Jaune, taking the tram back and seeing the cranes in the distance. Or walking down the little street whose name I forget on the way to the chocolaterie near Place De Launay. There's lots I miss....

And just so I can post ONE MORE photo of Mr. Gerdemann, here goes:



[tour de france images from their site: http://www.letour.fr/2007/TDF/LIVE/fr/800/images.html]

Pour mes lecteurs d'ailleurs

Je vous remercie, mes lecteurs d’ailleurs!

Je pense souvent à mes années à Nantes. J’étudiais là, et habitais juste à côté de Nôtre Dame du Bon Port. Mais, mon église favorite, c’etait St. Clement, près du cathédrale. A ce temps là j’aimais mieux l’art du Vuillard, Henri Rousseau, et les cartes de Tarots.

Maintenant, j’aperçois qu’il y’a beaucoup d’églises, et sites réligieuses partout en Bretagne, et en France á voir. Pour la prochaine fois que je sois en France, peut-être!

Excusez-moi, mes chèrs lecteurs, si mon français est émerdant. Ça fait une quinzaine d’années que je n’en parlais pas.

Ce beau photo j’ai trouvé à: http://www.vjoncheray.fr/phototheque/photos-nantes/quartiers-nantes/ile-de-nantes/