P.S....

HO HO HO!!

christmas day vertigo

christmas 2005, back when it was still open air! we didn't ride this one...

this year santa came through, and how! as anticipated, our day revolved around eating, and as we perhaps should have anticipated - given my track record - around saving one or two botched recipes: i forgot the vanilla extract for the cookies, and worse, i forgot to sauté the onions and rosemary for the sausage (which was really only half my problem - try finding jimmy dean's in france! i ended up buying a lump of sausage "flesh" and going from there). we managed to eat very well, despite the minor glitches, which just goes to show what an art form cooking is...

the real highlight of the day, however, was the trip to the tuileries, where santa got over his vertigo and what appeared to be a very strong urge to barf, and took me for a ride on the ferris wheel! it turns out paris recently replaced the old gondola-style cars with fully enclosed pods  - a real plus in the 35-degree weather. brr!

and look! you can hardly tell he's hyperventilating.

 napoleon's tomb in the distance

we'd just seen "the birds" a few nights before... i almost peed my pants when they took flight but this little one was completely unfazed.

christmas dinner - no, knox is neither saying grace nor thanking the lord for solid ground. he's asking me to stop taking pictures of our food (all blurry, of course) and eat.

happy holidays!

our "tree" - we "hung" our tin foil star with tape

hope everyone has a happy holiday season. knox and i are planning to cook up a bunch of food - cherry chocolate chip cookies, french toast, sausage with rosemary and mustard, pork tenderloin with onion and apples, party potatoes... - and go for walks in between meals! i asked santa for a ride on the tuileries ferris wheel this year, which is definitely NOT santa's idea of a good time... but i think i've been pretty good this year, so fingers crossed.

IMEC

since one of the perks of my fellowship this year is funded research travel, i decided about a month ago to head over to caen, on the normandy coast, and spend a few days in the archives of IMEC (Institut Mémoires de l'édition contemporaine). the archives are located in the abbaye d'ardenne, which was established in the 12th century, nearly annihilated during world war II, and reopened as a site for research in art and literature in 1988.    

the archives and reading room are housed in the old cathedral

a view of the courtyard in front of the cathedral

the entrance and administrative offices

as a researcher, you can stay onsite for 40 euros a night, which includes a ride to and from the train station as well as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. the rooms and cafeteria are located in the old barn and are both very comfortable. and when i say cafeteria, what i mean is ONSITE CHEF - duck, pork tenderloin, the most marvelous lentil and ham salad i've ever eaten, wine at lunch! (not ideal in a research scenario, but who can resist?), five kinds of cheese, pear tartes... all enjoyed with literature geeks from around the world... i didn't find any smoking-gun-type documents in the archives, nothing that is going to make my dissertation blow minds or anything, but it was such an enjoyable experience i don't care. in fact, knox and i are thinking of going back in the spring - a little lovers/geeks retreat, if you will. 

luuuuke, remember the force...

la bibliothèque nationale de france, where all the magic happens (view of east entrance stacks; there are two more on the west side)

the entrance: when it snows, everyone brings trash can lids or card board sleds - it's fun!

the stacks, west entrance (story goes that they built them in glass, then realized that the sun was going to bake all the rare texts they own and added the wooden panels)

weekdays, when we're not at home, snuggled on our great big red corduroy sofa drinking tea and watching 'office' reruns, knox and i can usually be found at the french national library. this is where, on december 1, 2008, i wrote the first word of my dissertation (i believe it was "Whereas" but i'd have to check. since then i've only managed to turn that word into 10-15 pages or so, but given that it took 2 full months of sitting here - reading and fretting and reading some more - to work up the courage, i'd say i'm doin' all right).

anyway, this is our office, aka "the death star." it's the french empire's ultimate weapon against american grad students completing their research! first of all, a study in wood, steel, and glass, it's not one of paris's most attractive sites. to get there, you have to climb maybe 75 or so wooden steps and traverse what the architects certainly couldn't have meant to be a roaring wind tunnel. then you get to the ramp, which when raining, is not for the faint of heart. once you're inside, you have to get past two metal detectors, three turn styles, and a handful of storm troopers... you transfer your belongings to the transparent briefcase they provide, then descend two sets of escalators into the bowels of the building, where the reading rooms are. if you haven't broken a sweat by the time you get to your seat (which you must reserve in advance), they make you go back outside and start over.

without bosses checking in on us, it's true that we often can't be bothered to turn up, particularly when it's raining. and since i generally refuse to rise before the sun, which now means we're not getting out of bed till 9:15 at the earliest, we're never at work before noon. BUT, once seated, we can usually work up a good groove till around 7pm, when we head home for dinner and a glass of vin rouge. it's actually a really great place to work.

i am thinking, though, that if i can tap into the force while i'm here, i'm going to blow it up before we leave.

untitled, 12

knox at the hôtel de ville

"i love my neighborhood - i pick up"

a little something i'm proud of... if you count my study abroad in aix-en-provence in 1997 and our last sojourn here in 2006-7, i think you'll agree that i've spent a good chunk of time in france. and in all that time, i've not once stepped in or slid through dog poop. "huh?!" you're saying, but this is actually pretty impressive. as anyone who's ever spent even an afternoon in paris can attest, the sidewalks here are littered with dog poop. in the past, i think the french were proud of the poop. or perhaps they considered it as unimportant as nudity on television or the president's sex life, issues that rattle some on american soil, but not here. but i think times are a-changing. not about the sex – no, you're still more likely to see a woman's breasts in a yogurt commercial than the yogurt itself, and i've lost count of all the perfect little bums i've seen plastered in metro stations and bus stops selling one thing or another – but it seems as though the french might just be ready to embrace the idea of poop-scooping:

you see this sign posted all over the place. this one is right around the corner from our apartment, in fact. the translation is "i love my neighborhood, i pick up." the "poop" part is only implied in the structure of the sentence, but the picture more than compensates for any grammatical ambiguity – we're clearly not talking here about weeds or lost children or wandering porn stars, as may be the case in amarillo. speaking of texas, it almost reminds me of the very successful, if sometimes *misunderstood, anti-litter campaign back in the lone star state.

it's all about tapping into the parisians' pride in their neighborhoods and in their city, right? it works in texas, it could work here! it could, but so far, it hasn't. while i have seen some diligent locals following pouffé the family poodle around with plastic bags, the sidewalks don't lie. i have noticed some guilty looks from the person standing there feigning interest in a book store window or intently examining a torn hem or a broken heel while their beloved pooch does his thing. what really impresses me, though, is the creative résitance some neighbors have shown to the pressure to ramasse – hoisting bruno the bichon frisé onto a garden wall, dragging ti-ti the terrier under a park bench, or very simply, taking to the street. for just as i snapped this picture and began to ponder the potential of a poop-free paris, i turned around to see a woman lead her little dog into the middle of the street – oncoming traffic be damned, tires with deep tread beware – and boldly stand there while the dog... well, you get the idea.

so, though progress has been made, it's clearly still not safe to wear flip flops or look up when walking.

* i met a guy once in minneapolis, who, after learning i was from texas and asking if i was a skinhead, said he thought "don't mess with texas" was some kind of pro-gun, "don't come to texas or we'll blow you away with our shotguns" message. how do you continue a conversation with someone like that? hint: you don't.

firetown update

just thought i'd post a quick update on the sylmar fire, in case you were sitting there fretting about the fate of knox's wedding suit or my grandfather's eames era clock: the keep-it-safe storage facility has reported major damage to its landscaping. it's all toast now. but apparently though the fire came and licked at the door, it left the structure untouched. whew! when we asked about smoke damage, the employee responded that they would indeed be replacing all the filters in the building. ...which doesn't actually answer the question, but never mind. we've decided to give it a week and call again to see if any of our "neighbors" have reported any damage. we'll take it from there.

thank you, lucky stars.

what is wrong with california??

cribbed this shot from the net

like clockwork, southern california is ablaze this weekend, and in particular, the small community of sylmar, ca. sylmar, which is located in the san fernando valley, has a long history of olive growing thanks to father iballa at the mission san fernando rey de espana, who at some point in the early 19th century introduced spanish olive seedlings to the region. interesting, no? it is also known for having a climate ideal for healing respiratory ailments, though sadly, not for supporting medical centers associated with these ailments: what is now the olive view-ucla medical center, for example, essentially began in the 20s as a tuberculosis center (which was destroyed in a 1962 fire) then had a brief stint as a different medical center (which was razed by an earthquake in 1971, a mere month after construction). wow...

but most recently, sylmar, ca. has become home to an entire apartment's worth of our stuff. yep, to save a few bucks, knox and i chose to store our wedding loot, guitar collection, viet nam photos, grand dad's bar ware, and portrait of bob (books, clothes, and a craigslist sofa too, but whatever) at the "keep-it-safe" storage facility on foothill boulevard, at the junction of the 5 and the 210, in what we now refer to as "fire town". 

if you click on the link above, it will take you to a satellite map of sylmar. you see that big red, purple area dotted with flames? keep-it-safe is across the street. not kidding.

those two big, red lines that cross right under the blue area (which means evacuation!!) are the 5 and the 210. that's us. the mobile home community just down the street is already gone. GONE. so, in addition to feeling awful for the 500 families who just lost their homes and working on detaching ourselves from all things material so that we might lead a more enlightened, freer existence, we are FREAKING OUT over here. fingers crossed, y'all. this does not look good.

yes we did...

...we stayed up all night watching the election results roll in. i haven't been up all night since... good lord, i don't know if i've ever seen the sun come up (still haven't, as it turns out, since these days it doesn't rise here before 8:00 a.m.). obama finished his victory speech at around 6:30 a.m. our time, and after reflecting momentarily on how somber and determined he seemed, we finally turned in. 

8:30 p.m. - we started our (blurry) appetizer course. at 10 p.m., we dug into the homemade mac&cheese (with shredded comté, tomatoes, onion, and lardon - this was a night of straight-up comfort food), which fueled the second part of the evening. sadly, the pics were even blurrier than this one. it was delicious, though, and got us through a good couple hours of pundit-watching.

11:45 p.m. - hy vong is "hope" in vietnamese, which is interesting, because "change" is actually  mi cang...

 

1:30ish - election headquarters chez barnes/peden 

2:45 a.m. - mr. peacock meets mr. chocolate cake. one of these two didn't make it through the night...

5:00 a.m. - announcement of president elect barack obama. the joy we felt was only slightly dampened by our delirium. seriously, i was hurting at this point. it was really incredible, though, and totally worth the three days it took to get over. as they say here in france, "vive obama!"