First Magazine Article!!

Wow- I had full intentions to sit down this evening and write up several posts to cover the ridiculous amount of adventurous fun I've had the past two weeks, but... this came in the mail today (okay, email) and I can't resist: http://www.needlemagazine.com/issue01/index.html

I'm published!!!  Remember when I gushed about meeting Jenny Hart, the embroidery artist?  And I mentioned I hoped my meeting would be acceptable as an article topic for a new on-line magazine called NEEDLE?  Well, my hopes were met--- I made the first page!  I'm so excited!!!  The magazine format is so professional and interesting, and the editors didn't butcher my writing during the editorial process like others have done in the past (*cough*Play Shakespeare*cough*).  I'm just so pleased!

Seeing my byline on that first page gave me such a rush!  Wow.  I'll be saying that for a while to come.  Wow.

Chef Jon

Oh My- it has been a while since my last post!  I apologize, but life has lately been a whirlwind of activity Chez Houston.  Jon's brother, Casey, and his girlfriend, Amber, just spent a week with us.  We had SO much fun, and rest assured that more than one post will come of our adventures.  But before that, I wanted to fill you in on the most recent event in Jon's French culinary career- the reception of his diplôme.

The ESCF, being a bastion of French bureaucracy and inefficiency, finally notified Jon that his diploma was ready for pick-up... last week!  Never mind that he finished course work at the school in JUNE or that he has been successfully working at The Ritz since August.  And ignore the fact that it took a myriad of ever-increasingly urgent emails from Jon to the program director.  The important thing is that Jon has the diploma in hand.  I was so proud, I made him sign it for my camera.

I like to think about the progression he has made from his days at Chew, where it all started, and Bistro Aix, where it continued, to today.  I think my favorite thought is how happy he is with his new found skills.

From student...

To Chef...

 

 

Congratulations, Jonny!!!

L'Armistice

Today, 11 November, is called La Fete de l'Armistice in France.  While in the U.S., we tend to use today to focus on all veterans, France uses it more to remember WWI in particular- La Guerre, as it is still referred to today- The War, as if there was never any other.  And, I think it really seemed like that to the French for a very long time.  WWI-- it decimated almost the entire male population of the country.  It wiped out a whole generation.  Statistics put military deaths in France during the war at 1.4 million.  Combined with civilian casualties, a total of 1.7 million people lost their lives during those four years.  Needless to say,  it left an indelible mark on France and its people.

Which is why today's observance of the Armistice was quite unique.  For the first time in the 91 years since the guns fell silent on the Western Front, a German leader joined in France's ceremony of remembrance.  Chancellor Angela Merkel stood with President Sarkozy at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider underneath the Arc de Triomphe.  She even helped him lay the wreath on the tomb. 

Image via L'Express

And today's observance was unique for another reason, too.  It was the first time since the ceremony began that a WWI veteran was not present.  Les Poilus (The Hairy Ones) as the French affectionately called them are all gone-- France's last living veteran of the war, Lazar Ponticelli, died last year at 110.

Image via ABC Australia

I suppose it's time for that, however.  England too lost it's last WWI veteran this year- Harry Patch (great name, no?)  In fact, with Patch's death, the world lost the last survivor of the trenches, as he was the only one left to have fought in that "Brutal Hell," and at Paaschendaele no less.  All that is really left for us now is to remember.

To that end, I thought it might be nice to look at some of the poems from that epoch.  I have to admit that the poetry of the WWI Trenches, from the men who are often referred to today as the "Lost Poets,"

is some of my favorite 20th century literature.  I really can't read an Owen Wilson poem without tearing up.  I have a hard time thinking about John McCrae and his Flanders Fields without a tightness in my chest.  And there will always be the Rilke poem, read in front of a classroom full of 15 year-olds, that made me cry.  Looking up, I saw the look on one of my student's faces, a girl, and I knew she was done for-- she started crying to.  And she told me a few years later that moment changed her life- it was then that she learned that a poem could make her feel.  How can I not be bittersweetly enamoured of these works?

So here are three of my  favorite WWI poems (it was very hard to choose)- all written by soldiers, two of whom did not survive the Trenches:

 ~ In Flanders Fields ~

John McCrae, Canadian, Died on the Front in 1918

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

~ Futility ~

Wilfred Owen, British, Died at the Front in 1918

Move him into the sun

Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning, and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know. 

Think how it wakes the seed -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

~ The Last Evening ~

Rainer Maria Rilke, German, Died 1926 
                                                                   
 And night and distant rumbling; now the army's
carrier-train was moving out, to war.
He looked up from the harpsichord, and as
he went on playing, he looked across at her

almost as one might gaze into a mirror:
so deeply was her every feature filled
with his young features, which bore his pain and were
more beautiful and seductive with each sound.

Then, suddenly, the image broke apart.
She stood, as though distracted, near the window
and felt the violent drum-beats of her heart.

His playing stopped. From outside, a fresh wind blew.
And strangely alien on the mirror-table
stood the black shako with its ivory skull.

Grumbles. No Wait- Happy Things!

Well, I've been a bit skimpy on the posts these past few days.  To tell the truth, I haven't been up to much around here lately.  What with sorting out some minor visa issues, the weather turning to complete crap, and the realization that HOLY COW- It's November and we need a new place to live and work and play in TWO MONTHS!!!!!, I haven't had a whole lot of time for sight-seeing or exploring.  I've also been wanting to flat-out murder both our downstairs (crazed, guitar playing and courtyard sweeping-at-all-hours-of-the-night weirdo) and upstairs (wild urchin child and high-heel-wearing-at-all-hours-of-the-night mother) neighbors.  I considered writing a whole post about this recent obsession that keeps me lying awake at night thinking up ingenious ways to kill them (that and all the noise they're making), but I'll take Suz's sunny approach instead and regale you with a few things that are topping my list of Birthday Things, or Things That Are Currently Making Me Happy.

My New Boots!

Candy Corn!

 

The Christmas Stockings I Made for Jon and I!

 

The Smell of "Holiday" Candles!

Thoughts of My Sis and My Dogs (That's Woody)!

AND FINALLY...

Knowing that in three weeks, I'll be spending Thanksgiving with 

These Two...

 

And This One...

 

Ahhh, I feel better already.  Wait... is that a guitar I hear???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!