A Quiet Holiday

Thanksgiving was a quiet holiday this year. I actually went in to work for a little bit...don't feel sorry for me, tho, as it worked out better for me to make the trip to get an employee evaluation completed. Back home, I treated myself to some turkey with gravy and mashed potatoes. And I opened this special bottle of wine. It was given to me during my month in France by Christiane and Jean-Paul, my dinner hosts one evening. Laury and I were invited for aperos and dinner...a very special treat for me. They have a lovely old house just up the hill from Laury's. It has a grand fireplace in a cantou, which is a stone inglenook that has seating along each side. Aperos of red wine with cassis were accompanied by crackers, dry sliced sausage, olives and cornichons (tiny pickles) along with rock-n-roll oldies (American, of course!), lots of laughter and some spontaneous singing along to the songs that took us down memory lane. Who knew the French loved American rock? Dinner was a country delight. Christiane put together a yummy salad of greens sprinkled with walnuts, sliced duck gizzard and homemade fois gras. Our main course was a casserole layered with duck, mashed potatoes, wafer-thin slices of squash, and 3 kinds of mushrooms drenched in a wine gravy. My mouth waters just remembering how good it was! Then the cheese course...a cantal, a soft cow cheese, a pepper-coated goat cheese, and a sharp local roquefort. Wine, wine, wine, of course...then an apple tart with a tiny glass of prune eau d'vie...a fruit-based Everclear-like alcohol, very strong! More laughter, more stories in rapid-fire French that Laury had to translate. And then as we prepared to leave, Jean-Paul gave me this bottle of wine. It flew home with me carefully wrapped, nestled deep in my suitcase. Opening it for Thanksgiving brought all those delightful French memories flooding back. I am thankful for new friends!

Remembering Family and Friends

I travel alone, but I always carry family and friends in my heart as I journey. Frequently, I come across a sight, an image, a color that immeditately calls someone to my mind. Then even if it's a not a particularly memorable shot, I feel compelled to snap a photo of it. Take this zaftig sculpture that sits on a promenade along the harbor at Banyuls-sur-mer. Created by Aristide Maillol, she was given to the town in thanks for the sculptor's visits there. I almost backed into her as I photographed the colorful harbor and its bobbing boats. My surprise gave way to delight...I knew my friend, Mickey would love to see her sitting there by the sea since she's a huge Maillol fan. Snap!

I saw St. Jacques everywhere I walked in Conques. OMG...throw a sombrero and a cape on my brother, Jim and hand him a walking staff....he could be St. Jacques! Even the names match..St. James in English. Snap!













Every time I'd see one of these adorable deux cheveaux automobiles puttering along a country road or parked by an old stone building, I'd think of my brother, Walt...the car guy! Not that he'd ever in a million years drive one of these antiques, but he would certainly appreciate the loving care that their owners lavish on them to keep them shiny bright and running. Snap!





Some of my most vivid memories of my dad as I was growing up are trips to the beach where he would surf fish. Standing thigh deep in the salty water, he'd fling the heavy tackle out into the crashing surf hoping for a catch. His fishing rod and reel seemed huge to me, and I was always amazed that he could stand for hours in the cold, frothy ocean. When I spied the fishermen casting out into the brilliant blue Mediterranean waters at Collioure, I immediately thought of my dad doing the much the same thing along the coast of southern California back in the 1950's. Snap!



How do you remember family and friends when you travel?

Digging Deeper

It's easy to be charmed by the villages of rural France. If you visit, it's usually because you read about a wonderful market or an historic site there in an illustrated guidebook designed to attract tourists...and tourist dollars! Or perhaps you fell in love, sight unseen, after reading one of Peter Mayles' entertaining books about the characters and adventures of his beloved Provence. In either case, the village usually does not disappoint. All spiffed up for tourists, it provides you with an ATM, WC, and car park along with interesting shops full of local arts and crafts and lovely cafes where you can sample local cuisine while sitting on the outdoor terrace watching the world stroll by. Life is idyllic and sweet. You may begin to question, however, if life was always like this. What was your favorite village like before it was discovered by tourists? How did people make a living before and after WWII? Was this village occupied by German forces? Were its people always prosperous? Finding the answers to these questions requires digging deeper. If you lucky enough to be fluent in written French, there are sources for your research. If you're not (like me!), you have the search even harder. There are books out there, tho. This book, "Little Saint" written by Hannah Green weaves village life and history into Ms. Green's research of Sainte Foy, the venerated saint of the Abbey Church of Conques. I read it first at Laury's in September, and then bought my own copy to re-read once I got home. After spending so much time in Conques, the book took on a whole new meaning on my second read. It's beautifully written and full of the lives and loves of the Conquois. Here are a few more good reads if you're looking for the stories behind the guidebook hype....

"Village in the Vaucluse" by Laurence Wylie. Wylie spent a year doing sociologic research in a small, rural village that he called Peyrane. Twenty years later, he revealed that this village was actually Roussillon, a famous tourist village in Provence. His work covers life in the village by age groups: children (infancy, school and adolescence) adult work and recreation, and the aged.

"A Life of Her Own" is an autobiography by Emilie Carles, a French countrywoman born in 1900 in the Vallee de Claree high in the French alps. All her life she kept notebooks and diaries, finally putting them together in a book the year before her death in 1979. Translated into English in 1991, it's a fascinating story of a strong, outspoken, often radical French woman who almost single-handedly saved her beautiful valley from developers' bulldozers.

Michael Sanders went to the tiny village of Les Arques in the Lot to write a book about its restaurant. When he finished "From Here You Can't See Paris," he had actually written a book about the story of the village. Typical of so many tiny villages, Les Arques was on the verge of disappearing...its young people were leaving to find work elsewhere, its old people were dying off, its farmers were having a harder and harder time making a living. When its school closed, the village's fate seemed sealed until someone had the idea to re-open the school as a restaurant. Le Recreation breathed new life into the fading village and Michael Sanders was there to record the story.

Moon River Remembrance

My eyes filled with tears as I drove home from work tonight. I was listening to an NPR story about the centennial anniversary of the birth of the great lyricist, Johnny Mercer, who wrote the words to such songs as "That Old Black Magic" and "I Remember You." But it was the Henry Mancini song that Johnny wrote the lyrics for that brought me to that sentimental moment in the car. In 1961 as Mercer's career was being slowed by the rise of rock and roll, Mancini asked Mercer to write lyrics for what became the beautiful song, "Moon River." And "Moon River" took me back to the Lot, back to Laury's very own Moon River that I watched flow by my window every morning and every night of that wonderful month in Cadrieu. Light danced and sparkled on that river. The cliffs of the causse and the colorful trees and bushes of autumn were reflected in it. On my first night at the Chatette, I watched a full moon rise over the river. Laury pointed out the moon's aura...light in the shape of a cross that framed it. She said that was special to moonrise over the river Lot; that she'd never seen that cross anywhere else. When I got home a month later, I checked it out on my Iowa full moon, and she's right...no cross here, only a soft halo. Remembering the Moon River of the Lot, remembering Laury playing the Mancini/Mercer melody on her lovely baby grand piano late at night while I sat curled up in bed, reading and watching the light of the full moon streaming through my dormer window...no wonder my soft, silly, sentimental heart overflowed!

Bad News/Good News/Interesting News

First, the bad news. I hit a deer yesterday morning on my way into work. Yes, in my brand new, not even licensed yet car! I was on the off-ramp from Hwy.5 going about 40mph when a doe jumped onto the road from below the embankment. I couldn't avoid her. I'm now without a passenger side head light and turn light, and the fender panel will have to be replaced; not sure about the hood panel.

Now, the good news...the car is driveable. And I found out how it handles in an emergency. I slammed on the brakes trying to avoid hitting the deer and, it did just fine.

Here's the interesting news. The gal at the little body shop where I took it this morning for an estimate on repair costs told me that mine was the 37th vehicle this week that had come in for repairs from deer/car collisions. All but one had hit a deer; the remaining car hit something else trying to avoid hitting a deer! I can confirm that there are deer 'bits and pieces' at least every mile on both the Interstate and highway that I travel daily to and from work. This is crazy!

How Many Men Does It Take to Move a Helicopter?

Yes, that's the new Life Flight helicopter sitting in the middle of Watson Powell Blvd. in downtown Des Moines. And what is it doing there, you ask? Why would we ever block the street to land for anything less than a real emergency? The answer: to haul this beautiful aircraft into the Des Moines Convention Center for the two-day state EMS Convention slated to start tomorrow morning. In case you've ever been curious how such a feat is accomplished, read on...

First, you take lots of pictures because it just looks so darn pretty!

Then you find a mechanic to put the wheels on the skids. Once that's done, you get all the guys to pull it out of the street, so Des Moines PD can open up a lane of traffic.

Next you use lots of high tech equipment (pillows and duct tape) to pad and protect the blades.

After someone attaches the tow bar, you hook the aircraft to the hitch on the mechanic's truck.

Then you pull it slowly, carefully, gently up the ramp and into the exhibit hall of the Convention Center with men guiding the tail, holding onto the blades to keep them from bouncing and with two flight nurses sitting in the front seats to add a bit of ballast.

Unhook the truck and watch the guys move Life Flight into place!

Mission accomplished!

Fleet Photo

Couldn't resist sharing this fleet photo that I took this afternoon next to our new satellite hospital in West Des Moines. The two ambulances in the foreground are part of a partnership arrangement that the hospital has with West Des Moines EMS and the big truck next to the aircraft is our new Blank Children's Hospital critical care transport unit. It was a nice, although windy, afternoon...perfect for our hospital's photographer to snap some professional pictures. I had to join in!