Driving

   Along with the standard developing country road problems like potholes, narrow lanes, no paved shoulders, unmarked speedbumps and carjacking, you also have to watch out for matatus, privately owned minibuses that zip around at breakneck speeds.  And then of course, the maps are not always accurate, which sometimes leads one to get slightly lost. 

   On a practice drive to the school one time I missed the turn off and I ended up driving to the next town over, Gachie, a small, crowded town where I found the driving very difficult with so many people and bikes on the sides of the narrow road. I was worried about hitting someone so I went super slow and eventually did a U-turn. The next day, I asked a friend's driver to show me the turn off that I had missed, and told him how I had driven to Gachie, which is actually not that far away.

"Gachie? You went to Gachie?" he said, in a funny tone of voice.

"Yes. Is there something bad about Gachie?" I asked.

"That's where a lot of carjackers come from."

"Oh." I laughed nervously. "Does this mean you wouldn't go to Gachie?"

"Well, I have been there before, but I would not feel comfortable living there. There are more Mungiki there than in other areas."

"Mungiki?"

"They are sort of like...a criminal gang..." [see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6685393.stm and http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/07/01/us-kenya-gang-idUSHUL13001020070701?pageNumber=2]

"I was very nervous because there were so many people crowding the road and I didn't want to hit anybody."

"If you do have an accident, even if it's completely not your fault, you should not stay in the area."

"Why not?"

"Because they might beat you, or lynch you, or torch your car."

"Oh. So I should leave right away?"

"Yes, and drive to the police station or another safe place to call the police and report the accident."

That discussion certainly made me feel excited about driving. Gachie did not look so bad in daylight. The advice about leaving the scene of an accident seems odd but is probably true. Just last weekend there was a story in the newspaper about some young men from Gachie who had gone out drinking, and while walking around at night, one of them was hit by a car. When the driver of the car got out to check on the victim, the victim's friends threatened to beat him up. Scared, the driver jumped back in his car and sped away to a police station to report the accident. Unfortunately, the victim died, and it is not clear if the friends, some of whom are now missing, did anything to try to help.

In the meantime, my driving, which was slow and shaky here to start with, has been improving every day.  I drove M. to school and K. to work one day recently. K. complimented me on my ability to keep up with the local traffic speed: "You've moved on from the Glacial Pace of Infinite Fear" he said with admiration. This was followed by the ultimate praise, something that every driver likes to hear from her passengers: "I wasn't even scared once." 

Nairobi news

My hands are cold, and I'm wearing a fleece as it's early morning in Nairobi. Keith and I are here, slightly south of the equator, and more than a mile high at 1700 m.  Our new home is a house in a gated compound in Runda, a leafy green suburb north of Nairobi's city centre. 

The road in the compound in front of our gate, which is barely visible on the right, past the guardhouse.

After you enter our gate, you will see the house:

Home for the next couple of years.

We are camping out in the empty house with hardly any furniture, as our shipment won't arrive for 2-4 months, assuming Somali pirates don't get it...

Empty living room.

But the weather is beautiful every day and we are enjoying the garden.

View from dining room. 

July and August are winter months, the mornings and evenings are chilly (12-15oC) and light sweaters have come in handy. During the day, it's 20-24oC. Even during the summer months, it's temperate; the daytime high is usually in the mid-20s, and a record high temperature would be 31oC.

Bird of paradise in the back yard.

Bottlebrush tree by the driveway.

We haven't been on safari yet, but I've already spotted some wildlife lurking in our garden:

An endangered black rhino, Clayus pottus ssp.  planterius, 
whose horn has been stolen for nefarious (medicinal?) purposes.

The past week has been a non-stop round of banking, insurance and other move-related errands, but I did manage to take an afternoon off to go for a walk in the nearby Karura Forest with my friend MK. We heard lots of strange bird noises, saw a thick, writhing ant trail across our path, and visited some lovely waterfalls. Karura was recently revitalized as a safe place to go for nature walks. Apparently though, some people (personnel of a certain embassy) are not allowed to walk there for security reasons. I can sense my mother getting anxious already...don't worry, I'm careful! It seemed perfectly safe to me, although it was a bit disconcerting that the only other people we encountered was a group of nature lovers hiking around accompanied by two armed guards, menacing looking guys toting AK-47s and decked out in full camouflage gear. 

Only 4 days left

The apartment is a mess, and I haven't done an inventory yet or filled out the insurance forms. What have I been doing to prepare for the move from Paris (land of Berthillon, Martine Lambert, and Picard luscious ice creams) to Nairobi (parched desert almost devoid of frozen treats?) I've been making ice cream with my Cuisinart ice cream maker, the kind that has a built in freezer unit so you don't have to pre-freeze anything. It's important to make sure all is working properly before the move, yes? My good friend "Amazon" is right on with their recommendations. If you have room in your kitchen and want an easy to use ice cream maker with built in freezer unit, get the Cuisinart one, plus two books, Ben and Jerry's "The Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Book" (for American style uncooked ice cream and traditional flavours) and David Lebowitz's "The Perfect Scoop" (for European style cooked custard based ice creams and exotic flavours like Basil Ice Cream). Perhaps it's just coincidence that American style ice cream is fast and easy, and European style tastes creamier and smoother but involves a lot more work and takes longer. So far, so good: raspberry-rosé sorbet and chocolate with chunks of chocolate-walnut praline. I think I can face the move now.

Only 4 days left until the movers come. The next few days will be a frenzy of sorting, organizing, and paperwork. Yesterday afternoon when I walked into our apartment building I could barely get to our mailbox as there were stacks of huge TeamAllied moving boxes piled up in the front hall. TeamAllied is our mover too and I wondered who else was moving out of our building. A big, burly mover stepped out of the elevator with another box.

"Who's moving out?" I asked.
"Someone on the 6th floor," he replied.
"We're moving with TeamAllied too, next week in fact," I explained.
"Where are you going?"
"To Africa, to Nairobi."
"That's Kenya, right?"
"Yes."
"This is also a move to Nairobi."
"Really? To Nairobi?"
"Yes, it's that man over there," and the mover gestured to the hallway where a man was talking to the gardien (caretaker) of our building. There are many neighbours that I say hello to regularly, but I had never seen this man before. I accosted him as soon as he was done talking to the gardien.

"I hear you're moving to Nairobi. We're moving there too. TeamAllied is coming to move our things next Tuesday morning."
"Interesting, why are you moving there?"
"It's for my husband's job, with UNEP."
"I work for UNEP too."
"Really? What's your name?"

So that's how I met Dr. DM. He gave me his card. We'll look him up after we get to Nairobi.

House staff: do we or don't we?

We haven't moved yet and I'm already wracked with guilt and anxiety about servants. We currently have cleaning help for four hours a week, and that is enough. I don't want more, both because we don't need it, and also because the kids can do more and if there's constant help they'll never learn how to do things on their own. The current tenants of our Nairobi house have a part-time gardener and one full-time maid/nanny. We were asked if we wanted to keep them on, and since I don't know them, had barely met them, don't need a nanny and don't like household help hovering while I'm trying to work at home, I initially said no. Since then though, I've been gently persuaded/guilted into keeping them on for a 3 month probationary period. It's good for them, they aren't left unemployed, and it will be good for us, to have experienced help right away who know the house and garden, and who come highly recommended.

Take a look at the Monday June 13 post and comments from http://africaexpatwivesclub.blogspot.com/ for a brief discussion of life with servants. Is it modern and independent and admirable to do everything yourself (with the help of electric appliances) or is it cold and callous to refuse to employ house staff? And here's an opinion from a Kenyan who grew up in Nairobi and now lives abroad (from comments, http://africaexpatwivesclub.blogspot.com/): I really feel sorry for women in the West who have such a huge burden. They feel sorry for women of the south but they are the most burdened women in the planet. They have such demanding domestic work as well as the pressure to go out and have careers they are the real 'beasts of burden'.

Nairobi: First Impressions

The garden at Gigiri Homestead B&B, Nairobi,
where we stayed while househunting,

"What were your impressions of Nairobi?" a friend asked me recently. We had just returned from a 3 day trip, to look for housing and to visit the school that, hopefully, the kids will attend. Sorry, no exciting photos of exotic landscapes and awesome animals. Nairobi itself, brief glimpses caught from the car on the way from and to the airport, seemed like a typical city in a developing country--a mix of mostly run-down, scruffy buildings with a few shining office towers, young men loitering on sidewalks or sitting on universally popular white PVC chairs, and lots and lots of road construction with deep ditches and big piles of red dirt everywhere. The soil is red from iron, just like in PEI (that's Prince Edward Island for you non-Canucks).

Most of our time was spent looking at houses, weighing the pros and cons of each one, and especially, thinking about security. Yes, I'm paranoid, yes, I'm spoiled, and no, I have never lived anywhere dangerous before, so that is why I was so obsessed with finding a house that was as secure as possible. I've learned a lot about medieval siege mentality this week. Within our castle, we will have a keep, a "safe haven." This is the safe haven's entrance: a thick metal gate at the top of the stairs that we will close and lock at night to separate the upstairs bedrooms from the rest of the house.

Gate at the top of the stairs, to close and lock at night.

The idea is to have layers of defences, making it harder for burglars. The house has an alarm system, of course, including "panic buttons." One press, anytime during the day or night, will summon armed guards to our door within minutes. There is a high electric fence around the property: and the property is in a fenced in, gated compound that is guarded 24/24. In addition, the neighbourhood itself has barriers and guards at the two main entrance roads. By the way, it is not just expats who live here, there are plenty of Kenyans who prefer to live in gated compounds.

View of the electric fence from upstairs.

Some other things I have learned: Try to avoid choosing a house next to an open field, a construction site, or a busy road, as all of these places allow strangers to come and go right next to your property. To maximize security, you want to minimize uncontrolled access by strangers. The more you isolate yourself from people in general, either by driving in a big, 4x4 car, or living in a fortress, the safer you will be.

The good news is that everyone says the bad guys are only after stuff, and not interested in harming people. Some things that people have said to reassure me: "It's much better here than in Johannesburg, where they'll beat you up for the fun of it," or "Nairobi is so much better than South Sudan." Ok. I'm feeling very safe now.

Goodbye Old Friend

1998 Mitsubishi Space Wagon

       I sold the car tonight. Our faithful and trouble-free companion for the past 11 years. K. put up the ad today for la voiture, and by evening I already had several heavy breathing, heavily accented phone calls from men who wanted to look at "her" and hand over the money. It made me feel like I was in a slightly sleazy Cold War spy novel. A Bulgarian chef desperate for a car came by to look her over tonight. He inspected carefully, verified that there was a spare tire (I didn't even know there was a spare tire, under the car--this is how ignorant I am), and ran his fingers over her in places I bet she had never been touched before (in the little holes in the hubcaps). A short test drive, he said Yes, paid a deposit, and we shook hands.

       It's a relief that it sold so quickly, one less thing to deal with, but I'm also a little sad. Even though I don't even really like cars to begin with, there's more than a decade of memories bundled up with that car, ski trips, weekend outings, frantically trying to entertain screaming babies strapped into car seats, then fast forward a decade to listening to Agatha Christie mysteries, all of us guessing whodunnit.

Naroibi skyline.

       Now, the reason why we're selling the car, and the real reason I have been such a blogging sloth recently, is that I've been dealing with our impending move to Nairobi, Kenya. July 9 is the deadline. This weekend we head to Nairobi for a few days of house and school hunting. I know practically nothing about Nairobi other than the following: lots of petty crime and gated compounds, great Indian food, wonderful temperate climate year round, stunning wildlife and landscapes nearby. By next Wednesday I'll know a lot more, I hope.

Slothful Excuses

       Coming back from Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica has turned me into a blogging sloth.

Baby sloth relaxing at the Jaguar Animal Rescue Center.

Maybe it was too much time hanging out at Jeffrey's Jamaican Kitchen, savoring grilled red snapper, black bean salad and manioc chips, all washed down with guava juice? Or maybe it was all the tasty samples we were given on the Chocoart tour? We learned about all the steps in an artisanal chocolate making process, from tree (sweet and tangy cacao pod pulp is one of the most delicious fruits I've ever had) to roasted nibs of chocolate, to chocolate sauce sweetened with cane sugar, served with slices of local red bananas...

A cacao pod: inside is the white pulp,
surrounding black seeds that can be made into chocolate.

Then again, there were the delicious homemade yucca pudding squares, coconutty, gingery, not too sweet, and slightly gelatinous (I'm a sucker for this texture, think glutinous rice balls with Carribean flavours). There's a woman at the Saturday morning market who sells them, and I think I bought her entire supply. And then ate it all by myself. Too bad nobody else wanted any.

Interview: Alison Pearce Stevens

       Time to catch up! I'm jet-lagged from a trip to Costa Rica, and headachy from switching back to black tea after a week of excellent Costa Rican coffee. Today's post is an interview with the writer Alison Pearce Stevens, a person I admire because she is a scientist and a writer who writes fiction as well as non-fiction, is a mom to two energetic boys, has made the leap to living abroad (Berlin) and knows what it's like to be a stranger in a strange land. Also, I like her work for the Nature Education Knowledge Project.


Q: How did you become interested in writing again after studying science for 18 years?

A.P. Stevens: By chance, really. We try to come up with personal, hand-made gifts for family  members, and my son and I decided to write a story for his grandparents. I got completely swept up in it. It was the first time in ages that I had let my creative side completely take over, and it was cathartic.

Q: Is it very different to write non-fiction vs fiction or do you think there is not that much difference?

A.P. Stevens: There are certainly differences, but I think that good, engaging non-fiction is narrative. It pulls the reader into the story, just as good fiction does. I also think it's important, even in fiction, to ensure that the story is factually accurate (unless, of course, it's fantasy). Readers retain information from engaging stories and they assume the information to be true, unless it was obviously fabricated.

Q: What brought you to Berlin?

A.P. Stevens: My husband was offered a job there. But we're about to move back to the U.S. (for the same reason). :)

Q: Has living abroad helped or hindered your writing?

A.P. Stevens: Definitely helped. It completely broadened my horizons and exposed me to new and different places and ideas. In addition, I stopped working full-time after we moved, so I had more time to spend on creative pursuits. It wasn't long before story lines and characters started appearing in my head, and I had to find a way to let them out.

Q: Do you have a writing routine?

A.P. Stevens: Nothing rigorous. I generally walk home after taking the kids to school. I find that walking helps stimulate ideas. By the time I'm home, I'm ready to sit down and work. But that means I might be writing a non-fiction article even though I'm in the middle of a chapter of a novel. I can't force myself to work on one particular story until it's done. The prominent idea from my morning walk gets my attention for the day, even if I'm in the middle of something else. By allowing myself to work on my top idea of the day, I find that my writing time is more productive, and the quality of my writing is much better.

Q: Do you have a favorite book or author?

A.P. Stevens: I can't possibly choose one! I adore Joseph Heller's work. More recently, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and Christopher Moore's books are great for a bit of levity.

Q: (If you are willing to say...) What is your current project?

A.P. Stevens: Which one? ;) I usually have at least three. I'm revising a middle-grade novel titled Thunderstruck, but I won't share the details (sorry!). I'm revising a couple of non-fiction picture books, one about how forests migrate with climate change and another about artificial reefs. My main focus in recent weeks has been non-fiction articles about scientists studying animals in the wild.

Thank you Alison!

Woodworking: A Jig for Tapered Legs

        I'd like to make tapered legs on two small side tables, and I hope they will be similar to these stylish legs:

Shaker table, by Rolf Sonnerup, oceanographer, salmon fisherman and woodworker. 

Here's a close-up of one of Rolf's legs, turned sideways. You can see that the bottom edge is straight, whereas the top edge is slanted:

Jack, my woodworking teacher, suggested making a jig, which is a template or guide, so that all eight legs could be planed to the desired angle at the same time.

Here is what the finished jig, made out of scrap wood, looks like:

Bird's eye view of the jig. The leg will fit in the space in the middle.

The jig is made to the exact dimensions of one squared, planed leg so that it fits snugly in the space in the middle. Now the jig is loaded:

Jig with squared, planed leg in middle.

The key is to elevate the leg at one end by having it sit on a small block of wood:

Close-up of jig.
One end of the leg sits elevated on the tiny ledge to the left of the two screws.

You can see this difference in elevation clearly in a side view of the loaded jig:

The leg (lighter wood) is elevated to the right.
The loaded jig is sitting on top of the thickness planer machine.

    

        The loaded jig is then put into the thickness planer machine, which has an overhead rotating blade that will slice off thin layers of wood from the top. Because the leg is elevated at only one end, the planer preferentially cuts off wood at only that end. This results in a tapered leg with one slanted surface. The bottom surface stays straight.

Jig and leg go into the thickness planer, which shaves off wood from the top.

The jig can be re-used for all eight legs. Stayed tuned to see what they look like next!

The Sand Quarry: Portrait of the Architect as a Young Man

       On the bus to the abandoned quarry, I sat next to V., who has some of the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. They were green and brown and blue, with specks and splodges of colour like a shimmering tidal pool or a piece of lovely marble. I could have gazed into his eyes all day. Too bad he's only twelve years old. Too bad I'm a frumpy middle-aged parent accompanying a school science trip.

       Someone passed out Carambars, a kind of caramel that comes in different flavours. V. took one. He unwrapped it, examined the yellow baton from all sides, sniffed it, picked up the discarded wrapper and read the writing, sniffed the candy again, then turned to me.

       "Do you want this?" he asked, offering me the Carambar. "I don't like lemon flavour."

Carambars, wrapped, from Wikipedia.

Lemon Carambar, unwrapped, from V.

       Twelve years old is a funny in-between age. Too old to indiscriminately chomp down on any old candy just because it happens to be sweet. And yet, too young to even suspect that an unwrapped, pawed over, pre-sniffed candy might not be so enticing to his adult seatmate.

       "Sure, thanks," I said, taking the Carambar to be polite. I tucked it discreetly into my handbag. At least it wasn't gooey.

The abandoned sand quarry, now used for 4x4 adventures and occasional school trips.

       The quarry was a big sand pit. The sun shone down through birch trees just starting to put out soft green leaves. Great tits (Parus major), a common European songbird, sang out. There were sedimentary rocks, where you could see wave and ripple marks on the sand before it hardened into rock.

Sedimentary rock with ripple marks.

Shells in the sand.

       There were lots of little shells in the sand.

       The kids were divided up into groups. My group had to lay out a 10m long measuring tape. Every metre, they had to set down a 10 cm by 10 cm red wire square, count and note the appearance of the shells in the red square, then dig up and collect 1-2 cm worth of sand from within the red square to bring back to school for further analyses.

Counting shells.

       The group started out fine, so I wandered off to look at the other groups. When I came back, everyone was busy, but the group had splintered into two:

Girls, counting and noting physical appearances of shells, collecting sand samples.

Boys, digging a hole, playing with bits of rock and shell.

       I am making no judgements. After all, I firmly believe that play, and the idea of "playfulness," is seriously undervalued in general.

       There was a great podcast this week, about the Dawn of the Iron Age. Apparently it was not at all obvious how humans discovered how to smelt iron ore around 3000 BC in Europe. Unlike copper, a light coloured malleable metal, iron is dark and thus difficult to distinguish from impurities, and difficult to work. It has to first be heated to melt out impurities, and the remaining ugly, irregular lump of iron has to be hammered repeatedly to make anything interesting. If I could travel back in time to the Dawn of the Iron Age, I'm sure I would see some humans hanging around a fire with some chunks of iron ore, wondering what would happen if they played around a bit and heated them up, or smashed them up, or both. Civilization has evolved not only because of hard work and discipline, but also because of play and serendipity.

       Back in the bus on the way back to school, I asked V. what his favorite subject was (Math) and what he wanted to be when he grew up (Architect). Someone passed him a piece of red string licorice. He didn't eat it right away. He dangled it from his fingers, studying it. Then he tied one end of the licorice to the seat in front of him, and put the other end in his mouth.

A new way to eat licorice

       "This is good," he said, chewing away. "I still have two hands free." I have no doubt he will be a fine architect some day.

Hairdressers, Part Two: Personal Computers

       The Secret Life of Hairdressers continues with Part Two today. I'm not any more obsessed with hair than anyone else. Really. Once when we were living in Switzerland, the hairdresser touched my hair and exclaimed in delight about how thick and strong my hair was. This sounds nice, but actually it made me feel like a freak. I could tell she was using the "scientist" tone of voice, which is the mesmerized tone one uses when discovering something interesting. Like, say, a two-headed tadpole or some other mutant beast. A long time ago, in a land far away, I was also once a scientist so I recognized that tone of voice instantly.

        My suspicions were confirmed when she asked if she could take one of my hairs for "testing," reassuring me that it would only take a minute. I said yes. She was as excited as a puppy under a Christmas tree. She took the hair over to a device on the counter. She clamped the two ends of the hair so that it was held taut. There was a magnifying glass and ruler to measure the hair's diameter. The machine slowly and gently stretched the hair until the breaking point, just like a miniature medieval torture rack. She noted down all the data, then turned to me. Her forehead was shining with sweat, her eyes were agleam. She was breathless. "This," she whispered, "is the thickest, strongest hair I have ever measured." Then she asked if she could have another hair, as a souvenir. I said yes. I wondered what her hair collection looked like. My family also appreciates my hair. "Wire hair" they call it, with that affectionate, teasing tone of voice that family members use with each other. But I don't have a complex about my hair. Really.

Gaspard Riche, the Baron de Prony (1755-1839).
French mathematician and hairdresser recruiter.

       The MISPFRUH Award, for the Most Innovative Scheme for Post-French Revolution Unemployed Hairdressers, has to go to the French mathematician Gaspard Riche, also known as the Baron de Prony. He was in charge of calculating mathematical tables for a huge land survey, the Cadastre. The government was keen to have comprehensive tables, for they could be used not only for surveying (and thus taxation), but also for astronomy, engineering, and navigation. Prony was initially daunted by the task of calculating these tables (from the numbers 0 to 100,000 to nineteen decimal places, and the numbers from 100,000 to 200,000 to twenty-four decimal places). It was so immense that even all the mathematicians in France would not be able to complete it. What to do?

       In a flash of inspiration after reading about the idea of "the division of labour" in Adam Smith's book "The Wealth of Nations," Prony saw that the job of compiling these tables could be divided up into two separate tasks: mechanical calculation, which did not necessarily require any previous math background, and verification or supervision, which required the skills of mathematicians. If he could train enough workers to grind out the mechanical calculations, relatively few mathematicians would be necessary to carry out the verification and supervision roles, and the job would be done that much sooner. Where to recruit these workers?

Hairdressers, 

        After the French Revolution, fancy, aristocratic hairstyles (see previous post) were definitely out of fashion. This led to high unemployment among hairdressers, and that is where Prony decided to recruit his "computers". The hairdressers had hardly any knowledge of mathematics (many could only add and subtract), and did not have any special interest in science. However, Prony trained them to methodically and mechanically go through a series of calculating steps, on worksheets with a blank space to fill in at the end of each line. It reminds me of our tax forms, but probably Prony's worksheets were even simpler.

...plus Worksheets...

        The hairdressers could take the worksheets home, and when the work was done, they would bring them in to be checked by mathematicians. This is like the cottage industry of piecework sewing that can be completed at home and then brought in to a central location for inspection. In the book "When Computers Were Human," the author D.A. Grier says these trained computers were "little different from manual workers and could not discern whether they were computing trigonometric functions, logarithms, or the orbit of Halley's comet." This model of labour, armies of trained workers grinding out a product for higher ups, can be found today, not only in factories, but also in university graduate schools.

...equals Calculators...

...and Computers.
Babbage's Difference Engine #2, now at the Science Museum in London

       Charles Babbage (1791-1871) was an English inventor who taught himself algebra, became a Cambridge math professor, married for love, and invented the cowcatcher on the front of steam locomotives. He is probably best known now as the "father of the computer," for he realized that if Prony's hairdressers could churn out mathematical data, then a mechanical machine could do it too. He worked for years on designs for a "Difference Engine" that could calculate results to 31 digits, and on an "Analytical Engine" that could be programmed using punch cards. The next time you use your calculator or computer, thank your hairdresser!

Hairdressers

       One of my fellow woodworkers is a retired hairdresser. He's always in a good mood, and he's been very patient and helpful with my beginner questions. He's currently finishing up a planter for his garden, a square wooden box with knobs on the tops of the four corners, like the planters for orange and lemon trees at Versailles. Later this spring, he and his wife will take a trip to Vietnam. He's been to Thailand before, and thirty years ago, he even manage to go to Burma. I asked him what Burma was like. "Oh, it was interesting, but the people were so poor." He paused, then shook his head sadly. "And the food was terrible." Then he told me that he would really like to go to China one day, but not just for a week or two. His wife hasn't retired yet, so as soon as she does, he'll start planning a long trip in China.

        Doesn't it seem like he has a good life? Do retired hairdressers in the US and Canada also have the resources to travel abroad for weeks at a time?

Marie Antoinette

        I was at the Louvre recently, on a tour about women in the 18th century. Hairdressers back then did not have an easy job constructing the towering mountains of hair that adorned aristocratic women. Our guide told us that a sort of metal frame was worn on the head as the scaffold upon which to build a 1-3 foot tall superstructure of hair and ornaments. Guess what hairdressers used in the days before hairspray and gel to mold the hair into the desired shape? Butter!! UGH!!! They probably used vats of it too. At the end they powdered the whole thing in lots of flour and stuck in jewels or ornaments. It was all so elaborate that nobody washed their hair for weeks or months. Bathing any part of the body was not widely practiced at this time; even the king would only bathe once a year. Those butter and flour hairdos must have smelled good right after they were finished, but can you imagine the rancid stench after a few weeks or months? No wonder French people love perfume.

Salted or unsalted?

        Carrying a mound of butter, flour and hair around on the top of your head was not easy for daily activities like getting into carriages, or sleeping. The frames were constructed with a hinge so that upon getting into a carriage, a lady could gently unhinge the hair, bend it backwards, and thus enter the carriage without demolishing her precious hairdo on the frame of the carriage door. Once inside, sitting on the floor of the carriage, she could prop her hair up again. Sleeping was more problematic, as rodents had to be scared away from the tasty temptation of gnawing on all that stinky butter. Ladies who wanted to protect their hair slept semi-upright. There was a little table by their side and on that table there would be a container with morsels of cheese or other tasty food for mice and rats. This would prevent hungry rodents from crawling up to munch on one's hairdo while asleep. What an excellent precautionary measure.

"in Just-" in time for Spring

     The bulbs are out and leaf buds are popping. Here is a poem by one of my favorite poets, Edward Estlin Cummings, better known as e.e. cummings. He wrote a poem a day from age 8 to 22.

in Just-
by e.e. cummings

in Just-
spring       when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles      far       and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far        and         wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

        the

                    goat-footed

balloonMan           whistles
far
and
wee

Musée Nissim de Camondo

       I learned today that if you are looking at fine furniture or art, and you are impressed with the craftsmanship but you don’t actually like it, you use the euphemism “beau travail,” literally “beautiful work.” Perhaps the object is not really your taste, perhaps the colours repel you, or perhaps you think the whole thing is downright ugly. If, on the other hand, you actually liked the object, you would simply sigh with a covetous gleam in your eye and say it was "beau,"  beautiful.

       The Camondo Museum is full of furniture and other art objects that are "beau travail" to me, although to someone who loves 18th century Louis XV and Louis XVI style, they will be marvelously "beau." The museum was the former home of the Camondo banking family. The Camondos were Sephardic Jews, chased from Spain during the Inquisition. They established a bank in Constantinople at the beginning of the 19th century, then moved to Paris in the 1870s. Monsieur Moïse Camondo built himself a mansion modeled on the Petit Trianon in Versailles, then filled it with 18th century decorative art treasures. Money, apparently, couldn't buy happiness, as his wife ran off with the manager of the family's stables, who also happened to be a dashing Italian count.

       The house is certainly impressive, and is near the lovely Parc Monceau.

Musee Camondo

The objets d'art inside are also impressive, although they will mostly appeal to people who go wild over gobs of gilt.

Why ruin a perfectly fine crackled celadon vase with all those gold curlicues?

        There are also many outstanding examples of fine marquetry furniture, where the inlaid wood veneer forms exquisite patterns. A huge amount of work goes into not only the marquetry design, but also the choice of wood for the veneer, the orientation of the wood grain, and the treatment of the wood to slightly char it, producing a 3D effect of shadowing. Here is a good example, a cabinet by the Maître Ebéniste (Master Cabinetmaker) Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806).

Riesener sliding door cabinet with floral marquetry

You can see the slats that make up the sliding doors. There are two small gold knobs in the middle of the bouquet. When you push the knobs apart, the doors slide into the body of the cabinet, hidden from view. This kind of slat-based sliding door design later came back with a vengeance, in 1970s TV consoles.

       Woodworking was not Riesener’s only skill, as the story of how he became a Maître Ebéniste shows. Riesener was an apprentice, then a journeyman with the great furniture maker Jean-François Oeben (1721-1763). Oeben actually had two journeymen, Riesener and Jean-François Leleu, who was more senior. If a Master died, it was assumed that the senior journeyman would take over the workshop. Therefore, when Oeben died, Leleu assumed that he was the rightful heir and that his future would be  bright and rosy. Riesener, however, had other ideas. Riesener and Leleu fought over the right to inherit Oeben’s mantle, and pounded each other in physical brawls that were noted in police reports of the time. Riesener eventually won by seducing Oeben’s widow and persuading her to marry him. He thus inherited Oeben’s workshop, became a Maître Ebéniste, and later became Marie Antoinette’s favourite cabinetmaker.

       One of the rooms I liked best at the Camondo museum was the kitchen, a large, light-filled space with a stunning collection of copper pots:

Kitchen of Musee Camondo

I also liked this austere but beautiful still life from the kitchen:

Meat grinder and friends 

        Just for the record, although my personal taste leans more towards Shaker style, I thoroughly enjoyed Coppola’s movie about Marie Antoinette. I guess it’s hard to make a fantasmagoric and luscious film about the Shakers.

       The Camondo family had a tragic end. Moïse Camondo’s only son Nissim was killed as a pilot in World War I. Devastated by his son’s death, Moïse willed his entire house and its contents to the state. His daughter Béatrice and her husband and children all perished at Auschwitz. 

Cherry wood

Cherry planks, the tall ones in the middle.

       The next project is a pair of end tables made of cherry wood. When the order of wood arrives, it looks exactly like a lengthwise slice of rough sawn tree. It comes with the bark and everything. What was I expecting, squared and planed perfect rectangles? I guess it's a bit like going to buy meat at the market and being surprised to see real chickens, with feathers and heads and feet.

       Here is what some of that cherry wood looks like after being made into squared and planed perfect rectangles for table legs:

Many hours of work later.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Japan. I keep checking the news to see whether or not nuclear catastrophe has occurred yet. Japan has been on my mind a lot in the past few days, as I have been reading David Mitchell’s book “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet”. It’s a wonderful book, a love story, an adventurous thriller, and a meditation on culture clash in the late 18^th century. Japan at this time was almost entirely closed to foreign influence, but limited trading with the Dutch East India Company was allowed as long as the foreigners, mostly Dutch, confined themselves to the artificial island of Dejima, near Nagasaki.  The hero Jacob de Zoet is an honest Dutch accountant brought to Dejima to help root out corruption. Along the way, Orito Aibagawa, a highly skilled but scarred midwife, literally barges into his life during a hilarious episode when she is chasing a thieving monkey that has made off with a corpse’s leg. This is a 500 page novel that draws you into a meticulously re-created lost world. There is a full cast of foreign and Japanese characters, including the sympathetic interpreter Uzaemon and the initially prickly, but good-hearted Dr. Marinus. Unbeknownst to everybody, the eery Lord Abbot Enomoto has sinister plans to kidnap Orito for dark rituals at his mysterious mountaintop shrine, rituals so evil that the monks and nuns have to be kept drugged to…well, read it and find out!

La Phonogalerie

Gramophones and stacks of records at La Phonogalerie, Paris.

I went on a guided tour this week of the "Phonogalerie", a centre for gramophones, records, and all things to do with the history of recorded sound. When you walk into Monsieur Aro's "Phonogalerie", a large light-filled showroom near Pigalle Metro, the first thing that strikes you is the sheer number of beautiful gramophones. The horns, the gramophone's most prominent part, are everywhere, attached to machines, stacked in piles, or encased in elaborate wooden cabinetry. They are mostly made of metal, but some are wood, and there is even a glass one. Some are large, flaring out like the petals of a petunia flower. Others are slim and streamlined, like tall pointy witch hats. One model, used at a World's Fair, did not have a horn, but instead, had many headphones attached. 

A wax cylinder gramophone with many headphones (white dangling tubes).

Monsieur Aro quizzed us: Who was the first person to invent a machine to record and play back sound? Everyone else on the guided tour was silent so of course I blurted out “Thomas Edison.” Wrong! It was not the American Edison, said M. Aro with a satisfied smile, but the Frenchman Charles Cros who was the first person to invent such a machine. Cros had written a note to the French Academy of Sciences, explaining the concept, but was so disappointed with the lack of interest that he then moved on to other projects. 

A glass horn. The beige cylinder to the lower right behind the horn is the wax cylinder used to record and reproduce sound.

           Edison was the first to patent his invention, and to make it commercially successful. We got to listen to music from the early 1900s recorded on a wax cylinder, before the invention of flat recording discs. We also heard music from the “Regina Hexaphone” jukebox (a nickel a song), and a song from a vinyl record played on a gramophone. All of us sighed that it brought back many happy childhood memories of listening to records.

Belleville

How I wish I had brought my camera with me today, it was so sunny, and the sky was so blue. I would have taken some photos of Belleville, Paris' old Chinatown in the 19th arrondissement, where I had lunch and bought groceries today after woodworking class. Bet you can’t guess what I had for lunch at the place with the cleverly obscure name, Restaurant Ravioli, at 47 rue de Belleville. The ravioli, or potstickers, are hand-made, including the wrappers, as I have walked by during off-hours and seen the workers sitting at a floury table, rolling out circles of dough at lightning speed, filling, sealing, done. Today I had tofu, shitake mushroom and chive ravioli, small, pan-fried and crispy on the bottom, tender and tasty with just enough chewiness everywhere else.

I couldn’t leave without getting some essential groceries: steamed pork buns, roast duck, and dried black beans. Black beans are amazingly difficult to find in Paris, and after looking around in many different areas of the city, in all kinds of gourmet, ethnic, and health food stores, I finally found some in Belleville, on the bottom shelf of a small display of beans in the basement of a very modest store on a side street near the Metro.

 Nobody in this town ever has change for bills bigger than 5 euros, so I’ve gotten into the habit of always trying to pay with exact change. I was at the checkout, painstakingly counting out my coins, when a young Asian woman rushed over, clutching a gingerroot and two boxes of strawberries. She seemed agitated, swayed side to side, and held her groceries tight against her body. She spoke in Mandarin and told the cashier her stomach really hurt, and could she please pay right after me, and before the next person, a middle-aged Caucasian man with a full grocery basket. The cashier considered her request, then replied in Mandarin that she should really ask the man, who was next in line. “But I don’t speak French!” said the young woman. The cashier turned to the man, asked in French if he would mind letting the young woman go first, and he said it was fine. As the cashier rang up the gingerroot and strawberries, she told the young woman: “I hope you understand why I said we had to ask him first. We have to be a little careful, we don’t want them accusing us of only looking after our own people!”

A Close Call on the 91 Bus

He was big, tall, with a hugely protruding belly, and he was so close I could smell his bad breath. I didn’t dare look up. I didn’t want to see his ugly mug. This is exactly the reason why Mister K prefers to walk or bike, instead of taking public transportation. I was musing about how to describe the unpleasant situation of being crammed into a packed bus, sharing air space with bulky individuals emanating noxious fumes.  Would I use the phrase “a miasma of stench”? Or would I use a different image, like “inhaling a cloud of germs from other people’s intimate parts”?

My purse was slung diagonally over my shoulder, hanging at my waist, and I felt a slight nudge there, faint as a whisper. I had the passing thought that nobody better be trying to pinch my bottom. The bus stopped, people got off, and some space opened up in the aisle near George. I moved to the aisle, towards George so we could be sure to exit together later, but there was a teenage girl standing in the way, chatting with her seated friend. I said “Pardon,” and was getting ready to move past her when all of a sudden the big fat guy lumbered into the aisle, pushed past me, separating the teenager from her friend, and then stopped right there, like a stolid elephant rooted to the spot. The teenager and I exchanged “some people are so rude” glances. In the meantime, other people had come onto the bus so I was now sandwiched between the fat guy and the invading mass of new passengers. Again, I felt a slight fleeting pressure near my waist, but it was so slight, we were wedged in so tightly, and I was busy thinking about how we had to get off at the next stop and I had to be sure to catch George’s eye so he wouldn’t forget to get off too. It was hard work wading through the crowd to get out, and as soon as I stepped off the bus, I looked down at my purse. The zipper was halfway undone, and I am absolutely 100% positive that it had been completely done up when we had gotten onto the bus. In that moment, looking at the zipper, I knew, I knew for certain, that the big fat guy had been trying to pickpocket me.

It explained everything, the odd microsecond nudges as he tried to push the zipper along, and his sudden febrile lunge into the aisle that ended so abruptly as soon as he was smack dab right next to me. Luckily, nothing was taken, my wallet was still there (too wide and bulky to lift out even with the zipper half undone), and no money was taken (wallet very deep, very little money in it, and the billfold area was stuffed full with junk like old receipts and coupons anyway). A happy ending!

Dirty Bit: Belgian Endive

Soil grown Belgian endive from Agnes' farm.
Note dirt on leaves--a good sign.

It’s true. Dirty endives taste better. Belgian endives grown in dirt taste better than those grown hydroponically. I never even knew there were two ways of growing Belgian endive, let alone that there might be a difference in the way they taste, until one fine day at the local greengrocers, Convention Les Halles.  There I was, waiting in line. The woman in front of me, let’s just call her Madame X, had piled up a mound of delicious looking fruits and vegetables on the tiny counter. The cashier, a middle-aged woman who often wore fingerless gloves to fend off the cold wafting in from the open store front, held up a bag of pale, torpedo shaped Belgian endives.

“What kind are these?” asked the cashier.

“What kind? I don’t know, are there different kinds?” asked Madame X.

“There’s the regular kind, then there’s ‘pleine terre’. The ‘pleine terre’ are more expensive.”

Madame X took her bag of endives and went back to the ‘pleine terre’ crate, which was stamped on its wooden side with a picture of a farmer and a plow. She inspected it, dumped the endives back in the crate, and marched back to the cashier.

“I’m not paying 4 euros a kilo for them, that’s twice as much as the other ones,” huffed Madame X. The cashier shrugged and rang up the rest of the groceries.

            After Madame X had stomped off, I asked the cashier what the difference was between the two kinds of endives. One was grown hydroponically, she told me, and the other was grown in soil. The soil made them less bitter and tastier, she said. Of course after that I had to try some ‘pleine terre’ endives.

            My favorite farmer in the local market is Agnes. You won’t find kiwis and pineapples at her stand; she is a real farmer, and only brings what she has grown or foraged. This weekend I tried her Belgian endives, grown in soil, and they are the sweetest, tastiest, least bitter endives I have ever tasted. The soil grown endives from the local greengrocer are also less bitter and tastier than hydroponic endives, but Agnes’ are the best. The Belgian endive, also called French endive, or witloof (from ‘white leaf’), is Cichorium intybus. It is the same plant whose roots can be roasted and used as a coffee substitute, chicory.