If this were the beginning of a Garrison Keillor monologue, it would go something like "It's been a winey week in my hometown." That sums up our next to last week nicely as the we sipped our way through meals, tasting, festivals and a party chez nous, where wine literally flowed like our Ouveze river.
We started with an excellent luncheon last Tuesday with our friends Gary and Marilyn at a charming wine bar, la Tourne au Verre, in nearby Cairanne. The sun came out especially for us and we sat outside,sipping whites, roses, and reds by the glass. We loved the name of one of the whites--La Vie On Y Est--a fun play on words for the varietal it contained, viognier. After working our way though a great house terrine, duck stew and pineapple tart, we decided to pay a visit to our friends, Francoise and John (yes, French and American), who are winemakers at the Girasol vinyard. Of course, we had to get caught up on their wines as well as their lives and more than a few bottles found their way into Gary's trunk.
Wednesday, after lunch, the trend continued with a visit to Chateau Unang close to Venasque, once more with Gary and Marilyn, who like to call themselves the Rhone Rangers. More sipping, swirling and slurping to get the full effect of more luscious wines and, again, more wines in Gary's trunk.
Thursday, we simply had some visiting friends of Hallie's in for drinks--meaning wine of course, and Friday, we took a small turn toward temperance in preparation for Saturday. We only stopped at one winery in Chateau Neuf du Pape and picked up some of Roger Sabon's lovely Lirac and a couple of bottles of his Rhone by Roger Sabon for our cellar. In fact, we didn't even go to Chateau Neuf du Pape for wine, but rather to see M. Sabon, who is a healer. (That's another whole story in itself for a later time.)
Saturday, at about 11 a.m., we set out for the women-run vinyard, Gros Pata, that makes the wine we serve all the time to guests. They hold a festival each year, complete with regional dancers, tasting of other winemakers from Alsace, Burgundy and Bergerac, plus a chanteuse to amuse the substantial crowd during lunch, served up buffet-style. The whole meal kicks off with anchoiade, then moves along to slices of terrine, caillettes and salad, followed by grilled ham and potatoes. About the time the food is served, casks of wine--both rose and red--show up so everyone can pour glasses for themselves. This procedure seems to work for them, as it has hardly changed in all the years we've attended. Despite the fact that everyone wore jackets this year instead of their usual short sleeved tops, a most excellent time was had by all. As we finally left, around 3 p.m., we picked up a gi-normous 10 liter bag-in-box for our party on Sunday afteroon. Hauling it away, we passed the horse drawn carriage giving rides down the main road and eased our way home.
We had decided to introduce our British and French friends to the concept of an open-house and so invited quite a crew to come by on Sunday afternoon, about the only way we could accomodate that many people in our small village house. We baked and chopped during the week, putting things together ahead of time and storing what we could in our tiny freezer that gets a mighty workout during our stays. We also have a second refrigerator, one of the best buys two cooks could have made, and so beer, rose and sparkling water went in there. That afternoon, before our company arrived, we organized the table and put out our various offerings. The food choices ranged from French--salmon cake and quiche--to American--guacamole and brownies. It was quite a nibbler's spread. Just before going upstairs to change, Hallie decided to open up the 10 liter bag-in-box so that we could fill pitchers with wine. Now, we are not virgins at this activity and it's pretty simple. You pull out the spigot, unwrap the piece of plastic seal that keeps the wine from dribbling out while it's stored, tip the box on end and you're ready to go. Hallie worked on this while I went upstairs to put on my party duds.
All of a sudden, I heard her yelling, "Help! Come now!" And so, sporting only my bra and tugging my pants up from half-mast, I flung myself down the stairs.
There she stood, flooded with red wine. Our bag-in-box, taking inspiration from the Ouveze, decided to flow like a river from its broken spigot. Faulty, the whole spout just fell out, spurting out wine that engulfed Hallie, her white top and jeans, plus the plaster wall and tile floor below it. It now smelled like a winery in our house, displacing all the enticing aromas we'd generated earlier. We waded through the rivulets of wine, mopped it all up, dabbed at the badly stained wall, and threw out Hallie's top. Hallie, while righting the box, to stanch the wine's flow, had torn the now soggy cardboard and it was, as our British friends would say, a right mess. I got out packing tape and bandaged the box back together, gave the spigot a mighty shove back in place, and got it in far enough so that we could still, gingerly, dispense adult beverages for our party. Hallie showered, we opened the window to dispel the fumes, and our guests started knocking on the door. They flowed in gently, unlike our wine, in manageable waves and, as we nibbled and noshed, we had a chance to chat, sip a bit of our badly behaved bag-in-box, and appreciate the richness of life in Mollans.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
Two Weeks and Counting
At the start of this past week, I realized, unbelievably, that I only had two weeks left of my time here in Provence. When you get up each day and have to concentrate to remember the day of the week, time is a tentative thing and life just flows by. Unfortunately, this past week and the next find this flow, like our local Ouveze river, moving at a torrent's pace, with a to-do list of chores falling from the sky like the rains of last week.
Luckily, the weather eased for a while. Monday brought more power outages and thunderstorms but Tuesday brought the sun, just in time for market day in Vaison and our planned lunch with Gary and Marilyn, friends from Minnesota staying nearby. Wednesday, both a market and errand morning in Buis les Baronnies, got the chore list front and center.
While getting dressed, I heard our neighbor in the field below our house revving up his power saw. We call him the hippie because that's the way he looks--in a stoner, Keith Richards kind of way. The prior week, between rain showers, I'd discussed having him trim some trees that were growing so rapidly that we feared for our view. He'd agreed but never showed at the agreed upon time to negotiate a price. Then nothing continued to happen even when the skies occasionally cleared. When we passed him in the village, he ignored us, and we thought he'd changed his mind. From the looks of the back of his property, he's clearly not suffering from the Protestant work ethic so we thought perhaps it was just too much effort. But, on Wednesday, with the sound of his saw drifting ever so sweetly upward,I came running down the stairs yelling "hippie" to Hallie. Scuttering along in my bedroom slippers and with my hair still plastered, wet to my head, post shower, I zoomed past Hallie and picked my way down the rickety stairs that lead to what we call our secret garden. I wanted to catch him before the inclination toward work had passed. We quickly negotiated a fee and he started in right before our very eyes. "Hooray, hooray for our side," we said and left him whacking away with his saw at our unwanted tree growth.
We had a task list of our own and hopped in the car and headed towards Buis. First stop--the bank. Our French bank account is great because we use it to automaticly pay almost everything--electricity, phone, taxes, car and house insurance, etc., etc., etc. Unfortunately, it needs replenishing from time to time and so we needed to deposit some funds. The process is amusing. First we go to the ATM and get cash in euros drawn from our American accounts using cash cards. Then we make out a deposit slip and put the same money back in the bank only in our French account. That accomplished, we were off to our next stop, the tresorie--sort of like a tax or public works office--to pay our garbage bill, which we can't pay automatically, for some reason. This is a once a year thing, as is the water bill, and we had high hopes to pay both. They hadn't managed to do the water bill yet in the brief month and a half since they'd read the meter so that went back on the to-do list for our fall trip to France and we hit the market. On the way home, we made a hardware store stop and did our usual pantomime and sketching routine to get the U-shaped runner thingies we wanted to put outside the door. More on the reason why in a later blog. As you can tell, I don't even know the right term in English for what I wanted so it's no wonder I don't know the name in French either.
Next the e-mails started. All the folks I work for back in the States seemed to want something from me. Some things could be dealt with here and others will need prompt attention as soon as I land in Minneapolis mid-June. So, another to-do list for post-Mollans begins.
It made the week fly by when added to enjoying the good food, wine, and friends that pass through our life, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. Floating through life, like rafting on a river, works until the rapids come along and the current pushes you onward and sometimes overboard. A certain amount of zooming is unavoidable and the trick is to keep the flow balanced between trickle and torrent.
Next up: Wine starts flowing like our local Ouveze.
Luckily, the weather eased for a while. Monday brought more power outages and thunderstorms but Tuesday brought the sun, just in time for market day in Vaison and our planned lunch with Gary and Marilyn, friends from Minnesota staying nearby. Wednesday, both a market and errand morning in Buis les Baronnies, got the chore list front and center.
While getting dressed, I heard our neighbor in the field below our house revving up his power saw. We call him the hippie because that's the way he looks--in a stoner, Keith Richards kind of way. The prior week, between rain showers, I'd discussed having him trim some trees that were growing so rapidly that we feared for our view. He'd agreed but never showed at the agreed upon time to negotiate a price. Then nothing continued to happen even when the skies occasionally cleared. When we passed him in the village, he ignored us, and we thought he'd changed his mind. From the looks of the back of his property, he's clearly not suffering from the Protestant work ethic so we thought perhaps it was just too much effort. But, on Wednesday, with the sound of his saw drifting ever so sweetly upward,I came running down the stairs yelling "hippie" to Hallie. Scuttering along in my bedroom slippers and with my hair still plastered, wet to my head, post shower, I zoomed past Hallie and picked my way down the rickety stairs that lead to what we call our secret garden. I wanted to catch him before the inclination toward work had passed. We quickly negotiated a fee and he started in right before our very eyes. "Hooray, hooray for our side," we said and left him whacking away with his saw at our unwanted tree growth.
We had a task list of our own and hopped in the car and headed towards Buis. First stop--the bank. Our French bank account is great because we use it to automaticly pay almost everything--electricity, phone, taxes, car and house insurance, etc., etc., etc. Unfortunately, it needs replenishing from time to time and so we needed to deposit some funds. The process is amusing. First we go to the ATM and get cash in euros drawn from our American accounts using cash cards. Then we make out a deposit slip and put the same money back in the bank only in our French account. That accomplished, we were off to our next stop, the tresorie--sort of like a tax or public works office--to pay our garbage bill, which we can't pay automatically, for some reason. This is a once a year thing, as is the water bill, and we had high hopes to pay both. They hadn't managed to do the water bill yet in the brief month and a half since they'd read the meter so that went back on the to-do list for our fall trip to France and we hit the market. On the way home, we made a hardware store stop and did our usual pantomime and sketching routine to get the U-shaped runner thingies we wanted to put outside the door. More on the reason why in a later blog. As you can tell, I don't even know the right term in English for what I wanted so it's no wonder I don't know the name in French either.
Next the e-mails started. All the folks I work for back in the States seemed to want something from me. Some things could be dealt with here and others will need prompt attention as soon as I land in Minneapolis mid-June. So, another to-do list for post-Mollans begins.
It made the week fly by when added to enjoying the good food, wine, and friends that pass through our life, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. Floating through life, like rafting on a river, works until the rapids come along and the current pushes you onward and sometimes overboard. A certain amount of zooming is unavoidable and the trick is to keep the flow balanced between trickle and torrent.
Next up: Wine starts flowing like our local Ouveze.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Music Soothes the Savage Beast
We're showing our resourcefulness in sussing out activities to keep the grump gorilla in his place. Everyone we talk to has had it with the weather, harder to take than perhaps in a climate like Seattle, beecause it's so unexpected here. To keep, as the old song says "On the Sunny Side of Life," our diversions the last few days have spread to music.
Friday evening, raincoat and umbrella in tow, I jumped into Steve and Jo's little white car and set off to Avignon with them to hear our friend Jean-Claude sing Verdi's Te Deum with his choir in the Avignon Opera House. Since everyone's on a budget these days, we chose the cheap tickets up in the nose-bleed section. Dangling over the edge but protected by a metal railing, our bleacher-style seating far above the velvet seats and boxes below, still allowed a fairly clear view of the orchestra but, unfortunately, obscured all but the feet of the male portion of the choir. An amalgamation of two amateur groups, they'd all been rehearsing mightily for a month and did an admirable job. After a brief intermission, the orchestra returned and launched themselves into Mahler's 1st Symphony--thank goodness more lyrical and less morose than his 8th. Back in the car, we motored home through the rain and fog, spirits more than soothed by the evening.
Saturday, we snuck in a walk and a visit to our local candle producer friends down the road before the thunderstorms rolled in. Business is slow for them and the price of parafin is rising steadily. After mutual grumbling, we consoled ourselves with the fact that we still had each other as friends, exchanged the three air kisses of affection and said "A bientot," or I'll see you soon. Later, we took ourselves out for a decent if not fabulous dinner as a small treat and snuggled under the covers in our rooms with good books for an early evening.
I'm reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, an appropriate book for what I do and who I am and just finished the second section about the author's trip to India. She talks about meditation and chanting in that section--the Pray of the title. In turn, that reminded me of the monks in nearby Le Barroux who go through their prayer offices each day in Gregorian chant. At our dinner party on Thursday, the mass they say--unusually,in Latin--came up and that was omen and suggestion enough for me. I mentioned to Hallie that I wanted to go and she said she'd come too. When there's a mass in our village church we go for the social aspect as much as anything and I explain what's going on in small whispers to Hallie. We've got a nice Catholic-Jewish vibe going on between us and now my conversation is studded with Yiddish and she knows a fair amount about the Catholic mass.
Anyway, we drove up to le Barroux, passing the most spectacular poppy field along the way--pulsing with red-orange life against the well-watered green hills behind it. We pulled into the monastery parking lot shortly before the service and found ourselves a pew. The main portion of their austere stone church is the altar and choir stall section for the monks, sectioned off limits to the public by a traditional railing. French of all ages, including a fair amount of families with small childred, filed in, genuflecting and crossing themselves in a way I remember from my Catholic childhood but haven't seen much of since. They were the most consistently well-turned out crowd I've come across in our area ever. Dressed in the French preppie style, with only the occasional working class version of dresses and suit coats present, I again thought of my mother and I dressing in our Sunday best for a trip to church. The only thing not dredged from the past were head coverings for women and one older lady did have her hair wrapped in a shawl.
At home, I attend an extemely liberal Catholic church, about as far to the other end of the same faith as you can get without becoming Unitarian. Going to a Latin mass is quite a departure from my current life. But, as I said, I've always loved Gregorian chant and expected the ritual and beautiful voices to be a truly spiritual experience.
I was fine through the Alleluia of the mass. Four monks with gorgeous voices stepped forward and praised God as He/She should be praised. Then things fell apart. The further into the mass we got, the less I felt a part of the process. It was a mass for the monks, not for those of us inferiour beings from the world outside, and we just bobbed and knelt at appropriate times, saying nothing except for the "I am not worthy" bit before communion. The Latin mass is, by it's very nature, exclusionary, with the congregation looking at the priest's back throughout while he intones in a very dead language. But, even in my childhood, we, the laity, chimed back with a few responses. Here at the monastery, we all stayed mute while the monks hoarded their gorgeous song for themselves and their God. The music seemed to stop at the railing instead of spilling forth to fill all our souls. We, barred from their gated community, were like voyeurs to their experience. And communion! I haven't knelt at a communion railing and stuck out my tongue to receive the host for over 40 years. Talk about not worthy. At the very end, as the dark robed, tonsured group filed out, they avoided eye contact at all cost and I felt as though my presence was a minor disturbance rather than an additional testament to our supposedly community of faith. The monks themselves were like sad automatons,with only a few showing any signs of peace that a life of prayer should bring.
I left thinking that it was no wonder so many of my friends had left the church when we were all young.
So the two musical experiences were quite a contrast. At the concert on Friday night, while I was also a spectator, I felt envelloped by the experience, a welcome and necessary participant in the performance event. As the conductor mentioned in a short speech, we were the cher public,the dear public, in other words appreciated and welcome. The music itself took all of us, performer and audience alike, out of ourselves and to a higher level, like a true prayer. There was nothing "dear" about my experience at the monastery, but rather a glum example of a miserly, pinched faith that I was perhaps better off for not sharing.
Next: Time grows shorter.
Friday evening, raincoat and umbrella in tow, I jumped into Steve and Jo's little white car and set off to Avignon with them to hear our friend Jean-Claude sing Verdi's Te Deum with his choir in the Avignon Opera House. Since everyone's on a budget these days, we chose the cheap tickets up in the nose-bleed section. Dangling over the edge but protected by a metal railing, our bleacher-style seating far above the velvet seats and boxes below, still allowed a fairly clear view of the orchestra but, unfortunately, obscured all but the feet of the male portion of the choir. An amalgamation of two amateur groups, they'd all been rehearsing mightily for a month and did an admirable job. After a brief intermission, the orchestra returned and launched themselves into Mahler's 1st Symphony--thank goodness more lyrical and less morose than his 8th. Back in the car, we motored home through the rain and fog, spirits more than soothed by the evening.
Saturday, we snuck in a walk and a visit to our local candle producer friends down the road before the thunderstorms rolled in. Business is slow for them and the price of parafin is rising steadily. After mutual grumbling, we consoled ourselves with the fact that we still had each other as friends, exchanged the three air kisses of affection and said "A bientot," or I'll see you soon. Later, we took ourselves out for a decent if not fabulous dinner as a small treat and snuggled under the covers in our rooms with good books for an early evening.
I'm reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, an appropriate book for what I do and who I am and just finished the second section about the author's trip to India. She talks about meditation and chanting in that section--the Pray of the title. In turn, that reminded me of the monks in nearby Le Barroux who go through their prayer offices each day in Gregorian chant. At our dinner party on Thursday, the mass they say--unusually,in Latin--came up and that was omen and suggestion enough for me. I mentioned to Hallie that I wanted to go and she said she'd come too. When there's a mass in our village church we go for the social aspect as much as anything and I explain what's going on in small whispers to Hallie. We've got a nice Catholic-Jewish vibe going on between us and now my conversation is studded with Yiddish and she knows a fair amount about the Catholic mass.
Anyway, we drove up to le Barroux, passing the most spectacular poppy field along the way--pulsing with red-orange life against the well-watered green hills behind it. We pulled into the monastery parking lot shortly before the service and found ourselves a pew. The main portion of their austere stone church is the altar and choir stall section for the monks, sectioned off limits to the public by a traditional railing. French of all ages, including a fair amount of families with small childred, filed in, genuflecting and crossing themselves in a way I remember from my Catholic childhood but haven't seen much of since. They were the most consistently well-turned out crowd I've come across in our area ever. Dressed in the French preppie style, with only the occasional working class version of dresses and suit coats present, I again thought of my mother and I dressing in our Sunday best for a trip to church. The only thing not dredged from the past were head coverings for women and one older lady did have her hair wrapped in a shawl.
At home, I attend an extemely liberal Catholic church, about as far to the other end of the same faith as you can get without becoming Unitarian. Going to a Latin mass is quite a departure from my current life. But, as I said, I've always loved Gregorian chant and expected the ritual and beautiful voices to be a truly spiritual experience.
I was fine through the Alleluia of the mass. Four monks with gorgeous voices stepped forward and praised God as He/She should be praised. Then things fell apart. The further into the mass we got, the less I felt a part of the process. It was a mass for the monks, not for those of us inferiour beings from the world outside, and we just bobbed and knelt at appropriate times, saying nothing except for the "I am not worthy" bit before communion. The Latin mass is, by it's very nature, exclusionary, with the congregation looking at the priest's back throughout while he intones in a very dead language. But, even in my childhood, we, the laity, chimed back with a few responses. Here at the monastery, we all stayed mute while the monks hoarded their gorgeous song for themselves and their God. The music seemed to stop at the railing instead of spilling forth to fill all our souls. We, barred from their gated community, were like voyeurs to their experience. And communion! I haven't knelt at a communion railing and stuck out my tongue to receive the host for over 40 years. Talk about not worthy. At the very end, as the dark robed, tonsured group filed out, they avoided eye contact at all cost and I felt as though my presence was a minor disturbance rather than an additional testament to our supposedly community of faith. The monks themselves were like sad automatons,with only a few showing any signs of peace that a life of prayer should bring.
I left thinking that it was no wonder so many of my friends had left the church when we were all young.
So the two musical experiences were quite a contrast. At the concert on Friday night, while I was also a spectator, I felt envelloped by the experience, a welcome and necessary participant in the performance event. As the conductor mentioned in a short speech, we were the cher public,the dear public, in other words appreciated and welcome. The music itself took all of us, performer and audience alike, out of ourselves and to a higher level, like a true prayer. There was nothing "dear" about my experience at the monastery, but rather a glum example of a miserly, pinched faith that I was perhaps better off for not sharing.
Next: Time grows shorter.
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