Politics at the most personal level: Living through something you do not fully understand

Sometimes I think we don’t use the words “I’m not sure” often enough. We have too much confidence, too much belief in our own choices and interpretations. We think ourselves to be above malice (‘it’s everyone else, never me’), above repression (‘I like differences, in theory’), to be generous and peace-loving (‘I avoid conflict, it’s everyone else that invites it’), believing in what we want to believe in (‘I’m incapable of being unkind; war is necessary; my country does it right’).

When I was very very young, I went to a birthday party of a classmate (this was in Warsaw, Poland). It wasn’t a well planned event (American families put lots more effort into children’s parties) and so the kids got restless. Soon, the activity of choice was to search in the flower pots for bugs and to transfer them into the hair of Fela Fastman. Why pick on Fela Fastman? Why indeed. Many many years later, it was suggested to me that she was often made fun of because she was different. She was Jewish.

In high school, I had a close friend named Malgosia. She and I recently found each other through email. She writes this about her last high school weeks (roughly translated): Do you remember our end-of-year prizes? How the teachers gave me mine and Felek his behind the scenes? How the principal would not recognize us publicly because we were Jewish?

I did not remember. In fact, I had not even known that Felek was Jewish. Malgosia said that she hadn’t known either until that last day of school.

In the turbulent political climate of the late 60s, I joined ZMS, which was the Union of Socialist Youth. Among liberal Poles, I later found out, it was considered a repressive organization, parroting the party line, avoiding all the difficult questions. I did not know that when I joined. I thought it to be full of energetic idealists, the doers, the movers, the ones that wanted to work together to accomplish worthy goals. I un-joined later.

One spring, I walked home from high school (in Warsaw) by way of the School of Engineering. I’d heard there were students out in the streets, marching in protest against recent government decisions. I knew by then that the students were on the side of reason. I knew. As I got closer, I noticed that it was no longer a peaceful march. I did not know that my very presence there put me in danger and so I did not see the police running toward me, I did not anticipate being repeatedly clubbed and beaten by them (so much so that I needed a hospital visit).

Not to know, not to see, to live in political and personal ignorance, not to engage in questioning, to accept as hard facts what you’re told by friends, politicians, those around you. To hang on to your own implacable vision of the world as if it could never be improved on. Or changed.

Adam Michnik, perhaps the most influential former Polish dissident, wrote an impassioned article in the New Yorker a few years back questioning the complicity of Poles in the anti-Semitism that has haunted the country for many decades. The occasion for this was the publication of a book by Jan Gross that detailed the massacre of fifteen hundred Jews in Jedwabne during WWII, not, as was originally believed, by the Nazis, but by the Poles living in this northeastern corner of Poland. Many Poles found the accusations to be slanderous and reprehensible. (For more info on this, see this website.) But the evidence is compelling.

In the article, Michnik implored everyone living in the 50s, 60s and 70s in Poland to look back and accept responsibility at the very least for the ignorance that was ours during this period – ignorance about our present and about our past.

It seems so much of this still has application, here, everywhere. Because we still live as if we know, even though we know and understand little. We act as though we are moral and just whereas oftentimes we’re neither. We don’t waffle, we don’t admit to errors, we don’t search out new evidence. And we don’t accept responsibility for our ignorance. We don’t even recognize it as such.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. It’s been weighing on me.

What my mother thinks I should know about

My Berkeley clipping service (aka my 80 year old mother) sent me a thick batch of newspaper articles this week. Among other items I find a piece on Sedaris (that makes sense – he is the hot author of the moment and my clipper wants to make sure I’m up on the new literary icons), an article from the Sunday Times on Warsaw (even though she knows I get the Sunday Times, so how could I have possibly missed it?), a piece on the Bush daughters and Chris Heinz (she is of the generation that loved tracking political families), and then the following two cuttings:


important information 

On the left, you see a new design for a Vodka bottle. On the right is a woman dressed in some youthful garb (it comes with the scribbled note ‘funki clothes from S.F. boutique’). What hint is there in this? That I am too conventional? Or that I live in a part of the country where people would not have the imagination to dress in this way? Or, oh my God, that this is the new style of clothing that she has come to adopt for herself? And the Vodka bottle – I don’t much care for Vodka, but it is Polish after all. Should I buy it? Praise it? Show it off to others? Looks like a perfume bottle to me… What was my mother thinking?

Weblog, not wobble, wabble, bulg or bloop

This morning I went for a long, wet, buggy (there's no escaping it) walk with a friend whom I hadn’t seen for many months. In catching up with our lives, I naturally felt compelled to tell her about blogging. ‘What’s that?’ she asks. And so I describe it in the usual manner: I explain what it is NOT. No, it’s not a journal. No, I never skip a day. No, no, I am the sole author of it, no one else weighs in. Though they do in other blogs. Sometimes. And so on.

Why is it that Merriam-Webster online offers so little help here? Look up ‘weblog’ and you’ll be redirected to wobbling or wabbling. For ‘blog’ you may be told to switch the spelling to blob or bloop. Wonderful.

How is it that such a vast majority of the computer-using public knows nothing of blogging? Trends emerge, some disappear of course, but typically there is great fanfare surrounding them. Clothes, gadgets, we KNOW what’s capturing the collective imagination. Bloggers, on the other hand, reside in a self-sustaining world. Sometimes I forget how contained within our own circle of readers we really are.

So many books, so what…

If it rains, then coffee shops fill and you have to look creatively for a spot to sit. At Border’s I found myself by a stack of books that I typically wouldn’t seek out. One volume in particular caused me to put my work down. This text, “Genius Moves,” explores icons of graphic design. I spent a good bit of time looking at the page where the letter “O” is used in designing ads (for example, in this one, promoting Women’s Day magazine):



…As well as at the page where the authors remind us of the power of the pointing finger. I like the way that the guilt inducing visual graphic here crosses all continents. Whether it’s Uncle Sam or the Red Army, the message is clear, they want YOU to join up.



Okay, those were the books in front of me. On my left, I have “Full Catastrophe Living” and on my right I see several shelves of intelligence and espionage narratives.

I can’t come back to this spot. How do you reconcile the search for stress reducers, with the need for lies and deception used ostensibly to attain a political equilibrium, and then read about the machinations that lay down guilt-trips so that you’ll purchase something, or worse, commit an entire life to a concept?

Forget this place. Next time I’m back with the cinnamon buns, scones and biscotti at the coffee shop. If I stand over someone long enough and point a menacing finger, maybe it’ll guilt trip them into relinquishing a seat. Eventually.

That Polish Spirit

In a recent (and as is typically the case for this blogger, both funny and sagacious) JFW post I am referred to as having the old Polish make-do?-can do!-spirit. Well yes, true enough. I tend toward the belief that if you poke that stick around the riverbank, you’ll let loose a stream of inspiring possibilities, all within reach, just a tweak here and you got it! You’re coasting! Yes, even if you're stumbling, it’s all doable, yes yes, no need to hold back!

But that spirit is embedded in an equally Polish trait: we are a contemplative lot. We take our promenades through parks and forests seriously. We know how to search out moments of calm. Here’s mine, learned at an early age (though what’s with the two fingers? must I always invent my own convention?).

Lobsters

I read today (Gourmet Magazine, May issue) that it is now illegal to kill lobsters in Reggio Emilia, Italy, by thrusting them headfirst into a pan of boiling water (a regulation to that effect was passed this March and it holds true for both the home cook and the restauranteur).

I hate cooking lobsters because it is the only food preparation that requires me to actively participate in causing a living thing to cease living under my guidance. I tell myself that the lobsters are living an existence in their tanks that has to be tantamount to hell, but it is a small comfort.

Still, I have long reconciled myself to not being a vegetarian. But I am a meat-fish eating person who wants the food I consume to be treated in a humane manner prior to my consumption of it (absurd? Maybe, but I am absolutely committed to this) and so I eat only free range poultry and meats and I avoid farmed salmon unless I know it’s farmed in ways that are in accordance with principles of sustainable fishery practices.

So where does this put me with lobsters? Do we KNOW that it is less humane to plunge them into the pot headfirst? If so, I will stop doing this immediately (on the rare, rare occasion that I cook lobsters). But what is the more humane alternative? Should I ask the governing officials of Reggio Emilia? Does it matter that they are a landlocked municipality? How is it that they deal with their pork and poultry?

Ah, the Italians! So often they govern with their hearts! Consistencies be damned.

It’s good to move things around every once in a while

Another round of applause for the talented Mr. F who can now do blog template tricks efficiently and well. Redecorating the blog has never been easier. Especially for me, who has done little beyond issuing directives. Sometimes it’s good to know nothing about something.

Conformity

Is it every girl’s wish here to be like the others? I just read a student blog that made me go back to this and think more about the pressure to conform. Because in truth, I do not remember this about my own past. My best recollection is that I was not bothered by my Polishness here (even at the height of the Cold War period and even though it meant that I came from a very poor country), about my years of spunk-verging-on-tom-boyishness, about my non-Catholicism back in Poland, etc. I’m still not particularly bothered by being outside of the mainstream in a number of my daily orbits. It may strike some as odd that I moonlight in a restaurant or write mini-essays in a blog (which does not aspire to be a blawg) or think it cool to clean my own gutters and watch cheesemakers form perfect rounds of Camembert or to hang out with people that are age-wise or otherwise different from me, like, for example students (with whom I have pretty much nothing in common) from the conversation class at the Kanzaki Cultural Center in Japan. I don’t aspire to oddities but I certainly don’t run from them.

Yet, sometimes I wonder if I am completely honest here. Because I do notice differences. For instance, in the last week of first grade (in my Polish elementary school), the girls were told to come to school dressed as fairies and princesses for an end-of-year celebration. My mother was not one to indulge little fantasies of gauze and petticoats and so she told me to just wear my best dress. Let me not count the number of ways in which I stand out in this photo (down to the odd way that I am holding onto my skirt). On the other hand, I do not recall being bothered at the time.



Sometimes I think there is a funny reversal of attitudes toward conformity here and in the Poland of my youth. Here, the preoccupation with individual rights is completely evident at every juncture (whereas in Poland, the collective good was, of course, at the forefront of political discourse). On the other hand, I notice that the vast majority of kids fight individuality and favor conformity all the way through their growing years in the States. To stand out appears to be the kiss of death. Only if you feel yourself to be beyond hope do you then jump ship and begin to intensely accentuate your strangeness.

I can’t say that I remember this to be the case in my Polish environment. It’s as if our collective conscience was saturated and we privately valued independence and uniqueness. Kids (yes, even girls) that stood out in high school because of their smartness or talents or peculiar backgrounds or interests weren’t shunned for it (I’m going to exempt religious diversity from this gross generalization – the specter of anti-Semitism in post-war Poland is a topic I intend to address in a later blog).

Even at the very basic level of appearance, tolerance for the odd was high (for instance, I had several years of skin issues that would cause anyone here angst to the max yet I was extremely socially active; friends had body odor since levels of hygiene were mixed and deodorants were unavailable; others had lousy clothes; one girl was extraordinarily obese for medical reasons yet for a long time she dated one of the hot guys in our class and btw, he was ‘hot’ even though he stuttered).

My high school had some of the more together students as it was right in the city center and many families living there had deep urban roots with an above-average commitment to education. Yet, perhaps at a deeper level, we all understood ourselves to be losers as well (Poland is a country with one huge complex, broken down into a thousand other, smaller complexes) and so our empathy for the tainted trait in another was high.

As for our forays into the world of nonconformity -- perhaps our similarities bored us and our streaks of individuality provided an excitement and a diversion. It was not a bad way to move through adolescence.

This week means graduation for all of Madison’s high school seniors. Such privileged students they are compared to my Polish peers from the class of 1969 (that would be 35 years ago: gulp..)! But really, I can’t say that we had the rougher go of it. We were bonded, down to the last misfit in our class. Is there a better way to survive the school years?

It was so warm today...

...that you just wanted to wrap yourself around a tree and collapse.

Conversation from earlier in the day

kr (kind reader): Why wont you go with us to the Simon & Garfunkel concert in Milwaukee? I thought you liked Simon & Gurfunkel.
nc: I do like them. I just don’t like concert crowds.

kr: Wait a minute! Didn’t you say you enjoyed Lilith Fair? Dar Williams? Indigo Girls? Didn’t I read something here about you and the Rolling Stones?
nc: That was then. Now, transport all that music, any music for that matter, into a nice atmospheric café or music club and you’ll find me there. But not at a mass concert that draws millions.

kr: You are inconsistent! You say you like to be around people. You talk all the time about looking for communities of people!
nc: I mean by that a manageable group of people, the numbers of which don’t tax my counting capabilities.

kr: But you go to non-pop music concerts in large halls..
nc: It’s civilized in those halls. Sometimes too civilized. As in fall-asleep-civilized. But civilized nonetheless. At pop music concerts I feel everyone is poised to attack – the singers, each other, anything in the line of fire.

kr: You never struck me as the nervous nor the quiet type.
nc: Correct, I am neither. But those places can be TOO LOUD and that can make me NERVOUS.

kr: You have again managed to make so sense.

Uttering something in a “bombastic declamatory fashion”

I don't think I am much of ranter. I know, you’re supposed to rant on blogs. Everyone does it: I read funny rants and serious rants, rants about spelling, about politics, about cigarette smoke, about verbose cab drivers, about life. Yet, I find myself sidestepping this form of blogging. It’s as if I can’t get into the swing of it, which is a shame because reading a rant is inherently more provocative and funny than reading a description of something without the sting of a critical edge.

Maybe I like the idea of this blog being more like the French film without plot, the character development without the slap, the stick that pokes around the tall reeds that grow at the riverbank rather than poking at the ribs of some hapless erring idiot. If there is zest to be found, it wont be because I’ll have swung out at the multitude of things that can (and do) annoy in the course of the day.

Still, may I make an exception?

WOULD WISCONSINITES PLEASE TURN DOWN THE AIR CONDITIONING IN PUBLIC PLACES? Yes yes, it’s warm today, nice in fact, toasty (REMEMBER WINTER??) , a bit steamy, so alright, yes, turn it on, turn it on,BUT NOT SO THAT PEOPLE ARE WEARING SWEATERS AND WOOLY SOCKS INSIDE!!

Oh, how I dislike this side of the ocean’s love affair with the AC unit! The close-the-windows attitude of shutting out air, putting a halt to the outside breeze that is so gentle and sweet and summery. We sit in chilled restaurants, shop in frigid stores, all of it COLD, really cold, as in I-am-soon-going-to-have-to-pack-up-my-belongings-and-get-out-of-here cold.

Please, let the summer work its warm charm. It all comes to an end soon enough.

Okay, now to get my stick back into the gullies and the riverbanks.

A Very Long Post On How Camp Can Make You Leaner and Meaner

A neighbor is sending his daughter off to camp next week. Camp. I went to camp four times during my childhood. They all get mixed reviews. What could I eek out of each experience?

1. Camp Robinson Crusoe: My first camp was thrust upon me when I was freshly on the shores of this country. I’d just turned 8 and was sent off, along with my sister, for the entire two month period. My sister balked. She was sure my parents were dumping us so that they could enjoy romantic clambakes on some Cape Cod beach without us. Give me a break, my mother is so not the romantic type.

Why were we sent there then? New Yorkers are always looking for ways to off-load their kids to places with ‘fresh air.’ And, my parents were anxious for us to get our English speaking skills up and running. Why that particular camp? I’m sure they heard somewhere that it was liberal enough to be generally accepting of Commie kids.

You could say that I got into the spirit of things at camp. I was so active that the counselors worried I would return scrawny-looking and so I was put on a regimen of double milkshakes, force-fed daily in the infirmary. Milkshakes in the clinical setting don’t taste as good as, say, at an ice cream shop, especially when a stern camp nurse (didn't any of them read Cherry Ames books and pick up tips on how to cultivate the saccharine side of the profession?) is staring at you to make sure you finish every last drop. And you have to wonder what else they put into it – maybe a dose of cod liver oil, that era’s dreaded cure for all kid ills.

2. Kolonjia Ruskaja: My second camp experience came several years later, when I was 10, still living in New York. My parents thought I needed to learn Russian and so I was sent to a camp run by the Russian Delegation to the UN. Several hundred Russian kids, squeezed into a compound somewhere on Long Island.

What I learned in Russian camp:
- I learned to count up to 19 in Russian (because in the morning line-up, which was according to height, I was always number 19. After shouting out “dzievietnatsat!” I could basically tune out).
- I learned to say SPA-SI-BA (thank you) very loudly because if you got up in the dining hall and shouted out ‘spasiba,’ you could retire to the dormitory room (each room with 20 beds, all in a row) for ‘naptime,’ even if you didn’t finish the godawful food.
- I learned something else – this from the one other Polish child at the camp. Oh, this girl was way ahead of me in her vocabulary. With my freshly expanded word-base, I returned home and said to my sister: “get your f***ing feet off my chair!” My parents’ idea of discipline was in line with the early 60s: swift, irrational, no Qs asked, no explanation given: no TV for a month and no more visits with the poor Polish kid who had, after all, only wanted to introduce me to the ways of the world. At least I escaped the slap on the behind – another 60s favorite.

3. Camp McDonald: My third camp experience was two years later, at a YMCA camp in New Jersey. There I learned that girls in the ‘tweens can be mean. What they did to each other was beyond the beyond. Still, chocking down fistfuls of candy late at night was great fun, as were the lethargic horses that we could ‘ride’ and the murky pond we could ‘swim’ in during the day.

4. Kolonia Mlodzierzy Katolickiej: My fourth camp experience was back in Poland. I was then 16, and the love of my life (or so I thought, for far too long a period of time) was trying to get me to understand his relationship to God and the Catholic church and so he convinced me to go with him to a teen camp for Catholics. What did I get out that experience?
- I witnessed what today could land the priest in charge in jail on child molestation charges.
- I did not learn a lot about my boyfriend’s relationship to God, possibly because I was far more interested in cultivating his relationship to me, so the church part was a wasted effort.
- The camp also confirmed my minority status in Poland: as I was the only non-Catholic there, I was always asked to mind the tents while everyone went into the woods to pray, sing and do all sorts of Catholic camp type things. [Though I did conspire with a friend to sneak off one very early morning so that we could watch the first shots of the American moon-landing on some village community center TV. Awesome (especially the sneaking off part).]

La la la la la la, it’s a small, small world.

I looked at Ann’s blog photos from NYC (you MUST check them out here) and I couldn’t believe it. There’s a shot from her hotel window. Oh, oh, now doesn’t that look familiar! I could not mistake that view. That is a photo that, if curved slightly to the other side, could be labeled: “Nina’s view from her window when she moved back to the States in the middle of her college years.”

The next obvious question is how could a college student from an Eastern European country afford a view that looked out on Fifth Ave. and the Metropolitan Museum of Art? The answer -- I was taken in by the S’bergers (I feel pseudo-protective of their privacy) of NY Times fame to look after their daughter and work as an ‘au pair’ for the family in exchange for room, board and college expenses. I did this for two summers and the months in and around. Clearly they could afford a Fifth Ave apartment.

Why was I lucky enough to land in this terrific position? Simple. I had 3 basic qualities that got me far: I was energetic, I loved kids, and I belonged to the .00001% of college students that came out of the 60s and had no interest in drugs (reminder: I did come out of the Polish college scene).

So there I spent my college years, looking out the window at the steps to the Museum feeling oftentimes that the world was too big, too cold and too strange a place to call home. But the S’bergers were wonderful and their daughter was the sweetest kid on the planet – outdone only by two other sweet girls that I got to know even better. Much later.

Labels

Who can forget these? The Great Communicator. The Teflon President. The 9 to 5 President. The Gipper. A Made-for-Television President. Author of Reaganomics and the Reagan Doctrine and Star Wars.

Quote of the day from the NYT and IHT (attributed to Former Speaker of the US House of Representatives “Tip” O’Neill):
"I've known every president since Harry Truman and there's no question in my mind that Ronald Reagan was the worst. But he would have made a hell of a king."

The Revenge of the Killer Bugs

It came a month too early this year: my turning a back toward the little Giverny that is my yard. Why? Why? Why walk away when colors like this are just beginning to take hold?


la vie en rose 


evening primrose 

I’ll tell you why. It’s the bugs. Bad enough that a walk through the Arboretum yesterday felt like I was battling the insects and reptiles of a steamy Amazon jungle (yes, turtles in the path, flying arthropods colliding with me at every turn). But worse, here at home, I woke up to that telltale buzz in the ear. Odd, I thought. There are brand new windows everywhere and I just installed the screens for the summer season.

This morning, I look up at the kitchen ceiling and I see that we are at war and I am outnumbered. Twenty of them, one of me. Not only that, but these guys fly with super speed.

My conclusion: just as new, hardier strains of bacteria have evolved in response to antibiotics, so, too, there are now new strains of mosquitoes that are screen-resistant. They are able to downsize their bodies to fit through even the fine mesh of new Pella window screens. And they fly faster than the swat of a human hand.

I have no great desire to be out there among the foliage flapping at bugs around me. Am I giving up too soon? I am not entirely abandoning everything, I am just stepping aside and taking stock, assessing the maliciousness of their intent and the strength of their battalion.

More reader comments…

A reader not favorably inclined toward blogs wrote the following email yesterday:
“your blog (appears to) overshadow(s) too much else…” I take that to suggest a certain amount of excessiveness.

I feel compelled to respond: true, yesterday’s post cost me several hours of frustration. So that I was blog-occupied for the better part of the late afternoon (rather than training for a marathon like a friend was, or cutting the lawn like my neighbor).

I have always imagined that some would be inclined to scribble two words on my tombstone should necessity force that circumstance: “too much.” Then, on the less visible, external side some would prefer to write “too little.” When the time came, a line of mourners would form (presumptuous of me to think that perhaps) and walk by the “too much” side and nod their heads in agreement – “yes, she traveled too much” (recalling especially my graduate school years and perhaps more recent times), “..emailed too much” (no comment needed here), “frolicked with the children too much” and “..blogged too much” (a new 2004 addition), etc. On the other side, another (smaller?) line would form -- a trail of mourners who would recognize the other two words. Nodding their heads they would say “yes, she slept too little” and “worried too little” and “followed the straight and narrow too little.”

Wherein lies the truth? It depends on the mourners as much as on the mourned, doesn’t it? Their “too much” may well be my “not enough.”

Reader Comments

Thanks to the reader who suggested adding the CD “Story of Chanson” to a list of these French classics. I myself also like “Paris After Dark.” But what is really terrific about the “French Café” CD I wrote of in yesterday’s post is that the songs are fresh. I’d not heard any of them before. But all these CDs are worth their weight in French gold.

And, to the reader who admitted to not reading the bill board correctly either – thank you as well. That makes two dummies who aren’t ashamed to recognize human frailty.

Finally, to the reader who is now inspired to start a family blog – yeah, go for it. Can’t wait to see the sparks fly as Uncle Joe admits to not really liking Aunt Minnie’s mashed potatoes and little Lucie ‘fesses up to having gone out for a puff at the curbside rather than sitting through another boring class of English Composition. And it’s not only the revelations that are potentially interesting. I find that people do not like being described by others in a blog (unless it is in a string of complements). They are always wanting to make corrections. So, my pal, do let me know how your family-togetherness-through-the-blog idea works out.

My Stupidity is no Longer in Question, it is a Given.

Q: Why did it take you so long to post something to your blog today?

A: I am so mad. I do not even want to answer that. Okay, briefly: the new Blogger photo program creates a new post with each photo you submit. So, any fool would understand that if you post 11 photos, they will appear on your blog from the last, meaning most recent one you submitted to the first of the bunch. As will your text. Anyone who may have been cruising around blogs in the recent hour and happened to come across ‘Oceans,’ would have had the pleasure of reading my blog backwards. To correct this, I had to go back and delete one file at a time, while saving the text into the original file. And republish everything at each step. It took FOREVER. I wont even bother explaining why the photos are on the small size. Retrofitting photos that are already on the blog would take, under the spiffy new Blogger program, even more time. Not worth it not worth it not worth it! If I never see another one of those 11 Market photos from today again, I will not be unhappy (a triple negative for emphasis).

Market Watch

Today was a classic! The sun brought out thousands, thus it was fortuitous that I started my L’Etoile foraging early.

The Madison market succeeds for many reasons. One is that it is scenically located around the Capitol and there are enough stalls to make it worth your while to go downtown. And, the farmers are there themselves, with the commitment and earnestness that displays their passion for their work. Felix, the renegade Swiss businessman started making goat feta a couple of years back. This week he is introducing his goat milk ice cream – it’s fantastic, worthy of his enthusiasm and that’s saying a lot. Rainbow’s End herb growers are giving us lime thyme – if you taste it, you get an immediate bite of lime followed by the savor of thyme. Blue Valley’s asparagus is exceptionally flavorful and they are so proud of it. They have an old woman who has been trimming it for them for years – she shows up each year and reclaims the cutting blades. Kim from JehnAire Farms has a handful of recipes to distribute along with her chickens. Anne at Fantome speaks of her young goats as if they were her kids. Yes, okay, that was lame, but if you talk to the farmers, it is like that: each has a story and a new idea for the season ahead.

By comparison, I read recently that the Green Market in New York is floundering. The sellers show up with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, knowing nothing of the foods they are attempting to sell. Discarded produce rots at the side. The visual impact is strong. You don’t enjoy being there. It is just another grocery store without a roof.

Today’s sunshine added new light and glimmer to the foods.
The jars of honey had a jeweled amber glow:


sunny honey 

Even the radishes looked sunbeamy bright:


bright radishes 

And the gourds danced in buoyant celebration:


dancing gourds 

Of course, the flowers now are extraordinary. I am limiting photos here, but it is hard because the colors are just so intense that you want to preserve them forever:


blue and purple 


poppies 

For one seller, there could never be enough displays of flowers:


hairstyle of the day 

…Though the colors are everywhere in the Market, not only in the blooms. The sheeps’ milk camembert rounds look milky white against the blue basket:


blue and white 

What’s new this week? The strawberries are now appearing in numerous places, and for the first time, I see the baby potatoes:


dozens of new babies 

Back at L’Etoile, the bakers can hardly keep pace with the lines outside. Here, Olga is putting the finishing touch on the sweet apple croissants:


the final step 

Outside, the drummers bang out the happy rhythm of the day:


energy 

And an off-the-square vendor lures buyers to invest in Madison-like clothes for the young:


peace 

It really is a brilliant day. I did not mind making 6 trips around the Square with the L’Etoile wagon. I could have done a dozen more.

Chanson

Nostalgic yet progressive. Diverse, creative and multicultural. Gipsy jazz and musette. Rich in poetry, satire, drama and emotion. The example of Edith Piaf. Born and raised in the cafes and music halls of France. These are words used to describe French chanson. The best compilation I’ve come across thus far is in the Putumayo recording entitled “French Café.”

I am listening to it constantly. Interspersed with a reader’s recommendation of Martina McBride’s “How Far” – an extremely sad song for me, for the lyrics alone. I should add a Polish retro recording, like “Yellow Calendars,” by Szczepanik (so, you Americans out there, how do you pronounce THAT, huh?) and also “the Peace of the Prarie” (only one reader could possibly get the inclusion of this) but my cup at this point runneth over.