Wordless Wednesday 16

My Paris

The Paris I visit immediately becomes my own.

No other city takes hold of me and makes me feel a part of it the way Paris does.

Every time I have been to la capitale -- including one-day trips for work this year -- I feel at home there.

Is it me, or is it Paris?

It's been almost one week since I got back, and I'm still trying to decide.

There and back

My five-day trip to Paris was rich in memories, exciting new experiences, and thoughts of what used to be... what is...and what could have been...

It will certainly provide me with plenty of blogging material to take you away from the French countryside for a while.

For now, though, it's time to catch up with everything and face up to a number of things. But I'll post more as soon as I can!

In the meantime, here's proof that my trip took place, and that I am overcoming my acrophobia.

Good-bye to all that

(Click on photo to enlarge)

See you later, laundry.

Ciao, cooking and cleaning.

A plus tard, working hard.

Tomorrow night I'll be at the Rodez train station, settling into a sleeper compartment with one of my daughters and two of her friends.

We'll wake up in Paris for five days of culture, fun, shopping, mouse ears and grandeur.

Salut!

Shut down, emptied out

I started a ten-day vacation this afternoon.


I should be elated, but instead I feel shut down and emptied out.


I suppose that in itself is a sign I need a vacation...

Rodez by dusk

It feels like night, but the changing dusky blue sky reminds us it isn't...

quite yet...

(This post has been submitted to this week's Sunday Scribblings collection: The Photograph.)

Wordless Wednesday 15

The Undisputed Truth

Poor smiling face.

You got left out of last weekend's smiling faces fest because nobody has bothered to deck your window out with red paint.

But as a consolation prize, you can help me reveal the answer to the trivia question embedded in that blog post:

"Who made the song "Smiling Faces Sometimes" a hit?"

In asking that question I was, of course, confronted with the fact that a lot of my readers are too young to remember that song. Never mind. If you had your transistor radio turned on every night in your room in 1971, you know it. So I'm talking to you. Can you dig it?

Originally recorded by The Temptations, the song became a number 3 pop chart hit in 1971 re-recorded by the little-known "psychadelic soul" act "The Undisputed Truth."

Despite the veracity of their name, The Undisputed Truth never made it back into the Top 4O. In a strange twist of fate, they were the ones who first recorded "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" in 1972. Their recording of the song hit a modest #62, but it was re-recorded shortly thereafter by guess who: The Temptations. That version reached number one on the pop charts and is considered an all-time soul music classic.

One of my commenters mentioned that "Smiling Faces Sometimes" used to scare her when she was a kid. She may get scared even now if she watches this:

Wordless Wednesday 14

(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau. Click on image to enlarge.)

Smiling Faces

"Smiling faces sometimes pretend to be your friend:

Smiling faces show no traces of the evil that lurks within:

Smiling faces, smiling faces sometimes they don't tell the truth, uh:

Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies and I got proof:"

The lyrics are an extract from the song "Smiling Faces" by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong.

No links provided because here's a fun trivia question instead:

Who made this song a hit?

Obviously, no online research allowed!

Room with a view

It's probably been quite some time since anybody checked out the view from this window. But someone who went up there now -- and you know how much I'd love to -- would be able to gaze down on this courtyard:

Astute observers will recognize the strange, run-down garden that I featured in my last Wordless Wednesday.

One can find plenty of similar sites in the South of France, but what especially intrigues me about this funny little yard is that it's right smack in the town center of Rodez...and clearly visible from a pedestrian street.

Yes, Rianna, those are probably rabbit coops in the back -- years ago, someone perked them up with a coat of Provençal blue paint, which actually isn't typical of Aveyron.

On the left, you can see what likely used to be "the facilities" -- as late as 1993, friends talked to me about homes that still had their "WC" outside the house, and I'm sure there are still plenty in the countryside all over France.

It's another funky little corner of Rodez that I'm sure will be gone one of these days.

Live in Paris; Read More?

In my ever-active mind, I have been bemoaning the fact that I don't read nearly as much as I used to. I was a huge reader in my pre-motherhood days, and even when my kids were small I managed to get through quite a few books since reading was about my only personal hobby.

Now between work, the house, cooking, driving my kids all over the place and yes, of course, the computer, the only time I find to read is right before going to sleep -- and if you're a busy parent, you know how long that lasts.

This year I have had the chance to go to Paris a few times for work, and was impressed by how many people I saw reading in the metro and RER. As you can see above, there are even poems posted in the trains just in case you don't have anything to read on you -- how Parisian!

When I'm in Olympia for the summer, even though there's no subway, I often see people carrying around books in order to devour a few pages if they find themselves with nothing constructive to do. And I've realized that here in Aveyron, I never see people dragging books around to read on the bus, in cafés, or in doctors' waiting rooms. I wonder why that is?

I'm not saying people don't read here. Au contraire! The main local bookstore does a booming business, as a recent article in Télérama points out:

La Maison du livre,avec son fonds sans défaut (30 000 titres) et ses conseils avisés, dégage un chiffre d’affaires annuel de 3,5 millions d’euros, qui, rapporté aux 272 000 habitants du dépar­te­ment, en fait une des librairies les plus dynamiques de France.

But reading seems to remain a private activity here, carried out in the
confines of readers' homes.

What's the "reading in public" situation where you live?

Wordless Wednesday 14

Retour de saison

After an unseasonably warm and dry February, winter made a comeback last week.

My daughters found themselves sprinkled with snow as they went back to school after the two-week winter holiday; my colleagues and I all bundled up at work as suddenly the heating system didn't quite keep us warm enough.


I've experienced this retour de saison many times in March. Just two years ago, it was also snowing during the first week of the month. And last year we fretted about making it up to Clermont-Ferrand to see Michel Polnareff in concert because it was snowing all over the area on March 19th.

I also remember one year when we had a huge snowfall on Easter Monday -- about a foot here in the Rodez area and at least three feet on the Aubrac mountains.

Winter lingers in Aveyron.

(Photos courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

Wordless Wednesday 13

Montpellier under a different light

While many families are off skiing, my daughters and I often take advantage of a day or two of their two-week February holiday to enjoy shopping, sun and cinema in Montpellier.

It is exhilarating to cross the Millau viaduct, sense the dreary isolation of the Larzac plateau, descend the precipitous and infamous pas de l'Esacalette, and suddenly find ourselves surrounded by vinyards and glorious warmth.

This year was the first time that the weather didn't play the game, which allowed us to discover Montpellier under a new light:

We hadn't come for shades of black and beige, but the tones left us with a new impression of the city.

Wordful Wednesday

I can't quite remember the exact chain of events, but somehow my post about love letters on And So Forth turned into a request to Randal, from me, for a poem...

Le voilà (the link is mine):

Thither and yon through electrons we roam,
exchanging words in the shortest of lines,
you in a land flush with the richest vines
and I in a place that you once called home.

This strained verse is but a miniature tome
painting impressions in vain; all these signs
of the passage of time, kneel at the shrines
of the new; no lost letters on the foam.

A gentle request made; but what to say?
That I purloined a photograph one day?
Nay, a thing as eternal as the sea,

a feeling stronger than the swords of old,
more valuable than the king's store of gold;
the fortune to call someone mon amie.

A moment of sheer blogosphere magic, don't you agree?

The Underside of Renovation

La Belette Rouge pointed out in a comment on my post about the changes taking place on the Rue Béteille:

"Your posts have featured a lot of change and construction lately. There's this post and the tractor (loved that picture). Are you in a mood of renovation?"

I am in anything but a mood of renovation (although I know someone who is -- or at least had better be.)

I watch, intrigued, as icons of Rodez's past move into the 21st century.

My first photo shoot of the changes taking place at the Hôtel Broussy gave a general idea of this major modification, but two months later I had to return to snap images of the grey underbelly of change.

This time a worker came up to talk to me. He was rightly curious as to why I was photographing this:

-Vous prenez des photos de ça?

-Oui, je trouve ça fascinant...

-Pour vous peut-être -- pas pour nous!

-Je veux bien vous croire...avec le froid qu'il fait...

-On espère juste qu'il tient le choc!

Wordless Wednesday 12 -- None of My Own Words, Anyway

Love emails, anyone? Everyone?

I didn't get around to writing a Valentine's Day post, but today this article culled from my favorites got me thinking about how much Internet communication has certainly changed long-distance relationships.

I've written a longer post about it here, full of indiscreet questions that I'm sure some of you could answer...if you're game...