Lo Vedo Life

My dad’s garage

A man and his garage

During their married life, my parents lived in two houses, and in each of them the garage was my father’s man cave. It was where he went to tinker, which he was remarkably good at. He solved many a household problem, even when the rest of us weren’t aware there was a problem. He’d go out to the garage and sketch one or two possible solutions, and then spend a great deal of time crafting this or that object, using whatever he could find to make the perfect gizmo.

While Dad was a good problem-solver and creative thinker, he was not the most organized guy on the block. Added to that, he was a child of the Depression, and like a great many Americans of that era, Dad simply could not bring himself to discard anything that might one day in the future have a remote possibility of being the tiniest bit useful. Bits of wire, a mind-boggling array of wrenches and hex keys, a great many items that had been torn, broken or moth-eaten, long-empty bottles of various garage-oriented fluids: he had in mind that someday, any one of these items could be the exact thing he would need to make a repair or to create something wholly new. He also had a pretty good idea of where everything was and could find what he needed almost immediately, even if he hadn’t laid eyes on it in years. Nowadays we call it hoarding, but I know some ranchers who call it the original form of recycling.

June in the garrigue

What’s a garrigue?

I live in the garrigue of southern France. If you stand on a Mediterranean beach near the city of Narbonne and move north, you’ll pass through flat and fertile river land before arriving in my regional garrigue. It’s a rough, rocky, hilly terrain that marks the transition from flat farmland to the low mountains of the Haute Languedoc region.

The garrigue is terribly difficult to farm, but people have been trying for a few thousand years. This land is hilly, dry and rocky. It used to be covered by forests, but those were chopped down, first by the Greeks (who arrived in the 6th century B.C.) and then by the Romans, who established Narbonne in 118 B.C. They all used a lot of wood, and entire forests were wiped out during this period.

The wondrous quilts of Gee’s Bend

The early history

The slow brown river moves like molasses, twisting and turning its way through the state of Alabama. Eons ago, the Alabama River chose one particular spot to carve itself a nearly-complete circle, and the land inside that loop has long been a separate place, largely closed off from the rest of the world, an isolation often intensified by human intervention.

The place is called Gee’s Bend, named for the first white man to build himself a plantation here. Joseph Gee came here in 1816, bringing with him 18 African American slaves for his cotton plantation. The property was sold by Gee’s heirs in 1845 to settle a debt; a short time later the Pettway family arrived with 100 slaves. When slavery was abolished after the Civil War, many of the former slaves continued to work for the Pettways as sharecroppers.

Earth Day and a full moon

A few thoughts, a few photographs

I didn’t want to let this Earth Day slide past without at least a mention, a vote of confidence, a rousing voice from the cheering section.

Here in the South of France, we’ve had some perfect weather lately: warm during the day, cooler at night, with clear, crisp, fresh air. Air so clear that we’ve had several days with great views of the distant Pyrenees, still snow-capped. Yesterday I walked with my friends Maryse and Claude, all of us harvesting some thyme to dry and cook with during the coming year.

Today I celebrated Earth Day with a nice walk in the garrigue, the scrubby foothills just uphill from my house. There are a few photographs of Mother Nature’s handiwork, along with thoughts about this planet we call home.

Genghis Khan

A quick trip to Nantes

I had read about an exhibit on Genghis Khan, to be shown in the city of Nantes, and it seemed like an interesting thing to see. My friend Kitty is also a history buff, and we decided to make a short trip to see the show. Our flight touched down in time for dinner, and two days later we left on a mid-afternoon flight. It was a brief but wonderful getaway.

Rome

A February jaunt to Rome

A while back, I was talking with my friends Mark and Ro about visiting Rome together. They had spent the majority of their professional lives in the world of classical music, especially opera, and they have been known to take themselves off to this or that city in order to see one of their friends conduct an opera or a concert.

We talked about going to Rome together, and we finally made it happen in February. We saw their friend (and Ro’s former boss) conduct a concert there, and also had time for some excellent exploration. We all had lists of things we thought we’d like to do or see—or eat!—and we managed to check most items off the lists. Except—oops—I came home with a longer list than I’d left with.

Here’s the story of how we spent five lovely days in la Bella Roma.