Christmas: A Day of Hope

When I was a student at Jackson Street Elementary School, each year there were Christmas rituals, always the same. At the start of the holiday season, Miss Gotwals, our beloved art teacher (at least, she was mine), arrived with her box of thick colored chalks and, with a few swift strokes that never ceased to amaze me, she turned an entire blackboard into a field of bright reds and greens inhabited by Santa, his elves and eight tiny reindeer.

We also sang Christmas carols and made decorations, cutting Christmas trees or wreathes from green construction paper. We shared scissors to cut out ornaments from scraps of colored paper or tin foil. Then we pasted them on our trees with thick white glue that some of us liked to eat.

Finally, on the eve of our Christmas vacation, came the day we were all waiting for. Our teachers herded us into one big classroom, where we doubled or even tripled up on the benches of desks solidly welded to the floor. The room was dark, the green blinds were drawn. We chattered and giggled and, exceptionally, no teacher scolded or shushed us because Christmas was in the air.

At the back of the room, our principal, Mrs. Violet Davenport, was expertly winding celluloid film into the unwieldy, old-fashioned projector. Once that was done, she called us to order and we all fell silent: the show was about to begin.

Each year it was the same, the program never changed, but rather than bore us, this only increased our pleasure: two films from the early 1950's, with wooden puppets as actors who had the power to enchant us over and over again.

The first film was “The Night Before Christmas.” Because of it, I can still to this day recite a large part of “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” by Clement Moore. The second was a story of the Nativity. I remember the words because of the first film. For the second, it's the images that have stuck.

As I write, I can still see Mary sitting on a donkey, tottering along, with an unsteady Joseph leading the way. Watching them, I worried about them. They looked brittle, fragile, and oh-so-vulnerable. If danger were to strike—bandits or wild beasts roaming the hill country around Bethlehem, with their slow, jerky movements, they would be an easy prey.

“No room for them in the inn” provided another source of worry. In the summer, my family often spent a week in a motel in Wildwood. The weather was hot and muggy and I could imagine a night of sleeping on the beach. But what about in the dead of winter, with freezing temperatures and snow on the ground? That's what Mary and Joseph were up against.

Fortunately for them there was the manger, the bed of straw, the warmth of the animals, the first humble home of the infant Jesus. The shepherds too were ready to help. They may have contributed blankets, food or drink, any help that was asked.

That little film marked me, I might say, for life. It gave meaning to expressions like “homeless” or “no vacancy.” No room at the inn, no place to go. Apparently, for the French, there is no greater fear than this: to find themselves in the street or on the open road, without a home of their own.

Only last Sunday, walking from my apartment to the metro, I was stopped by a young man. In halting French, he asked me if I could help him, give him some money, so he could buy something to eat. He was a refugee, one of the many who fled to Paris after France's biggest illegal refugee camp in the port city of Calais was closed. He was cold and hungry and probably sleeping in the street with temperatures around freezing.

Near the village where I have my country home (Two homes! Two addresses! Imagine the luxury...), in a region where there are many vacant lodgings, refugees are housed in apartments and assisted by the Red Cross and volunteers.

In other regions of France, in the Valley of the Roya River, for example, a mountainous terrain that marks the border between France and Italy, citizens have come together to help refugees attempting to cross from Italy into France. Many of the migrants are minors, traveling alone, with families thousands of miles away in the Sudan or Eritrea.

Citizens of the beautiful, rugged Roya Valley, where snow can fall heavily at Christmas, could no longer bear to encounter the homeless, the isolated, some mere children, wandering alone. They put in place a sort of “underground railroad,” a network of “safe houses,” of citizens ready to feed and house the refugees, to take them to hospital if necessary, to aid them on their way.

I used to live in Nice, not so far from this region. I know the freshets that cut deep ravines in the mountain slopes as they rush towards the Mediterranean Sea; skies so blue as to be harsh; a burning winter sun that, once it disappears behind the mountains, leaves the earth frozen and cold. I wouldn't want to be wandering in those parts alone and without a home.

On December 2nd, Eric Ciotti, a member of the French National Assembly and President of the “département” of the Maritime Alps, where the Roya Valley is located, declared that those who help refugees are “delinquents.” Already on November 23rd, Pierre-Alain Mannoni, a university professor, was put on trial for having attempted to obtain hospital care for three of them. His crime, he says, is not against, but “for humanity.”

Today, many in France and in the US are putting up “no vacancy” signs. There is no room in the inn and if Mary and Joseph were seeking shelter, they might not find even a stable to lay their heads.

Yet, today is Christmas, a day of peace and goodwill towards all. It is also a day of hope as we remember the utter helplessness of a newborn child come to save the world.

In that spirit, I wish all my readers a merry Christmas and renewed hope for the new year.

YouTube link to “The Nativity”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM1UWUapOuo

Carpe diem (2)

Since Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States, for some, it's the best of times; for others, the worst.

Commentators, specialists and ordinary people are asking, "What's next?"

Who knows? Only time will tell.

That's why I write today, as I wrote a month ago: carpe diem, seize the day!

And that's just what I'm doing, sitting on a marble bench, surrounded by marble columns in a park in the very city that gave "la dolce vita," the art of living easy, to the world.

For the past few days I've been in Rome, walking, observing, learning from the Romans, who seem more concerned with friends and family than work or the state of the world.

In restaurants, even late in the evening, families dine with small children. As the meal progresses from antipasto to primo and secondo courses, on to salad, cheese and dessert, children are passed from the laps of parents to grandparents, to aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, and each time they are cradled with love.

I also observe how parents often stroke their children's cheeks, a frequent tactile assurance of their affection and care.

Friends too show each other affection. Girlfriends wrap their arms around each other's shoulders. Boys are not afraid to touch, because touching is simply the Roman way of showing that you care.

Romans also have their own way of behaving in churches. In God's house they meet to rest, relax or chat, as if it were an extension of their home and living room.

Commerce too is more relaxed. I entered a supermarket to buy a snack of taralli, doughnut-like crackers brushed with olive oil, a bottle of water, and an apple. When I arrived at the checkout, the cashier, a simple employee, charged me for the water and the crackers, but gave me the apple as a "regalo," a gift.

In public transportation, young people jump up to offer their seats to gray-haired ladies (like me), and people make eye contact with strangers and sometimes even smile. This kind of behavior is unheard of in the Paris underground.

In Rome, people get sick and die. Some are rich and some are poor. Some sleep in the streets or in makeshift tent cities beneath umbrella pines. The city has its homeless and its refugees; it has danger and violence as well.

Yet Rome is different. This is a city that has been around for nearly 3,000 years: first Romulus and Remus, then the Etruscans, then the glory that was Rome.

Yesterday I visited the Ara Pacis, an altar built by the Emperor Augustus to glorify himself and the peace and prosperity of his reign. Facing it stood an obelisk whose shadow, once a year, fell on the very center of the altar. This happened on September 23rd, the first day of autumn, the day Augustus was born, proof the gods had destined him for glory.

At that time, the time of Chirst's birth, Rome was a city of one million inhabitants and the Empire extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red and Black Seas.

By the fifth century, after the barbarian invasions, the population had dropped to about 25,000, that of Pottsville in its heyday.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the once-great capital of an empire was a sleepy city of 500,000, surrounded by pine groves and swampy valleys infested with mosquitoes that spread "Roman fever," a particularly virulent form of malaria.

A few decades earlier, in 1871, the city had become the capital of a newly united Italy, created in 1861. In 1911, to celebrate the first 50 years of its existence, Rome organized an International Exposition of the Arts. Each region of united Italy had its pavilion, with local art and folk traditions on display.

Today those collections are housed in the Museo Nazionale delle arti e tradizioni popolari, the National Museum of Folk Art. I am sitting on its steps to write, in a part of the city far from the historic center and Rome's most famous monuments.

Known as EUR, this district of Rome was a project of Mussolini, who chose the most talented architects of his day to build a new city meant to become the setting for the 1942 World's Fair.

The fair never took place. World War II got in the way. Mussolini, the Duce, leader of Italy's National Fascist Party, never finished his grandiose project and died on April 28,1945, executed by a firing squad.

In Italy, leaders, governments, kingdoms and empires come and go. Carpe diem. The people, their art and traditions, remain, still as alive today as thousands of years ago.

Across from the museum of folk art, in another white-columned building, is the Museum of the Early Middle Ages. Its collections document Roman art and culture from the fall of the empire to the year 1000, a collection unique in Italy.

On a Saturday afternoon in late November, I am all alone in this museum, as I was in the museum of folk art.

When I leave, the cashier, the museum's guard, and an office employee are taking a coffee break. They invite me to join them. Carpe diem. I tasted the best coffee I've had in Rome.

Today the sun is shining. Yesterday the air was heavy with rain. A thunderstorm broke around midnight. The rest of the night was calm.

Before dawn, in the pine trees outside my window, a nightingale began to sing. I've rarely heard this mythic bird's song, but thanks to my English friend Libby, I know how to recognize its call. And with John Keats and the Romans I can say:

"The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown."

Carpe diem: seize the day in difficult times

Early this morning, listening to the news on the radio I said to myself that war is at the portals of Europe: a new offensive is underway against ISIS in Libya, a country less than 300 miles from Italy; Russia continues to bomb Aleppo in Syria, a mere 750 miles from Athens, Greece.

Other battles rage in the Middle East: American troops have joined Kurds, Turks and the Iraqi army to chase ISIS from Mosul, a city with over one million inhabitants. In a civil war that kills mostly civilians, Saudi Arabia fights alongside the currently ruling power in Yemen at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

And before winter sets in, refugees ready to risk their lives continue to board leaky vessels and sail the Mediterranean Sea. In Greece and Italy, the bodies of those who have drowned continue to wash up on the shore.

That’s a lot of war, suffering, destruction and death.

In France, “Plan Vigipirate” has become a part of our daily lives. It is a government program to fight against terrorism first put into place in 1978 in response to terrorist attacks in France and Europe at that time.

Since January 2015, marked by two deadly attacks in Paris, we also live with “Opération Sentinelle,” which has mobilized 10,000 French soldiers to patrol sensitive points throughout the country. In the Paris region alone, 6,000 soldiers walk the streets with their assault rifles slung over their shoulders, barrel usually (but not always) pointed to the ground.

In the town where I take the train to travel back to Paris from the country, Nogent le Rotrou, whose population is about that of Pottsville, I sometimes see soldiers patrolling the avenue that leads from the train station to the center of town. Very serious, they stare straight ahead, avoiding eye contact with the locals who wonder about the reasons for such a military presence in their town.

France also has its refugee problem. On October 24th, French authorities evacuated its biggest refugee camp located near the English Channel. Built by the refugees themselves, it is a sprawling shanty town on the outskirts of the port of Calais. In existence since 2002, this tent-city known as “la jungle” sprouted up when the French government closed an official camp nearby. It has recently been home to close to 10,000 refugees.

Between 6,500 and 8,000 are being willingly transferred to other towns throughout France. In some places, such as the city of Béziers, a few miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea, the mayor and some citizens are trying to keep them out.

Earlier this month, on October 13, the Catholic Bishops of France released a new document encouraging the French people to “rediscover the meaning of politics.” They call for a “new social contract” that would “accept cultural differences” so that people of all backgrounds and religions could learn to live together in a more generous spirit than the one that currently prevails in France.

Making no apologies for terrorism, the bishops point out that contemporary French society is failing to integrate the children and grandchildren of immigrants. They also emphasize that for the past 30 years, France’s number one problem is its high unemployment. In certain neighborhoods home to those the French call the “immigrant population,” it can rise to over 25% of those able and willing to work.

Finally, the bishops characterize the French as “anxious and on edge,” claiming that “sadness” pervades French society today.

Yet, and this is the mystery of life, despite the sorry state of the world, the wars, the threats, the dangers, the depths to which politics has sunk on both sides of the Atlantic, the endemic unemployment in France, I don’t feel sad. I feel happy and grateful to be alive. In that, I may simply be a piece of data, one of those Frenchmen who feel pessimistic about the outside world but largely satisfied with their personal lives.

I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. The French love to analyze social trends and I recently heard that we’ve become too individualistic to feel sufficient empathy for those suffering in the world. If their religion, skin color or culture is too different from our own, we’re all too likely to feel unconcerned by the trials they undergo. The refugee crisis is unfortunately a case in point.

Whenever I am in Paris, I see refugees at bus stops where the city has installed electric outlets where anyone can recharge their phone. That’s what they’re doing, two young men or a young mother with her child, huddled together on the edge of a bench. People hand them sandwiches, bags of food, but what they need is a home.

In a Bible story about Abraham and Sarah, three strangers show up at the entrance to Abraham’s tent in the shadow of the Mamre oaks and he does what is perfectly natural to him. He washes their feet, slaughters a calf and prepares them a copious meal. In this passage, Sarah laughs when she hears one of the strangers say that within the year she, an old barren woman, will have a son.

This is also where Abraham bargains with God and makes him change his mind. Through dialogue, he convinces an angry and destructive Lord to become more compassionate.

A few years ago I had the chance to see a 1930 German silent movie called “People on Sunday” with musical accompaniment provided by an orchestra. Billy Wilder, best known for “Some Like It Hot,” wrote the screen play, a simple story about how ordinary people spend a Sunday in Berlin. I loved that movie, made with amateur actors. Yet I marveled at the calm of those Berliners at a time when the power of Hitler and the Nazi Party was exponentially on the rise.

Sometimes I wonder if we are living in such times, but I don’t have an answer. Sometimes I wonder about my capacity for generosity when confronted with refugees in need. I know, though, these are not times for building walls and barriers, neither physically nor in our hearts.

Today I set out to write an article about autumn in le Perche, my “new” region. Instead the outside world came pouring in, along with sunshine and the scent of autumn. That’s life, the good with the bad. Carpe diem. Let’s seize the day while we can.

Home at last!

I'm sitting at an oak table in the living room of my new home. Yes, I can live here now and work is almost done. Me too, done in, that is, by months of working and waiting and learning how to be contractor-in-chief. I've also learned a lot about France, more than I ever expected, having quite presumptuously considered myself an expert on the country where I've lived for almost 30 years.

For those who read me regularly, you may remember those antique terra cotta tiles I chipped away at some of winter, all of spring, and part of summer, to the point of spraining my right wrist. The real contractor-in-chief of this project, Monsieur Béatrix, wanted to carry them off to the dump, but I got my way, piled them in a shed in my garden, and ended up with just about enough to cover the floor in my living room.

For the two square yards or so that went uncovered, Monsieur Béatrix and I found a solution while I was panting my way up an Alpine slope in early August (during that trek I made the discovery that cell phone service follows you everywhere, even when you're at eye level with Mont Blanc high up in the French-Italian Alps). My contractor suggested a tapis, a “carpet” of tiles in different shapes and sizes at the entrance to my home. I was too far away to do anything else but give him the go-ahead.

When later that month I opened the door to my new home, I almost sobbed. No, I was not disappointed. I was simply too happy, overwhelmed by the sight before my eyes: the expanse of those terra cotta tiles I had so lovingly retrieved. They were finally in place; and at my feet I discovered a perfect little “tapis” at the entrance, smaller tiles surrounded by a triangular border that set them off from the rest of the room.

A lot of hubbub for a few floor tiles, some might say, but for me, the experience of hammering, chiseling, brushing and washing over 500 tiles while, in the process, saving them from oblivion and bringing back to life a substantial piece of the past, has filled me with a sense of accomplishment I've rarely felt. I admire them as I write. I am happy and this simple happiness is teaching me a lot about what really matters in life.

I also have a kitchen from Ikea and to me it is as beautiful as any custom-made model I've seen. It is simple and functional with everything I need (except a stove, but that will come). It was installed by my “gentlemen craftsmen,” two Ukrainians, Radu and Victor.

One day in Paris when my water heater was leaking all over my bathroom, I asked them for help. They were working in a 1st floor apartment in my building and obligingly climbed the stairs to my 6th floor outpost to have a look. It didn't take me long to realize I was in the company of two exceptional men so rather than having them repair my water heater, I asked them to remodel my apartment instead.

I remember Victor being surprised by my snap decision, but he and Radu are two men who have never let me down. In two days, they installed my country kitchen and thanks to them, I have the kitchen of my dreams.

So far, it is the only room in the house where I've had time to hang a picture and my first impulse was to put a “Pottsville-Perche” connection in place. On one wall you can discover a tribute to my native city, the poster created by artist Nanette Major, a picture-map of Pottsville that I'm sure many readers know. Each time I pass by it, I stop and “explore,” identifying streets, houses, and places in a town that occupies a big place in my heart.

I have the feeling my new region, “le Perche,” may soon have its place as well. This past weekend, I explored its hills and valleys in my cobalt blue Peugeot 206, a used car I bought the last day of August. It has lots of miles on the motor and I would not trust it from here to Paris, but it is perfect for getting around a region where, very much like in Schuylkill County, a car is a must.

On Sunday, first stop the home of my friend Jacques. In front of his chimney, where a fire crackled and flamed, we sat down for Sunday dinner: grilled blood sausage as an appetizer, fresh rabbit cooked in mustard and cider as our main course, followed by salad and cheese, with for dessert, grapes from his garden.

On Sundays, Parisians brunch on salads and “terrines,” avocado whip, a mini-cheese soufflé, a mouthful of pâté, a mouthful of fish, served in tiny glass or crockery bowls. Hardly a meal, a Parisian brunch is more a “tasting,” where you can whet your appetite without really feeling satisfied.

In le Perche, on Sundays, people sit down to a meal. For years I've been a nibbler, a true Parisian. It feels good to be eating real food again!

Though it is a bit difficult to get up after such a meal and immediately hit the road, once we drank our café, we set off again in my little blue Peugeot to visit a 16th century chateau where Percherons are raised.

These horses were first found in the Huisne River valley, the very same river that gives its name to the village where I have my home (Condé sur Huisne). On Sundays, their day of rest, these hardy animals graze peacefully in the fields around the chateau.

Today, once I wrap up this article, I have to return to Paris (after all, it's my job at the university that is paying for all of this!). First, though, I'd like to do some work in my garden. It's is the time of year to plant tulip bulbs and I also have some anemones. By next spring, I hope to have flowers.

Less than a year ago I bought my ruin. It has become my home and, I'm starting to suspect, the threshold to a new life. Soon I'll have to add another “P” to my Pottsville-Paris connection: “P” for “Perche.”

My Alpine Vacation: Tonsils and Trekking

Before I entered kindergarten, I had my tonsils out. My sister had to have hers removed and my parents decided to have mine pulled too. Back in those long ago days of the 1950’s, lots of parents did that to their kids.

My sister and I were admitted to the Warne Hospital and Clinic, which once stood at Second and Mahantongo Streets in Pottsville. Soon after our surgery, the clinic was closed. We were among the last to be operated on there.

Nearly sixty years later, I still remember the experience vividly. I can still feel and smell the ether-soaked piece of cheese cloth dropped onto my face. I see the white room, the sharp instruments glistening in the overhead light, and the doctor, who is big and old. I’m strapped to a table that begins to spin, a horrid jack-in-the-box keeps popping up and laughing at me, and then I black out.

When I woke up, I was in pain and my sister was crying. My mother and two aunts took turns caring for us. We were vomiting, we lay in our vomit and no one came to change the sheets. A nurse poked her head in the room to scold us for making noise. Without our mother and aunts, we might have choked to death.

Thinking about my recent summer vacation, a week of trekking in the Southern Alps in a setting reminiscent of “The Sound of Music,” I find myself reliving a childhood experience that gave me my first tastes of pain, fitful sleep and neglect...

It started out in the pouring rain. The South of France, generally associated with dry air and bright sun, does not look its best beneath a leaden sky. As we travelled higher into the mountains to the starting point of our trek (Saint Véran, Europe’s highest village), we were immersed in thick gray clouds that, much like a tunnel, cut us off from the rest of the world.

The rain was discouraging, yet I did not feel discouraged. I was game, itching for a new experience, ready to cry “Excelsior!” and climb to the top of the world.

That was before it all began.

The first night we stayed in a lodge at 5700 feet above sea level (I include this information because it is very important for what follows). Across the French Alps, in almost every village, there are hotel-lodges that welcome hikers, offering simple accommodations: large rooms with 8 or ten beds, hot showers, and hearty meals.

By the next morning, the clouds had scattered and we had a pure blue sky. I huffed and puffed a bit during the morning climb but overall enjoyed it. We were walking through a forest of mélèze, larch trees, zigzagging, climbing gradually to the point where, at lunchtime, we were to meet others members of our group.

During that lunchtime pause—a frugal picnic because we were carrying all our food for the week on our backs and had to ration, I had my first chance to discover my trekking companions, longtime friends of the friend who had invited me.

They were experienced trekkers and performance was important. The conversation turned to questions of differences in altitude and the scale of gradations in the slopes we would “attack” the next day. It was “shop talk,” too technical for me and I tuned it out.

That was my second mistake (my first was having accepted, as I would later understand, to join the trek). I should have listened. I might have learned something about what was in store.

That afternoon, we crossed the timberline and entered a zone of rocky soil, scarce vegetation and soaring granite peaks. We moved constantly upwards, gradually enough that I could keep pace with the group.

Then we arrived, at the refuge, translated as “hut” in my French-English dictionary. Ours was a glorified hut, with many rooms, many bunk beds, few showers or toilets, and a big central dining room.

Life was regimented there: no showers after 6:30pm. Dinner at seven. Then lights out and to bed.

My group of eight was sharing one long, narrow room with three sets of bunk beds, one cot and a mezzanine with two mattresses so close to the ceiling you literally had to roll out of bed and then slither down a ladder to avoid hitting your head.

The previous night, I had grabbed a lower berth. I was not so lucky this time. I climbed up a rickety ladder and then slipped into my sac à viande, my “meat sack,” the pretty name the French give to a travel sheet. Five minutes later, I had to pee. I climbed back down to the moans and groans of my roommates, a group who never go to the bathroom at night.

This same group must sleep with shutters and windows absolutely closed and no one except me suffered from the lack of oxygen.

The next morning the real trek began: from 6250 ft. we were climbing straight up to 10,500 ft., a peak along the crest that divides France from Italy.

Straight up, in the cool air and the burning sun. At first, I was overcome with nausea. Later, vertigo set in. It was torture. Unable to take in the view, I looked at my feet. That’s how I know we walked through snow.

From that point onward, for nearly a week, despite hikes lasting seven or eight hours each day, I stopped eating. It was the only way to control the nausea. I was sick and weak, but no one seemed to notice. That’s how trekking is: you're always with the group, but at a certain point, it’s every man for himself.

I made it to the end of the week. That is what I can say about my “trek.” I did it and there’s little chance I’ll ever do it again.

I also learned some things. For example, I know what it means to have “strange bedfellows.” In mountain shelters, beneath the communal duvet, you never know who’ll be sleeping on the mattress next to yours.

I learned too that I’m like the bear that went over the mountain. In one week, I went over a lot of them and, well, each time, I saw another mountain. It was all too majestic for me and though I took photos, afterwards I deleted most of them.

Finally, I learned that despite the pain, neglect and fitful sleep, I was capable of having a good time. So this is how I spent my summer vacation and strangely, it did me a world of good.

Paula Modersoh- Becker: Painter, pioneer, woman of courage

On a hot day, a museum can be the perfect refuge, an escape from the heat, the glare, the crowds, the noise of summer in the city. You cross the threshold and enter into another world of soft light and shadows, whispering voices, and quiet respect for the works on display and those come to admire them.

Late July in Paris is hot, the city is crowded, but there are fewer tourists than in years past. Some are afraid to travel to a country where attendance at a rock concert or a fireworks display can end in death.

Others seize the day and its splendor in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In the metro, there are more languages than I would know how to identify; in the streets, plenty of tourists bent over a city map.

In the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, the city’s museum of modern art, until August 21st, there is Paula Modersohn-Becker, a German artist from the city of Bremen whose short life spanned 31 years. Born in 1876, she began drawing when she was 16. Sent to the home of an aunt in England to learn how to keep house like a good Hausfrau, she learned to draw instead.

In 1899, she had her first exhibit in Bremen. Confronted by her paintings, some critics, filled with disgust, considered her work impure. There was no reverence, no piety. How could a woman, pure and pious by nature, create in such a way?

Paula Modersohn-Becker, trained to be a teacher, prefers to read and paint. Thanks to a small inheritance from an uncle, she can do just that. With her friend, the sculptor Clara Westhoff, she moves to Worpswede, a small village on the swampy moorland between Bremen and Hamburg.

A group of painters have created an artists’ colony there. Like the members of the Barbizon School in France, they paint in the open air. Living together, working together, they spurn the influences of the city and aspire to the purity that only Nature can provide.

Paula Becker joins them, attracted in particular by the work of Otto Modersohn, who paints the immense skies, the canals, the birches and marshes of Teufelsmoor, the Devil’s Swamp, stretching for miles around Worpswede.

Modersohn is married and has a small daughter, Elsbeth. His wife has tuberculosis, a fatal illness at that time. Four months after her death, Modersohn and Paula Becker are engaged. Her parents are ready to give their consent if their daughter agrees to move for a few months to Berlin to attend cooking school. Her father encourages her to submit to her husband in all things; such are the foundations of a happy home.

Paula, a dutiful daughter, bows to their wishes. The couple marry in 1901, after Paula’s return from from Berlin and her first stay in Paris. There she studied anatomy and discovered Cézanne. Influenced by his desire to reduce nature to its geometric essentials, she sets out to paint her personal vision of the world and people around her.

Between 1901, the year of her marriage, and 1907, that of her death, there are three more trips to Paris. During that period, she produces over 700 paintings and drawings. She learns to cook but she does not submit. She wants recognition and believes she deserves it for her pioneering work as a painter.

Back in Paris, she discovers Gauguin, Monet and Rodin, whom she meets and whose watercolors she particularly admires. Of him she writes to Otto, “Can you imagine what it must be like to be completely indifferent to what others think?”

Otto is a good husband. He encourages his wife to paint and recognizes her exceptional talent, yet he feels the path she is following is wrong. For him, Nature and purity, the holy isolation of Worpswede; for Paula, the city and everything new. In his eyes, the abstraction she is introducing into her painting is little more than crude form.

In 1906, Paula leaves again for Paris and she leaves Otto, desiring an end to their five years of marriage. She does not want a child, she wants to paint. She is thirty years old, she has created a body of work she can be proud of and has much further to go.

During this final stay in the world capital of art at the beginning of the 20th century, Paula Modersohn Becker, along with Picasso and Matisse, is revolutionizing painting, making it more personal and abstract, cubist, expressionist, “fauve” or “wild.”

In 1906, Paula Modersohn-Becker paints the first nude self-portrait by a woman, introducing a completely new perspective on the female nude, the almost exclusive domain of men up to that time. She paints a series of naked nursing mothers with a monumental naturalness never before seen in art.

She also continues to paint portraits and self-portraits. The American art historian Diane Radycki, author of Paula Modersohn-Becker: The First Modern Woman Artist published in 2013, claims that Picasso himself may have seen her portraits and been influenced by one in particular, by a certain turn of the head, which enabled him to finally complete his massive portrait of Gertrude Stein.

There were also hundreds of still lifes. Before Matisse, in one, she included a fish bowl with three goldfish, elements of life, movement and constant chromatic change. The French call the still life “nature morte,” dead nature. Modersohn Becker gave it new life.

Then she changed her mind. She wrote to Otto and asked him to come to Paris. It was a mistake to want their marriage to end. They spend six months in the city together. She becomes pregnant and returns to Worpswede to give birth.

A daughter, Mathilde, is born on November 2, 1907. Labor is difficult and lasts two days. The doctor orders Paula to remain in bed. Eighteen days later, he gives her permission to rise. She takes a few steps, sits down and dies of a pulmonary embolism.

“Schade” (what a pity) was her last word.

After a couple of hours with the paintings of Paula Modersohn-Becker, I leave the museum deeply moved, refreshed and more alive.

P.S. For readers who might be wondering about French country living the hard way, by the end of August, I may have a home…

June, youth and violence

There is debate among etymologists about the origin of the word June. Some say it comes from “junior,” making June the month of youth, a time to celebrate all that is new, fresh, and strong. Showing due respect to its elder, June follows May, the month of “majors,” all those age 21 and above.

Another theory sees the name as a tribute to the goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter and guardian of the Roman Empire. Her birthday was celebrated on June 1st and on that date the Romans honored the warlike traits of this goddess who, with perfect ease, combined youth, fertility, sovereignty and military power.

In France, in early June, farmers keep a careful watch on the sky. Rain on June 8th, the feast day of Saint Médard, patron of farmers and vintners, means a bad harvest will follow.

In June 2016, bad weather, war and youth came to a head in France. June came in like a lion, with weather conditions closer to those of early March. On June 3rd, we Parisians were still wearing winter coats and wool scarves as the Seine rose to critically high levels, threatening the city’s infrastructures and underground transport system.

On June 4th, the waters began to recede, but not before having caused over a billion dollars’ worth of damage throughout France. That day, I joined the crowds along the Seine to gape at the fast-flowing waters lapping the belly of some city bridges and engulfing the riverside walks where French and foreign lovers like to stroll.

The month got off to a bad start and the farmers’ patron saint proved powerless to stop the torrential rains that continue to fall. May 2016 was France’s rainiest month on record since 1873. June is bound to break some records as well.

And as if the rain were not enough, we’ve had transport strikes, gas shortages, protests marches and the European Soccer Championships, marred by bands of Russian and British hooligans streaming through the streets of major French cities. They provide proof that soccer, like war, is politics by other means.

There’ve been garbage strikes as well. Walking among the mountains of trash piled up along a major Parisian boulevard on one of the only warm days we’ve had this month, I realized how clean and efficiently run this city normally is. On a day without a strike, you’d hardly know that garbage exists.

Striking sanitation workers returned to the job just in time to clean up for the Euro, as the international soccer championships are known. Parisian streets were made pristine to welcome soccer fans from all over Europe. Based on some of the behavior I’ve observed above ground and below, I’m not so sure many of them cared.

The day following the June 10th kick-off, I shared a metro car with a crowd of Irish fans. These young men were not hooligans, but they were supporting their team by getting drunk. Frankly, I don’t think they could have told the difference between a mountain of trash and the blarney stone.

That same Saturday night, above ground, in the Pigalle neighborhood home to the Moulin Rouge, Irish fans dressed in green were spilling out of Irish pubs (Paris has quite a few) into the streets, blocking traffic, improvising cheers, songs and line dances. They were a rowdy bunch but, well after midnight, I felt no danger as I milled among the crowds and the alcohol fumes.

What was I doing in Pigalle after midnight? I guess you might call me collateral damage of the soccer championships. Earlier in the evening I’d been on the metro line that stops at Stade de France, the French national stadium, among fans, tourists, and pickpockets.

And guess whose pocket was picked? Not the drunken fan’s, not the innocent tourist’s, but mine, the savvy Parisian who should have known better.

Actually, someone slipped a hand into my purse and got away with my wallet: driver’s license, national identity card, my civil service card stamped “bleu-blanc-rouge,” my debit card, an unsigned check, and a prayer to Santa Rosalia whose grotto I visited with my nephew Louis when we travelled to Palermo during summer 2015.

“Santa Rosalia, proteggimi,” protect me. Well, I guess she did. I got my wallet back. A transport worker found it and did some detective work to find my phone number. Once I got the call, I headed back into the metro to a suburban station where my wallet, minus about twenty euros, was waiting for me.

Nature has been unkind to France this past month and fate did me a nasty, though not very serious, turn when it sent that pickpocket’s hand my way. More serious is the violence humans have been doing to each other during this tragically bloody month.

On June 12th, 49 died and 53 were injured in the Orlando attack, making it the deadliest mass shooting in US history. The assailant used an A-15 semiautomatic rifle, readily available in Florida. There may be between 10 to 12 million in circulation in the US—though why anyone outside the military would want or need such a deadly assault weapon simply boggles the mind.

In France, a day later, a couple of policemen, parents of a three-year-old child, were brutally stabbed and murdered in their home.

In each attack, the assailant was a troubled young man with few chances of ever landing a good job, a nobody of sorts, who, after committing his heinous act, pledged allegiance to ISIL. Each young man had previously been under investigation for terrorist activity, but there was not enough evidence against him to warrant arrest.

On June 14th, hundreds of thousands of protesters across France marched to demand the withdrawal of a bill proposing a major overhaul of French labor law. For the most part, marchers were peaceful, but here and there, outbursts of violence reached unprecedented levels.

In Paris, bands of masked, hooded young men used metal bars to break the windows of a children’s hospital. By a deeply sad twist of fate, it was to this hospital that emergency health workers had earlier transported the small child of the murdered policemen.

One of the roles of the goddess Juno is to warn us of the dangers of violence and war. In a month of June marked by natural and human violence, we lowly mortals should heed her warning and not give in to hate or despair.

The grandeur that was Rome, the glory that was Pottsville!

In my apartment in Paris, on a shelf reserved for my most precious books, I have a copy of Pottsville’s Sesquicentennial Celebration Souvenir Program from 1956. The booklet, held together with yellowing tape, celebrates “150 years of progress.” I remember the event. Some readers may as well.

My childhood memories are of my father’s beard, grown specially for the occasion, and of a sesquicentennial beer glass that gave its bearer access to unlimited beer. I also remember ladies wearing bonnets and ankle-length full skirts. We children were proud to display commemorative buttons pinned to our polo shirts.

In the souvenir program, I can find photos of men who, just like my father, sport an old-fashioned beard. They also wear a string tie that looks a lot like the one worn by Gary Cooper in the 1952 western “High Noon.”

There are other photos: downtown Pottsville in 1956 at a time when not a single storefront was empty, Garfield Square, Tumbling Run, and the world’s largest anthracite breaker, the Saint Nicholas, belonging at that time to the Reading Anthracite Company. I like to look at the photos but I treasure the booklet for the words it contains in an essay entitled “Pottsville’s Picturesque Past.”

Overflowing with facts, style and humor, the essay was written by Edith Patterson, born in 1878, who served as head librarian of the Pottsville Free Public Library from 1918 to 1950. My Aunt Jean worked for her back in the late 1940’s and I think Miss Patterson was one of the persons she loved best.

In her short but succinct history, Miss Patterson dares an audacious comparison between the founding of Pottsville and that of Rome, both spread out across seven hills. To silence any protests against the pairing of the two cities, she immediately follows with a quote by a respected 19th century Pennsylvania historian:

“For anyone from Cape Cod to New Orleans, to say he had not heard of the renowned town of Pottsville would sound as marvelous as if an Arabian were to declare he had never heard of Mahomet.”

Writing in 1844 about the anthracite “coal rush” of the 1820’s, I. Daniel Rupp, a prolific writer and translator whose histories of many Pennsylvania counties are available on-line, goes on to describe the Buckley Basin, Pottsville’s canal port, once located where Claude A. Lord Boulevard intersects Norwegian Street:

“From this port…, there is a fleet of more than four hundred vessels—a fleet more formidable than that which bore the Greeks to the Trojan War…”

Back in those days, Pottsville was quite a place and could certainly bear comparison to the “grandeur that was Rome.” The city was the gateway to the “anthracite region,” whose coal fired America’s industrial revolution and made the nation great.

Then, a few years later, after World War I when anthracite production peaked, the US fuel market began to change. In the Kingdom of Coal, decline set in, just as in ancient Rome.

Of course, history is not so simple yet, having just returned from a trip to Rome, I can’t help feeling that somehow Miss Patterson got it right. Rome does remind me of Pottsville and, while exploring the Eternal City, I often find myself thinking about “home.”

It has something to do with so much of history happening underground.

When my mother was still alive and had a house on Third Avenue, we sat atop history: the Mammoth Vein, right beneath our house, the richest vein of anthracite in the world, tortured, twisted, impossible to extract. In the 19th century, miners lost their lives trying and entrepreneurs hoping to hit the jackpot went bust.

I used to think about the Mammoth Vein a lot, standing on our back porch, looking north, able to see the co-gens on Broad Mountain and the giant strip mine near Wadesville.

In Rome, I went underground to explore the history of Christianity. Walking along the Appian Way (and alive to tell the tale—the more than 2000 year-old cobble-stone road remains a major highway where Roman motorists travel at top speed, hell-bent on picking off a pedestrian or two), I made my way to the catacombs of the martyred saints Callixtus and Sebastian.

In these vast underground burial grounds that today belong to the Vatican, Rome’s first Christians met to worship in secret at a time when belief in Christ was punishable by death. In earlier times, these same underground galleries were part of mines and quarries that supplied the volcanic stone used to construct the public buildings of Rome.

When the mines were transformed into catacombs, “berths” were carved into the soft reddish-brown stone, each one long and high enough to contain a body. On the walls, in the dark passageways, Christian iconography began to take form: the fish as a symbol of the Eucharist, the dove as the Holy Spirit, the anchor as a symbol of hope. Carved into the rock, painted on the walls, many are still visible today.

Above ground, nothing betrays the presence of these underground cities. Yet all of Rome is like that. No matter where you walk, you can be sure that beneath your feet there are layers of history, just like in and around Pottsville, I might add, taking my mother’s house as an example.

In Rome, the past also has a tendency to “pop up.” Ancient Roman columns or tablets with Latin inscriptions are as natural a part of Roman parks and gardens as a flower bed or a shade tree in the USA.

But in and around Pottsville, the past pops up as well, a past so ancient that it defies the mind.

At the Yorkville end of Sharp Mountain, the sector I know best, I’ve often admired enormous outcrops of Pottsville conglomerate, sandstone, quartz, and shale pressed together 300 million years ago during the Pennsylvania period of geologic time. Around Pottsville, I’ve searched for the fossils of trilobites and tropical plants, local inscriptions of a far-distant past.

In the end, Miss Patterson’s comparison may not be as unlikely as it first seemed. True, no other city in the world can boast the concentration of beauty and splendor of Rome, but Pottsville too has a glorious past, inscribed on the earth’s surface and underground.

Very solemnly, then, let’s raise an ice-cold glass of Yuengling lager to the grandeur that was Rome and the past glory of Pottsville.

More French Country Living (and it ain’t easy!)

Today is Sunday and I’ve decided to make it a true day of rest: my favorite breakfast, fried eggs with a big round Lebanese flatbread sprinkled with za’atar, washed down with a cup of strong black coffee.

The flatbread, a za’atar manoushe, I buy at my outdoor market, prepared fresh for me by a Lebanese chef from the Beqaa Valley who has settled in France. He flips and throws his dough just like a pizzaiolo and then bakes it on what looks like an upside-down wok.

While it bakes, he brushes on some olive oil and then sprinkles the bread with a handful of za’atar, the Arabic word for thyme—though thyme is simply the base for an addictive mix of herbs and spices that includes, though is not limited to, sumac, sesame seeds, mint, oregano and hyssop.

Only on those days when I have the time to offer myself a real treat do I walk up the hill to the market to buy myself a warm za’atar manoushe, time to cook, to linger over breakfast, to let the minutes and hours pass without worrying about what to do next.

Today is one of those days, finally, because for weeks I’ve been spending Sundays at my house in the country, participating for the first time in years in the slow, luxuriant emergence of spring.

I’ve seen snowdrops come and go, watched the first primroses emerge and daffodils open to the sun. Hyacinths scent the air, violets peep out from among blades of new grass, and creeping myrtle (what the English call “periwinkle”) is climbing up the sides of the wood shed in my garden, its purple flowers nodding in the breeze, in approval perhaps of my industriousness…

Because I’m not in the country to admire nature. I am here to work. I have quotas to meet, long days where I hardly raise my head or take time to eat or drink. As for breaks to use the bathroom, well, my house doesn’t have one yet.

What am I doing? I’m working with hammer and chisel, I’m hammering and chiseling, scraping and tapping, cleaning one by one, with the utmost care, the terra cotta tiles that originally covered the floor in my living room.

In February, they were pulled up so a new cement slab could be poured to replace a clay and straw floor where any step could be your last. In the cider cellar below, the rotting supports, thick tree trunks complete with burls and knots, were replaced by steel beams—and no time too soon. The wood had turned to dust and that was what was holding up the house.

Now I am proud of my cellar! I would actually invite guests to climb down the steep stone steps and penetrate the darkness (no light in there yet), no longer afraid that a chunk of wood or a clump of earth might fall and hit them on the head. Nor do I worry they will return to the light enshrouded in cobwebs. My cellar is respectable now, a true storage space for cider or pretty much anything else.

But let’s get back to those tiles, beautiful marbled tiles, as old as the house itself. They are typical of the Perche region, a true collector’s item, sought after by homeowners striving for the authentic French touch as they decorate their country homes with a budget at least double my own—those tiles, my contractor was ready to get rid of them.

In my first act of womanly defiance, I stood up to him and said NON.

He said to me, Bah, qui va les nettoyer? Well, who’s going to clean them?

My answer to him was “Moi.”

These vintage tiles dating back to 1850 measure 20 cm by 20 cm, and it takes 25 to make one square meter. My living room floor has a surface of 25m². Do the math—that’s a whole lot of tiles, tiles that had not been disturbed in well over 150 years. When they were taken up, the earth came up with them, red clay, straw, rubble and mold, caked to the bottom of each one.

Sometimes it’s just a thin layer I can scrape off; sometimes, the caked matter, pretty much petrified, is two or three inches thick. I hammer against the blunt end of the chisel, hitting hard for the first few strikes. Then, in order to avoid breaking the tile, I have to tap gently, dozens, sometimes hundreds of times, before I can remove the dirt.

And the edges must be perfectly smooth, each and every one of them. Otherwise, the tiles cannot be re-laid. Chiseling, scraping, I feel like a sculptor working with loving care on what will finally become my “masterpiece.”

Monsieur Béatrix, my contractor, approves of my work. I would even say he is impressed and since I set to work cleaning the tiles, our relationship has changed. I too am on the job, and when he and his assistant “Papy,” a man who looks like a retired prizefighter, no longer hear the constant tap-tap-tap of my hammer, they come out to check on me in the garden where I’ve set up shop.

The only problem is I’m slow. On a good day, I can do about fifty tiles. That may sound like a lot, but it’s not. That’s 2 square meters and I’ve just hit the 10m² mark. There’s also the sticky problem of broken tiles. Once I’ve removed the dirt and then cleaned the unbroken ones with linseed oil, I’ll have to find a few more square meters of these beautiful—and expensive—vintage tiles.

For the moment, by necessity, I’m taking things one step at a time. As long as all the tiles aren’t cleaned, there’s no use in going out to look for more. Once the cleaning’s done, I’ll take inventory to determine exactly how many more I need.

But today, on the seventh day, I’m resting, in good company. Patient and determined, I know I’ll make it through the more than 600 tiles.

As for now, I have a new cement slab and a retiled roof with two new windows. Inside the house, clean new walls are going up. Who knows, in a couple of months, I may actually have a home, and Readers, when that happens, you’ll be the first to know.