The Medieval City

 As you know, we went to Perouges yesterday, which has been called one of the most beautiful villages in France.  It is indeed quite charming and several old time movies have been filmed there.  The walled city is from medieval times.  The city did a great job repelling some enemy at one point hundreds of years ago, and so everyone there got a break from paying taxes for twenty years.  Twenty years doesn't seem very long when you're in Perouges, so I wish the citizens had gotten a better deal. 

  The village is pedestrian only, small and compact.  We walked the streets, read all the plaques, looked out at the views beyond the city walls and visited a church built in the 1200s.  Then we started to get a little nervous.  We had about 4 more hours in Perouges and we were pretty much done.  The museum would open at 2 pm so we looked for lunch.  We were turned down by one place who told us to return in an hour.   Then my phone recommended a lovely place that was opening on the square. By the way, the square has a tree that was planted during the French Revolution right in the middle for all to admire.  

The restaurant was delightful.  The owner assured me that they would make something vegetarian.  

Not sure you're interested in our food items, but I've decided to describe them here in a bulleted list. 

• For our first course, I had the most wonderful omelette with mushrooms.  Delicious.  Husbandman had a salad with grilled char.
• For our second course, I had a beautiful vegetable plate.  V. simple and attractive as well as tasty.  Husbandman had a large slice of beef with morel sauce.  He requested it very rare and it truly was.
• For dessert, I had a lovely plate of cheeses with bread and Husbandman had a cake and ice cream that were made from pears. 
• The signature dessert in Perouges is the galette perouges.  Our desserts came with this signature dessert with cream.  A kind of sugary buttery slice of dough that was quite sugary and buttery.  Not sure I'll get one of those again.

We drank wine during our meal and coffee afterwards.  When we were done... Voila!  Time to head back to the train station to travel back to Lyon.  I highly recommend an hour walking around Perouges and three hours having lunch there.  We loved our day. I wish we hadn't missed the museum, but you win some and you lose some in this life.  Maybe we'll head back some day?

The Holiday

All Saints Day (November 1) is called La Toussaint here in France and it's a national holiday.  Schools get 2 weeks off.  Everything will be shut down on Monday.  I saw many people buying and selling chrysanthemums at the market this week and now I find out that people put chrysanthemums on the graves of their beloveds on La Toussaint.

I've also read that the French have a special midnight meal of bacon, black grains, pancakes and cider on La Toussaint. I don't see why the deceased would be honored by such a meal, but there must be something I'm not getting because of being an American.

We may take a day trip tomorrow to Perouges. A friend told us this would be a good idea, so we're going to give it a try.  We're taking the train. 

 

The Smallest Turtle

Another Britt.  I wonder how old these are?

Love that they rented to a guy named Badger.

This old stairwell was quite amazing and I came upon it by accident.

In order to climb these stairs, I did one of those smooth moves where I slipped in through that black gate after a resident exited.

I walk Lyon each morning and see new things every time I venture out.  I've been to 3 museums this week as well.  My second favorite job would be museum curator.  Or maybe just a museum docent. 

In the afternoons, back from my walkabout, I work on some writing, both fiction and non-fiction.  I have finished a short story about a boy named Barton and now I am writing a little story about the American turtles in the Lyon sanctuary. 

This morning I walked back to Park Tete D'Or to look at the turtles again. In my research, I read that the zookeepers remove the turtle eggs, so they don't reproduce.  This makes sense I suppose, though it is a bit sad. But here's the weird thing.  I saw one small turtle today.  Maybe 4 inches long?  Much smaller than the others.  If France stopped importing American turtles in 1993, where'd this guy come from?  Did an egg get overlooked?  Maybe these turtles have a few tricks up their sleeves?

 I wish I could get hold of a zookeeper to help me answer this question as well as the questions in the bulleted list below:

• How many turtles have died of old age at the sanctuary? (These turtles live 30 to 40 years).
• Do people ever steal the turtles from the sanctuary?  (It would be so tempting to just reach down and nab one).
• Are people still abandoning turtles in 2021?  
• Does anyone ever regret abandoning their turtle and ask for their turtle back, as they sob and wail?
• I've read that 2600 turtles were brought to the sanctuary between 2006 and 2018, but what's the population now?  
• Is it possible to take one of the turtles back to the U.S. with me when I leave next spring?
• If it is possible, may I have the smallest turtle?  

 

The Rush Job

Live Working or Die Fighting! These Canuts really loved their jobs I suppose.

More Britt, up in Croix-Rousse

This might not look like a steep rue, but it is.

This is our building.  We're on the 6th floor.  There's a teeny lift. 

 I want to blog, but Mari Homme just got a bit nervous about this goal.  "Hon!  We have to do 2 different markets."

He's right.  The supermarket closes at noon and so does the open air market in Place Carnot.  Time is ticking.

The main point of this blog entry anyway is to share this interview with Elizabeth Strout over at Cup of Jo's place.  She seems like a great person and now I'm interested in her new book.  I finished Sally Rooney's Beautiful World Where Are You? this week and then just turned back to page one and read it again. There's a lot in there.  Well done, Sally Rooney.  She was a competitive debater at one time, and I too was a debater in high school.  Unlike Rooney, I won no prizes for my debating skills.  Mostly just embarrassment and struggle. 

We are getting over nasty colds, so yesterday was a bust.  Just sleeping and nose blowing, but today we're gathering our forces and heading out to the Contemporary Arts Museum.  Mari Homme is making sandwiches on a weirdly skinny baguette.  Should work.  We'll have to see. 

To market, to market, to buy a fat hog.  

Do you know that rhyme?  Mari Homme is actually eating quite a lot of pork over here.  

The Interesting Connection

There's an artist here in Lyon who finds cracks in the street and makes beautiful tile designs within said cracks.  His name is Emenem.  I've personally seen a few of his pieces, hither thither and yon. 

I started seeing his art soon after reading about kintsugi in that Ichigo Ichie book I've told you about.  Kintsugi is a Japanese art of repairing cracked pottery using lacquer mixed with gold dust or silver dust.  You can look it up if you want to.

The point of kintsugi, as far as I can tell, is that we can choose to flaunt our flaws, dress them up and call everyone over to celebrate the heck out of them.  I can't find any evidence that Emenem thinks of his art as a relative of kintsugi.  When I get to see Emenem, I'm going to point out to him that his art reminds me of kintsugi pottery repair. 

Les Lieux

 The Places.  Last night we sat at Place Carnot and had some wine after dinner.  I wish there was a small bar with a terrace right next to our house on High Street. It's so pleasant to walk across the street and hang out with the peeps under a starry sky.  

This morning I walked across the Rhone to a book store called Damn Fine Bookstore. This small store has books in different languages.  I bought the new Alice Hoffman and The Maidens.  The owner of the store was friendly as all get out. We do have book stores in B-town, but the walk to these stores isn't consistently charming. What if we could put in an elevated path with gardens, fountains, scooter paths and small cafes east and west along 2nd street?  

After the book store visit, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant for lunch.  It was fantastic.  I had some dim sum and Mari Homme had pho.  When I was done with my meal, the waiter told me he was not going to pick up my plates until I finished eating my rice.  The rice was great, but I was full, so Mari Homme helped me out. Do we have a great Vietnamese restaurant with a bossy waiter in B-town?  I think not, my friends. 

As you can see,  I'm picking up on a few ways we could improve life in our beautiful Bloomington.  We can all work together on this.  As the old Rogers School motto used to tell us... The sky's the limit when our heart is in it.

Le Chien

 Have you ever heard of the shiba inu breed of dog?  I see a lot of them here in Lyon.  They're very popular dogs and I can see why.  They might be my second favorite dog breed now.  I wish one of you readers out there in the blogosphere would get a shiba inu so I could get better acquainted with these foxy dogs. I've read that they're stubborn and independent, difficult to train, and they don't get along well with other animals.  But on the plus side, they look great and they're super loyal and they don't bark. The people of Lyon know a good dog when they see one. 

Peinture Fraiche

 We're about halfway through our time in Lyon.  Sometimes I wish I could slow down time because come to find out I really like filling my days with strolls and baguettes and writing in my notebook in a coffee shop.  But everyone gets the same amount of time and this experience is a gift, so knock it off, Heffernan, and appreciate what you have.

Today I had a goal for my morning walk and that goal was the Street Art Fest, or as the Lyonnaise call it, Peinture Fraiche.  It was a bit of a walk from the apartment, but I saw swans in the river and the weather was pleasant.  The Street Art Fest was a fantastic event.  Tons of cool paintings, some massively big and some just regular sized.  There was a garden where people could pick up spray paint and graffiti the walls.  Lyon has quite a lot of street art.  Besides spray paint, artists make things on paper and then just glue their pieces in random spots. I'm thinking of collaging in B-town when I get back home.  This could be fun.  If I collaged at school on the weekends when not too many people are in there, that could start some great conversations on Monday mornings.  Just like Britt does with these amazing collages placed around Lyon. 

The Walk

Georgia O'Keefe

My brother Barry was a big runner as I've told you, but he was also an epic walker.  He would walk miles each morning.  Since he died, I've taken to walking for a few hours each morning every day in the Barry tradition.  I roam and ramble all over Lyon. It's a delight of course.  Yesterday I checked out these houses that date from the 14th or 15th century.  I guess they're not sure. But does it really matter?  They're old.  That's all we need to know. 

As I walked in a southerly direction today, I listened to an Ezra Klein podcast.  He interviewed Nick Offerman.  Nick Offerman has a new book out.  He's written quite a few books and he makes furniture and he tries to live in a way that's respectful to the planet. He recommends that we read Wendell Berry's first book of short stories.  He also recommends Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust:  A History of Walking. I must get these books. 

Down near a beautiful walking path along the Saone, I saw some trees had changed their colors to a bright yellow. I was far from them and I wondered if they were gingkoes.  They probably are because I've now read that gingkoes grow all over the globe.  Fun fact: gingkoes can live hundreds or even thousands of years. 

I finished a first draft of a short story today.  I've been working on it for weeks.  It's about a kid named Barton who goes to a data driven school.  The kids are reluctant to participate in a human data wall and Barton decides he's had enough with this school's weird ways.  If you have worked in schools these past few years, you know about data walls.  When I was a literacy coach, I did plenty of data driven activities that weren't my best memories of that job, but we resisted implementing data walls at my school.  Which was good because data walls are stupid and rude.

I'm going to revise this story using my 4 colors revision template that I made up awhile back.  Then I'm going to start on another short story which I think will be about a North American turtle in France who is trying to get back to the states.

 

The Drinks

We headed out to dinner last night at 7, which at home would be late for us.  Restaurants were open, but empty.  It feels weird being the Americans eating in the empty rooms, so we walked across the Saone and had beverages outside of Johnny's Kitchen. Then we headed back to our restaurant and there were just a few tables taken, but they said we couldn't get a table because we had no reservations and soon it would get very busy. The guy was nice.  He gave us a card and said, "Call in the afternoon and we'll get you in."  So we just hightailed it down the road and went to another restaurant.  We had to sit outside and it was chilly, but not too chilly.  There was also a dog named Jessie hanging out with us, so that was a bonus. She was friendly and well behaved. 

Okay, what have we learned from this situation?

1.  Make reservations for 8 or 830.

2.  Go out for drinks at 7.

3.  Understand that you can stay up later here and it will all be fine.

This morning we had success at the market.  Fruits, veggies, cheese, pate were all purchased and some french was used to make these purchases.  I even used the useful term, "apres vous" to a guy and his cute daughter when I was fumbling with my mask on the way in to the boulangerie.  I used french to request a baguette.  Then the boulangerie woman set down her last 3 baguettes on the counter and I believe she was asking me which one I would want.  They all looked great, so I just shrugged.  She laughed and handed over a baguette with a string of french that maybe meant that she was choosing a baguette for this madame. 

People are helpful here, and we're fond of this Lyon life.  But don't forget that we miss everyone a lot. 

 

The Park of the Gold Head

Our friend the tapir

This buvette charmed the heck out of me.

We went to Parc de la Tete D'Or over the weekend.  We brought sandwiches and oranges.  Parc de la Tete D'Or is a large and lovely park. We walked around the green houses, the botanical garden, the free zoo and the rose garden.  We also saw a turtle pond filled with North American turtles. People in Europe enjoyed these turtles as pets in the 1970s, but then many people set them free and they started causing problems for European turtles.  

Parc de la Tete D'Or has a pond set up for these invading refugees.  They have between 800 and 1,000 American turtles in there. We saw a park worker feeding them crabs.  It's now illegal to buy these turtles in France.  I wish there was some way we could get the turtles back to the states.  They seem happy enough, but some of them looked a little homesick.

The Love Flowing Freely

 I've wavered on writing about the death of my brother, and I've decided to go ahead with it.  My brother Barry died on Tuesday morning.  He was 66 and recently manifested a rare condition called vasculitis.  There are many different kinds of vasculitis, but he got a really bad kind that kills you pretty quickly.  Over the course of 4 to 5 weeks, while doctors were trying to figure out what was wrong with him, his condition got worse and worse and he ended up in the hospital 2 weeks ago.  By the time the doctors had a diagnosis, there was no hope for my brother's recovery.  We know that now, and during his hospital stay there were ups and downs, but the night before he died, we were sure that he was on his way home later this week. Word of his death on Tuesday morning shocked us all.

This is a sad and horrible story and writing it down doesn't change anything.  On the other hand, writing about Barry lets me document that our family has suffered a horrible loss that should not be ignored or rushed past. Blogging about Bar also lets the people I love know that something tough has happened and that our family appreciates your kind thoughts at this time.

Rosalyn, Quinn, Peter and I had a phone call yesterday and shared some memories of Uncle Barry.  Our memories were all quite funny because he was a hilarious person who loved to see the humor in situations.  Whenever he walked in to the house to see me when I visited Georgia, he would shout out, "Sistah!" Every time. Then everyone would get big hugs.  He was easy to be with, easy to love.

When we were kids he was always around for a ride on the handlebars of his bike, help with homework, sharing some fine music or some nutty antics. From an early age, he was a neat freak and developed into the type of person who cleans his cleaning supplies. After he vacuumed, he took apart the vacuum cleaner to dust out all parts of its interior. 

He was a runner, who came to running late-ish but made up for lost time.  He always placed in his age group.  I ran 2 races with him a few years ago.  Both times, he ran back after finishing and accompanied me in.  He wanted me to run a race with him this summer, but I passed up the chance.  He signed me up anyway because he wanted to gift me the race tee-shirt. 

He was with his wife Beth for 41 years.  They were always together.  Barry and Beth.  Beth and Barry.  2 amazing characters who brought so much sweet joy into our lives. And big perk for me --- they were both regular blog readers!

Because of Covid, no one could be with Barry while he was in the hospital.  He seemed to know that things were going downhill, and expressed his love and last wishes to all family members, but we kept thinking he was just being negative.  Seriously, I had no clue that he wasn't coming home.  

He texted to my sister that he wanted no funeral, no obituary, no memorial.  But somewhere down the line, he would like us all to have a party in B and B's backyard.  He wrote that he wanted it to just be fun.  "No haters.  Only love and may it flow freely."

I'm glad I wrote this blog entry.  My brother deserves a little memorial, though he didn't want one.  He was a good man, a sweet uncle and a marvelous brother.  We miss him dearly.