The Little Words Mean the Most

There is a fly

This morning's was captured, released. For karma. This evening's was crushed in a tissue, maybe the horror tale flies tell their maggots. When you live in the country, insect invasions are like rain storms: you need a good roof. I.e., a tough eradication policy, with occasional guilt trips regarding all living things.

Organizing the wine

When in France there are few chores I rush to, but.... I DO like to rearrange my wine supply and write notes on the boxes: where we bought the wine, when it should be opened (some will wait 10 years), how long it should breathe (four hours for the meaty reds), the price. It's all improperly stored in the attic, our only spare locked space; it's survived the rough handling.

These are memories by the bottle. We buy only from vintners in our region, the Languedoc-Roussillon; mostly from vineyards where we've done a tasting. The region is a quiltwork of tiny winemakers tucked away in small towns, where they produce limited quantities that seldom travel further than some discriminating restaurant in Paris, if that far.

In the U.S., wine was marketed as a snob's pursuit. Here, it's part of the diet. A 9 euro ($12) wine in France is expensive.

Shepherdia

Soft hours

These are soft hours for us. In France, on a Saturday afternoon with a light-handed sun. Simone is back from her Amsterdam conference by TGV. She was a star to some: a guy from Georgia (the Asian place), a guy from Rome, a guy from UNICEF. I picked her up last night in Montpellier. We watched the traffic jam in the station's parking lot until it drained away. Today, she's exhausted. A thoroughbred who ran her race and gets a day off in the meadow: for her, a reclining chair with a mystery novel. I finished my bottle of Domaine d'Aupilhac, hugely recommended. Now we're headed out for a two-hour walk through the vineyards. Be sundown on our return.

Eating your words

Proven: I won't starve in France, despite not speeking my neighbors' lingo. French inarticulation syndrome. Tonight I successfully ordered a Christoforo Grande (the big, not the small; chorizo is the recipe's star performer, under a duvet of cheese) from the Wednesday-night pizza truck. Wherein enacts a stage performance consisting of a woman who takes the orders and prepares the pies; her husband, who cooks and tends the pies; and this kid from the neighborhood who hangs around, apparently infatuated with the dog asleep in the cab. It was a warm October night. A smothered moon. Perfect for Halloween, a few weeks from now. I "bon soired" anyone else who showed up; politesse goes a long way in our small town. Simone is in Amsterdam, speaking at a conference, so I'm on my own. Monolingual. Yet eight slices full.

Bailing without a bottom

Back in the early 1990s I was one the guys who helped sell the idea of 401(k)s to very reluctant work forces. They didn't understand it. They feared it. They were deaf to half the pitch: when you said markets would go up and down, they only heard down. But companies wanted out of the so-called defined benefits racket. So with plentiful inducements (company matches), everyone bought in.

Okay, cut to the federal government. One would think, one would hope, one would fantasize that a responsible national government would have a few priorities posted on its bulletin board, number one being: Protect these people's retirement investments at all costs. Risk management, in other words. Because if you don't? Well, for one thing, the U.S. health care system is headed toward the boomer iceberg like the Titanic at flank speed. And if those golden oldies (me included) don't have any money left to help pay for the enormous cost of their chronic diseases and repair bills? Guess who gets stuck again.

Maybe the U.S. can take on so much debt that the obligations become another planet orbiting the sun. Right now I'm afraid the debt will become an asteroid instead, ending life as we know it.

When cherished reading glasses break

  I bought owl-eye reading glasses for $25 in Union Pier, Michigan. They quickly became my favorites. Too favorite: worn every day for a year, they finally gave out in France, my first day at the house. I fixed them with a coat hanger. I don't think you can really tell.

 

Brainstorming à pied

In France, Simone and I hike and talk about our work. Today we hiked to L'ermitage Saint-Victor, escalating 205 meters up a limestone hill, covered with the typical hot dry Corbières vegetation: rosemarie, thyme, teensy holly, dwarf oak, dill. Wear a hat and sunglasses. Bring water.

There's a vineyard shoved up every cranny, like a handkerchief shoved in a pocket. It's fall here: the vineyards are changing color, some to brown, some to crimson, some to beaten gold. Today's topics: the SteelYard, an arts center in Providence, RI; and Red Tomato, a ... well, we're still figuring that out.

At the peak of our hike, we had a view of a wind farm that stretched by the dozens down and into the Mediterranean sea. The hermit's home was nothing like isolated. Cell towers now surrounded it, a million messages transferring. The constant wind through metal frames sang a willowy song.

Pizza night, the movie

Book done, while in Fraunce

On the publishing oval I'm not setting speed records. But still: this is how-to book number four since 2005. Fini: TODAY. For publication by Emerson & Church in 2009. Topic: How to write a fundraising case for support. Today's weather in the sodden south of Fraunce: rainy, with clearing in the forecast. We flew from Boston in a downpour; it took exactly nine days for the same weather to find us again. Instead of lunch today, we ran and walked for an hour and a half through vineyards, snacking on grapes leftover from the harvest.