The Little Words Mean the Most

Ben graduates

We congratulated him by giving him a book in his field about the Eames couple, saying (me in my party guise as Facetious Man; sad past comment) that, despite the instructor acclaim, the awards, the A's, we'd never really thought he'd make it.

We knew him first and belovedly as Batman Ben, in his 5-to-7-year-old period; he loved his cape and mask.

Now he's grad-ye-aphid (as he maybe said; Laura had served me one of her "surprise" drinks) from the Rhode Island School of Design. Today. The speeches, the music, the nude graduates (it is RISD). Following the celebratory crab-fest at his parents' home, he heads for a 6-month internship at one of the most interesting book publishers I know, Chronicle in San Francisco. They reinvented (rescued) the coffee table book.

Simone and I met the future at Ben's party. And they are uniformly wonderful. One's headed to Nasa, to design environments for a space flight to Mars. One's headed into the Army after college. Jay, Ben's best friend from high school, has applied to the state police. He talked about the history of defunct laws.

Maria, Laura Lollipop's younger sister, is a great conversationalist. Fast for the unwary, a splashy laugh. Last time I saw her daughter, Julia, she was true goth. Today, she's just out of Savannah art school and working in a children's museum. Lime-green nails. Picture-window white sunglasses. And the most interesting voice at our table, bearing gracefully its full conversational weight. Talk-show potential? You'd think so without argument.

Out on the lake, motorboats cut white shoelaces through the black-blue bay. A party-boat surged past, exceeding the limits of pontoons, heroically dragging a happy child on a waterboard. On the screened porch behind us an iPod played a song list approved by three generations. The sun was out. The air was warm, shadows deep and swaying.

Crossed wires

Maybe she'll exercise 17 hours straight and become a pencil. Maybe I'll drink 17 bottles of discounted premium wine and become a pencil case.

A DOT of tru wit

Odd coincidence.

In November 2007 I was leaving Altoona, PA in my rental, already by the city limits one wrong turn in. I was in no hurry, though. There was Pittsburgh rush-hour traffic ahead and a two-hour wait at the airport before my flight. It was dour outside. Bare. Leafless. Wet. Snow the day before.

Just as I am getting back on highway 22 and pointed in the right direction, an official-looking highway sign flashes by that tells me, Buckle Up Next Million Miles.

Did I see that? I haven't had an hallucination in 40 years. So: enchanted, I'm sure!

I could stop; have my camera. Traffic's light. It's cold though. I'm already a mile up the road going a legal 65. I keep driving, there's a Panera I know up ahead where I can eat lunch and grab their free wireless. A clothes-hanger of regret rubs my shoulders. I expect to see the same sign again, since I'm driving another 60 miles. I don't.

Désolé. That was a great sign. Highway travel should be more entertaining; it would save lives. I'm always falling asleep on interstates. They're designed to be hypnotic: predictable, unsurprising, repetitive, broad, no sharp angles, all soft curves.

Rumble strips have saved me from a dozing crash on at least two occasions recently. "They" should make civil engineers take a semester's worth of human psychology. Engineers work in three dimensions. Drivers occupy at least four and maybe five dimensions on the road.

Flash forward to France, May 2009. I'm driving Paul Duffy, lawyer, limousine chauffeur, joke machine, and photophanatic, from the Toulouse airport back to the house. We have two hours to kill, so we're all over the topic pasture. He mentions a sign he saw on the highway, Buckle Up Next Million Miles. Me: "You saw that, too? I thought it was a prank!" Him: "No, it's real. I have the photo. I'll send it to you."

I am the destroyer of duckweed

I don't know if it's really called that. And I don't care enough to even look the correct name up. Classifying weeds by morphology: no interest. Understanding their rootage: vindictive interest.

Besides, every time I think "duckweed" I think "duck face," the poor woman denied at the altar in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Every weed has a weakness, I'm pretty sure. Duckweed's is this: it spreads by sending out hair-thin, wire-brown runners; easy to break. But if you're careful, you can move from one weed-head to the next by following the runners just as you'd follow a cord. Today's record was a runner one yard long, with a half dozen leafy extrusions budding along it.

If duckweed has an intelligence and a way of sharing information, I am the Destroyer. I know duckweed's secret. I have the tools and methods to exploit that secret and control (you can never eliminate) duckweed's party-crashing.

Duckweed is ugly, in a garden of pretty. It chokes bare ground that frames good, noble, intriguing, ensorcelling plants; with its polyester green, limp leaves. I'm tempted to try it in a salad, to see. It's the guest you despise and wish would leave cloning himself (never a her) a hundred times and dominating; a familiar sit-com script for the garden.

Our last day

And the sun, after a week in exile, came out. If the sign reflected in the car windshield is accurate, we did a 20K walk run in the 'hood. Simone and I figured out my next book en route.

Our house in France...

...has stuff. L-r: Liane, the house advertising deity; farm implements; Mr. Copain (translation: your friend), a cigarette promotion; our dining room; the hibiscus in the window soften the view of the neighbor's sodden laundry; rainwater deluging past our "bridges". We live on the side of an ancient volcano; rain says, It's all downhill from here.

St. Martin de 'Arcon

Forty-five minutes from the house is a very cute micro village we call the "hobbit town" because the houses are small, clustered together at the foot of a gorge, and made entirely of stone. We dragged Lee and Steve along for an Orb river tour. That nice looking yellow and black amphibian is a fire salamander, and it is outside its known region; alert the geeks!

The Larzac

Photos by Paul Duffy, Marilyn's sweet husband. L-r: The (formerly) Knights Templar town of La Couvertoirade, now an artisanal village; the agricultural mainstay of the region (Roquefort cheese and leather goods); lunch in the rain (the sunny south of France become the sodden south of France); the Sir Norman Foster built by Eiffel tallest-in-the-world suspension bridge we drove an hour to admire breathlessly.

Saturday marche

We buy our weekly cheese and sausage -- and Che Guevara gear -- from the vendors at the Saturday Pézenas outdoor market. Far right: our krew.

Mas Amiel

A fine vineyard in Maury expands. During construction, its tasting room welcomes you inside a double-wide. Footnote: I did not come to France for a stern lesson in sobriety.