Something to be Thankful for this Thanksgiving—Obama’s Victory!

We certainly had something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving—Obama’s victory!

Rick and I spent Thanksgiving with my sister and her extended family of friends and relatives. The group gets larger every year with more and more table extensions. It’s a group of secular liberal Democrats and while there were no formal prayers, there were plenty of expressions of relief at not having to face four years of President Romney--and a whole lot of gloating about the shell shocked Republicans who thought they were cruising towards easy victory.

I’m not a religious person so am not thanking God for sending Hurricane Sandy to give the president a bump in the polls. So I guess my thanks goes to the president who had a record of accomplishment, , to the voters who came in numbers much higher than expected and to Obama’s stellar campaign team. To quote James Carville: :

They connected people in a way that had never been done before with Facebook. If they knew I was an undecided voter, they also knew I was in the Marine Corps, and they'd have a retired gunnery sergeant call me to get me to vote. It was way far above anything that's ever been tried in politics before. Political scientists will mine this data forever.

And also thanks to Nate Silver whose fivethirtyeight.com kept me sane in those tension filled weeks before the election.

It would have been a very glum Thanksgiving dinner if things had turned out otherwise!

I have never been so far behind in fall clean-up as I have been this year.

My garden desperately in need of fall clean-up!

During my working years when my garden was a mess, I was convinced that when I retired things would be very different. How wrong I was.

I have never been so far behind in fall clean-up as I have been this year. Sure, I can blame it on the election. I was immobilized by anxiety the entire Fall (especially after the Denver debate).

But getting older and taking a little bit longer to do everything is certainly part of the explanation. My husband managed to keep election anxiety at bay but has seemed much less interested in garden work then he used to be. I haven’t raked a single leaf and he hasn’t been much better.

And there are all these leaves which still have to come down!

I still have a lot of bulbs to plant and it’s clear that divisions of perennials I had intended to do this Fall will not get done. There’s no choice about the bulbs; they have to go into the ground and they will even if it means I’m out there some cold rainy night in December desperately trying to get the bulbs in before the ground freezes.

Just hope we don’t have an early snow fall!

The Obama Victory

It sure felt different from 2008. Instead of the incredible high, there was just an enormous sense of relief. That word “relief” cropped up over and over in phone calls, emails from friends/family members today.

I’m a Democratic committeeperson and yesterday was a tough day at the polls—mainly because I could not sleep Monday night. I get caught up in worrying that I wouldn’t get enough sleep to handle a long day and that worry became a self-fulfilling prophecy. By the end of the day, I had a raging headache and could barely keep my eyes open.

The good news was that my neighbors voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Despite all those claims that liberals/progressives were disillusioned with the President, my neighbors were almost all voting enthusiastically for the President. So the vibes were good and that made the headache bearable.

When the networks called the race for Obama soon after 11:00 pm, I collapsed and had the soundest sleep I had had in a long time—no waking up in the middle of the night obsessing about the election.

There was so much at stake in this election. Obama has had real accomplishments-- e.g., health care, financial regulation, the end of DADT and support for marriage equality. It would be intolerable to see all this unravel.

But I think the intensity of my support for Obama is in some ways connected to my stage in life. I came of age in the 1960’s, a time of tremendous social possibility, but then spent my middle years in a time of reaction. There was bit of hope during the Clinton years, but then the dark ages returned with the George W. Bush years. Obama’s 2008 victory signaled the possibility of an era of progressive change. And we have certainly seen real movement in that direction.

I have hope (yes, a much ridiculed word) that we may see further change in the direction of fairer, less racist, less homophobic society. I so want to leave this beautiful planet on a note of hope.

Race and the 2012 Election: Just what is going on?

I never believed the post racial narrative of 2008, but I didn’t expect the venom of the Tea Party and their hideously racist signs.I consoled myself with the fact that this kind of virulent racism is largely confined to older white voters and that in 20 years (or less) this ugliness will pass. (Unfortunately, I probably won't be around to see it.)

However the 2012 election has made it painfully clear that this is not just a problem of overt Tea Party racism. Something else is going on. According to an Associate Press poll:

Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not.” The poll also found an increase from 2008 when 48 percent of Americans expressed implicitly racist attitudes compared to 51% in 2012.

And although the Democratic Party is certainly not free of racism, today’s virtually all white Republican party is "full of racists," as Colin Powell's former chief of staff Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson told MSNBC's Ed Schultz: :

My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people -- not all of them, but most of them -- who are still basing their positions on race. Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists, and the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that's despicable.

The uptick in both implicit and explicit racism helps explain some of the puzzling aspects of the 2012 campaign such as the dramatic shift in the race after the first debate. How did that debate change the trajectory of the race so much so quickly? Salon’s Joan Walsh’s speculates:

Still, it’s worth asking (even if we don’t have answers) why Obama’s first debate performance seemed to have hurt him so badly with white voters, and particularly white working-class men. My hunch is that apart from racism or cultural distrust (which certainly exist), working-class whites are more affected by whether Obama seems ready to fight for them.

Maybe.

I don’t understand how anyone who read the transcript of the first debate would conclude that Romney’s lies and inconsistencies trumped Obama’s more thoughtful responses, but of course nobody reads the transcript. This was all about who best projected leadership and apparently most people saw Romney’s manic posturing as dynamic leadership.

My explanation: deeply (and in many cases not so deeply) buried assumptions about white superiority are still an unfortunate part of the American psyche. My guess is many white people (particularly white men) over 50 boarding a plane would have a twinge of anxiety at hearing that their pilot was black and my guess is that it might be more than a twinge if they learned their pilot was a black woman. I think Romney tapped into the fear that maybe a black guy just wasn’t up to the job and fixing the economy required a white knight in shining armor.

The crazy belief that Obama cannot speak without a teleprompter is held by Tea Party fanatics but there is something more subtle at work with some white voters. Melissa Harris Perry wrote about this in 2011 in her nation column, “Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama.” She acknowledged that crude Tea Party racism is now mostly confined to the political margins, but that Obama’s re-election bid, however, “may indicate that a more insidious form of racism has come to replace it:”

The 2012 election may be a test of another form of electoral racism: the tendency of white liberals to hold African-American leaders to a higher standard than their white counterparts. If old-fashioned electoral racism is the absolute unwillingness to vote for a black candidate, then liberal electoral racism is the willingness to abandon a black candidate when he is just as competent as his white predecessors.

Perry compares liberal/ progressives’ responses to the Clinton and Obama administrations. Her focus is on progressive response to the president, but her comments I think have broader application:

[President Obama’s] record is, at the very least, comparable to that of President Clinton, who was enthusiastically re-elected. The 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent. If he is, it may be possible to read that result as the triumph of a more subtle form of racism.

I think Obama’s record is far more impressive than Clinton’s, but agree with Perry that Obama has been held to a higher standard and this (at least in part) explains the sudden, dramatic shift on the part of the electorate after the first debate .

If Obama wins, let’s hope that the double standard Perry describes finally begins to fade away.

It will be easier to get through the next 2 weeks after the Oct 22 Presidential Debate!

It will be easier to get through the next 2 weeks after last night’s presidential debate. The president was forceful, convincing and Romney was in an “etch a sketch” mode. This guy has real contempt for the voters. Does he think that we don’t remember he was taking very different positions a short time ago? We will soon find out if the voters have Romnesia and vote for someone who has no core beliefs and values.

If there is any consistency in Romney’s positions, it's his refusal to accept that the world has changed. One of Obama’s best lines was:

"You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines."

Obama also reminded Romney that the Cold War's been over for 20 years:

But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.

See full transcript.

Robert Reich had ( from my point of view) one of the best assessments of the debate:

I thought the third and last presidential debate was a clear win for the president. He displayed the authority of the nation's Commander-in-Chief -- calm, dignified, and confident. He was assertive without being shrill, clear without being condescending. He explained to a clueless Mitt Romney the way the world actually works. Romney seemed out of his depth. His arguments were more a series of bromides than positions -- "we have to make sure arms don't get into the wrong hands," "we want a peaceful planet," "we need to stand by our principles," "we need strong allies," "we need a comprehensive strategy to move the world away from terrorism." This has been Romney's problem all along, of course, but in the first debate he managed to disguise his vacuousness with a surprisingly combative, well-rehearsed performance. By the second debate, the disguise was wearing thin. In tonight's debate, Romney seemed to wither -- and wander. He often had difficulty distinguishing his approach from the President's, except to say, repeatedly, "America needs strong leadership."

Also Dick Polman got it right:

[Romney]was so woefully over matched in last night's foreign policy debate that he couldn't even get his geography straight. At one point, he said that "Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea." Wow, that's quite a revelation, given the fact that Iran has its own route to the sea, courtesy of its own 1000-mile coastline. But President Obama didn't rout Romney merely because the challenger can't read a map. Obama easily won the debate for four reasons: He called out Romney for lying, he educated Romney on basics of national defense, he listed Romney's long string of foreign policy flip flops, and he enjoyed the many moments when Romney endorsed administration policies.

But will the voters get it? Despite the president’s strong performance, I’m still scared and still nervously checking fivethirtyeight.com. Nate Silver is still predicting an Obama victory and as of today is giving the President a 70.3% chance of winning. I’d be in really bad shape if it weren’t for fivethirtyeight.com

The October 16 Debate-- the President is Back on Track!!!

I’m trying to remember if I was as stressed out in 2008 as I have been this election cycle. Probably not. Whenever I got worried I went to fivethirtyeight.com and Nate Silver calmed me down. The fivethirtyeight.com cure worked this year until the Denver debate and Obama’s poll numbers plummeted. He is still the projected winner but his lead seemed to narrow each day. For first time I really faced the prospect that he might lose.

I was in a state of high anxiety the day of the second debate. I was one of the few people who did not think that Obama’s performance in first debate was anywhere near as bad as most political commentators claimed; also, Romney’s manic spewing forth of lie after lie did not strike me as a great performance. Yes, Obama failed to point out Romney’s lies and yes he seemed tired and disengaged, but the transcript of debate creates a very different impression than the videotape—Obama’s thoughtful answers vs. Romney’s inconsistencies and prevarications.

The Biden/ Ryan debate lifted my spirits but it didn’t seem to produce a lift in the polls and the brief euphoria I felt after the VP debate quickly faded.

Oh what a difference last night’s debate made!!! The president was back on track,and once again the leader who inspired so many of us in 2008 and who has delivered for us in office.

Yesterday was very good day—Obama won the debate and the Supreme Court ruled that early voting could proceed in Ohio.

I slept well last night—no waking up in the middle of the night worrying about the election. The president is back on track to win this one!!!

It's time to move the plants back inside!

My sunroom uncluttered by plants

My sunroom last year after I crammed in all the plants

One of the household chores I really detest is moving all the plants back into the house before the first frost. I’ve really gotten to like my little sunroom with only one jade plant. But I can’t put it off any longer.

I used to think that when I was retired I’d get a head start on this loathsome chore and have all my plants back indoors by mid-October. Well, it hasn’t worked out that way. I’m just starting in mid October! I am even more behind schedule than I was during my working years.

Each year when I try to cram my plants back into the house, it gets harder and harder. Some have become enormous and I’m going to have to hack away at them if I’m ever to get them back inside. Our little sunroom is the only place we can put some of the really gigantic ones and soon there will be no room for us in the sunroom. I love my plants but this is really getting out of hand!

The Computer Crash Blues

I knew my ancient computer had to be replaced. I was holding out until I finished my book on second wave feminism in Philly and somehow got it published. I didn’t want to have to deal with transferring all those files.

The plan was, after I finished the book, I’d get out those back issues of Consumer Reports I was saving for this purpose, do the research, and get the best deal I could on a computer. Well, best laid plans and all that.

Lately, the computer was getting really, really slow and making weird noises. I was having trouble re-booting, and when we went to Block Island I left it on. I decided it was worth wasting electricity, so I wouldn’t have to worry about re-booting. (From an environmental perspective, very bad, I know.)

I have a publisher interested and was making the revisions she wanted so I could get the manuscript back to her by the beginning of October as promised. At this critical moment, my computer made a very loud, horrible sound and then the screen went black. Rick said it sounded like a power supply problem.

My students were always claiming something like this happened to them when they didn’t hand their papers in on time. This may be payback for never believing their stories.

So I had no time to do research to get the best possible deal on a new computer. I went to Staples (because it’s five minutes from my home) and bought the cheapest CPU from a manufacturer whose name I recognized and hoped that the extra hundred I paid for file transfers would work. I had thought I was backing everything up with Simple Save, but apparently not.

I finally got the wretched computer set up and then discovered there was no wireless adapter. So, back to Staples. I asked them why they didn’t tell me the computer did not come with a wireless adapter—I thought that was standard these days. The sales person acknowledged he should have told me.

Why am I bothering to write all this boring stuff? Maybe the real question is: why can’t I deal with the possibility of going without a computer for one day??

Block Island is Glorious in September!

One of the great joys of retirement is taking a seashore vacation in September! The prices are lower, the weather cooler, the crowds much thinner, and the ocean temperature still warm.

Last September Rick and I went to Martha’s Vineyard. We hadn’t been there for about 25 years and decided it was time for a revisit. It will be our last visit. Although thanks to our inn, we had access to a gorgeous beach in Menemsha , the public beaches were disappointing and beach access was severely restricted. The mega mansions took up large stretches of precious beach.

We found ourselves saying over and over, this is nowhere near as beautiful as Block Island, a tiny little island about 14 miles off the coast of Rhode Island. Unlike Martha’s Vineyard which is so large that you’re often not aware you’re on an island, on little Block Island you are always within sight of the ocean. And there's no problem with beach access. There are expensive houses on Block Island but no mega mansions commandeering large stretches of beach.

Block Island was once considered “the poor man’s Martha’s Vineyard.” I don’t think it’s exactly a poor folks’ vacation spot, (although it does have a new restaurant called The Poor People’s Pub), but it is no playground for the super rich.

We have been going to Block Island in the summer for the past few years and renting a house big enough to invite friends and relatives. Part of the fun is sharing Block Island with good friends. This year we decided to do this at the last minute and we had fewer visitors. We were so happy that our good friend Beth could spend a few days with us. The weather was glorious and it was our best time ever on Block Island. In the future, Block Island will be a September vacation spot for us.

RECOVERING FROM THIS YEAR’S GARDEN DISAPPOINTMENTS AND LOOKING FORWARD TO NEXT YEAR

From Fran Waksler who gardens in Cambridge MA

This spring’s azaleas promised a wonderful gardening year

As did the hibiscus

The spring of 2012 started out very well in my garden and I was looking forward to a beautiful and lush year. For a variety of reasons, however, the summer turned my garden into a big disappointment. As the weather and other issues interfered, the garden suffered. At first I was disappointed and unhappy, but I finally decided that it was more productive to focus on what I could do now to make next year a great gardening year.

With this year’s warm spring, I got an early start on yard work. I was optimistic that this year I would be able to keep up and have the best garden ever. Alas, it was not to be. May and June were taken up with finishing a book I edited with a friend of mine—a fully enjoyable project, but the amount of intense work involved limited my time in the garden. And then, in June, I had cataract surgery, after which I was not supposed to bend over or lift anything heavy for two weeks, so all I could manage was the little light pruning that could be done standing up. When I finally had more free time to devote to gardening, the weather scuttled my plans, with alternations of heat in the 90s and days of torrential rain, both of which kept me inside.

The odd weather was responsible for a number of disappointments. The lilacs, which reliably bloom around Mothers’ Day, had a very short season and were gone by the holiday. Clematis came and went with equal dispatch, as did the roses. The red roses, fortunately, rallied and gave a second show (despite the fact that their trellis fell down and had to be nailed back to the house, a task that involved many painful scratches from thorns). The June white roses were also short lived, but for some reason just last week decided that they owed me a second blooming, offering me both encouragement and pleasure. Strawberries and raspberries, however, produced almost no berries. The purple Concord and green grapes look good but don’t yet seem to have gotten the kind of weather that will make them sweet.

I finally identified the hateful vine that has been invading my yard for the past few years—swallow wart—and I have been on a mission to exterminate it. Apparently I am not the only one, for in my city and adjoining ones there are actually “vigilante” groups bent on its destruction. People walk through neighborhoods, talk to neighbors, and collect what pods they can that are in public places. Interestingly, we are told not to compost the pods and not to put them in the trash. The only suggestion is to burn them, but to the best of my knowledge burning them outside is illegal. I’m not sure what one is supposed to do with them—all I have come up with is putting them in plastic bags in the trash and feeling guilty.

So, in preparation for the wonderful garden I will have next year, I have started madly weeding, pruning, taking stock, and making plans. I’m cleaning up the strawberry and raspberry beds. I’m encouraging a shaded area with sparse grass and a moderate amount of moss by pulling up the straggly grass and transplanting moss that is growing is less desirable locations such as the strawberry bed. I’ll let the grass and moss decide on the dividing line between them and support their decision. It’s been a wonderful year for ferns, with the consequence that they are overspreading a north side path so I am cutting back where I can. When they die back, I’ll go to work with my edger, define their limits, and dig up those that have spilled beyond their boundaries. There is a certain perversity in the fact that plants that don’t do well and those that do too well are both problems!

And I will relocate some of the lovely tall phlox that Karen gave me years ago. The pink ones have spread in just the right places. The few white ones, however, have spread willy-nilly. Since I have a particular weakness for the white ones, I am carefully marking them where they self-seeded and will gather them together in a single place to make a beautiful big white splash.

Tall white phlox from Karen

The academic calendar still shapes the way I see the world.

I’m still kind of surprised by how easily I’ve adjusted to retirement--how it so quickly became the new normal.

Yet there are some old habits that linger. The academic calendar still shapes the way I see the world. I haven’t shaken the idea that the year begins in September and I have to get my house in order before the new year begins in the fall. One ritual was cleaning out my kitchen cabinets which I did religiously every summer (Yes, it’s true I only clean my cabinets once a year.)

Last week, I had a moment of panic. It was the end of August and I hadn’t cleaned the kitchen cabinets! But then reality set in—it doesn’t matter if this job stretches into October.

Just as it doesn’t matter that I haven’t gotten through that stack of books I wanted to read this summer. There will be time for that later in the year. No stacks of student papers will get in the way.

Labor Day used to be a serious work day for me as I desperately tried to finish all my course outlines. There was always one syllabus I hadn’t nailed down before Labor Day weekend. No more.

There is one Labor Day ritual I really miss—the Waterloo Gardens Labor Day sale, the mother of all plant sales. Sadly Waterloo Gardens went bankrupt and closed this summer. I learned the hard way never to plant in the late spring or summer. If hadn’t got a shrub in the ground by mid-spring, it would have to wait until the fall. When we were working the only time we could travel was summer vacation or winter holidays and it was just too risky to plant during the summer when we weren’t around to water plants for 3-4 weeks.

I really looked forward to going to Waterloo Gardens to buy their always healthy and (during Labor Day weekend) deeply discounted plants. Fortunately, we have a lot of good garden centers in the Delaware Valley, but nothing quite like Waterloo Gardens. I miss that wonderful Labor Day sale, but I sure do not miss going back to work!!!!

Road trips have their advantages—Part II, Montréal

After Burlington we went to Montréal which we had visited briefly about 25 years ago en route to visiting friends in Ottawa. We weren’t all that impressed with Montréal, but then we didn’t really see it. It was hellishly hot and the only thing I recall was visiting Montréal’s amazing Botanical Garden. It was too hot to walk round the garden and we rode through in a little train, with no time to stop and smell the roses. This time it was hot, but not unbearably hot, so we got to really see the garden, including the amazing Chinese Garden.

The jewel of Montréal is its beautifully 17th century old town which for some inexplicable reason we never visited last time.

Twenty-five years ago we were really disappointed with the restaurants. It seemed as if French culinary talent had not managed to cross the Atlantic. We were certainly not disappointed this time and ate very well in Montreal. Although food was affordable, wine lovers in Montréal(and all of Canada for that matter) will experience real sticker shock. Alcohol is heavily taxed with revenue going to pay for Canada’s national healthcare system, so we consoled ourselves that the high prices were in the service of a worthy cause. I’d gladly pay higher taxes in the U.S. for a single payer system.

Canada’s high taxes pay for a variety of public goods, including Montréal’s Museum of Fine Arts which is well–designed and has a good permanent collection which is free to the public. We spent an entire day there. We had intended to combine the Museum of Fine Arts with! Pointe-à-Callière, Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History, but in our senior citizen, slow-travel mode, we decide to see one museum really well and spend the rest of the day hanging out in a café.

Rick had the gratifying experience of being taken for a Quebecois because his French is so good. He was basking in compliments the entire trip. The first tribute came when we were entering Quebec and the border guard asked in surprise, “How come your French is so good?” When we went to the Botanical Garden, Rick asked for two senior tickets and when he looked at the receipt, he realized he had been given the senior rate for Quebec citizens.

We will be back to Montréal. For Francophiles like us, it’s wonderful to get a little taste of French culture without the pain and expense of international air travel.

Road trips have their advantages—Part I, The Hudson Valley and Burlington Vermont.

Pond at Bob and Susan's new house

Road trips have their advantages—no desperately trying to pack enough clothes into tiny suitcases, no pouring toiletries into those small plastic jars that will pass muster with homeland security. We just throw whatever we want in the trunk of the car—including as many hardback books as we want. Kindle books is not my idea of summer reading!

Since we decided to take international trips only off season--thus avoiding the crowds and high prices--we’ve been taking road trips in the summer.

Our good friends in Vermont have moved from southern Vermont to a small town outside of Burlington, right near the Canadian border, so this year we decided to combine Burlington with Montreal. One concession to old age is not to drive 6+ hours in one day. This means driving to Burlington is a two day trip for us.

Our first stop was Rhinebeck , New York. To Philly folks looking for a weekend get-away: consider the Hudson Valley town of Rhinebeck with its many antique stores, trendy boutiques and some very good restaurants. Just outside of Rhinebeck is one of the best B&B’s we’ve ever stayed in—Whistlewood Farm. The setting is idyllic, the owner very friendly and the breakfasts fantastic. On our return tip to Philly we stayed at another charming country inn, the Inn at Silver Maple Farm with Shaker themed furnishing and the friendliest innkeeper ever.

On our way to Vermont, we took the opportunity to visit Eleanor Roosevelt’s house at Valkill. Years go we visited Hyde Park but missed the last tour for Valkill. After reading She Was One of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker by Brigid O’Farrell for my feminist book club I really wanted to see Valkill. O’Farrell has documented ER’s contribution to the labor movement which if mentioned at all is often downplayed. The 15 minute film which begins the tour at Valkill emphasizes ER’s concern for the poor but does not mention her very strong ties to the organizations fighting to improve the lives of poor and working class people. The tour guide was very knowledgeable about the minutiae of ER’s life but did not seem aware of her ties to organized labor. I recommended the book to her and she said she’d look into it.

This was the first time we had been to Burlington and it lives up to its reputation as a charming small city. Cities with water fronts are very fortunate and Burlington takes full advantage of its waterfront on Lake Champlain.

Our main purpose in visiting Vermont was to see our friends. For those of you who know Bob and Susan here are photos of their beautiful new houses which sits on 49 (!)acres.

Susan's spectacular vegetable garden!

Bob about to mow their enormous lawn

Foix, the Pyrenees and Parc de l 'Art Préhistorique, The Langue d’Oc Diaries, Part III

The medieval streets of Foix

Our last stop was the Pyrenees town of Foix, a seriously charming old medieval town. We stayed in an inexpensive hotel in the old town—fine for one night. I had forgotten how beautiful the Pyrenees are; the only downside is there’s no escaping driving through those really long tunnels.

We decided to return to Barcelona by way of Foix because of the spectacular Parc Pyrénéen de l'Art Préhistorique. We had hoped to visit Grotte de Niaux, but the glorious weather we had enjoyed the entire tip changed to cold and rain. The guidebooks cautioned against visiting the caves in the rain as the entrance is slippery and there is no turning back. We decided we weren’t up to it. Slipping and breaking an ankle in one of these caves was too scary a prospect for this senior citizen.

We had visited caves with astonishing prehistoric paintings in the Dordogne, were in awe of the artistic vision of our ancestors tens of thousands of years ago, and wanted to have that experience again. However, it’s much easier to navigate the caves in the flat land of the Dordogne than in Pyrenees --and we were about 20 years younger.

Although we didn’t make ito the Grotte de Niaux, we saw amazing reproductions in the museum Parc Préhistorique.

The museum was organized in way that was very confusing. It reminded us of the American Indian museum in Washington, D.C.-- deliberately non-chronological in the organization of exhibits and, according to the American Indian museum’s designers, mounting a challenge to linear thinking. I don’t know if the designers of the Parc Prehistorique were deliberately trying to create an experience of disorientation, but that’s the effect it had in us. Nonetheless, the museum was a very powerful experience and will stay with me in a way most museums do not.

In addition to the museum, the Parc Prehistorique contains numerous open-air exhibits, including one which demonstrated how archaeologists work. (I think if I were a young person that museum would have made me seriously consider becoming an archaeologist.)Since it was a dreary day, we had the attentions of the young, enthusiastic archaeologist all to ourselves.

Luckily for archaeologists, pre-historic humans did not clean up their campsites and they left a treasure tore of litter for archaeologists to sift through. The exhibit recreated the kinds of objects found at these sites and demonstrated how archaeologists have interpreted the findings to reconstruct scenes of daily life at the campsites. Archaeologists expect to unearth many more caves and campsites and learn a good deal more about pre-historic humans. I hope some of the discoveries are made when I’m still around!

Rediscovering Toulouse: The Langue d’Oc Diaries, Part II

Toulouse, Main Square

Rick and I thought we had shortchanged Toulouse when we visited in August in the mid-1980’s. It was hellishly hot, and we thought if we hadn’t been stumbling about in a heat-induced daze we might actually like Toulouse.

And that’s just what occurred when we returned last Spring. Toulouse, like so many European cities, is an open-air architectural museum. The architecture is very much like that of Paris, but the colors are different. In Paris, it’s gray stone with black balconies; in Toulouse (called the Rose City) it’s Mediterranean colors—-red brick buildings with blue, turquoise, and green balconies.

Street in Old Town, Toulouse

Toulouse is also a clearly a much more prosperous city then it was in the mid-1980’s and is now the center of the French aerospace industry. The old town which I remembered as a little shabby has been cleaned up and is now filled with trendy shops and upscale restaurants and cafes.

There’s much to see in Toulouse: some very good museums and magnificent churches, like San Sernin which has one of the most beautiful towers in Europe and Les Jacobins which contains the tomb of Thomas Aquinas and a gorgeous cloister.

San Sernin Tower

Les Jacobins Cloister

We certainly didn’t exhaust Toulouse in our 3 day stay. We never got to many of the smaller museums as we couldn’t resist the pleasure of hanging out in cafes. I’m always amazed at how much free time the French appear to have. The cafes were always full and most of the peopled were clearly not tourists.

Toulouse is also a very affordable city. Our hotel was half the cost of our Carcassonne hotel and our restaurant bills were considerably lower. I especially recommend Café L’Opera—and old brasserie on the main square with traditional Catalan cooking. We were very glad we made the return trip and came away with a very different impression of Toulouse.