Go Figure

2009-08-13T12:01:00.003+01:00

Chapter Three

Late that afternoon, I had everything pretty much ship shape and was standing at the entrance to the living room looking through the viewfinder of Ben’s old 35 mm Pentax with the fish eye lens. My house proud mother, used to do the same with her stainless steel electric kettle. With satisfaction she’d survey each tidy room in the curve of the polished kettle. Unlike my mother, I was not a neat freak. I didn’t make a habit of keeping the house spotless but I suspected Fay, my antithesis did, just as she used to keep her room in the nurses’ residence.
Fay would be staying in Susan’s old room. Susan still considered it her room but since she did have an apartment downtown, an apartment she’d be sharing with her sister come September, I didn’t think it would be unreasonable to start using her room for guests. I knew she resented me asking her to clear the closet of all the stuff she hadn’t used since leaving for university but hey, give me a break! How long do parents have to keep their kids’ stuff? I mean high school notes or stuffed animals for pity’s sake? And who uses multiple CD players these days? Get rid of it, I say. Give it to someone who can use it. It was a pack rat mentality that burdened me with too much of my own stuff. I’m always trying to find a good home for my rubbish.
“Sometimes,” Fay used to say, when we shared an apartment, “there’s just no better home for an item than the garbage can.”
Maybe, I thought wistfully, I could persuade the girls to help me lug some items down to the local flea market this summer. Susan’s room, I noted with satisfaction, passed the fish-eye test.
I hadn’t told Robyn that if her sister came home on this weekend, she’d be sharing her room. Why invite a hissy fit? I was getting wiser with age. So wise in fact that I’d finally begun to pick my battles. Except for the laundry, I’d given up on trying to get Robyn to pick up after herself or give me a hand. I found it took less energy to do it myself than deal with the anger generated in me by her grudging responses or ‘forgotten’ tasks. I kept the door to her room closed so I wouldn’t be confronted with the chaos I thought of as a hell hole. A few more weeks and she’d be attending the Ontario College of Art and Design on Beverly Street in Toronto. I had to laugh when I thought of her going to art school. The choice suited her well but this past winter she’d run a different plan past me.
“I think I’d like to go to university somewhere warm,” she’d said as she dropped her snow-flaked winter coat, gloves, scarf and rucksack where she stood in the living room.
“And where might that be?” I asked, glowering at her discarded duds.
“Florida,” she replied brightly, ignoring my testiness.
“Florida’s warm,” I agreed.
“So can I go?!”
“I have no objection,” I said with a breezy air as I stepped over the pile of shed belongings. I was trying to maintain my calm as I headed for the kitchen to make a cup of tea and maybe eat a cookie or ten in the bargain.
“You don’t?” She sounded really excited and followed me into the kitchen.
“Not at all.” I opened the tap and filled the kettle still acting nonchalant and hoping she’d leave the kitchen so I could sneak a cookie from the emergency package I kept under the tea towels. Neither Ben nor Robyn cared for cookies and could easily take one and let the rest go stale.
“Great I’ll apply!” She bounced toward me and gave me a big kiss on my cheek.
“Just one thing, Robyn.”
“Huh?” she said, pulling back and looking less excited.
“How are you going to pay the tuition?”
“I have to pay?”
“Count on it.”
“But Daddy said he’d pay my tuition if I…”
“Got accepted to a Canadian university. Remember?”
Robyn turned on her heel, tears welling up in her eyes. I thought I heard her mumble “bitch” and felt angry myself. Why did kids nowadays think everything was a given? Why did they think we had to fulfill their every wish and desire? Why? Probably because we’d done our best to do just that and had only ourselves to blame. I opened the tea towel drawer, felt beneath the ironed tea towels for the package of cookies and removed four. I scoffed them with my anger.
Anyway that battle was behind us now. She’d got into OCAD and was pleased to have been admitted. Art was where her talents lay and I was pleased for her. I also wasn’t unhappy about her leaving. It was time to empty the nest, a thought I relished. It would provide solitude, and give Ben and me time to rediscover what we saw in each other in the first place.
The last chore I had to finish before setting out for the airport was to take down and hang up another load of laundry. I saw Fred strolling around his garden occasionally bending over to sniff the odd bloom before adding it to a bouquet. He was better dressed than he had been this morning and I remembered he said he had a cardiology appointment.
“Hey Fred!” I called over. “ How’d it go?”
He cupped his ear and I walked over to his side of the garden.
“How did it go at the cardiologist’s?”
He frowned and said, “Now here’s the funny thing. Remember this morning when we were talking about dying?”
“Yes,” I said, dragging out the word.
“Well, there were a whole bunch of women outside the medical plaza carrying placards with “stop killing babies’ written on them. You know, the anti-abortion brigade.”
“I think they call themselves, ‘prolifers’.”
“Whatever. Bunch a crazy women if you ask me, oh and one guy. Anyway, there they were stomping around the parking lot ‘cause there are a couple of gynaecologists working in the building too. So I got to thinking, I’ve got an appointment with a cardiologist, someone who might help me extend my life, but what if they blow up the joint? Do I have to die today for this cause? I don’t mind telling you, I was kind of nervous during that appointment. More nervous than on the operating table.
“Nut cases if you ask me," he continued. "I mean, can you murder someone if they don’t exist yet? You see, the thing is, I think a woman should be able to make the choice. It’s not a black and white situation. There are a lot of instances when it’s not a good idea to have the kid.”
I’d seen many a medical abortion in my student time. It needed the recommendation of two doctors and I don’t know what else. The cases were pitiful indeed, a teen raped by a relative, a destitute, crippled woman on welfare whose husband was in jail and she in a wheelchair. A forty-eight-year old mother of ten….
Fred interrupted my thoughts. I don’t see why someone who’s raped or for whatever reason thinks she can’t or doesn’t want to bring a kid into this world should be forced to carry that child. She’s not going to want it anyway. She’ll only dump it or treat it badly. Too many unwanted kids in this world if you ask me. I don’t think her choice is any of my business or anyone else’s. Hell! these prolifer nuts, to make their point, might end up killing me.”
“Murder of the unborn, they call it.”
“Yeah well, I’m already born. Where’s the logic in it? How can they be willing to take lives to save lives? Frankly, I don’t get it. Nowadays everyone has an axe to grind. Pro-choice, anti-abortion, gay marriage, whatever.” Then he chuckled, is belly moved perceptibly. “Ah well, guess I gotta die sometime.”
“But preferably not in your cardiologist’s office in a bomb blast?”
“Yeah well,” he said, not looking me in the eye but pushing his nose into the boquet he held. “They say, you start dying the moment you’re conceived.”
“Oh Fred! you think so? I don’t. I think there’s probably more of a halfway point when you start to die.”
“Maybe. All I know is we are programed for obsolescence and a heart only gets so many beats. Whatever the halfway point might be that you mention, I must surely have passed it long ago. My only wish is to have enough heart beats to enjoy the roses that surround me.”
Had he just told me how it went at the cardiology appointment? Not good? He still didn’t meet my gaze but added a deep yellow rosebud to his bouquet. Wanting to avoid eye contact, I bent over to pick up a wet shirt of Ben’s and felt my face flush as I cut off the circulation. Since when had bending over become a breath taking experience? I turned away from Fred to pin one corner of the shirt to the line.
“Oh and something else, Beryl. You may like this, I know Mary Frances will. My doctor told me to drop a few pounds before they’ll do another bypass.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, I’m sure as hell not going to go on one of Mary Frances’s cockamamie diets.”
For as long as I’d known Mary Frances she was always on one or another diet, filling me in on her progress as the days and sometimes weeks passed. She always gained it back and then some.
“What will you do? Join her for a little power walking?”
“No, I think I’ll take it easy for a while and join the ‘Y’. I hear they’ve got a lot of new treadmill machines I can set at a slow pace and build up my stamina. Watch television at the same time if I want.”
“Sounds like a plan. Now, you’ll have to excuse me Fred,” I said, “but I’ve got to drive out to the airport…”
“Here, these are for you.” He thrust the bouquet he’d been holding toward me.
“Gee, thanks Fred. What brings this on?” He’d never given me roses before.
“Oh nothing. Just thought you might like ‘em.”
“Oh I do. Yellow is my favourite colour for roses. That’s really sweet of you, thanks.” I let another of Ben’s shirts drop into the laundry basket and took the bouquet.
“And there’s something else I don’t get.” He had a twinkle in his eye.
“What’s that?”
“People like you hanging out their laundry in this day and age. You could save yourself a lot of work if you put it in a dryer. But no, you hang it up, outside. You’ve always done that. What’s the matter? Ben can’t afford to buy you a dryer?”
“Yeah, well I don’t see the point of using electricity when the sun does a better job.” I didn’t smile to soften the remark but pushed my nose in the bouquet.
“Suit yourself,” he chuckled, turned, and, secateurs still in hand, extended his right arm to wave as he ambled toward his back door.
I looked at Fred’s receding back, the folds of fat flowing over the waist of his pants. Funny about his remarks on abortion, since I knew he’d talked Mary Frances out of one and married her with her belly full of another man's child.

2009-07-26T11:47:00.007+01:00

Chapter Two

Housework to me is pure drudgery. It offers no scope for creativity, self expression or satisfaction; thus, if I feel anyone has thoughtlessly increased the load or casually dismissed its import, I become furious.
After a morning of cleaning and tidying, I went outside with a full basket of wet laundry that I set down under the clothes line. I was on my way to the compost heap when out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of my next door neighbour, tending his roses between our two properties. I was in a foul mood because Robyn hadn’t taken out the garbage or compost as she had promised, and she left the laundry out all night, which I’d have to take down before putting up another load. I had a lot to do before I’d be ready to pick up Fay. Seeing Fred quietly dead head his roses should have put a damper on my rampage but his calm only aggravated my rage.
“Hi Beryl,” he said, not looking up. “Got a bee in your bonnet have you?” He must have read my body language. Still fuming, I approached him, a plastic bag of potato peels in hand.
“Hey Fred. Yeah, I’m grouchy this morning.”
“Don’t be like that. Enjoy this fine morning. You don’t know how many more you’re going to get.”
“ I wish I could. Robyn is driving me crazy. She’s got the get-up-and-go to party all night, sleeps all morning, watches television all afternoon and then she can’t muster the energy to dump a little bag of vegetable peelings on the compost or take her laundry off the line at the end of the day.”
“Sounds normal to me. Mary Frances and I get into this all the time. Fred Jr. is as buff as a bronco, can bench press hundreds of pounds, run miles in the sand, but can he feed the cat? Can he put gas in my car? I tell him it doesn't matter how many muscles he's got on the outside, if he can't overcome his lazy-ass tendencies, he's a weakling. He laughs it off. I'm threatening to write him out of my will. So how have you been keeping?”
“Not too bad, thanks,” I said out of habit. Actually I was feeling generally rather crappy and had done so for weeks. “How are you?”
“Still living, still smelling the roses.”
“Sounds ominous.”
“I’ve got to go into hospital again.”
“God, how I hate hospitals.”
“Now that’s funny coming from you, a former nurse. I’ve come to regard the hospital as a body shop and repair station.”
“Need something repaired do you?”
“May need another bypass. Don’t know for sure, gotta see my cardiologist this morning.”
I turned to look him in the eye. “Scared?”
“Nope, I’m going without fear!” He said with what I thought was false joviality.
I studied his stiff practised smile. Fred once owned a Canadian Tire franchise. He was used to pasting on a smile.
“Well as my cardiologist points out,” he continued, “the positive results of the last one lasted unusually long, thirteen years.”
“Was it that long ago?”
“That long,” he said, grinning at me now, some of the falseness had fallen away, as if he were proud of surviving so long. “You know, I think being healthy is largely a mental attitude. It all comes down to positive thinking.”
“I agree with you there, but a healthy lifestyle and good genes help too.”
“I think the media have got us all scared silly, if you ask me.”
I waited for him to elaborate.
“They keep telling us to exercise, eat right, don’t put on any weight.”
“A constant battle for most of us,” I grumbled.
“I presently weigh between 195 and 199 pounds. It seems to be my specific weight. I eat less than I used to, but well, and I don’t seem to be missing it. I think of myself as perhaps a little short for my weight,” he said and dead headed two more roses.
“Maybe this is too close to the bone, but may I ask you something?”
“Fire away.”
“ When you had the first bypass did you prepare yourself to die? You know, get your affairs in order or whatever one does if they know there’s a chance things might go…”
“South?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
“Badly,” I finished, a little uncomfortably.
Fred and I had seldom exchanged much more than pleasantries in all the years we’d been neighbours. As usual we stood several feet apart, separated by his rose bushes, but he answered my question without hesitating.
“Before I got the bypass, they tested me psychologically. Asked me about my fears, anxieties and so on. I think they were surprised, my family probably more so, that I went into the hospital totally without fear. Fact was, I’d been working so hard, I was looking forward to a month of not working. Running a successful Canadian Tire is no cakewalk. Sounds kind of funny I know, but that’s how it was. For me, putting my house in order was the purchase of a new, and I may say, needed car, one week before the operation. I expected to survive. I was thinking of ordering a new car this time round too. A really big mother. One of those SUVs.”
Funny I thought, how the least sporty are the most inclined to buy Sports Utility Vehicles. I held back from delivering one of my eco lectures. It was Fred’s money, but our planet.
“You know,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning a little toward me. “they saw through the sternum and peel back the rib cage to get at the heart? It’s quite something.”
“Amazing isn’t it? Lots of people are getting it done now, more so than ever.”
“Sure and it’s getting safer and safer. I was in hospital seven days, the minimum. Be sixty-eight next month. Don’t feel it. Fact is, if I want to know how old I really am, I look in the mirror at the old man looking back at me.” He chuckled. “And you know what else? I don’t even think about death, which is unavoidably approaching, faster for me than for you.”
“Funny, I think about it all the time.” I do, I really, really do.
“No need to think about dying. It will take care of itself. Enjoy life as much as you can. It’s wonderful. I bet I have it as good now as never before, notwithstanding some physical limitations.” He winked.
I ignored the wink and steered toward neutral ground. “When you’re young, you think of your life stretching indefinitely but more recently I’ve become acutely aware that time is running out, fast. I feel a sense of urgency to get things done.”
“Well, I see you rushing through this chore without even stopping to smell my roses,” he said, with a wave of his upturned palm to indicate his magnificent rose bushes. “Ever since I retired, I just see life is accelerating all around me while I’m slowing down.”
“I’ve got to go to the airport this aft and I’m not nearly finished cleaning and tidying. Mary Frances gone power walking has she?”
“Ah yes, another task to rush through.”
“It’s supposed to be good for you.” I sighed.
“Do you enjoy it?” he asked emphasizing the ‘you’.
“Not a whole lot.”
“You know, I became a bit of a couch potato this first winter of my retirement. I sit around, watch the women’s talk shows. Funny thing about those talk shows, they have all these ads for sanitary pads, hair dyes and weight loss schemes, then the host comes back long enough to say he’ll be right back after more messages. As if we hadn’t just had a whole slew of ‘em. I’d be sitting there watching day after day. I started to pack on the pounds. Thought I better get me to the gym.”
“Did you enjoy that?”
“I did and I didn’t. Notice I didn’t say, I do and I don’t. Stopped going.”
I waited for him to explain.
He chuckled. “There’s a lot of thin women out there, who believe they’re fat, running on the treadmills. So I get into hamster mode beside this really thin woman. I like to have a little something to hold onto, you know, like Mary Frances…”
A flushed Mary Frances appeared just at that moment.
“Hi,” she gasped, “I just choked out two in twenty.” She bent over, placed her hands on her knees and tried to catch her breath.
Fred looked at his wife with amusement, then bent to attend to his roses again.
“Two what?”
“Miles.”
“Two miles in twenty minutes! That’s terrific.”
“I didn’t power walk the entire way, only sporadically and I am totally pooped.” She collapsed on the lawn, looked at the overcast sky for a second, then closed her eyes.
“That is fantastic. I can barely do a ten-minute kilometre.”
“Oh God, it takes too long to recover. I can’t do this. I’ll have a heart attack. The last few yards, I made one big spurt.” She held up her hand palm facing me. “ I know, I know, that’s not good.”
“Not worth getting a heart attack.” I glanced at Fred to see if he caught that but he was busy snipping off the blowsy blooms. I guessed Mary Frances was in another of her diet and exercise phases but didn’t ask. We talked about diets a lot but never around our men folk and Fred was still within hearing distance.
“I don’t know what got into me.” Mary Frances pushed herself up and lay on her side supporting her head with her palm and elbow. With her other hand she ran her fingers through her hair lifting it and I could see her white roots beginning to show at the hairline. For as long as I’d known her, Mary Frances had always been meticulous about keeping her hair blonde without a trace of dark root showing. In fact I’d never seen her original hair colour but now, like the rest of us, I could see no colour remained.
“I think, you’re supposed to build up stamina, not hurt yourself,” I said, wishing I were as motivated as she.
“You are soooo right,” she flopped on her back again, shielded her eyes and looked at the greying clouds. “You know, I’m going to be sixty this October? I feel the need to do something totally out of character like sky dive or train for and run a marathon. I just can't believe that I’m this old, but my mirror does a good job of reminding me on a daily basis!”
“I think you look just fine,” Fred said, looking up from his work.
“I’d hate to think how I’d look if I didn’t do all this exercise.”
“I was just telling Beryl ‘bout my adventures at the ‘y’.”
“Did you tell her about the skinny dame?”
“Started to.”
“You’ll love this,” Mary Frances said.
“So any ways,” Fred said, approaching us, “there I was on a treadmill watching another stupid reality show, when some really nice butts in the magazine of the woman beside me catches my eye. Next thing I know the woman’s screaming at me, saying I can watch the television or get my own magazine. Then she’s yelling she’s going to call the manager. So I ask what for? ‘Go fuck yourself!’ she says. Never went back to the gym after that.”

2009-07-26T11:28:00.004+01:00

Chapter One

Naked, Ben stands in front of our bedroom mirror and strikes a body builder's pose. "Looking good," he tells his reflection before setting off for his morning shower.  I've seen Ben do this every day since our first morning after. I thought it was cute the first time I saw him do it—twenty-five years ago.   Ben is fifty-six and no Adonis. He has lost most of his hair. What little remains is almost all grey. He keeps it short and clean. He doesn't part it above one ear, to plaster a few strands across his head. He doesn't have what they call a "six pack". Nor does he have massive shoulders or pecs. He has neither love handles nor a bulging gut. His buttocks have begun to sag a tad, and under each one are three sweet little wrinkles. I never intend to tell him about them, just in case he decides to tell me about some of the changes in my body, I can't see.   Normally, I don’t pay attention to Ben’s ritual, but with an HB 2 pencil, I’d just finished filling in one of those magazine questionnaires--no one will ever admit to doing. I'm a sucker for them. I never answer truthfully and always manipulate the score to get the outcome I want.
I had just thrust the magazine under the duvet for later erasure when my daughter Robyn burst into the bedroom. “Ever heard of knocking?” I asked.
“Sor-ry,” she sang and flung herself on Ben’s side of the bed and lay her head on his pillow causing her bright fuzzy orange hair to billow either side of her face. I regarded her intently, her perfect smooth skin, no wrinkles; her soft pale eyebrows, no stiff white hairs or open patches; her straight even teeth, no fillings. Did I have a hand in creating this beautiful being?
“Hey, I don’t mind, so long as I can do the same to you,” I said.
Ignoring my reproach, she selected a woman’s magazine from the assortment on the bed, given to me by my neighbour Mary Frances. I didn’t buy such magazines myself but devoured them when I got them. I especially liked the gossip mags. I wanted to see who was packing on the pounds, who was ageing well or badly and who succombed to cosmetic surgery. After flipping the pages a few moments, Robyn stopped at a questionnaire and asked, “Hey? Do you ever do these quizzes?”
Miffed, I didn’t reply but kept on reading.
“Well?.... Maw-um? Do you?”
"Never!" I lied.
"Why not?”
"Because they're utter nonsense."
Robyn sat up, withdrew a fat material covered elastic from her jeans’ pocket, then held it between her teeth while she struggled to gather her hair. Deftly she caught up her hair in a fly-away-contained mess which looked great. She sifted through some more magazines. “Here's one in Cosmo, 'How Compatible are You and Your Lover?'"
“Your dad and I have been married a while now," I replied, coolly regarding her freckled grinning face.
"Okay. How about, 'Will This Marriage Last?'" Her grin spread wider.
"So far, so good. Look, if I did them, you don't think I'd fill in the blanks do you?”
“Why not? Mary Frances does. Look she’s already done this one.” She held an ink-smudged page before my eyes.

“’Cause I know, you'd be right there after me, checking my score!"
"Okay," she sneered, "Try this, 'Do You Have the Makings of a Good Mother?'"
"Let's do this one," I said, pulling out a magazine at random.
"Okay, what is it?" she eagerly replied still grinning and still intent on getting the best of me.
I cleared my throat and invented a title, "'How to Tell If Your Teenage Daughter Is Using Drugs, Having Premarital...'"
"Forget it." She pushed herself upright and swung her legs over the bed.
"Forget what?"
"The quiz," Robyn said, heading for the door.
"Why?" I called after her.
"Mom, you said yourself. It’s all bullshit."
“Bullshit?” Ben said, entering the room as Robyn left. “What was that all about?”
“Nothing really, just your typical mother daughter exchange.”
“Okay, I’ll stay out of it,” he said and slid open his cupboard door to an array of light woollen suits all of which fit him.
He withdrew my favourite, a light gray Glen check suit with a thin dark blue line running through the pattern. I watched him put on his form fitting undies and then move to the sock drawer. I don’t pair them since I’m oblivious to subtle differences in shades of gray, black and blue, the lighter and darker hues depending on the age of the sock or the detergent.
Ben was particular about wearing equally faded black socks. I watched him bend over the drawer and noted how easily he did it without the impediment of a beer belly. He fished out two grey socks whose shade of gray seemed identical. He then leaned his butt on the bedroom wall to steady himself and while pulling on a sock said, “You haven’t found any stray running socks have you?”
“Nope.”
“I guess the sock monster has been here again.”
“It’s not a joke Ben.”
“I’m not joking.”
“I swear I do my best to see that they all go in the wash. It’s just that they don’t all come out again.”
“Maybe it’s a plot,” he said reaching for a white shirt with French cuffs. “A conspiracy cooked up by sock and washing machine manufacturers. Athletic sock makers kick in a few million dollars to washing machine companies' R&D departments.”
“I don’t get it,” I said and watched his hairy chest disappear inch by inch behind the bright white oxford cloth.
“The idea is to make certain the appliance makers can guarantee a steady stream of stray socks, for decades to come.” He turned around to the open closet to survey his ties, found the one he wanted pulled it off the rack and in so doing caused a few coat hangers to jangle. Facing me he tied a Windsor knot, then pulled on his trousers, neatly closed them without first sucking in his gut, pulled up the zipper and threaded a belt through the belt loops.
Wouldn’t I love to put pants on with the ease he did? And a belt? Forget it.
“I think your theory is all stuff and nonsense,” I replied.
“To quote your lovely daughter, you mean ‘bullshit’?”
“Yeah, bullshit. Socks transmogrify,” I said and pointed to the inside of his cupboard. “They become wire coat hangers.”
He laughed, swung his jacket over his shoulder and left. Moments later his head reappeared. “Forgot my phone. Hey! Isn’t Fay coming today?”
“Today? No tomorrow.”
“I thought you said Thursday, today’s Thursday.”
“Is it? Curses!” I had things to do, a house to straighten out, a questionnaire to erase, but first I’d look at my results. It was about body image. I’d checked off the most negative replies possible, not all that far from my truth, but no one need know.
The questions were along the lines of: "I never look at myself in the mirror because I'm frustrated that I don't weigh what I did when I was twenty-five," or "when I'm complimented on my looks, I'm sure the person complimenting me is just being polite". Lying would be more like it. I tallied my score and turned to the results, expecting to be advised to consult a psychiatrist immediately, when Ben came in again.
“Forgot something else.” he said and leaned over to plant a fat kiss on my lips.
Over my reading glasses I watched him straighten, grin at his reflection in the full-length mirror, and say, “Looking good!” He closed the bedroom door quietly behind him and I heard him tread with a bounce down the wooden staircase.
I'm a couple of years younger than Ben and no Venus, certainly not the de Milo rendition. My body favours the Venus of Willendorf, or at least that's how I see myself. Where Ben is flat, I'm round; where he has hollows, I have bulges; where he's firm, I'm flabby. Here’s the kicker. Having just completed the quiz, a.k.a. an exercise in self loathing, it occurred to me that Ben's Arnie act was much more than cute—it was sensible.
According to my quiz results, I felt negative about my body. Duh!
Apparently, I'm waiting for my body to change before I can enjoy life. Wait a minute! My body has certainly changed over the years, without me waiting for it. Whose hasn't? The editor must have meant that I was waiting for me to change my body (like I ever could) before I could enjoy life. But I do enjoy life--just not my body.
Typically the message was consistent with what the media have been hammering in since forever. Where once we improved, or should that be altered, our body shape with corsets and bustles, then girdles and uplift bras, and now elasticized body suits, we can go a few layers deeper, with dieting, cosmetic surgery, liposuction and Botox injections. We can sweat on treadmills or rowing machines, lift weights, do Pilates or hook ourselves to mini-generators that send electrical impulses to our muscles. I've never indulged in any of those remedies but have always felt a little guilty about not doing anything to meet current commercial standards of beauty.
And there was Ben, my sweetie, telling himself he looked good and believing it.
That's what gets me. I'd never say that, let alone believe it.

2008-03-31T15:02:00.001+01:00

SWEET CHARITY

I like boutiques. They offer a certain warmth, coziness, a friendliness and personal touch not to be found in department stores. Then too, they sell luxury goods, trinkets and those little non-necessities one needs. Thus it was I entered one such local shoppe in search of scented candles my daughter had told me were now half price.

The candles were advertised as being 100% beeswax and made by the homeless or former homeless. Even at a 50% reduction they were a hefty price, but who counts dollars when it comes to assisting the homeless? My arms full, I placed several pounds of wax on the countertop. Products such as these often carry a label stating what percentage of the profits go to the charity in question, but these candles didn’t. I remarked to the shopkeeper, “I wonder how much profit the homeless make?”

Whirling around, she said, “I don’t know! I’ve wondered that myself, but they get a wage you know.”

“Yes, I suppose they do, but do you think it’s a living wage?”

“I don’t get living wage, considering all I have to do here,” she replied picking up a candle with one bejeweled hand. “You know these smell so nice even if you don’t light them,” she added.

Was it not wrong, I thought, for me to scent my home using a candle made by a person without a home? “Still,” I persisted, “do you think they make even minimum wage?”

“Oh it’s a very good company. My daughter has been there and seen the factory.”

“Mmm, but do they pay a minimum wage? I mean we both know waitresses don’t get one and there are so many people who have to work at two jobs. I wonder why there are so many homeless in America?”

“I’ll tell you why there are so many homeless in this country, and I’ll look you straight in the eye when I tell you.”

I was in for it. Unwittingly, I’d pushed her buttons.

“There don’t need to be any homeless. It’s because they won’t work. They don’t have the motivation or gumption to get off their behinds and get a job.”

“You think that’s why?”

“I certainly do! And I’ll tell you another thing. The poor in this country can send their kids to college without it costing them a cent.” She glared at me.

“Perhaps, but I wonder if this company pays minimum wage.” I persisted, feeling more and more like a bulldog in a boutique. “Anyway,” I added, moving to safer ground, “do they burn well?”

“Oh, they sure do,” she replied still glaring.

“I guess they would, being beeswax.”

“Oh, these aren’t beeswax,” she corrected.

“But the sign says they are. Look,” I said, returning to the bookcase laden with candles. I pointed to a prominent sign above the product announcing the 100% authenticity of the beeswax and their homeless manufacturers.

“Well, I was just doing inventory, and I had beeswax candles right here on the shelf.”

“That may be, but now you don’t, and the sign is still here. In fact, it’s the same display and sign you had before Christmas that motivated me to buy these same candles at the full price. So you could simply remove the placard.”

She made no move to do so.

“You know, I don’t think you want to buy here. Coming in here and from the first moment upsetting me. This isn’t Macy’s you know. This is just a little store, and if you want to fight big corporations you can shop elsewhere. I’ve worked here for years, and nothing like this has ever happened to me before!” she shouted, her body visibly tense. “You must be a very unhappy woman!” she concluded.

“Funny, when you were yelling at me, I was just thinking the same about you,” I replied.

“Well you can just take your business somewhere else!” she spat.

Turning to open the door, I said, “Thank you, for refusing to do business with me.”

“I don’t need your business!”

“Obviously not,” I shrugged, thinking it would have been better if she had minded her beeswax, and I mine.

2008-03-31T14:41:00.002+01:00

JER-RY! JER-RY! JER-RY!

Like him or loath him, Jerry Springer provides a service to the American public, or so it seems to my nonresident alien eyes. It provides a mirror. The program shows what the U.S.A. has become, a nation without dignity.[1] Twice a day Jerry Springer, America’s number one television show, airs. We were wondering if we aliens could better integrate ourselves into American society by appearing on Springer’s program. The thought came to mind one Saturday morning when my husband was cooking pancakes for the children.

“Jeez pop, do you have to wear that shrunken dressing gown?” my eldest daughter asked.

“Yeah dad, it looks so queer,” her sister added.

“Well, didn’t you know? I am gay!”

“Oops!” I said, aghast. “Now they know. We’ll never get on the Jerry Springer show.”

“Oh, he is not, mom. You’ve been married sixteen years!” my fifteen-year-old piped up.

“Should we tell her?” I asked.

“How long we’ve been married? Why not?”

“Kid, we got married just after you were born,” I announced.

“Haw, haw, haw, haw,” her younger sister sing-sang.

“Guess she hasn’t seen the adoption papers yet,” her dad remarked.

“Now you’ve let another cat out of the bag!” I added, horrified.

“No fear, we still have an ace up our sleeve.”

“We do?”

“Yeah, we can go on Springer yet!”

“We can? Mind letting me in on the fun?”

“Sure but not here and now.”

“So you think only an appearance on Springer’s show can truly Americanize us?”

“Something like that.”

“You don’t want to be an alien anymore?”

“Well, it’s not exactly part of the American Dream, is it?”

“You guys are crazy!” my youngest daughter said.

“Yeah, we want a divorce.” announced her sister.

“Don’t be silly. Kids can’t divorce their parents,” I told them.

“They can in America!”

“And we’re gonna!”

“Yeah, and we can get a pretty good settlement too.”

“Is this true?” I asked my husband.

“No doubt.”

“So we’re leaving.” The little one said shoving a last hunk of pancake in her mouth, maple syrup dripping down her chin.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To call our lawyer.”

“You guys got a lawyer?”

“Sure mom, every kid does. This is America, ‘member?”

“Don’t sweat it,” my hubby reassured me. “They’ll have to prove paternity first.”

“Yeah and I don’t think grandpa will cooperate.” I added.

[1] This piece was written during Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Clinton’s behavior in the Whitehouse.

2008-03-26T18:12:00.012Z

Bone Appetite

All the experts say so; dogs should not be fed table scraps. Maybe, but try convincing my dog, Toby. He insists on table scraps. And why not? Those leftovers were once human food after all. I've tried feeding him nutritious, perfectly balanced-for-all-your-dog's-needs kibble.

While placing the bowl before his nose I enthuse. "Mmmm, yummy Toby. Look, new improved flavor!"

"And how would you know that?" he asks with his doubting Tobias look. Then he'll take a whiff, wrinkle his nose and look at me with disgust.

"What's this dog's dinner?" his expression asks. "You call this dog fare? Where are the veggies, the sweet potatoes, and the skin of baked salmon cut into little squares just the way I like it?" Some mutt's looks can speak volumes. He'll then sniff the air and exit, stiff-legged. He'd rather starve than stoop to eat plain dog food.

I fret, of course, but try to hide my concern from the family.

"Don't worry, mom. He'll eat when he's hungry," my thirteen-year-old counsels.

"Yeah, mom, you spoil him," adds her older sister.

From his basket beside the refrigerator, Toby, with sunken eyes, looks at me reproachfully.

He's starting to emaciate already. I panic and rush to the pantry in search of a can of tuna. Casually I drain the oil over his biscuits.

"Whatcha doin, mom?"

"Oh just making tomorrow's lunch pack," I lie.

"Tuna again? Can't we have peanut butter and jam, this time?"

I think, sure you could, but I wouldn't want to be caught smearing peanut butter on kibble.

I replace Toby's bowl under his nose. He inspects it with displeasure. He too is sick of tuna. He'd rather go hungry.

"To hell with you then!" I sneer leaving him to waste away.

He sighs as I turn out the kitchen light.

Later that evening, as I prepare to take Toby out for his evening walk, I notice his biscuits slightly swollen from the tuna drippings but otherwise untouched. Too weak to leave his basket he watches me.

"Oh, all right then!" I concede knowing everyone has gone to bed and I won't get caught rooting through the fridge. Pulling out leftovers from that evening's meal, I take a wooden spoon and lovingly mix the mutt's biscuits with potatoes, zucchini, broccoli and cauliflower au gratin. As I place his special china bowl on the floor, Toby, reconsidering his hunger strike and summing his last vestiges of strength, leaps from basket to bowl in one mighty bound.

Delicately, my canine gourmet munches while I look on relieved.I'll sleep well tonight. At that precise moment my husband arrives in the kitchen. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he glances at our cur, then me and pronounces, "Sucker!"

2008-03-20T19:05:00.002Z

Parental Guidance

While living in the U.S.A., we noticed much was made of teenage drug use. Practically every small town we drove through had signs posted near the school announcing that it was drug free. I was never sure if this were wish or reality. Neither as it turned out. Apparently, anyone caught selling drugs within the borders of the drug free zone would have to pay higher fines than outside it. Within this area drug pushers’ overheads are high.
But drug abuse is of course not restricted to American schools. From the International School in Basel, we got a handout telling us that the administration decided to hire an outside agency, Freedom from Chemical Dependency (FCD) to raise parents’, teachers’ and students’ awareness of drug abuse.

It was the meeting with a representative of FCD, at the International School on December 17/99, that reminded me of our American experience, our European attitude, and a conversation I had with our youngest daughter two years ago in the USA. There, we frequently received reports in the mail or handed out from the school on teenage drinking and drug use. We were encouraged to be ever vigilant with our children, that we police their parties, their lives and our liquor cabinets. In our family, we’ve never really fussed about alcohol intake. I suppose it’s our European background that led us to think it’s not a sin to take the occasional glass of wine, beer or other alcohol. Over the years we’ve built up quite a substantial cellar of good wines we must get round to enjoying, before we have an equally substantial collection of good wine vinegars. In any event, prompted by school handouts, newspaper reports, school meetings, television warnings, bill board and radio campaigns against the evil drink, the devil weed and demon drugs, I decided I had best speak to my daughter and started by casually asking her:

“Do you drink?”
“Oh Mom, you know I do.”
“You do? What do you drink?”
“I dunno. Whatever you offer me. Riesling at Thanksgiving.”
“Oh right… did you like it?”
“Wasn’t bad with some ginger ale.”
“Of course, with a little ginger ale, but—do you drink at other times?”
“Sure mom—don’t you remember last Christmas? We drank some Pinot gris?”
“Right, right, Pinot gris you say?”
“Or Pinot noir, something pee no.”
“So what about marijuana, if you wanted some, would you know where to get it?”
“Sure. What’s this all about, mom?”
“Well you know Petra, it says in the school newsletter that I’ve got to talk to you?”
“Yeah? What about?”
“About drugs, alcohol dangers and family values.”
“So?”
“You know we do our best to set a good example?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Let’s start with drugs,” I said, looking for my cigarette lighter.
“Mom, I don’t do drugs.”
“You don’t?’
“Naw.”
“But you would know where to get them if you wanted them?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“School.”
“SCHOOL! What do you mean at school? It’s supposed to be a drug-free zone, all the signs say so.” I pulled a cigarette from the pack.
“Geez, Mom. You can be so gullible. You can’t believe everything you read, you know.”
“No, I guess not,” I whimpered. “So what sort of drugs can you get at school?”
“Everything.”
“Everything, meaning?”
“Marijuana, crack, ecstasy, coke…”
“Coke? Since when is a Coke a drug? They were supposed to have taken out…”
“Not a Coke, mom, coke. Co-caine.”
“Oh, right. Have you ever tried any of these?’
“Naw, why would I wanna spend all that money to wreck my body?”
“Good point,” I agreed, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke.

2008-03-19T16:03:00.001Z

Book Worm

Whenever I enter a room whose ambiance pleases me, my head automatically tilts to my right shoulder and I find myself, before even beginning to engage in meaningful chatter, involuntarily sidling along the bookshelf-lined walls. It’s not an uncommon tic. I’ve often seen others suffering from it in my own living room. Many a time, with a wine glass in each hand, I’m confronted by my guest’s back, his head also skewed at this uncomfortable angle. Of late, however, my bookshelves have offered slim pickings. I doubt that my collection awakens quite the awe, envy and covetousness other personal libraries do, ever since I’ve begun to ruthlessly weed out the fluff. It’s not that I fear being judged by the books I keep; it’s just that after carting books from one continent to another, I have begun to feel the burden of ownership. Potboilers are easily the first to go, if not to any of the local libraries boasting an English section, then to a needy neighbour keen to improve his use of the English idiom.

I find it difficult not to find a new home for my books. I’ve tried telling myself they’re only paper ever since some thirty years ago, I watched a bookstore clerk rip the covers off books he planned to return to the publisher.

“They’re just paper,” he explained, catching my horrified expression.

Some books I toss with alacrity, Lord of the Rings for example, more like bored of the rings as far as I’m concerned. The most Tolkien’s trilogy ever did for me was induce guilt for not being able to say I’d read it. So too, do I toss should-have-read-but-never-did-and-probably-never-will-novels, classics excluded.

Books that have turned to dust are made to bite it, like the thirty-year-old copy of Slaughterhouse Five that crumbled in my fingers. I chucked it, elastic band and all. Commonsense dictates that duplicate copies should pose the least problem, but they pose the greatest. Whose volume to dump, mine or my husband’s? One criterion for reshelving the peripatetic tomes was that hard covers usually prevail over soft, except once, when both kept their ground.

I had recently married and since I planned to live happily ever after, decided we could as easily share a book as a bed. (My husband would deny this, not the part about the bed, but the bit about the book. He just has to hint that a book he’s reading might interest me or guffaw once, and by the next evening it will have migrated to my bedside table, never to find its way back unless sought and forcibly returned.)

When it came to the Odyssey, it was an ode of a different genre. We owned both a hard and a soft cover edition. Logically mine, the paperback, should have been tossed in the trash but his Homer was older, worn and musty smelling, altogether less attractive than my pristine copy. Just before pitching it, I glanced inside hubby’s high school Homer. From beginning to end, it was annotated in his handwriting.

“Can you read this?” I challenged.

He opened the book.

“Μήνιν άειδε, Θεά, Πηληιάδεω Άχιλη̃ος ούλομένην η̃ μνρΐ Άχιοι̃ς άλγε’ ̉έϑĸε, πολλάς δ΄ίφϑίμους δέ ξλώρια τεύχε κύυεσσιυ οι̉ωυοι̃οί τε πάσι—Διός δ̉ ε̉τελείετο βουλή—ε̉ξ ού δή τά πρώτα διαστήτηυ ε̉̉̉ ρισαυτε Άχιλλεύς! he said, or words to that effect.

2008-03-19T14:42:00.002Z

Adirondack Chair

Without the slightest preamble, a chair appeared in our back yard. It was large, white, wooden and hideously uncomfortable. As a child, I would sit in it and wonder why I bothered. My butt literally sank to the bottom of this chair not because it was cushioned, but because the seat tilted at a sixty-five degree angle. I’d slide down leaving my legs reaching up toward the branches of a pear tree, on the far side of the garden. As I hauled myself up to the top of the seat, I wondered how adults could be comfortable in such a thing? Once I reached adulthood, I imagined, this would become clear to me, as many such things would. I also thought that if my feet could only touch the ground it might even be comfortable to sit with my knees higher than my crotch. And maybe by that time, I'd also be able to cross my legs!

I never saw my father sit in this chair. I suspected he constructed it in our basement during one of those never ending Canadian winters. (I never went down to the basement. Monsters lived there, many of them gorilla-like.) Year after year “the chair” would appear in the back yard, always sparkling white and well maintained. Summer after summer I'd sit in it, always hoping this would be the year to sit on it, not in it—comfortably. That summer never arrived.

At some point the chair was replaced by something more expensive, more elegant and more comfortable—a chase lounge. At least that’s what I thought my mother called it. I supposed it got the name because you could 1) lounge on it and 2) hold it like a wheelbarrow while chasing the dog with it.

In the meantime, while the intruder chaise settled in, the huge wooden chair began to decline. The armrests rotted. That was indeed a pity. Those broad, plank-like arms could support an oversized glass of tangerine Kool-Aid or two, unless the seat was unoccupied and someone chose to sit on the other armrest. Then the chair would, in one fell, flying swoop, relinquish all its glasses of Kool-Aid (no matter what flavour).

I don't know what happened to that chair. It disappeared as abruptly as it appeared. The only concrete evidence of it ever having existed is a photo of my brother, my best friend, her sister and me, all being supported magnanimously by this chair.

I never knew another family in my town to have such a chair. They had light, tubular, aluminum, fold-up jobs—useless for child support.

In North America, I occasionally see a couple of these elegant white garden chairs parading like swans across a vast expanse of emerald green lawn.

No one is ever sitting in them.

2008-03-06T09:07:00.006Z

Message in a Bottle

Toby’s mining expeditions have finally paid off. Today the little digger found the putrid remains of a cow or maybe a human; I don’t know which. Yogi dropped the ribs when I shouted at him but Toby somehow couldn’t bring himself to do that. Maybe it was because half of what he was swallowing was already down his gullet and the other half was hanging out. I had to pull it out of him. Good thing I had Karel’s special running gloves on.

I walked fifteen kilometers today (9.330 miles for those of you who haven’t made the conversion yet) to the village where we used to live in a 600-year-old half-timbered house. Imagine! It has survived the French Revolution, the Plague, the Basel earthquake, two world wars, occupation, liberation, occupation, liberation and so forth. I’d say more but my knowledge of French history is lamentable.

I also officially become a bag lady toting a big plastic bag through the forests and along country roads in search of beer and wine bottles, even tin cans. I can spot a glass beer bottle at twenty-five paces, provided I walk like one of those stupid dogs you used to see in the back of people’s cars with the heads bobbing from side to side. It’s the only way to spot the glass, plastic and car stereo speakers flung in the ditch.

It's also the best way to spoil my enjoyment of the walk. However, to put a positive spin on the preoccupation, I have decided to make bottle retrieval my mission in life—like the man I met in Cambodia who has made it his mission to rid Cambodia of landmines or if you prefer, anti-personnel devices or some such rubbishy moniker. I expect to be on a reality show soon. There must be a slot for me.

No science podcasts on my Ipod today. I’ve run out. I even switched off the BBC political stuff and immersed myself in the ‘spirituality of sports’. At least those were the first two Tapestry (CBC) podcasts I heard.

Since the leaves are emerging, a month too soon, I won’t be able to see the bottles in a couple of weeks, so I am looking forward to getting in touch with my ‘inner self’. In fact, I almost did about a week ago.

I was fuming (as usual) about the thoughtless felling of trees best situated to hold back erosion, and the damn beer bottles, and the garbage thrown here and there, when I realized I couldn’t take it any more. It was at that moment I experienced an epiphany. I know it’s a bit late for an epiphany. Everybody’s already had theirs and appeared on Oprah long ago, but I’ve never been one to follow a trend. I think I finally gave into the idea of a mini skirt around the time of the Annie Hall look.

In any event I came home and told Karel I had found the meaning of life.

“An epiphany?” he said.

“No really!” I said, ignoring his uncanny ability to read my mind. “I think I’ve had a sudden revelation about the meaning of life.”

“And it’s located in the centre of your body?” he leered at me in my tight running pants.

“Well that might be where it is for you but my epiphany was more profound.”

“Tell me,” he said, still with that lascivious look.

“I discovered that I don’t have to take the weight of the world on my shoulders. I don’t have to be pissed off all the time at everything and how badly people behave, the sins of the world and all that.”

“Oh?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, I finally got it. There’s Jesus for that. His back is broad enough. He died for our sins.”

“Are you just getting that now?”

“Yeah.” I felt a little deflated but then he’s the son of a clergyman.

“It’s always been like that, didn’t you know?”

“Maybe I knew, but I didn’t really 'get' it. What a relief!”

But that was last week. I don’t know how long an epiphany lasts, I suppose for all eternity, but today I must have picked up thirty empty beer bottles and one Gewurtztramer 2006 Medaille d’Or wine bottle.

I feel my faith waning.

This piece will appear in the April edition of Hello Basel 2008.

2007-12-24T15:04:00.000Z

Season's Greetings!

Last year around this time, I received the following email:
If I get one more pesky Christmas letter telling me in nauseous detail that on the second of January 2005 it rained and on the third it didn't, describing their husband's brilliant doings/redundancy/performance/Viagra requirements, their children's education/homework/sports prowess/exam results/love life/drug habits, and filling me in on all their beastly grandchildren's first teeth/burp/nappy change/word, I might do something I will regret.

I share the writer’s sentiments. Now that everyone has a computer, Christmas year-in-review emails/newsletters are beginning to take on the patina of an established tradition. Ever noticed how some seem to be written by a ghost writer in the third person or the by family dog (ever so cutesy) with the aid of a Microsoft X-mas newsletter template? Occasionally the names of the family members will be penned in but more often the letter starts with a generic salutation like, “Hello Folks!!!”

Bah! Humbug! Frankly I’m not interested in every detail of your kitchen/bathroom/bedroom makeover. And hey, does everyone’s kid ace every thing? Surely not! And as for Chewy, your eighteen-year-old Labrador retriever who you finally decided to euthanize? Okay, so he died on the way to the vet. I’m real sorry but geez, you’ve been sending me Christmas cards for eons, I haven’t seen you for yonks and who knew about Chewy? Now about that vacation at your time share in Kruger National Park…wow, that’s impressive!

As for the extensive description of this year’s weather, I live on this planet too. I know the summers are hot and the winters are cold. I don’t happen to remember the weather from one year to the next but that’s because I don’t make a point of it and those who do, don’t need to be reminded, or do they?

Then there are the lists of people who visited, which read like the Queen’s social calendar. Give me a break! I don’t know all your pals but I’m sure they know who they are and probably remember the visit themselves.

Commenting on these views, one of my email correspondents said: “I know what you mean. There are one or two that are very well done; and there are some that make you want to puke. The worst, I think, are the humble boasting ones to the effect that we have so many blessings, and then going on and on, in detail about all the blessings—the trip to Antarctica, meeting with the Pope, the kid who has to choose between Harvard, Stanford or M.I.T. But the problem is, one doesn't want to air one's dirty linen. In such an impersonal forum, I'm not going to talk about my depression, our marriage counselling, Ken’s failing grades, Evelyn’s teenage pregnancy or the dismay my husband Bob feels over Susie getting married to a man whose faith isn’t Bob’s, or worse, has no faith.”

My guess is that these mundane but ever so newsy missives are written more for the writer than the reader and would be a more honest year’s appraisal if the writer never intends to mail them. Should you still have the urge to write your year in review, let ‘er rip! Then stuff it --in your own Christmas stocking not in an envelope or inbox addressed to me. Pull-ease.

2007-12-02T10:12:00.001Z

Santa Baby

He sees when you are sleeping.
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows if you’ve been bad or good.
So be good for goodness sake.
Most North Americans will recognize the above lyrics and can probably hum the tune. Oddly enough, it was our Egyptian tour guide who reminded me of the Christmas jingle. His explanation that an angel sat on each shoulder, one to record his good deeds and the other his bad all in preparation for the final reckoning caused my mind to wander to the ditty.
He's making a list,
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out
Who's naughty and nice.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town penned in 1922, has been performed by Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, The Beach Boys, The Jackson Five, Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen…need I go on?
I first heard it when I was three years old and didn’t much care for the message. Who was this guy who could note my good and bad behaviour? Didn’t I have a big brother for that? Lest I forget the power of Santa, my parents reinforced the myth and told me he could reward or punish me by giving or withholding Christmas presents.
Newly emigrated from Europe to Canada, we had no television. My brother and I would listen to nightly radio broadcasts charting Santa’s progress from the North Pole to Toronto in time for his annual parade, sponsored for seventy-seven years by Eaton’s, a once prosperous and now defunct Canadian department store.
Well I remember that November day in 1953. I wore elegant hand-me-downs from the daughter of my mother’s New York friend. Her hand-tailored spring coat, transparent nylon gloves and best of all underpants with the back panel totally covered by rows of frills (I sooo wanted to wear back to front) offered no warmth whatsoever. Toronto shares the same latitude as Rome but not its November temperatures, the average being 7°C. All about me, Canadian kids wore knitted hats, woollen mittens and snow suits while I stood in front of my mother with chattering teeth, bone-chilled bare legs and frozen fingers.
I vividly recall that virtually all the parade’s participants wore white gloves but because one’s memory often proves to be faulty, I located a Canadian Government website to verify my recollection. Recorded memories described the penetrating cold that day. Archived film footage of the 1953 parade showed well-bundled children and sure enough, white gloves were the order of the day. That’s what made the next incident so frightening.
Just as a Massey-Ferguson tractor pulled into view a float bearing Santa and his reindeer, out of nowhere, huge white-gloved hands grabbed me from behind, plucked me off the ground, hoisted me to massive shoulders and pinned me there. I did not know whose hatted head I was clutching. Warned never to go with or talk to strangers, what was I to do when abducted?
You better watch out,
You better not cry,
Better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town.
Petrified I could not enjoy my vantage point. Who was this guy? Finally, beneath the peaked policeman’s cap the head spoke to me with my father’s voice. “We’ll go meet Santa now.” Wearing his Saint John’s Ambulance uniform under his great coat, my father had been on parade duty that day.
A brief ride on an ancient streetcar, heated by a wood stove, and I was standing with trepidation outside the brass-handled spinning glass and wooden doors of Eaton’s Queen Street branch. I had never seen revolving doors before. With every turn a gust of hot air swooshed out into the street. Eager to be warm, I dashed into an empty partition of the revolving door and got my head caught between the door and the doorjamb. Pandemonium broke out. I may have screamed, my mother too. She pushed my head; my father pulled it. Hours later, or so it seemed, with sore ears and angry parents, I was led to an ‘alligator’. Horrified by the backward slanting slats of an ancient wooden escalator and none too keen to balance on the rickety rolling slats that didn’t quite form steps, I balked.
Indiana Jones had an easier time entering the Temple of Doom than I had reaching Toyland. Amid the bawling, the wailing and the coaxing, I edged toward to the jolly chuckler. The closer I got to him, the more intrigued I became by his sparkling white beard. When it came my turn to sit on his knee, I did so without fear—so keen was I to examine that beard. It was a fake. I said so.
No longer did Santa or his tab keeping terrify me. Before the year was out, my elder brother, an expert in all things then and now, said there was no such person as Santa Claus, but I’d already divined that.
A half-century later, Santa’s surveillance capabilities are no match to those of credit card and cell phone companies, closed circuit television or the Internet Interpol. They know if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

This piece was published in the Dec/Jan 2008 edition of Hello Basel.

2007-03-16T12:38:00.000Z

Culture Vulture

Throughout the last turbulent century whether under French administration, German occupation or even after suffering massive damage from American strafing, Strasbourg’s network of ten magnificent museums came into being.
Palais Rohan
Built between 1732 and 1742 as a cardinal’s mansion, the Palais Rohan served as a university under German occupation in 1871. It now houses three museums.
Inside the cardinals’ apartments, you’ll feel like an interloper as you stroll along the mirrored ballroom walls glowered at by rouged, powdered and periwigged ghosts. You can escape their glare in the impressive library with its massive wooden globe or in the chapel, where if you inhale deeply you might imagine catching a whiff of violet-scented vestments.
Within the courtyard is the entrance to the roomy, relaxed Musée des Arts Décoratifs, which houses a collection of 18th century furniture and china, elegantly and stylishly exhibited.
In the basement of this mansion is the Musée Achéologique, with twenty-one rooms of a rich collection of well-displayed artefacts, all discovered in the Alsace. It’s an exploration of Alsatian history from 600,000 years B.C. to 800 years A.D.
Like the cheerful Cambodian curator whose amputated limbs starkly illustrate the destructive force of the remnant but still active land mines and hand grenades he exhibits, Strasbourg’s archaeological museum displays its more primitive but equally lethal weaponry in context, i.e. along side split and fractured skulls. In general, the exhibits are artfully displayed in context, thus no dusty musty fusty fare this museum.
Musée des Beaux-Arts is on the first floor of the Palais Rohan. We were strapped for time and whizzed through it but it too is worth taking time. All in all, it’s rather convenient to visit three museums in one.
Located at the foot of the cathedral, the Musée de L’Oeuvre Notre-Dame houses seven centuries of art from Strasbourg and the Haut Rhin. Strasbourg was one of the most important artistic centres in the German Empire from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century.
During the thirteenth century, the cathedral’s exclusive architects, masons and stone masons constructed and maintained the church (shades of Jude the Obscure) within this building. It must have been a bustling noisy workplace, the antitheses to what it is now, uncluttered and oddly serene.
There’s a treasury where church monies were collected, managed and kept in a safe. The museum houses sculptures, ironwork, tapestries, stained glass, paintings, gold and silver objects, furniture and more. There are two wings to the building, one built in 1347, the other in 1579 that has a fabulous winding stone staircase.
A visit will take two hours or more with an audio guide available in English, French and German.
Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain is a bright, spacious, minimalist building with a cosy restaurant. Probably the worst person to review a museum of contemporary art, I can say the gigantic bright orange rhinoceros was cute (now gone) but the ascending row of fluorescent lamps, the single tea towel, the plexiglass office trash can or a man’s suit jacket are not what I travel 90 plus kilometres to see. Except for the ascending fluorescent lamps, mine are on one level, the ceiling, I’ve got all four items in my laundry room. Guess that makes me arty?
I was really taken with an incredibly realistic statue of a blue suited man sitting in a chair until I called my daughter to come and see, got closer and saw it wake up and yawn. Not to be unfair, however, there is considerable wheat among the chaff. Honest.
Musée Alsacien
The door to this museum doesn’t even hint at what lies behind. It’s an aesthetic, extensive museum consisting of two houses characteristic of 17th century Strasbourg and an inner courtyard. Some of the window frames are from demolition sites going back to 1580. Each room depicts an aspect of every day life in the Alsace from the 18th to the 19th century. On display are costumes, furniture, toys, religious objects and work shops. It’s impossible to whip through so allow yourself some time look and see or perhaps return for a second visit. It’s a great place to take visitors since it’s located a hop skip and a jump from town so even if you have to bring all the old aunties, in-laws etc. you won’t mind repeated visits. It’s complete, illustrative and a frankly stunning museum in every respect. Now for the good news: entry to the museum is free throughout 2007 in commemoration of its centennial. Can you think of any reason not to go?
All of the museums mentioned above are within walking distance of each other and the centre of town. For additional information on opening times, accessibility and the history of these museums, check the Internet: http://www.musees-strasbourg.org/.

2007-01-03T06:03:00.000Z

Double Dutch

Perhaps this piece deserves a disclaimer or even a warning:
Adult readers only. The writer refuses any responsibility for lost innocence.
When ever I tell people this story they want more, but I cannot invent more than what happened, much as I try. They say it’s incomplete, unfinished. One reader said, “Hey, it’s not fair! Where’s the rest of the story? Where’s this shop and what’s the name of the saleswoman? Don’t leave ME hanging!”
Some, notably only Americans, have been offended. I think that proves my point so I consider the vignette successful. I was dressed down by an American school teacher who thought I must have better things to write about and just what did my husband think about this? (He, having completely forgotten the incident, laughed.) But then there are those who would burn books before even reading them. So it goes...

I enjoy buying clothes with my husband, his clothes that is. Because he belongs to the tallest race in Europe, he shops in his homeland, the Netherlands. There, pant legs are usually cut long and generously enough to accommodate the sturdy Dutchman’s leg (all cyclists, born with a steel bicycle pedal in their mouths). Virtually everything he tries on fits, and if it doesn’t he takes on the attitude taken by most men, i.e. the fault lies in the cut of the cloth not his body build. For example, take the last time we bought him a suit together. It fit rather well, except in one place.
“It’s too tight in the crotch,” he announced, coming out of the dressing room grimacing.
“That’s the style right now,” the saleslady explained.
“Could be, but they’re too tight for me.”
“Pants are cut differently this year.” Elaborating, she added, “One has to dress in the centre.”
“But 1 happen to dress to the left.” my husband replied matter-of-factly.
“It’s the jeans cut. To wear it, you must dress to the centre,” she insisted.
“That may well be,” he ventured, “but I still dress to the left.”
“You’re probably used to wearing pants with three folds. But this year there’s only one fold. You have to dress to the centre.”
“Could be, but I still dress to the left,” now my spouse insisted.
Did I hear correctly? Were my husband and a
saleswoman amiably, unashamedly and openly discussing the tilt of his genitalia? Trying not to let my North American sensibilities and all too Puritan upbringing show, I said nothing.
“There was a time when everyone wore boxer shorts and could let everything hang nice and loose,” she said, turning to me with a confiding look as if to say, just between us girls, we know what it is to hang nice and loose.
I gave her my best virgin spinster look.
Unfazed she returned her attention to my husband and dropped to her knees in front of him. What was she planning to do I wondered?
“Well,” hubby began, “I’ve never worn boxer shorts and these pants are still too…”
Now I doubted my eyes? The saleslady was reaching up with both hands towards my partner’s crotch.
“Oh no!” I thought. “She’s not going to?”
Then she did. With both hands she rearranged, pulled, patted and straightened his pleats.
“So what do you think, Maddy?” my mate appealed to me.
“I think,” I hesitated, still recovering from what I had just witnessed, “if you’re willing to walk around in a suit you have to pull on the crotch every few seconds to wear comfortably, then go ahead.”
“Can the pants be let out?” my husband asked.
“Of course,” the saleswoman answered brightly, but I thought I detected a certain reluctance in her tone.

2007-01-03T05:50:00.000Z

Bon Appétit

It was just past dawn when I spotted them in the misty grey light. I am tempted to call them middle-aged, but are people in their fifth decade, "middle-aged"? We are not, all of us, going to live past one hundred years. Without ever completing the comparison, some would call them an "older couple". Let's just say they were in their late fifties, perhaps early sixties, both shod in gumboots, carrying a stout stick each and plastic shopping bags. Poking the undergrowth, they were avidly searching the ditches near our French Atlantic campsite. I wondered why? What were they looking for beneath the brambles? I hesitated to ask, for my French still fails me. I kept mum and walked on, my pooch scampering past.
On the return trip an hour later, the couple was still scouring the roadside where all the campers' dogs, including mine, relieved themselves. With regularity, the wiry little woman retrieved something round and brown that she gleefully popped into her plastic sack.
Could it be mushrooms I wondered? Surely mushrooms were more plentiful in the dung-splattered meadow from which I just came? Then I remembered that eighty percent of fungi grow near trees. Elder trees skirted the road, so perhaps they had found Auricularia auricula or Judas' Ear (named for Judas Iscariot, supposedly hanged on an elder tree). I could almost taste the sliced tree ears in a sauce made with onions, garlic and basil, thickened with crème fraîche then spread on toasted pain paysan.
Or, had they collected the versatile Bay Bolete? (Boletus badius for purists, but who could forget such a name even in Latin?) Could they have picked the highlight of the mushroom season, the fabulous-tasting, Chanterelle? No, I supposed not since the Cantharellus cibarius prefers mossy clearings, it had to be another variety.
Yes! I had it. They must have come across the Shaggy Ink Cap a.k.a. Coprinus comatus, another hard-to-forget name. Everyone knows this common fungus grows on grassy banks and road sides. How had I missed it? A couple of mushrooms, some onions, a little potato to thicken, sweated together and then puréed, made a simple, but sumptuous soup. But her catch was not white and certainly not shaped like the Shaggy Ink Cap. How could I entertain such a notion?
It had to be the Hedgehog Fungus, not your garden-variety mushroom, the
Hydnum repandum. Hard to find and much sought after this gem, but they were looking in exactly the right spot, a drainage ditch. That was it!
But no, wait, the Hedgehog Fungus is cream coloured; their booty was definitely brown. Exhausting my scanty knowledge of mushrooms, I regretted I could not yet accurately identify my prey, especially since I knew that one poisonous pick could contaminate the whole bunch. Fortunately, mushroom collecting is such a favourite and serious past time in France that pharmacists are trained to recognise the deadly fungi in collectors' baskets. However, this pair did not carry baskets.
"Bonjour Madame," I sang my greeting as I approached.
"Bonjour," she sang in return, sizing me up and clutching her precious cargo close to her body.
"What are you looking for, Madame? What have you got in your sack?"
Upon hearing my accent, obviously foreign and devoid of any gourmet undertones she relaxed and smiled, showing her ageing twisted teeth. I suspect she decided her treasure-trove would be safe from the likes of me.I would not return to mine the mother lode. Her husband joined us, the smell of cigarette tobacco lingering about him. Grinning wider, she opened her bag to reveal her find. Our heads almost touching, we stood and examined the loot.
Fifty or more Helix aspersa! Great gobs of slobbering, slippery, slimy invertebrates slithered about, each soft unsegmented mollusc leaving a mucousy trail for its fellow gastropods to navigate.
I have never much cared for snails—and living in France as I do, I realisethe blasphemy of my statement. This dislike is not based on prejudiceagainst all things creepy, crawly and crustaceous, but I've seen snails in their natural environment, and I've seen what they eat. Detritus, the encyclopaedia politely calls it.The fact is, I've always considered hot parselyed garlic butter infinitely more delicious than the rubbery creatures it enrobes, even when they are labelled escargots d'or. I admired the couple's abundant haul.
"Bon appétit!" I called, thinking "Garden snails... chacun son goût."

2006-12-31T18:15:00.000Z

Old Friends

“Hey mom, did you know there some famous old guys coming to the Saint Jakob’s stadium?” my daughter said, in passing.
“Oh who?” I replied, unable to muster any interest. Her idea of famous seldom jibes with mine.
“Oh, I don’t know, I can never remember his name. Gar, Gar, I can't remember. Anyway, he's an old guy and he's coming to Basel. I know, you like him. His name's Gar-somebody.”
“Garfunkel?”
“Yeah, I think that's him.”
“Simon and Garfunkel?”
“Yeah, both of them.”
“Geez! to Basel?” My enthusiasm level started to sky rocket.
“You see. I told you it was somebody you’d like.”
“You don’t like Paul Simon? Rhythm of the Saints?”
“Diamonds on the Soles of her Feet,” her dad added.
“Daaa-ad, That’s soles of her shoes.”
“Whatever.”
“Yeah mom, you know, lots of old famous people come to Basel.”
“They do?”
“Yeah mom, you don't pay attention.”
“Well maybe not, but Simon and Garfunkel aren't old guys.”
“Sure they are.”
“Whaddaya mean old? When was Sounds of Silence?” I looked at her dad. “1966-67? That's not ol....”
“Mom, that's like more than thirty-five years ago.”
“Yeah so?”
“That's old mom.”
Simon and Garfunkel. That took me back, all the way to 1966 and Toronto. I wanted to see Peter, Paul and Mary in concert. “Waste of money,” my father pronounced.
“It’s my money,” I said, confusing insistence with insolence. Two years later and living on my own, I saw Donovan at the University of Toronto’s Varsity Stadium. Add six more years, and it was Neil Diamond at the Maple Leaf Gardens, packed with women in their twenties and thirties. They held their Bic® lighters aloft and swooned when Diamond crooned Solitary Man, a tune that only ever made it big in Toronto. Next on the venue, Bob Dylan, front row seats but behind a newly erected pillar for lighting (about which my new squeeze was furious).
“I still remember that,” he says, twenty-five years later. “And the performance was god awful. We were going to walk out. Remember?”
I do. One never really forgets the extremes. Dylan was in his neo-Christian era backed by a five-woman line-up of gospel singers. Toronto audiences, notoriously difficult to please, barely clapped before stumbling out of Massey Hall, dumbfounded.
“Did we actually pay to see that?” my husband asks, still ticked off even now.
“I can’t believe we saw the whole thing,” I say, paraphrasing the tag line to a sixties Alka Seltzer commercial.
Thus it was, undaunted, more than two decades after Dylan we girded our loins and set off on our bikes to Basel. There we mixed easily with the other cyclists, pedestrians and tram takers. (No traffic jams for the sensible Swiss.) Unfettered by metal detectors and body searches, the fans, aged anywhere from a bare-midriffed sixteen to a support-hosed sixty-six, staked out a comfortable territory on the plastic mesh-protected playing field with their collapsible chairs, picnic blankets and beach towels. Some munched Bratwurst, others drank beer and a few, a very few it seemed, smoked a joint. If you had the good fortune to find yourself by a pot smoker and inhaled deeply, well who knew? Maybe the experience would be herbally enhanced.
Eight thirty arrived—and left. By 8:35 the punctual Swiss got a trifle testy in a low-key Basel sort of way. Up flashed the photographs of old friends, Simon and his pal Art from childhood to, dare I say it? old age….older age, oldish age? Buddies for more than fifty years, the slightly paunchy duo appeared and sang Old Friends—a gentle nostalgic start. I looked about me. Were there many ‘old guys’ among us? Not really, if I take the starting point of my own age. Every song an anthem, the audience accompanied the performers by singing the still pertinent lyrics. Clearly Simon writes from his heart while Art sings from his soul.
By way of introduction, Simon said he and Garfunkel used to imitate the Everly Brothers and then they appeared, complete with Hollywood hair. Three tunes later, the pace picked up. With trepidation I awaited my daughter’s early warning signs of a body being transported aloft to the area near the stage. “You have to be on the alert for that,” she counselled. “And, if you’re close to the stage you’ve got to be physically fit owing to all the push and shove.
“The people in the mid-section will sway to the music,” she said, “and if the mood is right you’ll go into a trance.” They did, I didn’t.
“Be ready to duck, lift or get smashed in the face,” she cautioned. I began to look more and more forward to the evening. She hadn’t finished There was more fun to come. Apparently, with any luck the hoisted spectator would ultimately be tossed toward a group of youths buff as broncos—always better than into a gaggle of girls, known to step back at the last moment and not carry their load. There was none of that. Perhaps no one trusted his body to the old fogies’ weak wrists and crumbling bones.
Simon was twenty-one when he wrote one song, he’s sixty-two now but he won’t be for long. Had they aged? Of course. Could they still sing? You bet.

2006-12-31T16:09:00.000Z

Musée du papier peint

“Wallpaper museum?!” my friend snorted, when I told her I planned to visit the Musée du papier peint.
Crestfallen, I said, “That bad?”
“Well no, I’ve heard it’s quite good, actually. It’s just that if you tell anyone you want to go to a wallpaper museum they snort derisively.”
Wallpaper has been made in Rixheim, France since 1797, and by Zuber and Cie, from 1802 to 1982. The Musée du papier peint housed in the old Zuber and Cie factory was founded in 1983.
Zuber et Cie, still the crème de la crème of wallpaper makers, is especially known for their scenic wall panels. At one time, the company shipped half of its product to the U.S.A. where many of their hand blocked panels still decorate famous residences across America including, whether Dubya realizes it or not, the Blue Room of the White House.
A labour intensive product, Zuber’s wallpapers require the services of many skilled of craftsmen (colourists, artists, printers, wood carvers)—thus once providing a livelihood for most of Rixheim’s townspeople until the process became industrialized. On display are numerous Rube Goldberg-like contraptions, even one from New Brunswick, New Jersey. One of these machines could produce in a single day, what it previously took four years to make; not however, the panoramic scenes which continue to be manufactured by hand and can require more than fifteen hundred blocks and over two hundred colours.
Apparently, owning a Zuber scene is akin to owning a famous painting. The whole painstaking process starts with the colourist, who hand mixes chalk with mineral, vegetable or chemical pigment. Four men, who are not allowed to talk during the process, apply the background colours with wide brushes. Once the paper has dried, right-handed printers, the blocks aren’t designed to accommodate southpaws, press the paint-laden fruit-wood blocks on precisely designated spots which are later retouched by an artist’s hand.
During the last war, the occupying German forces used many of the original, two-century-old wooden blocks, (since declared by the French government as historical monuments) for firewood. Those blocks that remain are still being used today. The museum’s entrance is located in a secluded courtyard just off the business area of Rixheim.
Musée du papier peint
La Commanderie, 28 rue Zuber
B.P. 41
F-68171 Rixheim
Tel. ++33 389 64 24 56
Fax ++33 389 54 33 06
E-mail: musee.papier.peint@wanadoo.fr
http://www.museepapierpeint.org
Opening hours (call for a guided tour): Daily (except Tuesday) 10-12 a.m. / 2-6 p.m.

2006-12-31T14:26:00.000Z

History and Hagiography

The Historisches Museum Basel houses a treasury of world renown. Once a church, now a museum, it is located directly opposite the Barfüsser tram stop. Step into that unassuming building (ignore the drab area on the left passing for a coffee shop) and you experience a quiet uncluttered calm that belies the importance of the treasury discreetly exhibited within. Churches have been endowed with jewel-encrusted, gold and silver objects since the late 8th century. Jewels can be readily sold; gold and silver are easily reworked into coin or ingots to pay for wars, so many medieval treasuries have disappeared. So few medieval treasuries exist in Europe today that scholars can only learn about what once was through written inventories. The Basel Cathedral Treasury was assembled over five centuries from 1019 to 1529 when the Protestant Reformation became established in Basel. It is rare because it has survived almost intact, nine hundred years. Over half of the original pieces are in the Historisches Museum. Five years ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, assembled almost the complete treasury for a major exhibition. It borrowed missing pieces from museums in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna and Zurich.
When the earthquake of 1356 toppled portions of the cathedral’s towers into the Rhine below, its treasury remained snug and undamaged within. It has outlived two eras destructive to Catholic religious objects and icons, the Protestant Reformation and iconoclasm, but not the division of Basel into Basel City and Basel Land. One item that fell victim to this division was the gilded silver Reliquary Bust of Saint Ursula (1300–1320). Basel Land being the poorer of the two regions sold part of its treasury. A hundred years later, the bust, purchased with donations from the people of Basel, was recovered from the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.
Its history began a half-century before its creation. In 1254, the Cologne Cathedral gave the Basel Cathedral a skull and two arm bones, among other relics of several thousand martyred virgins, or so the story goes.
There is no dearth of Ursula legends, all of Monty Pythonesque proportions. Details and dates vary. Essentially, Ursula was doomed to marry a heathen. She managed to postpone her wedding for three years, to make a pilgrimage to Rome to devote (albeit temporarily) her virginity to Christ. The delay would give her fiancé sufficient time to convert to Christianity, be baptized and become a devout practising Christian.
Ursula set sail from Britain with eleven thousand maidens in tow. Blown to the mouth of the Rhine, she and the damsels sailed up the river to Cologne where an angel foretold Ursula’s demise as a martyr. Unfazed, Ursula continued up the Rhine to Basel where she and all 11,000 chaste companions disembarked to continue their journey through the Alps to Rome, on foot. Along the way, Ursula managed to convert these ingénues to Christianity.
In Rome, Ursula met a certain Pope Cyriacus who was supposed to accompany her safely home but backed out. In the meantime, word reached the ruling Huns in Cologne that Ursula and her troop would be passing through. Only interested in women for pleasure according to one Ursuline Internet site, they eagerly awaited Ursula’s arrival.
Writers are always cautioned not to use hackneyed phrases like the one I am about to use but I can think of none more apt. Perhaps the expression ‘a fate worse than death’ originated with Ursula’s narrative because in Cologne, the maidens exchanged their heads for their maidenheads.
Surveying thousands of beheaded corpses, Ursula was comforted and entreated by the Top Hun to take his bloodied hand in marriage. Alas, already betrothed to a Christian, Ursula could not be tempted by the heathen Hun’s proposal and also perished. To add insult to ignominy, forty years ago, Pope Paul VI struck Ursula from the saints’ registry.
Centuries later, unsullied by time and travel, the Reliquary bust of Saint Ursula smirks serenely in the Historisches Museum Basel.
If your German isn’t up to scratch and you are unable to decipher the explanations beside each treasury exhibit, there’s an excellent film on the ground floor you can watch in English or French.
Another section of the museum houses bits of a mural rescued from the interior of the Prediger Church’s cemetery wall. These fragments of the Totentanz (Dance of Death) are all that remain of a two-metre high, sixty-metre long mural, warning the populace of Basel (still smarting from the earthquake and the Black Death) to live a virtuous if not exemplary life because Death could strike before its victim received last rites.
Once a popular theme in Europe, many a Totentanz was lost when Europe was bombed in World War II. Basel’s centuries old wall fell before the war; victim to urban expansion, it came crashing down in 1805. There’s no record of its commission but it is thought that the Totentanz was painted around 1430. The mural, protected from the elements by a cantilevered roof, depicted several levels of medieval society from a duke and his duchess, to a count, a knight and so on down to a crippled beggar. Each one, caught unawares, was made to dance with a skeleton—death. The message was clear; irrespective of one’s social standing, whether powerful or rich, death claims us all and in death we are all equal. The wall no longer stands but its message still does.
Also on display are some of Basel’s guild treasures, tapestries, ecclesiastical art and furniture. Not to be missed are the treasures hidden beneath the former church.
Kinderleben in Basel displays objects illustrating how (mostly privileged) children lived in Basel between the 18th and 20th century. There is also a coin section, several exquisite rooms from ancient demolished houses in Basel, some weaponry and much more.
If I were to identify a single negative point about the museum, it is that almost all the explanations are in German. Granted, Basel is a predominantly German speaking city and we all need to make an effort to learn the language, but at the same time, like it or not, it’s an international city. The museum would attract more visitors from the city and the region if the directors were to make information more accessible by having it in French and English; nevertheless, it’s well worth a visit.

HISTORISCHES MUSEUM BASEL: Barfüsserplatz
Closed Tuesdays, open Mon, Wed - Sun 10 - 17 hours
T +41 (0)61 205 86 00, http://www.hmb.ch/de.html
(If I haven’t convinced anyone to buy a Museumspass yet, I would like to add that I lost mine and it was replaced within two days. Don’t leave home without it.)

2006-12-31T14:14:00.000Z

Toten Tanz

Anyone who believes beauty is skin deep hasn’t visited the Anatomicsches Museum in Basel.
I visited it twice, not that once would not have sufficed but the first time my camera was on the blink. My eldest daughter, who starts medical school this month, thought the museum was ‘really cool’. Long finished his medical studies, my husband accompanied me for a second round. In general, he was impressed with the displays and in particular, the amazing amount of patience required for the preparation of each specimen.
No longer a practising nurse, I lean more toward the metaphysical these days and can’t help wondering if the two-legged, two-headed skeleton counts as one person with one soul or two persons with a soul each?
Naturally, to visit the museum, one needn’t be accompanied by anyone with the slightest medical interest—a couple of ghoulish teens would do. Years ago, when all the specimens were housed in heavy wood-framed, glass cases and the museum was open only on Sundays, a friend of mine visited it after church with her two children. When I asked if they went once or many times, she said, “I don’t recall. It may have been only once but it seemed like more. I know we came away feeling faintly sick and green at the gills but fascinated never-the-less.”
Now housed in modern glass casings, there’s no need to wait for a Sunday to view the recently repickled, century-old specimens. Opening hours are Monday through Friday from 1400 to 1700 hours. Until May of this year, the spine is featured. Worth playing with is a neat, hands-on model that illustrates better than any explanation, how improper lifting strains the spine. Furthermore, you can compare the fist-sized human heart to that of an elephant or a mouse and marvel that such a small muscle pumps 24/7 for seven plus decades (if you’re lucky and look after it). You can also examine a hip implant, a fracture repair and a knee replacement, and consider how many people are not in wheelchairs but still mobile owing to advances in medical science.
If you can shake off the feeling that you are walking among the dead, a visit to the Anatomisches Museum may prove more interesting than you first thought.

ANATOMISCHES MUSEUM  der Universität Basel
 Pestalozzistrasse 20 
CH - 4056 Basel
 Museum-Anatomie@unibas.ch

2006-12-31T13:59:00.000Z

Jailhouse Blues

Once upon a time, not so long ago (1835-1995) in Basel’s Old Town, there existed a prison—which had, long, long ago (1070) been an Augustinian monastery. End of fairy tale. Leaving a goal to sit in the heart of Basel on prime real estate did not make good business sense, thus a plan was proposed to convert the property into ritzy apartments. Fortunately for the citizens of Basel and its museum goers, the task proved too difficult to execute, so instead of becoming a posh place for the few, the prison became the largest musical instrument museum in Switzerland.
Along with its collection of Basel Fastnacht fifes and drums, the museum is home to about 3,000 European musical instruments (dating from the 16th to the 20th century) 600 of which are on view. The rest are in storage but accessible to music students.
Financed by private donations, the outer shell of the prison has been retained as have the prison cells and the original herringbone pattern parquet, restored to a rich lustre. The cells’ black walls and four-metre high ceilings provide the perfect décor for the glass cases of drums, stringed and wind instruments. At the foot of each cell is a touch-sensitive flat screen, placed at a height convenient for both adults and children alike; where, in three languages, you can read the history of each instrument and hear it played either alone or in a musical composition.
Outside the cells are centuries-old keyboard instruments of varying construction. One cell provides a hands-on display of piano and organ works. Finally, for those of a more lugubrious bent, there remains one untouched, vacated goal cell.
What struck me was that each instrument must have its own untold tale of a journey through the hands of craftsmen and musicians, across lands and into the care of people who sheltered or neglected them through decades of war, famine and pestilence until they landed, sometimes a century or four later in the hands of restorers, who then repaired, catalogued and mounted them in black display cases beside a little white number.
One of the more fascinating instruments on display is the Serpent. Once described as unlovely and bullocky, it is, as the name suggests, an S-shaped instrument, with curves encompassing up to 2.5 metres of hollow wooden tubing. Originally, Serpents were made from a block of walnut wood, the size of the finished instrument. The block was split down the middle, then both halves were hollowed out like a dugout canoe in the form of an ‘s’ then glued together. The final s-shape was hued from this reassembled block and covered with leather. Apparently, Serpents made this way are still more desirable than those made from high tech materials like fibreglass and owing to advances in carpentry, and probably glue too, are much easier to make than they once were.
How Serpents came into being isn’t known exactly, only that a Frenchman, Canon Edmé Guillau was (forgive me) instrumental in its invention and design. The Serpent was probably built by an instrument maker to the Canon’s specifications.
Prior to the 16th century, most music was written for the church and performed, without accompaniment, by the pure human voice (plainsong). Because low pitched notes sung by male voices lack volume, the Serpent was developed to fill that gap, thus it slithered its way into the church in 1590 and accompanied the male voice for the next 200 years.
Not to be outdone by the French, the English also developed their own Serpent, but constructed it from curved overlapping conical sections and bound it with varnished cloth strips or covered it with a leather sheath. Either way, it needed to be re-enforced with metal bands making it more durable, if less airtight than the French instrument. Its durability proved rather useful to the military, in turbulent 18th century Europe, because it could be played during marches, in battle and even on horseback.
From military bands to rural churches not possessing organs, the Serpent slid into the orchestra pit, until improvements in instrument design lead to its replacement by louder brass instruments like the tuba. This is not to say that you no longer hear the Serpent being played—just that you are not aware of it. Used in film sound tracks and commercials, it is also making a comeback with some musicians and especially in recreations of historic music recorded on the original instruments.
If you’d like to hear how a Serpent sounds you could try this link: http://www.oddmusic.com/clips/serpent.mp3 or better yet, hop on tram number 3 to the Musikakademie and visit the Music Museum in Basel.
Wheelchair accessible, the museum is closed Mondays, open: Tues, Wed, Fri 14-19h; Thu 14-20 and Sundays 11-16h. Im Lohnhof 9, Basel
Tel.: +41 61 205 86 00,  Fax: +41 61 205 86 01,  historisches.museum@bs.ch www.musikmuseum.ch
Happy Day: 1st Sunday in the month free admission.
Happy Hour: Tue, Wed, Fri 18 - 19 h; Thu 19 - 20 h free admission. Different prices apply for some special exhibitions. Free entry with the Oberrheinischen Museumspass or the Schweizer Museumspass
Guided tours : 1st Thursday of the month

If my description of the Serpent has intrigued you but you balk at the measly entrance fee, let me plug the Museumspass once more. With entry to 150 museums in three countries, at CHF 94 for one adult and five children under the age of sixteen or CHF 166 for two adults and the same number of kids, it’s a steal. Buy it. You won’t regret it. Trust me.

2006-12-30T17:40:00.000Z

Haut Koenigsbourg*

The Rhine Valley is studded with castles, most in ruins some restored. Haut Koenigsbourg perches on a ledge, 755 metres high at the junction of former wheat, wine, salt and silver routes. The more than nine-centuries-old former Austrian fortress has housed princes, emperors, lords, dukes, bishops, counts, knights, kings and kaisers.
Within its on average four-metre-thick walls, there have been workshops, a forge, a mill, a 190-foot deep well, a stable, cowshed, draw bridges and a walled medieval garden. Furnished with 12th to 17th century furniture, the baronial apartments, kitchen, chapel, ceremonial hall and an armoury housing some medieval and Renaissance weaponry can be viewed.
I liked the armoury best owing to my morbid fascination with man’s continuing need to slaughter his fellow man. On display were a number of early and late halberds, a far cry from today’s anonymous landmines and cluster bombs. The halberd, a combination spear and battle-axe developed by the Swiss, could, owing to its sheer weight, slice through armour. Since that wasn’t always enough to down one’s opponent, the later modified halberds were designed to pierce a man’s gut and then with a little twist and a pull, effectively disembowel him before moving on to the next ‘enemy combatant’.
Also on display are a few suits of armour. Made to measure, they were a luxury item then as now and weighed twenty to forty kilograms—a heavy load considering that men were smaller in stature than today’s elite warriors, who often carry considerably heavier loads while wearing modern day steel, titanium, ceramic or polyethylene re-inforced flak jackets based on their forerunner, plate armour.
I overheard one guide explain that an armoured knight always lifted his visor with the right hand, a gesture which was the precursor of Dubya’s sometimes snappy salute and another example of ‘old Europe’s’ influence in the New World.
Owing to wars and sieges, the castle, thought to have been built about 1114, has changed hands frequently. It was burned in 1462, rebuilt in 1479, then burned again and left in ruins for several centuries. Today’s tourist has Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to thank for its restoration in the early 1900s. Essentially, it was his attempt to create good public relations with the Alsace, then recently annexed to Germany. To restore the castle to its medieval glory, the Kaiser hired Bodo Ebhardt, an architect familiar with medieval architecture.
On top of the castle, the visitor has a terrific, panoramic view of the plain of Alsace, and on the way down there is a gallery of photographs showing the ruins before and after the restoration.
In 1919, the castle was classified as a National Palace and given back to France according to a provision in the Treaty of Versailles. During World War II, it was used to house collections from museums in Colmar and Strasbourg. In 1944, American troops occupied the castle until Germany surrendered Colmar.
There is plenty of free parking on the road at the foot of the castle including handicapped person’s parking but wheelchair access is difficult considering both the steep road and forest pathway to the castle. According to the website, people possessing an invalid card are admitted for free but anyone in a wheelchair needs to be accompanied. There are three hundred steps of different heights within the castle thus the armoury and apartments are inaccessible to wheelchairs. The grounds outside the castle are wheelchair accessible and although not seen from the top of the castle, the view, nevertheless, is fantastic.
Tours are conducted in French, English and German by well-informed and enthusiastic guides. Ninety-minute long, multi-lingual audio guides can be rented for an additional four euros. There is a souvenir shop and a bookstore, selling mostly French books, inside the restaurant on site. The castle’s only washrooms accessible via a stairway are also in the restaurant.
Located in Orschwiller some twenty kilometres north of Colmar, the castle is open in November, December, January and February from 9:45 to 12:00 and then from 13:00 to 17:00. In March and October it is open from 9:45 to 17:00. In April, May and September, it is open from 9:30 to 17:30 and in June, July and August from 9:30 to 18:30. The castle is closed the first of January and May and on December 25th. The Museumspass is not accepted; entry costs €7.50 (less for students and groups).
www.monum.fr (in English and French)
e-mail: haut-koenigsbourg@monum.fr
Tel: 33 (0)3 88 82 50 60
Fax: 33 (0)3 88 82 50 61

2006-12-30T17:35:00.001Z

Top Gear

A black and white blow-up of Mother Schlumpf—knitting— graces the entrance to the Automobile Museum in Mulhouse. It was to honour her that the Schlumpf brothers founded a car museum and bankrupted their business in the process.
Fritz and Hans Schlumpf were autocratic Swiss wool industrialists, who collected Bugattis like little boys collect dinky toys. How did the Schlumpfs amass enough riches to furnish their private museum with Bugattis, Ferraris, Mercedes Benz, Maseratis and Porsches— to name but a few?
One of the ways Hans, a former banker, siphoned off funds from the business, was to pay the mill workers poorly, dock fifteen minutes off their pay if they were late or signed out a minute or two early and not pay bonuses or increments.
The brothers set about refurbishing their cars by hiring and swearing to secrecy saddlers, body workers and mechanics. These employees worked in a sealed off a portion of the mill with direct access to the railway tracks. It was in this mill building that Fritz displayed the restored cars to private and select viewers. All went well for a few years with Fritz buying whole lots of cars, often paying much beyond the market price. When in the late sixties the textile industry began to move to Asia, the Schlumpfs’ enterprise started to falter. With strikes in the offing, the brothers laid off employees and sold part of the business. Rumours of their secret car collection persisted to circulate until 1977 when some union workers broke into the museum. Amazed and enraged by their discovery, they destroyed the shell of one not yet refurbished car, then occupied the museum and ran it for two years.
Meanwhile, unlike Robert Maxwell (who jumped ship) or Kenneth Lay (who died ‘prematurely’) Hans and Fritz, both survivors, ducked their debts by beating a hasty retreat to Basel, where they lived in self exile (and some comfort) in the Drei Koenige Hotel.
After much political wrangling, the French state did not sell or disperse the Schlumpf collection to other museums and private collectors all over the world but ultimately classified the collection as a historic monument. Thereafter, private individuals and public authorities purchased the land, the collection and the buildings that housed it. They transformed the Schlumpf collection into a world class museum that houses the biggest and finest collection of vintage cars in the world. Renovated, refurbished and reopened in March 2000, the museum still maintains the character of the original private museum with its brick walkway, white gravel aisles and Pont Alexandre III lamp posts. There’s also a long hall stuffed with Bugatti racing cars and filled with the appropriate sound effects of cheering crowds and racing cars.
Off in one corner (I missed it, but my husband said it was terrific) are two robots and a film showing how cars are assembled today. Sometime during your visit, you may want to squeeze into an old racing car to have your photograph taken, or if need be, you can take a spin in a rotating Peugeot—cheaper than a fair ride and more sick-making too, judging by the wobbly-kneed green-gilled teenagers I saw topple out.
If you think Bugattis are world famous Italian racing cars, think again. Although invented by Milan-born Ettore Bugatti, they were and still are manufactured in the Alsacian town of Molsheim. If you’ve seen the billboards advertising the Bugatti Veyron Exhibition and been tempted to ogle the car —touted as the most powerful in the world and the machine Jeremy Clarkson is itching to drive —go. You still have until November 5, 2006.
Clearly not a ‘car person’ I’ve focussed more on the Schlumpfs’ story than their museum in this article, but I can agree with the Guide Vert Michelin rating of three stars; the exhibition really is worth the trip.
Open every day of the year except Christmas and New Year’s day, the Musée National de l’Automobile, Collection Schlumpf accepts the Museumspass but does charge a little extra. An audio guide, in six languages, comes with the entrance fee and there’s a restaurant and a cafeteria on site.
192 avenue de Colmar
Mulhouse, France
Tel: +33 (0)389332323.
www:collection-schlumpf.com

2005-08-16T19:39:00.003+01:00

Chapter 1

Naked, Ben stands in front of our bedroom mirror and strikes a body builder's pose. "Looking good," he tells his reflection before setting off for his morning shower.  I've seen Ben do this every day since our first morning after. I thought it was cute the first time I saw him do it—twenty-five years ago.   Ben is fifty-six and no Adonis. He has lost most of his hair. What little remains is almost all grey. He keeps it short and clean. He doesn't part it above one ear, to plaster a few strands across his head. He doesn't have what they call a "six pack". Nor does he have massive shoulders or pecs. He has neither love handles nor a bulging gut. His buttocks have begun to sag a tad, and under each one are three sweet little wrinkles. I never intend to tell him about them, just in case he decides to tell me about some of the changes in my body, I can't see.   Normally, I don’t pay attention to Ben’s ritual, but with an HB 2 pencil, I’d just finished filling in one of those magazine questionnaires--no one will ever admit to doing. I'm a sucker for them. I never answer truthfully and always manipulate the score to get the outcome I want.
I had just thrust the magazine under the duvet for later erasure when my daughter Robyn burst into the bedroom. “Ever heard of knocking?” I asked.
“Sor-ry,” she sang and flung herself on Ben’s side of the bed and lay her head on his pillow causing her bright fuzzy orange hair to billow either side of her face. I regarded her intently, her perfect smooth skin, no wrinkles; her soft pale eyebrows, no stiff white hairs or open patches; her straight even teeth, no fillings. Did I have a hand in creating this beautiful being?
“Hey, I don’t mind, so long as I can do the same to you,” I said.
Ignoring my reproach, she selected a woman’s magazine from the assortment on the bed, given to me by my neighbour Mary Frances. I didn’t buy such magazines myself but devoured them when I got them. I especially liked the gossip mags. I wanted to see who was packing on the pounds, who was ageing well or badly and who succombed to cosmetic surgery. After flipping the pages a few moments, Robyn stopped at a questionnaire and asked, “Hey? Do you ever do these quizzes?”
Miffed, I didn’t reply but kept on reading.
“Well?.... Maw-um? Do you?”
"Never!" I lied.
"Why not?”
"Because they're utter nonsense."
Robyn sat up, withdrew a fat material covered elastic from her jeans’ pocket, then held it between her teeth while she struggled to gather her hair. Deftly she caught up her hair in a fly-away-contained mess which looked great. She sifted through some more magazines. “Here's one in Cosmo, 'How Compatible are You and Your Lover?'"
“Your dad and I have been married a while now," I replied, coolly regarding her freckled grinning face.
"Okay. How about, 'Will This Marriage Last?'" Her grin spread wider.
"So far, so good. Look, if I did them, you don't think I'd fill in the blanks do you?”
“Why not? Mary Frances does. Look she’s already done this one.” She held an ink-smudged page before my eyes.

“’Cause I know, you'd be right there after me, checking my score!"
"Okay," she sneered, "Try this, 'Do You Have the Makings of a Good Mother?'"
"Let's do this one," I said, pulling out a magazine at random.
"Okay, what is it?" she eagerly replied still grinning and still intent on getting the best of me.
I cleared my throat and invented a title, "'How to Tell If Your Teenage Daughter Is Using Drugs, Having Premarital...'"
"Forget it." She pushed herself upright and swung her legs over the bed.
"Forget what?"
"The quiz," Robyn said, heading for the door.
"Why?" I called after her.
"Mom, you said yourself. It’s all bullshit."
“Bullshit?” Ben said, entering the room as Robyn left. “What was that all about?”
“Nothing really, just your typical mother daughter exchange.”
“Okay, I’ll stay out of it,” he said and slid open his cupboard door to an array of light woollen suits all of which fit him.
He withdrew my favourite, a light gray Glen check suit with a thin dark blue line running through the pattern. I watched him put on his form fitting undies and then move to the sock drawer. I don’t pair them since I’m oblivious to subtle differences in shades of gray, black and blue, the lighter and darker hues depending on the age of the sock or the detergent.
Ben was particular about wearing equally faded black socks. I watched him bend over the drawer and noted how easily he did it without the impediment of a beer belly. He fished out two grey socks whose shade of gray seemed identical. He then leaned his butt on the bedroom wall to steady himself and while pulling on a sock said, “You haven’t found any stray running socks have you?”
“Nope.”
“I guess the sock monster has been here again.”
“It’s not a joke Ben.”
“I’m not joking.”
“I swear I do my best to see that they all go in the wash. It’s just that they don’t all come out again.”
“Maybe it’s a plot,” he said reaching for a white shirt with French cuffs. “A conspiracy cooked up by sock and washing machine manufacturers. Athletic sock makers kick in a few million dollars to washing machine companies' R&D departments.”
“I don’t get it,” I said and watched his hairy chest disappear inch by inch behind the bright white oxford cloth.
“The idea is to make certain the appliance makers can guarantee a steady stream of stray socks, for decades to come.” He turned around to the open closet to survey his ties, found the one he wanted pulled it off the rack and in so doing caused a few coat hangers to jangle. Facing me he tied a Windsor knot, then pulled on his trousers, neatly closed them without first sucking in his gut, pulled up the zipper and threaded a belt through the belt loops.
Wouldn’t I love to put pants on with the ease he did? And a belt? Forget it.
“I think your theory is all stuff and nonsense,” I replied.
“To quote your lovely daughter, you mean ‘bullshit’?”
“Yeah, bullshit. Socks transmogrify,” I said and pointed to the inside of his cupboard. “They become wire coat hangers.”
He laughed, swung his jacket over his shoulder and left. Moments later his head reappeared. “Forgot my phone. Hey! Isn’t Fay coming today?”
“Today? No tomorrow.”
“I thought you said Thursday, today’s Thursday.”
“Is it? Curses!” I had things to do, a house to straighten out, a questionnaire to erase, but first I’d look at my results. It was about body image. I’d checked off the most negative replies possible, not all that far from my truth, but no one need know.
The questions were along the lines of: "I never look at myself in the mirror because I'm frustrated that I don't weigh what I did when I was twenty-five," or "when I'm complimented on my looks, I'm sure the person complimenting me is just being polite". Lying would be more like it. I tallied my score and turned to the results, expecting to be advised to consult a psychiatrist immediately, when Ben came in again.
“Forgot something else.” he said and leaned over to plant a fat kiss on my lips.
Over my reading glasses I watched him straighten, grin at his reflection in the full-length mirror, and say, “Looking good!” He closed the bedroom door quietly behind him and I heard him tread with a bounce down the wooden staircase.
I'm a couple of years younger than Ben and no Venus, certainly not the de Milo rendition. My body favours the Venus of Willendorf, or at least that's how I see myself. Where Ben is flat, I'm round; where he has hollows, I have bulges; where he's firm, I'm flabby. Here’s the kicker. Having just completed the quiz, a.k.a. an exercise in self loathing, it occurred to me that Ben's Arnie act was much more than cute—it was sensible.
According to my quiz results, I felt negative about my body. Duh!
Apparently, I'm waiting for my body to change before I can enjoy life. Wait a minute! My body has certainly changed over the years, without me waiting for it. Whose hasn't? The editor must have meant that I was waiting for me to change my body (like I ever could) before I could enjoy life. But I do enjoy life--just not my body.
Typically the message was consistent with what the media have been hammering in since forever. Where once we improved, or should that be altered, our body shape with corsets and bustles, then girdles and uplift bras, and now elasticized body suits, we can go a few layers deeper, with dieting, cosmetic surgery, liposuction and Botox injections. We can sweat on treadmills or rowing machines, lift weights, do Pilates or hook ourselves to mini-generators that send electrical impulses to our muscles. I've never indulged in any of those remedies but have always felt a little guilty about not doing anything to meet current commercial standards of beauty.
And there was Ben, my sweetie, telling himself he looked good and believing it.
That's what gets me. I'd never say that, let alone believe it.