Photos

Here are some photos that were taken a long time ago but I recently found on Alison's computer. I am trying to construct a visual record but as I didn't take/save (m)any pictures, I am using the ones I find in her labyrinthine "My Pictures" folder.

There are three photos of our apartment. Top floor in the first photo, then views to the left and right of the building. Then there is a view from the door with the post office and a Tudor style house across the road.

Finally, there is one of my bike.

Bike Trip: Bougue

There is a cycle path called the "Voie Verte de Marsan et d'Armagnac" that supposedly runs from our town, Mont-de-Marsan to a town called Gabarret in the Armagnac region, 55 kilometers to the east. Unfortunately, while it supposedly exists, I can not seem to place it on a map. The "cycle-only" path only runs 18 km to the east to a town called Villeneuve-de-Marsan. I will possibly make this 36 km roundtrip today. Halfway to Villeneuve (9 km) is a village called Bougue and Alison and I rode out to it on the first nice day that early summer brought us. The path leaves Mont-de-Marsan, running behind backyard trees in a pleasant suburban track that three times crosses roads that cars cross so care must be taken. After a few kilometers the path leaves the confines of settlement and winds through sandy, shady pine and fern forest. Here are some photos from the trip, the town of Bougue, with its old, yet still inspiring church.

Cercles de Gascogne

I have decided that in an attempt to write in this more, I will write shorter entries, but hopefully the small "taste" will still be appealing. Also, I have been alerted to the fact that there may be typos and badly worded sentences in these entries (thanks Alison), but I am not going to fret too much.

Tonight, the Cercles of Gascogne.

These establishments, born after the Revolution of 1789, were meeting places for politicians, local elites, lawyers, and other officials of towns and regions as an informal place to discuss political matters, drink, and share company. They all bear names that evoke some of the founding principals of the revolution; Cercle de l’Union, Republicain, des Democrates, des Citoyens (citizens), Ouvrier (open), des Travailleurs (of workers), de la Concorde, de la Paix (of peace), de la Fraternite, and more. They were circles within circles. In 1860, they allowed aritsans and local businessmen to attend meetings. Children and women were not allowed and only men in their fifties or later were truly accepted. I am not sure how long this exclusion lasted.

Today, everyone is welcome and often these establishments host cultural events and concerts. On the website for the National Park of Landes of Gascogne, where most of them are located (about twenty in all), they invite everyone to come in and experience the conviviality of these establishments. They are somewhat hidden, old-looking establishments where you will not "find any posters for the latest beer", the floor will be stone or dirt, and the walls, ceilings, and support poles may be original.


A good bike tour of the national park should include stopping at one or two of these bars if you find them. From personal experience, I have only seen them in towns, but it was a Sunday and everything was closed. I imagine the atmosphere is not as welcoming as they would suggest. There are probably a load of old men that will stare you down if you don't look like you belong there, but such is the case with so many places in France. There is a place in Mont-de-Marsan called Le Cercle de Citoyens but I doubt it is an original structure and it looks fairly nice inside. I learned of these places by seeing a promotional brochure advertising a series of concerts they were holding at all the cercles from April to June. Unfortunately, most of them are in towns that can not be reached by train and the bus system schedule is not good enough to get you to a town and back in a single day. If I do travel around the park on my bike, I will be on the lookout for some of them.

Les Contes des Landes: The Four Dextrous Brothers

There was a man who had four sons and when they had grown, he told to them:
“All of you must go and learn a trade, whatever you prefer. Return here in a year to the day.”
After a year, the boys returned home. The father asked the first, “Well, what trade did you learn?”
“As for me, I am a franc (1) diviner,” said the son.
“And you,” said the father to the second, “which trade have you chosen?”
“As for me, I am a franc thief.”
“And you,” said the father to the third, “what do you do?”
“As for me, I am a franc marksman.”
“And you?” asked the father to the fourth.
“As for me, I am a franc repairman,” said the fourth and youngest.

“So, you have told me that you are true in your professions, but I want to see that you are as able as you say. To you,” the father said to the first, “the diviner. There is very close to here, behind the house, a great pine. Can you tell me what is at the top of the pine?”
The son responded, “At the top of the pine, is a magpie nest. In the nest are two eggs and the magpie is covering them.”
“It’s true!” said the father. “To you, now, the thief. You will climb the tree and take the eggs without startling the mother.”
The youth climbed the pine, lifted the eggs without startling the mother and brought them to his father. The old man took the eggs and said: “To you, the marksman, you will throw these in to the air and fire two shots breaking them each in two.”
The third son launched them in to the air, first one, then the other. He brought his gun to bear and fired two shots right through the middle of each of the eggs.
“Ah! To you, the repairman, take these eggs put fix them in a fashion that it is impossible to tell they were ever broken.”
The youngest, the repairman, took the broken bits of the eggs and made them look new. The father was very satisfied by his four sons.

After some days, the king of the land, who wanted to speak with the lads, sent for them to be found. When the four brothers arrived at the castle, the king asked them what they’re respective trades were. They each responded as they did to their father. The king asked to the diviner:
“Well, if you are a diviner, do you know why I have sent for you?”
He responded, “I do know why. For seven years, your daughter has been imprisoned by a demon and you don’t know where to find her. You have asked us here to find her.”
“It’s true,” said the king. “You are able to find her? Ask me for anything you would like to aid you, I will make it so. After she is found, she will be married to you.”
The diviner brother asked for a beautiful boat and captain and crew to pilot the boat across the sea. The next morning, they embarked to find the king’s daughter.

They started to sail and for a long time they sailed trying to find evidence of the king’s daughter, but they could not see land. Finally, after many days, they decided it was hopeless but as they were to give up they spotted an island from the boat. The island had a large moutain right in the center that was crowned with a forest. Then, the diviner said they must stop, as the princess was imprisoned in the castle in the forest on top of the mountain on the island.
He told his brothers, “To you, the thief, the moment has come to employ your skill. When you arrive in the demon’s castle, you will find a tapestry of gold or money. The walls will be made of gold, but you must touch nothing. When you make your way through the castle, touching nothing, you will find the princess sleeping in a chair of gold. Lift her out of the chair and bring her here, but still, do not take any of the beautiful things that you see around you, otherwise the demon will find you and kill you both.”
After the thief penetrated the castle and brought her to the boat, the demon realized that she was missing. The diviner shouted to the his brother, the marksman, as the boat turned away from the island, “When the devil arrives, fire at him and destroy him!” Next he turned to his last brother, “After the demon is destroyed, he will break in to two pieces and the fire inside his body will fall on to the deck of the ship. You must quickly repair the ship if we are to ever see home!”
Soon the demon appeared and the marksman raised his gun. He took aim and with one perfectly placed shot, the demon was split in to two pieces. Pieces of the devil fell to the deck and burned holes straight through the ship. Luckily, the fourth brother, the repairman, was ready and patched up the boat before even a drop of water was able to leak in to the boat. The boat turned back home, with the princess on board and the demon perished.

When they arrived at the king’s castle, he asked each brother, starting with the diviner, “Ah! To you, the diviner, what role did you play in finding my daughter?”
The diviner answered, “I indicated the place where your daughter was held captive and told my brothers how they could rescue her. Without me, everything would have been lost.”
The king asked the same question to the second brother. The thief answered, “I was able to free your daughter from the demon’s clutches and brought her back to the boat.”
The king asked the same question to the third brother. The marksman answered, “When the demon arrived, I took aim and destroyed him with my steady shot. Without me, he would have overtaken us and all would have been lost.”
The king asked the same question to the fourth brother. The repairman answered, “When the demon’s dead body fell to the ground, I repaired the boat from the damage it caused. Without me, we all would have drowned.”
“I am very happy with all of you,” said the king. “You have returned my daughter, but I can not marry her to you all. I will ask her who she prefers.
The young woman said to her father, “Daddy, if you give me my choice between thes four brothers, I would like to marry the thief. He is the first person that I had seen and fell in love when he took me from that place.”
The franc thief and the daughter of the king were married. To console the other brothers, they were all named generals in the king’s army.
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(1) The story uses the word “franc” before each of the word’s describing the sons’ trades. Translated, it means “frank” so I suppose earnest or true, but when I asked the owner of the coffeshop I go to what it meant, he said it was an old usage of the word, and while it roughly means “true”, it is not a direct translation. Oh well. Such is my understanding of French, rough and never exact.

Regional Accents

It has been a while since I posted anything of substance here, and I promise to do better. Today, I have three regional specialties that I am going to highlight (there are so many, I chose three at random).

First, the French Basset Bleu de Gascogne.



Information from pedigreesearch.co.uk

"The Basset Bleu de Gascogne is a medium sized, low slung but not too heavy dog. Perhaps the aristocrat of the Basset types it's form and action echo it's noble heritage and ancient origins. Every point of the Basset Bleu de Gascogne is for a purpose, from it's dwarfed legs to slow it's pace on the hunt to it's long ears to stir up scent when head down on the hunt. A tricolour dog, its body is predominantly white with tan markings above the eyes, on the cheeks and the underside of the ears. The white is heavily ticked, which gives it a bluish appearance. As with many of the hounds the Basset Bleu de Gascogne originated in France, with this particular breed being developed in what was the Basque region of Gascogne. As long ago as the 12th century references are found to the large blue hounds of Phebus, Comte de Foix, or Phebus of Gascogne, they had great stamina and scent detection and were used to hunt wolves, deer and boar. The legs of the Basset Bleu de Gascogne were dwarfed to slow down the breed's running speed. The blue colour is believed to have developed to better withstand the bright sunlight in this region."

Now, much of the region is covered with trees, but originally it was a flat heather-land, so sunlight would have been prevalent. We are travelling to Pau this weekend (south in the Bearn region, at the base of the Pyrenees) where Phebus lived. I will try to photograph a Basset Bleu if possible.


Next, the Basque beret.


The hat that has been worn by the people of the Basque region, straddling the Pyrenees in France and Spain, for centuries. It has been worn by military personnel of many nations, old men of all perversions, and Che Guevara alike. It symbolizes freedom of thought and national unity to many in this area. It is known as txapela, by the Basque in their language Euskera, and protects from sun and persistent drizzle of their rugged low-mountain homeland. It can be seen on men and women all over France, but especially in the region where I live, just north of the Basque homeland. In Basque, there is no word for "Basque", only for "person that speaks Basque", Euskal. Their unity is the language. And a funny little hat.


Finally, the parapluie des Pyrénées et de berger.

In the Gascogne (Landes) region, the threat of rain is a constant feature of fall, winter and spring (as far as I have seen). A sturdy umbrella is a good investment. For hundreds of years, shepherds have tended to their flocks on the grassy dunes and in the Pyrénées mountains and it is a job that does not stop for bad weather. A shop in Pau makes reliable, wind-proof umbrellas in the tradition of the region. Here is a link.




It may be four or five days until I post again. Until then , here is a restaurant in New York that serves many of my region's delicacies; foie gras, magret de canard (duck), and lapin (rabbit). Check out the "About" section and the menus for an idea of the types of food common here.

News

Picked up on this story a few weeks back and saw a video for it today. Just wonderful stuff.

No more dying: Mayor bans death in village



Better still, this town is only a handful of miles from our location in Mont-de-Marsan. Yes, the people of this region have to ability to suspend life by passing local resolutions.

Styles: Tecktonik

Should I feel old for not understanding this? When I walk around town after school is out, I am a head sticking out over a sea of faux-mullet-hawked teenagers. They jangle around town with a "fuck-all" attitude and with heaps of unnecessary accoutrement, bow-legged from their skinny white jeans. I suppose, adolescents will be just that, adolescents.


http://gridskipper.com/357298/dancing-french-electro+mimes-battle-in-the-streets

But I swear, if another one says, "Fack yoo mane" to me, I'm going to go on a rampage.