Montana Fashion Escape

We arrived in Montana-Crans yesterday for a few sunny days with family.

Today is gorgeous, though the once gorgeous snow rushes down in sun-sparkled rivulets.

Of course one of the first things I do on my morning off, because I don’t do downhill skiing anymore, is shop-drifting through elegant streets looking at elegant clothes with and without name brands, and wondering who could use that Desigual T –shirt with printed charcoal-drawing kids and color swatches, or the soberly elegant Gant shirt that whispers ‘I’m way casual but guess how much you’d have to pay for me?’

Tourist boutiques are filled with ugly cows leering from linen towels (made in China?), 200 Swiss franc kiddie Moonboot knock-offs (idem), fur jackets for many thousands, and the surfboarder’s dream jacket for 800, on sale from its original 1,200 francs, not counting matching trousers and the silk shirt on your back.

As if you cared enough to turn a tag around and take a look (with discretion), and you do and the price is….oh no, don’t tell me…..

Ah yes, pre-scuffed boots are in vogue, though they look even more tired than they did last July: you know, boots that have lived, boots with a history, for heaven’s sake Eloise.

What I would call Let’s Look @ My Vintage,  old hippie knock-arounds….hey, peace and love……I’m wearing boots that waded through monsoon and mud-slides in Bangladesh when I was a stringer for Bareback Outback…..when in fact the wearer is the daughter of a Valaisan banker….

Meanwhile of course this materialist loitering transports me to the land of Glamor and the Unnecessary Accessory, far away from news of the tragic death, following a series of brutal rapes, of a young woman in Ambedkar Nagar, Uttar Pradesh.

And the terrible events in Syria.

And my conflicting views on Israeli policy and policies, while loving Israel.

I can look at the fur of a wild animal killed for fashion, and feel the guilty pleasure of running my fingers through it, and the (supposed) moral superiority of someone who wouldn’t buy fur even if she could afford it.

Animals suffer at the hands of people, people suffer at the hands of people, and I am distracted by fur and fashion, the color and flow of textiles that are this year’s answer to what was happening last year.

We’ll see if 2013 will see its share of camouflage prints to honor Syria and perhaps as a tribute to repression, the rise of the hijab as the dernier cri in fashion.

ALPINE AIRHEAD

Ok, so I'd like to have a different identity, profile.
Something.....young, fresh, different.
An alter-ego to Bicontinental Blogger, who lingers over what she hopes is wise & witty, waits until a blog is ripe before allowing it out to pasture, and wouldn't mix a metaphor......

Yes, a new profile:  Alpine Airhead?
The world is absurd and strange, and full of people reacting to it. TV announcers become pundits, pundits become overblown with their own wisdom, the masses are ignorant or under-informed, but anyone is good for an interview by someone toting a microphone.

Alpine Airhead reminds me of Bécassine, Amelia Bedelia and Ugly Betty:
goofy, sweet, original, and occasionally intelligent.
 http://www.librairie-gaia.com/dossiers/becassine/Becassine%20Historique.htm
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/52753



She wanted to  be interviewed, as she hadn't had a chance to express herself---she is a modest unknown. So allow me to introduce her.

She's an expat (so what's new?) who tries to keep her nose clean, and even though she occasionally reads a journal and absorbs the newspapers in homeopathic doses, no one cares,  No one listens to her wisdom on whatever it is, the European economy, genetically modified food, post-feminism, fracking,  domestic cats, not so domestic cats, etc. even when she has nothing to say. I didn't want her to feel invisible.

I decided to give her a special moment in the sun before it disappeared at 4 pm, and promised I'd publish her interview here this evening.

Bicontinental Blogger (BB): So welcome to the Blog Alpine Airhead! Please feel free to express yourself. Just to let you know, we don't use really strong language on the blog. We beat around the bush, so to speak. May I call you Airhead? 

Alpine Airhead (AA): Natch!

BB:  So Airhead, what are your thoughts on the economy?

AA: Now I'm glad you asked me that. I have feelings about it, lots of feelings, but no thoughts. I really know so little about economics.....my feelings are.....what can I say...um....you know.....not so good, in fact rather bad, like......

BB: ....but surely....you're being too modest....

AA: no really, I don't know a thing. In the good old days there were experts, right and left, I mean left-wing and right-wing, but now the sleeves of competence are unravelling and left is no longer right, I'm so lost. I miss that old binary system, but when they dropped the Iron Curtain, everyone was dying to become Westernized. See where that's brought us!!

BB:  Ah.....where?

AA:  People scrambling to get into the Euro, out of the Euro, back to the drachma, into bed with underage teenagers, who knows, pesetas and lira and we'll have to break out our old piggy banks.  I mean poor Angela, she's got Europe on her shoulders and it's giving her very bad posture.

BB:  Ha ha, thank you Airhead. I feel for Ms Merkel too.
So how about genetically modified products? The French are battling it out right now, the US has developed an impressive array of them and has used them for years. What's the solution? Are they dangerous?  Where does it all end?

AA: You're asking me? Fish cell carrots? Insectide corn? Talking soy beans? Bleuuuuch. 
When I was young we were just working out how you glued together a model of the double-helix. You expect me to keep up with this? 
I tuned out after we learned about arginine, glycosylene, thyrosamine and cyclosporin.

BB:  I believe you mean adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine.

AA:  Yeah, whatever. Fill in the blanks. Show you know your way round the internet. Make me look stupid.

BB:  Oh, I didn't mean to do that! Forgive me if....

AA:  It's OK, I'm used to it.  It's because I'm a woman.

BB:  Well in fact I am too, but that doesn't mean....

AA: There we go, where's your feminist loyalty?
Oh,  I'll tell you a joke I heard thirty years ago:  two feminists go into a bar, and the first feminist says to the second......

BB:  Yes??

AA:  Oh hell, I forgot the punchline.

BB:  Hmm. Let's see. Um, fracking? Fracking and the environment?

AA:  I'm glad you asked me that BB. Fracking is an interesting word:  like  cracking and fracturing, which is what it sounds like, hacking, tracking, trucking, fuc......

BB: Excuse: me, we have to keep it clean.

AA: Ah, but that's the whole point. It's an onomatopeia, or onomatopoeia, if you have to be British. 
It sounds like what it is. You know, it's fracking the earth.

BB:  Well, I guess so. Let's end on a lighter note.
We've heard about your passion for cats. You're a cat-lover and cat-collector it seems!
You have, what is it, twelve cats?

AA: (Modestly) well right now it's eleven, but if you count the occasional dinner-guest, as many as fourteen step up to the trough in a day.

BB: Impressive. And what, er, what do you get from having so many cats?

AA: Well no-one has cats. Cats have you, clearly. But I enjoy watching them clean the bowl and chase spiders. They have their own language and are wise and beautiful.

BB:  But some cats seem to have some personality disorder, possibly borderline, as they don't relate to humans well. They can be very reactive, seem preoccupied only with themselves,  groom obssessively....

AA:  You of all people! Haven't you heard that Borderline Personality Disorder is no longer a proper diagnosis according to the new DSM V?.....You disappoint me. I thought you really kept up to date. I mean, I'm the dumb-cluck here.

BB: Yes, of course.  I mean I'm sorry. I mean thank you so much for your time Airhead. It's been.....

AA: ........and tell all your people out there that I'm for real.


End of Interview

Election Day 2012: Beyond Walt Whitman

Election Day, November, 1884 

by Walt Whitman

If I should need to name, O Western World, your 

   powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless 

   prairies--nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its 

   spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, 

   appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty 

   lakes--nor Mississippi's stream:
--This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, 

   I'd name--the still small voice vibrating--America's 

   choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the 

   main, the quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd--sea-board 

   and inland--Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--

   Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West--the 

   paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless 

   conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern 

   Napoleon's:) the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker 

   odds, the dross:
--Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to 

   purify--while the heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

Walt Whitman was passionate, fervent (note the Foams and ferments) and Election Day has always been Big News.

Things don't change and do change:  "The final ballot-shower from East to West" ok. But it's now become CNN's "final voting hour" with multiple millions of viewers tracking  results from East to West.

"The Heart of it not in the chosen---the act itself the main, the quadriennial choosing" is only partly true.

Today the stakes are planetary.  It's not just the touching idea of everyman, everywoman engaged in the quasi-reverent ceremony of The Vote, the Big Show and spectacle observed minute by minute by Americans and non-Americans alike.  
It's that we are witnessing two very diverse philosophies, and the potential outcomes.

I confess I used to be a bit more cynical about party differences, committed Democrat though I am, but there's something stark here.

Romney would bring a terrifyingly constricted world vision to the presidency, along with the corrupting influence of huge money: run the country like a business, look at me and try to do as I have done, live as I believe you should live (at least this week), look at my smooth, prosperous smile, trust me and don't worry that I don't know a damn thing about foreign policy.

It'll be a cliff-hanger, but Barack Obama will be our president for the next term.

Carpe Diem: the Smile

There are carpe diem moments.

And then there‘s the instant you didn’t realize might be a carpe diem moment.  And you drop the carp back into the river.

Scene:  Michael’s Pub in Manhattan, where Woody Allen played with his jazz band for years, circa 1974. Much more than a pub, it had fairly classy place settings, and offered a full menu, beyond my resources for a weekday night.

But I wanted a glimpse of the live Woody Allen: was he really quirky looking? How did he walk? Was he natural on stage?

So I glided unobstrusively into Michael’s at about 6 pm. and stood, awkward and invisible, by the bar at the back. Too shy to snag a waiter for a drink. Almost too shy to breathe.

Sure enough, a few minutes later he walked out in his marginally slouchy pants, carrying his clarinet and nodding happy greetings to the sprinkling of musicians. He proceeded to prepare the clarinet, clean it, test the reed, tune it and so forth.

Then he glanced up and smiled at someone sitting behind me at the bar. A big, broad, generous, humorous grin. I stared back. Then turned around to check who he was smiling at.

There was no one there…no one. He was smiling at me.

Was I a suave young Manhattanite who would offer Woody a glass of wine, or perhaps a ginger ale? Or laugh and wave back nonchalantly and change my dinner plans?

No way. I was out of there so fast I almost fell.

Shortly after that, Diane Keaton, an exact contemporary of mine, was doing all sorts of funny, silly, human, legendary roles.

No carp for me that day. 

Somalia has enormous social, economic and health problems.

Renu Chahil-Graf has been working on HIV in Somalia and reports on the acute HIV problems faced by the Somali people, highlighting an alarming ignorance about how it is acquired, prevented, much less treated. Renu has been working tirelessly in very challenging circumstances and wrote the article cited below.

http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2012/july/20120726mogadishu/

 Photo credit UNAIDS

The 1949 Hudson

As a sequel to the vintage car blog, http://lexieintrator.blogspot.fr/2012/07/chrome-nostalgia-cars-i-have-known.html and http://lexieintrator.blogspot.fr/2012/07/puss-on-peugeot.html  I asked Steve to send some shots of his 1949 Hudson.

Two-toned and beautiful, she's still up and running in 2012. Treated with respect and a lot of work. Great to ride in and draws smiles bigger than a front grille all over Cape Cod. 

Boat launching with Dave                                                                 Tracey's first ride

at Ballston Beach

in Steve's garage...

Plus ça change, plus ça change......banks on a roll.....

I love browsing in both print and cyberspace.
My in-laws outside Paris still have a full set of the Encyclopedia Britannica (15^th Edition 1973-1974),  a tradition which is becoming rare, even quaint. And while browsing.....
I couldn't resist retyping this delicious paragraph from p.707 in the section entitled (portentously?) "Industrial Finance".

Long-term and medium-term lending

            “Banks that do a great deal of long-term lending to industry must ensure their liquidity by maintaining relatively large capital funds and a relatively high proportion of time deposits, as well as valuing their investments very conservatively. Such banks, notably the French banques d’affaires and the West German commercial banks, have developed special means of reducing their degree of risk. Every investment is preceded by a thorough technical and financial investigation. The initial advance may be an interim credit, later converted into a participation. Only when market conditions are favourable is the original investment converted into marketable securities, and an issue of shares to the public is arranged. One function of these banks is to nurse an investment along until the venture is well established. Even assuming its ultimate success, a bank may be obliged to hold such shares for long periods before being able to liquidate them...”

Daphne Transformed - Sculpture by Renée Sintenis

Daphne Transformed

I was born in sweat and traces of blood,

then grew young and tall and smooth, 
lips like apricots.   His desire was relentless

as he stalked me through mortals’ fields,

and I was trapped in velvet skin, sweating shame
beneath his fetid hunter's breath.

Today I’m unassailable in my leaves and ivy chokers,

replaying days of freedom,

storied nights of goddesses and men….

It’s been so many years since he transformed me,

and no one dares to touch my cracking bark.

Books will tell you I was beautiful, then saved,

but I know the curse of beauty, how I’ve changed, 

that tears are merely amber and what myth is.

Alexa Intrator

June 2012

Sculpture by Renée Sintenis, 1930, 

courtesy of The Sackler Gallery

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Puss on a Peugeot

Cat on a Hot Tin Hood
+ + +

aka Puss on a Peugeot

Notice his choice of car with a sleek, aerodynamic look
in a dark grey that enhances his black and white fur pattern. 

He also appreciates the interior,

with its selection of velvety scratching rugs.

  

Photo sent with love from Rosemary

Chrome nostalgia: Cars I have known

The black 1949 Chevy!
Pre-seat-belt and safety-seat of course, I could roll from one side to the other cranking open the main windows and wedging the small triangular windows, or sling my wrists through the soft side-straps or poke at the fabric covering the ceiling. If memory serves, the direction signals were small reflector flaps that rose up from flat grooves on the left and right sides of the car. And the Chevy was black. All Chevies of that vintage were black. In fact most cars on the road in Geneva were black.

The upholstery was very soft, there was a radio that didn't work, a speedometer that waggled between 0 and 85, but I was the back-seat princess in my big black limo.

Car number two, the Vauxhall.  I believe we had a new 1955 model in light gray, a change from black, and we loved it.  Smaller than the Chevy, but more modern, it served us well.  I identified with it because it looked like it was wearing braces like me.
But we crossed the ocean several times, and when we returned we needed a second car, and it was.......

A 1957 Austin Baby A!  My father was proud to have purchased a demonstration vehicle, new but at a used price.  It had cream seats and a little parp-parp horn, and seemed perpetually cheerful. So were we --no way you could be broody in a Baby A. Look at that cute little snoot.  It was dark green and adorable.

The next 'big' car was a used Humber Hawk, which lasted about a year. It needed repairs often, not a real winner, but it reminded us of the Vauxhall.

This was replaced by a short-lived older Humber Super-Snipe. We adored its cushy leather seats and back-seat fold-out trays in polished burl that were oh so luxurious. But it was always in the shop, a real albatross (who was my father's car dealer?)

At some point there was a Simca, then another. And possibly a Renault Dauphine for about five minutes. Here's the 1961 Simca Aronde, but I must check facts with both brothers to get the complete institutional memory. I recall learning to drive on a small Simca with snapping gearshift that slipped backwards on moderate hills. Terrible gears. Oh well. 

Back to the US for a year's sabbatical, my father borrowed a spare car from his brother who owned Franklin Auto Glass in Philadelphia:  a Chrysler, 1951 or perhaps even a bit older than that. two-toned cream and maroon. A bit creaky but fun with white-wall tires and lots of chrome.

Ah, and then the Riley!

My dad went retro with a 1949 model-- dark green with a sticky beige rubber roof.  It was a sprawling, low-slung car and not unobtrusive. It had a sort of roar that cleared animals from the road before we'd rounded the bend. It had dark ivory seats and the heavenly smell of good leather.
However there was a defective muffler, and for about half a year we inhaled noxious fumes and had to keep the windows open all winter. We all loved the Riley, but the garagiste couldn't repair the toxic leak. We couldn't inhale leather minus the fumes. We had to sacrifice style for health.

Another Simca.         Bor-ing.


I moved to the US, got my driver's license at age 21 and ended up sharing a

BMW 2002, a spiffy car which I totalled on the Baltimore-Washington Expressway :--(( ........

.......and then buying my very own car:
A 1970 Fiat 850 Spider, convertible, red, sporty and dangerous! Powered by a sewing-machine engine, it made a great fuss of doing fifty, but fun!




Back to Europe in 1978 and it was a shared 1968 red VW Beetle that had already done too many kilometers, then a green VW Beetle on loan from a friend,

and then a used gray Datsun, a used red Honda Civic, a new gray Austin Mini-Metro that gave up the ghost before it was four years old,

a used Toyota,

a used dark green Nissan Almera (both great cars)...............

And today I have my 2010 Nissan Micra Lolita Lempicka

with all her little bells and whistles:

bluetooth look-ma-no-hands phone, GPS, leather seats, automatic transmission.

I guess I grew into it.

* * * 

Post-Scriptum

The Bugatti in a Box

What I haven't mentioned is the Bugatti that we didn't own.

A black pre-World War II Bugatti, probably the same 1934 vintage as the  above, was locked away in a garage on the grounds of the rental property we lived in for twelve years in St. Maurice, outside Geneva, from 1954 to 1966. It was mouldering away for years before we children found the keys up in the attic of the house and pried opened the door of the garage/box. There it was, in its very faded splendor: neglected? forgotten? Of course we showed it off to friends and acquaintances and acquaintances of acquaintances who loved cars.  Then one day it wasn't there. Disappeared.      

Bye-bye Bugatti. Hello cruel world. 

Chastened, we continued driving our used Simca and kept our eyes on the road.

One Year Already

One year now, and the wisteria has bloomed again,

Bicontinental Boomer is over one year old,
and the kittens are all grown up.

This began as a venture in online reflections delivered in nibbles and bites.

It has grown, people are reading and appreciating this blog

---over 3000 hits---

despite the fact that you can't even talk back to me.

A year older and not yet fossilized 
like this dude from Turin.

Thank you for reading and......keep on reading!

Shakespeare & Company (very good company)

The Shakespeare Group, The Shakespeare Study Group, The Shakespeare Class, The Group, Shaklovers:
The Shakespeare Group by any other name is still a fabulous perennial, an assemblage of retirees reading and celebrating the Bard on Wednesday mornings.
Over ten years. Longer actually, if one counts the years of original lectures given by George Steiner in an over-stuffed auditorium at the University of Geneva.

 "Prof. George Steiner used to give a course on Shakespeare’s plays during the winter term at the University of Geneva. He was brilliant but refused to use a microphone and so you had to be ready to dash in and get in one of the front rows.  The hall was always packed, almost entirely by áuditeurs’ of the third age," recalls Aamir Ali.
If they were 'troisième age'  over ten years ago---do the math: the average age is over 75, and some members have been well into their nineties.

When Steiner left Geneva for Oxford in the nineteen-nineties there was a cultural void. A colleague suggested Aamir carry on and give a course himself.
"Of course not," said Aamir  "there's no way I could even try."

The first meeting took place on 12 September 2001 (the day after the 9/11 disaster).
Friends and colleagues and Steiner survivors began gathering weekly to read aloud and discuss a play in depth, with Aamir Ali as respected teacher and coordinator, and active, at times vociferous participation of members.
The members bring different nationalities and cultural backgrounds to the table. Some grew up reading Shakespeare in other languages; some read classics at Oxford; some can name all the kings and queens of England; others have directed and acted in Shakespeare plays; one still calls up his ancient Greek, and all of us love the continuing thrill of Shakespeare's rich poetry and drama.

The Group started with Macbeth, followed by Julius Caesar, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet and Coriolanus.
We await the upcoming release of the film Coriolanus starring Ralph Fiennes for a 21st century take on one of the stranger and more intriguing plays; it may fall short of great, but remains painfully relevant.

Members produce (excellent) essays on Shakespeare themes of their choice. For the last few years, the Group has regularly contributed a feature on a Shakespearean subject to the AAFI-AFICS Bulletin. We have our own library of Shakespeare books, videos and DVDs at the ILO.

As Aamir puts it:

"The purpose of the Group is not to qualify for any diploma or certificate or pass any tests; it is to learn from each other and to enjoy ourselves. Which we do."

And continue to do.
In September we're off and running with The Tempest.