nourishment

There's something so undeniably nourishing about cooking wholesome, delicious, warm, homemade food.  It's a distinct piece of goodness to fold into your day, like reading on a park bench, or tickling a baby, or breathing deeply, or dancing around to silly music by yourself -- all of which, coincidentally, have made up parts of my day.

My past couple Mondays I've been lucky enough to get to participate in a rent-a-baby program (kidding, I've been babysitting) for my friend Kristin, a Norweigan working on her Masters here with her 2- and 4-year old kids, while her husband is training to go to Afghanistan with Norweigan NATO forces.  Sofie is four, and in full-french-immersion kindergarten, but Sigmund, my little bud, needs looking after while Kristin's in Monday classes, so I have to put up with all the hardships of cuddles, open-hand blown kisses, sleepy hugs, and extended tickle fights.  Life's rough.  Julian and I had babysat for both kids a few nights before Anders left, so the two of them could go out like a real couple, but I had a serious moment of revelation the first morning that I took Sigmund and we waved a tearful goodbye to Kristin -- er.... I don't speak Norweigan. At all. He's almost two, so he doesn't speak all that much either, but a lot more than me.  I definitely had no idea of anything he was asking for, let alone me being able to explain that Mama was only leaving for a few hours, but I promise she's going to be coming back!! So that took a little extra creativity, and I've learned to stretch my very very limited Norweigan well past its limits (a particularly proud example being my colored-pencil sketch of a blo hest -- that's assuredly spelled wrong -- a blue horse, who happens to be a character on Sigmund's favorite cartoon show, because that's about the only thing I could then describe after I drew it. yes my drawings sometimes need explanations).  The tickle fight this morning was key in the tiring us (both) out enough to need a noon-time nap, and, funny enough, tickles are one of those activities that span all language barriers.

But food! I was talking about food!  With market veggies I picked up yesterday...

Rosemary Roasted Carrots, Fennel, and Funghi

2 big carrots
1 bulb fennel
4 ish big white mushrooms (or any other kind you're excited about)
2-3 shallots
3-4 garlic cloves
olive oil
dried rosemary
sea salt

Cut everything up into, you know, pieces. approximately bite-sized.  Put in a roasting dish, cover with the olive oil and spices, toss everything with your hands so there's oil all over, put in the oven.  Roast everything for 30-40 min until the carrots are done (they take the longest, if you were really ambitious you could start with just carrots and then add the fennel and mushrooms after 10 min or so). Eat just like that, over some rice, cooled and on a salad, or with the tofu below.

Orange-Mango Rosemary-infused Tofu

3/4 of a package of silken tofu "cubed" (it's gonna end up in crumbly bits anyway, or you could use a firmer tofu if you prefer a texture that actually can hold itself together)
1/2 cup orange-mango juice (or just orange if that's what's in the fridge)
rosemary
oil (just a little bit)

Put everything in a pan. Sauté until the juice has reduced down a fair amount and the other things you're cooking are done.  Pour over the veggies from above, or just rice, or eat straight out of the pan like a caveman with hot mitts.

Pumpkin Oat Bread

The improv nature of cooking suits me better than the chemical precision of baking (yeah thanks, Mum)... so I sort just improv with the baking too.  It's never the same, but always some version of edible (thus far at least!).  This tuned out to be fairly flat, and chewy and warm.

Pumpkin, maybe half a kilo?  2 ish cups once it's cubed.

Oats. like 2 cups.
Flour.  mine maybe had lin seeds in it? or was whole wheat? I'm not sure. about a cup, with more added to make it not so gloopy once everything's mixed together. 
Baking Powder. a little bit.
Salt. a pinch,
Sugar. more than a pinch, to taste. 
Cinnamon. a sprinkle.

Milk. A splash - enough to wet the oats while the pumpkin is cooking.
An egg
1/4 of a package of silken tofu
A splash of fleur d'oranger
Raisins, nuts, chocolate chips, whatever you like.


Cook the pumpkin (I boiled mine, but roasting would also work, it's just a little slower) and drain and mash it.  While it's cooking, pour the milk over the oats in your big mixing bowl, so they can start to absorb the liquid already.  Throw in the tofu too if you like, or add it with the mashed pumpkin.

Add the rest of the dried ingredients, beat the egg and add it with the cinnamon and fleur d'oranger, and mix everything together.  Put it in a greased pan and bake until the knife comes out clean, approx. 30 min depending on how thick it is in your pan. Enjoy warm with ice cream or yogurt and maple syrup and a big cup of tea.  Bon appetit!

One Billion Rising - Toulouse

On February 14th, 2013, ONE BILLION RISING caught on fire all over the globe.  My Nana and Papa rose up in Pincher Creek, Alberta, walking in a march organized by the town's women's shelter.  My Mum and Mackenzie and Logan rose in a Champagne and Chocolate event in Seattle, Washington, with my Mum playing MC to a host of non-profit organizations, documentary film directors, and dance instructors throughout the evening.  My Dad rose up (literally) on the airplane while on a business trip, and I think generated more Facebook "like"s than half of Toulouse.  And I rose up here, in Toulouse, with over a hundred dancers behind me, in a Flash-Mob way bigger than I ever imagined.  

These first pictures are from the Saint-Aubin market, the Sunday before where we staged a mini "dance-in" rehearsal in the square in front of the church, me on a microphone with a speaker in front of a group of dancers learning the steps to the flash-mob, with a whole crowd of vegetable-shoppers gathered round.  

 We had spent one dreary Sunday afternoon in January with a warm veggie tart and bread and cheese and other munchies with limbs, paper and paint spread out all over my floor, making posters to hang up around town.  There are some at Ô3C, the café where Julian works on Mondays, whose owners are a lovely family that allowed us to stage a lot of our meetings around their big tables and kept my brain fueled with Apricot-Lemon scones.  Je me lève contre les violences faites aux femmes! is the French translation of the OBR catch phrase, I am rising against violence against women!  The large red poster is another one of my favorites, which says: Across the globe, 1 out of 5 women will be the victim of rape or attempted rape in the course of her lifetime.  You know this woman!  Fight for her on the 14th of February!  ONE BILLION RISING

And then there's this one, with a little wink and nod at the lovely old Saint-Valentine, which is the one poster that somehow I ended saving after all the chaos of the flash-mob: Love does not equal violence. I think it's going to have to end up on a wall somewhere.  The rehearsals for the flash-mob were so incredibly fun, and even while I was doing all this work outside of my "day job" and away from classical ballet, the concept of the whole world dancing together in the face of all of this violence reinforced my love of dance.  Out of all the organizing roles that I took on throughout this process (social media presence, governmental liaison, email coordinator, café-débat discussion leader, poster-making artist-in-chief, interested-association coordinator, photographer, instructional choreography video actor/camerawoman/director/laughingstock, press contact, etc), the dancing parts were the only ones where I felt I was even remotely close to qualified.  Everywhere else, I was making it up (in French) as we went along, and somehow everything worked out.  Dancing in front of hundreds of people, directing complete novices through a 4 minute dance routine, making sure everyone is facing the right direction? Psh, that part I can handle. 

 And yet here, dancing was about more than just the steps, more than just being clear about what happens when, more than my sometimes-there ability to mirror my dancers (saying Right while using my left hand, oh boy), more than my abysmal ability to count to 16 while doing the Cha-Cha.

When you read all the cold statistics -- 1 in 3 women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime, 1 in 5 the victim of rape or attempted rape, 1 woman dies every 3 days in France from domestic violence, 75,000 women are raped each year in France, Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be assaulted in the United States than other women, more than 140 MILLION women are living with the consequences of female genital mutilation, an estimated 50 MILLION females have been aborted or abandoned in India over the past three generations, and we are nowhere near a world where women are valued on par with men in almost any field or country -- the vastness of the issue can be overwhelming.  We can't assume that "we" white, upper-middle-class, educated, Western women can speak for all women of all races, nor ignore the privileges we have with regard to other domains of oppression.  At the same time we need to break some of the stereotypical images and stories that we tell ourselves about violence and what it looks like, (i.e. rape = a stranger with a dirty knife in a dark alley, when in reality around 80% of rape victims know their rapist) so that each of our stories is recognized as legitimate and important and part of the larger system of oppression as well as possessing its own set of unique horrors. 

These men are physically maiming our bodies, the media is objectifying our bodies, religions are trying to control our bodies, the US Congress is trying to legislate what we can and cannot do with our bodies.... So it is with our bodies that we must RISE.  Dancing becomes an avenue to create joy in the face of all of these horrors, to reclaim control of our bodies for ourselves and our movements, to fully inhabit the body that society tells us is inadequate 12 times before breakfast, and to love that body and its power.  Take any team-sports player, any protestor, any band-member, any soldier; they will all tell you there is strength that resides in belonging to something bigger than yourself, that together we multiply our power rather than add it, that being able to abandon yourself for your cause is a whole new form of freedom, and that moving, crying, singing, sweating, laughing, and dancing together seals that bond better than anything else. This is the community we created, one that is connected by music and dance and love, that embraces the incredibly vast differences across the entire globe and unites us all in a common goal: ending gendered violence.  Through a combination of this global sense of empowerment and belonging with the call to action at the local level echoed in hundreds of different languages in every small corner of the globe, we participated in the largest global day of action against violence against women in the history of the world. And we did it dancing.

If we can counter discrimination with empathy and education, if we can counter patriarchy with equality and empowerment, if we can counter violence with dance, if we can counter fear with joy, then in the long run, how can we fail?   Join us, as we figure out what pieces to take on next.

a taste of fall

Time keeps sprinting by.  It is October already, and Toulouse keeps trying to hold on to the last bits of warmth from our Indian summer, interspersed with days like yesterday, over cast and blustery, hinting at the autumn to come.  In perhaps my perfect Sunday, I got up late and biked over to the market.  Elizabeth, the American who is living with the de Saint-Exupery family this year, was waiting for me, and we got to know each other over veggie-shopping and lunch, full of discussions with topic headings such as "Philippe being adorable" and "where to find the best chocolatine in Toulouse".  She studied here two years ago, and is back now to be an assistant teacher at local elementary schools, in English.  The rest of the afternoon was full of cleaning and slowly caramelizing onions while I worked my way through my latest book, The Tale of the Roes: The Passion That Inspired The Little Prince, the memoir of Consuelo De Saint-Exupery, Antoine's wife.  Romantic, real, and beautifully written, she gives insight into the world and life of one of the most effective and curious writers of last century.

But in the true spirit of fall, we started the season off with many good friends gathered around my table.  My decorated apartment was having its debut, and the dirty dishes and empty wine bottles staring at me in the morning light speak to the fact that it went well.  So because recipes are more fun than stories full of inside jokes, the summary of last night is as follows:

Roasted Tomato, Avocado and Caramelized Onion Salad
serves 5-6

The title says most of what you need to know.  This is the perfect liaison between summer and fall, making use of the last great summer tomatoes while still warming you up with a roasted sweetness.

The most time consuming part is to caramelize the onions, but they are so so good.  I made them while I was still coming up with the rest of the evening's menu, and they are incredibly easy for all that they take a long time to do right.

2 medium onions
3 large summer tomatoes or a few cup of cherry tomatoes
2 avocado
1 large head of fresh lettuce

Dressing:
Dijon mustard
lemon juice
salt
pineapple juice (or what you have on hand, orange or apple would also be fine)
honey
olive oil

Chop the onions into small pieces and heat a fair amount of olive oil in the pan before adding them, over low heat.  Cook 30-40 minutes, keeping the heat low and stirring every few minutes, until they are a lovely translucent with hints of amber.  There are lots of ways to caramelize onions -- with a lid, without, adding sugar towards the end, etc -- so as long as you are patient and they aren't burnt, it's pretty hard to go wrong.  I then stored them for a few hours while I made everything else, and used the leftover oil in the pan to flavor the broth for the risotto -- the benefit of not having many pans....

The rest of the salad is simple, but oh so good, and also easy to prepare just as guests are arriving.  Once the tomatoes are in the oven, they take care of themselves, and slicing avocado or tossing salad are tasks easily delegated to sous-chefs.

Roast some market tomatoes (cherry tomatoes would be especially cute) sliced into wedges with a little olive oil and sea salt, in the oven on high heat for 20 minutes or so.

While they're cooking, wash some lettuce and slice wedges of avocado -- I used 2 avocados for 5 people, but I love avocado.

Mix all of the dressing ingredients together.

I tossed the lettuce in the dressing and then constructed each salad on the plate -- lettuce, a few slices of the roasted tomatoes, a spray of avocado, and some beautiful pearly caramelized onions.


Leek, Mushroom, and Courgette Risotto
serves 5-6, approximately 1 hr cooking time

a large pot -- 5-8 cups -- of broth, I boiled the middle third of the leek stalks (above the truly edible part but below the enormous leafy unruly part) in vegetable bullion with a little bit of leftover broth from making lentils during the week, and the water from rehydrating the dried mushrooms

olive oil
2 large leeks
2-3 cups fresh mushrooms
1 cup dried mushrooms, optional, conserving the water for the broth
1 fresh zucchini (courgette)
spices

2 cups arborio rice
white wine, or a tablespoon of lemon juice with water (about 1/2 c liquid)
parmesan cheese
coarse sea salt

Chop up all your veggies, fairly finely, and heat the oil in a big pasta pot.  Saute the leeks and fresh mushrooms over medium heat until the mushrooms lose their liquid, and then add the zucchini and rehydrated mushrooms.  I added some dried rosemary and thyme for a little flavor, oregano would also work well, or some garlic.

Add the arborio rice and stir to coat with oil.  Add 1/2 cup of white wine, or a tablespoon of lemon juice with a little less than 1/2 cup of water, and stir.

Add 2 cups of hot broth and stir.  This first time you can let it sit and cook for a few minutes.  For the next 30-40 minutes, add a ladleful of broth every few minutes and stir continuously.  The point is for the risotto to get to the right consistency, so add extra broth or feel free to leave some out at the end -- just continue adding broth each time what is already present is absorbed, until the rice is cooked to creamy goodness.

After about 30 minutes, add half the parmesan cheese and let it melt in.  Serve hot, with the rest of the cheese to sprinkle on top, and salt and pepper to taste.


Butternut Squash Tart
serves 5-6 (or leaves you one extra piece for breakfast)

Fall for me really lies somewhere between warm risotto and pie just out of the oven, so when I saw the beautiful bright orange squash at the market, I knew what I had to do...

a big hunk of squash. er. 2 cups of it sliced up or so?
cinnamon
nutmeg
a pat of butter

1/4 cup maple syrup
1 egg
1/2 cup condensed milk, skim if you like
salt

pie crust
water
coarse sugar

Peel and chop the squash into fairly small pieces, and put in a tin foil makeshift pouch in an oven-proof dish.
Chop the butter up into small little squares and sprinkle around, and add a little cinnamon and nutmeg.
Fold the tin foil over to enclose the squash (ish) or cook in a dish with a cover, I'm sure that would also work nicely.
Roast in the oven on fairly high heat for 35 minutes or so -- until the squash is soft and fork-pierce-able.

Mash the squash in the dish (now minus the tin foil) or a bowl, and add the beaten egg, maple syrup, salt and condensed milk.  If your mixture is too watery, you can always add a little flour, but it should be fairly wet.

Lay out your pastry crust (in it's parchment paper if you like) in a pie tin and pierce it with a fork a few times. Pour in the filling and fold over the edges to wrap it up nicely.  If you brush the crust with a little water and sprinkle it with some sugar, it makes it all crystally and finished when you take it out of the oven.

Bake on medium heat for 20-30 minutes or until it is cooked.  You don't want it to be watery or the dough to be raw, and you don't want it to be burnt, so find a time to pull it out of the oven sometime between those two points.  :)

Enjoy.  If you have whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, there are probably worse things in the world you could do than serve them as an accompaniment.

symphonie des psaumes

At the end of three weeks, I'm exhausted, but happy.  We had Brigitte (a stager from NDT) here to teach us Symphonie des Psaumes, the first of the three Stravinsky pieces in our program.  Stravinsky wrote this piece in 1930, where the choir sings the texts from three Psalms (38, 40 and 150) throughout the three movements.  Kylian choreographed it in 1978, early in his career, and set it within a constrained space smaller than the stage where chairs and a box of brown flooring mark out the walls of the church that holds all of our movement.  

The music, in natural Stravinsky fashion, makes a mess out of the idea of meter -- we spent the entire first week or two (or three) trying to count fast enough in every language at the same time, all while the meter was changing and the melody was swinging wildly over the underlying tempo, leaving us frantically searching for the 5's, 8's, 7's, 6's, 3's, 12's and 14's.... This led to the recent discovery that counting past 8 in French is a lost cause; as soon as I'm supposed to find neuf-dix-onze-deuze I completely lose the correlation between the music and the steps and the counts, because it took me two counts to figure out what silly number came after neuf! Maria, one of our principals, has been laughing about it with me in rehearsal, where she has often caught herself, mid run through, realizing she started counting the next 1 after 8 counts, instead of 12, and so trying to do math while dancing to say, "ok, I got to 3, 3 plus 8 is 11, plus 1 more is 12 and then I start again at 1!" -- of course by this time you're another 8 counts late, so you're trying to add those together too, and it quickly spirals out of control.  There's a lot of looking at each other in this ballet, and praying (fitting, given our setting).

I've been particularly beat up -- it's a physical ballet, lots of deep lunges and tricky partnering, deep contractions, so we're bent in half and walking in a deep plié so the inside of our wrists are the most forward and upwards part of our body, attached to the invisible chord pulling us all the way across the stage -- and I got lucky enough to be one of the two couples in both casts.  First cast my partner and I do all of the corps de ballet sections (the whole ballet is only eight couples, arranged in different patterns throughout, but with four soloist couples and four other couples who are in the group pieces and the pas de 4 and pas de 8, etc) and second cast for one of the four main pas de deux couples.  It has truly been a blessing to come back to Kylian, where I can feel like I can continue to build on the pieces I was just starting to dig my fingernails into in June with Petite Mort.  There are so many ways in which I can feel my dancing being stretched and pulled in the best of ways, learning to pare away my physical bad habits and mold myself into his way of moving, with simplicity and clear intention.  This feels as different from Petite Mort as Mozart is from Stravinsky, meaning in so many ways and in none.  It is still all about finding how to work with your partner, how to let your body relax into tension, pull out and extend from each exhale.

On top of that, this past week we have had Gilbert Mayer here as a guest teacher.  He is one of the iconic professors from the Opera National de Paris -- both the company and school at the Paris Opera --  and brought classical ballet (and how it is to be done in the école francais) back with a vengeance.  It is really amazing how hard we work, how long we have been dancing and taking class every single morning, and yet there are so many things that are still wonderfully too hard.  We finished the week by filming a full run-thru of Symphonie with each cast, and then being made to sit and watch it (dancers notoriously hhhhhaaaaate watching themselves on video) -- leaving us amazed at how much better it has gotten over the three weeks, and just how far we still need to go before we're even close to being satisfied.

Summer summaries...

So I've been horribly neglectful the last few months, and I sincerely apologize, though I don't feel too horrible because most of my free time was taken up by preparing for about 99% of my blog readership to visit, and then going home, so.... ;) they got the updates regardless.

Mm, The Tempest was a modern program we did in May at the Halle aux Grains theatre, but my memory is mostly muddled by constant apartment visits, searching for my new home. Just before heading to the theater for opening night I found it: after many "fine" or "maybe acceptable" slightly dingy options that I could've turned into a home with a fair amount of work, I visited the apartment I'd had a special feeling about all week, and it was magic. Mountains when the weather cooperates, river, trees, flowers, a balcony, 5th floor with an elevator, light, airy, clean... I snatched it up quick as I could. 

After mid-May, the days filled up fast, preparing for Nanette's last program.  I danced Concerto Barocco, Slaughter on 10th Avenue, and Petite Mort, and couldn't have been happier.  Concerto is ultimate Balanchine, 8 corps girls and 2 soloists to a Bach violin concerto with two solo violins (plus one boy to carry the girl around in second movement). It is 20-25 minutes in white leotards and pink tights, and the corps never stops, never leaves the stage, and carries the piece.  Slaughter on 10th Avenue is just great fun, Balanchinian broadway with girls in flapper dresses, Richard Rogers music, and tap dancing.  It was funny to me to realize that American culture includes knowing how to do the Twist and the Charleston and jazz hands, and a lot of Europeans don't have that innate sense.  I have long thought of myself as a mishmash of cultures, with no real precise cultural heritage but instead the specific surroundings that molded me into who I am.  After almost a year in France, I finally found an area where I truly identified myself as American with a smile and a high kick.

The major accomplishment of the program for me, however, was Petite Mort.  It's the kind of ballet dancers dream of performing, choreographed by Jiri Kylian to Mozart -- in other words, the best of the best.  My partner Jérémy and I had a great time with it, nerves and high expectations met equally by the movement and joy of doing it.  We were second cast to Paola and Valerio, two experienced Italian principals, and so had the chance to watch a more veteran approach before throwing ourselves into it and bringing a whole different quality to the pas de deux.  I came offstage, exhausted from doing all three programs in one show, but exhilarated and ready to perform it again and again and again into forever.  That kind of ballet.  

Through this whole program I had the incredible luck to have my family here!  Nana and Papa first, and then Logan, Mum and Dad, to watch the last shows and hang out in southern France for a while.  We went to Bordeaux for the Fête de Vin, and toured wineries in Saint-Emillion, they went and saw prehistoric caves... and we ate and visited museums and wandered Toulouse, with Papa, Dad and Logan joining forces for a bit of bricolage setting up my apartment while I was at work most days.  After Nana and Papa headed back to Canada for a family reunion and I finished up work (two extra weeks working with Kader, the director-to-be, tacked on to the end of the season), it was FINALLY time for les vacances.  

The first afternoon of freedom, Logan and I went paragliding in the Pyranées -- talk about running headlong into vacation -- and, with Mum and Dad, we stayed in a mountain lodge before going river rafting the next day.  Sunday we headed to Rome, the city of the Colosseum, Saint Peter's basilica, Michelango's La Pieta, and the fettuccine alfredo Logan spent most of his life thus far searching for.  Then Florence, full of art and beautiful bags and amazing food, with our two days in the city mostly spent taking the marvelous advice of my friend Clare who'd spent a semester studying there this spring, and went about 12 for 12 on recommendations.  A midnight private tour of the battlements of the town hall/museum with live music drifting up from the street (cue me and Logan waltzing with the city behind us); to-die-for gelato (coupled with the rationale that yogurt is a breakfast food, frozen yogurt definitely should count as an acceptable accompaniment to our croissant...); an unforgettable meal at Il Santo Bevitore, including potato foam soup with poached egg and truffle oil (as an example) and bathroom stalls marked by tiles of a simple red rose, and le petit prince... I can't wait to get back there. Then we had a quick stay in Venice, a city of romance and water, lightning storms over the canal and artisan masks, and winged lions harkening back to an era where Venice was the center of the Mediterranean world.... 

Then, back to Toulouse and on to New York, and then home for five full weeks, enough time to see so many old friends and bask on the dock and take a full course at the UW, which filled in all the time between my yoga, ballet, and Gaga classes.  It was called "Culture, Ecology and Politics in Seattle" and was wonderful -- both because the content was interesting, the teacher was great, the readings were thought-provoking... and because it reminded me about how good I am at being a nerd: taking notes well and knowing the answers to questions in class and having superb highlighting skills. ;) This post is already too long, but I could gush about my family and being home for hours.  I'll just trust in the fact that most of my readership spent time with me in person this summer anyway, and move on.  Besides, what more can you want, life has to be pretty blissful when I have this as the view from my bedroom window: 

Another "layover" in New York... for nine days... on my way back to Toulouse was wonderful -- apartment hunting with Sophie, learning secret family recipes from Dan's mum, getting to watch him and Max play tennis, getting caught in a downpour with Paul and Sophie, a Yankee game (and loss, thank the baseball gods), wonderful music and making new friends, catching up with Jin and Eduardo, getting to say a heartfelt hello to Alma (that'd be Alma Mater, the statue on the Columbia steps).... New York is always good.  It was the first time in a few years, however, that it didn't immediately feel like home -- a sign, I think, of how I really have become attached to my little space over here on the far side of the Atlantic.  And what a pretty little life I have set up for myself here:

I've been back two and a half weeks now, and my life is already feeling all sorts of lovely and full, with yoga and all day rehearsals of Kylian, and good new books (on my new Kindle too!) and long brunches and picnics out by the Garonne, market veggies and my new apartment starting to feel like home.... Life's good. All of sudden, here we are, at the start of year two. On y va. 

the ides of march

 I wrote this a few weeks ago (clearly, given it's almost May), but had some technical difficulties/life to live, so it's taken a while to get up.  We've been reabsorbed into the chilly gray rain epitomizing April showers and The Tempest rehearsals (including our first run through of the "Tempest" scene accompanied by real life thunder, lightning and hail... naturally it left us feeling preeeeetty powerful).  In efforts to get caught up, I'll post this now and see if I can't get something a little more recent out soon....

As I'm sure has now been heard around the world, Toulouse was struck by tragedy a few weeks ago; a gunman on a moto-scooter committed a series of attacks, first against French soldiers and then, apparently unable to find another soldier that morning, against a Jewish primary school. There are news sources that can give all the various factual details and background, so I'm going to leave most of it to them, but here are the basics:  Mohammed Merah was a 23-year old raised in Toulouse who claimed allegiance to al-Qaida after visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and his shootings were to protest the French forces currently as an occupying military presence around the world (thus the soldiers), the recent French legislation discriminating against strict Islam (such as banning the full face veil), and the deaths of Palestinian children (thus the sick retribution against the Jewish school). He was found by the police two days after the school shooting and after a 30 something hour stand-off trapped inside his apartment, he was shot in the final raid as the police tried to arrest him.

In total, he killed seven people, three soldiers in two incidents and at the school, a teacher and three children. There have been many horrifying events in this world, throughout human history, and certainly many insipid horrors too embedded in our everyday normalcy for us to notice that cause all sorts of pain, but there is something particularly evil about the cold-blooded murder of children that makes me think that the only way for such an act to be worse could only be in terms of scale. I do not want to imagine there being anything more horrible than executing innocent children, and there is no way children of 3, 6, and 8 years old are anything but the most beautiful kind of innocent. He killed the younger two and their father, a professor and rabbi at the school, as soon as he got off his bike and started firing, and then chased the other children while firing wildly, before catching the beautiful blonde 8 year old by the hair, holding her for long enough to change to a new gun after the first one jammed, and then putting a bullet in her head.  It makes me sick. Evil is not a word or concept I use or think of too often -- normally I acknowledge our world of grays, of motives and a need for understanding and reason and multiple points of view -- but I can't think of any other way to describe something like this. There had to have been a piece of his humanity that was just fundamentally broken. 

The pictures are from as close as I was allowed to go to the school the next day, where the police blockade was holding back the media storm and many other Toulousains had a similar idea of leaving flowers, notes, and candles. The number of hand-drawn cards was a clear reminder of how children were caught up in this tragedy specifically and directly, affecting both students at the school and anyone with empathy around the world.  


The following piece of the whole event was dramatic, but with so much less importance than the rest of it that I'm not all that convinced I need to talk about it, but given there were some Facebook posts of "I think I just heard gunshots" I figure I might as well talk about it a little.  Two days after the school shooting, French police tracked the shooter to his apartment, which they raided at 3 am, where they were engaged in a small firefight, wounding I believe three officers and trapping the shooter in his apartment.  I woke up to a text from a coworker making sure everything was ok, (not knowing any of this had happened while I was fast asleep) and quickly checked the news to realize that it just so happened that the shooter lived 3 blocks down from me. A little jumpy, my bus was in the opposite direction of the flurry of activity, so I went off to work where the news was on all day, and the door man and I worked out a thumbs up-thumbs down-big boom hand signals in case something happened while we were in rehearsal.  Merah was saying he was willing to give himself up to authorities (and had admitted guilt to all the shootings and claimed a link to al-Qaida) but in the afternoon. My worry then was what exactly he was wanting more time for -- just to be alive, to prove he had power over the police, to prepare some of the videos he had taken of his murders, or to build a bomb in the apartment. By afternoon, he moved the goal posts and it was at 10 pm that he was going to surrender... By 10 pm, it became clear he was just playing with negotiators, and declared he wanted to die with guns in his hands.  


I went to tea with a friend after work, thinking it'd all be done soon, to no avail, but was reassured by Christine, the mother of the family, that it was all quiet around our house.  Lots of watching the news but not all that much discussion in front of the children, it was nice regardless to have them as a presence right next door.  From our doorways, however, we could see the red lampposts of police lights just over a neighbour's house, reminding us precisely how close all of this was. I was on skype with Mum, Nana, and Papa, all together watching curling in Pincher Creek, when "a little jumpy" had a lot more energy put into the system, as loud bangs sounded all too nearby. The police -- at 11:34 pm now -- had set off flash-bangs to try to scare Merah into coming back to negotiations after he had cut off all contact with them. I found a live news feed focused only on the stand-off, where I spent the next few hours thinking that suuuurely it would be finished soon, as we were now over twenty hours into the episode. Talking to friends from home and drinking hot chocolate, I tried to wait it out so I could see how it was going to finish. Finally around I think 2 or 3 am, I decided there certainly wasn't anything my being awake was going to accomplish, so I went to sleep, knowing it would all be over when I woke up.... Not. Shaking my head at how it could be lasting this long, I headed off to work again, where after class we finally got the news that the police finally raided the apartment and Merah was killed in the shootout that ensued. It was over, at least, though unfortunate that he couldn't be taken alive so we could know more about his contacts and networks and future plans, and he could be forced to live with his guilt for the rest of a long long life in prison.

joyeuse pâques

Happy Easter everyone!

I have lots of other tidbits to catch up on, but for the moment I just thought I'd share a little bit of Easter magic... In my family, the Easter Bunny is quite the poet, leaving long rhyming clues for the kids to follow from one to the next in order to find the baskets and really good candy before we're set loose to find the rest of the eggs scattered around the house and garden.  The past few years have been a little hard on the poor rabbit, given how far apart we all are.... But what do you know, E.B. (that'd be Easter Bunny) got the last word, as per usual.  Here it is:

Fwd: What do you think I am, transcontinental??

Taisha Barton-Rowledge	10:57 AM (8 minutes ago)
to Russell, Lorinda, Mackenzie, Logan, Russ, Sheralyn, Darrel, Laura

Hey family!!

This came through to me again this year, not sure if you got it directly from E.B. 

as well or not, but I thought I'd send it along.  I love you, fly safely today Dad, and 

Happy Easter to all!  

xoxo love you,

Taisha

On Sat, Apr 7, 2012 at 11:59 PM, E. Bunny <eastermagic@gmail.com>wrote:

Well once again I find that my favorite family is a little scattered,

Must be trying to fool me, as though geography even matters.

But after all these years I'm really quite smart,

And the only map I look at covers the geography of the heart.

So once again my magic might have to be in a virtual letter,

(An old rabbit like me is becoming quite the trend-setter)

And while emailed chocolate still hasn't quite come through,

I've got Willy Wonka working, see what he and his gadgets can do. 

And despite what the oldest daughter might say,

Chocolate isn't the most important part of this day.

Instead it's the love you all carry for each other,

For your mother and father, your sister and brother. 

So despite all the distance between each of you,

Know that rainbows can stretch from here to Timbuktu,

You'll always be connected by the feelings you feel,

Even when you can't be there to all share a meal. 

Well my dears, love on each other and take care of yourselves,

I'm about to rest for the year, take a trip to see some elves.

You can count on each other through any commotion,

Love'll always be there, across any continent or ocean. 

Maybe some year, for once, you'll all be in the same state,

And you'll know where to find me, just look to the gate.

Baskets of love,

E.B.