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Larry Muffin At Home

Monthly Archives: March 2019

203 miles or 3 hours and 28 min.

26 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by larrymuffin in Travel

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

art., cocktails, Food, Halifax, Nova Scotia, vacation

This is the distance between Charlottetown PEI and Halifax N.S. by car or 3 hours and 28 min. A lot of people will go to Halifax for the day.  Halifax is an old sea port on the Atlantic, population half a million people compared to the small town status of 36,000 for Charlottetown.

Travelling by road to Halifax is not that difficult and the road is quite nice. You get a very different vibe as you cross from one province to another, once over the sea bridge to New Brunswick and then down the Highway to Nova Scotia, you know you crossed a border, I don’t know how that is done but everything looks different in the scenery despite being still in the Maritimes.

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Halifax with its famous Citadelle. 

We are going for a few days for a change of scenery and to see friends and try out new restaurants and old favourites, staying in the historical downtown. The weather looks like it will be warmer.

We hope to return to a favourite of ours Bar Kismet, barkismet.com   excellent cocktails and superb cuisine and also try new places, Ostrich Club https://theostrichclub.ca and Field Guide   https://fieldguidehfx.com.

There will be shopping and just plain fun. As I write this the Premier of PEI has just announced that the Provincial Election for the Legislature is now underway. He had been to see the Lieutenant Governor, H.H. Antoinette Perry today to ask for her to dissolve the Legislature so the election could take place. Saw the Premier a few days ago and he looked preoccupied and was not his usual talkative self. Everyone was expecting him to announce we would be going to the polls in April and yes we are on 23 April just after Easter weekend. The Green Party is very strong in the polls right now and the Liberals have been in Office for 12 years, many feel it is time for a change.

Looking forward to driving to Halifax, should be fun. The road will be Charlottetown to the bridge at Borden, then across the Strait 12Km, to Sackville, N.B. to Amherst, N.S. down to  Truro and straight to Halifax.

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Life Events

24 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by larrymuffin in Anniversary

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Birthday, Halifax, Harness races, Mont Blanc cake, PEI Symphony

This evening is the 51th Gala of the PEI Symphony with our New York Juilliard Maestro Mark Shapiro at the Top of the Park restaurant at Red Shores raceway. Live orchestra with a well known Island singer Tara MacLean and comedian Patrick Ledwell. It is sold out and it promises to be a very nice evening with harness racing live on which we can place bets, live auction the items are wonderful, plane tickets, pounds of lobsters, Canadian artist art work, designer jewellery, etc and great food, I really like Top of the Park, their food is alway tops and the menu changes daily. The guest list is impressive, the ”gratin” of the Island will be present, all the big names. Will has worked very hard at organizing this event, preparing things and giving interviews to the press.

 

Tomorrow is my 63rd Birthday, friends will come for a glass of bubbly and a Mont Blanc Cake which has chestnut purée and whipped cream. This is my favorite cake, we use to have it all the time in Rome. Will surprised me today with a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

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The cake I ordered from my favourite pastry chef Valerie. A Mont Blanc with Chestnut purée. “Mont Blanc” cake. Layers of vanilla sponge, soaked with chocolate liquor, then chestnut mascarpone cream, meringue, more chestnut cream, whipped cream, more meringue, more cream… more… more…more. Topped off with shaved white chocolate.

We will be going to Halifax about 3 hours away for a few days, change of scenery and to see friends.

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Birthday Bouquet it has a subtle fragrance

Petite Fleur

21 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by larrymuffin in Jazz

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

creole, France, Music, New Orleans, Radio Canada, Sidney Bechet

A great jazz piece by Sidney Bechet with Claude Luter And His Orchestra: Sidney Bechet (ss), Guy Longnon, Claude Rabanite (tp), Bernard Zacharias (tb), Claude Luter (cl), Christian Azzi or Raymond Fol (p), Roland Bianchini (b), Moustache (d) Paris, January 31 — March 12, 1952

 

Heard it last night on the radio show ”Quand le Jazz est là” with Stanley Péan on Radio-Canada from Montreal. Such lovely music, I find it very evocative.

Stanley Péan knows his audience and always plays the best of Jazz in its many forms. He knows the listeners are knowledgeable and adults and should not be treated like kids.

Bechet was born in New Orleans in 1897 to a middle-class Creole family. His older brother, Leonard Victor Bechet, was a full-time dentist and a part-time trombonist and bandleader. Bechet learned several musical instruments that were kept around the house, mostly by teaching himself; he decided to specialize in the clarinet.

In the 1940s, Bechet played in several bands, but his financial situation did not improve until the end of that decade. By the end of the 1940s, Bechet had tired of struggling to make music in the United States. His contract with Jazz Limited, a Chicago-based record label, was limiting the events at which he could perform. He believed that the jazz scene in the United States had little left to offer him and was getting stale. In 1950 he moved to France, after his performance as a soloist at the Paris Jazz Fair caused a surge in his popularity in that country, where he easily found well-paid work. In 1951, he married Elisabeth Ziegler in Antibes.

In 1953, he signed a recording contract with Disques Vogue that lasted for the rest of his life. He recorded many hit tunes, including “Les Oignons”, “Promenade aux Champs-Elysees”, and the international hit “Petite Fleur“. He also composed a classical ballet score in the late Romantic style of Tchaikovsky called La Nuit est sorcière (“The Night Is a Witch”). Some existentialists in France took to calling him le dieu (“the god”).

Panorama

21 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by larrymuffin in art, Italy, Restaurants, urban

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Birthday, civilisation

With the Birthday of Rome coming up, I stumbled upon this beautiful panorama of the old centre of the Capital of the World, to me it is so evocative, I can hardly believe that I was so lucky in my life to live in such a magnificent city for several years.

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Looking at it, I recognize the buildings and think of all the many times I walked the streets on this ancient city. For its elegant lifestyle, beautiful people and history making up the legacy of the Western World.

In the foreground is the Roman Forum and the street Via dei Fori Imperiali built by Mussolini. In the far background the big red square building is the Palace of the Bishop of Rome (Pope) and behind that the Cathedral of St-John Lateran.

This area is under construction now though it is invisible the Metro C line will arrive at the Colosseum this July from St-John Lateran station connecting with Metro line B. It has been under construction for 15 years and is 10 years late cost are in the billions of Euros. The reason for all the delay is due to the incredible archeological finds happening almost each week, recently a pretorian guard barrack and the expansive villa of their commander with beautiful frescos has been uncovered. There was so much artefacts at St-John Lateran station that it was remodelled by the architects into a museum station.

This is what happens when a city is 2754 years old and a major seat of civilisation.

 

Cu Rua

20 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by larrymuffin in Hanoi

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Asia, Chinese, legends, Travel, turtles, Vietnam

We visited Vietnam from one end to the other or from the Chinese Border to the Southern tip some 12 years ago. A very memorable trip and a fascinating discovery of a very beautiful country with great people, food and culture. I grew up in the area of the Vietnam war known in Vietnam as the American War. Vietnam has known many occupiers, the chinese was 900 years and the French until their defeat in 1954 at the famous battle of Dien Bien Phu and then the Americans until their defeat in 1975. In all cases the occupiers were defeated and expelled.

We visited Hanoi the Capital of the country and it is a charming city, lots of old French Colonial buildings and history. In Hanoi in the middle of the city is a large park with a lake Hoan Kiem and an old Temple. The waters of the lake are murky and by the lake is the statue of the Vietnamese Emperor Le Loi who liberated the country from Chinese oppression.  The lake has a charming legend about a wise old turtle named Cu Rua, the name means Old Great Grand Father.

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Cu Rua now enters the pantheon of the famous embalmed leaders like Ho Chi Minh, Mao and Lenin.

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The house of Cu Rua on Hoan Kiem lake in Hanoi. 

According to the legend, in early 1428, Emperor Le Loi was boating on the lake when a Golden Turtle God surfaced and asked for his magic sword, named Heaven’s Will. Le Loi concluded that the golden turtle god had come to reclaim the sword that its master the Dragon King Long Vuong had given Le Loi some time earlier, in order to fight and defeat the Chinese Ming occupier. The Emperor gave the sword back to the turtle after his victory against the Chinese. Emperor Le Loi renamed the lake to Hoan Kiem to commemorate this event, from its former name Luc Thuy meaning “Green Water” to this day the water is green and opaque. The Turtle Tower (Tháp Rùa) stands on a small island near the centre of lake and is said to be the home of Cu Rua.

Cu Rua belonged to the large soft-shell turtle family, the species name Rafetus Le Loi in honour of the emperor, it had been sighted in the lake for many years. The last known individual was found dead on January 19, 2016. There are three remaining turtles of the species in the world.

Near the northern shore of the lake lies Jade Island on which the Temple of the Jade Mountain (Ngoc Son Temple) stands. The temple was erected in the 18th century. It honours the 13th-century military leader Tran Hung Dao who distinguished himself in the fight against the Chinese Yuan Dynasty.

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Cu Rua carrying the sword Heaven’s Will on its back.

What am I up to…

09 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by larrymuffin in Haviland Club

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

2 Haviland street, Club, Esther Lowden, Full family, Halifax, Lowden Family, Pictou

Lately I have been fairly busy on a new project, I find that my retirement is full of such projects, it never stops. I became a member of the Haviland Club some 3 years ago. The Club is housed in what was a private mansion built by a wealthy woman some 150 years ago this July in 1869. It occupies an important corner in Charlottetown, Haviland and Water street. Land that once back in 1789 was military barracks and defensive positions on the harbour of the Capital facing the entrance to the Strait of Northumberland.

The young widow Esther Full Lowden, age 33, a single parent with 3 daughters, had lost her house to the terrible fire of 1866 which destroyed a great part of the old downtown of Charlottetown. She bought this piece of land and built a magnificent Italian style villa with imported Italian Carara marble fireplace and had elaborate decoration throughout the rooms.

She lived in the house until her death in 1896 and the Lowden family owned it until 1944.

It was the USA Consulate in Charlottetown between 1900 to 1927 rented from the Lowden’s.

From 1944 to 1997 it became the United Services Officer’s Mess, the house sits across the street from the Armoury of the PEI Regiment. Since 1997 it is a Social Club opened to all.

A few weeks ago a vacancy appeared on the Board of Directors of the Club and I am now the Fund raising director and also responsible for the Sub-Committee on interior decoration and general renewal in our appearance. There is work to do and my first project was the Library also known as the Historic room.  The room had not been renewed since 1962, nothing had been done. The books were ancient some dating from 1900 and in very poor condition. I had to throw out about 27 cases of books because of advance mildew, missing pages and brittle paper. They have been replaced by new books, general titles and various authors, a good selection.

The room also needed repainting, I chose colours which would be accurate for the period and appropriate for a home library. The damage to the walls was extensive simply because they are 150 year old plaster walls and through the years did not always get the required attention. After this project is completed,  I will start on another room on the second floor, known as the manager’s room, it was at one time the Office of the Club manager but in the last 3 years it has become somewhat of a siting room, it was originally a bedroom for one of Esther’s daughters, all the bedrooms had a dressing room and a parlour. The widow Lowden had also 6 servants in the house and they all lived in the annex which was connected to the house by a corridor now blocked.

On the South side of the house was Esther Lowden’s suite which also controlled the door to the servants quarters and the two staircase to the attic and at the very top the widow’s walk. Though the attic is not open to Club members and the widow’s walk is off limits, I did go up there last week. The attic is gigantic and looks like a great ship with impressive timber work. The widow’s walk is a big glass room where you can sit and admire the entire panorama of the city and see many kilometres away. It is said that Mrs Lowden would go up to the widow’s walk to see her many ships she owned come in and out of port. They also moored at Paoli’s wharf which is just to the South of the house.

The manager’s room will become something else, re-dedicated to a new purpose, can’t say now what it will be, we are still in preparation phase, but it will be very nice.

The President’s room was formerly the parlour and office of Mrs Lowden, currently displayed the framed photographs of every Club president since 1944. This room has not aged well and looks very sad. A member has stepped up to the plate to undertake a complete renovation of that room and transform it into a nice meeting room.

All this work requires a lot of attention to details and many conversations with members, some of whom have been with the Club for the last 40 to 50 years and have a lot to contribute in terms of knowledge and approach to what we want to do.

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The Library or Historic room prior to renovations. Haviland Club, Charlottetown

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The Haviland Club, #2 Haviland Street.

 

Sonate

04 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by larrymuffin in Music

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

cello, Debussy, piano, Sonata

Sonata for piano and cello in D minor (1915) by Claude Debussy.

Piano Christian Ivaldi and cello Maurice Gendron, recorded in Paris in 1967 by EMI.

Carnevale Season

04 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by larrymuffin in Rome

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Carnevale, Friends, Italy, mask ball, party

This is the Season for the Feste Romane, think of the music of Ottorino Respighi and also elsewhere in cities like Venezia. It is also the time of parties given by the aristocracy. I am happy to think that once in the not so distant past we went to such parties in Rome. What elegant parties they were. Here are some photos of our friends at the home of Prince Jonathan Doria-Pamphilj in his palace in the centre of Rome near Piazza Venezia last week. I remember when we first visited this palace and wonder how can anyone today live in such a grand place, it is beyond real. But family tradition and owning such a place for several centuries brings not only attachment but also a sense that you owe it to your ancestors to continue. Other princely families in Rome like the Colonna, the Palavincini, BonCompagni-Ludovisi or Torlonia, the  also have spectacular palaces but they are not open to visitors, you only enter as a guest invited as a friend.

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Side view of the palace Doria-Pamphilj on Via del Corso (Via Flaminia in antiquity)

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The interior courtyard of the palace.

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It was a mask ball, here friends in the Mirror Gallery. (name withheld)

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The Prince has through his family history a very large art collection of antiquities,  Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces. Our dear friends C.E. and her husband P.C.

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Palazzo Doria Pamphilj—the colossal, 1,000-room family seat, which dates from 1505 and is among the most treasure-filled palaces in Europe. Said to be nearly two-thirds the size of St. Peter’s Basilica, the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj may well be the largest private residence in Italy. It houses one of the nation’s most important private art collections, with 650 works, including masterpieces by Raphael, Caravaggio, Titian, and Velázquez. The Doria Pamphilj clan—whose family tree includes the renowned Genoese admiral Andrea Doria and Giovanni Battista Pamphilj, who reigned as Pope Innocent X from 1644 to 1655—is one of just a handful of Rome’s ancient princely families who have survived with their palazzi, fortunes, and staggering art collections intact.

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Prince Jonathan Doria-Pamphilj and his husband Elson Braga with their children Emily and Filippo Andrea VII.

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