Memories of

Tags

Anniversaries, Apollo, Arachova, Greece, lamb, life, Travel

It seems that in my life time anniversaries for both me and Will have always been in a city or place around the world. Will just wrote about Moussaka, The recipe he gives on his blog is very good, it’s from our friend Akis Petretzikis who is a famous TV chef in Greece  https://willyorwonthe.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/not-moussaka-its-moossakka/  and he included in his blog post photos of our anniversary trip to Greece when I was accredited to the Hellenic Republic.

Akis 

We travelled in Greece not as much as I wish we had but nonetheless it was always memorable.

For our 30th Anniversary in 2008, we travelled by car from Athens to Arachova which is a famous ski resort. The mountain dominating the region is Mount Parnassos, elevation 2457 meters home of the god Apollo and his aunt the Muses. The village of Arachova is above the Gulf of Corinth and about 10 minutes by car from the ancient site of Delphi.

Arachova being a mountain town, you can walk everywhere but a lot of streets are in fact stone staircases, so you do get a good workout. The food is grilled lamb and other Greek dishes. Most people speak only Greek. Being so close to Delphi we visited the ancient site with its wonderful temples and other religious sites dedicated to the gods of ancient Greece. Delphi is a magical site hanging over the cliff with the Gulf of Corinth far below. Mount Parnassos during our visit was hidden in the clouds, certainly lending an air of mystery.

Delphi is known as the Omphalos or Navel of the World with its vegetation of olive and pine trees. Of course the famous Oracle of Delphi is dedicated to Apollo, the god of light, harmony, music and prophecy, was the most visited oracle in Greece and people from all over the Mediterranean would come to ask for help. It needs some climbing up to get to the actual site, which stands on top of a rocky hill.

In 2018 for our 40th we were in Lisbon, one of the best 10 days in Europe and we would love to return to Portugal.  In 1998 our anniversary was in Poland, we travelled from our home in Warsaw to a small resort about 40 minutes to the West of Gdansk. In 1988 we were then living in Mexico, I don’t recall what we did, it seems we spent the weekend in Cuernavaca or San Miguel Allende. No anniversaries are the same and all carry wonderful memories.

Birthdays for Will and I are also special and each decade saw a special trip to commemorate. Vietnam, Ireland, Egypt, Poland, Mexico, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Beijing, Italy, etc.

 

 

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In the cards this year

Tags

2019, life, Me, predictions, Radical Faeries, Tarot cards, year

The great Karnak the diviner par excellence of Arizona AKA Dr. Spo read my Tarot cards for 2019. He is a delightful fellow for doing so. He put out his planet table cloth and let me choose the deck of tarot cards I would like. He has a collection of tarot card decks. I chose the Radical Faeries card deck.

So here month by month is what the cards say;  January would be a month of decisions on projects, February a month of inaction or vacation, March, April, May months of lots of action open to new ideas.  June could bring conflict, July could be a month of worries or a month where I overcome difficulties. August and September are months to apply knowledge or lessons learned, October is the best month of the year. November new worries and December could bring some lost or bereavement of some kind.

Overall 2019 the cards say is a good year busy, happy, going forward, self-growth. I can live with that.

Towards Xmas

Tags

Canada., Christmas, Food, French, life, Montreal, Music, Quebec

This week listening to Radio-Canada in the morning I heard some old Christmas favourites from my childhood. One was Mon Beau Sapin, Roi des Forêts known in English as O Tannenbaum. This was the song the second wife of my maternal grandfather, we called Tante Fernande would sing each Christmas at lunch at my grandfather’s house when all his children and spouses and us grandkids would gather for the traditional meal, gifts and benediction. It was an old, I dare say a very old tradition going back several generations, the family patriarch would bless is family for the New Year. Tante Fernande would have cooked a turkey it was always an excellent birds and very juicy, serving peas and mash potatoes and cranberries which she called Atoka, dessert would be a mix of chocolates, Bûche de Noël and other sweets. I always thought that Atoka was the real name for cranberries but it turn out that Atoka is a Quebec recipe for processing cranberries after they are harvested. It gives a much sweeter fruit and has none of the tartness found in canned cranberries. Tante Fernande was a cook who did everything from scratch including her cranberries. You could not buy canned cranberries back then or if you could it was not done on good homes.

The dishes used to serve the Christmas meal was on two dinner sets, one was white with a dark blue and gold rim, the other set was their wedding dinner set which I have now.

There were other songs and my aunts knew one each, a favourite, one was Petit Papa Noël, my Mom use to sing that one. It is not an old song, the melody is taken from an old Ukrainian song and the words written in 1944 were about a child asking Santa to bring his father home for Xmas from the POW camp in Germany. After the war the words were changed erasing any reference to the war to what we hear today. It is a song that you would learn in school and my mother knew it well.  It was part of every Christmas music recital at school in French Canada. Tino Rossi premiered this song in 1946 and it became his Christmas signature song. Radio-Canada played it today as part of their weekend Christmas show it brought back a tidal wave of memories.

On this score the French service Radio-Canada is doing a much better job with their Christmas programming than the CBC who is playing a mix of commercial music. Tomorrow 23 December, the CBC will have an all day Christmas concert as they do every year from the European Union broadcasted live starting at 9am. Radio-Canada will have its programming, vintage shows from the 1940 to 1970. Despite the fact that such programming might be speaking to an older generation, it is still enormously popular.

Maybe it speaks about a time when Christmas was not about shopping and stress. The Media today puts a heavy emphasis on how stressful and unpleasant it is, with those awful relatives. I wonder why it has to be this way, not to mention the trove of bad news. It sounds almost perverse.

Gifts use to be in my mother’s childhood an orange which was a luxury then, books, clothing like a scarf or a sweater. For us it was books, sweets or the dreaded Fentex slippers your gradma knitted for you, some small amount of money like a $5. bill new and crisp or a board game. The adults were not stressed, no one was driving around shopping in malls, it was a nice holiday with a focus in Roman Catholic Quebec on religion and midnight mass recalling the traditions of Old Canada and France.

The other popular song and remains so to this day is J’ai vu maman embrassé le Père Noël sung by Line Renaud who is 90 years old. This 1956 version is one you will hear on the radio. Renaud was and remains one of the great French singer of her time.

Well we avoided the stress of Christmas and it is something I never quite understood why so many people whipped themselves into a frenzy.  I think that a lot of the stress is made up on false notions about gifts and having to please other people, it is somewhat artificial. I hope you all have lots of fun and enjoyment out of the Holiday Season.

My Best Wishes to You!

 

Have you made your list?

Tags

Canada., Christmas, home, life, Music, Santa, Travel

Have you made your list for Santa?

What do you want for Xmas? I would like a BMW convertible or better still a Bentley Convertible, lots of Bulgari stuff and some nice cases of Bollinger Champagne. like in this photo in Lisbon.

 

Today 87 years ago, on 11 December 1931 Canada became a fully independent Country with the proclamation of the Statute of Westminster, George V was proclaimed King of the Dominion of Canada. These important changes were enshrined into our Constitution and Canada adopted its own Law on Royal Succession.  We were also able to finally make our own Foreign Policy independent from Britain and open our own Canadian Embassies around the world. The first one was in Tokyo, Japan and Sir Herbert Marler was our first Canadian Ambassador to the Empire of Japan.

 

Our trip to Portugal

Tags

art., life, Politics, Portugal, Travel, vacation

Well this trip had been planned half way through my campaign for municipal Office and we had decided that whatever the outcome, we would be off on a vacation away from PEI afterwards and somewhere in Europe.

So we departed on 19 November on Rouge, a division of Air Canada. We flew business class of premium I think it is called and despite all the negative press, I found it to be quite nice a flight, regular airliner and all the usual trimmings, can’t see what all the naysaying is about.

We found an Air B&B in Mouraria, one of the oldest neighbourhoods of Lisbon just below the thousand year old castle fortress of San Jorge formerly a Moorish Palace and citadel.

Lisbon airport is very close to the city centre, we were only 15 minutes away from our apartment. The joke is that Lisbon comes as a free gym, there about 12 hills and the city is small but everything is up or down hill some of them at a 40 degree angle.

this photo was taken from the Castle looking down on Mouraria where we lived, our building is in the middle of the photo.

From inside the Castle, the flag of the City of Lisbon and the flag of Portugal.

looking up to the castle walls.

Again from the Castle parapet looking towards the parish of San Vincente O Fora with the beautiful maritime pines providing the greenery. This church is the Royal Mausoleum to the Kings of Portugal. The monarchy was abolished in 1910 in a coup and the royal family of Braganza, retired quietly.

Some dates about Portuguese history you will here a lot about if you visit. In Lisbon 1147 Martin Moniz and a group of knights from England, Spain, France and elsewhere capture the Citadel and Castle from the Moors and expel them. Today a metro station is named after Martin Moniz who apparently according to the story wedged himself in a door of the castle allowing his companions to enter, he died in the process. The age of the Portuguese Empire starts with Prince Henry the Navigator and in 1497 Vasco de Gama,Count of Vidigueira travels to India and then to various points in Africa establishing colonies along the way. The Portuguese Empire spanned the globe and led to a Papal bull dividing the world between the Spanish and Portuguese Empires.

In 1644 the sovereignty of Portugal was restored and the Spanish Hapsburgs were forced to give up their control of the country. The Braganza dynasty becomes the Royal house in Portugal until 1910. Another metro station is named after the Restauradores (restorer). Another important date is 1834 when all monasteries are closed and confiscated and religious orders are dissolved. This happened because of a movement to liberalize society and give it a parliamentary and constitutional monarchy, the church chose to be on the side of the ultra conservative and fought the movement. In 1908 the king and the crown Prince were assassinated while crossing the Plaza de Comercio upon their return to Lisbon. This assassination shocked Europe, led to political paralysis in Portugal and two years later finally a republic was proclaimed. What is not much mentioned nowadays is the almost 50 years of dictatorship from 1932 to 1968 by the Estado Novo party and its leader Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, he died in 1970 but his government kept going, finally on 25 April 1974 the army ousted the party from power in what is called the Carnation Revolution and Portugal returned to democracy.

Plaza de Comercio, rebuilt in 1755 after the great earthquake destroyed much of Lisbon. What we see today is the work of the Marquis of Pombal. In this square facing the river Tegus, the King and his son the heir to the throne were assassinated in 1908.

We walked all over Lisbon, there is so much to see and do, it can be exhausting. Also many wonderful restaurants, good wines and lots of Port.

In the fashionable Chiado neighbourhood with the new Christmas lights. Love the sidewalks in stone mosaic pattern all over the city.

 

Only 23 days to go

Tags

Holidays, home, life

We are back from a fantastic vacation in Portugal. One of the best ever in all of our travels around the world. Now we are only 3 weeks from Xmas and this is my favourite song from Mariah Carey, it brings back so many wonderful memories. A few days ago Dr Spo asked about Xmas music best selection, well there you have it.

 

40 years onwards

Tags

life, love, Will

I am posting this a few days ahead because we are going to Portugal on Sunday and will not be taking my computer with me. Anyway here you go, we started to celebrate last night with our friends and neighbours over dinner and a bottle of Rosé Champagne.

We met in 1978, I was a student at the University of Ottawa and Will was with our national airline. We had both moved on our own in 1976 to the National Capital, me for studies and he for work. We were both arriving from major metropolitan areas so Ottawa felt really small town.

What was suppose to be a one drink meet and greet has lasted all these years. We bought 2 houses and sold them, we moved, travelled and lived around the world, we had and have dogs, Dachshunds, Bundnie, Reese, Nicky and Nora. What a time we had and the wonderful things we have done. I am very grateful for those years with Will, I really cannot imagine my life without him and without all the music festivals we went too over all these years here in Canada and around the world. The parties we gave and all the food Will cooked and fancy recipes with the funny stories that went with them.

So to celebrate we are off to Portugal, make the anniversary special has we have always done with any and all celebrations, be it Birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, vacation time, etc, our day 23 November. We got married 11 years ago in late July but our November date is the one that matters most to us.

Rome 2010 at the top of the stairs of the Capitoline hill

Via Appia Antica, 2009

Cape Sounion, Attic Peninsula, Greece late afternoon

Roman Summer Season of the Teatro del Opera at the Baths of Caracalla.

Vacation in Assisi, Italy

Will and I often attend cooking school and this one just outside Rome, Will is making ravioli by hand, I believe they were stuffed with pumpkin purée and quite good. I made a dish of grilled anchovies, using the entire fresh fish, it is very sweet and pleasant.

At dinner after the Opera during the Salzburg Whitsun Festival at the Sketch Bar, Hotel Bristol, Salzburg, Gunther the barman took the picture. May 2009. We stayed and dined at this hotel in our many visits to Salzburg for the festivals.

At the Mozarteum in Salzburg during the entracte, Will reading the program notes of all the concerts for the Season 2011.

1996 Christmas in our home in Hunt Club in Ottawa. I came home from Jordan. Photo in our dining room with those little sterling silver snowflakes in the foreground hanging from the chandelier, that we still use at Xmas time.

Our last picture in Ottawa, taken by Jean-Marc Carisse in 2016. Wearing our Austrian trachten jackets.

 

What can one say of a life time of wonderful memories. It’s been a slice! May it continue for many more years.

Rubies the stone of a 40th Anniversary

 

 

The results

Tags

CBC, Charlottetown, life

Well the election took place and the results surprised me and I am puzzled. The bulk of the votes went to one candidate, I think it is called a landslide in election parlance. No that person was not me. However I did receive a flood of message from friends and supporters this morning who congratulated me for a dignified campaign, well run, focused on issues and the City and that is always nice to hear. Yes I am proud of my campaign despite the nastiness, I stayed above it all and refused to engage in negativity.

During this campaign there was a lot of talk about change and how the people wanted fresh air, a new approach. There was also much talk about engaging youth and how they could be voting for change at City Council. All that was nothing more than talk and nothing came of it.

The local newspaper held a televised coverage on Eastlink which is a private service available only to subscribers, the CBC only offered radio coverage. The Guardian invited the out going Mayor to comment on the election of the new Mayor and for the youth panel we had the same 3 faces who represent all youth in the Province to offer their comments which were not terribly illuminating and dovetailed with the out going Mayor’s comments. Engaging youth and youth is our future are themes that come back all the time but I found few young people under 35 willing to put their money where their mouth is. Even the youth panel when asked why they had not put up their names for the election avoided answering and instead fell back on the old canard of no time and other priorities and blame the boomers.

On City Council only 2 new faces in my ward 1 (downtown) and ward 9 (near the airport) out of the ten councillors again not exactly the massive change the people were apparently asking for.

During this campaign I learned an awful lot, this being a small place, the political/business alliances do control all and in some cases in a pernicious way and if they support a candidate, will expect much for their support.

Ward 1 in particular being the downtown core is now firmly in the grasp of big corporate and business elite. This means that the corridor from Pownal to Prince streets and Euston street to the river will see the change business wants and gentrification will now happen in accelerated mode. This is not a bad thing much needs to be improved upon in that specific area if we are to revitalize the downtown core.

Now comes with the end of the year the Budget period and I have a project on this one I started last year and got a little bit of result and now with a new Mayor and renewed City Council I will propose again an open process for the budget. The one councillor who blocked my motion last year is gone, so I may get better results.  I have not lost any time and already reconnected with those councillors with whom I have been working in the last year.

So now time to move on and first a vacation with a departure date fairly soon to Portugal. For my new look, I know with this new look I could be Freddy Mercury’s twin, I bet that is what you are thinking or is it Hercule Poirot.

People now refer to me as a politician, in my life I have been a Public Servant, a Diplomat and now a Politician, it makes me smile.

 

This is day 215

Tags

City, life, Politics

 

Recent photos

Tags

Campaign, Election, Friends, GenZ, life

Lately I have had my picture taken quite a bit at varied locations, some I am using in my municipal campaign and others I am keeping as a memory of this year 2018 and life in PEI.

Speaking with a group of young people, students who I learned today are part of Generation Z born before 1997. They replace the Millennials who are now over 30 or over the hill so to speak. Pollsters and social scientists say that GenZ is very different from the millennials in their outlook on life, they are the first generation who do not know a time before electronics or dial up internet.

At a public meeting recently speaking with a participant about a big infrastructure project in our town.

At another public meeting, I seem to be doing this a lot in the last 5 months.

Very happy with this picture, here with Her Honour the Lieutenant Governor of PEI, Antoinette Perry in the great hall of Fanningbank, her Official Residence.

A group of friends on Rochford Street this past weekend. Will is looking very good in this photo.