The 2021 Audubon Photography Awards have just been announced this week. I've been looking at these images, and I'm especially impressed by how many common North American birds are in the winning photos.
If you love to look at birds and bird photos, you'll enjoy the following two articles:
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| Golden-fronted Woodpecker by Danny Hancock, Palo Duro Canyon State Park, TX |
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| From my attic bookshelves… |
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| Marie Laurencin: "Three Young Girls in Dance." |
"Lois said in a high, excited voice that she was bored to death with Montparnasse.
"'I'm bored, bored, bored! Look here. Let's go to a music-hall, .... Something canaille, what?'
*
"Two naked girls were dancing before a background of blue and mauve which was like a picture by Marie Laurencin." (Quartet, p. 85-86)
"August was a hot, oppressive month, the sun beating down on sleepy streets, the cafés and restaurants nearly empty, the staircase and passages of the Hôtel du Bosphore and its fellows pervaded by an extraordinary mixture of smells. Drains, face powder, scent, garlic, drains. Above all, drains." (Quartet, p. 127)
Reading these books about Paris, I experienced a feeling of strange juxtaposition between things that have stayed the same and things that have changed. Songs the characters play for dancing include "Yes, We Have No Bananas" and "If You Knew Susie" -- that is, the songs of the twenties. In a country town, the characters get a ride from the train station to their hotel in a horse-drawn cab. But so much of the atmosphere is totally familiar, like images in a dream: even the disapproving hotel maids and supercilious waiters; even the smell of drains. Sometimes while reading I wondered momentarily if the details were anachronistic -- but that's impossible, because the books were written at the time, not recently. And because Jean Rhys's biography includes Paris experiences very much like the story of her characters.
Do you want to read about romantic Paris adventures in a beautiful, welcoming city? Do you want to read about unexpectedly great meals in amazing little bistros? Do you love to learn of likable and idealistic characters succeeding despite some not-too-terrible obstacles? If that's what you want, don't read these books!Finally, I want to thank Nadia, the blogger at "A Bookish Way of Life," for reminding me about the work of Jean Rhys, and thank Tamara of "Thyme for Tea" for hosting the blog event Paris in July.
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| Yellow things in the park: a goldfinch near the railroad tracks. |
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| A yellow lane marker for little boats. |
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| A yellow skull at practice. |
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| A yellow flower with a fuzzy bee. |
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| Drone’s eye view of the Huron River. |
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| Spider in my backyard. |
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| In the Arboretum: pink flowers |
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| The Huron River also flows through the Arb, a favorite Ann Arbor spot. |
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| The owners said this white dog doesn’t like to be muddy. It was drinking from the river in quite a dainty way. |
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| Dining room in our friend Michelle's counry house near Cotignac, France, 1994. |
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| Lunch at a French country house in 1989. Our host Jean is at left, next to Len. |
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| Monet: The Luncheon (1873) |
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| Our friend Michelle served this dessert at a Sunday lunch at her apartment in Paris a few years ago. |
"The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said its food price index, which measures the global price of select foods, had in May hit highs not seen since 2011, up 40 percent year-on-year.
"A variety of factors are to blame, including a surge in orders from China, fluctuating oil prices, a sliding U.S. dollar, and looming above all: the pandemic, and in some places, reopening."
"Heat can cause havoc with crop production. In Bangladesh, just two days of hot air in April this year destroyed 68,000 hectares of rice, affecting over 300,000 farmers with losses of US$39m (£28m). New heat-tolerant varieties of crops need developing and deploying. The alternative is higher food costs and food price spikes with the increased poverty and civil unrest that typically accompanies them." (Guardian, "Canada is a warning: more and more of the world will soon be too hot for humans" by Simon Lewis)
The ramifications of global climate change are already being felt in the third world. This is a very complex problem, with complex consequences, and the solution, if any, is unclear. Where will we all live? What will we all eat? How will we all survive? Or will we?
As I think of all these brain-busting global problems, my mind turns to all the beautiful vineyards I have visited over the years, and I wonder how climate change will affect them. We have always enjoyed visiting these wineries and vineyards, and love to drink wines from many sources. Maybe this is frivolous, but here are some details I've found.
"California is at the frontline when it comes to rising temperatures and natural disasters and the pressure is on to find workarounds," according to an article titled "Climate Change Threat to Wine Regions." Droughts, wildfires, and changing rain patterns are all challenging the California wine industry to adapt to new conditions, but so far, they are adapting rather well. Of course we have been horrified when reading of the vast fires that destroyed many acres of vines and winery buildings in the Napa Valley, another place we have enjoyed visiting for many years.
A vineyard we visited near Santa Barbara, California, in 2014.
A vineyard near Martinborough, New Zealand, in 2007.
We had a wonderful tour of the Martinborough wine country, near Wellington, while visiting New Zealand some time ago. We also could see the vineyards of the more famous Marlborough wine region from a train as we traveled through the South Island. New Zealand's climate is much affected by global climate changes:
"In Marlborough, the climate has not only got hotter but has slowly shifted from a clean, dry heat to one with more humidity, which is encouraging diseases like mildew to thrive. Due to its flat topography and proximity to the sea, another threat to the region is sea-level rise. ...
"Martinborough is also set to change. As reported to local New Zealand news outlet, Stuff, the winemaker Clive Paton at Ata Rangi in Martinborough has long been planting grape varieties better suited to the heat and feels both Syrah and Tempranillo may become increasingly valuable players." (source)
We also toured some wineries in Australia on a trip even longer ago -- but tragically, one of the vast and horrific fires there destroyed the area where we toured. I read this:
"Although Australia is definitely on the frontline when it comes to climate change, it is also ahead of the curve in searching for ways to combat these issues and find solutions, whether it be experimenting with new vineyard sites or grape varieties." (source)
Our friend Michelle's vineyard near Cotignac, France, 1994.
French vineyards have been experiencing unusual and very damaging weather fluctuations this year. In particular, the early spring was unseasonably warm, but then an extreme cold spell damaged the budding grape vines. Between 25% and 50% of the 2021 French wine crop could be lost because of these early changes. Such episodes are expected to become more common; moreover, the harvests have been coming in earlier and earlier in the past decade because of climate change. An article titled "French vineyards devastated by changing climate reportedly expect to lose up to 50% of their crops this year" summarized this difficult situation.
Our tour guide with a map of the Washington vineyards in 2018.
A few years ago, on a trip to Seattle and the area, we toured some of the wineries near there which make wine from the grapes grown in Western Washington State. I'm particularly wondering how these growers are handling the record-setting heat wave and drought that's everywhere in the Pacific Northwest now.
The extreme heat this year fortunately came after the critical flowering stage of grape growth, and the harvests this year may be nearly unaffected. However, the future is delicate, and continued excess heat may alter the region's grape-growing capacity. An article in Time Magazine, "Pacific Northwest Wineries Are Shaking Off the Extreme Heat Wave, But Are Worried What It Means for the Industry’s Future," discussed the issues. Author Megan McCluskey interviewed Oliver May, the manager of Discover Vineyard in the Horse Heaven Hills. He says that while growers tend to prefer hot years, there’s a limit to what any grapevines can take:
“With the drought situations that are happening across the West right now, it’s going to get more and more difficult to manage these heat waves. Vines can adapt to drought conditions, but this is extreme,” he says. “The past few years, every year has been the hottest year. So at this point, this definitely isn’t the best place to grow grapes and it’s just going to become more and more difficult and maybe not even doable.”
Obviously, there's much more to be learned about the impact of climate change on the global food supply, the global wine industry, and indeed on the future of the world.
Blog post and all photos © 2021 and previously by mae sander
for mae food dot blogspot dot com.
"One night they went together to the Théâtre-Italien. They had not even looked at the programme. They wanted to see a great Italian actress, La Ristori, who was at that time the toast of Paris, and who was so much in fashion that they were forced to take an interest in her. The play was Phèdre. ... Phèdre was of Pasiphaé’s blood,* and Renée asked herself of whose blood she could be, she, the incestuous one of modern times. She saw in the play nothing but this tall woman dragging across the stage her antique crime. In the first act, when Phèdre confides her criminal affection to Œnone; in the second, when, burning with passion, she declares herself to Hippolyte; and later, in the fourth act, when the return of Thésée overwhelms her, and she curses herself in a crisis of dark fury, she filled the theatre with a cry of such wild passion, with so great a yearning for superhuman voluptuousness, that Renée felt every shudder of her desire and remorse pass through her own body. ... She was in agony, she was losing consciousness, when the last death-rattle of Phèdre, repenting and dying a convulsive death by poison, made her open her eyes. The curtain fell. Would she have the strength to poison herself one day? How mean and shameful her tragedy was compared with the grand epic of antiquity!" (pp. 179-180).
"She told him how frightened she had felt in the Parc Monceau. Then she confessed another of her longings: she would like one night to go for a row on the little lake in the gardens in the little boat she could see from her windows, moored at the edge of a pathway." Émile Zola, The Kill (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 2) (p. 120).
"Then, when springtime came, Renée’s feelings of melancholy returned. She made Maxime stroll with her at night in the Parc Monceau in the moonlight. They went into the grotto, and sat on the grass in front of the colonnade. But when she expressed a desire for a row on the little lake, they found that the boat they could see from the house, moored at the edge of a pathway, had no oars. These were evidently removed at night. This was a disappointment." (p. 168).
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| Monet: A view of Parc Monceau. Monet and the Impressionists were friends of Zola, though later they had a falling out. |
“The lovers adored the new Paris. They often drove through the city, going out of their way in order to pass along certain boulevards, which they loved with a personal affection. The tall houses, with their great carved doors and heavy balconies, with inscriptions, signs, and company names in great gold letters, delighted them. As the brougham rolled on, they gazed fondly at the wide pavements, with their benches, their variegated columns, and their slim trees. This bright gap, which stretched as far as the horizon, grew narrower and opened upon a pale blue square of space; this uninterrupted double row of big shops.” (p. 168)
"If Saccard was the animating spirit of the business, infusing it with his vigour and greed, Mignon and Charrier, by their matter-of-fact ways, their methodical, narrow management, saved it a score of times from being capsized by the extraordinary imagination of their partner. They would not agree to have superb offices, in a house he wanted to build in order to amaze the whole of Paris. They refused, moreover, to entertain the subsidiary speculative schemes that sprouted in his head each morning: the building of concert halls and immense baths on the building-ground bordering their boulevards; of railways along the line of the new boulevards; of glass-roofed arcades which would increase the rent of the shops tenfold and allow people to walk about Paris without getting wet." (pp. 97-98).
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| Another view of the Park Monceau by Monet, who painted it a number of times. The Impressionists painted many views of the new Paris that Zola described. |
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| I began this summer's Paris reading with the first book in Zola's 20-book series, which explains the humble origins of Aristide Saccard and his family, the Rougons. |
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| In New England, we were told, the 4th of July menu includes salmon and peas. This makes sense if you think about the season: when there were salmon in the Atlantic, that’s when they were being caught. Here is our version: grain salad with peas, a tomato galette, and salmon in sour cream and mayo. |
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| Close up: a salad of rice, quinoa, peas, mushrooms and garden herbs. |
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| Dessert galette, with rhubarb. And patriotic tart. |
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| Len and all our guests, ready to eat. |
"He’d called in at a takeaway and picked up a bag of fried chicken for dinner. He threw it down on a chair and was taking off his coat when he smelled the familiar old aroma of cooking. He hadn’t smelled something being cooked in his kitchen for a very long time. Chicken like that lying on the chair was his food, hamburgers, takeaways from the greasy spoon, ready meals from the supermarket, cold boiled sheep head, tubs of curds, tasteless microwave dinners. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually cooked himself a proper meal in the kitchen. He couldn’t remember when he’d last even wanted to." (p. 116).
Erlendur has a surprise coming:
"Slowly he made his way further into the kitchen and saw something simmering in a big pot. Lifting the lid, he looked down at a particularly delicious-looking meat stew. A slick of cooking oil was floating above turnips, potatoes, cubes of meat and spices, the whole thing giving off an aroma that filled his flat with the smell of real home cooking. He stooped over the pot and inhaled the smell of boiled meat and vegetables.
"'I needed some more veg,' Eva Lind said at the kitchen door. Erlendur hadn’t noticed her enter the flat. She was wearing his anorak and holding a bag of carrots.
"...When they sat down to eat, Eva Lind poured water into the wine glasses and Erlendur ate so much that he could barely stagger into the sitting room afterwards. He fell asleep there in his clothes and slept badly until the morning." (p. 117-118).
So goes his domestic life. He even eats the take-away chicken some days later, after it's been sitting on the chair waiting for him. However, he does seem to come to some agreement with Eva Lind about her future and his role in it.
There's quite a bit of local color about all the lowlifes who appear in the course of the investigation. Assuming that my much-anticipated trip to Iceland isn't cancelled, I still don't think I'll be encountering anyone at all like the people in the novel, or even seeing much of the neighborhoods where they live. It's still interesting to read detective fiction, though, no matter where it takes place.
Review © 2021 mae sander.
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| The lead vehicle in the parade was a police car, followed by dozens of bikes, and ending with two firetrucks. |
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| Gathering in the park. |
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| Stragglers and the final firetruck in the park. |
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| Watermelon and donuts for the bicycle riders. |
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| We put our little flags in the flower pots. |
