MAGPIE TALE: All the Wheat in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence

Our contribution to the Magpie Tales series.

Great grand grand father Adelard had no idea he was being painted from the window of the asylum. Some days as he wiped his brow from the summer heat, he would look up at the Saint-Paul Hospital and would see a face peering out at him from a window. Their gaze would be as intent and steady as a cat, making him wonder what was happening with the information sent to the brain by those eyes. Adelard hated being in the range of such eyes, as if they could suck him up from the wheat field and possess him.
And on the afternoon of July 27, 1890, he saw that odd man with red hair and a wound to his head step by his table outside of the Ravoux Inn. He had seen this off fellow around quite a bit, knew he spoke with what he mistook for a German accent and was likely on release or escape from Saint-Paul Hospital. Our Aunt Clarrisse worked as a laundress there for six months, but our family had no other connection. Adelard always wondered why that wheat field stood there between the asylum and and the stone wall that stood between it and the outside world. Who was that wall protecting -- the inmates, those of us on the outside or the wheat?

Wheat was so central to the life of our family. Adelard's hands worked the fields, and the bounty of the harvest nourished his body. The word gluten, which would come to be a scourge in our family in the next century, was a term Adelard had never heard nor understood. When the opportunity to marry Inès Boulliard presented itself in 1893, it was not because of any passion or attraction to this rather plain woman of 24 who had been waiting for a suitor for nearly a decade. It was only because 82 hectares of prime wheat fields and a small vineyard came to him with her hand.

Years later, Inès would educated Adelard on who that "odd little Dutch fellow" was and urged him to sell 12 hectares of the fields to buy a painting. Adelard would hear nothing of it, pointing out that the painting were very poorly executed -- wasting too much paint that was piled on thickly and the man clearly had poor eyesight as well as mental problems because all of his landscapes and figures were blurry and lacked precision.Adelard knew he was much wiser investing in new farm equipment, practical tools that would put food on the table. He would hear no more of these insane ideas of from Inès. She bristled at the word "insane" but would say nothing of it, fearing that Adelard might learn the truth about her sister Jasmine who had been at Saint-Paul since she turned 14. She clung to the hope that her long, near-spinsterhood was not because of her less than stellar complexion but the reputation the Boulliards had gained for being "a bit off" because of Jasmine. She just prayed that it would not be passed down to the next generation they hoped to produce soon. Nearly 25, there was much pressure for Inès to produce heirs while "the field was still fertile" as Adelard and her father would say, unapologetic about putting every situation in to agricultural terms.
A full year and a half passed without any children, and then suddenly they began to arrive. Adelard did little more than to pose in family photos with them. Fatherhood did not suit Adelard , and he fairly much chose to ignore it. Children were there to help him tend the fields in his opinion. But the two boys had no interest in farming, and he daughter had no interest in him or her brothers. She and Inès, however, had a close bond that Adelard always resented. They seemed to speak in their own language, finding refuge from that household of three males, three males who never talked to each other. It was Etienne, the younger son, who worried Inès. He had developed a brooding demeanor worse than his father’s at much too early an age. And she caught him drinking bourbon at the age of 12. Clearly he was following in his father’s footsteps at much too early an age. Adelard’s sullen moods grew darker, and he had gained the nick name of the “grim reaper” as he sauntered along the back trails of the village as he departed the wheat fields at dusk.

Etienne, Inès was certain, would end up in a room at Saint-Paul Hospital before he turned 18, staring out at those wheat fields. Those wheat fields that would turn one more male to madness.

Siittin' Around, Hangin' Out, Doin' Our Thing

Sieg Heil, Boston

On the Set: Junk Thief TV, Season 4

Whither the Lowly Incandescent?

At the stroke of midnight, September 1, 2009 -- a moment that will forever live in infamy when the European Union defiled the grand legacy of Thomas Edison and the incandescent light bulb. Rumblings of similar insanity were already sweeping the US -- a nation on the verge of the horror of single payer health care, Brie on Demand, unsegregated Perrier spouting water fountains, medicinal heroin, the metric system, football really being soccer and death panel inducing uncircumcised penises -- and holding the nation in the grips of the current Nazi/Stalinist regime.

In this dark moment when our nation is at threat of our children being forced to eat artisan bread, organic fruit and read King and King, a brave voice comes from the uppermost 'burbs of the Twin Cities as brilliant as the beacon of a GE 60-100-150 three-way bulb. Having the vision in 2008 to introduce the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act stands Michele Representative Bachmann.

Though no fan of science, Representative Bachmann recognizes that old science is less evil than new science and points out that the halogen and florescent bulbs will spew more mercury into our society than the many platters that Jeremy Piven could consume at an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet.

Mercury. Madness. Go ask Alice. Mercury. Bulbs.

Michele is driven by these thoughts as she walks through the "hardware" aisles of a Walgreens in Adams-Morgan and fondly touches the rows of incandescents resting on the shelves like innocent babies, oblivious that like a flock of Dodo birds they are fated for the Auschwitz style ovens planned by the cruel oligarchy of the Obama White House.

Closing her eyes, Michele is reminded of the time she visited the two Menlo Parks -- in California and New Jersey (where she got a great deal at the Ann Klein outlet in the mall) and sends out a prayer to the memory of Edison. Edison. Menlo. Edison. Menlo. Santa Michele. Santo Edison.
In a near trance, Michele is transported to Mount Menlo where she stands before the power of Menlo, the Greek god of invention. He peers down to her, tiny wire filigrees connecting in his eyes until they are lit brightly, giving her the strength to soldier onward, to champion the American right of choice, to embrace the unhealthy, unsustainable, environmentally destructive, insane values of our fore bearers. She imagines the rotting corpse of Ronald Reagan emerging from his grave like Frankenstein, his rotted brain only slightly more moldy than it was in 1985. Freedom. Contras. Innocent victims. Jolt Cola. Flock of Seagulls. Ah.

Michele falls to the floor, her crotch moist and head bleeding on the tiles as the announcement on the intercom has a slight tremor beneath the endless rows of fluorescent bulbs, "Customer assistance in hardware. Customer assistance in hardware!"

Such a Shame About Little Ouida

Standing in line with her bottle of Chardonnay at the Valu-Rite Market in Nyack, Ouida was reminded of that old line “A bottle of wine has as many calories as three cups of gravy.” Which doctor was it that always said that? Or was it from one of those wretched encounter groups with the promise to empower you to "take charge of your life"? Of all the abuse Ouida had endured in her life, nothing was worse than these groups where she had to sit in a circle and hear a bunch of self absorbed losers recount the tedious details of their boring, pointless lives. She started to turn and take the wine back to the refrigerated aisles with rows of Samuel Adams and enormous bottles of Kenwood but she halted. Maybe she might go back and grab some Easy Gravy Mix just out of spite.

Perhaps we should go back to where it all started at Dr. Baumgartner’s clinic in Utica where he studied Quida and Frieda for four years. Having written extensively about sibling confliction, Dr. Baumgartner said nothing equaled the Vogle sisters. Quida would turn scarlet red when Frieda was introduced as her “twin”.

Storming out of the room, Quida would scream “We are nothing alike!” And, indeed, only into his third year of research did Dr. Baumgartner learn that this was, in fact, true and that Ouida and Frieda were not twins but surviving triplets, their sister Lita having died mysteriously in a bathing incident involving choking with multiple rubber duckies.

Determining Ouida’s role in this was always murky, and Dr. Baumgartner chose to overlook it and instead focused on trying to break through Ouida’s rages and hysteria. When she took up an interest in gardening, it seemed there had been something of a breakthrough. The fact that her two favorite flowers – foxglove and oleander – were potently poisonous seemed to escape Dr. Baumgartner.

Mrs. Vogle took it as a sign of great progress at the girls’ ninth birthday party when Ouida burst onto the dance floor with Dr. Baumgartner in a joyous twist as “Under the Boardwalk” played at full volume. Mrs. Vogle was less excited, six months later when she found Ouida snuggled next to the doctor in his bed.

Things took a turn for the worse when Frieda turned violently ill after drinking a cup of hot chocolate Ouida had prepared for her. Only after returning from the ICU and noticing freshly cut oleander by the sink – and no vase in sight – did Mrs. Vogle start having doubts.

But Frieda’s sudden death after three days at the hospital put the family into such a spin there was no time nor energy to ask questions that probably should have been raised. And, after four years of intensive analysis with Dr. Baumgartner and no progress nor answers, Mrs.Vogle was ready to stop asking questions and just let mysteries rest.

When Ouida turned 15, the Vogles had reached a point of having lost the will to object when Dr. Baumgartner asked for the girl’s hand in marriage. In an unexpected turn of events, he left his practice and opened Godiva Vineyards on the outskirts of New City. The label on the bottle of a nubile nude nymph on horseback resembled Ouida too much for her mother’s comfort, but at this point she was happy just to have peace in the house so she and Harry could watch “Sing Along with Mitch” on TV trays, chewing their Stouffer’s Salisbury steaks and sipping Godiva Chardonnay in Dixie cups.

Dr. Baumgartner was found dead in the vineyards four years later, by what the authorities -- likely too distracted or too tired of hassles -- determined to be natural causes. Ouida sold the vineyards back to the Valduccis at triple the price she and the doctor acquired them for but with four times the production. She lived briefly in Montreal and then opened a small photography studio in Binghampton before settling in Nyack where she has lived quietly for the past 35 years. She can be seen strolling the streets in her Burberry coat, checking out books on Catalan culture at the library and buying brass tipped walking sticks at the flea market.

For years she was a regular at the Ebb Tide Lounge on Herman Street until her weight got out of control and her looks began to sag. Now she can be seen every afternoon at precisely 4:38 p.m. (except Tuesdays, an oddly sacred night when she drinks only filtered water) in the line at the Valu-Rite with her signature bottle of wine. As the checker scans the bar code and glances at Lady Godiva on the label, does he see any connection to the woman swiping her Chase debit card and raising her collar before punching in her four digit PIN?

On the Set

Junk Thief TV, the next generation. (Embiggen image to experience the full madness.) Coming soon (or later). People...get ready

Interactive Thursday: 10 Things That Make No Sense

Some things will never make sense to me. Here are ten of mine. Show me yours.

* Hawaiian pizza. Ham. Pineapple. Together. Where is the vomit bag?
* Coke - the drink and the drug. Tried the former and thought it was disgusting, have yet to try the latter but know it makes people dull and stupid
* Bijon Frises - Proof that intelligent design does not exist.
* Madonna - The Virgin and the pop star. The first one just doesn't make sense; the second one just makes me want to cast her as the object of desire in a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre XIV.
* Spas that dip people in chocolate - Heard an NPR report on this once and had to leave the room to vomit.
* The 1997 version of Titanic - The turd in the punch bowl of the North Atlantic. The most viewed film ever?
* Star Wars movies - I've never made it through an entire episode of these without falling asleep. Wait; is this the one with Dr. Spock?
* The current men's basketball uniforms - Why would I pay to see men in bloomers? Bring back tight short-shorts! Baseball currently has the best costumes.
* Survivor, the TV series. I just learned it's still on the air. I thought it got canceled back in 1999.
* Craigslist and Twitter. I've tried both and still don't know why they are thriving and printed newspapers are going belly up.

Because Gilligan Won't Go Away

It was Halloween night 2004, not too long after the most haunting photos of the new millennium had been released. Halfway through my smoke trout salad at the Atlas Cafe at 21st and Alabama, I looked up to see two adult trick or treaters. A young woman in fatigues with a cigarette dangling from her lips was followed by a barefoot man in the familiar black cape and hood that would later be attributed to "Gilligan". He pulled out a small wood box, stood in crucifix position while the young woman winked and pointed at him, and -- in unison -- the two sneered "trick or treat".

A third of my fellow diners laughed, another third sneered or muttered "tasteless" and another third, like me, stared bewildered. When one woman finally shouted out "You should be ashamed of yourself", the guy in the black hood pulled it off and cackled "Lighten up lady, it's not as if we have blood on our hands."

Nearly four years later, that image is as potent as ever and one to summon up in the midst of the far less important issues of Joe the Plumber, Levi and Bristol, Bill Ayers, the crazy "He's an Arab" lady in Minnesota or even the stock market.

While much hoopla has been trumpeting today's release of W., I am glad that instead I spent last night watching this week's DVD release of Erroll Morris' Standard Operating Procedure. I've been so burned out on so many doom and gloom documentaries over the past nightmarish years that I wondered if I had the energy for it. I gave up on self-righteous blow-hard Michael Moore about five years ago, but I've always admired much of Morris' approach. Though he almost goes too far the opposite direction of Moore of distancing himself from his subjects who sometimes drone on senselessly without him taking the reins or giving the context we need.

The crimes of the past eight years committed in the name of the United States are so endless that it's easy to erase or ignore them. But taking such an intense look at just Abu Ghraib was a sobering reminder of just how great they are how crucial changing course is to the future of humanity.

There are very few facts or images in SOP that I had not already seen or read over the past four years, but not in such a dense and intense two hour viewing. While Oliver Stone seems to be intent to give the full tragic arch of the Bush administration and larger family dynasty, this film does a far better job without ever really mentioning the administration and with only one flash second image of W. and Rumsfeld.

There is not a single, completely positive character on camera among the various, mainly low ranking members of the military who took the brunt of the blame. It's excruciating to watch Lynndie England who was the poster child of the events. She is as dull witted and unenlightened as ever as she mumbles "....we didn't kill anybody..." and at 25 is puffy and could pass for a woman twice that age. Yet as I read her biography elsewhere and noted that she went into the military in order to get out of a low wage night job, there is a certain tragedy to her fate. Not that it excuses what she did but gives it a weird poignancy and tragedy that is hard to reconcile with her seeming absence or remorse or understanding.

Even harder to reconcile is Sabrina Harman -- the "thumbs up" photographer who would later claim she posed with corpses to expose wrong-doing -- who still has a muted sparkle about her. She owns up to what was wrong, but it's hard to tell how much of her is real and how much is her own invention. Just as the documentary, which relies heavily on suspicious "re-enactments", sometimes seems suspect, it also points out that photographs don't exactly lie but also don't reveal the entire truth.

After two hours, it was clear that this is not even the tip of the iceberg but the misty air above the iceberg of cold-hearted crimes committed in the name of democracy.

In the end, the Iraqi prisoners remained nameless and just the photographs of naked, hooded, frightened men we have seen over and over. Likely some have committed crimes of some sort, but most are probably just as they are described -- cab drivers, shepherds, news stand operators -- hauled up, tortured, raped, humiliated and fodder for the economic and moral bankruptcy of the U.S.

I came away feeling worse about the country where I live but also feeling less blinded and numb to all that has taken place and hoping it's not too late to change course.