Welcome to my home away from home

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Where I am living this month and next.
A centuries-old Swiss house named l'Amandier, the almond tree (there are some out back, in the garden).
It is one of four or five big buildings here at the Community of Grandchamp. 
Down a bit is the cellar and the Salle d'Accueil (where Sr. S. is heading). 
This Reception is for guests and has for sale books, cards, and nice things made by Grandchamp artisan-sisters. 
Some elderly nuns live on the middle floor with an accompanying sister-nurse.
We volunteers, and sometimes a few guests, live on top. 
Enlarge the photo to see the house's pretty details. 

My room, called la Priere (prayer), on a rare sunny morning. 
For a monastic cell, it is quite big.
It has all I need and more.
The bathrooms are down the hall. 
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Long, Straight Road

When you get off the main roads around Marysville the farms stretch beyond the horizon. Out in the countryside there are gravel roads, as straight as the land permits, spaced a mile apart. The square mile they enclose is known as a section.

It's pretty quiet out here except for the sound of farm equipment and the wind.                

The hog will lead the way

One of the most famous trail markers in South Africa must be the hogs marking all the hiking trails around the village of Hogsback in the Eastern Cape.  We slipped and slid around some of the trails in Hogsback over a wet weekend recently but as we say in Afrikaans, "Mooi bly maar mooi" meaning "beautiful will always be beautiful".  I'll post a full blog post as well as a couple of individual photos about our visit soon, just watch this space.

After the biting "bise" wind, a ray of sunshine

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This morning at 8:50 the first rays of some rare sunshine illuminated the roof of l'Arche, the main chapel of the Community of Grandchamp. 
"L'Arche," French for "the ark," because it looks a bit like Noah's ark.
It was built several centuries ago, but not as a church, of course.
I'll get some close-ups soon and try to explain what it was used for.
Meanwhile, I just wanted to show you how welcome a little sun was today, because yesterday we had the infamous "bise" wind blowing for a whole night and day.
It was like frozen knives piercing us.
Never been so cold in my life!
It even made it into the newspaper:
http://bit.ly/2fzKDit
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Antique Tastes

One of Marysville's attractions is the Koester House, with its museum and somewhat strange gardens. German immigrant Charles (Karl?) Koester arrived in town in 1860 and soon made a name for himself. He ended up becoming the town banker, built a very fancy house by the standards of the day and filled the garden with reproductions of, I don't know, Greece-Roman-Renaissance-Baroque sculpture.  The garden isn't very big, the pieces seem thrown together in a crowded way, and yet it tells us something. What were the tastes of the well-to-do 150 years ago? The place seems very foreign in a prairie filled with corn fields.

Symbolism of the evergreen branches

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In yesterday's post we saw the new centerpieces being prepared in the cellar.
Today they are in place on the refectory tables.
And the first of the four big Advent candles is lit, on a bed of pine boughs.
One of the Sisters of Grandchamp explained to me that the branches are reminiscent of the palm and olive branches of the first Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, but because palm and olive trees do not grow here in Switzerland, the fragrant local evergreen boughs are used instead, now during the season of Advent. 
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Madeleine In Marysville Monday: 1 or 2?

1. Audition for a slasher movie, maybe. At breakfast at the Wagon Wheel Cafe. The knife wasn't very sharp.

2. A more traditional approach. She's been a good girl all year, mostly.         

First Sunday of Advent

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A sure sign that Advent is beginning! 
One of my assignments here as a volunteer at the monastic community in Switzerland is to gather pretty leaves, seed pods, flowers, etc. and to arrange them in little vases for the guest rooms. 
When I went down to the cave (French for "cellar") to look for secateurs yesterday, I got a sneak preview of the red and green centerpieces that the real flower-sister had created for the refectory (dining room) tables. 
And so last night Advent was indeed ushered in.
For my Christian friends, it is a beautiful and important time of  active waiting for Christmas.
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Marysville, Kansas

I've been visiting here a time or two a year for more than 40 years. Mrs. C went to high school here and grew up on a farm about 17 miles away. Marysville has about 3,300 people. The area is rolling prairie, not at all flat. Farmers grow corn, wheat, milo and alfalfa. Some raise cattle. When you drive down the gravel country roads the drivers of oncoming cars always wave hi as they pass.

This is small town America. Kansas has conservative booze laws and most bars can only serve beer with 3.2% alcohol, yet they are well-patronized. The main street appliance store survives despite the Walmart on the edge of town. Since I was here last summer, benches have sprung up all over town memorializing the deceased members of so many classes of Marysville High School. And why not paint a neo-primitive picture of the Wagon Wheel Cafe (where breakfast provides enough calories to last a week) on a circular saw blade?              

Happy 98th, Elvira

My wife's mother, Elvira Kruse, will be 98 years old on Tuesday. It's the reason we come out here every Thanksgiving. She's rather frail physically but her mind is perfectly sharp. She remembers many things that her children do not.

Here she is surrounded by two of her grandchildren, my daughter Emily on the left and niece Tricia upper left, and great grandchildren too numerous to name. (And there are many others.) Only my Madeleine is out of sorts.              

Cookie baking begins!

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The baking of Christmas cookies for the ca. 50 nuns, novices, and postulants of the Community of Grandchamp, plus many expected guests, has begun! 
And as a volunteer I got to help.  :)

Linking to Weekend Reflections.
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Thursday Arch Series, Plus Some Other Stuff

No pictures from Kansas yet, although there is lots to shoot today and tomorrow. So, a recent picture from STL. The view is from the northwest corner of the baseball stadium. On a sunny afternoon these four buildings march forward from the Arch. The middle two are the Hilton Hotel. The one on the left, the tallest building downtown (there's an understanding that nothing should be taller that the Arch), is a couple of blocks further back.

Out to the family farm  today.          

Sunset from Signal Hill

They say that you can't really say you've visited Cape Town if you haven't been up Table Mountain. We've done Table Mountain before and with a family of four it's a bit of an expensive exercise so on our whistle stop visit to the Mother City for the Cape Town Mega event we decided on the next best option.  Signal Hill.  Even better, Signal Hill at sunset.

The one thing we didn't quite think of was that it was a Saturday afternoon and the weather was great so just about half of Cape Town had the same thing in mind.  Traffic up was hectic and parking is limited.  Add to that a coach parked in the middle of the turning point at the top and cars squeezing into every available spot so the clever option was to park on the far side and cut across the top of Signal Hill on foot.  Something which turned out to be a wise move as leaving later on was much quicker from that side. 

The material covered take off area used by the paragliding outfit based up on Signal Hill makes for the ideal viewing site and as the sun started heading towards the horizon over the Atlantic Ocean, people took their places. 

There you have it, a beautiful Cape Town sunset over the sea.  Not many clouds, or more accurately just about nothing at all, meant no beautiful colours and painted skies, but still stunning never the less.  

The options to watch the sun setting over the Atlantic in Cape Town is many but I prefer Signal Hill because of all the added views of Table Mountain and the surrounding city.  But lesson learned.  Don't go on the weekend in peak season.

If You Haven't Finished Making Your Holiday Plans . . .

Why not consider Thanksgiving dinner at the Travel Centers of America truck stop in Foristell, Missouri, about 50 miles west of St. Louis? Hey, and you get $5 off at your next visit. Come back at Christmas!

Our stops on the way to Kansas City were a bit more frequent than usual due to a certain special passenger. She slept through most of central Missouri, though. Who wouldn't?

     

Fake Infrared

There are companies who swap out a sensor in a DLSR for one that uses infrared light. Theoretically, you could get the same dramatic results as infrared film. Years ago I did this to my old, old Canon 5D Mk I. Got some interesting shots but it was pretty fussy. Didn't keep it up.

This kind of image tends to get very bright leaves. Clear skies turn almost black. I found that I could get a similar effect just using the color sliders in the black and white adjustment tool in Photoshop. The subject is my favorite autumn tree in Forest Park.

Road trip today. Theme song for our destination here.          

Listen to the cow bells, on real Swiss cows!

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In Switzerland the cattle herds follow the good weather.
In summer they are taken to progressively higher alpages to live for a while.
Now, with snow on the Jura Mountains, they come down here to graze on the warmer plain. 

Today was the first time I heard the familiar din of cow bells out in the big field (grand champ, in French)!
I walked out from the Community of Grandchamp and into the field, walking carefully along the narrow muddy path in the middle of two fields, being careful not to touch the electric fence. 
I was so happy to see the pretty cows up close!
But how can each one stand wearing (and hearing) a big bell around their neck all their life??

Enjoy seeing and HEARING the videos!

(For ABC Wednesday, T is for tongues licking a salt-block.)
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And Just Next Door . . .

You can see this peeking through the right side of the second photo in yesterday's post. It's the side of the neighborhood post office. Apparently you can't have a proper wall in The Grove without it being painted. The sort of disjointed line-up reminds me of the work of one of my favorite contemporary artists, James Rosenquist.                    

The pretty sewer truck comes to Grandchamp

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Monday is a "desert day" of solitude and silence for the sisters of this contemplative community where I am volunteering.
On this quiet gray morning I was surprised to hear loud noises down in the courtyard.
I leaned out my window and saw this colorful truck!

The men opened all the manhole covers and made sure all was in order.

Even next to the centuries-old fountain that flows continually.

I like how the workmen in Switzerland are always happy to smile for a photo.  :)

A bit of excitement for a quiet day at the monastery.
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The Bethulie Concentration Camp cemetery - a sad part of our history

Bethulie in the southern Free State is one of those places not many people pass through as it's not really on any of the main thoroughfares going south (or north, depending how you look at it).  On my last trip up to Johannesburg I deviated off the normal route to see what this town on the banks of the Orange River is all about.  One of the things I found out was that Bethulie was the site of one of the most notorious concentration camps of the Anglo Boer War of 1899 to 1902.  I was shocked by the size of the Concentration Camp Cemetery Memorial and even more so when I saw all the names on the remembrance wall.

It turns out that even the English called the Bethulie camp "the hell camp" because of the shocking conditions Boer men, women and children were being held in.  The ravages of disease, starvation and extreme temperatures, enhanced by the bad administration of the camp, meant that the camp saw a death toll of 1 737 prisoners among its population of about 5 000 over the 13 months it existed between April 1901 and the end of the war in May 1902.  At one stage about 30 people a day was buried in the camp.  Truly shocking and it literally had me speechless as I stood reading the info around the memorial.  

The original camp and cemetery was located much closer to the river back in the days but all the graves were relocated to this position when the Gariep Dam (called the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam back then) was constructed in the 1960's.

At the top end of the cemetery is an enclosed area containing all the original hand-carved sandstone headstones which were removed from the old cemetery.  They've all been set into three walls and having a closer look at the information on them you suddenly realise how many children were among those who had dies in the camp.  Unfortunately the gate was locked tight so I couldn't get a closer look at all of them,

I drove away deeply touched.  The Anglo Boer War was such a significant event in the history of South Africa and yet so many of us never get to visit sites like this because it's often off the beaten track.  So next time you're on the main drag down to the beach fro your summer holidays, why not set a day aside and take some of the back roads.  You will come away the better for it.

Light Fuse Run Away

There is a new restaurant on Manchester Avenue in The Grove neighborhood called Firecracker Pizza & Beer. Good idea. Get those basic food groups checked off with a side of strong graphics. Black Cat is the name of a popular brand of firecrackers.

I like the "light fuse run away" concept. How perfectly juvenile.