Perhaps It's Just Me...

....but I find my family hilarious.  From our past family stories frolicking about the globe as a mass of personalities, to the small stories from nieces and nephews that cause me to guffaw, to the little email exchanges we send back and forth.  Here is one of those.  Red Bull and Leonidas anyone?

This set of emails is great because we lived in Brussels for four years from 1982-1986.  We have all returned at least once to reminisce, see old haunts, and walk around in awe.  Three must eats are Leonidas chocolates, une gauffre (a real Belgian waffle), and un cornet des frites avec une brochette (a cone of French fries with meat on a stick).  When my mother and I returned to Brussels two years ago for our first return visit, we ate chocolates, waffles and frites for four days, then I turned to her and asked if we could perhaps find a vegetable or a piece of fruit.  So hard to say no to Belgian delights!

Here are the emails:

______________________________

We are in the hotel in Brussels. One can get free internet in the lobby or pay 11.90 E in the room. So I just messed around in the room and found a free internet somewhere on this computer. I hope it lasts while we are here. We have the room until Sunday at 5 pm and the train leaves at 7 pm back to London.

I got a weekend special so breakfasts are free and everything in the bar fridge is free. The bar fridge stuff adds up to 25.50 E. So this may be the first time I drink Red Bull and I am just not sure about the 2 cans of Stella Artois. Wish one of the drinkers were here.

Somehow I forgot to pack any outside clothes. I have the pants I am wearing plus one extra top. I do have underclothes. How did I miss packing clothes and we have two suitcases with us.

The room here is lovely and large and Blvd Anspatch. It is the NH Atlanta. I stayed here with Arta and Zoe once. We are near the Bourse and very close to the Grand Place. I will look for the hole where there is a missing cobblestone that you snitched from the Grand Place Teague. You snitched it and then lost it somewhere.

Glen and Janet plus others who have stayed in Paris in the Edgar Quinet...the room has two large open doors onto the street which is 5 floors down. And we have lots of room to party. Next time we all come to Brussels, this is where we will stay. Leonidas is just down the block. Right now Greg and I are off the Chez Antoine's for frites and fried meat, no green stuff.

Wish you were here!

Love,
Wyona (my mother)

______________________________

Don't drink red bull! Too much caffeine. Have le fun!

- Lurene (my sister, who has the best family stories, including dancing for muny (money) in Brussels on the fence pedastal at our house)

______________________________

I'm so sad I lost that cobblestone. And Marcia's clarinet. Sad sad sad.

- Teague (my brother)

______________________________

Chez Brussels!

A grad student was headed there for a conference and I gave her a list of things to do including eat many Leonidas.

Consider this my request for a box of delicious Leonidas! Rub the good luck statue just off the Grand Place for me too.

I agree with leaving the Red Bull alone. Not a good drink choice. 

I was so jealous of that cobblestone! Taking one was such a good idea. Too bad it was lost along with a clarinet and the two seater bike and several wallets. :)

Hi ho, hi ho, its back to work I go...

- Tonia (me)

______________________________

... because it would have collected dust.

I took Charise's clarinet a few years ago, and it collected dust. Now Gabe is playing it in Gypsy. 5 lessons from his mother and he can play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star just long enough for the "Clarence the Clarinet Player" character.

Don't be sad. I have the piano. Everyone should be sad about that, except me.

I am tired. I need some red bull.

- Marcia (my sister, mother of three young children)

______________________________

...can't eat, can't sleep, can't even wash my feet. Won't someone please bring my hootoofootoo cobblestone ba-a-ack.

Can't wait to see the video you took of Gabe [while he was performing in Gypsy]. You snuck a camera in, right? The secret is to cover the red light.

Are the non-Bates sure they still want to be part of this heading?

- Teague (my brother who loses many things)

______________________________

It's in your bureau drawer, right by your favorite tooth.

And yes, on my cell phone there is a short 2 minute clip, please don't report me.

- Marcia

Computers Are Hot!

Monday night as I sat at my computer and typed out my thesis, Chapter 1, I found I could concentrate more with a bit of chocolate at my side.  Not surprising.  I did spend four of my most influential pre-teen years living in Brussels, Belgium, the chocolate heaven of Europe.  It is here thanks to Leonidas, Cote D'or, Neuhaus Chocolate, etc that I became a snob, a chocolate snob.  In most other realms of life, I reject snobbery as a most laughable, as I do not believe that things and objects make any one person more important or fabulous than another.  However, I am a chocolate snob.  I know the fake when I see it, touch it, smell it and taste it.  If is not refined, dignified, mouth wateringly melty and delightsome, no thanks.  I'll pass.  

This is why as I sat down to write and nibble I grabbed some Callebaut Chocolate out of my cupboard (I warned you.  Chocolate snob).  Even though the maker of said chocolates is Belgian, these are not chocolates from Belgium, but one quickly identifies a delicious substitute when one is so remote from ones country of influence (the snobbery deepens).  And so the process contined: write a little, think deeply, flip a page, mmmmm....ponder, write a bit more, reach of a piece of choco.....ick, what!

As it turns out, my milk chocolate was under the fan vent of my screen and unbeknownst to me had been melting before my eyes as my eyes had turned to my thesis.  Fingers IN the chocolate was not what I had in mind.  Fingers AROUND the chocolate was the actual goal.

I laughed.  I licked.  I stood up to take a picture.

Melted on left.  Solid and saved on right.

Note to self: melted chocolate is a tasty as the solid variety but not so conducive to focusing on the thesis.  Keep chocolate away from all computer cooling fans.

Off to do more writing.

Lobster, Grand Beach, Frozen Lake Winnipeg

The 39 New Things I am doing this year continues: 

My friend Christa's brother, Randy, came into town and the next thing I know they have planned a clambake on Grand Beach, one of the first places I was told to visit when I moved to Manitoba.  OK, maybe not a clambake, but not having every lived near an ocean since childhood, I can only make reference to the 1945 Rogers & Hammerstein musical, Carousel and the song "A Real Nice Clambake".  I sang this song on stage with the rest of the junior high and high school cast at the International School of Brussels in the mid-1980's.  Here I was years later going to my first real clam/lobster/mussel bake!

Listen to the song while you read:
This Was a Real Nice Clambake
by Rodgers and Hammerstein

Press play and keep reading!!!

The tricky part being the gag reflex that my body experiences when I try to eat seafood.  Then again, I reminded myself that I am trying new things and these two Nova Scotia native friends promised delightful lobsters, fresh from the coast, over an open fire on a beach.  Sounded like a fantabulous end to a long semester to me!  The trick was they only had three lobsters and I was an added forth.  A quick stop off at a local grocery store to pick up a fresh east-coast lobster solved that problem.  In a portable box, on the way out of the store I named him/her Blaire, after the young man questioning our lobster and 'smore-like purchases when spring had not yet arrived in the province.

Blaire in a box.

The ride out was longer than my other friend, Stephanie, and I expected but we arrived, lugged our assorted accoutrements around the 'do not cross' tape, after hitting my tall head on two 'be careful, do not enter' signs, we finally found the shore, friends and fire.  To my chagrin I shook my head and laughed at my strange country.  Is was the end of April, spring in many places in the world but Lake Winnipeg was still frozen over, with the shore only slightly showing signs of spring defrost.  Crazy cold country!

Lobsters cooking near a frozen Lake Winnipeg

I was elated when I found out not only were there lobsters a brewin', Christa and Randy had added garlic bread, corn, and mussels to the dinner menu.  With my intense knowledge of seafood and my clambake memories, I kept referring to the mussels as clams, but everyone kindly corrected me about 20 times over the course of the next 3 hours until I dropped 'clams' from my vocabulary.

The Feast!

These Nova Scotian's taught me how to cook, crack, dip, 

slurp, nibble and chew on lobster and I liked it!

The mussels (a.k.a. clams) were a little too fishy for me but I soldiered on.

Blair about the become dead and pink.

Randy stirring the mussel-clams ;)

We laughed, we cracked jokes, we stuffed our faces, 

we tried drying our synthetic wet socks on the fire....

Sock on marshmallow stick

Cleveland

Amongst the travels my family made one spot was Cleveland, Ohio.  We moved to the city in 1986 and left to move to Ottawa in 1990.  That provided me with enough time to begin Grade 9 and finish high-school completing Grade 12.  Interestingly enough we moved from Brussels, Belgium to Cleveland.  I know, odd really.  Two cities that I thought were polar opposites historically, in entertainment, architecturally, proximity to other countries, with respect to languages, in culture and in the ways of chocolate, frites and gaufres.  Needless to say, in my eyes after four years in both cities, in a list of two cities, Cleveland was not at the top.

After spending time as an adult near Brussels, I realized that each city has more in common that I once thought.  Both cities are largely overlooked as people plan travels or consider a place to live; I found friends in both cities with whom I am still in contact; each city has its respective although somewhat different entertainment activities; both specialize in amazing musical acts that sucked up much of my hard earned babysitting money.  In all, both cities made their mark on this one soul.

Returning to the point of being an over looked city, here is a cry out for help from one of Cleveland's most well-known supporters, Drew Carey, questioning the continued decline of Cleveland and attempting to find alternative ways to revitalize a large and wonderful place on Lake Erie.  While I do not agree with the documentary's opinion about education and increasing the number of charter schools (the best way to suck the public system dry of many good students, teachers and administrators), the show does raise interesting questions about the best practices involved in revitalizing and growing an already established city.  During some moments, I kind wanted to move back......

  

!WAR

Recently on the website 'big think', Bob Duggan reviewed the movie '!Women Art Revolution'.  He tells the reader about one women's documentary journey, Lynn Hershman Leeson, filming 42 years of women fighting the battle of being under-represented in the art world.  The film is being premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this January, a festival in my list of 'must do's before six feet under'.  In hopes that the film comes by the way of a film festival or other event to Winnipeg, I hope to see it in the next year.

My love of the visual arts was instilled in my soul as a young child living in Brussels, with parents who ensured their children received a first hand education in art as we toured European art galleries.  I have fond memories of asking my mother about certain paintings, and feeling a whisper on and in my ear of the symbolism of a particular piece of art, the reasons for it being painted a certain way, and even why there were so many nude and semi-nude people in European art.  All queries of a young mind.

As an young adult I moved to Canadian cities where the art world was small and lost contact with my childhood memories and connection with the visual beauty of another person's creativity.  Visits to Ottawa and Montreal and their respective museums rekindled my love of art.  During my first brief trip to New York City, I walked through the MoMa, MET and other galleries to build on my knowledge of art which had deepened to an appreciation of not only Medieval, Renaissance, and other European art, but also a further respect towards Surrealism, Abstract art, Pop art and now Contemporary art.  While in the NYC galleries I had a sense that I was missing something, though I could not ascertain what what it was.  After three days of meandering through various forms of art I realized I was missing my mother's voice in my ear, providing me with information and answering my queries.  I was now an adult and had to provide the answers to my questions through my own research and thoughts.  The adjustment to the missing voice was not easy.

Building on my childhood knowledge and developing my own art voice, I was intrigued when I say a group of women in the NYC streets with make-shift small stands, in odd costumes, asking people to complete their art survey.  Being willing to participate in other people's work it slowly dawned on me that this was not an academic survey, but a rouse of different stations, each one enlightening the participant to the lack of women artists represented in museums and art galleries in New York.  As it turned out, these interesting, vibrant and intelligent women were part of the Guerrilla Girls movement showing us at the end of the survey, that there are large numbers of female artists but their work is presented in on a fraction of major art galleries and museums in New York City.  I had no idea.

This group along with many other individual artists are featured in Leeson's movie, which is one documentary not to be missed.

(Copied from http://www.guerrillagirls.com/posters/getnakedshanghai.shtml)

Hint of Mint

When one spends four years of life at an impressionable age in Belgium, chocolate snobbery becomes a way of life.  My palette prefers raspberry and chocolate, or strawberry and chocolate, but I am definitely a high quality chocolate person (Leonidas being a family favourite).  Brussels chocolatiers make some of the world's most decadent and pure chocolate on the planet.  Manon being their very special delectable invention.  As an adult, the thought of the common variety chocolate sold in middle class stores (or anything Hershey related) causes my gag reflex to kick in.  Chocolate snob, all the way through, and I am not the only one:

Chocolate Around the World:  

Canadians recently dealt with the international banking crisis by binging on chocolate imported from Europe and the US, as our consumption increased by 2.7% in 2009.  - Suite 101.com
Top Chocolate Loving Nations are (pounds per year consumed):

1)  Switzerland  22.36

2)  Austria  20.13

3)  Ireland  19.47

4)  Germany  18.04

5)  Norway  17.93

- World Atlas of Chocolate