What's in a name?

In my last couple of trips to my Georgia house I concentrated on cleaning out the garage which was totally full. It's almost empty now. But thousands of books are still there. When I pass by a bookshelf, I'll pick one up at random. As I leafed through a book of quotations, I read the well known Shakespeare's quotation from Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Scene ii.) "What's in a name..."

The 4 1/2 hour drive back to Nashville gave me time to ponder on this quote and all its meanings ... roses...I had a rose garden in Georgia... I grew more than 150 rose cultivars: hybrid teas, floribunda, polyantha, a climber, a rambler, old-fashioned or heirlooom roses and grandiflora. One of my favorite roses was a strong tall bush, a grandiflora named Queen Elizabeth, with glorious pink blooms (as shown below.) I could see it from my kitchen window. It was introduced in 1954 to mark the Queen's coronation in 1953.

This royal rose was well named. My garden is long gone; now I just have a framed drawing of this regal rose. But maybe when I have more time I'll introduce this rose to my Nashville garden. I used to belong to the Deep South District of the Rose Society in Atlanta. At monthly meetings we would discuss roses and have a great time - I went there for years. Members were usually much older than me and came from every walk of life - we were united by our love of roses. It was a kind and fun crowd sharing rose information. I miss them. I still have the silver platter I won for 1st prize as a novice in the Atlanta Rose Show with my rose Mr. Lincoln.

"I don't know whether nice people tend to grow roses or growing roses makes people nice." (Roland A. Browne, American author.)

The names of my roses escaped me but last week I found a list of my roses. Below are top left The Peace Rose next to Dortmund (a rambler,) below left is Chrysler Imperial next to The Cherokee Rose, which is Georgia's official state "floral emblem."

In the Shakespeare's play, Juliet is telling Romeo that names are inconsequent and trivial. I take issue with this. Names are part of our identity, they influence us and how others perceive us. They can carry familial and cultural connections. Other people can make judgments or assumptions about us through our name. This reminds me that years ago, when I was expecting my first child, my husband told me that if the baby was a boy he liked the name Colin. The baby would be registered at the French Embassy as a French citizen through me, and then as a US citizen through my husband. The name of the child should sound fine in both languages and colin, in French, is a fish, a pollock, a cousin of the cod. The colin/pollock fish is popular with cooks because of its mild taste and flaky texture.

My grandparents came often to eat with us on Sundays in Paris and my mother would usually start the meal with a cold "colin" mayonnaise, as shown below.

I could not call my newborn a fish in French. Altough maybe with some French people who understand English, it might not sound so bad, but my French relatives did not speak English. Fortunately, our first baby was a girl (our second child was a girl as well.) In English, as well, names can be a problem, as I learnt at work. During my first ten years at Lockheed-Martin I was in charge of trainees coming to our plant to study our cargo aircraft the C-130 Hercules. My first duty when the trainees arrived was to draw a list of their names, birth dates, check their IDs or passports if they were from overseas so our Security Department could issue entrance badges to them. One time I made a list of Mexican trainees. I picked up the name of their country from their passports. As you can see from the picture below, it says "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" so I translated it as "United States of Mexico." Below map of Mexico overlaid on map of the USA.

Oh my! I received a telephone call from an irate Security Officer telling me that I had made a grave error in my document. He told me that only the United States of America can use the term "United States" and certainly not Mexico. He was returning my document and wanted me to correct the country's name. I was not sure what to call it. One of the Mexican trainees was standing near me and explained that they are aware of how defensive and possessive the USA is about the term "united states" and refuses for any other country to use it. He added that they translate it in English as the United Mexican States, placing the "united" first and "states" last to avoid hurting sensibilities here. So this is what I did. You see, names are important and can cause problems. Whatever one wishes to call the country of Mexico, it does have many states - 32 I believe. A photo of Mexico overlaid over Europe shows that it is a large country. (Click on collage to enlarge.)

Some countries are very strict about baby names; they even have laws on it. Denmark provides a list of 7,000 pre-approved names for parents to pick. If parents have another name in mind that is not on the list they will have to get special permission that will be reviewed by government officials. In Germany the first name must show the gender of the child, so you cannot use last names. The name must also be approved by the Standesamt (German Civil registration office.) If the name is not approved, you can appeal; if you lose you can submit another name and pay a fee. In Iceland the name has to be accepted by the "naming committee." It must contain letters in the Iceland alphabet and fit with the language, must be gender specific and won't embarrass the child in the future. In Sweden the Tax Agency has to approve the name, and it will be rejected if deemed not suitable. Portugal has banned the shortened versions of names as official names, so you can name you son Frederic but not Fred, and they also have a 4,000 list of prohibited names. In France, Napoleon Bonaparte created a law in 1803 showing which names were acceptable. In 1993 this law was repealed but if the registrar believes the chosen name could be damaging to the child's interest, he or she can refuse to confirm the name; the court needs to provide further consideration. But there are still banned names in France.

In 2015, a French couple wished to name their newborn girl "Nutella" afer the chocolate spread. (Photo above courtesy Imperial Sugar.) A judge denied their request stating that other children might mock her. The judge approved the name Ella instead (take it or not...) In France children cannot have the last name of a parent as a first name. Other names rejected were: Automne (fall in English) Joyeux (happy in English) Vanille (vanilla) Gentil (kind in English) Ravi (Indian name.) The name Manhattan was denied because it is the name of a known place. In the US I have heard people called after names of places, such as Lorraine (a French province) and its capital Nancy (a city) Rochelle (a French town by the sea) Chelsea (a London neighborhood) Paris (a capital) Africa (a continent) Asia, etc.

Most countries will not approve names that could be "detrimental to the child's interests" and have ratified the legally-binding international agreement of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) adopted in 1989. It acknowledges that children have basic fundamental rights. You can read it here . It is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history with 194 countries having done so. Only three countries have not ratified this human treaty: Somalia, South Sudan and the United States of America. The US says that it could interfere in the private lives of families, such as discipline. But then I found out that Former President Jimmy Carter signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) on July 17, 1980, and this treaty has never been ratified by the United States of America either. Could it be the reverse then, that the US state can interfere in the private lives of women? This treaty has been ratified by 189 countries. The countries that have not are: Iran, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, Tonga and the USA. But people can name their babies anything they wish here in this country.

Some US celebrities have given their poor children outrageous names - after cardinal points, seasons, colors, and more, such as Sage Moonblood, Audio Science, Bronx Mowgli, Denim and North. I found a list with appalling names given legally to US babies in 2022, such as Furious, Renegade, Billion, Luxury, Envy, Whiskey, Paradise, Exit, Handsome, Capone, Corleone (after the Godfather movie) Fairy, Rooster. How would you like to be named any of those? A name is powerful; it is an important part of our identity and should not be trivialized.

The top red rose was my winning Mr. Lincoln rose. I think "rose" is a good name for the flower, it is the same in French and English and calls to mind a delicate plant with lovely blooms and fragrance. If we changed the name of the rose to "cockroach" or "dung beetle" it might still smell as sweet as Juliet said, but would its image be as evocative and meaningful? No, let's keep calling it a rose, shall we?

End of Summer 2016, kudzu and Bucatini all'Amatriciana

The calendar tell us we are in autumn already.  Here, it still feels like summer, albeit the end of it.  Last Sunday the temperature was 93 F (33.8 C) but this week we are starting to have a "cold front" which means the temperature will be in the low 80s F (28 C.)  The little flowers you can see in my heading picture bloom in late summer and have a pleasant sweet fragrance.  What type are they? you may ask.  They are flowers of the Pueraria montana plant, from the pea family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae, or in plain English, they are the flowers of the kudzu vine.  (Click on collage twice to embiggen.)

I understand you can make jelly from these kudzu flowers, but I certainly don't want that many vines in our front yard as kudzu is invasive and will kill trees.  In the top photo in the collage above you can see a large black pipe in the background.  The county Water Commission cut over 30 of our trees (see pictures in my January post here) and their machinery propagated the kudzu vines to our front yard.  Kudzu is from Southeast Asia and was introduced in the US in 1876 as an ornamental shrub then later on, in the Southern US, to feed goats and as an erosion control.  But it grows rapidly and will cover everything in its path.  There was a field close to our house with a small abandoned house in the center of it.  Within 2 or 3 summers the field was totally covered with kudzu and the house was just a bump in the field.  Below are some photos from a road about one mile away, kudzu around our mailbox and climbing on pine trees in our front yard.  (The barn covered in kudzu courtesy UGA.)

Throughout August the Water Commission worked on our road, digging and installing big water pipes for their water main.  They even used dynamite which made our house shake.  They also cut our cable often and toward the end of August, for over 10 days, we had no cable access (no TV, no computer) from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm.  Some days we could not get out of our driveway for hours, or get back home.

I took pictures as the work progressed.  It was noisy and dusty.

But the summer had some highlights - such as the Tour de France which I followed on TV.  In the evenings, from August 5 through 21, we watched the Olympic Games held in Rio de Janeiro.  The U.S. women's gymnastics team was spectacular, as well as champion swimmer Michael Phelps.  Congratulations to the athletes of Team America for winning 121 medals.  It was fun to watch small countries winning medals, such as Ahmad Abughaus, 20 years old, who won the first medal in the history of Jordan, in men's taekwondo.  Dilshod Nazarov of Tajikistan won the Olympic men's hammer title and captured the first gold medal for the Central Asian country since it gained its independence with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.  Majlinda Kelmendi made history by becoming the first athlete from Kosovo to win an Olympic medal (the first medal since Kosovo became a state in 2008.)  The Fiji men's rugby team finally landed their country its first medal, a gold one, when Fiji beat its former colonial ruler, Britain, by 43-7.

How about France's golden boxing couple?  France's Tony Yoka won the gold medal against Britain's Joe Joyce.  Tony is the first Frenchman to win gold in boxing heaviest division.  His girl-friend, Estelle Mossely, competed in the women's lightweight boxing match against Chinese boxer Yin Junhua and won the gold as well.  Tony and Estelle are planning to be married, and France is super excited = boxing and love! C'est magnifique!

But not everything was fun and love this summer.  There was the terrible tragedy in Nice, France.  When a tragedy happens in one's country, a city visited many times, it seems to hurt more.  We see so much bad news on TV that, unfortunately, we often cannot grieve as well for unknown parts of the world.  One year I purchased my flight on Delta Airlines months before flying to Paris to see my mother.  Then Delta had a sale.  They gave me a coupon for the difference in price.  The coupon turned out to be the same price as a round-trip flight to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  So, I flew there, by myself, and stayed several days.  Baton Rouge means "red stick" in French.  It was translated by explorer Sieur d'Iberville and his exploration party in 1699 from the native term "Istrouma" or the Choctaw "iti humma" which means red pole.  I took photos with my old film camera and also purchased postcards.  Here are some below.

I rented a car and visited many historic plantations along the Mississippi River.  I'll try to find my old film photos and if some are OK I'll have a post later on.  Below is a postcard showing some of them: Nottoway, Houmas House, Oak Alley, Destrehan and San Francisco plantations.

In mid-August I was so sad to watch on the news the extreme flooding in and around Baton Rouge.  It was difficult to look at the devastation - 60,000 homes damages or destroyed in Louisiana.  I remembered the city well with its friendly citizens.  I had even spoken French with several Cajun families.  Below are some photos showing the flooded Baton Rouge area (courtesy Baton Rouge Advocate newspaper.)

In high school in France we had to study two foreign languages: 1) English or German, 2) German or English, Spanish, Russian or Italian.  I took English as my first language and Italian as my second.  We were about 37 in my English class, but only 3 students in my Italian class.  Consequently, I spoke much better Italian than English when I finished high school.  I had an Italian pen-pal who invited me to stay in her home for several summer vacations and I went there during the months of July and August.  She lived on the bank of the Adriatic Sea in the town of San Benedetto del Tronto.  I remember when I arrived there the first time I was in awe.  Coming from grey Paris here was a town with palm trees and flowers in the avenues and a turquoise colored sea.  I did take pictures, but they were small and in black and white.  But here are some old postcards below.  I placed a blue dot under Ancona (under San Marino, on the right) in the region of the Marches, to show where San Benedetto is located.

The parents of my pen-pal Marisa, had a farm/winery inland also, in the surrounding area of Ascoli Piceno, near Arquata del Tronto (shown in pictures below.)  The Tronto is a river that ends in San Benedetto del Tronto.  We would drink the wine from their farm and it was very good.  They had a rose wine, like a sherry, in which we would place pieces of peaches and then eat and drink this as a dessert.  They also had an amber colored wine, sweet and strong, which was a good accompaniment to smoked ham and melon.  I was able to achieve a similar taste with a Serrano ham, a "melorange" melon from Arizona and a glass of Ipsus Pantelleria Passito.

On August 23, 2016, at night, before turning the light off I checked my iPad and saw that there had been an earthquake in central Italy at 9:36 pm US Eastern time, or 3:36 am August 24, in Italy.  I stayed up to find out where this earthquake had been.  The epicenter of the 6-2-magnitude quake was in Accumoli, 9 miles from Arquata del Tronto (where the family had their farm/winery.)

The next several days I was on the computer as much as possible (whenever the Water Commission did not turn our cable off...)  reading on Italian internet sites.  This quake caused the death of 297 people and flattened most of Arquata del Tronto, Amatrice and Accumoli.  Many injured were taken to hospitals in San Benedetto del Tronto, 44 miles away (71 km.)  Such a terrible tragedy - I'm deeply saddened by the loss of life and all the destruction.  (Pictures below courtesy La Repubblica.)

What a devastating loss for these close-knit communities that have been there for centuries.  These picturesque mountain villages are sparsely populated.  As you can see by my collage above most buildings have crumbled.  I heard an old man saying on TV "il mio paese non esiste piu" /my village does not exist anymore.  It is heartbreaking.  I read an article talking about the seniors living in these villages, saying (in Italian and I translate)  "...Old people who have lived their whole lives in familiar four walls saw them collapse in a matter of seconds.  They are lost in the crowd of desperate people who have lost everything, like them.  Almost.  Because when you're old you no longer have the time to reconstruct a different life.  You do not have time to get used to a house that is not yours, and that you never knew.  No time.  And perhaps not even want to.  They are left there to watch the ruin of their past and the massacre of their future..."  Below are photos of Amatrice from before (on left) and after the earthquake (on right,) courtesy USA Today.

I went to look at the internet site of the city of Amatrice, which had been voted last year as one of Italy's most beautiful historic villages.  It still showed an ad for their upcoming festival for the 50th anniversary (on August 27 and 28) of their famous sauce for spaghetti called Spaghetti all'Amatriciana (invented by local shepherds in the Middle Ages.)  I copied the artwork you can see below.  It also showed the welcoming sign, at the entry of the town which said "Amatrice, 955 meters above sea level, citta' degli spaghetti all'amatriciana/city of the spaghetti a l'amatriciana."

But the festival did not take place, alas.  For a sad remembrance of their beautiful festival and to honor the people of Amatrice I drove to the DeKalb Farmers' Market in Atlanta (40 miles away/64 km) to buy the necessary ingredients to make Bucatini all'amatriciana.  It is a classic, simple but hearty Italian pasta dish.  The dish has six ingredients: bucatini pasta, not spaghetti (bucatini pasta is thick and hollow,) guanciale (cured pig jowl) but pancetta can be used, pecorino cheese, red pepper, white wine and genuine tomatoes from San Marzano.  I added a small onion in mine.  I was pleased to find the bucatini pasta and a genuine can of imported San Marzano tomatoes.  It did not take long to cook and it was delicious, but bittersweet.

I wished to finish the end of the 2016 summer with something positive.  To bring these villages back to life, they should not be just names on a map.  There was joy there, the love of good food; so we need to keep alive their famous pasta sauce, Amatriciana (there are many recipes on the internet.)  (for those who wish to help, here is a link to ItalianAmericanRelief.org .)

I hope all my blogging friends had a good summer 2016, filled with good memories.

Above is a photo of the Frecce Tricolori (Tricolor Arrows) the aerobatic demonstration team of the Italian Air Force (the Aeronautica Militare Italiana.)  This is to express my sympathy to the members of the Italian Air Force (I enjoyed working with them for almost ten years) and to Italy.

Recollection - Music from South Africa

Since last Thursday, December 5th, 2013, we have been mourning the passing of Nelson Mandela.  We have seen many of his pictures on television, read about him and listened to recollection of people who knew him or had met him.  It is a sad day for South Africa and for the rest of the world as it is difficult to say "goodbye" to such a great human being, but he will live in our hearts.

In many countries, including the United States and France, flags are flying at half-mast in tribute to Nelson Mandela.  I read that Archbishop Desmond Tutu asked the people of South Africa to unite in mourning as members of one family.  And indeed there was celebration for the life of Tata (father - the name the people have given him,) with singing and dancing in the streets of Soweto and other towns.  Listening to the music and songs of Soweto made me recollect all the years I have loved the music from South Africa.

Many years ago, when I was a teenager living in France, my teenage friends would listen to rock and roll or popular music but I listened to jazz.  As I mentioned in earlier posts one of the reasons I went to tour the United States was to listen to some good jazz, and I did (see my post here on San Francisco.) I was married on Saturday June 17, 1967 - that was the day one of my favorite jazz musicians was playing at the Monterey Pop Festival.  His name was Hugh Masekela, jazz trumpeter, composer and singer.  He was born in 1939 in South Africa but had left the country in 1960 because of the cruelty of the apartheid state.  In 1964 he had married another great artist from South Africa - the singer Miriam Makeba (they divorced later on.)  In the late 1960s I saw Miriam Makeba in concert in San Francisco,  Through her I started to enjoy listening to South African music such as Xhosa and Zulu songs.  I have several of her albums and CDs.  My favorite songs are "Pata Pata" and "Malaika."

Miriam Makeba (1932-2008) campaigned against the South African apartheid system.  The government retaliated against her by revoking her South African passport and her citizenship.  She was without a country.  In 1985 France made her "Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres" (Commander of Arts and Letters) and followed, in 1990, by giving her French citizenship.  After his release from prison, Nelson Mandela convinced Miriam to return to South Africa.  She went back using her French passport.  She was called "Mama Africa."  Nelson Mandela said "She deserves her title of Mama Africa.  She was the mother of our struggle and our young nation."

In 1987 Hugh Masekela wrote a song which quickly became a hit.  It was called "Bring him back home."  Nelson Mandela was a fan of Hugh Masekela and was successful in sending, from his cell, a birthday card to Masekela.  Masekela was so pleased and moved that he wrote this piece of music which became like an anthem for the people pushing for Mandela's freedom from jail.  I bought the cassette then and used to play it constantly in my car.  The song was in the cassette called "Tomorrow."  When I would stop my car at a red light, people hearing me sing about Mandela would look at me suspiciously.  Georgia is a conservative Republican state and at the time Ronald Reagan was president.  He had voted against the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, a bill that called for sanctions and travel restrictions to South Africa and for the release of political prisoners, Nelson Mandela included.  The melody is joyful and upbeat.  I remember at the time, I had a red Fuego Renault 1982, and would have the cassette in the car and sing along, loudly, with Masekela.

"Bring back Nelson Mandela,

Bring him back home to Soweto

I want to see him walking down the streets of South Africa - Tomorrow!"

When Nelson Mandela was released three years later, Hugh Masekela made a tour of the US and included this song in his repertoire.  I found out that in June 1990 Hugh Masekela would be performing in Atlanta at the National Black Arts Festival.  I certainly was going to drive to the streets of Atlanta to watch him.  My friend Charlotte agreed to come with me and so we went to Auburn Avenue, near the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center and watched the performance, free, on the street.  It was so much fun!  I may have been just one of a very few white people there but the celebration, the singing, the camaraderie around us was unbelievable.   I took some photos with my film camera, they are not very good, but they give an idea of what it was like.

 Masekela played "Bring him back home" and all of us sang and danced with him.

In March of 1988 a team from Safair, a South African cargo freight airline came to train in my company.  I was the customer trainee coordinator then.  I had never met people from South Africa and was a bit apprehensive.  They were very nice and friendly - we did not talk politics, of course.  Here they are below at a restaurant - one of them had brought his wife to tour the US after the training.  They invited me to come and visit them in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where they lived.  I told them, maybe in several years.  I'd like to go now.

In 1988 a South African musical called "Sarafina!" premiered on Broadway in New York and closed in 1989 after 597 performances.  It was nominated for the 1988 Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Choreography and Best Direction of a Musical.  It is set in South Africa during the 1976 Soweto riots.  A demonstration started by high school students protesting apartheid ends up into a brutal scene with many students killed by the police.  The music is uplifting though.  It shows how the teenagers are standing up for freedom, how they hope for better times and their inspiration in Nelson Mandela.  It is moving and cheerful at the same time.  It was written by Mbongeni Ngema with additional musical numbers by Hugh Masekela.  The musical came to Atlanta at the Fox Theatre.  My husband and I went to see it - the audience was 98% African-American - I wished the audience had been more diverse to listen to this musical celebrating human rights with great music and choirs.  I bought the cassette and played it often.

Hugh Masekela celebrated his 74th birthday earlier this year.  Last year, on July 18, 2012, he played for the 94th birthday celebration of his friend, Nelson Mandela.  He played again "Bring him back" with the Graceland Band and slightly changed lyrics.  So much has happened since I purchased my cassette in 1987 (I am surprised that it is still in a good enough state to listen to it...)  Freedom has come to South Africa, because of Nelson Mandela and also because of the help he received from all those exiled South African artists keeping apartheid and the oppressed in the international public eye and ear.

I have been listening to all my old cassettes and CDs on the music of South Africa.  I am sorry that my music recollection came about because of the passing of Nelson Mandela.  Our world is going to be poorer without him.

"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." - Nelson Mandela

So let's celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela.  Let us try to bring more justice and equality in the US and other parts of the world.  He said:

"Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity; it is an act of justice.  Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural.  It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.  Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great.  YOU can be that great generation.  Let your greatness blossom."  and    "While poverty persists, there is no true freedom."  N. Mandela.

The fight against poverty is difficult, especially in our highly indoctrinated country.  Negative and attack ads paid by billionaires and corporation lobbyists bombard the airwaves and television channels (owned by large corporations, too) against helping the poor and only for the benefit of the uber wealthy.  Some of the lowest wages are paid by many of the richest corporations in the US.

 "His day is done,

is done.

The news came on the wings of a wind, reluctant to carry its burden.

Nelson Mandela's day is done.

The news, expected and still unwelcome, reached us in the United States, and suddenly our world became somber.

Our skies were leadened.

His day is done ... No sun outlasts its sunset, but it will rise again and bring the dawn.

Yes, Mandela's day is done, yet we, his inheritors, will open the gates wider for reconciliation, and we will respond generously to the cries of Blacks and Whites, Asians, Hispanics, the poor who live piteously on the floor of our planet.

We will not forget you, we will not dishonor you, we will remember and be glad that you lived among us, that  you taught us, and that you loved us all. "  

Maya Angelou, American poet

Recollections and some news

What with trips to New Orleans, New York, Nashville and other places, spring went by very quickly. But spring is still here, even though it feels like summer already because of the warm weather. The start of summer is on June 20th. I was going to write a post on spring flowers but we have been home for a few days and I caught up with the news. I still would like to show our very pretty hydrangea shrub. We bought it at a The Hydrangea Festival in LaGrange, a town in mid-Georgia. It has white star-like flowers on the outside and a bunch of tiny blue buds inside. I believe it is called “Blue Bunny” a cultivar of the species involucrate or bracted hydrangea (hortensia in French.) I showed the flower in my top picture and here is the little shrub below.



This spring there was some sad news and some good news. Some of the news made me nostalgic; I’ll explain why. Growing up I was surrounded by music. There was the radio or my father playing the piano. My mother loved dancing and taught me how to dance when I was 4 years old. When she heard a tango or a Viennese waltz on the radio she would call me and we would dance. My father having been badly injured in WW2 could not dance with her anymore. I loved all the Johann Strauss, Jr. waltzes we danced.

The Viennese Waltz by Vladimir Pervuninsky, Russian, born in 1957

Later on, as a teenager I really enjoyed listening to all types of music – the dancing music, opera and classical music, and most of all jazz. I also bought many records, 45 rpm and 33 long players of French singers, like those shown below: Joe Dassin, Georges Moustaki, Demis Roussos, Hughes Aufrey, Georges Brassens, Serge Gainsbourg, Edith Piaf and many others.

One of my favorite singers was, and still is, the French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour. I had many records of his songs and now I have CDs too.



I brought all these old records with me when I moved to the US. When I met my husband in San Francisco, he introduced me to the music he liked, which was folk music like Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Collins, Richard and Mimi Fariña, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and others. He also listened to bluegrass music. So these were other genres of music I started to listen to with him. It was with sadness that I heard that one of the great musicians we listened to, and still do, just passed away. His name was Doc Watson. He was a guitarist, singer and songwriter. He won seven Grammy awards and several others. He died on May 29, 2012 – he was 89 years old. He played traditional folk, bluegrass, blues and gospel music. Below is a picture of him, courtesy Getty Images.



Doc Watson was from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and like so many people from that area he was a born storyteller. He was blind since one year old of age. Doc Watson was an authentic artist. He had a flat-picking style for playing his guitar - his fingers were so quick and the sound so smooth. We spent many hours listening to him.

“Just one of the People” 2011 Sculpture in Boone, North Carolina created by Alex Hallmark (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

In the clip below of an old video he sings “Deep River Blues.”





In 1982 I started working in an aircraft manufacturing company and for the first 14 years, until 1996, my position was to be the “liaison” between the company and foreign trainees who came to study and to learn how to maintain the aircraft their governments or companies had purchased. Three weeks after I began working there sixty trainees came from Algeria. None spoke English – just Algerian and French. I had to find housing for them, take them to driving school, doctors, show them around our town and be like their “big sister.” Here I am below in an old photo with a group leaving for an end of year vacation. I think about 50 of them left that day but I am shown here with only 14 of the trainees.




At first, and until they started to speak some English, I would go with them to movies or discos. My husband did not come because he does not like to dance, but my assistant and I would often dance. The singer who really made our crowd dance was Donna Summer. Here is a photo of her below (author unknown.)




She won the Grammy Award five times because of her innovative style and beautiful mezzo-soprano voice. In December 2009 she performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway. Donna died on May 17th, 2012 at age 63. She had a tremendous voice as well as class and style. Her funeral was held in Nashville, Tennessee. When I heard about it I still could see us dancing in Atlanta while she sang her hits like “Bad Girl” and others. Another era is gone. Below is a clip of Donna Summer singing “Hot Stuff.”





It is so hard to see such talented artists leaving us. Another one who passed away on May 8th, 2012, was the author and illustrator Maurice Sendak. He was 83 years old. His book “Where the Wild Things are” published in 1963 was a classic. Even though he said that he did not write for children, he told stories that delighted children. He wrote and illustrated dozens of books as well as operas.



Last January Maurice Sendak appeared twice on the TV comedy show “The Colbert Report.” I watched both segments then. It was brilliant. Sendak was gruff, grumpy and funny with a dark sense of humor – a unique fellow. He had great repartee to Colbert. When Colbert asked him if he liked writing children’s books he replied “I don't write for children, I write, and then someone says, 'That's for children.'" Below is Maurice Sendak with his dog Herman, named after Melville (photo courtesy of Annie Leibovitz and Vanity Fair.)




Here is another line from Sendak : "I didn't set out to make children happy or make life easier for them ... I like [children] as few and far between as I do adults. Maybe a bit more because I really don't like adults at all." He may sound mean but he was very charitable. After his 50-year longtime companion, the psychoanalyst Dr. Eugene Glynn, died Sendak donated $1 million to the clinic where Dr. Glynn treated young people. When people we like and admire leave us, a little bit of us goes away with them too. Here is a rose for their remembrance - the rose Mister Lincoln flowering in our garden this week.



But there were some good news too, such as the election of the new president of France Francois Hollande. Well, the future will tell if he can redress the mistakes that former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a good friend of George W. Bush, made with his conservative regime. The best news, of course, is that the current president of the United States, Barack Obama, has declared that he supports same-sex marriage. This is not a religious or moral issue; this is an issue of equal rights. The law does not say “equal but separate” or equal unless the Bible says…, or the Koran says… or any other religious book says… something to the contrary. Hatred based on religion is not admissible in a “free” country. When America affirms that there is liberty for all, then simply - there should be liberty for all, equal rights for all, with all citizens enjoying the same benefits. That’s it.

All men are created equal Line from the Declaration of Independence (public domain)

In North America, Canada has legalized same-sex marriage in 2005. I have not read on Canadian blogs that it has harmed heterosexual marriages in any way. Many states are trying to legalize bigotry and hatred – this should not be a state issue anyway - same-sex marriages should be legal under Federal law. When I became a US citizen I read the Declaration of Independence and remember that it says : “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.….” All US Citizens, regardless of sex, color, religion, age, national origins have the same rights to happiness – it is equal protection under the law. In a 1967 decision the Supreme Court said that no state could prohibit mixed-race marriages because “marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man.’ And it is – it is a civil and human right.

Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull, American 1756-1843