Snowy days in Cobb County, Georgia

During the bad winter storm two weeks ago in Metro Atlanta on January 28 and 29, 2014 (see my last post here,) we did not drive, but we walked.  I brought my cameras and took some pictures along the way.  About 3 houses up on the other side of our street are a couple of old barns.  Then on our side of the street, about 2 houses up, is a large red house with white columns - we do not know who lives there.  Actually we hardly know any neighbors (even though we have lived here since 1976) as the houses are not very close to each other.  (Click on photos and collages twice to enlarge.)

Adjacent to our house is a large piece of land with a lake.  There are four houses around the lake, I think.  When we moved to our house years ago there was one house only - a teenager there used to babysit our daughters from time to time.  We had to drive her back to her house on the far side of the lake.  We can see the lake from our house in winter when there are no shrubs or leaves on the trees.  On that stormy morning I came behind my cat Mitsuko to take some pictures from our kitchen window.  There is a screen outside the window so the photos are not clear.  Mitsuko did not want to move as she was looking intently at birds.  You can see part of the lake behind our barn in the center picture below.

We walked to the lake.  It is especially pretty in winter when there is snow.  Some ice was floating on the surface of the lake.

We walked along the side of the lake toward several ducks.  We observed them for quite a while - they did not pay any attention to us.

Across the lake we could see someone shoveling snow off a driveway with a dog nearby.  The dog started to run along the lake and came to greet us.  He was very friendly and walked with us until he started to dig, near the lake, and found a bone that he must have hid there long ago.  Then he trotted back to his home with his bone, tightly held between his teeth (bottom left picture below.)

We turned around and slowly came back.  It was sunny but still below freezing.

It was beautiful and peaceful there.  We saw a Bluebird fly away - I tried to take its picture - I did, and you can see him below.  We walked home from the back of our barn.

While we were at the lake we saw a car parked - I think it was a Jeep.  Later, as we walked away, the driver stopped to introduce himself and told us that he and his family had been neighbors for the last seven years.  We exchanged email addresses.  Later when he returned with his wife, who had been stranded in her car, he stopped and introduced her.  So now we know one set of neighbors, and that is nice.

Once back at home I thought I saw a Bluebird by the driveway, but it was a Blue Jay.  He was pretty anyway.

This past winter storm, named Leon, has been terrible for many people, but I was pleased to see snow again.  On Saturday February 1st, we drove to the little lake by the Senior Center to see if there was some snow left, but there was not.  By then it had melted.  The lake still had some ice on its surface though.

I thought that now we would have to wait another three years or more to see snow again.  Wrong!  Last Tuesday, February 11th, 2014, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed advised residents of the Metro Atlanta area to stay home.  I watched TV and news on my computer - another storm was coming named Pax.  People were rushing to stores to buy supplies - snow shovels were in high demand (we do not possess one.)  This time the Mayor was being pro-active and trucks were ready.

Metro Atlanta area people stayed home through yesterday, Thursday February 13th, although the roads re-iced during the night.  Roads were deserted apart from road workers, gravel and sand trucks, police and power workers since thousands lost electric power because of down lines and trees.  Georgia Power Company reported that yesterday 236,000 customers in Georgia were without power, mostly in the Atlanta and Augusta areas.  A reporter standing on Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta was showing that people had heard the warning - there was no one in sight (blue jacket below.)

On Wednesday, February 12th, 2014, it alternated between rain, snow and ice.  I was very surprised yesterday morning, Thursday, when I looked outside our kitchen window - the scenery was like a fantasy-land - white all over.  I could just make out the bright red color of a Cardinal across the window.  I took its picture several times but, as I said earlier, with the screen on the window photos do not come out too well.  I tried to take a picture of the yard, so pretty under the snow, but my camera focused on the screen as you can see below - but you can guess at the view ...

I thought I would make coffee and have breakfast then go out for a walk and take more pictures.  That was a mistake, because within two hours the sun was shining and the snow had already fallen from the branches.  I started by taking a picture of our barn - it looked like a Christmas card.  I took it with my little Canon Power Shot which I have not used in months.

I took more pictures of the front and back yard.

The snow covered branches on our fig tree made attractive designs.

We then repeated our stroll of two weeks ago by walking along the road to the farm nearby.  The snow looked different, softer.

There was a thick layer of ice under the snow.

The lake looked as pretty as always

and the colors seemed more glowing.

Back at home, since we could not drive to the store, I made a vegetable stew with what I had on hand and it turned out very tasty (I'll give the recipe next week.)  It stayed very quiet outdoors, apart from the chirping of the birds.

Return to San Francisco and more...

Even though I may already know the subject I'll write about in my next post, by the time I write it I have thought about so much more, that I usually go on a tangent and end up with an "eclectic" and longer post - this is another one.  I'll start then with the "more" from my title.  Let me hasten to say that the day after I published my last post, on the rain in Georgia, it stopped raining.  It has been sunny every day since with mild temperatures and low humidity.  This morning it was 65 degrees F (18 C) and now, in the afternoon, it is only 78 degrees F (25 C.)  It is not warm enough for my figs to ripen on our tree but our potted plants are flowering more than usual.  (Click on any collage twice to enlarge.)

Since I am not sure if there will be enough figs to make jam this year I went ahead and made peach jam - but with a difference.  I used a large mango, ripe Georgia peaches and finished with two tablespoons of "Safari" liquor.

I bought this liquor in Amsterdam a couple of years ago because the label said "Safari - Exotic liqueur spirit with tantalizing flavor of exotic fruits - maracuya, mango, papaya, lemon and lime."  It is produced in the Netherlands.  I thought an "exotic" touch would do well in my peach jam.  I was not sure what "maracuya" was and saw on Google that it was "Fruta de la Pasión o Maracuyá" and is also called Passionfruit, Pasionaria or Grandilla (Passiflora Edilus.)  The fruit is either yellow or purple at maturity.  It is a climbing plant originally from Central America but produced in many countries.  Photos below courtesy Wikimedia.

The Sunday before I wrote my last post, Sunday 18th August to be exact, it was raining so we decided to go to the movies.  We had not been since last November and there was a film I wished to see called "Blue Jasmine."  It was playing in Atlanta.  Early in the afternoon we drove there and saw that another film I had seen advertized on TV, called "Lee Daniel's The Butler" was also playing.  We purchased our tickets for Blue Jasmine but saw that the film The Butler was sold out until the evening show.  We were early for Blue Jasmine so we peeked in the theatre where The Butler had started.  I did not know that the 5 minutes or so we stayed there would create more time spent on the computer for research.  I'll explain below.

First - Spoiler Alert! for The Butler film.  As we started watching the movie I thought that it was telling the story of the butler's ancestor - it was a scene in a cotton field.  A boy was there with his parents - I thought it must be the butler's great grandfather on a plantation.  The mother is taken in a shack by the overseer and I guess, raped, as we hear her screams.  The boy asks the father if he will say anything about that, the overseer comes out, the father gives him a bad look, and the overseer shoots the father in the head point blank and kills him.  That's it, that's all we saw - we left to see our movie.  But I wanted to find out later what time period this scene was.  I did find that this scene was supposed to be in 1926 when the Butler was a boy and this tragedy happened to his family, on a cotton plantation in Macon, Georgia.  There are many fields of cotton in Georgia now but I rarely see any people working in them as production has been mechanized.  Below is a field of cotton I photographed last autumn, about 15 miles from my home.

Since I like history and research I read more on the movie and The Butler himself.  I found out that the original Butler was named Eugene Allen, that he was not born in Georgia on a plantation, but on a farm in Virginia.  His parents were farm workers but his mother was not raped and his father was not murdered.  Seeing on the poster (at the very top) that it says "Inspired by a True Story" I wondered what was authentic.  I found out that in the movie the Butler, re-named Cecil Gaines (I guess to avoid

slander) has 2 sons and one of them died in Vietnam.  In truth Eugene Allen only had one son and he came back from Vietnam alive.  In the movie Cecil's wife is an alcoholic and has an affair with a neighbor.  In truth Allen's wife of many decades was a lovely woman.  I wondered what else is not true and I guess about 95% of the movie is fiction.  In the movie the other fictional son is an activist, joins the Black Panther, is roughed up several times and spends some time with Martin Luther King, Jr.  He also pushed his father to quit his butler job - none of it true.  Actually I found out that the real Butler was a Republican (!)  Below are more photos of cotton fields but in vintage postcards from 1905.

All this research has brought many conversations with my husband.  He feels that if a film says based on or inspired by a true story or true events then only 2% needs to be true.  I disagree and feel that if the studios advertize the film this way, at least 60% should be true.  I understand that there is poetic license and that to make a film more dramatic some liberty can be taken with the story.  To me it shows not much respect to invent a promiscuous drunken wife to this real butler.  It cheapens the story and hurts the reputation of the true butler.  I think the audience is owed more "truth" if the studios market the movie as such - I saw TV interviews saying that most of this film was true.  I am also afraid that young people in this country, and other countries where this film will be shown, may not take the time to research the story as I have and believe the plot to be a true rendering of what happened to this American butler and his family (with all the African-American stereotypes) - then will see the word "true" in there and will believe it is.

When I go and see a movie founded or based on a true story I don't expect to watch, for more than two hours, mostly fiction and lies freely added to manipulate and rile up my emotions whether the actors are good or not.  Forest Whitaker is one of my favorite actors - I am sure he gives a strong and moving performance in this movie but I would enjoy it more knowing that it is a fictional tale showing the history of race in America, even if the idea for this film came at first from a butler's life in Washington, DC.  Any thought on that?  (Picture below of Forest Whitaker courtesy Entertainment Weekly.)

I really liked the film we went to see - "Blue Jasmine."  The main character, Jasmine, is played by Cate Blanchett.  She shines in this Woody Allen movie.  Her performance as a fragile emotional socialite is flawless.  The rest of the crew were well chosen and give great performances too.

As you can see from the poster above Blue Jasmine takes place mostly in San Francisco.  This brings me back to the subject of this post.  When I finished my 3rd post of San Francisco in the 1960s (click here to read it) we had left on the last day of 1969 thinking we would be back.  We never went back until this last June, and 43 1/2 years had passed.  The main reason I did not go back is because I had to go to Paris at first once a year then twice to three times a year to visit my mother as she became ill.  San Francisco was not on the way - it is in the opposite direction.  My mother passed away in 2002.  Last February I saw flight sales to San Francisco from Atlanta.  Tickets were bought - a hotel was found, and we went.  By air the distance from Atlanta to San Francisco is 2,138 miles or 3,440 kms (driving distance is 2,472 miles and 3,977 kms.)

To give some perspective I tried to see which town is about 2,138 miles from Paris.  I was surprised to find out that the flying distance between the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, and Paris, France is exactly 2,134 miles.  During that flight one does not fly over several states like in the US, but over separate countries, such as Austria, Hungary, Turkey and others.

It was raining as we left the Atlanta airport on May 30th, 2013, but sunny when we landed in the San Francisco airport.  I took many pictures from the aircraft along the way,

When landing into San Francisco airport you feel that you will land in the bay as it is close to the water, but everything went fine.  The airport did not look like it did in the 1960s.  It has been much improved.  We had never been on the BART rapid transit either.  We used it to get to downtown San Francisco.  Below at the top of the collage is a vintage postcard of the airport in the 1950s or early 60s, and the way it is now.

The five hour flight had gone by quickly.  It was only about 2:30 pm when we arrived downtown so there was still time to walk around the city after we checked into the hotel.  That will be in a future post.

In and around our house in August

The month of August is already gone and it seems it went faster than usual. I have not written a post in over two weeks - I meant to, however, my real life intruded on my virtual life. We had, and are having, health issues and they are time consuming. I should have written two or three posts during that time, but since I did not, I’ll write about some of our activities during this past month. Because of the heat, we did not do much in the garden apart from looking at some of the flowers. Here is a pretty rose which opened yesterday. It has a sweet rose fragrance. (Please click on the photos to enlarge them as they look so much better.)



Earlier in the season we had planted some thyme in a pot. It died and we left the pot as is. Then a few weeks ago we saw some type of violets that took over the pot – we never planted them, so I don’t know how they started to grow in that pot – could have been some seeds in the thyme dirt?

(Click on collage then on each picture to biggify)

We had bought a succulent and it grew some tiny peach blossoms. The squirrels did not eat the begonia and the dainty dark pink blooms come from an unknown pot – just appeared last week.

We live in west Cobb County which is northwest of Atlanta, Georgia, about 30 miles from downtown Atlanta. We are not in a city, but close to several: 6 miles from Kennesaw, 8 miles from Marietta, 8 miles from Acworth, 9 miles from Powder Springs and 7 miles from Dallas which is in another county – Paulding. So when we go shopping we have choices. We can also shop at a couple of farmers’ markets. Below is the market on the Marietta Square (my husband is near the sign.)



The area farmers and artisan food producers come every Saturday and Sunday mornings to offer their goods.



I like to look at all the beautiful flowers. Sometimes bluegrass musicians entertain us on the side of the market.



But one of my favorite things is getting close to the beautiful Greyhound dogs. There is an adoption agency that brings several of their dogs to the market. I’d love to adopt one – maybe when we don’t travel so much.



We also shop at the smaller farmers’ market in Kennesaw where I found Annie last week and spoke French with her. Her husband bakes the best baguettes and croissants.



Another market, but a flea market, is close by in Acworth. We went there last Sunday – it was very warm. They used to sell more antiques but now it is mostly cheap stuff from China.



Some Mexican vendors offer vegetables and fruits at good prices. I don’t know what is the dry bean type thing on the right hand side of the bottom right-hand photo – do you?




There was a red car for sale – it looked like a vintage model but I am not sure from which car maker. Seating is provided at the flea market – but it is not fancy… (an understatement.)



We ate the fresh vegetables at home but we also went out – ate some Italian food. At Douceur de France I ate a “tartine Corse” (seasoned tomatoes on top of a warm baguette covered with goat cheese) and a chocolate cake. My husband had the Millefeuille which here is called a Napoleon, I believe.


Our fig tree produced many good figs so I made several batches of jam. I showed my fig jam recipe back in 2010 in the post Fresh Figs – Home Grown.



I also made some cherry jam (with Cherry Heering wine from Denmark) and some red plum jam flavored with cardamom spice.



We now have a good variety of jams to eat with our English muffins and café au lait for breakfast.




But when it came time to place the jars in the cabinet – it was already occupied! It is also hard to read the newspaper after breakfast….



While at the library, I saw a picture book on Venice, Italy, then I found a mystery author named Donna Leon who wrote numerous mysteries taking place in Venice. I borrowed several, then several more and ended up reading about 12 or more during the month of August.



So, even if I did not travel overseas, at least I traveled virtually. We did take a small trip to Rome but a town in Georgia and not its namesake in Italy. I’ll have a post on it coming soon. I read another interesting book from the library entitled “Sixty Million Frenchmen can’t be wrong” by Canadian authors Nadeau and Barlow. It shows the wide difference between the US and French cultures.

Quiet Pleasures by Max Stevens, Belgian 1871-1946

I thought my husband would enjoy reading this book and was pleased to find an inexpensive copy online at a British second-hand book site. As I was going to take a picture of the book for this post I placed both books side by side, the library copy and the purchased copy to see which one would look better….

That is only when I realized that the second line of the title of the book was different. I thought that one copy was a newer edition but then I saw that the copy from the library was from the American edition and the purchased copy from the British edition. The American one said “why we love France, but not the French” and the British “what makes the french so french.” I asked my friend Vicki Lane, who is a successful published author, if authors make decisions on the covers of their books. She replied that the marketing department of the publishing companies makes the decision as to what will sell better in their market “taking into account the local preferences/prejudices.” It saddened me that the American publisher would think that the US market would be more likely to purchase the book to reinforce their feeling as to why they did not like the French…but c’est la vie…




My daughter called me to tell me that the daycare had advised her that the blanket I had knitted for the youngest grandson was too big. The car blanket I crocheted was too small. So she asked if I could make another one, just right. I did and so I started to watch some TV while making it. I finished it during the last day of the Republican Convention on national television.



Since I had to watch TV, I’ll talk about what I saw. I have read some bloggers saying that if a post mentions politics they just won’t read it and move on – many people are not interested at all. When I became a US citizen I knew that I would have to take some more responsibilities and voting was one of them. To vote I need to find out what the politicians are saying. To me, refusing to take part in the politics of one’s country is like refusing to be involved in one’s children upbringing – you just cannot say you love your children or place flags of your country on your blog and refuse to take part in the process. Below is a vintage postcard of the house of Betsy Ross (1752-1836.)



As I tried to research more on Betsy Ross, I found out that there is no credible historical evidence that she indeed was the seamstress who made the first flag – read it here . There are many myths in history and politicians create myths themselves so it is important to always do some facts checking. I use Factcheck.org and Politifact.com . When I came to the USA there were a great variety of television channels and radio stations, but now they have merged and been bought up by large corporations. The conservatives keep saying that the media is liberal, but it is not because it does not check facts thoroughly and does not challenge false statements. How could television chains do otherwise when, for example, NBC is owned by General Electric, ABC is owned by Disney, CBS by Viacom, Time Warner owns CNN, HBO, Cinemax – all of these chains donated millions of dollars to the past Bush re-election campaigns. Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are owned by super conservative Rupert Murdoch (who was under indictment in England.)



The copy of the Wall Street Journal above was delivered in our driveway last Friday, August 31st. We are not subscribers so it must have been a wrong delivery, but I was pleased to read this paper to see if the false statements said during the convention would be noted. They had not and instead had been repeated. I feel that the media and the press have a responsibility, in a free country, to understand and report news in a neutral way so that the public can make their decisions based on facts and the truth. Candidates in elections should be called out every time they lie to the public. But they don’t so I spend much time reading the foreign press- in English and in French and checking out facts.




On the little country map on the side of my blog I see that many readers come from other countries such as, today, from Tripoli, Libya, Ukraine, Cairo, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Ganzhou, China, New Zealand, Australia and many points in Europe, and the red dots change all the time. I’ll try to explain, in a very rough way, the two parties in the US. The Republican Party is the Conservative party (party of Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Richard Nixon) and the Democratic Party is considered the liberal party (party of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.) But since the 1960s when I originally came to the US, both parties have taken a turn to the right, so that, for example the Republican party would be considered Extreme Right Religious in Europe and the Democratic Party would be Center Right and not liberal at all. There are only two major parties in the USA. Next week the Democratic Convention will take place in Charlotte, North Carolina.



For more information – the population of the US is about 314,275,029 right now. Of the 132,645,504 registered voters about 38.4 percent did not cast a ballot for president in 2008 – that’s roughly 50 million people. This is also the number of Americans (50.3 millions) who, in the 2010 census, were found to have no health insurance. Health insurance is provided by profit making corporations here, apart from the senior population who are insured under the government program called Medicare. For example in Texas 26.3% people do not have health insurance – it is 21.9% in Georgia. So what happens? People die. A new study calculated that more than 26,000 Americans died prematurely in 2010 – that is about 502 preventable deaths a week. Thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care (so far the US is the lone exception.) From what I understood watching the Republican Convention and then checking the facts, the platform would stop Medicare and place it on a voucher system, which would make it go back to the profit making insurance companies. The country is heavily oriented toward money and in general disapproves of the poor. It is such a beautiful country, but it does have some strange politics.



The postcard above shows an example of the beauty of this country – Glacier National Park in Montana. There are some exceptional sites in the US. I did hear the term “American exceptionalism” repeated many times during the Republican Convention so I decided to research to see who invented the term. I found out that it was Joseph Stalin, the Communist leader of the USSR, who said it first, in 1929, while arguing about America. He said “the heresy of American exceptionalism…” while disagreeing with the belief that America is unique and exceptional compared to other countries. So I am surprised now that the Republicans use the same term – they may not know where it comes from! Below is another exceptional landscape – a postcard of the Powell Valley near Norton, Virginia.



There were many deliberate lies, half truths and distortions during the speeches at the Republican Convention. This kept me busy fact checking for a long time. I was quite surprised that even Fox News agreed that there had been many lies – read it here (I like to read both the Conservative and Liberal press.) The easiest one to check was a fact that Mr. Paul Ryan (the vice-presidential candidate) affirmed – he blamed President Obama for the closing of a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. But the plant had been scheduled to close months before Mr. Obama became president (he was sworn in January 20th, 2009) and the last vehicle came out of the assembly line at the end of 2008 during Mr. Bush’s presidency, see photo below (courtesy The United Way.)



Now that the baby blanket is finished I don’t think I’ll watch as much television. I do like to read the speeches online – it makes it easier to fact check. I also found four more mysteries by Donna Leon at the Kennesaw Library…. This is a long post – but it covered the month of August – an eclectic post for a fast moving month.

The Novel Reader by Vincent van Gogh, Dutch 1863-1890