Our French tutor, Agnès, is more than just a tutor. She's a painter and our friend.
To our delight, she invited all of us to her studio last Sunday to celebrate Tirer les Rois (Find the Kings), a French tradition celebrating the Epiphany (arrival of the three wise men).
What a pleasure to view her art for the first time, see where she works, and meet her partner!
Find the Kings is celebrated every year on January 6, although the tradition is so popular that people gather throughout the entire month of January to share in the fun and especially to eat more of the special cake, called galette, that the holiday centers around.
The history of The Galette des Rois goes back to Roman times, and survived through the Middle Ages and even the French Revolution (when all things royal were suppressed).
There are three main styles of galette throughout France, but the celebration is always similar. Above all, a lucky charm is always hidden in the cake, which traditionally is a fava bean (la fève), but in recent times could be a porcelain or plastic trinket. At a gathering, the cake is sliced to the exact number of people at the table, plus one. The pieces are then distributed randomly (often by the youngest person in the room, who is considered the most innocent and fair) and the fun begins to see who will find la fève.
Whoever finds the lucky charm becomes king for the day and chooses a queen to join him. It is also customary for the king to then host the next gathering and provide the galette.
Doug found the lucky charm in his piece of galette, which means he became king for the day. And who better to become his queen than Mademoiselle Abigail . . .
The whole family enjoyed a painterly kind of day this past Sunday with a visit to the Stedelijk Museum and then an evening out at the painting studio of our French tutor, Agnès.
Agnès and I had spent a recent French lesson touring the Malevich exhibit, now showing at the Stedelijk, and when I saw they had set up a "family trail" and art room for kids to explore Malevich, I thought it would be fun to bring Abigail and Reese back. Who knows, right? Well, they LOVED it, enjoying museum almost as much as much as learning the phrase artsy-fartsy.
Knowing how obsessed Reese is with the color blue, Agnès set me up with these two famous blue paintings housed at the Stedelijk. This one is "L'Accord Bleu," by Yves Klein. The kids were fascinated with the use of sponges in the painting.
Here's Barnett Newman's "Cathedra." This painting was slashed by a vandal not once, but twice, while hanging on the museum wall. Now there's always a guard in the room.
Kazimir Malevich was a Russian painter, and pioneer in the Avant Garde movement. Despite the fact that his work was revolutionary at the time, and that he was embraced by the rising Stalinist movement, he would ultimately go to prison for his artistic work. Following the Russian revolution, his work was banned because it explored "art for art's sake," and did not attempt to serve a social function, the only artwork allowed by the Communists.
This is one of Malevich's more well-known self-portraits:
"Taking in the Rye"
"An Englishman in Moscow"
This is one of the most famous paintings in Russian art, Malevich's, Black Square. Because of its perfect symmetry, the square is considered the most perfect form in many modern art movements, particularly for Malevitch and the movement he started, "Suprematism."
Writing a Malavitch-inspired postcard to her friend, Niko, in the exhibit's room for kids:
Reese hung his card up on the wall, so he "could have art in a museum too."
My mother-in-law is sixty-three years old. She is a barista at Starbucks Coffee where she has worked 30-40-hour work-weeks for over ten years. Most days, she works the opening shift and arrives at work by 5:30AM to set up and take her position at the cash register, smiling and ready to greet the morning rush. She is sweet-natured. "All heart" is how many would describe her. She has regulars and knows many of her customers by name, and they know her.
My mother-in-law loves working at Starbucks, even though the work is pretty grueling for someone in their sixties. Ten years ago, the company provided her with a fresh start in life, with terrific benefits, stock options and the chance to spend time with fellow partners who like what they do and believe in the mission statement of the company. Working at Starbucks allows my mother-in-law to have a variety of relationships and engage her strong work ethic. She's proud of the work she does and thrilled to share the experience of working at the same company as her son.
Yesterday, half-way around the world, her son woke up on a Sunday morning to learn that a gunman had entered a mall in Maryland. The gunman walked by the busy Starbucks where his mother was working at the moment, and then ducked into a shop a few storefronts away where he shot and killed two people (and then himself). He had a backpack full of homemade explosives. Doug's mother and co-workers dove into the store's backroom where they barricaded themselves for two hours until the SWAT team found them and escorted them outside. She was terrified.
It seems as though, as a nation, we're all sitting around, waiting. Sitting around, waiting for our lives to be touched personally by gun violence. Most of us know someone, or know someone-who-knows-someone, whose life was taken, or forever altered, due to guns. Many of us have been the victims of gun violence or can make a serious claim to have narrowly missed being a victim of gun violence. The degree of separation is ever so slight, and surely this must be altering the well-being of our collective psyche.
Doug and I were working for Starbucks in downtown Washington, DC on 9/11. We were the senior people in the office that day, and after making the decision to shut down the office, we helped co-workers find safe places to go. This wasn't easy. Roads and highways had been shut down, cell phone and land lines weren't working because of too much activity and, most of all, the news was full of erroneous reports of car bombs, fires, and multiple planes about to crash into the city. It was impossible to know whether to stay put or try to get home. In fact, I never went home that day as my house was one mile from the Pentagon where one of the planes crashed. The sense of terror for everyone was at once immediate and also distant, secondary to the known tragedy happening in New York City.
Of course 9/11 is not about guns, but it speaks to the odd mix of apprehension and acceptance that ordinary Americans seem to feel about tragedy--that it's just a matter of time before the next one occurs. Why aren't we trying to prevent the ones that are preventable? For layered one on top of the other, these events mess with our hearts and minds; we become simultaneously immune to them and full of dread.
About a year after 9/11, snipers wreaked havoc on the the Washington, DC area. Over the course of three long weeks, two men (one a minor) shot and killed ten people and critically injured three others. Before starting the shooting rampage in DC, the snipers killed thirteen other people as the moved across the country toward DC. They targeted people in locations where they did their daily-routine activities, such as bus stops, gas stations, shopping centers. They seemed to be targeting suburban DC, so as more and more people were shot and killed, many of us started doing our errands in the city. It sounds silly, but we were scared. The seventh person killed was shot dead in the parking lot of a Home Depot, at the Home Depot down the street from my home and where I had shopped just hours earlier. Again, immediate but distant. For the psyche, it registers like a narrow miss--no matter how level-headed one tries to be. The next night, I sat on a barricaded highway for five hours, just two exits from my destination, after another person was shot and killed by a sniper in the vicinity.
The 2002 sniper incident faded from public memory as new ones took place, and for the DC area, this was especially true following the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007--another shooting rampage in which thirty-two people were killed.
All of the victims had a story, and so do their families. Doug's mom has a life story, and now she has a traumatic event to add to it. It is of great concern to me that the investigation of the mall shooting and the killer will center on whether he knew his victims, whether this was a domestic dispute, love triangle or small-scale personal vendetta. Yes, these are important facts, but they will ultimately be used by various spokespersons to assert that the motive of the gunman was limited and specific and that he didn't intend to do large-scale harm . . . as if to say, these little squabbles are simply going to happen from time to time, and that we can't restrict gun ownership because of these one-off situations. Or, the investigation will find him to have had a history of mental health issues, to which the spokespersons will say the mental healthcare industry is to blame and/or dismiss the entire incident because the killer was "just crazy."
But shooting deaths, particularly in public places, have picked up in frequency and are practically commonplace nowadays. We all must admit that we are less shocked by each new incident than we used to be. The issue isn't just about mental healthcare, it's also about the type of guns available, and the ease with which most people can get a gun. Until we can move away from creating a story about the killers to justify guns, and start remembering the stories of victims of gun violence, their families and those who witness and live through these events, we will inevitably stay intrenched in a strange battle over gun control that pits mental health against weapons, rather than taking a more subtle, partnering, multi-pronged approach. I have been regularly engaged in the debate, signing petitions and advocating for stricter gun control laws. But the issue feels so stalled and out of the control of ordinary citizens. It's hard to see the path. I'm horrified that Doug's mom, grandmother to our children, spent two hours on Saturday crouched in a back room in real fear for her life. It's simply not okay.
On Sunday, the kids and I ran in the 40th annual Vondelpark Loop.
As I've mentioned, we live one street over from Vondelpark. It's truly our backyard playground, which made this run very special.
I haven't figured out how to add graphics to a graphic, and therefore can't place an arrow above our house to give you perspective, but you can see the park and the loop in the picture below. We're one street below the park and toward the left side in this image.
The kinderloop (kids fun run) was 1.5K. Abby and Reese were so excited and awed to line up with all their little co-racers . . . and to BOOM! hear the gun go off. It was all so new to them!! Rain was in the forecast, but it was a clear morning with a little chill in the air--perfect for running.
Abby and Reese both finished, running just shy of an entire mile!!
Smiles at the finish line . . .
The race was even better having shared it with good friends. Way to go les petits!!
The moms then ran the 6K while the dads and kiddos cheered us on. It was just as fun for me to share it with a friend as is it was for the kids.
SF deserves a huge shout out because she ROCKED it, coming in first among all the women and twelfth overall. Woo Hoo!! Congratulations!!
SF is inspiring and so was my first race (small as it was) that I've done is a couple of years. Can't wait to hook up with SF and our other friend, LL, when we, girls, will OWN THE NIGHT!!
On Saturday, I had the pleasure of a solo mom's day out. Doug watched the kids, and I took a 7:00AM train to Maastricht, a town in the very, very south of Holland that I've wanted to visit since the moment we arrived here. I watched the sun come up on the three-hour train ride, with a book, my knitting, a notepad and a big cup of coffee.
Coincidentally, I have FOUR Sara(h)'s to thank for inspiring this little excursion. Sarah H., a BI friend, had one clear set of parting words for me before I came to Amsterdam, which was to be sure to take time for myself and to explore with my kids, but also without them. Sara F., a fellow ex pat mom here in Amsterdam, who took the first inspiring leap with a solo day trip to Paris a couple of months ago. Sara O., another friend from BI, who raved about Maastricht, which she discovered while in Luxembourg as an ex pat mom. And Sara B., who always, always inspires me to "go deep" in all that I do.
Maastricht is the oldest city in Holland, going back to Roman times when is served as an important economic center, military stronghold and religious center. The long, rich history of Maastricht is still evident in the amazingly preserved architecture and street-scapes, so much so that the ENTIRE town has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Seventeenth-century street in Maastricht:
Saint Servaasburg, a 13th-century bridge that is now the primary pedestrian path crossing the River Maas.
The bridge is named after the first bishop of Maastricht in the 4th-century. Saint Servaas was revered as such a major holy figure that the church eventually built over his tomb became a huge pilgrimage site and major beneficiary of Charlemagne himself.
Saint Servaas Basilica:
The Basilica is really, really old, and a building of extraordinary Gothic architecture. In the courtyard pictured above, archeological explorations in the
1980's found old Roman walls of the original church from around 350AD
(when Saint Servaas was bishop) as well as tombs of various
ecclesiastics and pilgrims throughout the centuries (particularly the
4th-11th century when pilgrimages to the site were at an all time high).
In the basement of the basilica, at the entrance to the crypt of Saint Servaas, one can see where the entire threshold has been worn away by the feet of pilgrims since the 8th century; now you have to step over a hole.
Below is one of the finds from these excavations: the alb (the long white robe worn by clerics) of Saint Servass, which dates back to 384AD.
There are a number of large town squares in Maastricht, all lined with resturants, bars and cafes, and usually adjacent to an improtant, historic church or two.
Below, is a photo of Vrijthof, the square in front of Saint Servaas Basilica, which is one of the more popular squares, with lively cafe culture and nightlife. It turned out to be the perfect place for lunch.
Vrijthof Square (Saint Servaas, on the right).
Centuries and centuries ago, Vrijthof square used to be a huge town
cemetery located just outside the (then) city walls. Many of the old
medieval fortification walls are still standing and you can walk around
the city along top of them (perhaps this summer with the kids).
Vrijthof square is also where they hold a wildly popular annual food
festival, and Maastricht being known for its fabulous restaurants and wine scene.
If you check out anything on this blog posting, take a look at this video of a (very) young trumpet player alongside André Rieu, the famous violinist and conductor from Maastricht. Here, they're playing together in Vrijthof square. Sara O. sent me the link months ago. Melissa Venema with Andre Rieu in the Vrijthof
Maastricht is full of churches, most built between the 11th and 17th-centuries. The other significant landmark church I visited on Saturday is Onze-Lieve Vrouwebasilick (Church of Our Lady), an incredibly well-preserved 12th-century Romanaseque building (the style preceding the Gothic). It's the oldest church in Maastricht.
Admittedly, I am not a religious person, but I spent a lot years studying the religious history of Europe and visiting churches and cathedrals all over the place (just ask Doug), and I never cease to be moved by the haunting sound of organ music in a towering, dark cathedral. It seemed fitting that Onze-Lieve Vrouwebasilick was my first stop on Saturday morning, where the organ player happened to be practicing, and I sat for moment, grateful for a day alone, exploring.
There are, in fact, so many (very old) churches in Maastricht that some were falling into disrepair from lack of use and lack of of congregations. Several groups and organizations came forward with creative ideas to help save them, and this one blew my mind. It's a 700-year old Dominican church that has been converted into a bookstore--I can't think of a better pairing of my interests!
At their own cost, the owners of the bookstore have joined efforts with the city to restore the church to its original condition as much as possible, including the uncovering (and restoring) of ceiling and wall frescoes from the middle ages.
I ran out of time to personally visit Kruisherenhotel Maastricht , but it is 15th-century monastery and church that was converted into a high design hotel.
I ended my day with a nice dinner and a luxurious 3-hour train ride home, happy about my day, but also missing my family and feeling the excitement to get up the next morning and run a race with Abigail and Reese in Vondelpark (blog entry coming soon!).
If interested, here's a cool website about Maastricht, including a virtual tour of Saint Servaas Basilica and Onze-Lieve Vrouwebasilick (Church of Our Lady).
