Wise Woman Travel

Shrewd, absolutely; craft-y…not so much

Pamela Young

December 14, 2013

When I was a little girl, my mother and grandmother did their best to set me on the path of crafting excellence. They gave me wool and crochet hooks, embroidery hoops and thread, and endless hours of mostly patient mentoring. They sat me down at their sewing machines with scraps of practise cloth. But I dropped stitches, tangled thread, and kept their tension more constant than the wool on my knitting needles. I discovered it was much more exciting to put the hammer down on the Singer’s foot pedal and watch the needle maniacally dart up and down than to maintain the steady, measured pace they recommended.

My junior high home economics teacher was the last to try converting me. In two years of classes with her, I ended up with a half-finished pot holder and an oversized, fuschia and lime green scooter skirt which I abandoned at the bottom of my locker, together with its equally dismal mark sheet. I brought the skirt home in a wrinkled mass on the last day of grade 9, and modelled it with high drama and mock sophistication for my parents after dinner that night. My dad laughed so hard he sprayed a mouthful of tea across the dining room table. I dropped the skirt in the kitchen garbage can on the way back to my bedroom.

You would think that these early lessons in failed craftiness would have prevented me from ever again picking up a skein of yarn or a bolt of cloth. But inexplicably, in my late teens and early twenties, I was drawn to the idea of making gifts for my nearest and dearest. Once in a while, I even finished something. My first boyfriend wore a scarf I crocheted for him, in spite of its 7 foot length and wildly wandering widths. Ah, the blindness of young love. But, more often, I bought patterns and materials with the noblest of intentions, then lost interest and stuffed the half-finished bundle into a bag and forgot about it. I think I may still owe my sister a quilt I started to make for her master’s graduation in 1985.

It’s been years since I’ve even thought about handcrafting a gift for anyone. Ok – maybe that’s not totally true. Every year at Christmas, I eye the glossy craft magazine covers at the grocery checkout. They assure me that I too can make “50 easy projects for under $50.” However, unlike my younger self, I now put the magazine back on the rack. I’m quite content to be a wordsmith and a designer of engaging educational experiences. Besides, I’m blessed by a bevy family members and friends who are as crafty as they are shrewd. Maybe, just maybe, if I drop enough hints, they’ll take pity on me and gift me with the fruits of their labors and their love.

Deb’s sweet stitchery

Loretta’s fabulous fabric art

Marilyn’s blanket warmth

Karen’s metal magic

Groundhog Day

Pamela Young

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December 5, 2013

7:53 a.m. Downtown December rush. Step off the bus. Cold like a slap in the face.

Young guy, big parka, hood up. “Copy of the Metro, ma’am? Want to take a bunch for your staffroom table? I’m trying to get off the street as fast as I can today.”

Walk light already on, late already, already on my way. “No, thanks. Just the one.”

Wonder the rest of the way to work how the cold seeped through my downfill and into my heart.

7:53 a.m. Downtown December rush. Step off the bus. Cold grabs my shoulders, shakes me.

Young guy, big parka, hood up. “Would you like a copy of the Metro, ma’am? Maybe a few extra?”

December 3, 2013

I can remember exactly two times when I felt engaged with my public school science education. In grade 9, my older sister rescued me from my teacher’s complex written explanations of radiation, conduction, and convection. “Ok, Pam, think of it this way,” she said. “When you put your hand on top of the stove element, that’s conduction. When the sun comes in through the dining room window and warms up your back, that’s radiation. And when the heat from our fireplace escapes into the living room, that’s convection. Get it?” Well, that made a whole lot more sense to me than trying to figure out electromagnetic waves or vibrating atoms, and the next day, I nailed the exam question on heat transfer.

The following year, my biology teacher took our class to a marshy pond outside the city. In our rubber boots, we sloshed through tall grass and lily pads, and scooped up jars of murky water to take back to our lab. We dribbled water from eyedroppers onto slides, and watched in awe through our microscopes as a community of organisms whirred and crept across our field of view. We sketched what we saw, and pored over manuals to identify the little creatures, competing with each other to see who had the most diverse collection.

Unfortunately, two engaging experiences in 12 years of school led me to conclude that science was not for me. Biology, chemistry, and physics seemed to exist mostly between the pages of battered, hardcover textbooks, and on dusty chalkboards of notes and formulae. Science was about memorizing facts and finding the right answer. Those facts never seemed to be a part of my day-to-day life, and so I opted out of the scientific world as quickly as I could, taking up permanent residency in the social sciences and humanities.

Fast forward to 2003. My husband has invited me to watch a new TV show called Mythbusters. “These two special effects guys use science to debunk urban myths and legends,” he enthuses, “and blow up a whole bunch of stuff in the process.” Internally, I heave a martyred sigh, but, in a nod to strengthening relationship bonds, I figure I can probably endure one episode.

It doesn’t take long before I’m hooked.Concepts that bored me in high school- implementing the scientific method, building prototypes, consulting the table of elements – are reintroduced in the context of discrediting YouTube scams, uncovering movie truth-stretching, and putting worn adages to the test. And yes, there are some spectacular explosions and collisions, delightfully detailed by multiple-angled, high speed cameras, and replayed in exquisite slow motion.

The show inspired me to consider how science instruction could be restructured to engage the kind of non-scientific student that I had been. In my job as a post-secondary education instructor, I encouraged student teachers, secondary school instructors, and university professors to use their students’ existing talents and interests to welcome them into the world of science. I found an article that connected poetry writing with the study of minerals, and a website that promoted keeping a sketch journal to record observations about the natural world. I played an hilarious student-made rap video on chem lab safety, and a parody of the Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer, in which ukelele-strumming, University of Alberta pediatrician, Sarah Forgie, musically engages her medical students in the wise administration of antibiotics.

I have no way of knowing whether any of my ideas to breathe life into science teaching found their way into classrooms. But my own interest in the scientific world was kindled. So, a few months ago, when my husband mentioned that the Mythbusters were coming to town, I knew I had to be in the audience. We joined a sold-out crowd of families, university students, middle-aged couples, and seniors. When hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman bounded onto the stage, we greeted them like rock stars. ” A lot of people think that science is about facts,” said Savage, “but really it’s about relationships. ” “And when you play with those relationships,”chimed in Hyneman, “things get really interesting.”

For the next two hours, enthusiastic children of all ages joined the pair on stage to play with science. A tiny, bespectacled boy with a big sledge hammer bested the bell-ringing efforts of a man 5 times his age and weight. Two bike-riding men draped in plastic ponchos used pedal power to fill suspended water balloons which eventually drenched them from above. A chubby-cheeked ten-year old had his mouth raspberry recorded by a high speed camera, and replayed in side-splitting slow motion.

At the end of the evening, Adam Savage told us that they often receive letters from kids wanting to know how to become a Mythbuster. “Read everything that interests you. Stay curious. And remember that science isn’t really about saying ‘Eureka.’ It’s more about saying, ‘Hmm…that’s funny.” Good advice, I thought, and hoped that more than a few science teachers were listening and taking notes.

December 1, 2013

Like a bad joke, the magpie in our neighbor’s mountain ash catches my attention in a flash of black and white and red all over.

“Hey, Sister!” she squawks. “When’s that next post coming out?”

I sigh. “Last week was busy. Next week doesn’t look much better. I have a job, you know.”

“No need to get nasty,” she says.

“Sorry. Mid-week. Maybe. Possibly.”

“Just asking,” she mumbles, through the berries in her beak. “Just asking….”

Turn your head; can you see us?

Pamela Young

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November 20, 2013

We’ve settled into our seats for Theatre Network’s first play of the season, the world premiere of Colleen Murphy‘s Pig Girl. The stage is dimly lit, but we can see the interior of a wooden shed, its floorboards and roof jutting jaggedly towards us. Bare bulbed light fixtures, coils of rope, chains, and a large hook on a pulley dangle from the ceiling. A rusted oil drum, a tool box, and a plastic crate litter the background.

My stomach clenches and my heart accelerates as the house lights go to black. When they brighten, four characters have appeared on stage. A man and a woman, whom the program calls only ” Killer” and “Dying Woman” now inhabit the shed. In the empty spaces on either side of the shed stand “Dying Woman’s Sister” and ” Police Officer.”

What we experience during the next 90 minutes is rawer than any theatre performance I have ever attended. The play, although largely a work of imagination, is based on events that occurred in British Columbia’s lower mainland during the 1990s. Sex trade workers from Vancouver’s East Side were disappearing with alarming regularity. Their families’ and friends’ desperate pleas for action from the Vancouver police department were met mostly with indifference. Even after reports began to surface of women never returning from “parties” at a Port Coquitlam pig farm, it took years for the Vancouver police to investigate and eventually arrest Robert Pickton. He confessed to killing 49 women, and subjecting their bodies to revolting indignities. However, he was only convicted of 6 counts of murder. Twenty other charges against him were stayed by the Crown.

Colleen Murphy’s rage at this decision, and her determination to give a voice to all sex trade workers whose lives or spirits are lost to violence, fuelled her writing of Pig Girl. As the play begins, we listen in on the start of a nine year dialogue between the Dying Woman’s Sister and the Police Officer. The Sister is consumed by frustration with the Police Officer’s assertion that “people who live transient lifestyles sometimes leave town and don’t want to be found.” In the early days of her sister’s disappearance, she puts up posters, attempts to shield their mother from the news, and listens frequently to the last message her sister left on her cell phone. As the years pass, the Sister lights anniversary candles for her sister, fondly remembers incidents from their childhood, and confronts her own guilt over the times she turned her back as her sister disappeared into addiction and prostitution. The Police Officer at first defends the official response of his department, but gradually begins to realize and regret his bigotry, his lack of empathy, and his inaction.

Far harder to witness on stage is the interaction between the Dying Woman and the Killer. It is sickeningly clear what the last hours of her life will involve. He has brought her to the shed to degrade her, to crush her spirit, and take her life. What he does not anticipate is her fierce courage and her refusal to allow him to victimize her. Realizing her considerable intellectual advantage over him, she tries to negotiate her release in whatever way she can. He shrieks at her to be quiet, but she will not be silenced. Even as his violence escalates, she defies him. In the gut-wrenching final moments of the play, her body broken and her life ebbing away, she vows not to become the next missing woman.

It is difficult to describe the first minutes following our re-emergence into the theatre from the world of this play. A woman behind us is quietly crying. My neck and shoulders are stiff with tension. I’m dazed by the houselights, and grateful for the appearance of the panel members who will help us work through what we’ve just experienced: the playwright; Brad Moss, the play’s director and artistic director of Theatre Network; the actors, and representatives from three social agencies: Project Kare, an RCMP initiative that investigates and prosecutes cases of missing and murdered “high risk” women; Kindred House, which offers respite, resources, and friendship to sex trade workers, and CEASE, the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation.

The moderator, Paula Simons, an Edmonton Journal columnist, asks Colleen Murphy how it feels to witness audience members both walking out of the play part way through, and staying to give it a standing ovation.”Whatever people feel when they see this play is real,” Murphy says. “There is no right way to respond.” When the audience is invited to join the dialogue, their reactions show the depth and complexity of emotion that the play has stirred. An Aboriginal woman protests the play’s title as a further exploitation of Robert Pickton’s victims. Two Aboriginal men speak, one saying that it is “too soon” for these events to be dramatized, the other criticizing Colleen Murphy for appropriating a story that is “not hers to tell,” since many of Pickton’s victims were Aboriginal. Brad Moss reveals that he had been called to a meeting that afternoon in which Aboriginal representatives asked him to close the play and remove its title from the Theatre Network marquee. “If you’re angry, well, so am I,” he says. A young woman identifies herself as a former sex trade worker who is non-Aboriginal. In a quavering voice, she reminds us that sexual exploitation is a human issue, transcending racial boundaries. “I’m sorry that the Aboriginal community is hurting,” she says, “but I’m hurting too.”

I’ve spent the last several days processing everything I saw and heard last Friday, both during the play and after it. I’ve followed the continued discussions on race, sexual exploitation, appropriation of voice, and violence in dramatic productions on Theatre Network’s Facebook page , and on Paula Simon’s blog. I can’t say that I’ve come to any definite conclusions on any of these issues: I want to keep listening to all viewpoints as they are offered. But among the controversy and the competing voices, I remembered one of the Dying Woman’s stories from late in the play. She recalls how, as children, she and her sister stood outside an elderly neighbor’s window and tried to get the old woman to look up and notice them. “We’d say, ‘Hey. Turn your head. Can you see us?'” For me, the play’s most urgent message is that we truly see all women whose daily realities involve sexual exploitation and violence, and remember they are mothers and sisters, daughters and cousins, nieces and friends. In whatever ways we can, we need to hold out our hands and offer them our fiercest and most compassionate support.

Re-entry

Pamela Young

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September 21, 2013

Re-entry
Edmonton, Canada

Edmonton, Canada

It’s 5:40 a.m., and I’ve been awake for more than an hour. Of course, that’s what happens when you go to bed before 9 p.m. on a Friday night. My body thinks it’s still in Provence, and my brain wishes it were, so clearly there’s nothing else to do but get up. I just ate a rather tasteless orange, which reminded me again of where I was 4 days ago, and where I am now.

Later today, I’ll continue working on the lesson plans for a course I’ll soon be teaching to a group of 17 Chinese professors, who are visiting the University of Alberta to spruce up their teaching and their English language skills. They’ve been taking courses and observing classes since they arrived. It will be my job to help them make sense of the higher education culture they’ve been experiencing, and to figure out what parts of it they can implement in their classrooms once they return to China.

My own culture has seemed more than a little foreign since we came back from Provence on Tuesday. When we left the airport parking lot and swung out onto the Queen Elizabeth II, fhe highway looked unnaturally wide, the half bowl prairie sky more expansive than I remembered. When we grocery shopped on Wednesday, the vegetables looked as jetlagged as I felt, and the peaches had no perfume. I did buy some really good bread from our local bakery, but the loaf was 4 times more expensive than any I’d bought in France. Last night, I met a colleague for a drink at a pub in downtown Edmonton. We sat outside, but the rush hour traffic, metres away from us, drowned out sections of our conversation. At the table next to ours, a very young waitress in a very tiny black dress leaned into a group of happy hour men, showing off four inches of cleavage and a spread eagle tattoo that stretched across her collarbones.

According to Bruce Kirkby, a travel writer for the Globe and Mail, I am standing at that “fleeting and oft-ignored intersection… between vacation and routine, between exotic and familiar, [when], for a brief moment, we glimpse our home through the eyes of a stranger.” Kirkby says that the “anonymity, freedom, and time” we experience when we leave our homes to travel reshape us. We want the changes to last, but “how do we weave…all the ephemeral moments and all we have seen and felt and learned, into the starched and unbending routines of home?”

I began to consider an answer to this question before we returned from France. In my post “Les delices de Provence,” I decided to weave a little Provencal .food culture into my eating habits. I’ve dug up a recipe for salade Nicoise (maybe “the” recipe: it’s Julia Child’s), and I haven’t denied myself a square of Lindt dark chocolate in the evening, “Francais, ou pas Francais” helped me to consider the style of French women – clothes that fit, accessories with spirit, and posture that says, “I like me, and I care how I look.” I’d been working on my own posture and the core strength to support it since I hurt my mid-back during a coughing spasm last February. Before we left for France, I was losing my motivation to continue the exercises, but those French women helped me to regain it.

I’ve also resolved to continue travelling and blogging. I discovered that combining the two made both the journeying and the writing richer. Knowing I was going to write about my adventures opened up my senses and helped me to become more keenly observant. And because travel always presents us with unfamiliar experiences, sometimes positive, sometimes not, writing acted as a meaning maker for me, helping me to figure out and shape those experiences, for myself and for you. Because who is a writer without a reader? I loved having all of you along for the blogging ride, and I so much appreciated your feedback, your enthusiasm, and your encouragement.

So, here’s my plan. Before the end of the year, I’ll be launching a new travel blog, one that defines “travel” in its broadest sense. Sometimes, I’ll write about the travel I do outside of Edmonton. But more often, my travel adventures will take place in and around the city. I think those ephemeral moments that afford us the chance to see and feel and learn don’t need to be confined to exotic vacations. We can enjoy those moments every time we step out of our starched and unbending home routines to try a new experience, add a new skill, and find out more about other people and ourselves.

And so, until my new adventures in travel blogging begin, a bientot, everyone! Stay tuned!

(P.S. You can find Bruce Kirkby’s article “A trip doesn’t stop when we return home” at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/tra vel/travel-news/a-trip-doesnt-stop-when -we-return-home/article1361270/ )

An abundance of riches

Pamela Young

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September 13, 2013

An abundance of riches
Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

At dinner one night, I told Lorne that before we came to the Cote D’Azur, I had never seen skies in which most of the clouds were jet trails. Criss crossing over the Mediterranean with lattice-work fluffiness, they tantalize with unanswerable questions: Where are those planes headed? Where have they come from? Who’s on board? And who’s at the controls?

The Nice airport is only a few kilometres away, so commercial airliners are leaving some of these trails. But on the Cote D’Azur, private jet tracings are a probability too. Wealth is on display in every parking lot, harbor, and hillside. In Antibes, site of one of Europe’s largest marinas for superyachts, the general public can tour the Quai des Milliardaires. That last word isn’t a spelling mistake – it indicates the yacht owners are billionaires. Why not go for a weekend wander along the dock and have a look for yourself?

Of course, if you’ve got a yacht parked in Antibes or Monaco, you can’t just live onboard. You’ll need a place to call your own on shore. When we first arrived in Villefranche, I was impressed by many of the homes up the hill from our apartment. I realize now that the wealthiest people seeking real estate on the Cote D’Azur would not even consider buying these properties. I googled “La Loggia” last night, the name of a villa that has attracted me since we got here, and came across a fascinating article that discussed its details, and those of other homes and their prospective buyers. La Loggia is on the market, its asking price only disclosed to people with the bank accounts to make serious inquiries. Although the house has a Belle Epoque grace, the truly wealthy may bypass it in favor of a more prestigious waterfront villa.

The Cote D’Azur has a long history of ostentatious houses and their equally over-the-top owners. We visited the Villa Kerylos, the residence of Theo Reinach, a wealthy Paris intellectual (he and his brothers Joseph and Salomon were referred to as the “Je sais tout” (I know everything), a play on the letters of their first names, and possibly, their opinion of themselves). Theo was fascinated by Ancient Greece, and contracted an architect to recreate the splendor of that time and place. Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt and his neighbor Gustave Eiffel were frequent party guests.

Across the water from Reinach lived Beatrice, the Baroness de Rothschild, in a pastel pink confection perched atop Cap Ferrat. I was entranced by her vast collection of art and antiques, but more fascinated by Beatrice herself. At 19, she married a 34 year old man whose Russian business connections would be valuable to her family. He quickly amassed more than 3 million euros in gambling debts, and eventually, they separated although he maintained a room in the residence to keep up appearances.

Beatrice revelled in her wealth, her pets, and her gardens. Her menagerie included dogs, a mongoose, a monkey, and gazelles, and she conducted lengthy conversations with them. She staged an elaborate wedding between two of her dogs, inviting her friends and their pets to attend in appropriate matrimonial attire (the audioguide hastened to assure us that although this event seemed eccentric, it was actually Beatrice’s comment on her failed marriage).

The Baroness’s 4 acre garden was designed and redesigned to her exacting tastes and specifications. It showcased sculptures, fountains, and the many plant species she had seen on her extensive travels to exotic locales. From the home’s upstairs balcony, the garden’s shape resembled the prow of a steamship, and Beatrice’s garden staff were required to dress as French sailors.

As we ended our tour of her villa, we noticed a crew arranging flower bouquets and looping swaths of white tulle on the central garden pergola. Another team unrolled plastic sheathing on the gravelled pathway and stairs. In the parking lot, men were unloading a half dozen event specialist trucks, and a wedding planner rushed by with an emptry birdcage. I wondered if Beatrice would be thrilled by the upcoming wedding spectacle, or if she’d offer a quiet word or two of sisterly caution to the bride.

This afternoon, our last in Villefranche, we took a boat tour to Monaco for a final look at the Cote D’Azur’s splendor. We ambled past many of the sites we’ve enjoyed, the waterfront view giving us an alternative perspective. The tour paid for itself when the captain motored into Monaco harbor and gave us the chance for up close and personal photos of the megayachts, their crews waving to us from deck chairs

Like many people who visit the Cote D’Azur, I’ve fantasized about what it would be like to be so rich that pricetags are not an issue. That’s one type of wealth, and it might be fun to try out that lifestyle for a while.But the last three weeks have offered us wealth of a different kind – the joy of making discoveries together along cobbled passageways, in markets and boulangeries and village squares. We’ll never own a Cote D’Azur yacht, villa, or Ferrari – but the memories we’re bringing home with us are just as valuable.

Les reponses – Francais, ou pas Francais?

Pamela Young

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September 12, 2013

Les reponses – Francais, ou pas Francais?
Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

Alors, have you made your guesses and tabulated your results on the French/Not French quiz? Thanks for playing, and I look forward to your feedback on our assessments.

1) Madame T-shirt and Fannypack:

Not Francais. French women might wear such a T-shirt to do their housecleaning, but never in public. Although, come to think of it, this suggests they actually bought such a T-shirt in the first place, which is doubtful. And a fanny pack? S’il… vous… plait….

2) Madame Lime Green and Rose

Did the French language newspaper give you pause? Me too. But je pense que reading ability was the only part of this woman that was French. Quiet characterizes the well-dressed French woman’s wardrobe, and this outfit screamed. The matchy-matchyness of the jewellry was a giveaway as well.

3) Mademoiselle at the Matisse Museum:

French, absolutement. Women of all ages in France are much more likely than North American women to wear dresses and skirts, not body-hugging, but well-tailored. Younger women more often wear their hair long, rather than in the Jennifer Aniston, shoulder-length layers still so popular in North America.

4) Madame at the next table

This woman, the adored Grandmaman de petite Jeannette of Le Vieil Hopital in Caromb, gave me baseline data for norming “French/Not French”. We were introduced in the residence courtyard as Jeannette was showing off the contents of her first day of school backpack. My first thought when I looked at her grandmother was “What makes this woman so stylish?” I had the opportunity to answer my question when, by chance, we ended up at the same restaurant that evening. She wasn’t expensively dressed, but again, her clothing fit her well, and her posture emphasized the slim lines of her shirt and jeans. A North American woman may have completed the outfit with black sandals and a silver chain. But the red wedges and the wool felt beads added a little French twist to Grandmere’s outfit. French women’s general style and their voices in restaurants may be quiet, but their conversations and their accessories are spirited..

5. Signora in the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild gardens

We were able to verify her Italianness when we heard her arguing with her husband. But even before that, I doubted she was Francaise. The spirit of her accessories was more Ferrari than Peugeot. Although she still had the legs of a racehorse as she rounded the 40 year old bend, showing them off with a little cheek in pink Daisy Dukes tipped the balance away from her being French.

6. La vieille dame in the Caromb bakeshop

One morning when I came in for baguette, I noticed 3 or 4 people standing at the back of the shop, well away from the counter. Unusual, since French people know exactly what they want in the boulangerie and try to get out with it as quickly as possible. But that morning, no one seemed to be in a hurry as one of Caromb’s elders made her purchases and chatted to the salesclerk. This little slice of life characterizes French style of a different quality.

7. The woman with the blue dress and matching arms

I noticed the dress blowing in the hot wind outside a store called La Cotonnerie in Villefranche’s inner harbor – and fell in love with its detailed stitchery and half-moon, hemline cutouts. I saved it for Sunday when I knew we’d be going to an art show among many well-dressed French women. And then the heat disappeared, and the locals were arriving for lunch in sweaters, jackets and long pants, looking at me and muttering under their breath, “Une touriste. Pas Francaise.” .

8. The man in the Abercrombie and Fitch T and shorts

I’m sure when you were working your way through the people portraits, you were wondering when you’d get to the male descriptions. Weren’t men also subject to our evaluation? Since I developed the game because I was interested in French women’s style, I only played it in my head at first. Then, I engaged Lorne as a participant. Then, one evening, I asked him to develop criteria for the male version of French/Not French. He scanned the men as they walked by, both accompanied and unaccompanied. Finally, just before dessert, he shrugged. “I can’t tell,” he said. “Most of them are dressed like schlubs, even the ones who are walking with the obviously French women.” At first, I scoffed, and then I looked, and then I agreed. No baseline data was available to further develop the game.

I want to leave you with one last portrait. I just saw her today, and I’m still stumped. We were touring the Villa Kerylos, a Greek-style mansion commissioned by a wealthy Frenchman in the early 20th century. She was 20 or 21, by herself, listening to an audioguide. Hair twisted into a casually messy topknot. Sunglasses on top of her head. A black and white, Balinese-style animal printed blouse, and orange and white, bib-style shorts in a Balinese geometric print. Black painted fingernails with white tips. And a shoulder bag adorned with Audrey Hepburn’s face and the words, “Style can’t just be picked up at the market.” What do you think?

Francais, ou pas Francais?

Pamela Young

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September 12, 2013

Francais, ou pas Francais?
Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

The year I lived in Winnipeg, I got hooked on the TV show Sex and the City. Every Saturday evening while I did my laundry, I’d visit with Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda, the four high-style Manhattan friends whose loves and lives Carrie explored in her newspaper column.

In one episode, Carrie points out what she believes is an inaccurate character detail in her current male friend’s recently published novel. “No self-respecting New York woman would ever wear her hair in a scrunchie,” she tells him. He snorts, and bets against her assertion. Later, they are standing in a lineup for a trendy restaurant opening. Ahead of them is a woman with a ponytail, held aloft by a scrunchie. He raises his eyebrows at Carrie, who says under her breath, “She’s not from New York.” He taps the woman on the shoulder and asks if she’s looking forward to her dinner. With a big smile and a broad southern drawl, she says, “Oh, yes! My husband and I are from Georgia, and this is our first trip to New York City! I’m so excited!”

As we wait for Provencal trains, dinners, and traffic lights, Lorne and I often play a game I developed and dubbed “French/Not French.” The object of the game is to guess whether a passerby is French, only taking into consideration the context and how the person dresses and/or behaves. We each have to register a guess before hearing the person speak. Sometimes, we’re never able to validate our choice but there’s no point in ruining a perfectly good game with statistical evidence!

Wanna play? I thought you might Here are 8 people portraits. I’ll give you the context and the description using the most objective language I can. I’ll supply our answers and explanations for them tomorrow. Have fun!

French, or not French?

1. A woman about 30 years of age walks along the Villefranche seawalk. She is wearing a T-shirt with horizontal stripes and a stretched neckline. She carries her belongings in a fanny pack.
2. A woman with fluffy white hair sits in a restaurant courtyard, reading a French newspaper. She is wearing a fluorescent lime blouse. Her hoop earrings, bracelet and watch band are also lime green. Her lipstick is bright rose.
3. A teenage girl walks with her two friends through the Matisse Museum in Nice. She wears an ocean blue dress with a black empire waistband, and black flats. Her hair extends halfway down her back.
4. A middle-aged woman sits with a very straight back at the next table to yours in an outdoor restaurant.The conversation she is having with her friend is so quiet you can hardly hear it. She wears a pale grey, short sleeved T-shirt, slate grey skinny jeans, red wedge sandals, and a string of beads made of wool felt.
5. A woman in her 40s walks through the gardens of the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in Cap Ferrat. She wears red-framed sunglasses, a white blouse, pink short shorts, and white wedge sandals. Her toenails are painted azure.
6. A very elderly woman leans on a cane in a Caromb bakeshop. She is wearing a grey cardigan with holes in the sleeves and backless bedroom slippers.
7, It is the day after a rainstorm has significantly cooled the Villefranche heat, and a breeze is blowing off the harbor. A woman in her 50s sits with her husband, eating lunch at a stairside cafe. She is wearing a swimming pool blue, sleeveless cotton dress. She frequently rubs her bare arms to try to stay warm.
8. A man in his 30s peruses outdoor menus with his wife along a cobbled street above the Villefranche harbor. He is wearing a T-shirt with an Abercrombie and Fitch logo, long basketball shorts, and athletic sandals.

Monaco reconnaisance

Pamela Young

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September 9, 2013

Monaco reconnaisance
Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

The name is Young. Pam Young. Today’s mission? Surveillance of Monaco, to collect information that will inform the possible movements of other agents for whom the principality may one day be a destination.To maintain a low profile, I am dressed in vacation attire and travelling with the locals on public transportation. Accompanying me is my most engaging companion, Mr. Moneynickel

We catch the train from our headquarters in Villefranche-sur-mer among a crush of Spanish cruiseship passengers. Ten minutes later, we’re in the gleaming Monaco train station, and then on a bus to the old city. We arrive just in time to catch the changing of the guard ceremony outside the Grimaldi family’s Palais Royale. The taut jawlines of the young carbinnieres remind me of my youth, and I stand a little straighter as I admire their military precision. After a perfunctory review, the regiment wheels away, the pageantry is finished, and two freshly alert guards are installed on either side of the palace gate. Like young men everywhere, one is a little forgetful. He has no sooner come to attention in the guard house than his commanding officer re-emerges from the palace and discreetly hands him a pair of sunglasses.

After the parade, we tour the palace’s estate apartments and the neighboring Museum of Napoleon Souvenirs. No photos are allowed in either place,and no shops carry any postcard images of what we saw. I curse myself for forgetting my fountain pen camera. However, the official palace website offers a few snapshots of the palace rooms, which His Serene Highness Albert II and his family still use for official occasions. The chambers are a study in opulence – gilt-trimmed furniture, richly colored silk brocades, portraits of the Grimaldis, past and present, and centuries worth of gifts from other royals and near-royals. The Museum of Napoleon Souvenirs contains over 1000 items related to Napoleon and other Grimaldi ancestors, including an impressive display of weapons, a scrap of the robe worn by Louis XIV during his execution, and Napoleon’s bicorn, Mr. Moneynickel was in military history heaven. It was a good thing most of the explanations were in French, or we might still be there.

Just in case we are left with the impression that the Grimaldi fortune is tied up only in historic memorabilia, Albert II has amassed a collection of vintage vehicles that is also open to the public. Low-slung, Formula One racecars sparkle under hushed spotlights, next to Rolls Royces, Jaguars, Ferraris. I follow Moneynickel at a discreet distance, wiping small patches of drool off the cars’ hoods. I eye up one or two models for my personal use. However, I’m disappointed that the Prince has been unable to garner an Austin Martin DB5 like the one my esteemed colleague over at MI5 has made so famous. Those forward machine guns and tire slasher hubcaps would come in very handy when Moneynickel and I compete with the Mercedes and Audis for parking back in Villefranche.

The Grimaldis’ shows of wealth set the tone for the sights that dazzle us for the rest of the day. The official Monaco Yacht Show is not until September 25, but the marinas are still a waterfront spectacle.

Architectural showpieces leap up from the downtown core. But the piece de resistance is the Casino de Monte Carlo. Decked out in 19th century elegance,she is surrounded by fountains and palm trees, her entrance guarded by black suited men wearing earpieces. Two women with slim pink shopping bags sweep out and nod discreetly to the chef du parking, who provides the keys to their black Bentley They place their shopping in the trunk, lower their sunglasses, and disappear across the courtyard. A Ferrari shrieks in as they leave. A tanned, grey haired man gets out of the driver’s seat, and a slender young woman in platform sandals and a body-hugging fuschia dress emerges from the passenger side. “Ciao, bella,” he says, giving her a distracted kiss on each cheek, before galloping solo up the steps into the casino.

Damn the casual disguises Moneynickel and I are wearing for this mission.We have no hope of being admitted to the casino dressed as we are, much less to the private gambling rooms where we might have broken the bank. Even the white-gloved doorman of the neighboring Hotel Paris is on alert for fashion faux pas, turning away those in shorts and sandals who think they’ll slip into the lounge for a quiet pastis.

There is one other place during our visit from which we are barred admittance – St. Nicholas Cathedral, the site of Prince Rainier’s marriage to Grace Kelly, and their final resting place. Our appearance is not the problem this time. A funeral is underway, a reminder to wealthy Monagesques that although taxes here are not a certainty, there is no escape from life’s other inevitability .