We Lived in a Tiny Farming Village

We lived in a tiny farming village in the Burgundy region of France.  The village was so tiny that it didn't have stores, but a Boulangerie truck, or bread on wheels,  came by every day at late morning so everyone could have fresh bread for the day.  There was also a charcuterie truck that stopped on it's rounds and offered fresh meat, and probably other staples.  We lived up on the hill, and our address was "La Grande Croix," which meant somewhere in the vicinity of the Church and it's cross.  I often wondered how the little mailman found us, because everyone's address was the same, but then we must have been like aliens from another planet, and everyone would have known.

We found a small house to rent there not because we particularly liked it, but because it was the only house we could find anywhere close to where my husband worked.  There was no way I was going to be far away from him at any time.  He spoke French - I didn't.  It was that simple.  The house was basic and unattractive, and it was hard for us since we had a nice house and property back in the US, but we knew that everything was different now; that our lives were going to change in ways that we couldn't imagine. 

The house had mostly what we needed.  It was furnished, although all of the furniture except the table and dining chairs were things that could be folded out into beds.  It had been used as a country house for our Parisian landlord and as a summer rental for other Europeans vacationing in the area.  In fact, our landlord asked us if we would be able to move out for the month of August each year so that he could continue his rental activity.  We told him that we didn't think so.  Where would we go during that time.  We unfortunately didn't get a month's vacation as the French do.  The house also had a small sort of studio apartment in the backyard that was rented to a college student during the year, and where our landlord would come each weekend during the summer to do all manner of work to the property, generally starting early in the morning with the noisiest activities.  The one thing I can say about the house, it had a pretty view over the hills of Burgundy, although you had to make an effort to see it.  Our business-minded landlord would not have bothered to take full advantage of that view.  On a clear day (I'll talk about the fog later), you could even see an awesome medieval castle, Chateau de Brandon off on a distant hill. 

The house had tiny appliances that we had to slowly get used to.  The refrigerator was a  mini refrigerator that fit under the counter.  I used to come home from the grocery store and wonder how I would get everything put away, but I always managed somehow.  The stove was also tiny, and I had to turn off the baseboard heat while cooking or the electric box would trip, and the electricity would go out in the whole house.  It was, however, the washing machine that offered us the most entertainment.  It held about two pairs of jeans and a pair of socks, and would wash for a full hour and a half.  We often found ourselves sitting and watching it with utter fascination as you might watch a really good movie on television.  In time I learned to program it for the wool cycle that used cold water instead of boiling, and only took 45 minutes.  It was more practical, but infinitely less interesting.

We were surrounded by farms raising mostly sheep and Charolais cows - not very pretty cows.  They were white sluggish animals with sort of pinkish eyes, and always covered in manure.  I was moved to eat mostly vegetarian while living there.  I sort of felt like I was eating the neighbors otherwise.

Our daughter was only thirteen years old when we arrived in France, so she had to go to school.  We enrolled her in the local Lycee or high school, and she started attending it after we both had a month of intensive French classes taught by a teacher who couldn't speak any English.  She not only spoke to us in French, but explained grammar to us in French.  I admit that I would get so terribly tired concentrating on what she was saying, and trying to understant that I could actually drink a cup of the strong French coffee during the break with almost no side effects.  Maybe a little tunnel vision from time to time. 

Our daughter came home from school one day not long after she had started going full time and said that one of the girls in her class had invited her to a birthday party at her home.  We were very happy to think that she was fitting in and making friends, which had been worrisome for us.  Another girlfriend's mother offered to take our daughter to the party and bring her back, since she knew that we had no idea where anyone lived, or really what was going on.  She also said something about a castle.  We shrugged our shoulders and thought maybe the parents were caretakers or something?   We anxiously waited for her to come back home that afternoon so she could tell us everything.  It turned out that her friend was the daughter of the Count and Countess, which I guess made her a Countess too, and that their home was that medieval castle on the distant hill that we could see from our window.

I read an interesting blog recently

I read an interesting blog recently by Richard Jacobs entitled, "Searching for Beauty."  In it he poses questions for potters about integrity of purpose.  He wants our pottery to reflect where we came from and what made us who we are.  He asks, "Is it a good thing or bad thing that one can pick up a pot in some swank ceramic gallery in Soho or Manhattan or Tokyo and they often all look the same?  They seem to follow the latest trendy fad on what's hot right now in the ceramic world."  Wow, I don't even actually know what that means.   What is trendy right now I wonder.  Is it what I call those 'nouveau Rococo pots' - the ones with all the curlicues and a million handles, and everything else you can think of put on them.  In fact, I just saw the best example of that kind of pot the other day in a magazine.  It was made to look like a wedding cake or some sort of fanciful cake.  Clay as icing.  A few years ago it must have been crazy teapots, since that's all I ever saw in ceramic magazines.  Does anyone ever wonder who starts those trends?  Who was the one who made the first piece and afterwards everyone else scrambled to make their own version.

I found the blog interesting because it made me wonder.  Do I follow trends that I recognize from my limited knowledge of what is in mode right now.  Am I trying to do something that is mine alone, as Richard Jacobs asks of us, or am I trying to make what will be more easily accepted, get into shows, or sell.  I'm not sure.  I do know that everyone wants recognition, and who wouldn't want fame.  Ultimately I believe that all that we make is a sort of self-portrait, we can't help it, even if what we make looks more like what will get us on a magazine cover.

Mr. Jacobs' blog is taken from letters he wrote to a potter after buying one of her pots.  Critical thinking questions.  Maybe I should write letters to him as a collector  What is the role of the collector.  Is it to make sure that his or her collection maintains monetary value as an investment, or is it to simply have things around that are loved and appreciated.  Is it looking for that special something gift that is handmade and unique but less expensive, or is it an exercise in educating themselves to the value of craftsmanship, artistic form, place in history, integrity and that elusive quality of "completeness."

I can't with satisfaction answer these questions right now but will continue to think about them, as should all  artists and artisans who make things on which they put value, both artistic and monetary.  So while I don't necessarly agree with Mr. Jacobs that we must always stay true to our roots  and discard those powerful outside forces that relate to money, fame and success, because those forces are too hard to ignore.  I do agree with him that in doing so we create a sort of blandness of art.  Craftsmanship today in the U.S. at least,  seems to be more about the piece that is the most impossibly put together and most perfectly made, and exhibitions offer no surprises.

A glow worm is a small insect

A glow worm is a small insect that glows to attract a mate. It's not the same as a firefly, though they are of the same family, I think. The one and only time I ever saw a glow worm was while I was living in France for several years. The people who pointed it out to me also told me that they rarely are seen anymore, due to environmental issues no doubt.

I also became acquainted with pottery in France. I knew that I would be living there for awhile, and that I needed to learn the language, and taking pottery classes with a group of French people who were virtually my new neighbors, seemed to be a perfect way to help accomplish that since I had been interested in working with clay for a long time.

These two things, the Glow worm and pottery might not seem related, but you haven't heard the whole story. It's a very long story, and I'll only tell some of it today.

Sometime while struggling with learning the French language and learning how to work with recalcitrant lumps of clay, I decided to take pottery workshops. The first one that I signed up for was in England since I mistakenly thought that the language would be the same. The second workshop that I took the following year was held in the Jura Mountain region of France. I felt like I was comfortable enough with French to think that I could do that. I probably didn't read the ad in the Ceramic revue magazine very well, however, since my main concern was that it should take place not far from where we were living. It turns out that it was taught by a ceramic engineer who had his degree from a really prestigious university in France, and was used to teaching professional potters who were looking to refine their knowledge of glazing chemistry. Wow, the only way I got through chemistry in college was by becoming friends with a really nice, sort of nerdy chemistry genius in my class who took pity on me and my girlfriend and gave us the answers. In other words, I really didn't know anything about chemistry. Actually, I don't think that any of the other participants in the workshop read that ad very well either, except for one know-it-all who came to classes dressed in a sparkling white labcoat every day. "You didn't read the ad very well, did you?" she asked us while shaking her head.

The instructor hated us from the start. Well, that's not exactly true, he actually didn't hate me. In fact, he seemed to like me? I'm not sure why, but I did take advantage of it. "You cannot imagine what jerks you are!" he told us several times during those two weeks.

Oh, and I didn't tell you about the accommodations. We each had our own sort of little sheds. Really very rustic, to say the least. They were closed up all year except for July and August when he conducted his workshops, so the mildew was pretty bad. I had severe headaches from the smell each night as I tried to sleep but couldn't. When my husband saw the sheds the first time, he said, "you aren't going to stay here are you?" What could I say, my obsession with clay had started, and there was no going back. I needed to learn more than I needed sleep, or cleanliness, or all the other things missing there, so I did stay. All the other participants, even the lab coat lady thought that the accommodations were 'charming'. At least they did until the mice running back and forth in the attic space right over all of our heads got to be too frantic and noisy.

We struggled along with our daily work. Mornings were spent in scientific lectures with our handbooks that we were given at the beginning of the class. Afternoons we took to the studios where we attempted to create great stuff while enduring the disdain of the dreaded instructor. After our evening meals made by our instructor's elderly mother and taken together at an outside table under a tree, we all would set off as a group on our nightly walks. Since the other participants were all either French or French-speaking Swiss, our walks were not strolls around the village as a couch-potato American might take, but rather long, and to me, grueling affairs taken well into the French countryside, over fields and under barbed wire fences, through thick woods and deep valleys. To someone like me who wasn't sleeping at all, it was going to the point of exhaustion and further.

This is where the glow worm comes in. When we finally arrived back at our little group of sheds each night in the most profound of darkness that one can only find in a tiny French village tucked away in the countryside, I would look with anticipation for the faintest glow in the damp dark grass. There it would be - like a beacon, or a small beating heart - waiting like the best of friends to a lonely stranger, a tiny glow worm.