Moon over Hautrage

Euronews has a segment called "No Comment" during which they show camera footage with no voiceover. Seems appropriate.

Nashville sur Sambre

Where do you start describing last night's experience? I guess you start by explaining that our nephew Emmett is the drummer for The Ranchhands, a hard-driving country band out of Nashville, and that we took a half-hour trip on the E42 to see them play just this side of Namur. Not only did the band put on a great show (amazing drummer), but the crowd was a show in its own right. The Ranchhands were the feature act at the "Exceptionel Country Day," which was held in the Velaine sur Sambre community center. And lemme tell ya, for a certain segment of Belgium, American country music is huge. There were roughly 400-500 people there, and Rita, Sarah, and I might have been the only Americans other than the band. We were also the only spectators without some kind of "country" gittup on. Almost everyone had on at least a cowboy hat or an American flag bandanna (for sale in the side room) or boots or a fringed sumpthinerother or a gingham shirt or skirt. Some outfits were really elaborate, all the way up to a couple of "pros." One was decked out as a marshal, complete with badge, vest, and six-shooter hung for a crossdraw. He even had sideburns, which is why I considered him a pro: you don't decide the day of the show that you want sideburns, so this guy must wear these things year round. Same with the Trapper, who had long hair, a raccoon tail so big it couldn't exist in nature, and a revolver hung low on his hip. Lots of good-looking mustaches, too, which Belgian men seem to be able to grow at will. The most authentically American-lookin' guys, though, were probably the two young men who were were wearing, not cowboy boots, but Timbs. I, of course, wore the true American headgear: a ball cap. So did Emmett.
Emmett setting up before the show.


Then there were the line dancers. This must be what middle-aged Belgian women do while their out-of-shape husbands go off to have heart attacks on their bicycles every weekend. We noted several different troupes, including Roxy Line Dance (cowgirl boots and jean skirts with a flouncy ruffle), Indiana Ranch (bucking bronco logo on the back of a denim shirt), Country Planet (sequined logo on a black shirt), and a whole passel of freelancers. A Francophone band called "Country Cooking" played first, and the gaps were filled in by a country DJ. Many of the line dancers danced through the whole afternoon and evening, leaving only to go out front for smoke breaks. (I've found my retirement career: Country Cooking's lead singer was good, but he needs a diction coach.)

And bikers. We're not sure what brought the Eagle Brothers out from Dinant, home of Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone, and site of the bridge on which Charles de Gaulle was wounded in the Great War. Perhaps it was a general appreciation of the American arts. Or maybe it was just the chance to drink a whole bunch of beer and not have to get up and go to work the next day. But they were there too.

Wendy, Debbie, we can report that Emmett is fine. He's being well cared for, is having a good time, and always wears proper hearing protection and dark glasses to shield his eyes from the light shows (the shades also add a jazzy element to the band). And he assured us that he wouldn't autograph anyone's breasts, Chris Tedesco's offer to the crowd notwithstanding.

Our digital camera continues to be a bit hinky, so we didn't get a lot of shots to document all the weirdness; but here's one of a couple of Belgian cowpokes. Or bikers. We're not sure which. Apparently, neither are they. They can afford to spend a whole evening listening to The Ranchhands because Belgian cows ain't goin' nowhere: they just lie down all day.

In closing, special thanks to everyone in The Ranchhands for a great show and for bringing us a little piece of home. May you be successful but remember these European days fondly. Dear reader, know this: While the world may disagree with US foreign policy, it still loves American culture and the whole idea of America. Heck, even French intellectuals like jazz and Jerry Lewis.

En grève

The Belgian Post Office, and most likely a bunch of other offices, went on strike yesterday. I didn't hear any news coverage of it, but they most certainly had an announced reason for the strike. The real reason, though, was that Monday is a holiday, so they were tyring to grab a 4-day weekend. It's not Memorial Day for the Europeans but Whitmonday--Pentacost Monday. It's a big weekend for us, too: Sarah arrives Sunday morning; then Sunday evening we're going to see the Ranchhands, widely considered to have the best drummer in all of country music (our nephew Emmett). We also have a choice of city fairs to attend.

Language note for the Francophones: ducasse is the northern French word for the annual celebration of the local patron saint's day, which quickly devolves into the decidedly unsaintly. I didn't know where it came from. But you know who does know? Google knows! Ducasse is a corruption of dédicace. Google also tells us that the Occitan word is voto, from fête votive.

In France they have wine cellars

In Belgium we have beer cellars. Beer for home consumption can be had by the individual beer (people are free to break open a pack and take one or two), by the four-, six-, or eight-pack (seems to depend on quality and size), or by the case. The surprising thing for us is that the price is almost exactly the same. In other words, the price of a case is 24 times the price of a single beer. And sometimes they even round up! I guess they don't want anyone to be punished for wanting only one beer. All bottles are refillables. You see a couple of the throw-away kind, but very few. Those really nice, heavy Chimay bottles that in the States we toss in the recycling? Those would fetch 10 centimes each at the bottle return counter here in Belgium.

The yellow one on the top left, obscured by the shipping label, is Saint Feuillien, an abby style beer brewed not 20 miles from here in the town of Le Roeulx (pronounced luh roo and often called "le rolex" because it's a swanky place). It's our favorite everyday Belgian beer. We also like Chimay with the white cap. And I (David) like the Chimay blue. Leffe and Grimbergen are by US standards astonishingly good beers but by Belgian standards merely good, solid, mass-produced beers.

The flower market comes to town

As part of the Ascension holiday festivities in Saint-Ghislain, the flower market came to town on Saturday. We had just the spot picked out for impatiens, and a decorative wheelbarrow just waiting to be filled with "a riot of colors," as David put it. You can't quite see the riot of colors in this picture but it's there. We're going to go back to the big weekly flower market in Mons today to see what else we can get.

We miss our girls

We must because we keep seeing things that remind us of them. This is a town not terribly far from the US air base at Chièvres.

Things that have changed in 35 years

Mobylettes. They're almost all gone. You see the classic version every now and then, and you see some Vespa-like scooters, but the old 20-inch bike with a weed whacker engine mounted on the front wheel has gone the way of the 5¢ stamp. And all the scooters and bicycles combined are nothing like the fleets of two-wheelers that clogged the streets of Montpellier in the afternoon when university and lycée classes let out. You don't see people on bikes getting a free ride by holding onto the shoulder of a powered friend. You don't see gaggles of high school girls or gangs of teenaged tough guy wannabes on them. You don't see old ladies going shopping or old guys going to the pétanque game on them. You pretty much don't see anybody, in fact, because they wear helmets now. And most of them are in cars. No wonder we got global warming.

Mother's Day

A rose we bought at the Mons flower market today. And it smells great, too. The market was packed with Mother's Day shoppers. We went to Le Pain quotidien for lunch. Regular readers will remember this as our favorite little whole foods bakery/sandwich shop. When we commented on how empty the place was, they explained that they had had a big rush for breakfast but that people tend to go to fancy restaurants for Mother's Day lunch. I told them we were there precisely because it was Mother's Day. The guy who works there said ,"Enfin quelqu'un a compris!"At last someone understands!

David gets the night shift

Actually, he volunteered for it, the 4:30 AM shift for the Make-a-Wish 24-hourathon at SHAPE. It's a huge deal, with various departments and organizations at SHAPE putting teams together to keep at least one person on the track the whole 24 hours. We're not sure exactly how it works but it's a fundraiser, and the winning team seems to be the one that does the most laps.

Each group pitches a tent, some larger than others, for those spending the night or just chilling. Most notable of the tents: the Brits' fish and chips concession, the Germans' Bitburger on draft (gotta carb load, you know), and the Canadians' moose milk - along with their about 6-foot high ginormous statue of a moose. Folks - including kids and dogs - turn out in droves to walk or run, despite the on-again, off-again rain. It is Belgium, you know. To finish things off tonight, we have Gary Sinese and his Lt Dan band playing live.

Oh, I signed up for the more civilized hour of 6:30 AM!

Champagne

The morning after our wine-buying binge in Mons we got up and left for Champagne. If you read really fast, some of you may have seen that we were going...before we decided to take it down off the web site in case someone was waiting for us to be away so that they could come steal all the worthless junk you taxpayers shipped to Europe for us. (Thanks, by the way.) Of course we've bought more worthless junk since we got here, too.

But I digress. As always. We went to Épernay and visited three different champagne houses. We went from the humongous (Mercier) to the miniscule (Pierre Gobillard) to the merely small (J-M Gobillard). The lady at Pierre Gobillard explained that the two Gobillard houses were unrelated. Her outfit was so small that she had to unlock the door to the tasting room for us, and we had a private session. The other Gobillard house is across from the church where Dom Perignon is buried. Or where his tombstone is. There seems to be some confusion. If the guide book writers were tasting as much of the local product as we were, it's no danged wonder. Anyways, we bought some more wine.

This is the little village outside Épernay where we stayed, in what was essentially a French Motel 6. We took the picture because the town name reminded us of one of our daughters. Can you guess which one? From here we could look across the vineyards and up the hill and see the luxury hotel where we stayed during our 20th anniversary trip to the same region.

Here is it, off in the hazy distance. If you click on the photo and make it huge, you can maybe see it up near the brow of the hill. Oh, and that hill is the Montagne de Reims. And yes, all the green stuff on the slopes is vineyards.

David gets even for the jewelry show

Last night we went to the 19th Mons Wine Expo. While not quite reaching the level of our officemate who spent €2,000 one year, we did our bit to keep the French economy afloat. And yes, they were almost all French vendors, with one Romanian and a couple of South American countries also represented. But the poor Chileans were getting pretty much ignored in favor of the Burgundians and the Bordelais. It was a surprisingly small event--maybe three or four dozen vendors--and very uncrowded at first because we deliberately went early. But the smallness made it more manageable, unlike those monster jewelry shows where women just freeze in the entranceway as soon as they see all the sparkly things, with their hearts racing, unable to even breathe.

We both relived bits of our youth by loading up on wines from the Loire Valley (Rita) and Languedoc-Roussillon (David). Robin, Bob, Lynn, Thom, if you're reading, I got me some Corbières, which is now an appellation controlée! I had fun chatting with the vintner; I told him I hadn't had any in 35 years. Then there was the olive girl from Bandol, which is right next door to Toulon, where I spent the school year 77-78. We walked away with a few months worth of olives, dried tomatoes, and what she termed "Provençal candy": pickled garlic cloves. Putain! Elles sont bonnes!

Mosquito netting

Rachel is nagging us to offer you something new, so I'll tell you about the most exciting thing going these days: mosquito netting. With our four weeks of absolutely gorgeous weather have come the buzzing insects, so much so that we've opted to sleep with our portes-fenetres (French doors) and all the other windows closed the last couple nights. We managed to get to a hardware store this afternoon to buy screening and velcro; now we just have to figure out how to put it up and still get the windows and doors open. (All the windows and doors open in, and some of the windows swivel, so it's not just a matter of putting the screening on the outside).

Last Saturday we felt like real grownups: we took the train up to Brussels in the late afternoon to meet up with the younger brother of one of Becky's former soccer teammates, who was on a study trip to Brussels. I took advantage of the opportunty to go to the FNAC (bookstore) and buy a bunch of polars (mysteries) while David enjoyed a few beers down on the Grand' Place. Having gotten used to Mons, I was a little overwhelmed by the crowds on the rue Neuve (the main pedestrian shopping street in Brussels) - and by the price of beer on the Grand' Place. Made little ole Mons look good. We took a 10:00 PM train home and were exhausted the next day from staying out so late. We are old.