Maison Tranquille Blog

🌿🌿🌿 Thoughts about watching 84 Charing Cross Road starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins.... I watched 84 Charing Cross Road expecting a pleasant movie about books and letters. It was that. But somewhere around 1951, I became aware that I was there too. I was three years old, living a very different life from Helene Hanff in New York or Frank Doel in London. I have no memory of their streets or their bookshop. Still, while Helene was writing letters across the ocean and Frank was hunting down books for her, I was somewhere in Louisiana and Arkansas, busy being three. We were sharing the same time. The film makes space for the ordinary things. Helene wants a particular book. Frank finds it, or can’t find it, and writes back. Helene sends parcels of food to the Marks & Co booksellers in London, where meat is still rationed years after the war. Someone passes along a bit of news. People go home to their families. Years go by, and another letter turns up. Nothing happens quickly...

  I have been on Duolingo for 1,545 consecutive days. That sounds much more impressive than it is. It does not mean I have spent 1,545 days becoming fluent in French. Some days I have done several lessons. Some days I have only done enough to keep the flame from going out. At this point, I am not even sure why I maintain the streak.  Is it because I am devoted to French or because I refuse to be defeated by a cartoon owl. For a long time, learning French had the usual framework around it: lessons, levels, progress and the distant possibility of becoming fluent. Fluency is a fine goal, but it can turn an interest into another job. There is always more vocabulary to learn, another verb tense to master and another level showing how far I still have to go. Maybe, instead, I can simply be interested in French. I do not have to become fluent to justify the time I spend with it. I can like the sound of the language, enjoy recognizing a sentence and remain curious about how French peo...

  I opened the freezer the other day and decided things had gotten ridiculous. It was packed, with vegetables crammed into every available space. Broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, carrots, corn, peas, beans, berries and assorted bags of things I would have to pull out to identify. I took a picture, which somehow made it look even worse. Then I remembered this wasn't our only freezer. We have another freezer in the garage, and another refrigerator with a side freezer. Apparently I was preparing for the apocalypse. Or maybe I was planning on catering the apocalypse.  Anyway, the apocalypse has been canceled. We're eating the freezer. This comes at a good time. We're trying to pay down some bills, and I'm also working on downsizing our lives a little. Buying more groceries while several freezers are already full doesn't help either project, so for the next couple of weeks we're shopping at home first. We will still buy fresh produce, bread and other things we need, b...