CCK

Food Friday: Burmese Chicken Curry

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Back in March I wrote about a cookbook my mother had worked on when we lived in Burma in the post,  The Lady.  The Rangoon International Cook Book is dated 1954.

Aung San Suu Kyi is much in the news now as being the “unofficial” leader of her country.  She stood by her beliefs and suffered for many years under house arrest because she longed to see Burma free.  She comes by it naturally.  Her father was the founder of the Burmese army and negotiated independence from the British Empire.  Burma was the first country to leave the Empire.  He was assassinated the same year they gained independence.  Her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, became Chairman of the Social Planning Commission for the Union of Burma under the newly formed Burmese government and later was sent to India and Nepal as the Burmese ambassador.

Daw Khin Kyi also found time to donate some of her recipes to my mother’s cookbook.

Chicken Curry (Burmese)

2 chickens 65 ticals (2.5 lbs each)

0.5 cup vegetable oil

3 chillies

3 cloves garlic

3 small onions

1 tsp salt

1 tsp curry powder

1 tablespoon Chinese soy sauce

5 cups water

pinch of saffron powder

3 bay leaves

1 stick cinnamon

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Have chickens cleaned and drawn.  Cut into suitable sizes.  (I bought a cut up chicken.)

Mix saffron powder, curry powder, and Chinese sauce, and rub into the chicken.

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Grind chillies, garlic and onions till a paste  is formed.  (Use red chilies if you can find them. )

Fry in cooked oil till brown.  Add spiced meat and cook till it sizzles.

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Add 5 cups water.  Throw in 3 bay leaves and stick of cinnamon.  Simmer till tender, when the water should be reduced to half.

Serve with fruit and/or chutney.

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The Question of “Home”

 

I have read several blogs recently on the subject of “home”.  Where is “home”?

Dictionary.com tells us the following

home [hohm]

noun

1. a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household.

2. the place in which one’s domestic affections are centered.

3. an institution for the homeless, sick, etc.: a nursing home.

4. the dwelling place or retreat of an animal.

5. the place or region where something is native or most common.

Synonyms

1.  abode, dwelling, habitation; domicile. See house.

2.  hearth, fireside.

3.  asylum.

For TCKs or Global Nomads, it is an ongoing topic.  The eternal question – where are you from?  Where is your home?  These are not easy questions to answer.  Home is here and everywhere.  I am from here and everywhere.

That very last word is my favorite.  Asylum.  The place where you feel safe.  That is where home is.  That is where home should be.  What makes you feel safe?  People you trust.  People who love you.  Mutual understanding and respect.  Comfort.  Growing up, my home was always where my family was, unless I was with them, and then it was wherever we were.  It didn’t matter if it was a hotel room or a house or an airport.  As long as we were together and had a pack of cards nearby, we were at home.  A good card game could get us through anything.  Some of my fondest memories are of blackouts during torrential rainstorms playing cards by candlelight.

We all continue to search for the elusive “home” but I think we know where to find it when we really need it.

 

“The strength of this family bond works to the benefit of children when parent-child communication is good and the overall family dynamic is healthy. It can be devastating when it is not. Compared to the geographically stable child, the global-nomad child is inordinately reliant on the nuclear family for affirmation, behavior-modeling, support and above all, a place of safety. The impact, therefore, of dysfunction in this most basic of units in exacerbated by the mobile lifestyle.”

Excerpt from GROWING UP WITH A WORLD VIEW By Norma M. McCaig

Books

I stole these pictures and summaries from Amazon.  I know, shame on me.

I am currently searching for memoirs on Third Culture Kids/ Global Nomads/ Cross Culture Kids/ or whatever label you prefer.  I have found that there are quite a few Missionary Kids with books.  I find them compelling but I can’t always identify with them.

When I first discovered who I was and had my ‘aha’ moment (see About), I tried to find anything I could to read on the subject of Third Culture Kids.  At that time it was very limited.  This was in the mid-90’s and I was living in Moscow.  I didn’t have a library or a local English bookstore.  I trolled the internet and I found these two books:

Hidden Immigrants: Legacies of Growing Up Abroad

Linda Bell

Entering the foreign service in 1965 as a relatively new bride, the author accompanied her husband, Charles, on a 26 year odyssey that took her to Morocco, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Norway, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. Both Bell daughters were born in Africa and brought up in different parts of the world. This book is a story of their growing up in foreign lands.

Letters Never Sent, a global nomad’s journey from hurt to healing

Ruth Ellen van Reken

Born and raised in Nigeria as the daughter of American missionaries, at age 39 Ruth needed to understand why, despite a life filled with rich experiences, a meaningful spiritual component, and family and friends who loved her, she often battled a secret depression. Through the journaling that became this book, she discovered that the very goodness of her life kept her from dealing with some of the challenges that also come with a global lifestyle – the realities of chronic cycles of separation and loss, reentry, and questions of identity. How could there be any struggles when she loved her childhood world so much? As a way of examining this ‘other side’ of her story, Ruth’s began to write many letters home such as the girl known as Miss Question Box might have written. This book contains her story from ages six to thirty-nine. Today, in her mid-sixties, renowned internationally for her compassion, knowledge and insight into what it means to be a child growing up among worlds, van Reken, looks back over her life and adds a fascinating and reflective epilogue to a memoir that has already sold 32,000 copies and has helped and inspired its readers.

Letters Never Sent has just been re-released and I am told has additional information and photos.  They were both good books and I was happy to have found them.  It was the beginning of my education.

Several years later I met Ruth Van Reken at a Global Nomad conference and she signed my Third Culture Kids book written by her and David C Pollock.  Now that was a real eye opener!  It is kind of like the bible of TCK’s.

Now that I am working on my own memoir, I am searching for books to read.  Research!  So here is a list of books I have read, am reading, and want to read.

Do you know of any good memoirs?  I would love to know about them!!

BOOKS I HAVE READ

 

For The Souls and Soils of India

Helen C Maybury

Helen Maybury (ne Conser) was born in India in 1924 and attended two international schools in India, Kodaikanal and Woodstock, before coming to the United States for university studies in 1942. She has produced a heartwarming profile of her mother and father, two courageous individuals who were confirmed in their resolve to serve God and His people. In all, Helen’s parents spent 37 years in India, as well as 9 years in home missions in the United States after their retirement. Alongside the personal history, the letters tell the story of India during a time of tremendous upheaval and historical significance, as the country fought its way to independence. There are letters that tell of meetings with great leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, and Vinoba Bhave, the author of the land-gift or “sarvodaya” movement. A non-violent revolutionary in the tradition of Gandhi, he collected millions of acres of land to distribute to the landless. Helen’s parents were an American couple who clearly cared deeply for equality, human dignity and social justice.

In the small world department… This woman lives in my apartment complex and I found out about this book though our monthly newsletter.  When I told my parents about the book, they told me they know somebody in their apartment complex who went to school with Helen! –expat alien

Fly Away Home

Maggie Myklebust

‘Clean freak’ Maggie tries so hard to keep her life in order but is foiled at every turn. The descendent of second generation Norwegian immigrants to America, she grows up in New Jersey, spending her summer vacations on an idyllic island in Norway. Later, in the wake of an abusive marriage, she and her three young children leave America and return to the Nordic Island of her ancestors, where she rekindles a relationship with her childhood sweetheart. Pulled between two worlds, her life continues as she seeks meaning, identity and happiness. With her true love by her side and three more children to care for, Maggie discovers her traveling days are far from over. Life’s unexpected twists see her return to America before being catapulted to the Netherlands. At last she can begin to make sense of her experiences until, that is, she is on the move again. In the process she learns that life comes full circle, from the hopes and dreams of her forebears to the place where she can finally find peace and come to terms with her past. Follow this Jersey girl as she flies back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean looking for love and a place to call home.

See my blog about this at A Good Read –expat alien

Expat Life Slice by Slice

by Apple Gidley

From marauding monkeys to strange men in her bedroom, from Africa to Australasia to America, with stops in Melanesia, the Caribbean and Europe along the way, Apple Gidley vividly sketches her itinerant global life. The challenges of expatriation, whether finding a home, a job, or a school are faced mostly with equanimity. Touched with humour and pathos, places come alive with stories of people met and cultures learned, with a few foreign faux pas added to the mix.

This has some good insight and lessons learned –expat alien

Home Keeps Moving

Heidi Sand-Hart

Home Keeps Moving follows Heidi and her missionary family on their many moves through the eyes of a Third Culture Kid (TCK) and the unique phenomena of having four very different home countries to relate to. It tells the true story of being catapulted from continent to continent constantly: leaving friends and starting all over again, her unquenchable search for a home and sense of belonging in this world, her desire for a life-partner with the odds all but against her due to constantly relocating (even into adulthood). You will laugh and cry along with Heidi as she recounts hilarious and heart-breaking tales from her childhood as West blends with East.

That is the true beauty of Heidi s upbringing, it crossed borders and defied logic but she lacked for nothing.

This is a very short MK book that touches on some important points.  It also incorporates other people’s experiences so gives more than one perspective. —expat alien

Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up Global

Faith Eidse, Nina Sichel

A fusion of voices and deeply personal experiences from every corner of the globe, Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up Global presents a cultural mosaic of today’s citizens of the world. Twenty stirring memoirs of childhoods spent packing, written by both world-famous and first-time authors, make the story of growing up displaced feel universal. Best-selling fiction and non-fiction authors Isabel Allende, Carlos Fuentes, Pat Conroy, Pico Iyer and Ariel Dorfman contribute powerful and deeply personal accounts of mobile childhoods and the cultural experiences they engender. The memoirs touch on the opportunities and difficulties of growing up in the ever-changing landscape of expatriate communities.

NOW READING

Potato In A Rice Bowl

Peggy Keener

In the memoir Potato in a Rice Bowl, Peggy Keener shares her wacky misadventures as a sincere-though misguided-Minnesota housewife struggling to create normalcy for her family while living in Japan during the 1960s. Through charming vignettes, Peggy takes a look back at her bewildering foray into the Japanese culture after her husband accepts a military assignment in a country thousands of miles away from the small prairie town of Austin, Minnesota, where she was born and raised. The mother of three boys, Peggy chronicles how she managed to settle her disoriented family and flounce headfirst into the thorny, baffling culture while her husband was miles away on military missions. As she bungles through her boys’ Japanese school, grapples with the eccentricities of her home and neighbors, and reconstructs the language to her liking, she somehow ends up as a personality on Japanese national television-all with the earnest hope of melding with her new country. In this humorous, irreverent, and even soul-searching collection of anecdotes, Peggy provides an entertaining glimpse into the enigmatic Land of the Rising Sun.

Voluntary Nomads: A Mother’s Memories of Foreign Service Family Life

Nancy Pogue LaTurner

Nancy LaTurner’s engaging memoir begins in 1974 as her young family struggles without a livelihood in rural New Mexico. When a welcome stroke of luck lands her husband Fred a job with the State Department, Nancy eagerly packs their few belongings and bundles up their 20-month-old son and 12-month-old daughter for the journey from Los Lunas, New Mexico to Washington, DC and onward to any of the 200 U.S. Embassies around the world. 

Empowered by Nancy’s enthusiasm and Fred’s optimism, the naive little family embraces their first assignment in Tehran during the final days of the Shah’s regime. Dropped straight into a different culture and language in a country suffering the turmoil of revolutionary unrest, the LaTurners learn how important adaptability is to their new way of life.

Throughout Voluntary Nomads, Nancy’s recollection of raising two children in extraordinary conditions demonstrates that the triumphs and heartaches of family life go on, no matter how exotic the locations or unique the experiences. Nancy’s stories of Foreign Service family adventures in Iran, Cameroon, New Zealand, Somalia, Dominican Republic, Austria, and Bolivia, told with warmth, insight and candor, celebrate the resilience and resourcefulness of a spirited American family.

Ride the Wings of Morning

Sophie Neville

A conventional English girl arrived in South Africa, to help a friend run horseback safaris on a game reserve in the Northern Transvaal.

It was 1992. There were yellow road signs declaring “Dit is die Volkstaat”.

Sophie had heard of “biltong” but knew nothing of Afrikaans culture. She was aware of poachers, but not of the danger of sausage trees. Nor how to cook a gemsquash on the campfire without causing an explosion. She understood there were rhino on the reserve, but not that she would end up working as the safari guide. In the dark. On a stallion. Lost. With completely innocent tourists on other horses.

This upbeat true story, the sequel to her book ‘Funnily Enough’, is told through correspondence sent back and forth between Sophie Neville and her family in England.

ON MY LIST

Overseas American: Growing Up Gringo in the Tropics

by Gene H. Bell-Villada

Born in 1941 of a Hawaiian mother and a white father, Gene H. Bell-Villada, grew up an overseas American citizen. An outsider wherever he landed, he never had a ready answer to the innocuous question “Where are you from?”

By the time Bell-Villada was a teenager, he had lived in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Cuba. Though English was his first language, his claim on U.S. citizenship was a hollow one. All he knew of his purported “homeland” was gleaned from imported comic books and movies. He spoke Spanish fluently, but he never fully fit into the culture of the Latin American countries where he grew up.

In childhood, he attended an American Catholic school for Puerto Ricans in San Juan, longing all the while to convert from Episcopalianism so that he could better fit in. Later at a Cuban military school during the height of the Batista dictatorship, he witnessed fervent political debates among the cadets about Fidel Castro’s nascent revolution and U.S. foreign policy. His times at the American School in Caracas, Venezuela, are tinged with reminiscences of oil booms and fights between U.S. and Venezuelan teen gangs.

At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa

Nancy Henderson-James

At Home Abroad is a stunning autobiography of Nancy Henderson-James’s youth in Africa. Heart-wrenching is her uprooting at age 15 when the war for independence began, from Angola, whose natural world, people, customs, languages she so loved. Nancy bravely and articulately recounts a true saga of personal loss and bereavement. But out of the crucible of conflicts between herself and her parents, the Africa she loved and the America from which she felt estranged, comes crystalline strength, confidence, humor, and self-knowledge. Her journey to wholeness, with its exquisite analysis and detail, enlightens us, so that we, too, see our own lives with new understanding and compassion and recognize better our place in the 21st century as citizens of the world.

Judy Hogan, Founding Editor of Carolina Wren Press, 1976-91.

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Moscow Metro Station    (Christophe Meneboeuf)

 

Moscow

The Moscow Metro opened its doors in 1935.  The line was 11.6 km.

“Thirteen stations built on the initial section had island platforms long enough to take eight-car trains.  They were the first stations in the world to be completely faced with granite and marble and all had unique designs.”

When I arrived in Moscow, it took me a while to get up the guts to tackle the metro on my own.  All the signs were in Russian so I would have to sit down and concentrate to figure out what the Cyrillic writing said in order to know which way to go.  Once I started riding it regularly, people would always be asking me something I could not understand.  I had no idea why they kept asking me questions.  Like, were they lost or something?   Eventually I figured out that most of them were asking me if I was getting off at the next stop because they wanted to position themselves for the push to exit.

Today there are 12 lines running 305.5 km through 185 stations.  On my first visit I was impressed with the Metro.  All the stations were different.  Some had beautiful chandeliers hanging down the main hallway, some had marble statues and archways, some had mosaics in the ceiling, and one had colorful stained glass windows.  By the time I left, the stations were starting to look a little run down and were not very clean.  Before the fall of the Soviet Union, the number of people who could live in Moscow and use the metro was limited.  By the time I left 9 million passengers were using it on a daily basis.  It was taking its toll.  Today it is one of the busiest metros in the world – 2.3 billion rides per year.  Just for comparison, New York City has 1.6 billion rides per year.

Mexico 

The Mexico City Metro opened in 1969,  just as we were leaving.  It had 16 stations. During construction many important archeological finds were documented and rescued.  Today it has eleven lines and 451 km of track with 163 stations.  I remember going on it a couple of times when it first opened but I didn’t like riding on it.  When I went back in 1989 with my friends Jane and Tina, we decided to take the metro  home one day after being out sight-seeing and ended up getting onto a car jammed full of men.  Jane and Tina managed to make their way over to the window and somehow, found seats.  I stayed nearer to the door because the whole car was so full.  The men closed in around me and there were a million hands all over me.  I looked around to see who the guilty parties were and everyone I looked at was staring at the ceiling.  Finally I decided I had to take some action.  I managed to get my elbows perpendicular to my body and I rotated with as much force as I could.  They all scattered to the far corners of the car, which made us all laugh.  I then managed to make it over to where my friends were.  When we got back to the condo where we were staying, we found out that there were separate subway cars for men and women to reduce groping.  A little late for that!

Boston 

Boston is home to the first subway in the United States dating back to 1897 – the Tremont Street Subway (now known as the Green Line).  I remember riding on it many times during my year in Boston.  It was not air-conditioned and at rush hour was very crowded and hot!  Hopefully it has been upgraded since then.  The Red Line was brand new when I was there and was quiet and comfortable and never seemed to be too crowded.

Washington DC 

The Metro in Washington DC is modeled after BART in San Francisco. I met and became friends with a guy in Moscow whose family built the DC Metro.  It is clean and sterile.  It is expensive.  There is nowhere near enough of it.  It opened in 1976 and has five lines with 86 stations and 171.1 km of track.  It is the second busiest subway in the USA after New York City.  They are currently extending it out to Dullus Airport.  What they need is a ring line around the city.  But nobody asked me.

Do you have a favorite Metro?

 

Eurovision Song Contest

Abba

 

This year the Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan.  The finals will be aired on May 26.  You can watch it here:  http://www.eurovision.tv/esctv/future?program=47093

“Did you know that not only stars like ABBA, Celine Dion, Cliff Richard and Julio Iglesias took part, but also dance act Riverdance thanks its fame to the Eurovision Song Contest?”

 

I first heard about the Eurovision Song Contest in the 70’s when a friend of mine turned me on to ABBA.  It’s great claim to fame at the time was having won the contest for Sweden in 1974 performing Waterloo.

 

Waterloo – I was defeated, you won the war

Waterloo – Promise to love you for ever more

Waterloo – Couldn’t escape if I wanted to

Waterloo – Knowing my fate is to be with you

Waterloo – Finally facing my Waterloo

 

When I was living in Moscow, Russia, a British friend of mine invited me over one night for a Eurovision Party.  We all gathered around the television to watch the finals.  This was my first actual encounter.

I was hooked!  A little cheesy, a little flashy, a little corny, and sometimes surprising.

 

Photo: Alan Douit (EBU)

In 2009 the contest was held in Moscow and my favorite performance was from the Greeks.  Shirts open, hairy chests, hips gyrating, I have not idea what their music was like.

Very entertaining.

They didn’t win but they did come in 7th place.

 

Engelbert Humperdink is this year’s representative for the UK.  He too is a TCK (third culture kid) who was born in India to a British Army officer.  He moved to the UK when he was 10.  I have to admit, I am looking forward to seeing him croon away in Baku – I hope he makes it to the finals!

 

Engelbert Humperdink     (Photo: Ian Derry)

Easter Kulich

 

The first time I saw a Kulich was in Boston.  My boyfriend’s mother was Russian and her mother brought over a Kulich at Easter.  Nobody seemed too interested in eating it so I never got to taste it.

Ten years later I had a different Russian American boyfriend who kept raving about Kulich.  His mother would send it to him at Easter and he would savor every bite.  He would heat it and spread butter on it.  I thought it was dry and not that interesting.

Ten years later I was living in Moscow, Russia, and submerged into the people and the culture.  I had discovered Russian bakeries and the variety of Kulich available there.  It had grown on me.  I now looked forward to Easter and picking out the best Kulich I could find.  I loved to bake and cook but I never had the courage to make a Kulich.  It seemed to me it should be produced by a grandmother in order for it to be really good.

Back in the USA, I toyed with the idea of making Kulich.  I missed it.  And then I discovered a Russian store in the area.  In the beginning they sold the cakes made by local grandmothers.  Now they sell mass produced packaged Kulich made in Brooklyn.  It’s not quite the same.  I may have to break out and make my own after all.

This year Russian Orthodox Easter falls on April 15.  They still adhere to the old Julian calendar so everything is later.  When I lived in Moscow, we celebrated the “Western” Christmas on Dec 25, New Year’s on January 1, and then the Epiphany on January 6, then two weeks later was Russian Orthodox, Christmas, then the old New Year, and finally the Russian Orthodox Epiphany.  It was a month of non stop celebrating.  And then a lot of recuperating.

Traditionally Russian families will spend Easter morning at the cemetery cleaning the graves of debris that has gathered over the winter.  They will place flowers on the graves or even plant them.  People sprinkle bread and boiled egg over the graves.  It is a time for families to be together and to retell stories about each other.

From the cemetery they usually congregate at somebody’s house for a large meal lasting several hours.  The meal more than likely will end with Kulich and paskha a sweet cream cheese.

Kulich is a cross between a bread and a cake.  It has a lot of eggs and usually some raisins and can have other dried fruit in it.  It is always round and should be placed upright on the table. It is sliced in rounds, across the cake, the top being taken off to be saved and then put back, like a lid, on the part that remains.  Some of the fancier ones have a glaze frosting on top that drips down the sides.

People in the US can use old coffee tins to bake in or any round tin with an open top and closed bottom will do.  You can use regular cake pans but you should try to somehow build up the sides so it has some height.

 

KULICH

2 cups scalded milk

¼ cup sugar

2 packages yeast

3 cups flour

Cool milk to lukewarm.  Dissolve yeast and sugar in milk.  Add flour and beat well.  Set covered bowl in warm place until bubbly and very light (about 1 hr).

3 eggs

½ cup melted butter, cooled

2 ½ cups flour

1 cup raisins

½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

Beat the eggs well with the sugar and salt.  Add to the sponge which has been rising.  Add flour and knead well.  Knead in raisins.  Let rise until light.

Knead down and shape into loaves.  If you are using coffee cans, be careful not to use too much dough.  Let it rise again.  This makes 2 large (larger than a coffee can) loaves, although the size depends on how much you let it rise.

Brush top with glaze of 1 egg yolk beaten with 1 ½ tablespoons water (optional).

Bake in 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes.  Tap and listen for hollow sound to test for readiness.

Cool 5 minutes on rack then remove rom pan and continue cooling on rack.

To glaze: Mix confectioner’s sugar with water until it is a paste and pour it over the top, letting it drizzle down the sides.  Sprinkle slivered almonds or candy sprinkles over the glaze.

 

Famous Expat Women

Karen Blixen’s farm in Kenya

I watched Out of Africa last night for the umpteenth time and it got me thinking about all the amazing expat women through the ages.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Karen Blixen was Danish.  She married Baron Bror von Blixen and they moved to Kenya in 1914.  He was kind enough to give her syphilis and she returned to Denmark after one year for arsenic treatment.  She lived through it and returned to Kenya for another 16 years. She ran a successful coffee farm for a while but always struggled with it and eventually was forced to sell the land.  Her lover, Denys Finch Hatton, was a big game hunter who died in a plane crash just as she was dealing with the loss of her farm.  She returned to Denmark and lived there for the rest of her life.  She wrote under the name Isak Dineson as well as a few others and a couple of her more famous books are:

Out of Africa  (1937)

Anexdotes of Destiny  (1958) – includes Babette’s Feast which was made into a movie

Letters from Africa 1914-1931  (1981 – posthumous)

 

Beryl Markam was English.  Her family moved to Kenya when she was 4 years old in 1906.   She became friends with Karen Blixen even though there was an 18 year gap in age.  Beryl also had a brief affair with Denys Finch Hatton and was due to fly with him the day he crashed.  She had some kind of premonition and did not go.  However she did go on to fly extensively in the African bush and was the first women to fly across the Atlantic from East to West.  She briefly lived in California married to an avocado farmer but eventually retuned to Kenya and became a well known horse trainer.  Her memoir (a very good read) is:

West with the Night  (1942, re-released in 1983)

 

Alexandra David-Neel was French.  She became an explorer at a young age running away from home at the age of 18 to ride her bicycle to Spain and back.  In 1904 at the age of 36 she was traveling in Tunis and married a railway engineer.  That didn’t last long since she immediately had itchy feet and set off for India.  She told her husband she would be back in 18 months but did not return for 14 years.  Her goal was Sikkim in the northern mountains.  She spent years studying with the hermits and monks of the region and eventually, dressed as a man, snuck into the forbidden city of Lhasa.  Her travels were extensive and you can read more about her here:

http://www.alexandra-david-neel.org/anglais/biog.htm

Her account of her trip to Lhasa is:

My Journey to Lhasa (1927)

 

Gertrude Stein was an American Jewish lesbian writer who moved to Paris in 1904.  She held “Salons” promoting modern unknown artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne.  During World War 1 she learned to drive a car and drove a supply truck for the American Fund for French Wounded supplying hospitals in France with her life long companion Alice B Toklas.  Her writing was revolutionary and influenced many modern writers including Hemmingway.  She was a strong minded woman with strong opinions and a copious writer with a great sense of humor.  She was a real character as all these women were.  One of the easiest books of hers to read is:

The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas  (1933)

Another one I like very much is:

Ida, A Novel (1941)

 

Who are your favorites??

 

 

 

 

Learning to Drive

My father with car and dog

 

I am learning to ride in a car with a sixteen year old driver.  I am learning to quietly cringe and hold my tongue.  I am learning to resist slamming my leg down on the break that isn’t there.  I am learning to look out the window and observe things by the side of the road I have never had a chance to enjoy before.  I am learning to trust.  And to quietly guide.  And sometimes to shout out in a panic.  But not too often.

He is actually pretty good.  Baby steps.  He has time to learn.  And I have a built in designated driver!  There is always an up side!

I have been re-reading my father’s memoir and came across the following passage that seemed kind of relevant.  My father grew up on a farm in southern Iowa, the youngest of seven children.

“When I was about 7, I started driving teams of horses for some field work.  Dad, or someone, would harness and hitch up the horses to a wagon or a machine since I was not big enough to put on a horse’s harness.  Another of my chores in my early years was to walk to the pasture to herd the milk cows to the barn at milking time.  No one in our family drank much milk but we made our own butter and cottage cheese.  The only time I really remember drinking milk was on Sunday evenings.   I would fill a glass with popcorn and then pour in some milk.

When I was 11 or 12 (1931-32) the country went into the Great Depression.  Many neighbors gave up and sold out or were forced out because they had defaulted on their loans.  Livestock prices were very low and grain prices were the lowest on record. 

One of the things that helped my family survive the Depression was my parents started a small dairy and my brothers Bob and Floyd did the milking and delivered the milk door to door and to stores in town before school.  By the time they had finished high school, dad had purchased a heard of very good dairy cows.  I was the only boy left at home and had to take on this job.  My sister Margaret had recently been married and her new husband, Lee, helped with the chores and milking.  It was Lee’s and my responsibility to milk the cows twice each day by hand and to take care of the cows and the milk.  After Lee left, it became just my responsibility.  When I was 14, I was able to get a driver’s license and began to deliver the milk in bottles door to door in Shenandoah each morning as well as to two grocery stores before school.  Floyd had taught me to drive our Model T Ford when I was about 10 years old, so I had no trouble getting a driver’s license.  The dairy really saved us during the Depression.  When I left home to go to college, dad sold the dairy cows since it was too much for him and at that time larger dairy farms started up in our area, forcing out the small producers like us.”

When I was 16 I was in boarding school.  No driving there.

Between high school and college, I spent the summer with my parents in Ibadan, Nigeria.  Driving in Nigeria was kind of like playing Russian Roulette.  You never knew when somebody would come barreling around a blind corner straight at you.  I was not yet 18 so technically I couldn’t get a license anyway (although I doubt they checked).  An American guy I knew, Tim, turned 18 that summer and decided to get his license.  He went down to the Motor Vehicle department and an official actually got in the car with him:

Official:  Drive forward!

Tim drives

Official:  Stop!

Tim stops

Official:  Drive backwards!

Tim drives in reverse

Official:  Stop!

Tim stops

Official:  Would you be interested in a German Shepard puppy?

Tim pays his fee and gets his driver’s license and a dog.  Such a deal!

The following summer I went to live with my brother in Minneapolis, and his wife taught me to drive.  At 19, a college sophomore, I was a licensed driver!