F. Liszt and a day at the Museum

Today being Monday, I spent the day at the National Gallery of Canada on Sussex Drive. The Museum  
is closed on Monday's like all museums around the world. Being one of the volunteers, I was there for meetings and for training. How very nice to walk around the closed museum going from gallery to gallery, we have so many beautiful painting collections in our Museum.

The Smiths by Canadian painter W. Blair Bruce 1894. This painting in the National Gallery is quite large. The men are making steel wheel rims, an art lost long ago. It is believed that this painting was a tribute to Hamilton, Ontario.

The National Gallery of Canada on a grey day.

I really enjoy my time at the museum, meeting with other volunteers and curators.



This evening I was listening to Radio Swiss Classic on Airport Express on the internet, a little device that allows me to listen to radio music from around the world. This piece by F. Liszt is called Les Cloches de Genève, les Années de Pélerinage. Played on the piano by Konstantin Scherbakov in Zurich in May 2011.

Poulenc

One of my favourite composer of the XXth century is Francis Poulenc. Today we had a little bit of Poudrerie, a dusting snowfall which lasted all of 4 minutes and quickly disappeared under a returning bringht but cold sunshine.

I thought of these pieces from Poulenc's Suite Française went well with the weather today in Ottawa.
Also today the Rideau Canal is being emptied in preparation for winter. That is a sure sign in the Capital that the Seasons are changing. It will take about 3 days to bring the level of the water down sufficiently so that just the right amount remains to form a long skating rink. The big pike fish will gather in the depth of Dow's Lake to hibernate until Spring. Time to change the wardrobe from summer to winter, come out sweaters, mittens and scarfs. Time to think to buy snow tires, ouch!! they are not cheap.  Boots also for the children of Cerberus, so the paws don't get cold.

Edwardian house at the Canal on McLeod Street and Queen Elizabeth Drive.

John's Pumpkin cheese cake with pumpkin seeds dipped in chocolate.

the herons are still fishing around for small fish despite the level of the water slowly going down. 

Thanksgiving Luncheon

Last year we did not know what to do for Thanksgiving, having just returned from Italy, we were sort of out of the loop of friends and company. This year we got 3 invitations at once, so today Sunday we will be going out to dinner to our friends who live in the West of the City. Tomorrow Monday being a holiday we will make Thanksgiving lunch and have invited friends. This year I will cook the bird, I am not making any stuffing, just roasting the turkey, will make some gravy, I already have nice stock I can probably use. Will have whole berry cranberry sauce, vegetables, I am planning to roast a squash, a first for me, I have a recipe to do it provided by friend blogger C de V. Keep it simple is my motto for this year.

Years ago in the late 70's we subscribed to Gourmet magazine, they had fantastic photos of great table settings and exquisite meals. The only problem was that the recipes were complicated and required hours of preparation not to mention the ingredients often exotic and hard to find on the open market.
I remember how frustrating it was not to be able to find that spice or that other ingredient or vegetable they recommended. You see back then, the markets in Ottawa were not terribly sophisticated, you had your turkey, potatoes, green beans, brussels sprouts, carrots and peas. What else did you want? Chestnuts were hard to come by, if you wanted a bread stuffing there was and still is the dreaded Stove Top stuffing out of a box, or plain white bread, anything else was considerer exotic or was simply not available, Ottawa was too small a market. It was also expected that most people would simply travel during the holiday so stores did not stock up or were closed Sunday and Monday for the holiday. Meaning you had to rush on Friday night or Saturday morning otherwise you were out of luck.

Same for desserts, you could back then buy a cake ready made full of sugar and spongy or you could try to have a festive dessert meaning you made it yourself from scratch but again same problem with ingredients. I remember Mr. W had lots of energy to take the Gourmet magazine and go to it, my responsibility was to do all the shopping for those rare or non existent ingredients. Of course if we were on posting abroad that was another kettle of fish, you had to adapt to local traditions and markets.
We always did manage and it was always fun.

I will go out now and get some freshly fallen leafs from the Maple trees along the canal for decoration on the table. It is a bright sunny day though the wind is a little chilly and brisk around 5 C.

Fall is most beautiful on a cold but bright sunny day. Outdoor pictures taken this Sunday morning October 7 on my walk along the Rideau Canal and on the Campus of my Alma Mater, Ottawa U.

In keeping with the theme of Thanksgiving, Horn of Plenty, Corne d'abondance by J.B. Mauzaisse.

Jour de l'Action de Grâce, Thanksgiving

My favourite holiday of the year le Jour de l'Action de Grâce, Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October in Canada. It is a Liturgical Festival and comes to us from our ancestors in France and England celebrating the Harvest.

Les citrouilles harvest 2012

The actual holiday is Monday but most of us Canadians will celebrate on the Sunday with a Festive meal amongst friends and family. It is a holiday everyone can celebrate unlike Christmas. It is a holiday to reflect on our good fortune and be thankful, if only for the fact that we live in a peaceful and stable country bordering on the boring. In Canada the origin of this holiday are numerous, the first time the holiday is mentioned is 1604 when Samuel de Champlain and his companions who have settled at the fame l'Habitation, gave thanks for making a safe crossing of the Atlantic from France to Quebec City or Stadacona as it was then known. We know that the native people have for centuries celebrated the Harvest with meals and dances, well before the Europeans arrival. It was common to celebrate with the European settlers and this is where squash and corn came into being a part of the meal. The wild turkey a Mexican import came much later probably in those days venison was the main meat of the meal.

Starting in 1879 Thanksgiving was observed on a Thursday in November, something to do with the Royal Family, then after the First World War the observance was around the 11 November, Armistice Day, thankful for Peace, not to forget that 10% of the population had gone to war in Europe. Finally in 1957, Thanksgiving became a National Statutory Holiday and fixed on the second Monday in October.

Glorious Maple tree colours on our back street.

So today I went to the store to pick up my 5 Kg Turkey, a small bird. I love the smell of roasting turkey it brings back so many memories of family gatherings at my grandparents decades ago. I also will do two vegetables, some potatoes and a mixture of celery, pearl onions and peas. One guest will bring an appetizer and the other guest dessert. I have champagne and over 100 bottles of wines to choose from, plus several excellent single malt scotch, gin and vodka for apéritif. So we should be OK so to speak.

A Happy Thanksgiving to all!

 Our street in Ottawa.

On China

Just finished reading the 2011 book by Henry Kissinger, titled On China. Since I lived in China I wanted to read it to see what he had to say. Kissinger is a great believer in China and has many friends in the leadership of China. Whenever he travels there he gets the Head of State treatment with all that it entails. Kissinger had a great deal of influence many years ago in the original opening of the USA to the People's Republic of China. First secret meeting between himself and Premier Zhou En Lai in 1971, followed by the Official visit of President Nixon in 1973. Formal recognition did not come before 1979 for various reasons of internal USA politics and because of the War with Vietnam and the official recognition the USA government had granted Taiwan back in 1949.

Kissinger gives a lot of details on the personalities and character of each person he met, Mao Tse Tung, Zhou En Lai, Deng Xiao Ping and others. Mao the philosopher king, Zhou the cultured Mandarin and skilled diplomat and administrator, Deng the rough pragmatist. He described how the meetings went and how they were received and many more details on how the entire relationship evolved. For history all these details are important as a first person account. Kissinger stresses how the Chinese are master of the detail and are fully prepared with great seriousness for each encounter, nothing is left to chance or haphazard. He does not say it but the reader guess that the other side is not as well prepared and this is the Chinese advantage in any encounter.

Kissinger also looks at historical precedent in China and how Confucius influences the way of thinking of the Chinese leadership through the ages, he does spend some time in his book guiding the reader through the various phases of thinking which guide Chinese reaction to events. He also goes into what were the expectations and fears of the USA in the first meetings in the context of domestic American politics of the late 1960's. Past events like the victory of the Communist in China in 1949 against the Nationalist, the Korean war, the toll of the Vietnam war on the American public opinion, the Cold War and the difficult relations with the USSR. Though Kissinger never criticize past US Administrations he served and treats his Chinese counterparts with much courtesy in his book,  he does point out several times how many American thinkers made mistakes in their evaluation of China and its leadership, in the process delaying or impeding the relation between the USA and the PRC.  Kissinger gives the impression that he had to fight several battles with an entrenched bureaucracy at the State Department correcting what he considered wrong evaluations based on misunderstandings of history and events. What he considered to be too many assumptions, confusing Communism in general as an ideology and then believing that the way it was practiced in the USSR was the same in the PRC or that the new giants worked hand in hand against the West.

Kissinger also explains the concerns of the Chinese Leadership and their own problems with the USSR in border disputes which went back centuries to the time of the Emperors in both China and Russia. Of the rivalry between Stalin and Mao and then successive Soviet leaders who often failed to understand that the Chinese did not want to be dominated by them or even guided. The reader understand how the USA came to play a balancing act between the two great Communist powers in the world.

Then Kissinger guides us through the post-Mao period and the great changes brought about by Deng Xiao Ping. The internal fights within the Chinese leadership with two camps, one, the gang of four, for continuing the Mao doctrine and Deng's approach to go down a different path. It is clear that China today remains a Communist dictatorship and a police State but has a commercial, capitalistic components important to improve the material conditions of the people if the Communist party is to survive in power. Kissinger points out the great realizations under Deng, such as the eradication of hunger for the first time in China. Providing for basic health care, schooling and housing for all and most important quadrupling in a matter of a just a few years the wealth of individual Chinese who could see a net benefit under Communist rule.

In the last paragraph and epilogue, the books meanders as if Kissinger was at a lost on how to conclude his book and that part is less interesting, probably because the writer himself is retired and does not travel as much now as he did in the past.

A good read.

The remains of the day.

Have you seen this movie, The remains of the day, it's about a butler in a grand English home before the Second World War and what happens before and then after the war. This 1993 film is based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, it features Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

Today I attended the Annual General Meeting of my professional Association as Election Returning Officer. The meeting was held at the Foreign Ministry known in Ottawa as the Lester B. Pearson Building named after our Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Prime Minister who helped resolve the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956 and proposed the creation of the famous UN Peace Keeper Corps.

the Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson, P.C., M.P. (Prime Minister of Canada 1963-68)

It is in all likely hood my last meeting, I have been active with my professional association all my working life, so I was happy to do this little thing for them.  I arrived a bit early and went to the Cadieux auditorium. The lobby known as the O.D. Skelton room has been repainted and the furniture recovered, it had not been done since 1973 when the building first opened. It is a funny looking building it is shaped like a Sphinx in memory of the Suez Canal Crisis and the man who helped solve the crisis.  The renovations look cheap and everything was done quickly, no money and budget cuts. It use to be such an elegant room. The rooms are named after famous Canadian diplomats who started their careers in academe and then became advisors to Prime Ministers. But all this was a very long time ago in an other era, such people do not exist anymore.

I sat in the auditorium and we went through the agenda, I did my part, half way through I started to feel tired and thought to myself how all this did not relate to me anymore. I remember a time when I would have been happy and excited about being with colleagues who worked as I did on important dossiers and in our Embassies around the world. Today I really had the impression that I was living the remains of the day, no regrets really, simply that all this was now in the past. It is a very strange feeling all together, I feel no connection really. I spoke with a few colleagues, learned that two persons who were scheduled to leave this summer on posting were diagnosed with very serious illnesses. I was working with them just a few weeks ago, I had no idea. One colleague who is also retiring said to me, we were lucky you know, we served during the best of time. I agree because now the future for my younger colleagues is very clouded and uncertain. There was a small reception after the meeting but I did not stay, did not feel like mingling, would not have known what to say. I had that feeling like when you are about to take the train and it is time to board, you do not want to linger.

I do not know if I will ever go back to the Lester B. Pearson building but when I left today the late afternoon sun was  bright and I did not look back. However of my career as a diplomat I remain true to my motto, Non Sibi Sed Patriae. (Not for me but for my country)

    A small sprig of flowers on a Roman Spring day on Peter and Joe's balcony on Via Tronto.

Autumn 2012

Here are some pictures of Autumn delights.

Such exuberance is pure pleasure.

the children of Cerberus enjoying the morning sunshine, a daily tradition in our house.

our little street in colour.