Berton House under siege

Back from Champagne to discover that Berton House, the wonderful writers' retreat where I spent last winter, has had its funding application rejected by the Canada Council. This means the retreat will have to raise its entire budget (about $50,000.) through individual fundraising efforts--there's an annual fundraising dinner every November, so mark your calendars.

Until recently, the Council funded Berton House under a special grant program, but that's been cut. As of this year, each author needs to be individually funded by the Council. This makes for two problems--first, Berton House doesn't know from one season to the next what's happening with its funding, leading to the disaster we're currently looking at; and second, how can Berton House be an independent retreat, inviting the authors it feels most appropriate for Dawson City, when each author needs individual approval from the Council?

This is happening right when Prime Minister Harper is emphasizing the importance of the North for Canada (upping the military presence against international incursions, etc)--doesn't this include the North's phenomenal cultural & historical heritage? Will this unique Northern creation, the childhood home of Canadian extraordinaire, Pierre Berton, simply disappear? The current Berton writer-in-residence, Robert J. Sawyer, suggests that the newly-appointed Minister for Canadian Heritage Josee Verner take a stand on saving Berton House. A darn good idea.

(this is a photograph I took of the bookcase in Berton House, with some of Pierre Berton's 50 published books)

Champagne

a weekend in Reims...and though it seems to be raining everywhere in France right now, the sun made enough of an appearance for a champagne breakfast in a sidewalk cafe.

i visited champagne caves (of course!) but also spent time in the Cathedral, which has risen from the ashes twice, most impressively after World War I. these gargoyles were once on the cathedral...their lead lining melted during one of the conflagrations & they now lie, spitting solid lead, in the Palais du Tau, where the kings of France used to stay on the night of their coronation.

off to the Calgary Stampede!

this afternoon, between rainshowers, i was walking across the esplanade of the Invalides when two fighter planes went whipping across the sky, one trailing red exhaust & one blue. i suppose they're warming up for Bastille Day on Saturday. they were followed by several passenger-sized jets, each quite weird-looking & flying very low. maybe they're experimental jets? no idea, though one had a bizarre platform on top of it, another was trailing a huge antennae. and each was accompanied by an entourage of fighter jets, very impressive and noisy--even though most people didn't seem to notice, even when a distressed corgi being walked on the lawns barked valiantly, bouncing up and down on its short legs.

if it keeps raining, i'm going to start preparing for another flood like the one in 1910 (when even the esplanade of the Invalides looked like St. Mark's in Venice).

Journalist Alan Johnson is back in Scotland, after being freed last week. The BBC Gaza correspondent (the only Gaza correspondent) said in a press conference after his release that it was "the strangest thing" to be the focus of a story. And that he's looking forward to getting back to journalism after a few months' roundly deserved rest. For once, a happy ending.

air orchids

a Zagat survey has named the Georges V Hotel in Paris as number one in the world--a good excuse to throw a party! so they did. i was lucky enough to be invited, and though i arrived too late to savour the savouries, i had lots of time to marvel at the desserts...which included freshly-made green apple & coca cola-flavoured marshmallows. easily the weirdest thing i've ever eaten--stranger even than Tibetan yak tea. trust me on this. amazingly it didn't rain, so we could stand out in the courtyard, surrounded by gorgeous purple air orchids that were suspended in a bondage trellis. if aliens appeared on earth as orchids (and decided to crash a party at the Georges V) this is how they would appear...teleporting down from the sky. difficult to photograph (or maybe we'd consumed too many strawberry champagne cocktails to get the angle right...)

jazz fleas

after a great brunch with US authors Katy Yocom and Sena Jeter (in town for the Spalding University Creative Writing program), i headed over to the Picolo in the flea market near where i live. because it's in my 'hood, i'm biased in thinking that this is one of the best dives in town. today, David Enhco of Enhco&Co was playing in the back, as part of the Festival Jazz-Musette des Puces.

when the flea market really got going in the 1880s, there were already little dives in the neighborhood that served wine & welcomed musicians like Django Reinhardt. but it was Malik Harullak (for whom this part of the market is named) who bought the Picolo & made it what it is today. i first dropped by the Picolo over a decade ago, on the advice of a gypsy leather-maker who was working in the Malik market...one of the best bits of advice i've ever had, because unless you know about it, you might just pass it by.

though this weekend, the Festival is making the Picolo a little more noticeable. yesterday, violinist Didier Lockwood & guitarist Serge Malik (who met playing 'round here back in the 70s) inaugurated "Place Django Reinhardt" right in the middle of the Puces, not far from the Picolo--a lasting tribute to gypsy jazz at the flea market. As is Serge's 82-year-old mother, who still lives across the street from the Picolo and remembers listening to Django play.

reading

tonight i'm madly rewriting part of a story set in the Klondike, so that i can read it on Wednesday here in Paris. normally i would read something i'm more familiar with, a piece of writing that i was, say, finished writing (!) except that over the weekend, Justin Taylor convinced me that the reading would be an ideal place to try out the new material...in fact, i got the feeling he was daring me to...so come hear how it goes at 7pm the day after tomorrow, at WICE, 20 blvd de Montparnasse, metro Duroc. the evening also features readings from prose writers Justin Taylor (the daredevil who got me into this), Bonny Finberg (who i'm looking forward to meeting), and Jeffrey Greene (a wonderful poet who'll be reading from a new nonfiction book, just out, about a chicken farm. yep, that's what i'm told. a chicken farm. but i could be wrong--come by on wednesday and find out.)