What is up with this girl... let's see...

I had a lovely birthday weekend and spent time with my close friend Jackie. I had Thai food with her and Jesse and though it was just us three it was a good dinner. I ordered extra to take home so I had Thai dinner for two nights after that! Way to plan ahead! My sister was in town staying at my mother's and they did not come to my birthday dinner which made me very very sad to the point I cried. But on the other hand, the night before my sister and mother and I couldn't sleep (runs in the family!) so we were up until 0-dark-thirty talking and laughing. I cherish that time we had together because it is not often that we ever get to do that.

On to other stuff. I am still attending Bard College Clemente Course but I am not going to be writing papers, just do reading and attend lectures and participate in discussion. I won't get credit but I will get a certificate saying I completed it. I have been very sick this winter with pain and fatigue as I am every winter, and I just cannot keep up with the course load. I plan on trying again next year for the experience and the credit. It has been very enriching and has helped me meet some new people and have some great discussions. The theme is "With Liberty and Justice For All" within Literature, History, Art History and Philosophy. I am especially excited about the Philosophy part and am totally enamored with our instructor - I respect her very much. It was a hard decision to either work really hard to catch up with my work in this class or to decide not to get credit, but I think this is the right thing.

In the meantime I have been reading 3 books on France during WWII. I first read Sarah's Key written by Tatiana de Rosnay. Here's the synopsis taken from Powell's Books:

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.

Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.

Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

This got me interested in France during the War. It has only been the last 10 or 15 years that source documents have been released showing France's role in deporting to their deaths thousands and thousands of French Jews. I am especially interested in this because the history was literally rewritten and most French people would be offended if we were to bring this up. We always hear about the French Resistance and how they fought back, and that is what the people in France prefer to remember. They prefer to blame the Nazis, even though the French police and government were in cahoots with them the whole way....

I have been a hermit literally for the last couple of weeks, reading, watching movies, hanging with my cats, etc. I think the weather causes me to get very fatigued during this part of the year. I have been depressed too. And don't ask why - that is the point of depression... no particular reason.

Coming up this weekend I am going to Redmond to visit my sister Steph and Ry, and then having dinner on Monday with Brett and Cat, and then going to court in Everett for 10 minutes to get assigned a lawyer because I owe Everett money. Fucking Everett. It is going to cost me $60+ just to get there and back, aside from eating and everything else. Plus I will have to go back to have an appointment with my assigned lawyer and then go to court again. So I am trying to make appointments to see my friends while I'm in town. It will be an okay trip, but I'm sure I will be very tired and excited to get home afterwards.

The apple trees outside my house are starting to grow tiny buds and I'm sooo looking forward to taking pictures of the apple blossoms when they finally bloom.

So that is about it. Time for me to go. Au revoir!



Heide

p.s. I'm also reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Love in the Time of Cholera. The translation into English is amazingly vivid and brilliant writing... Not the way Americans write, by far. And I'm not reading the Oprah's Book Club version. I've been reading GGMarquez for quite some time... His book 100 Years of Solitude is among my favorites.