New Name Boards - getting ready to shove off!

Alouette with her new name boards and stars!

Sundays at Le Petite Normande

Its a French tradition, picking up a little something special for Sunday meals with friends and family.  Our favorite Patissier-Chocolatier-Confiseur here in Roanne, La Petite Normande.  Yum-Oh!

French Elections - Premier Tour

We have been following the French elections on French television since the beginning of the year.  The contrasts to the American system are striking.  Without getting into the positions of the individual candidates (we're visitors and not voters) we thought that it might be interesting to describe some of the differences between the two systems.

The President of France is elected for five-year terms by an absolute majority of eligible voters.  Persons who wish to run for President must obtain the signatures of 500 elected officials (talk about grass roots).  The system thus allows for a large number of candidates for the Premier Tour (this year - 3 women and 7 men).  If one candidate doesn't reach an absolute majority in the Premier Tour, a second election is held two weeks later.  This year, it appears clear that there will be a second election between the top two candidates (Sarkozy and Hollande).  There is an "official" election period of only 20 days during which the real campaigning takes place, although there is unofficial campaigning prior to this 20 day period.  Depending on the size of their losing margins, the candidates who do not make the first cut appear to have leverage to affect the policy of the ultimate winner, not unlike our American primary process.

The really surprising differences in comparing the American and French systems is in the strict regulation of the media and money.    To guarantee a level playing field, the role of the media, both public and private, is strictly regulated during both the official campaign period, and in the period prior to the start of the official campaign period.  During the official campaign period, all electronic media outlets must provide equal exposure to all candidates.  This means direct speech and coverage of both the candidates themselves, and their supporters.  This is strictly monitored and enforced with fines.  Paid campaign advertising is prohibited, but each television broadcaster must provide a set amount of time for each candidate to broadcast pre-recorded election spots (45 minutes per candidate per broadcaster).  For Americans, it's incredibly refreshing not to be bombarded with political ads and the hateful attack ads by special interest groups.  The equal treatment requirement also means that there are many one-on-one interviews with all of the candidates on the French news channels.  Our French is not good enough at this point to get all of the nuances but the questioning appears to be very intense and direct.  The print media, however, is largely unregulated in order to respect the principle of freedom of expression. 

There is a wonderful limit on the placement of campaign posters.  At the beginning of the 20 day official election campaign, each town puts up metal boards in a conspicuous place where candidates can put a single poster.  As we pass through tiny French towns we always look for the poster place.  All of the metal boards appear to be exactly the same size which kind of emphasizes the need to be fair to all.

Election posters outside the Mairie (Mayor's Office and Town Hall, Roanne)

Money is the other major difference.  There are strict limits to campaign spending and political fundraising.  Although I don't know the limits for this year, in 2007 the campaign spending limit for each campaign was about 16 million euros.  Any candidate receiving more than 5% of the votes is entitled to a reimbursement of about half of their campaign expenses.  Individual donation limits in 2007 were 4,600 euros per person.  Donations from corporations or any other legal entity are prohibited.  Citizens United has obviously not reached this side of the Atlantic. 

To our uninformed eyes, this all appears pretty civilized, and it appears that the French take it fairly seriously. In their report on the 2007 elections, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), an international organization that observed those elections, stated that "The overall election process appears to enjoy a high level of public confidence and offers a number of transparency mechanisms and other safeguards for the overall conduct of elections. . ."  For us, it's just been great fun to watch and to try and understand - and we can answer the phone without fearing the dreaded political campaign robocall, not that we would understand a robocall in French!

Springtime in the Port

We haven't had good internet coverage here in port, so I haven't posted anything since we returned, but I'll do a little recap later.  In the meantime, its not all fun and games here in barging land. We spent the past week prepping the boat for new coats of paint on the side.  We power washed, sanded, ground out the rusty spots, hand washed the boat with a special degreaser, treated the rust spots with a neat oily thing that stops the rust, hand washed again, and painted.  That was the red part, the lower part of the hull was power washed, the rust chipped out, cleaned again and then coated with braie vinylique.  We are nearly done! I ran out of red paint today, and its Sunday in France, the stores are closed, and we shouldn't be out painting, but we had to take advantage of the beautiful sunny weather, and the use of the port pontoon.  We plan to shove off some time this month - we are having the wheelhouse settee's cushions recovered this year, and as soon as they are finished, we're outta here!!  Hopefully no later than the 20th. 

Work pontoon tied to the side, painted from the bow to the pontoon

Randy in his official workman's jumpsuit.

We are planning to head towards Strasbourg this summer.  The Canal du Centre, however, just opened, and is scheduled to close on May 20th unless there is an abundance of rain.  That leaves us only one way back, a big loop around  to either the Loing/Briare and Lateral a la Loire, or the Nivernais to the Lateral a la Loire.  So, we don't know where we'll be going for sure yet, but we sure will look pretty with our new coats of paint, new brass stars and signboards on the port and starboard sides of the bow!

WiFi blues!

We made it back into port in October, but the WiFi in the port doesn't seem to be adequate to carry the traffic with all of the boats now back and using it.  We still have our 3G key, but its slower than what we're used to in the states, and I've been having a hard time trying to upload photos to the blog, hence no postings for a while, though I have lots of posts written in draft form.

All is well with us.  I managed to catch the nasty cold that was going around the port and have been suffering with it for 3 weeks now but am finally nearly back to normal, whatever that is.  We had a great visit with our friend Catherine Carpenter from Denver and had lots of fun finding the fixings for a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, which we prepared the Sunday before T-day so we could enjoy it with Catherine before she returned to Denver.  Our good friends from Australia, Laurel and Andrew, joined us for their first taste of an American Thanksgiving.

Our port association arranged another beaujolais tasting event this November, this time we traveled by bus, visiting most of the 10 Cru Beaujolais villages and arriving at the vineyard of Guy Trichard for a tasting, and lunch.

We're now decorating the boat for the first of several festivals in the port, the arrival of St. Nicholas, by boat, the evening of December 6th.  Many of the liveaboards in port are busy hanging lights for the event.  It will be interesting to see what happens when we all turn them on for St. Nick!

More to come...hopefully with pictures . . .happy December everyone!

For Jill, and for Mom

My mom was an amazing gardener, she could grow anything, and loved nothing better than to spend the days outside tending to her flowers, vegetables and fruit trees.  All of us kids inherited bits and pieces of her skill, but my brother Jerry's daughter, Jill, inherited the whole caboodle, and then some.  She is an artist in her garden with fabulous displays of color, texture, whimsey and an amazing sense of design, proportionality and composition. 

As we moved along the Canal de Briare a week or so ago, we entered a lock around 11:00 a.m.; the locks all close for lunch between noon and 1:00 p.m., so we thought we would tie up for lunch somewhere in between locks, have a bite to eat and get to the next lock some time after 1:00 p.m.  The lock keeper told us he didn't think we could make it through the next lock by noon, and I told him our plans.  He suggested he call the next lock keeper and ask if we could wait in the lock over the lunch hour - not something we've ever been able to do before, but we jumped at that chance since it would mean we could be out of the lock as soon as lunch was over. 

We cruised into the lock, and the lock keeper came riding up on his bike (he tends more than one lock), set the lock to fill ever so slowly, and went into his house for lunch.  As we ascended, we were treated to a spectacular show of flowers, beautiful beds, hanging baskets, groomed shrubery.  I immediately thought of Jill, and of course Mama.  So these pictures are for them.

Oh, and the lock keeper came out to take pictures of our boat in the lock as well!

The pictures are in the Jalbum to the right, Ecluse 20.

Jumping ahead to this past week

I have a lot of catching up to do - we haven't had the best internet connections in the countryside, so forgive me if I haven't responded to emails in the past month or so, or been able to post to this blog.  I'm fast forwarding to this past week.  We had a long-awaited visit from our Tucson friends, Bill and Mary Read, on their post-retirement trip to Europe.  We picked them up at the train station in Montargis, one of our favorite towns.  We had moved the boat the week before to Ouzouer-sur-Trezee on the Briare Canal, a lovely town a few kilometers away from Briare.  After cruelly forcing them to stay awake through an early dinner on the back deck so as to fight off jet lag, we spent the next day visiting the wine region of Sancerre, where the harvest had just ended.

Mary and Bill in Sancerre

The hilltop village of Sancerre

In the afternoon, we returned to Ouzouer, which was celebrating the annual national heritage weekend.  The old Romanesque church in town was open for tours in the afternoon, so we headed over to find a lovely local woman who took us on a tour of the church, the grounds, and pointed out some of the historic sites in town.  The Romanesque section of the church is from the 12th century, with a gothic section added later.  In 1961, as the pew of a section of the church were about to be refinished, paintings of the 12 apostles were discovered on the wood underneath the seats of the pews.  The paintings were removed and mounted on the walls of the church, and if I remember correctly, they are dated from the 16th century.  One building we had noticed every morning when heading out for a baguette has beautiful carvings, and a door much too short for Randy to go through without hitting his head.  This place also dates back to the 16th century.

The next morning we were underway, going through two locks, and crossing the Loire River on the Briare Viaduct. 

After we exited the lock, Bill noticed our big ball fender floating off behind us, so we nosed into the bank, I hopped off with the boat hook and ran back to retrieve it from the lockkeeper!  A nice morning jog for me!

Bill had a chance to drive while Mary joined me on the bow to enjoy the scenery as we cruised across the viaduct and into the town of Beaulieu.

On the viaduct over the Loire River

Although the weather is starting to turn chilly, we had another nice dinner served by Chef Randy, and the next morning, Bill and Mary were off to Paris to join a Rick Steves tour of France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.  Not a bad way to officially start your retirement!

After dropping Bill and Mary off at the train station in Briare, we moved the boat up to Sury-pre-Lere, a favorite spot, where we have high speed internet coverage, so I'm able to post a blog or two before we get underway again tomorrow.  We plan to be in port some time around October 15th but if the weather holds, we may just enjoy some of the anchorages on the Canal Roanne a Digoin!