The 100th Tour de France, blankets and jam

As you can see from the title above, this is another eclectic post - the Tour de France, blankets and jam don't have that much in common.  But first - this post is late because I have been away for a while.  We went to visit our younger daughter and family in July to celebrate our second grandson's 5th birthday and we just came back.  Prior to that visit I had been watching the Tour de France and, as usual during the last few years, was knitting a baby blanket, or two.  I finished a rainbow blanket for our new baby granddaughter, then finished another bluish striped car blanket for the third grandson's second birthday in mid-July - they are below.  The orange and green-yellow blankets are from last year.  These are small car-seat or security blankets.  (Please click on collages twice to embiggen.)

The Tour de France this year celebrated its 100th Anniversary.  It ran from June 29 through July 21st, 2013.  When they finished in Paris, the cyclists had covered a distance of 2,087.81 miles or 3,360 kms.  This year there were 19 teams in the competition from France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, the USA, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Great Britain, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg and Russia.  The riders represented many countries, such as France, Germany, Denmark, The USA, Italy, Estonia, Slovakia, Spain, Canada, Lithuania, Russia, Colombia, New Zealand, Australia, Costa Rica, Brazil, Japan, Ireland, England, South Africa, Uzbekistan, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Kazakhstan and more.  Where can you watch a sport event representing so many countries integrated in just a few teams?

The race started in Corsica this year (see my post of July 20, 2013) and included 21 stages (a one long day segment.)  There were 7 flat stages, 5 hilly stages, 6 mountain stages with 4 summit finishes, 2 individual time-trial stages, 1 team time trial stage and two rest days.  Below is the route and a photo of Robert Marchand, a cyclist record holder still biking at age 102, next to Australian Cadel Evans.

This race was organized in 1903 and has been held annually since, except when it stopped during the two World Wars.  I gave explanations on the Tour de France and its history in my post of July 22, 2009, entitled What is the Tour de France? Please go and read this post here.  Below are some early photos from the Tour.

I did add a PS to my post of 2009 as I had been giving glorious reports on Lance Armstrong then.  Unfortunately in 2012 the US Anti-Doping Agency stripped Armstrong of his 7 Tour titles as well as other honors and he was banned from cycling for life - he did admit in January 2013 to having used drugs for athletic and performance enhancement throughout his career.  Some people decided then not to watch the Tour anymore because of drugs being used in the sport.  But other athletes have been using drugs in football, baseball, tennis, boxing and even in the Winter and Summer Olympic Games - should no one watch those sports anymore?  What about film stars and singers who used drugs - will people stop going to the movies or listen to music?  If we want to live in a world free of people using drugs then we may as well be a hermit and live on top of a mountain, or go to a nunnery such as in Ireland (although I have heard some bad reports of happenings in some of those nunneries...)  Too many good people and fans are involved in those sports and they should not be penalized for a few bad apples.

The Tour de France has many international fans.  In 2011 fans from 38 countries came to France to follow the Tour.  Below are some of the fans from 2013 - they are a varied group, from the proper to the brash. Top row on left are French Nuns encouraging Kevin Reza of France, next are Norwegian fans.  In the center are two Japanese fans, then an Australian youngster; next is a French fan, and then a group of shameless fans from Switzerland calling themselves "The Swiss Borats."  On the bottom left are fans from Colombia, then a cheering group of Nursing Sisters from Marseille and then Christopher Froome cycling under a variety of flags, held mostly by British fans.

The Tour de France is truly the biggest and most famous cycling race in the world.  I read statistics showing it - it is watched by 15 million people along the roads, free of charge.  The French Government has to be involved because many highway and safety personnel are necessary for the safety of all and roads need to be closed.  Each day 1400 beds have to be available for the cycling organization alone.  There are 10 Emergency Doctors, nurses, seven ambulances, 2 cars with other medical teams and 47 highway policemen on motorcycles following the racers.  More than 14,000 policemen and women, 9,000 motorway police plus assorted city and village police are retained.  In 2011 there were 2,300 reporters and photographers, 700 Media from 35 countries, 100 TV chains, 80 photo agencies and 70 radio channels involved in the Tour.  The Tour was televised to 190 countries, 60 of which received live transmissions.  There were 700,000 fans in Facebook following the Tour that year.

Also in 2011 3.5 billion people watched the Tour on TV around the world - yes, billions.  When 50,000 people and vehicles stop in a small town for a halt on the Tour thousands of volunteers are needed.  Just the city of Cambridge, England, is asking for 1,000 volunteers for 2014 when the Tour comes to their area!  I am sure we will see some wonderful background landscape from England.  Just watching the surrounding countryside is always thrilling.

The last two Tour de France have been won by British racers - Bradley Wiggins in 2012 and Christopher Froome in 2013.  Christopher Froome was born in Kenya and moved to South Africa when he was 14 - he started riding bikes when he was a child in Nairobi and became a professional racing cyclist in 2007, aged 22, with a South African team, then he started to bike professionally under a British passport.

One of my favorite racing cyclists is Peter Sagan from Slovakia.  He is a sprinter and a bit of a clown.  He is the only cyclist I saw to make tricks with his bike.  He won the Green Jersey, as faster sprinter overall, in the 2013 Tour de France.  He had dyed his goatee green to match his racing jersey.

Cities and small towns bid to have the Tour come through heir communities at least one year or more ahead of the Tour - town overseas bid as well.  In 2014 Leeds, Yorkshire, England, will host the start of the Tour.  Yorkshire beat off challenges from Edinburgh, Scotland and Florence, Italy.  All the cities and towns on the Tour get an enormous amount of publicity but they also have work to do such as resurfacing the roads where the cyclist will ride.  The cities have to be cleaned, buildings painted, no rubbish should be found along the race and enough parking for the 1500 vehicles following the Tour, not counting all the vehicles from the fans, are necessary.  Barricades need to be set up toward the end of each stage as the crowd is so enthusiastic that fans come too close to the riders. The scenery along the Tour route is always superb.  I love watching the camera work from the helicopters and motorbikes.  Hundred thousand people, many in camper homes follow the Tour and waive flags from a variety of countries.  It has an atmosphere of happiness, of real "joie de vivre."

This year, for the first time, the Tour de France finished on the Champs-Elysees in Paris in the evening, and also for the first time the riders rode around the Arc de Triomphe - before they always turned around on the avenue.  TV channel NBCSC kept the coverage till the end and I was able to watch the glorious laser show on the Arc.  I took some pictures from my TV but many were fuzzy as you can see below.

Grandson number 2 had asked me several months ago to knit him a "Georgia Tech" blanket for his birthday while I watched the Tour.  His father attended several universities including Berkeley, Georgia Tech, Emory and the Medical College of Georgia but grandson is fixated on Georgia Tech and is a great fan.  I had to think about how I could knit or crochet such a Georgia Tech blanket.  I started during the Tour but had to finish it after the end of the Tour, since I had already worked and finished the other two baby blankets shown above.  I used the Georgia Tech colors of golden yellow and navy blue and added the yellow jacket mascot - here it is below.

The blanket was still not finished when we arrived at our daughter's house in Tennessee and I finished it while she was baking the birthday cake.  Grandson no. 3 was happy waiting for his brother's birthday cake while having a taste of another earlier cake, a chocolate cake.  Baby granddaughter wondered what all the fuss was about.

The birthday cake was covered with marine life since grandson number two is a dolphin fan.  Then it was time to make a wish and blow all the 5 candles while older brother was taking a picture and younger brother was patiently waiting for a piece of the cake.

The birthday boy likes to eat my homemade jams and asked me if I would show him how I made jam.  So I brought my pans and jam paraphernalia to Tennessee and we made three different jams: cherry, blueberry and strawberry jams.  He helped quite a lot.

When we returned home to Georgia we thought that our potted plants would have dried up after two weeks of our non-watering.  But it seems that it must have rained often as the leaves were quite large and the flowers healthy.

Just before I took the above photo, it rained again.

Now, I just have to wait till July 2014 to watch the Tour de France on TV.  It will start in England and go through the Yorkshire Dales - it should offer stunning scenery once again.

Happenings in Georgia and Tennessee

Two more posts on Warm Springs and Callaway Gardens will be forthcoming, but later on.  In early May friends invited us to attend a concert given at the historic Strand Theatre in Marietta, Georgia.  This theatre is by the turn of the century square in downtown Marietta and has been there since the 1930s.  I took pictures of it several times along the years but had never been inside.  I drove by it again this morning and took a picture through my car window.  (click on collage twice to enlarge.)

The Strand Theatre was opened in 1935 as a new Art Deco movie theatre.  It had the latest technologies of the time such as acoustical sound system, heating and air conditioning, a fireproof projection room and seating for 1,000 patrons.  At the time it costs $150,000 to build and it was the most modern theatre outside Atlanta.  "Top Hat" a musical starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was the first show featured at the Strand in the fall of 1935.  It closed its door as a movie theatre in 1976.

Afterwards the building housed a number of ventures until it deteriorated and became vacant in 2002.  Community leaders formed a group to save the Strand Theatre and after a successful restoration campaign it re-opened in 2008 with a showing of "Beauty and the Beast."  On May 4th, 2013, the "Paradocs" were giving a performance at The Strand.  We arrived early so we could get a good look at the theatre.

The group playing that Saturday came about when a "pair of docs" taking a break in the doctor's lounge at the local hospital started a conversation about music and how much they missed playing.  In 1996 they started playing together and were joined by more medical personnel and registered nurses.

The doctors and nurses call their 15 piece rock and roll band the "Paradocs."  Their repertoire includes great rock music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s to the present.  They also play some southern rock, country and blues tunes.  I was really surprised at their sound - it certainly rocked!

The female and male vocalists were true professionals and could certainly sing on the stage fulltime instead of working in a hospital.  I tried to take pictures, without flash, with my little Lumix camera - it was not easy with all the fast gyrations.

The Paradocs have been playing for five years and most shows are sold out.  They give all the revenues from the performances to benefit the Strand Theatre or other worthy charities.  We really enjoyed the performance.

 The following week I did not go on the computer much as I was trying to finish knitting a baby blanket before our trip to Tennessee.  I finished it just in time.  It was in the same style as those I made for our three grandsons, but mostly pink...

We drove to a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, where our younger daughter lives with her family.  Every time we visit we see how fast our three grandsons are growing - they are now 6, 4 1/2 and 2 years old.

This was a special event - the birth of our little granddaughter.

She was born on Friday, May 10, 2013.  She is a lovely 8 1/2 pounds baby, but has a slight heart murmur which we hope will heal as she grows.  The mother, our daughter, had to be readmitted in the hospital for a couple of days but she is out now and improving.  We stayed several days.  I pre-programmed a post for publication but am behind again visiting friends' blogs

I had time to crochet a "lap" blanket (or security blanket or car-seat blanket) - it is about 23 inches square.

Below is grandson no. 2 making a list of names for the baby.  Eldest grandson is showing his green
soccer uniform and youngest grandson is getting close to the baby to check her out.

While we were in Tennessee the weather was perfect - warm with low humidity.  Peonies and roses were blooming in the garden.

We drove back through Alabama.  Many fields were covered with bright yellow wild flowers.  I could have stopped many times along the way to take pictures.

I am a city girl and the sight of cows in a field will stop me every time.  There was no place to stop on the road but luckily no cars were behind me and I took the pictures from the car window.

It was lovely to see that our roses were in bloom when we arrived back home.

Our wild climbing roses were covering the adjoining trees.

Now we need to get busy planting annuals and herbs before the weather gets too warm.  Looking over this post it seems I have a lot of the color pink showing - it goes well with a new baby granddaughter!

In and around our house in August

The month of August is already gone and it seems it went faster than usual. I have not written a post in over two weeks - I meant to, however, my real life intruded on my virtual life. We had, and are having, health issues and they are time consuming. I should have written two or three posts during that time, but since I did not, I’ll write about some of our activities during this past month. Because of the heat, we did not do much in the garden apart from looking at some of the flowers. Here is a pretty rose which opened yesterday. It has a sweet rose fragrance. (Please click on the photos to enlarge them as they look so much better.)



Earlier in the season we had planted some thyme in a pot. It died and we left the pot as is. Then a few weeks ago we saw some type of violets that took over the pot – we never planted them, so I don’t know how they started to grow in that pot – could have been some seeds in the thyme dirt?

(Click on collage then on each picture to biggify)

We had bought a succulent and it grew some tiny peach blossoms. The squirrels did not eat the begonia and the dainty dark pink blooms come from an unknown pot – just appeared last week.

We live in west Cobb County which is northwest of Atlanta, Georgia, about 30 miles from downtown Atlanta. We are not in a city, but close to several: 6 miles from Kennesaw, 8 miles from Marietta, 8 miles from Acworth, 9 miles from Powder Springs and 7 miles from Dallas which is in another county – Paulding. So when we go shopping we have choices. We can also shop at a couple of farmers’ markets. Below is the market on the Marietta Square (my husband is near the sign.)



The area farmers and artisan food producers come every Saturday and Sunday mornings to offer their goods.



I like to look at all the beautiful flowers. Sometimes bluegrass musicians entertain us on the side of the market.



But one of my favorite things is getting close to the beautiful Greyhound dogs. There is an adoption agency that brings several of their dogs to the market. I’d love to adopt one – maybe when we don’t travel so much.



We also shop at the smaller farmers’ market in Kennesaw where I found Annie last week and spoke French with her. Her husband bakes the best baguettes and croissants.



Another market, but a flea market, is close by in Acworth. We went there last Sunday – it was very warm. They used to sell more antiques but now it is mostly cheap stuff from China.



Some Mexican vendors offer vegetables and fruits at good prices. I don’t know what is the dry bean type thing on the right hand side of the bottom right-hand photo – do you?




There was a red car for sale – it looked like a vintage model but I am not sure from which car maker. Seating is provided at the flea market – but it is not fancy… (an understatement.)



We ate the fresh vegetables at home but we also went out – ate some Italian food. At Douceur de France I ate a “tartine Corse” (seasoned tomatoes on top of a warm baguette covered with goat cheese) and a chocolate cake. My husband had the Millefeuille which here is called a Napoleon, I believe.


Our fig tree produced many good figs so I made several batches of jam. I showed my fig jam recipe back in 2010 in the post Fresh Figs – Home Grown.



I also made some cherry jam (with Cherry Heering wine from Denmark) and some red plum jam flavored with cardamom spice.



We now have a good variety of jams to eat with our English muffins and café au lait for breakfast.




But when it came time to place the jars in the cabinet – it was already occupied! It is also hard to read the newspaper after breakfast….



While at the library, I saw a picture book on Venice, Italy, then I found a mystery author named Donna Leon who wrote numerous mysteries taking place in Venice. I borrowed several, then several more and ended up reading about 12 or more during the month of August.



So, even if I did not travel overseas, at least I traveled virtually. We did take a small trip to Rome but a town in Georgia and not its namesake in Italy. I’ll have a post on it coming soon. I read another interesting book from the library entitled “Sixty Million Frenchmen can’t be wrong” by Canadian authors Nadeau and Barlow. It shows the wide difference between the US and French cultures.

Quiet Pleasures by Max Stevens, Belgian 1871-1946

I thought my husband would enjoy reading this book and was pleased to find an inexpensive copy online at a British second-hand book site. As I was going to take a picture of the book for this post I placed both books side by side, the library copy and the purchased copy to see which one would look better….

That is only when I realized that the second line of the title of the book was different. I thought that one copy was a newer edition but then I saw that the copy from the library was from the American edition and the purchased copy from the British edition. The American one said “why we love France, but not the French” and the British “what makes the french so french.” I asked my friend Vicki Lane, who is a successful published author, if authors make decisions on the covers of their books. She replied that the marketing department of the publishing companies makes the decision as to what will sell better in their market “taking into account the local preferences/prejudices.” It saddened me that the American publisher would think that the US market would be more likely to purchase the book to reinforce their feeling as to why they did not like the French…but c’est la vie…




My daughter called me to tell me that the daycare had advised her that the blanket I had knitted for the youngest grandson was too big. The car blanket I crocheted was too small. So she asked if I could make another one, just right. I did and so I started to watch some TV while making it. I finished it during the last day of the Republican Convention on national television.



Since I had to watch TV, I’ll talk about what I saw. I have read some bloggers saying that if a post mentions politics they just won’t read it and move on – many people are not interested at all. When I became a US citizen I knew that I would have to take some more responsibilities and voting was one of them. To vote I need to find out what the politicians are saying. To me, refusing to take part in the politics of one’s country is like refusing to be involved in one’s children upbringing – you just cannot say you love your children or place flags of your country on your blog and refuse to take part in the process. Below is a vintage postcard of the house of Betsy Ross (1752-1836.)



As I tried to research more on Betsy Ross, I found out that there is no credible historical evidence that she indeed was the seamstress who made the first flag – read it here . There are many myths in history and politicians create myths themselves so it is important to always do some facts checking. I use Factcheck.org and Politifact.com . When I came to the USA there were a great variety of television channels and radio stations, but now they have merged and been bought up by large corporations. The conservatives keep saying that the media is liberal, but it is not because it does not check facts thoroughly and does not challenge false statements. How could television chains do otherwise when, for example, NBC is owned by General Electric, ABC is owned by Disney, CBS by Viacom, Time Warner owns CNN, HBO, Cinemax – all of these chains donated millions of dollars to the past Bush re-election campaigns. Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are owned by super conservative Rupert Murdoch (who was under indictment in England.)



The copy of the Wall Street Journal above was delivered in our driveway last Friday, August 31st. We are not subscribers so it must have been a wrong delivery, but I was pleased to read this paper to see if the false statements said during the convention would be noted. They had not and instead had been repeated. I feel that the media and the press have a responsibility, in a free country, to understand and report news in a neutral way so that the public can make their decisions based on facts and the truth. Candidates in elections should be called out every time they lie to the public. But they don’t so I spend much time reading the foreign press- in English and in French and checking out facts.




On the little country map on the side of my blog I see that many readers come from other countries such as, today, from Tripoli, Libya, Ukraine, Cairo, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Ganzhou, China, New Zealand, Australia and many points in Europe, and the red dots change all the time. I’ll try to explain, in a very rough way, the two parties in the US. The Republican Party is the Conservative party (party of Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Richard Nixon) and the Democratic Party is considered the liberal party (party of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.) But since the 1960s when I originally came to the US, both parties have taken a turn to the right, so that, for example the Republican party would be considered Extreme Right Religious in Europe and the Democratic Party would be Center Right and not liberal at all. There are only two major parties in the USA. Next week the Democratic Convention will take place in Charlotte, North Carolina.



For more information – the population of the US is about 314,275,029 right now. Of the 132,645,504 registered voters about 38.4 percent did not cast a ballot for president in 2008 – that’s roughly 50 million people. This is also the number of Americans (50.3 millions) who, in the 2010 census, were found to have no health insurance. Health insurance is provided by profit making corporations here, apart from the senior population who are insured under the government program called Medicare. For example in Texas 26.3% people do not have health insurance – it is 21.9% in Georgia. So what happens? People die. A new study calculated that more than 26,000 Americans died prematurely in 2010 – that is about 502 preventable deaths a week. Thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care (so far the US is the lone exception.) From what I understood watching the Republican Convention and then checking the facts, the platform would stop Medicare and place it on a voucher system, which would make it go back to the profit making insurance companies. The country is heavily oriented toward money and in general disapproves of the poor. It is such a beautiful country, but it does have some strange politics.



The postcard above shows an example of the beauty of this country – Glacier National Park in Montana. There are some exceptional sites in the US. I did hear the term “American exceptionalism” repeated many times during the Republican Convention so I decided to research to see who invented the term. I found out that it was Joseph Stalin, the Communist leader of the USSR, who said it first, in 1929, while arguing about America. He said “the heresy of American exceptionalism…” while disagreeing with the belief that America is unique and exceptional compared to other countries. So I am surprised now that the Republicans use the same term – they may not know where it comes from! Below is another exceptional landscape – a postcard of the Powell Valley near Norton, Virginia.



There were many deliberate lies, half truths and distortions during the speeches at the Republican Convention. This kept me busy fact checking for a long time. I was quite surprised that even Fox News agreed that there had been many lies – read it here (I like to read both the Conservative and Liberal press.) The easiest one to check was a fact that Mr. Paul Ryan (the vice-presidential candidate) affirmed – he blamed President Obama for the closing of a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. But the plant had been scheduled to close months before Mr. Obama became president (he was sworn in January 20th, 2009) and the last vehicle came out of the assembly line at the end of 2008 during Mr. Bush’s presidency, see photo below (courtesy The United Way.)



Now that the baby blanket is finished I don’t think I’ll watch as much television. I do like to read the speeches online – it makes it easier to fact check. I also found four more mysteries by Donna Leon at the Kennesaw Library…. This is a long post – but it covered the month of August – an eclectic post for a fast moving month.

The Novel Reader by Vincent van Gogh, Dutch 1863-1890