On Selective Memory and Other Femenine Attributes

I have mentioned several times that the bag that my wife carries around is like a "black hole": things go in and never come out again. But that is not entirely true. Occasionally, my wife will go on a "sorting out" binge (she learned her English in the UK, hence the funny terms), and out will come the most varied, not to mention old and useless, objects and articles you can imagine. Yesterday, such a singularity (a term used by cosmologist) took place.

Among other things, out of the depths of the BH (a term I will coin for that bag, black hole = BH) came two tickets to a "bateau mouche". Unless you have recently arrived from Neptune or have never seen a movie shot in Paris, you will be aware that the River Seine is plagued with these crafts which load up dozens of tourists, swirl them around the river for about an hour so they can "see the sights" of central Paris (most of which the tourist have already seen from the ground), and then try to sell them pictures of their "romantic trip".

We took such a trip about two years ago on a frosty winter night. We were in Paris that December (for reasons that will be the subject matter of another blog entry) and noticing that the expiration date on the tickets was about due (Why we had bateau mouche tickets a year old is yet more subject matter for a blog entry), we decided to ride the romantic waves and listen to Yves Montand sing "Sous le ciel de Paris s'envole une chanson hum hum). Hum, indeed!

Anyway, there we were, skimming along the Seine, shivering but happy at sight of the lights glittering on the dark water, looking up at Notre Dame lit up and beautiful, the Eiffel Tower bright as a Christmas tree, etc. and old Yves humming away in the background.

Fast forward two years later to the present:

My wife: "Oh, here are the tickets to that boat ride we took. I'm going to throw them away."

Me reading a newspaper: "Oh, yeah, that was a nice boat ride."

My wife: "Well, I am surprised you say so. You didn't show much enthusiasm when we took it."

If this were a film, I would "stop action" the scene at that moment and have a voice over say: "My wife always accuses me of a lack of "enthusiasm" for anything. Be it a bowl of soup, or the sight of leaves on a tree in the spring, if I do not do cartwheels and shout for joy at the first spoon full of soup or the sight of the new green leaves, that proves I have no "enthusiasm" for the matter at hand and are thus indifferent to them. The fact of the matter is, I am past the cartwheel age and I have never been much of a cheer leader for anything. Hence, my appreciation for a soup consists of asking for a second bowl, and I would only shout for joy at the sight of new leaves if I were a herbivorous monkey."

But, my life is far from being a film so reason prevailed and I just quietly said:

Me: "That's not true. I did like that boat ride. I even sang along with Yves Montand."

My wife: "And it was so cold! You didn't even put your arm around me."

Me carefully choosing my words: "Again, you misremember: The fact that you are alive now proves I did put my arm around you, otherwise you would have frozen to death."

It is pointless to narrate the rest of the conversation because it went downhill from there, as they say. The gist of the conclusion was that I am an uncaring galumph who has as much enthusiasm for the romantic things in life as a dog has for the fleas that bite his, well, rear end.

My point in all of this is that women have not only a selective memory, they have a rewrite little woman inside their brains whose function seems to be to rewrite every scene from life to make us men seem uncaring, overbearing galumphs who are only enthusiastic about three things: eating, unbridled, unromantic sex, and football (or the sport of your choice).

Here is another scene from life as rewritten by the little woman inside my wife's brain:

Me, coming into the house sweaty from having washed the car in 36 degree heat: "Well, the car is looking clean again. Nice and..."

My wife: "Gray! Nice and gray. I hate that color. I don't know why we bought it that color."

Me: "Oh, its not that bad. I like it. It is.."

My wife: "Well, you weren't very enthusiastic about it when we were choosing colors."

Me: "What did you want me to do? Jump up and down and clap my hands like Boy George and say, 'Oh, goody it's is a lovely gray!'"

My wife: "No, but you could have shown some enthusiasm."

Me, cracking open a cold beer: "How the hell do you show enthusiasm for GRAY! It is GRAY, for God's sake! Haven't you ever heard the expression, 'Oh, what a gray day!' or 'That man is soooo gray!', People don't say those things with enthusiasm."

Again, needles to say, that conversation did not end in an enthusiastic agreement from my wife that my examples were called for.

I have often wondered why Nature programmed this into women's brains. There must be some sort of biological advantage to it. Maybe the cave women who exhibited this behavior bred better and stronger children, and got better food and care, because imagine this scene:

A cave man coming into the cave carrying the leg of a wooly mammoth: "Whew, that was a long haul. And this damned mammoth was a bitch to kill. It took three spears and..."

Cave woman: "I see that your fur coat is stained with blood."

Cave man: "Well, yes, I was sticking the spear into the damned things when I..."

Cave woman: "You can just throw it away. You don't seem to much care for it anyway."

Cave man: "Where did you get that idea. I love this fur coat and it matches my grass sandals perfectly. I said to Ugh, the other day that..."

Cave woman: "Well, you didn't show much enthusiasm when I made if for you."

Cave man: "What are you talking about. I said I love the thing. Look, I'll go down to the stream and wash the blood off. It'll come off, I swear it."

The cave man drops the leg of mammoth and goes down to the stream where a huge heard of bison is watering.

Cave man: "Holy sh***! Look at the size of those babies." Taking his trusty speak he lunges at the biggest one.

Back at the cave, the cave woman in sewing yet another fur coat for Ooogh, the cave man. He walks in with a huge side of bison.

Cave man: "Man, you should have seen the amount of food on the hoof there was by the stream."

Cave woman: "Oh, really? I saw them there this morning. I would have thought they would have gone by now. But, thank goodness because now we will have meat for the coming winter and for little Ooogh who eats like a horse, or rather, like his father. Just put the meat outside; the cold will keep it from spoiling."

Little Ooogh comes in running and tears a rib from the side of bison that dad is carrying outside. As cave boy starts to gnaw on it, there is a smile of smug satisfaction on the cave woman's face..

Love to play petanque, marbles, or Bingo? Join our association!

There are more than 32,000 associations in France. Every city, town, or villages has if not hundreds, maybe dozens, or at least a few. Every liked, disliked, objectionable, or unobjectionable activity involving beings, animals, or objects has one in favor of or against said activity, animal, or object. Hardly any reported item on the evening news goes without comment from the "President of the Association for/against (fill in the blank).

Say a kid gets bitten by a dog that was running around loose in the street. After the video of the kid being taken away by an ambulance, of the sound bite by the distressed mother, cue the "Président de l'Association contre les chiens sans laisse" (President of the Association against dogs without a leash), who gives us a 15 minute speech on the menace that unleashed pooches represent for the health and well-being of the French.

(I say 15 minutes because here you ask a "yes or no" question and you get at least a 5 minute answer. "Yes or No" answers are beyond the cultural and psychological possibilities of the French.)

My wife is no stranger to this association scheme: when I arrived here, she was president of the association put together to get the city to pave the street we live on. Of course, the neighbors had to pay for the paving, but the association was tax free (Thank you, Monsieur Le Maire (Mayor). The people do the work for you and you are gracious enough not to tax them for it.)

Anyway, I bring the "association" issue up because, unbeknown to me, my wife signed up to help out in the booth that the "Amis de Malandain Ballet Biarritz", an association to which WE belong, is going to put up in the forthcoming "Forum des Associations". This is an annual event in which all (or most all) of the associations in Biarritz gather in one place, set up a booth, and try to convince visitors to join their association. Or, if you have a hankering to meet people who love square dancing, this is the place to go find a group that loves to dress up like yokels and hoe-dee-hoe.

You may be asking yourself why I belong to an association having to do with ballet; and you have probably figured out that being a member of such a group, I am not the most "active" member of the Friends of the Malandain Ballet Biarritz. Well, the answer is that my wife loves the ballet and she is a very generous person so (sigh) there you are. For this Forum thing, she not only signed up to help, she signed up to help at the end of the Forum when things have to be packed up and stowed away. My participation in said activity will consist of sitting at a near-by cafe to watch a football match and have a beer, after which I will do my bit by driving my wife home.

In preparation for that upcoming jewel of a day, my wife had me print for her a PDF with the distribution of the booths and layout of the hall where the Forum will be held.

"What do you want that for?" I asked.

"Well," she replied, "I want to know where OUR booth will be."

She also had me print out the list of associations that will be participating in the shindig.

"And what is this for?" I asked giving her the long list of associations.

"Well, I want to see if there are any associations that might be of interest to us."

"That'll be the day," I retorted. "If anything, I will join an association that is for people who don't want to join associations. We will have no meetings, events, or activities, and we will convene individually in each of our separate homes."

A quick perusal of the association list told me that there are 144 associations in this city of just 25,000 people. If an average of 100 people belong to each association (not an unreasonable average if you look at the membership column), that means that more than half the population of the city belongs to at least one association and many people belong to two or more! No wonder nothing ever gets done around here: people are too busy going to association meetings and events.

The list is divided into sections: Culture, Sport, Social, and so on. The most numerous is "Culture" but I wonder how some of these associations sneaked in there. There is the "Expression Santé", whatever that is, and also something called "Harmonia" and another named "Kalage". The first sounds like a strange musical instrument and the later like one of those fish found in the dark depths of the ocean. (Imaginary conversation: Me: "My God! What is that ugly thing?" Oceanographer: "Oh, that's a Kalage.").

My wife took one look at the "Social" section and declared it the "Miseries of the World Section". It groups associations such as the "Association de Défense de Familles et Individus Victimes de sectes et dérives sectaires-Pays Basque (ADFI)" (no need to translate that!), as well as those dedicated to cancer, autism, and human rights. But then, this section swings wildly and encompasses "Les Amis de Milady Plage", the friends of the Milady beach, and "Femme Avenir Pays Basque" (I wonder what kind of future females they envision? I might pop by and see what they are up to.)

Of course there is a host of associations for sport and for the young. In sport you find the usual stuff: Tennis, Hockey, Swimming. But the "Jeunesse" or young, is an eclectic bunch with things like circus school and something called "Les Petits Débrouillards". My French-Engish dictionary says that "débrouillard" means "resourceful", "smart", "nifty"; but, it also translates as "survivor". I guess this last describes the parents of the "small, resourceful, smart, and nifty" kids.

"Here is an interesting one," said my wife, "Biarritz Olympique- Cyclotourisme", they tour the countryside in bicycles.

"I like to do my "tourism" from the comfort of an air-conditioned car, thank you."

"What in the world is "Capoeira Raizes de Rua," she wondered.

"Well, "capoeira" is a form of dance-martial arts. Only the Brazilians are capable of combining those two things."

-She highlighted a few more associations she was going to go inquire about. Of course, her challenge was not going to be finding one that is interesting. Her challenge is getting me to join one.

"You know what this list tells me?" I asked.

"What?"

"That there are a lot of people with a lot of time to waste. Maybe we should start an association: "The Association for People With A Lot Of Time To Waste." I am sure most of the people in the other associations would join.

A Little Gift for a Big Birthday

I celebrated my birthday on the 15th of this month.

"I am now entitled to sing a certain Beatles' song," I wrote to my son on the chat.

"Which one? When I´m Sixty-Four?," asked my son.

l laughed, "No, actually I mean 'Yesterday'," I retorted.

I have always celebrated my birthday, happy with the knowledge that I have lived another year, rather than, as a friend of mine insists, that each birthday brings us one year closer to the end of our lives. I used to celebrate my birthdays by inviting 25 or 30 of my closest friends and having a bash of eating and drinking until five or six o'clock in the morning. Now I am more sensible; so, in view of that astonishing fact, I said to my wife:

"For my birthday meal, I would like to go to that place we passed by, the other day when we went for a walk, and have a hamburger and a pint of beer."

"That's a great idea," agreed my wife (for once).

The place I was referring to, we found out, is called "Le Surfing" appropriately enough because it is on the part of the Biarritz coast that we call "La Côte Basque", and where lots of surfers come to ride the waves that are a bit longer and larger than on any other of the many beaches of this area.

The restaurant is a long, rectangular room with one side open to the beach. It is especially nice in the late afternoon when you get sunsets like this:

When the waiter came, we ordered some Serrano ham and goat cheese to nibble on with our aperitif; and as we ate and chatted, my mind went back to the birthday presents my wife had given me. One was a black T-shirt of very good quality. She likes me to wear black things; she says they make me look more elegant and handsome. When I wear black, I feel as if I were going to a marriage or a funeral, which to some people amounts to the same thing.

The second gift she gave me was a little book. I don't mean "little" in the sense of an endearing adjective, I mean the book is VERY little: 7 by 8.5 centimeters. The title is "The Quotable Oscar Wilde" and it contains, of course, quotes by that well-known, bon-vivant, author, homosexual rogue, and satirist. As I read through the many notable quotes in the petite volume, I was struck by the fact that for someone who reportedly only had a relationship with women in order to keep up appearances (and miserably failing to do so), he was pretty perceptive of their strengths and foibles. Among some of his most memorable sayings about women are:

"All women become like their mothers, that is their tragedy; no man does, that is his."

"Women are meant to be loved, not understood."

"I like men who have a future and women who have a past."

As I read through these and other of his quotes, I marveled not only at how sharp most of them were, but at how well they still applied to "the human condition", especially the female variety of humanity. Wilde says, for example, "Women can discover everything except the obvious." I have always said that if I wanted to hide anything from my wife, I would place it in plain sight. Whenever I see her running around the house looking for her mobile phone, her glasses, a pen, or any other article, I am sure to find it in front of where she had been sitting--or in that bag of her's that I call "the black hole".

Another of my favorite quotes is, "Women give to men the very gold of their lives; but, they always want it back in small change." I laughed when I read this, not only because of its obvious hilarity but also because I have always recognized that trait in the women I have know--and I mean that to be not only friends and girlfriends I had in my youth but also women closer to me such as my mother, my sister, and surely my present wife. For example, she is generous to a fault and will not hesitate to get me an expensive gift or to make the grand gesture that makes me happy; but, little by little, she gets payback: "A gentleman never pours wine for himself first if there is a lady present," she will say if I partake of wine at lunch without first filling her glass. Or she will point out that she would like to be asked if she wants a spot of something when I am serving myself my afternoon aperitif. She has also said that "A little tenderness is never amiss at the end of the day or when one wakes in the morning." Little by little, the small change tinkled into their cash box!

More importantly, Wilde's adage that "The world was made for men,not for women" seems to be proven everyday by my wife and women friends of ours: they seem baffled by simple mechanical things, stumped by the works of most electronic apparatus, absolutely mystified by the instruction booklets that explain how to assemble any kind of article from a bicycle to a skateboard. Therefore, in our case, I have to come to my wife's rescue and take over when tears of frustration start to well in her eyes as she tries to put together the charming little bookshelf she bought at the do-it-yourself store. She then goes off to have a cup of tea and I interrupt whatever I am doing in order to finish the job. I sometimes wonder if this is not the way women have of getting us to feel (falsely) superior and thus trick us into doing all of these menial jobs.

My musings were interrupted by the waiter who brought our order: I had a hamburger that was very good but a challenge to finish and my wife had a "parmentier de confit de canard" which is a marvelous French dish consisting of strands of duck meat covered in mashed potatoes. As we ate and conversed, again my mind wandered back to my little book: in the section where Oscar Wilde talks about women, he also has this to say about men:

"I sometimes think that God, in creating man, rather overestimated his ability." But, he should have added, and underestimated the wiles he had given women.

But, Wilde, like all men, was not infallible. I think he got it wrong when he said, "In married life, three is company, two is none." Because that night, on my birthday, with the sea air coming through the open windows of the restaurant, and the rush of the waves softly murmuring in the background, we two were definitely very good company.

Communication and Miscommunication

The phone rings.

Me: Oh, hi dear. How are you? No, you're mother is not here. She went to Bayonne to get her nails done. Don't ask me, I have no idea why she has to go 10 kilometers to get her nails trimmed and painted. I do mine here at home, after a bath and it costs me nothing (laughing) but of course, I don't paint mine. OK, yes, call her on her mobile phone. Bye.

My wife's mobile phone rings. I search for it and find it on the kitchen table. I answer it.

Me: Oh, hi again, dear. No, I am afraid that your mother left the phone here at home. Yes, I'll tell her you called and tell her to call you back. Bye.

An hour later my wife comes in.

My wife: I am telling you; I will never go back to that place again. That woman is mad. I kept telling her that she was hurting me with her tool, which looks like a surgical knife...

Me: A scalpel...

My wife: Yes, that's it. And, she kept insisting that it was impossible for it to hurt, that that infernal instrument was proven to be safe. Well, I told her you can take your safe instrument and...

Me: Your daughter called. She says to call her back.

My wife: When did she call? I didn't hear my mobile phone ring.

Me: And I can tell you why: your mobile phone was here and you were ten kilometers away.

My wife: No, its not. Its in my bag.

She dives into that bag thing I call "the black hole" because whatever you put in it never comes out again. It is impossible to find anything there. There's more debris floating around in that thing than there is circling the Earth. I have seen tickets from shows we saw years ago, half-chewed candy from when the grandchildren were babies, and keys that belong to no door in the house, and sundry pairs of glasses, broken pencils, and coins from several countries---all floating around as if in a vacuum.

My wife: I am sure it was in my bag.

I hold up the mobile phone.

Me: Then this must be a duplicate.

My wife: Augh, you had it all the time!

Me: No, I didn't have it all the time. I just had it when it rang and you were not here.

My wife; Well, you should have given it to me when I was about to leave. You have no business keeping it here.

Me: What! No business...it is your phone you should...

My wife: Let me see how many calls I missed. Who is the Eloise?

I look at the message. It is obviously a scam. It says that it cost nearly two euros to call "Eloise" back.

Me: It is a scam. You will have to pay "Eloise" a couple of euros to call her back. Just erase it.

My wife: No, what if it is because she is in another country? Maybe that is why it costs so much to call her.

Me: Yep, she's in another country all right, perhaps Nigeria. Those fellows over there are experts at setting up these scams.

My wife: And look at his one: "Hi, we are in Oslo..."

Me: In Oslo? Like in Norway?

My wife: Who do we know in Oslo?

Me: Maybe it is their Winter Olympics committee and they want your opinion on who should represent them in the Giant Slalom.

My Wife: Oh, really, what if its for a translating job?

Me: No one in Oslo will call us for that. They email. ! Jeeze, your phone is full of scams and spam. You should change your phone number.

My wife: I have all of these numbers registered in my phone book and I don't know who these people are. I will call them to find out who they are.

Me: You're going to do what? Listen, don't; just erase them.

She ignores me and calls the first one.

My wife: No answer. Just an answering machine.

Me: Why don't you leave a message.

My wife: And, what would I say? I don't know who I am calling.

Me: You could just say: "I have no idea who you are but I have your phone number registered in my contacts, so please call back and identify yourself, anonymous.

My wife: Don't be silly.

I find that most people are strangely at odds with the technology they THINK they need. When I was in business, I used to carry two mobile phone and a beeper. And, I used them, constantly. One was for communications with the engineers that worked in my department. It also had direct walkie-talkie communications and alerts from the computer servers that were our responsibility. The other was for customers and people in the company other than those in my department. The beeper was for emergencies at night and for when I turned off the phones, like at the movies.

Yes, those phones and beeper were not half as sophisticated as the stuff even kids carry around now. But, most young people use their phones for SMS and other rather simple stuff. Their sophisticated GPS and Web and myriad of tools and apps are rarely used. And, if you don't believe me, just hunt around the Internet for statistics on what is chewing up the bandwidth of mobile phone companies.

Most adults, on the other hand, use phones for that: phoning. My wife's phone has all the gadgets you can find on any of the sophisticated, feature laden phones of today. Yet, she, like most people of her age and social demographic profile, hardly every use anything else but the phoning feature. The Web, even the camera on the thing, are rarely used features. And, it was months, if not years, before she sent a "texto" as the French call messages, from her phone. And it read: "OK".

But, it is not just phones that are like that: cars, televisions, computers--they all suffer from feature creep. How many people that you know and who own an HD TV full of HDMI and computer input ports actually hook up a computer to their TV? And from what I have seen, I am the only nerd out there who uses his "cruise control" in the car when we are on a motorway. In their mad rush to get from A to B as quickly as possible, most French drivers zoom by at 160 kilometers per hour only to have to break for a truck that is passing another truck at 90 KPH. With their stop and go driving, cruise control is useless. Yet, all of their cars have it.

It seems to me that this technological onslaught to give us features that would help us communicate better has really led to miscommunication or non-communication.

Once, when we were in Paris, my wife was laboring to call her aunt, who at the time was in a little town in southern France. She could not remember the number and she could not find it among her contacts either.

"I give up," she said closing the phone.

"Maybe if you call her daughter she will give you the phone."

"I can't", she replied.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because I am out of battery," she replied, and then added, "and I forgot my charger."

Life's little routine pleasures...

(The square in front of the entrance to the Delacroix museum.) "Ah," my wife sighed, "I am so far behind in reading newspapers. This is last Sunday's" She said that on Thursday. "Why do you bother?" I replied. "You are just as well watching the noon time news cast you like. They are experts on old news. That's all they broadcast." That little exchange is a ritual my wife and I follow. We go to bed, she looks mournfully at the stack of unread material piled by her bedside, she complains about being so far behind in reading the stuff, I berate her about it, she picks something from the pile, and after reading a few lines, she falls fast asleep. The next day the pile will grow and we will perform that ritual again. Life is made up or little rituals, habits, and personal schedules. That's what keeps us sane in this age of uncertainty, chaos, and change. Our day follows a well-worn schedule: -We get up, fix tea and watch the news; -After the news, my wife goes to her study and I go to my studio; we read email, work on translations, or, if we have time, I write my blogs and books, and she finds ways of getting into trouble (she orders some incongruous article from an online store (a ham slicer more appropriate for a butcher shop than a home, or jars of mayonnaise and mustard the size of a barrel come to mind)); -At noon I stop whatever I am doing and come into the house to find something to munch on and pour myself a cup of wine, my wife hears me moving about and stops her mischief long enough to prepare lunch; -After lunch, I take a nap and she goes to work on the ton of translations she has gotten by then; -After my nap, I go back to work on my translations, or book, or blog. -At 5 PM we stop for tea. -At 7 PM its time for an aperitif -At 8 PM its the news (snooze) and dinner. -At 8:30 PM its a movie or TV show -By 10:30-11:00 PM its time for bed. This schedule, though, is not rigid or unbreakable—far from it. We break it to go to a movie, or for a walk by the sea after dinner if the night is nice and the wather is tolerable. We have dinner parties or get invited to dinner. During the holiday periods and birthdays there are family gatherings or friends come for an aperitif. Sunday mornings, we often go to the market and every two weeks or so we go to Spain to buy groceries and booze, have some tapas, and fill up the gas tank (gas is 15-20% cheaper there). But the thing about having a routine is that you know what's going to happen. If your head is muddled, as mine sometimes is, and my wife's often is, there is no need to think about what's next: all you have to do is look at the clock and you can figure it out. Also, when you come back from a trip or after a night out, slipping into your routine is like putting on an old coat or your favorite pajamas: you relax immediately with the feeling that you are home. We even try to keep our routine when we are away from home. A few weeks ago we were in Paris and even though many things, from the pots and pans to the stove (an electronic wonder) were strange to us, we tried our best to keep to our schedule. My wife: It is time for the one o'clock news. Me: Good God, we are in Paris! We've already lost half a day mucking around, let's have lunch somewhere in town. My wife: OK, but first the news. We did break out of our schedule once in a while: we had lunch is a nice restaurant on the Avenue de la Grand Armée, and at one of those fancy places in the food court of La Defense when we went shopping there. I tried to get away to the Louvre and other museums, or to wander around the city as much as I could, given that we get translation jobs to do even when we are on the road. But, all things considered, we did keep to our regular schedule pretty much as we do at home. When we were in Mexico, we had quite a time doing so. In Dolores, Hidalgo, we stayed in a separate apartment, part of the home of a very nice family. They were very accommodating with us and tried to make our two month stay as comfortable as possible.

(Street scene in Dolores Hidalgo) But, Murphy's Law was obeyed and things sometimes got out of hand: it rained more than it usually does in Dolores and the room were we kept our computers was flooded a couple of times. There was no WiFi in the house so a cable had to be extended from our landlord's home all the way to our apartment. As an added bonus attraction, the man who provided the Internet service would promptly turn off his computer at 10 PM, leaving us dead in the water when things were about to start in Europe, where we get most of our work from.

(A rainy day in Dolores) Getting our water from a huge, plastic bottle was new to us and we often ran out because it was not part of our routine to buy bottled water. The same thing for gas: out stove and the water heater for out bath used bottled gas. One thing that was certainly not part of our routine was going shopping late in the afternoon or night, and even on Sundays. In Dolores, like most places in Mexico, shops stay open until late and open even on Sundays, quite a change for us but we were delighted that we could go buy bread at eight o'clock or go to a large department store, such as Soriana, on a Sunday afternoon. We foolishly left our tin of tea back home and trying to find Finest Earl Gray in Dolores was like looking for an honest man in the Chamber of Deputies, but all in all we had a wonderful time there. The market was a wonder to us with its bountiful fruits and avocados, the food was marvelous and cheap, and we had a beautiful little garden where we could eat outside as is the French custom in summer. When we came back home, it was a relief to get back to our routine, but we did miss the excellent avocados from Michoacán—not to mention the most friendly and wonderful people of Dolores.