Lessons for future and present renovations

Well, life is ever interesting, and ever evolving. I own a home. And with this goes the responsibility of caring for it. But, I've been idea-rich and cash-poor for some time now. And this has stymied me. I've been counseled that fixing my leaking roof would be upwards of 10-15,000Euros, but best to check with any number of local companies (entreprises) who specialized in this. Need I say that I've put off this more and more urgent issue for over three years now as I've simply not the funds? nor the means to get a loan of this size? And there I stopped. I would put cups and towels down when fall storms sent drops of water down into my bed room, the stairwell, the kids' room. I dealt by not dealing, though occasionally moaning and groaning, in a bag-over-the-head sort of way.

And then there was the shabby-chic room downstairs. The one that is pleasantly cool and dark and refreshing in the hot summer, and damp, cold, a bit moldy and dusty in the winter. This is the room where Leo is choosing to be at the moment. Um, is there something wrong with this picture?

And then there is the dream project of a glassed in terrace/living space out beyond my kitchen on the polished ochre-colored cement floor I put in right after my arrival. I'd checked with a local eco-builder who had estimated the highly insulated, wood/windows/sliding doors 20sq meter room at 40,000Euros -- a couple of years' ago. The room would be on the north side of the house, thus subject to the cold winds, not too much sunshine and the insulation/double/triple paned windows/plexi for the roof, etc., would bring the price way up. Yes, this too was quite obviously put on hold.

I've been telling myself that the day the b&b in Arles is sold....

And then my dear friend Martine got me thinking that I had to get Leo's room into order, and soon. It is just not healthy for him to breath moldy, damp air. It wasn't hard to convince me. After toying with various ideas -- put up a wooden wall with air space behind it? cover it with a nice rug? -- She suggested I use the technique known as enduit en chanvre -- a hemp-filled stucco -- that insulates, equalizes the hydrometry of a room and renders the space healthy, warm...


It just so happens that the person who is master of this technique and who has been practicing it, preaching, teaching it and more over these past 20 years is a father in my kids' school (very bio-dynamic/Steiner'ish all this stuff). Yves Kuhn -- you can google him. And so I gave him a call and he came to visit my house. With his urging I got to work. I and the kids removed all Leo's belongings from the room, and I began to tear down the cement/stucco that was covering the stone walls with Erick's burin/burineur -- serious heavy equipment. With two walls completely cleared and the third nearly there, you could say I'm now committed to this project.


I called to find out the estimate for the cost of materials (nearly 1000E for the surface area I've to do) ouch! And discovered that there was a workshop/stage this past weekend to learn precisely the techniques I needed. Being financially-challenged at the moment, and being that the woman who runs the company is dedicated to helping others (truly a great lady! named Mirei), I was able to do the class for a song, and I brought Erick with me as he with his masonry background shall be my main helper for this and perhaps future jobs. Good thing I get along with my ex-husband, n'est-ce pas?

And so Saturday saw us both over at Yve's workshop learning to mix hemp, pumice, chalk/white wash, plaster, water, etc., and smooth them into wall mixtures, flooring mixtures, stucco mixtures, finishing mixtures, roof insulation, sculpture clay (for sinks, showers, etc.,) and more. Quite an extraordinary day. I was supposed to be baking cookies Sunday for the school Christmas market (Nov. 27/28) but I just couldn't resist going back for a second day of lessons in these techniques. Ever since I built Martine's raw clay brick wall (see blog post this time last year) I have been even more aware of the profound pleasure and delight I absorb when deep in manual activities.

As Erick clicked with Yves -- both men having been sculpted from the primeval clay of this earth by Prometheus, I got more and more ideas and Eureka moments. I don't need to hire an expensive company to do my roof! There's a serious possibility of doing it with friends, insulating it so that summers are not so hot and unpleasant, putting in the skylights for the stairwell and bedrooms, etc., at perhaps a third the price (or more realistically half) of what I'd been expecting to pay....



And hey, what about my terrace/living room? I could insulate the wall between myself and my neighbor with this technique, and build the half wall to the north this way, maybe put in a rounded corner with the denser material over a
frame of woven cane such as Yves showed us in his studio covered in plaster-dipped gauze, (that being the corner with a view from the neighbor's window, thus best visually blocked) then put in my windows, the sliding doors to the West, etc., build the roof with this technique and have one row of windows in it... and I could do this myself with Erick and a friend or two, thus having only the cost of materials: way below the estimate of 40,000 from the builder...

Suddenly the world is opening up. It is doable, affordable, beautiful, eco/organic, and it is a technique that favors collaboration, sharing, teaching, working together.

Hm, for those of you who've been reading this blog a bit more faithfully. Didn't I mention somewhere that I had begun dating an architect? Yes. And yes, in a past life it would have been normal for me to say, hey, want to design my terrace/living space? But you know, this is my house, and though I appreciate his taste in urban design, I don't see him doing this kind of artisanal, hands-on (thus expensive on a large scale), organic technique. And, deeply feminine and sensual as I be, I love the idea of rounding and softening angles, rendering the rooms in warm tones (yes you add natural ochres to the mixtures to get beautiful colors in the mass, not just applied, though these are ideal surfaces for frescoes). His taste is more in the red/white/black/metallic direction. Let us say, I'm discovering new power and pleasure in contemplating the possible tactile, nourishing renovations I might actually be able to manifest through my own impulse (with a lot of help from friends), and who knows, maybe I'll teach him something? And, I have to say that I do not feel in need of being saved (as I once did by the vintner, and we know that didn't work out!), nor am I as impatient and eager to jump into our living together before it feels right. Thus, for the indefinite future, we'll enjoy the virtues of the city at his place, and the country at mine.

Spirits of the St. Jean

Les Projets Techniques

One of the great things that the Steiner school here in Sorgues/Avignon does is the projets techniques of the 9th grade class. The range of objects produced with non-invasive mentoring and huge effort on the part of the students is impressive to say the least. Here is a sampling:

An electric guitar
Bag pipes (each piece of wood individually turned, different colored woods...)
a bed (gorgeously finished, with exotic wood inserts, intelligently conceived, easy to assemble and dismantle)
an axe -- hammered, folded, hammered, folded, and put on its own sanded and sculpted handle.
a surfboard
a stereo sound system
and a surreal go-cart/car/moto-scooter!

You can imagine the amazement and admiration they garner from the younger classes!

Doing Dishes - a personality profile

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts recently that repeat in different terms that we as a human race come in four basic molds. I learned the Steiner (which refer to the medieval which refer to the Ancient Greek) definitions of melancholic, sanguine, choleric and phlegmatic. The four basic humors. But I'm hearing variations which refer to our nature energies (nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon) or to our crisis selves (rage, depression, distraction, avoidance), etc., etc.,

In this household, I'll probably stick to the first set of terms. I know them well having studied them during my Waldorf teachers' training and I'm ever amused by the many ways they manifest in daily activities in my household such as: doing the dishes.

There's the child who whips through the task, manages to soak the curtain beneath the sink, and then disappears. Often, there are dishes right behind him he neglected, and more than a few that require my rinsing them further.

There's the child that takes hours to delicately remove every tiny scrap of food with the point of his sponge. Scrubbing energetically isn't natural to him, so there are times he seems to be manipulating a powder puff on china rather than a scrubby on cast iron. His physical self, repulsion at having wet hands, etc, are far more present in his spirit than method and adapting to the tools at hand. In the end, the dishes are pretty clean, but not always.

Then there's the mellow kid. He sets up the two sinks -- soapy warm and hot clean water -- puts a chair in front of the work area (being eight, he's still a bit short for the task), and calmly gets to work. When he's finished he comes to me, ready to brush his teeth, put on his jammies and be read a book. All is calm, no hysterics, and the next morning I put away the dishes with ease. All are clean and sparkling.

These tendencies carry over to how we wash and vacuum the car -- he who sees half of the job no matter the explanation, and who is done in 5 minutes. Quickly done, poorly done, more than half left for me. If I push him to return to the task, I get a flash of moody, temperamental attitude. (no, this is not Leo). In fact, my own two were pretty on the ball for this task. Vacuum in hand they worked carefully on the seats and the floor. That I was right along side removing dust from the interior and mud from the exterior was reassuring, at least for them. For my little choleric, it was the annoying and heavy presence of a surveying adult.

Even the way they sponge off the table... yes, there's one that never gets the table fully clean, the other who sensitive to textures and moisture never completely squeezes the sponge out enough, and so though he does the whole table, it takes a while to dry... And my little one who is closest to the task, and yes, seems at this point to be the most calm and thorough in manner.

And me? a recovering and joyous sanguine. I do dishes quickly, mostly pretty well. I enjoy scrubbing and the hot water is lovely, and if my hands get torn up, oh well. However, I'm not a particularly adept wine glass washer. I leave that to JP (when he's around). I once had an au pair who took hours to do the dishes. She drove me batty -- how could you spend an hour on something that I do in 15 minutes? But goodness, her glassware sparkled!

How to appreciate our differences... That choleric? he's the moving force in many a bike ride/tennis game and more in this household. He definitely has his virtues and I would be the last to deny them. And my texture-sensitive one? He's a faithful and attentive friend to those he loves. No one will be written off. Simply, I hope, understood a bit better.

Movie Night

Well we are continuing our tradition of curling up in my bed on Sunday night, my two boys and I, for a rented movie off of ITunes. This one was suggested by JP. He had strong memories of it as a child. And I? Well, no doubt I saw snippets of it over a few days on the 4:30 movie, much cut up by ads, when I was home sick during elementary school.

I rented Ben Hur. In my ignorance, I had only the image of the grand race course in my head. That it takes place during the time of Jesus, that the King Balthazar is a character, that you see a different side of Pontus Pilate, none of this was remotely in my head. I did realize that it would deify Charleton Heston a bit (though goodness he is stiff!). But I figured I could get past this.

Leo was very happy with my choice. He's been studying Roman History and the Greek Gods at school, and back in third grade we read the Childrens' Bible together (also in keeping with the Steiner program), so he had sufficient historical perspective to really get into what is a very very long and at times drawn out story. That Arles used to have a race course of its own the size of the one portrayed in the film is of course, icing on the cake.

Jonas however, was quickly overcome by weariness and lack of interest. He is not as yet able to watch a peplum film from Hollywood of the 1960s. Perhaps a modern one with lots of fighting (yuck), but an old-fashioned one with lots of talking??? Not really his cup of tea.

But Leo is old enough to get into it all. He happily watched the three hours of Richard Burton's Alexander the Great this summer. Listening to exquisitely pronounced English with the diction of a Shakespearean actor doesn't come to all children his age. That I didn't get him the Orlando Bloom version didn't seem to phase him at all.

Meantime, cuddling was the order of the day. In my exhuberance at the approaching end of winter I'd turned off the heat last week. When we all returned last night the house was frigid as could be. Only now, the next morning, is the heat beginning to enter the stones anew. Silly me. I was so thrilled to be saving on heating gas... Ah well, what's a night or more with the covers over your head to keep warm? thick socks, sweaters and more under multiple covers...

Steiner's Four Temperaments (aka the Medieval Humors)

Part of studying to be a Waldorf teacher includes learning about the four temperaments. As my father, a gifted medievalist and renaissance scholar, quickly noted, these are simply a reintroduction of the Medieval Humors. Though thankfully, our doctors no longer believe we should be bled to remove the excess choleric in us, nor plunged in an ice bath to startle the phlegmatic. I now see myself using this information when working with the children in my house, and when observing friends and colleagues. It is one of many tools for understanding a general tonality of a person, and for learning to accept differences. These differences can be so immense, and so basic. For instance, how we hear, how we interpret, our ability to sit still, our length of interest, and how to stimulate this last...

I see that my Leo and my elder female boarder, L, are definitely melancholic dominant. They are tall and willowy, intensely emotional, detail oriented, and potentially slow to get moving. When there's a crisis, emotions flow and sulking may ensue. They express this tendency in their own individual ways -- Leo is particularly sulky, brooding, and heavy to get out of bed in the morning, resistant to change and occasionally imobile. L is wildly emotional, feels everything as a personal attack, quick to tears, distraught. Apparently she is quite attentive to her school work, and has carefully and conscientiously decorated her room, surrounding herself with her own cocoon of emotional reassurance.

Gaetan has also a tendency towards melancholic: careful, detailed, discreet, tall and slender; he reacts emotionally but holds it all in, till he is nearly shaking with frustration and anger.

A typical melancholic adult might be your careful and long-winded professor who slowly and clearly explains the same idea to you in a multitude of ways. Precise, didactic, thorough. Either, you can relate to this type of person, and revel in his magnificent grasp of detail and the tremendous clarity he offers, allowing you to take the best notes you've ever taken in a class. Or, you fall asleep as he starts in on the third version of his discussion.

Or perhaps, you've a gentle and conscientious dentist who revels in rebuilding your broken tooth, working with the care and detail of the most gifted artist/scientist. She might, in her spare time, embroider a highly detailed wall calendar that you assume her grandmother made, but in fact, discover was her winter project.

Put next to them our other boy, M. Here is the epitomy of a choleric: short, compact, lively, quick to take umbrage, quick to initiate plans and projects, ambitious, direct, focused, revelling in challenges. Nothing will get him down! No one will beat him! He's up for anything. He needs little sleep, eats and stores his food on his tummy (and as an adult on his chest). He moves through life like a cross between a race car and a tank, pummeling much in his path. But, he gets things done. He doesn't mince his words. He is efficient, forward-looking, and perhaps just a bit egotistical, or you might interpret him this way as he's not necessarily looking right and left to see if he's done any damage to his entourage in his head-long flight forward.

Think of Sarkozy, or Hillary Clinton. We need cholerics, as otherwise, we might never get up and do things. The status quo would hold too dearly to us. A shove forward is a good thing. Ambition, challenges, clarity. These are strong virtues. And, getting over your anger as quickly as you express it. This too is a useful trait. No wallowing in emotional turmoil and angst.

I'm a dominant Sanguine. This is the personality that revels in the senses. Emotional, but fleeting as well. Deeply sensitive, sincerely touched and weeping at a funeral one day, I'm a Scarlet O'Hara the next, up and ready to move forward. Interested in the arts, revelling in beauty and the sensual, I can be creative, enthusiastic, light and social. I discover people, listen, ask questions, laugh, dance. On the flip side, I can become overwhelmed by the numerous aspects of the world and the people in it that interest me. I can be over-extended, and distracted. But I can also turn on a dime, be attentive to my entourage, hear the nuances expressed in voice or body language. As I child I danced, sang and loved artistic pursuits. I learned languages, music, history and a world of science fiction and adventure stories.

When I meet a fellow sanguine, I feel the click in a way that is quite amazing. My mother is dominant sanguine, one of the reasons we get along so easily. But so are many of my friends. We are generally people in motion, not as slender as the melancholics, but with perhaps more muscle tone.

The last temperament is one I've but little of: the phlegmatic. This is the person who is unflappable, calm in all crises, content to have a roof over his head and good food on the table. He is steady, assured, gifted at calmly attacking a complicated math problem that will take weeks to solve. He will state things as they are, with little emotional inflection. You can count on him, he is a good and faithful friend. However, getting him moving forward out of his comfortable cocoon requires thought, and creativity on the part of the teacher, parent, friend. The phlegmatic will have a tendency towards putting on weight, and will have remarkably few wrinkles on his face.

We all have all four in us, but in general have a tendency towards one or the other. It is rare to be equally balanced. And we are drawn to different temperaments for different reasons. My vintner has a strong tendency towards the melancholic (as did my father) but sufficient sanguine in him to not be driven insane by my love of conversation and stimulation. I am the light to his dark. I flutter like a butterfly and put him in motion, as well as in touch with feelings that he might have bottled up by preference a long time ago. I understand and enjoy cholerics -- often this will be the person who has little tact, but a heart of gold. They are quick to anger, but also quick to find a solution, help, be there. They are good leaders, and great friends in a crisis.

Jonas' teacher last year was a wonderful phlegmatic -- gifted at not saying too much. He was calm, present, sensitive to the needs of his students, rarely raised his voice, and knew just what to teach to keep them interested, but not overwhelmed.

This year, his teacher is a dominant sanguine. I appreciate her as well, finding her easy to talk to and relate to. I know that she has a tendency -- as do I -- to talk a lot, to be interested in everything, to jump all over the place in a conversation, leaping onto tangents and ideas as they pop out of the air or her head. She's learning to tone this down for her little charges, and I'm confident she'll manage.

The new accountant at the school is a calm phlegmatic -- perfect! and my dentist is a marvelously detailed and attentive melancholic who takes the time necessary to do a perfect job. What a privilege for us all.

So, whether I use these personality sketches to help me handle my brood of pre-teens at home, or to adjust my converstion with friends and colleagues in my professional and personal life, they are aids. Just a stroke more information to assist me in advancing through this life.

Leo as Dieu Pan

For the first time in his school life, Leo received the honor of the lead role in the younger grades' end of year play. They were three in his class who raised their hands, asking the teacher for this honor. And he was chosen. He was thrilled. Unbeknownst to me, this play which is a yearly event now for the school, resonated in his heart and he'd hoped as he entered into his 5th year class this September, that he might, just might, have this role.





It is and was a big deal. Leo is not at the top of his class and he knows this. As the French put it, "il galère." We're working with writing and reading therapists to improve his grammar and spelling skills, and simply to assist him towards a fluidity in the act. He is quickly exhausted by writing, and has as yet not grasped the necessity, nor the true usefulness of this act. The time spent learning French grammar, writing, and more in class is for the time being, time wasted. Little seems to have entered his head. The parts of speech, and the families of rules (i.e. the adjective mauvais is akin to anglais is akin to français), that these go from masculine (mauvais) to feminine (mauvaise). In French there are ten different ways the sound "a" is written. However, each (é, ais, ait, ai, ée, er, et, è, ez, et) has its moment and its place. As a child, I simply memorized what I was taught, good little girl that I was. But oh how complicated this grammar stuff is! and spelling in both English and French is as much about history, linguistics and roots as about pronunciation. Culture is communicated when we learn to spell, and one who masters a written language is viewed as cultivated, educated. It is a separator of class, and mindless, frustrating, useless and more as it must seem to a child who actually thinks and reflects to learn this strange thing called grammar -- rather than obediently, unquestioningly learning as I did -- it could be that which impedes his ambitions later in life.

Leo is living this duality, this frustration. On the one hand ever so aware of the kids that do well in class, and on the other, wearied and quickly discouraged when he attempts the school work before him. And yet, he is one of the eldest of the class, and he tries so hard to be good. He is a protector, a leader at heart. This dichotomy is a struggle. What is it to succeed? What virtues do size and age convey? His best friend in class is a year younger, and at least a year ahead of him in reading fluency and writing.

And yet, he received this honor. An honor that, had he not been able to memorize the 40 lines of the play, he could have shared with another. But this idea was not for him. He would do the work necessary to memorize his lines, and he would be present at each rehearsal with each participating class. The first grade (in which his brother Jonas is) were gnomes, spirits of the earth.



The second grade played mosquitoes and frogs, there to awaken the summer spirits.



The third grade were the hot salamanders, there to warm the earth and encourage the plants to transform flowers to fruit.


The fourth grade were the spirits of the air, carrying seeds to new destinations.


And the fifth grade was divided into fauns (the boys) there to taunt man and stimulate him to better,


and ondines (the girls), the spirits of the water, there to moisten the earth.


Leo, as Dieu Pan, led them all, asking of each spirit what he or she had contributed to the earth, to life on this day of the St. Jean, the Solstice. He asked, he approved, he guided, he led. And with grace, he intoned, he scolded, he praised, and he went upon his way.

We were there, his father and I, ever so proud. And he looked to us, smiling shyly, happy, proud, and concentrated on his role. Oh, he fell out of character occasionally when he wasn't speaking, but he popped right back when he spoke his lines. The teachers of the school, who've known him, watched him, and discussed him (he's a favorite case) were impressed, proud, and as one put it, eager to watch him grow up. With such a moment of glory behind him, there will be great moments before him.



As his mom, I praised him, but I also reminded him that I was there to watch his little brother too. Yes, he has the lead, yes, it is a huge honor and I'm prouder than proud, but this is Jonas' first play, Jonas' first line, and Jonas' first act in the school tradition. I am ever so proud of them both, and there is enough to go around, truly. No need to insist that the lime light be his. It already is. But, graciously sharing it would be nice too, no? ... we're still working on it.