ramblings from a village of white stone walls

It seems like careers, even jobs, oblige one to practice something in excess. I keep meeting farmers and carpenters, tilers and roofers who have allowed repetitive strain and basic misuse of their bodies to create permanent damage in (most often) their knees and lower backs. Market gardeners talk about food in their sleep, carpenters` lungs house and feed termites, Casino entrepeneurs evaluate potential markets while on polar bear safaris in Churchill, Manitoba. Can one put bread on the table and be moderately involved in the many things opposable thumbs and abstract minds allow? The Renaissance (whoah)man. The Taoist who manages to preserve their body and mind through harmony and balance and a mediated level of exertion in the world until they are perfectly ripe when picked.

My gosh, Stephanie brought me to a house of chocolate fanatics, how to be moderate about that? Her parents' house is beautiful, with a nice productive backyard garden in a little town called Saint Georges de Coteaux. The washrooms in France are separate from the toilets. Allow me to clarify. A little closet houses a toilet and (hopefully) toilet paper. Next to it lies a larger room, which houses the soap and the shower and the sink. While in Italy there area bdays (not birthdays, although they have them also), in France they are currently passé, and although houses come with these marvelous things, they are for the most part removed. There is a massive loaf of bread in the kitchen for the family, it is three feet long and fatter than my thigh. There has been marvelous maliciously hot mustard in every maison since the Spanish border.

I tried a wet sauna for the first time today at the local spa/fitness center (is it "re" or "er" in Canadese?)Nothing to write in the blog home about.

Stephanie's brother's girlfriend Aurela of Basque-ish descent makes (unliquidated) loaves of bread by advising people on how to start business enterprises and told Stephanie (with me the big, bearded still guy in the background trying to follow) about a couple who worked in Canada for a few years and learned carpentry and other house-building skills and now have an enterprise 45 minutes away from here. She will connect us and perhaps they can apprentice us.

QUESTION: I am getting used to this non-qwerty board (the French went wrong here in their insisted independence from America) but what does µ mean?

Aurela insisted that it is not difficult to make fat, family-sized loaves of bread growing organic produce, however I still think it is important to learn carpentry. As the French say (in English), better to have a few strings in your bow. Especially in the scenario where the string shop's economy collapses and it sinks into a spontaneous abyssmal chasm.

Dry-stone-walled pastures, wooden sauna, vegetables, a mule or two, laying hens, fruit trees, natural spring, wood lot, tree nursery, subterranean meditation chamber, dry toilets, with my partner and the soft skin on her neck amidst a hamlet of close-knit community members with sustainability in their bellies and the present moment in their minds.Who's with me? SPEAK UP!

Cheers,
Maurizio