While we're in the wedding mood, I thought I'd post some photos of the handira -- a.k.a. traditional wedding blankets -- that I bought while I was in Morocco this past July. My understanding is that a bride would make this sort of blanket to include as part of her wedding trousseau, thereby demonstrating both her skill in weaving and the wealth of her family. The bride then wears the blanket around her shoulders on the day of the wedding; the sequins protect her from the evil eye.
I bought three vintage blankets: one large blanket to use as a bedspread, a smaller blanket that I'm currently using as a throw, and another medium-sized blanket that I gave to Mark and Erin as a wedding gift (how convenient of them to announce their engagement while I was in a vacation spot with excellent shopping). I went through many blankets to find just the right ones, and the shopkeeper threw in the two pillows as a sweetener to close the deal (at first I thought the pillows would be too ratty to actually use, but thanks to Amanda's needlework, they cleaned up pretty well). At the time, it was difficult to visualize exactly how the blankets would look in my apartment, but I'm really happy with the results.
As you can tell, I didn't shy away from the sequins. All that bling may not be to everyone's taste (Amanda dubiously called the big pillow the "drag queen pillow"), but I kind of love it. All those little metal beads add a jolt of fun to the room -- not only do they sparkle in the sunlight, they also jingle when I roll over at night.
The smaller blanket is the more traditional size. It's smaller than a bedspread but larger than your average throw blanket. It's also very heavy, what with the weight of the wool and all the sequins. Some people use these blankets as rugs or as covers for headboards. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with mine, so for now it's piled in my basket by my couch (what I really need is a second bedroom...).
In addition to the blankets, I also bought some rugs. I've already posted pictures of the small rug that I put in the bathroom. Here are some photos of the runner that I had custom-sized to fit my hallway. The pattern is a "Sahara" pattern, meant to evoke the undulating sand dunes.
(One word of caution to those who might feel inspired to go to Morocco and make similar purchases: Shipping this stuff home is an enormous hassle and can be more expensive than just paying for the extra baggage on the plane. I found this out the hard way by sending everything to myself via FedEx. Not only were the shipping charges outrageous, but because the value was greater than $250 I was automatically deemed to be an "importer" for purposes of the customs laws -- so everything was subject to additional tax, paperwork and bureaucracy. At the end of the day I managed to avoid paying the additional customs tax, but I still felt thoroughly oppressed by dear old Uncle Sam.)
Happy day! The couple was radiant, the ceremony intimate and sweet, and the warmth of family embrace more than enough to keep chilly autumn winds at bay. Welcome to the newest member of the Davis clan!
As you might have guessed from its name, the town of Twin Falls sits on a bluff above the Snake River very near a number of falls. Some of my relatives said they wanted to stop by Shoshone Falls on the way back to Boise, so I decided to join them.
Unfortunately due to the dry season, the falls weren't nearly as spectacular as they would be during the wetter months.
Shoshone Falls
Even so, the heights were dizzying (the falls are about 200 ft high, the cliff walls just shy of 700 ft), and the downstream views were very impressive.
Snake River
Moi, Wilson, Vance, Dan
For purposes of comparison, here's a shot of the falls during the wetter season:
Suppose you’ve got a few hours to kill before meeting up with your bride and the photographer for wedding photos.What do you do?If you said “shoot guns!” then you’d fit right in with my family (probably better than I do).
When Ammon and I pulled up at Jordan’s parents’ house in Twin Falls on Friday morning, we found him and Mark loading all sorts of weapons and ammunition into the bed of a giant pickup truck; the cab was already provisioned with water bottles, a small loaf of zucchini bread, and a wholesome array of candy bars.
Loading the truck
A few minutes later the four of us were bouncing along the country roads into the nearby hills.As if in reaction to the impending threat of tuxedos, boutonnières and color-coordinated mothers-in-law, we were off to practice the manly art of shooting stuff.
I expected that we’d end up at a shooting range with carefully monitored premises. Silly me -- turned out, the “shooting range” consisted of the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere.
Middle of nowhere
Side of the hill
(those orange dots are the targets we set out)
It was obvious that we weren’t the only ones to have seen the spot’s potential – it was littered with spent shells, old “targets” (a.k.a. beer cans) and shattered clay pigeons.The rocks were pocked with bullet marks.Ammon set about laying out new targets; Mark and Jordan unpacked the guns and started loading them up.I stood by, astonished at the arsenal that emerged before my eyes.
And these are just the pistols
I started with the handguns, of which there were approximately one million . . .
Everyone raved about how accurate this revolver was
One of the semi-automatic handguns (there were several)
Shooting the semi-automatic
Jordan's grandfather took this Beretta from an Italian officer
whom he captured during WWII
Shooting the Beretta
then moved on to the musket (which was used in the battle of the Alamo and/or the movie The Alamo – I can’t remember which) . . .
I knew I should have packed my coon-skin cap
the 22 rifle (proffered, reassuringly, as the “kids” gun) . . .
Okay, all you 8-yr-olds -- bring it!
and then the assault rifle (which was completely outrageous but also, I must admit, the most fun to shoot).
Pink gingham and assault rifles
go together, right?
Keep in mind that all of this was totally new to me. Unlike my more rugged relations, I have never had any interest in or experience with guns. (I suspect they got the "if-you're-a-boy-you-must-like-guns" memo while I was busy reading Jane Eyre.) Fortunately, Jordan and Mark were very careful to teach me how to handle the guns and shoot them with laser-like accuracy (and by “laser-like accuracy” I mean, “into the hill”). Under their patient tutelage, I may have wounded at least one rock and come within spitting distance of an actual target.Not surprisingly, it quickly became obvious to everyone involved that I’m a natural.Daniel Craig called to ask if I wanted to play the next James Bond.
Eventually we ran out of bullets and started packing things up.Yay, I thought.Time for lunch!
Sadly, no.Turned out we were only at intermission.I learned that the second act entailed going to the top of the hill where we could “launch” things and shoot shotguns at them.Given the difficulty of hitting stationary objects, I thought this would be an impossible task.But then Jordan explained that shotgun shooting was “less about aim and more about just firing in the general direction.”Sage advice, that.I hit my first clay pigeon without batting an eye.
Having thus achieved near-godlike status among the shooting set, I was hungrier for lunch than ever.I was also kind of bored.The others' excitement hadn't flagged in the least, so I was happy to let them shoot the remaining rounds.
Ammon on the launcher, Mark with the double-barrel shotgun
As we drove back to the house, I mulled over what I’d just experienced – I knew people would ask whether I had fun, and I wasn’t sure that I could give an unqualified “yes.”Shooting was fun enough, in its way.I mean, you get to stand around in nature wearing earplugs while trying to break brightly colored pieces of clay -- that's kind of like hiking, right?And I felt a nice sense of accomplishment the first couple of times I actually hit the thing I was aiming for.Beyond that first hour, though, it just felt tedious. I could see the genuine enthusiasm and appreciation that the others felt for the mechanical operations of the firearms and the skills it took to shoot accurately.Perhaps if I took the time to learn more about those mechanics, or practice enough to acquire the marksman’s skills, I would feel the same way.
On the other hand, if we were in England and the shooting party looked like this . . .
Thursday was the day for last-minute wedding preparations.I needed to pick up my tux, find a box and wrapping paper for my wedding gifts, wrap said gifts, and run some errands for various other family members who were otherwise occupied.Fortunately for me, Jaron volunteered to come along as my special helper.Which means errand running turned into a “boys’ day out.”
We had a blast trying on suits while we waited for the final alterations on my tux – little boy suits are completely adorable; Jaron and I were both disappointed when none of them were quite little enough.Then we checked out all of the Angry Birds merchandise at Shopko and had lunch at Five Guys.
The rest of the afternoon was devoted to wrapping gifts, playing with the kids and getting everyone ready for the trip to Twin Falls.The Boise temple is currently under renovation, so the nearest temple is two hours away in Twin Falls.Given the distance, Heather and Ashley decided to make the trek with all the little kids a day early, so as to have time to get settled and under control before all the official wedding activities started on Friday.Lady and I, on the other hand, would be staying in Boise so we could pick up my dad from the airport and drive down the next morning.
So.What to do with a free evening in a (relatively) unknown city?Why, eat, of course.I started asking around for recommendations for steakhouses, but then I realized – Wait a minute, it’s just Lady and me; we can eat whatever we want!So I made reservations at Le Coq Rouge, the highest-rated Boise restaurant on TripAdviser.
The restaurant was delightful -- an over-the-top bistro complete with red-checked tablecloths, French movie posters everywhere, and a waiter with a nearly unintelligible French accent.It was the heartiest French cuisine I’ve ever had (no skinny Parisiennes here!) but still very tasty.Good enough, in fact, to inspire my mother to try snails (or, rather, a nearly microscopic speck of one snail) for the first time ever.It was an act of bravery on par with anything you see in the movies.She may receive a medal.
Escargots with butter and garlic
The face of pure terror
Raviolis with truffles and sage, with butter and balsamic reduction
carré d’agneau with grilled vegetables
Veau de Dijon
Lemon meringue pie
White cake with raspberry filling and chocolate
We finished our dinner and lingered (as one does) over our desserts, enjoying the live music.
By the end, it was just us and two other couples on the other side of the room.The others were friends of the chef – he came out to greet them, sing a few songs in French, and join the ladies in some dancing.After a while the singer shifted to a more romantic mood and before I knew it the chef swooped in towards our table, clapping me on the back:
Chef:And now mon ami, eet eez time for you to dance wiz your wife.
Me:She’s not my wife, she’s my mother!!!
Chef:Ah, oui?But she eez so young and bee-yootiful!Come, Madame, and dance wiz me.
First snails, now dancing with the chef.I think Lady and I need to go out more often!!
Barely back from wedding festivities in Germany, I left DC again on Wednesday for another set of nuptials.This time with my younger brother, Mark, as the groom, and the setting Boise, Idaho.
The trip out went as planned – I flew from DC to Chicago, then on to Boise, where I rented a car, checked into a hotel, and met up with my family in the morning.But going “as planned” is not exactly the same as going “smoothly.”Honestly, I felt like I was in one of those slapstick disaster cartoons where everything that could go wrong almost does.
It started in the airport parking lot, which was completely full.After half an hour of driving through every level of the garage in advancing stages of panic, I asked the attendant at the exit gate if there were any other parking options.She gruffly mentioned some secret “super economy” parking lot and then charged me five dollars because I’d been in the garage for longer than 10 minutes (no matter that I hadn’t actually been able to park in said garage).Thankfully, the lot did, in fact, have free spaces. As I rode the shuttle to the terminal, I congratulated myself on being safely on my way.
Then my flight was canceled.No fanfare, just a friendly little email from United directing me to come back tomorrow morning.I had no intention of letting all that parking anxiety go to waste, so I marched up to the ticketing counter to see what could be done.At first nothing could be done (there was much hand-wringing and sympathy behind the counter) but then I activated a (mostly) friendly version of the god-mother gene and, lo and behold, within minutes I was booked on the next flight to Chicago, departing in an hour.Yay!Problem solved.(Ashley and Ammon weren’t so lucky with their flights from New York – their flights were canceled, too, and they ended up having to schlep themselves and two little kids all the way to Rochester in order to get on a series of connecting flights that routed them through Chicago and San Francisco before finally landing in Boise.)
The flights themselves were mediocre, at best.On the first flight I was sandwiched between two mustachioed gentlemen who congratulated me on joining them in the sardine tin.On the second flight I found myself in the very back of the plane, next to a vent that blew nothing but hot air that smelled of sewage.But as I always say, better a sweltering gag-inducing flight than no flight at all.
As fun as these adventures were, the best adventure came last, courtesy of our friends at the Budget car rental desk.Here’s how the exchange went:
[Scene: 12:30am.Budget is one of several rental agencies; the desks are grouped in a small semi-circle in one corner of the airport.]
Me:Hi, I have a reservation for a fuel-efficient compact car.
Bo:Great, I can give you a mini-van or a Lincoln SUV.
Me:Can you please clarify how either of those fits the category of “fuel-efficient compact car”?
Bo:Oh, they don’t.We don’t have any of those.I mean, seriously, why would you even want a small car?Just take the mini-van – it’ll cost the same, and it gets better mileage than the SUV.
Me:No way.There are several advantages to being single without children – never having to drive a mini-van is one of them.
Bo:Okay, then we’ll go with the SUV.It’ll just cost three times as much as the compact car you reserved.Can I see your driver’s license?
Me:Nope, I’m pretty sure this is an illegal racket – you can’t just lure customers into your shop by allowing them to make reservations that you have no intention of fulfilling and them force them to take more expensive cars.
[Turning to the other rental agency desks in the semi-circle.]Okay, anyone want to rent me a car?Who can give me a compact car and beat this guy’s price?
Avis guy:I can give you a Ford F150 pickup truck if you want.
Me:Dude, you need to work on the definition of “compact.”Anyone else?
Thrifty lady:I’ve got a four-door sedan; it’ll be less expensive than Budget’s Lincoln.
Me:Sold!Budget, you just lost a customer.
[I go over and start filling out the paper work.After a few minutes . . . ]
Bo:Wait!Wait, Mister Davis!I think you might have misunderstood me.There’s actually a special deal right now for the Lincoln!It just started.The car’s only, um, a third of what I originally told you.Now do you want it?
Me:[to the Thrifty lady]He’s beating your price – can you do better?[She shakes her head]Fine, Bo, I’ll take your freaking SUV.Sheesh.But don’t think for a minute that I’m forgiving you for not having the car I’d reserved in the first place.
[Fin]
Which is how I ended up with a posh set of wheels for the weekend.I may have destroyed the environment a little more than I’d intended -- and I paid alot more for gas than I’d hoped -- but I admit the car was awesome.
Three bites of heaven. This is why you always go to weddings where the bride lives in Belgium.
(The Maid of Honor was clearly onto something when she persuaded the guy with the left-overs to give her an extra box. If only I'd had the presence of mind to get in on the deal!)
Saturday morning before the wedding was a study in contrasts:
Niko: He got up at a normal time, showered, strolled down to the dry cleaners to pick up the shirt he'd forgotten to get the day before, watched a few episodes of Portlandia online (per my recommendation the day before) in his pyjamas. Eventually it was time to leave, so he pulled on his suit and tie and we headed out into the autumn morning.
Me: I timed my alarm so that I woke up exactly fifteen minutes before Niko said he was setting his so that I could quickly get in and out of the bathroom without interfereing with Niko's pre-wedding routine (which I assumed he had). While he showered, I reviewed and practiced each of the songs that I'd be singing during the wedding. I wrote and scrapped a couple of blog posts, ate breakfast and did the dishes, sketched out an action plan for the unscheduled afternoon hours, planned my outfit for the evening reception, and then showered, dressed and was ready to go with twenty minutes to spare.
In retrospect, it seems to me that there's no reason for a wedding guest (even one with a minor singing role) to be more neurotic on the morning of the wedding than the groom himself. Sheesh. Can you imagine what it would be like if I was the one getting married?
Anyhoo, our first task was to pick up the flowers. They turned out lovely and, from what I could tell, exactly what QN had in mind.
From there, to the church -- which I loved. It was all modern, with a large, light-drenched, acoustically live chapel for the wedding.
Once inside the church, I set about figuring out what I was supposed to do for the music. QN had asked me to prepare two hymns for the opening and closing -- but I had no idea how Catholic masses (especially wedding masses) normally worked and I was anxious about throwing everything off. For example, I didn't even realize until the day before that I wasn't expected to sing a solo, but rather to lead the congregation in singing the two songs. Nor did I learn until that morning that it was customary to have the audience stand for the songs. It's never been so obvious to me just how Protestant Mormon meetings are!
Meeting customs aside, I was also nervous about the mechanics of the music itself: I would be near the pulpit at the front of the room -- but the organist would be in the back of the room facing away from me. I had hoped to have some time with the organist to practice the pieces, address any technical issues, and align our thinking with respect to tempi, dynamics, etc. The organist, on the other hand, had his own agenda. He ended up granting me only about five minutes -- and in that five minutes it became blindingly obvious that although he was a very talented and professional musician, he was not an accompanist. He had little interest in hearing anything I had to say about how I wanted the music to go. He also insisted on making up his own accompaniment instead of playing from the sheet music that QN had provided to me. It's one thing to change the key of a song, but it's quite another thing to change the accompaniment -- suddenly he was adding music between verses that, to my mind, shouldn't have been there, and I was placed in the position of having to take cues from him for tempo and entrances because I could no longer rely on the sheet music. Which, let's just say it, was a frustrating role reversal for what should have been the conductor/accompanist relationship. Further, he had settled on a tempo that would have been delightful for an organ solo but was way too fast for a congregational hymn -- I knew that most people would not be familiar with the hymns, many would be uncomfortable with singing in the first place, and so they needed the organist and me to make it as easy as possible. I tried to get the organist to understand this, but then my five minutes were up and we split for the ceremony to start. I went back to my seat reminding myself that I can't control everything and praying that everything would run exactly the way I wanted it to.
Unfortunately, it didn't quite. The opening hymn was okay -- it felt a little shaky to me because the organist was buried behind the standing audience, so I had to rely exclusively on the sound of his playing to catch tempo and entrances (since clearly he was not watching me). The problem is that given the distance of our separation in the church hall and the degree of reverberation, there was an inevitable delay between the sound and what I should have been conducting (I do have enough experience singing with organists in Catholic churches to know that a good accompanist will have a mirror to carefully follow the conductor and will actually anticipate the beats so that the sound of the organ aligns with the visual cues of the conductor, it's tricky but awesome when done well). He also tried to add his inter-verse accompaniment bits, which just didn't work for the audience that was reading from sheet music that didn't include those interstitial moments. Thankfully, he ended up abandoning the interstitials and just played the music as written.
The closing hymn, on the other hand, was kind of a disaster, at least in the sense that it didn't go as I'd planned. Part of the problem was the organist -- he picked an extremely quick tempo (even faster than before, despite my instructions to slow it down) that exacerbated the acoustic delay problem and left the audience in the dust (it's sad, as the conductor, to watch inexperienced singers struggle to keep up). But the other part of the problem may have been my fault: I may have ended the song too soon! And I say "may" because I'm not entirely sure. All I know is that after doing everything I could to hold everything together with some semblance of grace and order, I got to the end of the last verse and waited for the organist to do his closing flourish in the accompaniment. The flourish ended up being an entire additional run-through of the song, which seemed unusual to me, but since the organist had gone off-book, I just assumed it's what struck his fancy at the moment. But then, after the ceremony was over, the organist came up and asked me why I stopped singing. I had no idea what he was talking about and asked him why he played another verse of the song. That was the crux of the error -- either he played one too many verses, or I sang one too few. Given my preoccupation with the fast tempo and my concentration in trying to keep everyone together with the organist, it's entirely possible that I skipped a verse without even realizing it. Which, if true, is very embarrassing. But I didn't say a word to anyone. I've performed enough that I know better than to apologize for mistakes -- you just make them big and push on with confidence; most people won't realize that anything was wrong (and if they do, it's not like drawing attention to it will fix anything).
But enough about me and the music -- although this post is about me, the wedding was all about QN and Niko, and the music was just a tiny part. The real take-away is that QN and Niko got married and the ceremony was beautiful in both its substance and its linguistic presentation (different portions were presented in French, German, Vietnamese and English -- a great symbol of the mixing of families, cultures, experiences and interests of the couple). QN looked gorgeous in her custom-made gown, and the recessional through the great double doors of the church, complete with full wedding bells, made me think of the wedding scenes at the end of so many Disney princess movies.
After the ceremony and light refreshments, I joined the other former IEP students and went into the downtown area to find some lunch and hang out before the dinner and reception started later that night. It was cold and rainy, really terrible weather for sightseeing (and there weren't any sights to see in that stretch of street, anyway).
We ended up just camping out in a "typical" Bavarian restaurant that was such over-the-top kitsch (complete with busty women in dirndls carrying giant mugs of beer, with oompa music in the background) that it would have felt right at home in Disneyland. Naturally, everything on the menu involved some combination of meat, potatoes and cabbage. The French folks (who'd picked this place) instantly became squeamish and started looking for menu items that looked more French than German (half of them ordered a plate solely because the cheese was described as "similar to Camembert"). I, on the other hand, adopted the "when in Rome" philosophy and ordered sausage with sauerkraut.
After polishing off our sausages and pretzels, we split to refresh ourselves for the reception that night. I went back to the apartment to change out of the suit and tie that I'd worn in the morning and into slacks and a blazer with a bow-tie (QN had specifically mentioned that bow-ties were welcome -- and she was right, at our table alone half the men were wearing bow-ties). Dinner was a tasty array of classic cuisine:
Quail in raspberry sauce, frisee salad with balsamic vinaigrette and figs
Salmon with pesto risotto
Praline ice cream wrapped in marzipan with rhubarb and currents
The reception was enormous fun. It was held on the top floor of a building overlooking the Gendarmenmarkt, which is flanked by a neoclassical theatre and two churches -- one German and one French, built for the French huguenots who were welcomed to Berlin to escape persecution in France. The details of history aside, the big picture theme of the location had a nice symbolic echo to the Franco-German alliance of the newlyweds. We ate and talked and looked at pictures of QN and Niko from when they were little. Grit, another of my best friends from the Rennes year, was there with her boyfriend and it was really great to be able to catch up with them -- we hadn't had much contact since the Croatia vacation in 2010 (Grit and Andre joined QN, Niko and me for the last half of that trip).
After a while, they cleared out a section of tables and the place became a dance floor. QN and Niko started with a well-practiced waltz, and then everyone else joined in for more modern dances to pop music, as well as some traditional Breton dances (the link being that Rennes -- where QN and many of her quests are from -- is located in Brittany, where Celtic, pre-French Breton culture remains vibrant).
Inviting the rest of us to join in
Niko et moi
One of the great things about wearing a real bow-tie is that you can untie it
late in the evening to show off that yes, it IS a real bow-tie.
QN et moi
Grit, QN, Andre
I stayed late (until about 1:30am) and would have stayed longer had I not needed to leave for the airport before the crack of dawn. By the time I got home, packed, and figured out how to get from Niko's apartment to the airport early on a Sunday morning, it was 3am. An hour and a half later, at 4:30am, my alarm sounded and it was time to get ready to leave. Fortunately my travels today went perfectly -- I got home around 6pm, have partially unpacked (acknowledging that I'll just be packing for another wedding trip in three days), and will go to bed as soon as I finish this post.
I admit that in the beginning -- indeed, until the moment I landed in Berlin -- I wondered why I'd decided to go to the wedding. Wouldn't it have been better to go later when I could spend more time and avoid the conflicts with work and Mark's wedding? In some ways, maybe yes. But I loved being there for the wedding, getting to be part of the special day and having the chance to mingle with QN's and Niko's other friends and family. Not only did I feel like I was able to renew my friendships with each of QN and Niko, but I now feel further integrated into their broader network of family and friends. And isn't that, really, the whole point of all these traditions surrounding wedding celebrations -- the melding of two people and their friends and families? I think so, and I think the best wedding celebrations do that -- this one certainly did a lot to accomplish that goal. It was a whirlwind trip, and definitely worth it.
