NOTES FROM AN ABANDONED VILLAGE

I'm still asking: Where and why did they go? Here is the story: the Bories village is composed of seven groupings of huts, each having a very precise function: houses, stables, barns, goat shelters, tanning mills, bake houses - the whole social and economic system build laboriously from limestone, and it all was abandoned by its inhabitants about 150 years ago. Classified as a Historical Monument by the French Government, it includes an impressive collection of archived documents none of which tells WHY??? The Bories village in France isn't the only abandoned place on Earth: Brochs, Trullis, Cabanes, Cleits, Giren are scattered around the world. Wherever you spot them, you are hit by the patience and dexterity of those who created them and the enigma that surrounds their abandonment. Visiting abandoned places - ancient but also modern - is becoming more and more popular tourism nowadays. Ghost towns in the former USSR and in the US, orphaned mine sites in Canada, post-Chernobyl villages attract by their macabre beauty. As the DirJournal blog says, "There are mainly two reasons why people suddenly or little by little leave the place where they used to live for years or even generations: that's the danger and economic factors."
My blog is dedicated to
"These were thy charms - but all these charms are fled."
Oliver Goldsmith, "The Deserted Village"

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Supper of a “green” student





















“Green”, or conventional, student’s life is hectic this time around: midterms. It is twice as hectic because there is a couple of students in the house. Last week with my daughter we signed a non-cooking agreement. No more mental math: “How long it will take to cook this and that?...” No more cooking, for the whole week. The agreement came into effect only this week, because at the moment of its ratification there were some cooked leftovers to finish in the fridge. And as a protagonist in the movie “Julie and Julia”, who aspired to cook using all 524 recipes from Julia Child’s cookbook during a single year and to blog about it every day, I will non-cook (please forgive me this grammatical whim!) for 7 days in a row and will report on it in my blog.


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