What particularly lured me was the cows. Of the five enormous pavilions at the show, one is devoted to cows, sheep, pigs, rabbits, chickens and pigeons (the kind you eat, of course). All through the day you can sit in an arena and watch judges choose the best in class among Charolais or Holsteins or many other breeds. When they declare the winner, rock music plays loudly and colored lights flash. It didn’t look like the cows were much moved by the hoopla, but it made their handlers happy. Having a winning cow is big stuff in the ag world.

My friend Donna Morris and I walked through the stalls touching every cow we could. (They are very large close up.) Many clanked with huge decorative bells strapped around their necks. Calves nuzzled up to their moms – even in the competition rings. In the pig section, litters of little ones cavorted around the sleeping sows.

This is a serious trade show as well as fun for ordinary people. Men sit hunched together over tables – with a glass of wine, of course – negotiating the best prices for artificial insemination from the very finest bulls.

As we made our way through the animals, booths offered free tastings of yogurt and cheese and fresh milk – way more flavorful than the very pasteurized stuff we get in the US. Almost any food made in France was represented: artisanal ice creams, foie gras, bread, milk, honey, olive oil, sausage, bread, wine, beer. You could buy products to eat, to wear, to supply your kitchen or just to delight your dog back home.

I suspect that most of the people surging through the salon were really there for the food. In the Régions of France pavilion, booths offered up oysters from Brittany, aligot — mashed potatoes with tomme cheese — from the Auvergne, foie gras from Périgord, snails and beef from Burgundy. Throngs of people crowded the 38 temporary sit-down restaurants, each featuring the specialties of an agricultural area. The pavilion also includes Madagascar, Martinique, Guadeloupe and the other overseas areas considered part of France. There the spices of the Caribbean and Africa scented the stalls, and Calypso music played under the crowd noise. Another entire pavilion is devoted to foods from other countries: Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and many more. No wonder everyone was walking out with shopping bags.

Unlike a typical US state fair, there weren’t any carnival rides, although Donna took a huge green tractor out for a spin around the parking lot. Mostly, everyone was intent on food and where it came from.

At the same time as the Ag Salon was Fashion Week in Paris. Long white tents were lined up in the Tuileries gardens, and there was a plethora of tall thin people sighted in the cool restaurants. But really…skinny models or fat cows? For me, it’s the cows all the way.

As we walked up the marble stairs, we could hear a buzz of people. Stylishly dressed people, mostly in their 30s and 40s, were crowded into the bar. A €10 entrance fee also brought me a glass of wine.

Located right on the rue de Rivoli, the Swedish Circle club has been operating in Paris since 1891. They host a number of events for members and guests, and you can even eat lunch there Monday – Friday. For the Wednesday night jazz concerts, you don’t have to be a member or even invited; you just walk in.

We sat in a typically French room with high ceilings and arched windows overlooking the Tuileries gardens. Tall mirrors and a crystal chandelier made the room sparkle with light. There’s a different menu during the jazz concerts every week. I ordered Swedish tapas: herring in mustard sauce, salmon pudding, meatballs and smoked lamb with horseradish (a bargain for €10).

Up in front of the room, Viktorija Gecyte from Lithuania sang American jazz classics, backed up by Julien Coriatt on piano and Peter Giron on bass. Viktorija has a light and clear voice, and she sang almost exclusively in English. People talked together quietly – mostly in French and Swedish — during the sets, and others wandered in and out. There was always a crush at the bar in the next room.

This was a totally unexpected evening for me – not the sort of thing I do at home. Despite its Swedish origin, it felt very Parisian. If you like jazz, I’d definitely suggest you drop by on your next visit to Paris (doesn’t everybody have a next visit coming up someday?)

So here I am again in Paris. And it’s always a debate: do I try new things (that’s how I discovered galettes in the first place) or go back and do the things I love. Yesterday, it was definitely go back.

So I had lunch at the Creperie Josselin in Montparnasse. It’s situated on a narrow street lined with enticing creperies, but Josselin is the great grandmother of them all. It always seems to be crowded here, but they wedged us into one of those tiny tables four inches away from the tables on either side. In the US, I would refuse a table like that. Here in Paris…well, that’s how it is. And at least they don’t allow smoking in restaurants anymore.

Crepes are a specialty of Brittany, and when you cross the threshold of Josselin, it’s as though you’ve traveled several hundred miles and nearly a century back in time. Antique Quimper plates – examples of the iconic Breton pottery – hang on the dark walls, and the light fixtures are draped with Breton lace. The place hums with activity, as waiters greet you with a big grin and rush to get you seated and served.

A friend and I shared a couple saumon fumé, a double buckwheat crepe with smoked salmon, lemon and a big side dish of crème fraiche to slather on top. Traditionally, you wash it all down with Breton cider; we had a pitcher of semi-dry. And we followed that with a crepe of caramel buerre salé – salted butter caramel. Oh, so good. The man sitting next to us ordered a crepe drenched in Calvados. When the waiter set it alight, it burned with a blue flame for nearly a minute.

Should you find yourself yearning for a great galette in Paris, you can find Creperie Josselin at 67, rue du Montparnasse (not to be confused with Boulevard Montparnasse, a much bigger street that runs nearby). Seems Josselin is too traditional for a website, but they’re easy to find (and open on Sundays).

Lobby of the Grove Park Inn, a historic resort in Asheville, NC

Only then, around 3pm, did I try to log on to the hotel’s wireless.

Wifi is vital for me. I’m here to facilitate an executive retreat, and I knew the client was sending me some large files – stuff way too hard to read and deal with on my iPhone.  I had lots of other work to get done as well – most of it calling for email or web access.

No signal. Or, actually, the teensy tiniest weensiest little dot at the bottom of the wifi icon on my MacBook. So they HAD wifi, but the signal was too weak to connect.

I spend nearly half my life in hotels. I’ve seen this before. I leapt to a diagnosis: my room is too far from the router. I need a new room.

The front desk wasn’t buying it. No, they assured me, the signal is the same all through the hotel. But maybe I’d be willing to come down to the lobby and do my work there?

Nope, no way. I’m not sitting in a busy resort lobby for hours trying to write and focus on client projects.

“Let us take you through the steps to log in,” the hotel voice-of-whom-I-don’t-know-I’m-speaking-to suggested. “You’re probably skipping a step.”

Sigh. I know I’m not skipping a step. I haven’t taken a step yet. There’s no signal.

Patiently I let him instruct me in how to log on to wifi. Patiently I explain to him how it’s not working.

Time to upgrade me to the IT guy by phone. He’s thousands of miles from this hotel. He’s probably never seen this hotel. He’s not buying it when I explain that not only am I too far from the router, but it looks as though a massive stone wall is blocking my room from any signal.

He takes me through the steps. By now it’s 4pm. I have to send an important (and very long) email by five. If I have to do it iPhone, I’ll have to start typing click by click now.  I’m about as good typing on my iPhone as I would be dancing the samba. Possible, but not pretty.

“Don’t worry,” the offsite IT guy promises. I’ll call the hotel’s IT guy and tell him to reset the router. He’s probably still there. And I’ll call you right back.”

I never heard from him again.

It was back to the front desk, pleading for a new room. They were willing to try anything other than moving me. I was out of options. My Inner Warrior emerged. Finally, twenty minutes before five, they sent up a bellman with a key to another room. This one faces the mountains, not the stone wall. And yes!! Wireless.

I went back to my old room, packed everything up helter skelter, hauled it up the elevator and down the hall. I see now what I did wrong – I never should have unpacked. Lesson learned: check the wifi first.

“The little goats like my mouth and fingers,” the poem began.

Goats and me on the Dales Way in England last summer

If you’ve ever fallen in love with baby goats running towards you in a field, you know what a sweetness there is to their goaty little faces. They’re so friendly, so frisky (unlike lambs, who generally run away). I’ve encountered goats mostly on hiking trips – in France, Italy and even Morocco.

I ripped out the page. I keep reading the poem over and over. I keep smiling.

And – this is where our digital lives make these things so easy – I finally wrote poet Mark Doty an email telling him how happy this small thing has made me. I’ve never written fan mail to any author in my life – and certainly not to a poet.

I can’t reproduce the poem here; I’m sure it’s copyrighted. But you can read it online at The New Yorker. And if you’d like to hear Mark Doty speak about the importance of poetry and literature in the world, you can listen to a talk he gave at the Key West Literary Seminar in January, 2008.

Excuse me, I think I’ll go read that poem again. Is there something that calls you to read over and over?

Saturday, February 6, 2:30 p.m. Delray Beach, FL

I am sitting on a bench that honors two men named Frank. “Frank Veale and Frank Bergin, two friends who shared many happy times together with their families in Delray Beach.” I am positioned on the bench so the Atlantic is on my left and Ocean Blvd is on my right. For an anti-cold weather person who was landlocked in Missouri during my formative years and two decades beyond that in Oklahoma, I have done my time in the middle of the country with its associated winter weather. I am not a wimpy winter-weather ranter. I rant from experience as a fair and foul weather walker.

I am on a two-month ‘pre-release’ arrangement from my home in Washington, D.C.  and am a bit smug in the knowledge that the Nation’s Capital is at this very moment getting hammered by the snowstorm of the century. I am confused. I thought that storm already happened in December.  I was there for it. The falling powder was beautiful and the pre-storm zaniness with my neighbors on Capitol Hill was a hoot. But the aftermath… climbing over dirty piles to reach the sidewalk, wading through slurpy slush up to (and sometimes over) the summit of my boots, the treachery of black ice, the sodden aftermath.

What is the aftermath of a 72-degree sunny day in Delray? A healthy glow to your skin, the natural anti-depressant of another brilliant day, the astonishing azure and green in the Atlantic, cottony clouds that highlight a shamelessly blue sky, the predictable push/pull of the tides, and the rustle of palm fronds in the breeze to lull you to sleep.

There are no cross-country skiers, snow angels or snowball fights here.  Just kite-surfers, roller-bladers and vitamin D seekers.  I’ll take the latter, thank you very much.

***

Judy Leaver is a professional writer with clients ranging from private sector to nonprofit local and national organizations to a division of the Library of Congress. Her blog, Literary Mileage, and more information about her writing can be found at www.jleaver.com.

A nice bowl of snow ice cream.

But deep snow is also a perfect condition for making snow ice cream. I just whipped up a batch and took it downstairs to share with some friends in my building.

It’s easy to make snow ice cream. In preparation, put a very large bowl in the refrigerator to cool for a half hour or so.

Then go out to gather the snow. I’m lucky that we have an enclosed courtyard here, so I knew the snow was clean. You don’t want snow from too near an active street, or where animals frolic, for obvious reasons.

Gathering the snow.

Brush off the top of the snow, and dump big spoonfuls into your bowl. Don’t fill the bowl all the way up (I did, and then realized I needed some space in there for stirring).

I know two snow ice cream recipes, both extremely simple. The first: mix a few drops of vanilla, heavy cream and powdered sugar into the snow. What are the proportions, you ask? I don’t know. Just add and taste. It’s snow ice cream, so it should be fun and experimental. That’s it. Mix and eat.

The second recipe: mix a few drops of vanilla and some nonfat sweetened condensed milk with the snow. That’s what I made today, because I didn’t have any cream or half and half around. I used about half a 14 oz. can of condensed milk. What in the world I’ll do with the other half I don’t know…maybe make more ice cream this afternoon. When you use condensed milk, the ice cream comes out a luscious French vanilla color.

The snow today isn’t perfect for ice cream. It’s already got some icy lumps in it. But you can just toss those out or consider they add a little extra crunch to your treat.

Sumintra was a volunteer taster.

Eat your ice cream immediately. It melts pretty fast. I’ve never tried to freeze the leftovers…actually, there never are any leftovers. Snow ice cream is a spur of the moment kind of thing – fun to do, fun to eat.

This morning was like that. Last night’s snowfall left everything white and pristine…white ground, white sky, white trees. The trees looked like they were dressed for a wedding, arching over the street in graceful patterns of lace.

I grabbed my camera, drawn to the idea of standing right under one of these beauties to look up through the branches. I choose a tree with red berries still clinging to the branches and positioned myself underneath. Thick snow traced the dark wet lines of the branches. The solemn berries brought the only note of color. I inhaled the silence, the peacefulness of it all.

Plop! A big dollop of wet snow landed on my forehead. Plop! Another one smooshed into my hair. Plop! Plop! The snow was already falling off the trees and into me.

It reminded me of other things that are supposed to be romantic or inspiring, but somehow don’t live as well as they sound. I used to read in descriptions of people on dating sites, “I love walking in the rain.” Hah! I’d think. Then you’ve probably never tried it.

In my 20s, I once dragged a date out for a walk in the rain. I persuaded him that carrying umbrellas would have lost the intimacy. And it’s ridiculous for two people to walk very far under one umbrella. So we went without – for the effect, you know. The rain gently pelted us. My wet hair matted to my head, and my Aqua Net hairspray, of which I had used a liberal amount, now glopped into my eyes and stung them a vivid scarlet. I don’t remember the date’s name, probably because I never saw him again.

Oh, yes, these days I walk in the rain on hikes in England. But I’m wearing a Gore-Tex jacket with a hood latched around my face. It’s utilitarian, not romantic. And sometimes that’s just enough.

“Oh, look,” I pointed out to her. “Here’s a poster about the Crown of Thorns. They take it out once a month and parade it around the church.”

“On the first Friday of the month,” Robin read aloud. “Um, that would be…today.”

And that was how we found ourselves — a Unitarian and a Jew — venerating the Crown of Thorns, one of Christendom’s most sacred relics.

A little history: Hidden away in the treasury at Notre Dame is what Catholics and many other Christians believe to be the true Crown of Thorns from the Crucifixion. The crown’s journey to Notre Dame took centuries. It was first discovered, so the legends say, by Helen, mother of Constantine, Rome’s first Christian emperor, on a visit to the Holy Land in 325. Sightings of the crown were reported in Jerusalem regularly throughout the next centuries. Eventually the crown was moved to Constantinople (now Istanbul) to protect it from marauders who periodically rampaged through the Holy Land.

In 1238, Emperor Baldwin, low on funds, pawned the crown to a bank in Venice. Before too long it ended up in the hands of St. Louis, king of France. He built Sainte Chapelle as a larger-than-life reliquary to protect the crown. The crown was whisked away from Sainte Chapelle for safekeeping during the French Revolution, and then moved permanently to Notre Dame early in the 19th century.

Robin and I noted the time of the service, dashed out to eat lunch and shop a bit on the nearby Ile St. Louis, then took our seats back in the cathedral just before the ceremony started. (If you do this yourself, I suggest arriving about 45 minutes early so you can sit on the aisle up front.)

The crown is guarded by the Knights of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem. Wearing flowing white capes and white gloves, these men took seriously their task of directing people to seating and trying to maintain some semblance of reverence. Suddenly the cathedral went quiet as clouds of incense preceded the crown and other relics down the center aisle. Photographs are forbidden, but there were plenty of flashes going off. I tried to join in too, but my camera jammed just as the crown appeared.

The crown itself was surprising; it’s woven of reeds, banded by a thin gold thread, and there’s not a thorn to be seen. Apparently through the centuries the emperors gave the thorns away to favorites and political allies. The reeds are encased in a glass circle, carried in on a red velvet pillow.

We watched the procession and sat through the mass so that we could get another look at the crown on the recessional. Just at the end of the mass, people in the rows in front began lining up as though they were going to take communion. We lined up too, even though we’re not Catholics. We figured we’d gracefully decline to take communion, but maybe we’d get a closer look at the crown at the altar.

It was only when we were five or six people from the front that we saw we’d queued up not for communion but for kissing the glass circlet containing the Crown of Thorns. No turning back now. (If the idea of kissing something hundreds of other people have kissed gives you the willies, you should know that the priests constantly wipe it down with alcohol. Or you can just give it an air kiss or press your forehead against it.)

And so we venerated just like everybody else.

When I was a tiny girl, my Southern Baptist mother sent me to a Catholic kindergarten. Each day started with 15 minutes of recited prayers. Protestants were excused; you could instead just put your head down on your desk. But Mama insisted I say the prayers. “It won’t hurt you to say other people’s prayers,” she said, “and it might do you some good.” I’d like to think she’d have been happy to see us there at Notre Dame.

No matter what your religion – or whether you have any at all – there’s still something touching about moving quietly in a procession of people toward an object that is sacred to millions. If you find yourself in Paris, veneration usually takes place in at 3pm on the first Friday of every month, on every Friday in Lent, and from 10am – 5pm on Good Friday.

I made my loan through Kiva, a website that arranges these loans all over the world. You click in, read about the individuals and groups who need money, and make your loan to the people you choose. Kiva handles the rest.

Actually, though, I didn’t cough up any new cash. I’d made a loan through Kiva a couple of years ago, to a group of women in Kenya who needed to buy fabric so they could make and sell clothing. They paid back my loan, and I lent it again to a rice farmer and her husband in Cambodia who needed a new motor for their battery recharger, a side business that allows them to earn $5 a day. They paid it back, and I lent it to…

You get the idea. I love seeing the money that I have to give constantly renew itself. On the Kiva website, the needs change minute by minute. Just as I was going to click on a loan to a woman in the Dominican Republic, her loan was completed. I get progress reports on my loans, and when the whole amount has been repaid, I get to do it again. Maybe next time I’ll make a loan to someone in Tajikistan, or the Sudan. It’s a very good way to make a small contribution work over and over again. Take a look at the Kiva website; you just might get hooked yourself.