Bonni Brodnick Blog

We spent the afternoon visiting the splendor of Château de Varennes, a vineyard in the family since the 16th century. The current family is the 15th generation of that lineage. Here is a photo of me with Monsieur Charvériat  in the tasting room.  This is a photo of the five wines they produce. We tried every single one of them. I am not showing the photo after that when I was trying to squeeze around a barrel with empty wine glasses on top. My pocketbook bumped into them, and they all hit the floor, shattering. I tried to cover up the faux pas  by gently kicking sawdust over them, but it was hard to hide the shards. Slightly embarrassing (to say the least). But what a landscape! "Stunnnnning!", as my mother would say.

These vibrant, geometric floor tiles are from the Palace of the Popes in Avignon. Approximately 120,000 of the original designs are from ... get this ... the 14th century! They were so hip back then, n'est-ce pas?  

 Viviers, a village in southern France that's perched above the Rhône River, is known for its narrow cobblestone streets and well-preserved medieval and Renaissance architecture. Can you imagine living in a house built in 1500 or earlier?  You know when you move into a place, and there are all these holes in the walls from previous tenants hanging stuff up? Imagine all the holes in these walls.

When I was an art student at the Leo Marchutz School in Aix-en-Provence, France, an old Army bus would pick us up in front of the Palais du Justice & drop us off in the fields to paint Mont Sainte- Victoire.  In spring and summer, breezes carry the scent of lavender.  Cezanne was born in Aix, so it's sort of Cezanne this, Cezanne that. At the restau above, I had the delicious meal below. (And I hate it when people take photos of food before they eat it, but I wanted to capture it before the burrata ran into the heirloom tomatoes.) Here I am standing in front of  La Rotunde , a fountain at the bottom of Cours Mirabeau, the main thoroughfare in Aix. Built in the 1860, it represents justice, agriculture, and the fine arts. Come along with me on this trip to southern France, filled with cherished memories and friendships that have endured for decades.   * All photos by the author, except for the last, of course.  

Seeing the world through my eyes would make most people either dizzy or feel like they were going to throw up.  Like they just stepped off a roller coaster at an amusement park or were living in a perennial state of hangover. I see everything in double. And there are times when I also see a ghost image hovering over the primary image. I've tried patches and prisms to try to correct it. In fact, the goal of every ophthalmologist or optician I see is to merge these two images, or at least line them up on the same visual plane. Nothing works. It's hard for me to imagine what it would be like to see straight. Would I be me if I didn't have the character-building "pirate" episode in the popsicle line at Maplewood pool when I was five years old? (See part one in a series of three: "Seeing With Crossed Eyes: My World in Double Vision" ) Or, to strengthen my eye muscles when I was seven, I forwent after-school sports for something even more challenging: after-sc...

June has always been one of my favorite months. I especially get swoony when I get a whiff of wisteria or lilacs. These fragrant clusters of purple blooms scream "It's  JUNE !" and transport me to Jefferson Elementary School in Maplewood, New Jersey, where I grew up.  At the end of every school year, there was an assembly in the auditorium. Row upon row of hard-wooden mahogany folding seats that made creaky sounds when you opened them to sit down, then snapped closed when you stood up.  Once each of the grades -- from kindergarten through sixth -- was in their places, Miss Lorenz, the music teacher ,  walked to the front of the auditorium. She'd raise her arms like a conductor preparing an orchestra, then ssssh-hhh the restless students.  It was the sacred moment to sing the song we'd waited for all year, a snappy tune that marked the end of another school year an d the be g inning  of summer. I can't find a recording of it anywhere, but here it is, in a...