Satisfying Feedback
It’s happened before: I’ll write one of these blogs or a Travelogue, and within a few minutes of releasing the newsletter a reader will send me something that either adds to, explains or (rarely, thank goodness) contradicts something I’ve written.
Back in December, for instance, I wrote about the regional differences in the ways watershapes appear in winter, noting that my pool in southern California may well be at its visual best in our cool months and contrasting that with the grave aesthetic effects winterizing has on watershapes of all forms where deep freezes are a factor (click here).
I expected some blowback for calling out winterized pools, but none developed. I did, however, get a note from an old friend who commented on the logistics of celebrating Thanksgiving on the road: He’d tried the same thing a couple years ago when his family started to disperse across the country and, as we had, rented a big house and tried to stage things as though the feast were being held in the family home.
It didn’t work that way, he wrote: “You had good luck in your kitchen, but ours wasn’t up to it and we ended up spending a lot to get all of the pots and pans and tools we needed. And the thermostat in the oven was off by quite a bit, so we had to watch like hawks to make sure things actually cooked.
“I know now that I should have asked tons of questions before picking a place to stay. As it was, there was so much drama that we decided we’d never do it again. But then I saw your article and it gave me hope. It’s a nice idea for preserving family traditions, but if we ever do it again I want to make sure the kitchen is ready for us. Either that,” he concluded, “or call in a caterer!”
That’s interesting: Our experience was truly satisfactory as far as the kitchen and overall experience went, but we also were so exhausted that we decided hiring a caterer would be just the ticket next time.
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Shortly after my Travelogue on the Machine de Marly appeared in December, a reader sent me an article titled, “That time when the fountains at the Gardens of Versailles consumed more water than the entire city of Paris” – a bit ungainly but certainly descriptive! It was published on The Vintage News web site (click here) and provided a much more detailed history of the Versailles fountains than I offered in my own brief article (click here).
The hydrology of Versailles is a fascinating tale of excess, with the desire to have abundant water and flowing fountains putting huge (and ultimately unattainable) demands on the local water infrastructure. And even the grand Machine de Marly was inadequate: At peak capacity, it couldn’t provide enough water to run all of Versailles’ fountains at once, and the article’s writer concludes by reporting that even today, with modern pumps, water supply is still an issue.
I can only admire the ingenuity of the work-arounds, which were covered in fine detail in The Vintage News: “Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the French Minister of Finances and notable politician of that period, came up with a system by which the people who maintained the fountains would signal each other with whistles upon the approach of the king. The whistle was a sign that if a fountain was off in that moment, it needed to be turned on. Once Louis XIV had passed that particular operating fountain, that fountain would go off and a whistle would be blown from there to signal for the next one to be turned on.”
In an era when “off with their heads” was more than a colorful phrase, I can only imagine the tension on the grounds when the king decided to venture into the gardens – which he apparently did with staff-discomfiting frequency.
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My thanks to readers for both the suggestion and the amplification: I love these exchanges, believe me!