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Ranum News, circa 2010
In addition:
For the past seven or eight years we have been busy with
editing-writing projects that have taken a lot of time and kept us from
"musing" or writing book reviews during our summers at Panat. Those projects included:
- Patricia's
self-published Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier (2004),
timed to coincide with the Tercentenary of Charpentier's death. It is
available on Amazon.com.
- The revised and expanded edition of Orest's
Paris in the Age of
Absolutism is available from Pennstate Press (Univ. of Pennsylvania at
State College, PA)
- Our edition of Guillaume Tronson's memoirs
of the Fronde, was published by the Société de l'Histoire de
France
- As if that were
not sufficiently satisfying, a manuscript entitled Voyage en Allemagne, Hongrie et Italie, 1664-1665,which Pat came upon
in the British Library. (The manuscript is catalogued as: Add. 19,568
― a detail that was omitted on the title page of the book and that will
henceforth be shown on a little sticker). Pat identified the author, a Jansenist priest named
Charles Le Maistre, has just appeared in a lovely volume printed by L'insulaire,
13 rue Saint-Lazare, 75009 Paris. ISBN: 2 912268 08 7. It's a wonderful text;
and despite its 590 pages, it's affordable. It
may not longer be listed on Amazon.com of
France (but don't use "Hongrie" in your search because they spelled
it wrong! You should be able to find it by searching "Charles Le Maistre"),
but we have learned that Michel Jullien, the publisher (13 rue Saint-Lazare)
will soon be making the book available through the distribution system of
another Parisian editor. We will keep you informed!
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Patricia's book, The Harmonic Orator
has been available since early 2001. Here is a link to the Pendragon
website, so you can order it:
http://www.pendragonpress.com (along with her Portraits around
Marc-Antoine Charpentier, which they also stock). The book attracted the attention of Oberlin Conservatory, and Patricia was
asked to explain this word-focused approach to the singers who were preparing Pancrace Royer's
Le Pouvoir de l'Amour (1743) in January 2002. It was a gratifying
experience, to work with these talented young people!
In February 2005 she and Orest lectured French baroque music and French
instrumental and vocal performance at
Oberlin Conservatory, and now and then she is a consultant for both French and
Latin declamation at the Peabody Conservatory of Baltimore.
- Orest published a little family document,
Ithamar Stowe Chaffee's civil war journal, which historians, Chaffees and civil-war buffs
can order by visiting "Our Publications."
- We also published Remember me to
all who may Inquire, a collection of
letters written by the Beans and the Chaffees of Wisconsin and southern
Minnesota, 1848-1903, available at Amazon.com.
Along with all that mental work, we have spent a
succession of delightful summers at Panat, with lots
of gardening. The drought of 2003 reduced our gardening to a struggle to keep
plants alive by giving them a glass or two of water each day. We won the battle:
our brief visit to Panat in March 2004 revealed that the all the roses had
survived, although we did lose a few of less native plants such as arborvitae.
By May the roses were blooming magnificently, as if the drought had given them
new vigor! The summer of 2005 was also dry, so after a splendid June the roses
became protectively bald... but the lavenders and santolinas flourished. On one
quite warm July evening we invited the villagers and all the people in the close
vicinity who had been so welcoming when we first came to Panat, to a buffet
campagnard to celebrate our 40 years at Panat and our 50 years of
marriage. Wandering through the gardens in flower is a true joy for us.
You who have visited Panat and lamented the maze of overhead
power wires and poles, will be pleased to know that they have been buried
and that we have stylish lampposts now. Our "Central Park" garden (situated
in the middle of the village, just below the place in front of the
chateau), which we hewed out of a wilderness of brambles five years ago, is
coming along well and has improved the view from the upper village. It gives us
great pleasure. Even more pleasure comes from looking up at the roof of the
chateau, which is now fully restored!
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