A note on the background

Nine years ago, I headed off to Europe for a 6-week backpacking trip with a friend of mine. It was probably one of the most adventurous things I've ever done, and that includes a 6-month trip to Africa. It was just my friend and I and we had no itinerary other than the one we made ourselves. We traveled from city to city using the railway system, walked a great deal in the places we visited and enjoyed the scenes of Europe from the city streets. The great thing about this kind of travel is that you don't have to follow anyone else's schedule and unexpected experiences are far more likely to fall in your way.

Lyons is an example. We didn't know much about the city of Lyons, France. The reason it made it on our itinerary is because in high school I did a research project on the French Resistance under Nazi Occupation, and I read the story of a woman who helped her husband escape Nazi imprisonment in Lyons. (The book was Outwitting the Gestap by Lucy Aubrac and I highly recommend it!) I was so fascinated with her story and the pictures in the book, that I wanted to see Lyons for myself. However, besides the Resistance museum there, we had little on our list of "must-see's" while in town. Which left us at the mercy of the recommendations of our guide books.

It was because of said guide-books that we found ourselves wandering the rooms of a tiny textile museum in a quiet corner of Lyons. It was a fascinating hour, to our surprise. Here were dozens of examples of cloth dating from Renaissance and Baroquial periods through colonial times and forward. Cloth! It was a study of textures, colors, patterns, and prints. It fascinated me to move through the museum and see the changes and innovations in cloth-making, in weaving and printing and dying. How tastes changed over generations to accommodate different designs, tones in colors. All information was in French, so I learned little, but I saw far more than I would have expected. Sadly, I have no pictures of this museum. I don't remember if they were allowed and I failed to take any or if they weren't allowed at all. But I found this background during a late-night nursing (trying to keep myself awake) and it reminded me of some of the things I saw there. I looked at it appreciate the sagey greens, the watery browns, the burnt reds, and it reminded me of this museum. If I ever find myself in Lyons again, I intend to look it up.