In a post of 17 January 2007 entitled Therapy, I mentioned my enthusiasm for the blog of Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip. [Click here to see this post.] Lately he has set aside his usual facetious and offbeat topics, as well as his curious naive crusade against the concept of free will, and he has got around to some serious soul-searching about the role of the US in today's world. He has been trying to invent serious and less serious schemes for the US to get out of Iraq, to win back respect and friendship from other nations, and to cease being regarded as a prime target for terrorists. He has even taken a sudden interest in the threat of global warming.
In the piles of comments that Scott's blog attracts, I've often found allusions to the much-celebrated role of the US in putting an end to the Hitlerian catastrophe in the Old World. A bewildered American asked rhetorically the other day (I'm paraphrasing his comment): "If the US could do such a good job in eliminating Nazism, why have we got everything screwed up in Iraq?" I would hope that the fellow who made this comment recalls that Iraq is not the first US military fiasco. There was Vietnam...
This evening, on the Franco-German TV channel called Arte, a series of excellent documentaries tackled the subject of the current image of the US as seen through European eyes. A theme that reoccurs constantly is the notion that the USA felt comfortable on the world scene as long as it had a precise enemy to combat, such as the Soviet Union. But Bush's alleged "war against terror" was a nonsense thing, because there was no longer any explicit enemy to wage war against. And the US is lost in this new world, like Don Quixote setting out on his steed to fight windmills. Another reoccurring theme is that we Europeans might happen to have ringside seats for the imminent fall of a latter-day empire akin to that of Ancient Rome. It's astounding to observe the way in which many serious European observers tend to talk calmly but solemnly about the USA as if its power, global glory and influence were things of the past. In two words: no future.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Monday, June 4, 2007
Why do we talk so much?
I've just heard that it's coming soon in the USA, on 29 June 2007: Apple's revolutionary iPhone! [Click here or on the image to visit their excellent website.] Up until now, I've been a total phone philistine, maybe because I don't live in an urban environment where lots of friends are calling me continually to invite me around for a drink or dinner, or to talk about going out somewhere. Gamone has never been that kind of world. Even my dog Sophia rarely gets phone calls. Like me, I assume she prefers the Internet. Well, on the iPhone, we'll have both. So, I have a feeling that my phone world might change radically for me—and lots of other folk—when this little Apple gadget is released. Between now and then, I'll have to look into the idea of maybe extending my list of people who might be prepared to talk to me. [Poor lonely soul!]
I've always been amused by the words of an unnamed critic, back in the days of the Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who took out a patent on the telephone in 1876. "That gadget won't last for long. People will soon run out of things to say to one another."It's a bit the same with blogs. This will be my 257th post. Now, six months ago, if somebody had asked me whether I would be capable of publishing an article a day, to ramble on about anything and everything, I would have replied: "No way. I'm simply not that talkative." It's true that I prefer to write about a precise theme, in a well-specified context. Here, that's not at all the case. From one day to the next, I have no idea whatsoever of what I'm going to write about. And above all, apart from a handful of personal contacts, I don't even know who's reading my stuff. So, I guess I have to admit that I might even be a naturally talkative fellow. Add that to the fact that I speak in such a loud voice (I've always been slightly hard of hearing) that I'm capable of waking up the neighbors of my aunt and uncle in Sydney, and you'll gather that I'm definitely not the kind of guy to invite home... which is probably why nobody phones me on my portable.
I've observed the frenetic way in which today's adolescents use and abuse the portable telephone. In Sydney's suburban trains and buses, the situation was even worse still. "Hi. It's me. I'm on the way home. See you soon. Bye."
Why do people do so much talking on phones, on blogs, etc? It's time for another plug concerning the fabulous book by Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine. [Click here to see my article of 4 March 2007 on this subject, entitled Imitation.] Let me just repeat the gist of the subject. Darwinian evolution transformed us into big-brained naked apes, of whom one of the earliest and dearest specimens was our Mitochondrial Eve, celebrated in yesterday's article. But this style of progress is henceforth—as they say in French—a little has-been. We need something bigger, better, faster and more modern in a human sense than old-fashioned genetic evolution. The new stuff is called memetics. And, if you read Susan Blackmore's book, you'll see that we humans talk a lot (well, at least those of the talkative kind do) for the simple reason that we're constantly transmitting and receiving memes.
I hope I've talked you into reading this great ground-breaking book.
Mothers
In genealogy, there's a relatively unusual approach that consists of only taking into account your female ancestors. So, you disregard your father entirely and look only at your mother. Likewise, you disregard your maternal grandfather, and look only at your mother's mother. And so on. The set of ancestors that you obtain in this way describes your so-called uterine ancestry. In many ways, it's a sound approach to genealogy. In concerning yourself constantly and exclusively with the unique womb in which each female ancestor developed, you remain on relatively firm ground. After all, an error at a maternal level is less likely, for obvious reasons, than ambiguities or downright lies concerning the identity of somebody's father. Besides, the concept of matrilineality (as it is called in genealogical terminology) corresponds to our intuitive impression of having once emerged from the body of our mother. To put it in silly terms, most humans surely feel more like a well-hatched egg than a grown-up sperm, even though we've learned that we're a little bit of both.
The only problem about family-history research of a strictly uterine orientation is that, in societies where a married woman takes the surname of her husband, the researcher is likely to run out of data rather rapidly, at least much earlier than in investigations in which both male and female ancestors are being researched. In the case of my personal research, the disparity between a purely patrilineal and a purely matrilineal approach is flagrant. Concerning possible ancestors called Skyvington—or a variant of this patronymic such as Skivington, Skevington, Skiffington, Skeffington, etc—I've already filled a small book with research results. [Click here to visit this website.] But, when I concentrate solely on my uterine line, I find my maternal grandmother Mary Jane Kennedy [1888-1966], my Irish-born maternal great-grandmother Mary Eliza Cranston [1858-1926], my maternal great-great-grandmother Eliza Dancey [1821-1904], and then I run into an ancestor named Mary Adams about whom I know nothing whatsoever. And there's little chance of my ever learning the name of this Mary's mother. So, I've run up against a genealogical brick wall after four or five matrilineal generations.
Now, the uterine approach to genealogy has some strange but positive consequences when we look at things from a genetic viewpoint... which is, after all, a perfectly normal way in which to deal with family history. Every human baby inherits from its mother a stock of weird stuff, stored in every one of our cells, called mitochondria (in fact, a form of DNA), which can be thought of as tiny energy suppliers. Were it not for our mother's gift of mitochondria, our cells would be like factories without fuel, or cities without electricity. We would instantly collapse and die. Human males, like females, need mitochondria to survive. But a father, unlike a mother, does not transmit any of his stuff to his children. And, because mitochondrial DNA is only transmitted down uterine lines, this means that it can be used as a "marker" (that's not quite the right term) in the genealogical domain. By analyzing the mitochondria of two individuals, it's possible to ascertain whether they have a common uterine ancestor.
In the context of the famous tomb at Talpiot, this was the kind of analysis that enabled geneticists to declare that the individuals designated as Jesus and Mariamne (allegedly Mary of Magdala) were not related in a matrilineal sense. And this conclusion made it feasible to imagine this couple as man and wife.
In fact, the existence of mitochondria makes it possible to hypothesize the existence of common female ancestors—vastly more ancient than Biblical women—for all human beings living today. Genetic genealogists use a rather unromantic name to refer to the most recent female in this role: Mitochondrial Eve. She wasn't exactly a plump white-skinned European beauty. Mitochondrial Eve lived in Africa some 150 thousand years ago. Whatever she looked like, she's the lady to whom we can say thanks for passing on to us the primordial cell energy enabling humans to crawl out of their beds every morning, to make hay while the sun shines... before getting back into their beds of an evening, maybe to make more mitochondria.
The only problem about family-history research of a strictly uterine orientation is that, in societies where a married woman takes the surname of her husband, the researcher is likely to run out of data rather rapidly, at least much earlier than in investigations in which both male and female ancestors are being researched. In the case of my personal research, the disparity between a purely patrilineal and a purely matrilineal approach is flagrant. Concerning possible ancestors called Skyvington—or a variant of this patronymic such as Skivington, Skevington, Skiffington, Skeffington, etc—I've already filled a small book with research results. [Click here to visit this website.] But, when I concentrate solely on my uterine line, I find my maternal grandmother Mary Jane Kennedy [1888-1966], my Irish-born maternal great-grandmother Mary Eliza Cranston [1858-1926], my maternal great-great-grandmother Eliza Dancey [1821-1904], and then I run into an ancestor named Mary Adams about whom I know nothing whatsoever. And there's little chance of my ever learning the name of this Mary's mother. So, I've run up against a genealogical brick wall after four or five matrilineal generations.Now, the uterine approach to genealogy has some strange but positive consequences when we look at things from a genetic viewpoint... which is, after all, a perfectly normal way in which to deal with family history. Every human baby inherits from its mother a stock of weird stuff, stored in every one of our cells, called mitochondria (in fact, a form of DNA), which can be thought of as tiny energy suppliers. Were it not for our mother's gift of mitochondria, our cells would be like factories without fuel, or cities without electricity. We would instantly collapse and die. Human males, like females, need mitochondria to survive. But a father, unlike a mother, does not transmit any of his stuff to his children. And, because mitochondrial DNA is only transmitted down uterine lines, this means that it can be used as a "marker" (that's not quite the right term) in the genealogical domain. By analyzing the mitochondria of two individuals, it's possible to ascertain whether they have a common uterine ancestor.
In the context of the famous tomb at Talpiot, this was the kind of analysis that enabled geneticists to declare that the individuals designated as Jesus and Mariamne (allegedly Mary of Magdala) were not related in a matrilineal sense. And this conclusion made it feasible to imagine this couple as man and wife.
In fact, the existence of mitochondria makes it possible to hypothesize the existence of common female ancestors—vastly more ancient than Biblical women—for all human beings living today. Genetic genealogists use a rather unromantic name to refer to the most recent female in this role: Mitochondrial Eve. She wasn't exactly a plump white-skinned European beauty. Mitochondrial Eve lived in Africa some 150 thousand years ago. Whatever she looked like, she's the lady to whom we can say thanks for passing on to us the primordial cell energy enabling humans to crawl out of their beds every morning, to make hay while the sun shines... before getting back into their beds of an evening, maybe to make more mitochondria.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Memorable façade
I return to the fascinating subject of the work of Simcha Jacobovici concerning a tomb at Talpiot, to the south of Jerusalem, that contained a bone box labeled "Jesus son of Joseph". [Click here to visit the official website of this affair.] Uncovered accidentally by an earth-moving machine on Friday, 28 March 1980, the tomb and its ossuaries did not attract much attention during the brief period of time that the façade remained visible. But photos were taken, and a detailed diagram of the tomb was drawn by a young archaeologist named Shimon Gibson, who was intrigued by the carvings on the façade.
The bulky stone chevron (inverted V), whose triangular form resembles the gable of a roof, houses—as it were—an embossed stone circle. An observer is tempted to ask whether these forms might be symbols enabling us to determine the likelihood that this was indeed the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. In fact, this approach is not particularly rewarding, for several reasons. First, for all we know, the chevron and the circle could be purely decorative. Maybe the carving work was interrupted before its completion. Besides, we cannot know whether these forms were created prior to the burial of the individuals associated with the ossuaries, or after their inhumation. (Only in the latter case might the forms help us in identifying the deceased.) Even if we were convinced that these forms play a symbolic role of some kind, this would not enable us to prove or disprove possible links between the Talpiot tomb and Jesus of Nazareth. For example, somebody recently affirmed that "the pointed gable over the rosette is a pre-Christian Jewish symbol that referred to the Temple", and that this pattern can even be found on Hasmonean coins. Well, that doesn't affect the issue of whether or not this particular tomb did in fact house the remains of Jesus and his family.
There is, however, a subtle way in which the forms on the façade of the Talpiot tomb might have a bearing on the question of the identity of the incumbents. Imagine, for the sake of the explanations that are to follow, that the Talpiot tomb was indeed the place where the body of Jesus of Nazareth was laid to rest. In that case, we can assume that a certain number of early Christians were aware of this site, and had visited it. For such people, it seems reasonable to assume that the façade was memorable, because of its chevron and circle... regardless of whether or not these forms actually meant much to those who saw them. We might imagine that the façade served as a visual indicator for pilgrims, who probably spread the information, by word of mouth, that Jesus was buried in tomb to the south of Jerusalem adorned with a sculptured triangular form above a circle. In this way, the forms on the façade of the Talpiot tomb would have been transformed into a symbol of the tomb of Jesus, even if this had never been their initial raison d'être. Now, if this kind of reasoning is valid, there should be cases of the presence of this symbol, later on, in Christian contexts. Here is the most explicit case of such a symbol:
This celebrated Supper at Emmaus (depicting the resurrected Jesus) was painted in 1525 by Jacopo Carruci, known as Pontormo, whose work was greatly influenced by Leonardo da Vinci. Above the head of Jesus, a curious visual image is composed of an eye at the center of a triangle. Is it thinkable that this round object on a triangular background might be intended to evoke the façade of the tomb at Talpiot? If so, this would mean that the 16th-century Florentine painter was aware—in ways that are hard to fathom, but plausible—that Jesus had been buried in a tomb that bore an image of this kind.
More recently, this image of an "all-seeing eye" (as it is often termed) has been adopted as a masonic symbol, and it is construed today as a coded sign that might have come from Ancient Egypt. As I said earlier on, this discussion about possible signs and symbols cannot be used to prove anything, but it provides us with interesting guidelines.
The bulky stone chevron (inverted V), whose triangular form resembles the gable of a roof, houses—as it were—an embossed stone circle. An observer is tempted to ask whether these forms might be symbols enabling us to determine the likelihood that this was indeed the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. In fact, this approach is not particularly rewarding, for several reasons. First, for all we know, the chevron and the circle could be purely decorative. Maybe the carving work was interrupted before its completion. Besides, we cannot know whether these forms were created prior to the burial of the individuals associated with the ossuaries, or after their inhumation. (Only in the latter case might the forms help us in identifying the deceased.) Even if we were convinced that these forms play a symbolic role of some kind, this would not enable us to prove or disprove possible links between the Talpiot tomb and Jesus of Nazareth. For example, somebody recently affirmed that "the pointed gable over the rosette is a pre-Christian Jewish symbol that referred to the Temple", and that this pattern can even be found on Hasmonean coins. Well, that doesn't affect the issue of whether or not this particular tomb did in fact house the remains of Jesus and his family.There is, however, a subtle way in which the forms on the façade of the Talpiot tomb might have a bearing on the question of the identity of the incumbents. Imagine, for the sake of the explanations that are to follow, that the Talpiot tomb was indeed the place where the body of Jesus of Nazareth was laid to rest. In that case, we can assume that a certain number of early Christians were aware of this site, and had visited it. For such people, it seems reasonable to assume that the façade was memorable, because of its chevron and circle... regardless of whether or not these forms actually meant much to those who saw them. We might imagine that the façade served as a visual indicator for pilgrims, who probably spread the information, by word of mouth, that Jesus was buried in tomb to the south of Jerusalem adorned with a sculptured triangular form above a circle. In this way, the forms on the façade of the Talpiot tomb would have been transformed into a symbol of the tomb of Jesus, even if this had never been their initial raison d'être. Now, if this kind of reasoning is valid, there should be cases of the presence of this symbol, later on, in Christian contexts. Here is the most explicit case of such a symbol:
This celebrated Supper at Emmaus (depicting the resurrected Jesus) was painted in 1525 by Jacopo Carruci, known as Pontormo, whose work was greatly influenced by Leonardo da Vinci. Above the head of Jesus, a curious visual image is composed of an eye at the center of a triangle. Is it thinkable that this round object on a triangular background might be intended to evoke the façade of the tomb at Talpiot? If so, this would mean that the 16th-century Florentine painter was aware—in ways that are hard to fathom, but plausible—that Jesus had been buried in a tomb that bore an image of this kind.More recently, this image of an "all-seeing eye" (as it is often termed) has been adopted as a masonic symbol, and it is construed today as a coded sign that might have come from Ancient Egypt. As I said earlier on, this discussion about possible signs and symbols cannot be used to prove anything, but it provides us with interesting guidelines.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Different lands
The chilly damp weather has continued at Gamone, and I've spent most of the afternoon and evening reading in front of a log fire. Meanwhile, Natacha phoned to let me know that she and Alain had visited a fabulous botanic park, the Domaine du Rayol, on the edge of the sea in the Var département. Then she emailed me this photo of a eucalyptus tree at Rayol:
Although the Mediterranean coast is less than an hour away by train, I often have the impression that, climate-wise and weather-wise, Natacha and I live in two totally different lands. Her land is called Provence. Mine is the Dauphiné. I'm always amazed by the fact that the geography of France is so varied, often over quite short distances.
Although the Mediterranean coast is less than an hour away by train, I often have the impression that, climate-wise and weather-wise, Natacha and I live in two totally different lands. Her land is called Provence. Mine is the Dauphiné. I'm always amazed by the fact that the geography of France is so varied, often over quite short distances.
Friday, June 1, 2007
Spirit of place
For Nancy and Natacha
Many people persist in believing that any two places on the planet could be made to resemble each other, provided that enough transformation work were to be carried out at both ends. A couple of months ago, I joked about this style of thinking in my post entitled Mediterranean Bondi. [Click here to see this post.]
In fact, many spots on the planet Earth would appear to be unique and inimitably specific. Surely one of the most celebrated places of this kind is the sacred mountain at the heart of the Holy City, adorned by the Moslem Dome of the Rock.
If only this majestic site could be duplicated magically at other spots on the globe, this might end many ancient quarrels. American Jews could then have their own holy mountain, say, in an isolated corner of Colorado. Certain Christians might admire a copy in Salt Lake City. And Moslems would be free to recreate the spirit of Jerusalem's splendid es-Sakhra, the Rock, in every Arab corner of the globe.
But that's not at all the way the cookie crumbles. Places are unique. They are not swappable. We cannot rebuild Paris, as somebody once suggested, out in the country.
Why is this so? What does it mean to say that places are unique? It means that certain places have a spirit. A spirit of place. As the Romans put it: a genius loci.
Probably the most extraordinary machine on Earth is the human brain. And, if any known machine is capable of detecting the ubiquitous spirit of place, it's surely our extraordinary human wetware, about which we still know so little. Our brains react to the specificity of a place.
I was thrilled this morning, when phoning Nancy to wish her a happy birthday, to learn that she had recently ventured by accident into the place of our ancestors in New South Wales: the tiny country town of Braidwood. And that my aunt had been engulfed in a curious spiritual cloud that Nancy described naively as happiness. Why not?
I know that such things happen, that such mysterious feelings arise unexpectedly from time to time. But I don't know why. No more than Nancy does. Nor even Natacha, who's attached profoundly to the spirit of certain places in her beloved Provence. It's obviously a matter of the ways in which our respective cerebral mechanisms interact with tellurian memories stored away in specific places, in ways we don't yet understand. In a nutshell, we're sensitive to the spirit of place. For the moment, that's all we can say. But let's say it with joy!
Many people persist in believing that any two places on the planet could be made to resemble each other, provided that enough transformation work were to be carried out at both ends. A couple of months ago, I joked about this style of thinking in my post entitled Mediterranean Bondi. [Click here to see this post.]
In fact, many spots on the planet Earth would appear to be unique and inimitably specific. Surely one of the most celebrated places of this kind is the sacred mountain at the heart of the Holy City, adorned by the Moslem Dome of the Rock.
If only this majestic site could be duplicated magically at other spots on the globe, this might end many ancient quarrels. American Jews could then have their own holy mountain, say, in an isolated corner of Colorado. Certain Christians might admire a copy in Salt Lake City. And Moslems would be free to recreate the spirit of Jerusalem's splendid es-Sakhra, the Rock, in every Arab corner of the globe.But that's not at all the way the cookie crumbles. Places are unique. They are not swappable. We cannot rebuild Paris, as somebody once suggested, out in the country.
Why is this so? What does it mean to say that places are unique? It means that certain places have a spirit. A spirit of place. As the Romans put it: a genius loci.
Probably the most extraordinary machine on Earth is the human brain. And, if any known machine is capable of detecting the ubiquitous spirit of place, it's surely our extraordinary human wetware, about which we still know so little. Our brains react to the specificity of a place.
I was thrilled this morning, when phoning Nancy to wish her a happy birthday, to learn that she had recently ventured by accident into the place of our ancestors in New South Wales: the tiny country town of Braidwood. And that my aunt had been engulfed in a curious spiritual cloud that Nancy described naively as happiness. Why not?
I know that such things happen, that such mysterious feelings arise unexpectedly from time to time. But I don't know why. No more than Nancy does. Nor even Natacha, who's attached profoundly to the spirit of certain places in her beloved Provence. It's obviously a matter of the ways in which our respective cerebral mechanisms interact with tellurian memories stored away in specific places, in ways we don't yet understand. In a nutshell, we're sensitive to the spirit of place. For the moment, that's all we can say. But let's say it with joy!
Required reading
Many people like to believe antiquated nonsense such as the notion that the crucified Jesus once ascended bodily into the sky. In a different domain, other misinformed folk persist in believing today that donkeys are stupid beasts. Once upon a time, in French schools, teachers punished the dunce of the class by forcing him/her to wear a so-called bonnet d'âne [donkey bonnet] adorned with a pair of big cloth ears.
The French term ânerie [donkey stuff] is still used as a synonym for ignorance and stupidity, as in the English metaphor that consists of designating a silly fellow as an ass. Well, in a recent issue of a serious French TV weekly, two otherwise respectable French intellectuals dared to apply this derogatory term to the famous film by Simcha Jacobovici about a tomb to the south of Jerusalem that contained several ossuaries [human bone boxes], one of which was marked "Jesus son of Joseph". [Click here to see my earlier article, entitled Thomas time, on this fascinating subject.] These Parisian intellectuals, who should know better, referred rudely to Jacobovici's work as an ânerie mercantile [roughly, commercial donkey shit]. I would like to offer a symbolic donkey hat to each of these gentlemen, while hoping—as we say in English—that they'll end up being obliged to eat it.
Simcha Jacobovici's film was finally aired on French TV late last Wednesday evening, and it was followed by a well-mannered debate in French between Simcha himself and 65-year-old Monsignor Jean-Michel di Falco, bishop of Gap, who has long been looked upon as an elegant and well-informed spokesman of the hierarchy of the Catholic church in France.
I hardly need to say that Jacobovici's astounding film is clear and convincing. Quite the opposite of commercial donkey shit. On the other hand, di Falco's observations were neither pertinent nor particularly relevant, and certainly not persuasive. He even wasted everybody's time by evoking two extraneous subjects: Dan Brown's popular novel [The Da Vinci Code] and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Curiously, Monsignor di Falco did not utter a single word concerning the relatively recent discovery (1945) of the most fabulous Christian documents since the Bible: the Nag Hammadi library. [I've already written two articles on this theme. Click here to see the first post, entitled Sharing life together. Click here to see the second post, entitled Gnostic discoveries.]
This juxtaposition shows the covers of two books. The current situation can be summarized simply. If you're concerned by Christianity today, either as an interested observer (like me) or as a believer (like Monsignor di Falco), you need both these books. The one on the left provides a complex but partial introduction to the subject. The one on the right [hot off the press] offers an even more complex but necessary and complementary view of Christian things. Henceforth, for aficionados of Jesus, both books are required reading. The second book reveals all that was stupidly banned, in year 367, in the days of Athanasius. Today, we're adult enough to read such stuff. In any case, to my mind, Simcha Jacobovici's research and film go hand in hand with the Nag Hammadi scriptures. And together, they'll end up turning Christianity upside-down...
The French term ânerie [donkey stuff] is still used as a synonym for ignorance and stupidity, as in the English metaphor that consists of designating a silly fellow as an ass. Well, in a recent issue of a serious French TV weekly, two otherwise respectable French intellectuals dared to apply this derogatory term to the famous film by Simcha Jacobovici about a tomb to the south of Jerusalem that contained several ossuaries [human bone boxes], one of which was marked "Jesus son of Joseph". [Click here to see my earlier article, entitled Thomas time, on this fascinating subject.] These Parisian intellectuals, who should know better, referred rudely to Jacobovici's work as an ânerie mercantile [roughly, commercial donkey shit]. I would like to offer a symbolic donkey hat to each of these gentlemen, while hoping—as we say in English—that they'll end up being obliged to eat it.Simcha Jacobovici's film was finally aired on French TV late last Wednesday evening, and it was followed by a well-mannered debate in French between Simcha himself and 65-year-old Monsignor Jean-Michel di Falco, bishop of Gap, who has long been looked upon as an elegant and well-informed spokesman of the hierarchy of the Catholic church in France.
I hardly need to say that Jacobovici's astounding film is clear and convincing. Quite the opposite of commercial donkey shit. On the other hand, di Falco's observations were neither pertinent nor particularly relevant, and certainly not persuasive. He even wasted everybody's time by evoking two extraneous subjects: Dan Brown's popular novel [The Da Vinci Code] and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Curiously, Monsignor di Falco did not utter a single word concerning the relatively recent discovery (1945) of the most fabulous Christian documents since the Bible: the Nag Hammadi library. [I've already written two articles on this theme. Click here to see the first post, entitled Sharing life together. Click here to see the second post, entitled Gnostic discoveries.]
This juxtaposition shows the covers of two books. The current situation can be summarized simply. If you're concerned by Christianity today, either as an interested observer (like me) or as a believer (like Monsignor di Falco), you need both these books. The one on the left provides a complex but partial introduction to the subject. The one on the right [hot off the press] offers an even more complex but necessary and complementary view of Christian things. Henceforth, for aficionados of Jesus, both books are required reading. The second book reveals all that was stupidly banned, in year 367, in the days of Athanasius. Today, we're adult enough to read such stuff. In any case, to my mind, Simcha Jacobovici's research and film go hand in hand with the Nag Hammadi scriptures. And together, they'll end up turning Christianity upside-down...
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Building fences
Over the last thirteen years, since settling down at Gamone, I've planted hundreds of chestnut posts in the rocky soil to build wire-mesh sheep fences. If the donkey leans against such a fence, or a sheep runs into it at full speed, it won't survive for long. [I'm talking of the fence, not the donkey or sheep.] So, I often recycle old posts and even previously-used wire mesh to build new sections of fencing. At a Gamone level, that's the sustainability concept.
I've repainted the pointed ends of these posts with bitumen (sold in cans in hardware stores), to minimize rotting in damp soil.
In the above photo, I'm holding the heavy steel spike used to create post holes. The general idea is that you stand with your feet apart at the spot where you intend to make a post hole, and you raise and then hurl this spike into the ground. To produce a hole that's deep enough for a post (about thirty to forty centimeters), you might have to raise and drop the spike a dozen or more times.
This photo also shows how I'm using a pulley device (a steel block and tackle), attached to a linden tree, to stretch the wire mesh so that it lies flat up against the chestnut posts. At that stage of the fence building, all I have to do is to hammer in U-shaped nails (I don't know what they're called in English) to fix the mesh to the posts.
Back in South Grafton, when I was a child, my father often talked about fencing. I seem to recall that local farmers and graziers used eucalyptus posts and barbed wire, but I don't know how they dug holes. Probably with a spade and shovel...
Fencing is a primordial rural preoccupation. My neighbor Madeleine once told me that, after their marriage, Dédé said that, either they would go on a honeymoon, or they would use this time and money to build a fence around their future property at Choranche. Their splendid fence is still there, as solid as their marital union.
I've repainted the pointed ends of these posts with bitumen (sold in cans in hardware stores), to minimize rotting in damp soil.
In the above photo, I'm holding the heavy steel spike used to create post holes. The general idea is that you stand with your feet apart at the spot where you intend to make a post hole, and you raise and then hurl this spike into the ground. To produce a hole that's deep enough for a post (about thirty to forty centimeters), you might have to raise and drop the spike a dozen or more times.This photo also shows how I'm using a pulley device (a steel block and tackle), attached to a linden tree, to stretch the wire mesh so that it lies flat up against the chestnut posts. At that stage of the fence building, all I have to do is to hammer in U-shaped nails (I don't know what they're called in English) to fix the mesh to the posts.
Back in South Grafton, when I was a child, my father often talked about fencing. I seem to recall that local farmers and graziers used eucalyptus posts and barbed wire, but I don't know how they dug holes. Probably with a spade and shovel...
Fencing is a primordial rural preoccupation. My neighbor Madeleine once told me that, after their marriage, Dédé said that, either they would go on a honeymoon, or they would use this time and money to build a fence around their future property at Choranche. Their splendid fence is still there, as solid as their marital union.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Childhood myths
I'm using the word "childhood" to designate, not only my own early years in Australia, but the wider concept of the infancy of Humanity. The great myth of Noah's ark belongs to these two domains.
As a boy in Grafton, I had witnessed two major floods, in 1950 and 1954. In our dull existence in a small country town, floods were exciting happenings, tinged with anguish, because nobody knew to what height the waters might rise. On the other hand, people rarely feared for their lives, because few of us were in the vicinity of swirling currents and treacherous depths. Besides, there were boats and dinghies everywhere, even amphibian military vehicles nicknamed "ducks". During the tense countdown to an impending flood, many local men saw themselves faced with long hours of harsh effort, in the chilly dampness, to protect their families and belongings from the rising waters. Some of these flood fighters were convinced that an ideal way of sustaining their bodies during these combats consisted of a regular intake of warming alcohol, often rum or whisky. An outcome of this belief was that a few rare accidents during a flood involved drunken men who slipped in the water and drowned.
I've always looked upon the biblical tale of Noah's Ark as an archaic precursor of themes I'd witnessed as a ten-year-old child in South Grafton. As soon as weather reports made it clear that there would soon be a flood, farmers started to move their animals to higher grounds. As the waters slowly rose, families in isolated places were offered a choice between moving by boat to safer places, or staying stoically in their inundated houses. In my juvenile vision of a Clarence River flood, the waters seemed to cover the entire flat world. I had no reason to imagine that there might be places on Earth that remained high and dry.
The ancient people who left us legends of the Deluge probably saw things in a similar way to me, at the age of ten, on a farm in South Grafton. If the rain were exceptionally heavy, the resulting flood would be universal (or global, as we would say today, knowing that the Earth is round), and the only way of surviving would be to scramble aboard a gigantic biblical boat. If there were room on the vessel, a farmer might ask the captain to save some of his dearest animals.
Normally, there's a time for infantile tales: childhood. As we grow up, most of us set aside such legends, replacing them by adult explanations. Sadly, some folk remain immature kids throughout their entire lives. In the USA, a recent poll revealed that half the population believes that a supernatural being named God created the universe, in much the same form as we see it today, at some time during the last ten millennia. In other words, for these folk, who have the superficial appearance of adults, it's as if scientific research in general, and Darwin's theory of evolution in particular, simply never existed. The extremists, who call themselves creationists, believe that Genesis is a literal description of the way in which the cosmos came into being. A milder form of this anti-scientific affliction consists in believing in the concept of intelligent design, which alleges that "all things bright and beautiful" were conceived and produced by a superior being intent upon creating a satisfactory abode for humans.
[NOTE: In my personal profile attached to the Antipodes blog, I speak of spending my time at Gamone "admiring the beauties of Creation". I have hoped that readers would understand that my use of the term "Creation", with a capital C, is a trivial case of poetic license, which is not meant to suggest that I see the cosmos as the outcome of a biblical Genesis-type creator. In fact, I often use the term "Creator", with a capital C, to designate Big Bang principles, evolutionary events, and their on-going consequences.]
Some Australians might be pleased to know that America's star creationist is a Queensland expatriate named Ken Ham, who has set up a so-called Creation Museum in Kentucky featuring a reconstruction of Noah's Ark carrying robotic dinosaurs. First, Crocodile Dundee, then Steve Irwin, and now Ken Ham. There would seem to be big openings in America for Aussie clowns. I don't wish to waste any more time describing the US operations of this nitwit whose success story appalls but does not surprise me. Whether we like it or not, America is America. Use Google to learn more about the Ham scam.
As a boy in Grafton, I had witnessed two major floods, in 1950 and 1954. In our dull existence in a small country town, floods were exciting happenings, tinged with anguish, because nobody knew to what height the waters might rise. On the other hand, people rarely feared for their lives, because few of us were in the vicinity of swirling currents and treacherous depths. Besides, there were boats and dinghies everywhere, even amphibian military vehicles nicknamed "ducks". During the tense countdown to an impending flood, many local men saw themselves faced with long hours of harsh effort, in the chilly dampness, to protect their families and belongings from the rising waters. Some of these flood fighters were convinced that an ideal way of sustaining their bodies during these combats consisted of a regular intake of warming alcohol, often rum or whisky. An outcome of this belief was that a few rare accidents during a flood involved drunken men who slipped in the water and drowned.I've always looked upon the biblical tale of Noah's Ark as an archaic precursor of themes I'd witnessed as a ten-year-old child in South Grafton. As soon as weather reports made it clear that there would soon be a flood, farmers started to move their animals to higher grounds. As the waters slowly rose, families in isolated places were offered a choice between moving by boat to safer places, or staying stoically in their inundated houses. In my juvenile vision of a Clarence River flood, the waters seemed to cover the entire flat world. I had no reason to imagine that there might be places on Earth that remained high and dry.
The ancient people who left us legends of the Deluge probably saw things in a similar way to me, at the age of ten, on a farm in South Grafton. If the rain were exceptionally heavy, the resulting flood would be universal (or global, as we would say today, knowing that the Earth is round), and the only way of surviving would be to scramble aboard a gigantic biblical boat. If there were room on the vessel, a farmer might ask the captain to save some of his dearest animals.
Normally, there's a time for infantile tales: childhood. As we grow up, most of us set aside such legends, replacing them by adult explanations. Sadly, some folk remain immature kids throughout their entire lives. In the USA, a recent poll revealed that half the population believes that a supernatural being named God created the universe, in much the same form as we see it today, at some time during the last ten millennia. In other words, for these folk, who have the superficial appearance of adults, it's as if scientific research in general, and Darwin's theory of evolution in particular, simply never existed. The extremists, who call themselves creationists, believe that Genesis is a literal description of the way in which the cosmos came into being. A milder form of this anti-scientific affliction consists in believing in the concept of intelligent design, which alleges that "all things bright and beautiful" were conceived and produced by a superior being intent upon creating a satisfactory abode for humans.
[NOTE: In my personal profile attached to the Antipodes blog, I speak of spending my time at Gamone "admiring the beauties of Creation". I have hoped that readers would understand that my use of the term "Creation", with a capital C, is a trivial case of poetic license, which is not meant to suggest that I see the cosmos as the outcome of a biblical Genesis-type creator. In fact, I often use the term "Creator", with a capital C, to designate Big Bang principles, evolutionary events, and their on-going consequences.]
Some Australians might be pleased to know that America's star creationist is a Queensland expatriate named Ken Ham, who has set up a so-called Creation Museum in Kentucky featuring a reconstruction of Noah's Ark carrying robotic dinosaurs. First, Crocodile Dundee, then Steve Irwin, and now Ken Ham. There would seem to be big openings in America for Aussie clowns. I don't wish to waste any more time describing the US operations of this nitwit whose success story appalls but does not surprise me. Whether we like it or not, America is America. Use Google to learn more about the Ham scam.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Powerful TV commercial
The Italian truck manufacturer Iveco (which also happens to be the world's leading manufacturer of diesel motors of all kinds) has scored a hit with a brilliant TV commercial exploiting the powerful image of the All Blacks. [Click here or on the image to see this commercial. To make it play, you have to choose a language.] There's no doubt that the visual image of the All Blacks and their famous haka has always been a striking symbol. [Click here to see the official website of the All Blacks, which explains the origins of their war dance.] And there's also no doubt that Iveco must have paid a huge amount of money to create this exceptional advertising.
Monday, May 28, 2007
School for chefs
On Saturday afternoon, by chance, I came upon one of the most fascinating TV programs I've ever seen in the domain of high-class cooking. It was the fifth and final episode of a cooking competition, L'Ecole des Chefs (the school for chefs), that has been going on at a weekly rhythm for the last month. There's a good French-language website about the competition [click here to display this website], which includes typical video extracts.
The general idea is that seven promising young apprentices were selected from several French écoles hôtelières [culinary colleges] and invited to participate in an extraordinary month-long training experience, guided by four distinguished chefs:
— Alain Dutournier of the Carré des Feuillants (Paris)
— Yannick Alleno of the Hôtel Meurice (Paris)
— Alain Llorca of the Moulin de Mougins (Alpes-Maritimes)
— Régis Marcon of the Clos des Cîmes (Haute Loire)
In yesterday's episode, there were four finalists, two males and two females. At the start of the final trial, each contestant received an assortment of splendid foodstuffs, to be used in the preparation of two dishes. The first dish was to be based upon Mediterranean rock lobsters (the equivalent of Australian crayfish), and the second on roast lamb cutlets. Each of the four finalists worked in association with one of the four above-mentioned chefs, who acted as a coach, but without actually participating in the manual operations of the food preparation and cooking. All phases of the activities were precisely timed, and we TV spectators were treated to a lengthy presentation of the work of each of the four finalists, followed by the comments of the jury members, another group of four distinguished chefs:
— Joël Robuchon
— Thierry Marx
— Marc Veyrat
— Marc Haeberlin
The resulting TV program was highly informative and didactic, since we were invited into the hectic kitchen environment of the dynamic young culinary creators and their experienced coaches. Apart from the immense imagination and practical competence of the apprentice chefs, I was impressed by their ability to work calmly and efficiently under the huge pressure of the competition. Not only did they have to think and act rapidly, but they had to deal with the constant advice and criticism of their respective coaches, while knowing all the time that they were being filmed and, above all, that they would be serving the outcome of their cooking to four of the world's most famous chefs.
In the world of high-class cooking, it is not by chance that the French word for a master of cooking is chef, which simply means "chief". He/she rules over the kitchen in a style that appears to be almost tyrannical at times, crying out orders to his/her subordinates that must be obeyed instantly, exactly as the chef has commanded. The atmosphere is almost military. There is no time for discussion, and no place for disobedience. The only acceptable reply to an order is "Oui, chef!" Meanwhile, the chef has his/her eye on everything that is happening in the kitchen, including the possibility that one of the electric ovens might suddenly break down.
There were all kinds of tiny but fascinating details, such as the way in which these culinary artists use their bare fingers, all the time, to pick up hot pieces of food in pans, to turn them over while they are being cooked. When performed by a great chef, even the way of tipping a saucepan with one hand and using a spoon in the other hand to splash buttery juice rapidly and regularly over the roasting lamb becomes an artistic gesture. The terminology used in rapid discussions between professionals is precise and apparently universal. Plausible names for newly-invented dishes were generally invented spontaneously during a ten-second conversation between the apprentice and the coach, often while they were walking from the kitchen to the jury's dining table. Once there, the apprentice had to describe in a few brief remarks the specificity of his creation, just as if he were conversing with diners in a top-class restaurant, and he had to remember to wish them "Bon appetit!" Several times, the members of the jury complimented the apprentices on the simple fact that they had mastered the technique of serving up their dishes hot, straight out of the oven. This did not prevent the apprentice chefs from devoting a lot of last-minute attention to the purely aesthetic fashion in which the food and sauce were laid out the plates. Funnily, while watching this interesting program, I often had the impression that it was some kind of a sporting event, involving highly-trained young athletes.
The self-assurance of the fourth contestant, whose first name was Hugo, worried me as soon as I saw his initial discussion with his coach, Régis Marcon. The two of them appear to be smiling but determined individuals, used to making up their own minds, and I was afraid that a conflict might erupt in front of the TV cameras. Hugo had decided spontaneously that he would use vanilla to flavor the sauce for the green vegetables accompanying his roast lobster. Well, Marcon disagreed firmly but politely, warning his apprentice that this would give rise to an excessively "heavy-flavored" sauce. Hugo's immediate reaction: "Chef, I'll prepare my vanilla sauce, and then you'll taste it. If you like it, I'll use it. If not, I won't." Later, in real time, we saw Régis Marcon sticking his finger in Hugo's vanilla sauce, tasting it and flashing an expression of amazed delight. Hugo had just invented a new concept of serving up lobster!
Hugo was the winner. The prize: he will spend the next six months touring the planet, working in each of Joël Robuchon's restaurants. There is little doubt that, on Saturday's TV, we witnessed the birth of a future great chef.
The general idea is that seven promising young apprentices were selected from several French écoles hôtelières [culinary colleges] and invited to participate in an extraordinary month-long training experience, guided by four distinguished chefs:— Alain Dutournier of the Carré des Feuillants (Paris)
— Yannick Alleno of the Hôtel Meurice (Paris)
— Alain Llorca of the Moulin de Mougins (Alpes-Maritimes)
— Régis Marcon of the Clos des Cîmes (Haute Loire)
In yesterday's episode, there were four finalists, two males and two females. At the start of the final trial, each contestant received an assortment of splendid foodstuffs, to be used in the preparation of two dishes. The first dish was to be based upon Mediterranean rock lobsters (the equivalent of Australian crayfish), and the second on roast lamb cutlets. Each of the four finalists worked in association with one of the four above-mentioned chefs, who acted as a coach, but without actually participating in the manual operations of the food preparation and cooking. All phases of the activities were precisely timed, and we TV spectators were treated to a lengthy presentation of the work of each of the four finalists, followed by the comments of the jury members, another group of four distinguished chefs:
— Joël Robuchon
— Thierry Marx
— Marc Veyrat
— Marc Haeberlin
The resulting TV program was highly informative and didactic, since we were invited into the hectic kitchen environment of the dynamic young culinary creators and their experienced coaches. Apart from the immense imagination and practical competence of the apprentice chefs, I was impressed by their ability to work calmly and efficiently under the huge pressure of the competition. Not only did they have to think and act rapidly, but they had to deal with the constant advice and criticism of their respective coaches, while knowing all the time that they were being filmed and, above all, that they would be serving the outcome of their cooking to four of the world's most famous chefs.
In the world of high-class cooking, it is not by chance that the French word for a master of cooking is chef, which simply means "chief". He/she rules over the kitchen in a style that appears to be almost tyrannical at times, crying out orders to his/her subordinates that must be obeyed instantly, exactly as the chef has commanded. The atmosphere is almost military. There is no time for discussion, and no place for disobedience. The only acceptable reply to an order is "Oui, chef!" Meanwhile, the chef has his/her eye on everything that is happening in the kitchen, including the possibility that one of the electric ovens might suddenly break down.
There were all kinds of tiny but fascinating details, such as the way in which these culinary artists use their bare fingers, all the time, to pick up hot pieces of food in pans, to turn them over while they are being cooked. When performed by a great chef, even the way of tipping a saucepan with one hand and using a spoon in the other hand to splash buttery juice rapidly and regularly over the roasting lamb becomes an artistic gesture. The terminology used in rapid discussions between professionals is precise and apparently universal. Plausible names for newly-invented dishes were generally invented spontaneously during a ten-second conversation between the apprentice and the coach, often while they were walking from the kitchen to the jury's dining table. Once there, the apprentice had to describe in a few brief remarks the specificity of his creation, just as if he were conversing with diners in a top-class restaurant, and he had to remember to wish them "Bon appetit!" Several times, the members of the jury complimented the apprentices on the simple fact that they had mastered the technique of serving up their dishes hot, straight out of the oven. This did not prevent the apprentice chefs from devoting a lot of last-minute attention to the purely aesthetic fashion in which the food and sauce were laid out the plates. Funnily, while watching this interesting program, I often had the impression that it was some kind of a sporting event, involving highly-trained young athletes.
The self-assurance of the fourth contestant, whose first name was Hugo, worried me as soon as I saw his initial discussion with his coach, Régis Marcon. The two of them appear to be smiling but determined individuals, used to making up their own minds, and I was afraid that a conflict might erupt in front of the TV cameras. Hugo had decided spontaneously that he would use vanilla to flavor the sauce for the green vegetables accompanying his roast lobster. Well, Marcon disagreed firmly but politely, warning his apprentice that this would give rise to an excessively "heavy-flavored" sauce. Hugo's immediate reaction: "Chef, I'll prepare my vanilla sauce, and then you'll taste it. If you like it, I'll use it. If not, I won't." Later, in real time, we saw Régis Marcon sticking his finger in Hugo's vanilla sauce, tasting it and flashing an expression of amazed delight. Hugo had just invented a new concept of serving up lobster!
Hugo was the winner. The prize: he will spend the next six months touring the planet, working in each of Joël Robuchon's restaurants. There is little doubt that, on Saturday's TV, we witnessed the birth of a future great chef.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Doggish behavior
We dog-lovers tend to get carried away by the exceptional intellect of our favorite animal. Not necessarily dogs in general, nor even other dogs, but our dog... who happens to be a unique genius. As the saying goes: The only thing that's missing is the ability to speak. But dogs bark, and that's exactly what Sophia has been doing, non-stop, for the last twenty minutes.
Why? You see the stone slab in the form of a mysterious jungle beast (maybe a petrified bunyip that swum here from Australia back in the age of dinosaurs). Well, Sophia knows that there's a terrified lizard curled up behind it, hiding. I don't know why Sophia's annoyed by the presence of the tiny reptile. It's not as if she wants to eat the lizard, although it's likely that she would smack it with her paw, just for fun, and traumatize the poor lizard. No, Sophia is barking out of sheer silly doggish behavior. However it's reassuring at times to discover such trivial manifestations of canine stupidity. I realize, on such occasions, that I should cease to have a guilt complex about never having sent Sophia to a superior school for exceptionally intelligent dogs.
Now, having taken the liberty of speaking in these derogatory terms about my dear Sophia, I must admit two things:
— I'm impressed by Sophia's ability to smell the presence of a tiny lizard hiding behind a rock. I wouldn't be capable of doing so, even if the lizard farted.
— Back in the days when dangerous reptiles used to hide behind rocks at the entrance to caverns where my ancestors resided, the barking of Sophia's ancestors no doubt saved human lives. Otherwise, one of my potential ancestors would have got gobbled up by a boa, and I wouldn't even be here today to talk to you about Sophia. We must be grateful to barking dogs. Thanks, Sophia. In a moment, I'll go downstairs and move the slab, so that you can have some fun attacking and destroying that lizard.
Why? You see the stone slab in the form of a mysterious jungle beast (maybe a petrified bunyip that swum here from Australia back in the age of dinosaurs). Well, Sophia knows that there's a terrified lizard curled up behind it, hiding. I don't know why Sophia's annoyed by the presence of the tiny reptile. It's not as if she wants to eat the lizard, although it's likely that she would smack it with her paw, just for fun, and traumatize the poor lizard. No, Sophia is barking out of sheer silly doggish behavior. However it's reassuring at times to discover such trivial manifestations of canine stupidity. I realize, on such occasions, that I should cease to have a guilt complex about never having sent Sophia to a superior school for exceptionally intelligent dogs.Now, having taken the liberty of speaking in these derogatory terms about my dear Sophia, I must admit two things:
— I'm impressed by Sophia's ability to smell the presence of a tiny lizard hiding behind a rock. I wouldn't be capable of doing so, even if the lizard farted.
— Back in the days when dangerous reptiles used to hide behind rocks at the entrance to caverns where my ancestors resided, the barking of Sophia's ancestors no doubt saved human lives. Otherwise, one of my potential ancestors would have got gobbled up by a boa, and I wouldn't even be here today to talk to you about Sophia. We must be grateful to barking dogs. Thanks, Sophia. In a moment, I'll go downstairs and move the slab, so that you can have some fun attacking and destroying that lizard.
Busy Sunday
Every year, I watch the TV coverage of the Grand Prix de Monaco. I'm not exactly a fan of automobile racing, which can be quite boring on TV, but the legendary Monaco event is inevitably exciting.
For me, there's also an element of nostalgia. Shortly after my arrival in France in 1962, an Australian friend drove me down to watch the race. At that time, tourists could wander around the circuit at ease to find a vantage point. I recall that we spent most of the race at the famous Mirabeau hairpin. These days, of course, the famous race is a gigantic event that paralyzes road circulation on the French Riviera.
As if car racing wasn't enough to draw a crowd on the shores of the Mediterranean, the red carpet of the 60th Cannes Film Festival will be rolled up this evening after the announcement of winners.
Finally, for those who love to spend hours in front of their TV [on a par, I suppose, with spending hours in front of a computer screen], there's the French Open in Paris, which starts this afternoon.
At a personal level, to put the events of this busy Sunday in their proper perspective, I should point out that the Monaco supershow on my wide flat TV will be relegated to the status of a background blur and noise. I don't intend to spend time at Cannes, and the ball is out at Roland Garros. In fact, if it's sunny this afternoon, I plan to build a fence around the patch of Batavia lettuces I planted yesterday.
The future enclosure [of the sheep fence style] will protect my lettuces from Gavroche the billy-goat. But what about snails, which are presently thriving just a meter away from my lettuce patch?
My ex-neighbor Bob, who dropped in yesterday to pick up his mail, is an experienced vegetable gardener. He made an interesting suggestion: "Grow your lettuces to feed your snails. Then collect these lettuce-fed Burgundy snails from time to time. They're far more tasty than lettuce." Bob's right. A few years ago, I used to prepare regularly a stock of Gamone's excellent Burgundy snails, but the dry summer of 2004 seemed to eliminate them. I see now, at exactly the same time I'm planting lettuces, that the snails appear to be back in force. Gastronomical days ahead...
For me, there's also an element of nostalgia. Shortly after my arrival in France in 1962, an Australian friend drove me down to watch the race. At that time, tourists could wander around the circuit at ease to find a vantage point. I recall that we spent most of the race at the famous Mirabeau hairpin. These days, of course, the famous race is a gigantic event that paralyzes road circulation on the French Riviera.As if car racing wasn't enough to draw a crowd on the shores of the Mediterranean, the red carpet of the 60th Cannes Film Festival will be rolled up this evening after the announcement of winners.
Finally, for those who love to spend hours in front of their TV [on a par, I suppose, with spending hours in front of a computer screen], there's the French Open in Paris, which starts this afternoon.
At a personal level, to put the events of this busy Sunday in their proper perspective, I should point out that the Monaco supershow on my wide flat TV will be relegated to the status of a background blur and noise. I don't intend to spend time at Cannes, and the ball is out at Roland Garros. In fact, if it's sunny this afternoon, I plan to build a fence around the patch of Batavia lettuces I planted yesterday.
The future enclosure [of the sheep fence style] will protect my lettuces from Gavroche the billy-goat. But what about snails, which are presently thriving just a meter away from my lettuce patch?
My ex-neighbor Bob, who dropped in yesterday to pick up his mail, is an experienced vegetable gardener. He made an interesting suggestion: "Grow your lettuces to feed your snails. Then collect these lettuce-fed Burgundy snails from time to time. They're far more tasty than lettuce." Bob's right. A few years ago, I used to prepare regularly a stock of Gamone's excellent Burgundy snails, but the dry summer of 2004 seemed to eliminate them. I see now, at exactly the same time I'm planting lettuces, that the snails appear to be back in force. Gastronomical days ahead...
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Chirac has some explaining to do
We've heard a strange financial allegation concerning Jacques Chirac, former president of France. Apparently he has an account at the Tokyo Sowa bank, and the balance of the ex-president's account would appear to be 45 million euros. Now, that's a hell of a lot of spare cash, and people are obviously wondering where it came from.The global context in which this bank account has come to light is referred to, in France, as the Clearstream Affair, since it concerns a Luxembourg clearing house of that name.
Everything started in 2001, with a judicial inquiry into alleged commissions associated with the sale of French frigates to Taiwan in 1991. This inquiry was assigned to a celebrated French magistrate, Renaud Van Ruymbeke, who had already handled several high-profile affairs. He was appreciated for his competent style in terminating the case of the 1996 murder in a French youth hostel of an English schoolgirl, Caroline Dickinson. This case was finally solved, after nine years of futile investigations [click here to see the BBC timeline], thanks to the diligence of an alert US immigration officer.
In January 2004, the French prime minister Dominique de Villepin called upon a mysterious general, Philippe Rondot, well-versed in intelligence affairs, to do some detective work in the domain of the frigates affair. Then, a few months later, an anonymous individual sent the judge Van Ruymbeke several documents that claimed to name prominent people whose illegal commissions concerning the Taiwan frigates had been paid into secret accounts at the Clearstream bank. And one of these named people was Nicolas Sarkozy.Finally, after numerous investigations and incidents, it emerged that these alleged Clearstream documents were forgeries, and the identity of the forger was revealed. And it was during these investigations, in May 2006, that the Canard enchaîné weekly newspaper revealed the anecdote concerning Philippe Rondot's discovery of the president's mysterious bank account in Japan.
In France, the most famous magistrate in the financial corruption sphere is Norwegian-born Eva Joly. A few days ago, she made life more uncomfortable for the ex-president by declaring publicly that she hopes that French justice opens an inquiry into Chirac's alleged Japanese bank account. So, many observers predict that sparks will start to fly after June 17, when the ex-president's penal immunity terminates.This question of a mysterious bank account has nothing to do, a priori, with the other affair [click here to see my previous article on this subject] for which Chirac might have some explaining to do: salaries paid to fictitious employees at the city hall of Paris, in fact money directed towards Chirac's political party.
Romantic table
Romantic table. My daughter used this expression, a few days ago, when she saw this photo. The top is a heavy plaque of white marble with traces of gray. The support is black forged iron and steel.In a previous post, I mentioned a friend who's trying to sell his former restaurant in Pont-en-Royans. [Click here to see this post.] His name is Eric. After diluvian rainfall, Eric's former restaurant is a wreck, but there are still enough resources left to serve me up a green Chartreuse liquor (on the rocks) whenever I drop in. I love to sit on the upper balcony of Eric's dilapidated place, of a late afternoon, and contemplate the hanging houses. Periodically, a tiny flock of ducks flies down from the Vercors to their habitat on the Bourne at Pont-en-Royans. They swoop past Eric's place in a gracious curve, like jet fighters at an air show. They give me the impression that they know I admire their aeronautics. They're surely doing their act for me and my dog Sophia.
My romantic table is in fact a gift from Eric, who's getting rid of his former restaurant equipment. The lawn in front of Gamone is henceforth adorned with two such lovely white marble romantic tables.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Final bottles of walnut wine
In an earlier article, I mentioned my production of walnut wine and my use of a siphon device. [Click here to see this article.] Today, I've been preparing the final bottles, using the wine in the lower half of the plastic cask. The closer I get to the bottom of the barrel, the more the raw wine looks like sludge. Concerning the last five or six soupy liters in the cask, I had in mind the advice of a colleague, who told me he simply discards them. After this afternoon's experiments, I accept his advice. I tried several techniques in an attempt to extract clear wine from the sludge: siphoning, paper filters and straining through a cloth that I was obliged to wash constantly. There's a delightful old saying in French, applied to things that aren't worth doing: Le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle. Literally, this means that the outcome of an operation does not cover the cost of the candles you need to light up the scene where the operation is carried out.The sludge is heavier than the clear walnut wine, so it remains at the bottom of the barrel. But it remains suspended in the liquid, and never settles as a solid sediment. This suggests that there is no doubt a certain presence of solid matter — remnants of the green walnuts — even in the wine that seems to be relatively clear. And this is probably why the imbiber of a small glass of this beverage has the impression that it's a little like bitter medicine.
Funnily enough, here in the Napoleonic atmosphere of France where most matters are tightly controlled, the production of walnut wine remains a kind of do-it-yourself rural art, akin to gathering medicinal herbs to prepare archaic unctions instead of relying upon the local pharmacist. In any case, for those of us who live in the countryside of the Dauphiné region, surrounded by walnut trees, offering a glass of walnut wine is a traditional gesture of friendship towards visitors.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Esperanza
It's encouraging to hear that Raul Reyes, second in charge of the Farc [Columbian Marxist guerrilla], has actually contacted Nicolas Sarkozy, asking him to try to bring about the creation in Columbia of a demilitarized zone in which negociations could be carried out with a view to exchanging prisoners, including Ingrid Betancourt.
Circular thinking
I've always been amused by a silly little joke about a road worker erecting a pile of rocks in the middle of a street and placing a red warning lamp on top.
Passerby [to road worker]: "Why have put that pile of rocks in the middle of the street?"
Road worker: "To support the flashing red lamp."
Passerby: "And why have you put a flashing red lamp in the middle of the street?"
Road worker: "To let people know there's a pile of rocks there."
George W Bush is reasoning in this absurd circular way about the situation in Iraq. He invaded the country because invalid intelligence (lies) caused him to believe that Osama bin Laden might be intent upon transforming Iraq into a terrorist haven enabling Al Qaeda to prepare attacks against the United States. Today, Bush acknowledges that Iraq has indeed been transformed into a terrorist haven, and he now argues that this is a justification for pursuing the war.
While it would be asking too much to suppose that the intellectual capacities of Dubya might enable him to recognize the existence of circular thinking, other smart observers see things this way. The New York Times quotes Richard A Clarke, former presidential security adviser, as saying: “One day, Bush tells us we are fighting in Iraq so that terrorists won’t come here [to the US]. Then he releases intelligence that says terrorists trained in Iraq are coming here. Which is it?” The New York Times also quotes Thomas Sanderson, terrorism specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as declaring: “We created the biggest terrorism training ground known, which is Iraq.”
Meanwhile, at a press conference in London yesterday, Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International, launched their 2007 report. Basing her speech upon a central theme that she called "the politics of fear", Irene Khan said:
"Five years after 9/11, new evidence came to light in 2006 of the way in which the US administration treated the world as one giant battlefield for its 'war on terror', kidnapping, arresting, arbitrarily detaining, torturing and transferring suspects from one secret prison to another across the world with impunity, in what the US termed 'extraordinary renditions'. Nothing more aptly portrayed the globalization of human rights violations than the US-led 'war on terror' and its program of 'extraordinary renditions' which implicated governments in countries as far apart as Italy and Pakistan, Germany and Kenya. Ill-conceived counter-terrorism strategies have done little to reduce the threat of violence or ensure justice for victims of terrorism but much to damage human rights and the rule of law globally."
Passerby [to road worker]: "Why have put that pile of rocks in the middle of the street?"
Road worker: "To support the flashing red lamp."
Passerby: "And why have you put a flashing red lamp in the middle of the street?"
Road worker: "To let people know there's a pile of rocks there."
George W Bush is reasoning in this absurd circular way about the situation in Iraq. He invaded the country because invalid intelligence (lies) caused him to believe that Osama bin Laden might be intent upon transforming Iraq into a terrorist haven enabling Al Qaeda to prepare attacks against the United States. Today, Bush acknowledges that Iraq has indeed been transformed into a terrorist haven, and he now argues that this is a justification for pursuing the war.
While it would be asking too much to suppose that the intellectual capacities of Dubya might enable him to recognize the existence of circular thinking, other smart observers see things this way. The New York Times quotes Richard A Clarke, former presidential security adviser, as saying: “One day, Bush tells us we are fighting in Iraq so that terrorists won’t come here [to the US]. Then he releases intelligence that says terrorists trained in Iraq are coming here. Which is it?” The New York Times also quotes Thomas Sanderson, terrorism specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as declaring: “We created the biggest terrorism training ground known, which is Iraq.”
Meanwhile, at a press conference in London yesterday, Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International, launched their 2007 report. Basing her speech upon a central theme that she called "the politics of fear", Irene Khan said:"Five years after 9/11, new evidence came to light in 2006 of the way in which the US administration treated the world as one giant battlefield for its 'war on terror', kidnapping, arresting, arbitrarily detaining, torturing and transferring suspects from one secret prison to another across the world with impunity, in what the US termed 'extraordinary renditions'. Nothing more aptly portrayed the globalization of human rights violations than the US-led 'war on terror' and its program of 'extraordinary renditions' which implicated governments in countries as far apart as Italy and Pakistan, Germany and Kenya. Ill-conceived counter-terrorism strategies have done little to reduce the threat of violence or ensure justice for victims of terrorism but much to damage human rights and the rule of law globally."
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Hard stuff to believe
Animal research carried out by scientists in Argentina suggests that Viagra could be used as a remedy against jet lag in the case, say, of travelers flying from Europe to Australia. So, what the bloody hell are we waiting for? Well, two remarks:— Qantas might indicate the flights that employ horny hostesses of the kind we heard so much about a few months ago. [I'm thinking of the liberated lady who distributed special in-flight services in the toilets.] I mean, if guys are going to do the trip while sky-high on Viagra, well they might as well have an opportunity of going the full way, if you see what I mean.
— Meanwhile, I remain a little wary. If I understand correctly, Viagra has only been tested in this context, up until now, on hamsters. As I see things, there's no guaranty that jet-lagged hamsters, reaching Sydney by air, would roam around like zombies for a few days, and wake up in the middle of the night. What I mean to say is: Are these Argentinian scientists sure that hamsters and humans suffer similarly from jet lag? And could take advantage of the same remedy?
To call a spade a spade, I have a nagging suspicion that these Argentinian scientists, keen to suggest snake-oil solutions, might be looking upon us jet travelers as a bunch of dumb pricks.
Scientific research in Grenoble
Every time I leave the nearby city of Grenoble, to return to Choranche, I drive alongside a vast scientific research zone, snuggled in the northern tip of the big triangle located between the two great waterways known as the Snake and the Dragon: that's to say, the Isère and the Drac. (The latter looks and behaves like a normal stream, but it's actually an Alpine torrent.)
This zone houses two extraordinary research tools, whose construction was financed by a consortium of nations:
— The ILL [Institut Laue-Langevin] is a nuclear reactor that produces neutrons. This research reactor produces the most intense neutron flux in the world. Its thermal power is over 58 megawatts. By comparison, Australia's recently-inaugurated Opal reactor, which is also designed to produce neutrons for research, has a power output of only 20 megawatts. Grenoble's ILL reactor is funded by France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Russia, Italy, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Hungary, Belgium and Poland.
— The ESRF [European Synchronotron Radiation Facility] is a giant ring-shaped tunnel that accelerates X-rays. Grenoble's accelerator, which is one of the three biggest synchrotrons in the world (the others existing in the US and Japan), is funded by France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Israel, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
If I've listed all the nations whose scientists use these tools, it's to give you an idea of the kind of international atmosphere that reigns in the great provincial city of Grenoble, which has always been a major center of learning.
The two facilities lie side-by-side. In the above photo, you can see the circular dome of the ILL reactor just behind the big ring of the synchrotron. To a certain extent, they might be considered as complementary tools, since beams of neutrons and high-energy X-rays can both be used to analyze the physical nature of targets that are placed in their way. The differences between neutrons and X-rays are illustrated in the following radiographs:
I was reminded of Grenoble's extraordinary scientific research facilities a few days ago. In his book called Programming the Universe [click here to see my previous article on this theme], Seth Lloyd tells us that he had been thrown into a stupor when told that, "not only was an electron allowed to be in many places at the same time, it was in fact required to be there (and there, and there, and there)". He couldn't seize this weird conclusion in a totally intuitive fashion, so he remained in a state of intellectual trance. It was not until years later, when Seth Lloyd happened to be working at the ILL in Grenoble, that the American researcher finally saw the light, as described here: "I awoke from my trance. Neutrons, I saw, had to spin clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. They had no choice: it was in their nature. The language that neutrons spoke was not the ordinary language of yes or no, it was yes and no at once. If I wanted to talk to neutrons and have them talk back, I had to listen when they said yes and no at the same time. If this sounds confusing, it is. But I had finally learned my first words in the quantum language of love."
In the context of Lloyd's fascinating book, I got a kick out of hearing him say that an arrow from a quantum Cupid [a Qupid?] had finally hit him while he was working in the capital of the French Alps. Over the last 14 years, I've visited Grenoble on countless occasions. But I still find that I'm overcome by a tingling sensation of excitement whenever I set foot there. I don't know whether it has anything to do with Lloyd's "quantum language of love". Often, I've imagined that some kind of tellurian energy is accumulated in the celebrated mountains which, as Stendhal once said, can be glimpsed at the end of every street in this fabulous city at the heart of the ancient Dauphiné province.
This zone houses two extraordinary research tools, whose construction was financed by a consortium of nations:— The ILL [Institut Laue-Langevin] is a nuclear reactor that produces neutrons. This research reactor produces the most intense neutron flux in the world. Its thermal power is over 58 megawatts. By comparison, Australia's recently-inaugurated Opal reactor, which is also designed to produce neutrons for research, has a power output of only 20 megawatts. Grenoble's ILL reactor is funded by France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Russia, Italy, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Hungary, Belgium and Poland.
— The ESRF [European Synchronotron Radiation Facility] is a giant ring-shaped tunnel that accelerates X-rays. Grenoble's accelerator, which is one of the three biggest synchrotrons in the world (the others existing in the US and Japan), is funded by France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Israel, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
If I've listed all the nations whose scientists use these tools, it's to give you an idea of the kind of international atmosphere that reigns in the great provincial city of Grenoble, which has always been a major center of learning.
The two facilities lie side-by-side. In the above photo, you can see the circular dome of the ILL reactor just behind the big ring of the synchrotron. To a certain extent, they might be considered as complementary tools, since beams of neutrons and high-energy X-rays can both be used to analyze the physical nature of targets that are placed in their way. The differences between neutrons and X-rays are illustrated in the following radiographs:
I was reminded of Grenoble's extraordinary scientific research facilities a few days ago. In his book called Programming the Universe [click here to see my previous article on this theme], Seth Lloyd tells us that he had been thrown into a stupor when told that, "not only was an electron allowed to be in many places at the same time, it was in fact required to be there (and there, and there, and there)". He couldn't seize this weird conclusion in a totally intuitive fashion, so he remained in a state of intellectual trance. It was not until years later, when Seth Lloyd happened to be working at the ILL in Grenoble, that the American researcher finally saw the light, as described here: "I awoke from my trance. Neutrons, I saw, had to spin clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. They had no choice: it was in their nature. The language that neutrons spoke was not the ordinary language of yes or no, it was yes and no at once. If I wanted to talk to neutrons and have them talk back, I had to listen when they said yes and no at the same time. If this sounds confusing, it is. But I had finally learned my first words in the quantum language of love."In the context of Lloyd's fascinating book, I got a kick out of hearing him say that an arrow from a quantum Cupid [a Qupid?] had finally hit him while he was working in the capital of the French Alps. Over the last 14 years, I've visited Grenoble on countless occasions. But I still find that I'm overcome by a tingling sensation of excitement whenever I set foot there. I don't know whether it has anything to do with Lloyd's "quantum language of love". Often, I've imagined that some kind of tellurian energy is accumulated in the celebrated mountains which, as Stendhal once said, can be glimpsed at the end of every street in this fabulous city at the heart of the ancient Dauphiné province.
Hail Jaws, full of grace
The Washington Post has just published a delightful story revealing that "a team of American and Irish researchers have discovered that some female sharks can reproduce without having sex". However the presence of Irish researchers in the team is not reassuring. Now, I've got nothing against the Irish in general, and Irish science in particular. I've even, myself, inherited a good dose of Irish genes. And I'm sure that, if ever I were to set foot in Ireland, I would be perfectly at ease in a pub conversation on the question of virgins and sharks. But frankly, listening to Irishmen talking about the virginity of sharks is, to my mind, a little like asking Eskimos to tell us what they think of sandstorms.
It all started when a female hammerhead shark was born in an Irish zoo in 2001, where there were simply no male sharks. The lead author of the scientific paper on the virgin shark tale, Demian Chapman, is quoted as saying that, during his research in Belfast, he bet various local scientists that the shark mystery would turn out to be something other than parthenogenesis (the scientific name for virgin birth). In Chapman's own words: "I lost so many pints of Guinness over that one." I would be less suspicious if he hadn't encouraged the theme of beer to drift into this otherwise plausible story. Full of grace? Or full of Guinness?
PS
Irish joke
A young lady is examined by her gynecologist.
Gynecologist: Lady, I have excellent news for you and your husband.
Lady: I don't have a husband. I'm not married.
Gynecologist: Well, it'll be good news for your male friend.
Lady: I've never had any male friends.
Gynecologist: What I mean to say is that it'll be interesting news for the last man with whom you had a sexual union.
Lady: But I've never had a sexual union with any man.
The gynecologist strolls over to the window of his surgery, draws the curtain aside and stands there in silence, peering up into the sky. After a while, the young lady becomes impatient and asks the gynecologist what he's doing.
Gynecologist: The first and last time this happened, they say a bright new star came into existence and moved slowly across the sky. This time, my young lady, I don't want to miss the show.
It all started when a female hammerhead shark was born in an Irish zoo in 2001, where there were simply no male sharks. The lead author of the scientific paper on the virgin shark tale, Demian Chapman, is quoted as saying that, during his research in Belfast, he bet various local scientists that the shark mystery would turn out to be something other than parthenogenesis (the scientific name for virgin birth). In Chapman's own words: "I lost so many pints of Guinness over that one." I would be less suspicious if he hadn't encouraged the theme of beer to drift into this otherwise plausible story. Full of grace? Or full of Guinness?
PS
Irish joke
A young lady is examined by her gynecologist.
Gynecologist: Lady, I have excellent news for you and your husband.
Lady: I don't have a husband. I'm not married.
Gynecologist: Well, it'll be good news for your male friend.
Lady: I've never had any male friends.
Gynecologist: What I mean to say is that it'll be interesting news for the last man with whom you had a sexual union.
Lady: But I've never had a sexual union with any man.
The gynecologist strolls over to the window of his surgery, draws the curtain aside and stands there in silence, peering up into the sky. After a while, the young lady becomes impatient and asks the gynecologist what he's doing.
Gynecologist: The first and last time this happened, they say a bright new star came into existence and moved slowly across the sky. This time, my young lady, I don't want to miss the show.
Alpine Swifts
I've just been admiring the aerial ballet of a flock of Alpine Swifts above the oak trees on the ridge up behind my house. They're darting and diving incessantly, to capture edible insects. These elegant birds, which reappear once or twice a year for short spells at Gamone, have always fascinated me, because ornithologists claim that they simply never alight anywhere on the surface of our planet during their entire existence. I've always found that story hard to believe... like the tale of the 5th-century Syrian ascetic Simeon Stylites who is said to have resided permanently on top of a stone column. What I mean to say is: How could ornithologists possibly keep track of individual swifts, day and night, to make sure that they never land anywhere? That would be even more difficult, to my mind, than parents trying to keep track of the nightly movements of their teenage offspring.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Australia, world champion polluter
Within Australia's CSIRO [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization], Mike Raupach is the chief of the Global Carbon Project, which measures the growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions. He can therefore be considered as one of Australia's leading experts on the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and the risks of global warming. An article in today's Herald Sun indicates some of the alarming findings of Raupach and his research team. In 2004, Australia's per capita emissions were 4.5 times the world average, and increasing twice as fast as those of the US. In China, explained Raupach, annual carbon emission amounts to one metric ton per person, whereas in Australia and the US the per capita output is over five times the Chinese figure. In the case of a significant yardstick known as carbon intensity, which is the quantity of fossil fuel consumed to produce a unit of energy or wealth, Australia has in fact become the world's most wasteful nation.In the forthcoming elections, one of the main reasons why I'll be voting Labor is that it's shameful that the Howard administration has never signed the Kyoto agreement.
The Environment Society of Australia [click here to visit their website] informs us that Clive Hamilton, director of the Australia Institute, has just brought out a book, Scorcher: the Dirty Politics of Climate Change, which deals with "greedy corporations, craven politicians and public disengagement". Hamilton is particularly critical of Howard's claim that Australia, as an energy exporter, should be pardoned for its excessive emissions. "Our energy exports have no bearing on Australia's emission-reduction obligations at all. The emissions from our exports of coal, gas and oil are counted in the country where they burnt." Hamilton recalls the fact that Howard asked for advice on greenhouse pollution from the country's major polluters, without bothering to listen to environmental experts. Hamilton concludes: "In short, the Howard government has been able to hoodwink the community with impunity because many Australians have preferred to believe the lies."
Monday, May 21, 2007
Thoughts that should just go away
When I was a child, I was terribly marked [in an interior way, because I've never mentioned this anecdote up until today] by an image of horror related to a news item. Two young kids had come upon a discarded refrigerator in a municipal dump. They scrambled inside. The door shut. And they suffocated to death.
In our house at Grafton, we had one of these self-shutting refrigerators. I came to hate it. Even today, more than half a century later, I'm terrified when I discover, for example, a village butcher's shop in which the unwitting butcher could shut himself into a cold room and freeze to death. On the other hand, I hasten to relativize what I'm saying, in that I've never developed any abnormal tendency towards claustrophobia. But I've never been tempted to go for a ride in a submarine or a bathyscaph, and I have no desire to get involved in the sport of speleology, which delights some of my Choranche neighbors.
In another domain, as a child, I was alarmed at the thought that kids my own age, suffering from polio, might be expected to survive in a newly-invented respiratory device named an iron lung. Here's a photo [circa 1953] of an entire ward of such gadgets in an American hospital:
In a related realm, I found it hard to fathom [no pun intended] that certain individuals would wish to earn their living by donning a diving bell, such as this one in my hometown museum in Grafton:
No, in general, I prefer to spend my time with my head out in the open air... which explains why I like living here at Gamone.
Now, why am I saying all this? Well, ten years ago, the French intellectual world was stunned by the publication of an autobiography by a 46-year-old man about town [of the kind that French media people would now refer to, in crazy English, as a people] named Jean-Dominique Bauby.
Bauby's 140-page book informs us that he was struck down on 8 December 1995, in an abrupt and totally unexpected manner, by a cardiovascular accident. When he woke up in hospital, he was terrified to find himself a victim of a mysterious condition referred to as LIS [locked-in syndrome]. What this meant is that Bauby, while totally conscious of his situation and predicament, could no longer communicate with the outside world. Happily [the adverb is unseemly], Bauby's body retained a single functioning element: his left eye. He could flap his eyelids like the wings of a tiny but beautiful butterfly. Over a period of two months, with the help of a literary Florence Nightingale named Claude Mendibil, Bauby used the open/closed eyelid movements of this left eye as a binary semaphore device enabling him to transcribe his tale onto paper. Of an afternoon, Bauby's female alter-ego would read out aloud to her literary partner: the daily press, or even Zola.
In November 1996, Claude Mendibil read out to Jean-Dô (as he was called affectionately) the final version of their typescript. Reaction of a tired but contented Bauby: "I could never have written another line." The best-seller was born. And Jean-Dô disappeared into the diving bell of Eternity exactly four days after its publication.
Since then, his book has appeared in English. And today, a film on the awesome drama of Jean-Dominique Bauby is being shown at Cannes.
I was wrong in thinking, once upon a childhood time, that there are thoughts that should simply go away. In thinking of such unthinkable thoughts, we unlock the locked-in world. In writing about the unwritable, we achieve, not only art and enlightenment from anguish, but profound freedom.
In our house at Grafton, we had one of these self-shutting refrigerators. I came to hate it. Even today, more than half a century later, I'm terrified when I discover, for example, a village butcher's shop in which the unwitting butcher could shut himself into a cold room and freeze to death. On the other hand, I hasten to relativize what I'm saying, in that I've never developed any abnormal tendency towards claustrophobia. But I've never been tempted to go for a ride in a submarine or a bathyscaph, and I have no desire to get involved in the sport of speleology, which delights some of my Choranche neighbors.
In another domain, as a child, I was alarmed at the thought that kids my own age, suffering from polio, might be expected to survive in a newly-invented respiratory device named an iron lung. Here's a photo [circa 1953] of an entire ward of such gadgets in an American hospital:
In a related realm, I found it hard to fathom [no pun intended] that certain individuals would wish to earn their living by donning a diving bell, such as this one in my hometown museum in Grafton:
No, in general, I prefer to spend my time with my head out in the open air... which explains why I like living here at Gamone.Now, why am I saying all this? Well, ten years ago, the French intellectual world was stunned by the publication of an autobiography by a 46-year-old man about town [of the kind that French media people would now refer to, in crazy English, as a people] named Jean-Dominique Bauby.
Bauby's 140-page book informs us that he was struck down on 8 December 1995, in an abrupt and totally unexpected manner, by a cardiovascular accident. When he woke up in hospital, he was terrified to find himself a victim of a mysterious condition referred to as LIS [locked-in syndrome]. What this meant is that Bauby, while totally conscious of his situation and predicament, could no longer communicate with the outside world. Happily [the adverb is unseemly], Bauby's body retained a single functioning element: his left eye. He could flap his eyelids like the wings of a tiny but beautiful butterfly. Over a period of two months, with the help of a literary Florence Nightingale named Claude Mendibil, Bauby used the open/closed eyelid movements of this left eye as a binary semaphore device enabling him to transcribe his tale onto paper. Of an afternoon, Bauby's female alter-ego would read out aloud to her literary partner: the daily press, or even Zola.In November 1996, Claude Mendibil read out to Jean-Dô (as he was called affectionately) the final version of their typescript. Reaction of a tired but contented Bauby: "I could never have written another line." The best-seller was born. And Jean-Dô disappeared into the diving bell of Eternity exactly four days after its publication.
Since then, his book has appeared in English. And today, a film on the awesome drama of Jean-Dominique Bauby is being shown at Cannes.I was wrong in thinking, once upon a childhood time, that there are thoughts that should simply go away. In thinking of such unthinkable thoughts, we unlock the locked-in world. In writing about the unwritable, we achieve, not only art and enlightenment from anguish, but profound freedom.
Appalling legacy
In comparing George Bush and Tony Blair, a wag [no pun intended] said recently that Bush has done everything wrong, with one exception: his success in getting Blair to back him up over Iraq. Inversely, Blair has done everything right, with one exception: his decision to back up Bush over Iraq.
The name Chatham House might not mean much to you. You'll know what I'm talking about as soon as I point out that, up until September 2004, this London-based think tank was known as The Royal Institute of International Affairs. [Click the banner to visit their website.] Here's how they describe themselves:Chatham House is one of the world's leading organizations for the analysis of international issues. It is membership-based and aims to help individuals and organizations to be at the forefront of developments in an ever-changing and increasingly complex world.
This organization has just published a 12-page report, Accepting Realities in Iraq, which describes the appalling legacy which Bush and Blair—and let's not forget Howard, too—have left there. [Click here to obtain a copy of this so-called briefing paper.]
The report reads like an exercise in conjugating the verb fail, and declining the concept of failure. A spine-chilling extract [page 2]:
It can be argued that Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation.
The report quotes [page 3] the words of Anthony Cordesman of the Washington-based think tank called CSIS [Center for Strategic and International Studies]:
It is more than possible that a failed president [Bush] and a failed administration will preside over a failed war for the second time since Vietnam.
Observers have been pointing out constantly that the Bush/Blair/Howard legacy in Iraq can only be described as civil war. The Chatham House paper is far more scathing [summary on page 1]:
There is not 'a' civil war in Iraq, but many civil wars and insurgencies involving a number of communities and organizations struggling for power.
How many more deaths and how much more destruction will it take until the diabolical and stubborn Bush/Blair/Howard trio wakes up to an obvious fact? They have only one option left: Get the fucking hell out of Iraq as soon as possible...
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Jimmy Carter blasts Bush and Blair
Never before in recent political history has a former US president spoken so harshly about both the current president and the British prime minister. Jimmy Carter claims that the current presidency is "the worst in history". The 2002 Nobel laureate said that the Bush approach represented "the overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations". He added: "We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered."Carter was particularly outspoken in his criticism of Tony Blair's relationship with Bush: "Abominable. Loyal, blind, apparently subservient." He explained: "I think that the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq has been a major tragedy for the world."
Thirst
In an earlier blog, named Geography lesson, I evoked the Picard bridge at Pont-en-Royans. [Click here to display this earlier message.] At the Vercors end of the bridge, there's a charming bar-restaurant named the Picard, which I've been patronizing ever since I settled at Choranche. The proprietor, Jean-Noel, has been a friend of mine for years. A few months ago, Jean-Noel purchased an adjoining café, which means that the new Picard has doubled in size, as you can see here:
When I went in there recently, after taking my dog for a sunny walk alongside the Bourne, the girl behind the bar offered a big bowl of cool water to Sophia, who lapped it up enthusiastically, as if she were dying of thirst. The truth of the matter, I believe, is that my dog simply takes pleasure in discovering that friendly people in such places don't forget her. When we were moving around Provence recently with Natacha and Alain, they would have on hand, in the back of their automobile, a supply of water for Sophia. And it was a joy to see the dog downing water enthusiastically at every stop in our excursion.
It sounds silly to say so, but I find it's in fact a great joy for human observers to give water to a thirsty dog. It's one of those simple moments when you know you're doing the right thing. And it's so much better when the dog actually reveals that he/she was truly thirsty.
Plants, too, can behave similarly. In my message called Gifts from Provence, I showed a photo of a tiny fig tree that Natacha and Alain gave me. [Click here to display this earlier message.] Well, it downs water like a thirsty dog. Sometimes I notice that its leaves are drooping, and I rush to quench its thirst. Half an hour later, the tree is beaming with new-found vigor.
Strangely, my donkeys don't seem to have any particular desire to drink water. For years, whenever I've left a tub of water in Moshé's paddock, he immediately strives to turn it upside-down. I gather that the donkeys get the liquid they need through the huge quantities of grass and weeds that they're eating constantly.
When I went in there recently, after taking my dog for a sunny walk alongside the Bourne, the girl behind the bar offered a big bowl of cool water to Sophia, who lapped it up enthusiastically, as if she were dying of thirst. The truth of the matter, I believe, is that my dog simply takes pleasure in discovering that friendly people in such places don't forget her. When we were moving around Provence recently with Natacha and Alain, they would have on hand, in the back of their automobile, a supply of water for Sophia. And it was a joy to see the dog downing water enthusiastically at every stop in our excursion.It sounds silly to say so, but I find it's in fact a great joy for human observers to give water to a thirsty dog. It's one of those simple moments when you know you're doing the right thing. And it's so much better when the dog actually reveals that he/she was truly thirsty.
Plants, too, can behave similarly. In my message called Gifts from Provence, I showed a photo of a tiny fig tree that Natacha and Alain gave me. [Click here to display this earlier message.] Well, it downs water like a thirsty dog. Sometimes I notice that its leaves are drooping, and I rush to quench its thirst. Half an hour later, the tree is beaming with new-found vigor.
Strangely, my donkeys don't seem to have any particular desire to drink water. For years, whenever I've left a tub of water in Moshé's paddock, he immediately strives to turn it upside-down. I gather that the donkeys get the liquid they need through the huge quantities of grass and weeds that they're eating constantly.
Gregan out
The French sporting press appears to be surprised and saddened by the idea that George Gregan, in World Cup year, might no longer be the emblematic captain of the Wallabies. And journalists here tend to be ironical concerning the solution of dual captains.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Illustrious Graftonian
The latest issue of the newsletter of the Clarence River Historical Society [click here to see their website] presents a drawing of a member of the state parliament of New South Wales whom I knew and admired: William Weiley [1901-1989].
Bill Weiley [father of my friend John, the celebrated Australian cineast] was a friend of my parents and grandparents. Around 1960, John took me along to Sydney's Parliament House for a luncheon with his father, and this encounter made a great impact upon me. It was neither the food nor the parliamentary splendor that impressed me, but rather Bill Weiley's enthusiasm for a theme he had just discovered: the Dead Sea Scrolls. I've never forgotten his words:
"Take a Sydney phone directory. Tear it in half. Reduce it to confetti, and mix it up. Now throw away two-thirds of your confetti. What you've got left is akin to the state of the Dead Sea Scrolls."
I was terribly impressed by this didactic demonstration, no doubt exaggerated, of the precariousness of our Biblical past.
Bill Weiley [father of my friend John, the celebrated Australian cineast] was a friend of my parents and grandparents. Around 1960, John took me along to Sydney's Parliament House for a luncheon with his father, and this encounter made a great impact upon me. It was neither the food nor the parliamentary splendor that impressed me, but rather Bill Weiley's enthusiasm for a theme he had just discovered: the Dead Sea Scrolls. I've never forgotten his words:"Take a Sydney phone directory. Tear it in half. Reduce it to confetti, and mix it up. Now throw away two-thirds of your confetti. What you've got left is akin to the state of the Dead Sea Scrolls."
I was terribly impressed by this didactic demonstration, no doubt exaggerated, of the precariousness of our Biblical past.
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