Vote for the planet Earth!

I've translated into English the flyer for a big outdoor reunion in Paris, next Sunday at the Trocadéro, organized by the Nicolas Hulot Foundation. If you feel like listening to Nicolas explaining in French his ecological pact, click here.

Books about Provence and the French Riviera

I don't wish to appear foolishly pretentious, but I still believe that the most readable English-language book about Provence and the French Riviera is the one by Jean Hureau that I translated for his French publishing house back in 1977. Over the thirty years since then, in my (biased) opinion, this tourist guide has hardly—as they say in French—developed a face wrinkle.

That book was a funny writing affair. When I first browsed through the original, after having signed a well-paid translation contract, I was horrified. Jean Hureau's French was excessively syrupy and mushy. I had the impression that he was so overwhelmed by the beauty of the places about which he was writing that he had abandoned all sobriety and constraint. As we used to say in vulgar and misogynous Aussie parlance, his written expression was all over the road like a mad woman's shit. I quickly concluded that there was no way in the world that I could simply translate literally Huleau's descriptions dozens of cities, towns and villages. I could generally understand what he was trying to say, but he wasn't using the kind of words and phrases that would go down well in English. So, I decided to do the only thing possible. Instead of attempting to carry out an almost impossible task of translation, I would carefully read the multiple elements of Hureau's text—which had the merit of being well documented—and then I would simply rewrite each description from scratch, in my own words.

When I finally submitted my "translation" to the publisher, they gave it immediately to somebody whose job consisted of evaluating my work. He/she apparently read through my typescript, found it not only readable but well-written, and told the publisher that I was indeed a good "translator". That's why they then gave me a contract to write a tourist guide on Great Britain.

Since 1989, most English-speaking visitors arrive in Provence with a copy of Peter Mayle's book in their luggage. Over half a million copies sold! The observations are informative and thorough, but it's superficial writing, like articles in a weekly magazine. He describes a gay and quaint Provence inhabited by stereotypic French individuals who belong to a sun-drenched lavender-scented adult fairy tale. I guess it's great if you're a tourist or a newcomer, and you like and believe that kind of story.

By far the most profound treatment of Provence I've encountered (thanks to Natacha) is Caesar's Vast Ghost by Lawrence Durrell. It's a mixture of poetry and history, with a little madness thrown in for good measure. At times, I had the impression that Durrell might have been half-drunk when he was writing, particularly in the final chapter, whose heroine is a full-sized latex doll named Cunégonde with the features of a sexy Provençale. I recall that, when I dropped in at Sommières long ago in the hope of finding Durrell at home (which was not the case), the village people all warned me that he was more often drunk than sober. The best-written sections of his monograph take up the theme, introduced by Denis de Rougement, of the invention of courtly love in Provence. Durrell talks of Avignon, Arles and Aix as if these magic places transmitted aphrodisiac waves, or exuded a vaporous love potion. Ever since running into the great novelist/poet in Nîmes in 1963, and hearing him talk about Provence, I've never doubted his words on this subject.

Turbulence ahead

I'm about to change my ISP (Internet service provider). After many years with the French national provider named Orange (formerly Wanadoo), I'll be moving to Free, mainly because it's cheaper and their phone service is wider. Above all, most Macintosh users in France swear by Free.

As soon as I change ISPs, my old e-mail address will become obsolete. So, from now on, please use one or other of the following addresses:

william.skyvington@free.fr

william.skyvington@gmail.com

If all goes well, I'll be able to use Free in the next few days. However, I prefer to be cautious, since anything could happen. If the worst came to the worst, I could even enter a blackout zone (as they say in the astronautical domain) in which my blog and e-mail would go into temporary hibernation. So, if ever I seemed to disappear from the Internet and/or phone world over the coming days, don't be worried. Naturally, if the blackout were to persist for longer than expected, I would get around to sending out lovely handwritten postcards with photos of Pont-en-Royans and nice French postage stamps.

Guilty plea... to try to get out of Guantanamo

Yesterday, trying desperately to get away from Bush's notorious and ignominious Guantanamo penal colony, Australian David Hicks pleaded guilty to a charge of material support for terrorism. This courtroom sketch shows Hicks seated next to his sympathetic military defense attorney, Major Michael Mori:

The prisoner has let his hair grow long so that he can use strands of it to cover his eyes to protect him from the light that is turned on permanently in his cell at Guantanamo. Isn't that trivial anecdote straight out of a horror movie? Doesn't it back up one's feeling that the Bush administration, traumatized by 9/11, has lost all sense of moral relativity?

The truth of the matter, I fear, is that most Americans, preoccupied as usual by their own egocentric challenges (these days, the possibility of running short of petroleum gas for their automobiles), probably haven't even heard of David Hicks and the unjust way in which his case has been handled. As far as ordinary Australians are concerned, their passionate attempts to insist upon a fair deal for David Hicks have been typically marvelous, right from the start, and it's a terrible pity that the Australian people's concern and indignation have never been relayed adequately to Bush & Co. In the words of Brett Solomon, executive director of GetUp!: "The Australian government didn't have the guts to intervene and ensure a fair trial for David."

Sharing power in Northern Ireland

Normally, these two allegedly Christian leaders wouldn't share a piece of bread if they were hungry, let alone power. Like many of their fellow countrymen, they haven't evolved much at a religious level over the last four and a half centuries, since the days when England's Henry VIII decided to break from papal allegiance, and found a new church, so that he could get rid of his wife Catherine of Aragon. Be that as it may, the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein made a promise today that they will share power in Northern Ireland starting on 8 May. The world will be watching them, warily.

Crying in the wilderness

The other day, my friend Eveline (who stayed in my house when I went out to Australia last year) informed me that an artist friend, a wood sculptress whom I don't know, was interested in an old dead tree behind my house. I realized immediately that she was referring to the dear old object—a dead cherry tree—that I've always called Crying in the wilderness.

The form of the dead tree reminds me of the famous man in a white shirt in Goya's celebrated Third of May 1808 painting.

What is the world coming to, you might ask, when artists start to become interested in dead trees? It's coming to awareness, sensitivity, perspicacity, feeling, empathy, etc. In a word: humanity.

Boring spectator sport

Back at the time of the Olympic Games of 1956 in Melbourne, I remember my aunt Nancy telling me excitedly that one of the amazing surprises of their new tool called TV was the fact that it brought swimming races right into your living room, because you could actually watch the swimmers in the pool. Big deal. For me, TV swimming remains the most boring spectator sport that I can imagine, because you can't understand anything apart from the excited words of the commentator. And you simply wait for the times in hundredths of a second. I should be super-excited about the prowess of Laure Manaudou, whose first name sounds like gold in French. The truth is that this mindless love-struck youngster is just as boring as the sport in which she excels. French commentators, with nothing to say about this silent juvenile wonder woman, complained that Laure might have at least inscribed AMOUR rather than LOVE on her left palm.

There's an even more boring sporting phenomenon than swimming. It consists of wandering into a Sydney pub, say, on a Saturday around midday and being confronted by dozens of video screens relaying matches of all kinds (rugby, horses, dogs, etc): the object of betting. Last year, shocked by this spectacle, I was tempted to cease considering myself as an Australian. Sport as gambling commerce. It's simply all too boring.

Half the local Aussie population is leaving!

Sheridan Henty arrived in Pont-en-Royans in May 2003, having purchased a huge village house on the banks of the Bourne that was rebuilt in 1955 after the Nazi bombing of 21 July 1944. The original owner was a maquisard named Hugues Reynaud du Charmeil, killed in the bombardment.

When I first met up with Sheridan (an inevitable encounter in an environment where we were the only two Australians), I was amazed to learn that she was the sole descendant of the famous Henty brothers who left England on the barque Caroline and reached the Swan River, Western Australia, on 12 October 1829. [I remember that date because my brother Don was born on 12 October 1941, and our father died on 12 October 1978.] This tiny fuzzy drawing, executed by James Henty, shows the Caroline anchored off Rottnest Island:

Shortly after Sheridan's arrival, I learned by chance that my ancestor Charles Walker [1807-1860] had reached Sydney on that same ship, working as a steward, on 6 August 1833. So, there we were in Pont-en-Royans, two shipwrecked Aussies whose ancestors had reached the New World on the same vessel.

Unfortunately, Sheridan has discovered that she cannot carry on living in Pont-en-Royans, so she has sold her house and will be moving back to Paris in the next few days. Yesterday, there was a delightful farewell luncheon for Sheridan in an excellent village restaurant.


Meanwhile, Sheridan Henty has given me officially the task of obtaining a valuation of her mysterious and magnificent ceramic plaque of a youthful Victoria. [Click here to visit my website.]

Back at school in South Grafton, we children learned that the Hentys couldn't stay for long in Western Australia because their English animals, brought out on the Caroline, ate poisonous weeds and died. So they left for what would later become the city of Melbourne, and they got involved in Tasmanian whaling. Here in the Royans, there are no poisonous weeds, but Sheridan is leaving us all the same. When a Henty moves, there might be great changes, as in the old radio saga of When a girl marries. In any case, whales in the Seine should be warned of impending danger.

Max gets mad about the Mayas

American sheilas should know that you don't fuck around with us Aussie blokes about ancient history, particularly when we've got Firm Convictions. And we all know that Mel Gibson has always had Firm Convictions, even about biblical stuff such as the treatment of Jesus. Mel knows what really happened. Don't ask me how or why. I have no answers. We must simply believe in Mel.

Last Thursday, Mel dropped in to a Californian university to talk about his recent film Apocalypto. Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American Studies, complained about the fact that Gibson's film presented the Mayas as savages. The academic passed the microphone to a Mayan representative, Felipe Perez, who made the mistake of speaking his native tongue, Spanish. This created a disturbance in the audience. There were boos and cries: "This is America. Speak English!" In spite of his having posed as a specialist on the Mayans, Mel Gibson revealed that he too was not a man of many tongues: "I can't understand what you're saying." In the confusion, microphones were turned off, and then turned back on again, enabling Mad Max to sum up the situation. Turning towards the eminent academic Alicia Estrada, Gibson blurted out: "I think you're a fucking troublemaker, so fuck off."

I'm not sure that many researchers would be prepared to adopt Gibson's blunt method of handling scholarly questions, which we can sum up in Mel's Mad Maxim: Fucking troublemakers should fuck off!

Reading

Over the last six months, my acquisition of English-language books has increased considerably because of the ease of getting them through the local branch of Amazon. Meanwhile, for old stuff of a historical or genealogical nature, the Gallica service of the BnF (bibliothèque nationale de France) has been useful at times, but not as much as I would have hoped. [Click here to see this service.]









A new system named Europeana has just gone into action. It is the French contribution to a future European digital library with an ugly but logical name: BnuE (bibliothèque numérique européenne). It goes without saying that this European initiative aims explicitly to counteract the dominance of Google Book Search in this domain. If you want to read, not only Racine and Hugo, but also Shakespeare, Dickens and Dante, then Europeana is the place to go. [Click here or on the banner to visit the website, whose interface is only in French for the moment.] For the moment, the catalog of Europeana is not very rich, compared with Google's present achievement of a million scanned books. [Click here to visit Google Book Search.]

If everything goes as planned, the great advantage of Europeana, compared with Google Books, will be the possibility of downloading fragments of a book in text format, so that they can be pasted into the user's work.

For me, the subject of books reveals that I remain a very old-fashioned fellow. While I love to see stuff flashing up onto the screen of my Macintosh, I must admit that there's nothing better, on cold evenings, than to sit in front of my open fireplace, with my bare feet up on the hearth, and a good book in my hands.

I remember our potter friend Maurice Crignon pointing out that the "three eights" system applies, not only to ordinary folk (roughly: work, personal affairs and sleep), but also to monks (even more roughly: their daily schedule of prayers, worldly activities and sleep). Well, I've created a personal three-part breakdown for my daily existence. It's not an earthshaking invention. The early moments of the morning are for thinking. The main part of the day is for writing or working on my computer. And evenings are for reading, or watching a little TV. I'm convinced that the human brain functions in a way that encourages this particular time-based division of operations.

Ordinary, all too ordinary

I've finally learned how to pronounce the name of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Once you get into the habit of pronouncing the syllables smoothly and rapidly, they just roll off the tongue: mah-meud ah-mah dee-neuh jad. A couple of days ago, he was interviewed for the first time by French TV, and he came across (in an erratic context of language translation) as a very ordinary guy. Too ordinary, in fact, to be true. The French often apply a silly expression to individuals who talk as if they might be sneering slightly and trying to avoid an authentic contact. They say that he/she has a tête à claques (slappable face). Watching him trying to avoid the direct questions asked politely by the calm French journalists, I couldn't help feeling that it would be fun to slap Mahmoud's bearded face. But I realize that my reaction is a variant of an obsession whenever I see a guy sporting a beard like a banner, for alleged religious reasons. I feel like taking out a can of pink aerosol paint and giving his beard a few spurts, to make it stand out even more clearly. [For red and purple robed cardinals of Rome, I would use white paint, or maybe simply the traditional technique of cream tarts.]

We learn this morning that Ahmadinejad won't be visiting New York as planned to address the UN Security Council. He claims that his delegation couldn't get their US visas in time. If it's true that the US embassy in Switzerland was sluggish in supplying these documents, it's indeed a shocking predicament, like missing a train because the ticket seller had stepped outside for a smoke. Let's await explanations.

Howard speaks out on brutality

I don't usually see Australian PM John Howard as a positive leader on the world scene, but I must admit that I liked his rough style of talking about Zimbabwe and its president Robert Mugabe:

"Frankly, I've run out of patience. Most people have run out of patience about what's happening in Zimbabwe. We pussyfoot around far too much using diplomatic language. This man is a disaster. His country is just a total heap of misery."

Above all, we must applaud the courage and pragmatism of Australia's consul in Zimbabwe, Mark Lynch, who protected Sekai Holland—a female member of the MDC opposition party (Movement for Democratic Change) whose husband is Australian—by driving her to the airport and putting her on a plane to Johannesburg.

Howard described the context in which Holland had been bashed:

"The police are using brutal tactics. They're bashing up opposition politicians. They're fracturing skulls. They're behaving in a totally unacceptable fashion."

What a pity that Howard didn't use this kind of direct language in describing the treatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. [Click here for further photos.]

Second-hand creativity

I've often denounced a parasitic offshoot of creativity that takes an existing instance of genuine inspiration and reworks it insipidly to produce a pale copy. The example I've always used when whining is that of blue jeans. Once upon a time, the first adolescents who were so emotionally attached to their battered old pants that they refused to throw them away, even when they had holes at the level of the knees and buttocks, were authentic creators, who had invented a new sartorial concept: that of clothes with worn threads... not only at the seams. A variation on this theme was the case of kids whose jeans were a shade too long, so that they tended to put their heels on the cuffs of their pants, which would soon become threadbare and scruffy, often muddy. Another example of the bond between youngsters and their jeans was the idea of using a needle and thread to attach some kind of personal emblem to this mass-produced clothing whose aspect had become standardized. Some kids sewed on a cloth badge of one kind or another, but the most brilliant invention consisted of devoting time and effort to embroider a colorful message to observers, maybe admirers: the wearer's nickname, or the name of his /her idol or loved one. Imagination was in power, as Parisian adolescents wrote on the walls of the city in May 1968, and there were no limits to the ways in which young people might express spontaneously their attachment to this second skin: their jeans.

Then the marketing men and the industrial product designers stepped into the picture... and that's where the annoying phenomenon of second-hand creativity took over. They invented nasty techniques to mass-produce artificially "used" jeans, to make them look discolored and threadbare, to "personalize" them with badges and embroidery...

The notorious Hillary 1984 video (whose author has just been unmasked) provides us with a typical case of second-hand creativity. [Click here to see it on YouTube.] The primordial Macintosh ad, which ran on TV 23 years ago, was an extraordinary and daring work of creation. No such praise can be attributed to the messy mashup that has nevertheless just scored over two million hits on YouTube. This pale copy carries no clear message, but it manages to make Hillary Clinton look good in her Big Sister role. Meanwhile, the anonymous author was frankly dishonest when suggesting that the video might have been produced by Obama's team.

The concept of second-hand humor is similar to that of second-hand creativity. What I mean is that somebody invents a great joke, and then other dim-witted folk believe they can be funny by constructing insipid variants of the initial story. Some kind of general principle seems to be at play, meaning that second-hand things are inevitably dull. In the village, the witty innkeeper once invented a disdainful description for the endless series of new girlfriends, often mature ladies, whom his buddy used to bring along to the bar on the back of his motorcycle. The innkeeper referred to them by a French expression that can be translated as second-hand women.

Missing word

There's an ordinary French word that nobody, apparently, has ever bothered to translate into English: francophonie, meaning the existence of French, in many societies throughout the world, as an everyday operational language. Let me fill in this gap. Since the use of telephones is referred to, in English, as telephony, there's no reason why the use of French should not be called Francophony. Yesterday, March 20, was Francophony Day for 200 million French-speaking people throughout the world: a celebration organized by OIF [Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie]. Among other things, Francophony Day reminds us that the next Tour de France and Bastille Day are less than four months away.

Vernal equinox

My house at Gamone looks eastwards onto a vast half-circle of cliffs, which means that, throughout the year, I'm particularly conscious of the changing spot on the horizon where the morning sun first pokes its nose up above a cliff. Today is the vernal equinox: the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This morning, the sun appeared over the distant cliffs at the far end of the valley of the Bourne, directly in front of my house, and it had more than enough room to rise in the sky without hiding behind the Cournouze. The only problem is that the weather has remained so overcast today that I didn't see much of the sun at all.

Since settling down at Gamone, I've realized retrospectively that the evolving itineraries of the sun, and even the existence of the seasons, were aspects of the environment of which I was totally unconscious during my adolescence in Australia. I believe that my only vague awareness of the points of the compass was due to the fact that I grew up in a town named South Grafton, so I concluded that the place called Grafton no doubt lay to the north.

Unfortunately, in the pre-Alpine region of the Vercors, the night sky is invariably cloudy, which means that it's not an ideal place for star-gazing. I'm not at all sure that Galileo, if he had lived here at Gamone, would have got around to inventing the telescope. Worse than that, in view of the massive nature of the cliffs around the Circus of Choranche, it's not at all unlikely that Galileo would have carried on believing that these gigantic walls of stone remain stationery, and that the sun actually does the moving, gliding over the top cliffs. That's how it looks to me.

War effort

This famous photo shows Princess Elizabeth changing a lorry wheel during World War II. The 19-year-old heiress to the throne had joined the Auxiliary Territorial Services with the same rank as a second lieutenant. By the end of the conflict, she had become a Junior Commander capable of driving military vehicles. And today, it's quite possible that Prince Harry will soon be serving in Iraq.

In the Los Angeles Times, the Bush family biographer Kitty Kelley has just written a scathing article whose provocative title is indeed an excellent rhetorical question: Why aren't the Bush daughters in Iraq? [Click here to read the article.] In other words, why aren't they setting a moral example of patriotic service by playing some kind of meaningful role in the allegedly "noble" war being conducted by their father?

Discovery Channel

During the night, a centimeter-thick veil of snow covered everything at Gamone, from flowering shrubs through to my automobile. Apparently most of France has been hit by this cold spell.

Only two days ago, the television showed us Alberto Contador riding along magnificent sun-drenched mountain roads to his victory in the Paris-Nice race. It's amusing to recall that Contador's US employer, Discovery Channel, was in the limelight a few weeks ago because of a happening that had nothing to do with cycling. They're the people who aired the controversial documentary, produced by James Cameron and directed by Simcha Jacobovici, about a tomb near Jerusalem that contained bone boxes labeled Jesus, Mary, etc.

I don't know what the Spaniard Alberto Contador thinks about Discovery Channel's version of the Jesus story. Three years ago, he had a terrible fall in the Tour of the Asturias. With his jaws shattered, and suddenly racked by convulsions, 21-year-old Contador was taken to hospital in a critical state, and many observers, including fellow cyclists, feared that he might not survive. So, in Christian terms, Contador's brilliant performance in Paris-Nice on Sunday might be thought of as a miracle, a resurrection.

Not strawberry weather

Over the sunny weekend, I started digging up the earth for my strawberry patch. This morning, the plants were sitting on the floor of my living room, waiting to be taken out and placed in the earth. And then the sun disappeared behind low clouds, the sky turned gray, and fine hail started to fall. Ten minutes later, the hail had changed into rain and then snow. Not exactly the kind of weather for planting strawberries.

Opposite my house, on the other side of Gamone Creek, a dense wood on a steeply-sloped section of the hillside is a haven for roe deer. Over the last week or so, I've been enthralled by the non-stop symphony of bird calls emanating from the somber trees, which will be transformed into a mass of greenery in spring. In the precociously warm weather (according to the calendar, it's still winter), I had the impression that the birds were singing for joy. This afternoon, under the snow, they're still singing, but the tones are subdued and the melodies less strident, as if the singers were a little alarmed, or at least confused. Like us all.

Fourth anniversary

On Friday, the French PM Dominique de Villepin visited Harvard University, invited by the political science professor Stanley Hoffmann. Four years ago, that same Frenchman spoke to the United Nations in New York about the dangers of a US invasion of Iraq. A major American newspaper said that, over recent years, everything has changed except Bush's conviction that he can win the war in Iraq. Something else that has not changed during the last four years is France's conviction that this terrible and costly fiasco is not a war that can be won. By terrorists, maybe, but certainly not by Bush.

In the realms of international diplomacy, no politically-correct head of state or his ministers would ever refer to their foreign counterparts by means of derogatory personal remarks or judgments. The representatives of the Republic express themselves with a quality known in French as réserve. Besides, they avoid any remarks that might be interpreted as interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. For those reasons, it would be unthinkable for Jacques Chirac or Dominique de Villepin to react in the way as Australian PM John Howard when he recently blasted the US presidential candidate Barack Obama. But the fact that no French leaders refer to Bush explicitly as an idiot doesn't prevent onlookers from reading between the lines and guessing that this is what they think. One has the impression that nobody in France is keen to talk to Bush any more, or even talk about him. He seems to have become a kind of international nonentity, and people are simply waiting for him to go away, or be chased away.

Getting back to Dominique de Villepin, it's hard to guess what he's going to do with himself after the departure of Chirac in a month or so, because this man has never been an elected politician, and it would be funny seeing a former PM striving to pick up votes in a provincial electorate. During his American visit, somebody asked him whether he felt like becoming an expatriate... maybe in the USA. "No, " replied de Villepin curtly, "I'm too French."

Rugby victory for France

For many French TV viewers, yesterday was a busy day. First, at the start of the afternoon, there was the second-last stage of the Paris-Nice cycling race. Then there was a grueling series of three major rugby matches. Personally, I decided to turn the TV off and drive to St Marcellin to buy some plants: a flowering shrub and strawberries.

So, it wasn't until much later in the day that I learned that France had thrashed Scotland, and that England had failed to beat Wales. It's encouraging that France, as host nation of the forthcoming World Cup, has at least emerged victorious from the European six-nations tournament.