God travels incognito

I've just finished reading an excellent novel, with an unusual title: 36 Arguments for the Existence of God.

The author, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, is a philosopher who's working at present as a research associate in the department of psychology at Harvard.

[Click the portrait to visit her website.]

The novel's hero, Cass Seltzer, is an academic at Frankfurter University in Weedham (Massachusetts)… which is possibly inspired by Brandeis in Waltham. His unusual field is the psychology of religion, where Cass has become a celebrity through his book entitled The Varieties of Religious Illusion. Readers of Goldstein's novel are offered a close look at this treatise on "illusion", in that the novel contains a lengthy appendix summarizing succinctly the 36 arguments that are said to have been presented and analyzed by Cass in his book.

Up to that point, everything appears to be rather ordinary. So, what is it that makes Goldstein's 36 Arguments for the Existence of God such an extraordinary novel? Well, the first thing that strikes a reader who turns to the appendix is that every one of Cass's 36 arguments has been enunciated scrupulously and then promptly demolished! In other words, the Seltzer treatise is hardly likely to substantiate any kind of belief in the existence of God. Indeed, Cass Seltzer has become a celebrated atheist. But, as TIME magazine put it in their cover story, Cass is an "atheist with a soul". What does this mean? Well, as a reader of the Goldstein novel, I would say that Cass Seltzer appears to be a profoundly religious individual, but with a slightly unconventional bend: He simply doesn't feel it necessary to believe in God!

To come to grips with this unusual but exciting notion of godless religion, one needs to set aside Cass Seltzer's treatise and return to Rebecca Goldstein's novel. For she too offers us 36 arguments for the existence of God. Why shouldn't she? After all, that's the title of her novel, which is composed of exactly 36 chapters, each of which is presented as an "argument"… often of an unexpected kind, such as "the argument from prime numbers", or "the argument from tidings of destruction", or even "the argument from the New York Times". So, the next logical question is: What is the exact nature of the goods that this novelist is trying to market by means of this curious mixture of an appendix of 36 unsuccessful arguments concerning the existence of God, juxtaposed alongside 36 narrative chapters that don't really appear to be striving to argue in favor of anything of a specifically religious nature? Well, I would say that Rebecca Goldstein is simply marketing a new vision of God, who doesn't need to exist concretely (like a tree or a giraffe) in order to enable us to adopt a profoundly religious attitude towards life. And Cass Seltzer, in that case, is Rebecca's extraordinary salesman.

Why does the number 36 appear, first in the title of the novel, then in the number of items (Cass's arguments) in the appendix, and above all in the number of chapters in the novel? For a while, I delved into my books on Judaism, the Kabbalah and the Hebrew language in the hope of finding an answer to that question, but I was unsuccessful. Then it dawned on me that 36 is the product of the squares of the first three primes. 36 = (1 x 1) x (2 x 2) x (3 x 3). I wouldn't swear to the validity of this interpretation, but I have the impression that the novelist's preoccupations are systematically closer to numbers and science than to the tenets of Judaism and the Kabbalah. I tried, too, to find Jewish explanations for the choice of the hero's name: Cass Seltzer. Here again, I found nothing capable of adding Biblical weight to the diminutive of the Latin Cassius combined with a wrongly-spelled reference to a town in Germany that gave its name to carbonated water. So, I conclude that this name highlights the fact that our hero is not a conventional Jew, not an ordinary believer… in fact, an unbeliever.

I have the impression that the goods that Deborah Goldstein and Cass Seltzer are proposing correspond to a vast system of mathematical truths and human values in which there's a bit of God in almost everything. I would call it scientific pantheism. Since God is everywhere, then He is nowhere. We don't need to search for God, as if He were a hidden diamond, because there is in fact no place in the cosmos where He would not be present… if only He existed, which He doesn't! Cass is sensitive to this ubiquitous religiosity, but he is often obliged to clean up his home and his haunts by sweeping trivial avatars of God under the carpet.

Some of the characters in the novel are admirable, indeed lovable. Besides Cass himself, and his longtime sweetheart Roz Margolis, I'm thinking of the young Azarya Sheiner, a master of numbers, destined to become the future spiritual chief of the Valdener sect. Certain characters are exasperating. They can be stupidly exasperating, like the ultra-Orthodox professor Jonas Elijah Klapper: "one of the most prominent, if not the pre-eminent, propounders of poppycock of our day". Others are brilliantly exasperating, such as Cass's former partners Pascale Puissant, absurdly Cartesian in her affections, and Lucinda Mandelbaum, "the Goddess of Game Theory", incapable of retaining the visual memory of human faces.

The novelist Rebecca Goldstein writes superbly, and she skips effortlessly from poetic songs of awe to hilarious laughter. In the 36th and final chapter of the novel, Cass is attending a joyous assembly of Jewish Hasidim of the Valdener sect in a fictitious village in New Jersey misnamed New Walden (nothing to do with Thoreau).

Although Cass is in fact related to the Valdener rabbinic dynasty, through his mother, the main reason for his attending this assembly is his affection for Azarya Sheiner, the new Rebbe. Normally, Azarya's intellectual prowess would have enabled him to become a great mathematician at MIT. Instead of that, he has decided to make himself constantly available as a guide for his Hasidic brethren. There are no limits to Cass's respect for the traditional culture of his tribe. The assembled Hasidim imagine that they will be able to watch their Rebbe enacting an ancient costume, which consists of dancing with his week-old firstborn son. Normally, all this is so silly, because there could be so many greater things on the mind of Azarya Sheiner than prancing around in front of the ecstatic crowd with a baby in his arms. Was it simply the force of the novelistic art of Rebecca Goldstein, or might I too be some kind of emotional adept of atheism with a soul? Whatever the explanation, I devoured the vision in the final line of the novel:

And the Valdener Rebbe holds his son and dances.

And I, William, an atheist goy, burst into tears.

His Royal Quackness

This photo shows Prince Charles visiting a laboratory of a British company that markets various kinds of natural salts.

I'm sure that Charles is a nice chap, like his dad. But, from an intellectual viewpoint, I've never held him in high esteem. And, if he knew me, His Royal Highness would no doubt be in a position to inform the kingdom that this feeling is mutual. At a medical level, I'm not convinced that the future king would be able to take care of a pimple on his bum. But this has never prevented him from promoting would-be solutions such as herbal medicines and homeopathy.

I evoked British homeopathy in my article entitled Snake oil [display]. It's a pity that a charming celebrity such as Prince Charles, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, goes out of his way, in a great scientific nation such as the United Kingdom, to support quackery. He should know better.

Fasten your video belts

From an artistic viewpoint, this English road-safety video is particularly aesthetic:



One might wonder, though, whether this strong dose of loveliness (that's the first silly word that springs into my mind) is really effective in getting the message across. Maybe the whole thing could backfire completely, in that recollections of this video might soothe the driver into imagining dangerously that he's accompanied constantly by a pair of guardian angels, ready to intervene miraculously as soon as a bad situation arises. Besides, I find that they guy has a dumb grin on his face. I wouldn't feel safe as a passenger with that fellow at the wheel.

Encounter with local history

Today, in St-Laurent-en-Royans, I met up with an 80-year-old former politician, Gérard Sibeud, to talk about local history. He was the Gaullist député (member of parliament) for the Drôme département from 30 June 1968 until 1 April 1973. During those five years, he was a member of the UDR party (Union des démocrates pour la République).



For many years, Gérard Sibeud was the mayor of St-Laurent-en-Royans. In 1997, he was the founder and initial president of the so-called commmunity of eleven communes located in the Drôme part of the Royans region: Saint-Jean-en-Royans, Saint-Laurent-en-Royans, Sainte-Eulalie-en-Royans, Saint-Nazaire-en-Royans, Saint-Thomas-en-Royans, Oriol-en-Royans, Saint-Martin-le-Colonel, La Motte-Fanjas, Rochechinard, Léoncel and Échevis.

We had planned to talk about Royans history in general, but the principal motivation of this encounter, for me, was to evoke a great scholar who was responsible for the rare historical texts concerning our region. I am referring to a Catholic priest, born in St-Laurent-en-Royans: Abbé Jean-Louis Fillet [1840-1902]. See my article entitled Place with a name [display] concerning this man. Gérard Sibeud gave me a copy of the following poor-quality photo (which I saw for the first time today), which would appear to be the only existing image of Abbé Fillet.

[Click here to see the original photo before I cleaned it up.]

Gérard Sibeud married a woman named Fillet who was a descendant of the Abbé's family, and she inherited the old farm where the future priest was born. And that's where my meeting with Gérard Sibeud took place this afternoon. This property looks out across a plain towards the bare hillock where the great medieval castle of the Bérenger family, called La Bâtie, once stood.

I was pleased to find that Gérard Sibeud was enthusiastic about my suggestion that we should look into the possibility of publishing a modern edition of the collected Royans monographs of Abbé Fillet.

First peony at Gamone

Not only is it the first peony; it's in fact the first flower in the garden of rose and peony bushes that I prepared last autumn. It's a Chinese species, Paeonia suffruticosa (tree peony), called Adzuma Nishiki. I was reassured (in a silly way) that the flower and the plant correspond exactly to information in the superb album on peonies that Christine gave me as a Christmas gift:

Semi-double peony. Rose-pink, pale at the tips of the petals, darker and deeper towards the center. The petals get smaller and smaller at the base. White pistil and stigma. Dark green foliage with purple flares.

It would have been strange indeed if my alleged Adzuma Nishiki had emerged say, looking like a rosy geranium! Still, an exotic plant such as a peony is surrounded by an aura of Oriental mystery, and it comes as a surprise to discover that you can unwrap it from its plastic bag [display my Christmas article entitled Planting peonies], bury the sweet-smelling mass of nondescript roots in the earth, and then discover, exactly four months later, that the resulting plant corresponds precisely to what was written in the book. Like my hero Richard Dawkins, faced with the wonders of the world, I've remained essentially an awestruck child.

POST-SCRIPTUM: If I note down the date of flowering of every one of the 9 peonies and 22 roses that I planted last year, then I'll be able to look forward to welcoming them back individually, in future years, like the return of so many Prodigal Daughters.

There will be apples

At the same time I'm saying this (because of the profusion of white blossoms), and the donkeys might be dreaming about this (for they are the major consumers of Gamone apples), countless small creatures—ranging in size from fruit flies and wasps up to field mice and squirrels—are also looking forward, no doubt, to a good apple harvest towards the end of summer at Gamone. As usual, it'll be a matter of sharing out the produce to all interested parties... but often on a brutal "first come, first served" basis. Nature hasn't yet discovered organized gentlemanly democracy. The world has never been a welfare state.

Necessary rebuttal

In my article of 8 February 2010 entitled Mystery as philosophy [display], I deplored the announcement of a book (which I'm not at all keen to read) entitled What Darwin Got Wrong by Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, in which they apparently contend that Darwin's idea of natural selection is illogical and unsupported by empirical evidence.

Like countless Darwinists, I was shocked that distinguished academics would dare to write such stuff today. I was aware, though, that their arguments were technically complex, and would require some serious unraveling. Fodor (professor of philosophy at Rutgers) and Piattelli-Palmarini (professor of cognitive science at the University of Arizona) are far removed from the arena of crackpot creationists. One had the impression that they were thoughtless renegades rather than declared enemies. In any case, it was clear that it would take a talented heavyweight scholar to bring these deserters to their senses.

Fortunately, Jerry Coyne (professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago) has set himself the task of cleaning up the mess. Click the banner to read his excellent article in The Nation entitled The Improbability Pump. Before his rebuttal of the groundless ideas put forward by the philosopher and the cognitive scientist, there's a bonus: a beautiful review of The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. Please allow me to quote Coyne quoting Dawkins quoting the DNA of a tiger:

Dawkins describes selection as an "improbability pump," for over time the competition among genes can yield amazingly complex and extraordinary species. Here's how he describes the evolution of tigers:

A tiger's DNA is also a "duplicate me" program, but it contains an almost fantastically large digression as an essential part of the efficient execution of its fundamental message. That digression is a tiger, complete with fangs, claws, running muscles, stalking and pouncing instincts. The tiger's DNA says: "Duplicate me by the round-about route of building a tiger first."

Only Dawkins could describe a tiger as just one way DNA has devised to make more of itself. And that is why he is famous: absolute scientific accuracy expressed with the wonder of a child—a very smart child.

Tiger building! What a splendidly imaginative way to produce new stocks of a chemical product known as deoxyribonucleic acid...

Riverside excursion

This afternoon, it was warm enough for an excursion with Sophia to the edge of the Bourne at Pont-en-Royans. Seeing me getting ready to leave the house with my Nikon, Sophia sensed that something interesting might be about to happen. She stood tensely in front of me, staring me in the eyes. I stared back at her in silence for a few seconds. Sophia realized that the absence of a negative stay-at-home order (such as "Guard the house") indicated that she was being invited along. So, she dashed outside and waited for me alongside the Citroën.

She appreciates a minimal contact with the water.

I don't know whether it might be called "swimming". I think that "cooling off" is a more honest expression.

People come here with bags of stale bread, to feed the ducks. This means that Sophia always manages to find a few chunks for a riverside snack. She has become an expert at convincing people, particularly children, that she's starving.

Are those ducks naive enough to imagine that Sophia is getting ready to throw them a bit of bread?

I think the ducks are starting to realize that Sophia won't even be leaving them a few crumbs. We bid farewell to the ducks and wander upstream to the pool beneath the cliff houses.

An optimistic angler imagined that he might find a trout lurking beneath the Picard bridge (the "pont" in the name of the village: Pont-en-Royans).

Above us, the sharp crest of the slopes marks the dividing line between Pont-en-Royans and Choranche.

Normally I'm not particularly good at leaning out over parapets to take photos, but I was enticed by this interesting view of the foundations of the ancient bridge alongside the flimsy wooden poles supporting the cliff houses.

Local people are proud to point out that these ancient dwellings have never yet slid down into the Bourne, so it's quite possible, indeed probable, that they never will. (Poor logic!)

Personally, I wouldn't be happy residing in such a scary place.

Here's a view from the other side of the bridge, looking downstream from the road that leads up to Choranche.

Sophia, still soaked (with that marvelous smell of a wet dog), scrambled into the car and we drove back to Gamone, a kilometer up the road.

Garden ready

Over the last week, I planted perennial flowers in the empty spaces between the roses and peonies in my future garden. So, I'm hoping that everything's ready to bloom soon.

I also installed a pair of water tanks of 500 liters each. That's a total capacity of a cubic meter.

I figured out that a cubic meter of water should represent a reasonable irrigation of the future garden by watering cans, in summer (when the spring will have ceased to flow), for roughly a month… depending on the weather. This enabled me to make an interesting observation. Even today, by which time the level of my spring pool up above the house has dropped considerably, it took no more than a few hours to fill the two plastic tanks by means of the narrow hose that comes down from the spring. In other words, the quantity of water that could be obtained from my spring in the course of a year is at least a thousand times greater than what my future garden might require. Even if I were to capture some of this water in an artificial pool up behind the house (which I intend to do before next winter and spring), it's inevitable that most of my spring water will overflow from this future pool and end up trickling down, wasted, into Gamone Creek.

King-sized Jesus in Oklahoma

I found this funny story in the excellent Pharyngula blog by PZ Myers [access].

The history of Catholicism is filled with magic happenings. In the case of St Francis of Assisi (the fellow who preached to birds), we encounter the phenomenon of a talking cross, shown here:

In the church of San Damiano, the image of Jesus on the cross said to Francis: "Repair my church. As you see, it is falling into a state of total ruin." Francis immediately set about repairing the actual building, but he soon realized that the words of the cross of San Damiano were to be interpreted as a metaphorical order, meaning that it was rather the ecclesiastical institution and its members that were in need of repair. So Francis finally started work on that much bigger task.

Over the centuries, the San Damiano Cross has inspired countless reproductions. The latest copy, some three meters in height, has been hung above the altar of a church in Oklahoma. And the least that can be said is that it's well hung.

This copy was executed by a local artist named Janet Jaime. She has highlighted the abdominal muscles of Jesus to such an extent that a naive observer might imagine that the King of Glory is exhibiting a king-sized erection. Needless to say, this copy has given rise to controversy among Catholic parishioners in the Oklahoma town of Warr Acres, where the church is located. The artist, though, gives the impression that she doesn't understand what the fuss is all about.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the illicit sexual behavior of certain Catholic prelates and priests. The last thing the Church needed was yet another much-publicized sex-oriented incident, particularly when it takes the form of a giant phallus emerging from the crucified body of the Lord. One can't help wondering whether this Oklahoma painting is in fact yet another element of an international conspiracy, orchestrated by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, aimed at screwing Joseph Ratzinger. And, talking about screwing, that awesome Oklahoma apparatus elicits an exclamation of admiration. In a word, as Mary Magdalene might have gasped: Jesus!

Visit of feral flock

Yesterday afternoon, since the weather was sunny, I decided to clean up my vegetable plot. Looking up towards the slopes behind my house, I was astonished to find that Gamone was being visited by the feral flock that some neighbors still refer to as "William's sheep".

Back in 2006 at Gamone, I had reduced my flock to three lambs, probably siblings. One day they strayed onto the property of my neighbor Gérard Magnat, and decided to stay there. So, those three lambs became the founders of the feral flock (ten animals at present) that has been roaming around at Gérard's place for the last three or four years. Today, I see that there's a splendid Merino ram with curled horns. I tried get close to them, but the donkeys suddenly raced up to see what was happening, and the sheep promptly took off back home. There was evidence of the places where they scramble through the barbed-wire fencing.

Upon reaching the crest of the hill that separates the valleys of Gamone and Sirouza (once called Chirouze), I looked down and discovered with surprise that the sheep had already arrived back at Gérard's place. They're familiar with the tracks, of course, but they must have done some rapid sprinting.

Since the weather was splendid, I decided to continue my excursion. It would take me twenty minutes or so to edge my way down the slopes, cross the steep and slippery banks of Sirouza Creek, and reach the old house. Taking a path that was slightly different to the one I usually follow, I came upon a fragment of an ancient stone wall that I had never noticed before (or maybe simply forgotten).

I gazed out over the precarious graveled slopes, on the far side of the valley, where I had once trudged wearily for hours, trying to locate my sheep, the first time they had escaped from Gamone.

Apparently the members of today's feral flock no longer venture up there. Gérard's brother explained to me that the animals have discovered that they've got everything a sheep needs down in the vicinity of the house: grass, creek water, hay in winter (intended primarily for Gérard's cattle) and shade in summer. I have the impression that Sirouza is indeed "better sheep country" than Gamone (for a tiny flock, of course), because there are stretches of more-or-less flat prairies where the animals can race around madly, which they seem to appreciate.

At the level of the house, I met up with Gérard's brother Jean Magnat. He told me that Gérard, now retired, had sold all his cattle. For me, it was strange that the old buildings were uncluttered by traces of agricultural activity. They seemed to be tidier, in a weird way, than I had ever seen them before... but it was undeniable that the property was moving already into the quiet and timeless state of an abandoned farm. The three women whom I used to encounter there regularly—Madame Magnat (the mother), her daughter, and Jean's wife—have died, and Sirouza is moving inexorably towards the end of an epoch.

On the way home, I noticed other sheep: four animals purchased a few months ago by Jacques, owner of the old water-mill on the Bourne, midway between Gamone and Pont-en-Royans.

I strolled alongside the stone quarry, which is still in exactly the same abandoned state as several years ago, when Tineke Bot and I devoted our energy to creating documents designed to prove that this quarry should not be reopened and enlarged. Clearly, I can conclude retrospectively that we won that tiny environmental battle.

When you turn around, so that your back faces the quarry, here's the view out over the Bourne towards the Circus of Choranche:

It's unbelievable that the ancestors of my former neighbor, the local political personality Bernard Pérazio, would have decided to set up a stone quarry at a place with a view like that! That was the way the world was, not so long ago.

Finally, I reached the simple rural signpost whose names read like the words of a magic poem that was written especially for me by a lovely muse of the mountains:

Gamone, Saint Estèphe, le Château, la Ranconnière, la Bournière, les Nugues, Campeloup, le Faucon, les Champs... What splendid old terms, evoking ancient times and places. Opposite, another signpost:

I'm almost home. From the road, there's a good view of the farms of my closest Châtelus neighbors, on the other side of the Bourne.


Finally, there's a signpost with a warning that this is not a road for heavy vehicles, and that the road can't really take you beyond Gamone (which is not exactly true).

On this sunny afternoon, the feral flock provided me with an excellent pretext for making a delightful excursion through places that I know fairly well... which doesn't prevent me from feeling that I rediscover them every time I go out on such a walk. And, talking about sheep, on my way back up towards the house (where I had imprisoned my dog Sophia, so that she wouldn't disturb the sheep), I passed alongside the place where it all started.

That sheep shed is surely one of my finest constructions at Gamone. It's a pity that the former occupants seem to have abandoned it forever.

Hats

My sister Susan sent me this photo that she has just discovered in Mullumbimby, in northern New South Wales, where she now lives.

It shows members of the Mullumbimby Agricultural Society Committee of 1909. In the middle of the front row, the man with a white beard is Patrick Walker [1845-1941]. He was a brother of our great-grandfather Charles Walker [1851-1918]. They were both born in the notorious gold and bushranger territory of Braidwood, and this is the first photo I've ever seen of any relative of that generation.

Beneath the photo, a caption identifies all 27 men in the photo. It provides us, too, with the names of three committee members who happened to be absent when this photo was taken. To my mind, that could be a trivial lie. Those three fellows weren't really absent. The truth of the matter is that they weren't allowed to participate in the photo because they dared to turn up without hats.

My bunyip has broken a leg

In the following photo, I refer to the beige stones on the right, propped up against the wall of my house, as my bunyip. (Some readers might not know that bunyips are mythical Australian beasts respected by Aborigines. These creatures inhabit murky water holes and creeks called billabongs.) To the left of the big bunyip, there's a baby bunyip.

My dog often detects the smell of a lizard hiding in the narrow space between the big slab of rock and the wall.

Sophia is disgusted to think that our bunyip might use its mass and power to protect a cowardly lizard. Besides, if Sophia ever traps such a lizard as it emerges into the open air, she punishes the reptile (the lizard, not the bunyip) with instant death.

Well, this morning, as I was taking these photos, I noticed a wide crack in the bunyip's hind leg. And, when I rolled over the block of rock, I was sad to see that it had split into two fragments.

This local variety of marlstone (called marne in French) is relatively fragile. When moisture in cracks turns to ice, and then melts rapidly as a consequence of a sudden rise in temperature, a rock can split just as cleanly as if it had been struck by a stonemason's chisel.

Talking about bunyips, I've been looking into the idea of using this mythological beast as a metaphor for the countless mysterious "things" in which humans, over the centuries, have believed... without ever coming up with firm evidence for their existence. For a legendary bunyip to earn recognition as a real creature, all that is necessary is a validated sighting. In other words, it's relatively simple to prove empirically that a particular bunyip exists. For example, these photos prove beyond doubt that my marlstone bunyip with a broken leg exists just as truly as Sophia and I exist. On the other hand, it remains logically impossible to ever prove that a particular bunyip—such as God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster—does not exist. And that's why people can continue calmly to believe in bunyips until the end of time.

French website on medieval Latin parchments

After years of refusal, the people in charge of the archives of the Sassenage family finally gave me an authorization, a week or so ago, to publish copies of some of their medieval parchments on the web. Click the following image to visit my new website, which is in French.

Click the fourth line of the menu to see a sample of a few lines of one of the six parchments.

I'm expected to keep an eye on requests to examine the files of the parchments, so I've installed a password device. If any readers of this blog happen to be particularly interested in accessing the 59 folios available through my website, please let me know.

The purpose of this website, as I've explained at length to the person in charge of the Sassenage archives, is to find a scholar (maybe at the Sorbonne) who would be prepared to accept a contract to transcribe (into typewritten documents) and translate (into French) these six terriers (land registers drawn up for a feudal lord) describing Sassenage lands in the Royans. Personally, of course, I'm interested most of all in the parchment concerning Choranche, since it contains a description of my property at Gamone (known then as Chaléon) in the middle of the 14th century.

Tempest in Rome

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And—like the baseless fabric of this vision —
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

OK, it's still wishful thinking... but the end is near, the clowns will soon be discarding their funny robes, and the grand circus will be closing down. The writing is on the wall.

When spades were called spades

The other day, my ex-neighbor Bob called in to pick up his mail. He was driven here by his female companion. Bob had a broken collar-bone as a consequence of riding his bike into an oncoming tractor, so he was incapable of driving. To my mind, Bob, a former champion rugby player, is indeed the sort of guy who would be capable of plowing his bike into a tractor. He probably imagined the vehicle, for a split second, as an attacking player... and he automatically tackled it.

I talked to them about the disappointing Plowmen's Feast at St-Jean-en-Royans [display]. At one point in our conversation, I exclaimed that this event used to be fun when there were floats manned by inmates of the two local mental asylums (in St-Laurent-en-Royans). All of a sudden, realizing that Bob and his companion are employed in these institutions, I imagined that I might be using offensive language: "You professional people surely don't talk any longer of mental patients." Bob's companion replied: "Effectively, the administration asks us to refer to them as X, whereas we employees, talking among ourselves, call them Y." Here, X was a verbose expression, which I've forgotten, along the lines of "individuals with an exceptional cerebral state", whereas Y was more like "dingbats".

In the context of my genealogical research, I've just been consulting the UK census for 1911. On the left, you see the heading of the final column on the census form, which was filled in by a state employee referred to as an enumerator. In the copies of the census results that are available online today, entries in this column have simply been erased by big white rectangles.

I'm not basically opposed to politically-correct language, although many specimens of NiceTalk strike me as rather stupid. Personally, I tend to not get excited about such matters.

Chirac style of handling rumors

An Australian article sent to me by my old friend Bruce Hudson was my first encounter with rumors about Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni [display]. There was however a basic error in that article when it evoked "the French media in a frenzy over speculation the singer and her husband are both having extra-marital affairs". The truth of the matter was that the rumor hadn't really surfaced at all in France at that time, so nobody was in a frenzy. Today, it's the president and his entourage (including his wife) who are in a frenzy trying awkwardly to quell tardily this storm in a presidential teacup. And they're simply not doing a very good job of stamping out this silliness. Sarkozy's weak point (his Achilles heel) is emotions. He never stops getting bowled over by emotional matters, which often get the better of his intellectual powers. Consequently, we cannot exclude the possibility that the people who launch rumors such as this are indeed smart guys who know exactly how to lead the president into a sticky mess.

This fellow, named Pierre Charon, is in charge of communications at the Elysées Palace. It goes without saying that he's a little upset by the apparently empty rumors that have been circulating throughout the world about the president and his wife. As for Pierre Charon, he's convinced that these rumors are part of a conspiracy. Funnily enough, back at the time when Jacques Chirac was the mayor of Paris, Pierre Charon was handling communications at the city hall. The weekly Nouvel Observateur of 29 September 2009 related a lovely anecdote revealing the art of Chirac in the face of rumors. The mayor found himself face-to-face with his director of communications at a cocktail party.

Chirac : "Monsieur Charon, I want you to accompany me back to the city hall."

Charon : "Certainly, Monsieur le Maire."

The two men got into the mayor's official automobile.

Chirac : "Monsieur Charon, I want you to do me a favor."

Charon : "Certainly, Monsieur le Maire."

Chirac : "I would like you to stop spreading gossip about my daughter Claude getting into bed with every guy in Paris." There was a long silence, then Chirac tapped his driver on the shoulder, saying: "Monsieur Charon will be getting out at the next red traffic light."

Jacques Chirac was a classy gentleman, so different to screaming Sarko, who wears his boring heart on his shoulder.

POST SCRIPTUM: Happily, in French, there's a nice succinct way of saying "I don't give a screw". The magic French formula for expressing explicitly one's near-to-zero concern for the private life of the president and his first lady: "Je m'en fous."

Humor and age

I think it's good when people who are getting on in years retain a vibrant sense of humor. That's the case for my neighbor Madeleine, for example, who still gets a kick out of playing pranks. At the recent dinner for senior citizens of Choranche [display], Madeleine offered me the glass of white wine that had been poured out for her husband, who no longer drinks alcohol. Seeing that I appreciated this liquor, Madeleine soon got around stealthily to placing no less than three similiar glasses on the table in front of me. Tackling the first one, I discovered that Madeleine had simply filled empty glasses with water. That's a typically innocent prank that delights Madeleine... and I'm convinced that this kind of juvenile fun plays a part in preventing her from ever growing old. The other aspect of Madeleine's behavior that endears her to me is her taste for gossip, and tales about neighbors. That too prevents Madeleine, I'm sure, from growing old in spirits. How can you possibly accept the effects of aging when you still have so many wicked anecdotes to relate concerning folk in the commune? That kind of preoccupation necessitates an alert mind and, above all, an alert tongue. Besides, in the case of Madeleine, I'm joking when I use the adjective "wicked" to describe her anecdotes, because the amazing thing about the gossip of Madeleine (who has remained a fervent Catholic, imbued with pious and charitable intentions) is that her words could never even hurt a church mouse. It's an art of kindhearted tale-telling that Madeleine no doubt acquired and practiced over a period of decades, when she was running single-handed an old-fashioned grocery shop in the main street (well, you could almost say the only street) of Pont-en-Royans.

Personally, I've always liked to drag along with me a certain sense of humor, without ever knowing with certainty whether it might or might not be shared by those with whom I happen to be in contact... such as readers of this blog, for example. I consider, rightly or wrongly, that there's no better place for joking than in those modern tabernacles of society that are our supermarkets, both tiny and gigantic. I've considered for ages that the authentic reincarnation of the Vestal Virgins of Antiquity are the supermarket cashiers, particularly those whose smile and words would appear to be made out of plastic. (I'm joking unfairly. I've often been totally infatuated by certain local supermarket cashiers who have appeared to me as Martian nymphs within our consumer society.)

This afternoon, at the small supermarket in St-Jean-en-Royans, my shopping list was short, comprising merely two items: a glass bottle of white wine and a plastic bottle of bleach.

At a financial level, this transaction cost little, and I should have kept my mouth shut instead of wasting the time and intellectual energy of the Martian virgin who served me. But my extrovert behavior was encouraged, I know, by a silly anecdote that has always intrigued me.

The great French TV personality Léon Zitrone once came near to death when he got up in the middle of the night, feeling thirsty during a stay at his daughter's place in the country, and downed a bottle of bleach. This story has marked me indelibly, but in a funny illogically-backwards way. Whenever my daughter drops in at Gamone, I make sure robotically that there's no bleach (or avocados, for that matter) hanging around in the refrigerator...

Be that as it may, I felt mirthful, this afternoon, when I approached the Intermarché virgin with my two bottles.

William (tongue-in-cheekishly): Remind me, please. Which is the one for cleaning my sink?

Supermarket virgin (seriously, indicating the plastic bottle of bleach): This one, Sir.

William (pointing to the bottle of Alsatian wine, and wishing to appear more stupid than ever): So, I shouldn't use this...

Supermarket virgin (realizing that she's confronted by a terrible Alzheimer case): No, Sir, it would be silly to clean your sink with this fine wine.

William (realizing that his joke has backfired): OK, I must be careful.

Fortunately, the woman behind me in the queue burst out laughing. She, at least, would be a potential Facebook friend, or maybe even (who knows?) an Antipodes blog follower.

What we need is some kind of tangible smiley badge that could be worn by old humorists like me when we queue up, to pay, in supermarkets. Instead of identifying my political clan, my social affinities or my ethnicity (as was the case for the disgusting yellow star imposed upon French Jews during the frightful Pétain era), the badge would warn people: This silly old bugger is a dangerous joker.