Roadside encounter

The day before yesterday (Wednesday), I ran into a South African couple, Andrew and Brenda, at the petrol station attached to the local supermarket in St-Jean-en-Royans. They were driving a luxurious Fiat camping car, with German license plates, and wanted to find a cylinder of propane gas for their stove. And this product didn't happen to be stocked by this supermarket. Since it was nearly 7 o'clock in the evening, there was little chance that any other stores would be open. So, I suggested that they might follow me back to my place where, if they ran out of gas, they could always use my kitchen to prepare their evening meal. As things turned out, they did not run out of gas, and actually invited me to share their fine dinner (prepared in the camping van), seated in the warm semi-darkness in front of my house.

They told me that they were thinking of selling their bed-and-breakfast business in South Africa, and setting up a guest house somewhere in Europe. So, they were keen to see what kind of possibilities existed around here. Yesterday morning, I took them along to the excellent guest house in St-Jean-en-Royans operated by Roger Dunne (a former UK cyclist) and his wife Teresa. They've done up an old water-mill on the edge of the village, and transformed it into a high-quality base for visitors who can go out bike-riding in some of the most magnificent landscapes that cyclists could ever imagine.

[Click the photo to visit the website of Roger and Teresa]

When Andrew and Brenda finally drove off (heading up towards the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse), they had several good contacts with local real estate possibilities.

Quintessence of a silly old bugger

This charming 89-year-old American guy, Harold Camping, speaks slowly with a deep monotone voice, which might even lead naive folk to imagine that the old fellow knows what he's talking about. But that would be a big mistake. Harold Camping appears to me as a splendid anthropological specimen: the quintessence of a silly old bugger. An extraordinarily silly old bugger. And God knows, he's competing in a field where there are countless contenders for the title.

I don't intend to waste time mentioning the many stupidities that have come forth from Camping during his long and prolific existence. I'll merely describe the latest in date. The SOB [silly old bugger] is proclaiming, to all who wish to listen, that exceptional events will be taking place next May 21. There will be a great earthquake, of an intensity never known before on the planet. And truly Christian believers—including, if all goes well, the SOB himself—will be "raptured". That's fuckwit talk for flying upwards into the sky, headed for Heaven. Exactly 153 days after that initial happening, the entire universe will disappear.

Needless to say, the SOB has convinced countless followers to believe in his bullshit. Often, those who are prosperous are liquidating their properties and other assets, and sending the cash to the SOB, to provide him with financial resources enabling him to disseminate still further, urgently, his apocalyptic message.

If ever the SOB still happened to be hanging around unharmed on the morning of May 22, he would be the laughingstock of the entire nation. If this were the case, I propose that he should stack his dollars into a huge trunk and jump onto a plane to Pakistan, where he would be able to invest in a charming little property in Abbottabad, recently vacated and now up for sale. It's a perfect home away from home, with "live and let live" neighbors (reputed for keeping their noses out of other people's business), where Harold would be able to spend his remaining days (until the next-scheduled rapture) in peace and tranquility.

Freedom of speech

To encounter a dramatic new sense of these three simple words, "freedom of speech", click this photo of Christopher Hitchens (suffering from cancer) and read his splendid article entitled Unspoken Truths.

Hitchens spoke of the awesome song If it be your will by Leonard Cohen. You can cut the publicity at the start.

I can understand why many Hitchens well-wishers find inspiration in this beautiful song (prayer) by Cohen.

Three decades ago in Paris

At 8 o'clock in the evening on 10 May 1981, this is the TV image that informed us that the new president of the Fifth Republic was a Socialist, François Mitterrand.

Revelers soon took over the Place de la Bastille in Paris. Here is one of the rare surviving photos of that wonderful evening:

I myself was lost in the middle of that huge throng. People flocked there spontaneously. Ever since the French Revolution in 1789, it has been a sacred spot for the People of the Left. It was an astonishing evening. People found it hard to realize that Mitterrand, who had been defeated in several presidential elections, was finally victorious. During those first few hours, nobody worried too much about possible political problems that might lie ahead. The citizens merely bathed in the euphoria of their momentous electoral victory.

The celebrations at the Bastille took the form of an impromptu evening of singing and dancing. There was a makeshift stage on which various singers and other celebrities appeared from time to time. In a way, I think that everybody was half-expecting that Mitterrand himself would soon be there in front of us, in the warm air of a May evening in Paris. Instead, we were greeted with thunder, lightning and a deluge of rain. God Himself had dropped in on us, to join in the victory celebrations.

Portrait of dogs

I shot this video clip this morning, at the top of the stone staircase (which I built last year) leading down into my flower garden. Sophia, constantly impatient, is letting me know that she's not particularly keen on posing in front of a camera. So, she wants me to hurry up. Fitzroy, on the other hand, seems to like being treated as a video star.

Australian award for Julian Assange

The Sydney Peace Foundation, founded within the context of the University of Sydney, makes an international award known as the Sydney Peace Prize.

The City of Sydney is a major supporter of this prize, in particular at a financial level.

The gold medal of the Sydney Peace Foundation will be awarded to Julian Assange on 10 May 2011 in London. The citation is "for exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights". The director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Stuart Rees, says:

"By challenging centuries old practices of government secrecy and by championing people’s right to know, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have created the potential for a new order in journalism and in the free flow of information. Instead of demonizing an Australian citizen who has broken no law, the Australian Government must stop shoring up Washington’s efforts to behave like a totalitarian state. The treatment of alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning confirms a US administration at odds with their commitment to universal human rights and intent on militaristic bullying."

French Eurovision candidate

Maybe, in proposing Amaury Vassili—a smart young good-looking candidate with a marvelous tenor voice—France is playing with fire. If ever we were to win, it would be disastrously expensive for the République. [The winning nation has to organize, host and foot the bill for the following year's contest. Consequently, observers have often said that France has always been quite content not to win.]

Here is my rough English-language version of the lyrics, based upon a translation of the Corsican into French:

Dream

I dream of those lips
of that soft pure voice
Above all, I remember you
And that night beside you

I dream, I weep in sorrow
In my heart, spring has gone
In my life, I await tomorrow
Kneeling, gazing at the sea

I shared the world with you
But you did not wish to join me
I would have sung in victory
Far away from you, I still find you
close to me, and I dream of you

I would have sung, it was your song
The song of you and me
I am so weary now that
I ask the heavens to let me die
on a summit, where I would be facing you
where I would awake from this dream
If you die, then take me with you

Disillusioned dog

What I don't like about this video is the idea that a master might tease his dear dog in such a sensitive domain as food. What I do like is the dog's accent and slurred style of speaking. To my mind, that's exactly how dogs would talk.

This particular dog reminds me immediately of my Sophia, who really loves food. For Fitzroy, on the other hand, food is often a kind of afterthought. He eats when he feels that he's got nothing better to do.

Moving ahead

The quality of relations between France and New Zealand sank to an all-time low after the incident of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985. Today, judging from the volume of legs of New Zealand lamb in French supermarkets, business seems to be moving ahead.

The rest of this blog post is based upon an interesting French-language article of 6 May 2011 by Frédéric Lewino in Le Point [access].

Tomorrow morning, in the French city of Rouen, two women—a French member of parliament, Valérie Fourneyon, mayoress of Rouen, and New Zealand's ambassador to France, Rosemary Banks—will be coming together for a strange ceremony. The lady from the Antipodes will be taking custody of the tattooed head of an anonymous Maori warrior that has been reposing for 136 years in the local museum of natural history.

So-called moko face tattoos, indicating the genealogy of noble individuals, were a part of ancient Maori culture. The tattooed heads of deceased warriors—referred to as mokomai—were kept as precious relics. Following the arrival in New Zealand of the English navigator James Cook, the marketing of mokomai became a thriving business, enabling the Maoris to acquire European weapons. Apparently the very first purchaser of a moko was Joseph Banks, Cook's naturalist companion. The market value of these objects rose to such a level that certain unscrupulous indigenous communities did not hesitate to capture slaves, tattoo their faces with meaningless junk, kill and decapitate these victims, and transform their heads into highly-priced fake mokomai.

The phenomenon was brought to an end in the middle of the 19th century, but specimens were displayed, by then, in many of the world's great museums. There was even a famous private collector, a British soldier named Horatio Robley [1840-1930], seen here in a photo that dates from about a century ago.

Is there some kind of "moral logic" in returning such objects to their land of origin, New Zealand? Personally, I fail to appreciate why this is being done. These mummified hunks of DNA don't "belong" to today's indigenous population of New Zealand in any objective sense whatsoever. It's not as if the victims were abducted recently, and the absence of their bodily remains were preventing their Antipodean descendants from attenuating their grief. And, if anybody were to suggest that a moko head in some far-flung corner of the world contained an ethereal spirit (not to be confused with the head's DNA) that was yearning to return to the company of its descendants in New Zealand, I would be tempted to reply: "How sad. Too bad."

That's to say, maybe the heads should never have been severed in the first place. But, since they now exist, and since anthropologists and other people find them interesting, it would be silly to invoke supernatural reasons for putting them in one place rather than another, or doing one thing with them (exhibiting them) rather than another (say, burying them in the earth of New Zealand). Obviously, I would not talk this way if ever I were convinced that there are serious folk out in New Zealand who are genuinely upset, in an intense emotional manner, by the fact that mokomai are scattered throughout the world. And, when I speak of "serious folk", I'm obliged to exclude simple-minded individuals who believe in ancient spirits.

No community, of course, neither here in France nor elsewhere, would ever think of appointing a guy like me to handle questions of tattooed Maori heads. Fortunately, therefore, what I have to say on this subject is of negligible importance.

More than just a black-and-white affair

This informative and moving evocation of the history of the production of crossword puzzles is a tribute to outstanding figures in that industry, some of whom might be thought of as great artists.

[animation by Michael A Charles]

The narrator, Garson Hampfield (a retired inker in a crossword design team), has given credit to most of the major creators in that vast and ancient domain. I'm a little disappointed, though, that he made no mention of the Phoenicians, who invented the alphabet. And he might have put in just a tiny word for the fundamental role of Euclid, too, who invented the straight line (defined as the shortest distance between two points). Try to produce a crossword puzzle without using straight lines, and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Damnable opulence

Long ago, when I had just arrived in France and was working with IBM, a French colleague told me a trivial parable that illustrates perfectly a fundamental difference in mentality between the French and Americans. In the USA, when a humble working citizen sees a rich man driving by in a fabulous automobile, he says to himself, inevitably: "What must I do in order to own a vehicle like that?" In France, in a similar situation, the humble working citizen is likely to say to himself: "Why the hell is that son of a bitch parading around in a flashy vehicle instead of driving a cheap old car like the rest of us?" Well, the following banal photo has provided a pretext for demonstrating that this mentality still exists in France, indeed more than ever… no doubt as a reaction to the bling-bling behavior of the present president.

We see Dominique Strauss-Kahn—current president of the IMF [International Monetary Fund]—and his wife Anne Sinclair about to step into a Porsche driven by their friend Ramzi Khiroun. This photo was taken on 28 April 2011 in front of the Parisian residence of the Strauss-Kahn couple, who have been living in Washington over the last three and a half years.

So, what's so exceptional about this photo? It is becoming more and more apparent that DSK (as he's generally called in France) will in fact be stepping down soon from his IMF job in order to become a candidate of the Parti socialiste in next year's French presidential election. And voting-opinion polls have indicated that DSK is highly likely to win. In other words, that left-wing individual seen stepping into a black Porsche could well be the future president of the French République. And that's why many French people have been annoyed by that photo. Why? Well, it's morally wrong for a leftist Frenchman to move around Paris in a luxury automobile! The photo transmits an incoherent message of the way in which a leftist presidential candidate should be behaving. It would have been infinitely better to see the Strauss-Kahn couple (who, in fact, are quite wealthy) catching a cab, or maybe even stepping into the Paris métro.

Political anecdote. During the 1974 presidential election (mentioned in my previous post, about the red Coluche roses), the journalist Françoise Giroud embarrassed Valéry Giscard d'Estaing by asking him if he knew the current price of a métro ticket. He had no idea, in fact, but that didn't prevent him from being elected. On the other hand, his haughty aloofness with respect to the realities of the ordinary people's existence probably played a role in Giscard's defeat in 1981. In any case, ostentatious signs of wealth (particularly when the wealth in question is basically money-based and recently-acquired) can be a handicap for would-be political leaders in France.

A rose by any other name

The names given to varieties of roses don't necessarily mean much. But one of the roses I planted in 2009 has a name that means a lot, not only to me, but to countless ordinary French people. Called Coluche, it's one of the first roses in my garden to bloom.

Michel Colucci, known to everybody as Coluche, was an inimitable French comedian who died in a motor-cycle accident, a quarter of a century ago (at a time when I was out in Western Australia).

He rose to fame instantaneously, on the evening of 19 May 1974, an hour or so after Valéry Giscard d'Estaing won the presidential election. TV viewers were awaiting the reactions of the defeated candidate, François Mitterrand, who was running late. To prevent viewers from becoming impatient, the TV host called upon a little-known 29-year-old stand-up comic, Coluche. His drawn-out sketch, L'histoire d'un mec (Story of a bloke), not only filled in time, but literally went down in history. Coluche lived just the street from my place in Paris, and I used to see him regularly seated outside his favorite bistrot with his fellow-comedians from the nearby Café de la Gare.

The famous sketch about a bloke can only be understood by French-speakers, and Coluche's style of humor is so special that it's almost impossible to even outline the gist of the sketch. But I've included it here for any nostalgic Coluche admirers among my readers.

Coluche is remembered by his compatriots as the founder of a great charitable organization, Restos du Cœur (Restaurants of the Heart), which hands out countless meals to people in need throughout France.

In a month's time, on 19 June 2011, France will be commemorating the 25th anniversary of the death of Coluche. By then, sadly, the blood-red roses will have disappeared, like Coluche.

Software tool goes to court

This is great news for those of us who've grown accustomed, over the years, to the excellent software tool called FreeHand, which I mentioned in my article of October 2010 entitled First, find an old Mac [display]. A lobby group named Free FreeHand has been set up, in the hope of preventing the Adobe corporation from allowing the tool to become extinct.

Well, this organization has actually filed an antitrust lawsuit against Adobe, in the northern district of California.

Onlookers who use neither FreeHand nor Illustrator—that's to say, people who never need to create sophisticated computer graphics—are likely to imagine this conflict as a storm in a teacup. But that would be a big mistake. It's a showdown between an arrogant monopolistic corporation and its customers, past, present and maybe future. Adobe decided unilaterally that it would be better (for Adobe, that is) if there were only one product, Illustrator. So, the corporation has been blithely suggesting to FreeHand enthusiasts that they drop their familiar drawing tool and change to Illustrator. Now, this is often an unrealistic suggestion, because you simply cannot obtain identical results with the two products, and people don't want to be faced with the task of redoing in Illustrator—supposing this were feasible—all the stuff they've mastered in FreeHand.

Let me tell you a trivial anecdote. Many years ago, after working as a sailor for a few months on a Greek cargo ship (which took me as far as Kuwait) and then a British tanker, I got back in contact with Europe at Rotterdam. Funnily, after the relative solitude and austerity of the big vessels, I was somewhat irritated by my rediscovery of an urban environment, which struck me as "soft" and superficial. (This attitude lasted for some 24 hours before I returned to a normal state of mind.) In a bar alongside the port, I found myself standing next to an American tourist, a guy in his fifties, who asked (in English) for a Coke. The friendly but naive Dutch barman dared to offer the American customer a glass of an unidentified brown liquid that came from the tap of a drink fountain that couldn't be seen from where we were standing. From his first sip, the American reamlized that it wasn't pure Coca-Cola, and he snarled furiously at the barman: "Hey, fellow, I'm an American and, when I ask for Coca-Cola, I mean Coca-Cola!" Then he stormed out of the bar. Now, if I think of that incident, it's because I see Adobe, today, as trying to persuade Coke drinkers throughout the world that they should switch to another beverage. The proposed beverage, brown and bubbly, might look a bit like Coke, and taste a bit like Coke… but it just ain't Coke! In any case, the idea of bringing the FreeHand affair to a court of law is fascinating, because it's probably one of the first of citizens asserting their right to carry on using a piece of software of their own choosing. It's truly a religious issue!

Joan Baez sings an Australian song

The ballad entitled And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda was written in 1971 by Eric Bogle, a Scotsman who had emigrated to Australia in 1969. I heard it soon after, and often used to sing it, late of an evening, accompanying myself on the guitar, at Le Petit Gavroche in the Marais district of Paris. The Joan Baez version dates from 2008.

The haunting female voice is surprising in the case of a soldier's song, like certain illustrations in the video, but the overall result is impressive.

America's gift to Japan

The time-honored French TV show called Culture Pub appears to have huge archives of all the publicity-oriented video stuff produced throughout the world. They found this little gem from the 1980s in which a US corporation congratulates itself proudly on being so kind as to have sold nuclear reactors to Tepco in Japan. Today, I can imagine the Japanese bowing politely and crying out with a single voice: "Thank you, General Electric!"

The French-language subtitle at the beginning states: "Tokyo has been equipped with the safest reactors in the world." In French, that kind of offering is referred to as a poisoned gift.

Do-it-yourself Golgotha

I was intrigued by a short news item in this morning's French media. In South Korea, police found the dead body of a 58-year-old taxi-driver, known for his extreme Christian piety. His hands and feet were nailed to a wooden cross. Police determined that the poor fellow had died during the Easter weekend. He was attired in a loincloth, with a crown of thorns on his head. Forensic examinations revealed that, prior to his death, he had been flogged with a whip. On his right-hand side, a deep stab wound had probably precipitated his death. The article states explicitly that "the police are trying to determine whether the man actually crucified himself". But they do not exclude the possibility that other individuals might have played a role in the man's death.

The aspect of the police approach that fascinates me is the idea that it might have been a do-it-yourself crucifixion. That raises an obvious question: How could a man, all alone, nail his own hands and feet to a cross? A possible answer to this enigma is provided by a video ad (amusing, but not particularly brilliant) promoting the use of condoms.

If my hypothesis were correct, and the police were to find a discarded hammer that might have been used to do the nailing, they should realize that there would be no point in examining the tool for fingerprints. Prickprints, maybe…

Breton sailors

A few weeks ago, I spoke of the beautiful maiden named Nolwenn [display] who lives deep in a dark forest somewhere in Brittany, surrounded by fairies. Happily she emerges from time to time, to sing ancient songs that she learned from her Celtic ancestors, many of whom were seafarers. On such occasions, her singing enchants the local peasant kids, who gather spellbound around the princess. This lilting song, in the archaic Breton language, celebrates three sailors.

Talking of Breton sailors, many of them used to go out to Australia. In 1882, one of them, a 16-year-old fellow named Guillaume Le Queniat, actually liked Melbourne so much that he jumped ship there.

I would imagine that the Izel was a navy brig. (The expression Breizh Izel designates the westernmost territory known as Lower Brittany, where Breton was the only language used by the local folk.) Today, a descendant of the sailor lives out in Australia [genealogical website], and he still has relatives in the region of Plouha, on the northern coast of Brittany. The story of this Breton sailor was brought to my attention by my son, whose house is located on the clifftops, just up the lane from the ancestral home of Guillaume Le Queniat.

Grapevines and walnut trees

In my article of 20 November 2010 entitled Wine of a kind [display], I evoked the Herbemont variety of US grapevines, which was one of the six varieties imported into France towards the end of the 19th century, for grafting in the hope of halting the catastrophic Phylloxera invasion. Here at Choranche, cunning landowners got around to using this Vitis americana plant, not for grafting, but to make a would-be "wine", as if it were a genuine variety of Vitis vinifera, which it was not. Today, the production of beverages from these six American "grape weeds" (Herbemont, Noah, Clinton, Jacquez, Isabelle and Othello), thought to be unfit for human consumption, is prohibited by law, and has almost ceased to exist. On the other hand, French authorities concerned with varieties of grapevines informed me last year that they know next to nothing about the exotic Herbemont plant, and they would like to inspect the specimens growing (apparently) at Gamone. I promised them that I would make an effort to prevent my donkeys from devouring the precious vines. So, I fenced of the area where Hippolyte Gerin, half a century ago, planted his famous Herbemont. Here's a first resurgence of the delicate reddish Herbemont leaves:

There are a dozen or so visible plants, and I've started to clean up the ground around some of them:

Meanwhile, the walnut trees of Gamone have donned themselves in colorful leaves, as if to welcome the warmness.

Sometimes, I think of my humble walnuts, not as trees, but as clockwork machines. They obey the seasons precisely, minutely, as if they were programmed… which, of course, they are, like everything else in the Cosmos.

Their hues are tender and fleeting, like the warm phantom of Spring that has deigned to move over Gamone. They are old, too, my Gamone walnut trees… like me. I love and respect them.

Fanette and Fitzroy, friends

These photos indicate clearly that Fanette and Fitzroy are friends. Very good friends. Did we really need proof? Look at the way they're staring fondly into each other's eyes.

They're a little reluctant, however, to let the wide world know that this relationship exists. They're modest. Maybe they themselves are not quite sure yet that it's a genuine love affair. Don't forget that even Kate and William spent a decade together before taking the big step. Meanwhile, Fitzroy has been edging cautiously his big wet tongue into the vicinity of Fanette's tender pale snout, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if actual contacts had already been made.

Video talk for bloggers

I recorded this video talk on Sunday afternoon, before the amazing US raid on the Bin Laden compound in Pakistan. It's essentially an experimental project, enabling me to know what's involved in using the camera as a blogging tool. Incidentally, I screwed up my mention of two well-known software products. My video editing tool on the Macintosh was Final Cut Express version 4.0.1 (not the Pro product, as I said mistakenly). And the browser that doesn't seem to be able to handle HTML5 is, of course, Internet Explorer, not Express. Also, as with quite a few English words, I'm simply not sure how people pronounce the verb "beatify" (which I can nevertheless pronounce perfectly well in French). The truth of the matter is that I hardly ever listen to English-language TV, and I've become rusty concerning my spoken mother tongue.