Ghoulish Catholics

I've never understood why Catholics are so obsessed by blood and guts, as if the Creator had been particularly concerned by human anatomy. Well, yes, I do understand. We humans are obviously interested in such matters, because we often have to spend time getting bodily repairs carried out. So it's normal that we imagine the Creator being interested in the same messy meat as us. And other believers in magic can be more obsessed still.

Saint Padre Pio was a Capuchin friar (an offshoot of the Franciscans) who suffered constantly from an exotic bodily affliction that believers call stigmata. His hands displayed spontaneous flesh eruptions that reminded observers of the wounds inflicted upon their alleged hero of ancient times known as Jesus, about whom modern historians know next to nothing.

Well, preserved parts of the dead monk's internal organs have been placed in a plastic box, and they're currently being transported to places in America. Ghoulish pilgrims are coming out in droves. It's not often that they're offered a fleeting view (?) of a few pieces of relatively well-conserved meat.

I was better off sleeping

I don't suspect that many people in France stayed up late into the night to watch this debate. We've got far more interesting local stuff to see on TV, in prime hours. The New Yorker suggested recently that Hillary Clinton might have been seriously studying self-control.

In the case of such debates, there has to be a winner, otherwise it's not good entertainment. It appears that Hillary won by a big margin.

Click here to view a short talk between a French-speaking journalist and Oliver Stone, who sees the Clinton/Trump affair as a choice between the plague and cholera, between a warmonger and a madman.

Behavioral differences between members of the same family

In my post yesterday entitled Mongrel genes, I spoke of a curious change of behavior between a recent Skyvington father and his son. Well, no matter how hard I try to follow up this question on the web, I simply cannot understand how enormous behavioral differences might affect members of a single family. Explanations evoke inevitably the question of nature versus nurture. But I still fail to grasp the reasons why members of my own family group appear to be so different.

I grew up essentially in the same environment—indeed, in the same houses—as my brother and sisters, in simple rural settings, in similar educational contexts and social circles. But I have the impression that I evolved in totally different directions to my siblings. I often feel that I was "hit by a dose of mongrel genes", which have made me a very different individual to my siblings. For the moment, I simply fail to understand how these differences could have come about. I continue to believe, rightly or wrongly, that they were differences of nature rather than of nurture. But this opinion could well be erroneous.

In any case, I have no recollections of ever getting involved in "philosophical" discussions with specific adults, be they teachers or religious folk. The only individual whose remarks often sent shivers up my spine was my maternal grandmother, whom we called Grandma. She often analyzed critically the personality of my father, suggesting that he was what we might call "bipolar", constantly alternating between one kind of behavior and its opposite. Grandma used a mixed-up metaphor, saying that "the worm would turn". I think he meant that Dad was capable of abruptly reversing his personality. It's a metaphor that even Shakespeare used, but nobody knows its exact origins. Somebody suggests that the worm was a dragon, and that his "turning" simply meant that the beast was no longer about to attack us.

Grandma had lost her beloved husband Charles Walker [1882-1937] when he was still a relatively young man.

I often felt that this premature departure of her husband had destabilized the poor lady, and caused her to adopt a constantly harsh outlook on human existence. Grandma would go out of her way to make me realize that my own dear mother Kath could rapidly find herself placed "in the clay up on the hill at South Grafton" (that is, the local cemetery).

In another situation, Grandma plunged me into a state of despair when I saw her reacting most negatively to the fact that Bill, Kath and our family had failed to make a point of communicating with her when we traveled on vacation up around the Northern Tablelands. Because of our failure to communicate, Grandma said that she no longer wished to hear any words about our supposedly happy holiday. This austere character existed also in her elder sister Henrietta. Besides, let us not forget that these ladies were essentially descendants of Irish Protestants.

Is it imaginable that Grandma was transforming me when I was still a child, as it were, into the objective thinker that I would soon become ? It's certainly a highly recognizable case of nurture that cannot be denied.

Air-borne witch

These photos come from the 43rd annual Icarus Cup event near Grenoble. Here we see a witch running down the slopes:

Click to enlarge slightly

And here she's floating through the air, with a skeleton hitching a ride behind her:

Australia’s preferable mate: USA or China?

The French newspaper Le Monde informs us that this crucial question has arisen Down Under. May the better mate win.

Vehicle-free zone in Paris

In Paris, air pollution is 60 times more deadly than road accidents. Every year, 2,500 Parisians die through having been exposed to atmospheric pollution, caused mainly by automobile exhausts. And that explains why the municipality of Paris is immensely proud to have announced today a new law that will transform permanently the roadway alongside the Seine into a vehicle-free zone.

This will rejuvenate the magnificent City of Light... and make it more like what it used to be when I arrived here in 1962.

Meanwhile, a fellow named Georges Pompidou arrived on the scene, and decided to transform the banks of the Seine at Paris into a highway for motor vehicles. Talking about Pompidou, I remember finding myself just behind him in the queue in a tobacco shop in Houdan around 1968. He appeared in front of me so quickly that I didn't even think of taking a selfie. But how could I? Back in those ancient times, selfies hadn't even been invented. We lived in a peaceful old rural world.

French police records

In colloquial French, a simpleton is said to be "neuneu".
The expression "Je suis neuneu" evokes "Je suis Charlie".

But the police don't necessarily see things in that light.

In French, a card created by the police to identity an individual is called a fiche. Recently, a much-talked-about new kind of police record has come into existence. It’s referred to as a fiche S (S-record), where the letter S stands for « sûreté » (security) as in the expression « atteinte à la sûreté de l’Etat » (state security threat). To call a spade a spade, while simplifying the situation abominably, anybody with an S-record is “largely” on the way to being looked upon as a terrorist threat… where the sense of my last remark depends greatly on the meaning associated with the “largely” adverb. Theoretically, an S-record should be created by French authorities for anybody who might have behaved as if he were a potential terrorist. But the inverse is not true. The fact that a certain individual is associated with an S-record does not indicate that she/he is a potential terrorist. It merely means that this person interests the police, for any of many possible reasons.

Consequently, the subject of S-records must be handled in an extremely subtle manner… which is not easy for the Australian-born author of the Antipodes blog, who knows next to nothing about French police methods. Meanwhile, the general public in France hears a lot about this new variety of police record, and it’s easy to imagine that one knows what it’s all about. But we don’t really understand anything at all, because the basic idea of sound security methods consists of making sure that they remain as enigmatic as possible. And that’s my final word on what I intended to say.... which I wish I'd never started.

Selfie imbecility

These people are turning their backs in order to take selfies with Hillary Clinton in the background. If you want my opinion (which you probably don’t), I look upon such folk as harmless idiots. I often wonder what they do with their shitty photos. I suppose they would show this selfie to equally-idiotic friends and say: “Look, that’s the closest I ever came to the wife of Bill Clinton”. I hope they’re happy to be able to survive with such shitty thoughts. If ever I were to learn that Trump started his presidential career by taking selfies of this kind, that information would provide me with a deeper understanding, both of the candidate and of American politics.

Maybe I should coin a new term: self-idiocy.

BREAKING NEWS : The more I look at this silly spectacle, the more I realize that it was no doubt Hillary herself who either organized, or agreed upon, this ridiculous demonstration of self-idiocy. In other words, Hillary is as stupid as the kids. Probably more stupid still. Media professionals in France were shocked by this silly show of backsides, and believe that it might have negative effects upon the candidate.

Gamone Press books delivered to my doorstep

The mail-woman has just delivered to my doorstep the three copies of A Little Bit of Irish that I ordered recently. Really, the self-publishing solution offered by Ingram is perfect. Bravo!

Back to Brittany

Nantes, last Saturday. Several thousand marchers were crying out for the reattachment of the Loire-Atlantique department to Brittany. [AFP] Here's an extract from Wikipedia:

Loire-Atlantique is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. Its name was changed in 1957 to Loire-Atlantique. The area is part of the historical Duchy of Brittany, and contains what many people still consider to be Brittany's capital, Nantes. However, when the system of French Regions was reviewed by the Vichy Government, the department was excluded from the Region of Brittany and included in the newly created Pays de la Loire Region. Whilst these administrative changes were reversed after the war, they were re-implemented in the 1955 boundary changes intended to optimize the management of the regions. Regular campaigns reflect a strong local mood to have the department reintegrated with Brittany.

Two big poplars at Gamone

The autumn light at Gamone is not ideal for taking a photo of trees. My old Nikon and my eyesight problems don't improve the result. But you should be able to identify the two tall poplars alongside the road leading into my property. [Click the photo to enlarge it slightly]

Often, when I gaze at those gigantic poplar trees, the terrible words of Billie Holiday flash back into my mind:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

The only nasty fruits that hang from my poplar trees are heavy branches that might be blown down onto the roof of my wood-shed or even my house. Consequently, I have decided to call upon a local specialist to remove these two trees, as soon as possible. It's possible that this operation might also destroy my letter box and/or my old cherry tree. But that's neither here nor there...

Clever fat clown

The French actor Gérard Depardieu is certainly not a fat clown, even though his bulging body often evokes a clownish sadness. I see him as an extraordinarily brilliant fellow, whose talents as an actor reflect the clarity and depth of his thoughts. Of his inherent cleverness.

Improvement of French social security

On the surface, the forthcoming improvement of the French social security system doesn’t look like a momentous achievement. But, for French citizens, it’s great news. It means that huge money-saving efforts have paid off, and that we can now live in peace, protected by this wonderful service. Thanks, Marisol Touraine, for your fine work.

I like this question

published here

Mongrel genes

Every family has a few black sheep, either in the present or in the past. Most often both. And a family historian, believing that every effect has a logical cause, is inevitably inclined to start looking around for mongrel genes: biological factors that gave rise to the existence of such-and-such a black sheep. Now, in such research, there can be both a bit of good and a lot of bad.

The very notion of a certain black sheep in the family can be frighteningly fuzzy. Relatives might think they’re acting objectively when they stigmatize a particular individual as a black sheep. Or decide rather, for that matter, to praise an exceptionally snow-white sheep. But are the relatives themselves pure merinos with an error-free sense of judgment? As for me, I prefer to believe that the supposed existence of a black sheep in the family must always be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe it’s right… but maybe it’s wrong.

The case of alleged family defects such as alcoholism is worse still. Does such-and-such a past or present member of the family drink because of inherited defects… or simply because he/she happens to have easy access to dangerous beverages? It’s far too easy and too silly to declare that there are, or have been, alcohol problems in the family. If the family historian is not perfectly sure of what is being said, then she/he should simply shut up, because false declarations are worse than no declarations at all. [The current Skyvington family historian is proud to declare—just for the record—that he hasn't tasted a drop of alcohol, or even been vaguely interested in doing so, for well over a year, since falling down the stairs at Gamone and bumping his head.]

To me, one thing is certain. Whenever family members start searching for inherited defects, they should look carefully into the terribly common phenomenon of nasty bumps to the brain. Since falling down the stairs, it has taken me a long time to get back to a state that I myself judge as normal.

At the present moment, I’ve been greatly affected by thoughts about an infamous Skyvington black sheep: my paternal great-grandfather, the crazy fellow who called himself “William Courtenay”. See my blog post here. Over the last few days, I’ve received new information from England revealing the admirable character of this fellow’s father. That renders suspicious the mad fellow’s mother, Mary Ann.

Would that poor girl, who died in Yealmpton [Devon] at the age of 21, have been responsible for the introduction of mongrel genes into the Skyvington line? That idea, though theoretically plausible, is quite unlikely, for Mary Anne Jones belonged to an honorable family of Devon, in which no known cases of insanity have been recorded.

Whichever way I look at things (and I’ve thought a lot about that mad ancestor), only one explanation satisfies me fully. Unknown to archivists in general, and Skyvington family historians in particular, my ancestor William Skyvington [1868-1959] probably ran into the same kind of accident as his future great-grandson, also known as William Skyvington. He fell down the stairs and bumped his head. If that was really what happened (and why not?), then all I can say is that I got off better than my mad ancestor. If only God existed, I would promptly thank him.

Road on top of the Great Wall of China

I've never had an opportunity of visiting the Great Wall of China. If I did, I might be surprised to find that a modern concrete roadway runs along the top.

In many modern cities, concrete has been Man's best friend, giving rise to architectural splendors. In other places, an abominable enemy.

You Want It Darker

Last Wednesday, on Leonard Cohen's 82nd birthday, he announced the forthcoming arrival of a new album, You Want It Darker, produced by his son Adam Cohen, 44. The title song is superb.

Click here for the words (with French translation)

Church Night

Pleasant US satire. It’s so well done that it could be real. The title, Church Night, is ingenious.

Belgian street art

Brussels is world-famous for its ancient Manneken-Pis.

A bigger sample of prick art has appeared recently on a Belgian wall.

Funnily enough, people apparently walk past this masterpiece without noticing it. My personal explanation is that a prick is so boring that our human visual system simply fails to acknowledge its presence.

Publisher receives copies of his book

This morning, the Choranche postman (who's replacing Martine for a while) brought me a big bag.

Inside, I found three immaculate copies of my book They Sought the Last of Lands. I had ordered them recently through the Internet from the Ingram Spark printing platform in England.

Their technical qualities are perfect: beautiful hard cover, fine illustrations (photos and ancestral charts on nearly every page), heavy paper, excellent printing. They cost me 43 euros per copy, delivered to my doorstep. That price takes into account the fact that I'm the publisher, Gamone Press. Most people would pay a little more. Regardless of the price, for people seeking solid information on the Skyvington family, my book is a convenient economic solution.