Tenorissimo

In memory of Maestro Pavarotti, this image of the evening sky in the direction of Italy, seen from my house at Gamone:

French Communist irony

One of France's oldest newspapers is the Communist daily L'Humanité, founded in 1904 by the great Socialist Jean Jaurès, who was celebrated because of his defense of Alfred Dreyfus. His pacifist views provoked his assassination by a nationalist student from Alsace-Lorraine, Raoul Villain, three days before the outbreak of World War I. At the end of this war, in which France emerged as a winner, pacifism was considered retrospectively as a misdeed. Villain was therefore liberated. The widow of Jaurès was even obliged to pay the court costs! In modern France, Jean Jaurès became a national hero, and streets and avenues bear his name from one end of France to the other.

L'Humanité, read by countless folk who don't belong to the French Communist party, has printed one of the few articles I've discovered in France concerning the start of the APEC conference in Sydney. I've translated the following tongue-in-cheek extract:

On this occasion, John Howard made an odd appeal on the Internet video platform YouTube. He asked protest groups to support the fundamental efforts made by the USA and Australia since their nonsigning, in common, of the Kyoto protocol. Protestors will surely respect Howard's electronic gesture and refrain from transforming the prime minister's environmental celebrations into a demonstration against a global economic order.

The banner of L'Humanité is beautifully cynical, in the time-honored spirit of the Parti communiste français. The US bomber is dropping teddy bears. No need for explanations. The journal's slogan is a splendid play on its name: In an ideal world, Humanity would not exist. For those who might not understand: If everything were fine in the world [meaning, among other things, that bombers would not be dropping explosive devices disguised as teddy bears], then there would be no need for a newspaper, defending the powerless innocents, such as L'Humanité. I'm in no way a Communist, but I agree.

Click the banner to see the English-language version of this great French daily newspaper.

Stadiums

A few days ago, in my article entitled Fences and walls, I evoked the use of barriers as protection, as in Sydney this week. In the modern world, there's a new kind of fortress: sporting stadiums. At the outset, it was a matter of defining an enclosed space for sporting events, making it possible to "protect" matches from those who would wish to watch them for free.

Modern stadiums, particularly for soccer matches, are faced with the additional responsibility of protecting players from certain spectators, and separating adverse spectator groups. Here's an aerial photo of the new stadium at Montpellier, to be used for Rugby World Cup matches:

During these events, France will be employing some 27,000 police officers and gendarmes. They'll be aided by 1,500 members of the armed forces, 5,000 firemen and 4,000 first-aid specialists. That sounds like a pretty solid protective barrier... even by John Howard's standards.

Paris to London by train in two hours

In London a few weeks ago, I was greatly impressed by the splendid transformation of the old St Pancras station, which will soon replace Waterloo [after 14 November] as the terminus of the Eurostar link with the Continent.

The modern rail section between the English Channel and London is referred to as High Speed 1, because it is Britain's first line capable of supporting high-speed trains of the kind that have been crisscrossing France regularly for years. This morning, a train pulverized the speed record between Paris and London. Two hours and three minutes! These two great cities are so totally different in ambience and style that it will be an amazing thrill to be able to leave one and set foot in the other a couple of hours later.

PS When I reread that last sentence I've written, I find it so trite and obvious that it almost deserves to be classed as what the French call a lapalissade. Monsieur de la Palice used to make declarations of the following kind: "No more than an hour before she died, the poor lady was perfectly alive!" A good modern example, from John Howard's Texan mate: "I think we agree: the past is over."

Gamone facelift

Since this morning, the main eastern façade of the old house is covered in steel scaffolding, and two tradesmen have started to remove the dusty mortar between the stones, using an electric percussion tool and a steel pick. They've protected all the windows and doors by covering them with heavy plastic. So, Sophia and I are cooped up inside as if were were in an air-raid shelter. And the constant din of the tools prevents me from thinking. The façade has certainly been patched up on many occasions over the last two centuries, but this is no doubt its first overall facelift.

Years ago, after purchasing the property, I watched my son and his friends removing rotten timber by tossing it out through the windows. The architects in charge of the restoration had planned that about half the inside timber would need to be replaced. As things turned out, we had to discard the totality of the old wood... except for the roof beams, which had been restored a little earlier on.

Today, we've encountered a similar situation. The fellow in charge of the facelift had imagined that about two-thirds of the old mortar would have to be removed. He has just revised his estimate. All of it will have to be replaced!

Closer than ever to a deer

Clearly, my dog Sophia smells the presence of a roe deer on the slopes opposite Gamone, and starts barking, before she actually sees the animal. An hour ago, I dashed across the creek and managed to get this photo before the deer spotted us, and disappeared into the woods.

In French, there's a lovely simple word, orée [from the Latin ora, extremity], to designate the edge of the woods, where wild animals come out to feed on the grass. There, they know that, if a danger appears, they can spring back into the safe obscurity of the woods. It's strange that this common rural term doesn't appear to have passed into English. The nasty-sounding word edge, of Germanic origins, is associated with blades of weapons.

Fences and walls

When people are terrorized (in both senses, figuratively and literally) and their imagination runs out, causing them to lose control of themselves, they build fences, hoping that the demons will remain on the other side. That's what the French did, between the two world wars, when they decided to erect the ridiculous wall of blockhouses, to the north of Metz, known as the Maginot Line:

The Nazi demons simply flowed around one end of this silly barrier.

The most notorious fence of modern times was the Berlin Wall:

Thankfully, most walls are fragile. They have weak spots. And, when a breach was finally found in the ignominious barrier between the two German peoples, the wall disappeared overnight, heralding the start of a new European era.

In Belfast, the Protestants thought of the Catholics as demons, while the Catholics applied this term to the Protestants. And people found a pretty name for the ugly barrier that cuts the city into two camps: the Peace Wall.

In the Holy Land, where a legendary wall around ancient Jericho was once shattered by a trumpet blast from Joshua, today's leaders have thought it necessary to erect a wall to keep the demons out.

In Sydney, John Howard has been so terrified by potential demons on Australian soil that he too decided to build his own little fence:

The greatest surprise with protective fences and walls is that, when they're broken down, the elements out of which they were composed can be transformed rapidly into weapons.

French energy

After months of discussions, a merger was announced this morning between two major French corporations in the energy domain: state-owned Gaz de France (the national utility handling natural gas) and part of the private group named Suez (processing of water and waste resources). The future conglomerate, to be called GDF-Suez, will be at least 35% state-owned. The final go-ahead for the proposed merger still has to be obtained from Suez shareholders, representatives of personnel and finally the European Commission. If all these authorizations are obtained, which appears likely, the merger will become a reality at some time in 2008. The new French giant will be the fourth-largest energy group in the world, following Gazprom (Russia), EDF (French electricity) and EON (Germany).

First Wallabies training session

In the new rugby stadium at Montpellier named Yves-du-Manoir, the Wallabies trained today in front of an invited crowd of 10,000 spectators. They were also seen on TV, on Saturday evening, visiting the Quai Branly Museum, near the Eiffel Tower, which has special displays concerning the arts and culture of the indigenous people in each of the countries participating in the Rugby World Cup.

Incidentally, Australian rugby fans visiting Paris might like to know that there's a so-called "rugby bar" named Café Oz at 18 Rue St-Denis, in the Halles neighborhood. [Click here to see their amusing website.]

Franco/Spanish police success

Yesterday morning, in the city of Cahors in south-west France, French police swooped upon a suburban house [the grey-walled place on the left] and arrested four alleged bomb-makers, three men and a woman, belonging to the Basque separatist group ETA. According to French and Spanish authorities, the four individuals were actually preparing an imminent attack. One of the arrested men is described as a "historical member" of ETA, which is police jargon for "a big fish".

I'm tempted to compare the calm efficiency of this combined Franco/Spanish operation with the recent fiasco in Australia concerning the "capture" of an Indian doctor suspected of abetting terrorists in the UK. Admittedly, France and Spain have a common border, whereas England and Australia lie on opposite sides of the planet.

Circus act

My billy goat Gavroche roams freely over some ten acres of grassy land, some of which he shares with my two donkeys, Moshé and Mandrin. So he can't really complain about not having enough to eat... as you can see from his roundness. But he still appreciates the freshly-cut grass of my lawn. And, as soon as he sees me coming out of the kitchen, Gavroche is reminded that he should hang around near the door, because he knows from experience that I'm likely to bring him out a dish with a few handfuls of mixed cereals. So, life at Gamone is not too unpleasant for Gavroche.

If Gavroche could talk, he would surely tell you that there's only one annoying problem here at Gamone. The sex life of this terribly horny little beast is rather miserable. I would be delighted to find him a female goat, but there would soon be a host of baby goats roaming over the slopes. So, Gavroche is forced to get his sexual thrills by attempting vainly to seduce one or other of the male donkeys... which is a pretty awkward and frustrating affair.

In fact, when the tiny animal is sexually aroused, he indulges in an amazing act, which you have to see to believe. Normally, it's not the sort of thing one would talk about in refined circles, as it were. But, since even an ex-president of the USA once had to reply publicly to highly clinical questions about his sexual behavior with a staff member [no pun intended], I see no reason why I shouldn't describe the spectacular Gavroche act. Besides he doesn't use a cigar or any other kind of prop. It's a no-strings-attached one-goat performance. To put it bluntly [and Gavroche puts it very bluntly], the little fellow arches his back and turns his head in such a way that he's able to aim his long thin penis directly at his open mouth, at point-blank range... if you see what I mean, without my having to draw a picture. And the clever little bugger generally scores a direct hit, and seems to relish the result. I don't know whether experts in sexology have invented a technical name for this act. Is it possible that Gavroche actually invented it, all on his own? Maybe I should get him patented, or entered into the Guinness Book of Records.

Incidentally, a week or so ago, I made a trivial but surprising linguistic discovery. The English word butcher is a variant of the French word boucher. And, since people eat meat obtained from butchers, I had always imagined that the origin of the words boucher/butcher was the French word bouche, meaning mouth. Well, not at all. These words come from bouc, the French word for buck: the technical term for a billy goat. Apparently, once upon a time (in the Middle Ages, I suppose), the usual meat supplied by butchers came from goats.

Getting back to Gavroche, it could be said that, rather than letting humans eat his meat, he has invented a better way of using it.

First word of a poem

Over the last couple of weeks, I've got back in contact with one of my earliest passions: the literature of Rilke. I discovered this poet when I was a young man back in Sydney, and my love of his work took on a new meaning during the many years I spent in Paris, which was also Rilke's adopted city for a while.

I'm looking into the idea of writing a cinematographic adaptation, in French, of Rilke's great novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. This would not be an easy task, but I'm highly motivated to tackle this project.

Australian graves in France

On this evening's TV news, a lengthy sequence showed the arrival of the national Australian rugby team in France... in a graveyard!

What a terrible symbol for forthcoming failure! It's surely the Parisian embassy staff that engineered stupidly this immediate link to spooky Villers-Bretonneux, where panels list the names of some ten thousand Australians who died in France and have no known grave. As for me, as an Australian settled in France, Villers-Bretonneux is the last place in the world I would ever think of visiting, even as a pilgrimage, because it doesn't really seem to symbolize anything whatsoever of an authentic Franco-Australian nature. That whole affair was simply a huge planetary mistake. More precisely, I ask rhetorically the following questions:

— Before coming here to die, did these dead soldiers have anything to do with the spirit of the Old World, or the great European nation named France? Or were they simply obeying orders in a blind fashion?

— Had they ever heard of France?

— Did they know anything about French history and culture?

— Did they speak French?

— Did they have personal contacts in France?

— Today, should we think of these countless dead Aussie soldiers as a symbol of Franco-Australian relationships, or rather as the terrible price of stupidity?

It goes without saying that we have no answers to such questions. Over a year ago, however, I was alarmed when Australian friends informed me that tour operators, in the context of the rugby cup, were offering Aussie visitors—besides the Eiffel Tower—a mindless blend of wine tastings and war cemeteries.

Talking of Australian graves in France, here's one that has concerned me over the last decade or so, ever since my encounter with the Dauphiné region:

Christina Jager and her young brother Nicholas were students, residing in the fabulous village of Bruno and the Chartreux monks. They came here on purpose, and they chose a magnificent place to stay and study. But, one winter morning, while setting out in their automobile to the university city of Grenoble, these Australian students were blinded by the sun on the first bend in the road below Saint Pierre de Chartreuse, their vehicle left the road and they were mortally wounded. Over the last twelve years, I've rounded that innocent but treacherous bend on countless occasions. Every time I visit the great monastic village, I spend a moment before the grave of Christina and Nicholas, who died shortly before my daughter Emmanuelle was born. I've always imagined these two Carthusian kids—brother and sister—as my Australian forebears in the territory of Bruno.

Unhealthy compatriots

At a medical level, you might say, I would have thought it enough that Australian Internet news [my immediate informational contact with my land of birth] should reveal that equine flu had stopped the NSW spring racing carnival. But there seems to be worse news, of human kind.

There would appear to be what is referred to, in The Australian, as a "growing obesity epidemic". Now, this doesn't really surprise me in the sense that my French children and I first discovered the McDonald's phenomenon in Sydney, many years ago. Last year, during my brief excursion to Australia, I was shocked by specimens of obesity encountered everywhere, including my birthplace. In a South Grafton club, I witnessed a family of overweight monsters who appeared to be regarded as normal by the locals. At the place in Grafton where my dear departed father once sold spare parts for Ford automobiles, there is now a cake shop that distributes unbelievably heavy-weight luncheon stuff for workers. But my brief observations have little weight... you might say. So let me quote directly The Australian:

Almost all Australians are either eating poorly or exercising inadequately, while only five per cent meet national lifestyle guidelines, a new report shows. The landmark study of more than 16,000 Australians has painted a grim picture of a slothful, unhealthy nation falling short of its own recommendations for exercise and nutrition.

One in four—25 per cent—meet physical activity guidelines, while 55 per cent eat enough fruit and 15 per cent eat enough vegetables.

But an alarmingly small number—fewer than five per cent—met the criteria for all three guidelines, a statistic the University of Sydney and Deakin University researchers say is "extremely concerning".

At a personal level, I'm not directly involved in the problem to which I allude. I'm no longer directly concerned by Australia in general, because I've moved on. But I still react as if it were my birthplace [which it is] and my homeland [which it hasn't been, for ages].

I love a fat brown country...

Brilliant French electricity corporation

Everybody in France is familiar with EDF: Electricité de France. They're the national electricity utility, whose shares were recently made available to private investors. We think of EDF as the athletes who climb up poles after storm damage, the engineers who play around with hydroelectric dams, or their colleagues who operate France's well-known network of nuclear reactors.

Well, believe it or not: EDF is also a state-of-the-art researcher in the exotic domain of Dead Sea Scrolls archaeology. It's a long story, which I'll try to summarize...

In 1952, in the caves above Qumran, searchers on the lookout for parchments—mostly leather, sometimes papyrus—came upon two mysterious rolls of copper, known today as 3Q15, the Copper Scroll.

Needless to say, researchers were totally unaccustomed to handling ancient stuff of this kind. Finally, after much discussion, the scholars sent the rolls to the Manchester College of Technology in England, where they were cut into rectangular sections. Photos of these strips then enabled a Polish ex-priest and scrolls expert, Josef Milik [whom I had the pleasure of meeting personally, fifteen years ago, in his Paris flat], to produce a first edition of the astonishing contents of the Copper Scroll. Without going into details, let's say that the Copper Scroll seems to describe vast quantities of gold and silver that might even be the mysterious treasure of Herod's temple in the Holy City, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 of the Common Era.

Readers might be asking by now: How, when and where does France's high-tech electricity organization step into this ancient picture? Well, on the outskirts of Paris, EDF has an avant-garde laboratory called Valectra, which is no doubt one of the world's most advanced workshops for handling ancient metallic specimens such as the Copper Scroll. Today, two bulky and expensive books relate, in French, the story of the extraordinary collaboration between Biblical scholars and EDF scientists, culminating in the restoration and preservation of the Copper Scroll... not to mention its translation. You can also use Google to find many documents describing this fantastic intellectual and industrial adventure. Probably the most spectacular aspect of the EDF Copper Scroll project has been the production of perfect metallic replicas, enabling scholars and museum-goers throughout the world to come face-to-face with artifacts that resemble ideally the real thing.

Ignorance in God's Own Country

Stephen Prothero, of the religion department at Boston University, has just published a book entitled Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—and Doesn't. Here are several gems from a recent poll:

— Two Americans out of three don't know the name of the man who delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

— Only 50% of Americans can name one of the four Gospels.

— Less than 50% know the name of the first book of the Bible.

In a broader historical domain, Americans were asked to identify Joan of Arc. Some 10% replied along the following lines: "Did you say Arc? That rings a bell. She must have been Noah's wife."

Citizens of that pragmatic nation, where everybody is out to make a buck, were confronted with the following quotation: "God helps those who help themselves." Over 75% were convinced that this is a statement from the Bible.

In fact, it was the illustrious American statesman Benjamin Franklin—"a true champion of generic religion", as somebody said—who put forward this point of view. But everybody knows that what was good enough for Benjamin Franklin is, of course, good enough for latter-day insertion into the Bible.

Sydney skies

On the front page of The Australian this morning, we find this photo of an RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] jet fighter, illustrating an article with a shock title: RAAF may use 'lethal force' for APEC.

Australians in authority often take themselves a little too seriously, to the point of getting carried away with their self-importance. We saw a striking case of this behavior recently in the conflict between a self-righteous government member and the Indian doctor suspected of abetting terrorists. Today we find a member of the air force, in charge of protecting the airspace over Sydney next week, telling reporters that "any pilots entering the area without a permit ran the risk of being shot down". This excessive kind of cowboy talk, coming from a senior military representative, would be hilarious were it not alarming. The RAAF would do better to go about its assigned business quietly and expertly, with no spectacular but unnecessary buzzing of central Sydney, and no front-page stories in the media.

There is indeed a nonnegligible risk that an unfortunate private pilot might be unaware that special airspace regulations are in vigor over the Sydney region during the APEC conference. One can even imagine such-and-such a member of a visiting delegation with a civilian pilot's licence, who decides to rent a small aircraft and spend an afternoon with his wife, taking aerial shots of the Blue Mountains, while naively ignorant of the fact that a so-called "lethal force" is operating in the nearby skies. Imagine the huge diplomatic incident that would ensue if rescuers were to find that the wreckage of a small aircraft, blasted out of the skies by an RAAF fighter, contained the charred remains of a junior cabinet member, say, of Brunei, Peru or New Zealand.

Awesome movie

If you happen to have an open and inquiring mind, a good Internet connection and two hours of free uninterrupted time, and you're happy to be blown healthily out of your mind, like shit in a powerful fan, then click the following banner:

Not everybody knows that the German word Zeitgeist signifies the prevailing spirit of our epoch, indicated by abundant evidence, but not necessarily manifest. This celebrated movie is a terrifying masterpiece.

No horses at next week's Sydney circus

This photo shows an unmounted policeman in Sydney, leading a horse that is probably suffering from equine flu:

That's the way it's going to be at the APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] event next week. Not only will police horses be absent, but Laura Bush won't be there either, because she has a mysterious pain in the backside, or somewhere or other. As for Bush himself, he'll be arriving and leaving earlier than initially scheduled, which means that a lot of the advanced security planning carried out conscientiously by NSW authorities will have been a waste of time and effort. They've nevertheless purchased some kind of sophisticated high-tech truck capable of spraying high-pressure water on groups of protesters. The APEC circus will provide the authorities with an excellent opportunity of testing this equipment... provided, that is, that there are groups of real-life protesters. According to plans, it is highly likely that people in this category will in fact turn up in Sydney. On the other hand, if ever the planned protesters did a Laura, or stayed away from the APEC circus because they were afraid of catching equine flu, then the police would have no other alternative than to stir up pseudo-protesting among crowds of normally calm onlookers, so that they can be hosed down experimentally with the new truck. I've heard rumors that the most disgruntled abservers of all are the members of the famous Bondi Icebergs: the folk who make a point of going surfing every day, even at the height of winter. Apparently the APEC organizers have taken over their clubhouse on Bondi beach, in the context of some kind of luncheon for APEC dignitaries. Wouldn't it be funny if Icebergers, protesting because they couldn't go for their normal swim, were to get hosed down by icy water from the high-tech truck. They would probably whine that the water's too warm for their tastes.

Finally, there'll be a fireworks show, but the authorities are telling Sydney folk to watch it solely on TV. As for me, here in France, I plan to watch TV to admire, not only the fireworks, but the high-tech hose-truck in action. I had been looking forward to seeing George W Bush and John Howard dressed up in R M Williams clothes for the traditional end-of-conference photo. But this is unlikely, unless the organizers were to take a photo of Bush in Aussie cowboy gear before he leaves, and then use Photoshop to insert him magically into the final group photo. These days, everything is possible. But only one thing is certain: This gigantic APEC shemozzle is going to disrupt the normally calm life of Sydney for most of next week. I'm glad I'm not there.

Excellent web journalism

One of my favorite news sources on the Internet is the New York Times [click on banner to visit the website]:

They've created an amusing informational category named Freakonomics [click on banner to visit the website]:

Besides, they often display marvelous images, which I like to "borrow" whenever it's appropriate:

This delightful image accompanies a fascinating New York Times article [click on image to display the article] concerning the gesture of an upturned palm, employed as a signal in the animal kingdom. Great stuff!