A quick French lesson for the day...

My father sent me a very good video on how to order coffee when in France.  Here it is.

This ignited me to thinking of ways of ordering other drinks.  Here is what I replied to my father.

There's an expression that I use when ordering at a bar.  It's called "un canon", or a cannon, as in artillery piece.  Like what Napoleon used to lob at the English, Spanish, Germans, and Russians.  What is means is a glass of wine (usually red, but can be white), drank at the bar, paid for quickly, and away we go.

There's also an expression I use, which cracks up the locals because it's an old expression and it's "un remontant", or a drink that remounts ones spirits.  That is to say, builds one's strength.  A refreshment, if you will.  It can be anything you specify after surprising the barman with such an old expression.

The last one for today comes from a famous book titled Zazi dans le metro or Zazi in the metro.  The saying goes like this.  I'll have some water of the rifle - "...je vais prendre l'eau de fusile".  This really opens their eyes if they've ever read that book and we all have an excellent laugh.  Conversations that follow are usually light and easy, almost like you're one of the locals, or something.  The drink itself is typically a water of life - "un eau de vie", but again, can be anything you specify.

If you've ever read Zazi dan le metro you might remember that the barman suggested an update to the expression l'eau de fusile.  The modernization suggested was a l'eau nucléaire, or nuclear water.  In the book this was followed with a question of why one wouldn't drink un amaro (Italian patent medicine) for one's health.  It would be better for you.  But that's a topic for another time.

There you have it.  Your oh so serious French lesson for today.  With a helpful dash of culture thrown in as a bonus.



  Here is a nice little wateringhole in Nice. They speak excellent English there.

What (some of) the Irish think of America these days...

Irish Times-April 25, 2020-By Fintan O’Toole:

 

THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT

 

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

 

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

 

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.

 

As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”

 

It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

 

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

 

If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.

 

Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?

 

It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

 

Abject surrender

What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.

 

Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.

 

In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”.

 

Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”

 

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

 

It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

 

Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.

 

The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.

 

Fertile ground

But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.

 

There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.

 

Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.

 

And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.

 

That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.

 

And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.

 

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.

 

Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.

Wading into politics... sorry...

From a friend who found this on one of the social media sites. I have no idea who Adam-Troy Castro is. So keep that in mind, too. ->

THIS WAS ON SOMEONE’S PAGE: An anguished question from a Trump supporter: ‘Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?’

THE SERIOUS ANSWER:

Here’s what the majority of anti-Trump voters honestly feel about Trump supporters en masse:

That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine." (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/04/10/trump-university-settlement-judge-finalized/502387002/)

That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay." (https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hotel-paid-millions-in-fines-for-unpaid-work)

That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem." (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/list-trumps-accusers-allegations-sexual-misconduct/story?id=51956410)

That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue." (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/11/22/donald-trumps-outrageous-claim-that-thousands-of-new-jersey-muslims-celebrated-the-911-attacks/)

That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you exclaimed, "He sure knows me." (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/23/president-donald-trump-could-shoot-someone-without-prosecution/4073405002/)

That when you heard him relating a story of an elderly guest of his country club, an 80-year old man, who fell off a stage and hit his head, to Trump replied: “‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t—you know, he was right in front of me, and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him. He was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible, because it was a beautiful white marble floor, and now it had changed color. Became very red.” You said, "That's cool!" (https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-howard-stern-story)

That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw. (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-criticized-after-he-appears-mock-reporter-serge-kovaleski-n470016)

That when you heard him brag that he doesn't read books, you said, "Well, who has time?" (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/americas-first-post-text-president/549794/)

That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense." (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/19/what-trump-has-said-central-park-five/1501321001/)

That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, "Yes!" (https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-trump-campaign-protests-20160313-story.html)

That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, "What a great guy!" (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/donald-trump-orders-protesters-coat-is-confiscated-and-he-is-sent-into-the-cold-a6802756.html)

That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, "Thumbs up!" (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/why-cant-trump-just-condemn-nazis/567320/)

That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, "That's the way I want my President to be." (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-insult-foreign-countries-leaders_n_59dd2769e4b0b26332e76d57)

That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you have said, "What a genius!" (https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/12/29/138-trump-policy-changes-2017-000603)

That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, "That's smart!" (https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-05/how-is-donald-trump-profiting-from-the-presidency-let-us-count-the-ways)

That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, "That makes sense." (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/09/26/the-very-big-ocean-between-here-and-puerto-rico-is-not-a-perfect-excuse-for-a-lack-of-aid/)

That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, "That's statesmanship!" (https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/02/politics/donald-trump-dictators-kim-jong-un-vladimir-putin/index.html)

That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they’re just “animals” - and you say, “Well, OK then.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-5-400-children-split-border-according-new-count-n1071791)

That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise. (https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2018/06/04/451570/confronting-cost-trumps-corruption-american-families/)

What you don't get, Trump supporters, is that our succumbing to frustration and shaking our heads, thinking of you as stupid, may very well be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also...hear me...charitable.

Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.

- Adam-Troy Castro

Nice to Paris ~ what a reentry

We've returned to Paris after spending four months in Nice.  We needed to return home.  The trip back was an adventure.

Here's the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

It really started two days prior to our departure date. Jude didn't sleep well (she seldom does before travel).

We had a good day before departure and got to lay one last time under the Mediterranean Sun out on the balcony.

The night before we departed Jude didn't sleep (again!), this time due to a stomach bug that wouldn't hit me until an hour before our taxi arrived.

We were up at 04h15. 05h30 Taxi. My stomach is starting to go and Jude is bleary and weary beyond belief.

We got to the airport and the doors were only then opening at 06h00. We waited another 10 minutes for the police to arrive so they can check our documents. Then we waited for the Air France counter to open up to take our baggage.

All our boarding passes and baggage tags were generated at a kiosk before we saw an Air France person. 2 minutes to get our baggage onto the conveyor belt and then through security. Nothing slows us down through security and we're soon in the waiting lounge 30 minutes before boarding.

The flight is supposed to be for working personnel, but we see nothing but tourists trying to move to gawd only knows where. Most (all?) people have masks.

Into a rather full plane we pile and we're wheels up at 07h45.

Banking high over Nice for one last view and north we speed with the Alps on our right side. It was a beautiful site.

Some seemingly short time later we're descending and we are on the ground in Paris at 09h10.

Shock of shocks, we wait 45mins to get through passport control!  Good thing we travel with all our documents.

Passport control is how the authorities keep connecting passengers out of the city. Strict controls are encountered everywhere. We watched as Americans, English, Spanish, and Argentinians were turned away and sent over to an Air France counter to either be sent back to wherever they came from, or to some transfer destination.  We even saw one Frenchman who was trying to go to Orlean (via Paris?  really??) be turned away and to be sent back to Marseilles.

In our case the immigration agents could easily verify our address matched our cartes de sejour and we were welcomed home with a smile and a kind gesture.

We collected our checked baggage and were out the door to grab a taxi. The taxi was to be driven by someone from China (can't make this stuff up).  On our way off airport property the driver noted all the Air France planes on the ground. All being confined, I asked. We laughed.

Home quickly and walking into the house I remember we needed to get some TP.  We'd left the house pretty bare. Ugh.

But before I could go out we stripped the bed and threw a load into the laundry.

To the store I go for TP and lunch goodies. Then lunch and TP on hand I headed out a second time to get more food and a few essentials, only to encounter a long long line (social distancing, of course) to get into Monoprix. Fortunately the line moved very quickly and 10 minutes later I was getting some of the things we needed.

Home again, and working through a second and third laundry load we're getting rather tired.

I vacuumed the floor to get up the dead insect carcasses that had fallen like soldiers in a night battle that raged for four months.

Then ironed the sheets and remaking the bed and, well, looking forward to opening a nice bottle of vin nature. 

Soon we were tucking into the roti chicken I'd picked up, pre-cooked, at Monoprix.  Teeth brushed and into bed we dove.  Dog dead tired we were.

The following day was much better.  We only had to clean the air vents, to do three more loads of laundry, clean around a few more things, change the table cloth and... things were looking better and the apartment was finally warming up.

We're in a much different place, now, one week on. Rest and food has helped.

What a crazy adventure!

la peste ~ making noise for the caregivers

Last weekend Jude and I heard a what sounded like a giant party erupting outside.

We thought that was rather curious as we are all confined to our residences and can't go out.  Up came the shutters so we could see what was going on.

It was puzzling.  People were standing on their balconies clapping.  This went on for several minutes.  Then some of the yachts in the harbor started tooting their horns.

Thoroughly confused, we came back inside and did a little research on the internet.  Searching on "Nice actualite" led me to Nice-Matin (a local news source) and their top story was about the exact topic we were researching.

Like in Barcelona and in part of Italy, every evening at 20h00 people gather on their balconies to clap and make noise to give thanks to our CV19 caregivers, to give them encouragement, and to boost morale.

The world can feel so civilized, even during these times.

la peste ~ martyrs for the American economy?

Every now and then the strangest things strike me. Hard.

Today it's something straight from the mouth of the Texas Lieutenant Governor. Here's what he said.

 "... “My message: let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living, let’s be smart about it, and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves,” Lt Gov Dan Patrick, a 69-year-old Republican, told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday night.

“Don’t sacrifice the country,” Patrick said. “Don’t do that.”

Patrick said he feared that public health restrictions to prevent coronavirus could end American life as he knows it, and that he is willing to risk death to protect the economy for his grandchildren. “You know... no one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’” Patrick said. “And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.” 

“That doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that,” he added. “I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me.”..."
(from the Guardian)

Let me see if I have this right.

1) American citizens prime mission is to support the economy.

2) Older people are willing to die to keep the economy afloat.

Do I have that right?  Is that what the Texan is saying?

Cranky Old Man News Flash: There are plenty of things I might be willing to die for, but keeping the "America that all America loves" alive is not one of them.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  OK.  As a foundational idea, I can support that (even though the Texan is clearly not referencing this).

But to sacrifice myself for an idea as vague as "the America that all America loves?"  I think not.

The strange thing that strikes me hard is the narrow-mindedness of certain "public leaders."

I swear, it feels as if they're trying to kill us off.

UPDATE:
This is what I should've written, but fortunately someone else has -

NY Governor Cuomo: “My mother is not expendable. Your mother is not expendable. We will not put a dollar figure on human life. We can have a public health strategy that is consistent with an economic one. No one should be talking about social darwinism for the sake of the stock market.”

la peste ~ signs of the time

France is currently requiring everyone to stay home.  The exceptions are going to a doctors appointment, shopping for food, and walking a dog.  We need to carry a signed and dated permission slip.  Friends have been stopped and asked to show this document.

There is talk over here about Italian dogs.  At this point Italians have been home for over a month.  It turns out that dogs are tired from being walked so much.  Rumor has it that pets are shared between different people so everyone has a chance to get out of the house.

It's difficult not to see what's happening in America.  Things from that part of the world are well-reported on over here.  The runs on and fights over toilet paper and ammunition have been covered by the French press.  People here wonder how stocking up on toilet paper and ammunition will help fight a virus of pandemic proportions.  Perhaps America knows something the rest of the world does not?

By contrast, the shelves in our local markets continue to be well stocked.  Tabacs are open, as are most boulangerie.  In one exceptional case, a very small market around the corner from us was pretty empty of everything the day after strong orders were issued to stay home.  But a day later the little market was restocked, including, yes, with toilet paper.

Just as France entered this time of restricted movement, Jude and I headed out for a doctors appointment.  Along the way I spied two things that pretty much summed up the current situation.