Growing Old in Paris
Some thoughts bear repeating.
I mentioned to my family this Christmas that although I am delighted to be back in the U.S., I ultimately want to spend my dotage in Paris. Yup. It's a long way off (hey, in my mind I'm still quite the spring chicken), but now's the time to plan! When and if I have to grow old, for umpteen thousand reasons I'd prefer to do it in Paris. And preferably sooner rather than later. (The Paris part, not the aging part.) Hmm. More reflections on that reasoning for a later post. Meanwhile, it reminded me of something I wrote this time last year, which I offer here, slightly edited, for cheap regifting appeal. 'Tis the season.
Excusez-Moi, Madame
This has now happened to me three times in the past year. I'm striding down the sidewalk, high-heel boots clicking confidently as I bob and weave through the tangle of pedestrians. I'm concentrating on my next destination -- métro, bus stop, café, or wherever. Then, from nowhere a sweet, quavering voice calls out, "Excusez-moi, madame." I slow down and turn to see a diminutive dame d'un certain age, elegant wool coat buttoned against the cold, silk scarf neatly knotted, gripping the knob of her cane as she inches in baby steps toward the curb. "Est-ce que je pourrais vous demander de me rendre un service et de m'accompagner à traverser la rue?" she asks. ["Can you help me cross the street?"]
Each time this happens, I positively melt. MELT! I'm not quite sure why. First off, I'm honored that from a quick glance she has deemed me trustworthy enough to ferry her across a treacherous passage. The high curbs, you know; and the cobblestones are so uneven and the traffic so aggressive. I'm also pleased that she addresses me in French. And finally, of course, I do sincerely like to help; and this has never happened to me in the States.
I offer my elbow, and we begin five minutes of exchanging pleasantries. "Oui, oui," I nod, "it's not so easy crossing the streets these days. Oui, je comprends. Non non, madame, cela ne me dérange pas du tout -- it's my pleasure." We wait for the walk light to change as she clutches the crook of my arm; then we inch slowly across while she looks up at me, chatting in genteel appreciation. As we reach the safety of the next curb, she offers her most winning smile and heartfelt merci. Then our mutualau revoir et bonne journée, and we part company. I pick up the pace and continue on my route, this time with more of a spring in my step.
Every time this scenario happens, I get a lump in my throat.
Why?
Perhaps because I have an 85-year-old mother. Perhaps because I recognize my own future.
I deeply hope that some day, thirty-plus years from now, I'll be tottering down the streets of Paris, coat buttoned against the winter winds, hesitantly approaching a curb and eyeing the passersby to nab a younger woman whom I can stop and ask,
"Excusez moi, madame, est-ce que je pourrais vous demander de me rendre un service et de m'aider a traverser la rue?"
I imagine this is also happening elsewhere, but just now at the intersection of East Denny Way and Bellevue Avenue East I came upon a hundred or so people throwing a snowed-over street party: music blasting out of an apartment window, booze in most hands, and all manner of sleds, skis, and snowboards cruising down the steepest part of Denny toward the I-5 overpass.
Pressed into sled service: a giant surfboard (seats upwards of five if necessary); the casing for the front bumper of a cheap car; lots of cardboard; several laundry baskets; and a green box spring mattress.
Photo, captioned "sledding down Denny," by StrangerFlickr contributor joshc.
Saki, the mordant British wit and author, was born today in 1870. The Writer's Alamanc says,
In 1915, he sent his sister a Christmas card that said, "While the Shepherds watched their flocks by night / All seated on the ground / A high-explosive shell came down / And mutton rained around." He died from a bullet wound the next year.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has surprisingly reignited the row today over the separation of church and state by saying it is "not the end of the world" if the established church were to disappear.
Rowan Williams, the most senior figure in the Church of England, argues that there is a "certain integrity" to a church that was free from state sanctions.
His endorsement of disestablishment comes in an interview published today in this week's New Statesman.
Christmas crackers are an integral part of Christmas celebrations in the United Kingdom, Australia,Canada, New Zealand, other Commonwealth countries and Ireland. A cracker consists of a cardboardtube wrapped in a brightly decorated twist of paper, making it resemble an oversized sweet-wrapper. The cracker is pulled by two people, and, much in the manner of a wishbone, the cracker splits unevenly. The split is accompanied by a small bang produced by the effect of friction on a chemically impregnated card strip (similar to that used in a cap gun).
In one version of the tradition the person with the larger portion of cracker empties the contents from the tube and keeps them. In another each person will have their own cracker and will keep its contents regardless of whose end they were in. Typically these contents are a coloured paper hat or crown; a small toy or other trinket and a motto, a joke or piece of trivia on a small strip of paper. Crackers are often pulled after Christmas dinner or at parties.
“The Reader” is a triumph of bite and speed compared with “Doubt.” This film, written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, who adapted it from his own play, unfolds in 1964, at a Catholic school in the Bronx. A jovial priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is accused by the principal, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), of interfering with an altar boy. He denies it, she yearns to believe it, and we don’t care. Collectors of large narrative signposts will spend a happy couple of hours at Shanley’s movie, enjoying the window-rattling thunderstorms that he uses to indicate spiritual crisis, and the grimness with which Sister Aloysius, narrowing her red-rimmed eyes, delivers the line “So, it’s happened.” I didn’t know you could hiss, groan, and murmur at the same time, but Streep can do anything. She is, of course, wasted on this elephantine fable; if only “Doubt” had been made in 1964, shot by Roger Corman over a long weekend, and retitled “Spawn of the Devil Witch” or “Blood Wimple,” all would have been forgiven. ♦
He wakes every day at 7 a.m., composes for two and a half hours, goes out for a constitutional with an aide, rests after lunch, composes again or receives visitors in the afternoon, and watches French satellite television in the evening, if he does not have a concert to attend.
He said he has gone back to reading the classics, including “Hamlet.” After starting a third bout with Proust in the original French, “I got a little sick of it two months ago,” he said. “That’s why I turned to Shakespeare.”
A terra cotta self-portrait head of his wife, Helen, a sculptor who fiercely protected him until her death in 2003, sits in his living room. A small group of New York musicians, including Mr. Rosen, the cellist Fred Sherry and the clarinetist Charles Neidich, are close to him, playing his music and keeping an eye on him. Virgil Blackwell, a clarinetist, serves as Mr. Carter’s business manager and helper, handling everything from royalties to hearing-aid batteries.
Nearly half of all men and one-third of women have lied about what they have read to try to impress friends or potential partners , a survey suggests.
Men were most likely to do this to appear intellectual or romantic, found the poll of 1,500 people by Populus for the National Year of Reading campaign.
The men polled said they would be most impressed by women who read news websites, Shakespeare or song lyrics.
Women said men should have read Nelson Mandela's biography or Shakespeare.
Among the 1,500 who took part in the research were 864 teenagers.
About four in 10 of the 1,500 said they had lied about what they had read to impress friends or potential partners - 46% of men and 33% of women.
Among teenagers, the figure rose to 74%, with most saying they would pretend to have read social networking pages or song lyrics.
One in five adults said they would read their chosen material whilst waiting for their date to arrive in the hope of making a good first impression.
Now, Adam Fogle over at the Palmetto Scoop revels in the blogosphere’s resilience, but misses the point entirely. Political blogs (especially consultant driven outlets like Fogle’s) can never fill the void that honest journalism should have been filling (but largely hasn’t in years) - unbiased, unvarnished truth-telling (and we’ve had it better in SC because of Hoover, Stanton, Davenport and Bandy than the MSM in most states).
On the internet front, FITS comes closest in this state - and anyone who reads that has had too many eyefuls of Chargers cheerleaders and Pam Anderson to consider it a serious, long-term, unbiased news outlet - traffic or no traffic. SCHotline is the state’s Drudge Report - but that’s not reporting stories, that’s collecting stories. I don’t think we’ve seen where an honest internet news outlet can go in this state - but I hope we get the chance soon…We don't understand these things. We just notice them.
Madonna is causing ''crazy enthusiasm'' and ''impure thoughts'' on her first concert visit to Chile, a prominent retired cardinal complained on Wednesday, as he paused in a tribute to a late dictator to denounce the pop star.
Roman Catholic Cardinal Jorge Medina criticized the flamboyant singer during his homily at a Mass in honor of the late dictator Augusto Pinochet, who oversaw the deaths of some 3,200 dissidents during his 1973-1990 rule.
''This woman comes here and in an incredibly shameless manner, she provokes a crazy enthusiasm, an enthusiasm of lust, lustful thoughts, impure thoughts,'' said Medina, the cardinal who was chosen to announce the election of Pope Benedict XV.
Hundreds of fans spent three days camping outside the National Stadium in Santiago to get good spots for Wednesday's concert, the first of two. About 60,000 people were expected at each performance.
One of those waiting in line, Roberto Lopez, told local reporters that he had quit his job in the southern city of Punta Arenas because his boss hadn't given him time off to attend the concert.
...Poverty fundamentally erodes state capacity -- by fueling conflict, sapping human capital, hollowing out our impeding the development of effective state institutions, and creating especially conducive environments for corrupt governance. So why does this matter for American national security?
When states fail to meet the basic needs of their citizens -- for food, clean water, health care or education -- other groups move in to fill the void. Sometimes help comes from multilateral aid agencies or secular NGOs, but in Africa, South Asia and parts of the Middle East, many times these services are provided by foreign-funded religious NGOs, Christian missionaries or mosques -- sometimes with theological, even extremist, strings attached. Hezbollah and Hamas have been quite successful in filling these voids at a large scale -- effectively supplanting government and becoming "states within states..."
Books by the Seine
Those bouquinistes who sell their wares from bins along the Seine in Parisare in trouble. Buyers of old books have gone on-line (guilty as charged, your honor!), and tourists don't read. But what really caught my eye in this article was the regulation of the Seine-side book trade:
The trade is strictly regulated. Each bouquiniste is allowed four boxes painted dark green: three must contain books, the fourth can sell items such as prints, collectors' postcards, stamps and souvenirs.
How very French! The boxes must be painted dark green! Positively medieval. (h/t Maîtresse).
"Hey," George Jones said of the White House meeting , "they were like down-to-earth country folk."
Laura Bush honored such country folk roots by speaking in tribute to the singer.
She is widely recognized for her role at CBS as the principle "Ground Zero" reporter during the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks, broadcasting live from the scene when the South Tower collapsed.
There’s a wonderful passage in the “Life” when, as Boswell records, he and Hester looked at each other after some Johnsonian moment, recognizing that, as she whispered to him, “There are many who admire and respect Mr. Johnson; but you and I LOVE him.” The stress is, in every sense, in the original.
The blogger Tanta, an influential voice on the mortgage collapse, died Sunday morning in Columbus, Ohio.
Tanta, who wrote for Calculated Risk, a finance and economics blog, was a pseudonym for Doris Dungey, 47, who until recently had lived in Upper Marlboro, Md. The cause of death was ovarian cancer, her sister, Cathy Stickelmaier, said.
Thanks in large part to Tanta’s contributions, Calculated Risk became a crucial source of prescient analysis as the housing market at first faltered, then collapsed and finally spawned a full-blown credit crisis.
Tanta used her extensive knowledge of the loan industry to comment, castigate and above all instruct. Her fans ranged from the Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who cited her in his blog, to analysts at the Federal Reserve, who cited her in a paper on “Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit.”
She wrote under a pseudonym because she hoped some day to go back to work in the mortgage industry, and the increasing renown of Tanta in that world might have precluded that. Tanta was Ms. Dungey’s longtime family nickname, Ms. Stickelmaier said.
Calculated Risk, which gets about 75,000 visitors a day, was started in early 2005 by a retired technology executive named Bill McBride. The housing market was soaring, but Mr. McBride sensed that the industry was about to peak, and he posted articles and data that made his case.
The blog quickly drew a lively and informed group of commentators, few livelier and none more informed than someone who called herself Tanta. She began by correcting some of Mr. McBride’s posts. “She would tell me either I was wrong or the article I was quoting was wrong,” he said Sunday. “It was clear she really knew her stuff. And she was funny about it.”
Tanta soon graduated from merely commenting to being a full-scale partner. Her first post, in December 2006, took issue with an optimistic Citigroup report that maintained that the mortgage industry would “rationalize” in 2007, to the benefit of larger players like, well, Citigroup.
“Bear with me while I ask some stupid questions,” Tanta wrote, and proceeded to assert that the industry was less likely to “rationalize” than fall apart, which it did. Citigroup was bailed out by the government last month.
She loved the intricacies of mortgage financing and would joke about being not just a nerd on the subject but a nerd’s nerd. She eventually wrote, for the Calculated Risk site, “The Compleat ÜberNerd,” 13 lengthy articles on mortgage origination channels, mortgage-backed securities and foreclosures that constituted a definitive word on the subject.
The rest of the time, Tanta liked to chew on the follies of regulators, the idiocies of lenders and — a particular favorite — clueless reporters, which according to her was just about all of them. She did not approve, she once wrote, of “parading one’s ignorance about mortgages in an article full of high-minded tut-tutting over ignorance about mortgages.”
As the credit crunch bites, Britons may be turning to sex as a cheap way to pass the time, a charity says.
A YouGov survey of 2,000 adults found sex was the most popular free activity, ahead of window shopping and gossiping.
The Scots were most amorous with 43% choosing sex over other pastimes, compared with 35% in South England.
Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, which published the survey, also welcomed recent figures showing an increase in condom sales.
Around one in 10 respondents to the survey, carried in November, said their favourite free activity was window shopping and 6% chose going to a museum as the cheapest way to pass the time.
But the sexes differed on their priorities, with women preferring to gossip with friends while men had sex firmly at the top of their list.
BRITISH men and women are now the most promiscuous of any big western industrial nation, researchers have found.
In an international index measuring one-night stands, total numbers of partners and attitudes to casual sex, Britain comes out ahead of Australia, the US, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany.
The researchers behind the study say high scores such as Britain’s may be linked to the way society is increasingly willing to accept sexual promiscuity among women as well as men. They also believe that, among certain age groups and at certain times, men and women are equally liberal.
