A Perfect Day

Dear Friends,

It was cloudy all day yesterday and rained quite hard last night, but this morning we awoke to a glorious sunrise with just a sliver of a moon over Villa Rothschild across the bay.  Yesterday we were caught in a low pressure area so the sea was at least a foot higher as the pressure elsewhere in the Mediterranean was high.  Today the air pressure is a little higher but still lower than elsewhere so we still have high seas.  There is also a very nice wind, perfect for sailing which many boats are doing.

This picture is taken from our balcony.

We played pétanque for a couple hours this morning with a group from the other places that our landlady rents.  After a leisurely stroll through the Saturday market where we picked up some wonderful radishes and baby tomatoes we returned home for lunch.   We did not stay inside for long as it was too beautiful a day, an incredible blue sky with just a wisp of cloud every now and then.  The temperature is 60 degrees but the sun makes it feel much warmer.

We took a two hour stroll along the sea including a short stroll on the beach so that Jane could conquer a rock in the surf.

So perhaps now you understand why we love Villefranche-sur-mer.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Our French Lessons

Dear Friends,

We just completed our second of four weeks of French lessons with our fabulous teacher.  She is a young mother whose child is just 2.  She and her husband live in Villefranche just about a block from us.  Her English is great, although she very seldom uses it, except to test us on vocabulary.  Her teaching style is fantastic.  She has a curriculum which she designed for us based on our ability level.  We meet with her at our apartment for three hours a day four days each week.  The time goes racing by.

Each day starts with what appears at first to be a warm-up time of just chatting, but she has an ulterior motive of forcing us to use the imparfait and the passé composé.  As a result, we must remember when to use which tense and then conjugate the verb correctly.  She keeps excellent notes of each day's lesson in very clear handwriting in a notebook. Whenever we stumble on a vocabulary word that she thinks is important she writes it on a page reserved for that day's vocabulary words.

While she always has a particular point of grammar in mind, les articles, les adjectifs possessifs, les pronoms possessifs, verbs indirects, etc., she does not hesitate to deviate if we are using an incorrect construction that she feels she should teach us.  Sometimes she decides not to teach us at that moment and tells us that we will get to it later.  She takes very good notes on each point of grammar including examples.

A couple times a week she has us watch a news program (actually just the headlines) on the computer.  Usually the first time through we can just barely get the sense of what is being said.  She then gives us a print out with some words, usually verbs, missing and we listen again, trying to fill in the missing words.  We are getting better at figuring out the missing words.  In fact yesterday between the two of us we got all of them on the first try.

She also gives us homework exercises that are very good for practicing.  Today we corrected a two page assignment on the use of de, d', de la, du, des, le, la, les, un and une.  You need to remember masculin ou feminin, negatif ou positif et si le verbe est un verbe comme aimer, détester, préférer, etc.  How could we have missed any of them, but we did.  The key is to remember that a verb of preference takes priority over the negative.

Today we  had a detailed pronunciation lesson on the quatre voyelles nasales - an/en, in/ain/ien, on and un.  The lesson included how to make the sounds with various parts of you lips, mouth, nose and throat.  Do not expect me to demonstrate these four sounds.

Next week we start the subjonctif as we have already worked on the présent, imparfait, futur simple, futur proche et passé composé.  Unfortunately for me, I do not know all the tenses in English and there are tenses in French that have no comparable tense in English.  I suppose all of this is really good for my brain.  In any case, these lessons are the highlight of our day.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Climate Change

Dear Friends,

A headline in The New York Times today reads, "2014 Was the Hottest Year on Record, Surpassing 2010" (here).  I have reprinted a few paragraphs from the article below as well as a chart that to me says it all.

Several scientists said the most remarkable thing about the 2014 record was that it occurred in a year that did not feature El Niño, a large-scale weather pattern in which the ocean dumps an enormous amount of heat into the atmosphere.
Longstanding claims by climate-change skeptics that global warming has stopped, seized on by politicians in Washington to justify inaction on emissions, depend on a particular starting year: 1998, when an unusually powerful El Niño produced the hottest year of the 20th century.
With the continued heating of the atmosphere and the surface of the ocean, 1998 is now being surpassed every four or five years, with 2014 being the first time that has happened in a year featuring no real El Niño pattern. Gavin A. Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said the next time a strong El Niño occurs, it is likely to blow away all temperature records.

I am afraid that you cannot see the scale for the chart which shows the yearly global surface temperatures from 1880 through 2014 relative to the 1951-1980 average.  The last month where the surface temperature was below that average was in February 1985.  The sustained annual upward trend started in the late 1970s.  

Of course none of this will matter to the Republicans who deny the existence of climate change and who will, I am sure, continue to argue that climate change does not exist, that we cannot make any difference and that anything that we do will harm the economy.

Bravo, to President Obama who is going to issue new regulations to limit the emissions of methane by the oil and gas industry.  He announced that he will issue new regulations to dramatically reduce the emissions of methane during the exploration and production of oil and gas.  Here is an article from The New York Times.  President Obama is serious about doing everything he can to curb global warming and that is great.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

"What's Wrong With 'All Lives Matter'?"

Dear Friends,

Today I read an interview in The New York Times by George Yancy, a professor of philosophy at Duquesne University, with Judith Butler, a philosopher and professor in the department of comparative literature and the program of critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley, entitled "What's Wrong With 'All Lives Matter'?" (here).  I wish everyone would read it.

Ms. Butler discusses the implications of and background behind the racism that makes the phrase "Black Lives Matter" so important.  While the phrase is obviously true, we have never realised that fact in American life.  She demonstrates in many ways how we have failed to realise that truth.  While the phrase "All Lives Matters" is equally true, it is critical that we focus on those lives that we have treated as not having validity and worth, e.g. the lives of black people in the United States.  Ms. Butler posits that since the society, among other ways through police violence against blacks, demonstrates over and over again that black lives to do not matter, it is becoming or perhaps remaining the norm.  She also posits that by protesting and publicly grieving the lost lives of blacks, we are speaking against the white power system that has for so long made clear that black lives do not matter.

I would like to reprint the entire interview but it is quite long.  Here is one of the best paragraphs:

Whiteness is less a property of skin than a social power reproducing its dominance in both explicit and implicit ways. When whiteness is a practice of superiority over minorities, it monopolizes the power of destroying or demeaning bodies of color. The legal system is engaged in reproducing whiteness when it decides that the black person can and will be punished more severely than the white person who commits the same infraction, when that same differential is at work in the question, who can and will be detained? And who can and will be sent to prison with a life sentence or the death penalty? Angela Davis has shown the disproportionate number of Americans of color (black and Latino) detained, imprisoned and on death row. This has become a “norm” that effectively says “black lives do not matter,” one that is built up over time, through daily practices, modes of address, through the organization of schools, work, prison, law and media. Those are all ways that the conceit of white superiority is constructed.

The interview ends with these three paragraphs by Ms. Butler:

Whiteness is not an abstraction; its claim to dominance is fortified through daily acts which may not seem racist at all precisely because they are considered “normal.” But just as certain kinds of violence and inequality get established as “normal” through the proceedings that exonerate police of the lethal use of force against unarmed black people, so whiteness, or rather its claim to privilege, can be disestablished over time. This is why there must be a collective reflection on, and opposition to, the way whiteness takes hold of our ideas about whose lives matter. The norm of whiteness that supports both violence and inequality insinuates itself into the normal and the obvious. Understood as the sometimes tacit and sometimes explicit power to define the boundaries of kinship, community and nation, whiteness inflects all those frameworks within which certain lives are made to matter less than others.

It is always possible to do whiteness otherwise, to engage in a sustained and collective practice to question how racial differentiation enters into our daily evaluations of which lives deserve to be supported, to flourish, and which do not. But it is probably an error, in my view, for white people to become paralyzed with guilt and self-scrutiny. The point is rather to consider those ways of valuing and devaluing life that govern our own thinking and acting, understanding the social and historical reach of those ways of valuing. It is probably important and satisfying as well to let one’s whiteness recede by joining in acts of solidarity with all those who oppose racism. There are ways of fading out whiteness, withdrawing its implicit and explicit claim to racial privilege. 

Demonstrations have the potential to embody forms of equality that we want to see realized in the world more broadly. Working against those practices and institutions that refuse to recognize and mark the powers of state racism in particular, assemblies gather to mourn and resist the deadly consequences of such powers. When people engage in concerted actions across racial lines to build communities based on equality, to defend the rights of those who are disproportionately imperiled to have a chance to live without the fear of dying quite suddenly at the hands of the police. There are many ways to do this, in the street, the office, the home, and in the media. Only through such an ever-growing cross-racial struggle against racism can we begin to achieve a sense of all the lives that really do matter.

For me these last paragraphs provide a way for me and I hope others to work to make sure that "Black Lives Matter" and also the lives of all of those that are seen as "other" matter.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Une Grande Aventure

Dear Friends,

Jane and I have been very purposeful about keeping Wednesdays free from lessons.  Today we decided to walk to St. Jean Cap Ferrat for lunch.  It is about a two mile walk each way if you walk directly and do not get lost.  It was a beautiful day full of bright sun and a nice breeze.  To get there we decided to walk to Beaulieu and then along the coast to St. Jean.

There is a wonderful walking path that goes by many magnificent homes (mansions) including David Niven's which is the only one that is on the sea side of the path.  For all the others are all on the inland side of the path.  This is a picture of David Niven's house from the path.  To continue on the path you go behind his house.

Jane decided to stop and play a little jazz as we arrived at the port.

St. Jean is a very nice new port full of large boats.

As you can see despite the warm weather the port continues to celebrate Christmas.

We had yet another great French meal.

Of course no French meal is complete sans du vin.

This wine is a nice bottle of rosé from Provence.  See if you can spot the one sentence in English on the back label.  The answer is at the end of this post.

Two hours after we arrived for lunch we decided we had better walk home, but by a different route.  But before we left we thought we would stop into this store to get a truly French bathing suit.

As you can see they have thongs, but unfortunately they were closed for the winter.

Thinking that we were truly French and that we knew exactly where we were going we began to climb up the hill which we thought would lead us to the other side of Cap Ferrat and then we could walk along that coast back to Villefranche.  We walked up and up some lovely stairs with absolutely gorgeous views.

As we approached the very top, we encountered a very nice Frenchman and in our very best French said, "Pardon Monsieur, je suis désolé de vous déranger, mais nous cherchons Villefranche."  He spoke back in French which we consider a great victory and told us very nicely that we were not on the right road and that we must go back down.  We understood most of his instructions and began our walk down the hill.  We came upon a small chapel.

The sayings on each side of the door are "all by love" and "nothing by force".  What a wonderfully uplifting sentiment in this violent time, especially here in France.

After a while we came to a fork and were not sure which way to go so we used our best French again on a young mother with her son who had just finished playing soccer.  She was very nice and responded also completely in French, another victory even if we were still lost.  We followed her directions and before we knew it we saw the Villa Rothschild and knew exactly where we were.

At about the same time we saw the man that had given us directions originally and wondered how he, who was walking slower than we were, had gotten ahead of us.  Of course the obvious answer is that he knew where he was going, and we did not.

By now the wind was very strong and we were walking in the shade. It was so cold that I had to put on a jacket over my shirt.  Sorry to those of you in Minnesota but here when it gets to be windy and shady I need a jacket even if it is 60 degrees.

Eventually we caught up to the gentleman who had given us directions and had a nice conversation with him all in French.  There were a couple of times that he did not understand.  I was surprised twice when I understood Jane's French exactly but he did not.  The only explanation for his lack of understanding must have been that he could not hear her speak since the wind was very strong and loud.

Eventually we arrived home, having taken over 15,000 steps for our grand adventure.

The English phrase on the back of the bottle of wine is, "A succulent fruit bomb ideal for aperitif or with typical Provençal cuisine."

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Île de Lerins Saint Honorat

Dear Friends,

Yesterday, we visited the Île de Saint Honorat just off the coast of Cannes.  We took the train from Villefranche through Nice to Cannes, then we walked through Cannes past all the fancy shops to the marina and took a boat out to the island.  The island and the boat are owned by the Cistercian monks as are the vineyards, shops and restaurants on the island.  It is beautiful place with old fortresses and building.  The first monastery was created on this island in the year 410.  The monks maintain a website about the island and monastery (here).  It is a small island only about 1.5 km by 0.4 km.  It is beautiful and very serene.  You can go on a spiritual, silent retreat for several days on the island which would be great if you want to do a retreat.  Here are some pictures.

Of course, the restaurant where we had lunch was also very good.

I can only imagine where the monks found those beautiful fresh raspberries this time of the year.  We had a wonderful adventure.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Je Suis Juif

Dear Friends,

Everywhere you go in France you see signs of solidarity and unity after the terrorist attacks last week on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and the kosher grocery store.  There was non-stop coverage of the national unity march yesterday in Paris.  It is estimated that there were more than 1 million people from all over Europe and from all walks of life.  The signs of unity were everywhere.  One that struck me the most was a young Muslim woman who was near the site of kosher grocery store attack carrying a sign that read "Je sis Juif" (I am Jewish) in a show of solidarity with the victims of the attack, the family and friends of the victims and the entire Jewish community in France.  There are many such signs now.

The reports of the march stressed the true solidarity of the French people for each other regardless of religion.  The Grand Synagogue of Paris was closed last Friday because of the threat of attack.  It was the first time that services had not been held there since World War II.  The service last night was attended by President Hollande and Prime Minister Netanyahu as well one of the leaders of the French Muslim community and other dignitaries.  It was a show of solidarity against extremists, bigots and hate and fear mongers.

The general public here as well as commentators talk freely about the need for the French government and the society as a whole to be more purposeful about integrating Muslims into the community and speaking out against those who stoke fear and hatred of "others".  In France it seems that all of the mainline parties are in agreement that in order to stop the radicalisation of Islam, all people must be integrated into the society and given hope for a good life.  There seems to be a general understanding that the actions and lack of action by the French government which excluded Muslims played a role in the radicalisation process.

Another item on the news yesterday was a report about young Muslims who are giving more impetuous to the reform movement within Islam.  It is a very hopeful sign.  So together with the signs from the national unity march in Paris, I have more hope today that this world can learn to be a single community while continuing to maintain its wonderful and significant diversity.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal