L'examen et Pétanque

Dear Friends,

I am sure you are all wondering who did better on the incredibly difficult and important vocabulary test.  The test was oral not written and each of us had different words unless the first person missed one in which case the other person had a chance.  So it really is impossible to say that one of us did better than the other.  Suffice it to say, that we both did very well considering what happens to one's memory as you age.  Together we got 73 correct answers and missed very few.  The test, of course, served its purpose of getting us to work on increasing our vocabulary.

When our teacher describes a new topic, it sounds so easy and understandable, but some how putting it into everyday practice is much more difficult.  Yesterday we started on the subjunctive.  The first thing we had to learn was to unlearn our consistent use of the phrase, "C'est nécessaire ...".  Apparently, that phrase, while grammatically possible, is never to be used.  You must use the phrase "Il faut que" followed by the subjunctive.  The rules for conjugating the subjunctive are also quite easy with only a few exceptions.  Nevertheless, the chances using the subjunctive appropriately any time soon are close to zero. I am, however, quite sure these lessons are really helping my brain.  Il faut que je continue écrire ce blog post.

Today is another beautiful day in Villefranche, and since it is Saturday, we were off to play pétanque this morning.  It is sadly our last Saturday here so it was particularly important that we play and play well.  Jane was in great form.

Lest you think that we do not take this game seriously, please note the extreme concentration on Jane's face and the seriousness of the other players watching.  The gentleman in the yellow sweater from Sweden was on Jane's team as was I.  The other two are on the team we were playing.  We won in a close, hard fought battle 13-9.

Please note the wonderful varieties of blues in the sky and the sea as you gaze past the walls of the citadel of Villefranche which was built in 1554 - just your everyday pétanque experience.  I should also note that while the temperature yesterday and today is about 60, we have had the french doors to our balcony open as the sun is quite warm.

There were four teams each lead by a woman.  Here are the captains of the two winning teams, and the two winning teams.

Since we are good sports (pas joueurs mauvais), here is a picture of all the players, representing France, Sweden and the United States.  Just to solidify how serious we all are about this "game", the man on the left just got his own boules.  His set which was of course chosen only after careful measurement and determining the correct weight included the cochonnet.  Since he is not very old, he chose not to buy the magnet on a string which you can use to pick up your boules rather than bending over to pick them up.  This game is one that all ages can play.

We will miss our new friends and playing pétanque, but we are making plans to have a place to play at our cabin.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
P.S.  Just for the record, I got 38 right and Jane got 35 right.


 

Study, Study, Study

Dear Friends,

Today we had another day off from any tutoring, etc.  Unfortunately, we have a vocabulary test tomorrow, and it will be a contest to see who gets more wrong (or does better depending on your outlook on life).

We started out a little slow on the studying today as we slept in and read The New York Times while having a leisurely breakfast.  It was a beautiful day so we had to go for a walk along the bay.  We decided that we would walk along the path that leads to the point that goes to Nice.  The path goes quite away towards the end of the point before you have to go straight up hill to the road.  It was a beautiful walk.

This is a picture of Jane with the bay of Villefranche behind her.  The colors here are absolutely beautiful.  There is a reason so many painters loved the Côte d'Azur.

This picture shows where the path ends and forces you to go up the hill to the road.  We decided to simply turn around and follow the path back since it was such a beautiful walk.  Of course after all that exercise we needed a break.

So we stopped at a outdoor snack shop by the marina for an espresso and to read the local daily newspaper, Nice Matin.  We have gotten so we can get a good idea of most all of the articles although vocabulary remains a big problem.

After finishing our café, we needed to do some shopping, so we went to le Petit Casino, a supermarket chain, with two small stores in Villefranche (hence the "Petit").  We really just get ordinary supplies there like soap and trash bags although the produce etc. is quite good.  Of course we then had to go to the boucher (butcher), le traiteur (delicatessen) and the fruits et légumes vendeur (a guy who puts out fresh fruits and vegetables in a small square).

After a nice lunch at home and doing the laundry since it was a good day to hang it our to dry, we had to get down to the hard work of studying our vocabulary.

As you can see it was really hard work.  I am afraid that Jane will clobber me tomorrow in our vocabulary test, but it sure was a beautiful afternoon.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Environmental Racism

Dear Friends,

There are people who claim that we are in a post-racism era now that we have a black President.  Of course that is utter nonsense.  In my view much of the hatred and disrespect shown to President Obama is racism pure and simple.  In any case, racism takes many forms some more subtle than others.

The current rumor is that the Justice Department is not going to take action against the police officer in Ferguson who killed Michael Brown.  If Michael Brown had been a white man from a wealthy family, the result certainly would have been different both in the reaction of the police and the reaction of our "justice" system.

Environmental racism is much less visible and can be too easily forgotten.  Charles Blow wrote today in The New York Times about the environmental racism his hometown faces in a piece entitled "Inequality in the Air We Breathe?" (here).  I am reprinting three of the closing paragraphs, but you should read the entire piece.

Fifteen years ago, Robert D. Bullard published Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality. In it, he pointed out that nearly 60 percent of the nation’s hazardous-waste landfill capacity was in “five Southern states (i.e., Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas),” and that “four landfills in minority ZIP codes areas represented 63 percent of the South’s total hazardous-waste capacity” although “blacks make up only about 20 percent of the South’s total population.”
More recently, in 2012, a study by researchers at Yale found that “The greater the concentration of Hispanics, Asians, African-Americans or poor residents in an area, the more likely that potentially dangerous compounds such as vanadium, nitrates and zinc are in the mix of fine particles they breathe.”
Among the injustices perpetrated on poor and minority populations, this may in fact be the most pernicious and least humane: the threat of poisoning the very air that you breathe. 

I thought that it had been a long time since I had heard much about environmental racism and a quick google of the subject confirmed my suspicions.  There were many articles from 1970 through the late 1990s but very few since then.  The most recent report was from The New York Times in May, 2014 (here).  I have reprinted the entire item below.

Three environmental organizations released a study Thursday on the demographics of the 134 million U.S. residents living with the danger or “vulnerability” zones of 3,433 chemical facilities, and the 3.8 million living with the “fenceline” zones closest to potential harm, with the least time to react in the event of a catastrophe.
A key finding:
“The percentage of Blacks in the fenceline zones is 75% greater than for the U.S. as a whole, while the percentage of Latinos in the fenceline zones is 60% greater than for the U.S. as a whole.”

 How can we as individuals and as a society be so uncaring of our fellow human beings?  Racism in all its insidious forms is thriving in the United States and yet where is the outrage?

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Notre Appartement

Dear Friends,

We have a wonderful apartment in the middle of la vieille ville of Villefranche-sur-mer with a wonderful view.  To try to orient you, here is a map of the general area.

As you can see from the map the Bay of Villefranche is one of very few natural harbors along this coast of the Mediterranean Sea which is why Villefranche played such an important role in naval history.  Villefranche is about 5 miles from Nice and about 10 miles from Monaco.  The train runs right along the coast to all the cities shown as do roads with great bus service, so it is easy to visit most places without a car.

The vieille ville of Villefranche is quite small and nestled in the southwest corner of the Bay of Villefranche. Here is a map.

If this map continued north and east, you could see the rest of the bay which is enclosed on the other side by Cap Ferrat.  The purple streets just west of Port de la Santé are all the streets in the vieille ville.  The hill slopes rapidly up to the west from the water.  If you look closely at the map you can see that the streets run mainly north and south and there are primarily stairs that run east and west that will take you up the hill from the water.  There are very few streets where cars are allowed.

Our apartment is on rue Baron de Brès.  If you start counting the streets that run north and south from the water, it is the third street from the water.  As you can see the church holds a very prominent place in the town.  There is a street that runs from the top of the vieille ville to the bottom just north of the church, rue de May.  Rue de May is stairs only.  Our apartment is just a few houses north of the intersection of rues Baron de Brès and de May.

This picture is Jane standing in front of the door to our apartment building.  You are looking north.

This picture is taken facing south.  The plants that you see at what appears to be the end of the street are the plants in front of two little restaurants at the intersection of rues Baron de Brès and de May.  One restaurant is quite fancy, very good and a little expensive.  The other is more casual but with very good food including a pizza named after Minnesota that has hamburger on it.

Our apartment has a wonderful view of the bay.  This panoramic picture was taken from our balcony.

Here are some pictures of the apartment.  The living room is very light and airy and is 1.5 stories high as you can see there is a loft with an extra bed and bath.

The kitchen is wonderful with a great stove, lots of counter space, a dishwasher and large refrigerator.

The bedroom is also very roomy with great closet space and a wonderful bed with great linens.  The windows face rue Baron de Brès and if you need it, they will provide great cross ventilation with the living room windows that face the bay.

The bathroom is great with two sinks, a shower and a bath as well as a toilet.  The only problem is that, as in most of France, there is no door on the shower so water gets on the floor which you clean up with a squeegee.

You can see more pictures and get more info about our apartment on the website of the landlord (here).  Our apartment is the one called "Chez Nous" and since it is new (just started renting in May) the information is not as complete as for the others that the landlord rents.

So as you can see not only are we living in paradise because we are in Villefranche, we are living in paradise because notre appartement est très joli.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Les Bateaux Gros

Dear Friends,

Yesterday we went on a wonderful excursion to Antibes, Cap Juan les Pins and Mougins.  We certainly saw much of the extremes of life.

Our first stop was the Port Vauban, Antibes.  It is a wonderful, large marina with many boats big and small and a separate area for super yachts.  It being a Sunday in the off season, we walked right in with no problems even though I am quite sure normally security would have stopped us.  The segregated area for super yachts is called "Grande Plaisance" which simply means big pleasure boating.  More often we heard people refer to this area with a little disdain as the area of les bateaux gros (big or fat boats).  There were probably 20 or more there, virtually all registered in George Town, Cayman Islands.  Most were in the 60 meter/200 foot range.  They were, of course, beautiful to someone who loves boats, but they also represent the worst of the worst extravagances.

There were several that I particularly liked so I wrote down the names to look them up.  One was called Montkaj.  It is owned by Mohammad bin Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, as you may have guessed a Saudi prince.  It is 256 feet long with a beam of 42 feet.  It can accommodate up to 24 guests and a crew of 22.  Sorry to tell you that it is not available for either purchase or charter.  I guess you need to get to know the owner.  

Another boat that I liked was called Baton Rouge.  It is slightly smaller at 205 feet long and 40 feet at the beam, but it is very pretty.

The good news about the Baton Rouge is that it is for sale which also means you can charter it.  The asking price is only 59,950,000 euros and with the dollar getting stronger against the euro it is becoming more of a deal every minute.  If you want to try it out to see if you like it, you can charter it for a week in the winter for 475,000 euros or only 420,000 euros in the summer.  Of course that is just the base price, there are many additional expenses.

After we left the marina of decadence we proceeded to the top of Cap Antibes - Juan les pins.  The view was fantastic.  Here is a picture that Jane took looking back at Nice and the mountains behind.

From there we traveled inland and upward to a small village called Mougins.  It is an old village that now is full of restaurants and art shops and in the summer is full of tourists.  On this Sunday in the winter it had just a few people strolling about the town taking in its beautiful streets and enjoying the magnificent views.

We had lunch in a wonderful little restaurant called Le Petit Fouet.  If you look closely at the picture, you can guess that le fouet means whisk.

It was great food and ambience, and everybody was speaking French.  On the way home we passed through a poor area of Nice, reminding us once again how lucky we are.

After a short rest, we took the bus to Nice to meet a friend from Minneapolis for dinner.  She is in Nice just for a few days, and it was fun to see her.  Even though she lives only a few blocks from us in Minneapolis, we had not seen her for six months.  We had to go to France to find the time to get together.

It was, as you can see, another wonderful day in paradise.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Moving Hillary Clinton to the Left

Dear Friends,

There are two interesting articles at Time.com by Rana Foroochar.  One is entitled "How Elizabeth Warren is Yanking Hillary Clinton to the Left" (here) and another entitled, "This Could be Hillary Clinton's Economic Policy" (here).  MSNBC also published an article by Alex Seitz-Weld and Suzy Khimm entitled "Is this Hillary Clinton's Economic Policy" (here).  Both the articles about Secretary Clinton's economic policy discuss a recent report by the Center For American Progress, a pro-Clinton think tank.

Interestingly enough in the last weeks during which there have been terrorist attacks in Nigeria by Boko Haram, terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish community in Paris, Republican congressional efforts to make cuts in Social Security, Republican congressional efforts to push the Keystone XL Pipeline, the initiation of an inquiry by the International Criminal Court into potential war crimes in the most recent Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the Republican efforts to dilute the impact of the Dodd-Frank regulations on Wall Street, Hillary Clinton has been completely absent from the news and has only made one public statement.  That statement was in the form of a tweet. "Attacking financial reform is risky and wrong.  Better for Congress to focus on jobs and wages for middle class families."

First, it is clear that Secretary Clinton is steering clear from taking a position on anything that is or may be in the future controversial.  The national media and virtually all politicians are refusing to talk about the terrorist attacks by Boka Haram or the victims of the latest violence between Israel and Palestine, even though in both cases far more innocent people were killed.  I cannot help but think that the lack of outrage in the United States and other western countries over the deaths of innocent Nigerians and Palestinians has a lot to do with the otherness attached to those people.  How can you explain the incredible difference in response to those atrocities and what just happened in Paris?  In any case, that is a question too hot for Secretary Clinton to deal with.

Of course the issues of freedom of speech raised by the attack on Charlie Hebdo raise a lot of difficult questions as well.  Secretary Clinton,  a hawk who voted for the Iraq war and for the Patriot Act twice and a member of the Obama administration that has attacked freedom of the press with a vigour normally only seen in Republican administrations, has not been a strong advocate for freedom of expression and would have great difficulty navigating the difficult issues raised by the recent Paris attacks to say nothing of the crack down on freedom of expression following the Charlie Hebdo attack.

I am actually surprised that she has not made a statement condemning the opening of an investigation by the International Criminal Court into the latest Israeli/Palestinian violence.  Normally she defends Israel regardless of what it has done.  I am at a loss to explain her silence on this issue although one might posit that there are more and more Democrats that want to hold both the Palestinians and the Israelis responsible for their violent actions, so perhaps she thinks her silence will not offend anybody.

Of course, Secretary Clinton is maintaining her silence on the Keystone XL Pipeline.  This issue is a symbolic one pitting the environment against short term profits for giant oil companies.  Secretary Clinton's ties to big business and Wall Street make it difficult if not impossible for her to oppose the pipeline.  I should note she has not commented on the fact that 2014 was the warmest year on record either.

Secretary Clinton chose, as her only public comment, to tweet about the Republican efforts to dilute the regulations imposed on Wall Street by the Dodd-Frank legislation.  Her comment was limited to a tweet and hence could not contain any real substance.  What a perfect way to try to walk the fine line between her Wall Street backers and Elizabeth Warren.

It is the issue of Secretary Clinton's closeness to Wall Street that made the articles about a report by the Center for American Progress, a think tank full of friends of Hillary and Bill, so interesting to me.   The two articles about the report cited above were clear about the ties of the think tank to the Clintons and their advisors and the fine line that the report walks to not offend Wall Street while trying to sound like Elizabeth Warren.  The report was written by a group of Clinton loyalists lead by Larry Summers.  This group are deregulators and people that supported NAFTA and other "free trade" agreements.  They share in the blame for the great recession and the ever increasing gap in wealth and income in the United States.  In light of the popularity of Elizabeth Warren, they and Secretary Clinton are trying to reinvent themselves as populists.

I am not yet convinced that Secretary Clinton can actually reinvent herself as a populist and true liberal.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal