Villefranche-sur-mer Winter 2018 - 10 Combat Naval Fleuri

Dear Friends,

The annual "Naval Combat Fleuri" was held in Villefranche last Monday.  The first event of the day was the arrival of a couple of marching bands at l'Octroi (the main drag and plaza).  There were a couple of neat floral arrangements.  Here is Jane with one of them.

The first marching band was from Italy and also from another era.

But they were very good at throwing their flags in the air and catching them without hitting any spectators.

After watching this group for awhile, we had to do some shopping so we could have lunch before the actual boat parade.  From our apartment we watched the people coming from the train station through security to get to the waterfront from which they could watch the parade.  We were invited to view the parade from the apartment of some friends who were just above the waterfront at the center of the activity.  As with all events in France now where there are lots of people, there was lots of security.

These officers were checking people entering the waterfront from the street directly below the apartment from which we were watching.  They were amazingly disciplined.  At all times at least one of them was looking away from the parade at the buildings overlooking the route.  The boats got ready in a small marina area used primarily by the boats from the cruise ships in season.

It is hard to tell from my pictures how many people there were.  It was a lot.  Right on the water, they were five or six deep along the about 5 blocks of the route.  In addition there were people wandering on the street.  While waiting for the boat parade to start the crowed was entertained by several marching bands, including the one we had seen earlier.  One of the bands, consisting of teenage girls from Eastern Europe, stole the show with their fantastic drumming and dancing.

At the start of the parade, the boats make a pass in single file along the waterfront to the cheers from the crowds.

After a boat has made its initial run past the crowd, it joins the others milling around waiting for the rest to finish.  

Once all are done, the "battle" begins as the beautiful floral masterpieces are torn apart and thrown into the crowd.  This maneuver requires the boats to go right next to the shore which has a deep drop off but consists of huge boulders.  If you look closely, you can see the man in the bow has just thrown a large bunch of mimosa (a beautiful yellow flower that is in full bloom around here now).

This continues for a long time until most of the flowers on the boats have been thrown.  Many of them do not make the shore and end up in the water.

At the end of the day everybody is happy and most of the crowd goes home with beautiful bouquets.

Great fun was had by all!!!

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Villefranche-sur-mer Winter 2018 -9

Dear Friends,

The weather here has been colder and rainier than normal, and it has impacted our adventures.  Nevertheless, we have enjoyed several adventures in the last week.

Before starting on the adventures, I want to provide you with a picture of the beautiful surroundings that we get to walk around in each day.  This is a picture of Rue Volti, named after a wonderful Villefranchoise artist.

We have a wonderful tutor who teaches us French three days a week for three hours a day while we are in Villefranche and also Skypes with us one hour a week when we are at home.  We decided to have her and her family for dinner.  We were very proud of ourselves for pulling off this dinner.  First of all, serving a dinner to a French family where the Dad is a really good cook is threatening in and of itself, but doing so in a strange kitchen makes it all the more stressful.  At home, we have two full ovens, a microwave and a speed oven (combination microwave and regular oven).  Here we have no microwave and a single oven.  We made chicken marbella which I must say was great.  It was accompanied by Jane's famous and delicious roasted tomatoes and rice with small vegetables.  The rice was precooked and frozen by Picard Surgeles, a fantastic frozen food store that with any luck will find its way to the US.

The children, ages 3 and 5 ate like adults and were perfect guests.  They especially liked the ice cream with homemade chocolate sauce.  The homemade chocolate sauce was really just some of the wonderful chocolate they have here melted with a little milk and some butter.  It was delicious.  We had a fun night and spoke French the whole night.  

A couple of days later, the day started off the way all Villefranche days should be with a slight breeze, a beautiful blue sky and the sun shining brightly.  We decided we would walk to Saint Jean Cap Ferrat for lunch.  It was a little cool, but the sun was still shining when we arrived at Le Sloop restaurant right on the water in the marina.  The main course of the day was whole dorade which we both ordered.

Jane ordered her's well done, and I ordered mine as the chef prefers.  We learned an important lesson.  It is much easier to filet a fish that is cooked well done than one that is still a little gelatinous.  Once I was able to remove the head and bones, it was fantastic.  Unfortunately as the meal progressed, the temperature dropped and the skies began to cloud over.  The restaurant was prepared with blankets and an awning.

After lunch we started our walk back (2.5 miles) but the sun was nowhere to be seen except a sliver shining on the ancient hilltop town of Eze.  Jane captured the sight wonderfully with her cell phone.

We got back to our apartment and got our clothes off the line just as the rain started.  In this picture you can see our clothes hanging on the balcony of our apartment which is the top floor of the yellowish building.

During one of our French classes last week, we looked out the window to see an unusual sight.

Unfortunately the picture does not do the reality justice.  That is a small blimp with a person sitting in a chair below who is pedaling so that two propellers turn to move the blimp and keep it from landing in the water.  Proving once again that the harbor of Villefranche-sur-mer is one amazing place even on a chilly and overcast day.

After the success of our first dinner party, tomorrow we are having our second one.  This one includes two other couples whom we have meet in our stays here in Villefranche,  In fact it is the same group who had dinner together on Valentines' Day at a local restaurant.  Anyway, we are nervous about the meal.  We have planned ahead.  We went to our favorite patisserie to seek out the perfect dessert.  We saw a large tarte but did not recognize the name.  We asked Marie Claire what it was and when she described it we both made it clear that it was what we wanted.  We asked if she always had one and she suggested that we reserve it which we did.  When I asked if we needed to pay now, she said that she knew us as we had been coming to her shop for several years.  We wondered if she had noticed any improvement in our French over the years.

Today, we had to do the serious shopping.  It was cold and raining on and off so there was no Pétanque this morning.  So after breakfast we were off to the Saturday market to buy all the fixings for our dinner including olives and tapenade for starters, chicken provencal with artichoke hearts and capers, salad with avocados and Jane's vinaigrette dressing as well as Jane's roasted tomatoes.  The local market had everything we needed except for the chicken, artichoke hearts, capers and white balsamic vinegar.  The local butcher was about to go on a two week break which means there is no butcher in the old town of Villefranche.  As a result, his inventory was very low, and he had no chicken legs and second joints.  

To get the chicken and other remaining items, we set off to Nice.  We also needed some Nespresso coffee pods.  Normally this trip is quite easy.  We take the 100 or the 81 bus from the main drag in Villefranche to the port of Nice or the Place Garibaldi.  Then we take the tram to Place Massena where the Nespresso store is located.  Unbeknownst to us, today was Carneval, mardi gras a few days early.  As a result the tram was not running because there was a big spectacle in Place Massena.  The security was intense, a result of the terrorist attack in Nice on July 14, 2016.  Anyway we had to walk which was fine because we not only got our coffee, we got a lot of steps.  

Once we had our coffee, we headed to the old town of Nice to find the butcher shop that I had discovered online, Boucherie Saint-Françoise.  It is well known, as it is quite large and quite a production line.  You tell one of many butchers what you want.  He cuts it and packages it.  He gives you a number and puts the package on sort of zip line to the cashier.  When the cashier calls your number, you pay and get your package.  We got our chicken and then realized we also needed steak for tonight so we got to go through the process twice.  It was quite an adventure.  It is hard to capture the scene but Jane got me waiting in line.

We were a little worried about carrying the raw chicken back on the bus with us to Villefranche, but then this restaurant reminded us that a lack of refrigeration is not a problem in France.

Those fish were there in the middle of the afternoon and would undoubtedly be cooked and served for dinner tonight.

We got home form our adventure in Nice around 6:00 in time to rest a little before having steak, artichokes, potatoes, mushrooms, onions and leeks for dinner. 

Now we must get ready for our next adventures.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Constitutional Changes - Voting

Dear Friends,

If we are to achieve true equality of opportunity in the United States, each person must have the same influence on who represents them.  The Constitution of the United States establishes a very undemocratic way to determine federal elected officials.  First let's look at a few interesting facts.
The population data is from the 2010 census.  The official site is here.  I found the Wikipedia site (here) easier to use.  When people refer to the population of the United States, they are generally referring to the people in the 50 states plus the District of Columbia.  The people who live in American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands don't even count and of course get no representation.  I note that Puerto Rico has a population that is about the same size as that of Oklahoma or Connecticut.

The population of the United States including the 50 states and the District of Columbia is 308,745,538.  Since the District of Columbia does not get any voting members of Congress, I would reduce the population by the 601,723 people who live in DC.  So the number of people living in the 50 states who actually have representatives in Congress is 308,143,815.  There are 100 voting members of the Senate.  If they were divided equally, each Senator would represent 3,081,438 people but of course that is not the case.  Wyoming is the smallest state by population (563,626), and each of the two Senators from Wyoming represent 281,813 people.  California is the largest state by population (37,253,956) and each of its two Senators represent 18,626,978 people.

The same issue exists with members of the House of Representatives.  There are 435 voting members of the House of Representatives.  They represent a total of 308,143,815 people, so if all were equal each Representative would represent 708,377 people.  However, every state gets one Representative.  The sole representative from Wyoming represents only 563,626 people, while each of the 53 Representatives from California (on average) represents 702,905 people.  If you combine both the House and the Senate, each of the 3 representatives to Congress from Wyoming represents just 187,875 people, while each of the 55 representatives to Congress from California represents 12,417,985 people.  This is clearly not equal representation.  I should also note that the 601,723 people in Washington DC have no voting representation in the House or the Senate while the 563,626 in Wyoming have 3 voting representative, two Senators and one member of Congress.

Of course the same is true for the election of the President since it is done by the electoral college which is based on virtually the same system.  There are 538 electors in the college, three for each state plus the District of Columbia.  For reasons that escape all understanding each state can determine how its electors will vote with many choosing a winner take all approach.  As the general electorate becomes more divided politically and those lines are also geographic we can expect more times when the President will be elected after losing the popular vote.

The failure of our voting system in recent years is made clear by the fact that in the last 4 Congressional elections (2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016) the Democrats have won a greater percentage of the votes than the percentage of seats in the House of Representatives they have won.  This difference often referred to as a "seats bonus" is the topic of an article by Molly Reynolds (here) that is very interesting talking about the 2016 election.  She writes:

First, while Republicans, as of this writing, received a plurality of votes cast for Congress nationwide this year—49.9 percent, again according data from the Cook Political Report—they received a greater share, 55.2 percent, of the seats. Democrats, as a result, won a smaller share of seats than they did votes: 44.8 percent of seats as compared to 47.3 percent of the votes. (These numbers may change as final vote tallies are updated.)

This differential is a result of the Constitution's undemocratic approach to voting as well as gerrymandering.

It seems clear that there are several amendments that must be made to the Constitution.  

1. The electoral college must be eliminated so that the President and Vice President are elected by a direct popular vote.
2.  The Senate seats must be done by population not state.  Smaller states could join together with adjacent states to gain enough people to get one of the 100 Senate seats.
3.  Congressional districts must be drawn in a non-partisan manner, i.e. no gerrymandering.  Also a state that does not have enough population to get one of the 435 seats must join with other states to reach the threshold.
4.  All American citizens must have a Senator and a Representative.  That means that Washington DC, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands must be included in our system of representative democracy.
5.  The qualifications to vote must be set in the Constitution and not left to partisan state legislatures, so that all voter suppression is eliminated.
6.  The Constitution must say that money is not speech and therefore not protected by the First Amendment.  All political contributions must include the name, etc. of the person making the contribution and only real live citizens of the United States can make contributions.  Contribution limits should be established on a per person per year in the aggregate to all candidates, parties, PACs, etc.  The campaigns must be funded by the government and all campaigns must receive equal media coverage.
7.  Election Day must be a holiday and multiple ways of voting must be available to all.
8.  Lying, including reckless disregard for the truth, in a political campaign must be a felony.

I am sure there are other amendments, and there are many details that need to be put in place, but these would be a good start.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal