LEFT HANDEDNESS, SPANISH STONEHENGE, TWITTER, AND MORE: #15

 

THE LESSONS OF LEFT HANDEDNESS

Sandy Koufax was my sports hero growing up. I also followed and admired Bill Russell and Johnny Unitas and other big sports names of the time. But Sandy was my hero. To this day, when I'm filling out a ballot and I just don't like any of the names, I write in Sandy Koufax. On the list of the greatest lefties of all time, Sandy rules.

As it happens, I have been married for 50 years to a lefty. She complains occasionally about scissors being designed for right handed folks. But I hadn't thought about it much until I viewed an interesting TED Talk on YouTube. The presenter pointed out that, if you want a small taste of what it's like to be a person of color in the United States, a very small taste, consider the plight of the lefty.

Only 10% of humans are left handed. No one is certain why. A recent major study revealed that there are measurable differences in the brains of lefties, mostly in the right brain, but those difference are so slight that they only appear when studying large data sets. In this case, the researchers studied over 30,000 brain scans, 3,000 of which were of lefties. Even so, the researchers concluded that, not only could they not determine why people are left handed, they also could not predict just from looking at scans whether an individual was left handed or not. So lefties are just like the rest of us, only different.

But here's the kicker. Imagine that you are left handed. It's not just scissors that are designed for righties. Everything is designed for the 90% of us who are right handed. School desks, baseball gloves, guitars, EVERYTHING. Just ask your left-handed friends. Oh, for certain. You can generally buy the item that you are looking for designed especially for the left handed. But you'll pay a premium and there will be fewer choices.

And now imagine that you are a person of color in an increasingly white nationalist USofA. Of course, the system is designed in favor of the majority. That's the way that it works, isn't it? And if you are a white nationalist and looking at the numbers, you are bound to notice that your privileges are about to be revoked. In a right handed world, white nationalists are learning what it might be like to be left handed. And they are scared. And they should be.

RAND PAUL IS AN IDIOT

Senator Paul is quoted as saying that the FBI will have to justify their actions. 

The National Archives asked politely for the documents. The documents were subpoenaed. A lawyer submitted an affidavit representing that all documents had been returned. And still, the FBI found Top Secret documents in Trump's possession. Illegally.

Under those circumstances, the FBI has nothing to justify. But Trump sure as hell does. In court, I hope.

SPANISH STONEHENGE

No one expects the Spanish Stonehenge. (If you immediately thought of Monty Python, give yourself five bonus points. If you don't understand the reference, google 'no one expects the Spanish' and see what pops up.)

Climate change has resulted in severe drought in many regions around the world. Sunken boats resurface in lakes that are drying up. Ghost towns reappear. In a particular dam-created lake in the USofA, several bodies have been located, some in oil drums, clearly murder victims intended to be lost to the light of day forever. In Spain, we have something a bit different.

Thought to be from 4,000 to 7,000 years old, the Dolmen of Guadalperal have been uncovered for the first time in 60 years. First submerged in the 1930s, the result of a Franco rural development project, the standing stones are back in the sunlight. Perhaps a question greater than the purpose of their construction is the question of why it would be considered progress to submerge them in the name of progress in the first place. 

It goes to show that humans are just hairless bipeds with big, useless brains.

TWEETS AS JOURNALISM

I read the news. I have a television, but I just use it for streaming videos and movies. When I lived in the USofA, I watched the evening news on TV. It made me crazy. Now, I am in France. Now, I read the news. I subscribe to a major American newspaper and to a European wire service. I cruise two sites that aggregate news from a variety of sources - from FOX and media even farther to the right, to CNN and others farther left. And I have come to hate Twitter.

Freddy Baseball has been traded to the Yankees. Twitter has exploded. Read some examples.

Sally Popstar's new boyfriend is twenty-three yeas older than she is and the Twitterverse is in a tizzy.

I understand that the proliferation of platforms has led to a scramble for content. But please. Don't pretend that the random typing of my neighbor 's teenage son qualifies as news. It doesn't.

FRENCH MORTGAGE, RAIN, AND BITS AND BOBS: #14

 

 

FRENCH MORTGAGE

Those of you who have been paying attention will know that it has been several months since I last wrote about our mortgage application. At that time, I wrote that we were at the finish line. 

We were not. 

Innumerable twists and turns ensued before the money finally came through. I simply could not keep up. Here are the highlights:

• First met with our banker during the first week of November. By the first week of December, we were told that our request for a loan had been approved. We closed on the new house on December 15th. The loan money arrived on August 2nd of the following year.
• First, the bank called it a mortgage, then a refinance, then a loan.
• First, the banker proposed a 10-year term with life insurance for me. Now it's a 7-year term with life insurance for both of us.
• First, I proposed that the bank finance 38% of the purchase price. The bank agreed to finance 27%.
  
• First did an online medical questionnaire in November. The website didn't like Cathey's phone number for the verification code. Mailed a signed hard copy witnessed by the banker. Then the bank decided in April that the medical questionnaires were too old and had to be resubmitted. Still didn't like Cathey's phone number but her sister's number worked just fine. She called us with the verification code.
• First the bank wanted us to open a 10,000€ savings account maintained to ensure payments. Settled for 25% less, money that we can't touch until the loan is paid off. 

Each of the changes required an exchange of emails and a personal meeting with the banker. I have counted 15 separate email threads.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY: The old adage is true. The best way to obtain a loan is to prove that you don't need it. For American citizens in France, the requirements go a bit further, including making the deal worth the effort for your bank to comply with American and European banking regulations. 

Regardless of the fact that we have submitted French tax returns, in addition to our American ones, for 15 years. Regardless of the fact that we have lived permanently in France for 8 years. And regardless of the fact that we have received our ten-year residency permits, one step below French citizenship, about three years ago. We are still Americans. We must learn patience with French bureaucracy. If you don't learn that patience, living in France won't be nearly as much fun.

RAIN

Did I read recently that the folks who built that ark in Kentucky (or someplace like Kentucky) are suing their insurance company? They want to be paid for water damage. To the ark that they built. From rain. Water damage.

 OPERA SURPRISE

The conductor has led the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted the Royal Ballet of Covent Garden Orchestra at the Met in New York. The soloists are among the best in France. And for 30€, we'll be attending their performance of Donzinetti's The Elixir of Love in a small theater in a small town a few minutes away. We had no idea when we moved to the rural, politically conservative, ancient region of France, a region that traces human history back to Neanderthals and beyond, that modern players would find venues for music from Bach to the blues anywhere and everywhere that an audience could be called together. What a gift!

 UPDATE: Attended the opera last night. Unfortunately, our heat wave hadn't broken. Fortunately, the venue's tiered seating afforded everyone a clear view of the performance. And the orchestra was tight and confident from the first notes of the overture. And the set was simple but enhanced with occasional, interesting projected animations. And the principal soloists were nationally recognized professionals. And the chorus displayed enthusiasm and discipline.

And I am so grateful to live here.

TRUMP 

There has to come a point of reckoning or else why do we pretend that there is such a thing as the rule of law? You simply can't take stuff out of the Oval Office and stick it in your closet at home if it is classified certain ways or if it belongs in the National Archives. The man overtly puts the Presidential Seal on everything in sight at his resorts and on his golf courses in clear contravention of the law. His other transgressions are so numerous as to defy comprehension by reasonable, rational people. There has to come a point of reckoning.

 

BAD NEWS, FRENCH MORTGAGE, SAUSAGE, AND BITS AND BOBS: #13

 

CONTENT

The news ain’t what it used to be. 

I’m retired. I have wifi. I have Reuters and Google News and Flipboard and The New York Times and more sources for ‘content’ on my phone than I could ever need.  Not so long ago, scanning through those sources was enjoyable, might even have evoked a chuckle or two. 

Remember the Chris Christie meme? How many ways could an obese governor lounging in a beach chair be photoshopped into wildly inappropriate current events stories? As it turned out, lots of ways, lots of very funny ways. Where are the memes featuring the politicians of today that evoke laughter and not disgust? 

COVID. Trump. Boris. Putin. Ukraine. China. Climate. Supply chain. The price of energy. The price of food. 

The world is too much with us...

ON THE OTHER HAND

UPI reports that a chicken walked up to a security area in the Pentagon, unaccompanied and unarmed. Yes. A chicken. Not a Bird Colonel. An actual chicken. With feathers.

When I was in college, we stole a chicken from the agricultural school, spray painted it red, and let it loose in the room of the resident assistant, where it proceeded to use the poor guy's Masters thesis on his desk for toilet paper. But the Pentagon …?

FRENCH MORTGAGE

For those who are following, we are in the home stretch. The last piece of paper that my banker needs is the payoff of our current mortgage. Our notaire, the French semi-lawyer who acts as an impartial(?) broker in all real estate transactions, is supposed to pay off Credit Immobilier de France with the proceeds of the sale of the old house. Our buyers say that they have transferred the money to escrow. Let's see what else can go wrong.

ON THE OTHER HAND

 

Rescuers had a hard time approaching a dog, lost in some woods. They tied a sausage to a string connected to a drone and flew it over the dog, who dutifully followed the flying sausage out of the woods to safety. Never underestimate the power of sausage.

BASKETBALL 

The 76ers mortgaged their future for James Harden. If they don’t win a championship this year or next, they blew it. Yes, I know. Noam Chomsky thinks that professional sports are jingoistic exercises meant to distract the masses. My guess is that  Noam never played full court, five-on-five basketball in the gym at the local Y.

 

 

FRESH FLOWERS, FREE SPEECH, A PISSED OFF CAT, AND OTHER BITS AND BOBS: #12

 

FRESH FLOWERS 

Joni always gets it right. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

For something like 30 years and a bit more, we bought, packaged for resale, and distributed thousands of cut flowers every week. Roses, carnations, mums, and more slipped through our hands, primarily viewed as a commodity. It was how we made our living. Oh, every once in a while, a particularly fine specimen would catch our eye and wind up in a bud vase on the kitchen table. But in general, I just became accustomed to having fresh flowers in the house without really noticing them. 

In retirement, Cathey has taken to container gardening on the terrace. No veggies. Just stuff that looks pretty, smells good, or might spice up a stew. So we have sprigs and blossoms of several different sorts on the table as summer begins on through the middle of autumn. But the winters, as far from eastern Pennsylvania as we are, still can be pretty sparse. And, because I am a man, I hadn’t noticed that the vases had been put away and that the table was bare. 

The bulb lit in the dim recesses of what passes as my mind when a dinner invitée brought Cathey a bouquet of flowers instead of the usual bottle of wine.

“I just love cut flowers,” Cathey said. After more than 50 years, you may be as stupid about some things as a lump of granite, but if you are still alive and have all of your fingers and toes intact, you know when the lady of the house speaks from the heart.

Yes. I have started buying flowers. No big deal. Self defense is a noble and essential animal skill that human males would be wise to keep sharply honed.

FREE SPEECH

There’s lots of talk these days about freedoms. In particular, folks seem to be adopting the philosophy that rights are more important than responsibilities and can be disconnected from truth and from consequences. 

Joni again. She’s joined Neil Young in taking her music off Spotify in response to that service providing a platform for misinformation. Does Joe Rogan have a right to spout his bull shite? Of course he does. Does Spotify have the right to give him a platform? Certainly, although one could wish that Spotify would pay greater attention to the quality of the information its platform provides a megaphone for rather than the profitability of same. So what’s all the huffing and puffing about?

We need to have a serious conversation about how far we are willing to go to participate in the post truth society that we seem to be enveloped in. Most of us haven’t the power to influence the course of that conversation on a macro level. Joni and Neil can. But we have to do our part. We have to, with love and all due respect, push against falsehoods promoted in our hearing. Bypass the channels on the television or radio that promote false narratives for profit. Don’t give voice to family and friends spouting anti scientific nonsense, particularly in front of our children.

The freedom to swing your fist ends at the point of my nose. Should the two collide, there will be consequences. And in these troubled times, the freedom of people like Rogan to give credence to opinions that might cause serious harm to me or those that I love should not be allowed to be monetized without significant push back from serious and thoughtful people wherever it rears it’s ugly head.

OUR CAT IS PISSED OFF

We're in the middle of a move. We're only moving about 75 yards down the street, but we are moving. Beds, rugs, spice cabinets, plants, all that had been here will soon be there. Because we're only moving down the street, we are doing most of the moving by ourselves. We pack a box, we carry it down the hill, we unpack the box, we bring back the empty box. Repeat. It's been a couple of weeks now, but we are near the end.

Sylvie is having a hard time. She’s a snowshoe, an offshoot Siamese breed. And she was a street kitten, feral child of a feral mother, very territorial and always aware of her surroundings. So when stuff that Sylvie had become accustomed to began disappearing, Sylvie noticed. She began following us around. She became more of a lap cat. Something unusual was going on and she was not comfortable with it.

The crisis came when I began to tear down the room that she and I share. It’s my office, but it’s the one room in the house that has the radiator going all winter so that she has one dependable warm place to nap on her cat tower. As the date for the move neared, I spent a day clearing everything out of the room except my desk and that tower. Day bed, book cases, coats and hangers in the little open closet…all suddenly gone. 

Sylvie immediately displayed her displeasure. She threw up everywhere. Everywhere. She stopped eating, even her favorite daily treats. She hid inside the little cave in the tower that she had never frequented before. Sylvie was one pissed off cat.

Two days passed. We kept close watch. We considered a trip to the vet if she continued to refuse to eat. But in time, Sylvie came around. Slowly at first, but now back to whatever passes as normal for her. Now comes the kicker. We move her to the new house in a couple of days. I will report.

BITS AND BOBS

A friend in Florida is complaining that it’s so cold that he might have to put on socks. Meanwhile, they’re experiencing a blizzard where he grew up in the north. Opinions about the weather are indeed relative to the thickness of one’s blood and, in warmer climates, the blood thins rapidly.

A teenage girl just became the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe in a single-seat prop plane, solo. It took the better part of six months to complete the journey, proving that given enough time and money, anybody can do anything.

Apropos of our move, the new house is heated primarily by programmable electric radiators. I intend to fire up the fireplace insert frequently for two reasons. First, a fireplace not only provides heat, but visual and auditory and aromatic enjoyment as well. Secondly, we don’t have a ten year old child handy to teach me how to program the darn radiators which, by the way, come in a variety of different flavors with different buttons and little, unreadable screens.

FIRE IS RITUAL AND NOVELTY: #11

 

Our new house has a fireplace with an insert. I haven't lived in a house with a fireplace for over fifty years. I’m ready. Impatient. I've started fires in the insert every day for the past few days. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Fire starting involves ritual, repeated adherence to certain personalized rules to accomplish the desired outcome. Do you sweep the hearth clean or build on a bed of ashes? Do you use one of those little fire-starter cubes? If you do, organic or petrochemical? What sort of kindling do you use and how do you arrange it? What size log(s) of what type of wood do you use? How do you arrange them? How do you set the draft? Once you have your fire going, how often do you poke and prod it?

These are all serious questions requiring serious answers. As you learn your particular fireplace, you settle on the answers that seem to produce the best result. There’s little profit in changing the ritual once you have settled on a formula that builds the fire that you want in an acceptable timeframe. You have faith that your ritual will produce positive results and continue to produce positive results every time. That’s ritual. That’s comforting.

Once you have your fire going, ritual is done and novelty comes to the fore. Every fire is different. Those differences may explain at least part of the fascination that us hominids have with fire.

I have my rituals. Comforting. I await the novelty, fascinated. The kindling catches quickly. Or not. The log(s) catch quickly. Or not. The draft needs to be tinkered with. Or not. The log(s) seem well positioned and can be left alone. Or not.

When a substantial log catches, and if the draft is strong and I leave it strong, the log may become swathed in flames. I usually would restrict the air at this point. Burn slower. Build up heat. But there are times that I am enthralled by a log that is engulfed in flames and just let the pulsating veils of fire eat the log down to embers quickly.

And in the penultimate stage, when the log is no longer a stout piece of wood but is not yet a fragile collection of embers barely holding together, rivers of fire appear on the face of the log, as if the fire is bursting to get out from inside. The log appears as a miniature echo of a nighttime aerial portrait of rivers of lava from an erupting volcano. The lines of fire appear, intersect, broaden, pool, and eventually cause the log to collapse in on itself.

Fire. Ritual. Novelty. Finally…

 

GETTING A FRENCH MORTGAGE: PART DEUX #10

 

 

To recap:

• You have a banker, not a bank.
• Bring every piece of paper that you own.
• French bankers don't negotiate like American bankers.
• You don't actually apply for a mortgage until you've been approved.
• You are not approved until the regional office signs off.
• There's a waiting period. 

And don't forget, the banker can get COVID and let your paperwork sit on his desk for a couple of extra weeks. That's where we were the last time that I posted. It gets better.

After satisfying Frederick's request for updated French tax info, I thought that we might be home free. Silly me. Out of the blue, more requests for documents. Statements for the past three months for our Belgian account. Proof that we had paid off the mortgage on our current house. And how about the deed to the new house? You know, the one that the mortgage is for. Let's take them one at a time.

BELGIAN ACCOUNT

We don't have any accounts in Belgium. Frederick said that we did, that we had received transfers of money from an account in Belgium. I asked Frederick for the dates and amounts. And thus the puzzle was solved. The dates and amounts were dates and amounts that I had used Wise (formerly Transferwise) to move money from our American checking account to our French account. Apparently, Wise has an office in Belgium that handles such transfers. I've explained to Frederick. Frederick understands. Never mind.

PROOF OF PAID OFF MORTGAGE ON OUR OLD HOUSE

We won’t pay off the mortgage on our old house until we close the sale. Mid February. Frederick knew that. The loan cannot be finalized until after the old mortgage is paid in full, he said. He could have told us that two months ago. He didn’t. Oversight? Who knows? But the fact is that Frederick never once in three months said that receipt of the loan could not be accomplished before the closing on the old house. Well, now we know. Pressure off. We’ll just have to wait.

PROOF OF OWNERSHIP OF THE NEW HOUSE

We’re still waiting for our copy of the deed to the new house. It’s been over a month since we closed and received the keys. But given that we’re waiting until mid February anyway, I don’t have jump on the notaire to send it over quickly. She said that it would take a month to finalize. It’s been a couple of weeks more than that. Gentle prodding should produce results.

AND THERE’S MORE

The home office has decided that because of our age, the loan will have to be for seven years instead of ten and the insurance will have to be at 100% instead of 50% of the loan should either of us ‘disappear’. (Apparently, that’s the polite term that bankers in France use for kicking the bucket.) Obviously, that means that the monthly payments will be higher. Not out of sight, not more than we can handle, but a significant percentage increase all the same. Shorter term. Better insurance. But this is the third time that the details have been modified. 

For the first time, I let my frustration show to Frederick. Just a little...

So we’re not done yet. Once again, stay tuned.

MACRON, 1/6, PIZZA, AND OTHER BITS AND PIECES: #9

 

MACRON IS PISSED OFF. SO AM I.

I don't care if it was political calculation, a slip of the tongue, or simply an uncharacteristic burst of honest feelings from a politician. But I am not pissed off that Macron is pissing off the people who piss me off by not getting vaccinated. As the controversy over Macron's statement concerning the last 10% of the French who are holding out against the jab plays out, anti-vaxxers are being interviewed by the media. And what those interviews bring to light, admittedly as anecdotal evidence, is that the anti-vaxxers have no problem purchasing fake vaccine passes or borrowing the passes of friends and family in order to go to restaurants and cinemas while unvaccinated. In other words, they have no problem breaking the law and endangering other people's lives, demonstrating that they are not merely criminals. They are sociopaths. 

Yes, such rants are becoming more and more common. Given that anti-vaxxers are such a small minority - in numbers if not in volume - that calling them names might not seem as edgy as it would have a year ago. But a year ago, I was calling them names too.

AT LAST. PIZZA

Friday night is Pizza Night. 

Isabella's Pizza outside of Bath made a fine pie just the way that we liked it back when we lived in Pennsylvania, USofA.  Isabella never appeared in person but her old man always welcomed me with a handshake and a grin. And on a warm summer evening, he would hand me a cold beer if I had to wait a few minutes for my pie to come out of the oven. For decades, Cathey could rest easy and enjoy someone else's cooking that one night a week. 

In France, it's been different. 

Every little town in France has a pizza joint. Some have full menus. Some just pizza. Sometimes. the pizzas are little more than crackers-with-toppings with thin, almost wafer crusts. Some of those cracker pizzas are better than others. I like the guy who parks his truck in the square on Wednesday nights better than I like pizza from the town's storefront shop that's only open on weekends, but the difference isn't that dramatic.

Crackers with toppings...

Recently, fate intervened. A new friend, and a foodie too, said that he heard that a pizza restaurant in a market town up the road made a good pie. So we went to the Sunday morning market in Saint-Chinian, lingered over a cup of coffee while we waited for Pizza Di Rosa to open, and the three of us ordered three different 8" pies. Wonderful. A fine cross between the full-crust American pie and the French crackers, with a thin but slightly bready crust, flexible enough to fold, but not so thick that the toppings were overwhelmed. 

Now, for a decent bagel...

 1/6: A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY

When Liz Cheney said that 1/6 will be remembered by Americans in the same way that 9/11 and December 7th are, she was immediately castigated by the Trumpists in her party. So many people died when the planes flew into the World Trade Center, so many people died when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, that there can be no comparison, they said.

Well, Liz wasn't talking about deaths. No, Liz was talking about unexpected attacks on the soil of our USofA and its institutions. Liz was talking about events so previously unthinkable that they shook our concept of what is acceptable and normal. And she was right. A 21st Century insurrection to overturn an election that to this day still stands as free and fair, despite every attempt to brand it as stolen, will almost certainly be remembered for a long time to come. Let's hope that it's remembered in the proper context - a failed attempt to subvert democracy fueled by an ignorant, arrogant, and defeated President.

YOUTUBE: THERE'S A VIDEO FOR THAT

Putting together IKEA furniture? Wondering how to change a setting on an iPhone Xr? Carving a turkey or a rib roast? There are videos for that. There's a video for everything. No more mysteries. No professional secrets. 

Put malt powder in the water when you boil your homemade bagels. Intel or AMD? Add cinnamon to lamb shanks to sweeten them a bit. What's the easiest way to make pallets out of your furniture? (Wait a minute. Reverse that.) There are videos for that. 

 Clearly, it is more likely than not that we live in a simulation. We are engulfed in a digital world so interconnected and complex that almost certainly, the next step is to live in a virtual world of our own choosing, a virtual world in which such nuisances as COVID do not exist.

How's that for taking a sharp right turn that you didn't see 

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Thousands of anti-vaxxers took to the streets in Austria to protest mandates. Millions stayed home, fully vaxxed. Guess which group earned the headlines.

Djokovic rightly expected to be able to compete in Australia. Money and power. What else do you need to be allowed to do whatever you want to do? Just ask Trump. And by the way, Trump will never go to jail. Why not? Money and power.

For the past week, lows at night have hovered between 28F and 39F with frost turning the vineyards white in the morning. In eastern Pennsylvania, such temperatures in mid January might be considered a blessing, especially if the daytime temps rose fo 50F as ours have been. I guess that my blood is thinning after eight years living within spitting distance of the Mediterranean.