Aux Armes, Citoyens!

I’m not a huge Francophile. As a country it is often narcissistic and arrogant and has a long and cruel colonial past (So are we, come to think of it). And as far as I know they are the only nation which ever put out an automobile made entirely out of merde.

To celebrate owning this thing, our first car since we’d been together, said lady and I drove to a pizza joint, where we ate our slices joyfully before returning to the vehicle waiting proudly at the curb outside. Try to imagine our horror when it would not start. I popped the hood and found to my disbelief that the battery had cracked in half, and apparently there is something about being in two separate pieces that raises havoc with a battery’s function. I had never before heard of anything like this happening, but it soon developed that this was an omen.

Over the next twelve months we dealt with the following:

• The doors were so thin that frost formed on the inside in Minnesota’s winter
• One could not drive faster than 45 mph because the car would vibrate so badly one’s composure was destroyed and one’s dental work was in danger of being shaken loose
• The engine got great gas mileage but poor oil mileage. It burned oil in such quantities that we needed to carry two gallons in a can in the backseat just to make it between gas stops
• The heater worked well enough to keep us warm in summer only. After that it was hopeless

When we finally sold it to a young man whose dreams included owning his very own Renault 4CV, we told him all the bad stuff and he still put his money down and drove away. I never heard from him again and always hoped that nothing untoward had occurred .

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There is this thing about French wines and cheeses. Both have been excellent since … forever. Wines eventually proved to be a poor dietary choice for yours truly, but cheeses … mmmm … another matter entirely.

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However, there is one thing French that is amazing, and that is its national anthem, La Marseillaise. A more stirring call to arms I cannot imagine. And unlike our own Star Spangled Banner, a normal person can actually sing it! A close look at the lyrics reveals that they are a bit bloodier than our own anthem, but hey, European life was stressful when it was written in 1792. (Here’s a link to the French and English words to the song).

Can’t let you go without watching a recorded performance. Here’s a dandy.

That was beautiful and makes one want to put on a tricorn hat, wave the tricolor flag, and burn down a Russian village or two. But, in all seriousness, could I really ever fully trust a country that put out the Renault?

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The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci said a wonderful thing in 1929, when Benito Mussolini had Italy under his thumb. “My mind is pessimistic, but my will is optimistic,” he wrote to a friend from prison. I think he meant that as long as we are alive, we have hope. I try to take Gramsci’s words to heart still today, even if not always successfully.

Daniel Barenboim

I think that this quotation from an article in the NYTimes at least partially sums up how I get through each day, having been bombarded (as are we all) by more bad news than my woodland brain was ever meant to contain. I really am better equipped to pad barefoot through the forests eating termites or whatever I can find along the way, and seeking shelter in rotted tree trunks than I am to deal with reports of one sleazy politician, one murderous spouse, one narcissistic “leader,” one greedy investor, or one wrenching war after another.

Since I have not been granted the opportunity to live the life I am genetically prepared for, now I must scuttle across the urban landscape trying to avoid being trampled by the elephants in our society.

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The time today could be described in any number of ways. You could say that it was one o’clock on Monday the 9th of May, or you could say it’s lambing time. Both would be accurate. Here’s a bunch of critters we pass on the way to the gym.

Please pardon the noise on the video. The wind bloweth.

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We are experiencing one of those weeks of colder weather accompanied by high winds followed by several days of drizzle. For a fair-weather outdoor boy like myself it is a dismal forecast. Our new toys, the sit-on-top kayaks, were not designed for windy days on the water, so they remain roped firmly onto their trailer.

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