#even only metropolitan france French

[sgiandubh]

What about Grandma then? In recent days, that Barbour issue has been discussed in several corners of this fandon, as you said. Well, the day before yesterday Garance was posting stories showing off his Barbour coats...Obviously those two also follow the topics discussed on Tumblr. 🤷‍♀️

Dear Garance Anon,

You will have to forgive me for the very, very late answer. I wanted to give it my full, undivided attention, because I believe we never spoke seriously about Mrs. Mariline Fiori, aka Garance Doré.

The short answer to your comment is 'oh, but we know they do, as we know they are not the only ones'. Unlike S&C, though, the McGrandmas might see us as a free, useful toolbox of sorts, where readily available ideas congregate. Remember they have deliberately calibrated their public couple personas on exactly what SC are unable and/or unwilling to give/show this fandom. To some extent, it works and, as any good Frenchwoman, Garance understood she was savvy to play the atout charme joker card. Which is exactly what she does - also, being French, she knows exactly what type of European public is instantly attracted to the Barbour reference: a public whose wallets she needs.

But as I just said, your post made me think about Mrs. Doré. Who is she, really? So, sorry, Anon, if I use you as a springboard for my musings.

She was, as I said, born Mariline Fiori, on May 1st (same day as JAMMF, LOL) 1977, in Ajaccio, Corsica's main town and birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte. Not a Corsican, though (same as Napoleon, LOL): Italian father, French/Algerian mom. People who left Algeria when it became independent, after the Evian Peace Accords, and whom the metropolitan French still call, to these day, 'pieds-noirs' (literally and quite derogatorily, 'black feet'). Her family's social status is, however, a bit unclear, as Mrs. Fiori successively played with her personal story in interviews, in what the French also sarcastically call 'des petits arrangements avec la vérité'/ a bit of tinkering with the truth.

In this 2019 interview to Elle UK, for example, her parents are described as owning a restaurant in Corsica (https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/a29758314/garance-dore-original-influencer/):

But in another 2013 interview to The Talks, her mother was a shrink (https://the-talks.com/interview/garance-dore/):

Also, for the sake of clarity:

Oh, well: different country, different crowd/market, different agenda and perhaps older and wiser when talking to Elle UK, you would think?

Not necessarily and still a divisive figure for the international press/blogosphere. People did not appreciate her frequent flying and luxury travels during COVID, for example, along with her 'white, bourgeois woman entitlement'. Both in New Zealand...

(Source: https://www.ensemblemagazine.co.nz/articles/garance-dore-new-zealand - I think you should read the entire article, as it is absolutely enlightening, also something I wouldn't go polemic about, you make up your own mind, really).

...and in France, where they apparently are not very fond of her 'cult of personality' approach to social media, to say the least:

(Source: https://www.madmoizelle.com/a-t-on-vraiment-besoin-de-preter-attention-aux-conseils-antivax-des-influenceuses-1145916 Non Francophones could use Google Translate, but considerably lose in doing so the ferocity of the writing - but then, again, the French press is particularly sarcastic & ferocious, when set against someone or something. I love them to bits.)

The translation is clear, and I deliberately did not insist on the political stance of the article, whose title gives a straightforward idea: 'Do we really have to pay attention to the influencers' antivax advice?':

'This influencer cannot singlehandedly convert a part of her fans to antivaxing, via Instagram, but this comforts those who already thought so and keeps them even more hooked. This is because Instagram is a social media whose model heavily relies on shared affinities, meaning that it congregates likeminded people and creates bubble phenomena, of which GD is a good example.

GD, who built an empire around her handle which she turned into a brand and transformed her own lifestyle into her best product might very well turn her cult of personality into an economic model. Many celebrities already do so and are perfectly entitled to. But in her case, we are not talking about sending a birthday personalized cameo, we are talking about dispensing health advice during a pandemic.'

Truly, Ha-wa-wee 2.0 sounds like kindergarten compared to the above and never made it so far and wide in the international press. But hey, don't we know, double standard is the law of this land.

But to cut the story short, because it's 5 AM in here and we'd be talking about Mrs. McGrandma until tomorrow evening, do we really imagine someone so well versed in the ways and means of social media not following Tumblr?

Yeah, thought so, too.

[nesiacha]

Tribute to all these revolutionary women coming from the overseas departments and Haiti who fought at risk of their lives for their freedoms and forgotten even more than the women of the French revolution in metropolitan France already well despised.

In this post, although there are many of them, I will cite two of them, I will perhaps write a more detailed post when I have time because it is shameful that these women are not better known: -Sanité Bélair: Lieutenant of Toussaint Louverture, considered the soul of the conspiracy, particularly with her husband Charles Belair and fighter against Leclerc. She was captured, sentenced to death and shot. She showed great courage during her execution like many of her peers. She died but not her ideals and became a great symbol She is considered one of the great heroines of Haiti's fight for independence alongside Catherine Flon, Cecile Faitman and Dédée Bazile. On the Guadeloupe side we have Rosalie alias Solitude, whose historian Mathilde Larrère has written a magnificent article that I invite everyone to read. This woman had joined the community of "maroons". While she was a few months pregnant, she fought against the reestablishment of slavery. Captured, she will be executed like so many others after giving birth. When will there be more tribute to these women by exploring these parts of France? Personally I prefer a hundred (or even a thousand) times more to pay homage to them than Napoleon, who in my opinion, if he survived, failed as emperor, where the people I cited who died for their ideas had a posthumous victory. on the abolition of slavery and the independence of Haiti). Frankly beside the point when we are presented with Madame de Stael or Louise de Prussia as the only female figures standing against Napoleon, I am very sorry that they make a very pale figure regarding the women mentioned earlier (I am not saying that in a goal to clash with Louise of Prussia and Madame de Stael but rather the "thinkers" we can see in media, movie, who voluntarily cite only them to obscure the others because they believe that we can judge Napoleon magnanimously on what he did concerning slavery and do not focus only on the Europe part or worst to the goal to justify the horrors that France did to Guadeloupeans, Reunionese, Haitians, etc, or to the thinkers who only believe in white feminism, etc…).

[parasolyaa]

give me rtc character hcs for being in the subway for the first time

i love how this implies that they’ve never been in the subway before. well, since most of them almost never left uranium, this checks.

ocean — she always advocated for public transportation (and for some reason believed it wasn’t widely used, probably because she assumed everyone could use a car and subway was for noble people who cared for the environment), but if she ever went to a big city, she never stayed there for long, and usually walked by foot. when she actually used the subway for the first time, she decided to hand out flyers that said something like “thank you for choosing public transit! here are some other ways you can help the planet (…)”. ended up absolutely overwhelmed and in a taxi, wiping tears with the flyers no-one seemed to like. wonder why.

noel — romanticized the shit out of paris metropolitan, said he researched all about it and prided himself on being more knowledgeable of it than a local. when he got to go to france (probs a family/school trip when he was a teen) he bought an overpriced graphic t-shirt with the metropolitan map and confidently entered the underground. immediately got disappointed it wasn’t all gothic catacombs, and accidentally sat on a wrong train. had to take off his t-shirt and figure out where he was, and after two hours of being chest naked in the french underground and hopping from one wrong train to another even wronger train a kind passer-by pointed out that the print on his tee was of marseille, not paris. he spent an extra hour figuring out the correct map and asking for directions in broken french (the locals despised him). he entirely missed the drag show he waited for, and ever since then grew to hate the french underground.

mischa — is in on a ukrainian inside joke about metro in odesa. successfuly convinced all choir that there’s metro in odesa. there is no metro in odesa.

there’s also a ukrainian book called toreadors from vasyukivka, where two boys want to build a metro in their village, so they dig a big hole in their yard and a cow accidentally falls into it. safe to say their idea doesn’t stick. at some point these boys get to kyiv and immediately get lost in metro there. that’s 100% mischa. he did this i was the cow.

also he always finds ways not to pay for his ride: jumps over the tourniquet’s, crawls under them, squeezes in with a person in front of him etc. sometimes gets extremely bored and hides in a train wagon when it reaches the final stop, and stays in it when it goes to depo.

ricky — his parents drove him everywhere by car, and told the tales about toronto subway being inaccessible, dangerous and full of freaks. he never believed them. at some point (maybe in a trip with the choir) he got to travel by subway himslef. it was, in fact, a bit of an unpleasant experience, but he found out that it sucks on his own terms and was lowkey proud.

also he was listening to some cringefail furry music (i do not know if furry music is a thing but it will be now) and realised his earphones disconnected and he was blasting it to everyone only after he got home.

penny — had a secret hiding spot in toronto subway where she could keep her things and return to see them intact. she and ezra hid there often and spied on people, sometimes picking up what fell out of their purses — like pieces of candy or pennies (get it? penny? pennies? penis?). they never stayed there for long tho cause it was too overwhelmingly loud.

one time she went to that place and realised some construction workers occupied it. she was emotionally devastated.

constance — always saves the seat for the elderly, disabled and other people who might need it, and people always thank her plenty when she does so. actually never ever sat on a train seat unless the wagon was mostly empty. however, one time she had a horribly tiring + devastating + bad day and decided to sit down for once. got called 10 slurs by an old guy who didn’t see there was another free seat and ocean then told her she should have thought about others first. when she got home she wrote an angry vent in her musical diary (yk, the ones that open with a password and then play a one direction song or smth) with a fluffy pen.

+ talia — she is a subway rat. has a love/hate relationship with obolon station. has beef with pochayna station. she herself is from solomyanka region of kyiv where there is no subway. considers it her curse.

thank you folks for reading this, feel free to send me asks for headcanons!

[qsycomplainsalot]

Lindybeige is Either an Idiot or an Asshole

Most Likely Both

--There could be more flattering ways to put it, but he's never once given us that favor so why should I. His videos are wildly speculative and often based in cherry-picked British sources, when they come with any sources at all - see his masturbatory piece about the Bren vs the “Spandau”.

--There are two videos that I absolutely loathe at the edges of my youtube recommendations, both just filled to the brim with misinformation and logical contrivances. Videos that neckbeards will endlessly quote at me without question, taking a frustratingly long amount of time to untangle by which point they'd have usually lost interest already. The first one is Shadiversity's video about boob armor, the other is Lindybeige's video about the French Resistance.

--This video will have you believe that the French Resistance on its own did nothing of worth, based in great part on the fact that De Gaulle glamorized its contribution to the war for political status. I cannot stress this enough, just because De Gaulle used the general idea of the Resistance to smooth over a lot of Vichy war crimes and restore national unity does not mean the Resistance did not exist as a capable fighting force. --The very first more specific argument he offers to support his view -if you ignore “ME AND ME PA FOUND THAT VERY FONNY”- is that most of the French armor was American-made and provided through the lend-lease policy, making French people less deserving of credit in winning World War 2. I assume that in his mind that would diminish the contribution of the French Resistance to war efforts, even though these tanks and armored fighting vehicles were used by the Free French Army, not the Resistance at any point of its existence, making the point moot while also conveniently ignoring that the United Kingdom received ten times the aid France did through that same program.

--The image is from War Thunder because it makes for a better glamor shot than having it stand behind a museum fence or in black and white.

--His next argument implies that De Gaulle was "allowed" to walk in the liberated Paris ahead of Allied troops to give a speech that solidified the myth of the Resistance I mentioned. Again, in this passing, deceptive comment, Lindybeige implies that De Gaulle walked in after the fact and that Allied forces did the heavy lifting, only allowing him to do his speech a their convenience. Even a cursory amount of research will tell you that Paris was in fact liberated by the FFI, the Parisian people themselves and Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division composed of Metropolitan and Colonial French with Spanish elements, supported only on the very last day by the US 4th Infantry Division and a special British unit sent to gather intelligence. --Following this, he quotes the speech De Gaulle delivered in front of the town hall the day the German garrison surrendered, but cuts it short of the part in said speech mentioning “the help of our dear and admirable Allies” to then call De Gaulle ungrateful, which I have a hard time believing could be anything but intentionally deceptive. He then goes on to claim that the French Resistance was not organized by De Gaulle but by the British, justifying the ludicrous claim with 'they didn’t tell him because French intelligence services were bad and would have leaked all of it’. This is of course ignoring the fact that De Gaulle had personally sent Jean Moulin back to France for the exact purpose of organizing the five big Resistance movements into one organization, which he did, creating the Council for National Resistance that played a major role in the liberation of Paris. How the British would have any hand in this may be explained by his further comments, where he goes on to say that agents of the organization preceding the MI6 had been infiltrated in the Resistance to organize it, which begs the question of who's responsible for it being a non-effective combat force if it had been the case. He then gives us a voice in a sarcastic tone by saying, “of course you and your British bias would say that !” but does not really address it. Because honestly yeah, you and your British bias would say that.

--After quickly rambling that there were too many people in France and not enough bushes for all people to join the Resistance, which I have to admit is an extremely pointed and pertinent thing to say in a video downplaying the efforts and suffering of thousands of people fighting back against Nazi occupation under constant threat of torture and execution if caught, he mentions that the German forced labor system had severely depleted France’s manpower of fighting age. He says that by 1944, only teenagers and decrepit middle aged men were left to fight in the Resistance, to the great disappointment of the British agents he mentioned earlier. According to him, this meant France lacked the manpower and the communication capability required to pull the Resistance off, which is again contradicted by the actions of Jean Moulin, who had seemingly managed to access both before his death.

--There are a few problems with that argument. The Service de Travail Obligatoire, STO for short, was a system put in place by Vichy France to supply Germany with civilian manpower to make up for their own shortfalls due to the Eastern front. Because Vichy had negotiated a relative independence compared to other occupied country, its own government was responsible for the order, although it was in almost every point similar to forced labor orders in Denmark or the Netherlands. Now the STO did deprive France of over six hundred thousand young men, many of them skilled workers. However as an incentive given by the Nazis, every three forced laborer sent to Germany would lead to the release of one French POW, meaning that as far as manpower was concerned, France pretty much lost only four hundred thousand men and received qualified military personnel for its trouble. Not only is it hardly the manpower drain pictured by Lindybeige, it also ignores that many of these forced laborers, my grandfather included, immediately skipped work and joined either the Resistance or Allied military regulars after operation Overlord, as they were not as tightly surveilled as POWs and minorities in concentration/death camps. It also bears mentioning that it was teenagers, dismissed by Lindybeige as a negligible quantity, that acted as reconnaissance troops for the Free French using their motorbikes to scout and guide the way to the German Kommandantur. In any case, most members of the FFI integrated the regular French army after the liberation of Paris, meaning they were definitely of fighting age. Of course that whole argument is dropped as soon as he brings in British involvement, at which point he finally points out how the Resistance disabled most of the railway network and stopped the famously lightning-fast German army from facing the Allied invasion properly. For their role in this sabotage, a hundred fifty Resistance members working for the French national railway company were shot and another five hundred deported.

--To put it simply, Lindybeige dismisses the Resistance as a useless, wasteful and infighting group of functional morons, while every successful operation they carried out, every display of good mobility and coordination is attributed to British uniformed soldiers overseeing it. In reality most of that effort was done by either agents of the French government in exile or the Allied command under Eisenhower, with no account mentioning any significant autonomous British involvement which stands to reason as De Gaulle and Churchill could not stand one another. In fact Lindybeige tries to pass off operation Jedburgh as a purely British operation while it was specifically a joint one with American, British, French, Belgian and Dutch operatives all along the Atlantic coast.

--The next part is baffling. Lindybeige points at the Allies stopping their shipments of weapons to the French Resistance after July 44 and justifies it by saying the various cells were fighting each other and were uncoordinated. Thank god the Brits stopped sending arms or there would have been a civil war between these silly French Resistance members. Of course what happened in August was the liberation of Paris followed by the integration of the FFI into the new French army, which would go on to liberate the rest of the country. But Lindybeige pushes this civil war angle pretty hard, calling at this point of the video both Vichy France and the Resistance to be pro French in a way and underlining the conflicts between the two as a reason why the weapon shipments stopped coming, with examples such as Resistance members exacting reprisals against Nazi collaborators, which is a completely moot point because Vichy France and collaborators had nothing to do with the Resistance and were in fact, at this point of time, recognized as the enemy by all Allied forces, meaning acts of resistance against them would in no way prompt Allied command to stop supporting the French Resistance. Lindybeige goes so far as to say that the OSS and British secret service stopping the weapon shipments in August 1944 legitimately prevented an outright civil war between the different cells of the French Resistance, which was in actuality pretty unified in its support to De Gaulle at this point thanks to the efforts of Jean Moulin as discussed previously. This hardly gels with the events following August 1944, where the members of the Resistance and FFI were enlisted in the Free French Army and were therefore issued American military equipment and training to function as regular troops. Now stop me if I'm wrong but it appears that in Lindybeige's mind all French people were ready to tear each other apart until the British stopped sending them pipe guns, after which the Americans sent them tanks which obviously disabled their ability to start a civil war.

--Two French colonial soldiers using a blend of Allied gear during the winter of 1944-45. They are presumably thinking of killing each other.

--Much like the Phantom Menace review this is addressing a piece of media were essentially everything is wrong, hence the length of this post. Lindybeige has obviously researched the topic to great length, then ignored half of it to record 17mn of vague, dismissive and unsubstantiated claim that each take an equal amount of time to debunk. He present the facts as if everything that happened on British soil was under British orders so as to make the French Resistance only effective on their accord, all the while disregarding the French government in exile and slandering the efforts of French people but also inadvertently of the Americans. It is my honest belief that this sad excuse of an historian is either profoundly lacking in literacy or actively trying to justify his xenophobia by bending WW2 historiography around his bias, and whatever it may be he should be deplatformed to avoid spreading more harmful and disrespectful lies about a group of brave men and women who fought to liberate their country from fascism.

[fatehbaz]

And the penal colony was to remain a viable alternative to the penitentiary, not only in nineteenth-century Britain, but also in twentieth-century France [...]. But what might it mean to have a rigorous and distant form of imprisonment, located in a colony and continuing until the mid–twentieth century? [...]

---

French Guiana emerged as an early favorite for the placement of a French penal colony. [...] Daniel Lescallier [...] authored a work entitled [...] (Exposition of the means by which to develop French Guiana). In it he points to the example the British have set in exporting offenders to the colonies [...]. Louis-Napoleon, still serving in the capacity of president of the republic, threw his weight behind [...] the exile of criminals as well as political dissidents. “It seems possible to me,” he declared near the end of 1850, “to render the punishment of hard labor more efficient, more moralizing, less expensive [...], by using it to advance French colonization.” [...] The era of the French penal colony was now open; the new French Empire had begun its Botany Bay, even as the British original [penal colony in Australia] wound to a close. [...] The double logic of the British system also drives the French imagination; proposals alternatively concentrate on a desire to punish criminals and rid the Metropole of their presence, on the one hand, and a hope of furthering the work of colonial expansion and economic progress, on the other. Within this logic the focus shifts between the need to colonize, the need to punish [...].

In the case of France, it shimmers with colonial fantasy, allowing future Australias to emerge on tropical horizons. [...] [T]he penal colony requires location. The specificity of the site matters; it is the very place that is to enact punishment [...]. The penal colony is in essence a geographic technique [...]. But despite frequent outcries and sensational reports, the French Guiana penal establishment continued to exist through the end of World War II. [...] As geography itself becomes a technique of isolation, the French penal experiment in Guiana threatens further ordeals implicit in separation from all that is civilized. [...] In sensational accounts these tropics incessantly punish [...]: “Fever and dysentery get every man! Clouds of buzzing mosquitoes and fire ants sting your aching body while you labor [...].” As the commandant of the bagne would inform convicts on their arrival, “The real guards here are the jungle and the sea.” [...] Many of the prisoners, after all, were from urban environments [...]. The terror of Devil's Island takes shape amid metaphoric invocations of the jungle and of the savage [...].

---

For those in Metropolitan France the penal colony served as a hidden punishment, a distant if graphic terror, retaining elements of torture out of public view. Yet it retained a veneer of reformation, for the convicts were still told to “make a new life for themselves.” In addition, shipping convicts away from France in the name of colonization cloaked their punishment in the robes of the “civilizing” mission: they would be part of an effort to build a greater France, to develop Guiana, and to integrate it into a Franco-world system. At the same time the bagne underscored that resistance to the humane norms of France could lead to decivilization and exile in the wilderness. [...]

---

For those sent to French Guiana, however, the penal colony served directly as a public display, a constant reminder of the operations of justice. The convicts were not merely confined but forced to labor on public works. Official executions were performed by that once-humane instrument, the guillotine, but before an audience of convicts and by a fellow convict, far beyond the gates of Paris. A slower execution, that of the “dry guillotine,” the effects of the tropical climate, surrounded the entire process of deportation, reminding the convicts that this punishment could only happen here and not within Metropolitan boundaries. Theirs was a raw and primitive environment, one of torture and deprivation away from the public eye. Against the truth invoked in their conviction - justice - lay a suggested truth invoked in their punishment: no longer civilized, they were no longer human.

---

And for those already living in French Guiana, the penal colony also served as a public spectacle, if one not aimed directly at them or of their making. Not only did the proximity of prison life to their own lives parade the power of justice before them in an immediate fashion, but the constant importation of prisoners for this apparatus of punishment emphasized the particularly colonial nature of this power. Uncivilized elements were sent to them; their relation to France was that of a repository for human waste, and acts and punishments deemed unseemly for the homeland could still occur within their boundaries.

In addition, the appropriation of the names “Guyane” and “Cayenne” in myths of the bagne and “Devil's Island” precluded other identities, while burdening the area with a symbolic brand and a historical chain to France. “The bagne,” writes Ian Hammel, “left only a disastrous brand on Guiana.”

Brand here means “trademark” as well as “scar,” indicating purpose, function, and maker.

To be remembered as a penal colony is to be remembered not only as a prison, an exotic place of horror, but also as a colony, the object and product of another. [...] Modernizing France, a convulsive patchwork of provinces, cities, farms, and factories, casts its shadow overseas. [...] The penal colony takes shape at a crucial moment in European colonial understandings of place and labor. Slavery had just been abolished in the French Empire […]. If slavery were at an end, then the crucial question facing the colony was that of finding an alternative source of labor [...], not only in French Guiana, but also throughout colonies built on the plantation model.

---

All text above by: Peter Redfield. Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana. 2000. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. The text shown here comes from several different chapters in Redfield’s book, shown in the order that they originally appear. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[newsfromstolenland]

I don't get what the big deal is with those qc cities? like, qc was originally colonized by white folks from france and whatnot. the bigger og settlements like mtl or qc might have had *some* people of color there, but the folks who started settling outwards and starting to farm there andnwhatnot were basically all white .so if there were no people of color there to begin with (obv excluding Indigenous people who weren't invited and probably didn't want to be around the whites anyway), then of course the current population is all white? everyone who lives there is a descendant of the first french peasants who first settled there? those cities started off as villages and grew into urban areas that qualify as "cities" but these aren't 'major metropolitan areas', they aren't as appealing for immigrants to settle in, in fact even people born in those places tend to want to move to the bigger cities like Montreal... why *would* they have more p.o.c. if *nobody* seems to want to live there in the first place lmao

the point of that post is to warn people of colour about towns where we are so outnumbered that it becomes dangerous

your point about white settlers not only dismisses Indigenous people already living there, by your logic it could be applied about anywhere in canada.

the truth is that having a town that is over 90% white is extremely disproportionate to the overall population. the data in the link in the original post includes the overall percentage of the population of canada that was white as of 2015, which was 76.7%

that in mind, the reason that a town large enough to have over 100 000 people (which all the towns on the list are) would be over 90% white is due to an insular community. also, a lack of people of colour leads to viewing poc as outsiders.

all this means that these >90% white towns are generally unsafe or at least uncomfortable places to visit as a person of colour (I've been to most of them and can attest to that) so I wanted to give people of colour a heads up about places they might not want to stop in while traveling.

the "big deal" is our safety

[cuntylouis]

I think some people are being very stubborn about their hc and have a kneejerk reaction every time someone mentions race in period dramas. There are a lot of regions where the population in Europe is white. Just white. Do they even know where Auvergne is on the map of France? It's in the center of the country, slightly toward the south. It's landlocked. It's an agricultural region. And today in the 21st century, it's overwhelmingly white. I know, because I live there. I live in one of those little villages in the country, like Lestat's. I know because I have been stared at and ridiculed as a child enough times for being a dark skinned Muslim in a population that is completely white. I was and still am the only drop of melanin among their pasty faces on a range of 30km. And that's today, in the 21st century. And people are trying to tell me that yeah Nicky could have been plausibly black at the time? In this region, in the backwaters of France? And belong to a prosperous local family? That's bullshit. Of course there were poc in Europe in the past! It's obvious. But the proportion was so much smaller than it is today, and even today, France is majorly a white, catholic country. Had Lestat been from a village close to Marseille or Bordeaux or any other big port with economical ties all over the world, I would have jumped at the idea of having a non-white Nicky! In fact it would have been the perfect opportunity to explore the diversity that was found in those cities in the French Kingdom, the economical connection with the Maghreb and the transatlantic slave trade. If Nicky & Lestat were from Paris or Ile de France, again, a very cosmopolitan place, it would have been something I'd like to see. But they're from backwater France. I won't be gaslighted this part of the country isn't and hasn't been white, not with all the shit I had to endure over the years from their small minded everyone-must-be-french brains.

Nicky and Lestat's story is a perfect vehicle to explore class disparities at the end of the French Monarchy and the tensions that brought the French Revolution in the first place.

Thank you for sharing your experience, this is really important and interesting! I also come from a region in countryside with practically exclusively white people, which was very alienating as a child so i feel you

I think in iwtv's case there are several sides to the Nicki's casting that are all different questions, a) what is technically possible b) what is realistic/likely c) what people would like d) what is the best choice narratively and e) what are the writers actually going to do. I think the show is most likely going to keep Nicki as white (assuming they don't change his story so that he came from more metropolitan area different than Lestat). As you say, the population in that region was/is almost entirely white, but in history there are examples where even overwhelmingly homogenously white places has had some people of color, even if it's extremely rare. It's technically possible that Nicki would've been that one very rare person of the color in that region. I could imagine for example a backstory where his (white) father was born there, traveled to a bigger city, became an international merchant, had a child with some woman from a french colony, and chose to return home. It would maybe be very unlikely but technically possible. Some people may feel it would be unrealistic, but then again we can ask does 'realism' need to matter in a fantasy horror show, why would people of color existing in very white places somehow be more unbelievable than the existence vampires and witches and demons?

Then many people are understandably just headcanoning their favorite characters' races and there's nothing wrong with that, like i've myself headcanoning that Armand is a romani until proven otherwise lol, i know that probably won't be canon but it would make me so happy. Then the question 'should nicki's character stay white, what is the best and most compelling choice narratively speaking' i think is very complicated and doesn't have one right answer. Yesterday and today i've seen quite literally every possible opinion about this subject! When i made that poorly phrased mildly controversial post i thought it would make more sense not to change Nicki's race, but after reading people's comments who disagreed with me i get it isn't that simple and Nicki being a poc could actually be an interesting narrative choice if well-written. Like you I'm still leaning towards Nicki being white, but i can see how it would be cool if he wasn't

[sissa-arrows]

When you say the new generation putting aside the French language, do you mean Algerians no longer speaking French? I'm American and I wonder if Metropolitan French being exposed to German and English media forces them to change too.

First of all some context to my answer. My family in Algeria is from a super rural area. There’s legit 4 houses that’s it. It does color their view of the French language and because I live in France my knowledge and view of French in Algeria is influenced by their view and knowledge of it.

French had a huge place in Algeria. But we chose to never be part of the international organization of la francophonie cause French is not a choice we made it was imposed to us. Everyone speak Arabic but French was seen as the language of the “elite” so kids would study French early and in college the teaching was done exclusively/almost exclusively in French for stuff like economy, administrations… in rural areas it’s also seen as the language of the bourgeoisie. If you ask me or my cousin to describe a snobby woman from a big city she will 100% speak French. Knowing how to speak French doesn’t make that imaginary woman snobby it’s the way she insists on only speaking French even if you speak Arabic with her.

Now the younger generation started slowly putting French aside and replacing it with English because that’s the actual international language. Then last year the Algerian government announced that English would be introduced in primary schools to eventually replace French. Learning French would still be an option but just like Spanish or German or Italian. French would lose its privileged position.

It doesn’t necessarily comes from a place of rejection of everything related to France it’s more from a place of what will actually be useful to develop the country.

For German and English medias influence on France honestly I don’t see any difference for German medias. For British English medias they are mostly used to comfort French people in their racism. American English medias on the other hand do help us bring attention to what’s happening in France. For example, Kimberly Latrice Jones’ “how can we win video” was used to explain to white leftists why kids and young people were breaking everything during the protests. White leftist in France will listen to Black Americans before listening to us Black and North Africans people in France. And while the situation in the US is bad the denial in France is just so much worst. I saw French people supporting Black Americans calling out the police violence in the US and then when we ask them for support here in France they be like “it’s not the same in France it’s not about race you guys are thugs that’s why the police has to do that” best case scenario they deny the race aspect and make it about socio economic classes without questioning or even acknowledging why North Africans and Black people are over represented in the lowest socio economic classes. So the right American medias used the right way help us more than German or British medias do.

Anyway if something wasn’t clear let me know. You can also send a DM or an other ask if you prefer.

[gokitetour]

The 7 unforgettable reasons to visit Paris

With its ageless allure and many cultural offerings Paris the enchanted capital of France has mesmerized tourists for generations. Paris, which is located along the Seine River in north-central France, has been a hive of human activity since approximately 7600 BCE. The 41 square mile city is now a key global hub in addition to being the capital of French trade and culture. Paris provides an experience that is both profoundly historical and vibrantly modern thanks to its rich history, vivacious arts scene, and population of over 12 million people in its metropolitan area. With a GDP of €765 billion the Paris Region is the most economically significant region in the European Union demonstrating its importance on a global scale.

Paris has so much to offer, from the famous Eiffel Tower to the quaint neighborhoods of Montmartre. Paris offers once-in-a-lifetime experiences at every turn, whether you're scaling the Eiffel Tower, strolling down the famed Champs-Élysées or touring the world-class Louvre Museum. Long after you've left, the city's charming parks picturesque Seine River banks and lively marketplaces will continue to weave a tale of sights and sounds in your memory. Indulge in the local food, experience the Parisian way of life, and become fully immersed in the art and culture that make this incredible city. A Paris Tour Package is the ideal approach to experience everything that this amazing city has to offer for a genuinely unforgettable vacation.

Here are The 7 unforgettable reasons to visit Paris

1. The iconic landmark that is the Eiffel Tower:

The most famous monument in Paris, the Eiffel Tower provides an unrivalled view of the city. Completed in 1889 this architectural wonder rises to a height of 324 meters and continues to stand as a testament to French inventiveness. A novel viewpoint is added to your visit when you descend the steps, but the glass-walled lift offers an amazing view of Paris when you ascend. The magnificence of the Eiffel Tower never fails to astound and witnessing it first-hand is an unforgettable experience. This famous location is usually included in a Paris tour package so you won't miss one of the most important sights in the city.

2. The Museum of Louvre - A Treasure Trove of Art:

With more than 380,000 artefacts and 35,000 objects of art the Louvre Museum is a must-see for both history buffs and art aficionados. This ancient royal palace is one of the world's largest museums, spanning 60,600 square meters. There are masterpieces like the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa but the latter is frequently visited by big crowds. The Louvre's enormous collection and historical significance make it an intriguing destination even if you're not a museum enthusiast. You'll have plenty of time to peruse the Louvre's extensive galleries if you include it in your Paris tour package.

3. Inspiring Walking Tours:

One of the most satisfying experiences is taking a skilled guide on a foot exploration of Paris. Walking tours which pass by famous sites like Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and the Pont des Arts provide insights into the rich history and culture of the city. You'll be walking through picturesque streets and ancient districts, so comfortable shoes are a must. These tours are a great complement to any Paris trip package because they not only showcase the city's main attractions but also disclose lesser-known treasures.

4. Heaps of History:

Paris is a historical city whose roots can be found in Roman times. The Archaeological Crypt of Notre-Dame and the Arènes de Lutèce are just two instances of the city's rich historical legacy. Paris is a city full of reminders of its commitment to preserving its history through its museums and sites. Whatever your passion Paris offers a living museum experience that will take you back in time whether it's Roman ruins or medieval architecture. Including historical experiences in your well-planned Paris tour package can help you make the most of your time there.

5. Stylish Shopping:

Paris is well known for its shopping which includes everything from upscale stores to quaint marketplaces. High-end labels can be found on Avenue Montaigne while legendary retailers like Louis Vuitton can be found on the Champs-Élysées. Unique items can be found on the quirky streets of Saint-Germain and Le Marais, while historic department shops like Galeries Lafayette and Printemps are landmarks in and of themselves. A Paris Tour Package will lead you through the city's retail landmarks for a shopping experience that combines fashion and history.

6. Gorgeous Gardens:

Beautiful gardens may be found all across Paris, offering a peaceful respite from the bustle of the city. Well-kept landscapes, fountains and quaint places to unwind may be found in locations like the Luxembourg Gardens and the Jardin des Tuileries. These green areas are great for picnics, book reading, and leisurely strolls. Because of Paris's dedication to preserving its parks you can always find a peaceful garden nearby which will enhance your urban exploration with a hint of the natural world. You can fully appreciate the green spaces of the city by visiting these charming parks which are frequently included in Paris tour packages.

7. Amazing French Cuisine:

Paris is the epicenter of French gastronomic expertise, which is praised globally. With its Michelin-starred restaurants and little bistros, the city provides an unparalleled culinary experience. Savor traditional fare like croissants, escargot and coq au vin or visit acclaimed restaurants to discover cutting-edge food. Paris is a food lover's dream come true because of its incredibly varied and wonderful culinary scene. Ensuring that your Paris Tour Package includes eating experiences will guarantee that you sample the finest French cuisine while visiting.

Conclusion:

In conclusion Paris enthrals the heart and senses with its unique fusion of culinary delights artistic brilliance and historical grandeur. Every landmark in Paris, from the breath-taking heights of the Eiffel Tower to the exquisite exhibits of the Louvre Museum, provides a different perspective on the spirit of the city. The city is a location that appeals to every interest and passion thanks to its dynamic culture, chic retail districts and tranquil gardens. To make sure you don't miss any of the amazing features this amazing city has to offer a Paris tour package is a great way to see it all.

Paris offers an experience that will stay with you long after your visit, whether you're exploring its historic streets dining at top restaurants or just taking in the romantic atmosphere of the city. A carefully chosen Paris tour package can lead you around the city's well-known sites and lesser-known gems, letting you experience the authentic Parisian way of life. In one of the most captivating cities on earth embrace the enchantment of Paris and make lifelong memories.

[je-lurk]

I have decided to start a series entitled:

Tips and Tricks to Smooth Your French Translations (When You Don’t Speak French)

People probably already did that but they say that to teach is to repeat, so let’s repeat.

This guide is based on my own observations. Each section will touch one notion. It will include an explanation for the notion, examples, notes and anecdotes to illustrate the finer points, and how to force this notion on your translator. I 100% take criticism to make this clearer.

The translation I will use for this last part will be DeepL, and I encourage you to use it too.

DeepL is much better at handling context. Only use Google Translate when you know what you are doing. If you are learning new information from this series, you do not know what you are doing.

This guide is intended for metropolitan French. I might talk about different dialects (or even regional dialects in metropolitan France) but things can be wildly different depending on where your story takes place and where your characters come from.

For now I will use two tags for this series: #lurk’s guide to french translation, and #french translation for non-french speakers

The first sections will focus on dialogues.

The very first section discusses the differences between "vous" and "tu" and when to use them.

Table of contents | Next

[douxlen]

How the International Olympic Committee Fails Athletes

New Post has been published on https://douxle.com/2024/08/10/how-the-international-olympic-committee-fails-athletes/

How the International Olympic Committee Fails Athletes

Athletes here at the Paris Olympics have brought us magical performances, from U.S. gymnast Simone Biles, to French phenom swimmer Léon Marchand, to Ankita Dhyani, a 5,000-meter runner from India we watched circle the purple oval at the Stade de France, finishing last yet receiving a rousing applause when she crossed the line, as if she had won the race. Olympians make the Olympics special, plain and simple.

But behind the shimmering sheen of athletic brilliance and perseverance, stark inequalities exist all around. The gap between millionaire Olympians like Novak Djokovic and LeBron James and athletes from lesser-known sports like canoe slalom and badminton is the equivalent of a sporting Grand Canyon. The benefits that powerful countries like the U.S., China, and France hold over nations with GDPs smaller than some American cities show up with crisp visibility on the Olympic medal table. But perhaps the most seismic inequality, and one that all too often evades public notice, let alone scrutiny, is the yawning gap between the luxury-box existence of the International Olympic Committee and most Olympians themselves.

The IOC’s slogan is “Putting Athletes First.” But all too often, athletes come in closer to last.

The Olympic money shuffle is a great place to start. The IOC is officially a nonprofit, but it sure is profitable. According to its most recent annual report, the organization raked in $7.6 billion in the Olympic cycle spanning 2017 to 2020-21. A 2019 study from Toronto Metropolitan University and Global Athlete found that only 4.1% of Olympic revenues make it into athlete pockets (whereas with the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB it’s more like 45-50%). The IOC often reminds us that it redistributes 90% of its funds, but only a paltry 0.5% is direct compensation to athletes.

Ahead of the Paris Olympics, Global Athlete, the athlete-led group fighting for enhanced rights and increased pay, released a statement asserting that the Olympics “serve the interests of the few powerbrokers behind the International Olympic Committee” and that “the Olympics are failing to serve the interests of athletes … because the IOC, which wields complete control over all things Games related, operates without accountability.”

At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics—postponed until 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic—the IOC chose to stage the Games even though transmission rates were high and a national poll revealed that 83% in Tokyo did not want it to proceed. The pandemic was a challenging time for anyone putting on a big-ticket event, not least the IOC. But the organization took steps that seemed to prioritize their own finances over athletes.

Certainly, the IOC and local organizers in Paris were not “putting athletes first” when they chose to stage the triathlon and marathon swim in the Seine River. The sights of athletes vomiting when leaving the Seine or reports of sickness due to E.coli was hardly unpredictable. We spoke to people in the Paris office of the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental group, which was logging high and unsafe levels of E. Coli and enterococci for months. And Surfrider noted that they were only testing for bacteria, in alignment with the European Bathing Water Directive, not pesticide runoff, pharmaceutical refuse, or toxic metals. But the French government has put $1.5 billion into cleaning it—the images of people swimming in the Seine for the first time in a century were irresistible, and athletes were put last.

Read More: Inside the Billion-Dollar Effort to Clean Up the Seine

While many athletes live hand-to-mouth, the IOC enjoys an opulent existence. Here in Paris, its members are staying in the ritzy Hôtel du Collectionneur, which the IOC is renting out for a cool €22 million ($24 million). IOC members also enjoy extravagant perks, like first-class airfare and five-star accommodations. And they receive per diem payments of up to $900 on days they attend the Olympics and other official IOC events. This means an IOC member could make more money in per diem alone, than a U.S. Olympian who earns a bronze medal and the $15,000 that comes with it from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

Back at the Hôtel du Collectionneur in Paris, the IOC have banned reporters from entering the building where they are residing for the first time in decades. Decision making has also become increasingly centralized under a small team of senior executives, including its current president, Thomas Bach of Germany. Small groups of loyal IOC members—called Future Host Commissions—now essentially choose which cities will host the Olympics, with the rest of the organization relegated to being a gold-plated rubber stamp.

For all of these reasons, it’s time for the current iteration of the IOC to go. This might sound radical, but the IOC has yet to find an answer to the role the Games play in overspending public money, stoking displacement, and intensifying policing in Olympic host cities. It’s also time to end the fiction that the current iteration of the Games are environmentally sustainable, given the air miles and mega construction projects. Just ask the people of Teahupo’o, Tahiti, host of the Paris 2024 surfing competition, who protested the construction of an Olympic-standard viewing tower that damaged the community’s delicate coral reef, possibly affecting its ecosystem for decades.

The current iteration of the IOC should be replaced with athletes and independent thinkers who are not afraid to make drastic changes. That includes embedding democratic decision-making processes at every level, refusing to hand hosting rights for the Games to egregious human-rights violators, and making sure athletes receive a bigger slice of the Olympic money pie.

In the era of climate disruption, such measures are especially necessary, if not inevitable. Here in Paris, Madeleine Orr, assistant professor of sports ecology at the University of Toronto, told us this in no uncertain terms. “A sustainable Olympics is an oxymoron,” she said. “And the [Olympic] model is completely untenable. They’re not going to be able to continue to do it much longer.”

At the opening ceremony of the Paris Games, IOC President Bach delivered a speech. As he delivered his remarks in the rain, an assistant held an umbrella over Bach’s head so he wouldn’t get wet (unlike the flag bearers, volunteers, and fans in attendance). The image dripped with symbolism. One reality for the IOC and another for everyone else.

[nesiacha]

Pierre Gaspard Chaumette

Chaumette is, in my eyes, one of the most complex revolutionaries of this period. He is very interesting, but at times I wanted to applaud him and shake his hand, and at other times I wanted to booed him or even punch him in the face. It's really strange, and this feeling lasted until the end. Frankly, the mix of admiration and exasperation (an understatement for the two feelings mentioned) he inspires in me is disconcerting even to myself.

In a way, he embodies one of the most generous aspects of the revolution and, at the same time, one of the most conservative, even reactionary, aspects, sometimes verging on the lamentable. He is truly a paradoxical character, much more so than other revolutionaries. That’s why, in my eyes, he is one of the most fascinating figures of the French Revolution to study.

Positive Aspects:

He went much further in the fight against slavery than others (notably compared to Olympe de Gouges); for example, he supported the Haitian revolts with great enthusiasm. One could say he was an anti-colonialist, which demonstrates that he firmly believed not only in the freedom of metropolitan France but also in the freedom of other peoples (perhaps this idea took root when he was a naval officer in the American War of Independence, but we know his fight against slavery was due to his stay in the West Indies).

Like other revolutionaries, he was against the issue of war, a decision that proved to be the right one.

He sought to emancipate the French people from religious aspects that infantilized them.

Contrary to the black legend, he did not participate in the September massacres.

Let’s not forget that he lived with other revolutionaries in a very complicated and infernal period, aggravated by a war he did not want and fight. Plus the royalists threats were not empty words

He fulfilled his role as the prosecutor of the Paris Commune with great care. He championed the principle of providing individual beds in hospitals, for example, and the equality of funeral rites for both the rich and the poor. He advocated for the maximum and only intervened in the Convention with the sections of the sans-culottes when he deemed it necessary for measures that proved to be good, such as the maximum and the raising of a revolutionary army. He fought against poverty. He did not use armed force to throw deputies out and get elected (at the same time, the sans-culottes would have dismantled him if he had tried, and he wouldn’t have succeeded). As for the Girondins (the 21 placed under arrest), let’s not forget they were responsible for a war that Chaumette and many others did not want, which worsened the revolution’s situation, and moreover, the Gironde wanted their heads and other deputies had gravely disrespected them (an understatement when we consider Isnard's speech). I feel that Chaumette did not want power; he was part of that group of revolutionaries who would oversee the government to ensure it responded to the people's needs and would only intervene if he deemed it necessary, which is ultimately a good thing. Moreover, he was pragmatic and more reasonable than others; he refused to rise alongside other Hébertists for an insurrection against the Montagnards (some argue he was satisfied with the Convention's compensation on the Ventôse law, ultimately not applied, and knew the Convention was in a tough situation and it was better not to push). Ultimately, his execution was a grave mistake. One could say he was a man who lived for the revolution until the end and died with disinterest.

Negative Aspects:

The gross opportunism he displayed, along with others, to eliminate the Enragés and resume his petitions. Just a big no for me.

Apparently, but this needs proof, so maybe what I'm saying is false, he was complicit with Hébert (alongside Pache and Jacques-Louis David) in the disgusting false accusation concerning Marie Antoinette and her son (so horrible I won't repeat it). He should have died of shame for even thinking of doing that.

His great misogyny, which is appalling, even worse than other revolutionaries who refused to grant more rights to women's citizenship. Just reading his speeches makes you facepalm and want to hit him. And apparently, it was worse for prostitutes.

When he invaded with Hanriot and the sans-culottes to demand the arrest of the Girondins, they made a grave violation of the law, regardless of whether they had good reasons or not.

It’s true he supported the harshest laws, no matter how understandable his frustration was with many others, you don't "play" (forgive the expression) with judicial safeguards. He let Hébert, his deputy, unleash demands for executions, including those of innocents (General Custine among many others). So in the best case he is responsible and in worst case he encourage or maybe give him orders as Hebert was less senior as he didn't have the same rank in Commune than him although Hebert acted freely.Plus somewhere it allowed madmen like Carrier, Barras, Fouché (although more out of opportunism than a fervent revolutionary, especially when we know Fouché well) to try to exonerate themselves from the horrible acts they committed while trying to rely on the unusual harshness of certain aspects of the revolution.

The imposition of dechristianisation of people that didn't want that. Can't answer intolerance by other intolerance . Yes secularism is very important but cannot prevent people from following a religion. Plus it exasperated a lot of French people at that time bad move ( already talk in one my post of this https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/744960791081631744/the-difference-in-treatment-between-the-indulgents?source=share)

It's interesting to see that by lowering "the safeguards" and legal security, the revolutionaries programmed their own disappearance in a way (I simplify because it's more complicated than that they were not bloodthirst and there is too much black legend on them). I know wartime laws cannot be the same as peacetime laws, but one must be very careful even if there was an infernal situation. And if Chaumette’s execution can rightly be judged as unjustified, he, in a way, also programmed his own disappearance with others. But whatever happens when we analyze all the aspects of the frev we can only be admiring but also disappointed in the missed appointments of this period which could have been magnificent. And that’s really what comes out of Chaumette

[sa7abnews]

How the International Olympic Committee Fails Athletes

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/09/how-the-international-olympic-committee-fails-athletes/

How the International Olympic Committee Fails Athletes

Athletes here at the Paris Olympics have brought us magical performances, from U.S. gymnast Simone Biles, to French phenom swimmer Léon Marchand, to Ankita Dhyani, a 5,000-meter runner from India we watched circle the purple oval at the Stade de France, finishing last yet receiving a rousing applause when she crossed the line, as if she had won the race. Olympians make the Olympics special, plain and simple.

But behind the shimmering sheen of athletic brilliance and perseverance, stark inequalities exist all around. The gap between millionaire Olympians like Novak Djokovic and LeBron James and athletes from lesser-known sports like canoe slalom and badminton is the equivalent of a sporting Grand Canyon. The benefits that powerful countries like the U.S., China, and France hold over nations with GDPs smaller than some American cities show up with crisp visibility on the Olympic medal table. But perhaps the most seismic inequality, and one that all too often evades public notice, let alone scrutiny, is the yawning gap between the luxury-box existence of the International Olympic Committee and most Olympians themselves.

The IOC’s slogan is “Putting Athletes First.” But all too often, athletes come in closer to last.

The Olympic money shuffle is a great place to start. The IOC is officially a nonprofit, but it sure is profitable. According to its most recent annual report, the organization raked in $7.6 billion in the Olympic cycle spanning 2017 to 2020-21. A 2019 study from Toronto Metropolitan University and Global Athlete found that only 4.1% of Olympic revenues make it into athlete pockets (whereas with the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB it’s more like 45-50%). The IOC often reminds us that it redistributes 90% of its funds, but only a paltry 0.5% is direct compensation to athletes.

Ahead of the Paris Olympics, Global Athlete, the athlete-led group fighting for enhanced rights and increased pay, released a statement asserting that the Olympics “serve the interests of the few powerbrokers behind the International Olympic Committee” and that “the Olympics are failing to serve the interests of athletes … because the IOC, which wields complete control over all things Games related, operates without accountability.”

At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics—postponed until 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic—the IOC chose to stage the Games even though transmission rates were high and a national poll revealed that 83% in Tokyo did not want it to proceed. The pandemic was a challenging time for anyone putting on a big-ticket event, not least the IOC. But the organization took steps that seemed to prioritize their own finances over athletes.

Certainly, the IOC and local organizers in Paris were not “putting athletes first” when they chose to stage the triathlon and marathon swim in the Seine River. The sights of athletes vomiting when leaving the Seine or reports of sickness due to E.coli was hardly unpredictable. We spoke to people in the Paris office of the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental group, which was logging high and unsafe levels of E. Coli and enterococci for months. And Surfrider noted that they were only testing for bacteria, in alignment with the European Bathing Water Directive, not pesticide runoff, pharmaceutical refuse, or toxic metals. But the French government has put $1.5 billion into cleaning it—the images of people swimming in the Seine for the first time in a century were irresistible, and athletes were put last.

Read More: Inside the Billion-Dollar Effort to Clean Up the Seine

While many athletes live hand-to-mouth, the IOC enjoys an opulent existence. Here in Paris, its members are staying in the ritzy Hôtel du Collectionneur, which the IOC is renting out for a cool €22 million ($24 million). IOC members also enjoy extravagant perks, like first-class airfare and five-star accommodations. And they receive per diem payments of up to $900 on days they attend the Olympics and other official IOC events. This means an IOC member could make more money in per diem alone, than a U.S. Olympian who earns a bronze medal and the $15,000 that comes with it from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

Back at the Hôtel du Collectionneur in Paris, the IOC have banned reporters from entering the building where they are residing for the first time in decades. Decision making has also become increasingly centralized under a small team of senior executives, including its current president, Thomas Bach of Germany. Small groups of loyal IOC members—called Future Host Commissions—now essentially choose which cities will host the Olympics, with the rest of the organization relegated to being a gold-plated rubber stamp.

For all of these reasons, it’s time for the current iteration of the IOC to go. This might sound radical, but the IOC has yet to find an answer to the role the Games play in overspending public money, stoking displacement, and intensifying policing in Olympic host cities. It’s also time to end the fiction that the current iteration of the Games are environmentally sustainable, given the air miles and mega construction projects. Just ask the people of Teahupo’o, Tahiti, host of the Paris 2024 surfing competition, who protested the construction of an Olympic-standard viewing tower that damaged the community’s delicate coral reef, possibly affecting its ecosystem for decades.

The current iteration of the IOC should be replaced with athletes and independent thinkers who are not afraid to make drastic changes. That includes embedding democratic decision-making processes at every level, refusing to hand hosting rights for the Games to egregious human-rights violators, and making sure athletes receive a bigger slice of the Olympic money pie.

In the era of climate disruption, such measures are especially necessary, if not inevitable. Here in Paris, Madeleine Orr, assistant professor of sports ecology at the University of Toronto, told us this in no uncertain terms. “A sustainable Olympics is an oxymoron,” she said. “And the [Olympic] model is completely untenable. They’re not going to be able to continue to do it much longer.”

At the opening ceremony of the Paris Games, IOC President Bach delivered a speech. As he delivered his remarks in the rain, an assistant held an umbrella over Bach’s head so he wouldn’t get wet (unlike the flag bearers, volunteers, and fans in attendance). The image dripped with symbolism. One reality for the IOC and another for everyone else.

[pursuingheavenonearth]

Google Maps Lifelist: The places that have defined me as a human being.

NOTE: Photos will be added over time, but are not accessible directly from Google Maps lists.

Over the 70 years that I’ve lived on this planet, there have been many lifetime milestones associated with a specific place. This list commemorates those places which have figured prominently in my life, either because they have or had great meaning to my existence or are places which I frequently visited.

Baskin-Robbins

$ · Ice Cream · Bowling Green

Ice cream chain with lots of flavors

The original Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Shop used to be located at 1705 U.S. 31 W Bypass, Bowling Green, KY 42101, but has recently (in last several years) been rebuilt and move further east on the Old By-Pass in 'downtown' Bowling Green, located at 1542 U.S. 31-W Bypass, Suite 9, Bowling Green, KY.

The 'old' Baskin-Robbins was the place that my wife and I had our first date, too many years ago to recall when to confess, but, of course, I do remember at it was more than 45 years ago. We moved away from Bowling Green long ago but still fondly remember our fun ice-cream eating times at 31.

Baskin-Robbins 31, as it is known in Japan as "31" [sirty-one], has been a part of our lives even once we moved to Tokyo in 1979, and it really hasn't changed much since then --except for the menu items increasing and the few of the old flavors have been either renewed or replaced. Nowadays, we go to the Baskin-Robbins Shop in Hibarigaoka, a suburb of Tokyo, enjoying a delicious scoop just like we did 45 years ago usually after awaiting our granddaughter's piano lesson to finish, not 200 yards away. Our 7-year-old granddaughter has learned to love a sugar cone with her favorite scoop of Baskin-Robbins ice cream. z

WKU Fine Arts Center - Music Department

University · Bowling Green, KY

I graduated in 1976 with a B.A. cum laude in Music History & Literature, French, and Education (Teacher certification). Initially, the Music Department was housed in its own 5-story building, located behind the library annex building. The construction of the Fine Arts Center, where the Department of Music is now housed, occurred during my junior year while I was away on my Junior Year Abroad at the Paul Valery campus of the University of Montpellier, France from Sept 1973 to July 1974. My wife, Shizuko, a foreign graduate student in piano performance, started studying at WKU in the fall semester of 1975, just one year after I had returned as a senior student at WKU's music department.

Tokyo Bunka Kaikan

Concert hall · Taito City, Tokyo, Japan

Over the years, I played the part of 'supernumerary' (a stage extra) for many foreign opera, dance and theatre companies that have toured and performed in Japan, often at the old Tokyo Bunka Kaikan. I am visible while in costume in each of the three photos above.

Many years ago before the construction of the Shin Kokuritsu Gekijo (New National Theatre), there were many opera and ballet performances by foreign dance and theatre companies who performed at the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan hall. During some of the performances, there was a need for foreign staff to be 'hired' as stage extras. I was one of the people who did that job for about 10 years.. In the process, I was a stage extra or supernumerary for such companies as La Scala Opera, Deutsches Opera, The Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera, the Royal Ballet, and American Ballet Theater, and several more. There were anywhere from 10 to nearly 100 people, mostly foreign extras, who were hired depending on the production. In doing so, I got to see some world-class opera and dance performances from right on stage, with such stars as Luciano Pavarotti, Agnes Balsa, Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, and with directors and ballet masters as Mikhail Baryshnikov. My younger son, Paul, was only 7 when he was in the American Ballet Theatre performance of Giselle. Amazingly, he was instructed on how to act in one scene by Baryshnikov himself, I know as I was on stage in rehearsal as an extra, too.

Machiko Hasegawa Grave

Cemetery · Fuchu

Machiko Hasegawa was one of the first female Japanese manga artists, who lived from January 19, 1920 to May 27, 1992. Her famous comic strip, Sazae-san, ran in newspaper comics from 1946 until 1974. It become a regular TV cartoon series that still runs today. Not far from Machiko Hasegawa’s grave on the corner of the open roundabout stand two crepe myrtle trees that bloom in July every year. The blooms last until mid-October and there are other shades of pink, violet, white and almost red crepe myrtle trees throughout the cemetery.

The gravestone for Machiko Hasegawa, the Japanese anime artist, located in Tamabochi Cemetery, not far from our family home in Tamacho, Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan.

Musashino-Mori Park

Park · 府中市 (Fuchu City, Tokyo, Japan)

Plane spotting, leafy walks & sports

We often take walks with our dogs in Musashino-no-Mori Park. It has green fields, a forested mini-hill that you can climb and explore, a large pond where birds gather to search for food, and an observation point for the Chofu Airport. ふるさとの丘 On top so the highest point to the south is the Furusato no Oka. Here you can see sample typical rocks, stones, and minerals from each of the 47 prefectures of the Japanese archipelago on display in 2 m by 1m plaques placed in the ground at the summit of a small hill. The 47 plaques are lined up along the edge of the cement sidewalk that curves up and around the hill.

多磨霊園のスギ (Tama Bochi (Reien) no Cedar Tree)

Tourist attraction · Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan

In all seasons of the year, we take our dogs, a family of Toy Manchester Terriers, for a walk in the beautifully serene Tama Bochi Cemetery. Even Ichiro, our oldest dog, who passed away at the age of 20 years old, loved to take a walk here, most often by a neighbor, Mr. Nishiyama, who was 80 years old when he passed just a year after his beloved friend, Ichiro, died.

Brunswick Executive Airport

Airport · Brunswick, Georgia

Originally, this airport was part of the Brunswick Naval Air Station, where my father was stationed during the Korean War as part of the weather ballon unit. While my home state of Georgia hasn't been my actual home since I was an 8-year-old third grader in Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia. I frequently visit Georgia and have and have had family there on both my father's and mother's side. BRUNSWICK is where we had planned to hold a family reunion this past August, which was postponed due to he ongoing COVID-19 pandemic., and we had planned to have all the family reunion attendees visit the BNA Museum. Therefore, 2020 was not only a very significant election, the January 5, 2021 runoff election,deciding the control of the country, makes my connections to this place in Georgia actually very personal., and significant for my own history and family legacy. I was born in Brunswick 😃GA, 67 years ago ( as of Nov 2020) since my still teenage parents moved there. Shortly after their Halloween wedding on October 31, 1952, my dad was transferred to the Brunswick Naval Air Station, for which this museum was created to commemorate. My mother, an 18-year-old high school homecoming queen, Rebecca, and her high school sweetheart and co-captain of their small rural high school’s football team, Jerry, were my late parents. My parents, both from Cave City, KY, were stationed at Brunswick Naval Air Station from 1952-1954, where I was born (in Nov. 1953).

Brunswick Naval Aviation Museum

Museum · Brunswick, Georgia

Originally, this airport was part of the Brunswick Naval Air Station, where my father was stationed during the Korean War as part of the weather ballon unit. While my home state of Georgia hasn't been my actual home since I was an 8-year-old third grader in Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia. I frequently visit Georgia and have and have had family there on both my father's and mother's side. BRUNSWICK is where we had planned to hold a family reunion this past August, which was postponed due to he ongoing COVID-19 pandemic., and we had planned to have all the family reunion attendees visit the BNA Museum. Therefore, 2020 was not only a very significant election, the January 5, 2021 runoff election,deciding the control of the country, makes my connections to this place in Georgia actually very personal., and significant for my own history and family legacy. I was born in Brunswick 😃GA, 67 years ago ( as of Nov 2020) since my still teenage parents moved there. Shortly after their Halloween wedding on October 31, 1952, my dad was transferred to the Brunswick Naval Air Station, for which this museum was created to commemorate. My mother, an 18-year-old high school homecoming queen, Rebecca, and her high school sweetheart and co-captain of their small rural high school’s football team, Jerry, were my late parents. My parents, both from Cave City, KY, were stationed at Brunswick Naval Air Station from 1952-1954, where I was born.

Soya De Maadjou

$ · Restaurant · Djohong, Cameroon, West Africa

It’s been a long time since I was there, actually in December 2000 to January 2001, so I’m sure the place has changed. So long in fact that I doubt this restaurant existed then, though it may have been the one I ate in. I spent two weeks in and around the village of Djohong, which at the time had no electricity and no wells for water. However, I had a very memorable time there and the great memories of what I experienced there will live with me forever. I was a member of an Earthwatch expedition to assist an American nurse named Phyllis Jansyn, who had immigrated to Cameroon in order to continue her former Peace Corps work in Djohong village. Her goals were to help the people of the village get medical care, to assist in safe childbirth, to provide medical care to prevent, get safe , clean drinking water, and cure various diseases caused by parasites. There were small groups of 5-8 people at three or four times a year who were eco-volunteers through Earthwatch. We lived in a rustic, straw-thatched cabins and worked for two weeks, assisting Phyllis in administering vaccines, and checking for intestinal parasites in the villages in the Djohong province.

Van Meter Hall

Western Kentucky University · Bowling Green, KY

I started as a freshman at WKU in the fall of 1971. As I was a music major involved in many musical organizations, I had many chances to perform in Van Meter Hall. It was also the venue for the 1976 performance of the visiting Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. That year, the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), made a short tour of the US, performing in only 4 cities, of which Bowling Green was one. I was studying Russian with Mania Ritter, a long-time Foreign Language Department faculty member at the time. My wife and I hosted 3 members of the LPO by taking them around the city by car, and having them to our house for dinner that evening. The LPO's performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade was one of the most outstanding musical experiences of my life.

Eloise B Houchens Center

Non-profit organization · Bowling Green, KY

The Eloise B. Houchens Center was the venue for my parents' 50th Wedding Anniversary Celebration in October 2002. Jerry Franklin Brooks and Rebecca Lewis Brooks were married in Cave City, KY on October 31, 1952 (68 years ago today as I write this). They had come to live in Bowling Green in 1963 ,after the birth of their fourth child. All four of their children graduated from Bowling Green High School, two of whom still live in the city. The Anniversary Celebration was a public event, which had over 75 people in attendance, including family, friends, fellow church-goers, and other people in the South Central Kentucky area.

Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 Faculty of Philosophy

University · Lyon, France

I have returned to visit Montpellier (and Lyon), France several different times over the year. Here I am in 2005 when my sister, who took the photo, accompanied me on a return visit to Europe.

In Sept-Oct, 1973, I attended a 6-week course in French language studies at the Université Jean Moulin Language Institute in Lyon, France, in preparation for beginning a year-long academic stay at University of Montpellier from October 1973 to June 1974. This was the first time to travel outside my home country of the United States. Even though it was almost autumn, the local city pool situated on the banks of the Rhine River was still open. I remember going for an exhilarating September swim in that pool.

Dalewood Middle School

Middle School · Chattanooga, TN

In 1965 - 1966, I attended 7th grade at Dalewood Middle School (called Dalewood Junior High, at the time). I was in Mr. Carson's homeroom, and my best friend in grade 7 was Benjie Burrows, who was captain of the baseball team. I was a band member, playing the French horn, and also played viola in the orchestra (only 4 members, which included the Shapiro Brothers, who lived with their family in the Frank Lloyd Wright House there in Chattanooga. Benjie and I competed to be the best student, although we were good friends during that year. I never made the connection that Benjie's mom was from Korea, so he was a racially mixed child, growing into a teenager. I moved back to Kentucky the following year. Eventually, I was to marry a Japanese women and have two mixed genetic heritage sons, and four grandchildren who are of mixed American-Japanese heritage.

STORY: Just a short memory I recall about 7th grade: There was a school play going to be put on, and the day for try-outs for the play came. I walked down the long hallway toward the audition room, and next to me appeared Chip Bell, with whom I had been 2nd grade at Anna B. Lacey Elementary School five years earlier. We had also done a play in 2nd grade, and Chip had had a leading part. He asked if I were going to the try outs of the school play, which was where he was headed. Quickly, I responded that I was on my way home, turned around abruptly, and left school. I guess I felt that he was more experienced and would no doubt get the 'part', having no idea what play they were even putting on. Such are the foibles of childhood.

W.R. McNeill Elementary

Elementary school · Bowling Green

In 1963, I was a fifth grader at W.R. McNeill Elementary School, which was the year that John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. I remember that event very well, and recall how nearly the entire school was brought to tears by that news. Later that school year, our class put on a musical play and I recall having to learn how to square dance for our performance. My own siblings were also attending McNeill School, in grades 3 and 1, respectively, at the time.

The next school year in Grade 6, we attended a newly built elementary located much closer to our home on Morgantown Road in Bowling Green, called Dishman-McGinnis Elementary School. I attended the sixth grade there and then we moved to Chattanooga, Tenn., where I went to Dalewood Junior High (see separate entry), and then we returned to live in Bowling Green again for my eight-grade year. I went to L.C. Curry Elementary School (K - 8th grade) for the first half of the year, and then went again to Dishman-McGinnis Elementary School for the remainder of my eigth-grade year. See the attached 8th Grade Graduation Photo.

Here is my 8th Grade graduating class at Dishman McGinnis School in May, 1967. I'm in the very center of the photo.

Anna B Lacey School

School, Elementary

The year 2020 is the 60th anniversary of my 2nd grade year at Anna B. Lacey School located in Chattanooga, TN. Our class put on a play in front of the entire school, and every student played a part. I was the court page in red at the far right of the photo (See attached photo of the class play). I wonder if any of my classmates even remember that time. In fact, I'm pretty sure that at least one classmate remembers: It was Chip Bell, who played the Prince in our second grade play. He reminded me of that special event in our 2nd grade of elementary school when we were both student, new 7th graders at Dalewood Junior High School (now Dalewood Middle School). I retell the incident in Google Maps entry on here in this list (just above at Dalewood Middle School), and also on my Google Maps entry for that place.

Conservatoire Régional de Montpellier

Conservatory of music · Montpellier, France

When I was a junior in college at Western Kentucky University, I spent a year studying at University of Montpellier's Paul Valery College of Liberal Arts and LIterature. At that time, the city of Montpellier had a sister city relationship with Louisville, Kentucky. Consequently, I was awarded a 10-month scholarship to study viola with Professor Chene, who taught at the Conservatory of Montpellier. I had viola lessons with him every week from October until June that year. I have visited Montpellier several times since then and always stop by the Conservatory.

Dorchester Apartments

Apartment building · San Diego, CA

When I was a graduate student at SDSU, I rented a 2-bedroom apartment at Dorchester Apartments for the summer, so that my family could stay with me. We really enjoyed the apartment complex. Having a pool on the property was ideal for the boys and it was not very far from the campus. For two more summers after that (in all 1991-1993), I attended the summer school at San Diego State University to earn a second Master’s in Education Administration.

Byzantine Walls

Historical landmark 

Walls of Constantinople was where my wife and I began our sojourn through much of Mediterranean Turkey at these Byzantine Walls. From this starting point, we had planned a two-week long trip along the Western coast of Turkey to (mainly) follow the visit made by the Apostle Paul to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey) in the first century. It is fitting that our sojourn began here at the Byzantine Walls. "The Walls of Constantinople are a series of defensive stone walls that have surrounded and protected the city of Constantinople (today Istanbul in Turkey) since its founding as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine the Great. With numerous additions and modifications during their history, they were the last great fortification system of antiquity, and one of the most complex and elaborate systems ever built." (Credited to Bahman Amirzade, Google Local Guide)

Kohala Divers Ltd

Dive shop ·  Kawaihae, Waimea, Big Island

My friend, who lives in Kappa'u (near Hawi) on the Big Island, went diving with me a couple of times.

Kohala Divers is one of the best dive shops and scuba diving / snorkeling operators on the Big Island of Hawaii. I have been diving with Kohala Divers about a dozen times and have always had a great time with a friendly and knowledgeable dive master. In particular, I can recommend Kelli as she is extremely patient and very knowledgeable about the biological and oceanic life, as well as how to best enjoy the dive experience. The shop has a wide assortment of dive equipment and accessories, and at least once a year you can find great bargains on regular dive equipment during their sale of their older rental equipment to make room for new inventory. I don’t know about now, but in the past many of the dive masters here were women, which makes for a less aggressive, more nature-centered diving experience — in my opinion. They use a fairly large dive boat, which can handle at least four dive groups, based on level and dive experience.

Makaha Valley Plantation

Condominium complex · Waianae, Oahu (West shore)

When I bought a two-bedroom condo at Makaha Valley Plantation in 2002 just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in NYC, I had no idea the condo would go up four times in value. I fixed up my unit myself, painting it entirely, and tiling the dining and kitchen floors. But as I could only use it on vacation once or twice a year, I did end up selling it. I decided to hunt for property on the Big Island and eventually built a small vacation home, which I sold in 2011. It was destroyed by the Kilauea Lava Flow of 2018, so I was glad no had sold it before the eruption.

Center for Liberal Arts/Kitasato University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

University department · Sagamihara, Japan

As a teacher in the English Language Department of Kitasato University for 24 years until 2020, I saw a lot of changes in the university’s buildings over the years. Of course, the most important elements in the life of a university are the students and teachers, of which I knew and taught thousands.

Books Kinokuniya Tokyo

Book store · Shibuya City, Tokyo, Japan

Japanese bookstore with large selection

Located on the sixth floor of the Nitori ( ) Home Furnishings Store, Kinokuniya Books is a book lover's delight. There are all types of books, magazines, and media (limited DVDs & Blueray disks, etc) available for browsing or purchase, including an extensive selection of English Language teaching materials, children's books, young adult's literature, and academic texts and research books / literature. Formerly, the entire building was a massive 6-floor bookstore run by Kinokuniya, but nowadays if you want to get books written in Nihongo, including manga in Japanese, you'll need to stop by the multi-storied main store, located not far away near the JR Shinjuku East Entrance, a roughly 700-m-walk from this Foreign Books only branch inside Nitori. If you arrive here at the street level entrance, then it will be fun to take one of two possible routes to return back towards Shinjuku JR Station. It's a kind of mini-tour side-trip that makes exploring a new and large city such a joy.

1) The first way back is to go up the stairs on the NW corner of the 6F store to reach the 7F sky walk over to the next building, which houses Takashimaya Department Store and just before that, Tokyu Hands, a multi-storied arts & crafts and eclectic utilitarian goods mega-store for every imaginable need. ( See my separate review elsewhere on Google Maps).

2) The second possible return trip begins by using the escalator inside the building and descending to the third floor of Nitori, which is actually a national chain franchise, stopping along the way to view the largest selections of home furnishings in Japan, and emerging on the 3F wooden-planked walkway that will carry you all the way back to Shinjuku Station, which is, by the way, the largest, busiest and most complex train station in the world.

 --------------- PROFESSIONAL USE ---------------

Kinokuniya Books provides a professional academic, research and educational materials service (including K-12 and college textbooks) for its customers. It is possible to either order online or telephone, or to browse the shelves to find a specific book you want to buy. Then you can either purchase it yourself or have the book(s) shipped to your school or institution's office for later payment by your organization or university. Like me, many college faculty members have an annual research stipend or might have received a MEXT grant, The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology Organization's grant-in-aid for research study, which will pay for texts and print materials for use in one's research efforts.

Jikei-in Temple

Pet cemetery · Fuchu

We went to the pet shrine and cemetery, called Jikeiin where our recently passed pet dog, Bati, is interred. He passed away in my wife’s arms on December 30, 2018. I was out of the country at the time, so it was my first time to see where he was laid to rest. Actually, his ashes will only be kept here for just three years. Then we’ll either bring his burial urn home or pour his ashes in a special place—probably the former will be best.  Also memorialized here is my mother-in-law’s pet dog, Ichiro, (named after the Japanese star who played for the Seattle Mariners) who outlived her and came to live with us. Ichiro passed away at the age of twenty.  He died about 4 years ago. Also buried at this shrine are the two rabbits, which were our sons’ pets for about 10 years before we had a dog. In the photo, Bati’s burial urn of cremated remains is kept on the second floor of a two-story building on the grounds of the shrine, located about a mile and a half from our house. It’s really just a 6  x 15 foot room, filled with shelves. Bati’s memorial niche is on the bottom row of this shelf of pet graves. It’s in one of several dozen of such crypt rooms. There are are also graves and mass burial sites - something for every budget and form of commemoration.

Sengenyama Park

Park · Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan

One of our favorite places in West Tokyo for a lovely walk in a forest preserve is also next to one of the largest cemeteries in Tokyo. One of the highlights of the park is the vista point to see Mount Fuji on the far west side of the park. Of course, it can be obscured by the clouds. There are trails and roads, where you can see a natural spring, and, in season, a rare lily-like yellow flower in May blooms on the hillside. There is a small shrine at the top of the 'mountain.' Sengenyama Park connects directly with Tamabochi Cemetery on the east side. There is a suspension bridge above the road that passes between the two, where you can cross to get from the cemetery to the park itself. The park is beautiful in all seasons as there are different flowers and wildlife that can be seen in each. I recommend going on to see the Tama Cemetery too, as there are many interesting monuments and the funeral and burial practices in Japan are quite unique.

Triolet University City

Student dormitory · Montpellier, France

Back in the day, October 1973-June 1974, when I was a foreign exchange student studying at the Paul Valery campus at the Universite de Montpellier, I lived for nine months at Cite Triolet dormitory and ate meals in the attached student cafeteria. It was a totally different experience from my 'normal' life back home in Kentucky, where I had lived with my family. Dormitory life was new, but something I enjoyed. I soon made friends with another American from the same university back home. We befriended Frankie and Patrice who were also students at Paul Valery University. On weekends, we usually watched TV at the dorm, never missing an episode of Kung Fu, the American TV drama starring David Carradine, and then got drunk on wine in my room and ended up wrestling in our underwear. I met Patrice, his wife and their two grown kids, when I visited Montpellier in March of 2018.

Enpukuji

Buddhist temple · Itabashi Ward, Nishidai, Tokyo

My wife’s family, including her parents, and many of her ancestors are interred at Enpukuji Temple, which is located within a short walking distance from her old family home in Nishidai. As she is the guardian of the family shrine, we go to the burial place two to four times a year at least. The autumnal and vernal equinoxes are the two mandatory days to visit the graves as well as the memorial dates of the passing of her mother and father. We usually clean the gravesite, place fresh flowers there, and light incense, then offer our prayers for good health and wise choices. I learned a few years ago that I will be buried in my wife’s family cemetery plot, as I have lived in her country of Japan for over 42 years. That fact somehow makes the trips to Enpukuji Temple there more meaningful.

NASA Mission Control Center

Museum of space history · Houston

Back in 1989, I had the opportunity to be one of 36 international educators who were selected to participate in the annual International Teacher's Space Camp held at the NASA Mission Control Center. For two weeks, we visited different divisions within NASA Mission Control, getting to do some of the same training exercises that real astronauts undergo, we heard talks from former and future astronauts and their preparation for space missions, and watched presentations by space scientists currently working on missions for NASA. It was a very rewarding experience for me as an international school teacher and as a person.

Pamukkale Belediyesi Kocaçukur Naturel Park Havuzu

Park · Pamukkale

Back when we went to Pamukkale, it was possible to spend a long time in different pools - both the natural ones and man-made ones. We met a young Turkish family at the bus station that offered us a couple of rooms in their home as a place to stay. The place was cheap enough, but the most interesting thing was the family cooked our dinner every night and more than that, the young woman who was the hostess showed my wife how all the dishes were made. Even today, we sometimes have home-made 'dolmas,' baklava, and other authentic Turkish dishes that she learned back then.

Hospital District De Djohong

Hospital · Djohong, Cameroon, West Africa

Thanks to the work of Phyllis Jansyn, who loved and volunteered many years of her life to the people of the village and area around Djohong, it was possible to construct this hospital and to staff it. When I visited Djohong in the early 2000s, the thing I remember was the early morning call-to-prayers by the imam at the mosque. Of course, there were prayers offered at various times during the day , but I can only recall the early morning ones.

Jekyll Island Oceanview Beach Park

Parking lot · Jekyll Island, (near Brunswick, Georgia)

Although I was born in Brunswick, my parents often used to come to Jekyll Island on my dad's day off from his work with hot air weather balloons at the Naval Air Station to spend their leisure time on the beach. I was only a newborn infant at the time. Years later, the three of us returned to this beach when I was over 50 years old to once again enjoy the experience and to reminisce about the 'good old days.'

El Cabron

Nature preserve · dive site: Gran Canaria, The Canary Islands, Spain

It may well be the best place for diving on the island of Gran Canaria, but I don't know about that since it the ONLY place I've dived (multiple times). I do know that there is quite a lot of sea life in these waters. It was great getting my PADI certification here and also getting Underwater Photographer PADI credential here. too, with the tutelage of the Davy Jones Dive School in Arinaga.

Parque Chichen-itza

Playground · Mérida, Yucatan (state), Mexico

At the time we visited Chichen-itza, I was teaching fourth grade in an international school, where the social studies curriculum dealt with the Maya Civilization. Therefore, I was delighted to get to visit the same sites that I had been teaching about in school. It was very hot that day, but we climbed several of the Mayan pyramids, walk on the ancient ball fields, and attempted to decipher the enigmatic face-like glyphs in the various monuments. Due to its proximity to the Yucatán, it was a perfect compliment to what we had seen at Tulum on the coast.

Fés

Train station : Fes, Morocco

It has been many years ago now that we were in Morocco. We arrived from Spain by crossing by ferry at the Strait of Gibraltar. After staying one night in Tangiers, we traveled by train to Fez. On board our train we met a Moroccan couple who were returning to their home in Fez with their infant son. We ended up making friends with them, so they invited us to have dinner at their home that evening. The next day we got took us to see the central marketplace.

Jekyll Island State Park

State park · Jekyll Island, (near Brunswick, Georiga), USA

Island retreat for leisure & fitness

Of course, Jekyll Island State Park means a lot to me. Besides being a wonderful place to spend your free time with friends and family, it was near where I was actually born.

Wright Brothers National Memorial

Memorial park · Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina

Iconic plane take-off spot with exhibits

It's been a long time ago now since 1977 since we took my wife's parents (they were Japanese who were living in Tokyo) on a grand tour of the Eastern United States, and the Wright Brothers National Monument at Kitty Hawk was one thing they wanted to see.

Empire State Building

Tourist attraction · New York City, Manhattan Island, NY

The Empire State Building is a 103-story landmark skyscraper with observatories was for the longest time the tallest building in the world. Located in the heart of Manhattan Island, New York City, it is still a noteworthy edifice that is visited by millions of sightseers from around the globe.

I first climbed to the top of the Empire State Building in 1973 when I was departing New York's JFK Airport to spend a year studying in Montpellier, France -- one of those Junior-Year-Abroad study excursions. The next time was in 1977 after I married my wife of 42 years. Her parents were visiting from Tokyo and we made a driving tour of the Eastern United States, and of course, stopped in New York City and went to the top of the Empire. I think the third time was in 1999 when I convinced by parents to fly to New York to meet up with me and my older son, who was studying in Cambridge, Mass. at the time. We were both attending and presenting at the TESOL conference held in New York in March of that year. I can't remember the details of the fourth time I visited it, but it was on a solitary trip to NYC in second decade of the 2000s. Over the decades I’ve seen the New York skyline undergo slow and steady changes, but it always remains one of the world’s great metropolises and a spectacle to behold from the zenith that the Empire State Building offers.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

$$$$ · Performing arts theater · New York City, New York

I have performed on stage in Tokyo several times as a stage extra with the Metropolitan Opera, who used to bring an elaborate entourage on tour to Tokyo. While normally you need ticket for a performance at Metropolitan Opera or New York City Ballet at the Lincoln Center in New York , you don’t need a ticket to visit the Metropolitan Opera Gift Shop. At times, you can find great bargains on special gifts, music CDs, books, and surprising fashion items, such as dresses, handbags, wraps, and evening wear. So you don’t have to even attend one of their world-class performances to enjoy your time at the Met. If you are so inclined, you’ll be completely amazed by the opulence of the theater itself. I’ve attended opera performances they were absolute stunningly staged musical and dramatic works.

Cumberland Mountain State Park

State park 

Lakefront recreation area & golf course

It has been many many years since we've been to Cumberland Mountain State Park. But I do have a childhood memory of a family incident that happened there. Our parents took us to Cumberland Mountain State Park one weekend on our way to Chattanooga, where we used to live. Mom and the three children climbed up into the woods and, for some reason, Dad was not with us. All of sudden, we heard a animal cry like a lynx or a mountain lion, so the four of us hurtled down the hill, back toward the car, running as fast we could. When we reached the car, there was our Dad, laughing his head off, for it had been him who was making the animal noises. My mother was furious because she had been scared so bad that she had peed in her pants. We all used to recall with humor and alacrity that story of Cumberland Mountain State Park. We never went back to visit, by the way.

Gaidos Seafood Restaurant

$$$ · Seafood · Galveston

Longtime upscale restaurant with views

It has been a long while ago now that we ate at Gaido's Seafood Restaurant. Our friends, with whom I had worked as a co-teacher in Japan. Ann Doumas was the junior high science teacher at Nishimachi International School where I was also a teacher (1979 -1990), The Doumas’ had moved back to Galveston some time before. When we visited them a few years ago, they insisted on taking us out to eat dinner at Gaido's Seafood. It was fantastic food - there is no question about that.

Harvard Graduate School Of Education

University · Cambridge (outside Boston, MASS), USA

When our older son, Mikio, graduated from The Harvard Graduate School of Education, he was the youngest person in his class. At that same time, Seiji Ozawa, the renowned conductor, received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University.

Glasgow Cemetery

Cemetery : Glasgow, Kentucky

My mother, Rebecca Florence (Lewis) Brooks was visiting her husband's grave along with her sister-in-law, Susan, at the Glasgow Cemetery.

My father was born in Glasgow, so it's appropriate that he and my mother were buried there upon their deaths. They had met in high school at the nearby Cave City’s Caverna High School, and lived just a block away from each other during that time. My father's funeral was held on August 14, 2012. Many members of his family, as well as family friends, were present at the funeral and at this cemetery for his burial that day. My mother passed on Nov 27, 2017, and was buried there on Dec 3, 2017 in the Brooks family burial plot alongside my father. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend my mother's funeral as I live in Tokyo, and had job commitments at the time. In fact, the last time to see my mother was from March 13-20, 2017. I have not been able to visit Glasgow Cemetery since I was there with my mother while visiting her at her former home in Bowling Green, KY the year before that in 2016.

The photos were mostly taken at Glasgow Cemetery immediately following my dad’s funeral and during his burial after the ceremony in August 2012. They include pictures of my mom, my aunt (by Dad's younger sister), and the pallbearers, including my own son, and his cousins. Incidentally, my father's parents, Arthur Leroy Brooks and (Dorothy) Jeannette Conklin Brooks are also buried in another burial plot at the same Glasgow Cemetery.

          I plan on being buried in my wife’s family burial plot at Empukuji Temple, where nearly 16 generations (nearly 300 years) of the Yamaguchi Family are interred. The gravesite is located directly behind the Empukuji Temple in Tokyo’s Itabashi Ward near my wife’s former family home, where we lived for 12 years until we moved to Fuchu City (West Tokyo), and is the actual place she was born and the temple is where we both will be buried in the same plot as her father and mother. As is Japanese custom, the person’s ashes are placed in the grave exactly 49 days after being kept at home in the family altar.

[newsbites]

News from Marseille, France, 18 July

"La ville de Marseille a décidé de proscrire les cigarettes de toutes ces plages jusqu'à la fin de la saison balnéaire."

The city of Marseille has decided to ban cigarettes from local beaches until the end of the tourist (lit "bathing") season [per Radio Star].

2. French President Emmanuel Macron has decided to retain Elisabeth Borne as prime minister, maintaining stability in his government amid calls for a reshuffle.

Borne, who has been criticized for lacking charisma but praised for fulfilling Macron's campaign promises, is likely to make only minor adjustments to her cabinet.

Macron's decision to keep Borne in her position indicates his focus on drafting comprehensive policies to address recent riots, rather than opting for immediate changes in leadership.

3. The Var prefecture is recruiting 2 apprentices to the sub-prefect in charge of the economic and political issues of the city.

4. Starting next school year, the announcements in the Marseille metro will be translated into Provençal, adding a local touch and cultural flair.

The idea was proposed by Jean-Michel Turc, a Provençal language professor and local councilor, who plans to extend the use of Provençal to the tramway network as well.

This initiative highlights the unique cultural identity of Marseille and sets it apart from other metropolitan cities like Paris.

5. Marseille is in negotiations with Chelsea to sign Gabonese player Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who is interested in the Marseille project and willing to reduce his salary to join.

Meanwhile, a move to Marseille for international Senegalese striker Iliman Ndiaye appears to be on the brink of collapse.

6. The owner of a renovated apartment in Marseille is testing the short-term rental market by listing it on Airbnb at an exceptional price of €550 per night during the upcoming Rugby World Cup matches at the Vélodrome stadium.

7. The 98th edition of the Foire Internationale de Marseille will be held from September 22 to October 2, 2023, with a focus on the theme of the sea.

The fair will feature around 1,000 exhibitors showcasing various products and activities related to the sea, fashion, gastronomy, innovation, street food, and craftsmanship.

Tickets can be purchased in advance online, with discounts available, and there will also be evening events and a nocturnal closing time of 23:00.

8. "Et n'oubliez pas le Radio Star Live, le vendredi 29 Septembre, avec une programmation exceptionnelle."

[fatehbaz]

How is it that a small wedge of the South American continent, long claimed by a major European power and still administered by it, could present a profile of wilderness at the end of the twentieth century? How might this same location on the globe have proved useful for such an unlikely combination of purposes as the resettlement of convicted criminals and the launching of rockets?

French Guiana remains a remarkably insignificant artifact of the political landscape - rarely noticed by most of France, let alone anyone else - as well as one of the least settled regions of the world. It has also hosted two exceptional experiments of the French state: the historical penal colony known in English as “Devil's Island,” which operated between 1852 and 1946, and the contemporary space center that launches the European consortium rocket Ariane, responsible for transporting a good half of the commercial satellites orbiting our globe. [...] Its base, the Guiana Space Center (CSG), indeed lived up to its slogan, becoming “Europe's Spaceport,” a center of high technology near the equator. [...]

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[T]he penal colony begins operation in the middle of the nineteenth century, partly as a substitute for a system of plantation slavery. It conceives of French Guiana as open land for agricultural settlement, fertile ground for a tropical - and French - Australia, where the action of moral reform can translate into a scheme of colonization. [...] [T]hese early hopes are belied by the high mortality of the convicts [...]. Despite periodic calls for reform and increasing international discomfort, the bagne lasts through World War II. It leaves a deep mark on French Guiana, in both symbolic and material terms. As the movement of seventy thousand exiles progresses, the surrounding landscape shifts from a luxuriant field of dreams into a tableau of terror. At the same time, the colony as a whole grows accustomed to the presence of this artificial prison world within it [...].

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The space center begins operation in the second half of the twentieth century, in the midst of the Space Race and in the aftermath of the Algerian War. It conceives of French Guiana as open land for technical experiments and a gateway into equatorial orbit, an even more tropical - and French - Cape Canaveral. [...] [A] regular stream of technicians and engineers arrives to assemble and guide it into space. The initial mandate to provide France with a launch site expands into a focus on commercial satellites, and although local opposition to the project continues, the effects of the enterprise on French Guiana in both symbolic and material terms only deepen. As the Ariane rocket gains importance, the surrounding landscape transforms from an orphan of history into a handmaiden of the future. At the same time, the department grows accustomed to an increased infusion of consumer goods, technical personnel, and [...] a new island with an artificial environment and a powerfully altered social profile.

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At slightly closer range a number of striking structural similarities emerge. Not only do both projects found towns (St. Laurent on the one hand and the new Kourou on the other), but both operate as rival poles of influence and authority relative to the civil administration of French Guiana. Each involves [...] its own hierarchies, its own links to bureaucratic networks in Paris, and its own claims to significant national French interests. Each [...] exerts considerable influence over the surrounding economy. Most crucially, each controls and orders a separate territory within the larger political entity; each has a spatial presence, a direct impact on the landscape. And tied to this spatial strategy, each comes to serve as a symbolic nexus in collective Metropolitan imagination. [...] One employs leftover forces of law and order, whereas the other employs highly trained technical personnel; thus [...] both [...] have ties to the military [...]. The penal colony imports the unwanted of France, whereas the space center imports the selected few. [...]

And the bagne reflects visions of an ancient underworld, whereas Ariane reflects visions of a new overworld. [...]

Many of the specific additional attributes of a desirable site for penal colonization (distance from the Metropole, possibility of confinement and surveillance, and prevention of local disturbance) find echoes in the specific additional attributes of a desirable site for launching rockets (distance from the Metropole, adequate security, adequate possibility of transport, and political stability).[...]

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The penal colony takes shape at a crucial moment in European colonial understandings of place and labor. Slavery had just been abolished in the French Empire, and an accompanying understanding of work in terms of race had far from expended its interpretive force. [...] Work represented the route to a better future, to the growth of new, valuable lands. [...] If slavery were at an end, then the crucial question facing the colony was that of finding an alternative source of labor. During the period of the early penal colony we see this search for new slaves, not only in French Guiana, but also throughout colonies built on the plantation model. Thousands of Asian Indians and Chinese found their way to new homes in different corners of the British Empire, serving as contract laborers on plantations. [...]

Kourou [the space center] is a neutralized, controlled corner of the tropics, with much of its cultural fabric simply imported. Amid the restricted space of artificially cooled buildings and automobiles, in zones free of carrier mosquitoes and amply supplied with wine and cheese airlifted from France, the distance between Paris and Cayenne shortens; the effects of translation between them grow less clear. If the island mimics the mainland successfully, if Crusoe builds a little England - or France - is his task done? [...] To answer this question, let us return to a crucial turning point of Guyane's history: the aftermath of World War II and the period of formal empire. It was during this era that the natural, political, and moral space of French Guiana was neutralized through a combination of DDT spraying, departmentalization, and the final closing of the penal colony. In 1949, a former teacher [...] in Martinique published an overview of the new overseas departments and territories. His description of French Guiana includes a call to arms for its development, a development still conceived in terms of a need for [...] agriculture, and industry [...]. Gold mines aside, it seems that the method of painstaking labor is the only one really applicable at present. Incontestably, there is magnificent work to accomplish there, such as should tempt young men fond of broad horizons and adventure. The appeal is for an army of Crusoes, advancing ashore to improve their collective island. The questions of race and level of expertise filter through patterns of history and perceived practicality. But the call remains, the call of a wilderness inviting domestication.

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All text above by: Peter Redfield. Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana. 2000. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]