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07.06.2020

In solidarity with anti-racists in the U.S. the English are also tearing down statues. The statue of a famous slave trader was toppled and tossed into Bristol harbor in Western England. The political establishment there strongly opposed the actions and vowed there would be arrests.





11.06.2020

The first partial lifting of the lock down in some areas of France included the reopening of our neighborhood park, Parc Oberthur. We have been feeding the ducks since we moved here more than 2 years ago and alongside the ducks were ever present tiny little black birds with giant feet (especially the babies). We recently learned that they are moorhens, also known as marshhens. "Marsh Hens" are briefly mentioned in the Edgar Allan Poe story "The Gold-Bug", as part of a description of the ecology of Sullivan's Island. They were originally from Australia 23 million years ago! A lot older than humans.

There are always an abundance of flowers
along the roadways in France. 		We like this time of year. We found a nice bench under the trees to feed the ducks. It didn't take long for them to appear.
Our mixture of bird seed, oatmeal and rice
is still a hit. 		Each May there is a new set of baby ducklings.
This is our third year in Rennes. 		A closeup of this year's ducklings.





13.06.2020

Woo Hoo! We got a new washing machine! It's an LG brand. We can troubleshoot problems by holding our phone next to a port on the front. It has a number of functions we didn't have on earlier washers and it sings when it's finished. So does our dryer and if we do more than one load the washer and dryer will sing to each other when their cycles complete. I don't know all the pluses and minuses of the washer's 6 direction direct drive except that it is by far the quietest washer we've ever owned. There's a picture below of Tommy sitting on the washing machine, looking for all the world like a guard cat. From the picture it looks like either he's the biggest cat in the world or we have the smallest washing machine in the world.

Tommy guarding the new washing machine.





19.06.2020

We had a video chat with our friends Kathleen and David and she gave us a heads up on a Transhumance trek she'll be doing soon guiding sheep up a mountain. This is what wikipedia has to say about Transhumance. Kathleen took some video. Would you look at those doggies! One of them looks like Scout, one of the dogs that our friends in New Zealand own. Scout is the dog who made Danny pee while John was holding him (some of you know that story). Good boy, Scout!

We asked Kathleen what moved her to make the journey and she explained the history of those treks and her motivations for joining one: "Transhumance is a seasonal ritual that has taken place since antiquity, wherein shepherds move their flocks between mountain and valley from summer to winter. The paths are often the same ones taken by their ancestors. In Italy, the "tratturi" paths were laid down by the Romans for safe passage. Until modernity, the Transhumance journey would involve many shepherds, and thousands upon thousands of sheep and take many days. Today, the flocks are smaller, there are fewer actual shepherds, and the sheep are moved up or down the mountains in trucks. I've long been enthralled by descriptions of it by writers who came across it accidentally or deliberately. When a friend told me a traditional Transhumance took place in the Mercantour National Park and that a few tourists were invited along, I immediately signed up. "

When Kathleen first mentioned Transhumance we thought she was talking about a music festival that takes place each year not far from where we live. I googled Transhumance music and Rennes to get a link for that concert but instead I got links to reindeer treks in Russia. Rennes means reindeer in French.

Here is an actual link to the Transhumance music festival.

As I've mentioned before Kathleen is a photographer who does wonderful, interesting work (OK some of her still lifes of canned food during the lockdown were a little weird) and you see much of it on instagram.

I've been video chatting with some friends lately especially with my friends in Eugene OR who are atheists, political liberals and smart and caring people. I've known almost all of them since 2007. I also video conferenced with some of my friends in and from San Diego who I've known since the 90s. It was great to see my friends again. One good thing that Covid did was bring us closer together across long distances. I hadn't done video chats for years - well a few with Kathleen these recent years and our friend John in Saint-Malo. My friend Chue in San Diego had been encouraging me to video chat and I finally arranged that, It was so good to see her and her family. I met her kids when they were tiny (2 to 5 years) and now Dawn, the oldest is 30. I will be chatting soon with other friends (in New Zealand, Boston, Houston, San Diego and elsewhere. I even intend to conference with several of them at once and break them into zoom rooms to see how that works. Dana, one of my new friends from the atheists group in Eugene, has been helping me get familiar with zoom and some of its functions. He is the host of the weekly Wednesday coffee klatches I've been attending virtually.





22.06.2020

Protests against the murder of George Floyd in the U.S. have spread throughout the world including in France. Our President Emmanuel Macron said that the statues of slave traders in France would not be removed - France won't 'erase' history by removing colonial-era statues, Macron said. So I wrote to him 'About your decision to keep the statues of slave traders in France' and I sent him the text of a relevant Internet meme message via his website:

"I think most Christians would agree that Satan is an important part of Christian history, but if you put up a bunch of statues of him in your church, people might start to make assumptions about who you worship and what ideals you glorify." (Later it was suggested to me that the same applies to the statues glorifying "heroes" of the Vichy government during WWII.)

Later I learned that the Vichy government melted bronze statues of people and ideals they didn't agree with. They used the metals for war tools but the motivation for the destruction was silencing dissenting voices. Perhaps that factored into Macron's views about the statues. The Vichy government carried out murders ordered by the Nazis. They murdered or enslaved Jews, blacks, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, Slavs, Jehovas Witnesses, and any one who sympathized with them or otherwise opposed the Vichy or Nazis.

Vichy memorials in France and confederate statues in the US stir strong emotions among the victims and those who care about them. An oft suggested solution or compromise is to put the statues in museums. The destruction of statues in the United States is happening because no moves were made to put the public statues honoring fascists into museums with historical explanations of their origins and of the war. The statues simply stand in public honoring slave owners. Some schools in the South still glorify the war and its leaders. In France today there are many tours of Vichy statues and monuments. In Germany there are many tours of crematoriums (which really creeped me out the first time I went there). Tours of concentration camps are also common in Germany. Germany is very sensitive about its fascist history. Nazis are banned there. The tours are so the horrors will not be forgotten or repeated. France also has tours of its crematoriums. The purposes are historical education with an empasis on preventing the atrocities in the future. The atrocities against blacks in America should be treated similarly but to date the war leaders have been glorified in the South and some non-Confederate right wing states and even right-wing areas of progressive states. These opportunities for educations about the horrors of the past surely motivates Macron's thinking about the statues but I also think they should be removed from public squares and placed in museums.

An article on the French American website France-Amerique reported that "French people will hardly be surprised by the divisive debate in the United States concerning the future of Confederate statues. After all, they experienced the same awkwardness with Marshal Pétain - although this was a more complex issue, as Philippe Pétain was both a glorified hero of World War I and the leader of the abominable Vichy government. In his first role, Pétain was praised and honored until 1940. The city of New York gave him a triumphant reception on October 26, 1931, and his heroic work earned him a plaque on Broadway. This ambiguity persisted even after World War II, and the then French president François Mitterrand continued to lay flowers on the tomb of the "hero of the Battle of Verdun" every year.

The far right is the sole group to continue upholding Pétain's name in France today, and only because they follow the same nationalistic and xenophobic ideology as the Vichy regime."

Several American streets and avenues are named after Marshal Pétain
Pétain Street: Defiance, OH, Ellwood City, PA, Hartselle, AL, Manchester, NH, Monroe, LA, Prichard, AL
Pétain Avenue:, Dallas, TX, Abbeville, LA, Milltown, NJ, Carmichaels, PA, Yuma, CO





22.06.2020

John and I went to the prefecture to get our residency cards. For the most part everything went well and we got our cards quickly. Everyone wore masks, hand sanitizer was dispensed to people as they entered the building and chairs were positioned far apart. The next time we go there we will apply for our ten year long term residency card. It allows us to continue to stay in France for 10 years and it authorizes us to work. It also saves us 5,000 euros.

France is set to reopen its borders to everyone from 14 countries and open visa applications for students coming from outside of the EU on July 1, however it is planned to bar tourists arriving from the US (and many other countries) due to the country's high rate of Covid-19 cases. Allison Lounes, who works as a visa application specialist for Americans looking to come to France, told The Connexion that she is not surprised if tourism from the US is not starting up again quite yet, due to the number of Covid cases. She said, however, that for many of her clients it is more important that France will start to consider visa applications again from July 1 for those traveling for professional or educational reasons.

The French are very good at social distancing while waiting in line. Inside places for people were clearly marked
to avoid contact. 		Security was present to enforce social distancing. Chairs were stacked and placed out of the way to create more room.





HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

I spent the first 20+ years of my life in Texas, much of it in Houston and the Houston area and John worked in Houston for a year, so we are attentive when there are important happenings in Houston. They are now a Covid-19 hotspot. Today Texas' largest medical complex, Houston's Texas Medical Center reached 100 % ICU capacity. "If this trend continues, our hospital system capacity will become overwhelmed, leading us to make difficult choices of delaying much-needed non-COVID care to accommodate a greater number of COVID patients," according to the medical center's press statement. "We are therefore calling upon the people of Houston to do their part in helping us to slow the spread of this dangerous virus."





New Kitty

We started looking for a new kitty. This time we wanted to try for an orange one (they say red instead of orange) and we want to name it Sunny. There's also a couple of cats who resemble Danny (tuxedo cats) and are very cute that we will see soon. And a white one. And maybe others. Pics of the new kitty will be in next month's blog.

Stay safe everyone. Wear masks if you will be near people and share Covid-19 precautions with whomever you can. Wash your hands very often!