Zhuangzi's Muddy Tail

2019-11-03 Marseille et Château d'If

(I became distracted by developments back home and fell a bit behind writing up the account of our travels.  I'll try to catch up as much as I can remember.)

        Well, the bandage held  (cf. entry for 2019-11-01) and we made it safely to Marseille, which like many growing cities seems to have located its airport in a neighboring country.  Give the distance to town and the time already lost while our plane was in surgery, we decided to grab a taxi.  Sofie’s time with us in Marseille would be brief, and we wanted to her to see as much as possible.  Any excuse to ride in a Mercedes C Class sedan.

Entrance to Marseille Old Port with Ile d'Îf of the foreground and Notre-Dame de la Garde Overlooking the Harbor

        It was Halloween when we arrived, Sofie’s first away from the US, and she was anxious to know if there were Trick or Treating in Marseille.  The cabbie–François–wasn’t too encouraging on that point (he had a son her age), and neither was the property manager when we reached the apartment.  We were encouraged, however, by images of jack o’ lanterns in bistro windows and young women dressed as witches headed for parties in bars along the street.  Undaunted, Sofie dressed up as best she could and headed for the nearest up-scale confectionary, Le Roy René, a specialist in Provençal sweets.  After explaining to the clerk what trick or treating was and why it was important, she was able to score some pretty nice chocolates and a classy bag.  The selective adoption of American holiday customs perhaps says something about our cultural influence abroad.  Although the French do not celebrate Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November, they do observe Black Friday the following day.  That night Sofie conscripted me into riding Marseille’s enormous ferris which towered over the Vieux Porte.  It was–thankfully–no match for Bastia’s Freak Out!

Trick or Treating in Marseille

Marseille Sunset from Our Apartment

        The following morning we hopped a boat for Il d’If, which lies outside the mouth of the Vieux Porte.  The isle is the site of Château d’If, a prison and fortress dating from the 16th century.  It was here that French writer Alexandre Dumas imprisoned three of his literary figures–the Man in the Iron Mask, Abbé Faria and the Count of Monte Christo.  To prepare for the visit, I had given Sofie a copy of the manga version of the Count of Monte Christo when we were in Münich.  Just reading the book was something of a cultural experience.  It was originally published in Japanese, and the English version simply substituted English for the Japanese text.  This meant one had to read it right to left, back to front, and the book included instructions to that effect.  She had no problem, and by the time we met up in Bastia, she’d not only finished the book but had gone through her school library looking for other manga in German!

The Count of Monte Christo (Manga version–click to enlarge)

        The Château is an important historical site both as a prison and as a fortification that was sharply criticized by Louis XIV’s brilliant military engineer Marquis de Vauban.  Sofie found the structure interesting more as a prison than a fort.  Above the door to each cell is a plaque with the name of its most famous occupant, including the fictional Abbé Faria and Edmond Dantès.  Sofie was amused that the French cultural authorities had dug a tunnel between the putative cells of the Abbé and  Dantès to accord with the novel's account.  Her unsuccessful attempt to climb through it provided uncontrovertible evidence that that the story was either false or that Abbé Faria had lost a great deal of weight.  Perhaps more important to Sofie, however, was that the Chateau provided an excellent spot to try out her new camera.  She and her sisters seem to have a knack for composition and framing.

Château d'If

Sofie Trying to Get Stuck in the Tunnel  Between Edmund Dantés and Abbé Faria's Cells

        The following morning François was waiting downstairs to help us send off Sofie.  At the airport we found four other children about her age also headed for Munich and being sent off by their grand parents.  I was sad to see her go.  I find that helping a child to comprehend an unfamiliar place serves to sharpen my own understanding–especially because they ask the basic questions I assume I understand until I try to explain them.

2020-01-09 Reflections on the Decline of the Republican Party

(My recent sojourn in Europe presented an opportunity to reflect on developments in Washington away from rancor that pervades the US.  Before returning home, I put some thoughts down that I share here.)

 

        In a recent column on Republican climate denial, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote,

But the reality is clear: Modern Republicans are irredeemable, devoid of principle or shame.  And there is, as I said, no reason to believe that this will change even if Trump is defeated next year.

The only way that either American democracy or a livable planet can survive is if the Republican Party as it now exists is effectively dismantled and replaced with something better — maybe with a party that has the same name, but completely different values. This may sound like an impossible dream. But it’s the only hope we have.

        Although I am a registered Democrat, my political consciousness began in a rural Idaho high school as a Republican.  Indeed, I come from a long line of Republicans.  My great, great grandfather was a St Lawrence County, New York committeeman.  His in-laws (perhaps he as well) were abolitionists.  My great grandfather Henry Lamdin Benson and his brother Frank were elected to state and local offices in Oregon as members of the Republican Party.  Henry was elected associate justice to the state supreme court, and Frank was secretary of state and, briefly, governor.  My primary early political influence–my mother–was a proud Republican who worked on gubernatorial campaigns in Oregon.  Her influence and the high regard I had for family tradition were strong.  But, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and my exposure to students from throughout Asia as a grantee at the East-West Center in Hawai’i changed all that.  Since then my evolution has continued, and in 2016 I supported Bernie Sanders and like-minded candidates.

        My progressive evolution, however, never altered my belief in the institutional importance of the two-party system to American democracy.  I’m not sure where that notion came from–perhaps from Mrs. Duclos, my high school government teacher, though she would have been happy to see the Democrats frozen in amber along with other insects.  In the Seventies it wasn’t difficult to believe in the importance of having two competing parties broadly representing different political views that would balance one another.  The two parties were widely viewed as “big tent” entities, each embodying a spectrum of views that overlapped like a Venn diagram.  To continue the analogy, where the closed curves did overlap, cooperation and collaboration between the two parties was possible and often fruitful–as with the Civil Rights Act.  Regrettably, that overlap has continued to shrink as increasing numbers of uncompromising members have been elected from both sides.

        Ironically, a salient example of collaboration by the two parties was the Watergate Hearings resulting from the impeachment of President Nixon.  What became the guiding principle of the Watergate Panel was enunciated by the Republican senator from Tennessee Howard Baker when he declared, “The central question at this point is simply put:  What did the president know and when did he know it?”  This position represented a change of heart for Baker.  Initially, he was loyal to the White House and reportedly promised Nixon, “I’m your friend. I’m going to see that your interests are protected.”  Both sides focused on getting all the facts and getting them accurately.  In the end, because the committee was able to subpoena whomever they thought pertinent, they uncovered unanticipated and valuable information, most notably the infamous Watergate Tapes.  Carl Bernstein has credited the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee with being the “real heroes” in the Watergate inquiry because they were crucial in casting votes in the Senate Judiciary Committee against a member of their own party.

        It is unlikely that the current crop of Republican senators will show such wisdom or courage.  It is not just the rank and file.  The Republican leadership in the Senate especially has declared they have no intention of looking at the the charges and the evidence impartially.  Senate Judiciary Committee chair Lindsay Graham stated in a press conference in Doha of all places that he was “trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here.”  And Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has declared “I'm not an impartial juror.  This is a political process.  There's not anything judicial about it.”  Ironically, they are doing more than anyone to ensure that the process is politicized.  They are, after all, the two senators most responsible for assuring its judicial integrity.  I can’t help but wonder if they have carefully thought through the implications of their positions.

        If the Republicans truly believe that the president is not guilty of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” then it is to their and the president’s advantage to allow the process to go ahead with presentation of evidence and arguments and thereby gain a convincing acquittal.  As it is, by declaring their partiality before the proceedings have begun, the Republicans have ensured that the decision–which likely is a foregone conclusion in any case given their majority–will remain forever tainted, as will the president’s and their own legacies.  More importantly, they will have undermined the integrity not just of the impeachment clause but of the entire Constitution. 

        Why would they be willing to allow this?  They say it is because they want the Senate to put the matter behind it and get on with the people’s business.  But even the president, for his own reasons, was reported to want a full hearing to make his case.  One can only assume that the Republican leadership have concluded that the charges have merit.  If an impeachment trial were to go forward with the opportunity to subpoena the witnesses who declined to appear before the House committee and with the additional possibility of evidence of wrong doing, Senate Republicans could find themselves in the awkward situation of voting openly to acquit an obviously guilty president.

        As a Foreign Service officer, I was privileged to have been posted to Japan while Howard Baker was ambassador.  At one point in my tour, another member of the Watergate committee, former Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye, came through Tokyo and stayed at the ambassador’s residence.  I happened to accompany the ambassador to an official event, and in the car Senator Inouye’s name came up.  I commented on how during John Ehrlichman’s testimony during the Senate Watergate Hearings Senator Inouye hadn’t realized his microphone was hot when he muttered “He’s lying.”  Ambassador Baker smiled and replied, “Oh, I think Danny knew.”  Then, he continued,  “You know there’s something people don’t know about Danny.”  Ambassador Baker then related how not long after President Reagan appointed him White House chief of staff to repair relations with the Democratic Senate in the wake of the Iran-Contra Affair, his phone rang.  It was Senator Inouye asking if he wanted someone to talk to as he tried to straighten matters out.  “A lot of people aren’t aware of this, but once a week Danny would come down to the White House and we would sit there in my office and talk things through.”  I remember being not only impressed by the depth of Ambassador Baker’s gratitude but especially by the example of these two men from opposing parties working together for the best interests of the country.  Inouye’s offer was particularly striking considering that he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee that investigated the Iran-Contra affair.

        I’m in no wise a supporter of President Trump.  I did not vote for him.  I believe he has badly undermined public comity and caused uncertainty and instability overseas.  He generally has failed to provide the sort of leadership required for a functioning mature democracy, particularly one that faces the challenges we now do.  He has cast a pall of dismay over friends in London, Paris and Berlin and spread a frisson of schadenfreude among foes in Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang.  For the US to stand as an example for fledgling democracies throughout the world, and for it to enjoy the high regard of the other mature democracies that we turn to as allies, we must respect our own foundational principles and institutions.  This means placing principle above party and conducting government as determined by the Constitution and guided by precedent.  If the president is to receive the due process that his supporters claim will show him to be innocent, then the Republican leadership too must take the process seriously and engage in it sincerely.  To abuse the process will diminish the Constitution that sets forth the principles that guide and validate all we do as a nation.  If our leaders fail to respect it and the oath they swore to uphold it, who will respect them?  And who will respect us as a people and as a nation?  Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham may not measure up to Howard Baker and his colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, but shouldn’t they at least make the effort?  When this is all behind us, it will be interesting to speculate how historians fifty years hence might compare them to Baker and his colleagues.  For the historians’ standard will not be how they performed as Republicans but how they fulfilled their oaths of office as United States Senators.

 

Postscript:  The Hill recently said of Senator Lamar Alexander, “The Tennessee Republican’s decision to retire at the end of 2020 coupled with splits from Trump on high-profile votes, including opposing the emergency declaration on the border wall, have sparked speculation that he could be willing to break rank and support calling witnesses.”  Alexander was a protégé of Senator Baker, whom I heard speak affectionately of him.  Will he follow his mentor's example?

2019-12-10 Munich

The US is currently a country that fears the worst ever. About a society that teaches school children how to fight and welcomes spying on neighbors. 

Süddeutsche Zeitung 12/12/2019  Google translation

By Jürgen Schmieder 

        Charles this morning does not go to work, but to the school of his ten-year-old son Colton in Los Angeles. Members of the non-profit organization Sandy Hook Promise have announced themselves. That worries him. Seven years ago, a former student at Connecticut Sandy Hook Elementary School killed 26 people, including 20 children ages six and seven. Now the organization wants to give a lecture on the topic. 

        Apart from Charles, who only wants to be called by his first name, about 20 parents have come, all concerned. "They're not going to show this video to our kids?" Whispers Charles. This video is actually disturbing. It starts like a typical advertising film at the start of school. A teenager takes a backpack from his locker and says that his mother bought the right one. A girl explains how colored folders help to sort the teaching material. This is usually followed by a cut and the name of the company that sells all of these things. Not so in this video. 

        These scenes follow: A boy runs through the hallways of the school. While someone is being shot behind him, he shouts: "I really need these shoes this year." One girl bandages her friend's gunshot wounds, another holds scissors like a weapon: "It is really helpful." The video ends with the door to the toilet being pushed open, steps can be heard. The young woman presses "Send", then the screen goes black and a text appears: "The school year has started. You know what that means." 

        What is meant is: there will be shootings at schools. In the spring there were 22 incidents with six deaths and 21 people were injured. According to the Federal Center for Homeland Defense and Security agency, there have been 387 school incidents since Sandy Hook in which a firearm was fired. "You can't gloss over a school killing spree," says Mark Barden, one of the founders of Sandy Hook Promise, whose son died at the time: "I hope a lot of people see the video and think about it." 

        Charles is afraid that his son might see the video. And that's not the only thing he's afraid of. His son must not leave the house without the company of his parents (they do not trust other parents or babysitters), and must not meet friends in the park. "I don't want anything to happen to him," he says. 

        Colton knows what a school massacre is. For two years now, schools in California have been carrying out active shooter drills, in which children learn how to secure gym doors with hoodies, that scissors are a stab weapon and a marble that is a projectile. They learn how to tie a wound with knee highs. The motto is: "Run. Hide. Fight." Run away. Hide. Fight. 

        The Americans are afraid. The Sandy Hook Promise film first appeared on breakfast television. Another topic on the show: kidnapping children because a five-year-old girl had disappeared the night before. President Donald Trump had recently tweeted a warning about illegal immigrants and an indication that the building of the wall on the Mexican-American border is going great. 

        The afternoon news reported on a senator being investigated for possessing child pornographic material. In between: advertising for surveillance cameras, for pills against hyperactivity, a course against massacres. And recently, in this daily media threat scenario, the news of an attack on a Jewish supermarket in New Jersey with six deaths fell. 

        "I know the numbers," says Charles. He knows that, according to statistics from the FBI's National Crime Information Center, 424,066 children in the United States were reported missing in the past year. He knows the study by Harvard University, is being harassed on the Internet after one of seven children. And another statistic, according to which a school with a 2.50 meter high iron fence, three centimeter thick bars and a double door made of iron bars, which can only be opened from the inside, reduces the probability of a massacre by more than half. He campaigned for his son's school to be equipped in exactly the same way. Now it looks like a prison. 

        The numbers are not wrong. In fact, more than 400,000 children have been reported missing, but the number of those who have been kidnapped by a stranger for more than one night is significantly lower: less than 250. The Harvard researchers have added to their own study because they took the term "harassed" very broadly. It also applied when one child to another wrote "You're stupid" in a chat. The number - "one in seven children" - had spread like wildfire. The case that most people imagined - old man molesting minors - was more likely to be one in 1000, the researchers said. Of course, each case is one too many, but numbers can also be used. When moderator Tucker Carlson mentions the 424 066 missing children to FoxNews after a report on a kidnapped girl and warns of a widespread threat to American families, he creates a context that is not so true, but it causes fear among viewers. 

        American sociologist Barry Glassner wrote the book "Culture of Fear" about misguided fears 20 years ago. It served as a template for the Oscar-winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine" by Michael Moore. Glassner updated the book twice, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and after Donald Trump was elected president. He is politically at the center and also accuses former presidents of both camps, such as Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, of instilling fear. 

        Glassner is a hobby magician and a member of the Academy of Magical Arts. In an essay for the Los Angeles Times , he compares Trump to a magician: "Trump makes an average of 100 false or misleading statements a week. His lies are effective illusions. His followers know that he is lying - but like fans of magicians, they accept them Lie as part of the show. " Trump's opponents, on the other hand, reminded him of a six-year-old at a birthday party who shouts to a magician that everything is nonsense: "Are these children annoying? Sure! But they are good for the show, they help the magician." 

        Trump warns Americans against anyone who does not settle in time abroad - and then he warns that people illegally immigrate and abroad to the United States where they cause chaos. He stirs up fear, mostly that someone wants to take something away from the Americans. It can be something abstract like wealth or freedom or more specifically health or even life. According to Trump, his compatriots would have to defend themselves against this, even with weapons - but wait a minute: the left would also want to take them away. So Trump asks not to choose the effeminate takers. The magic trick is done. 

        Two examples from the small town in the south of Los Angeles. The police had recently blocked a street because they suspected that an escaped prisoner had escaped there. It looked spectacular with helicopters in the sky and snipers on roofs. A man on this street barricaded the house, put a gun in the hand of his wife and 13-year-old daughter, and he himself crouched at the front door armed. It happened: nothing, the person they were looking for was not there. Since then, however, the man has been celebrated by other men than someone who is able to protect his family. He is considered a hero. 

        Another man had installed a surveillance camera because of some package thefts that he could also use to watch the neighbors' houses. He caught the supposed thief, a dark-skinned young man, informed the police.  It was not a criminal, but an employee of the neighbors who brought the package to the house. However, the man with the camera was not criticized for the latent racism and the fact that he appears to be spying on his neighbors; rather he was praised for the fact that at least one person was concerned with security in the area. 

        This leads to the question of who benefits from this fear: the manufacturers of weapons, cameras and emergency backpacks, for example. Or the providers of self-defense courses against gunmen - a weekend seminar costs around $ 500. 

        In this climate, children grow up who learn that they have to fear everything and everyone or who are a little wild and are considered hyperactive and immobilized with medication. It is not the causes of school killing spells that are discovered; instead, ten-year-olds learn to hide, to run away, to fight. 

        "We should be less focused on how we respond to violence, but rather on not even letting violence emerge," says Sandy Hook Promise founder Mark Barden. His lecture is not about self-defense, but about looking after other students. To be friendly. "To say hello. Greet a new student and invite them home. Invite a child sitting alone to join the community. Praise a classmate for good performance. Helping others with homework. In short: to create a climate of friendliness, openness and togetherness." Mark Barden doesn't show the video this morning.  

Copyright: Süddeutsche Zeitung Digitale Medien GmbH / Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH

 

2019-11-01 Bastia

        From Bonifacio we headed for the opposite end of the island and our final stop on Corsica–Bastia.  The drive north, while on a straighter road, did nothing to alter my impression of Corsican drivers.  It was on this stretch that I saw the only speed monitoring camera in our entire time on the island.  But then I didn’t see any at all the last time I drove through France and still found a ticket in the mail when got home two months later.  I expect a repeat, since my mind has trouble adjusting to the metric system and reads a 50 km (31mph) speed limit sign as 50 mph (80 km).

        En route into town, we picked up Sofie at the airport.  She had a week's vacation and no one to watch over her, so she flew to Bastia to join us.  This altered the theme of our tour from hiking and history to gift shopping and swimming and generally having a good time.  I don’t think she was particularly interested in Napoleon.

Bastia Harbor

        Our first evening was spent in a hotel because the apartment owner’s father-in-law had gone off somewhere with the key.  The room was small, which forced us out into the streets where we discovered a wonderful fish restaurant.  In a nearby park there was a retro car show with carnival rides.  I never got to see the cars.  Sofie wanted to ride the Freak Out, one of those rides that clamps you in and then swings you to increasing heights until you are nearly upside down while simultaneously spinning.  How could I let my grand daughter down?  I bought a pair of tickets and off we went.  I easily could have been the grandfather of every other one of the twenty persons on the ride.  At the end the operator gave me two free tickets for being the oldest person to ever take the ride!

        The following day we got moved in and hit the beach.  There were maybe four other persons in the water and not many more than that on the beach where we were.  It was a fine beach and to be swimming in the sea the last week of October was pretty cool.  We would come back again and go swimming off Cap Corse, the northernmost part of the island, before we left.  My only regret was no surf!  But the big thrill was that Sofie got to use her camera to take pictures underwater.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to shoot other than grass. 

        As we’d traveled about Corsica, I’d noticed stenciled on walls the figure of a bearded man and the phrase “Massimu Sempre Vivu” (Massimu Lives Forever).  In Bastia these tags were particularly numerous.  Corsica has long been known for its culture of the vendetta and mafia  There has also been a strong nationalist feeling manifested in an independence movement.  I figured “Massimu” represented one or the other.  I asked a clerk in a souvenir shop.  She didn’t know but guessed it was someone who’d been jailed.  She looked him up on line and held her hands up in the universal sign of handcuffs and said, yes, he was in jail.  Later I consulted my favorite snitch, Google Search, and discovered that in fact Massimu Sussini had been assassinated a few weeks earlier in a small town on the east coast.  The reason was not clear though it was though it was probably because of his anti-mafia activities.  One reason was that the stolen car thought to have been used by the assassin was found alongside the road, a “pirate” tactic and not uncommon sight.  After my experience with the clerk, I was surprised to find the death had been widely covered in the press–including the New York Times.  In recent years there has been an effort to rid the island of the mafia, but not without cost.  According to one estimate, in the past twenty years there have been 375 homicides of mafia opponents, including “four mayors in office, a lawyer, a senior official, two teachers, a restaurateur, a peaceful retiree and many others.” 

Massima Tags

        Massimu’s murder has engendered a strong reaction.  His uncle has founded the “Le Collectif Anti-mafia Massimu Susini.”  Some 800 persons crowded into a university lecture hall in Corte in a meeting organized by the “Core in Fronte,” a Corsican nationalist group in which Massimu was an activist.  My interest in this aspect of Corsica was sparked in freshman English by the Prosper Mérimée short story “Mateo Falcone” in which Mateo shoots his young son for revealing the hiding place of an outlaw to the gendarmes.  It made me curious about what sort of values such people possessed.  More recently it was revived by the MhzChoice series “Mafiosa” about a Corsican mafia family, leadership of which is taken over by his niece when the head of the family dies.  Interestingly, the uncle has the name of Pascal Paoli, who was a contemporary of Napoleon, the leader of the short-lived Corsican republic, and the author of its constitution, which reportedly influenced writers of the American constitution.

        We finally departed Corsica in the afternoon on Hallowe’en.  Our flight was scheduled for the morning, but some sort of skin had peeled off the nose of the Air Corsica A320 we were to take.  The local maintenance people tried to “bandage” it but in the end had to fly to Ajaccio for the repairs.  I swear, the man appeared to be patching it with gigantic strips of Scotch tape!

Bandaging the Airplane

 

2019-10-28 Bonifacio

        Bonifacio is a lovely town with a long history.  At various times it was occupied or visited by Romans, Greeks, Lombards, Vandals and various pirates and traders.  In 806 it was occupied by the Moors of Spain, who held it for a short time.  The Corsican symbol of the Moor’s head refers back to this time when the Corsican fighters are said to have paraded the heads of their slain foe on the end of a pike.  In 828 the pope assigned the island’s defense to the margrave of Tuscany.  Parts of the city are remnants of a fortress constructed by and named for Boniface II of Tuscany in 828.  Initially controlled by Pisa, in the 12th century it was taken over by Genoa.  The inhabitants spoke the Genoese dialect. 

Bonifacio Harbor

        Its place in the early history of the island notwithstanding, I was surprised to find that unlike our other stops, Bonifacio has no museum introducing the city’s past–perhaps because it played no role in the lives of neither Napoleon nor Pasquale Paoli.  In some ways the eastern end of Haute Ville–the Upper Town–is itself a museum.  With its narrow streets, old buildings and fortifications–especially the Bastion de l’Étandard–it has a decidedly medieval air to it. The western, modern end of the upper town–the portion that projects into the Mediterranean and overlooks the harbor entry–presents an interesting contrast.  Here are the remnants of a coastal artillery installation from WWII, and inland a bit is a cemetery.

Memorial to Bonifacien Dead in Franco-Prussian War

        I have found Southern European cemeteries interesting, especially those in small towns.  Usually there is a cenotaph to the war dead from the town, though it is often found somewhere in the center of town.  Most common and often the most numerous is a memorial to those who died in WWI.  To their names may be added the dead from WWII.  In Southern France, including Corsica, one also finds monuments to martyrs of the Resistance.  As back home (I’m thinking of my uncle), individual headstones note the deceased’s military service.  I recall tombs in a cemetery in Levanto, Italy that not only recorded military service but also membership in Fascist paramilitary units.  But what struck me in the Bonifacio cemetery was a monument to 19th C Bonifaciens who had died for the country, including two who perished at Sebastopal in the Crimean War and three from the Franco-Prussian War.  It brought back memories of my Western Civ class more than a half century ago.

Fanfan, the Flying Ass

        Perhaps a sense of Bonifacio’s different attitude is to be gained from the town’s symbol–Fanfan, The Flying Ass.  The Tourist Information Centers hand out cards with an illustration of Fanfan.  On the back is an account of the tradition according to which each year an old ass was selected to be sent flying from the cliffs.  As part of the ceremony, the inhabitants would help the beast become airborne by taking turns using a straw to inflate the ass by its ….. derrière.  Round as a balloon, the animal would soar off into the distance until it disappeared into the water.  One day, a new Genoese commissaire accepted an invitation to participate.  But he was very fastidious and declined to put his lips where others had put theirs.  To avoid swallowing the saliva of others, he removed the straw from the ass’ rear, handed it to a bystander, and to the consternation of bystanders took his turn at blowing.  The Bonifaciens were so perplexed by this they put an end to the tradition of the flying ass, which had existed for centuries!  (If they should decide to revive the practice, I can suggest an old ass that is self inflating and already filled with hot air, perhaps by a similar method.)

        Although the settlers of Bonifacio reportedly did not adopt the Corsican custom of the vendetta, while we were there it sounded as though a feud was being pursued with a vengeance.  The sound of shotguns echoed throughout the narrow inlet.  When we hiked out along the tops of the cliffs toward Cape Pertusatu we came upon hunters, dressed in camo and bandoliers, armed with shotguns, after wild pigeons.  Every so often we’d hear firing and see a flock of birds taking off.  We never saw one fall nor did we encounter a hunter who had one.  While along the cliffs the brush was low and the hunters could see hikers, in other places the maquis was thick and high, and once or twice I heard the guns fire and then the sound of buckshot scattering through the brush.  We also could hear sanglier (wild boar) rooting in the brush but never saw them.

The Grain of Sand  and the Cliffs at Sunset

        One of the most welcome aspects of Bonifacio–really, of any costal town on Corsica–was that in late October the weather was pleasant enough that we could hike some of the many trails, and the water, still warm enough for a swim.  All that was made more enjoyable by there being few tourists.  We had a well situated apartment with a great view of the cliffs and of the Grain de Sable, an enormous stack of layered limestone that broke off from the cliffs some 800 years ago.  In the distance we could see Sardinia.  The view made for some great sunsets.  We hope to see them again.

2019-10-26 Ajaccio to Bonifacio

        Taking off from Ajaccio early in the morning without breakfast, we felt the need for a pastry.  Driving the T40 through Bicchisano, we spied a sandwich board in front of a roadside shop for a Boulangerie/Patisserie.  Discussion completed and decision made by the time we reached the roundabout 100 meters further on, we swung about and came back and parked in front of the shop.  Inside the place seemed more like a tea shop than a bakery, with knick knacks and chinaware everywhere.  But there were delicious-looking pastries too.  And to top it off there was a small, energetic, warm and friendly lady who seemed constantly in motion.  Jeanine was her name, and she was absolutely charming.  As she boxed up our pastries, she wanted to know who we were, where we came from, what we did and so on.  And when we decided to have coffee, she began pressing other pastries on us to try.  She began talking about Jacques Chirac, who’d passed away a couple of weeks earlier, saying that no one cared about his mistresses, etc.  When I mentioned I had “met” him at the G-8 summit in Okinawa in 2000 (I meant to say I had "seen" him, but my French being what it is now….) she rushed out the door to fetch her sister to meet the American who’d met the former president.  The sister arrived and I was able to explain the reality, but then it came out I’d been a “diplomat.”  The sister left, and Jeanine pumped me a bit about being a diplomat and then jumped up again and ran off to retrieve her nephew, who she was certain would be interested in talking to an “American diplomat.”  He turned out to be a polite and knowledgeable young man who clearly had been rousted out of bed.  He was studying law and knew a bit about the US–more than his American counterpart would about Corsica, I’m sure.  From him we learned the family is Corsican, and he lamented not having been taught the language when he was younger.  The experience sounded similar to Theresa’s with Taiwanese under the KMT.  The conversation ended with a few words about President Trump.  Jeanine’s reaction was typical of what we had been experiencing:  She threw her hands up in the air with a cry of disgust, and then said something along the lines of “But ours is no better!”  On that note we got back into our Citröen, drove to a roundabout to get ourselves again pointed south.  As we passed by the shop, Jeanine was standing in the doorway smiling and waving. 

Enjoying Jeanine Ettori's Pasteries and Humor

        We weren’t far down the road before I had to make another stop.  Jeanine’s coffee had been wonderful and powerful.  The most convenient wide spot, generally recognized as such judging from the informal midden growing at the base of a large tree just a short distance away, turned out to be an information kiosk about endemic species.  As I walked past I was pulled up short by what I swore was a photo of the icon of the Owyhee–a California Big Horn Sheep!  It was in fact a Corsican Mouflon (Ovis orientalis orientalis), a distant cousin of the Big Horn.  Like the Big Horn, the Mouflon is endangered, though primarily from poaching rather than pneumonia.  The other three species pictured were the Corsican macrostigma trout (Salmo trutta macrostigma), the Corsican nuthatch (Sitta whiteheadi), and the Tyrrhenian wall lizard (Podarcis tiliguerta).  (See pictures in the Corsica photo album.)  The similarity of species that one sometimes encounters never fails to remind me of how connected we once were.  (Before my time, of course.)

Espèces Endémiques Kiosk

                Filitosa was our last stop before Bonifacio.  This is a Neolithic/Bronze Age archeological and interpretive site that was somewhat off the beaten path but was well worth the diversion.  It is particularly noted for its menhirs, which are nothing like those Obelix is always hauling around.  They differ from those in Brittany, where we saw fields filled with rows of smooth menhirs and large stone burial chambers.  The Corsican menhirs (Filitosa is not the only place they’ve been found) are described as “statue menhirs,” sculpted to represent human or other figures.  Especially striking are the depictions of armaments found on some.  On display in the site museum were obsidian arrowheads not unlike those seen in the Great Basin back home.  What is unusual about these is that obsidian is not naturally found on Corsica and would’ve had to be imported, perhaps from Mount Arci on Sardinia.  And to top it all off, there is an olive tree said to be 2000 years old and still bearing fruit.

Menhirs and 2000 Year Old Olive Tree

        From Filitosa to Bonifacio we became familiar with another element Corsicans may share with Italians–their driving culture.  I found that much of what I wrote about Driving in Sicily eleven years ago applies equally to Corsican drivers.  Winding, narrow roads discourage no one from pretending to be Juan Fangio, who once said “Driving fast on the track does not scare me. What scares me is when I drive on the highway I get passed by some idiot who thinks he is Fangio.”  (Women seem less prone to this but not entirely without the urge.)  It is disconcerting enough to look in the rear view and see a car following so close that its grill is not visible.  But to have a semi tractor come flying around a blind curve taking half my lane was enough to cure my constipation.  More frightening were the dudes I encountered in small Fiats or Kias who were entirely in my lane and unapologetic about it.  I say more frightening because of the inordinate number of remains of such cars we saw burned out alongside the road.  (Later from what I read in the press I would conclude these might have been stolen and used in crimes.)  The whole thing is exacerbated by narrow medieval streets in the towns filled with drivers in a rush.  One in a red Ferrari scared the devil out of me when he came charging around us out of nowhere with roaring exhausts and then slammed on his brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of me.

2019-10-20 Ajaccio

        From Corti we moved on to Ajaccio, which is now the capital of the Département of Corsica and the largest city on the island.  We had planned a briefer stay here–two nights– than elsewhere largely because I hadn’t read the guide books carefully enough.  My interest in the place focused primarily on Napoleon and the Fesch Museum.  Having conceived Napoleon in Corti, Carlo Buonaparte moved the family to Ajaccio to deliver the future emperor  in a house in the center of the city that has been restored by various descendants–including Louis Napoleon III, who had the original furniture and other items tracked down. 

Looking for Parking

        A serious effort was apparently made to achieve authenticity, and I had to wonder at the significance of the beautifully carved crêche placed in the room where the future emperor was born.  Napoleon’s uncle Cardinal Joseph Fesch (who was younger than he) was archbishop of Corsica.  Altogether, Fesch had acquired some 16,000 paintings (not all held at the same time), the core of which were Italian works from the Renaissance to the 18th century.  The Eyewitness Travel guidebook describes the museum bearing his name as holding “the most important collection of Italian paintings in France after the Louvre.”  We were anxious to see it, but a bit disappointed when we did.  The building had been remodeled.  Much of the lighting came from windows, and though fabric had been hung in front of them to diffuse the outside light, it could not prevent glare on many of the works. Many of most important works were auctioned off in 1845.  There is also a collection of Bonaparte memorabilia, including some sort of pocket container (tobacco?) with an erotic depiction said to be of Marie Louise, the Austrian archduchess who was Napoleon’s second wife and mother of his son, happily enjoying coitus on a galloping horse with her lover and second husband, Adam Albert von Neipperg.  When Napoleon went into exile on Elba and Marie Louise had returned to Vienna in 1814, her father, Francis I, Emperor of Austria, set von Neipperg onto her to seduce and deflect her from any notion of reuniting with her husband.  She married von Neipperg in 1821 after Napoleon died on St. Helena.

 

Napoleon's Birthplace

 

Napoleon and His Brothers Dress as Roman Consuls

        The major Napoleonic site in Ajaccio is of course Maison Bonaparte, the house where he was born August 15, 1769–the only date in his life I have consistently remembered since I was a boy.  The house had been in his family more or less since his great great grandfather Giuseppe moved there in 1682.  Napoleon lived there only until he was nine, when he was sent to the French mainland to school.  The house itself, though interesting, isn’t particularly impressive when one realizes that originally it was partitioned among several families.  More important is its symbolic role and the way in which the Bonaparte family and Napoleon’s supporters turned it into a cult site emblematic of Corsican pride.  The size of visiting crowds is suggested by the extent of the ticket line stanchions and left us self-satisfied we’d come in the off season when there were just a handful of visitors.  But seeing how he has been remembered offered an occasion to reflect on how authoritarians rise to power and the good, as well as the bad, that can result.  Napoleon was a brilliant tactician and administrator, that cannot be denied.  But he couldn’t appreciate the limits imposed by circumstance or ego.  But that is usually the case with autocrats and seems to be so still.  His most enduring legacy is perhaps legal (Napoleonic Code) and political (the Concordat).

 

Dining on Duck Breast and Frites

        Aside from the two museums the rest of our stay in Ajaccio that wasn’t devoted to finding parking was spent walking the streets observing people or looking at buildings, such as the cathedral, old government buildings, the citadel (not open to the public) and the fish market.  It’s a lovely city, but its attraction for tourists seems to be largely the nearby beaches and the offshore islands.  Corsica has some wonderful marine preserves, but I unfortunately didn’t manage to get any diving in.

2019-10-27: Corsica

        For two weeks now we have been on Corsica.  I was moved to come here from a childhood interest in Napoleon that lasted probably through college, and which was revived when I heard Mark Knopfler with Emmi Lou Harris singing “Done with Bonaparte.”  As I write this, we're in Bonifacio in the south of the island.  Corti (the Corsican spelling; Corte is the French) was our first stop; it was very interesting.  The “national” Museum of Corsica is there, making it the place to start.  Corsicans would like to be independent.  Place names on road signs are in both French (on top) and Corsican, with the former in many cases painted over in black with Banksy’s medium of choice.  In Corti we were ensconced in a pleasant small apartment overlooking the town and with a view of the mountains and the mouths of the two imposing gorges–Gorge du Tavignanu and Gorge de la Restonica –that are the town’s natural icons.

Corti with Restonica Gorge to the left

The Citadelle with the Mouth Tavignanu to the Left

        That first Tuesday the weather was nice, so we decided to hike Tavignanu.  There is a paved road for much of the length of Restonica that would allow us to see a good part of it even if there were rain, which was in fact forecast for Wednesday.  Not so for Tavignanu.  There is no road, and much of the Tavignanu trail is granite stone, portions of which still show saw marks where the trail had been cut through larger stones.  Despite a pair of good boots and Superfeet inserts, it made for painful walking on aging feet.  But the beauty of the gorge more than compensated for the sacrifice, and completing fifteen kms up and back at my age restores confidence that there is much I can conquer before I am reduced to fording gutters and scaling curbs.  That distance may not seem like much to those accustomed to hiking the well-maintained (?) trails of the Northwest, but it still took seven hours.  That said, others moved much more quickly, and we even encountered a few people running the trail.

Tavignanu Gorge

(The trail is visible to the right as a thin white line rising upward)

        The Restonica gorge is longer, but the first thirteen kms are paved and have a parking lot (closed for the season) and a mountain café with decent coffee and wonderful house cake made from chestnut flour, a specialty of the Castagniccia region.  From there, however, the five km hike up to Lake Méloc is just as rocky as the Tavignanu trail and much steeper.  But once again the view more than repaid the pain.  Nearly as rewarding as the views were the people we met on the trail, which was surprisingly populated for an October weekday.  Besides French hikers, we met Swedes, Dutch, a Croatian and a Bosnian in the same party, who planned to return home via Belgrade (how things have changed!), French Canadians and lots of Germans.  We were the only Americans.  One party of four young Germans asked where we were from.  “The United States.”  “Where in the U.S.?”  “Portland, Oregon.”  One turned to the others and explained “Portland is the American city most like a European city.”  “How so?”  I asked.  “Well, public transportation….”  “What else?” his companion asked.  “Uhhh….”  His friends laughed.  I tried to come to his rescue with a few lame suggestions.  “Well yes.  Public transportation is pretty good, at least by U.S standards.  Lots of trees.  People are nice.  Good food…..Uh….”  At which point another of the Germans chimed in, “And it’s pretty left!”  A bonus was watching a search and rescue Gendarme rappelling from a helicopter into a side canyon, apparently as part of an exercise.

The Restonica Trail

What Dreams Would These Beauties Bring?

Lac Mélo

Gendarme Search & Rescue Helicopter

        A day separated our two hikes, and we used it to walk about Corti, visit the Citadelle and the Museum of Corsica, and to have a superb lunch, for which I followed my cardiologist‘s advice and ordered meat only as “condiments,” i.e., charcuterie. While Corsican charcuterie may not be a health food, it is “a substance” that “adds flavor to food.”  And to life as well!  The museum is not large and is mostly devoted to peasant life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  I enjoyed that.  It is sometimes too easy to forget how hard life once was–and perhaps is going to get.  The town has many old buildings and stone stairways leading up the hill toward the Citadelle, which was built in the 14th C by the Genoese who ruled the island for several centuries.  Napoleon was from Corsica, and signs and plaques of the “Washington Slept Here” sort found in some American bedrooms and inns are encountered throughout southern Corsica.  There is at least one restaurant and one hotel in each town bearing his name.  After marrying, Napoleon's father Carlo Buonaparte (Charles Bonaparte) moved to Corti to study law, and while Ajaccio is proud of being the emperor’s birthplace, Corti outdoes it with a plaque claiming Napoleon was conceived there.  (Napoleon, leur second fils, y sera conçu)!  The woman at the tourist information office in Ajaccio laughed when we told her.

University of Corsica Directory

University of Corsica

(Massimu Susini was an anti-mafia activist who was assassinated 9/12/2019.

His death spurred formation of an island-wide anti-mafia collective who declared they "refuse to be in the grip of fear".)

        In Corti the students are everywhere, hauling roller bags from the train station back to school on Sunday afternoons, grocery shopping, or chatting as they drink coffee or beer and smoke cigarettes at local cafes.  I have the general impression that Corsican nationalism is strong among them and perhaps at the university generally.  The campus directory in front of the Law, Social Sciences, Economics and Management building was entirely in Corsican, which is much closer to Italian than French.  (Napoleon was born “Napoleone Buonaparte.”)  Corsican graffiti is ubiquitous, as is the Moor’s head symbol that has been an icon of independent Corsica since it was adopted by Pasquale Paoli  (1725-1807).  We came across a plein air art class of elementary school students being taught in Corsican.  The Corsican situation brought to mind that of the French Basques in the southwest of the country.  For that matter, it also made me think of the Kurds and of the Uygurs in NW China and of the treatment doled out to ethnic minorities worldwide.  Native Americans too.

2019-10-15: Munich

        In mid-August we hauled Claudia and family (now four girls) with a pile of belongings out to Sea-Tac Airport and put them on a plane to Munich with a layover in London and another in Copenhagen where they were to meet up with one of Sofie’s school chums before heading for Munich.  (A lot has happened since I last posted to this blog.)  

        After trying out the University of Copenhagen for a year, Mathias and Claudia decided he would accept an offer from Technical University of Munich, where there was also a better position for her than in Denmark.  At the end of September (9/30 to be exact) we flew to Munich to help out before beginning a two plus month sojourn in Corsica and the South of France.  Daughter Claudia was to begin her job overseeing clinical trials of a vaccination (H. pylori) for stomach cancer at TUM.  She was able negotiate a three-year, three-quarter time contract that will allow her time to spend with the kids.  By the end of three years her German (which she has never studied formally but has picked up from Mathias and the girls) should be at a level that will permit her to do clinical work with children, which is her real love.  This is made possible by an impressive childcare/educational

Ready for School

system.  There is a great public day care just 200 meters from their home with well-trained staff and excellent meals.  The meals are the only thing they have to pay for.  Emmi's (2 ½ yrs.) lunches, which are prepared by a "chef"–a nice fellow from Togo–cost only €38/month.  Lara’s (nearly 6) are free, because she is technically in kindergarten, which falls under the school system.  She attends class at the local elementary school one day a week.  Runa's (11 mons) lunches come from mom.  Sofie (soon to be 11) is in the fifth grade or first year of gymnasium, which lasts eight years.  He school is a ten-minute bike ride from home.

 

Kinderkrippe snacks

        The family fits well into half of a three-storey duplex, which they share with a French family who have two girls about the same ages as Lara and Emmi.  I think the kids are going to be happy.  Being an hour from Mathias’ family and perhaps the same distance from excellent skiing probably will help adjustment.  Mathias expressed the hope to Theresa that we will look after the two younger girls while they head for the mountains after Christmas with the two older ones, who both ski.   Perhaps handling two won’t be so bad; four was like a Portland anti-fa rally.

        For a boy who grew up in farm country (though not on a farm), it is interesting to watch young children, who speak three languages (English, German & Danish), settling into a new school system and social milieu.  Sofie has been learning German since she was three.  She’s pretty good and is in the fifth grade in gymnasium but is sometimes frustrated by vocabulary she hasn’t encountered before–such things as “millions,” “billions” and whatever they’re talking about in math.  Lara and Emmi are quickly learning German, but one occasionally can catch them conversing in Danish.  French, which is the language of the family next door, is Claudia and Mathias’ language for talking about the kids in their presence and I suspect about me as well.  And once Theresa and I arrived, Chinese and a bit of Taiwanese were added to the mix.

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Watching the Neis Rathaus Glockenspiel in Marienplatz

        Our arrival coincided with Oktoberfest, which also overlapped with one of my periodic interludes on the wagon.  The town square (Marienplatz), the Oktoberfest site, and subway stations were filled with women in dirndl dresses and men in lederhosen, a few quite loud and a bit drunk though it was not yet noon.  The Oktoberfest celebration is in a large open field filled with large beer halls put up by the major breweries for the occasion, and then taken down and stored until the next year.  There were also some pretty stupendous rides and a special section with older rides from the fifties and sixties.  When I was a kid, each year when the carnival came to town, my mother would tell my brother and me how she’d known the fellow who had developed the most popular rides along with the early hydroplanes that raced on Lake Washington.  I recall in high school the carnival hired four of us at a buck an hour to tear down the rides after the carnival closed on the last night.  After a couple of hours they decided they needed only three of us and let Larry Davis go.  He assuaged his disappointment by sitting in the car where he could watch us (and we could see him) while drinking the bottle of wine we’d all bought together.

2017/12/13: In Search of the Original danta at Pasteis de Belem in Lisbon

        In winter of 1967 I was struggling four hours a day in one-on-one classes at the Mandarin Training Center (MTC) of Taiwan Normal University, trying to master spoken and classical Chinese.  Winter in Taipei then was pretty grim with air badly polluted by hibachis burning soft coal and diesel-powered buses and trucks that had no emission controls and badly needed tune ups.  Young fool that I was, I was smoking a pack a day of “Chang Shou” (Long Life) cigarettes that left my throat so continually raw I ultimately abandoned a vice I’d cultivated from the age of fourteen.  While there was some excellent Chinese food to be had, we mostly could afford plain fare capable of keeping a student nourished without lifting one’s spirits.  The occasional decent hamburger was nearly impossible to find for those without access to the American military bases.

        Not all was dreary, though.  For across the street from the language center was the Puyi bakery 普一食品廠, which sold a delicious baked egg custard tart (danta 蛋塔 in Chinese).  A fresh batch would come out of the oven each afternoon about ten minutes after class let out.  We would rush to purchase a couple before they cooled, while the pastry crust was still as flakey as my mom's apple pie.  It was a real morale booster.  But the danta struck me as a very un-Chinese delicacy, and when I asked about its origins I was told it had been introduced by the Portuguese.  I didn't think about about this too closely and simply assumed they referred to the Portuguese who in the 16^th century arrived in Taiwan and dubbed the island Ilha Formosa (Beautiful Island).  So much for the critical approach I learned in historical methods classes!

        Over the years, whenever I returned to Taiwan I went out of my way to stop by Puyi for a danta and some memories.  Although I could find danta at other bakeries in Taipei and in Chinese communities elsewhere, they were never as good.  Then one year, perhaps in 1984 or so, on a visit from Japan I headed back to Heping Dong lu for my danta ration and found Puyi gone.  Boy was I despondent!  But after a asking around a bit, I learned that the shop had simply moved about a half mile away to a classier location.  In a way, that felt like betrayal but I let it go and hurried off to get my fix.  The location may have changed, but the product had not.

        In 2005, my wife and I visited Lisbon with in-laws from Taiwan.  They were excited about finding the shop that was reputed to have produced the original danta.  This was the Pasteis de Belem just off the river in the western part of Lisbon near the Jéronimos Monastery.   The building was divided into a number of high-ceilinged rooms with bucolic tiled scenes along the lower third of the walls.   Everyone was excited to have danta from the source and all agreed they were better than Taiwan.  Except me.  I continued to think Puyi’s were the best, though I kept my opinions to myself

        When I next visited Taiwan a few years later, I looked for Puyi and couldn’t find it.  I was certain that I had the right location, but it was not there.  Subsequently, when I began doing a bit of research for this essay, I learned that it had closed in 2011–the year of my visit.  I’d missed it by a few months.  Although run by a master baker, Wu Bingxiang 吳秉庠, who’d begun working there in 1974 when he was eighteen, the shop’s business had declined and at the end there were just ten employees compared with eighty at the peak.  Wu reportedly moved to Ilan and opened a small shop there.    

         Porto Manteigaria Pastel de Natal & coffee

        Returning to Portugal last month after twelve years, we were looking forward to once again eating the original danta.  Walking through downtown Porto, we spied some in the window of a small bakery and I bought one.  It looked good, but in taste and texture it didn’t approach the Puyi standard.  Then on returning from the market, we passed a larger bakery where through the window one could watch the bakers working.  I decided on a second try.  These were good and they were warm, which made all the difference.  Moreover, there was coffee the likes of which Puyi never had. (That year I survived on Nescafe instant.)  Manteigaria–the name of the shop–is headquartered in Lisbon but has shops throughout the country.  My only quibble was with the crust, which was a bit hard.  The custard was delicious and the texture, sensuous.

 

Espresso and Pastel de Belem – Yumm!

        In Lisbon we frequented a Manteigaria shop just a five-minute walk from our apartment.  But we wanted to find the shop we’d been to on our earlier visit.  We couldn’t remember the name, though I had a vague idea where it was.  I did some on-line searching, and it was then I learned that the delicacy dated only from 1837!  No chance the Portuguese had introduced it in the 16^th century.  In any event, being more interested in introducing Catholicism into China and Japan, they had been on Taiwan only briefly.  I further read that in the 1920s it had been introduced into Hong Kong from Portuguese Macao.  Now that made sense but left me feeling a bit stupid. For once my memory did not fail me and we found the Pasteis de Belem.  Although at the Manteigaria shops and elsewhere the tarts were known as Pastel de Natal, our waitress insisted the real thing is properly called “Pastel de Belem” after the shop.  (Belem is the section of Lisbon where the bakery is located.) 

        As good as the Pastel de Natal was, the Belem version was better.  It came closer to the Puyi standard both in filling and crust.  The only ingredient lacking was that pinch of nostalgia that cannot be recreated by others.  But for those former MTC language students who want to relive a Puyi moment, I would say a visit to Lisbon wouldn’t be amiss.  And once you’ve been sated on danta (if that is possible), there are a few other nice things to see and eat and lots of nice people to meet.  And when I next get to Ilan, I shall report back whether Master Wu has revived the Puyi experience on the east coast of Taiwan.