It snows, and I can't see the winter sports

What kind of sense does that make?

Satellite depends on nearly perfect weather, but cable, like natural gas, real public transportation, or any household necessities, is not available here. We only got high-speed Internet access about 4 years ago, while it ran contentedly past us about 4 km away. I don't know what made them decide to take pity on our 400 residents, along with the handful over in Méricourt, and the two handfuls in Moisson.

Saturday evening, we had dinner at the Paris home friends of my husband's parents. At the end of the evening, our hostess looked at Audouin and said something that I knew from the word or two that I caught and the look on his face as he nodded "yes" had to have been something like, "But surely you don't wish to stay there forever?" I heard him acknowledge that he did, but that I surely did not. She looked rather beseechingly at me, hoping for proof that I was not hopeless, beyond her comprehension and reach.

Non, non, I reassured her, I could not imagine finishing my life here. I knew I would pay for that without even having to look at my husband. It came the next morning while we were putting the groceries away.

"Where else would we have the advantage of warmth when it is cold everywhere else? Look. There we were, chatting comfortably with the neighbor at her window, when in the grocery store parking lot, only a few kilometers away, it was so much colder?" The question was not rhetorical.

Of course, I had to admit that it is true that it is several degrees warmer here owing to the southern exposure and the protection of the chalk cliffs behind us, from which the space for our road and chain of houses along it is cut, but that is not all that makes one happy in life.

I don't think that our hostess would see fit to trade her little (dust-free) corner of Paris away for several additional degrees warmth in all seasons.

She has a grocery store across the street, and I bet she can watch a dust-free television whenever she chooses, which, knowing our hostess and the lack of a television in evidence in their tidy apartment, is not likely too often. Ah, but Paris offers so many other enchantments, nearly all of which I have forgotten how to enjoy.

I am getting old, and I am discouraged. Don't feel sad for me. That's just the way it goes when you have lost sight of what is actually important and how to be a decent person.

No, it's true, I have. I know it, and I am often reminded of it by any number of snags and pangs of conscience.

I am unable to be sufficiently charitable towards my husband's youngest children (long story that no one benefits from the telling), my contractor, my new president or myself. Impatient and not particularly well-suited or positioned to make a difference as far as the Big Issues that concern me are themselves concerned. Growing lazier by the day, but not proportionately indifferent (necessary to stability and harmony with the self and others). Philosophical, but not stoic. I know that nothing gets done if you don't start doing it. I know that. But what if I don't actually want it enough to do it, ever?

Take the couch. It's a wreck. It embarrasses me. I try to see the room without seeing it. And the same has come to be true for the garden, my bedroom, the petit salon, myself. I dream of being as efficient and content as Hunka Munka, broom in hand at the threshold to her tidy, comfortable little home in the hollow tree on a spring morning. Steady in the regularity and asperity of application, which always achieves its results. But, I can't see Audouin and I shopping for a new couch. Even once the room is done. I just can't. So, what's the point of thinking about how I want the room to be and doing the drawings, especially when the workers never come, always for perfectly good reasons?

Sort of.

Take health care. It's a wreck, and the supporters of single-payer argue amongst themselves over whether to stress morality or economics (Must we choose? Didn't that get us precisely where we are?), while Daschle is revealed to have ties to Big Health Care and made millions giving advice to insurers and hospitals, among others, according to the January 31 Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune:

The disclosure of Daschle's tax problems coincided with the release of the financial statement he submitted to the Office of Government Ethics, which details for the first time exactly how, without becoming a registered lobbyist, he made millions of dollars giving public speeches and private counsel to insurers, hospitals, realtors, farmers, energy firms and telecommunications companies with complex regulatory and legislative interests in Washington.

Or today's New York Times:

Beyond the ramifications for Mr. Daschle’s ascent to the cabinet, the disclosures about Mr. Hindery and the many clients Mr. Daschle advised on public policy offers a new window into how Washington works. It shows how in just four years an influential former senator was able to make $5 million and live a lavish lifestyle by dint of his name, connections and knowledge of the town’s inner workings.

The NYT article goes on to site some specific clients, such as:

Another client paying for his policy advice was UnitedHealth, a giant insurance company with many issues pending before the Department of Health and Human Services. About a third of its $81 billion in revenue last year came from federally regulated sales of Medicare Advantage and Medicare supplement and prescription drug plans.

The company boasted in its annual report that “one in five Medicare recipients participates in a UnitedHealth Group Medicare program.” (Mr. Daschle has said he will recuse himself from matters involving former clients.)

Oh. OK.

Not so hard in that light to see why single-payer is "off the table" and "unrealistic" for America, is it?

Oh, I don't mean he is necessarily a bad guy, just that a lot of good guys believe what they tell themselves so they feel better when they tie their tie in the morning.

And while House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman of California is the guy to go to to get health care reform moving, single-payer supporters are certainly not going to find an ally there, according to Physicians for a National Health Program's January 30 post, "Waxman Ready to Move -- But Where?", citing an article from the same date in The Washington Times, "Waxman to push '09 health care reform":

The top House lawmaker in charge of writing health care legislation said Thursday he is committed to passing a universal health care package by the end of the year…

“This is our time, we need to move forward, we need to get this job accomplished this year and get the bill to the president,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman at a conference sponsored by Families USA…

“The economic times which are so difficult is another reason why we need to do it right away,” he told reporters after his speech. “The health of our economy depends on a great extent on our dealing with the health of our health care system.”

But Mr. Waxman said private insurers would play a significant role in the implementation of universal health coverage, adding that relying solely on a Canadian or European-style single-payer system is unrealistic in the United States.

Don McCanne, MD -- providing the comment for PNHP -- writes in his comment following the post:

If a U.S. model based on private plans were as effective as the Swiss and Dutch systems, it would still leave about 7,600,000 individuals without insurance, which certainly tests the definition of universal. With much higher health care spending in the United States, the premiums for private plans, even with generous subsidies, certainly would test the definition of affordability. U.S.-style private plans, designed to enhance business success by creating patient barriers to care and payment for care, certainly tests the definition of social insurance.

Maybe James Clyburn did let slip the dark secret of the Washington reformers. If we were to continue with only incremental reforms, we would end up with a system that will leave many without insurance, that will leave health care unaffordable for many more, and that will leave in place an industry that takes away health care access and choice to further its own financial interests. Hmmm… Looks like another con job. Go the incremental route, but call it universal.

It just depresses me.

People I respect beg me not to be the fool of those who back a bad bill -- H.R. 676 -- that is destined to lose, even as they join their support for single-payer to mine, and without Waxman on board, they caution, nothing is going to happen. He's the man you have to convince. Conyers carries no weight for health care reform; he does not sit on the committee with jurisdiction.

Don't, they implore, undermine the the support we need to give President Obama, who has just made the Elena Kagan appointment to Solicitor General at the DOJ, (selects cases for advocacy in the Supreme Court and advises other federal agencies on selecting cases for other courts) and Neal Katyal to Principal Deputy Solicitor General (recommends cases and actually argues them in the Supreme Court), adding:

in all of American history, Neal Katyal ranks among the most important people ever, on the scale of preserving the Constitution and Rule of Law. He's the fellow who single-handedly took down the entire Bush Administration about Guantanamo. He sued and on behalf of a prisoner, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, arguing that the entire war powers views of Bush and Rummy re imprisonment and trial were unconstitutional. He personally argued the case before the Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

He won, and the Bush Administration's neo-fascist views were dead that day.

I broke into tears when I learned of his appointment last week.

And I wasn't even paying attention.

I will continue to back single-payer. I will continue to read and to educate myself, and I will continue to share what I learn, as well as my private embarrassments, suffered at the hands of those who do know more than I do, and do have more experience.

To Q, and you know who you are (if you read this), I say, go ahead, disparage, challenge, deflate my spirits if it is truth that you are speaking because we'll get nowhere otherwise. Who recently said -- ah, it was Harvard University -- that the point of a liberal education is to make young people uncomfortable, to take their world view apart, shake up everything they think they know so that they will have to reorder it all for themselves. Pain is growth, or growth is pain. I want nothing more than to shy away, take refuge in my corner of the countryside, a book in hand, but then I feel only... depressed. I have to return to turn on my computer and see what you have said and give it consideration.

Ah, but cheer up... there's still Colbert!

The Audacity of Nope

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Cars and trucks have traveled the street along the house this morning, but none stop here, discharging the balcony.

It's precipitating mixed snow and freezing rain.

Another wasted day.
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Update: February 2, 2009 New York Times Editorial, updated February 3,

The Travails of Tom Daschle

Mr. Daschle is another in a long line of politicians who move cozily between government and industry. We don’t know that his industry ties would influence his judgments on health issues, but they could potentially throw a cloud over health care reform. Mr. Daschle could clear the atmosphere by withdrawing his name.

I agreed, and I am heartened, like the NYT editorial board, that Mr. Daschle has withdrawn his candidature, as well as resigned from the position of health care reform czar. We didn't need to start reforming health care under a cloud of doubt, even if a brother in political arms wrote -- and I am sympathetic to this viewpoint -- "I'm so bummed out about the Daschle thing, I actually sent off the following story idea to The Onion:

Jesus Christ Returns!
Pays Back Taxes, Resigns From Deity
Ghandi Rumored Ineligible Because He Shuns Limos

"Now the "honeymoon" for Obama ends abruptly;" he continued, "we'll see how well he recovers. Healthcare, already down for 8 counts, takes yet another hit. It's time for Obama to address the nation on values, just as he did on race during the campaign."

I know that we aren't any of us working in a perfect system, unsullied by the reality of the workplace and the legislative place, where power, money and law meet.

We can't change it over night, or see the white knights sweep in from the Great Forest astride their mighty steeds, radiant perfection in human form.

I wish. That would be like Aragorn come to life with Gandalf and Frodo at his side, smiling proudly and benevolently at me, and I'd be 13 again, walking in the snow to school, imagining that I, too, walked silently and carried the ring.

But, we can do our human best to uphold the standards we say we will employ.
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Stealing a moment

Le chantier aujourd'hui

The worksite today

It's a glorious day. After another été de merde, [trans: shitty summer (sorry, that's how we say it over here)], September is doing its best to make up for all the clouds and wind. Blues skies, cool mornings that warm with the sun, evenings coming sooner.

Georges and José finished removing the old stucco from the part of the house that we'll strip bare, and then they attacked the plaster of Paris around the window and door openings to be able to remove first the metal shutters for sanding, and then the windows, avant que le froid n'arrive [trans: before the cold comes (we're more polite about that)].

Audouin came home and asked how they were doing the shutters.

"By hand."

"You're kidding. That's a lot of work."

"They're not using a sander because the metal is thin, and they don't want to remove any of it. So, they work with sand paper for metal and wire brushes."

He looked at me. I wondered if a defense of stone age techniques were required, but I decided to let sleeping dogs lie if he didn't press the issue.

People do still work with their hands. It's the best way to feel your work.

....

The window decision redux

Yesterday, they started removing the windows to sand them. That has been difficult for us. It's not an easy decision to resuse the old windows and restore them. They are single-paned, naturally, so they are not especially energy-efficient, but many are fairly easy to restore, and they belong to the house. It isn't easy to throw them out; someone would likely recuperate them from a yard of old building materials and put them to use.

When I first walked the job with Joachim (remember him? I can't forget. Neither can my brother and Stephanie, I'm sure), he thought they were worth recovering, except three, which he thought should be rebuilt completely.

Then, he returned once the job started for real on September 1 (a Monday this year, coincidentally) and started wondering about changing them for thermally insulated new windows.

Merci, Joachim.

I brought it up with Audouin, who said, "Bon, oui, peut-être on devrait le faire. Oui. Bah, je ne sais pas. [trans: Well, yes, maybe we should do it. Yeah. Ah, I don't know."

We were absolutely undecided and indecisive.

Money. It's more expensive to replace the windows. Decision. We had made one. Why make another? Loan. We had negotiated and signed it. Were we really going to add to it, or compromise by putting in low-quality windows. Experience. Mac used to always put single-paned windows into our renovations of old houses, and we had storm windows made for the winter months. We have the metal shutters we close every evening. We also face south-south east and are protected from the northerly and westerly winds by the chalk cliff behind us, across the road. The walls are not insulated beyond the insulating qualities of 16" of brick and silica, plus several inches of real stucco on the exterior. We do not heat excessively, preferring sweaters and breathable (not stuffy hot) air.

The issue floated the time they removed the stucco.

Op là, on y va, we restore.

....

The windows

So, then, today was reassuring. All while they were sanding the shutters, Georges kept asking me about the windows.

"Madame de Floris, alors, c'est lesquelles qu'on remplace? [trans: Mrs. de Floris, so, which ones is it that we replace]" He must have asked three times every day, upping my confidence factor by zero percent.

"Um, that one, and the one above, and the one over the entry, in the end bedroom. I think." What did Joachim say? What did Joachim say?

Sanding away at the French doors from the living room (which is entry/kitchen/dining/living room all at once, unfortunately; the house is small by US standards), I stopped to peer at the result. Georges ran his hand over the smooth wood, with traces of the paint here and there and said, "It's good wood, in good shape."

Phew.

"Is it oak?" He nodded.

"Je pense, oui."

That's Georges on the left, and José on the right.

....

Georges and José

Georges is around 34, and he and his wife have a little boy, Samuel, who is two years old. He loves that we both have Samuels. I do, too. His wife is Brazilian. I told him she probably speaks better Portuguese, then.

José is older. He is 58, and his wife lives in Portugal still. He only sees her a couple of times a year, when he can return for vacations. His village is Esposende, between Porto and Viana do Castelo, and his house is 1 kilometer from the ocean. Audouin says it's too cold to swim because the Atlantic there is even colder than in Brittany. You may think Maine. They have a daughter who is 28 and works in construction, on bridge construction crews, I think.

"She didn't really like school," he told me.

I am so lucky to have two really nice guys working on the house. I actually like having them around. I gave them the smaller room and the bathroom in the petite maison to use as they wish, the garden for lunch, and we chat a bit every day. Today, we got onto divorce, the universe and life after death before we all had to get back to work.

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The state of life, young truants

We got onto divorce in part because there are some kids we have noticed aren't going to school, and who all have, in one way or another, unfortunate family circumstances. One hangs out and talks to them when they are near the sidewalk and the gate. I don't know him. Maybe he just actually spends his entire lunch period watching the workers.

Another I do know, and I like him. His parents are divorced, and he lives with his father here while his little sister and brother live with their mother, "I don't get along with my mother," he told me.

And then there is Brandon. I hear all sorts of things about his family. It's noisy at their trailer-turned-cabin down on a plot by the Seine, which they aren't supposed to be living on since the zoning regulations changed, but the village doesn't give them a hard time because it has decided that there is no point pressing the point. They get their electricity by arrangement with the old man who lives next door in a sort of cabin house of his own, to which he has right to full services since his presence there predates the newer regulations.

The mother has an eye that looks off somewhere to the side of you when you talk with her. They are what we refer to in impolite society as "trailer trash," but it's hard to look at a kid and think of him that way. What choice had he? It's already considered beauf [trans: no class] to give a child an Anglophone name. It's becoming more and more common in the lower classes.

"They hear the names on television," say the French who would never adopt such a practice.

Brandon is getting to be big for his age. The second boy is small for his, and repeated a year. He says he does well in math and won a prize this last school year.

These two boys play together, or frequent one another, despite a pretty big difference in age at 13 and maybe 9, along with Romouald's little brother and sister. The little brother is a munchkin. It's unreal.

The other day, I drove up with Sam as they were walking upu the street. Romouald and Brandon, quite the surprise there -- he must be learning from the other kids, -- stopped to kiss me hello (faire la bise, the kiss on each cheeck that younger children offer to adults with whom they are acquainted, and women friends and male and female friends off to one another; guys shake hands, unless it's their parents), and then headed on up the street.

"Be nice to them, would you Sam? They don't have it very easy. Your kindness could mean a lot."

"Hm."

"Sam, please."

The other day, Sam came up from parking his scooter down in the lower garden and said, "Mom, you know that kid you asked me to be nice to?" I nodded. I sort of knew; there were three. "Well, I just saw him running away from his mother, who was chasing him and yelling. He ran off across the field. I think she was drinking."

"Which kid, Sam."

"The blond one, the one you asked me to be nice to, Romouald." Romouald is not blond. Sam said he was. I asked if he had tried to help or to find him. He said he had gotten far by the time he had put his scooter away.

"Well, if it happens again, keep an eye out and see if you can help at all." I decided to talk to Romouald about it when I'd see him next.

That was the other evening, but he was riding his bike around so happily that I decided not to torment him with prying into his life.

Today, I drive up from the bank to see about the insurance papers for Sam's driving lessons and the grocery store, where I bought lot sof cleaning products to clean.the.house (yup, it's not happening yet), and I see Romouald walking up the street toward me.

"It's a holiday for you today?"

"I missed the bus."

"You missed the bus the other day." The nieghbor drove him to school. His father leaves at 6 AM and sets an alarm for his son, who misses it. Maybe he doesn't really want to go to school that much. "You know, you can come tell me, and I will drive you to school. Don't make it a habit, though. I can take you now."

"No," he thanked me, "I only have another hour of class."

"You can go for an hour. Your teachers will appreciate that you came at all."

"I finish at 1:30, it's almost 1:00." That was true. There wasn't much point anymore. I shook my head.

"How do you get home when you finish early? There's no bus, so you have to stay at school all afternoon?" He nodded. "Maybe you prefer not to go to school Friday since there is no one to take you home?" No, no, he said. I wondered and asked about the other day.

"Oh, no, that wasn't me. That was Brandon who ran away from his mother." He told me what happened.

"His mother brings him to the bus every morning and picks him up, but he didn't want to get in the car. He ran off, and she went after him," he hesitated, "He shouldn't have done that, but --"

"Does he talk to you? I mean, I know that there is a lot of yelling there, and maybe it isn't very nice for Brandon."

How much do you say to a kid? How much do you let go on before you ask, before you say something? We have heard that Brandon has an older half-sister by his mother, and that his father was accused of attouchments, or sexual abuse. It is said that she was removed from the home and put in a foster family in neighboring Bonnières. I have never asked for confirmation; I have never been uncivil or impolite with his mother when I have seen her at the bustop by our house, or met up with her while walking the dogs across the field towards their cabin. I have waited for confirmation or denial of the story to come in its own time, but it makes it hard to listen to the cries and shouts when you walk by with the dogs.

When it is quiet, which it mostly is, I walk by listening for sounds. When there are shouts, I stop a moment, and wonder.

"No," he said, but he looked at me to say, "It isn't very nice, though," and added aloud, "Brandon hasn't gone to school for two days."

"Ah, bon? And why not? Is he sick?" I knew he wasn't. Romouald would never have said anything were it only that.

"His father doesn't want him to go to school."

"Ah, bon? And how do you know that? Is that what Brandon says?"

"No, the neighbor," and he gestured with his chin over by house where their apartment is, next to the bar-restaurant, the one commerce in this village of 400. I wasn't delighted when the bar portion opened. It's nice for people who want to stop for a coffee, but it attracts the locals who have nothinng better to do than pass their time at the counter, tipping back demis, des petits blancs et Ricards. I see them, and when I have reason to be recognized -- often because of the dogs -- I hear the speech get thicker and thicker. Go home. You should go home.

"The neighbor told us," I nodded. "Can I help you carry your groceries?" He stooped to pick up some bags as I said it was ok, but he picked them up anyway, and then went back for the rest.

I offered him lunch, but he said he could eat at home.

"What will you eat?"

"Oh, I have some purée I can make. I did the shopping."

"How? Where? It's far." The fire-sale store up in Freneuse, next to Bonnières, where his school is. I asked how he got there.

"My grandmother took me, yesterday. She lives in Mantes." I asked again if he didn't want to stay for lunch, but he said no. I showed him the picture of Baccarat's brother, her and Rapide's sires, Baccarat as a puppy. When his eye stopped on the picture of Irish Coffee de Trévira, he beamed, "That's Rapide!"I laughed.

"No, that's her grand-sire!"

"He looks just like her," he said. It didn't even occur to either of us that Rapide is a Black and Irish Coffee a Chocolate Lab.

"Well," he looked at me and smiled, "I've got to go make my lunch."

"I'll call you in the morning to get you out of bed." He laughed. "Better yet, I'll come tap on the window and make sure you're up for the bus. Go to school." Of course tomorrow is Saturday, and not everyone has school Saturday. Sam does. The Lycées do, but not the middle schools, and since this year, the primary schools no longer do.

He headed out the gate. A car stopped, and a hand reached out to give him a high five. It was the nearly twenty-year-old school drop-out of the alcoholic family up the street. His younger brother repeated a grade twice, failed a third time, and drifted out of school. The mayor uses him to help drive the tractors in the field below. Hopefully to give him something to do and keep him out of trouble. How will Romouald go?

The boy with the glasses appeared to look through the gate, just as the car and Romouald moved on.

My moment is over. I have to clean the house and work on my drawings.
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