Why can't I be as brilliant as Justin H. E. Smith?

Only occasionally do I repost other people's things here. I have to appreciate them very, very much, and I appreciate this piece by Justin H. E. Smith very, very much. My brother -- whom I also appreciate very, very much -- sent the link to me the other day, and I am doing the cyber equivalent of cutting it out an pasting it in my scrapbook of personal treasures and memories I don't want to lose.

Enjoy.

Thomas Friedman Clogged My Toilet

Justin E. H. Smith

A few nights ago I hosted a reception for an old friend, a respected scholar and most recently the author of Citation Techniques in Duns Scotus. We were celebrating the sale of the 100th copy of his book.

Now ordinarily this sort of event is attended by only the dustiest of academics, so you can easily imagine my surprise when a former colleague of mine --a newly minted global-justice theorist who left academic philosophy in order, as she put it, to 'work the Davos circuit'-- showed up accompanied by the prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

The two of them had just come from the opening session of the ‘Mini Davos’ forum, which this year my adoptive city had the honor of hosting. My former colleague (let us call her ‘Juliette’) had just led a session on ‘The Universal Right to Clean Water’, in which her performance was judged by Stephen Harper, Desmond Tutu, and Bono alike to be of ‘Oscar calibre’.
“Water,” exclaimed Bill Gates, “now there's something people can get excited about.”
“She's gonna take this act all the way to Switzerland,” Bill Clinton himself was heard to say.

I had already known Friedman to be a small and twitchy man, and was now able to confirm that this is at best a mild understatement. Yet almost immediately I sensed that there was something unusual, that this man, however awkward he may ordinarily be, was at this very moment in a tremendous amount of discomfort.
“It's a pleasure to meet you Mr. Friedman,” I said smoothly and, I hoped, with just the right amount of ambiguous sarcasm. “I'm a big fan of The Lexus and the Olive Tree. It really captured the moment. When I read it I was like: forget about On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense, it's Friedman who's really got his finger on the pulse.”
“Thanks,” Friedman groaned. “Call me Tom.”

This was all he managed to say, after which he just kept standing there, sweating and wincing. I imagined Juliette might be able to bring him back to life if I were to disappear, so I excused myself and went to mingle among the other guests. Things were proceeding as usual. Reginald, it seems, had read Gunther’s new book, Kenelm Digby’s Qualitative Corpuscularianism. The babysitter-deprived and therefore absent Gunther, Reginald reported to the crowd’s amusement and surprise, had based his study almost entirely upon The Nature of Bodies of 1644 while completely ignoring the Discourse concerning the Vegetation of Plants of 1661.

Thirty minutes in or so, when I simply could not stand to see my most distinguished guest suffering anymore, and when conversation with the others had weakened from Digby to dental insurance to daycare, I leaned in and, in a whispered tone, asked Juliette what was wrong. She knew the man better than I did, after all, and I had long known her to be what Nietzsche would call a penetrating 'psychologist'. Was she ever! Thomas Friedman, Juliette whispered to me discreetly in the elegant Ciceronian Latin she still retained from her years as a scholar of Imperial Stoicism, was in the throes of a fluxus ventris.

It is not for nothing that some years ago I sought out a home with a semi-secret 1/2-bath in the basement, for who has not at some point been at a social gathering, and preferred to reabsorb rank toxins through the intestinal walls, rather than to risk, by the emanation of one's own stench even through a closed bathroom door, being found out as a defecator? This, I've long believed, has been the key to my reputation as a host.

I gracefully led Friedman to the basement door and pointed him down the dark stairs, giving him, for some reason, a little thumbs-up as he began his descent. He was looking much worse by now, and I was worried that he might collapse on the bathroom floor, so I lingered on the stairs and pretended to be busy putting the boxes I'd piled there in order, all the while listening for a thud.

I heard nothing that sounded like that, exactly, but anyway after a good 15 minutes what I did begin to hear was an unusual amount of flushing, repeated in two-minute intervals or so, each time accompanied by a mild curse. After five or six tries I heard one much rougher profanity, the sound of the sink, and of the light being switched off. I quickly pulled a newspaper clipping out of one of the boxes --an old Mike Royko column, of all things, on the disagreeableness of health food-- and pretended to read it.

“Your toilet’s backed up,” Friedman announced as he came out, visibly relieved and almost giddy, still wiping his hands on his Dockers. “But you know, I just flew back from Shanghai, and let me tell you, the lavatories in the airport there are world-class. You don’t see anything, you don’t touch anything, and away it goes, right down the modern, rust-free pipes.”
“So you clogged my toilet?” I asked. I was, I confess, a bit annoyed, but also fascinated by the way Friedman's trip to the restroom had brought back what I imagined to be his usual élan.
“Now hold on, let’s back up a bit here. Instead of asking who clogged the toilet, maybe we should be asking why America’s scores on standardized math and science tests are so low. Maybe we should be asking how we lost that competitive edge to a bunch of scrappy upstarts in a call-center in Hyderabad.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Maybe we should be asking why America’s pipes are so rusty.”
“My toilet’s in Canada.”
“Well that’s just the kind of potential I’m talking about,” Friedman replied without missing a beat. “There I was just now, sitting on the commode in Quebec, while simultaneously chatting on my Blackberry with the Prince of Dubai, who was at that very instant sending out tweets about the construction project he’s partnering with Texas A & M to build on a landfill site in the Gulf. And guess who’s doing the building? Filipinos and Bangladeshis, that’s who!”

I confess I was quickly being overcome by the sheer intensity of the Friedmanist line. I knew it was a ruse, I knew there was a toxic pile of shit waiting to be plunged, but I couldn't help myself. “You're right Tom,” I said, prompting him for what was sure to be his most spellbinding performance yet, “but how are we going to have any stability in the region if we don't make any progress on the Middle East peace plan?”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Friedman shot back, “the Middle East doesn’t need a road map. What it needs is a flight plan. You know why? Because when the Israelis and the Palestinians realize it’s in their own interest to get along, they’re going to take off. I’m talking about high-tech companies based in Ramallah texting orders to their supplier in Tel Aviv. I’m talking about firms outsourcing their IT to a couple of upstarts in Bethlehem. How’d you like to get your IT solutions from a Muslim working in the birthplace of Christianity? Because I tell you what: it’s going to happen.”

That did it. I was ready to join up. Just to think of those gleaming towers in the Gulf! Just to think of those IT solutions I could be getting! I wanted to text my excitement to everyone I knew, especially my mom (she won't be around forever). Having lived for years without a car, I had a sudden urge to buy a Hybrid and show those Saudis I'm not addicted to their oil. Ten years out of grad school, I wanted to retake the GREs, just to show Thomas Friedman we could do better. I'd even take the SATs again if that could bring about a little statistical bump for America. Most of all, I wanted to return to America, to reverse the tide of the Bush-era brain drain, and help make my country great again.

And at that moment, just as I was ready to volunteer for some new Service Corps, or to reinvent myself as a scrappy upstart with a can-do attitude, Juliette came looking for her party companion. “Tom,” she said urgently, “text from Soros. Big Malaria afterparty at the Hard Rock. I'm talking about World Bank execs. I'm talking about potential for some serious Clinton exposure. I'm talking about you remember the Dysentery happy hour last year at Señor Frog’s? Well forget about it.”

Juliette had changed, that much was certain. She and Tom said their perfunctory good-byes and departed just as suddenly and inexplicably as they had arrived. I went back up the stairs and looked around the living room. Reginald was on the phone to his sitter, while his wife had made herself comfortable on the couch and was busy grading blue books. My friend the Scotus scholar, bless his heart, had fallen asleep right next to her, holding a copy of the Treatise on the First Principle. One could still hear a few mutterings here about the proper use of semicolons, and there about so-and-so's impending divorce, but this party was definitely winding down.

My work however was not done for the night. I grabbed the plunger from under the upstairs-bathroom's sink and headed towards the basement. And what did I see when I came to the staircase but the ghost of Mike Royko, sitting forlornly on a step, reading his own column. “Oh the celery bit,” I heard him mutter. “I crack myself up.” But Royko wasn't cracking up; in fact he looked miserable, even for a ghost.

I slipped past him on the stairs and continued toward the bathroom, hoping he would simply evaporate. “I wouldn't go in there if I was you, kid,” he called out behind me.
“Did you see what Friedman did?” I asked, exasperated.
“Of course I saw. I'm a ghost. I was hiding in the Glade can, but I got sprayed out when he tried to cover up the smell. That Friedman. He can raise a stink that would floor Slats Grobnik, and Slats was no lightweight, I tell you. But you want to know why Friedman's so full of horse puckee? Well let me tell you a little something about the news biz.” Royko's form seemed now to be bulging in certain parts and contracting in others, like a fun-house mirror. “Come in a little closer, kid. This is a secret we don't want just anyone to get in on.”

And so I began to walk back up the stairs towards the ghost of Mike Royko, who had by now contorted into a sort of spiral, hoping to learn the mystery of what had happened that evening, and also to understand, finally, what it is that keeps me, year after year, so ready to make room in my schedule and in my thoughts for the ordures deposited daily, with no thought of accountability nor any solid proof of any real expertise in anything, by the tenured squatters of the New York Times opinion page...

To be continued. Next episode: 'You Can't Wrap a Fish with Nanotechnology', plus Nick Kristof's Name-That-Fistula Contest.

--

For an extensive archive of Justin Smith's writing, please visit www.jehsmith.com.

It was theater

Breakfast of gardeners

I got up with Sam this morning. The épreuve began at 8 am. He had to be there in the room before 7:30 am, equipped with his passport, convocation, and a spare blue pen. I poured the cereal and he grabbed the milk.

"I was supposed to get pens yesterday! Do you have an extra one?"

"Yeah, I have everything I need. It's ok."

"Do you want coffee?"

"No."

"There's orange juice. Do you want what's left?" He looked at me darkly. I had pushed being supportive on the morning of the French bac a bit too far.

"Sh, Mom. I don't want to talk." I nodded -- that can't count as talking --, and headed to the bathroom to let him eat his Special K with dark chocolate shavings in peace. He was on his way out when I returned, wearing a t-shirt and white hoodie.

"Aren't you going to be a little cold on the scooter?"

"My coat is down in the scooter. See ya."

"Okay." Is there anything more pathetic a mother can say? Okay, see ya. I pushed my luck, adding from the door as he headed across the terrace, "Good luck, Sam." He nodded and disappeared down the stairs.

Back inside, I did the only thing left to do. I started worrying.

Gas! I thought to myself. I hope he thought to make sure he has enough to make it to school on time. I checked myself. You're worrying senselessly. He doesn't run out of gas. He won't today. Not for the French written bac. I grabbed my camera and headed back outside to take pictures of the early summer morning sun on everything. It's the most glorious moment of the day, competing only with late evening. At 10 am, I went back to bed to read Emma and wait. I slept. It's tough being a mother. I am the one who sat up late (nearly 2 am), feeling a little tense for him, as well-prepared as he was, and working as hard as he had been. You never know. I thought about my English AP exam. I loved it. I aced it. He'd be alright.

There's nothing more you can do for them, you have to say to yourself.

I was outside in half my gardening clothes when he arrived. Baccarat heard him before I did. That's the beauty of a walled garden with no neighbors: you can wander outside before you have finished dressing. I made it back upstairs to pull on my jeans and espadrilles before he made it up from the bottom of the garden.

"Did you have lunch?" I congratulated myself on starting with a question other than anything having to do directly with the bac.

"Yeah."

"You had lunch with your friends after?" The lead-up.

"Yeah."

"How did it go? What was the topic?"

"Good. It was theater."

"Did you write about Molière (his favorite) then?" I remembered dragging him to see Le bourgeois gentilhomme his second year here, and his loving it. There was no problem getting him to see L'école des femmes with Daniel Auteuil at l'Odéon for Audouin's birthday last year.

"Yeah. I cited him 3 times. But, I only wrote 3 pages, and the time was racing by. I usually nap 3 times in the 4 hours, but I only had 15 minutes for the third part."

"Oh, Sam, you didn't nap during the bac, did you?"

"Last year. I didn't have time this year. Time was going by so fast."

"Maybe you liked the topic and had a lot to say. What was it?"

"Does the spectator participate in the play."

"Was it a subject for which you felt prepared?"

"Yeah. Asmaa and I talked a lot about it. There's a 1 out of 5 chance of getting theater for the dissertation question, and it's the main topic for theater: is a play meant to be read or seen? I had a lot of arguments to make. I only wrote 3 pages, but I did the typical French thing. I wrote on every line of the math ruled paper, not skipping any lines, so I wrote a lot, actually. Only SVT (Sciences de la vie et de le terre) left on Wednesday, and then it's done. The oral next week is easy."

He introduced me to the Macbook Pro he got refurbished and then headed up to prepare for Wednesday.

Friday, we see the head of the terminal at Notre Dame Les Oiseaux in Verneuil, where Sam will most likely finish school next year. The teachers wanted him to switch concentrations from ES to a less academic program since he did so poorly this year. Not surprising, neither that they wanted him to change nor that he did poorly. The week before last was tough.

The usual end of the school year storm cloud appeared suddenly over my head the evening he returned from his class dinner and asked, "Did you get a message from Mme. Foubert?" I hadn't.

"Je pense que mon portable est déchargé."

"Tu devrais mettre le chargeur et écouter tes messages," suggested Audouin, helpfully. I nodded and went to get the charger. There was a message. It was from the day before, and it was Mme. Foubert, Sam's head teacher, and she sounded very decided.

C'est, elle m'informa, la forte décision du conseil de classe, qui a eu lieu aujourd'hui, que Samuel change d'orientation. She asked me to call at my very earliest convenience. The floor sunk a few centimeters below my feet and my vision darkened. I motioned for Audouin to come right away and hit 3 for "listen again", pressing the phone to his ear. He listened, his expression darkening, too.

"S'ils te gardent à l'école, et ça n'est pas certain" said Audouin to his stepson, when her message was finished, "c'est sur qu'ils vont te faire passer en STG." Sam and I said "non" at the same time.

"Il ne va pas changer d'orientation," I said. "Il va aller jusqu'au bout et voir ce qu'il peut faire. Son problème n'est pas qu'il n'est pas capable de faire le travail d'ES -- il en est fort capable --; son problème et qu'il ne veut pas accepter que c'est les professeurs qui ont le pouvoir et pas lui, et il ne veut pas travailler quand il est en bagarre avec eux. C'est bête car les professeurs devraient pouvoir comprendre ça et calmer la situation." Audouin agreed as far as a parent can realistically agree with that point of view here, and headed to bed. I sat down to talk with Sam, who was lying on the sofa with his hands over his eyes. I think his vision had darkened considerably, as well.

"I'm not changing orientations, Mom."

"No, you're not. But you are going to have to learn how to play this game and do it if you're going to make it, Sam."

In the morning, I got up early and waited for it to be time to call the school. They were already in meetings, Pourrais-je leurs laisser un message? Yes, please tell Mmes Mouray and Foubert that I called. The end of the year is hard on all of us.

Mme Mouray called back an hour later. I suspect that she intercepted the message, on the look-out. She taught Sam's physics class in the previous grade level, and she is the head of the première. Mme Foubert is also his history and geography teacher, and I wasn't too certain how amenable she would be.

"Vous avez parlé avec Samuel, et il vous a dit la décision du conseil de classe, j'imagine."

"Oui," I told her. "Et j'ai eu le message de Mme Foubert, tard. Nous ne voulons pas que Samuel change d'orientation, mais nous reconnaissons qu'il a fait une très mauvaise année."

"Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé?" she asked. I resolved to tell the truth, carefully. I told her that Sam, whether it could be said that his point of view was exaggerated beyond reality, had felt since the beginning of the year that it had been a mistake to repeat the year. We had understood that he would have different teachers and be able, as he had been assured would be the case, to "start fresh". Instead, he came home as early as the end of the first week of school telling me that nothing had changed. Any time anyone talked in class, his teachers fixed their eyes on him and said in front of the whole class, "Here we go again, last year all over again." He was miserable, and he gave up.

"Oui," she said, sounding genuinely understanding, "c'était vraiment dommage qu'on n'a pas pu lui changer de professeurs, mais autant que ça soit possible en S car il y a 3 sections, il n'a qu'une en ES, et on ne peut pas." I told her that I had believed I had heard them assure Sam this would be the case, and that was in large part why he had accepted to do it. He later told me that he had not heard what I had, only that his teachers would begin with a new attitude, too.

Which they did not, and his only got worse.

I told her what she knew very well already, which is that I had done my best to try to help him see things differently, get a little perspective on the situation, and focus on his work in the face of his frustration, but it just didn't work. He's too sensitive to negative reinforcement. He always has been, I told her, remembering his kindergarden teacher, close to desperation, asking me what to do with him, wailing, Punishing him just doesn't work! I had felt genuine sympathy and concern for her situation, and thought a minute before replying, Have you tried ignoring him and using only positive reinforcement as often as you can? She had looked like I had come up with a sure-fire idea for a pocket-sized hydrogen battery and thanked me.

Mme Mouray agreed that the year and the attempt to work better and raise his grades had been a failure and was best forgotten; Sam should go on to the last year of ES and make his best effort. It was not a problem of capacité, mais de motivation, "Mais, il y a une question que je me pose, et je le dis comme ça puisque nous parlons franchement." I asked her to continue. "Est-ce qu'il ne serait pas mieux dans un autre établissement où les professeurs et les élèves ne le connaissent pas déjà?"

"Je me suis posée la même question," I reassured her. We had already begun thinking about it, from a private boarding school in Cergy-Pointoise where my brother-in-law has sent his two children to the local public school, if they would take him and allow him to go on to terminal ES.

"C'est juste que les professeurs parlent entre eux dans la salle des professeurs, et les élèves dans sa classe risquent de provoquer les mêmes comportements chez lui car ils ont une image de Samuel qui le suivra l'année prochaine." Sam's sense of humor is a little too appreciated by his classmates, and not enough by his teachers. Hélas. We agreed to meet at 2:45 pm, 15 minutes after he would meet alone with her and Mme Foubert.

I arrived a little breathless, helmet in hand, and she shook my hand with a broad smile that looked distinctly like pleasure mixed with relief, "J'ai une bonne nouvelle à vous annoncer. Enfin, je pense que c'est une bonne nouvelle." I listened.

After she had hung up with me that morning, she had gone to see the assistant director of the school, Mme Gosse, who had listened to what she had to say about her conversation with me that morning. Mme Gosse said she tended to agree with Mme Mouray and I, and placed a call to the head of the terminal ES at their sister school, Notre Dame in Verneuil, Mme Silva. Mme Silva was ready to meet Sam and me, and they would almost certainly take Sam. "On fait ça assez souvent," she added, "quand un enfant ferait mieux de changer d'établissement pour se trouver mieux. On accept des enfants de chez eux et ils prennent des notres. Je lui ai expliqué son cas et les particularités de sa situation, et je pense que ça va bien se passer."

We headed to the tiny, overheated room in which I have sat previously with Mmes Mouray and Foubert, the same little group reunited, and I found a beaming Sam.

"J'étais en train d'organiser mes arguments sur pourquoi je devrais passer en terminal ES et pas en STG, et vous me proposez ça!" he said, practically laughing. Later, I asked him if he were happy. He shrugged and said, "Not really." Right.

"Vous feriez bien," smiled Mme Foubert, "de bien préparer ton bac. Vous avez eu des résultats formidables l'année dernière. Cette année, les professeurs pensent que vous ne pouvez pas le faire, mais vous pouvez leur montrer."

"J'ai déjà commencé," Sam told her. "C'est mon intention exacte; de pouvoir mieux faire sur le bac français et SVT c'est le seul côté positif de cette année."

"Tout ce qu'on veut pour vous, Samuel, c'est que vous nous appeleriez en juillet prochain pour nous annoncer une brillante réussite au bac. Vous pouvez le faire, mais vous devez travailler pour bien apprendre vos sujets. On doit être précis et juste sur les concours. On écrit 'Daval' au lieu de 'Laval', et on ne lit même pas le reste de ton papier du concours de Sciences Po. Il faut être exacte dans vos connaissances."

They finished with an expression of confidence and a further offer of help, Mme Foubert turning to Mme Mauray to ask, "On pourrait pas faire un effort de nettoyer son dossier un peu en reprenant quelques-unes des appréciations?"

"Oui," said Mme Mouray without a second's hesitation.

"Vous aller mentir?" I asked.

"Non! Bien sur que nous n'allons pas mentir, mais ces appréciations sont quelque peu exagérées, et ce n'est pas la peine de lui apporter préjudice." They were actually offering to edit the teacher comments, removing the most eggregiously negative so that they would not follow him to his interview at Notre Dame les Oiseaux and his university applications.

"En tout cas," continued Mme Mouray, "on pense avoir vraiment trouvé la solution idéale pour Samuel l'année prochaine. Notre Dame est une très bonne école située dans un très beau parc et cadre."

"Mon fils est allé là," added Mme Foubert, smiling and nodding her head.

Back out on the sidewalk, Sam looked at me and said, "It's les Oiseaux, you know. I have friends there, and they love it."

"It's Notre Dame les Oiseaux? But I thought that was in Saint Germain! Les Oiseaux in Paris is where X's kids go to school, and several people asked why we didn't look into the one near Saint Germain when you left the EAB. I didn't because I wanted you do be done with trains to school, but that's beside the point now."

"No, it's in Verneuil, and I'm really lucky to be able to go there." As long as Sam continues to think that, then I am as happy as a mother can be.

All of this takes a lot of out me, but I take comfort in knowing that I am so far from the only parent to go through this. We have a lot of company.

Et maintenant, j'ai faim.
....

Epinephrine and drug overdose, or the SVT bac

Clematis Jolly Good 'Zogojo'

It managed not to rain, and I managed to kill my back working in the garden. I didn't realize how heavy the root ball of a laurel rose bush is. It's full of sort of ceramic stone things, to imitate the irascible conditions along a freeway in California and make it happy.

Among other things, like cleaning the pool, telling my husband exactly what is wrong with our marriage and life in exhausting detail for the thousandth time (never fascinating or helpful, but we've had too many late nights and I am probably a little over-sensitive), deadheading all the roses and other flowering plants on the top two terraces, mowing those two lawns, cutting out all the dead branches and black leaves of a Japanede acuba (I don't particularly like these plants, nor does my husband; one thing we do have in common) attacked by a mystery illness (probably a terrible fungus) and watering many things, I dug up the laurel rose I can't figure out what to do with and stuck it in a big terracotta pot.

It was originally where my Judas tree is, down behind the gazebo, where it wasn't getting enough sun, but was doing far better than where I put it, farther back behind the palm tree, under the neighbors' fig tree, which drops under-ripe figs onto our lawn, where they then rot and smell not so good. Every leaf turned brown and fell off there. At Fay, the laurel roses were all in large terracotts pots along the rear terrace, where they were doing very nicely. Mine was valiantly -- but excruciatingly slowly -- sprouting new leaves. At the rate it was going, it might be covered with leaves in 2 or 3 years and flowers in another 2 or 3. I want leaves this year and flowers by next year, at the very latest. I didn't, after all, buy this big, yellow-flowering laurel rose to do nothing in the garden. Everyone has to pull his weight here.

I put extra not so good dirt in the pot, since they thrive along highways in full Calfornia sun, cut off some more branches, shortened some others, gave it a little water and an ultimatum to do better than the camellia in the CRRA; nothing whatsoever appears to be happening there, although I repotted it again to see if I really can't get it to grow some useful roots to replace the ones the fungus and cold killed.

Sam spent his first day of summer studying for the bac. He has the 4-hour written French bac at 8 am, and he is determined to nail it.

Oh, Sam, do I hope that you will. He deserves it. He has been working so hard for this to make sure he does at least as well as last year (so as to make his year not a perfect loss), or better.

The last few days have been bac preparation classes at school, French and science. The two subjects they pass this year. He didn't do so well in Science last year, which he chalked up to apathy and a failure to apply himself. Terrible for a kid who actually is interested in the stuff of science class.

On the way to dinner with friends in Les Andelys last evening, he was chatty, which is understandable for a 17-year-old who hadn't spoken to a human being all day, but he even wanted to chat about the neurologic system.

"Did you know that if you give a person who has overdosed a shot of adrenaline, it saves them?" I haven't seen Pulp Fiction, so I didn't know until I checked his story out that the teacher must have.

His explanation, unrefuted somewhat unbelievably by his doctor stepfather, present at the dinner table, included mention of dopamine and the epinephrine blocking the brain's ability to be affected by the drug. Hm. I can't find anything, anywhere on Google that makes that claim, and dopamine, like epinephrine and norepinephrine, is a catecholamine, produced by the adrenal medulla, and are part of the sympathetic nervous system. Their release is part of the "flight or fight" response, and they do act to improve or restart cardiac function:

The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for up- and down-regulating many homeostatic mechanisms in living organisms. Fibers from the SNS innervate tissues in almost every organ system, providing at least some regulatory function to things as diverse as pupil diameter, gut motility, and urinary output. It is perhaps best known for mediating the neuronal and hormonal stress response commonly known as the fight-or-flight response. This response is also known as sympatho-adrenal response of the body, as the preganglionic sympathetic fibers that end in the adrenal medulla (but also all other sympathetic fibers) secrete acetylcholine, which activates the great secretion of adrenaline (epinephrine) and to a lesser extent noradrenaline (norepinephrine) from it. Therefore, this response that acts primarily on the cardiovascular system is mediated directly via impulses transmitted through the sympathetic nervous system and indirectly via catecholamines secreted from the adrenal medulla.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_nervous_system

But, epinephrine does not block dopamine or "stop the brain's ability to be affected by the drug taken". At least not that I can find.

My husband does use epinephrine in the event of neonatal cardiac failure, which he did say, but he didn't correct Sam's other statement concerning the blocking capacity of epinephrine.

Epinephrine is indicated during resuscitation of cardiac standstill or cardiac arrest. ^{{01} {60}} Epinephrine is used as an adjunct to restore cardiac rhythm in the treatment of cardiac arrest due to various causes. ^{01} It also has beneficial hemodynamic effects in the setting of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), improving myocardial and cerebral blood flow.
http://www.drugs.com/mmx/dopamine-hydrochloride.html

I'd go quiz my husband on his puzzling omission of a correction and possibly learn that Sam was right and why, except that I am still feeling too inclined to prove my earlier poolside points to enter into willing and civil discourse of the intellectual (or any) sort.

What interested me most was his adding last night in the car, when he first brought this up, that his SVT (science) bac preparation sessions have been small -- only 5 or 7 students --, and this has let them exchange and discuss with the teacher, ask their questions, and permitted him (he said) to adapt the class to his needs.

"Now I understand," he said, "why it's worth it to spend 10,000 euros a year for private school with small class size."

Was that a hint?

Ask the frog.
....

My itsy bitsy teeny weeny green freedom burqini

In blue

I have found it! The answer to the prayers of every woman who has had a melanoma: the burqini. Soon to be seen around the pools of Mousseaux sur Seine, Eglise Neuve d'Isaac and anywhere else my trusty steed takes me.

It looks perfectly cool and comfortable on a terribly hot and humid day. Perfect for the beach at, oh, say, Brighton in November.

How did I find it, you ask? I did not. Lo, it found me. I turned my Twitter avatar green in support of those in the streets in Tehran, Tabriz, Mashhad, and -- I received marketing tweets from the UK for burqinis. Rather not my goal.

I have been waiting for years, years since Khomeini betrayed the Iranians, installing the Islamic Republic of Iran in the place of a truly free and just Iran, forcing thousands to leave their country or face imprisonment, house arrest, or, tout simplement, fear of the modesty police; years while the US and the west demonized the people of one of the world's great civilizations and formerly great modern nations; years while their leadership and ours cut them off, denying us, and those who had left, the privileges of their culture. I have been waiting for Iranians to rise up and say "No." This they are doing, by tens of thousands, but they must take care because none of their leaders are to be trusted. The Iranians need a real leader for a modern Iran with a Muslim population.

This is only my opinion.

Mousavi is the savior of the day, promising what Khomeini did, and did not deliver. Stating that Khomeini never intended this for his people. Mousavi was one of them.

Or, we have not understood why the Iranians have come together to say "No".

How many of them are saying "No" to the modesty police in their "No" to a false election? The answer to that question interests me. How many of the candidates who did not win an election that was not allowed to happen would put an end to their patrols and allow men and women, their heads uncovered, unmarried, to walk together, ride together in a car, meet in class without fear?

Don't misunderstand me. This is a step of historic importance for the Iranians, standing to say "No" together and with the support of all of us who have been waiting for this moment.

Tweet on, دوستهای ایرانی.

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Le Fay

It's time to go home.
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Moi aussi, partie en poussière

Falstaff, in bud

new David Austin English rose I planted yesterday
along with Anne Boleyn and Kathryn Morley

I'm late. I should have left now, but I have been working on my costume for the birthday party, Min-Hoï and Ariane's 50th (to think I was there for the 30th, the soirée Bleu Marine, at the apartment on the avenue de la Motte Piquet... sigh). The theme is "50 ans de pub", and Audouin woke up with a better idea than the one I had when I woke up.

I wanted one that included him, his absence, and made a joke of it so everyone would laugh, and not "faire la tête", at least his sister.

There was a commerical on TV, back when I first lived in France, for Pliz (pronounced "please"... who says the French don't speak English?). A woman ties an enormous dust cloth around her neck, leaves the room, and reenters at a trot (she's a stout, older cleaning woman) to take a running leap onto a long dining table and glides down its length, like a beer on the zinc, and the announcer says "Pliz, prend la poussière au piège".



Here I have been, sewing little fragments of pictures of Audouin -- on duty at the hospital (his grand classique) while there's a party, "parti en poussière", meaning "gone", or "disappeared", or "taken off" --, onto a dust cloth, when I should have been sewing them onto a giant piece of yellow fabric to tie around my neck, the photos of him sewn to that! Avec Pliz, Audouin, parti en poussière, reste sur le chiffron... get it?

I even have a piece of yellow cloth, somewhere.

Now, where did I put it? [searching through the drawers... rustle, rustle...]

Et c'est tant mieux parce que je ne ferai pas ça tous les jours.
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Fish overboard!

Frog eyes

It was terrifying. Positively terrifying to think of the tiniest baby fish getting to close to the edge of the basin and finding themselves washed onto the brick ledge, only to be left there as the waters of the storm receded, struggling in vain to get back into the safety of the deeper waters. I struggled in vain against going out into "the weather" to see if any required saving.

I grabbed a rain jacket and ran out into the driving rain. The plastic basins and trash cans we have placed under the disconnected downspout to catch the water tumbling off the roofs had long since seen their capacity to contain the water that could fall from the roofs exceeded. They sat in several inches of water at the edge of the slab on which the house rests. I hardly noticed the sound of the water crashing onto their overflowing surface; it has become a background noise in the last days, like the tumult of the turtle doves in the trees overhead. Something like C-5's in love. We have all grown used to their thrashing about in the limbs, wings beating like elephants' ears swatting flies in the breeze. I crouched down to examine the sheet of water on the bricks that make the sloped border.

This, it has not failed to escape me in moments like this, when the basin is overflowing, was one of the very few smart things our predecessors here did. Sloping the bricks that make the ledge down into the basin, very slightly, causes the water that accumulates on them, and everything it contains, tend to flow back into the basin when the deluge is over. Not that no one is lost overboard.

I found a single, tiny fish, twitching about in the shallows on the brick. Very gently, with the tip of my finger, I pushed the water alongside him back into the high seas. He blinked and looked around in the middle of the swells between rain drops. I lost sight of him. There weren't any others, but my rain jacket was already soaked through to my sweater. Whoever else would be so unfortunate as to get to close to the edge would likely perish. There's nothing to be done for it, when the rain falls like it did yesterday and in the days previous.

Only a couple hours before, I had gone to Truffaut to pick something up that had been on order. I went to see the shubunkins and the carp koi. I knew I was going to take more home. Not like I needed more fish, with all the babies, any more than I needed another hole in my head.

I think I have a fish problem.

The thing is that they all come over to the side of the tank to look at you when you approach. They want to come home with you, and when you have such a wonderful fish-pond-in-a-fountain to offer them, how can you resist?

Besides, the two little carp koi seem lonely. They are often in their own corners; the comets and the shubunkins, closely related, are having a perpetual party, to which the little koi seem reluctant to accept the invitation. I needed more carp koi, and a couple more shubunkins wouldn't be a bad thing, either. The babies are some mix of shubunkin and comet, mostly grey, some orange, others clearly calico and spotted, perhaps some mostly blue, like the two larger ones I bought at Florosny, just before they stopped selling their fish, for "sanitary reasons", meaning that the fish were catching a flesh-eating disease from a source of infection: one of the larger carp koi, who was missing large chunks of his own flesh along the dorsal area.

"Ca ne lui fait pas mal?" I'd asked Cyril.

"Non."

"Et les autres, ils ne vont pas l'attraper de lui?"

"Non," he shook his head, looking at the fish swimming around the leper with me. I didn't believe him. He was spinning to control damage. I understood. "Je vais chercher le traitement ce week-end." He explained that he had learned at a seminar on aquarium fish he had attended with his parents that the way to treat this disease is to dunk the poor fish in water and rock salt.

"Ca ne leur fait pas mal non plus?"

"Ils ne l'apprécient pas, mais --"

"Il faut le faire."

"Il faut le faire," he nodded again. Poor fish!

Ours appear to have escaped the terrible microbe. When I went to Florosny the day before yesterday, I checked to see if the fish were available for purchase. Their shubunkin are more exceptional. There was no sign, but there was one fish dining on a large, dead carp koi at the bottom of the tank. I know this is normal, but.

But.



I am hopelessly in love with the life in the basin, and most of all, perhaps, with the frogs.

Sam came out last evening and stood on the other side of the basin from where I was observing the fry during a momentary lull in the downpour.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, "I thought it was a fish, but it was a frog! It swam from here across the basin." I followed where his finger pointed. "They're fast," he added, after a pause, with unconcealed admiration. I know what he means.

They stretch out their bodies, from head to the point of their hind-end, and then they draw up their long, powerful legs and push them to their furthest reach, again and again, propelling themselves through the water in a sort of perfection of body and movement. If we say Michael Phelps is a fish, I say he is a frog.

This was the Sam who I asked the other day what he thought of the baby fish.

"I don't watch the fish," he said, imperial, with the greatest possible expression of lack of interest in such things as fish, anywhere.

But the cuecueya, that's a whole other something. That they agree, even chose, to live in our basin is a wonderful thing. I would like to swim like a cuiatl, although I am not sure that I wish to become one. I might appreciate them less by being one of them.

Meanwhile, get this guy a cocktail. I climbed out the kitchen window to get this picture so as to least disturb him and miss it.
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