Life, Death and Immortality, the 21st Century Way

Today is Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week. It is a week of great drama, but not of tragedy. A few days after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Christ will be crucified. On Easter, the first day of a new week, he will rise from the dead to live eternally. Belief in this resurrection is the core of Christian faith, and on Easter day Christians proclaim, “Oh death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

These words of hope and faith were written by Saint Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians. Strangely, in 2018, they could also be a rallying cry for transhumanists and life-extenders, atheists in their vast majority. For them, death is the great enemy because “Death is wrong.” This is the title of a 2014 transhumanist children’s book by Gennady Stolyarov II, whose young character angrily tells his mother that “people should not die.”

In this disturbing overlapping of messages, both Christians and transhumanists seek victory over a common enemy, death, and place their hope in immortality. Yet, while Christians have faith in eternal life after death, transhumanists want it here and now, on Earth.

Take, for instance, transhumanist journalist, writer and political activist Zoltan Istvan, who, as a Libertarian candidate, is planning a run for governor of California in 2018. His 2013 science fiction novel The Transhumanist Wager sums up his philosophy: “If a reasoning human being loves and values life, they will want to live as long as possible—the desire to be immortal. Nevertheless, it's impossible to know if they're going to be immortal once they die. To do nothing doesn't help the odds of attaining immortality—since it seems evident that everyone will die someday and possibly cease to exist. To try to do something scientifically constructive towards ensuring immortality beforehand is the most logical conclusion.” (http://www.zoltanistvan.com/TranshumanistWager.html)

In a few strokes of the pen, or rather, fingers to the keys, Istvan does away with faith. It is simply impossible to know what happens after death. And why believe, when, in a not-so-distant future, science may “constructively” place immortality within easy reach.

Today, in the Silicon Valley and elsewhere, transhumanist movers and shakers anticipate “curing death.” They also want to implant human life on Mars, where space travelers can aim for lifespans far beyond the record 122 years, thanks to life-extension technology and drugs.

In France, in a contrary yet related movement, the big issue is not fighting against death, but for it: the right to choose when to die and how, in conditions corresponding to a personal definition of “dignity.”

In 2018, euthanasia and assisted suicide have been much in the news. Last January, a bill was introduced to legalize both, going one step further than a bill of October 2017, calling for “active medical assistance” for those in the final phase of a terminal illness.

This is not part of the program of President Macron’s ambitious reforms, but newly elected deputies, members of his movement, “la République en marche,” (loosely translated, the Republic on the move), have taken hold of power and gone off on a tangent of their own.

Many of these new deputies are young, have little or no political experience and no strong party allegiance. Macron has been counting on them to help him reform French institutions: health care, justice, education, labor law, transportation. Instead, their cause has become a citizen’s right to die.

In an open letter published in the French national daily Le Monde last March 1st, Jean-Louis Touraine, a doctor, deputy and member of Macron’s party, calls for putting an end to the hypocrisy that deprives the terminally or very ill of the help they need to die. It is urgent, according to the deputy-doctor and the 155 members of Parliament who also signed the letter, to vote a new law replacing end-of-life legislation now in place.

France presently has two 21st century laws that regulate end-of-life care. The 2005 Leonetti Law comes out against euthanasia, according patients the right to decide when to put an end to aggressive treatment, replacing it with palliative care. The law was revised in 2016 as Claeys-Leonetti Law; it guarantees nationwide access to palliative care and legalizes stopping treatment whose sole purpose is to maintain life artificially.

As with the 2005 law, Claeys-Leonetti protects the patient’s right to refuse unreasonable treatment and avoid all undue suffering. The 2016 law also accords the terminally ill the right to request deep and continuous sedation until death, for those who are about to die, but not for those who wish to die.

For Deputy Jean-Louis Touraine and the 155 other signers of his open letter, these laws do not go far enough. For them, anyone suffering from a grave and incurable illness that causes unbearable physical or psychological suffering or places the person in a state of dependency incompatible with their sense of personal dignity should have the right to die. This means to decide the time of death and request the lethal act to end life.

On March 13, in another letter to Le Monde, 85 other members of Parliament replied to protest Touraine’s proposals. For these deputies from all political horizons, the legalization of euthanasia opens the door to something more than patients’ rights:

In a society where fear and rejection of death is on the rise and mercy and kindness in short supply, the legalization of euthanasia could lead to the encouragement of the act as a means to put an end to “useless” lives. With medical costs rising rapidly, legalized euthanasia might eventually turn into a form of eugenics, where lethal sedation of the terminally ill or the “useless” elderly could contribute to reducing health costs and maintaining a healthy, productive society.

Indefinite life extension is the transhumanist goal, and transhumanists believe in it, not as a possibility, but as a reality not too far down the road. In France, those supporting euthanasia hope to legislate the right to die, the ultimate frontier of human rights.

Mounting the road to Jerusalem, Jesus meets a woman who seeks his blessing for her sons. He asks them, “Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of?”

So what shall it be? A cocktail of life-extension drugs, a lethal brew, or life as it has been given to us, with its joys and pain?

Smoke gets in my eyes, and I don’t mind!

My parents liked to go out to eat. Both worked hard outside the home, and my mom also held down the full-time job of housekeeper. On weekdays we went to Joyce’s, a few steps from the intersection of Centre and Norwegian Streets in Pottsville. For Sunday dinner, we drove out of town, though we didn’t go far. We went to Longo’s, once located on the grounds of what is today Schoeneman Beauty Supply on the Saint Clair Highway.

In some ways, I liked Longo’s. I liked the Italian food. I liked the frescoes on the wall, scenes of what may have been the Amalfi Coast or mountain villages in Sicily. As a child, I spent a lot of time contemplating the stucco homes, built so close together, much like houses in the coal region. I admired the vineyards, the olive groves, and the vine-covered terraces, where happy Italians drank and danced. I wondered if people in Italy really lived that way and thought I might like to go there some day.

After a while, I got tired of looking at the pictures. I’d finished my meal, even dessert, and I was ready to go. The adults had finished too and the waitress was clearing away their plates. This was not, however, the signal to say, “Check, please.” It was the moment to ask for another cup of coffee and light up a cigarette.

I can still remember how my heart sunk to my toes when my dad offered my mom a smoke and then lit one for himself. But don’t imagine I was worried about their health. No! For me, the cigarette, travelling from mouth to ashtray and back, was like the stroke of a metronome moving to an excruciatingly slow beat.

One cigarette, then another, often a third. I watched them. They were enjoying themselves, slowly drawing on their cigarettes. My sisters and I waited. We could not go out to play. The restaurant was on the edge of a busy highway. It was too dangerous. Instead, we sat, seen but not heard, and breathed in all that secondary smoke, without a care for our health.

Back in the early 1960’s, in my little world, nearly every adult smoked. My parents belonged to a generation encouraged to light up. Doctors and dentists claimed cigarettes would protect smokers’ throats and teeth. In an ad from the 1950’s, actor Ronald Reagan declared Chesterfields the “merriest” Christmas gift around. At the corner grocery store, we kids bought packages of candy cigarettes.

Then came the 1964 Surgeon General’s report, the first on the hazards of smoking. I can still recall some of the first anti-smoking campaigns, one built around the popular standard “Smoke gets in your eyes.”

I was a kid who worried. I started worrying about my parents and smoking. I wanted them to stop.

My mom did. She was never a real smoker. She had a cigarette after a meal, to keep my father company. My father, on the other hand, went through two packs a day. Our house smelled like smoke and when he was home, we walked through billows floating in the air.

In 1968, four years after the Surgeon General’s first report, my father died. From where I sit today, I know he was a young man, 48 years old. In that death, cigarettes played a big role.

I’ve never smoked. Oh sure, I tried a cigarette or two when I was young. I actually smoked in my father’s presence. A friend of his offered me a Kool. I liked the menthol taste, liked feeling grown-up, but that was before my father died.

Most of my adult life, I was a crusader, a cigarette-hater, intolerant of cigarette smoke. I cheered every piece of legislation that chased smokers to the peripheries of daily life: no more smoking in movie theaters, busses or airplanes. Then smokers could no longer light up in restaurants. Finally, cigarettes were banned in bars!

Reading up on the anti-smoking laws in Pennsylvania, I’ve discovered that in some counties, authorities have even instituted bans on smoking in public housing. A man’s home used to be his castle. Now, during a long, cold PA winter, if he is a smoker and happens to be renting from the state, he’ll have to go sit on a bench in the snow to enjoy a cigarette.

According to 2016 figures, nearly 35% of French men and women between the ages of 15 and 75 smoke. In the USA, the figure is about 15%.

In France, there are frequent anti-smoking campaigns. Packs of cigarettes and pouches of tobacco are stamped with messages such as “Smoking kills,” or “Smoking can damage sperm and reduce fertility.” There are also photos worthy of horror films, the kind of image that makes a non-smoker cry, “Get behind me, Satan!” They are truly evil-looking things.

The latest move by the government of President Macron is to push the price of cigarettes up to ten euros. It will increase by increments, and by 2020, the goal will be reached: $12.50 for 20 cigarettes. Today the price is about $8.50, equivalent to what Pennsylvania smokers are paying in 2018.

An anti-smoking fanatic like me should be cheering. But I am not. Since I’ve moved to the country, my attitude towards smoking has changed. In Paris, I didn’t have a single friend who smoked. In le Perche, I know several people who do. Some are retired, living on very limited incomes. Others work long hard hours. Few of them go on the kind of vacations my Parisian friends so often take. In fact, few of them go on vacation at all.

Smoking is their pleasure, their little luxury. It is also their means for controlling stress; for many, it is an addiction they’d like to overcome, but they do not know how.

They fit in with the statistics: they are of what’s called a “low socio-economic background,” less educated, unqualified for high-paying jobs. Many have worked since they were teenagers, some from as young as 12 years old.

They are the people whom President Macron seems to be leaving behind as he sets out on an ambitious program of reforms to “make France great again” (sound familiar?).

I say, help my new friends and acquaintances move up the socio-economic ladder, provide them with the counselling they need to break addiction, or please, let them enjoy a smoke.

Pioneer Living, Old-World style

Readers about my age must surely remember the TV series “Wagon Train.” It was one of the formative viewing experiences of my youth, and though I didn’t like shoot’em-up westerns, I loved watching the Conestoga wagons trek across the plains and mountains of the American West.

On “Wagon Train” there were families, which meant children, and the show allowed me to experience the journey through their eyes. Another detail sticks in my mind: girls were just as courageous as boys, and big or small, everyone did their part to survive. Go West, young woman. That seemed to be the motto of the show.

At night, I pulled the sheets over my head, turning my bed into a prairie schooner. Peeping out into the darkness, I imagined Chimney Rock, the Colorado River, the snow-capped Rockies. I also sensed the dangers of the trail: “Indians,” as we called them then, but also wild animals, rattlers or scorpions, and shortages of water and food. Participating in the journey through imagination, experiencing beauty, danger and adventure, I simply couldn’t understand why my parents, or their forebears, had never heeded the call.

I did. I went to California, albeit by jet plane, to study, not to homestead. I landed in Los Angeles, a quick trip into the future for a girl from Pottsville, PA. The Old West was buried beneath concrete and asphalt.

But that did not stop me from trying to dig it up. In 1976, to commemorate the bicentennial, I dragged my mother and two sisters onto an Amtrak train we boarded in Union Station in LA (they’d flown there for a visit). In 48 hours it was going to deposit us in Harrisburg, after having unfurled at ground level the beauties and wonders of the continental United States.

That was the program. Things did not go as planned. The train broke down in the Arizona desert and we sat there for hours. No air conditioning, intense heat, crying babies, passengers in panic. No one in my family would speak to me.

When we finally made it to Saint Louis, we changed to a local making every stop on this side of the Mississippi before it finally reached Harrisburg, nearly 90 hours after the trip had begun.

That was my transcontinental trek, inspired by “Wagon Train.” My family hated me for it, but I enjoyed the adventure. That may be why I ended up in France, a truly long trek that has finally provided me with a taste of “pioneer life.” Who would have ever imagined (certainly, not me!) that I had to return to the Old World to discover what conquering the New was like.

At this point in my adventure in “la France profonde,” heartland France, I call myself “pioneer woman” and wonder for how long I can keep this up.

To give you an idea of “a day in the life,” it all starts very early. I get up in darkness and pull on several layers of warm clothing, first my “woolies,” a pair of wool panty hose and a thermal undershirt, then a heavy sweater and a wool scarf around the neck, topped by a sweat suit ordered especially from Iceland, where they know something about cold. A pair of socks, fur-lined slippers, and I’m ready to go.

Then it’s time to make the fire. Every night I let it die down and go out. Every morning I start all over again. First, I remove yesterday’s ashes and clean the ceramic glass door of my wood stove. I clean that glass every morning, wetting and balling newspaper, dipping it in ash, and then scrubbing away. This leaves my nails caked with soot, but it gives me a beautiful view of the flames, the best entertainment in town.

Once the stove is clean I can build the fire, using the top-down method and fire-starter squares—I don’t know what I’d do without them. Sometimes it takes two or three tries to get it going, and once the flames begin to rise, I’m never far away. At the onset, my fire requires care and pampering if it is going to last all day—as it should, as it must. Wood fire is my main source of heat.

Working hard, my stove is always hungry. For me, this means numerous trips each day to the woodshed in my garden. I fill a heavy-duty bag and lug the wood to the house.

When my morning chores are done, I can finally eat, and I’m hungry. Now I can understand those big cowboy breakfasts of hot biscuits, gravy and beans. I also need a couple of cups of strong black coffee if I am going to make it through the rest of the day.

Part of it I spend sitting at a computer, something pioneers never did. Yet I am also in my garden, still, in January, living off the fat of the land. I’m harvesting winter salads, broccoli, Brussel sprouts and sorrel; and down in my root cellar, my supply of potatoes and beets will hold me through to spring.

To top it off, I live in a house I’ve ‘built’ (with the aid of local craftsmen). I have become a homesteader and that home still requires work. During the Christmas holidays the plumbing backed up, and the French take holidays seriously. Tracking down a plumber was like searching for the Northwest Passage, except that I was not battling ice.

And no pioneer experience would be complete without skirmishes with the natives, animal and human. I’ve had chiggers and been attacked by fire ants. A small house next to mine is abandoned. My contractor suspects it is infested with rats. He tells me to be careful when I feed the birds, or I’ll have rodents in my courtyard.

As for the humans, it’s an uphill battle. A foreigner, an American no less, a member of that nation whose founders were not satisfied till they’d grabbed an entire continent, has come and laid claim to a piece of the local “patrimoine,” their heritage. Until she took it, nobody wanted it, but now that she’s fixed it up, things have changed.

We all know “how the West was won.” It took generations, and I’ve only been here two years. In the village of Condé sur Huisne, I’ve staked my claim, but will it hold?

Just like “Wagon Train,” this is one episode in a series and the show has just begun…

“Kids United” uniting kids and the world

This year I got into the Christmas spirit with the pre-adolescent set and their forty-something parents. I joined more than 20,000 of them in the biggest concert hall in Paris, AccorHotel Aréna. We were all there for “the Kids,” “Kids United,” the hottest group in France, at the top of the charts, having recently knocked Céline Dion out of first place.

Who are “the Kids”? In some ways, they are a fluke, a group of children and adolescents, between the ages of 10 and 17, who, at their beginnings a mere two years ago, were chosen to sing together to promote the cause of UNICEF. Contestants on shows such as "France Has Got Talent" and "Voice Kids," they were already used to performing when they were singled out to become representatives of French youth and ambassadors of UNICEF.

In May 2015 they gave their first concert at the Olympia, a Parisian theater where all the greats have sung: Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. At the close of the concert, “the Kids” presented their first check to UNICEF for over 400 thousand dollars.

And the rest is history, a success story that my friend Tiago, 9 years old, has been following every step of the way. Singing “feel-good” songs, most of them unknown in the English-speaking world, “The Kids” have captured the hearts of the French and got millions humming “On écrit sur les murs,” (“We write on the walls/the names of those we love”), a 1989 pop song that became their first big hit.

The day of the concert, one of two Paris appearances in the group’s nationwide 2017 tour, many of us arrived early. We were bubbling with excitement, ready to stand patiently in long lines and undergo a body search before we could enter the hall. Like most parents and chaperones, I’d thought about the dangers of such a gathering, but I was gladly, even gleefully, chaperoning Tiago to what was the biggest music event of my life.

Once inside, we waited, with no sign of “The Kids.” When the group finally burst onto the stage, emerging from mist and beams of colored light, the 20,000 fans went wild. As for Tiago and me, a discrete usher invited us to rise from our last-row seats and follow him. He directed us to the fourth row of the giant hall, a stroke of luck, a miracle of sorts. Suddenly “The Kids” were real.

Now I could see the sweat on Nilusi’s forehead. This graceful 17-year-old whose roots are in Sri Lanka is the oldest member of the group and is about to go solo.

As the singers change positions on the stage, she is soon replaced by Gabriel, 15. He is what the French call “un black,” a French boy with roots in Africa, who spent a part of his childhood in England and is completely bilingual.

Esteban, 17, is proud of his Spanish origins. Erza, 12, has parents who fled their native Kosovo. Even Gloria, the youngest at age 10, has an Italian last name.

They are so close I could almost touch these talented, energetic representatives of UNICEF and France today, were it not for the security guards standing between me and the stage. All around me, children and adults are singing along, and I feel like the only person among the 20,000 who doesn’t know the words to every song.

Good, clean entertainment, I guess you could call it, provided by the very best of multicultural France, every one of “The Kids,” an example of the wealth of origins, backgrounds and races that are vital ingredients in what it means to be French today.

Everybody in the audience loves them, the parents as enthralled as their children—to the point that a little boy falls off the back of a seat into my arms while his mother blithely records the show on her phone. Every child in the hall dreams of someday becoming a “Kid” and, to children and adults alike, “Kids United” conveys the message that “le monde est beau,” the world is beautiful.

Then it’s over and we’re back in the cold, dark night. Outside the hall, there’s a hot trade in posters, selling for 2 euros, as opposed to the official price of ten. Tiago rushes up to a salesmen and whips out a 5-euro bill. No change, he is told. I search in my wallet, find a 2-euro coin, extend my palm and Tiago gets his poster—in the nick of time.

Just as the exchange is taking place, the police break in, confiscating all the posters, but ours. “Cadeau,” the policeman says, as he drags the poster-seller away. A gift, you don’t have to pay.

As for the salesman, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. He lost his posters and he’s going to lose his profits, and if he happens to be an illegal immigrant, he may lose his foothold in France.

Concerning illegal immigration, President Macron has recently increased police powers, sanctioning random identity checks in hotels and shelters. The goal of his government is to keep new immigrants out and get rid of those who shouldn’t be here. With temperatures hovering around freezing, police have been destroying makeshift tent cities, slashing tents and throwing blankets, mattresses and personal belongings into trash bins.

While running for office, Emmanuel Macron praised the generosity of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who, in 2015, offered asylum to over one million refugees. France committed to welcoming 30,000. In 2016, there were 85,244 requests for asylum status, of which 26,531 were accepted, according to figures provided by the Ministry of the Interior.

In 2018, President Macron hopes to reduce those numbers, in part by outsourcing the processing of asylum seekers to countries like Niger or Libya, where human trafficking and violence are rife.

A few days before Christmas, “Kids United” celebrated a different, more generous image of France. These vibrant singers proclaim that yes, we can all live together, at least for the duration of the show…

My wish for 2018, a year promising dangerous times, is that we all give it a try.

Circuses in the US and France: Will the show go on?

A week ago I had an experience that may make of me one of the last willing participants in a dying art, the oldest and greatest show on earth. I went to the circus and, thanks to the animals and their trainers, I had a fantastic time.

To tell you the truth, I wasn’t expecting much. The circus had rolled into town a few days before, and I’d already had a chance to observe many of the animals (over 60, many exotic, according to posters all over town). I saw two black pigs, a lot of chickens and geese, some ponies, three Bactrian camels, two llamas, a wildebeest, emus, a yak, a cat and two dogs, freely roaming the grounds.

In the same field, there were two truck trailers, the wooden entrance to the big-top, not yet in place, and one mobile home. Either this was a small operation, or not all the members of the circus had arrived. I walked the grounds, petted the ponies, took photos and pretty much had the menagerie to myself. If I had walked away with a llama or invited one of the dogs to follow me, I’m not sure anyone would have noticed.

Every afternoon a car drove back and forth through the village, announcing weekend show times. Sunday arrived and I set out for the 11 o’clock matinee. I bought my ticket, stood in line, waited. I thought the little clown who peeped from a crack in the tent was busy seating people inside. It took me a while to realize that the small crowd outside—36 in all, I counted—represented the entire audience.

Finally, the clown, dressed in a droopy harlequin costume, folded back a flap of the tent and invited us to file in to the sound of recorded music: Sousa marches, the music of Nino Rota, who composed the soundtrack for “La Strada,” Fellini’s 1954 movie about a small carnival starring Anthony Quinn. Most of us took our seats on bleachers, a few paid double for front-row seats. Everybody, with such a small crowd, had an excellent view of the one-ring show.

A drum roll, the curtains open, three beautiful lions from Kenya and their trainer burst into the cage occupying the entire ring. I’d seen lions represented on the posters around town, but thought they were just a come-on. Now I had them before my very eyes, three surly beasts, growling, showing their teeth, obeying reluctantly. They run, they jump, they mount metal stands, they form a triangle, with one of the lions placing his impressive paws on the backs of his two companions.

The man next to me says under his breath, “Mais il n’est pas gentil avec ses bêtes,” he’s not very nice to his animals. The tamer prods them, and we’re so close we can see the metal point on his prod. He cracks the whip, he withstands the lions’ growls, their outstretched paws trying to strike him. My heart is beating fast, I can see the lions wet with sweat, I can smell them, the smell of wild beasts, I feel fear and I can feel fear around me.

It is a great performance. The small audience applauds wildly. We too are members of a dying breed, an audience overwhelmed by the courage of the man in the cage.

Then it’s over and it’s time for a change of set. The cage must come down. A man I recognize as a local comes out to begin dismantling it. He is soon joined by the lion tamer, who, after his death-defying feat, must work, hands-on, if the show is to continue. Then the ticket seller and the little clown get into the act, all working together to prepare the stage.

The next act is juggling, and the juggler is none other than the lion tamer, brilliantly playing a new role. He is a handsome man, young, a one-man-show from the look of things.

Another change of set, the preparation of a new act, and while this is going on, the little clown and a little fairy entertain us. Shanny and Ethan, the announcer tells us, and this is when it begins to sink in. This circus, “The Shanny and Ethan Seneca Circus,” is a family affair. Mom takes care of tickets, the concession wagon, props, Shanny and Ethan, no more than 6 and 8 years old, seat the guests and entertain us. Teddy, the father, does just about everything else.

From beginning to end, the audience loves it. There are other animal acts, trained horses and llamas, the wildebeest and yaks. When the barnyard animals scurry into the ring, fanning out in two directions, their trainer is none other than Shanny, dressed in a Bo Peep costume, carrying a dressage whip disguised as a staff.

At the show’s end, Teddy Seneca, one-man-show, stands in the center of the ring and reads us a poem about his love of animals and his pride in performing in the greatest show on earth. I’m ready to claim it sent a shiver up everybody’s spine and made some of us misty-eyed.

The year 2017 has not been a good one for circuses with animal acts. It marks the closing of Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus after 146 years. New York City and Los Angeles have banned the use of wild animals in all entertainment, private or public. The subject is under debate in Paris and 62 French municipalities have already taken the step.

Many studies show it is impossible to meet the needs of wild animals in captivity; there is also ample proof of their physical and psychological suffering. As recently as November 17th, in the French science magazine Science et Avenir, a panel of veterinarians, philosophers and ethnographers called for the ban of animal acts in France.

This is progress and the show may not go on for Teddy Seneca and family.

Since I was a child in Pottsville, attending performances at the 16th Street field or at Agricultural Park, I have loved the circus, including the animal acts. I suppose it’s the wild beast in me.

Freed from exploitation, wild animals will lead better lives. If we could just bring the same care and attention to our fellow humans, we’d truly make this world a better place.

My Prince has come – and no time too soon!

Someday My Prince Will Come—who doesn’t know those words, that line? In the 1937 Disney movie, Snow White first sang the song, a sweet waltz to lull the seven dwarfs to sleep. The lyrics pack a promise alive still today in the hearts of many little girls and many who are not little anymore.

The song, one of most popular in movie history, also promises a carefree life in a castle and happiness forever, “someday when my dreams come true.” Somehow that song reminds me a lot of politics and I don’t think little girls are the only ones who believe extravagant dreams can come true.

Take the current US president, for example. Back when he was campaigning, he promised to “make America great again.” To do so, he was going to cancel Obama Care, pull out of NATO, ban Muslims from the United States, and build a wall all along the Mexican border. He was also going to “lock up” Hilary and approve “waterboarding” because “torture works.”

To his credit, he said he would elect a pro-Second Amendment judge to the Supreme Court and he did (I wonder what Neil Gorsuch thinks of the recent Las Vegas massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in US history); he also pulled out of the Paris climate control agreement, and has stepped up deportation of illegal immigrants.

As for “making America great again,” I suppose only time will tell. I’m not convinced Americans are going to be any better off at the end of Trump’s four-year term.

In France, our new president Emmanuel Macron calls himself “Jupiter,” King of the gods, who knows just what his subjects—oops, I mean, citizens want. Some Americans compared him to James Bond after viewing a July 2017 video of the French president being lowered from the air (like Jupiter) to the deck of a nuclear submarine. American political commentators see him as a bulwark against the populist politics gaining ground around the world.

While still a candidate, Emmanuel Macron proclaimed, “If anyone believes we are dreamers, rest assured. That’s exactly what we are.” As President, with a majority in Parliament, he is attempting to make his dreams come true, much to the chagrin of large segments of the French population:

Macron’s program includes increased taxes for the middle class and retirees, and decreased taxes for the rich. His labor bill, currently under discussion in Parliament, proposes fewer protections and rights for workers. In general, the new president and his majority hope to create a more technocratic government, and society, where those who know best decide for the rest of us. Apparently, there’s a name for this: “epistocracy,” the “rule of the knowers.”

“Someday when my dreams come true,” sings Snow White. We know she marries the prince and goes to live in the castle. But what happens afterwards? That part of the story was left unwritten, but for lots of girls who grow up to marry their prince, “afterwards” rarely means “happy forever.” In fact, they often wake up to a nightmare.

In his 2016 book Against Democracy, Jason Brennan coined the term “epistocracy.” He imagined a society composed of hobbits, hooligans and Vulcans, and argued not all of them should have the right to vote. Hobbits, according to Brennan, are those uninterested and uninformed about politics; hooligans root for their team, enthusiastically, even violently, but their understanding goes no further than easy slogans. As for the “Vulcans,” they are the ones who know and can decide for the others, but not because they’re morally superior. They’re simply better informed and trained.

A large percentage of millennials may agree with Brennan. Many recent polls in the US, Canada and Australia indicate that only between 30 to 40 percent place their faith firmly in democracy. Many millennials mistrust political leaders and feel elections rarely change anything. They also believe there could be alternatives to democracy.

In another recent book, Democracy for Realists: Why Democratic Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Governments, the authors C. Achen and L. Bartels contend that popular sovereignty may be a concept as questionable as the divine right of kings. As for the American ideal of a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” that’s the stuff, they say, of “fairy tales.”

Which brings us back full circle to Snow White, her prince, and mine.

I met him in early September, an unexpected encounter (the best kind) and an awakening because I have been forced to very directly confront myself. My prince is older, already retired, tall, lean, and weighs about 1,000 pounds. He is also Arab, a pureblood Arabian. My prince is a retired racehorse, chestnut brown with a black mane.

I wonder if any readers remember Booie. He used to have stables at the end of North Centre Street in Pottsville and you could often find him and his ponies at block parties. Sometimes he trucked the horses to fairs; at others, he simply led them through the streets of town. When I was near those ponies, I got sick. My face swelled, I couldn’t breathe, and usually I had to go straight home to bed.

Thanks to Prince (that’s my prince’s name), I know I’m not allergic anymore. I’ve also discovered a horse can teach me a lot about myself. I call my riding lessons “horse therapy.” Thanks to Prince, I’m trotting, cantering and even galloping back through my life, coming up against fears, doubts and obstacles that are barriers to inner peace today.

Above all, I am constantly confronted with what I cannot control, an intermediary zone, where Prince and I must learn to communicate and negotiate. My signals are not always clear, nor are his to me, and we often have to start over, finetuning our relationship.

This new experience is personal, but, just like Snow White’s song, it somehow reminds me of politics. With a horse, you get nowhere if you don’t observe and listen, negotiate and compromise, skills all too absent from the political arena today. With Prince, there’s no name-calling or shouting; instead there’s constant give-and-take.

For the moment, I’m thinking and learning, thanks to “my prince.” And I’m not in the world of dreams. My feet are firmly planted in the stirrups of reality.

It’s mushroom-hunting season in Schuylkill County and le Perche

In continental France (as opposed to the French Antilles, battered by tropical storms), autumn arrives as autumn should: bright, blustery days, cool nights, alternating with periods of damp and rain. Perfect weather for mushroom hunting in a region like le Perche, where there are over 1,000 different varieties hidden among the undergrowth of the forests that have given this region its name.

Perche, I learned on the site of the regional park (http://www.parc-naturel-perche.fr/en) comes from an Indo-European root word, perk, which has nothing to do with the English word spelled the same. “Perk” applies to oak trees and is both the root of the Latin word for oak, quercus, and for the region where I have my home.

This time of year, in oak forests all over le Perche, men and women not afraid to get their feet wet are out searching for mushrooms.

At my village café, where I’ve earned the right to stand at the counter with the regulars and pay a round of drinks from time to time, I’ve been told it’s a record year. Why, all you have to do is plop down on the ground (if you’re ready to get the seat of your pants wet), plunge your hands towards the earth, and begin harvesting.

I’ve benefited from this abundance. Just yesterday a village friend gave me a bag of “trompettes de la mort,” trumpets of death—not a very promising name for something you’re supposed to eat. These dull, velvety black mushrooms look like the trumpets angels play to announce the Apocalypse. Their form is also very close to that of a highly toxic South American flower that bears that very name: Angel’s trumpet.

When receiving a gift of wild mushrooms in France, considered a great delicacy, one is supposed to first ooh and aah while caressing and gently sniffing a specimen. That done, the next step is to wax nostalgic about memorable mushroom meals. Ah! Ce bon petit rôti de veau aux girolles—ah! That delicious little roast of veal in girolle mushroom sauce. Finally, after more profuse thanks, one declares what one will do with one’s own little treasure: a creamy soup, a sauce for pasta, un bon petit rôti de porc (pork roast), or, better yet, an omelet.

I held my bag, I said my thanks, all the while silently remembering my own experiences with woodland mushrooms. Memories took me all the way back to my first summer in France. I met a man in a café in a little village in the mountains above the Côte d’Azur. He invited me to accompany him to a dinner at the home of friends.

Always ready for new adventures, I accepted. That evening, we drank a Beaujolais wine called “Pisse-dru” (the first word I think readers can figure out, the second means heavy or abundant) and ate wild mushrooms sautéed in garlic and butter. There was some oohing and aahing, but there was also some concern. One of the guests was not sure these mushrooms were real the thing.

“Fausses chanterelles” (a variety of wild mushroom), he declared. Not poisonous, no, but very hard to digest.

The other French guests, always on the lookout for good argument and debate, begged to disagree and defended the honor of the host serving us this gastronomic meal. Better than the original, more flavorful, they declared as they swallowed generous mouthfuls.

I had no opinion, at least none I wanted to share. I was doing my best to wash the mushrooms down with gulps of Pisse-dru. They were gooey, downright slimy. It was like eating pan-fried slugs (which, also known as escargots, are another French delicacy).

That was not a good evening. I had, and still have, the American’s fear of wild mushrooms coming from anywhere but supermarkets or specialty shops. Leaving the dinner party, I felt nauseous. I wondered what would come next. Luckily, the answer was nothing. I went home, refusing the gentleman’s offer to check out his little villa overlooking the sea, and went to bed.

I also have a Schuylkill County experience to relate. Once, at my mother’s home in Pottsville, my sisters and I looked on as my former French brother-in-law made himself an omelet with morel mushrooms he had found in the woods behind our house. The morel, or morille, as it is known in French, is the Cadillac of mushrooms, and it sells for a Cadillac price.

Oh là là! My brother-in-law was so excited. Terrified, my mother, my sisters and I feared he would die before our very eyes.

But he didn’t, probably because the French know about mushrooms. They track them in secret forest groves whose location they reveal to none but their most trusted friends. Picking up the scent, they are like human beagles sensing, not beast or blood, but a musty, earthy smell that, for the French, has the power of an aphrodisiac.

More prudent hunters carry a guide, beginners accompany the more experienced, and when truly in doubt, it is possible to take one’s find to the local pharmacy. In France, pharmacists are supposed to have the know-how to decide if, eating your mushrooms, you will live or die.

As I’ve been writing this article, I’ve been busy digesting, a cult-like activity in France that requires time, attention and care. I’ve also been listening to my body for any gurgles or untoward movements of the digestive tract. So far, so good. That means the omelet with sautéed trumpet-of-death mushrooms I ate for lunch is going down just fine.

I accepted the gift. I didn’t ask any questions about whether the mushrooms were safe or not. I have complete confidence in the friend who offered me them. I also listened carefully to his wife, who explained what I was supposed to do with them once I got home:

I filled a bowl with water, added some vinegar, and washed them several times. That done, I carefully drained them and just as carefully laid them out, one by one, on a tea towel. By morning they were dry. By lunchtime, I was ready to give them a try.

I sautéed them in butter and garlic. Then I folded them into an omelet I ate with fresh baguette, salad from my garden, and a glass of Burgundy wine.

Who knows? A few more experiences like this and I’ll be out hunting mushrooms myself.