Easy days of summer 2018 turn into memories

Tomorrow all over Schuylkill County students will be returning to school; in France, they still have one more precious week of vacation. Autumn is around the corner and summer is already the stuff of memory.

The French will savor the summer of 2018 for months, even years, to come. For the first time in 20 years, France won the FIFA World Cup, an international soccer championship that takes place once every four years. This is France’s second victory since the competition began in 1930. On the night of July 15th, fans went wild, pouring into the streets to celebrate the victory. There could have been no better way to wrap up the holiday weekend that began with Bastille Day, France’s “Independence Day,” on July 14th.

Next came the Tour de France, which France did not win—the victory went to Geraint Thomas, a Welshman representing Great Britain, but the best young cyclist award went to a Frenchman and the 1st and 2nd place climbers were also French. Perhaps next year will bring victory, as the 2018 tour promises a bright future for France.

But the Tour de France is more than a bicycle race. True to its name, it provides a tour of France: north, south, east and west, from high mountain passes in the Alps and Pyrenees Mountains, from the Breton coast to the Mediterranean Sea, through remote villages and small towns a lot like Pottsville, where everyone turns out to cheer the cyclists on. It’s one of the best ways to get to know the country, a true pleasure to watch—live or on TV. France in all its beauty and variety unfurls before your very eyes while world-class cyclists whiz across the screen towards the finish line, a race down the Champs Elysées in Paris.

This year I saw the cyclists in Nogent le Rotrou, a town near my village, where I go to catch the train to Paris. The Tour’s arrival in town was posted everywhere, but somehow I managed to ignore it and showed up to catch a train just as the cyclists were passing through. All the main roads were blocked, there was no access to the station. I got involved in my own race against the clock, trying to find a place to park my car not too many miles from the station. When I finally did, I grabbed my suitcase and ran, along the same route as the cyclists and the crowd cheered me on, assuring me I’d not miss my train. I was part of the pack, the “peloton,” earning kudos for my speed on foot, just like the cyclists on their bikes.

In France and much of Europe, this summer will also be remembered for “la canicule,” an exceptional heatwave that broke records in Spain, Sweden and Portugal and brought drought and water shortages to much of France. In Pennsylvania, summer has been a steam bath; in France, we’ve roasted in a hot air oven, an unusual phenomenon in my village in usually wet, damp Normandy.

Summer is a time of fairs and festivals. France is known for its theater festival in Avignon and this year, Tiago, a 10-year-old friend of mine, bursting with talent and energy, was on stage for the opening play, a tragedy by the Roman author Seneca. It was staged in the majestic courtyard of what was once the Pope’s Palace during the 14th century, when 7 popes reigned over Christendom from the French city of Avignon.

There were also jazz, piano, opera, rock and folk festivals, and every village celebrated itself at least once, with a flea market, fireworks, a communal cookout and a “bal populaire,” a dance where young and old dance together to polkas, waltzes, tangos, disco and rock.

On my own personal list of most memorable summer experiences, I rate highest my first “Comices agricoles,” a regional agricultural fair, similar to a 4-H county fair. Encouraged in the 19th century as a means to promote and reward progress and hard work in the agricultural community, the most famous of all belongs to fiction. During the heyday of comices agricoles in the mid-19th century, Gustave Flaubert included such a fair in his novel Madame Bovary, the story of a woman who fiercely believes life must conform to the plot of a romance novel.

His comices is the backdrop for a love scene and that’s what gives it all is satirical spice. While cattle low, pigs grunt, geese squawk and roosters crow, in an upper room of city hall, Rodolphe Boulanger, a member of the French gentry, wealthy and blasé, pays court to Emma Bovary, a sentimental woman married to a mediocre man, hungry for “la grande passion.”

Emma has read lots of tales of romance but has never had a lover. Rodolphe, an experienced seducer, has had many. Innocent in her beauty and ways, Emma represents a minor challenge, but even before he conquers her, Rodolphe frets about how to get her out of his life.

As he whispers words of love, outside the master of ceremonies awards prizes for the best hog, the best ram and the best fertilizer. It is a cruelly comic scene, where Flaubert mocks both romantic love and the pretensions of local officials, decked out in uniforms and medals for the big day.

My comices agricoles was much simpler. I admired the handsome Percheron horses and many races of fine bulls and cows, I bought goat’s cheese and honey though I did not partake of the banquet whose main course was a steer roasted in a pit over open flames. I also studied agricultural implements of the past and the latest equipment of the day. The sun was blazing, the sky blue, and summer at its peak.

To wrap up the summer, I attended my first dressage and jumping competition at the French National Stables, le Haras du Pin, about 40 miles from my village, at the heart of France’s horse country. I continue riding, I am learning the basics of the art of dressage, precision movement on horseback. Watching some of the best international riders, my passion for the sport has grown even stronger.

Today is the last day of summer dreaming. Tomorrow school begins and these easy days become memories to cherish till summer rolls around again next year.

Identity Problems (2): Bread and Water

This month’s article picks up where last month’s left off. I am alone in Tbilisi, Georgia, without money or passport, wondering how I’ll survive…

Puri, tsqali, bread and water. That’s what I had to eat, delicious Georgian bread baked in an oven that looks like a well. My first day in the city, I saw, literally, a hole in a wall. I went up to it and looked inside. I saw a woman bending over what appeared to be a well. When she stood up, she had a loaf of flatbread in her hands. Seeing me, very naturally, she came to the hole in the wall, the “entrance” to her bakery, and handed it to me. I gave her a five-lari bill. She handed me back a lot of change.

That’s how Georgian bread is made, in a well where, in the place of water, very hot embers burn. On the inner walls, the baker slaps strips of dough. After five minutes, with a metal spatula, she peels off a loaf of bread.

As for water, Georgia is known for its mountain springs. Though once considered prison punishment food, a piece of warm “puri,” a glass of Georgian mountain tsqali,” bread and water, become a simple, noble meal. For me, it was my “daily bread.”

After another search of my apartment, realizing I’d really lost everything, I cancelled my credit card and called a friend in France. He told me he was immediately heading to Western Union to send me some funds.

Money problems taken care of, I moved on to the next challenge: how to get a new passport. I’d travelled to Georgia as a French national though, I’ll admit, I don’t feel very “French.” I called the French consulate and was put through to the vice-consul. She told me the procedure to follow to apply for a new one. I’d need passport photos, a statement from the Georgian police declaring the loss, and most important, 96 euros. Without the money, there’d be no new passport.

When I explained I was waiting for a Western Union transfer, she advised me to go to an agency on Rustaveli Avenue, the “Fifth Avenue” of Tbilisi. There, she assured me, I could get money without a passport. I’d just have to mention the French Consulate had sent me.

Lucky for me the bus in Tbilisi costs 20 cents, and a ticket includes transfers. I took one bus, then another. New streets, new neighborhoods were rushing before my eyes. I saw a big fountain with a statue, Shota Rustaveli, Georgia’s national poet. The vice-consul had told me the bank was nearby. I got off at the next stop.

Inside the bank, I went to the Western Union counter. I explained what I’d been told at the French Consulate. The teller left me alone. When she returned, she said, “No money without a passport.”

I protested, asked her to call the consulate, and demanded to see the manager.

All my requests were granted, but by the time the call was made, the vice-consul had left for the weekend, and her assistant was adamant: without money, no passport, and getting the money was my problem, not hers.

The bank manager, speaking perfect English, also came to talk to me. She told me she’d have to phone headquarters; she could not decide on her own. I was invited to wait; I waited for almost four hours. By that time, the manager had gone home, a new shift of tellers had come on. One was on the phone. She looked in my direction. When she hung up, she approached me and said:

No passport, no money.

That was the final answer. It was 7:30 on a Friday evening. I had less than five dollars. The weekend was about to begin. I felt very alone.

Returning home by metro, I realized my stop was next to a police station. I walked in to make my declaration. I tried to explain in English, in French, in a few garbled words in Russian. The police got the gist; they found me someone who could speak English. She told me I was in the wrong place.

I had to go to another station. I was told to wait; I’d be taken there in a patrol car. When it pulled up, I got in. A second later, we were travelling top speed, weaving in and out of traffic, running red lights—just like in a high-speed chase in the movies, and, you know what? It was a thrill.

A few hours later, I had my statement. I’d told my tale to an official translator who translated my words from French into Georgian. The document was typed, stamped and handed over to me, and I was very favorably impressed with Tbilisi’s finest.

But I still had no money. When I got back to the apartment, I tried to call my friend in France to give him an update. Except my phone did not work. I’d gone over budget; my provider had cut my service. Now I was cut off from the outside world.

It was almost midnight. I decided to go to bed. Like Scarlet O’Hara, I said to myself, “Tomorrow is another day.”

When morning came, I got up and looked out at blue sky. I breakfasted on bread and water. I counted my remaining coins. Enough for transport, more bread and water. I got dressed, headed out.

I’d come to Tbilisi to explore the city and that is what I was going to do. I climbed to the church of Mama Davidi (mama = papa in Georgian), who brought Christianity to Tbilisi in the 6th century; I visited the remains of a Zoroastrian fire temple; I wandered through streets where, in the 19th century, Russians built elegant summer palaces. I saw the opera, the city’s museums, and new glass-and-chrome shopping centers. I also got lost in the labyrinth of the city’s central market, above and underground, around the main train station. I’ve been to bazars in Istanbul and Jerusalem, but never have I visited a market as all-encompassing as this one: it contained the world.

The day of walking exhausted me. That evening, it was bread and water again. Then I was tired and fell asleep.

The next morning depression got the upper hand: I was alone, with no money, no phone. It was 6 AM; another day of bread and water was about to begin. I looked around the apartment. It was a mess. I decided to clean the place.

I started with the bed, removing the quilt. When I grabbed a corner, I felt something solid. I thrust my hand inside the quilt cover, as I thought I’d done the first day. When I pulled it out, I had my passport, my money and my bank card in hand.

Feeling faint, I had to sit down. All along, my identity and money had been nestling comfortably in my bed.

Later that morning, I went to a Western Union agency open on Sundays. I had my passport, now I could get the money, except that I’d declared my passport lost to the police. If I handed it over to a teller, would she have me arrested on the spot? Once again, my throat went dry. Behind her bullet-proof window, she looked at my passport and then made a phone call. I broke out in a sweat. An identity-check. A stolen passport. Jail.

But she returned my passport and handed me the money. I walked outside and took a deep breath. I was free and once again “me.”

In a Turkish restaurant, where I had my first real meal in Tbilisi, I mulled over what had just happened: a nightmare of my own creating, where I’d come as close to down and out as I’ve ever been.

I think it may have been the French passport, the problem of no longer knowing who I am or where I belong. Many dual nationals would understand.

I have long since returned to France, but my identity troubles have not ended. Today I hover somewhere over the Atlantic, halfway between the United States and France.

Identity troubles

Last month readers joined me on a trip to Baku and the shores of the Caspian Sea. I also mentioned my stay in Tbilisi, Georgia, in the foothills of the Caucasian Mountains, but didn’t go into detail. This month—and next—that’s what I am going to do. I have a long tale to tell, where small details count. Read on to get the big picture…

The day of my departure for Tbilisi began early, or late—depending on your point of view. I was up before 3 in the morning, caught a taxi to the airport (no public transportation in Paris at that time of day), and then boarded a 5:30 flight to Kiev, where I would transfer to another plane to carry me to my final destination.

The airport in Kiev plunged me into the world of the Cyrillic alphabet. I spent the three hours of my layover deciphering ads, trying to understand words, and studying phrases in my Russian phrase book. I was under the illusion that in Tbilisi most people would speak Russian and a few basic phrases would serve me well.

When we boarded our plane, most of the passengers were speaking Ukrainian. Flying the national Ukrainian airline, they also knew the ropes. No complimentary food, no drinks, not even coffee; just one small glass of water and no refills. I’d found this out on the Paris-Kiev flight, my dreams of coffee and a roll dashed once the plane was in the air. My fellow passengers on the Tbilisi flight had come prepared. Bags of food, even some meals from McDonald’s and KFC. The plane smelled like an American fast-food restaurant, and the Big Mac the mother and daughter next to me were sharing was beginning to look pretty good.

Our plane landed in Tbilisi in the late afternoon. We claimed our luggage, passengers dispersed, I withdrew some money at a bank machine (the national currency is the lari), and I walked outside with the intention of catching a bus into town.

Immediately, however, a man came up to me and offered to take me into the city (a trip of about 12 miles) in a taxi. He named a price that, compared to Parisian prices, was cheap; I accepted and followed him to his car, a Japanese SUV. I noticed the steering wheel was on the right though Georgians, like Americans, drive on the right side of the road. This was my first contact with the thriving market in used cars imported from Japan, where, like in Britain, drivers drive on the left side of the road.

When we arrived in a neighborhood of rundown Soviet-built apartment blocks, the driver was convinced I had the wrong address. This was not a place where tourists stayed! I insisted (I had studied Google maps before leaving home) and even showed him the way to the building where I’d rented a flat.

A few minutes later, I was inside “my” apartment, and I was delighted. I had a view of mountains and the roar of the city seemed far away. I was also hungry. Eight hours earlier in Kiev, I’d eaten a hotdog, my sole meal of the day.

I headed out on a recognizance mission in my new neighborhood. Only once in the street did I realize how tired I was. I did manage to buy some of the delicious local bread, freshly baked and hot in my hands, tomatoes and cucumbers, olive oil and feta cheese. I also found a honey store and bought some fragrant mountain honey. I was set. I went home, took a shower, dined on simple, delicious food, and went to bed. The next morning at 9, my job as a visiting professor at Tbilisi State University was to begin.

I awoke refreshed, breakfasted on bread and honey, and prepared to pack my book bag: computer, some papers, and finally, the little pouch containing my passport, bank card, and extra cash. There was just one problem. I couldn’t find it. My throat went dry. I ripped the apartment apart searching. No, I couldn’t find it anywhere.

And time was passing. I had to leave. I had a class to teach. Once again, thanks to an on-line map, I found my way to a bus stop and got on a bus supposed to drop me at the front door of the university.

Before leaving France, I’d been told that in Tbilisi, “everyone” speaks English, and everything would be written in English. After less than 24 hours in the city, I’d already discovered this was not true. As for busses, information was written in the squiggly letters of the Georgian alphabet (for example, Tbilisi looks like this: თბილისი). Luckily, I could recognize the numbers: bus 51. I hopped on.

We sped across a bridge over the river Kura, crossed a huge square, and I panicked. Where did I get off? I looked around, saw a young woman, probably a student, and asked her in English. Next stop, she said.

I got off outside a university. I walked up the steps and went inside. Classroom 212, my correspondent had told me. I found the room and the students. I told them who I was. They burst out laughing: right room, wrong university. Theirs was an engineering school! Worse still, no one spoke English well enough to tell me where to go.

Finally, a security guard, in very good English, directed me to another university further down the road. I set off at a run along an 8-lane boulevard and sweating, shaking, arrived at another Classroom 212 only to find the door locked. Students, though, were waiting. One got the key. We went inside.

I poured out my story, and the lovely young women who were my students felt very sorry for me. Telling calmed me, and once the story was out of my system, I got busy and taught. When class was over, my correspondent, a professor from Tbilisi, was waiting for me. I told her about my loss. She shrugged her shoulders—it wasn’t her problem—and sent me back out into the streets, almost penniless and with no “official” identity.

Thank goodness for Lela, one of the students. She followed me and offered to lend me some money.

I caught another bus (the ticket cost about 20 cents), went home, searched again. No passport, no money, no bank card, everything gone.

Thus began my life in Tbilisi. I had less than ten dollars in my pocket and I’d been stripped of my identity… (to be continued in July).

Baku-Pottsville-Paris Connection

This month I am going to ask readers to travel nearly 6,000 miles from home to discover some faraway connections, deep and strong, to Pottsville and Schuylkill County.

First, we’re going to board a jet, crossing the Atlantic Ocean and then the Mediterranean and Black Seas. As we land, our plane swoops over the Caspian Sea, in reality the biggest salt lake in the world, to begin our descent into Heyder Aliyev International Airport, an ultramodern landing terminal and gateway to Baku, the capital of the Republic of Azerbaijan, about 250 miles from that country’s border with Iran.

We hop a taxi and travel the 12 miles between the airport and center city. Wide boulevards are packed with Hummers, SUV’s, luxury cars and state-of-the-art electric busses; construction is underway everywhere. We head to the Old City within fortress walls, where traffic is restricted and pedestrians can roam narrow streets scented by roses in bloom. We check into our hotel and head back out. Our first destination: the birthplace of piano teacher extraordinaire Julie Askernia, who has her studio at the Art Center on Mahantongo Street in Pottsville.

I’ve done it. I’ve made my “Pottsville-Baku” connection, thanks to Julie, whose talent, personality and, most importantly, friendship wakened my interest in this part of the world. Now I stand in front of the building where Julie spent the first years of her childhood, a typical solid home of golden stone with a view of the nearby Caspian Sea.

When Julie was born, Azerbaijan was a Soviet Republic, and the city carries the mark of that presence, with many buildings constructed in what is known as the “Soviet Orientalist” style: the train station, the National Academy of Sciences, and many big apartment and office buildings found in the modern city’s vast pedestrian zone dotted with fountains and parks.

Julie’s life is marked by that presence as well. Once she completed her piano studies in Baku, she went on to study at the Moscow Conservatory of Music, the training ground for some of the greatest pianists in the world. Three of my favorites (besides Julie) studied there: Lazar Berman, Radu Lupu and Bella Davidovich, who like Julie was born in Baku.

My sister Jane, my niece and nephew, and I have studied with Julie. From my first lesson, I knew something exceptional was happening. This was not simply a piano lesson, I was experiencing music at is best. Julie opened new worlds by simply teaching me to place my fingers differently on the keys, to obtain a different sound, to “make music.” I was partaking, at my modest level, in that long and demanding Russian tradition of taking music seriously and playing joyfully.

With or without my trip, in Schuylkill County, a solid connection is already in place to Baku, Moscow and one of the greatest piano-teaching methods in the world, thanks to Julie Askernia, a musical gift to us all.

Today, in Baku, things are changing fast. The city is becoming a showcase of contemporary architecture. Dominating the skyline, three flame-shaped skyscrapers burn in the night, thanks to the LED-screens covering their surface. These Flame Towers are also a reminder of the city’s Zoroastrian past. There’s also the new carpet museum, inaugurated in 2014, tracing the history and celebrating the art of carpet-weaving in Azerbaijan. The building has the form of an unrolling carpet, complete with motifs.

The crowning jewel is the Heyder Aliyev Center, a museum, conference center and concert hall, designed by British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadad, who died an untimely death in 2016, the year of her creation’s inauguration.

Baku underwent its first growth spurt at the end of the 19th century, when oil was discovered. Today, once again, it feels like a boom town, clean, modern, prosperous and safe. Like in China, prosperity comes with a price. The same family has been ruling the country since 1993, and it’s best, as many journalists know, not to criticize the regime.

Politics, however, has in no way dampened the hospitality of the people of Baku. They give freely of themselves and help above and beyond the call of duty, as I learned when I arrived in the city on a night train from Tbilisi, Georgia. Mila, the Azeri woman who shared a sleeping compartment with me, took me in hand, joined me in a taxi and dropped me at my hotel.

Then Julie’s friends Nellie, Rassima and Karina took over, showing me the town and above all, offering me the experience of the best in Azeri cuisine. First I sampled “dushbara,” a delicate broth with tiny dumplings, then melt-in-the-mouth stuffed grape leaves, eggplant salad, grilled vegetables, “qutab”—light and delicious crepes filled with herbs, ground meat or pumpkin; rice pilafs, and grilled meats, accompanied by the local red wine. For dessert, baklava and watermelon-rind jam that we washed down with black tea, the national drink.

I walked the seaside, visited museums, took in the local sights, relaxing after 10 days on my own in Tbilisi, Georgia, where I taught at the national university. No one took care of me there and the Georgian language and alphabet were often a challenge, but in that country, more democratic but less prosperous than Azerbaijan, I encountered the same hospitality and kindness from students and strangers. In a country actively developing its tourist infrastructure, its culture and natural beauty call out to be explored.

While there, I was also able to satisfy my curiosity about another local connection, one I noticed during a visit to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. Near the Visitors’ Center, there’s a signpost with arrows pointing to important raptor-watching spots throughout the world. One is in the mountains of Georgia, above the city of Batumi on the Black Sea coast.

Though I did not go to Batumi, I was not far away from the “largest and most diverse raptor bottleneck in Eurasia,” as it is described by two leadership interns from Hawk Mountain, Johannes Jansen and Wouter Vandsteelant of Belgium. They have played a central role in establishing a raptor-observation site near Batumi and I encourage readers to learn more at https://www.hawkmountain.org/science/batumi-bottleneck-georgia/

In the past month, my world has become wider and richer. It has also become a friendlier and more familiar place, thanks to connections between home and abroad.

Striking yesterday, striking today

At the beginning of the 20th century, John Mitchell, “the boy president” of the United Mine Workers, stormed into the anthracite region and convinced miners, underpaid and exploited, that the coal they mined wasn’t “Slavish, Polish or Irish coal, it’s coal.”

When on September 17, 1901, the UMW issued a call to strike, over 125,000 miners walked off the job. At the vanguard were miners in the Lehigh and Schuylkill fields. It was a long, bitter strike that hurt everyone. Miners lost their wages, stores closed, entire families had to go to work, earning barely enough to survive. Many left the region to seek jobs elsewhere and never returned.

When the strike was finally settled in March 1903, miners received a 10% wage increase, a sliding wage scale, and an 8-hour workday for several categories of miners. Pleading the miners’ cause before the Anthracite Coal Commission, the national board assembled by President T. Roosevelt to arbitrate, Clarence Darrow, “attorney for the damned,” proclaimed that, above all, miners had won a moral and spiritual victory:

“They (financial interests, such as those of J. P. Morgan, controlling the mines) are fighting for slavery, while we are fighting for freedom. They are fighting for the rule of man over man, for despotism, for darkness, for the past. We are striving to build up man. We are working for democracy, for humanity, for the future...”

In France, in 2018, April has become a month of strikes: railway and airline workers, civil servants, and students have walked off the job or out of the classroom to protest government policy and make their demands heard. Airline workers are demanding higher wages. Railway workers and students are fighting for the preservation of what they call “le modèle républicain,” a model of public service and equal opportunity representing the ideals of the French Republic.

In this French model, general interest takes precedence over the individual, and civil servants—who may be teachers, secretaries, doctors, nurses, economists or high-ranking government officials—work for the good of the nation. Railway workers, though not civil servants, work for the national rail company that still belongs in large part, at least for the moment, to the state. They too have a mission of service, and the development and maintenance of the rail system continues to be financed by the taxpayer.

I’ve lived in France for 30 years and I have benefited from “le modèle républicain.” To begin, there is the national health system. When I compare my benefits to those of friends or family in the States, I would say I receive better care for a more affordable price. I also depend on reliable, reasonably priced public transportation. When I retire, I’ll receive a public pension. For the moment, as a university professor, I am one of those civil servants serving the nation by educating its young people. I am “in the system,” and I believe the system is good.

President Macron does not share my belief, and this may be the crux of current strikes, though it all started with the SNCF, the French national rail company. The president and his majority in Parliament have voted to put an end to the “special status” of rail workers, first put in place in 1909 but considerably modified since. This means railway workers can retire earlier than the national retirement age of 62; they have 28 days of paid vacation per year (the average in France is 33), and once they’ve completed a long training and probationary period, they are guaranteed employment for life.

Claiming to be carrying out directives issued by the European Union, the government has voted to privatize passenger service in France in 2020 and put an end to the “special status” for new recruits in the same year. The law also contains many technical components concerning the legal status of the SNCF and the payment of the company’s extensive debt, due in large part to the development of the TGV, high-speed trains.

Except for specialists, few can truly grasp, as the French like to say, “the complexities of the dossier.” Yet, concerning the strike of the “cheminots,” railway workers, everybody has an opinion, and this may be because something else is at stake. Many feel Macron’s government has declared war on “le service public” and “le modèle républicain.”

For the entire month of April, my university has been closed by striking students. For me, this has meant being glued to my computer, doing most of my work on-line. My eyes, neck and wrists are aching, but this may be a blessing in disguise: the trains that carry me back and forth to work have been cancelled because of the rail strike.

Striking students are protesting what they fear will become a system of selective admissions to enter university. Currently, public universities are open to anyone with the French high school diploma called “le baccalauréat.” At the end of high school, students all over France take a series of national exams. If they pass, they are guaranteed a place in a university where their education is basically free.

From my experience, first-year university studies in France often turn into a free-for-all, leading to the survival of the fittest, natural selection that roots out about two-thirds of new students. Beginning this year, students will apply, much like in the USA, and places will be limited from the start. For many students, this puts an end to their equal opportunity to study what they choose, where they choose, as is the past.

In 1902, miners went on strike for dignity and decency. Today, life is easier, but the issues worth fighting for are less clear-cut. Macron wants to reform France. He is pushing through new laws, for the university, the national rail system and much more, leaving the French stunned by the speed of change. Seeking to place services in the hands of the private sector, he is counting on enterprising individuals to “make France great again.”

If he succeeds, he’ll seriously shake up le modèle républicain. He is certainly “working for the future,” but only time will tell if he is also “working for democracy and humanity,” to echo Clarence Darrow’s words.

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.