Q 36 More Granularity: The French Bureaucracy

We have a mad president who believes in border walls. He learned nothing from the Great Wall of China’s failure to keep the Mongols out.  The EU has succeeded in creating an essentially borderless Europe through the Shengen Area agreement. Brexiteers and their ilk want to recreate borders to keep out those they don’t like because of their color or culture or language.  Raw nationalism is in the area so wherever you go you bump into it.

When you come to France you don’t need a visa if you are planning to stay less than 90 Days. I planned to stay for 60 days so I never got a visa. When the epidemic came the question was “should I go home or stay here”.  I have wonderful 975 square foot apartment with a view of the Seattle port and Mount Rainier from my breakfast table or living room in a 6 floor co-op apartment Building.  My French maison is a three bed-room house in a tiny village in the middle of the Medoc wine area northwest of Bordeaux.  I sensed quarantine coming so I had to choose and I chose to stay in France.

I have great food, good wine everywhere and miles of untraveled roads to walk along to get my exercise. 

But I was supposed to leave after 90 days.  Recently the French government announce a 90 extension for all visitors. So now I’m legal until the 16 th of June.  The future is coming. It is not here yet. 

Q33 Granularity of life Third thought

Some one asked me, “What do you mean by Granularity of life.” Life is like walking on a beach and never seeing the grains of sand. Isolation in place forces us to look at all sorts of little things we never had time or took time to examine.

Food is good example of the grains of sand I’m talking about. What did you eat for dinner last night? Being France I’ve a French friend Guy who used to invite me over dinner.  Dinner is at 7:30 PM and the table was always set with tablecloth and silverware in place. Nothing was haphazard in the preparation. The courses were served in a leisurely fashion. The cheese course was set out early so it was soft and warm and not straight out of the refrigerator. The two wines were chosen according to the food that matched the taste. This wasn’t some fancy restaurant in Paris. This was a country meal in a town of 500 souls who, as the French say, work to eat rather than Americans who eat to work.

Since I am alone in my house here, I set the table for myself. Tablecloth, silverware, glass for wine and glass for water and napkin.  Do you remember what your meal tasted like? I had 9 big Medoc oysters that I shucked myself. Wrestling them out of their shells is the first challenge. They filled a whole plate.

My vegetables were a sauté of broccoli, green peppers and cabbage with mushrooms,added at the end.  Salt, pepper, Garam Marsala and Curry powder were in at the beginning. Two cloves of garlic squeezed through the press topped off the vegetables. A salad of Batavia lettuce with cherry tomatoes and avocado dressed with olive oil, Balsamic vinegar and Dijon mustard was the last course. My wine is limited to one glass and I used a local Cab/Merlot blend.

Why only one glass you may ask? A year ago, in February I felt like I weighed too much, so I went on a keto diet.  We have always heard, “ we are what we eat”, and I was too much what I ate, so I dieted and lost 45 pounds. I was determined to keep it off and coming to the land of wine and great bread was a real challenge. Portion control has been tough, but I weigh today what did when I arrived on February 2.

When I sit down to the meal, I laid out above, I used to eat like a Hoover vacuum sweeper. Now I follow my mother’s rules, sort of. “Chew each bite 50 times. Then swallow.”  I found that I tasted what I cooked. My body and brain also had time to tell my mouth that I was full, so I didn’t need more. By the way, if you eat oysters slowly you taste and feel some of the sand, they grew up in.

Dessert can be fruit or pastry. I’m told that French women often take one bite of a cookie and that is it.  Not 2 or 3?

I’m going for my afternoon walk before dinner.

Q32 Granularity of life in Isolation

As isolation enters its second month the small things of existence take on more importance, or maybe they just get noticed. I just wrote about the postal service but an adjunct to La Poste is Amazon.fr which is the local arm of the monopoly.

As I became aware that I was going to be here for awhile, I decided I need a 32-inch monitor for my Dell Laptop. That set-in motion my purchase of a keyboard and a printer. My tech support and I discussed various options. Orders were placed and then messages came telling me the progress in time and space of my purchases.

The monitor arrived first. I was excited as I opened the box and extracted the curved screen 32-inch monitor. I connected it and it worked. Belle picture which meant I did not have to lean forward to work on my computer.  Less back pain as I hunt and peck my way through my ideas.

My eye hand coordination has never been good.  I got my only D in High School in typing.  I memorized the keyboard but my brain, eyes and fingers were only able to do 25 WPM with 5 errors, enough to get a passing grade of D. My teacher was Bill Corr. I’ll tell you more about him later.  He nominated me to be on the Wall of Fame in the foyer of my High School, Downers Grove North. But I digress.

The next package to arrive from Amazon was the keyboard. Again excitement. Replace the mouse dongle with the new dongle. It is all wireless.

As I started my hunt and peck effort to log on, I realized that something was wrong. My log-in contains an "a." All of you reading this know that the keyboard “a” is the furthest left on the second row of letters. On my keyboard there sat “q”. “A” was above it at the far left on the first row. OK, I guess I can handle that.

It also contains an “m” which had been promoted to second row next to “l” and replaced on the bottom row with the “?” and the “,” below it. I’m sure I don’t need to bore you with the myriad of changes. Look on google if you want to scramble your mind.

I called my tech and she said, “I've never been abroad so it never occurred to me to check.  I'll see what the manuals say. You know all those people at computer companies sit around all day trying to make it easier but, in the end, us in the field are mystified.”

Turns out my beloved Dell’s inner workings tell the keyboard to ignore the keys lettering and work like an American keyboard. Good luck if you are a hunt and peck typist. So, I press Q and expect an A. Who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?

I still haven’t found the “delete” key. But my next excitement comes on Wednesday. Amazon brings me my French printer.  What surprises await this poor lonely isolate?

Q29 The Granularity of life

Having a postal system is something we take for granted. This Service was created at the beginning of the USA because they understood the need for connections across the continent. It has grown over time with addition of railroads, ships, and airplanes.

Right now, we are considering a world in which our postal system may be in danger. Living in rural France has given me a chance to experience what it was like in the past. My daughter and a friend sent me letters more than a month ago which have not arrived. Before you jump to the conclusion the French Postal system is failing, let me tell you I received a book of poems from a friend in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

My experience came to a fine point when I tried to send my passport to the US Embassy in Paris. I sent it as a registered letter 12 days ago. Tracking records showed the letter move to Bordeaux but never moved to Paris. Try to get an explanation. Good luck. I need my passport to apply for a visa extension to remain legally in France. I came to France, thinking I would stay for 60 days After 60 days I need a visa, but my passport is in limbo.

The answer to the mystery probably lies in Globalization. Airlines carry mail around the world, but the airline flights have been curtailed. In addition, France has stopped Amazon from importing into France because labor safety protections are inadequate.

Yesterday brought a new wrinkle in the mystery. I heard a knock on my door, and it was the postman holding a Parcel from Amazon.fr. I took it but he asked why I did not have a postal box. I led him around the corner of the house and voila, there it was! So, there is another reason for my isolation. My mailbox is misplaced. 

My passport is now in Paris but who knows when it will appear. Good government workers like the postal workers and State Department workers are doing their best.

Q 22 Every vote Counts

Periodically the tech savvy members of Legislative bodies want to introduce Technological changes to the operation of Government.  The House of Representatives introduced the voting score board so that a vote would take minutes rather than hours.  Previously voting required calling the roll once and, then again, for those members who missed the first time through. So that speeds up the voting. Before this change members were loath to require members to come to the floor to say aye or nay on an amendment unless it has real import.

After electronic voting began, creative members began to introduce many more amendments, many of which had no real impact but gave people a way to show that they had done something. People back home only knew that a member had introduced an amendment.

Amendments were introduced to embarrass or frustrate the sponsors of a bill or to force individual members to vote on things that could be used against them in the next election. The amendment process on the floor became partisan warfare.

The Speaker pro Tempo re of the House would bunch the votes together so that members only had to walk over to the floor a few times a day to cast a lot of useless votes on things that had no chance to pass.  But someone got credit for raising an issue. These were “15 minute” votes which meant that everyone had 15 minutes to get to the floor and cast their votes.

No member in the House is more important than himself.  So why should I vote early when the slugs of the house won’t be there in 15 minutes. Some members assumed votes would take 20-30 minutes so there was no need to get off the phone or abandon constituents or lobbyists in the office when the bell rang.  Voting would get longer and longer as procrastinators or simply rude members delayed 435 people in doing their job. Speakers got irritated and periodically gave speeches about courtesy and stated that all votes would be over at 17-19 minutes. Some members got aggravated when they arrived to late to be counted.

 The second strategy the speaker had was to declare the second and subsequent votes in a bunch as 5-minute votes.  Even a 5-minute vote turned in to 6-8 minutes because people began to get on phone calls in the cloakroom and would try to stay as long as possible on the call.

The next strategy to shorten these long useless voting exercises was to reduce the voting to two minutes. Sounds efficient but Democracy is slow and messy and does not work efficiently.  Dictatorships or Kings or Czars are very efficient. But when we say we want democracy you can only have so much efficiency. 

Why is the time important?  I cast 2500 votes per session.  I am of average  intelligence and a pretty quick study but there is no way any human can keep 2500 things clear in his or her mind.  I had to rely on staff in my office or on the committee to tell me the issue before I could cast a vote.  I usually knew as I walked to the floor what I thought the proper vote was but not infrequently, I looked up at the scoreboard and saw a red light(NO) next to the name of someone I trusted.  I needed a few minutes to find that person and ask why they were casting that surprising vote.  I often learn something I had not known, and I changed my vote. 5-minute votes gave me a chance to find them among the 435 members on the floor.  2-minute votes were impossible to verify or reverse.

Every new class to the Congress raises the idea of voting electronically from their office. The word Congress means a coming together. It is seen as the means by which the people can discuss and come to a consensus which is usually a compromise. To let individual members sitting alone away from their colleagues decide how to vote begins to tear the fabric of trying to reach a consensus in a democracy. 

Jim McGovern of Massachusetts has been given the job of analyzing the next step in rending the consensus building fabric: Voting from one’s district. All members can sit in their bathrobes in the Bronx or Seattle or Fargo and vote on issues that are presented to them as an up or down vote.

On what basis will they decide? What the leadership sends out as information may not be the whole story. Those who write history are the ones who control story. Examine any school textbook to find out about the histories of minorities over time in the USA.  I am sure if Native Americans wrote our history for public education. we would have a different picture of the western expansion in the USA during the 19th century.  Assuming the finest motives, should the Speaker or the Majority leader be expected to present an issue in the broadest perspective. We can use technology to publish the bill. Who will answer any questions in what forum or format.  Video conferences have some limitations as we are discovering as the whole world is trying do business or teach school over Zoom Platforms. One does not have to be a Luddite to be worried about the likelihood of reaching a democratic Consensus without people meeting and discussing or arguing or questioning. 

We are entering a time of great change. We are in a period where no one trusts that others are protecting themselves or their neighbors. Social isolation has been ordered by governments backed by police enforcement. Hopefully this situation will not go on forever. In this time of panic, we must not give up the only way to run a democracy.

I remember 2001 on 9/11 when a fourth plane was headed for either the Capitol or the White House and went down in Pennsylvamia because of the quick action and bravery of the passengers.  A lone member of Congress began talking about a method to reestablish a functioning Congress if the entire elected body or a large portion were destroyed by a disaster of any kind. Few members wanted to contemplate such an event and Brian Baird’s idea remains unanswered.

Today we are faced with a similar dilemma.  How should we approach   a threat to all the Congress? Should we empower the leadership to present proposals to the members electronically to vote without enough time to consult with one another.   

Putting all the power in a small group to propose legislation and call for a vote is called a junta. No member should feel comfortable giving up the sacred trust of his or her office to a small committee that can’t be questioned.  This decision will be key as to whether we keep a democracy or not. Maybe matters of appropriation for existing programs can be voted on remotely but deciding policy requires being locked in a hot room in Philadelphia as they did in 1789. 

A quick Google search reveals that Jefferson in writing the Ordinance of 1784, which would have prohibited slavery in the West, fell one vote short of prohibiting Slavery in the new territories after 1800. A delegate from New Jersey got sick and missed the vote. Think about the power of your knowledgeable vote. The people did not elect the congress to be rubber stamps for a President or the legislative leadership, no matter how good or bad they are.

As You Sow, So shall You Reap

All of us in this country are suffering from the Arrogance of our Would-Be Emperor in New Clothes by his refusal to recognize what health and intelligence sources were telling him weeks ago.  His administration is filled with the phenomenon that Michael Cohen described about Donald: “You don’t have to be told what to do. You do what the boss wants because he sends subliminal messages.”

Health officials in Seattle were aware of the problem in a Seattle suburb nursing care facility and tried to get CDC to react and help. The Federal agencies did not respond positively.  It may be a long time before we find out why they dragged their feet. The people in Washington State government moved anyway and began testing. That is how Seattle became the epicenter of the disease. No one else was testing. 37 people have died at this facility.

Today I awoke to an email from Columbia Lutheran Home in Fremont telling me  their tale of woe.  I suspect if you talk to any facility working with the elderly or the underserved communities their story is similar.

The most distressing sight to me has been the dance done by Tony Fauci and Deborah Birx.  They are two very talented and experienced public health professionals.  They, because of their respective positions in government, are almost always standing on stage next to Donald.  Tony is the head of infectious diseases research at the NIH and Deborah is the AIDS czar who was drawn in to be the Presidential Epidemic Coordinator, and both work for the President.  Donald only wants praise for his knowledge, understanding and decisive action so anyone working for him has a very fine line to walk. He or she must be a cheerleader for Donald or they risk being fired for disloyalty to Donald. 

I know them both from the 1990’s during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and they are great scientists who don’t want to get ahead of their skis and have a fall.  They want to say what they know scientifically and make it clear when they are speculating.  Columbia Lutheran is part of the research trial that Tony is waiting to see the results from before making a recommendation.

Unfortunately, they are working for someone who hasn’t a clue how science moves forward by making hypotheses and then doing experiments to see if their hypothesis is correct.  The President, however, wants to move forward on hypotheses with only minimal verification by testing.

 We all know that one beautiful day does not mean spring is here.  We don’t pack our winter clothes away and bring out all our summer clothes. But the president again and again acts in this matter, only to get caught in a spring snow storm.  

A case in point is the use of Chloroquine for treatment in early cases of the COVID-19 flu.  The Chinese and French are running large scale tests of the safety and efficacy of this drug that was developed to treat malaria. Columbia Lutheran is part of one the research trials that Tony is waiting to see the results of before making a recommendation.

 It may be a game-changer to be given to people who test positive but do not have the full-blown disease syndrome.  It has some side effects for certain heart patients and can be unsafe, so testing both the safety of the drug and the efficacy of the drug is very important before statements are made about how the epidemic has been brought to a halt by this miracle drug.  Stopping social distancing and opening the economy full scale is stupid and foolhardy.

But imagine the dilemma for Fauci and Birx?  How do you contradict a leader who will not listen to Intelligence sources or scientific experts worldwide? Who refuses to read briefings from the very people who are charged with protecting the USA? Their job is impossible. Speak the truth and suffer the wrath of an impetuous tyrant or try to save your integrity while soothing the ego of a narcissist.

The ordinary folks in the society to whom this all sounds like hopelessly confusing information are easily led to believe this is just a plot to make their leader look bad. 

Until the epidemic hit Queens New York where the leader knows some people who are now getting the disease, it was fake news. When his acquaintances get sick, finally it is real. By that time, it had spread on the beaches of Florida, in New Orleans at Mardi Gras, in Jewish synagogues and conservative Christian Universities like Liberty University in Virginia.  

Surely the Reverend Falwell knew that the Bible says, “you shall reap what you sow.” April will be the month of harvest for the president’s crop of actions.  He will characteristically blame the Seed or the field hands who are loyal to him or the impeachment weather. God forbid he should ever admit he made a mistake. I would guess that it was this admonition from St. Paul in Galatians 6:7-8 that the Boston Globe was aware of as they opined that the President “will have blood on his hands.” It is ironic that this is the week in which Pilate washed his hands of the responsibility for Christ’s crucifixion.

The American people want a leader who is more concerned about their agony, pain, and fear than about his personal empire’s bottom line or his re-election prospect. They deserve better.