Sunday, March 22, 2020

Marie Antoinette moment & and my French intellectual objects

Me:
"Now Sara and I are cocooned in for a long wait, starting the wait with the D'Artagnan duck, D'Artagnan cassoulet, and cheeses flown in from fromages.com. Our Marie Antoinette moment :)"
My French intellectual does not even bother to correct me:

Well, Marie-Antoinette died in October 1793. She was guillotined on Place de la Concorde. D'Artagnan, from the four Muskateers, was a character of 3 novels written by Alexandre Dumas in the mid-19th century based on a real person, Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan (c. 1611–1673), who was supposed to live under the reign of the French King Louis XIII and his Prime Minister Richelieu between 1631 (when he reached the age of 20) and 1643 (when Louis XII died). Louis XIII married Anne from Austria in 1615, a Queen mentioned in the story of d'Artagnan, with a jewel plot.

Just to let you know that a jump of more than 150 years in time is quite a stretch. But in your situation, in Chicago, I supposed that the product from this d'Artagnan company must look like an amazing luxury!

However, I can find fresh duck at a butcher selling only duck, including foie gras. I would never dare even mention the name of this company considered as the most shameful thing ever produced in the Southwest of France, so low is the quality of their products. People would have banned me from the entire covered market I loved to go shopping to, for the rest of my life.

Me:
I stand humbly corrected by 150 years :) OK, OK, I know that Marie Antoinette never said what she said. This is a tale told only in the Anglo-Saxon world. But I do have a question. In colloquial English "Marie Antoinette moment" refers to her reputedly having responded to news of people rioting because they had no bread by "Let them eat cakes"
But I always wondered... She never said that, did she? Sounds like post-guillotine Republican propaganda, no?
My French intellectual:

OK for Marie-Antoinette in the English version. But the quote "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" (let them eat brioche) is due to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his book "Confessions" published in 1782 (7 years before the beginning of the Revolution). However, he does not name the "princess" in his text. His text was only intending to illustrate the insensitivity of the aristocrats towards the people. But he probably invented the story, because no trace of it could be found in the contemporary documents. The only reference can be found in the "Mémoires" of a certain Mademoiselle de Boigne, published only in 1903. In those, the quote is attributed to Madame Victoire, instead, a daughter of the King Louis XIV who was actually a bit dumb but very generous. She intended to help and not to mock the poor. She proposed the crust used in the pâté which was not eaten by the high society,. This crust was used only to protect the meat inside during cooking. In her memoir Miss De Boigne writes

“Madame Victoire had very little wit and extreme kindness. She was the one who said, tears in her eyes, in a time of scarcity when we spoke of the sufferings of the unfortunate people lacking bread: "But my God, if they could resign themselves to eating pâté crust!"

The quote was attributed to Marie Antoinette later, and I have no document showing when. Only the symbol was kept. I never heard this quote in France. I heard it only while in the US. Another myth about France, I thought. But there is a Wikipedia page, in French, about this quote. So some French scholars are aware of it.

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Life in Trumpistan, season 4, episode 3 : Fleeing Jawja

I'm up, starting to get ready to hit the road.

What got me going was Putin's idiot who - with the help of his basement Nazi - surmised -correctly- that the most xenophobic way of infecting the maximal number of people living here would be to announce that all flights from EU will be shut down the next day. Worked like charm. On Saturday, all major US airport international arrivals looked like this:

200313OHare.jpg

with everyone already infected made to stand together with the yet uninfected, stewing side by side for anything up to 8 hours - Mein Gott!

(Hartsfield Delta check-in looked like this still on March 22 - there is no hope for this country). 

For the next step, I did not wait for Georgia Tech's president who listens to the self-elected, vote-suppressor governor Kemp who follows Putin's idiot who watches Fox Channel 24/7 to close the campus. I believe in exponentials. I teach exponentials.You cannot beat exponentials. This might be a vacation on planet Fox, but on this planet it is the worst pandemic since 1918, exploding at the same exponential rate, everywhere. And you cannot beat exponentials, unless you work very hard to decrease the infection rate : the difference between 100 and 1000 infected is only 10 days. Then it is 10,000 and then it is 100,000 and ...

Exponentials said that in a week Chicago would be shut down (correct), and in two weeks we would leave Italy in the dust behind us (correct). I immediately rented a car, packed it with contraband:

IMG_20200316_195421.jpg


and March 17 I left. Atlanta. Wagner's Götterdämmerung would have been the right music for the drive- but instead I went for country while driving through Nashville, otherwise talking-head podcasts. I particularly liked the one about our "Inner fish" (S had bought me the book, enjoyed it as well)

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/03/16/88-neil-shubin-on-evolution-genes-and-dramatic-transitions/

It took driving 12 hours straight to meet S at a sketchy south Chicago gas station and transfer the contraband into the trunk of our Chicago car. I got tenderized into minced meat :) Every time I got out of the car to stretch legs - very socially distanced from other seniors going in big circles around each other - I felt the ground moving around me and the engine buzzing under my. For hours after getting out of the freaking car I was like a sailor on solid land - the ground was swaying under me, and I could feel the engine rumbling throughout my legs and ass. Persisted at home the whole evening until I fell asleep. Is this normal? I'll take a 12 hour bike ride over that, any time. 

On a positive note, I was not held up by 2ndA vigilantes, even though I had packed a very visible load of toilet paper on the back seat.

Now S has me where she wants me - we are cocooned in for a long wait, starting with the wait for the D'Artagnan duck that arrives today. Our Marie Antoinette moment :) Here is the view:

IMG_20200321_183515.jpg

I have not been out of the apartment in weeks. It's a small disruption on the life of last few years, where S had mostly worked from our Chicago apartment, and so did I, in long periods (she had both knee replacements over past few years).


PS from Steve McDonald, reporting live from the lowlands: Just remember you cannot have the Corona without a lime.

PPS Getting to Chicago seems like eons ago, so I have to write the date down: March 17, 2020.

PPPS For you, who read this, but do not live in US, and do not have a woman prime minister: If it is any consolation, our idiot is more incompetent than your idiot.

Thursday, March 12, 2020

Officer Tyler Beck who killed Scout Schultz won’t face charges

continued from my previous post  (March 12, 2020) 
 
ajc.com : Tech officer who shot, killed student won’t face charges.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard has decided not to bring criminal charges against a Georgia Tech police officer who shot and killed a student armed only with a multi-tool.
“[...] all of the available evidence indicates Schultz decided to take his own life by provoking police officers to shoot him,”
Howard said in a statement. Two use-of-force experts contracted by the DA’s office concluded the shooting was justified, Howard said. Attorney Chris Stewart, who represents Schultz’s parents, said the “suicide by cop” defense doesn’t justify the shooting.
“There’s no such thing,” Stewart said. “It’s disappointing to see the DA perpetuate this myth.” 

Anonymous: Scout Schultz was a burning flare maskmagazine.com (Sept 2017)

Continued here (June 13, 2020