Twenty Guns: A Sign of Mental Illness?

 

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A very smart friend just posted that the father of the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate former President Trump owns 20 guns. He thought that indicated Dad was mentally ill.  

If Dad is mentally ill, he is part of a mass psychosis.  There are nearly 400 million guns in America yet the majority of Americans don't own guns, so a large, vocal minority owns a lot of guns.  

Twenty is not far from average for an avid gun owner.  When I was deployed to Iraq, I asked soldiers I served with how many guns they owned.  I should have made a careful but the number that came up most often was sixteen.  They included soldiers of every rank, enlisted and officers.  

According to Pew Research, 32% of Americans own guns, just over 100 million people.  

The majority, 62%, own one hand gun. That's more than 60 million people.

More than 25 million people own three to seven guns. 

The top 14% own 8 to 140 guns.  The average of 17 guns was in line my informal survey in Iraq. That's about 15 million people who own an average of 17 guns, or a total of 250 million guns.  

If you combine all the multiple gun owners that group is more than 40 million people. Can 12% of the population be mentally ill?  Not in any sane definition of mental illness.  

The 40 million people who own multiple guns are part of a community in which owning many guns is normal.  Nearly all of them have jobs and are part of communities.  They made a choice the majority would not make, but they are not mentally ill.

Today, I talked to an 80-year-old guy who is a life-long resident of Lancaster County. He volunteers with community groups and has been part of emergency communications teams that help in disasters. He has five guns: two pistols, two shotguns and a hunting rifle. They are locked in a gun safe.  He is part of a community in which five guns is not even remarkable. 

 

 

Mundolingua: A Word Museum Paris

Near Luxembourg Gardens in the 6th Arrondissement of Paris is Mundolingua a museum of words: "Stacks of books and dictionaries share space with dozens of digital screens, the intimate exhibit spaces at once cozy and quirky. Words in many languages and alphabets adorn the walls, and, as you wander from the first floor down to the building’s 17th-century cellar, you are surrounded by languages at every turn."

   

Please follow the link above if you are interested. Better yet, if you get to Paris add ths odd museum to your list of sites to vist.

So Many Mennonites on Bicycles!

 

Last Saturday, I was riding between Leola and New Holland in Lancaster County. On that five miles of PA Route 23 I saw more groups of Mennonite men than I have ever seen in more than 40years of living in Lancaster County.  Every few hundred yards I saw another group of three to five guys in straw hats, suspenders and farm boots riding and talking.  

On  the way back I caught up to one group and asked why there were so many bikes on the New Holland Pike.  They told me I was seeing people leaving Horse Progress Days at the end of the two-day trade show/event/festival.

In a huge field on South Groffdale Road, south of Leola, were tents and displays of manure spreaders, tillage equipment, sprayers, and then the haying equipment--all designed for horse-drawn (and mule-drawn) farming. 

Over the two days ofthe event, 30,000 people came from all over the U.S.and Canada to see the latest in horse-powered farm equipment.  

Along with the bicycles were several pairs of Amish men riding high-wheeled scooters along Route 23.

The next day I rode the same road and saw a few buggies, but no bicycles or scooters.  I will have to wait until next year.  

 

Moving to Panama--For a Year

 

The Panama Canal

For the third time in my life, I will live in another country beginning on August 15.  My wife got a Fulbright grant to study abroad for a year, so I will join her in Panama City on the Pacific Coast of a very narrow country. She is going to study math and to teach in a community outreach math program (She is fluent in Spanish). 

While she works, I will make dinner and ride coast to coast! I have never ridden coast to coast before on the six continents I have visited, but Panama will be the place I make my first transcontinental ride from Pacific.  The distance is 75km or 45 miles ocean to ocean. A lot less distance than New York to San Francisco.

The last two times I lived overseas, I was a soldier. I carried a gun.  This time, no gun.  

In Iraq I had the gun all the time. 

In West Germany during the Cold War, I rode inside my gun. I also carried a sidearm. 

I have never been to anyplace between Tijuana, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, so there are many places to explore.  Panama is a beautiful place from all I have read and heard, and the canal is a marvel of engineering.  So it should be an amazing year. 

In Terror of Ducatis on Sestriere: My First Climb in the Italian Alps

In 2000, I made the first several climbs up to the Sestriere ski resort.  It was a beautiful September day as I toiled the seven-mile climb. At several point on the way up, I was riding through avalanche tunnels--they are a roof over the road, open on the cliff side. 

 It's dark inside the tunnels, not totally but dark compared to ride in bright sun.  As I rode through first tunnel I could hear the roar of Ducati race-replica motorcycles climbing between the turns, then the odd silence as they coast through the hairpins and roar to life again out of the turns. 

I have this experience before on Mount Palomar in San Diego county.  But there are no tunnels on Mount Palomar.  As the bikes got closer I pedaled faster, not that it would make any difference, but I wanted to get out of the tunnel. I had a sudden vision of the bike at the back of the group moving right to pass one of his mates then slamming into me.  

The roar went from deep rumble to deafening howl as the pack swung out of a hairpin and accelerated into the tunnel. The tunnel had about a six percent grade so the roar swelled as they approached, throttles wide open.  I put my head down and kept pedaling.   I could see the end of the tunnel. I hoped the roaring bikes could see me.  

Then it was over. The bikes flew past me in a line. Clearly they had passed many bicyclists on this mountain.  They shot from the tunnel into the light and disappeared. I continued to pedal, a little more slowly.  

Mount Palomar has many more motorcycles than any alpine climb I have ridden, but they are almost always single or in pairs.  They also are mostly four-cylinder high-revving Hondas, Kawasakis and Suzikis.  When they were near me in a turn, I could hear the best riders dragging the hockey-puck pad on their knee as they leaned into the turn at 45 degrees or more.  

Only on Sestriere did I have packs of motorcycles fly past. In 2005, three different packs flew past me on my way up. 

Usually, the excitement on these rides is descending and feeling the rush of speeding around the hairpin turns. On this ride, the biggest rush was the pack of Ducati race-replica motorcycles that shot past me on the way to the summit.

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On Tuesday, July 2, 2004, the Tour de France will climb to Sestriere then to Col de Montgenevre, through Briancon, up to Col du Lauteret on the way to Col du Galibier then downhill to the finish in Valloire.  

A Russian Journalist Defies Putin on War in Ukraine

Zhanna Agalakova Жа́нна Леони́довна Агала́кова

Journalist working at Russian Channel One until the War in Ukraine

Zhanna Agalakova has an Instagram page with stunning photos of Paris.  She lives and works in the city near Clichy. I followed her for several years, admiring her photos.  But one day the image on March 17, 2022, Zhanna posted a video of her cutting off her Первеу Канал (Russian Channel One) ID bracelet.  

She ended a three-decade long career as a journalist in defiance of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Her husband and daughter were with her in Paris where they now make their home.  Zhanna's career is outlined on a Wikipedia page.

I met Zhanna in 2013 at the Ig Nobel Ceremony at Sanders Theater at Harvard University.  Marc Abrahams, emcee of the ceremony and impresario of all things Ig Nobel, asked me to escort Russian and Japanese camera crews when they filmed. Sanders theater had very clear guidelines about the amount of time the crews could film. The Russian and Japanese crews were notorious for not understanding the restrictions, year after year.  

From 2013 to 2018, I escorted Zhanna and Boris her cameraman into and out of the theater.   In 2019, Zhanna returned to Paris where she had worked previously for Channel 1 Russia.  Then in 2022, she quit very publicly and began a new life and career. 

In 2023, Zhanna and I had coffee near Clichy. She told me about her break with Channel 1 and with Russia and President Vladimir Putin over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  I had hoped to talk to Zhanna again this trip, but maybe next time.  

 

Fascists Fail in France! One Bookstore at Least

 

A very funny pair of neighboring bookstores is no more.  The fascist bookstore La Librairie Nouvelle went out of business in its posh location opposite Luxembourg Gardens at 10 rue de Medicis.  Until last month the fascists were located between the two shops of The Red Wheelbarrow English-language bookstore on either side of them: a children's bookstore to the left at 9 rue de Medicis and a general bookstore to the right at 11.  

In May, the fascists folded and Penelope, the quiet, determined owner of The Red Wheelbarrow leased the former fascist store and is renovating it as her new children's bookstore.  Penelope said they may lease the current children's shop to another bookstore. From my first visit in 2019 until my most recent visit, I noticed Penelope always had a selection of anti-Facist books in her window display.

If they keep all three shops, The Red Wheelbarrow currently has many books more than three meters above the floor, accessible only by ladder. They could certainly fill the space.  

While I was at Red Wheelbarrow, I saw a new book by Kazuo Ishiguro, a book of lyrics, which I will be reading on the flight to America. 

Last week The Red Wheelbarrow had an author event and book signing. When I first visited the store in 2019, I met Nita Wiggins, and American professor living in Paris who just published a memoir. She had an author event at The Red Wheelbarrow.  

Among its many fascist tomes, La Librairie Nouvelle displayed Le Grand Remplacement  by Renaud Camus.  The Great Replacement Theory that is at the center of the beliefs of Tucker Carlson and other American fascists was written by Camus in 1946. It has been a favorite of international Jew haters ever since.   

It seems strange that with fascism growing in popularity in France and across Europe that the fascist bookstore would fail now.  But Penelope told me 2017 that the clientele of La Librairie Nouvelle thought Trump and his acolytes were idiots. So maybe it is just intellectual fascism that is in decline. Pandering populist fascism is the preferred style.  

May fascists everywhere fall as easily as La Librairie Nouvelle.