Fathers, the Army and Career Paths in America and France: A Delightful Conversation at Lunch

Professor Christian Amatore of the Ecole Normal Superieure

At an award lunch at a history of science event in Paris, I was seated with Christian Amatore, a professor emeritus of electrochemistry at the Ecole Normal Superieure (ENS). Christian is a bright, funny and out-going man who smiles easily.  He said he lived in America for two years early in his career in Bloomington, Indiana.  

We talked about how much we liked visiting each other's country then turned to the differences in growing up in America and France in the middle of the last century.  Christian had a straight career path that began at ten years old, when a teacher identified him as having potential for a science career.  

Christian was born in Algeria in 1951 and spent his early years on French Army bases.  His father emigrated from Italy after World War II, his mother from Sweden.  Service in the Foreign Legion was a rapid path to citizenship for his family.  Christian's father was a career sergeant who told his son to get an education and be one of the leaders, "or you will be a nobody."  

In 1970, he started college at ENS, beginning his PhD program in 1974 and completing it in 1979.  He was a professor after completing the PhD and three years later began two years of research and teaching at the University of Indiana.  

As we talked about his linear career path I told him of the twists and turns of mine. Christian never served in the military. His father looked back on the Army as something he did to have a better life for his family.  During the years Christian was completing his PhD I was 600 kilometers east of Paris in a tank on the east-west border. I started college in America in 1980 when he beginning his first professorship.

For my father, world War II was the best years of his life.  He went in the Army on the eve of the war in his mid-30s with an eighth grade education.  When the war began, the Army sent Dad to Officer Candidate School. He was commissioned, commanded a several small units and ended the war a captain, commandant of a Prisoner of War Camp for 600 German Afrika Korps prisoners. My father loved to tell stories and loved to tell war stories most of all. From the end of the war to his retirement, he worked in a warehouse.

Talking about our fathers and the Army led us to talk of Napoleon, who talented in mathematics and had a high regard for science.  We talked of how math was the basis of his success as an artillery officer.  Napoleon restored many of the academic institutions leveled during the Revolution. On Christmas Day in 1797 he was elected in the seat of Lazare Carnot in the Institute de France. 

Talking about war led us to talk about the peace in Europe during our entire lives. "During my entire lifetime there has not been a land war in Europe," Christian said. "That is unprecedented in European history."  We talked of Putin and the threats from Russia.  It was comforting to hear Christian discuss President Biden. He was simply talking about the decisions of the American President.  During the Trump presidency, no one I spoke with in Europe could quite believe what kind of person America elected.

Amatore in his habit vert of the Institute de France

Near the end of lunch, Christian gave me his email, writing it in my notebook. Neither of us had business cards, really showing we are fully retired people.  I said I would look at his work on the internet.  When he wrote his name he said, "If you look me up on Google, use my full name. If you Google Amatore, you might get a porn site."  Amatore is Italian for Lover.

We already exchanged email messages.  I was fascinated with electrochemistry a couple of decades ago when I worked for Atofina Chemicals so I will look up some of his research.  Christian has published more than 500 papers in electrochemistry and related fields, so there is a lot to look at.  

When I am in Paris, I often have lunch or coffee with friends. I hope to catch up with Christian on a future visit to Paris. 

Posts about traveling in France and neighboring countries in February 2022:

My favorite restaurant is a victim of COVID.

The Museum of the Great War.

The Waterloo Battlefield.

The Red Baron Memorial.

Chartres Cathedral.

High Performance Cars in a garage in Versailles.

Talking about Fathers and Careers at lunch.

A Healthy Culture Includes All of its History

The French flag waving in the Arc d'Triomphe de l'Etoile on November 11

Few great cultures have been more self critical than French culture.  When revolution swept France in 1789, they even threw out the seven-day per week calendar. They invented the guillotine in 1791 and used it on their king two years later.  The French people analyze and criticize all of their long history and celebrate the best of French history.

Last year, I was in Paris on November 11. I walked around as close as I could to the Arc d'Triomphe de l'Etoile. I saw French people from kids to people in their 80s watching the celebration of the victory of the France and their allies in World War I.  Napoleon commissioned the Arc in 1806. The design was completed the same year, but it would be three decades later in 1836 before it was completed.  

France has a long a long history of fighting wars at great cost in men and money.  The French celebrate their two millennia of history. The celebrate the great triumphs in World War I and many of Napoleons battles and other wars going back to the Roman Empire.  

The French, much better than America, accept all of their history. I worked for a French petrochemical company in the 1990s.  They thought American anguish over President Bill Clinton was amusing. No one in France is surprised when someone with the ego to stand in front of 300 million people and say "Elect me!" turns out to have some flaws.  

I am currently reading a biography of Thomas Jefferson along with the Federalist Papers.  I plan to read biographies of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton later in the year.  The men who founded America were not perfect, but they were great, mostly very young men, who began a nation with liberty for some in the hope of liberty for all some day.  

Jefferson wrote that the American colonies should end of slavery in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. In 1787, Hamilton wrote the Federalist Papers to persuade New York and New England to unite with the South, knowing it would mean a slavery compromise. They did the best they could in founding a new nation. 

We should honor our founders knowing they were not perfect, but strove to bring real equality and freedom into a world of monarchy and despotism.  

What they did began a new nation that would lead the free world for much of the 20th Century. Their ideas held until January 6, 2021, when a petulant monster attempted to steal the election and ended the 240-year tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.

I was in London just before November 11. I got a poppy in London and a blue cornflower in Paris. I wore both on November 11. These little commemorative flowers grew in the devastated landscape where the war was fought. 

France and the United States 200 Years Ago

France in the person of Marquis de Lafayette and the troops he brought to Yorktown are the reason there is an America.  Without the French, America would have been defeated in Virginia and lost the war.  Coming to the aid of America added to the crushing debt France already had. That debt and its effects was one of the major causes of the French Revolution less than a decade later. 

Alexis de Tocqueville came to America and wrote a thousand pages about what he saw, praising self-government and the American spirit while unsparing in his criticism of slavery and the way we treated Native Americans.  His book was a call for change in France as well as the single greatest book written about America.  

Book 2 of 2022: Marie Curie--a graphic novel biography in middle-school-level French

(In past years I have written an essay about the books I read in the previous year.  As my list of books gets longer and my memory shorter, I decided to write about the books as I read them rather than 2000+ words at the end of the year.)

 

In November I visited the Institute Curie near the Sorbonne in Paris.  This book was on the shelf in the tiny bookstore inside the small museum.  I read kids books in French to keep some level of reading comprehension.  This graphic novel gave me a chance to practice French and to remember what I learned about the life of this remarkable scientist.  

I learned a lot about Marie Sklodowska-Curie's life because more than half the book is about her childhood in Poland and struggles to get to France to study physics.  When I read about her previously, it was about her research and life-saving work in World War One.  

After I finished the book, I looked up how many people have won Nobel Prizes:  962 laureates earning a total of 603 prizes (as of 2020).  Just 59 laureates are women and Marie Curie is the first.  

Just four laureates have received two Nobel Prizes:  

Linus Pauling won a chemistry prize and a peace prize.

John Bardeen won the Nobel twice in physics.

Frederick Sanger won two chemistry prizes.

Marie Sklodowska-Curie won the Nobel Prize in physics and in chemistry: the only person to be awarded to Nobel Prizes in two different fields.  She is extraordinary, even among the short list of multiple Nobel laureates.  

If you read French at all, the book is fun to read and not difficult.  

The summary on Goodreads:

Cette biographie de Marie Curie (1867-1934) retrace les principales étapes de son existence : son enfance en Pologne, sa scolarité studieuse et ses études supérieures, son arrivée à Paris, sa rencontre avec Pierre Curie, ses recherches sur le radium et ses découvertes sur les rayons X, l'obtention de ses prix Nobel en 1903 et 1911 et son engagement pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

Lunch in Paris Talking NASCAR!!

Nita Wiggins, author of Civil Rights Baby and I 

at the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore in Paris

In July of this year, I met professor Nita Wiggins at the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore in Paris.  We both arrived at the store just before it opened.  She was there to sign copies of her new book Civil Rights Baby.  She was born the year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.  

A lot of the book is about her rise through the crazy world of sports journalism in America, particularly broadcast sports journalism.  She spent several much of the first decade of this century as an on-air reporter for Fox News.  

Then in 2009 she decided to leave journalism and all of the struggles a woman of color faces in that career and move to Paris.  She currently teaches journalism at the Institut Supérieur de Formation au Journalisme in Paris, France CELSA Sorbonne in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.  She has also taught at the American University in Paris since 2009.

Earlier this month I was in Paris again so we met for lunch at a cafe near Red Wheelbarrow bookstore opposite Luxembourg Gardens.  We talked about Paris and America and living abroad and how much Nita was looking forward to seeing her parents for the Christmas Holidays after all the COVID travel restrictions.  

Then we talked about NASCAR.  Nita covered stock car racing early in the 2000s. She talked about interviewing Richard Childress, Roger Penske and other NASCAR luminaries and legends in the years she covered racing.  It was fun to hear Nita talk about covering NASCAR while it was in transition from a regional southern sport to a national sport.  I told her about being a NASCAR fan from age eight until about the time she started covering racing. The changes NASCAR was making were not for me. 

And I was quite sure we were the only people in that crowded cafe talking about American stock car racing.  

This post has links to Nita's website and info about her book.

Nita Wiggins in the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore.

Tragic Accident on a Beautiful Night in Paris

Iron poles along Paris streets prevent parking on the sidewalk. 

A human body flying into one of these poles from a scooter is instantly  broken.

Last night, walking in Paris, I happened on a scene of agony I found terribly familiar. A motor scooter was lying on its side, bent and broken, several feet from the road on the sidewalk. The rider was a dozen feet away, also on the sidewalk. The passenger was against the curb, in the street, partly underneath a parked truck. 

A few feet from the battered scooter, a Honda Civic with a dent and scrape on its left front fender was parked on the sidewalk, its emergency flashing lights adding orange bursts to the red and blue lights from the two ambulances already on the scene. A half dozen medics worked to move the rider and the passenger onto stretchers and into the ambulance. They moved the rider first. I could hear the deep pain in his moans as three medics moved him onto the backboard, then onto a gurney. 

 Last year I yelled and groaned in that same agony when a medic named Mohammed lifted me onto the backboard after warning me how much it would hurt. A woman on the medic team was talking into the ear of the woman under the front of the truck. The scooter passenger was partly covered with a blanket, but I could the white sneaker on her right leg twisted at an impossible angle. 

I did not want to remain among the gawkers longer, and a moment later a policemen pointed and told me to move. I left. From what I could gather watching the witnesses, the car and the scooter were both driving downhill from the Pantheon toward the traffic light opposite Luxembourg Garden. The car made a legal, but possibly unexpected left turn toward an underground parking garage. 

The scooter, I am guessing by the dent on the car, was passing the car on the left, on the wrong side of the road, thinking the left turn signal was for the upcoming intersection rather than the garage entrance thirty feet before the intersection. Scooters often swerve around cars briefly to get to the front at traffic lights. In all of my motorcycle and bicycle accidents 

I have had the amazing good fortune not to hit anything solid: no cars, no curbstones, no iron poles along the edge of the sidewalk that prevent parking on the sidewalk in Paris. The unfortunate riders hit all of these. Worse, I did not see a helmet anywhere. 

As I walked away, a third ambulance pulled up. I think it was a fire department rescue team. Extracting that poor, broken woman from under the truck was going to be awful. 

I continued to walk on a beautiful night in the City of Light hoping the scooter riders would survive the night.

 

A Cathedral and a Holocaust Memorial Share the East End of an Island in Paris

The most famous Cathedral in Paris, Notre Dame, sits the east end of the most famous island in the Seine River, il de la cite. 

The grand cathedral is currently in the midst of a many millions of Euros makeover. It will be closed for years.  

Behind the soaring cathedral on the very eastern tip of the island is the Holocaust Deportation Memorial. The entire memorial to the 200,000 Jews deported to death camps is underground. 

The entrance is a steep stone staircase down to an open area with a barred opening looking east along the Seine.  East is, of course, the direction of transport the victims took to their death.

For me, the beautiful view of the Seine through iron bars is what deportation would look like--passing through a beautiful countryside in a cage.

In the summer when the setting sun is north of west the shadow of the cathedral falls on the Holocaust memorial, not for long, just minutes.  I was overcome with sadness the first time I visited this memorial in 2017. I was in Paris in late June and early July and saw the shadow fall on the memorial after 9pm near sunset. During the Nazi era, 400 million Christian labeled people were either participants, complicit in or ignored the Holocaust. 

Inside the memorial is a map with the number of  Jews from each department deported to death camps.

The death camps are listed in blood red.

The barred opening seen from the north bank of the river is just a dark rectangle on a gray wall.

Another map shows all the Nazi camps to which people were sent to die.

IN the midst of the memorial is a flame of remembrance.

The view to the east up the Seine River is lovely.

The open courtyard of the memorial feels very vertical and forbidding.

Inside is a long tunnel with names of the victims.

Each time I visit Paris I visit the memorial to those deported. Usually there are just a few people inside.  

A few hundred meters away thousands are usually visiting Notre Dame.  Even now dozens of people were looking at the posters on the walls enclosing the cathedral during its restoration.  

 

"Le Grand Remplacement"--Great Replacement Theory Began in France and Became the Trump Call to Arms

Le Grand Remplacement came to America as "Great Replacement Theory," the belief that Jews are 

replacing white people with brown people as a strategy for world domination

 

On my last day in Paris in July 2021, I stopped by La Nouvelle Librairie on Rue de Medicis across the street from Luxembourg Gardens. It is the fascist bookstore of Paris, on a shaded street with a half dozen bookstores and several cafes. 

In front of La Nouvelle Librairie was a book table with a dozen copies of Le Grand Remplacement by novelist, gay rights activist and fascist Renaud Camus.  The subtile "Introduction to Global Replacement" (Introduction au replacisme global) made me smile. A French intellectual could describe a 500-plus-page book as an introduction. An American publisher would insist on something less than a third that length.

The fascist bookstore and The Red Wheelbarrow English-language bookstore are next door neighbors. Not happily.  The Red Wheelbarrow always has anti-fascist books in the window display.

Penelope Fletcher, owner of The Red Wheelbarrow, the English-language bookstore next to the fascist bookstore, assured me in 2019 that the French fascists have nothing good to say about President Trump or American fascists.  "They see themselves as intellectuals," she said of the fascists next door. "They don't like to be associated with Trump and American fascists."

But American white supremacists, Nazis and others racists have made Great Replacement Theory their own, even if they don't know its French roots. When the Charlottesville Nazis chanted "Jews will not replace us" they were echoing the theory that Jews are moving brown people into white nations as part of a global takeover.  (I can't help wondering what Charlottesville racists would have thought if they knew they were quoting a gay activist French intellectual.)

The man who murdered Jews in Pittsburgh in 2018 was motivated by Great Replacement Theory.  When Trump said caravans were invading America he was echoing Great Replacement Theory back to his racist ChristianNationalist voters.  

The ADL (Anti Defamtion League) has an excellent summary of Great Replacement Theory.   I have some highlights below: 

• “The Great Replacement” theory has its roots in early 20th century French nationalism and books by French nationalist and author Maurice Barres. However, it was French writer and critic Renaud Camus who popularized the phrase for today’s audiences when he published an essay titled "Le Grand Remplacement," or "the great replacement," in 2011. Camus himself alluded to the “great replacement theory” in his earlier works and was apparently influenced by Jean Raspail’s racist novel, The Camp of the Saints.
• Camus believes that native white Europeans are being replaced in their countries by non-white immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, and the end result will be the extinction of the white race.
• Camus focused on Muslim immigration to Europe and the theory that Muslims and other non-white populations had a much higher birth rate than whites. His initial concept did not focus on Jews and was not antisemitic.
• The “great replacement” philosophy was quickly adopted and promoted by the white supremacist movement, as it fit into their conspiracy theory about the impending destruction of the white race, also know as “white genocide.” It is also a strong echo of the white supremacist rallying cry, “the 14 words:” “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
• Since many white supremacists, particularly those in the United States, blame Jews for non-white immigration to the U.S. the replacement theory is now associated with antisemitism.
• The night before the August 2017 the Unite the Right rally, white supremacists, marching across the University of Virginia campus, shouted, “Jews will not replace us,” and “You will not replace us,” clear references to Camus’ theory.

Use By Individual Extremists

• In October 2018, white supremacist Robert Bowers killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, after writing a Gab post blaming Jews for bringing non-white immigrants and refugees to the U.S.
• In March 2019, white supremacist Brenton Tarrant livestreamed himself killing 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand. Tarrant also released a manifesto online called “The Great Replacement,” an homage to Camus’ work.
• In April 2019, white supremacist John Earnest killed one and injured three at a synagogue in Poway, CA. In a letter he released online, Earnest claimed that Jews were responsible for the genocide of “white Europeans,” and cited the influence of Bowers and Tarrant.
• In August 2019, white supremacist Patrick Crusius opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, killing 23 people and wounding almost two dozen. In a manifesto, Crusius talked about a “Hispanic invasion” and made reference to the great replacement.

Use by Media/Tech Personalities

• In July 2017, Lauren Southern, a Canadian far-right activist, released a video titled, “The Great Replacement,” promoting Camus’ themes. That summer, Southern was involved in “Defend Europe,” a project lead by European white nationalists to block the arrival of boats carrying African immigrants. Southern’s video further popularized Camus’ theory.
• In October 2018, on Fox News' The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham said, "your views on immigration will have zero impact and zero influence on a House dominated by Democrats who want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever increasing number of chain migrants."
• In October 2019, Jeanine Pirro was discussing Democrats' hatred of Trump on Fox Nation's The Todd Starnes Show. She declared, "Think about it. It is a plot to remake America, to replace American citizens with illegals that will vote for the Democrats."
• On April 8, 2021, on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host explicitly promoted the ‘great replacement” theory. Carlson discussed “Third World” immigrants coming to the US who affiliate with the Democratic Party. He asserted, “I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term 'replacement,' if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate — the voters now casting ballots — with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World, but they become hysterical because that's what's happening, actually. Let's just say it. That's true."
• On April 11, 2021, Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, posted on his own platform: “Now today the ADL is trying to cancel Tucker Carlson for daring to speak the truth about the reality of demographic replacement that is absolutely and unequivocally going on in The West. These are not ‘hateful’ statements, they objective facts that can no longer be ignored.”

Last Day of the Trip was a Beautiful Day in Paris

Jardin Luxembourg, the garden ringed by statues of every queen of France 

After two weeks of traveling across central Europe visiting four concentration camps, I arranged my trip so I would spend the last day in Paris. The day turned out even better than I could have hoped. 

First, I woke for breakfast at 9am then afterward went back to bed. I finally got up at noon and on the train to the area of Saint Michel, Luxembourg and the Pantheon. All my clothes, which isn’t much, were dirty, so I walked form the Seine in brilliant sun up the hill toward the Pantheon. I stopped on the way to eat Sushi then walked over to Boulevard Saint Michel. 

When I arrived in Paris two weeks earlier the five-floor bookstore Gibert was closed—I thought forever. 

Gibert librairie

But the doors were open and I went inside, to every floor. 

I bought a little book of Greek grammar and Leonard Cohen’s “Book of Mercy.”

I walked further up the hill and started washing my clothes. I went back to the laundromat where I met an Australian couple who were in France for the 24 Hours of Lemans. But this time I met no one. Only one other machine had clothes in it while I was there. With the clothes washing I walked further up the hill and had cappuccino at Columbus Café, opposite Jardin Luxembourg. 

Next I walked around the corner to Red Wheelbarrow bookstore and visited there. After folding my clothes, I walked around Luxembourg for an hour. 

Then I had an early dinner at Au Pere Louis, one of my favorite restaurants in Paris. I walked more and finally went back to the hotel. Following two weeks of shared seeing the worst of humanity, it was good to spend the last day in civilization at its best.

Meeting an American Author in a Paris Bookstore

 

Author, professor Nita Wiggins at 

The Red Wheelbarrow bookstore opposite Jardin Luxembourg in Paris.   

My first full day in Paris, I walked to Jardin Luxembourg to visit The Red Wheelbarrow bookstore.  I have visited the store several times since 2018 when Penelope bought the store and moved it to this lovely location near the Pantheon and the Sorbonne.  

Penelope, owner of The Red Wheelbarrow

When I arrived at the store it was not open. A woman was waiting outside and said the store would open soon in English that was very American.  Penelope arrived a few minutes later.  While we waited outside the store, Nita Wiggins and I began talking about The Red Wheelbarrow and the beautiful day in Paris.

As we talked I learned that Nita is a professor. She teaches journalism in Paris at l’Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme de Paris. she moved to Paris in 2009 to teach journalism and has lived here ever since.  

Before moving to Paris, she was a sports reporter for all of the major US networks. Her book: 

Civil Rights Baby: My Story of Race, Sports, and Breaking Barriers in American Journalism

was published in March 2019.  It is the story of her career as a sports reporter and all of the difficulties she faced in the very-white-male-dominated world of sports reporting.   

Nita and I talked about living in Paris, loving Paris, journalism on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and how badly American journalism failed in predicting the rise of Trump and the cult he created.  I am looking forward to reading the book on the plane back to America.  

For more about the book and the author, her web page is here.

The Movies in Paris

 

A year ago on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I drove southwest of Paris on a cold, cloudy day to visit the Circuit de Sarthe, the site of the annual 24 Hour Race at Lemans, France.  

In a delightful coincidence I had just seen the movie "Ford v Ferrari" ("Lemans 66" was the title outside America) in a Paris theater. It is a great movie that was nominated for Best Picture.

When I arrived at the track, I hoped to walk the 8-mile circuit, but found in another delightful surprise, that there was a 24-hour race nearing it's end and I could watch an amateur competition at Lemans. I visited the museum and saw many laps of the race.   

In another coincidence of timing the movie "Midway" debuted in theaters while I was on the trip.  I saw both movies in their original format with French subtitles.  With "Ford vs Ferrari" this gave me a chance for some French practice and some extra laughs with the translations of Carroll Shelby's Texan English.  

In the movie "Midway" the Japanese sailors spoke in their own language, sometimes in complex speeches. The subtitles were, of course, in French.  My French definitely got a workout trying to follow translated Japanese dialogue.    

It is strange to think how much the world has changed in the past 12 months.  No more movie theaters, the annual race at Lemans was delayed for months and who knows when I will travel across the ocean again.  

But with all that, the memories are wonderful. 

Old Age is a New Adventure

Two weeks ago, surgery restored my smashed left elbow to something like its previous shape. The next morning, after surgery, another doctor gave me some stunning news: I needed to start taking large doses of Vitamin D right away and when I get home, call the hospital and come back for a Dexascan.  The doctor said I had low bone density, a significant Vitamin D deficiency and said I should join an osteoporosis support group. 

Wow!!

I knew this day was coming. Someday my bones would be frail enough that it would be stupid to ride a bike.  I did not know the day would be so soon. 

The strange thing, from inside my mind, was my feelings of excitement—not loss or panic.  Since the early 90s when I became bike obsessed, every day, every trip, every vacation, and all future plans were built around riding.  I took two bikes to Iraq on deployment. I took a bike with me on more than 30 business trips in three years between 1998 and 2001. 

One of the first things I thought about was how different the world would look if the bike were not part of the trip. I have been to Paris two dozen times in the last two decades. I have never been to The Louvre.  Because visiting the premiere museum in Paris takes all day and when I am in Paris some part of every day, I ride with the racers at the daily training race at L’Hippodrome in Bois de Boulogne.  One way or another, The Louvre never happened.

I then imagined myself walking across every bridge from the Eiffel Tower to Ile de Cite because I would not feel the need to ride. 

As I healed from major injuries several times over the last 30 years, my focus always was getting back on the bike.  When I broke my neck, I spent 90 days in the neck and chest brace. On the 91^st, I rolled down the hill I crashed on.  Now, I was oddly delighted that I would not be focused on getting back on the bike. It was a relief.

I knew Old Age would impose limits on me, like not riding, but I expected the limits to feel like fasting or waiting in line—deprivation.  But against all my expectations, I feel excitement. I have a new frame to view the world.  I started thinking about moments over the last five years when I began to deal with the effects of change from aging and other causes.

If I had to date the beginning of Old Age, I would say it was July of 2015.  On June 30, 2015, I retired. I had worked summers and Saturdays and sometimes after school since I was 12. I had a full-time job from my 18^th birthday until the day I retired. I have not worked a day since.  I have not missed it.  In June of 2015, I went on my last Army training exercise and took the Army fitness test for the last time.  Soon after, I left the Army. With the rise of Trump and his popularity among soldiers, I was glad to be gone.  It was a big change to no longer be a worker or a soldier, but after a half-century of defining myself as both, I was neither and I was unexpectedly happy.

I started meditating. I started taking Yoga.  After years of resisting both, I was open to both and began practicing. I am currently not doing Yoga in part because of COVID-19 and now because of my injuries but have been meditating daily for years.

Also, in 2015, my workouts changed.  The swimming and running that carried me through an Ironman race in 2014 were history for me.  Both shoulders had torn ligaments. My left knee ached and would be replaced three years later.  No more Army fitness test meant no more pushups.  The bike was my only workout besides yoga. 

And coincident with my own advancing age, in 2016 America became senile. America elected a racist who wanted to make America white again.

Since 2017, much has changed in my thought and spiritual life because America is in rapid cognitive decline. More on that soon.

Evangelical Escapees Around the World

When I travel, one of the categories of people I meet are Evangelical Escapees. Sam fits in that category.  He grew up in central Ohio in a family that was in Church twice on Sunday, Wednesday, and his teens youth group on Friday put him in Church at least four days per week. Three times a year, the big Church had a weeklong salvation event. In the summer, the whole family traveled around the south. His father was teaching and preaching at Camp Meetings. 

Sam, of course, had no choice about attending any or all of these services. For him, childhood was managing boredom attending events he had no interest in.  He was interested in science. His dad was a high school principal for a day job, but Sam was walled off from advanced studies because he had so many commitments outside school. “I never had time to really do homework. I did okay in school, but I wasn’t like the kids who took advanced classes.”

Sam left home after high school and eventually became a professional mountain bike racer. He married a researcher with a PhD in bioinformatics who got a job at French pharmaceutical company. Sam opened a bike shop in Paris.  He has a clientele of amateur athletes and some professionals on the French national team. He is a perfectionist who does bike fitting for people who want top performance. 

Sam is in his early fifties, tall, thin and fit. He is a strong rider who is very much part of the cycling community in Paris.  He speaks French with an American accent. He has a strong voice and speaks slowly. When I have heard him speak to clients, I can understand him a lot better than the native French speakers he is interacting with.

Sam says his parents really lived the faith they proclaimed. His problem was with nearly everyone else in his Church life. He learned racial epithets at Church before he heard them in “the world.”  And in the kind of Church he grew up in, Creation Science, the arrogant lunacy of asserting the earth is 6,000 years old was the only science. 

Better than Brainwashing--a convoy leaving Camp Adder, Iraq.

Sam is very far from his childhood: physically, spiritually, culturally, but not as far as a soldier I served with in Iraq. David heard me arguing with some Creationists in the mess hall before we deployed. He came up to me later and asked, “Can you really be a believer and not believe all that [Creationist] shit?” He had been told the opposite all through his childhood. He enlisted because he wanted to get away from home and Church, but he could not to a secular college. So, he turned 18 and headed for Iraq.  War was better than brainwashing. And after deployment he went to college with the GI Bill. 

David went back to his childhood hometown after serving in the Army, but got the secular education he wanted. Sam keeps in touch with his family, but is happily staying quite far from home.