Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Passage du Grand Cerf: "Passages" in Paris are Small Malls with Small Stores Between Large Buildings


The long hallway and skylight in Passage du Grand Cerf.

In Paris, especially in the area of north of the Louvre toward Montmarte, are more than a dozen shopping areas called Passages. They are actually passages between buildings, sometimes straight, sometimes turning corners.  Some of Passages have high ceilings and skylights, some have ceilings no more than the height of a storefront.  

Small restaurants and food stands are in most of the Passages.  The typical business is a boutique selling clothes or shoes or jewelry or crafts.  

Here are the businesses I saw in Passage du Grand Cerf.




















 


"Jewish Politics" by Hannah Arendt. Published in 1942. So Relevant Now.

 

Hannah Arendt

In 1942 Hannah Arendt, philosopher, historian and refugee of Nazi Germany wrote the following essay.  As I read it, I felt myself sitting up straighter to pay better attention to what Arendt was saying about the Jewish people in the midst of World War II and why we need democracy and now always.  

I love Hannah Arendt's writing and thought.  This essay is among the best 900 words in all the millions of words she wrote.

Jewish Politics 

If the horrible catastrophe of European Jewry and the difficult, sad struggle to form a Jewish army and to gain recognition of the Jews as an ally of the United Nations result in our finally realizing that despite our millionaires and philanthropists we Jews are among the oppressed peoples of this earth, and that our Rothschilds have a better chance of becoming beggars or peddlers than our beggars and peddlers of becoming Rothschilds-if in other words this war politicizes us and pounds it into our heads that the struggle for freedom is tantamount to the struggle for existence, then and only then will our grandchildren be able to remember and mourn the dead and to live without shame. 

Those peoples who do not make history, but simply suffer it, tend to see themselves as the victims of meaningless, overpowering, inhuman events, tend to lay their hands in their laps and wait for miracles that never happen. If in the course of this war we do not awaken from this apathy, there will be no place for us in tomorrow's world-perhaps our enemies will not have succeeded in annihilating us totally, but those of us who are left will be little more than living corpses. 

The only political ideals an oppressed people can have are freedom and justice. Democracy can be their only form of organization. One of the most serious impediments to Jewish-and not just Jewish-politics is the fact that in our current intellectual world those ideals and that form of organization have been corrupted and dragged through the mud by an uprooted bohemianism. For almost fifty years now one generation after the next has declared their disdain for "abstract" ideas and their admiration for bestiality. Freedom and justice are considered concepts for feeble old men. The French Revolution's egalite, liberte, and fraternite are taken as signs of impotence, of an anemic will to power, and at best a pretext for better deals to be made. The so-called young generation--which ranges in age from twenty to seventy--demands cunning of their politicians but not character, opportunism but not principles, propaganda but not policies. It is a generation that has fallen into the habit of constructing its weltanschauung out of a vague trust in great men, out of blood and soil and horoscopes. The politics that grows out of this mentality is called realpolitik. Its central figures are the businessman who winds up being a politician convinced that politics is just a huge, oversized business deal with huge, oversized wins and losses, and the gangster who declares, "When I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver." Once "abstract" ideas had been replaced by "concrete" stock market speculation, it was easy for abstract justice to give way before concrete revolvers. What looked like a rebellion against all moral values has led to a kind of collective idiocy: anyone who can see farther than the tip of his own nose is said to live in a fantasy world. What looked like a rebellion against intellect has led to organized turpitude-might makes right. 

Disdain for democracy and the worship of dictatorial forms of organization are especially fatal for small, oppressed peoples, who depend on the firm commitment of each individual. They least of all can forgo a democratic frame of mind, by which, as Clemenceau put it during the Dreyfus affair, the affairs of each individual are the affairs of all. In a dictatorship the individual has no political meaning-no matter how many of them wear uniforms because the individual no longer has any sense of responsibility for anything beyond staying alive himself. Once the order from "higher up" is given, any number of SA men marching in ranks can be shot on the spot without bringing the parade to a halt. Each man is ready and willing to step over the corpse of his neighbor and march on. And once the businessman's opportunism has suffocated peoples and nations by atomizing them in a politics of cliques and clans, despotism takes this atomization to its logical conclusion, until finally sons denounce their own fathers, neighbors and friends denounce one another, for the sake of their careers or personal security. 

Almost across the board, Jewish politics, to the extent that it exists at all, is run by people who have likewise grown up-without ever growing powerful!-worshipping power and opportunistic success. Their abhorrence for principles, their fear of betting on the wrong horse, their admiration of those who hold power on this earth, and their reluctance to mobilize the energies of their own people have cost us the deployment of a Jewish army. In the midst of the monstrous turmoil the world now finds itself in, those who are unwilling to take any risks are certain to lose everything. The time for compromises is past. Those who think they can live on their knees will learn that it is better to live and die standing up. We do not need any opportunistic practitioners of realpolitik, but we certainly do not need any "Fuhrers" either. The trouble is, first, that a great many organizations and bureaucracies are working to prevent radical democrats from speaking to our people; and second, that our people-those who are not yet behind barbed wire-are so demoralized by having been ruled by philanthropists for 150 years that they find it very difficult to begin to relearn the language of freedom and justice.

From the book The Jewish Writings, pp 241-3

Monday, November 7, 2022

The Arts Tunnel--Jardin Tuilleries, Paris

 


Several years ago, Paris closed a tunnel for cars that is more than a mile long on the north bank of the Seine. The tunnel runs between Pont Neuf and Jardin Tuilleries. The city government opened the tunnel 21 July of this year to bicycle and pedestrian traffic. 


Before the tunnel opened artists were given forty-meter long stretches of concrete wall four meters high to paint--whatever. Street artists were also given forty-meter wall sections for their art. 


The result is hundreds of strange and beautiful and vivid works of art lining walls. My late afternoon walk through the tunnel was noisier than I expected because nearly all of the bicycles going though the tunnel were commuters on electric bikes. I counted five pedal bikes in a half hour.  Bikes were also far more numerous than pedestrians. 

Jardin Tuilerries  entrance at the west end of the tunnel

The ends of the tunnel are beautiful parts of the Paris landscape. Musee D'Orsay is on the south side of river opposite the Jardin Tuilleries entrance. Ile de Cite and Pont Neuf are at the east end of the tunnel. 

Pont Neuf at the east end of the tunnel

























 


Saturday, November 5, 2022

Visiting the Castles of Saint Louis (a tarnished saint) East and West of Paris

 

The tower of Chateau de Vincennes

Today I was in small cities with large castles east and west of Paris.  Ten kilometers to the east is Chateau de Vincennes. Twenty kilometers to the west of the City of Light  is Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.  

 

Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye 

Each of these castles was built or expanded during the life time of King Louis IX in the 13th Century.   

Saint Louis, King Louis IX, of France

Le Chateau de Vincennes covers several acres of walled grounds. A beautiful church is at the center of of the rectangular walled area opposite the main tower. 



The castle grounds include the palace of Anne of Austria who was Queen of France from 1615 to 1643.  She was married to Louis XIII. Her name is known to people who know little of France and its rulers because she is part of story of The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) by Alexandre Dumas.  

Another resident of the castle, although not happy to be there, was the Maquis de Sade. He was imprisoned in the tower for seven years from 1777 to 1784. He would spend the rest of his life in various prisons and insane asylums until his death in 1814.

After visiting Vincennes, I went across Paris to the west end of the RER A train line to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.  I wanted to walk to the far end of the royal garden next to the castle where there is a circle of trees. 

Two views of the circle of trees

A corner of the royal garden

Two views of the 2-km walkway above the Seine

The view back to Paris from the wall on the east side of the royal garden

------
Back to Saint Louis. He is the only French monarch to be made a saint. Louis IX ruled from 1226-70. Along with the Christian character of his reign, he robbed and persecuted Jews after he decided usury was wrong--the Jews suffering for a sin he permitted, then changed his mind about. He set up a show trial called the Disputation of Paris in which four rabbis defended the Talmud. They lost. Louis IX caused 24 wagonloads of Jewish holy books and other writings to be burned in Paris in 1242. This was long before printing, so all of the books were hand copied.  

Louis IX continued his persecution of Jews throughout his life. He is certainly not unique, or even unusual, as a king persecuting Jews, but sainthood makes him a persecutor and burner of holy books with a halo.

And speaking of sainthood, the beatification of Pope Pius XII is still on hold after the Vatican opened his archives in 2020. The complicity of Pius XII with the Nazis and his refusal to condemn the Holocaust during the entirety of World War II, make put him in the top ranks of Jew Haters. This book makes the evil of Pius XII very clear,

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Essential Elements: Atoms, Quarks and the Periodic Table by Matt Tweed, Book 35 of 2022

 


This little book of chemical facts covers all of the elements and major concepts of chemistry with one page of text and one page of drawings per concept.  

And yet, it is good review of chemistry and dense with basic facts.  Matt Tweed covers bonding in a page: covalent bonds, metallic bonds, ionic bonds and hydrogen bonds all in 200 words and six drawings. 

Hydrogen and Helium get a page all to themselves; they are the most abundant elements in the universe.  The twenty elements of the p-block of the periodic table, like the periodic table itself, are covered in just a page.  The twenty elements of p-block include carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, all of the halogens, all of the semi-conductors, as well as tin, lead and aluminum.  The main elements of life and the digital world are all in this group.

At the end of the book, we get all the forces of the universe, from gravity to the glue holding the nucleus together.  A survey of quarks, baryons, mesons and the weird components of the the nucleus, as well as theories of everything. 

A fun review of chemistry.



First 34 books of 2022:

Les horloges marines de M. Berthoud 

The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Cochrane by David Cordingly 

QED by Richard Feynman

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough


The Life of the Mind
 by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen



Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Les horloges marines de M. Berthoud. Book 34 of 2022 (Clocks for sea navigation)

 

I picked this book up in the gift shop in the Museum of Arts and Technology in Paris.  It is a biography of Ferdinand Berthoud, the leading designer and maker of clocks for ships in the second half of the 18th century. 

Most ships had accurate techniques for establishing latitude, their position north and south. But east and west position could only be determined with accurate clocks on a voyage that began at a known position. Berthoud made this possible with clocks that would keep time nearly perfectly for weeks and even months. 

He lived a long life that saw him become the marine clock maker of the King of France, survive the Revolution, and be honored for his service by the Emperor Bonparte before his life ended at the age of 80.   

The book is written in middle school French. I had to struggle with many words in the vocabulary of navigation and clock making, but I learned a lot about navigation. Accurate clocks were the only way a ship could be sure of its longitude when sailing across open ocean.  




First 33 books of 2022:

The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Cochrane by David Cordingly 

QED by Richard Feynman

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough


The Life of the Mind
 by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen



Monday, October 24, 2022

The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams, Book 33 of 2022


I read this little book on the train traveling back and forth to Philadelphia.  A poem or two or three at time. My favorite poetic forms are the epic and the sonnet and these poems are in many other forms. I liked some more than others. I was glad to share the beauty and craft and creativity of this little volume of 36 poems.  

I bought the book at The Red Wheelbarrow bookstore in Paris, a lovely little store opposite Jardin Luxembourg.

Brevity defines both the volume and its contents.  The first poem:

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which 
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

The last poem:

The Locust Tree in Flower

Among
of
green

stiff
old
bright

broken 
branch
come

white 
sweet
May

again

And my favorite:

The Term

A rumpled sheet 
of brown paper
about the length

and apparent bulk
of a man was
rolling with the

wind slowly over
and over in
The street as

a car drove down 
upon it and
crushed it to

the ground. Unlike
a man it rose
agin rolling

with the wind over
and over to be as
it was before. 

------

First 32 books of 2022:

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Cochrane by David Cordingly 

QED by Richard Feynman

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough


The Life of the Mind
 by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen




Sunday, October 16, 2022

Lunch with Bill Nye the Science Guy: We Talked About Bicycles


In 2004 Bill Nye, the Science Guy, spent an entire day at the museum and library where I worked until I retired: The Science History Institute in Philadelphia. He was filming part of an episode for his (then) new series "The 100 Greatest Discoveries in Science."

The founder of SHI, Arnold Thackray, spoke about the discovery of atoms, the benzene ring and oxygen for the episode on chemistry. 

In the middle of filming we took a lunch break. Nye had a film crew from the Science Channel and several staff members of SHI were helping with filming.  When we had our box lunches, Nye suggested he and I sit at the end of the table.  He is a bicyclist and I told him I had just bought a Trek Madone road bike.  

Nye had been thinking about getting a new carbon bike, so he asked me dozens of questions about the frame, the drive train, the wheels, tires, every part of the bike.  Nye is a nerd down to his bike socks. He really wanted to know every detail about the bike.  When I told him I raced, he wanted to know about that too. 

After we were finished filming, Nye came back to the atrium at the center of the building on the third floor. It has a skylight its entire length four floors up.  Nye told us we should install a sundial at the center of the atrium.  He then talked about how his father was a Prisoner of War in the Pacific in World War II. He maintained his sanity by making sundials in the POW camp.  

Some media stars play a role on camera and are someone else when the lights go off. Bill Nye is a science guy all the time.  It was a delight to spend the day with him--and very tiring. 

 

Monday, October 10, 2022

50th High School Reunion--The Kinder, Gentler Reunion

SHS Class of 71

This past weekend on Saturday night I drove to my 50th High School Reunion. The Stoneham (Massachusetts) High School Class of 1971 met for dinner at Bear Hill Country Club on the north end of our little town.

Bear Hill Golf Club

Since 1971, I have attended four reunions:  the 10th, the 30th and the 40th before the current reunion. Just over fifty of our class of 364 attended this half-century gathering.  Several more wanted to attend by life got in the way.  

The reunion committee: Elaine, Niccie, Bill and Patricia

If my memories are reliable, this reunion was the most congenial I have been to. At all of the previous reunions nearly all of us were working, our kids were still at home, and we were still working out our place in the world.  At this reunion, I spoke with many people who seemed at peace with life--or at least more at peace than I remember.

Speaking of remembering, I introduced myself to about twenty people. Some had not been to previous reunions--or not the the reunions I attended.  Some people were instantly recognizable, but others I could not place.  

I had more trouble recognizing men than women. Our senior year, a lot of boys had long hair, some had shoulder-length hair.  Fifty years later, the men most difficult for me to recognize had the least hair--or no hair.  

Many of my classmates were recently retired. Some missed their jobs, most were happy to be retired.  

At the end of the evening several people were talking about a 55th reunion in four years--since the 50th was delayed a year by COVID.  If that 55th reunion or the 60th happens, I will be happy to go. 


No Canvassers for Trump

  At all the houses I canvassed, I saw one piece of Trump literature Several times when I canvassed on weekends, I ran into other canvassers...