Gym

A few years ago, an American friend of mine started working out on a regular basis. The slim graduate student in French I had known was transforming into a young muscular lawyer. “You know” he said “there are two types of Americans, the big fat ones, and the big strong ones. I am trying the big strong type”. My friend is now a partner at his law firm, and past the years of hardship to climb his way up and settle the cutest American family I have ever met, he has turned into a fit, not big and not over-muscled male. I was thinking of him this morning when I decided to visit again-after three weeks of relinquishing fitness sluggishness-the gym at the top of the residence where I live. I do not work out for fun-I hate sports with very few exceptions-but I live in the US, and well, I have a gym two stories above my head: in Rome DC, do as the DC Romans. Also, I am very well aware I often eat the American way-on sweetened and fattened bread, sugared drinks and all sorts of bad things which would make me join type 1 American in my friend’s taxonomy if I did not pay attention. More than anything, I suffer from my load of back pains, like anybody in one’s mid 40’s who works mostly seated.  It has been years now that I have followed the advice another friend gave me: taking on regular light exercising greatly helped him with his pains in the back. Such is the case with me since I have comitted myself to a daily 5 minutes training. Going to the gym is just a fancy way to do my short morning routine. What I like the most is the strecthing part. I do it on the terrace-which overlooks the city in a spectacular urban view. When it is sunny and warm like today, it is the best thing ever. Sometimes though, it turns out pretty bad. Once, the management of the building had forgotten to unlock the door. You could exit to the roof, but not get back inside. This is how I happened to find myself locked out by a frisky late-winter day.

It gave me the opportunity to realize that I was able to open a lock with a key-I mean a key which does not correspond to the lock (which is an electronic one, with no key).

As they say, with sports you learn a lot more than what your body is about.

 

Tax Mail

April 15^th is the limit set by the IRS for tax returns and payments, a national ordeal that produces an endless stream of jokes, worries and grumbling—tax returns are unusually complicated in the US, and you cannot even file online with the US government, only private businesses offering for a fee the service. I usually return my taxes sufficiently in advance, but this time I was a bit in a rush. So I sent my paperwork on express mail at the local Post office. At the check-out I am asked the routine questions — “anything liquid or perishing?”

— I hope my taxes were perishing and liquid, unfortunately they seem to be solid as it gets.

 

France-America: convergent news

Living in another country means becoming acquainted with a different way to see the world. Different news, different ways of dealing with the news. However, in the globalized contemporary world (believe me, I am not very proud of this sentence, but it is a convenient shortcut) we find ourselves more and more often dealing with the same type of issues. I do not mean the news that draw world attention like walking on the moon, a world-level sports gathering, a shooting war in Israel, a G-something summit or a universal economic crisis. It has been a while since some events have hit the headlines all across the planet rather unanimously. I am thinking of those more local facts that we retrieve in different countries, presented and understood in different ways. In the US these days, the headlines are devoted to a piracy story: three bad African pirates have been taken down by American snipers and an American citizen has been saved. In the same time-frame, French have rescued French hostages, one of them, the father of the family on the sail boat and owner of the ship, being killed. The difference in the ways the operation has been handled in the two countries is striking. The French president put himself on the frontline, wanting to appear as the one making personally all decisions. In the US, the president, while making the decisions, kept the visibility of his role minimal and needed not to brag about his deeds — a decision which might have been wise on the French side if we consider the semi-disaster the operation turned out to be. While the politics have been more a testimony to the wisdom of the American presidency, the news coverage has wandered a lot more in the US than in France. Americans news have immediately mentioned the link with terrorism—an obsession inherited from the Bush era—even if the president insisted on the fact that pirates were not terrorists. French had more reservation and reported on the controversy about the use of military force to take over the ship instead of the more civilian corps of the gendarmerie nationale.

Convergence issues are even more striking when they deal with more daily facts of life. Behind the apparent similarities, differences are obvious. Let us take this menial fact of modern life: driving and speeding. In the US, speed cameras are just started to be used — in some place like Arizona they have been in use for two decades, but it was rather exceptional — while in France it has been a major tool in making French road safer since 2004. County Montgomery in Maryland has been the first local authority in Virginia—my state of residence these days—to introduce the device. The same concerns as in France arise, but we learn a lot about the differences between the countries. In the US, there is a speed limit excess margin of… 11mph (supposedly no margin in France); the ticket is… $40 (45€ and 1 point on the license in France); appeal to the court is possible, and the local judge holds a special session every month to deal with the tickets. Only part of the money goes to the local authority which decides on the implementation of the cameras, the purpose of which being to insure citizens that speed cameras are there to make roads safer, not the state wealthier.

These concerns are rather foreign to the French government which decides where to put the cameras, pocket the money and does not really grant appeal to the court for speed violations. 

 

I drove to Richmond

…to go out.

Saturday night non-fever.

 

Is voting against the US constitution?

Washington voting right act

Americans have a little moto on their car plates, as diverse as the country itself. When I travel in New England, I am always amused by the contrast between the bold “live free or die” from the State of New Hampshire and the gracious “vacation land” of Maine. Vermont is pure etymology: Vert Mont meaning in French “green mountain” the plates show “The green mountains state”. In Washington DC, the inspiration is all politics and revendication and we read on the cars of the capital city:  “Taxation without representation”. It is a protestation against the strange sitution of the District of Columbia,which, not being a state, has no proper representation at the house. Indeed, DC people have a delegate — Eleanor Holmes Norton. However, she has no right to vote but on a consultative basis. It is kind of token representation — while it is not token taxation, of course. For a country that is both the founding place of modern constitutional democracy and a democracy the history of which started with a rebellion against taxation and issues over representation at the British parliament, it seems weird, to say the least.

Not to mention that DC voters are in majority black, which reminds sore memories of the American history.

Fortunately enough, in a bid for coherence, the Obama administration favored the idea of a voting representation in the Congress for DC, and a bill passed the senate. But in a typical-Americana-style it was introduced along with a companion bill on guns which complicated the issue, which is still pending. The whole thing is obscure enough, and was made darker when constitutional issues interfered: some lawyers at the Justice department decided that the law granting DC voting representation would be unconstitutional. The Attorney General asked for a second opinion. This move, which  might have been expected to be understood as a common sensical one (since not having the right of vote is rather uncomprehensible,) is sometimes regarded as inconsiderate. The attorney general  appears to frame politically what should be pure law. To that extent, his decision to review the first legal opinion of his office, though perfectly legal, is compared to the advices requested from the Departement of justice by the Bush administration over the constitutionality of “harsh interrogation tactics”.

This strange parallel is a measure of the misunderstanding of the role the rule of law plays in democracy. That law, and moreover constitutional law, should be respected by law makers and leaders despite intricacies that are blatlantly against common sense is one thing. That trying to get a second opinion on granting suffrage should be compared to fitting the constitution into the right to torture people is obviously a very different one. Legal formalism might be equal in both cases, the sense of law is obviously radically different.

 

Doodle advertises France

Google is far more than a search engine. It is a whole community of tools and activities-whether one likes or not the mingling of good intentions, technology and business is certainly a legitimate question to raise. As for me, I do not object. Business is business, no illusion about it, but if along the way some good things happen, all the best for the world!

Precisely, the world is the topic of the 4^th Doodle contest for kids. Being an old academic removed from the vibes of the techno planet, I have not fully grasped the Doodle contest concept. Enlightened readers will be welcomed to post some insights. From what I understand, it is a contest of drawing the purpose of which is to ornate at some point the Google logo. It targets kids and schools (a shrewd way, critiques will say, to seduce future consumers at a young age). Anyway, the topic for the ongoing contest (until March 17, 2009) is “What I Wish for the World”. A little descriptive offers some orientation… What google wishes for the world is

… we use plants for electricity

… we make college free for everyone

… we give health insurance to all who need it

… we connect everyone by cell phone or computer

Reading this for the first time, I laughed and said to my friend: “well, Google wished planet is obviously France”. University costs 150€ per year (plus, if you pay less than 600€, you get full health care), and we have a universal health insurance system. About 80% of French people have a cell phone, more than half of the families have at least a computer and all the schools of the country are connected to the Internet (OK, the quality of the connection is not guaranteed). So Google planet is France.”

- Wait a minute: how do you use plants for electricity?

- 80% of French electricity comes indeed from Nuclear plants.”

 

Women border’s security and academic life in the morning

Since I have introduced the world to my qualms about waking up early in the morning, I might as well underline that these days, the fatalistic “sixam” is the time when I get to my work and review the chapters of my next book, a collection that I am editing with my friend Taina Tuhkunen—for once in this blog, a name is in full letters, since being an author (and a very commendable one) is no private information. The book itself is about women’s political representations, from the right to vote to the numerous images and imaginary prejudices that still weigh on them and for the longest time have justified their exclusion from the public sphere. The book itself is the outcome of an international symposium held two year ago at my university commemorating the 100^th anniversary of women’s right to vote in Europe—and as a matter of fact, in the world: in 1906, for the first time in the history of humanity, women were recognized full suffrage rights in Finland.

It is also exams period, and I am busy correcting papers and hearing student’s oral exams. On top of this, I am also preparing to depart to the USA, where I will spend the spring semester, as a Fulbright scholar in Georgetown University. Too many things at the same time. Hence “sixam”.

Hence also a question about what my academic life is about. My research in the USA deals with borders’ security. Can I justify the diversity of academic interests ranging from gender studies to security studies? The question is often asked to me. I think that, fundamentally I have not one, but three, answers to offer. The first is the less politically correct in a world of academic specialization, but it is as simple as that: I have become an academic because I am a curious mind and my attention is drawn by very diverse topics. Renouncing that would be renouncing what made me want to become a scholar, and still makes me believe in what I do. Academic stuff is about intelligence, after all (too sad it is often forgotten). Being intelligent is being opened to the diversity of the world, and that is it. The second answer is that I have a continuing interest for one interrogation, one problem: the issue of liberty. Turning down foreigners at the border, expelling them, developing checks on citizens, as well as enslaving and brutalizing or abusing women (or in other works that I have completed, freely communicating, developing the free market etc.) is about what we consider to be free, and the legitimate concern for freedom. My third answer is of the same kind, though regarding less the continuity in the topics I choose, than the way I deal with them. I am attracted in researches that imply seeing a question under a new light. It has been a major shift of paradigm in gender studies when they switched from taking the case of women as a topic, to considering it as a way to review any topic—as a new way of looking at things, rather than a new thing to study. The same is true of my research about borders: what is a border, what are the values conveyed in practices that seem to be only a matter of bureaucracy and technology? Security seems as a routine thing as the domination over women has long been and often still is. Understanding how these routines make sense both satisfies my curious mind and my sense of liberty.

 

Visa to America

SIXAM, I am used to saying, is not an hour. It is a five letters word,  the French equivalent of four letters words in English. 5:15 leaves me speechless. That was the time when my alarm went off because I had an appointment with the American consulate to establish my visa to the US at 7:30. I do not complain, though, except for the first moments in the morning which are really hard on me. I am not bad at waking up, but I am by no way an early bird. The rest is pretty cool, though. No time to tidy the kitchen after a quick breakfast, no time to think about anything but catching one’s train, and once in the train, a perfectly calm, empty ambience. A simple life. the book I have taken with me is pretty interesting—I am reading Mc Culloch’s 1776. That is appropriate for a visit on the US territory after all. I’ll be finished with 1776 on my way back.

No problem with the train either—it is before rush hours when delays are to be expected. The US consulate is located in the center of Paris, at the very beginning of the Champs élysées and although it is far from being the most spectacular part of the avenue, it is still a nice walk off the station, across one of the most spectacular plazas of the city. In the day, it is crowded with cars, but Paris is a late city. At 7 AM, when I reach the capital, traffic jams thicken in the suburbs, but the streets of Paris are still rather empty. The night is cold and deep, the surroundings are blurred, sunk in the darkness. I feel the city at my hand, nearly at my convenience, protected by the Eiffel tower that makes a long spot of light on my left. When I reach the consulate, a light snow is falling down. It is rare event here, and I appreciate it. I go through the routine security checks, and in less than an hour and a half my visa is adjudicated. I do not know if it is because I have a department of state grant or because they just know me by heart after my numerous visits to the US, or just because it is early in the morning on the first day after vacations, but it is particularly fast. The Vice-Consul who conducts my interview (now compulsory in order to obtain an American visas) speaks perfect French and finds it ironic that I am applying for a visa to go and study… the visa system in the US (Okay, the title of the research is some grand thing about border’s security, but the bulk of it is the control of foreigners, which includes visas).

When I exit the consulate, I am ecstatic: Paris is covered with snow. I walk to WHSmith, mostly to browse new paperback stuff, and buy some season’s greetings cards. Then, I do what I always do after a session at the consulate: I check Angelina—this nice restaurant and salon de thé—and order a hot, dark, thick chocolate along with a pain au chocolat (chocolate croissant). We are only a bunch of people there—four Japanese tourists staying in a nearby hotel and me. It is before 9AM, and the half inch of snow that has powered the city is probably enough to block the local traffic and to discourage people from getting their breakfast outside. I see through the window of Angelina people on the avenue wrapped in their winter clothes walking briskly to warm up. The snow is still falling. I decide to walk back to my train station and cross the Tuileries garden, which is immaculately white. The few people who are there with me are busy taking pictures with professional cameras. I regret not to have brought my cell phone because of the Consulate security restrictions: I would have loved to bring back photos. The Tuileries park is located on the Seine Right bank. It is connected to the left bank where my station is by a new —a couple of years old, I mean—pedestrian bridge. From there, I look over the river. The boats seem to dance slowly with the flakes. Walking is delicious. I am so ravished that I decide to visit the Musée d’Orsay, the 19^th century Museum of Paris (my master and colleague Alfred Grosser once corrected me: “the French 19^th century Museum of Paris). Unfortunately, it is Monday and it is closed. Just across the street is another museum, the museum of the Légion d’honneur—not the most exciting one, but I realize I have never checked it, so I could have a try. But it is nearly always closed, especially on Mondays…

 

Fun Photos

I have an immoderate love for digitalization. I have no nostalgia from the old days of vinyl recording that seems to have invaded the planet. I remember with emotion the first CD I ever played, it was magic. I remember my $150 CD reader integrated boombox bought at Best Buy twenty years ago (back to my country, I had a nasty explanation with the French customs over the boombox, because back then, it was major smuggling to import high tech—the fact was that it was not smuggling because I had stayed over than six months in the US—Na! as kids say in French, when they want to challenge somebody). I remember that the first CD I bought and listened to on my boombox was U2 Rattle and hum (the second one was Madonna’s Like a prayer).

I also find digital pictures wonderful, and I am more than inclined to dispatch mine all over the planet (emails to friends, facebook, my Website… and this blog). The first time I had a cell phone with a camera I found it perfectly useless—not the telephone, the camera. I had picked the GSM because it was a 3-band that I could use it in the US (Okay, I then learned that I needed a quadband in Vermont where I mostly stay because they a sort of weird system of their own over there); as a bonus I got an integrated 1.3 Mp camera. I soon realized that I was using this feature sometimes more than the cell phone itself. I used it for the silly pictures we all take of passing moment (I even shot pictures of department meetings, but it was just to tease my colleagues); but I also used it to shoot pictures I would never have shot otherwise: my daily walks in Paris, the places I visited without a camera, and even, once two youngsters who saw me shooting pictures of Bordeaux, and asked me to take a picture of them, which I immediately shared with a Bluetooth connection.

I liked it all. And now, I have a Sony quadband cell phone with a 2.2 Mp camera that is supposed to also benefit from an autofocus (that, I doubt finally).

Over the years, I have shot, mostly with these cell phones, sometimes with cameras, funny little things. This is a selection.

Sorry! Ask a political scientist to fill the shelves

My favourite: applies to democracy and not only to books most of the time.

Yes, there is a long way to environment friendly behaviours. This was shot in Paris.

English lucidity, I makes me think of this movie by Lubitsch where you have a sign on a French boutique: “Se habla español, English spoken, American understood”—see a little anecdote on this on Google Book.

In a closed city, books readers are open

Boston: this encapsulates what I think of this mythical city, that has been for the longest time my favourite in the US: opened, closed…

 

The day of the Year

I like the French expression “le jour de l’an”—literally: “the day of the year”. So, French has an expression where English has a periphrasis (the New year’s day), with a linguistic precision: there are two words for “year”. “Année” means—if I wrote like Heidegger—the year-as-being-a-year-in-its-duration, the year as a year projected in time, the dasein of the year. While “an” simply means “year”, as in: “I’m forty-four years old” (j’ai quarante-quatre ans). What we call the “the day of the year” is actually the first day of the year (in the sense of “année”—the first day of this duration that the year will be). Of course, it probably comes from the fact that at a certain point, we just dropped the “new” in “new year’s day” which became “year’s day” —or, as I translated it, the “day of the year”. Whatever the story and the etymology are, it still rings nicely, and I find it a charming expression every time I think of it. It feels as if only the waking of the twelve next months made sense the rest of the 364 or 365 remaining days just being a follow-up. One day makes it for the whole year in a way. Of course, nobody thinks that way; no French speaker ever pays attention that it is somewhat strange to have a special expression for the first day of the year, and two words to mean “a year”. We just say it. Until some academic takes note of it, thinks it special and meaningful and pretends that every language has its own metaphysics. As for me, mingling up with the “day of the year” the tradition of season greetings (that starts in January for French people) I simply wish the world that every day is the day of the year.