The D’Orsay is a lovely distraction, and not just for the works of art, but also for the building itself.

And, yes, we will have to change our culture– from one that knows the cost of everything, but the value of little… to its converse– before we can finally realize a similar philosophy toward health care.

Spread sheets be damned!

Check out Bill Moyers’ interview with, Wendell Potter, a former Cigna Exec… and try to imagine the savings involved in just not having a billing department!

Isn’t part of the French grid that the Muslims are isolated in shitty neighborhoods outside the cities? But they are equal opportunity in their biases: anti-semitism is rampant there as well. Pretty scenery though.

My favorite part of the D’Orsay is room 44 with Daumier’s political figurines. I’ve been taking my kids to Paris every year since they were 6 (they’re 16 and 14 now) and they still insist on spending at least half a day in the D’Orsay, always something new to see.

We stay in the 17th, Clichy, which has a large north African population but it definitely is not a shitty neighborhood, altho Saint-Denis can be pretty rough.

I was ready to go. They gave me a printout explaining the symptoms of concussion, and I asked about the bill.

Zero. The doctor seemed a bit nonplussed by the question, and reminded me that in his country health care is a right. I admit it was quite a relief, as I had been trying to work out an estimate of what it would have cost me in the US.

masaccio !!
What a great example of what the people of Our country want!! Public Health Care without all kinds of co-pay and deductibles, just a monthly payment based or your ability to pay!! Gee what a novel thought! To freaking bad if it puts the rich insurance companies out of business! It is the law of natural selection that they become extinct! Beside think about how much better American businesses would compete in the World market place if they weren’t saddled with providing health care for their workers. The Health Care Industry has sucked enough life out of Our economy as it is, I wonder how many of their CEO’s became filthy rich at our collective expense. And it would reduce the bankruptcy rates for the middle class by how much?? Over 70% of personal bankruptcies are caused by trumatic helth care costs.

There is no doubt there are problems in France, and more than you mention. Arab and other immigrants tend to live in the banlieus, but there is also a concentration of them in the 10th Arr. and in the area around St. Denis. Other areas have immigrant populations, like the 20th Arr., just north of Pere Lachaise, where there is a large number of people from Southeast Asia.

The country has a long history of difficulty in dealing with immigrants. I have high hopes for the next generation of immigrants, you see them marching with the other kids all over, making notes on the pictures at the D’Orsay, playing together at the parks, and hopefully turning into the irritating and lovable people you meet all over the country.

masaccio, you always bring up info of tremendous interest to me.
Yes, the French, because of several aspects that I’m aware of, are far beyond us in terms of urban planning.

One of the things that we don’t have in the US, but may be learning because of easier travel, is the ‘Alice Waters initiated organic foods movement’, Whole Foods, which is finally translating into rapidly growing segments of the grocery sales in the U.S. What I admire about the French is their sense of ‘terroir’; where food comes from matters.

My rough, (very rough) translation is something along the lines of ‘the good earth’; you get a wine from a south facing slope (’cote’) in Beaune and the very dirt that it grows in is different from the soils in the Loire. And the French make more connection, IMHO, between the soils and specific locale of where (and how) food is grown than we do in the U.S.

This sense of the ’soil’ or the ‘terre’ or the ‘earth’ being unique to each place, being able to grow THIS type of grape or THAT type of grass for goats to eat (then milked for cheeses) is a far richer **experience** than in the U.S.

We have Washington and California wines, but here we irrigate our grapes. A Frenchman once fairly fainted in horror when I brought up that point ;-))

We want a kind of ’standardized’ flavor; part of the fun of the French concept is to really pay attention to the weather, pay attention to ‘the earth,’ or ‘the land’, or whatever you care to call it.

I suspect that when you understand that the soils in which your food is grown then translates to the health of your own bones, skin, and other tissues, you treat it a bit better.

Here, we’re too much about booms and busts.
And having spent far too much time trying to save farmland in my little region, I can definitely attest that we’re incredibly short-sighted. We also have the very reactionary, intolerant ‘property rights’ movement in my region — but I swear that some of those groups are almost certainly funded by large developers who use that libertarian attitude as a front.

Must go, in order to be back for the Book Salon later today.
Nomi Prins is hosting, and if you’ve never read her “Other People’s Money“, take 2 aspirin and start it as soon as you can 8-0

That is a great part of town. We stayed in the 18th on Rue Caulaincourt, near Sacre Coeur, this time.

Good points. One of the lovely places in France is the Dordogne valley. When you look over the area outside the cave called the Font de Gaume, near Les Eyzies de Tayac, you see an area with wild herbs, wild asparagus, walnut trees, and a river that once must have brimmed with fish, and you realize that the Magdalenian people who lived there, doubtless the ancestors of the French, understood good living and food. And art. Click on the link above and see for yourself.

Yesterday all the travel shows were in France….. many of the places that Elmore and I went to last summer. The French grow up with art and history, does not matter where in the country, centuries of construction from Roman aqueducts to 1800 rebuild of Paris.

History is preserved, the walled city at San Malo was heavily destroyed during the bombings in WWII. They rebuilt it, I didn’t even know until I started reading the history. They didn’t build modern, no they attempted to replicate what was built centuries ago.

We decided that we would not spend a lot of time at museums but did go to the Rodan museum.

Think about it….. the French grow up surrounded by history, art and universal health care. When you have the foundation of life – good food, wine and never having to worry about paying for your basic right – medical services.

What is that song……. wind beneath my wings……. that is what the French health care system is…….. …if Americans had that “wind” they we can devote our time for all the other things that make us fly…..

How very true Katy. How you feeling today Katy? Hope you are having one of your better days (:>))

Bette Midler

Ohhhh, oh, oh, oh, ohhh.
It must have been cold there in my shadow,
to never have sunlight on your face.
You were content to let me shine, that’s your way.
You always walked a step behind.

So I was the one with all the glory,
while you were the one with all the strain.
A beautiful face without a name for so long.
A beautiful smile to hide the pain.

Did you ever know that you’re my hero,
and everything I would like to be?
I can fly higher than an eagle,
for you are the wind beneath my wings.

It might have appeared to go unnoticed,
but I’ve got it all here in my heart.
I want you to know I know the truth, of course I know it.
I would be nothing without you.

Did you ever know that you’re my hero?
You’re everything I wish I could be.
I could fly higher than an eagle,
for you are the wind beneath my wings.

Did I ever tell you you’re my hero?
You’re everything, everything I wish I could be.
Oh, and I, I could fly higher than an eagle,
for you are the wind beneath my wings,
’cause you are the wind beneath my wings.

Oh, the wind beneath my wings.
You, you, you, you are the wind beneath my wings.
Fly, fly, fly away. You let me fly so high.
Oh, you, you, you, the wind beneath my wings.
Oh, you, you, you, the wind beneath my wings.

Fly, fly, fly high against the sky,
so high I almost touch the sky.
Thank you, thank you,
thank God for you, the wind beneath my wings.

Part of my dissertation covered the culture and written work surrounding the predecessors to Madame De Loynes’ salon (including Gautier, Dumas, Saint-Beuve, and others mentioned in the history on her).

Her crowd–particularly Gautier–were actually really wary of the new readers of newspapers and the novals they were reading–notably Dumas pere’s work. (Gautier had the role of a Dana Milbank, whose work was not much different from bloggers, but who loved to call them barbarians in an effort to protect his turf.) And the reference to WHERE Saint-Beuve was writing was sort of the opposite of noting, to Dan Froomkin today, that you read everything he wrote in the WaPo. The newspapers all had their culture and the Constitutionnel–as the name suggests–was one of the more open papers (like the HuffPo today). FWIW, Saint-Beuve led the efforts to tax the newer newspaper production, believing that they (and the increasing participation of the lower middle class in political debates) had cause 1848.

In other words, it was a world that wasn’t entirely different from our world today, in which newer participants are being branded as heathens by the elite.

Live

Lovely… thanks, masaccio.
Glad to know that you are getting away from your work for a bit — I hope that at some point you are able to take in an opera ;-))

(Will you make it to the Opera Bastille…?)

In other words, it was a world that wasn’t entirely different from our world today, in which newer participants are being branded as heathens by the elite.

Ding.

That picture is so cool, she looks sharp and edgy. I never expected that she was a Royalist and and Anti-Dreyfusard.

Actually we are back, and did see an opera, Le Roi Roger, at the Bastille. It was a musical treat, but the production was not one of their better efforts, confusing and weird in a bad way.

FWIW, Saint-Beuve led the efforts to tax the newer newspaper production, believing that they (and the increasing participation of the lower middle class in political debates) had cause 1848.

It’s always intriguing to me that at this very period – the rise of Industry, post-Revolution, just prior to Lincoln’s US Presidency – the region where I live was just wild; a raucus blend of various tribes of Native Americans, fur traders, ships coming to the Washington coast for timber, and in Paris and London, salons, elegant carriages, and velvet gowns.

Now, it’s about 12 hours by jet.
(Because of Boeing, she snarks… )

How very odd the opera sounds; glad that you were able to see one, however.

My mother once entertained my family with her description of a Polish Opera troupe that she’s seen in Paris, perhaps early 1990s. “They just stood there. And did n-o-t-h-i-n-g!“, she exclaimed.

Then she kind of mused that although she’d always loved the music, she’d forgotten that her earliest opera viewing had been of ’singers, just standing there on the stage like a group of statues!’

It led to an engaging conversation about how, as an art form, opera had changed so much within a pretty short time span — the newer designs of opera stages, and lighting, and costumes, made for so much livlier productions. My parents went to the Seattle Opera every year for over 30 years, and arrived in town during the period when Speight Jenkins (sp?) really revolutionized the form here.

Seattle Opera now performs at the McCaw Center.
One more advantage of cell phones: a better opera house.

So there’s your Puget Sound trivia for today.

Sounds like you saw some ‘experimental’ opera; but at least they moved!

Today I am doing ok….. need to get up and get something done today…. watch too much TV….. of course it will hit 112 degrees today!

The one lesson that you learn in France is that the food is fresh….so fresh that it was in the ground or the sea yesterday and cooked today. Elmore fought eating peas while growing up….. I witnessed him eating them twice in France …… those tiny french peas….. Never in the 14 days we were there did we find a “bad” meal, even buying picnic food at the rest stops on the autoroute. Fresh baguette, wonderful cheeses, salami and fresh fruit that was actually fresh with chin dribble peaches….

Couple that will preventive care since birth…. no wonder the French are not battling chronic disease at the levels of Americans. Americans pay over twice in health care than the French. They are number 1 in all the outcomes….

My question to the repugs is …..Are you willing to settle for #37th in infant mortality ? How about life expectancy dropping a year, yearly.

Not so very different than ours today either in that the capitalist system was getting ready to experience one of its periodic hiccups with the financial disasters of 1857.

Is the store that sells giant traps for rats (displayed in window with rats attached) still there in Paris, somewhere in the environs of the Picasso home?

I was in the Jeu de Pomme just before it closed to move. I recall a painting, I think Monet, that I had never seen before. He had painted a veil on a hat that basically was black dots all across the woman’s face. I thought it was a really brilliant painting, very edgy for the time.

Art, not bombs. Health care, not bombs.

Some years ago, a dear friend became ill, such that she had to go to a hospital emergency room in NYC for treatment. After waiting the long, but not interminable, time which breathing people who are not bleeding have to go through, she was called to the desk clerk where the first question – the one which comes before “what’s wrong” – got asked:

“How are you going to pay for this?” asked the pleasant, large woman behind the desk.

My friend reached in her bag, pulled out a card from inside her wallet, said: “I’m Swedish.” and handed over the card.

The nice desk lady had never seen such, and there was a bit of confusion behind the desk because, after all, no one walks into an American hospital without money worries. A call “upstairs” and … that was that. Treatment and resolution, and no bill.

Masaccio, love this diary. Thank you.

If we can’t change the culture at GM, I’m not sanguine about changing it more broadly.

It’s really about the common woman and man being as self-assertive about protecting their rights as the common company, isn’t it? It’s also about recognizing that others have those same rights – something companies claim they are constitutionally prohibited from doing, which is an artifact of the legislature-made law and judicial decisions that interpret it.

Well, when constitutions fail to instigate a just government for the governed, we should change them.

One suggestion is that public schools teach citizenship as involving more than about being orderly and obeying orders. The side benefit is that that would send Lynn Cheney into a tizzy from which her equanimity would never recover.

They used to teach this in schools here(I’m from Ohio,moved to GA for work about 5yrs after graduation). I graduated in 1978 and it was required we have a credit in Federal Gov’t,one in State and Local Gov’t and one in Civics to graduate.We also had to have at least two history credits,American History.There were 8 classes to chose from,beginning with First Contact up to Contemporary American Issues. My senior term paper was on Hippies and Haight Ashbury,lol. I got an A. Those requirements were gone by the 1980’s,exactly the same time that the fundies began really infiltrating school boards with a vengence.

The Gracchi brothers:

The Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, were a pair of tribunes in 2nd century BC who attempted to pass land reform legislation in Ancient Rome that would redistribute the major patrician landholdings among the plebeians. For this legislation and their membership in the Populares party they are deemed the founding fathers of both socialism and populism (other populists prefer Spartacus or the latter Populares as Julius Caesar as their predecessors by members of both ideologies trying to find immemorial roots to their movements). Both were assassinated for their efforts. The brothers were born to a progressive patrician family – their mother being Cornelia Africana, the daughter of Scipio Africanus.

One of the reasons the United States was so attractive was that you could actually own land. Historically this was not true in much of Europe. In France and England, all land belonged to the king. If you wanted control of the land you became a vassal, exchanging control for military service. In much of England land is still held by a few people. It is one of the reasons they are having a housing shortage…there is no place to build new housing.

So yes, I admire the sharp cut off of city and country in Europe. It is quite beautiful. But it comes from a historical legacy that we don’t have. We own land and that ownership is built into our character. And that character bridals at the thought of trying to let some monarch tell them what they can and cannot do.

On top of that land development and civic infrastructure projects are claimed to be our largest economic driving force, not cars, not crops and not bombs. We build cities and then we hollow them out and build them again in a ring around the middle. It’s where the money is. That is the thesis of “The Geometry of Nowhere,” which helps explain how we’ve ended up with such a reprehensible built environment.

A beautiful book that those interested in land development and history should pick up is “Measuring America.” Beside explaining that an acre was originally the size of a plot that a man could plow with an ox in a day goes on to say because the United States land is measured in a surveyor’s chain 66 feet long, we will never adopt the metric system. The author is from Scotland. And the beautiful thing is that an acre has a rational base. It is 10 square chains, (66 x 660 ft) which is more understandable than 43,560 sq ft.

Regarding Kelo: I studied economics and political science in school I was appalled by Kelo. I was not appalled that public good could be subordinated to private rights in general it was that the government could take your property precisely because it was particularly valuable and wanted to develop it for its own ends. Those ends are “economic development”. The term economic development is very vague and open to individual interpretation.

If you look into what that case was about, it was about a small group of land owners who over time ended up being on prime waterfront property. Rather than leaving these fortunate souls alone, the government targeted their little patch of waterfront property for a re-development. Took their property and kicked them on the street.

The original idea behind immenent domain was so that if a highway needed to be built that it could be built. Here in New Orleans portions of people’s property is being taken by immenent domain to improve the levee system. These things are done because the property in question is unique in the world and the only way to improve that levee or build that highway is to take a person’s property.

In the case of Kelo there was no necessity of taking those particular individuals property. There was a desire among powerful people in government to re-develop a particular neighborhood into something else. Most likely they wanted to increase the tax base or their friends wanted the contract for re-development. The point is that there was nothing particlar to that property that made them need it. They wanted those people’s property they did not need it.

That is a huge world of difference in my book. That court case is part of what really convinced me that the last election was about the supreme court. The Kelo decision proves that the court does not really consider the ramifications of its actions. To me the ramification of Kelo is that no property owner, and particularly not one of little means or power is safe from his or her land being taken. This is particularly true if the property is deemed valuable. Also remember that the government only gives you present value for the land. What if after the improvements they make it would be worth ten times as much? Tough.

In NOLA we are fighting over the old Charity and whether to build a new hospital complex. Curiously there is a two block area smack dab in the middle of the new complex that they are not proposing to take. Why do you think that is? Who owns that property? Probably the state. That land will be worth 10 times the value of today after the medical complex is built. Rather than build it on land they already have, they are proposing to bulldoze neighborhoods where people live that they plan on taking by immenent domain.

Lesson: vague statutes and vague supreme court cases make for really crummy lives for the people that have to live with the results.