So interesting, the things you learn in foreign history books about your own country...
This is an extract from The Armchair Diplomat on Europe, by Melissa Rossi
"Algeria and the Swat that Led to Colonization
Until the 19th centure, Algeria, that Mediterranean-edged African land of sinewy mountains, thick stands of date palms and sweeping Saharan dunes was, for the French, little more than a pirate-infestes coast where they could buy wheat (blé). Decades after of huge shipments of grain had been shipped out to feed Napoleon's soldiers in Egypt, France hadn't shaved much off the resultant multi-million-dollar bill (n'avait pas payé). The lingering debt led to a showdown: in 1827, after being told that the imperious French king Charles X couldn't be bothered to answer Algeria's letters requesting payment, the enreaged Algerian leader Hussein Dey called the French consul in Algiers a number of unflattering terms - then slapped him with a flyswatter and booted him from the palace.
King Charles settled the dispute by sending in the military and announcing that Algeria was a French colony. Given the clash of cultures - Algeria was mostly Arab-Berber, Muslim and heavily tribal - it would probably never have been a happy cohabitation, but it started on an excessively violent note. The French, who claimed to be on a "civilizing mission", raped the local women, robbed the state treasury, pillaged villages, defaced cemetaries and looted mosques - and sequestered the best agricultural lands for the colonial farmers they soon sent in.
Not only was Algeria an agricultural annexe, the French also shipped troublemakers off to the seemingly faraway land which was considered part of France proper. The locals had few rights, although eventually they were offered French citizenship if they renounced Muslim law, which few wanted to do. Although many of the colonial "pieds-noirs" fell in love with the exotic land, few Algerians fell in love with the French, and it would all lead to a major blow-out when Algeria tried to shake off France 130 years later and France wouldn't let go."
samedi 16 décembre 2006
Great Idea : The Hippo Roller
What is a Hippo Water Roller ?
Millions of people worldwide are forced to walk long distances on a daily basis to collect their water requirements for the day. Traditional methods of collecting water include the use of 20-liter (5-gallon) buckets, which are laboriously carried on the head. Extensive suffering occurs in the process. This method is very time and energy consuming and is also the cause of many serious health problems.
The Hippo Water Roller was specifically designed to alleviate the suffering caused by a lack of access to water. The Hippo Water Roller is a barrel-shaped container designed to transport 90 liters (20 gallons) of water. It comprises of a drum with a large screw-on cap and a clip-on steel handle.
The drum is manufactured from UV stabilized Polyethylene and has been designed to withstand typical rural conditions such as uneven footpaths, rocks and even broken bottles. The large opening (135 mm / 5.3 inch diameter) allows for easy filling and cleaning of the interior. The sealed lid ensures hygienic storage of water and the steel handle provides firm control over difficult terrain while pushing or pulling the roller.
The innovative design allows water to be placed inside the "wheel" rather than carried above the wheel. The 90kg (200 pound) weight of water is borne on the ground resulting in an effective weight of just 10kg (22 pounds) on level ground. Children and the elderly can easily manage a full roller over most types of terrain. Extensive field tests over many years and various awards have proven the effectiveness of the Hippo Water Roller. Approximately five times the normal amount of water can now be collected in less time with far less effort.
mercredi 13 décembre 2006
Spasmophilie
tétanie
lumbago
névralgies
allergies
asthme
attaques de panique
phobies
aérophagie
fourmillements
constipation
fatigue
tachycardie
palpitations
hyperexcitabilité des muscles
hypersensibilité émotionnelle
asthénie (fatigue du matin)
tension des mâchoires
brûlures d'estomac
troubles du sommeil
symptômes anxio-dépressifs
baisse de la libido
.........etc............etc................etc
Le tout est causé par un manque de l'organisme en magnésium. Comme le magnésium a besoin de la vitamine B6 pour se fixer, les 2 sont souvent associés.
La spasmophilie est une maladie à la fois physique, psychique et émotionnelle.
En ce qui me concerne, les symptômes se déplacent mais ne diminuent pas. C'est comme un jeu. J'ai en revanche en continu la sensation d'être fatiguée.
Et bien, assez. Mon retour de Saturne approchant (voir un prochain numéro), j'ai décidé de prendre ma vie en main TRES SERIEUSEMENT
AH-HA!
On ne rigole plus!!
J'ai donc, grâce à ma très chère amie Jeff, trouvé un médeçin généraliste/homéopathe/acupuncteur/psych.../énergétisant...etc. Et maintenant, je prie.
Je crois qu'il ne faut pas faire de pub à des médeçins (enfin, je ne sais pas, mais dans le doute... bref, si vous voulez savoir qui c'est, écrivez-moi)
Apprendre la guitare
I spent years with classically-trained musicians. Most my lovers were classically-trained musicians.
Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way (mandatory reading, everyone!) writes about "shadow artists"; people who would like to be doing a certain thing tend to gravitate around people who are doing that thing. It is often the case of critics who get stuck in a rut and can never express, grow or nurture their own talent because they do not allow themselves to do it.
That is the most widespread expression of soul suicide I see around me.
As a matter of fact, I don't think I know people who don't suffer from artistic inhibition, for everyone crushes down their own talent and gifts, and everyone has them. The censorship voices in our heads are many, manyfold, strong, hope-icide, and sound utterly reasonable (why would you buy a guitar? They're expensive you know! You'll need years before you can produce something worthwhile! Who'll be interested in what you do? There are thousands more talented than you out there, you know! Everything's been done already! You haven't been to school for this, what's the point? You don't have room/time/money/support for this....etc).
I am very intimate with those voices myself.
I am sorry to say that my muscially inclined friends and boyfriends very much echoed those voices. They also seemed to consider "it's a boy thing" and spent hours practicing the goddam Stairway to Heaven intro I won't be sorry never to hear again. After mastering that piece of bravura that looked for all the world like spastic wanking off, or as someone else said, like a spider running on a plank, they managed to look both jaded and deep.
Allright, this was not what I had in mind, but music! Music transported me and I won't get cheesy over this, but I know you've all felt the same way about rock'n roll, Andean pan pipes, operas or soul music. The point is, THERE IS NO HIGHER MUSIC or lower music. There is music you love and maybe want to participate in.
It took me YEARS (YEARS!) to actually pick a guitar (I even had one!!) and diddle with it. And that's when, ladies and gentlemen, I learned music's best kept secret
LEARNING THE GUITAR IS EASY!!
Okay, I am not talking John McLaughlin, Al di Meola and tutti quanti. All I mean is that you can play most any rock, pop or folk song.
Now for music's second best kept secret
Most songs are made of 4 chords.
Eleanor Ribgy, a song I love for many reasons, is made of 2 CHORDS!!
So, what you have to do, ladies and gentlemen is learn some chords, and I shall tell you exactly how many:
A, B, C, D, E, F, G (or la, si, do, ré, mi, fa, sol): that's 7 chords.
Am (m stands for 'minor', which sounds 'sad'), Bm, Cm, Dm, Em, Fm, Gm: that's another 7 chords. All in all, 14 chords.
And you don't even have to learn them all by heart at once. You can learn them while you're learning a new song.
Now, d'yall think you can do that?
For instance, Let it be, Dreaming my Dreams, La femme libérée, Save Tonight...etc all follow the same 4 chord progression:
Do Sol Lam Fa
or
C G Am F
(For Save Tonight, you have to start with the A chord).
Then, when you've mastered this, we can go on swapping songs in 2 minutes (clandestino: Am, Dm, E). There are whole websites dedicated to 'sheet' music.
As you have probably judiciously noted, I have enclosed a chord chart in this entry. You can download it, print it and start practicing. Not al chords will be useful at first. The first one to learn are the 14 I mentioned.
It will take a little while, but I guarantee practice makes perfect, and it is good practice for the brain, the fingers and the soul.
The point here is not to revolutionize music, by the way, nor is this the way to become a star (lol!). It is a way to learn something you can love and share with other people. It is a way to switch to your right brain. It is a way to express yourself.
Now for my favorite secret
ANYONE CAN DO IT
mardi 12 décembre 2006
2 pièces de l'année
Voilà les projets théââââtraux de l'année
Avec ma troupe bien aimée, Drama'urge
L'ultime souper, traduit, revu et corrigé par nous-même
et avec mes nouveaux camarades Les Echafaudeurs
Willersheim 2016!
une pièce délirante écrite de leurs blanches mains
My brother 's website
Aha! Now that someone's found his calling, let us see and praise what grew...
http://fightclubs.free.fr/am/index.html
http://fightclubs.free.fr/am/index.html
mardi 5 décembre 2006
Books of the month, possibly the year
There are 2 books I read last month that blew me away. I am currently in recovery, since after 1 good book, it is hard to go back to the usual fluff (I routinely use fantasy books as "cushions" to go back and forth between writers), but 2 such great books one after the other caused me to read the entire Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey.
(For those interested, the books are the retelling of fairy tales in Victorian England, where magic is as strictly ruled as it is in the Harry Potter series. Elemental Magic-s are linked to the 4 elements. It is a nice, unassuming series, the villains are quite vile, even if not always convincing, and Lackey is ever throwing a word in favor of suffragettes and lady doctors.)
Anyway, back to ze 2 great books
The first one - just because I read it first - is The Time Traveller's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. I didn' t like the pitch when I heard it, which is why it took me 3 years and numerous signs to finally get to it.
It is a love story between Henry and Claire, the same way Belle du Seigneur, by Albert Cohen, is a love story between Ariane and Solal. The hitch, in TTW, is that Henry suffers from a condition that causes him to vanish in a different time period when he is tired, stressed out, or sometimes perfectly fine. He cannot control "when" he will land or for how long. He has thus lived through the accident that took his mother's life hundreds of times, as a child and an adult. Henry the character suggested that such emotionally charged incidents could act as a strong pull on him, forcing him to go through the experience over and over.
Another problem, which could seem funny rather than tragic, is that when he "lands", he lands naked and penniless. Over the years, he's had to learn to master burglary and mugging in order not to end in jail every time he is pulled away.
So, since this is after all a love story, Claire meets Henry when she is 6 years old, and they are already married in "his" time. She grows up meeting him and being guided and nurtured by a Henry who is already in his forties, asking him how they are doing in the future. Sometimes Henry answers and sometimes he doesn't. Claire grows up waiting to meet Henry in both their presents, and when she does, of course, he hasn't met her yet...
Now, I may sound confusing, so this is why you must read the book. Audrey N. beautifully and effortlessly weaves all the strands of the story together. It looks so simple when she is doing it than only afterwards do you realize the true grace of her talent (usually when YOU try to explain and it all comes out jumbled....)
It came out in French under the cheesy title "Le temps ne compte pas", but still, do not skip it!
The second one, heading this entry, is We Need To Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver
Now we are radically changing styles.
Lionel Shriver is a woman. She was nearing her mid-forties when she went soul-searching in order to know if she should have a child. The result was - not pregnancy, but - this book, an epistolary novel.
Eva Khatchadourian writes letters to her "estranged" husband, 2 years after their son Kevin murdered a dozen fellow students in his high school.
Okay, it sounds grim. I didn't find the reading painful, though. We already know the worst; the time has now come to analyze it. Eva is an incredibly smart woman (some readers on the internet found her "arrogant" and "too sophisticated"). When she gives birth to Kevin, (the infamous "KK") she's in her forties and has ambivalent feelings about motherhood, as well as a heavy family history - but hell, who doesn't? She is also a successful businesswoman who traveled the world for her guide company, not a fainting bluette who thought her son was the world's 7th marvel (and that's for the good, I guess...). As she dissects the reasons that prompted her to finally become a mother and the years that follow, her voice is so honest, so smart and articulated, so gritty that she can be funny and so utterly un-self-pitying that I couldn't help but cheer for her. I was definitely on the "Eva-is-great" side. Some readers were of the opinion that Kevin had the turned out the way he had BECAUSE his mother had been a bad mother.
Needless to say, the raging debate was music to Lionel Shriver's ears. Nothing is easy and clear-cut (except the sister counterpoint theme, but I'm cutting LS slack at this point), but I found myself underlining so many wonderful passages that I had to stop myself, figuring it is the un-underlined ones that would stand out.
It is very refreshing to read about a woman who doesn't take shelter behind the whole motherhood mythology. Motherhood is tough. Kids aren't perfect. Parents (some parents) can be lucid about their children. And some people have a cross to bear. Some do it with style. I think this book will be easy reading for those who have ever tried to wonder at the nature and root of violence, and -possibly - evil.
3 et 4 décembre à Saint Malo
Nous sommes partis 2 jours avec Maman et Mr Bailly (que j'ai à présent le droit d'appeller Ludovic!).
Au programme: dimanche, (re)voir la maison, petit verre avec Elizabeth, Emmanuel et Mifa Fontaine (qui nous ont vendu la maison), marcher dans Saint Malo. (Je m'y perds encore.)
Lundi; rendez-vous à 8h avec toute l'équipe, qui arrivait en voiture de Paris, les pauvres! Paul, qui est plâtrier, Pierre Desliens le plombier, Joachim qui est très mince et très fort, les beaux-frères da Silva et leur beau-père, Yann Panier l'électricien et filleul de Ludovic...etc et dans l'après-midi, rdv avec le pépinièriste Mr Trécand. Choisir les interrupteurs (pas trop "modernes"...) et l'endroit où ils seront placés, faire le tour de chaque pièce avec chacun des représentants des corps de métiers.
Les plans des cuisines n'allaient pas, on a tout rechangé, l'ascenceur passe à certains étages mais ne peut pas s'ouvrir à d'autres, bien qu'il puisse s'ouvrir dans 2 sens, il y a un très vieux puits dans le jardin, mais qu'il faut planquer aux photos aériennes parce qu'il y a en France une taxe sur les puits (???!!!), les goûts et fautes de goût de chacun sont en compétition. Mr Bailly insiste pour une buanderie, Maman dit non, mais d'après le Mr. Desliens, le ballon d'eau chaude et la chaudière pour toute la maison prendrait... la place de toute la cuisine! Plus de cuisine! Va pour pour la buanderie, qu'il faut isoler, chauffer et chouchouter, sinon la chaudière gèle, ne générant pas sa propre chaleur (rigolo, non?). Du coup, on rajoutera un congélateur dans la buanderie, et les machines à laver et à sécher le linge. C'est mieux.
Dans le jardin, certaines haies "se suicident" (elles sont allergiques à l'iode...) mais en revanche, j'apprends que St Malo dispose d'un micro-climat et que les palmiers (notamment phoénix) et les oliviers s'y plaisent beaucoup.
En haut, le dernier étage sans aucune cloison ressemble à une coque de bateau renversée, c'est tout juste si on n'imagine pas des hublots. J'aime bien l'espace de cette pièce, mais ell va être coupée en 3, 2 chambres et 1 salle de bain. Chacune des chambres de la maison est plus grande que mon studio parisien... Internet et le câble seront accessibles dans toutes les pièces, surtout si on prend du Wifi. A part ça, chacun a son truc; Ludovic sa buanderie ( il a gagné), Maman le petit abri de jardin qui est tout moche mais qui a le mérite d'exister, car on ne devra pas demander de permis de construire, Ramon le garage, et moi, bon, les bibliothèques.
A part ça, je me demande si des vélos seront pratiques (avec des beaux cirés jaunes bretons), ou si il faudra avoir une voiture. On est restés 5 heures d'affilée le lundi matin et 4 l'après-midi, au risque de rater le train, autant dire qu'on n'a pas le temps de sortir!
La prochaine fois, peut-être.
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