Well, I’ve been getting some feedback, as I suspected I would. Some of it witty. Some of it equivocating. But there were a couple or so of you who, indeed, find these entries a tad on the long side… First response is, tough noogies, as we say over here in Provence. Second response is, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Third response is, well, what better have you got to do—like I’m keeping people from something—and if something, go do it. This is a free service. Despite what you think it’s still a free country. I mean that sincerely, whether you’re here or there, or should I say, state-side or in LBF (la belle France).

Others of you, the few who have written and I am appreciative more than I can say, so I won’t, have been approbative and encouraging, without an ounce of condescension. One of you, shall I say D— (no names, and I know I’ll get crap about that from S—) has even been, in part, inspired, because I think she was thinking of doing it anyway, to start her own blog.

She wrote, having begun to look into the notably painless process of doing so (you think if it was difficult there would be so many freakin’ blogs?), that there seemed possibly to be something in it for me:

“they ask for a referral code.  Do you get some marvelous benefit for referring me?   A free car?  A side-by-side refridgerator freezer filled with eskimo pies?  In any case, I didn’t want you to miss the boat.   Let me know!!”

Aside from shaming some of you, if that’s even remotely possible, I also thought this toughtful gesture needed thorough investigation as soon as possible. The result of this exhaustive study is contained in my reply to D—, which follows forthwith, and will constitute the remaining substance of this blog entry. It is, in fact, not only about referrals to new blog subscribers, but continues to have as its motif, life in France:

Dear D

So I looked into the referral thing, and, as one would expect from life in the modern era (the "oughts" or, alternatively, especially if you’re British, the "nils" or, finally, particularly if you are part of Generation X, Y, Z or the first four letters of the Greek alphabet, once we get past "Z," the "zeroes") it’s complicated and moral, which is the classical definition of the comedic mode, speaking in terms of the traditional canon and Aristotelian principles of mimetic art. And you know how I love the comedic mode.

I had to read, well, I read about 10% and skimmed the rest of, something called terms and conditions for doing business with a "partner" of Six Apart, the company that actually owns TypePad, the blog service I use, and that partner is called Commission Junction, so you know where that’s headed, and I DID click on the "accept" button of the terms and conditions portion, but then I was directed to a button to approve, or rather show my acceptance (there’s very little I approve of in life in the modern era, see above) of the CJC (that’s short for Commission Junction) Privacy Policy. Well, maybe it’s my slight allergy to lavender, which is always vaguely in the air — I mean, come on, this is Provence in mid-summer for God’s sweet sake, or maybe it’s because my eyes were slightly bleary from something I recently read, or tried to read, or maybe it’s because I suddenly felt the need for a Klonopin (which is my anxiety warning bell sign) because of something I was in the midst of trying to read. I was trying—really—extra extra hard.

But it all got too difficult and then I went wildly clicking on reset buttons and buttons to close browser windows, and finally the browser itself because I couldn’t take anymore of all this really ponderous, tedious, long-winded prose, which, as you may know, is a subject that causes great anxiety in me (look up, in the Howard Index: conditions which cause anxiety, because Howard may be the cause of them himself through uncontrolled compulsive behavior).

The bottom line, as we like to say in business, from which I know you recently retired, on a trial basis (ha ha "trial"…) and I really am not trying to cause any anxiety in you by saying things that, like, bring back bad memories, anyway, the bottom line is, I get three bucks, if I accept these terms, and those policies, and give away far too much private information about myself in the process, and there’s something about "advertising" and "negative account balances," both of which I find to be loathsome concepts, and I would never accept them, and allow people to link to this TypePad Web site of mine so they can sign up for a "trial" (ha ha) subscription themselves.

And three bucks is three bucks it’s true, but over here, three bucks buys you two euros, more or less, and for two euros, you get a really really cold Coca-Cola (un Coca, and isn’t that nice and kind of amazing it’s the same word? If you want a Diet Coke, it’s un Coca Light, again, amazingly, say it just like English, only as if you had something wadded in your nose at the same time, or as if you were just sniffing a lot of really mature very fresh lavender blossoms really really close — why they don’t say "Diet" in French, I don’t know; maybe it’s like a slangy really dirty word, you know something to say to Zidane in the middle of a World Cup soccer final: "Hey Zizou, your mother really should go diet… and maybe your sister too…").

Now I never drink Coke, unless it’s disgustingly hot, and I’ve had four of them since we got here, so you know how hot it can get. But I don’t feel like a Coke right now, even up here on the third floor, which gets not only disgusting hot, but beastly hot, almost like you were in England or something and it was that hot. Part is because we got this big floor fan and it’s going like crazy on its highest speed, and it really works really well. And part is because it’s been thundering outside for about ten minutes, which is the promise of cooling off, but kind of a hollow promise, because the sun is still blazing out there… I can see all this really bright sunlight out the window, and the cicadas (in French, les cigales) are really chirping like mad, it’s a kind of really grindy, sandpapery chirp, with no high tones, just rapid grating, which they only do if it’s really hot. They chirp, they stop, they chirp, they stop. If it hits the disgusting beastly level of hotness they do it non-stop. But anyway, under these conditions at present, no Coke is necessary.

Of course two euros will also buy you a nice little Pastis, which is that Provençal liqueur that smells badly of anise or licorice, but which is mighty good, and mighty cheap, and gets you some ice cubes and a big pitcher of water (pichet de l’eau) so you can either or both keep your drink cool longer and dilute the pastis, which is pretty strong medicine (some Americans think it tastes like medicine — I don’t; I love licorice) taken straight. Anyway, diluted or not, they don’t actually give you too much pastis for two euros. I mean, compared to American bars, it’s a bargain (especially given your typical pastis is 90 proof), but it’s no sweet little buzz, never mind a good drunk. For that you need at least ten euros spent fairly quickly, shall we say? And in the middle of Provence, the heart of the heart of the country we might say, in the middle of summer, where it’s always on the verge of getting, and not only because of the superfluity of Brits around here (which you can blame on a strong Pound Sterling, which is even stronger than the euro, which, see above, re: dollar to euro conversion) beastly hot, you don’t do anything too quickly. Nothing. Not even drink. Unless it’s beer. Maybe.

So, I’ll just forget about this big commission of three dollars, US (two euros, uh, EU, I guess), and advise you to just start up what I know will be that sweet little blog of yours. For one thing, I know it will be a lot shorter every day to read.

Howard

PS You know, reading this over, I think it’s so good, I’m going to put it on my own blog. How’s that? So you can even skip that entry, in case you don’t feel like having that déja lu (that’s a pun, in French, see?… lu is past participle of lire, the verb "to read") feeling. And then you’ll also be the envy of at least two other people, and maybe as many as over a hundred.

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Market day in Aups this morning was not so bad. Enough people to cause long lines at the stalls, but not so many to stall traffic.

There is a whole topic, for long discussion, in the subject of the French and being in line.

Before getting into the subject proper, I’d like to observe that Henry Fountain of the New York Times had interesting things to say on the subject of great athletes, and why some crack and some don’t, the latest of them being the French football great Zinidine Zidane, who did crack, and broke the heart of a nation. Even the petite Nicole, innkeeper across the way, and usually far more interested in fashions and movie star gossip, thinks he’s a rat. Forever.

Anyway, Fountain spoke to, among others, a guy named Sagal, an expert in winning ways (and partner in an outfit called Winning Mind, which gets him in to consult to World Cup soccer teams, if you can believe it—what the hell, business is business), who said, “You’re talking about a situation of absolute intense pressure. And you are talking about a player in particular who is unparalleled in his ability to stay narrowly focused. What you saw was him losing his focus. His strength became his weakness.”

If Zidane had been a little smarter, he would have spoken to Sagal before the game, or even to Vizzini, the rogue played by Wallace Shawn in the movie, The Princess Bride. Vizzini advised that the most famous advice was never to get in a land war in Asia, but slightly less known was “never go up against a Sicilian when death [or, presumably, sudden death] is on the line.” Marco Materazzi, who dissed the mother and the sister of Zidane, thereby provoking him to crack, is from Puglia, but close enough.

However, whatever advice he was given, however focused his concentration, Zidane cracked, thereby proving that when zucchini is on the line, nothing can crack a middle-aged Frenchwoman in the produce stall at marché. They set new standards for stalwart implacability. In the ‘States, we call this behavior obnoxious or rude, but it’s par for the course over here, so get used to it. In France, we call it the narrow focus of world-class champions.

And if you’re in front of the red peppers, don’t leave the slightest gap, or some lithe, and usually pretty peppy, broad (I say this in the fondest way; French women are generally thin, especially here in the country: the rich ones do yoga—another story for another time, but remember the mayor’s wife, and ask me about it, if you forget—and the less well-to-do do gardening and run around a lot in very tiny cars until they get where they’re going, and then it’s foot traffic at high speed) will suddenly be up in your face, oblivious to your presence, and squeezing the fennel bulbs. The vendor, Patrick, and his son, with the pierced eyebrow, which has healed since last January, keep up a running patter, hand out plastic baskets for patrons to collect their fruit and vegetables, and stay focused on the person right in front of them. But that’s the extent of their focus. These guys know they are not even made of the stuff of Zidane, and long before market is over they will crack in the face of the onslaught of French balabustas [this is yiddish, not French, and it means head of household, and when in reference to the female head, it means, kind of, housewife on steroids]. And they know it, and so they keep it light and always ease off.

As it’s market day, and it’s mid-summer, and it’s the Saturday market, not the off-day market on Wednesday, there are a lot of people buying, and they queue indiscriminately to their place in any logical pecking order or right by time of arrival. Each place in line represents not a priority in age, or etiquette. People bull their way in because they need that thing goddamnit right in front of where you, or somebody, else is standing, and they won’t wait. And the scales and vendors work the crowd from the middle of the stall behind the majority of the produce. The rest is in bins inaccessible from the front, and most people have to ask the vendors for a weight of onions or potatoes, which sit in several varieties in plain view, but out of reach, unless you actually wander into the stall behind the vendors, who neither invite you nor shoo you away once you realize that nobody gives a damn if you do wander back there to pinch and poke the root vegetables.

Then there are people raised in the venerable tradition of having the vendor select the fruit and vegetables according to the running advice one gives as to need: ripe, almost ripe, for next Tuesday, or a dinner for eight, and never do the patron’s hands touch the food. If you have the reticence mixed with suspicion I do, or, if some people are correct, the level of control that I myself apparently make manifest I absolutely must exercise (moi? a control freak? pardon, monsieur, ‘dame), this tactic never works. There’s a catch 22 in there somewhere, because if I never trust the guy to get what I ask for, as I suspect, or maybe expect, he will substitute some wormy, mealy, overripe, or god knows what defective, as I fear he will, I’ll never learn if he can be trusted.

Today I spent 14,40 euros (the comma is not a mistake; in addition to the other strange metric things they do over here, they use commas, where we use decimal points, and vice versa, though to them a period is a period is a decimal point, or point [a kind of nasal pwehn, with a very soft “n” almost non-existent at the end there, for you non Francophones]), which is not a great deal though it weighed down our shopping basket, or 16,40, if you include the medium sized Cavaillon melon I got from another stall just selling melons across the way, making it even heavier—and bought yellow peaches, courgettes [zucchini] grown right there in Aups, a huge red pepper, also Aupsoise, two beautiful Italian eggplants, six apricots, ready to eat or bake into a clafoutis, sort of a cross between a pudding and a cake, studded with the fruit, and usually made with cherries, but actually an appropriate recipe for any small stone fruit, or even figs or, if you’re stoned yourself, just about anything sweet and not so thick if you cut it in half, plus salade, which is how we refer to all and any sorts of lettuce, in a one huge head, and two fresh ugly old-fashioned beefsteak tomatoes, probably grown right here, in one of the tiny farms in Fox-Amphoux. They’re tiny, that is, compared to the bigger farms, which mainly grow grapes, or wheat, or sunflowers—we’re surrounded by sunflowers down on the plain, just about in the middle stages of growth—or merely sheep fodder, which seems to get left lying in the fields, or winter fodder, which is grown later, and gets rolled into bales by big reaper/balers. The latter are always a surprise, like indoor plumbing and town water and sewer, which is what we have in our village of 50 houses, the final stage water treatment building disguised as yet another medieval-looking stone mas (antique farmhouse). There’s also now ADSL connectivity, and a rumor of cable, but it’s very expensive. I always think I will see farmers in WWI vintage Ford tractors, but they’re actually fairly modern, and why not? They’re subsidized to the hilt to perpetuate the myth that this is a nation of small farmers (remember the tomatoes?) to attract the tourists and rich northern Europeans, Brits, and crazy Americans like us, so we’ll buy up the ancient real estate at inflated prices. Where was I? Tomatoes.

Also strawberries in a little wooden basket, grown somewhere in the north, because it’s way past strawberry season, but these are nonetheless real strawberries, as opposed to the red-on-the-outside-white-on-the-inside semi-hardened foam monstrosities that they insist on selling at Whole Foods Market emblazoned with the word “Organic,” as if that means anything any more, and which traveled further to get to River Street in Cambridge than we did to get to the Old Village here in Fox from River Street.

Anyway, it was quite a bit of produce per the aggregate price per pound, and especially considering it was mostly grown about 30 minutes from where I’m sitting at the moment in our cool ground-floor sitting room. I picked it out all myself. I’ve been doing this for what will be 20 years soon enough and I’ve never asked Patrick, from whom I’ve been buying this stuff—and he lives in Fox, though I’ve only seen him once on the highways and byways of the village—for half that time. I still don’t know if he knows me. The bemused fellow at the pizzeria we like, whom we’ve seen far fewer times and at greater intervals, obviously knows me. Life goes on without pizza, but you always need fresh produce. And it’s hard to tell if Patrick recognizes me or anyone else, ‘cause he’s not letting on, which may be the champions-who-lack-focus and crack factor, or it may be simply that, in public, like any good psychiatrist, he’d prefer not to acknowledge his clients. I mean, he knows how well I choose produce. Probably gives him a good chuckle.

There’s a lesson here, as I say, practical only on market days in France, but edifying nonetheless, I think, if not merely entertaining. I have prepared this simple photo/diagram to illustrate my point. So mouse-click on the small photo and you will see some items for discussion and elucidation in the larger version.

Shown is the left hand side of Patrick’s produce stall. The troops, uh, the patrons have massed on this side (we are facing the center, with the scale, barely visible, and pile of plastic baskets). Starting from the right, see the green arrow, is Patrick, blurred, conveying the constant motion he stays in, usually whistling and offering many a bon mot. No doubt he considers that a moving target is a safe target. To his right a female clerk, possibly a relative (only his close friends would know for sure), and a minor player. She’s there to relieve some of the pressure, lest the queue build too much strength in numbers. All the way on the left, helping the customer in the light blue pinafore dress and the huge barrette choose some fruit—always deployed on the left side of the stand—is the son, under the red arrow; you can’t see the pierced eyebrow too well. The greens, that is leeks, fennel, zukes, cukes, etc. are always on the right, not visible in this photo, and not a busy part of the stand, not in the summer, not during the canicule when it’s too hot to cook. Fruit can be eaten raw, which explains the particular battle array, um, queueing of this crowd. The woman in the pink bow, with a floral print skirt and red sash (this all is camouflage) it looks like is getting her money out to pay the girl. Why have it out ahead of time, which might lessen the waiting time for others?

The big guy on the right in shades, and without socks I suspect is there either under duress, or has wandered in innocently, wishing to buy one potato, say, or a banana. Another photo shows him holding hands with the woman with a back pack in a khaki colored sleeveless dress, so it’s possible they are on a reconnaissance mission for a larger party, including children and a nanny—anything to add critical mass, or merely inert bodies that do not move at all. I suspect the guy being hunched over is just a feint, and he is really buying nothing at the moment, and only pretending to get out his change purse.

The woman in a bobbed mannish hairdo, with clogs and a white top may appear to have done her shopping (in the green poly sack hanging from her right hand), but she is only looking thus far. Patrick gives your produce to you in a poly sack, but it is distinctively purple (please note the absence of purple sacks), or in thin brown kraft paper bags, marked “does not allow humidity” [this is a rough translation, produced under battlefield conditions]. Please note the absence of thin brown kraft paper sacks. The woman with vaguely reddish-blonde hair, pulled up for the heat is only in the preliminary stages of shopping at the stall, and is clearly absorbed in thoughts, for the first time that day, about what to serve for dinner. When she finally gets to the front of the line, which is a bit bunched up here, strategically so, she will take another five minutes, pondering what is actually offered that day, and with turtle-like rapidity alter the menu in her head.

Some people, the real veterans, pick things up, put them back, mumble to themselves, and chat with Patrick or his son. All stalling tactics to frustrate the enemy, I mean, me.

By the way, to illustrate that Patrick is complicit in all this, purely by virtue of the layout of the stall—unique to summer, when there are plenty of recruits to refresh the lines of combatants, please note the cluster tomatoes in the foreground, only part of an island display (absent in the Fall and Winter), which also includes that other hot item, lettuce, or as I said, salade, as the french call it. Another hot weather favorite. Just wash and serve.

Think about the cleverness of this placement tactic. At the stall one sees only (the better) varieties of locally grown tomatoes—your vine tomatoes, beefsteaks, Romano or plum, etc. These are more expensive. So people queuing will note the tomatoes, and get interested, poke them and prod them, maybe a surreptitious squeeze or two, and then note the price, and say, screw this, and immediately begin looking for cheaper tomatoes. Hence the cluster tomatoes—handsome and robust in their own way, sort of stereotypical in appearance, the way you’d expect a tomato to look and, this being Provence, not half bad tasting, but, unlike the local breeds, not really quite ready for eating. If you’re in a queue in the front of the stall near the scales, you have to turn around, and brave at least one layer of other shoppers to get at the cheaper tomatoes, thereby creating a gap as soon as you move, which is quickly, in fact immediately, filled in. In fact, the moves are so fast, you can guarantee yourself to be jostled, and whatever is hanging on your shoulder: expensive digital camera, shopping bag, purse, will get tugged or poked in such a way that you have to check for either damage or attempted theft. This distracts you, losing momentum, and forcing you to have to push through to the tomatoes in clusters and the lettuce, which, having seen the tomatoes, causes you to recall that you also need some salade, because what goes together like lettuce and tomato better than the very self same materials?

What you cannot realize, viewing this photo in a casual way, is that this simple seeming queue… you may call it a crowd, but it is a queue, take my word for it. Just try to get in front of someone. They’ll let you know what they think of you and remind you that there is a line after all, Monsieur!… This queue seemingly two-deep, is actually three deep. Note, please, the turquoise arrow, which points to a woman’s flats of approximately the same color.

This embedded queue participant is further insurance against any flanking motions around either side of the cluster-tomato/salade island that was in front of me as I shot this photo. To the left of the hidden woman in azure flats is the jetty of Cavaillon melons (you can see the wooden slats of the crate holding them just above the turquoise arrowhead). This prevents penetration from the left because you can’t possibly squeeze between the melons and, well, here’s a coincidence, the… the large-breasted woman with her hair up in the vaguely yellow sun dress with spaghetti straps. Go around to the right—about two meters, it’s a BIG island of lettuce and tomatoes—and you’ll have to squeeze in behind the woman with the backpack, in case you were wondering why she’s standing just there, and doesn’t have anything hanging from her shoulder. You don’t want to do that because you’ll have to contend, maybe, with her burly escort who is feigning getting money out to pay for the produce they’ve had for quite a while (and how do I know? Because hanging from backpack lady’s right wrist is a purple poly sack, not very laden, as I suggested (see above), maybe one, maybe two potatoes). And with two of them groping and digging for change, they can take twice as long occupying that space, at least as long as it would take to get around the lettuce island…

And you thought the Japanese and British were pains in the ass when they queue up. They just shove and stuff. Here, it’s more insidious and appears to be polite, but it’s like the shochet (kosher butcher) said to the cow hanging upside down in front of him, “this won’t hurt a bit.” Zip zap. You turn around to ask your wife if she’d prefer squash to zucchini, and some little thing in espadrilles is next to you and somehow in front of you, and she’s already got her hands on two bunches of ciboulettes (chives) like she’s been standing there all day.

Later, I’ll analyze another kind of queue. The ATM queue. It’s an experience especially fraught because the cash machines mainly spew out fifties, which the vendors love. They love it in particular if you are spending like, six euros forty-seven cents, they will take the fifty and always ask if you have a euro-fifty, and that means getting out your change purse with the coins, because the smallest paper denomination is a fiver. And of course your hands are already full of paper and poly sacks, and a very heavy shopping basket. And you’ve got a five-thousand dollar digital camera perched on the very edge of your sweaty shoulder, and you’ve got to get your hand in the pocket of your shorts to get at the zippered change purse they handed out as a gift at the bakery up the street back in January, when there are hardly any customers, and there’s never a queue. No intense pressure. Nothing to make a man, never mind a champion, crack.

But that’s another story.

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The Delta flight, direct from New York to Nice, is not full by any means. As a result both Linda and I get two seats each, and next time, she says, she’ll make her move sooner—sooner than the others on the flight—and grab three seats. Any number of things might account for this surfeit of empty seats at a time when tickets seem to be not only at a premium, but at an all-time high for prices. But the airlines ain’t talkin’ and one must speculate.

For one thing, the premium on tickets presumably has eased as we flew with frequent flyer points, originally slated for a May 30 departure, with a return on the very day we are finally able to leave. Linda thinks it’s because she played the medical “card” telling a sympathetic Delta agent about her illness and treatment (the cause of the first delay in our plans), but, boarding the plane, it is evident immediately why seats were forthcoming. This is a sure indicator of the ways in which Delta must be hurting. A previous trip to Nice, also via JFK airport, one of the few direct flights from the U.S. to Provence, occurred on Christmas Eve, and was clearly not only full, but with a very full contingent of French citizens.

This flight, in high summer, and on the verge of the official French vacation period, when all of Paris, and much of the rest of the country, shuts down, is bereft of Francophones, it seems, of any nationality. What this condition seems to prove is that, indeed, America itself has shut down as a source of tourism revenue—whereas in the past, certainly pre-9/11, the United States provided as much as 40%, and perhaps more, of the tourist traffic that made France (and apparently still makes it, even without our help) the number one tourist destination in the entire world. [All you Francophobes out there, and you know indeed who you are, I have several words here for you. You may be thinking at this point, so they’re losing business… good for the conniving, disloyal bastards… that well may be, but France is still the number one tourist destination on the planet, and those tourists are coming for France, not the French. We come for both, because, well, we know both of them. I added this merely to give myself an opportunity to disabuse one and all, but especially the Francophobes that they don’t hate Americans. Indeed, they scarcely work up the energy to work up a hatred for much. Scared? Yes. They’re scared of what crazy militant Muslims will do. Whether this is wise or not, I’ll leave to you, but at least we still share that much with them. And they’re very afraid, or at least heroically non-plussed by the present American administration. If you don’t care for Chirac and his crew, then count yourself even. Finally, at the risk of repeating myself, they don’t hate Americans. Best of all, they don’t hate these two particular Americans, nor any of you lot that have managed to visit us. Indeed, the feelings seem to be more akin to "like" or, dare I say, "love?" If you want Europeans who hate Americans, you’ll have to work hard and look elsewhere. And, of course, though I disclose a bias, if there’s a nationality or an ethnicity over here that you yourself must hate, I’d look elsewhere than at the French. Every French person I’ve ever met has been a pleasant human being, likable and friendly. We do count our friends among the natives, and these we love. No question about it.]

Delta has, and has always had, only the one flight each day to Nice from New York. If any city could fill that flight, one assumes it would be New York. Hence, the numbers are down for sure, even on this wisp of anecdotal evidence. It may be that it’s because it’s Monday (rentals in France are usually Saturday to Saturday, but the standard rentals are not aimed at Americans. Indeed, it’s better to arrive on a Tuesday, because, in rural France at least, so many shops (and too many bank branches) are simply closed on Monday. That’s an artifact of the draconian 35-hour work week laws among a number of artifacts that conspire to make France an interestingly different place to live than the U.S. They’re laws that much easier to enforce, despite the abundance of workers who simply don’t work. There is nary a “typical” French worker who needs more than an official excuse not to work. Indeed, it becomes a right. And institutional idleness has become a creative proposition.

Seats generally are at a premium, especially on the traditional national carriers, which are bleeding money, because there are so few tourniquets. One way of choking off the blood flow is to raise the price of seats made premium by relative scarcity. Fewer flights. Fewer seats.

We flew on a relatively big plane to Nice. I’m sure if Delta could use a smaller plane with less capacity they would. But a 767 has not much less range than a 777, and a 757 won’t make it to Nice. Wouldn’t even make it to Paris.

When we arrived, it was only variations on a theme.

In France, the vaunted French vacation period for its workers (exceeded these days at least by Germany, thereby making it a workers’ paradise, a phrase that has lost the grim irony of only 50 years ago) begins in earnest July 15. Our flight was the 17th. We arrive after a night of no particularly great turbulence, including the type fomented by infants, of which the flight had its share, and a blood orange colored dawn and took our room at the Hotel Westminster, a lovely old place smack on the Promenade des Anglais, and therefore with capacious seaside rooms that somehow fit with the remnants of a Belle Epoque air (though with thoroughly modern frigid-making climatization equipment for those rooms) and a central stairway that would give Dolly Levi a suitable entrance.

The large room in which we ate our breakfast the morning after we arrived is particularly ridiculous. It seems to be a ballroom, with a level of ornateness not seen since about the time of the war. That would be World War I.

It’s hard to tell if this is a room original to the hotel’s design, renovated and modernized (parquet floors, huge gilt chandeliers
, with a myriad of fixtures tricked out to look like they still burn gas), or if it has been designed to reproduce the era at impossibly great expense. The Westminster is part of a millionaire’s row of hostelries right on the water, with the Negresco, queen of all of them, still going strong and still with a suitably famous restaurant, Chantecler (though it lost one of its three Michelin stars in fairly recent memory). All of them are monuments to faded glory. In our breakfast room, presided over by a lone waiter, who fetches you hot water for tea, or a carafe of coffee or cocoa, as you choose, there is so much room the tables are widely spaced, as if for some desultory senior prom or a failed fund raising banquet. The food stations are yards apart. Tucked in a corner, chafing dishes with scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausages, alongside a huge water-filled gizmo with wire cages for eggs (piled in a basket) for boiling with a timer that maxes out at 120 seconds. Another table features cold cuts and cheeses (a particular favorite of Germans). Yet another is festooned with a huge wicker pannier, filled with mini-croissants: plain, raisin, and chocolate, set beside Dairy Queen-sized chilled dispensers of orange juice and grapefruit juice. Somewhere in there are bowls of stewed fruits, including prune plums, apricots, grapefruit, and a cornucopia of dried cereals that would do Kellogg proud. It is altogether an impossible amount of food for the slow stream of guests of varying nationalities and ethnicities—though all decked in casual garb in defiance of the decor. The hotel is not empty, but it is far from full. Perhaps the feast is only fitting to the design of the room, with coffered ceilings and the heads of odalisques set above the arched doorways. The sense of grandeur makes the meal worth the price (36 euros—about 45 dollars—for what is dubbed a “continental” breakfast; presumably a full breakfast would be “planetary”), though that is included in the cost of our room.

The room itself, I’ll add quickly, is the perfect set up for a lagged out pair of Americans, who don’t want to miss all of the rest of the day, and yet desperately need sleep. The plane may have allowed us to spread out, but not sufficiently to get even three or four hours of sleep strung together into a whole. After a touristic lunch of salade niçoise at a nearby bistro, tricked out to look Parisian, we collapse, but with the drapes left drawn open to admit klieg amounts of brutal white sunlight into the room. We awaken, with plenty of hours of day left, and time enough to make reservations on the terrace of the restaurant in the hotel.

We were splurging, though the promotional price we got was dubbed “Farniente,” one of those French idioms with no really suitable translation into English, possibly a nonce word and definitely made-up, though it comes close to meaning literally, “nothingness” and is understood to mean perfect guilt-free idleness. Not only does this cheap rate garner us a sea-side room but it is on the top floor, so our view of the beach, or plage, is as spectacular as it gets for essentially middle-class folks with, if not a budget, then at least thoughts of one always lingering in the backs of their minds.

The beach is occupied practically from the moment the sun rises at around six, and stays occupied until it sets, which, at these latitudes, and situated where we are in the European Central Standard time zone, occurs at about nine-thirty of-the-clock. Note, however, that occupied does not mean packed, and in Nice, they come and go, not talking of Michelangelo, indeed not talking of much of any consequence at all but to their personal quotidian concerns, and carrying minimal gear.

Many of them have not even towels, their bathing outfits barely visible under shorts and tee shirts.

The only way to tell those who have been swimming, aside from the obvious drift of that part of the crowd moving generally away from the shore, is the occasional wet tee shirt, particularly on young women who bear two round wet spots over their bikini tops. You have to wonder why anyone braving the unrelenting sun—there’s not been a cloud in the sky for four days now, going on five, despite promised storms that have already soaked the Southwest—would not have spent his or her entire time in the water, far warmer than our northeastern beaches, not to mention that the beaches this far east on the Mediterranean are, in actuality what the British call “shingle.” That is, there is no sand whatsoever, but a swath, perhaps 25 yards deep from the Promenade to the water’s edge, at low tide, composed entirely of pebbles ranging from a quarter-inch to an inch along their narrower axis and worn smooth. In short, impossible to walk on in bare feet, and nearly so even with the usual street-worthy footwear.

Inland only a block, and further into the interior of this seaside city, the buildings are sufficiently high—likely averaging about four stories, especially in the tourist quarters within two or three blocks of the shore—to cast a shadow on one side of every street and thoroughfare. Only tourists venture on the sunnier side.

The ultimate point to be made is that crowds move right along, just as they do in September, right after the great “Rentree,” the institutionalized return, or reentry, to school and work life, or even in December, as Christmas shopping crowds brave the frigid daytime temperatures in the 50s and 60s. More importantly, the Promenade des Anglais, which I’ve seen immobilized with traffic, even in early June, itself moves along at the stately pace of 50 kph, the heavily enforced speed limit [about 30 miles an hour].

Once we pick up our car—this time a Passat, with a turbo-diesel injected engine and quite peppy—we move right along, to my great surprise, and right out of the city, and make it to Fox Amphoux in our usual hour and forty minutes.

The dread for travelers of high season on the French Riviera and elsewhere in the south has abated for sure, and left an unhappy lot of touristic entrepreneurs whose livelihood depends on a certain volume of business from May through September.

The big test will be market day in Aups on Saturday. Having missed the other market day, driving up on Wednesday afternoon—markets are exclusively in the morning—we have no idea what to expect.

The last time we were in this region this late, and actually a bit earlier, having departed on the 15th of July, the crowds on market day in Aups, a town that is really no more than a village of three thousand people, made it impossible to traverse it from one end to the other on the main drag in less than forty-five minutes. It usually takes about two minutes, maybe two-and-a-half if an unusually large number of folks are crossing the street in the middle of town.

I am determined to get to town early, have coffee, shop and get the hell out, so I may never know if the crowds have abated here as well. Watch this space.

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The following appeared in The Boston Globe under the headline as indicated:

Lawmaker Plots Ban On Marshmallow Fluff…

The Boston Globe   |  Phillip McKenna   |  Posted June 19, 2006 03:30 PM

The escalating war on junk food in schools has targeted a new enemy — that gooey, sugary, and often irresistible sandwich spread known to children everywhere as Fluff.

Outraged that his son was served peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff sandwiches at a Cambridge elementary school, state Senator Jarrett T. Barrios , a Democrat, said he will offer an amendment to a junk-food bill this week that would severely limit the serving of marshmallow spreads in school lunch programs statewide.

Senator Barrios is our state senator.

I just sent him the email below.

I always find it’s best to overstate the case to these guys… Keeps them fired up.

Also, of course, I do, essentially, find him correct. No offense to you Fluffernutter freaks or [gulp] you geeks that eat this crap out of the jar, unmolested by other things that might actually do you some good and taste good besides (like peanut butter, at least the kind that isn’t mixed with corn syrup and trans fat shortenings — why do they do that anyway? because a spoonful of sugar makes the peanut go down?).

Of course, I also find it offensive that The Boston Globe sticks a headline like "Lawmaker Plots…" as if Barrios is up to something nefarious. But I’ve already cancelled my subscription to the Glob for manipulative and, despite the undoubted intentions, un-witty editorial decisions. It’s gone from a mediocre paper to a true piece of trash — sort of intellectual Fluffernutter. But that’s getting off-topic…

"Dear Senator Barrios:

"I applaud and support your efforts to remove unwholesome dietary products, like Fluffernutter®, both from mandated school meal programs and from any recommended nutritional items to be offered in the schools in your district, if not the entire Cambridge school system, or any school program supported by state or local funds in any way.

"The recent kerfuffle in the Senate about Fluffernutter® brand product is a distraction from more important matters facing the legislature, and a sign of the air-headed sensibility of too many of your colleagues.

"I have nothing against free enterprise and capitalism. Indeed, I earned my living one way or another providing marketing counsel to mainly profit-seeking clients. However, at some point common sense and the need for preserving the common weal takes precedence over the freedom to make a profit legally.

"There is no reason whatsoever for the government at any level to condone or appear to endorse products that, taken themselves to the possible exclusion of more nutritional foods, are, in fact, harmful to the health of their intended consumers. In this case, those consumers are the most vulnerable and most susceptible to persuasion, not to mention the most indulgent of their own sweet tooth, the children of our fair city (and other fair cities adjoining).

"I have no children, but my wife and I both are concerned about the extent to which the government intervenes in the ability of citizens to choose to eat healthily. At the very least, the government should not facilitate the mongers of poor nutrition by appearing to endorse the consumption of products like Fluffernutter®.

"Least of all, your fellow members of the legislature should be protected from the effects of even thinking about this, to me, offensive, if not disgusting, foodstuff. There is already too much fluff to be found, in their heads, if not in their bodies, to encourage them further to distract themselves from significant legislative issues.

"I am in your district, and I do vote."

By the way, lest you think there’s less here than meets the eye, the response of two of Mr. Barrios’s esteemed colleagues was to sponsor a bill that would make the Fluffernutter the "state sandwich." Seems the company that manufactures this decay-enhancer (from your teeth to your alimentary tract) is in their district.

California politicians may do some nutty stuff when it comes to food bans. But in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we’ve got Fluffernutty legislators.

Barrios responded to me, and his first sentence was, “I love fluff.” This suggests two things to me. One, that he indeed realizes he put his foot in it, whether a vat of Fluff, or some of the stuff of which Bush père liked to speak (the “deep doo-doo” so perilous to politicians). Two, it suggests the he misread my message.

He was concerned, as I would have assumed, not with putting Fluff on a pillory (hard stuff to keep there, anyway) or even to suggest that people’s lives should be intruded upon in such a way that the government dictates all of what you put in your mouth (though, try telling that to the California legislature, who see no risk in banning things like foie gras). The problem with our kids is that too many of them are fat little porkers (and childhood obesity is a sometimes impossible from which to disburden yourself as you enter adulthood) and, more critically, the incidence of childhood diabetes (the more severe form, with insulin-dependence, also called Type I) in children is on the rise. The complications and threat of Type I diabetes are exacerbated, as one might expect, with improper diet, especially involving sugars, and particularly in victims who are overweight.

Whatever one’s feelings about these things, and whether you have children or not, one must have pause considering the possibility that public tax dollars (largely spent at the local level for education, and all programs associated with it) are being used in any way to foster conditions that lead to the worsening of life-threatening diseases. Also, of course, as diabetes runs its course (and the mortal threat of Type I diabetes increases dramatically after 15 years of insulin-dependence) the cost to the public overall increases as well:  in providing medical care for sufferers, whether in the form of increased medical insurance premiums, or the taxes associated with maintaining health care programs funded by the government.

Responsible politicians pay strict regard to such matters, and accept the risk of running the thin line that divides them from other politicians, responsible or otherwise, with agendas that cause them to see fit to intrude on the privacy of our citizens.

I would like to think that my State Senator Barrios (or “Jarrett” as he signed himself, familiarly addressing me as “Howard,” which, make no mistake, is fine by me, though I haven’t ever met the man) is of the former disposition—responsible, but no meddler (not to mention no moralist, of either the right or left persuasion). I would also like to think he sides with me—and he did say the right things in his response to me—in believing that citizens must also be responsible in wanting to see to it that their tax money is not being spent to promulgate disease in anyone, least of all children, and further, that these moneys are not being used, however indirectly or passively, by encouraging people to think that it’s OK for children to stuff their faces daily with a dose of the likes of Marshmallow Fluff, which I personally find such a repulsive food, if one may elevate it to that level.

As I said to professional chefs with whom I correspond, “if their parents want to use gavage (force feeding through a tube; a technique used to fatten ducks and geese, so as to enlarge their livers for later harvesting as foie gras, see above) from drums of Fluff on the little tykes in the privacy and sanctity of their own homes, that’s their business [however repugnant, I might add at this point editorially].” However, if parents find themselves incapable of saying, “No,” not to drugs so much, but to non-nutritional foodstuffs, then at least public funds should not be used to suggest that the implicit imperative is “Yes,” when it comes to what the ladies in the hair nets in the school cafeteria dole out onto student lunch trays.

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Far be it from me to suggest anything other than some salutary perspective-taking to esteemed and respected, not to mention respectable, professional chefs, but there seems to be the usual, if not slightly greater, fuss about the latest food sensation among the “hautes” – “sous-vide” or “under-emptiness” to be literal about the French origins of the term and the technique.

First, let me remind those who probably don’t need a lot of reminding, that there are esoteric, and hoary, cooking techniques, that make sous-vide look like Shake ‘n’ Bake® when it comes to tedious protracted exacting time-consuming attention. Making a classic cassoulet still takes three days, and I defy any vacuum-bag toting three-star ganzer k’nacker [yiddish for “big shot,” comrades] that there is a sous-vide methodology that makes a cassoulet a simple matter of keeping the thermostat at 140F on the bain marie for mere hours, and that the result will be the equivalent for textures, complexity, color, aromas, and sheer gustatory pleasure.

And speaking of Southwestern France, there’s the small matter of confit (the last newcomer to the hall, and now a staple on every lunch menu on the Upper East Side, whatever city we’re talking about), a method of cooking that dates back at least 1000 years and makes you wonder how those peasant clots, otherwise fearing (quite literally) for their immortal souls, and fending off such niceties as plague and long-bow bearing English yeomen, could come up with such a relatively simple, straightforward, non-technological (relatively speaking) method of cooking the random fowl to such a degree of melting, succulent, ambrosial tenderness, while also devising a no-muss, no-fuss methodology for preserving same for astounding lengths of time, given that the Sub-Zero (or even the Hobart) brand was some millennium to come. And now sous-vide trumps it, for the very same fowl. Allegedly, that is, if you believe the latest foolish truck that gets printed and passes for news. The implication of the testimonials is that try a duck thigh cooked in a sack and you’ll never go back to that gruesomely primitive, straightforward, lowly brown thing (for which La Goulue can still manage to extract upwards of ten bucks over a simple pile of baby herbs).

After the health department ministrations to the dangers of sous vide (they’d investigate fire, assuming Ugg and Mugg had just invented rubbing dry oak saplings until they ignited, and happened to notice that the lamb shank that dropped accidentally into the fire had acquired a certain “je ne sais quoi” when extracted from the embers an hour later — it’s the JOB of the health department to make sure the health of the public is not endangered; simple huh?; there’s nothing in the statutes about common sense… theirs or yours, but there is the presumption of scientific principle); after the equipment comes down in price, and after Williams-Sonoma has put the slew of sous-vide cookbook classics on after-Christmas markdown. After Target has put a down-market vacuum machine designed by either of the public’s favorite Mr. Designer Teapot, Mr. Starck or Mr. Graves, at the very popular under-one-hundred-dollar price point, and after Whole Foods offers their 365 store brand vacuum bags next to the dishwashing liquid that, well, doesn’t really clean anything… After all that, when sous-vide, done right, of course, is just another excuse to keep the cost of a really expensive evening out to dine to over two hundred dollars per person, not including alcohol, it will be, indeed, what it has been since the French found themselves at that nexus of time and invention in the 60s that allowed its innovation. Just another way to cook, with a particular, if not a peculiar, and certainly distinctive (and, yes, highly attractive) set of gustatory characteristics of its own. Just as braising isn’t sauteeing, and roasting isn’t boiling, and frying isn’t sun-drying.

It’s another of those familiar Air Field Marshal Goering moments for me, which I like to quote. “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my pistol…” Now, when I hear the word sous-vide, and when I hear that, I know I will hear on the heels of its utterance, “unlike any… the ultimate… the tenderest… most flavorful…” and when I hear those fulsome, incredible (as in “don’t believe it;” as in, “no Virginia, there is no cure for Cancer”) adjectives and prepositions, pronouns and nouns, and whatever other parts of speech inspire PR consultants, not to mention the greater majority of the populace, including chefs, who should attend to their specialty or craft, rather than to rhetoric, I reach for my braising pan…

I’m sure there’s a substantive, and provable, difference between the claims for the product of sous-vide (which is a process, after all, and not the product) and the claims for the product of foaming (or cryogenic centrifuging, if you must have an esoteric and expensive technological component), but I think, functionally (and almost exclusively to the food and hospitality industries) it all amounts to the same thing. It’s an excuse to charge a lot of money for cooked food.

I predict:

No great cook will ever go broke not preparing a thing sous-vide. I prefer to think of it in the end as what the French have said all along is what it is, less than a big nothing.

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You know, despite having taught in at least two institutions of higher learning (there was a third, but I didn’t get paid for it), and despite having made a good run for a career in academia, I’m glad in the end that I didn’t succeed.

My sense of these matters, even as a very young man, was that faculty members, or any academicians of any sort, are not deserving of any dispensation (never mind greater status) for their credentials, their intellectual attainments, their collegial stature or approbation, or their intelligence.

They are no less venal, political, or subject to the psychopathology of everyday life than any other man or woman.

I think it’s a damn shame that the right thing to do was for Larry Summers to step down.

As for articles that appeared in The Boston Globe, and particularly the one containing Alan Dershowitz’s observations, I think Alan Dershowitz is a self-serving, sanctimonious, moralizing and sophistical pain in the ass. I prefer to avoid his pronouncements, as I did this one, and so whatever he said is irrelevant to my point of view on this. Fortunately, this particular matter is not about Alan Dershowitz or me, or any one of us, unless we’re on that hapless faculty, or unless, somehow, Larry Summers is reading this blog entry…

For the matter at hand, I have been told nothing of Larry Summers behavior, whether by way of reportage or analysis or opinion by third parties, that justifies this consequence.

I think Harvard and Larry Summers deserve each other. The pity is, they need one another.

The irony is, of course, that officially he is not only resigning the position of President of the University. He is also taking a sabbatical for the academic year 2006-2007, as he is a member of the faculty, and he is slated to return in what would have been his seventh year in his latest tenure on the campus. Yes, he remains a member of the faculty, and I sincerely hope he remains so 2007-8, and remains as big a pain in the ass to those who carried the rail he was carried out on once he returns.

[a friend sent along the remarks attributed to an unnamed Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences member: “I was disappointed in the Globe‘s coverage, which made it sound like a minority of non-far-seeing faculty were behind the resignation.  There is no sense of the chaos, the breaking of promises, the neglect of the humanities, and the many obstacles to moving forward that his arrogant and mulish presidency generated.  Yes, we know he was abrasive, but it was much more than that.”]

I appreciate getting that perspective. Indeed, I thought the headline in the Globe said it, when it referred to the end of the "tumult" at Harvard. That’s not understating it. And remember, I didn’t read the local news stories themselves. I think even less of the Globe than of Alan Dershowitz.

As for this unidentified faculty member, I have friends and acquaintances on the faculties there too. With many different points of view. [Ruth R. Wisse, Professor of Comparative Literature, FAS, Harvard and holder of the Martin Peretz Chair of Yiddish Literature, had some choice and very common sensible things to say in an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/public/us (requires a subscription or registration for a two-week free trial for access); she more or less said there are some chickens abroad as a result of all this, which will come home to roost once the present student body (3:1 in Favor of Summers staying as President) comes to its majority of influence]

Part of the point with Harvard I guess. The whole school is a mare’s nest of intransigence, rivalry, internecine warfare, xenophobia (fear of other disciplines, never mind other faculties). The university notoriously treats its neighbors like shit (as you and I well know) because there is no degree of federalization, so you never know which faction you’ll be dealing with on an issue. Apparently it’s worse internally. It famously is made up of many fiefdoms, even within the same faculty, and the behavior of the Business School almost makes the University seem Balkanized (especially when considered as well with the medical faculty, whose behavior and stance are at least tempered by their humanitarian mission).

I had some dealings with the former FAS Dean, before Kirby. Hateful, self-important rat bastard. But maybe that’s just me.

[Former President of the University] Rudenstine had what we used to call a "nervous breakdown" over the burdens and stresses of the job.

As for arrogance, in some senses, Harvard has always begun with an "A," if you get my drift. It’s why I say they (Summers and the University) deserve and need one another. We needed Nixon to go to China 35 years ago. Harvard needs Larry Summers, or someone very like him, to end the bullshit of that situation.

In the end, I put little credence in the testimony of the participants. At a place like Harvard, you cannot practice the kind of detachment and disinterest necessary to have a sound perspective. I have to end this observation on a note of irony as well, because, well, it’s precisely these characteristics (and the notion of academic freedom) that is supposed to have been instilled in people being trained as scholars (and that’s about all the training you get, as you know, unless you also collect some education credits, or have a cadre of particularly inspiring professors).

The key terminology in that faculty member’s negative observation is "obstacles to moving forward." I’m sure Larry Summers has something to say on that subject as well, from his perspective.

Finally, as for the neglect of the humanities (my general field), well, it’s the same all over.

What no one talks about in the midst of all this, well, tumult, is that the students are suffering. I observed it with my intermittent appointments, over 20 years, at B.U. I don’t mean they suffer emotionally. I mean these days, universities finish off the job (warning: I’m being sarcastic) that our sterling educational system (with a succession of "education Presidents," and I’m talking about POTUS, and the enlightened school boards of well-informed citizens who sit on them spread across this great country) never actually even begins to do. Producing a great many intelligent, yet unobservant, inconsiderate, inarticulate, inexpressive, half-educated non-introspective dolts, with no sense of culture, history, or when and how to put their brains in gear.

Harvard undergraduate students have at least half a leg up on everyone else, and then they arrive, as they have for the past five years, only to find themselves in the midst of turf battles, and gang wars. The professional school graduates don’t have to worry. As for FAS graduate students in the humanities, there haven’t been real jobs for them for at least 25 years.

Sorry, I don’t buy it — not what I’ve heard from most any faculty member over there, and especially not at FAS.

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I’m besieged these days, as I’m sure we all are, by emails from the political, or quasi-political, organizations to which, in weak moments, I revealed even the mildest interest in hearing what they might have to say. Worse, I am sent missives, though they are more like missiles, at far less frequency, from my more assertive friends on matters political.

It works out, given what comes out of my mouth, and the impressions I apparently convey to other folks, that my proclivities are liberal in nature. Hence, most of the epistolary traffic that ends up in my mailbox derives from individuals with a similar bent (and I mean that in many senses of the word, particularly with the sense of the peculiarly compelling insult that was current among my friends back in the 1960s).

I wouldn’t ordinarily think that I’d say this in any context, but I prefer the mail from the "Truthouts" and even from the noxious "Moveon" to that from the amateurs who seem to have decided, at any particular moment, that the sky is falling, and only we, "we happy few, we band of brothers [though the latest email was from a ‘sister’]" stand between utter destruction and the fate of civilization as we know it (in third millennium America).

The glibness and slickness that the more established liberal organizations have developed aside (and I worked in marketing and marketing communications for over 30 years, so I know glib, and I know slick) is preferable to the Chicken Little style of rhetoric that pervades most home-grown campaigns. These individual rally-criers could learn a little bit from the pros (though the pros could learn something about the frequency with which they inundate the ‘Net — they’re as insidious and unavoidable as the fund-raisers on NPR stations — from the amateurs).

Perhaps the most vexing aspects of the emails I get to join the latest fray — one of the latest frays, by the way, is to give the Democratic caucus in the Senate the steel required to mount and sustain a filibuster; some of that steel, according to one strategist at least, will apparently have to come from moderate Republican forges: the object of the filibuster, the defeat of the nomination of one Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to the position of Associate Justice of the United States of America Supreme Court — are the rhetorical and typographic strategies of emphasis.

Curse the day (and I say this as a professional graphic designer, who has also taught the discipline in university) that civilians were shown how to make type on a computer boldface. What those civilians don’t learn, apparently, is that, to use a culinary metaphor, boldface is like pepper. A little goes a very long way. And some people really don’t like any spice at all.

The presumption of these warriors is that we (we happy few, etc.) are possibly too stunned or distracted at most times ever to put our brains in gear. In any event clearly there is the expectation that we are, for the time it takes to read an email concerning a matter "that will have an enormous impact on all our lives, and the lives of our children and grandchildren [O woe that the baby boom is about to enter its dotage…]," no longer susceptible to reasoned argument with the objective of raising us from what is apparently a generation-wide torpor, sufficiently long and sufficiently energetic enough to send a line or two to our Senatorial delegation.

Those who know me, indeed, those who merely read this blog, will know the irony of my advice that, at least in this case, shorter is better. Simpler is better. Indeed, as Einstein allegedly advised, make it as simple as possible, but no simpler. He might have added, "and don’t repeat yourself, not even once."

Hence, these emails, without exception are repetitive, redundant exhortations.

The famous St. Crispin’s Day speech, from Shakespeare, Henry V, the opposite of exhortation, but the model of inspiration (to the point of cliché, I shamefacedly admit) is 223 words, 1175 characters, including word spaces.

The last email I got, as I say, mustering the troops to "pull out all the stops" and presumably all the boldface, in two different weights of type, but mainly bold, and two different typefaces (for no particularly good reason), and get those Dems and Mod Republicans to filibuster their little hearts out, was 690 words, 4,624 characters (with spaces). And I assure you, not the least bit of inspiration to yours truly to do a damn thing.

Worse, the tone of the piece is the rhetorical equivalent of pure boldface (I have another friend, who resides largely on the Right side of the tracks, as it were, equally exhortatory, who had a habit of sending all email in ALL CAPS, but he started the practice as a novice; then he tried to plead as an excuse a problem with dyslexia; all in all it took about two years of invariable responses simply saying, stop putting everything in all caps or I won’t read it, and finally ignoring all emails altogether, to get him to stop; his emails are no less crazy or convincing today, but at least they’re readable). Bold-face exhortation. Like they say, white on rice. Yuch.

Perhaps it’s petty of me. Perhaps the reason for my inaction is purely psychological, self-defeating resentment of the messenger, and not the message. But I must say, it is not in response solely to the message, as the messenger in this case is an inveterate exhorter, foam-at-the-lips, and gleam in the eye and she lost me a long time ago — though I remain sympathetic to many of the causes, and I believe I remain, as I characterized above, a reasonable person in possession of my intellect, and susceptible to rational argument, and even responsive to reasonable call to action. She also has not learned the value of intelligent typography, even in so mundane a thing as email. Even when the fate of American and the World is at stake.

In this case, this entry in the blog is my rise to action. I have only one piece of advice.

Can the bold in every sense, and maybe next time I’ll give Teddy K, and Big John F. K. a buzz…

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DUTY FOR MEHMET ALI AĞJA

So here’s this Turkish nutball, who attempted to put the big sleep on Pope John Paul II back in the days, released back among us (is it still January? yes, just this month). Why he did it, heaven knows, also John Paul presumably, as the two put their heads together a couple of years after the assasination try and the Pope, in his largeness and holiness said what they talked about was between him and Ali. Certainly no one has gotten anything cogent out of the irrepressible Turk as to motive, before, during or since.

He’s been in a Turkish prison lately, for crimes not related to the attempted murder of a pope (because John Paul pardoned him, he somehow got off that hook). Ali had already killed somebody in Turkey, but that only warranted a short prison term, and he escaped anyway. He wasn’t in prison most recently for that misdeed, but another. The details are not important.

In any event, you’d think, or at least I would, that the guy would be like 65 by now. His attempt on the Pope was back in 1981 (and remember he already had a yellow sheet, as they call it on those NYC crime shows that are so addictive, and a prison record, back in Turkey, but who knows if they differentiate between juvenile offenses and any other kind in that place no one in the West is ever likely to comprehend). But no, he’s only 47. Which means he was 22 when he took a shot at putting a cap in the Pope’s ass (I know it’s irreverent; but we don’t blink when they talk that way on Law & Order, and they’re still talking about killing a human being… so, like, what? The Pope is more important than an African-American in Harlem, more deserving of like rhetorical niceties?)

One of the results of Ali’s checkered life, and the facts on his rap sheet, is that, according to Turkish law he must now serve in the military, as he never quite managed to fulfill that obligation before taking to a life of demento crimes.

Turkey. You know. On the edge of Europe. Eligible for membership in the European Union in less than a dozen years. Mainly Muslim. The bridge and gateway to Asia. Capital is Istanbul, the cradle of the Caliphate. When what we can no longer can politely call the Infidel had overrun a significant part of Asia Minor and, well, Europe, and kind of ran the civilized world, they were based in what is now Istanbul, which was the center of Muslim political power. Where that is now is up for grabs and is, arguably in any number of places, including a really big, say half-dozen, including Saudi Arabia, and going around the world from there.

There are those, especially Europeans, who are afraid that Istanbul may very well lay claim, still, to the title. And if Turkey is admitted to the European Union, well wouldn’t that be a nice kettle of lentils, my pretty?

So, Turkey. An enigma. A problem (a political problem). Cradle to many facets of what we now call civilization, though we’re reluctant to say it.

Turkey. Where at the moment they don’t quite have a handle on this little problem with avian flu, which is scaring the bejesus (not to mention the bemohammed) out of epidemiologists who make a living in the Western world. You’ll recall from your recent current events not only that Mehmet Ali was let out of prison (convicted murderer, convicted attempted assassin, convicted of a bunch of other crimes) in Turkey, but that the Turks couldn’t quite seem to bottle up a little outbreak of avian flu among their human population. Seems they sent out teams to destroy infected birds, but they only managed to be effective in front of TV reporting crews. In the really little, really poor villages and towns, grandmas and grandpas simply locked their chickens away, and who knows how many sick birds, not to mention healthy ones, have been overlooked.

Anyway, now we’ve got Mehmet Ali, buck private, soon to be assigned once he finishes basic training (which he badly needs, one would infer, as he kind of didn’t quite get the hang of using a gun on his own). I would guess even the Turks would like to put him somewhere where he won’t attract too much attention and maybe get it into his sick little head to pull some new caper that will just add to the pile of reasons, big and small, that would vote them out of the EU when the time comes.

Well, I’ve got the perfect solution.

I know what Mehmet Ali Ağca’s military assignment should be. Let’s set him loose in those native villages, and let’s let him wring the neck of every bird he can get his hands on.

I’d even let him have a protective mask.

THE MEMORY OF SAMUEL ALITO

In the recently ended hearings in the U.S. Senate concerning the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr., just one of the things that seemed to put every caring liberal person’s private parts in a vise was his less than forthcoming explanation for his membership in something called "Concerned Alumni of Princeton," which apparently has been characterized as a racist and sexist organization bent on restriction of admission to that hallowed academic institution of minorities and women. Indeed, he alleged, or at least implied, having no memory of membership whatsoever.

Those of us who recall Princeton from the 60s, and earlier, have to wonder where all these current conscientious objectors to such blatant prejudice were back in them days, when there were NO women in Princeton, not enrolled in the college anyway, and people of color were rare on the campus. It’s not my point here, but just an aside, that it’s a wonder there aren’t about 50 such organizations related to the return of Princeton and Ol’ Nassau to the status quo ante.

Maybe Alito is a racist and a misogynist — it was an old Princeton tradition after all among some small part of the student body and ensuing alumni body for many years — who knows?

What I wonder about is getting our knickers in a twist about whether he "remembers" belonging to such an organization.

Consider for a moment our esteemed president, George W. Bush, alumnus of two equally illustrious, and no less ivy bestrewn institutions (and, by indictment of the pious and sanctimonious left, as guilty of any number of similar racist, ethnicist, misogynistic crimes as any Princeton — or Dartmouth or Brown or Penn, you name them… — can be called to account for in its history).

Ask him what he remembers about his college days. Or any number of days of his early alumnus-hood, up to the age of 40 (Alito was 35 when he mentioned on a job application that he belonged to the "Concerned Alumni Etc…."). If Bush didn’t remember, or claimed not to, nobody would bat an eyelash.

We’d just figure, well he was probably smashed out of his gourd most of the time from early teenhood on, until Laura put the fear of God and no more sex into him, and it’s surprising he remembers his name.

So I figure, Samuel A. Alito, Jr. is a secretly redeemed coke head, or pot head, or drunk, or something like that. He certainly aspires to all those things those of a divergent ethnicity (divergent from pure WASPishness, the lifeblood of the Ivy League going back to the 17th century — yessirree, racism and misogyny with a three hundred year-plus pedigree) aspire to: prestige, power, control, money. And soon, the U.S. Senate will deliver to him on a platter a significant handful of the first three. No reason he would not also have succumbed to the excesses of those in power, prestige, and control: drugs and alcohol. At least while he was in training, back there in Princeton and thereafter — his Wanderjaren.

And we’re worried about his memory. Call him a coke-head and forget about it. We manage to do it most of the time with the President.

© 2006, Howard Dinin. All rights reserved.

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In my last post to this blog, the one from November 16, in which I was actually responding to an editorial (or so it called itself) in a new local free newspaper here in Cambridge, I went on forever, well at least to the length of 3500 words. The editorial itself was much shorter, barely 550 words. It hardly warranted so much of my attention—not because I am any more important than anyone else, except to me of course. Rather, the editorial was written, or at least it read, like it was wrung out by a freshman science major, with a penchant for stating the obvious as if it were an argument.

But my problem was not even with that—why get started? My problem is that the simple observation that the MBTA should have planned a green line route to carry the as yet non-existent residents of North Point to Harvard Square (and simply because without such a green line, they will make a bee line to the boutiques of Back Bay, while whining about how hard it is to get to Harvard Square) was a single point, an asymptote, on a larger sphere of problems.

Addressing the single point would be as effectual in coping with that world of problems, as relieving a hungry village in Nepal with a single bag of rice.

So, what is my defect? Being set off by a single point to attempt to address a galaxy of of points. And I always seem to try to address the entire sphere at once.

As George Bernard Shaw observed, "The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time." In short, there’s a universality to things, to all things, and any one thing, if one only seeks it.

I write at length because there are so many things that make up the universe that we experience, each in his or her own way, in the shorthand we call "life."

The world says, get to the point, or can’t you be brief? Marc Levy, the editor of Cambridge Day, responded to me by email, when I sent him a link to my blog entry, by saying, "I’m not sure how many people read your blog; if you wanted to share your thoughts with others, you could shorten it and have it run as a letter on the commentary page."

Don’t bother with War and Peace, man… Cliff Notes!

Even if no one reads, I will write. The few who get it will, eventually, read it. Those who don’t, like Mr. Levy, will make newspapers to boost the local economy. That will get people to Harvard Square for sure…

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The history of Cambridge, Massachusetts, nowadays still smirkingly referred to as "the People’s Republic" (though the reason for the smirk is a function of the politics of the smirker), dates to the beginnings of the Massachusetts Bay colony (it was established in 1630 as a village with the name of Newtowne; for perspective, let me just say that Plymouth Rock was a discovery in 1620, and Boston shares 1630 as the year of its establishment). So promising was Newtowne, for any number of strategic geographic and political reasons, it was long considered as the likely site of the chief city, or capital, of the newly founded colony—especially once it had gotten its feet on the ground. That is, once it was clear that no external threat, or internal scourge, such as disease or dissension, would annihilate the stalwart inhabitants.

A fellow named John Harvard helped establish what I will whimsically call a bible college (preparatory to the training of ministers of the faith, who would be needed in greater numbers as the population of the colony swelled). He died young, alas, but left a bequest of profound worth to the fledgling school—his personal library. Books being worth, possibly as much as, if not more than, their weight in gold, this was an estimable legacy. Apparently, considered in concert with the character, if not the piety, of the newly deceased benefactor and his generous gift, it was decided to name the college after him. Further, as if this signal honor were not sufficient (the full significance of which may not have been realized until several hundred years hence—after all Harvard did not become Harvard with the the mere signal honor of the name bestowal—"Tobias, we must rename the college Harvard. Instant prestige, my good sir! The endowment coffers will swell. At the moment we have but books, and three Holstein cows. And when Yale College is founded 65 years hence, we will be well ahead of them in applicants…."), the gratitude of the city fathers extended so far as to conclude that the only full measure of their gratitude could be taken in the re-naming of Newtowne as Cambridge. Cambridge was, of course, the seat and eponymous namesake of the very much older, and already famous, University of which the young John Harvard was so proudly an alumnus.

Not that the two facts were associated (at least I don’t think so), but it was at about the time of the renaming of the community, or town, or village (which is all it truly was at the time—Harvard Yard famously being the cow pasture formerly grazed by the kine of any townsman who cared to lead them to it) that any idea of making it the capital of the colony went out the window (the year Cambridge was renamed was 1638; Harvard College was officially founded two years earlier). Boston went on to glory in this role of primacy among incorporated towns within the Commonwealth. Cambridge was left to seek its own glory in its own inimitable way.

The only other salient fact to bear in mind is that Cambridge remained a village for quite some time. It was in 1846 the town incorporated itself as a city, though it was in signal recognition of its having exceeded being the mere home of a very old college. Harvard was, and the laws of physics being what they are still is, the oldest in the nation. In 1846, however, Harvard made only a plodding and obstinate claim to academic merit, based on its sheer venerability, if nothing else. And many academic historians say there wasn’t very much else to speak for the claim of any distinction, but the vocal and loyal and already very rich members of the rolls of alumni.

Cambridge had become as well a center of commerce and light industry, including tannning and candy manufacture among its main occupations. A village no longer, Cambridge has struggled with its role as a city, and whatever that may mean. In the present day this seems to remain as obscure a fact (seem like simple questions: "what is a city? are we a city?") to the current residents, but especially those most and best endowed with educational attainment, social standing, and financial success. It is as if none of them have ever heard of Ms. Jane Jacobs and her seminal theory—generally, though not universally, accepted as definitive—about what makes a city and, concomitantly, what unmakes it: The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Cambridge, incidentally, originally incorporated as a city as the result of the merger of three smaller villages: Old Cambridge (which centered around what is now called Harvard Square), East Cambridge (then and now the nearest point in Cambridge to the center of Boston being separated by an inlet to the Charles River) and Cambridgeport (which, to the extent it constituted a port, was a port on the Charles River). The three original villages have quite distinct personalities, if not a sense of unique community within each, even today, and even as the city has grown to include several other distinct quarters of readily differentiated traits. But that’s the point of this opinion piece about this small city.

I am biased, as Cambridge is, and has been for 20 years, my home town, but I think, small as it is, it is not a village, but a great American city. I’m not so sure it was great then (150 years or so ago). In fact, it seemed to have exhibited some of the same dubious conduct on the part of the citizenry that remains intractable, if not ineradicable. The official history of the City on the City Web site suggests the three villages that merged as a city had, to that point, engaged in a kind of rivalry. Unfortunately it is not clear of what sort the rivalry might be classified. Given the vagaries of human behavior and the persistence of idiocy as a human trait I am content to suppose that it must have been akin to the benign rivalries that exist today.The ones that become news every Thanksgiving when this "traditional" rivalry or that pits the football team of one town’s high school against that of another. Of such are cherished human memories made.

There’s a new newspaper in this city, my hometown, Cambridge MA. It’s called Cambridge Day, and it seems innocuous enough. It’s been out there, distributed free in the quantity of 15,000 per day each weekday at various points throughout the city. My very casual observation indicates that these are usually retail outlets or the door-stoops to same. The Editor (and apparent publisher; there is no masthead as it is commonly expected to appear in a periodical publication) is one Marc Levy, who offers his paper’s mission, in very personal terms here: About Cambridge Day.

Ads have begun to appear in Cambridge Day, in less than the three weeks or so that the paper seems to have been in circulation. It seems that Levy expects ultimately that the thing will be self-sustaining, or so I infer. Reporting and editing, I can only further infer, seem to be largely on a voluntary basis. But, as there is no shortage of opinion (ranging from the sage to the hortatory, if not bloviatory)  in town, and no shortage of folks who believe they have the makings of vigilant, highly observant investigators, and, likely, no shortage of successful graduates of the Harvard College compulsory course in Expository Writing still in residence within the city limits, and absolutely no shortage of self-appointed experts or chutzpah of other varieties, Levy should never suffer from lack of material or contributors.

There have been a number of editorials, and one of the latest (from the November 14 edition) is the text, or at least the leaping off place for this opinionated, bloviating, vigilant and observant reporter (alas, I have had to gain what few expository writing skills I may have entirely on my own, with some minor tutelage in my Advanced Placement English courses in the 11th grade).

The theme is the observation that "for Cambridge as a community, the T’s green line makes no sense whatsoever" [the green line, as opposed to the red, orange and blue, and the new silver lines, is a light rail trolley and underground system run by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority throughout Boston and several of its suburbs, including Cambridge, in a quite abbreviated spur line to the Lechmere section—in fact it consists of a single stop, the terminus, within the city limits]. I believe the editorialist means that to get from any one point in Cambridge to another, the green line is inherently inefficient (the logic is irrefutable: the green line makes only one stop in Cambridge, and it’s the end of that particular route).

Why make this obvious point? Because the underlying subject of the piece concerns the imminent start of development of a very large tract of previously industrial zoned land in the northeast corner of Cambridge, and which has lain fallow since the days of the great retreat of Cambridge residents to the suburbs, which occurred, as it did all over the nation in the days immediately followig the end of World War II. These 45 acres have been designated "North Point" by the planners, and big ideas are afoot with a grand vision of creating a new "community."

I put that in inverted quotes, because reference to "community" appears several times in this editorial, and it would seem to have a slippery meaning, at least with regard to the locus of application. Variously, Cambridge is a "community" (as quoted above, one for which the green line is "no sense at all"). A sentence or two away, we see that North Point, an as yet unrealized venue, is an "entire community" (Platonic as it may be, or shall we say, a conceptual community?) that, because of the absence of a green line, will find it "easier to go to Boston or Somerville than anywhere in Cambridge."

Now, Cambridge is a seat of great learning, the home of life-changing discoveries and earth-shattering intellectual attainments. It is not the custom of Cantabrigians to preoccupy their better-than-average intellects with the obvious.

That we leave to editorial writers whose self-appointed mandate is local boosterism.

Looking at a map (not the one appended to the editorial in Cambridge Day — it’s a subway system map, distorted and out-of-scale, and the stuff of the nightmares of Edward Tufte) points one immediately to the irrefutable truth of the foregoing editorial assertion. Even with no vehicular transportation whatsoever, of any hue (green or otherwise), it’s easier to get to Boston or Somerville from North Point than to almost anywhere else in Cambridge, except what is immediately contiguous, that is, the neighborhood of East Cambridge. That’s because North Point borders on Somerville to the west and north, and is immediately proximate to the bridge that takes one out of Cambridge and into the now defunct West End of Boston (a lovely walk, may I say, but perhaps not in the winter). Indeed, it will always be easier.

Maybe we should start stating some truths here: if you are anywhere on the planet, you have to be next to something. Northpoint happens to be next to Boston and Somerville. It’s not next to Harvard Square.

The writer further asserts, having established the brutish and hostile neglectful treatment of future North Pointers at the hands of the MBTA and, by implication, those of the city planners, that there’s "not much impetus to go to Central or Harvard squares, though, when the green line [there it is again, the nasty green line, its tracks implacably and relentlessly taking all of its riders away from places they should want to go, presumably, as members of the greater Cambridge "community"] can carry you to Copley Square or Newbury Street [ed. note: this would be the same stop] as fast as you can walk to Kendall."

Obviously the writer has not sat in a green line car in the Government Center station, or in the tunnel just outside of the Boylston Street stop, interminably and always for reasons it would not deign the conductors of the vehicles to inform their passengers; that, or the author walks really really slowly.

But enough of this, as much fun as it is. The point is not one concerning the inadequate rhetorical skills of the editorial writer. Rather it is one that concerns a larger issue, not only for Cantabrigians, but for all of us faced with the issues life in America forces us to confront.

The editorial quotes Terrence Smith, Director of Government Affairs for the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce [full disclosure here: I am a member of the board of directors of the Cambridge Chamber, as I have been for 14 years; in effect, Terrence works for the President of the Chamber, and she presides at the pleasure of, well, me and the rest of the lively gang of business and institutional leaders that comprise the Board]. The theme of the obvious must have been implicit somewhere in the question that elicited this statement from Terrence:

"Historically, East Cambridge has been sort of its own neighborhood with a unique personality compared with the rest of Cambridge. Look at a map of Cambridge—it looked like different communities. If you’re going to buy or rent in East Cambridge, you’ve already figured out that East Cambridge is harder to get to than Riverside, mid-Cambridge or North Cambridge."

Let’s sort this out, as the editor has done Terrence the disservice of removing any point of reference, and perhaps, methinks, the greater disservice of some brutal editing and lifting out of context. Terrence seems to mean that East Cambridge is further away from some unnamed point of departure than other neighborhoods and distinct communities in the City. In fact, in the second to the last paragraph of the editorial, the writer makes the questionable assertion that "Harvard Square is the geographic heart of Cambridge…" and one may suppose that this is the reference point that is required to make any sense of Terrence’s statement.

I don’t want to put words in Terrence’s mouth, but the reference and informational materials themselves that the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce publishes (and produced at great trouble and expense, I might add, on a yearly basis) does just that. I’ll consult with Terrence about any possible conflict he may feel with regard to the descriptions about the appeal of Cambridge as a whole that are posted on the Chamber Web site, and in its literature.

If there is anything to be celebrated in even as small a city as Cambridge is (and this is one reason I feel it is a great city—it manages to manifest a diverse character in as small an area as 7+ square miles and with a population of barely 100,000, and to serve some of the most arcane needs that exist on the planet), it is the diversity of its population, the unique neighborhoods it embodies, and the profound differences in feeling, not to mention the experience in the quality of life, reported by so many when comparing Inman Square to East Cambridge, or Central Square to North Cambridge, not to mention the invidious comparisons of all of these to Harvard Square, the putative heart of the City.

May I just say, if Harvard Square is the heart of the City, Cambridge is doomed to some serious cardiac intensive care.

The beef in this editorial is that short shrift, if any shrift at all, has been given to the transportation needs of Cambridge—a city apparently in desperate need of better means for citizens within the city itself to get from one part of the city to another. Indeed, it is practically made the responsibiilty of the MBTA to ensure that such means are planned and developed. The implication is that the absence of such means is worse than somehow ensuring that there is enough of a lure in any one neighborhood to entice inhabitants of another neighborhood to come on by for a visit. Not to mention the possibility of attracting entrepreneurs and shop owners who have truly unique things to sell, not only to North Pointers, not only to Cantabrigians, but to the world.

Implicit in all this is a state of mind that most benignly and efficiently can be called provincial. It’s not uncommon in Cambridge, this most famous of cities on the world stage (but famous for what happens in the minds of its residents and inhabitants, not for what happens in its streets) to experience the daily manifestation of provincial thinking.

The great lesson of Jane Jacobs, if there is merely one lesson to be learned from this wise and thoughtful woman, it’s that one thing and one thing only characterizes cities. A city changes. It’s dynamic. This is how it stays alive.

Further, of course, she makes clear that our sense of cities, the sense that Americans hold as a cherished ideal (and it may, indeed, be an outmoded ideal, if not already archaic, sadly; dare I say, it might itself be provincial to think of cities in this way). It’s an idea that nevertheless still holds, in practical and day-to-day terms and mainly for perfectly ordinary people who must live in cities.

I’ve never heard anyone argue convincingly otherwise than that a city neighborhood—perhaps one of many neighborhoods, if not hundreds, depending on the scope of the city—is a living thing, and its chief constituent is people, people who are there for many purposes: living, yes, but working as well, and providing services to those doing the living and the working, and finally those transporting people and goods into and out of the neighborhood. People constantly entering and leaving it; people seldom leaving it because it is their home.

Now, I ask you (and the writer of this idiotic scolding of the MBTA), should people want to go to Harvard Square because the green line has conveniently placed a stop there, as well as on the corner nearest your condo in North Point? Or should they want to go because there are stores like Clothware and Setebello and Harnett’s and Burdick’s, and the Brattle theater, and the restaurants Casablanca and Algiers—and because places like that just don’t exist anywhere else?

Is it unfair to have city planners consider that there might be other modes of transportation, less disruptive of street traffic and the building of which would be less disruptive of residential and commercial life for the years it would take to build it than a light rail line (which, let’s face it, is designed for commuters, and other travelers who must traverse great distances in cities of far greater breadth than Cambridge—here’s a point of reference: New York City is 800 square miles; Boston, not a very large city itself, is nevertheless over 48 square miles within the city limits)? Is it fair to think that Cantabrigians, indeed, above all because they are Cantabrigians, cannot consider walking from one neighborhood to another? Or riding a bicycle? Or renting a Zip Car for two hours (less than the cost of a cab ride from one end of Cambridge to the other, never mind into Boston, never mind onto Newbury Street at mid-day).

There are repeated testimonials, not to mention exhortations, in Cambridge Day as to the virtues of shopping locally, "Shop Local First." I’m all for it, but I may be missing something if I fail to see the connection between the absence of a green line strategy for joining North Point with Harvard Square, and shopping locally "first." If there is a failure of the local citizenry to shop locally, it just might be either because the local shops aren’t worth the patronage, or because local shops would rather blame the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which services 175 cities and towns covering over one thousand square miles, and over two million people, than assume responsibility for more effective marketing, offering more interesting, better differentiated products and services, and inviting folks from every neighborhood into their own.

The absence of green line access across Cambridge neighborhoods may not be an incentive to greater communal solidarity (it wouldn’t be in any event if there was nothing in any other neighborhood to go and get), but it is certainly no impediment.

The lament seems instead to be that this big change, called North Point, is coming. Something new will appear among us, and it will be called North Point. What I wonder is, what will there be in North Point that I might want to go there to get? But there is no mention made of that. Rather, there seems to be an undercurrent of fear. There will be a new "other" at the outskirts of our village, and they may shun us.

Well, we are no village, and if we are shunned, it may be because we should be.

Cambridge is a city and it must change if it is to remain vital. Just as the Necco building is now Novartis world headquarters for their chief research facilty, and just as the continuing development of University Park continues to exert changes on the rhythm and make-up of the neighborhoods surrounding it.

We’re good at pushing back here in Cambridge, and that’s a good thing, even if the energy comes from some provincial impulse to keep the intruder out, or at least keep the intruder from changing my daily routine.

At worst, we will not even notice that some time in the not too distant future (and here’s hoping I live that long) there is an enclave of thousands of people in a place someone arbitrarily (and unimaginatively if you ask me—the name is stupefyingly dull) called North Point that never gets a foot closer to where I hang—Harvard Square, Porter Square, Inman Square, and East Cambridge.

If they’re spending all their time on Newbury Street, it just means it won’t get harder to get a seat at the bar at Casablanca for a glass of Booker’s small batch bourbon, neat, with a soda on the side. And if I’m feeling hungry, maybe a plate of Ana’s Short Rib. That’s a combination I know I won’t find anywhere else: on either the green, red, blue, orange, or silver line.

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