As in any country of any size (Italy, the United States, China, being the best known examples) the cookery of France is a cuisine that is essentially regional. A "French" restaurant is never a precise designation, unless of course, the restaurateur, especially in a foreign country, and particularly the U.S., where French restaurants abound, is ambitious enough to have a bill of fare that fairly represents the diverse numerous distinctive cuisines that add depth and dimension to the country with which we have had a love-hate affair for well over two hundred years.

As Americans have become more sophisticated—say in the past 40 years or so, dating from the publication of the classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking—they can and do indeed distinguish Provençal specialties from those of, say, Alsace, or the great Southwest, of Lyon (the Bologna of France), of Burgundy, of Nice. That is, Nice as well differentiated from Provence, being some amalgam of dishes native to this independent County—not a part of France as we know it until the very late 19th century, plus ingredients begged borrowed or stolen from neighboring Provence, to the west, and Liguria, to the east and the closest distinguishably unique Italian cuisine.

A tart, to speak of one dish common to many cuisines, is simply a pastry casing which is filled with whatever, and may, of course, be savory or sweet, or something in between; and let’s clear this up right now. A pie can be a tart, in that a tart is always open (no top crust or pastry covering), but a tart is most certainly seldom a pie, in that most pies are covered even if only partially. Although the characteristic tarts of Alsace, the onion tart, larded as it is with bits of pork belly, and the ever popular quiche lorraine—butt of innumerable jokes—are well known to Americans, there are few tarts from Provence that have attracted our attention. This is possibly because there are no indigenous tarts in Provence, or even in Nice, but, as I’m being cute, mainly because of a linguistic anomaly and a soupçon of strict culinary interpretation. Strictly speaking, the dish is a tourte, a Provençal and Niçois term. There is the great, and ubiquitous, tourte aux blettes, which comes in two versions, the savory and the sweet. Blettes is French for chard, and it’s a big vegetable in the south of France, in every sense of the adjective.

The weather is temperate enough (even in the somewhat elevated climes of the village, at 540 meters above sea level, and where the usual temperature around the first of the year is 0° Celsius, or freezing, first thing in the morning). On the other hand, this is about as cold as it gets, and chard is a hardy plant. I noticed just the other day as I walked through the village that the nearest potager, or kitchen garden, had a few robust chard heads growing, without a sign of freezing or wilting.

In the market, healthy chard is sold in bunches, even in mid-winter, as a local product, with leaves as much as half a meter long, and more than a quarter meter across, that is to say, in practical terms, and British measure, more than a foot-and-a-half in length from tip to stalk, and, in some cases, as much as a foot across. A bunch is usually about four or five of these behemoth deep forest-green leaves, with startlingly white stalks tinged with light green.

Also readily available are poireaux (pronounced like the cunning and cunningly named Belgian detective invented by Agatha Christie, that is, Poirot) and is simply the magnificent member of the genus allium, the leek, making it cousin to the onion and garlic, though with some loftier pretensions.

Where I am headed with all this is a recipe, one that has become stock-in-trade for me, as I’ve made it repeatedly while over here, probably at least once on every trip for a few years now, and well-known to our friends and neighbors in the terroir. I’ve made it so many times, I make no reference to a recipe, and in fact, have forgotten where I might have seen the original recipe on which I based the one I prepare now not so much by rote as absently, if not automatically.

It’s a wonderful thing, if I do say so myself, and made in the more-or-less 11" tart pan that I use over here—largish by American standards, and doubly so, because the pan is in one piece and with very high sides, perhaps close to an inch-and-a-half, as opposed to the half-inch standard tart pan, with a removable bottom that has become so familiar as the receptacle for almost any dessert or savory tart made commercially in the U.S. The tart I make, which includes far more than the nominal leeks and chard, is a robust dish, with one slice, a healthy wedge of perhaps one-tenth the whole, and a salad making quite a substantial meal.

The crust is a not-out-of the-ordinary pâte brisée, made from scratch from three ingredients, or four, if you insist on a pinch of salt, though I usually omit it.

From this point on, I’ll write this in recipe format, which, being who I am, may not be entirely standard form, but it’s the form I use, and which regular readers have seen before in this space.

And sorry, but since I usually make this tart over here, in metric Europe, what I can interpolate from my usual ministrations to the ingredients, which does not include much measuring anyway, is in metric units, in those few places along the way where I actually take note of the volume (nothing weighed, so it’s all cubic centimeters or milliliters). Otherwise you need only be able to count, and use a very sharp knife without injuring yourself, and a rolling pin (I prefer a French pin, which is a healthy length of hardwood, rounded on the ends and of uniform circumference, about the size of a very fat broom handle, but shorter, maybe two feet).

Leek and Chard Tart (with optional goat cheese)

For the crust (pâte brisée)

350 grams All-purpose flour (yes, I know I said I didn’t weigh anything, but I use a liter graduate that’s marked variously for the actual ingredient being measured, so there’s a scaled line for flour, for sugar, for water, etc., with the volume being measured indicated in grams if it is a dry ingredient—I’ve never seen such a graduate in the ‘States, so you may, indeed, have to get out the kitchen scale). On another note: the flour in French supermarkets is softer than American all-purpose flour—less gluten—and you might want to consider adding a small amount of cake flour to replace and equal amount of the all-purpose; all in all, however, the flour from King Arthur (Sands & Taylor’s venerable brand from Vermont) should work fine without any tampering or tinkering;

175 grams 82+ (or higher)-butter-fat unsalted butter (butter is sold by weight, so I guesstimate from the total full packet—usually 250 or 500 grams—approximately what fraction is the amount I need)
several tablespoons of iced water

Optional: granulated sea salt

In a food processor, add the butter cut into medium-size bits (about a teaspoon apiece) to the flour in the bowl, using the conventional metal-blade. Add a pinch or two of salt if you like.

In bursts, combine the butter and flour until all of it is about the consistency of coarse meal.

While operating the processor in bursts, add the iced water (keep the ice out of the processor) in tiny amounts, until the mixture forms clumps that adhere naturally to one another. Do NOT allow the mixture to form a single mass, usually taking the form of a rough ball trying to whir around the angular force of the spinning blade.

Dump out the dough onto a sheet of wax paper or plastic wrap. Trying to handle the dough as little as possible (keeping the heat from your fingers and hands away from it), work the dough into a single rough ball. Dust your hands in flour if necessary and work it only until it doesn’t stick to your skin and the surface is relatively smooth. It should end up about the size of an American softball. Wrap it in plastic wrap. Place it in the refrigerator for about an hour.

For the filling

A bunch of very large leaves, with stalks intact, maybe four or five in all, of Swiss Chard, the all-green kind

Four medium sized leeks

Five large eggs

One cup whole milk

30-35 cc crême fraîche

3/4-1 cup grated Emmental cheese

3/4-1 cup grated Cantal cheese (actually you can use almost any combination of semi-hard cheeses: Gruyere or Comté keeps it in the European family, or Gouda, Leerdammer, Jarlsberg, or even cheddar)

Extra-virgin olive oil, sufficient to sauté the chard and the leeks

3-4 Tablespoons of nigella (also called black cumin), an interesting mild spice that will actually help dispel some of the natural bitterness of the leeks, while adding a certain sweetness that goes well with the custard that encases the vegetables

Whole nutmeg, with grater

2-3 teaspoons of dried thyme

Optional A log of fresh chevre, about 7-8 inches long and about 1-1/2 inches in diameter, cut into 1/4-inch thick slices

Cooking instruments

11" fluted tart pan, one piece, preferably Teflon® coated inside and out (the type I described with very high sides, about 1-1/2 inches); if you can’t, improbably, find a non-stick coated tart pan of these dimensions, use any tart pan that fills the bill, and butter the inside generously before inserting the dough as described below

Large sauté pan

Three non-reactive bowls (stainless or ceramic)

Two plates larger than 11" in diameter

Heat the oven to around 375-400 degrees Fahrenheit (it’s really not critical, and don’t be a baby about this; I cook in France on a French stove, whose oven control, like all French oven controls, has a dial numbered one to ten—actually in numerals, 1-10—and I cook in a medium-hot oven, around 6, and believe me, it’s a really good oven, or at least it’s a very expensive one, and I know it never delivers the same temperature twice; remember cooking may seem like science, and this is the bullshit a lot of recent books tell you, but it’s all art, and heart, and instinct… Just pay attention, that’s the main thing). Put the rack you will use in the middle of the oven.

While the pâte brisée dough is chilling,  clean the leeks in your usual method after cutting off the dark green portion of the heads, and cutting off the soft curly roots, well into the white stalk. Slice into "roundels" about 1/8-inch thick. Set aside in a bowl.

With a very sharp knife, cutting as close to the white stalk as possible, separate the green leaf of the chard from its stalk. Cut off the wide end of the stalk, to remove any dried-out portion. Set aside the stalks. Stack the leaves, minus the stalks, on top of one another. Fold in half length-wise, and loosely roll the leaves into a huge "cigar" of chard. Cut the chard crosswise, through all the leaves at once, into slices about 1/4-inch wide. Set aside in a separate bowl.

Stack the chard stalks, and from the thin pointy end, cut into 1/4-inch thick slices toward the wide-end, until you have about a cup of sliced stalks, and add to the bowl with the chard leaf slices.

In a large sauté pan, heat EVOO, at least three tablespoons, and no more than 1/4 cup, over medium heat. Throw in the chard and stir with tongs or a wooden mixing blade (or silicone rubber spatula… let’s not get too technical here), until it is all coated with oil and cooking well, but not too quickly. Throw in a few pinches of sea salt, and grind a few grinds of fresh ground black pepper into the pan. The chard leaves will wilt immediately. Stir a few times. Cover lightly, but keep watching it. The stalk slices will ultimately turn translucent and get limp. The whole concoction will reduce significantly in volume. Without burning anything, cook until you are satisfied it is well-cooked. Transfer back to the bowl, and remove all of the chard with a slotted spoon or skimmer, leaving as much oil behind in the pan as possible.

Top up the oil a bit with more EVOO. You’ll need a bit more for the leeks than the chard, as the volume of leeks is greater. Heat the oil, and add the leek roundels. Add salt and pepper to your preference. Stir well with your instrument of choice, and let the leeks cook covered until they are quite limp. They will also reduce in volume, though not as significantly as the chard. The leeks will give off a lot of liquid. Uncover, and stirring, turn up the heat a tad, to drive off the liquid (mainly water) from the leeks. Do not burn, and try not to brown the leeks significantly if at all. No tragedy if you do brown them a little. When done, again using the slotted spoon or skimmer, remove the leeks, leaving as much oil behind as possible, and put the leeks into the bowl with the cooked chard. Set aside to cool.

Crack all the eggs whole into a bowl, suitable for whisking. Whisk the eggs well, until beaten into a froth of a uniform color. Add the milk, the ctême fraîche, the nigella, and the thyme, in no particular order. Grate maybe a 1/2-3/4 of a teaspoon of the nutmeg into the bowl as well. Don’t go nuts with the nutmeg. It takes an experienced hand to add enough for nuance, without adding so much that you actually taste the nutmeg in the finished dish. It should help lend an indefinable nuttiness to the flavor overall. Under-grate if you’re not sure or just plain nervous about these things.

Mix all the ingredients in the bowl until uniform, and then dump in the grated cheeses and mix some more. Set aside.

Remove the ball of chilled dough from the fridge, and place on a floured rolling cloth (get one; I know you probably don’t have one, because none but the fatally serious cooks do, so get one; a light canvas is best, because most durable; probably the on-line shop that King Arthur has on its site will have one available). Gently beat the top of the ball all over with the rolling pin ("gently" is the key word here) until it begins to flatten. Turn the flattened ball over and continue gently to tap it all over uniformly, until it has become a very fat disc.

Now begin to roll with the pin. Roll a few times in one compass direction, and then roll a few times in a compass direction 90° (you know, right angles) to the first direction you used. Then at 45° to that direction, and then at right angles again to this last direction. In short, roll it out uniformly, switching directions every half-minute or so, so it retains a more or less circular (as opposed to oval) shape. Keep rolling until it’s about 1/4-inch thick. Then roll some more so that it’s incrementally thinner (don’t get obsessive; incrementally means noticeably, but that’s all; just get it a little less than 1/4-inch thick).

You should have a more or less round piece of flattened dough significantly and hence comfortably larger than the diameter of the tart pan.

If you did this right, you should be able to lift the edge of the dough and simply fold it in half over itself. Keep right on going if there were no hitches (if you used a floured rolling cloth, nothing will be sticking to anything else), and lift the dough folded in half and place it on top of the tart pan, so the straight edge of the dough is right on the diameter of the pan. Carefully, if not gingerly, unfold the dough so it covers the entire tart pan, and gently, gently (gently!) lift the edges of the dough and let the dough drop down the fluted sides of the pan. The idea is to get as much dough of a single layer into the pan, covering the bottom and the sides.

Gently push the dough into the flutes of the sides of the pan. Be careful that the dough fits into the inner circumference of the pan where the sides join the bottom. In short, the dough should conform, like a skin, to the inside surfaces of the pan. Keep the extraneous dough draped on the outside over the edges of the pan. Once you’re satisfied that as well as possibly can be, the dough is touching all surfaces of the inside of the pan, take the rolling pin and roll it over the pan, thereby "slicing" off the extraneous dough like a big ring, using the edge of the pan as the slicer. Dispose of the extra dough. Set the pan and the dough aside.

Add the cooked vegetables in the bowl where they’ve been cooling to the egg-dairy-spice-herb mixture, and stir thoroughly until uniform.

(Optional step) Take the rounds of chévre and symmetrically place in the bottom of the tart pan, more or less covering as much of the area of the dough in the bottom as you can. You should be able pretty much to cover most of the bottom with goat cheese rounds.

Carefully and slowly pour the contents of the filling from the bowl into the tart pan, with the aid of a silicone rubber spatula to spread the filling evenly. If you did this right, and if I am not a complete nincompoop, it will miraculously just fill the tart pan. It’s also a miracle to me, and it always just fills the tart pan. And I swear, I measure nothing but the flour.

(Special bonus, secret optional step: I’ve only done one or the other of these, but once) Sprinkle the top with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese uniformly. Just a little all over. Or take bits of butter and dot the top evenly. Not a lot of butter either. You could go crazy and do both. But like I said, I usually do neither.

Place in the middle of a medium-hot oven and watch it once you get past about a half-hour of cooking. It will have started to puff up by then. It should take no longer than 50-55 minutes to brown to the degree in the photo. In any event, it should be a nice uniform medium brown. Not light, not dark, but medium.

Remove the pan with the finished tart to a rack, or just put it on top of an unlit burner on the stove, just so air can circulate underneath. After at least a half-hour, but more like an hour, take one of those really big plates and put it upside down on the top of the pan. Turn the whole shebang over. Don’t be nervous. Lift the tart pan from the tart. Place the other dish upside down on the tart’s bottom, and turn the whole shebang one more time. You’re done. You can eat it hot, but it’s better warm, and it’s great at room temperature.

Serve with a very fresh salad of lettuce, tomato, and sweet onion sliced very thin, with a home-made vinaigrette.

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I was born and raised for a while in New York City. Not quite to the age of consent, but long enough still to remember. I pride myself with a perverse pride in that I have yet to visit in almost 62 years any of the iconic attractions—dare I say tourist in proximity to that last noun?—of that city. The only destination of note I ever did visit was the World Trade Center, and indeed traveled to the roof of which tower they permitted such a thing. The rest is silence.

Pretty much the same pattern manifests itself in me here in France. Dodging the greatest attractions of Paris is easy. So far, no Eiffel Tower, not Pantheon, no Montmartre, no Montparnasse, etc. Why play with the destiny of these august destinations. Here in Provence, it’s a little more difficult.

You drive around, even aimlessly, and the next thing you know, you’re smack dab next to some ruin or some well-preserved monument that’s been there for a couple thousand years and untold millions have gaped at after traveling kilometers untold out of their way just to see it. My own little village continually surprises me, embarrasses me with its unknown treasures. Indeed, hidden in the very word "embarrass" is the source of one major surprise. In this tiny out-of-the-way unpronounceable village was born the guy, Count Barras, who, essentially, arranged for Napoleon to be Emperor. Thanks a lot Count.

But even I will allow myself a grudging pride in every lichen covered stone that probably graced a wall several millennia ago, built to defend a Roman encampment. I’ll even allow myself the fantasy of seeing well-muscled centurions, having spent a refreshing day beating a bunch of Gauls into submission, doffing their leather armor, watering their horses, kicking back for a well deserved snooze and a snootful from that skin of wine.

But what I won’t allow myself is a visit, especially now that I can entertain the more sustaining and satisfying fantasy of being a genuine tax-paying, mortgage-holding French landowner, to any of the myriad sites and sights for which the French themselves scrupulously, if not sedulously, plan for months prior to the skimpy four weeks (out of a total of six, not to mention all the three-day weekends, and other jours feriés (bank holidays) of summer they get to go anywhere they please. They are hardly to be blamed that the whole damn country is chockablock full of tourist attractions. They’ve been collecting them, hoarding them, building more, year after year for centuries, millennia.

But you won’t catch me going. No sirree. No Mont St. Michel for this homey. No Carcassone. OK, OK, so I and the wife did go to this ridiculous pile, restored to an inch of its life, with only about two or three million anachronistic errors by a narcissist with the laughable name of Violette LeDuc (and this is a guy we’re talking about), but I plead "tourist;" I was a tourist, honest. Owning a house here wasn’t even a fantasy at the time. Same with a few other medieval rattletraps, mammoth stones picturesquely strewn about, the now eternally silent cloisters of a clutch of monasteries, now bereft of monastics. But I swear, I’ve never set my baby blues on one field of lavender. Never haunted a trail in the Luberon. Never dipped a pinkie, or a baby toe, in the miraculous fonts of Lourdes.

Most important of all, though it’s practically right up the road a piece, never ogled the vaunted Gorges du Verdon, the so-called "Grand Canyon of France." Ha! I say. I say it to your face. Never ogled, boggled, or blanched at the (testimony abounds) splendors of the natural marvels of what, after all, I ask you, is anything more than some river meandering, do-se-doing its way like some whacked out switch-back mountain road, wearing the rocks away for what, like, thousands, maybe it’s millions, of years? I mean it’s nature doing its thing.

I do my thing. And my thing is not natural wonders.

But then there’s the problem of house guests. Essentially a special variety of tourist, on whom I lavish affection, love, and not even grudging them gobbets of time, driving, shopping, cooking, whatever, and all for their pleasure. And all I need do is silently chew the insides of my cheeks to raw flesh in mortal anxiety that they might take it into their heads to go and see. Yup. The freakin’ Gorges du Verdon.

Incidentally, let me disabuse you right now, should you ever head this way and are thinking, Verdon? Wasn’t that some really famous battlefield qua slaughtering ground of the First World War? Like did they throw themselves over the cliffs or something. But no, that was Verdun, which is way away that way (gesturing north). The Verdon is a river. Just another river down here. Like the Tarn and the Loup (which also have gorges—almost accidentally saw some of them a few years ago, I think it was the Loup, but I barely escaped, taking that fortuitous left turn out of a rond point to Vence), but mightier and more majestic and God knows more famous. In the summer the roads are literally clogged here, people can’t crawl slow enough to get to the Gorges du Verdon.

I’ll admit to seeing the Verdon, at the very very end of it, because I’ve been many times to a little town called Moustiers Sainte Marie, a truly god-forsaken place, which I visited regularly before I wised up. I have a fondness and hence a weakness for my wife, and she likes it there, for the there. She certainly doesn’t like it any more than I do for what’s most famous about the place (aside from a chapel built halfway up a mountainside, which you access via steep stone steps cut into the same mountainside, the climbing of which is very much akin to being given a stress test by a sadistic cardiologist, or the strange ten pointed star—similar to a regulation normal five pointed star, except for some reason it has tiny little points between the usual large points—that some maniac prince in the famous medieval bygone era ordered strung across a, well there’s no other word for it, gorge that runs smack through the center of this essentially kitschy little burg, and there’s a legend about how the chain that holds up the star broke, so they had to string the damn thing back across the gorge, because the prince was sentimental and made a pledge—it’s still there so you can tell I’m not making this up; I’d show you a picture, but it would be too shameful and embarrassing for a serious photographer like myself, even though I have a very nice snap that takes care of the whole nauseating touristic thing: the chapel, the star, even the chain, and the gorge of course). But what Moustiers Sainte Marie is famous for is its faience, which is a fancy French word for dinnerware. Which is all like white with tiny hand-painted figurines wearing cute Fragonard type outfits from the eighteenth century doing quaint homey eighteenth century type stuff, like hanging out, or hunting grouse or pheasants, or butchering pigs. Stuff like that. Anyway, it’s the kind of stuff my mother, may her soul be at peace in heaven—next year is her centennial by the way—would like. They still make it the same way. Big euros. And the old stuff looks exactly like the new stuff, only it’s even bigger euros because it’s old.

But the town is nice, in a patently cute, old-fashioned kind of way, and you can manage to squeeze off a few good shots along the way, what with all the rocks and rills, and little runlets and rapids, and really tall stone walls, which are about as troublesome and puzzling as that star on a chain—like, why did they build them?

And I do have house guests, and, it being past the winter solstice, the days do grow longer, and you gotta’ find things for people to do. We had a reprieve for a couple days, because we had a friend of theirs, guest of a guest, which may mean something, but in this case, what it meant was good, because he was and is a good guy, and we had to piss away a whole two days just picking Jean up and eating big time in Aix-en-Provence when we did, and shopping, and doing good solid American stuff like that. So the Gorges du Verdon went way to the back of my mind. But all good diversions must end. And Jean had to go back to Paris, and I’m sorry to say, Bob and Naomi didn’t forget the Gorges. Not for one second as it turned out.

Then the weather bailed me out. It rained for three days, which it almost never does, certainly not in January. But all bad things must end, and soft-hearted basically masochistic fool that I am, the next thing I knew, sun playing tag with clouds in the legendary blue skies of Provence, I was driving north toward Moustiers. And then en route, Bob being Bob, and me being me who can refuse my friends nothing, Bob, Gee How, if you don’t mind (I hear this particular combination of words and my brains turn to a frigid gel), maybe we could take this road and take a look directly at the [loud minor chord] Gorges du Verdon.

So I took the right with the sign to a town I never noticed before and had my own stars been set right, and had I lived a more righteous existence, I would never have had to notice, Aiguine. But we plowed right on through that sucker and kept going. Gorges du Verdon, and destiny, right this way. There was one more precipitous turn onto the corniche above Aiguine and a road sign smiled at me, a sign I had never seen before. It was entirely pictorial, as no words were needed. It showed a tire with chains on it. I don’t know the French for tire chains anyway. But with a song in my heart, and knowing I had remembered to take my anxiety meds that morning, we plunged ahead. I shouldn’t use the word "plunge" of course, because I know what a corniche is (Alfred Hitchcock made good use of them in several films, including "To Catch a Thief," because driving along a corniche is like instant cinematic suspense and terror). And we drove and drove and switched back and forth, with increasingly more thrilling views, until it was clear we need not actually drive up as high as the clouds, which were, in fact, literally enveloping the tops of the cliffs overlooking the Gorges. So we stopped at a turn-out, facing a sign that said 967 meters, referring to the elevation.

And, well, what’s the use? It’s time for the words to stop, because they do, indeed, literally fail.

But here’s what we saw, along with a few glimpses of Aiguine (and its charming castle, semi-charming soccer field, and views of the town perched high above the Lac de Sainte Croix, into which the Verdon River now debouches (the very very end of the river that I referred to above), easily visible, as are the high walls of the Gorge, as you cross the bridge that separates the Var, the département my house is in, from the Alpes de Haute Provence, the département that Moustiers is in, because, try as I might to avoid it, we ended up there for lunch. So there’s a few of the more palatable pictures I shot in Moustiers to end this little Web gallery.

I will say in closing that I’m not sure of which I am more proud, losing at last my Gorges du Verdon virginity, or taking these pretty interesting shots with a tiny little Canon camera that costs less than two hundred bucks, is much smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and really hardly deserves to be called a camera at all.

http://bertha.com/Gorges_Aiguine_Moustiers

As usual, enjoy.

by

On January 3, 2008 a friend forwarded a bit of Internet fodder, with the Subject header line supplication, "Please Read." I did. It was a bit of correspondence/essay attributed to a Dr. Vernon Chong, a USAF Major General (Retired). It turns out it has been kicking around since 2004. It is not uncommon for these things to spring up from time to time, sometimes redundantly, if not repeatedly, among the small motley circle of my friends who exchange items of interest. Or at least they are of ostensible interest. We are motley for our wide spectrum of political views, which range from Libertarian to Liberal (if not quasi-anarchistic) to those of one of us—an eternal trickster, if not provocateur, who gets a clearly perverse, if benign, delight in offering up bits of casuistry such as Dr. Chong’s. This last is simply to stir up the pot, and see what happens, especially if one of us makes the mistake of taking seriously the intent of the sender (or his credulity). This last go round for the maundering of the alleged Dr. Chong was passed along by one among us, who espouses a strange mix of middling liberality and staunch chauvinism (he is one of the few, if not the only one, among us, who served in the armed forces, albeit in the Medical Corps—during the late unfortunate hostilities known by our enemy at the time as The American War.

I won’t dignify or substantiate Dr. Chong’s remarks either by repeating them here (never mind the absorption of bandwidth) or even by providing a URL of the various sites on which they might be found on the World Wide Web. If you must waste your time by first reading them, I’d suggest entering some combination of Dr. Vernon Chong (or even include his rank) in Google, or your favorite search engine.

I do think it’s remarkably telling that, in the midst of what has become a surprising, if not exciting start out of the gate of the 2008 Presidential Nomination Follies, with newspaper headlines trumpeting the decreasing lack of importance of the war in Iraq that this should appear among a group of us comfortable, late middle-aged (some of us are, in fact, still working actively for a living) bourgeois Northeasterners of various political stripes. For some, indeed, the continuing bellicosity of various Muslim factions in Iraq, and the continued presence of well over 100,000 American troopers in that nation is not only an issue, front and center, but even if it settles somewhere into the middle or rearward  reaches of our consciousness, we are well aware that the more pertinent, or seemingly more salient issues—and in particular the economy, which worsens by the moment—are intimately tied to the effects (and costs) of the five years and counting that our military forces continue to be deployed in the former biblical kingdom of Assyria.

What follows is my response to this innocent attempt to evoke some interesting intellectual discourse among our stalwart little group of citizens, bound more by affection and friendship if truth be told than by any real desire to debate (which seems only to get us into trouble, especially as we each of us seem to lapse into emotional conflict rather than the desired dispassionate reasoned debate). I’ve cleaned up and edited a bit the spontaneous effusion I sent immediately back to the entire list of recipients.
Whether or not you read Dr. Chong’s "essay" is not important. Its argument, if it can be elevated so precipitously as to be called that, is contingent on one quasi patriotic, hyper-emotional assertion, about which the author goes on at such length as to permit saying that it is attenuated to the point of etiolation, if not beyond.

There is only one fault with this argument. However, it is a fault that is fundamental, if not elemental, and hence makes the rest of this argument, which I’m loathe to call it, as it is so badly articulated, built as it is on a false premise, not only dubious, but time ill spent in the reading. Perhaps this rhetoric is deliberate, blatantly bent on appearing persuasive, as opposed to expressing a truth, any truth.

The fault is the unsubstantiated assertion that we are at war.

We are, I would assert, not at war, not at the moment. And no more so than we were at the time of this essay of Dr. Chong’s, that is, some time in 2004.

However, we are at this time (January 2008) policing an insurgency among a people who only half want us to be there for any purpose whatsoever.

In precipately, and pre-emptively, engaging in war with a sovereign nation, however disreputable and odious its government and leaders, and irrespective of the relevancy, applicabicability, or the verifiable condition of the stated causes we had for engaging this enemy at the time, we did unleash all the pernicious forces disposed throughout the unfortunate country known as Iraq.We removed the government and nominally disarmed, and certainly disbanded, the military forces of that nation, along with the entire organizational structure of those armed forces and all bodies of police and other keepers of the peace. As a consequence of our ill-considered (if they were thought about at all) policies as victors, the forces we unleashed have been free to wage terrorist acts upon one another, enter into internecine deadly conflict with one another, not to mention the repeated assaults on the U.S. troops we stubbornly keep in place on the proviso that were we to withdraw, just as precipately (and we now hope rapidly, so as to minimize further losses to our own forces), we would leave the countervailing factions to enter what is likely to be catastrophically bloody and chaotic civil war amongst themselves.

Whatever actual war we began and fought ended very soon after we started it, certainly within a month or two, or perhaps three.

Since then all acts of violence perpetrated on our troops, as well as on the opposing elements of the internecine forces that have always been resident in Iraq, plus those elements that have entered the fray from third party nations—with or without the sanction and support of those nations—since we neutralized the legitimate military and police organizations of Iraq immediately after defeating them in war, I would suggest are not acts of war. They are acts of violence that, in any other "civilized" nation, operating under any reasonable body of laws, whatever their basis: British Common Law, Napoleonic Code, or even laws formulated and legitimized by political bodies in governments adhering to certain religious codes, like the Koran), would be considered criminal acts. The perpetrators of these acts, these criminals, would be sought, neutralized, imprisoned, indicted and tried under those laws.

I would submit further that the litany of acts proffered as acts of war by this alleged Maj. General Chong (retired) against the United States since 1979 are, in the main criminal acts. Furthermore, one may go back, to earlier dates than these, if one must, as I would include other acts of terrorism — some political, some strictly criminal — performed mainly against military U.S. forces deployed in foreign countries, or U.S. citizens both at home or abroad.

Even acts, like the attack on the U.S. Panay, readily put at the feet of the military forces then under the government of the Emperor of Japan, that were meant to provoke our country, if not precipate engagement, were not sufficient to escalate our diplomatic or military posture such that we would, as a matter of policy, engage in war with an enemy that had a recognizable and coherent body of government formulating and implementing military engagement as an intentional act of war. Otherwise, the preponderance, if not the entirety, of these acts remain as they so patently and clearly are, as I said, criminal acts. All of which should have been, if they were not, prosecuted as such.

Every sovereign nation, whatever the prevailing religious beliefs of its citizenry, embraces a code of conduct and a body of laws that is meant to deal with criminal behavior. The maintaining of the social fabric demands of humans that they formulate codes for such a purpose. Crimes against individuals, or against a people, against institutions or corporations, are disruptive and potentially threaten the stability of any political entity, even a whole nation.

I submit that were all nations, in the interests of peace, and the maintenance of domestic tranquility (as I believe the phrase goes) were to concentrate on containing such acts of criminality, and indeed were to cooperate on whatever necessary basis to act in concert and to share intelligence, mainly of a forensic or probative nature, all such acts of criminality, widespread, and with the great frequency we have experienced them over whatever arbitrary span of time Maj. General Chong (or whomever) cares to define, would ultimately be contained to the point of manageability.

Terrorist acts are criminal acts pure and simple, and they should be dealt with as such, even if the dealing requires extensive applications of force and the resources to apply them. Widespread rioting, looting, and hooliganism in the modern history of all countries, including our own, have sometimes required to mobilization of national defense forces. These circumstances have never defined a state of war, even internally. And arguments prevail for calling our great Civil War as being, in actuality, a War Between the States.

We should be loathe to find wars where they do not exist. Even to a rhetorical abhorrence for application of the soubriquet of war (so enamored by our government, with various "wars" on poverty, drugs, even crime itself). War may be, Clausewitz cleverly defined it, a continuation of diplomacy (or politics) "by other means," but it is tantamount to mass murder, and the surest unequivocal sign of the failure of civilization, per se. It is, in short, not some manifestation of civilization, but its denial.

I don’t swallow a word this semi-literate, manipulative individual has offered up for purposes that can only be called inflammatory and ill-considered, never mind poorly reasoned and poorly argued.

Incidentally, Chong is, indeed, a real person, though he did not, apparently, write this letter, but passed it along to an email correspondent. The original letter, with a different original opening set of paragraphs, was allegedly written by an attorney and sent to his sons.

When, Oh!, when will we stop sending this crap to one another? It’s not worthy of lengthy discourse, never mind intelligent debate, if such were to be what it inspired.

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Down on the plain of our village, right at the crossroads, with a road north to Manosque on the verge of the Alps, the road east to Aups and beyond to the Gorges de Verdon, and the road south to Barjols and Tavernes, stand several small buildings. At the very crux of these is the home and the establishment of Jean and Chantal, owners of Chez Jean. It’s a small bar-tabac, which shares the building with their living quarters, plus a tiny alimentation, or grocery store, more accurately a bodega I suppose. Or perhaps, it’s an épicerie, but smaller. This is Chez Jo, run by the sister-in-law (of which of the couple I cannot say) where you can pick up very fresh chèvre or local farm eggs, butter, milk, various canned goods, a tiny selection of wines, the local paper, and a limited selection of produce that, depending on the time of day, looks often like it is on the point of expiration, whether a pear or a peach, a squash or an eggplant. But sometimes, you run out of something, and it’s good to know Chez Jo is there.

Across the way is the post office, which was almost closed by the authorities for lack of justification. We share a postal code with at least four other towns, and as our town has a permanent population of no more than 380 people on the rolls, the powers that be figured we could do without the convenience of having a local branch, which was only open at whimsical hours anyway. The whimsy being that of the local postmistress (a woman spoken of with awe, wonder, and not a small touch of fear, if not horror).

The mayor, who exerts himself mightily on behalf of the village in many ways, apparently lobbied strenuously to keep this branch of La Poste open. Not the least of the reasons being that there is apparently some familial connection between the mayor and the post mistress, or somehow, in some convoluted way between members of each of their respective families. I say "apparently," because it is one of those stories explained to me in rapid French, and I can never be sure of what I have construed properly, and what I have filled in with my own subconscious prejudices and assumptions.

On the other side of the crossroads, facing the post office, is the hulking shell of the former local wine cooperative. When we first began coming here, in the late 80s, the cooperative was active and in operation, pressing grapes, and doing what vintners do to make the juice of pressed grapes into wine. You could buy the local plonk (which is unfair, it was better than that, perhaps of vin de table grade—though to be fair, linguistically and strictly speaking, "plonk" is merely "cheap wine") at the co-op at appointed hours for very reasonable prices. Certainly it was certifiably a decent, cheap vin ordinaire and it served the local folk, farmers, gentry, bourgeoisie, and tourists well, especially at about $1.50 a bottle (this back in the days when the local currency was still the franc).

In the interim, the cooperative has devolved. First the pressed juices were merely shipped by common carrier to a local repository (pumped through thick pipes from the bowels of the co-op into waiting tanker trucks) to be collected with the must of of several other small towns, to be sent from that collection point to an actual domain, which produced the wine all under one label, bottled, or in casks, to be tapped into a customer’s own containers, once transported back to the contributory cooperatives. This transformation of the basic business has ceased altogether, and the cooperative does not even open any longer for brief hours on a Saturday morning—the last regular mercantile trade associated directly with the products of the local grape farmers. Some of the vineyards hereabouts apparently qualify for the A.O.C. designation of Côteaux Varois or Côtes-de-Provence, and some do not. The remnants that fall short, which seem to cluster very near the center of town, have been allowed to go fallow, and instead of vines of various stages of robustness, depending on the diligence of the farmer, there are now weeds and vast fields of disheveled useless flora.

Behind the cooperative, which is the size of a large barn, is an open area, whose expanse is blocked from view of the road by the vast building. This space is used for outings, weddings, and other sorts of colloquies involving large aggregations of the village residents and their guests and relatives, that is, when it is not raining (which is seldom in any event). The open area is surrounded by official buildings, belonging to the village: the small primary school, the library, a salle polyvalent (a utility hall, where gatherings take place, dances are danced, movies are shown, and so forth), and, of course, the mairie, or mayor’s offices, where all official business is conducted, and where the mayor’s council meets on a regular basis, and issues policy, dicta, rules, etc. These all are posted in regular locations, within well-known bulletin boards, maintained by the village, and covered in framed glass protective enclosures.

Having set the immediate scene, I shall return your attention and my own to the focus of culinary matters in the village. I am sorry to say, as I may have suggested in the past, that it is not the Inn just opposite our little house in the medieval village perched on top of the hill overlooking the scene just described about 100 meters below us and away at a distance of about 3/4 to a full kilometer (but easily visible from several vantages, including the Inn). The Inn has a menu which is good enough with a bill of fare, and a number of choices, of some varied dishes featuring more or less the local cuisine, and including the usual suspects, such as steak, because so much of the Inn’s business derives from tourists, who expect meat, but the locals, who are always glad to know there is a local venue for this perennial favorite, if not a number of others. However, it is not plain fare, but aspires to a status somewhat more soigné. Certainly it is fare that must justify a menu price of 32 euros for a three course meal. The food is good, very good at times, and I am not doing our friends, the innkeepers, a disservice, by saying this, and not very much more. The ingredients are always fresh, well-cooked, and in abundance on the plate.

Rather the focus of gastronomic attention belongs down below, at le carrefour, the crossroads, in that humble establishment called Chez Jean. The road signs leading to the village, directing travelers to the café, say "casse-croûte," which is  French for "snack." But the literal meaning of the word is, of course, "break crust" or as we say in English, "break bread."

The "casse-croûte" is an unintentional misdirection. It’s true they have snacks, including home made sandwiches of the usual suspects in France: boiled ham, with and without cheese, and charcuterie, and perhaps even a pan bagnat, more or less a salade niçoise squeezed between halves of a baguette, but I am not sure of that. There are also the usual ice cream novelties, featured in a colorful poster provided by the manufacturer of cones pre-packed and covered with lurid-colored glop, and ice cream rockets and bars, and the like.

Also, this is, strictly speaking, a bar-tabac, as the ancient rusting wrought iron lettering on the facade tells you, barely visible against the ochre stucco of the walls, partially covered by vines of some sort. The most regular trade, though hardly the most lucrative, comes from regulars (and peregrinating stragglers) who come from practically dawn until close, which is more or less at sunset, for, ahem, liquid refreshment.

The farmers of the region, stop here early of a morning on their way to the remaining vineyards, the greater amount of acreage in wheat, the declining acreage in sunflowers, plus a range of other crops, including olives, and a variety of produce that you can buy on market day in various towns as Patrick, the most enterprising and amiable of the local producers, makes his rounds with his sons and helpers of the circuit of five or six towns that occupy his week. He also has a store-front in Aups—the market town we have always preferred—that he keeps open on weekday mornings, and is always a sure bet for the freshest produce, especially in summer when it is all local… starting with the very local tomatoes, artichokes, zucchini, lettuce of various varieties, plus some stone fruits, like peaches and nectarines, which sell on market day at least until the end of September, and sometimes into October. After these dates the venues for sourcing produce spread in ever widening circles to all of Provence, moving southward with the sun, as the season wanes and even the weather goes south, so to speak.

When they stop at Chez Jean, the farmers imbibe perhaps a ballon de rouge, a fat round brandy snifter of a glass of red wine, or a beer, or perhaps a truly fortifying marc de Provence. Marc (the "c" at the end, properly, is not a hard "k" sound, but the sound of the French "r" disappearing completely down your throat, without a stop, not even a glottal stop, to signify the consonantal presence of this last letter) is an eau de vie, fiery and instantly warming, invigorating—perhaps even a natural energy drink in a tiny amount, which is what they are served—and certainly fortifying. It’s what I would drink if about to haul my ass onto a tractor for several hours of hard work in the fields.

There is a regular flow of bar customers, many of whom stop to kibitz for extended periods with Jean, the patron and chief barkeeper. He is a man of the slightly diminutive stature of Frenchmen of a certain generation, bespectacled and what remains of his hair, of a significant if diminished quantity, straight long hair, still quite dark in color, is slicked back from his hairline still well forward on his brow, to the back of his head. One’s first impression, as a stranger, is that he is perhaps a tad grumpy and uncooperative, but he is a mild fellow, friendly, slightly harassed, I think, by the unceasing flow of business throughout the day, which finds its apogee or apex in the middle of the day, when the only full meal is served.

I have finally brought this narrative to the most important business at hand. Lunch at Chez Jean, in the tiny, almost imperceptible village of Fox-Amphoux, at the crossroads of the roads from nowhere to somewhere or other. So popular has this meal become, and so widespread the reputation of this homely repast, a masterpiece of country cooking—let the magazines speak of food of the terroir; this is all mainly editorial bullshit, foisted on them by the flacks of major league chefs, with international reputations, indeed, who are brands, and who have "rediscovered their roots" and opened restaurants somewhere or other among the hilly landscape that is the Haut Var. This part of France is more appropriately the domain of the people who work this land, and the animals that still populate it. You are reminded of this at least once or twice of every two- or three-week sojourn, when you must stop on the country road on your way to market, to allow a local herd of sheep, with a mystical leading squadron of beautifully horned goats, and hectored by a small band of beautifully trained, earnest, honest scruffy dogs, to proceed across a road from their pasturage to their overnight accommodations in a bergerie well up in the hills above the plain.

We are intruders, and we are privileged to sit indeed to break bread, but only if we have made a reservation. In the summer, which is high season, reservations are often not to be had at all. This is, I mean, high season for hordes of tourists and high season for the likelihood of the canicule, the dog days, when temperatures rise in to the 100s, and the natives disappear entirely behind their shutters. And all you see are mad dogs and Englishmen, and occasionally us as well, on our perpetual quest for decent brocante (used furniture and stuff). We don’t do this often enough for some members of the household, dog days or no, but a man can stand only so much tooling around to misbegotten little towns that happen to be having an expo de brocante or, worse, an expo des antiquités, which means the merchandise are genuine, authentically old, no more attractive and significantly more expensive.

This, our modest little bar-tabac, with its stalwart patron, his doughty wife and boon companion Chantal, who helps run the place and is chief cook of the miracles of country dishes that come out of her kitchen, offers one meal a day for as many people as are lucky to have made a reservation before Jean and Chantal have computed there is not enough food to serve.

The menu is a menu fixe, four set courses, with few, if any, variant choices in any single course. The first of the miracles wrought in this unassuming establishment is that the menu is served at a very unassuming price. Currently, it is 12 euros 50 cents. At the current confiscatory American bank rates, this is about 18 bucks. However for proper perspective you should think of those euros as dollars, as the buying power is probably about the same for the locals as it is for us, if not worse… The Bush dollar may be in the toilet, but in the U.S. there’s pretty well loads to go around for the gentry and even for the middle class. In short, you can’t judge the cost of a meal here in France by the value according to an inflated exchange rate.

For $12.50 in the states you can get a "gourmet sandwich," an individual portion of artisanal chips, and bottled spring water. For 18 bucks, you can get an 8-ounce Black Angus Burger and fries, a non-alcoholic beverage, and the tax thrown in, but not the tip.

For 12 euros, fifty cents, here, in Chez Jean, in Godot-ville, where there is a very pleasant, luxe, calme, et tranquille wait for the mythical fellow, you get a four-course meal, a carafe of clear cold local water, all the bread you want (fresh French baguettes, of indisputable authenticity), the attentive service of your host or hostess, who serve you themselves, with a dose of bonhomie and cheeriness thrown in among the bustle, with tax (which is a 19+% value added tax) and service included… Beverages are extra. A pastis or kir, as an aperitif, are 1.50 euros apiece. A beer is 2.50, and a carafe of wine (25 centiliters — or about 3.5 ounces) enough for the meal, or refilling your glass a couple of times—small glasses—is a mere 2.50 euros as well.

We had lunch there the other day, came to 33 euros for the two of us (plus a small pourboire, a few pieces of change—my current rule of thumb is about 3%). Here’s what we had.

Things started off with a choice of appetizer of the omnipresent plate of charcuterie—an ample serving of slices of local cured hams, and various kinds of saucisson (the literal translation of which is "sausage," but which is, at best, a hard sausage, and really much closer to what we and the Italians call salami). The local saucisson is invariably pure pork, with various flavorings, starting with garlic, and including such varieties of flavoring as the local herbs (thyme, sage, etc.), wine, perhaps a bit of cheese, tidbits of what are called variety meats—that is, your garden-variety organ meats. However, the saucisson may also include or predominantly consist of other animal flesh: cow or steer meats, lapin (rabbit), venison, sanglier (wild boar) and, despite the rumors, rarely these days the traditional horse. The famous and fabled saucisson of Arles, commonly understood to be manufactured of the flesh of the lowly, if still noble, little âne (ass or donkey, particularly well suited for making one’s way in the hills of Provence, and Provence is hilly if nothing), is in fact fabricated in a ratio of about 6:1 of beef and pork, plus various seasonings, spices, herbs, etc. Maybe they used to make it of donkey meat, but no longer. Rather the designation d’Arles refers to a specific flavor of saucisson.

In all events, we skipped the charcuterie (which I have had in the past, and I can vouch for as meeting any expectation for flavor and is especially recommended on those days when you simply have a jones for eating a lot of savory, fatty, highly salinated food that is bad for your heart). Instead we both opted for the tarte aux ratatouille. Speaking of savory. This turned out to be two generous wedges of home-made tarte, on a crust of pâte brisée, it consisted of a ratatouille spread in a thin layer of mainly eggplant and courgettes, with just enough tomato and tomato paste to impart a ruddy, almost terra cotta hue (something like the color of the native soil in this terroir). It was lovely, bursting with flavor in just the right portion, with a nice unctuous texture, broken by the still substantive bits of vegetable in this characteristic Provençal ragout (see my attempt at the canonical recipe for the ratatouille itself: http://perdiem.bertha.com/2006/08/2006august02_th.html —you will note please the date of my recipe, well in advance of the ridiculously successful Disney/Pixar full-length cartoon eponymously titled after this now world-famous dish; I haven’t seen the movie, despite the urging of many… I am a little afraid lest I see some pilferage of my ideas; I know no check from Disney or Pixar has appeared as yet in my mailbox).

The main dish was a veal roast, served in thick slices on a platter, with its own mushroom sauce. That is, the sauce, of pan juices, fortified with wine and, I’d guess, the fluid version of crême fraîche that is the alternative to the thicker version with which we are all familiar in the ‘States. The thinner version is a preferred substitute for heavy cream, which is, in fact, hard to come by. Though it does seem to be appearing slowly and surely in the supermarkets (the heavy cream that is; crême fraîche is always available in a variety of weights, measures, and from at least a half-dozen different sources).

This is a boneless roast I speak of, likely a rump roast, though it may have been what we call eye of round. Bits of the twine that had bound up the roast after boning were on the serving platter. I’m of the school that sees this as a good thing, and we are certainly too far into the country to imagine that the strings were added, cynically, to add some sort of air of authenticity. Jean had made too much of a fuss when I showed up at 11:40 that morning in person to make the reservation. He fussed a bit, and looked at what was, indeed, a long list of parties already with reservations. The two hangers-on at the bar good-naturedly gave him a raft of shit, both before and after he disappeared into the kitchen. No doubt he was simply checking to see if there would be enough food. He finally appeared and asked if I wanted to sit inside or out. And I told him, oh in the shade outside, for sure. So he dragged out a paper tablecloth to clip to one of the tables out there, presumably to be our table. He asked what time we wanted to eat, and I said 12:30, and he said "and not a minute later…" Somehow I knew he was kidding. Just wanted the last word.

Anyway, the veal roast was ample, and heavenly. I ate my portion, and Linda hers, sopping up the sauce with bread, and then she had no room for the last slice, but I did. It was served with what they called "sautée de pommes de terre" cuboids of potato, done to a turn, that looked, and tasted more like they had been somehow both pan roasted and fried. The French verb, rissoler [meaning to brown, as in a poêle, or frying pan] is a favorite way to cook potatoes here, and usually in the shape they were brought to the table. It’s only a technical point, as they were delicious, and nice counterpoint to the lamb so tender it didn’t need a knife. But if it was pommes de terre rissolées, why didn’t they just call them that. You ask Jean. I didn’t and I won’t.

Then, the cheese course. A medium-sized plate of four significant portions of cheese: a local chèvre, two cow cheeses, one of them possibly a cousin to reblochon, and cheese with mold, all delicious, even in the delicate samples we allowed ourselves. The platter was more than generous and clearly intended not to be consumed by us (way too much cheese), though I’ve seen some Americans do exactly that in other restaurants, with similar sized portions. And we wonder how the French stay slim.

Dessert was a choice of flan (which we’ve had in the past, and we know is home-made), a tarte à poire, and ice cream. No contest. We both had the tarte. Again, homemade, though it sat in the fridge a bit too long, I fear, and was very very slightly desiccated, especially the custard (or the crême n’importe quoi [whatever] holding the fruit in place, and the crust had gotten a little too biscuity (crumbly, rather than flaky, and a little on the harder vs. softer side), but a good finish to the meal. If the dessert had been perfect, we would just have to cancel our return tickets and stay here. It would a lot cheaper eating one meal a day down at Chez Jean, than to return home and go back to that boring three squares a day routine.

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Once again, to celebrate Linda’s birthday, we have arrived in Montréal, the closest we can get to France without flying over the North Atlantic. It does seem like only weeks ago I was describing the lobby of the W Hotel in Square Victoria (where we stayed for last year’s birthday extravaganza), just a few blocks east of us here in the Marriott Château-Champlain—no, we’re not following the sun, we’re following the room rates. The hotel gods, with the assistance of some of Linda’s terrestrial admirers, whom we know number in the hundreds, if not thousands, have smiled again. Not quite as luxe (or weird) as the W, but what the hell, the dollar is also worth about 20 cents less against the Canadian dollar (talk about loony) than a year ago, at which time the dollar was slowly circling the global currency exchange rate drain.

One thing I must note. We took a slightly different route this time, traveling on US Route 93 North almost all the way to the border (it never actually makes it to Canada, peeling off into 91N just after St. Johnsbury). The border is not much farther away.

This route keeps you on multi-lane superhighway practically to the perpetual bottle neck on the Champlain Bridge into Montreal, but it’s also about 50 miles longer than the leisurely sojourn from 89N about 30 miles north of Burlington, through the cornfields of southern Quebec with its parade of one-horse towns (the towns that can afford the horse) and the battlefield conditions of the secondary roads.

Nevertheless, coming by either route, the last 20 miles or so into the city of Montreal are on Canada Route 10 West. The difference was, by today’s route we drove that much longer on 10.

I am positive that for the entire route, once we braved the weapons quiz from the stalwart young woman in her Canadian customs officer’s get-up, "This is the only important question, really, I have for you: any weapons, mace, firearms… you ma’am? any mace or firearms?"… there was not another American car to be seen on the highway, as we passed and were passed innumerable times on the 72 mile trek to the city. Now we did take a "rest" stop at the Customs and Immigrations shed before actually entering Canada, and maybe some Massachusetts or New Hampshire vehicles slipped past us as we relieved ourselves.

But I’m pretty sure we’re the only Americans at present in Quebec province.

I have to think about this. What could possibly explain it? The profoundly reduced buying power of the dollar, especially since the Canadians haven’t lowered their price tags? Has national shame finally reached a critical delimiter? Dare we show our faces outside our borders ever again? Even in "friendly" Canada? Well, this part is practically France, it’s true, but still. A year ago, we sometimes were one of a virtual phalanx of Massachusetts cars tooling down the pock-ridden byways of Quebec province. Forcing the notorious speed demons of lower Canada into the right lane as we roared past.

I mean, Karl Rove did quit. No matter. Even the stock market has gotten timid.

Skype blamed a massive network failure last week (leaving millions of subscribers doomed actually to pay for their long distance phone calls for a couple of days, using a real telephone) on a sudden surge in Windows PC re-boots, as millions of Windows users installed a much needed service patch for the decrepit Vista operating system (on a re-boot Skype automatically logs in, and all those log-ins into the Skype servers were not unlike all those toilets flushing at the first commercial break during the Super Bowl broadcast). Maybe, similarly, millions of U.S. passports expired at once. Neglect, you know? The anticipation of disuse.

I don’t blame you my fellow citizens. Not one bit.

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The above entitled essay was posted in error, as it was incomplete (how do you tell…?), but keep watching, it will re-appear complete and whole… Sorry for any inconvenience…

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The Blue Man Group has been an entertainment phenomenon since the 80s, first in the United States, and now through troupes in London, Amsterdam, Oberhausen and Berlin.

This isn’t about them.

I wanted to bring your attention to a BBC World Service program on their Close Up series. The theme of a recent set of programs on Close-up was "Every Shade of Blue."

I can only imagine where this theme took them. Where their analysis ended was with a program about a Czech composer and performer, kind of their Jelly Roll Morton or Scott Joplin plus Kurt Weill all in one—one of three acknowledged pioneers in jazz and blues composition, and among the most famous in their modern history—Jaroslav Jezek.

To quote the BBC World Service Web page devoted to the program,

To round off our Close Up exploration of Blue, the programme travels to the Czech capital Prague and a composer’s study decorated entirely in blue. American pianist Patricia Goodson tries to unravel the obsession of Jaroslav Jezek, the composer in question, with all shades of blue.

Jezek’s world was literally dark blue: because of his very poor eye-sight he saw the world shrouded in a blue haze. He wrote the most popular Czech jazz and theatre songs of all time in his blue room claimming [sic] that the blue light in there helped him to see. Is there a medical explanation for this? Jezek’s song Dark Blue World has been seen as a loose metaphor for his ‘life-blues’ but perhaps it has a more literal meaning too? And how do Bugatti racing cars fit in all this? Find out in Close Up: the Dark Blue Room.

Why am I bothering to tell you this? Well, for one thing, the guy was a great blues musician. The more personal reason for me is that my good friend Patricia Goodson, a great musician herself—pianist, composer, and musicologist—and living in Prague since 1991, is the host and narrator for this particular segment.

It was broadcast last Friday, June 29, but it’s available for direct streaming from the BBC for a week, that is, until this coming Friday, July 6.

I’m prejudiced, but I think it’s a great program. Catch it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/close_up.shtml?focuswin

You’ll need the Real Player plug-in for your browser, but you should have that as part of your basic kit of Internet tools anyway. You can get the plug-in from the BBC (and other places) at this URL:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/help/install/

Enjoy.

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If true to form, I would have entitled this essay, “Getting Sick in France.” But this would not cover the subject in hand. Indeed, I would suppose (and I can only suppose, because nothing dire has ever befallen me or my wife while in France—I can say this, that is, certain common ailments, a cold, nausea, headache, vomiting, etc. are pretty much suffered as they are in the U.S. of A.; it sucks for a while and you get over it—and also, as per usual, pre-existing conditions are not covered) that to be consistent with the point of view I have always tried to engage in my essays on life in France I should wait until I get sufficiently ill that it requires a visit to a French hospital or physician’s office.

However, I boldly have decided not to do so. The subject is on my mind, the keyboard is at hand, the usual is occurring around me: bright sun, French blue skies, gentle breezes, the shade of centuries-old trees, birds twirping, bees buzzing, pigeons cooing, swallows swooping and whistling (but only at sunset), and flies omnipresent. The only other subject that interests me at the moment, speaking of flies, is the possibility of directing my analytic gaze at the possible differential behavior of the French fly (I mean la mouche Française, the winged variety, as opposed to the zippered or buttoned variety).

I can make short work of the latter. Like the zippered or buttoned variety, French flies that fly are pretty much the same as anywhere else, so let me take care of this now.

[The essay that might have been:]

“French Flies“ [I hate to give up the linguistic possibilities of that title, the ambiguity, the potentialities for ironic usage, the hipness, but life sucks sometimes]

French flies, the winged variety, unlike the buttoned and zippered variety, are pretty much the same as anywhere else, but particularly the United States. They’re everywhere. They’re a nuisance. They suck.

[The End]

Some of you will be astute enough to have noticed a slight modification in the essay above, kind of mortised into the essay proper (by the way, the mortise is a record for me: one paragraph consisting of four sentences, three of which had three words or less comprising them… the chances I let go by), from the prefatory remarks enclosed within the actual essay.

First I said flies (flying variety) here in France are like the zippered and buttoned variety, that is, not very much different. Then when referring to the zippered and buttoned variety (notice the steady heightening of titillation as I mention zippered and buttoned flies—there I did it again—not once, but four times so far) I said they were unlike anywhere else. Well, this isn’t quite true. I don’t know, not having studied, say, the Italian or Spanish types of flies (z & b types), but I would guess maybe in the other ”Latin“ countries of Europe, there may be similarities or even utter identity. Notice how I included France in this varietal geographic taxonomy of the continent of Europe and its currently constituted union of member nations, called “Latin?” This is something that Anglo-Saxon countries do (Britain, Ireland, not to mention the Scandinavians, maybe even the Teutons do as well, and the Slavs—I don’t read that press). They do this purposely, I’m sure, especially Americans (which still consider themselves, and therefore act, officially, like Anglo-Saxons—blue-eyed devils…) because of the sub-text that, being Latin, they are hot-blooded, and this explains their otherwise irrational unwillingness to go along with our hare-brained schemes geopolitically and economically speaking, because their heads are always, well, in their flies (the buttoned and zippered etc.).

Well…

The buttoned and zippered closures on men’s trousers are likely to be different than American men prefer, real American men I’m talking about (wink wink nudge nudge—oh wait that’s British…leer leer) in that they are shorter in length. Not because of any difference in endowment requiring less tailoring in this dimension (much as real American men would like to think so), but because these Latins will wear a nice pair of slacks with a shorter rise. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask a tailor, a woman, or a salesman at Barney’s. Otherwise let me suggest, you may, just possibly, be out of your depth reading this essay, or any essay, in this place, at this time, or any time. I expect people to keep up. Sometimes the fur flies thick and fast. The flies fly, but they are generally not thick, but of sufficient density in numbers, and not fast, being, in fact, kind of torpid, as it is summer, and it is the south of France and everyone is torpid. Even those seemingly anxiety-ridden always flitting American flies would be torpid down here. Let me put it this way, and then put finis to this unpleasant subject. While sitting here, just writing (I write, it’s not “just typing”) I’ve killed eight flies in the course of the production of one-and-a-half essays. And that’s by simply swatting with my hand, or with a copy of the 2007 edition of the French version of the Guide Gantié, a hefty, dense volume, printed on coated stock—it’s a brick.

Hence, no real essay on flies, wordy or wordly. French or otherwise. I will say, because it’s fun, that the French for fly, as in the closure of a man’s trousers to allow the facilitation of nature taking its course, is braguette (naturally, it’s feminine—it’s just the way; in France the counterintuitive is the intuitive). It’s not a hard word to remember. Just remember what’s inside the braguette and remember baguette, also feminine, naturally, and the English homonymic cognate “brag.” Simple. Funny. Let’s move along here.

Back to the matter at hand.

I have the same scientific qualifications as any self-styled intellectual in Cambridge, the educational hub of the United States, North America, mayhap the world (there is the problem of the Indians and the Chinese, not to mention the Japanese, and there have always been Jews and Israelis — but for the time being we wily Cantabrigians still have them bollixed and bamboozled so they think the same thing is true of Cambridge, and hence they are disproportionately represented among the student bodies of Harvard and MIT, the world’s GREATEST UNIVERSITIES). To wit, I’ve read three-and-a-half chapters of The Selfish Gene, I’ve watched that DVD of Hawking’s A Brief History of Time twice (OK, one-and-a-half times; but I do refer casually to “Hawking” in conversation), I’ve riffled through and looked at the index of Guns, Germs, and Steel. I pretend to have an opinion about that guy Pinker jumping ship from Harvard to MIT, or was it the other way around. What the hell? What’s the difference? I affect a blasé, if not cynical mien and attitude on subjects clearly of deep intellectual import.

Therefore I can make observations on my own of people’s behavior, engage in conversation with neighbors and friends here in France, in two languages (which is one-and-a-half more languages on average than most Americans, your average Americans, can lay claim to mastery of—strictly speaking, and truthfully, I haven’t mastered French, but French people do think I’m Belgian when I speak, and that counts for something towards that virtual Master’s degree in a foreign language). As always I have collected anecdotal evidence, buttressed by reading the local French press, and that impeccable and unquestionable authority on life in Europe, the World, and beyond, the ”International Herald Tribune,“ which is kind of a distillation of the New York Times, a fact that, if anything, concentrates one’s sense of its veracity, and almost, but not quite, justifies their charging two euros and 20 cents an issue for a 28-page (on average) flimsy paper.

Therefore you can trust, as you have for a couple of years now, the basic truthiness, if not truth, of what I have to say here.

Here’s how the French behave when they’re sick.

They go to the doctor’s office. In fact, many of them each go to several doctor’s offices, even for the same illness. Some of them, possibly saving up for the opportunity, or, to exercise a certain efficiency, not to mention the national trait of extreme frugality with regard to consumables, e.g., to save fuel, wait to have an odd assortment of symptoms, which, even to the ignorant, seem to be unrelated and thus possibly a signifier of multiple individual illnesses. They then go to several doctors, parceling out the symptoms, or sharing them all with each consulting physician.

I don’t think I am necessarily describing the behavior of the majority of French, but clearly a significant minority. I say this because this behavior accounts in part for the virtual bankruptcy of the social service system devoted to preserving the national health. People—some people OK?—simply like to get the assurance of attentive care, and an accurate diagnosis, and proper treatment—well, really who knows the ultimate or primary cause of this behavior?—and because it’s free, they go for it. Big time.

Did you notice the “free” in the last sentence? Americans are sensitive to the issue of health care costs, because health care is expensive, and growing more so. And it’s in our face, on the news, every time we see a doctor, receive a hospital bill, fill a prescription, etc.

The sensitivity of the French, no less palpable and apparent, and no less justified, is really attuned more to the high rate of taxes, as a result of the wide scope, depth, and breadth of the social safety net, which absolutely positively covers health care, but myriad other things we pay through the nose for, right out of our wallets. They merely get taxed to their eye teeth for same, all at once, as it were, So, if as a result of paying all those taxes, some service is offered on a completely and unquestionably free basis, you’re damn well going to take advantage of it. You don’t have to be as smart as a blue state American to understand that proposition. Indeed, not even red state Americans are so dumb they’d refuse the opportunities such an arrangement presents to any participating individual.

But in ways we cannot begin to imagine as possible, health care in France is free. Gratis. Not a plugged nickel. Gornisht, nada, and zip. If you’re a French citizen you show up at the showroom, excuse me, the clinic or cabinet (office) of a physician of your choice. show your identification, and you are examined and diagnosed and treated. No muss, no fuss, and not a red cent changes hands. Ever.

It used to be in France, before the socialists truly engaged the French consciousness and had an apparently ineffable effect on modes of social awareness, modes of governance and, most important, the core structure of the French system of taxation—say, at least 70 years ago, before paid holidays (what the hell, before any holidays), or mandated limits on the length of the work week, not to mention the work day—the entire French medical consciousness, among practitioners and the public alike, centered on the condition of the largest single organ in the human body. The liver.

Yes, there was Pasteur, and that whole bacteria thing. The French are a lot of things, but they’re not stupid, and they’re not unscientific. They didn’t need Napoleon to stop going to church. Virtually everyone is Catholic, but for decades something like only about 8% of the population actually attends church services on a regular basis. They’re essentially scientific minded (remember Madame Curie and Mr. Curie… Jacques Cousteau? eh? I’ll say no more). Hence they did take a very scientific “approach” to this whole matter of the liver. Or so it seemed to them. Even had they gone to church, I believe there is not a single reference to the liver in the entirety of the liturgy of the mass, but you’ll have to check with a theologian on this one.

In practice, any ailment more or less was perceived as “une crise de foie,” literally a “crisis,” but more idiomatically a “malfunction” or “breakdown,” of the liver. Something like having trouble with the starter of your car—or maybe the whole engine, as that’s a better analogy, given the engine is generally the largest organ, uh, mechanism in the auto.

Une crise de foie was (and, in dark smoky bar/tabacs and cafés still is) a broad and encompassing diagnostic term. It could be a small crise or a big one. Never to be taken lightly, it can manifest itself in all sorts of ways, with palpitations, or light-headedness, with pains in the chest, or in the joints, in the back, the stomach, or the head. I could go on and on. The literature on this, if there were a literature on this, would be as rich and comprehensive of every conceivable human symptom of disorder of the body as “The Yellow Emperor’s Book,” which was the chief tract on Chinese medicine for over two millennia and which is a heavy volume, filled with many words filling many pages.

Une crise de foie was (and, see conditions above, often still is) treated with specifics, by way of remedy, and usually prescribed and administered in a manner very reminiscent of the manner in which what is now called homeopathic medicine offers ways of remedying the sick. In truth, the chief specific recommended, sometimes large doses, sometimes small, of that little bit of the “poison,” if you will, that somehow, through the mysterious processes of inscrutable nature, had fallen into an imbalance, which manifested itself in the specific sort of breakdown of the liver in question, was, one way or another, alcohol. A cynic might say this all boils down to “a little bit of the hair of the dog what bit ya’,” but this would be unfair, and would defy the innate scientific basis for such remedial strategies—at least the theory of them is scientific in appearance. Further, as we all know, if you boil down alcohol, no matter what form it takes, the good bits, the efficacious component, is lost in the clouds of steam above the boiler.

So you are advised to take it straight. Many crises are best ministered to with red wine, which I believe was (and, blah blah blah, still is) the most frequently prescribed remedy. However, take care, as there are nuances here. As many nuances as there are varieties of grape, and types of red wine, and vintages, and levels of maturity and degrees of baumé, or brix (look it up, I warned you, I expect people to keep up and there’s no waiting here, temporizing while you find references to these esoteric matters). Sometimes you want a Bordeaux, sometimes a Beaujolais, sometimes it’s a crise so deep and alarming, nothing but a Burgundy will do. Then there are the considerations of which varietals to emphasize: your Mourvedres, your Syrahs, your Pinots, your Merlots, etc. etc. etc. And you thought wine was simply a matter for connoisseurs and oenophiles.

Some crises de foie are so severe that specific remedies are suggested for ingestion not only by the patient, but the attending, um, physician, the relatives standing around looking mournful, friends, attending experts, perhaps the negociant and even the vintner himself. Some are of such grave concern that the only remedy will be not even the wine itself (too weak), but a distillation of it, usually some form of eau de vie (you didn’t think they call it “water of life” for purely metaphoric reasons, did you?) and could depend on the region in France in which you found yourself and your malfunctioning liver. It could be a marc, a cognac, an armagnac, a Calvados, poire William, and so forth.

It may not surprise you to learn, as part of this inquiry into the health system of France, and the ways in which the good citizens of this still great country, adhere to them, that many believers in this particular pharmacopoeia advise that, in addition to providing a cure to various forms of crises de foie (or almost any other organ), one may ensure good health and will prevent such crises from ever occurring by the regular ingestion, while in a healthy state, of various of these specifics. One must pay careful attention that one varies the form of the specific, though copious amounts of wine in the course of a full day seems to be generally accepted as permissible, to be followed, at the end of the day (though there are adherents, especially in rural communities, who believe that a bit at the start of the day instead, or perhaps even better at both ends of the day) by a swallow or two of the water of life will guarantee that one’s life will be lengthened immeasurably.

Nowadays, with the flexibility that the stresses and demands that modern life places on your typical Frenchman, you find a sort of amalgam of the old ways and the new to their liking: regular ingestion of the classic preventatives to crises de foie, and willing, if not enthusiastic, participation in the free health care system.

I have had occasion many times in my essays based on observation of French life in the hinterlands and the great cities of this land to remark on the prudence and good sense of its citizens, and it would be unfair if I were not to say that most French people are generally prudent in their participation to access to health care. Nevertheless, as I alluded to above, the health care system in France is not itself very healthy, not from a fiscal perspective. In fact, it is in a condition that economists refer to as “deep shit.” I barely understand the science of economics myself, so I will not comment. However it is clear that one kind of crisis is evident and unrelieved, and the French government has no liver, so to speak, so the crisis will not be solved by sending a case of Médoc (literal or figurative) to the Assemblée Nationale, even if the right-wing party of the new president did manage to hold a majority there in the recent elections.

President Sarkozy has many ideas on how to solve this aspect, as well as many others that exist, of the overall fiscal crisis the country is slowly suffering. Most of these require the administration of another specific, namely money. Being as how there is no more money in the exchequer to apply to the problem of the absence of funds in the health care system, this money will come from the pockets of those most affected, the beneficiaries of the liberal health care system: the people themselves, it is expected, will pony up modest sums (preposterously small, if not ridiculous sums, if I may editorialize a bit, with my native United States citizen with an up-to-date passport’s sensibility in full play) when they pay a visit to the doctor.

One proposal would have the citizen pay a mere euro, a single euro, a lonely and individual bi-metal coin of that denomination, as, what we call in the U.S., a “co-payment” to help defray the cost of providing the state-of-the-art care the French receive otherwise for free at this present time. A euro coin is used in supermarket parking lots to provide temporary use of a shopping cart (the euro is returned when your shopping visit is done). A euro buys in your typical French bakery, at least in the hinterlands, 1.18 baguettes. It buys 5/6 of a cup of espresso (and the accompanying right to sit as long as you please sipping it, not to mention the glass of water you’re entitled to ask for by law in any café throughout the land). A total of a single euro acquits you of the social obligation to leave a token pourboire (a friendly tip for the waiter, more token than emolument, but still meaningful to the French) with each visit to the café, let us say three, maybe four times—in 20 or 30 cent increments. A euro will buy you 94% of a liter (94 cubic centimeters, you MIT grads) of diesel fuel (most of the cars these days are turbo-diesels, not least of the reasons being that the fuel is cheapest for these types of engines—kind of vin ordinaire for treatment or prevention of crises de foie), and a liter of diesel will get you about 12 kilometers down the highway, which is the distance to Aups from my house in Fox, that is, the shortest route to the cabinet of a doctor; there is a bar-tabac a lot closer, maybe one-eighth of a liter’s worth of fuel away, and the drinks are cheaper.

In short, a euro is nothing (it looms larger than that, of course, when we have to pay our mortgage each month on our little hacienda here in the ancient hills of Provence—but this isn’t about us). Yet the outcry at such an outrageous idea—to pay a single euro out of one’s pocket for a single doctor’s visit, that is, for every single doctor’s visit to pay a euro—is not dissimilar to the reaction to the rape of the Sabine women (among the Sabines of course—the average Frenchman doesn’t give a fig about this outrage, and, I daresay, even fewer Americans). The act would be looked upon not so very differently, that is, that a visit intended to seek salutary attention from a medical professional would be accompanied by a violation to one’s pocketbook (the second largest organ in the body, one might say, in jest of course).

There is a similar idea being floated that each citizen pay an annual, single franchise of ten euros (I’ll spare you the homely, if immediately poignant and down-to-earth examples of what ten euros would buy—I hope you get the idea; if not, I’ve lost you anyway…). That is, they would pay a "deductible" (which is what franchise means in this context) of ten euros for a surgery let us say, a hospital stay… Outrage and violation are too mild to describe the expressive distress this idea evokes.

Now that I’ve introduced the idea of a hospital stay, let me offer this information.

Rather than suggest that the sorry financial state of the French health care system (which, incidentally, the World Health Organization, which rates health care systems nation by nation throughout the globe on an annual basis, rates as the best in the world, and have done for a few years running; in other words, the French health care system is not only at the leading edge of losing money, but is doing so by providing exemplary care) lies entirely at the feet of its exploitative greatest beneficiaries, the French citizenry, let me tell you how the doctors behave.

As it’s all free anyway, and state-controlled, single-payer, and a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse, the doctors, being even smarter on average than the average French citizen, who often feels free to use and abuse the system with impunity, with the system taking no steps to stem the tide, never mind control it, or even simply take revenge, assuming the state were capable of an emotional response, the doctors, as I say, provide not only great care, but do it in spades. If your condition calls for a hospital stay, say for a procedure and tests (or one or the other), it calls, or may as well, for a stay of several days just as well as it does for what would be an adequate, but shorter, period. In the United States, I’ll remind you, standard practice says that even for many major surgeries, what’s adequate is a one-day stay. Hack it off, and send you home.

Not here in France.

True story: while we’ve been here this visit, our dear dear friend, whom I’ll call Regine, was diagnosed, during a routine annual test, with a case of a serious common disease that, in her case, was caught early and was not at an advanced stage. Nevertheless, it called for surgery, and the feeling was, sooner better than later, and she was scheduled for a visit to the hospital in a nearby coastal city (about an hour and fifteen minutes away) for a procedure and whatever might ensue. Fortunately, the size of the lesion that was removed was as small as suspected, and there will be follow-on additional therapy, but not much more.

However, Regine is languishing in the hospital, under the supervision of the medical staff, being tested and monitored, though she feels fine, feels “great” in fact (it was reported to me that on the day after the procedure she was planning to demonstrate some gymnastic routines she does regularly as part of her personal regimen to “prove” to the doctor that she was ready to go home—that was Friday, the procedure having been done mid-day Thursday—but she will be staying until Sunday; doctor’s orders). I have had major surgery, as has Linda, several times, and in three out of four instances we were sent home from the hospitals, listed among the top 20 in the United States, the day after we went under the knife. Our bills, in the United States, had we had to pay them in their entirety, amounted to five figures for the one day of intensive, world-class, care for those 24+ hours.

I am sure Regine’s care was no less superlative, and the costs, in proportion, no smaller. But whereas for-profit insurers, negotiating the convoluted financial arrangements that ultimately defray the cost of care in the U.S., try to ensure that costs are minimized or at least contained, there is no such oversight or safety valve in the French system. Or at least no effective one. What is at risk for France, where the care is impeccable and universal, without regard to ability to pay or severity of need, is that it is in great danger of rupture—thereby threatening the ability to maintain not only the level of care, but the very ability to deliver it to the populace that falls sick altogether.

The reasons are various, no doubt, and include the two broad matters I’ve tried to illustrate: the unchecked exploitation of the system by a sufficient portion of the population to make such behavior untenable, and the relatively unmanaged (and perhaps somewhat understandable) propensity of the professional health care providers to utilize the system to its maximum capacity, irrespective of the resources to maintain its operation at this level.

There is another factor, among the many I speculate exist, and that is illustrated by a conversation I had with Regine’s husband, whom I’ll call Bertrand. Clearly deeply concerned with this threat to Regine’s health, not to mention the long-term risk of shortening her life, however small (though greater than if she did not have the disease in the first place), Bertrand demonstrated an uncharacteristic response to the circumstances. In fact, very bright, resourceful, and innovative in many respects, and generally well-enlightened in so many facets of modern life that anyone living in a first-world country must stay abreast of, Bertrand betrayed a bewilderment and ignorance of medical facts, not only about Regine’s case, her disease, the procedure to be performed, and the staging of the necessary therapies to ensue, but, I had the vague sense, ignorant about the whole business of staying healthy in general. This both fascinated me, in the abstract, and concerned me, as his friend. I provided some tutorials in very basic terms, about matters I have the feeling, but no proof, that Regine’s doctor must also have provided, and in Bertrand’s presence.

I don’t know enough to say it’s typical, even of people in our own country, that is, to say that Bertrand’s reaction is typical, or that it’s typical to evince a general lack of knowledge that I think people of a certain age should begin to acquire, as they enter their middle years, and look forward beyond them, so they can anticipate what their role will be in terms of participating in their own medical treatment. And that, of course, requires a certain level of understanding and insight that it never occurred to me until now was actually a function of the way in which the whole society deals with these things.

It is possible, and, finally, to put all joking aside, that the virtues of universal free health care, such as the French do provide, getting high marks for performance and very low marks for management of the operational facets of the whole machine, are offset by the troublesome side effects, or artifacts, of providing a benefit that many of us feel should be available to all without question in a way that allows people to take it completely for granted. If ignorance is the result, and the wages of ignorance—ignorance of the consequences of abuse, ignorance of the simple economic formulation that there is no such thing as a free lunch, ignorance of the difference between being exploited for low wages and exploiting the system by refusal to pay a pittance to preserve an invaluable benefit, ignorance on the part of the practitioners of their responsibilities to be stewards of the system, as well as providers of the system, and ignorance of how our own bodies work, and what doctors must do to them to keep them healthy—is destruction of the system from the inside out, well there is only one sensible response. And that is, indeed, to lay it all at the lobes, as it were, of that incredible organ, the liver. And as a result to keep that organ as happy as can be, never mind the effects on our state of mind, by putting our lips around the neck of whatever bottle we can put a hand on that contains the vital essence of the fruit of the vine in whatever form it presents itself to our mouths.

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The comic genius, Stephen Colbert, has famously crafted a new definition for the word "truthiness." Insisting his word was in fact an altogether different one than that which one can find in that still arcane reference, The Oxford English Dictionary, he found occasion, when criticized, to drive home the emphasis he wished to place on his "truthiness."€

"You don’t look up truthiness in a book,"€ he pointed out, "you look it up in your gut."€ And therein lies what’s wrong with America today, he claims, that is, the way we cling to a reliance on mere facts, instead of looking to our hearts for the essential truths of what is right.

What has this to do with me? Well, first, let me say, there is no pretense to being in his league, and certainly not a comic genius. I have my moments, I will admit. I think I can say this safely as others, with no reason to rub me the right way with hope of some benefit, have said as much, at such moments. Their sensibilities and perceptions coinciding with mine, I do swell with pride at those occasional instances when, intending to provoke a laugh, I did precisely that.

I have my own patent way of doing this. In person it’s easier, because "zingers"€ issuing spontaneously from my mouth have a way of doing exactly that, and with great brevity and compactness (the soul of the comedic moment), and the matter is closed.

In writing, it’s another story. No one knows, even those who should know don’t, where this comedic impulse comes from. In his column/blog for the NYTimes, Dick Cavett, on the subject quotes Woody Allen who, Cavett says, "has pronounced it to be a mystifying gift, not susceptible to rational explanation." [http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/a-life-in-rim-shots/ this is the URL for Cavett’s blog, which I highly commend to you, not just for this one entry in May, but for following with regularity; he has yet to write a dud]. Would that I either had such a talent for sure, or that I had had the heart or the guts, or the mere overwhelming need to prove I had it and to do what so many comic geniuses have done. That is, would that I had put my ego on the line, and the prospect of starving at risk and sought the unavoidable test of delivering that most evanescent of human products: humor to order, against a deadline.

When I do write, whether it’s humorous or not, and if so, whether it’s intentional or not, there is one quality of which you can be assured, and that is, to emulate in a lame way the inspired neologistic impulse of Colbert (who allegedly invented "truthiness"€ with its peculiar meaning to him, just moments before he started filming his first episode of his own show), the "wordliness" of what I have to say.

I am not just wordy, which can have a perfectly neutral meaning (now archaic, according to those lexical sources Colbert scorns) of being made up of words (what then? algebraic symbols?), and more usually and certainly as chronically applied to me, a negative one meaning using more words than are necessary. I will say this, first asking my usual question in response, one that I think is perfectly logical to me, and that is, "according to whom?"

Popular opinion holds no water, not from my well. It’s popular opinion that gave us George Bush as President. It’s popular opinion that gave us… but enough said, just by saying the magic word "Bush."€ The duck will not give you 75 bucks at the end of the show, incidentally, if you do say "Bush."€ Though the proper response to hearing the word is to duck. The response to "Cheney" should be to run for cover, preferably to an undisclosed location.

I have been hearing for too long that I use too many words, that I don’t get to the point, etc. etc. Frankly I don’t care. Consider this as one possible explanation for my otherwise generally irritating verbal behavior. My "point" is to use a lot of words. Not merely for the sake of using a lot of words, which seems like a grand inefficiency, if not a sign of an obsessive, possibly masturbatory tendency whose only gratification is purely self-reflexive. I know this not to be true, because under certain conditions, indeed, my what I’m calling "wordliness" has elicited expressions of gratitude, at the very least, and unsolicited expressions—€”clearly meant to bolster my sense of well-being and self-worth—€”of congratulation, adulation or approbation, sometimes some combination of all three.

Here is the usual scenario that produces the latter response.

I have at least one other reputation, apparently despite my greater more invidious reputation for using too many words (an expression that always makes me think of the famous observation by the Emperor Joseph II of Austro-Hungary of a new composition by Mozart that the piece was fine, but that there were "too many notes," a moment immortalized in its portrayal in the movie "Amadeus.")

I have a reputation for being a ready, and often expert, resource for information on a variety of subjects, including those that are the context for what we call a "considered purchase,"€ that is of high-ticket items, usually of comfort, based on high technology, or more generally constituting a category I will call "œhigh gadgetry," from computer scanners to high-end mp3 devices.

I will readily admit, I am the type of fellow, call him a geek, or something less severe, more polite, who, casually asked the time, might just respond with an abstract on the history of clock making or, if in a philosophical mood, I will share my thoughts on cosmology. However, I will eventually report the time, very often with significant accuracy (which is important to me, it’s the same impulse as that for using the "œmot juste," but expressed in horological terms).

But most people, being assured of my knowledgeable reputation on a subject, contact me for a useful response, and not because they want to provoke or trigger a perfectly predictable torrent of digressive, discursive, allusive prose, filled with multi-syllabic words and phrases, dense with dependent clauses, parenthetical asides and the use of every weapon in the armamentarium of typographic devices used to set off phrases and clauses not entirely germane to the matter at hand, and, in strictly ordinary (and crushingly boring) terms specifically to the point—€”like a laser to the moon. This is not even to mention my proclivity, if not my preferred inclination, to use my two favorite items of punctuation, the ellipsis (but for purely dramatic or rhetorical effect… as opposed to represent material previously present and now redacted from the narrative) and the semicolon; the latter, of course, is completely out of favor with, not the word police, but the style police, who are a far more dangerous menace than the clods who simply think certain words should be avoided for their explosive potentiality when placed in proximity to hypersensitive humans who should learn to grow up and suck it up if someone uses pejorative epithets instead of some approved effete euphemism. The style police would constrain the breadth of reach any artist should be free to strive for, because their own limitations leave them filled with grief at having reached their expressive limits, significantly short of merit, never mind genius.

Anyway, say you’ve got a question about digital cameras. Why, fire off an email to Howard, you’re told. He’ll have the right answer. He’ll have a good recommendation. He can point you in the right direction.

I get the email and being generous to a fault, with that most valuable of ineffably elusive of resources, that is, my time, I will write, as well as I can, as comprehensive, yet concise and specific of answers, tailored to the circumstance of my interlocutor: constraints of budget, or technological expertise, or tolerance for certain technical or historical details, which I, or some other more scientifically minded individual might find not only relevant to a general understanding, but pertinent to the business of picking out a product, and only one product, for a single purchase, and some time in the next two or three days (as opposed to the months or years one might want to spend in contemplation of the aforementioned cosmological aspects of the question).

Or say a more personal inquiry appears in my in-box. It may involve a matter concerning the choice of an institution of higher learning of a friend’s child recently come of age, and having received their bac (as they call it here in France, for baccalaureate; more prosaically their high school diploma in the ‘€˜States), or it may involve a matter of the heart, or it may involve a delicate, if not fraught issue between the writer and a mutual friend, or it may be an entirely self-referential personal matter, requiring the resolution of a significant "life"€ decision they find themselves on the threshold of having to make. It may be simply a recommendation as to where to eat with out-of-town guests who suffer a specifically defined set of constraints in their dietary preferences and allowances.

I write back, with the same spirit of generosity of not only time, but camaraderie, neighborliness, a touch of samaritanism, and the sheer pleasure I wish to share that comes from cementing the bonds of friendship through human kindness and consideration. And indeed, referring to this last quality, the thanks I get in response—usually a very brief response, thank God, if truth be known; I don’t want to read some verbose expostulation or flowery ornate ejaculation of appreciation… what am I? made out of free time?—makes an allusion to my "thoughtful" reply. And this adverting to this peculiarly rare quality these days always carries with it a tone, sometimes an outright allusion, though nothing so direct as to be probative, that always allows me to infer that the recipient of my email not only did not expect such a voluminous and authoritative, if not canonical, answer, but in fact, experienced a not unpleasant surprise in being the recipient of such consideration.

"Thoughtful," the word, has, I think, as its closest concise meaning, "considerate."€ One who is thoughtful does, indeed, think. But as well they do so not only in the manner of considering the subject or the topic, but they do so in the spirit of considering the needs of the party on whose behalf they are exerting themselves. If you are considerate of others it’s because you are thinking about them as more than another mere living creature.

It is under such conditions that I never hear the sneering critique that I have used "too many words."€ Or, "Gee, can’t you get to the point?"€ What happens to all this impatience when the presumed beneficiary of my extensive expressive output is not selfish old me, who may be merely capitulating to some selfish and perhaps greedy need to just go on and on and on, and in public, simply because I like the look of my own writing (as if, in perusing it myself, I were not reading it, as I might expect any reader to do—what a silly thought—€”but merely looking at the words… kind of similar to the famous observation of the work of Kerouac, I believe by Truman Capote, that "that’s not writing, it’s typing"€), but the beneficiary is the recipient, who initiated this torrent of an embarrassingly rich load of useful information and knowledge, if not wisdom?

I admit I like reading my writing. As the great rabbi of old (Hillel, is it?) would say, if not me, who? The recipients of my efforts at knowledgeable help never apologize for needing it, or expect to be insulted for asking.

Why am I not "too wordy,"€ in fact, when the beneficiary is, without question, little old you?

Finally, and again, not to make smart self-serving, if not sly, presumptuous, and insinuating comparisons between myself and a recognized high standard that bear no proof in the matter of truth, or even of truthiness—how many of us feel about "The New Yorker"€ that it has an endless list of contents, from one issue to the next. And in viewing the week’s latest issue we find ourselves saying, well, I couldn’t possibly be interested in that subject, only to discover that these essays, or profiles, or features—€”call them what you will—€”that do go on interminably or so it seems, and in purely quantitative terms, also have the quality of drawing us in and keeping us through to the end, strictly because of the quality (in the sense of bearing and sustaining a high standard) of the writing?

That’s my aim. Length is not the question or the problem, but the mere dimension. I’ll call it not wordiness, in all its ugly, mean, and ill-intentioned injuriousness, and so often and blithely thrust my way. I’ll call it wordliness, which always has the same intent, the same neighborly, human and humane intent I have in serving some circumscribed personal and private need, often of a complete stranger that a friend has pointed in my direction.

It does me good, if no one else. Does that mean it’s doing you bad?

I don’t think so. As I say so many times, if it’s that bad, don’t read it. No one yet has had the guts to say, like an imperious ignoramus, anything other than "Too many words Dinin."€ If it’s shit, say so. I can take it. If it’s true, I’ll try never to do it again that way or that badly.

And that’s the truth.

Word.

[If you’ve reached this far, you’re a true believer in wordliness, and you should subscribe, so you’ll get reminders by email automatically, whenever I post a new essay. The subscription link is in the sidebar to the left, scroll down, to just below the list of "Categories," and just above the "Technorati Fave" button, which is above the Google search window… Thanks.]

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To quote my friend and neighbor Martha, "Ain’t technology grand?"

I have added a spiffy link to the sidebar on the left-hand side of this page. Scroll down carefully. It’s there. Honest. It’s all in type, so it may be a little hard to see: it appears right after the end of the handy list of Categories…

If you click on this link, which says something like "Subscribe to Per Diem Updates by Email" (in fact, that’s exactly what it says—just another indication of my irrepressible modesty, if not of my manifest anxiety about being wrong), you will be taken to a page on the Feedburner.com site.

This asks for your email address. They will then send a confirmation email with a link in it, and once you click on that, you will be "subscribed."

Then you never again have to read another falsely timorous, excruciatingly self-conscious, and embarrassingly unfunny reminder from me that there is a new essay on the blog (doesn’t the use of "essay" and "blog" with mutual reference to one another constitute an irresolvable internal inconsistency not unrelated to oxymoron?).

You can unsubcribe any time. It’s very easy to do, I’m told—just 39 steps and two forms to fill out.

Really not.

Just another thoughtful service from moi.

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