fabrisse

It is impossible to go into the caves at Lascaux -- and that's been true since 1963 -- but they have created substitutes over the years. Lascaux IV is the most comprehensive, and it's brilliant.

We decided to go at noon because that was when we could go at our own pace. There were two English language tours in the morning (and two in the afternoon) where we would have had to stay with the group. By arriving at lunchtime, we could get headsets.

The very first area in the cave replica, it talked about a bull to my left. I saw horses, which were also mentioned, but no bull. Then I took a step back and realized that the bull was huge. It was so big (probably 2.5' by just under 4') that my eye rejected it for the smaller horses.

The whole thing was beautiful. The layout got a little claustrophobic, especially with the cane, but I was so glad that I got to see it in context.

There was a room which allowed us to interact with parts of the exhibits in isolation, showing us incised sections that we may have missed or details that don't stand out when it's so far above you.

Before we left we had a cheese plate and a crepe, then went back to the car.

Now this whole "Fabi can't find reverse" meant that neotoma had been helping me out of spots by pushing the car while I had it in neutral and steered. This didn't work once we hit a barred route on our way back -- no suggested detour sign -- and ended up on driveways. We ended up stuck at one house for about half an hour before we made ourselves heard. The gentleman there backed the car up and gave us a better idea of how to get back to where we needed to be (I'd made a reservation at another hotel well in advance including a dinner reservation at the bistro). He also tried to show me what I needed to do to find reverse, but I misunderstood the directions. Also, bless him, he told me I had a very good accent when speaking French. On a wearying afternoon, the compliment meant everything to me.

Two or three towns later, I missed a turn. This time an old man -- probably my age, but we never really see ourselves as old -- called his son who spoke English. They helped us get out of their driveway and back on the correct road, and this time when I was shown how to get the car into reverse, it clicked.

We had a nice evening in a room at the top of a flight of steep stairs, and the dinner at the bistro was nice. There were also some very well behaved dogs at the bistro.

The following morning, after a good buffet breakfast, the woman at the front desk helped us find our way to the autoroute. She wrote down the name of each town we needed where a shift from country road D2 to country road D734 (or whatever the actual route numbers were) would take place. There must have been 8 names. This was where neotoma and I cheered when we found a country road wide enough that there were lines painted on it. I still wasn't going anywhere near 80 kph.

We found the autoroute -- which was a toll road (we took it and prayed it took credit card) -- and spent most of the rest of the drive doing 130 kph (~80 mph). We made it to Toulouse in time for our train to Narbonne. After that we took the "poor man's TGV" back to Paris. They announced when we were going to our top speed of 320 kph (~199 mph), and the countryside passed by swiftly.

neotoma and I got up early on the Wednesday, found a way to extract our tickets from the kiosks and went from Paris Montparnasse to Toulouse Matabiau. Once there we picked up our very small car.

It took a few minutes for me to realize that I kept putting the car into third gear rather than first, but after the first hour, the fact that it had been 30+ years since I'd driven stick shift wasn't a huge problem. However, I will say that if I see one more traffic circle, I may burst into tears.

Getting out of Toulouse was one traffic circle after another. Then we hit the country roads. First of all, I would like to say that the Dordogne is every bit as beautiful as everyone says. We had glorious sunny weather as we hit the lovely vistas of plowed and planted fields with hills, forest, and poplar wind breaks everywhere we looked.

On the other hand, neotoma learned that I will swear at the car if it's not cooperating (see the 3rd gear vs 1st gear issue), and we both learned that the Dordogne has more hills and curves than the average roller coaster. The posted speed limit for most of it -- unless we were actually going through one of the beautiful 16th or 17th century towns -- was 80 kph (~50 mph). There was no way that I could handle any car at that speed on narrow roads with no shoulders and more curves than Marilyn Monroe. At one point on our second or third day of driving, we actually cheered because we'd finally found a road wide enough to have lane markings.

We found a decent hotel for Wednesday evening, but had some upset because the GPS on neotoma's phone still said we were 2 hours away from Lascaux. It had told us we were 2.5 hours from Lascaux when we first got in the car and we'd been driving for three hours.

The hoteliers told us we were only about 30 minutes away, which proved reasonably accurate when we left the next day. It was a great relief.

We are back in Paris, having gone to Toulouse and from there to Lascaux IV. The countryside was beautiful. The driving... More will be said when I am not typing with one finger.

Siderea posted last week asking how people learned the basics of the Constitution/U.S. Government and at what age. I followed up with an email.

Now I went to 5th grade, for the second time, at a Catholic School in Arlington. We weren't Catholic, so my folks asked if Sis and I could be excused from those classes. I was allowed to go the library, and I found a series of biographies aimed at 8-12 year olds. I could read one in an hour and a half. As I got older, I realized they were mostly fiction, but based around typical things a child-teenager would do in that time frame, for their gender, for their economic status. Some things were reasonably accurate to the person, especially if they'd written an autobiography, but it was mostly best guess fiction to get kids interested in history.

Being me, I looked on Amazon to see if the series was still printed. It is. Some of the ones I read are no longer for sale except as antiques (one was going for $139), mostly the ones around the Confederacy. Many new ones have been written. There are two that I'm not certain if I read them: Jim Thorpe and Helen Keller. I know I read something about Jim Thorpe before I was in 7th grade, but I'm not certain it was this series. I know I read The Story of My Life by Helen Keller in either 5th or 6th grade, but I'm uncertain if the reason I read it was because I'd read the Childhood of Famous Americans book about her first.

I've marked people of color with an asterisk. There are more men than women, but the range of women was pretty wide.

When possible, my parents would reinforce something I'd read. For instance, they took me to see Clara Barton's house just outside of DC. Our trip to Philadelphia when I was 11-ish may have been because I'd read about so many of the participants of the Second Continental Congress.

Most of the Confederate ones seem to have quietly fallen off the modern list (Thank $deity). But there's still Robert E. Lee.

( “List” )

Statement from the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Could the wording be stronger? Yes. Is it still a good first step? Absolutely.

There are some disappointments. The only University of California branch signing is at Riverside. Duke signed, but I didn't see Stanford. No one expected Columbia to sign, and they didn't, but I was surprised not to see Dartmouth joining with the other Ivies.

But I was also gratified to see American University (Dad for M.A. and Ph.D, me for one year), University of Maryland (me), Boston University (Sis for M.S., Dad as a professor, me as an administrator). Dad's undergraduate school, University of Richmond, and Sis's undergraduate school, Longwood, were not signatories.

University of Virginia may cover Longwood as it's part of the Commonwealth's University system, but I'm doubtful. I was shocked that Northeastern and Emerson didn't join. And somewhat taken aback that I didn't recognize the name of a single HBCU. I know that many black influencers refused to participate -- and encouraged their followers not to participate -- in the April 5 marches because white folks got them into this mess, so there may be an aspect of that. I would hope that the HBCUs will issue their own letter.

The single name that thrilled me the most, though, was Hollins University. It's a private women's college founded under the name Valley Union Seminary in Botetourt Springs, VA in 1841. By the time my great-great-grandmother graduated, it was known as the Hollins Institute. She won a commendation for French, and I still have the French language Bible she was awarded.

The women's colleges were well represented on the list. The only one of the old Seven Sisters whose name I didn't find was Barnard.

I don't know if other Universities can become signatories. It took a year-ish to get all the names on the Declaration of Independence, so I can hope. If it's possible and you don't see the name of your school(s), encourage them to sign. We need to stand together.

ETA: They are accepting signatures and quite a few have added them. MECURTIN: Georgetown has signed. And for my Boston peeps, Emerson has signed. I'm also excited by some of the community colleges that have signed. They're taking a risk. So seeing that Bunker Hill Community College is now on the list makes me very happy.

I was also assuming that the Heidelberg College was somewhere in the U.S., but now I think it's Heidelberg in Germany. Notre Dame de Namur in Belgium has signed.

I am not good at this, but I hope that I'll have a crop of something by the end of the summer.

The raised bed exists, but I need more soil before I can plant anything. In Georgia, that means I'm already too late for peas. I'll have at least a few beans of various types though (yard long, lima beans, and October beans) if I'm not completely cack-handed. Okra should still grow. Lettuces. It's a small bed, but if I grid it correctly, it should give us quite a bit for late summer and early autumn. I hope to get the artichoke planted, but I know that I can't expect anything until next summer at the earliest and more likely the summer after that.

In large planters, I have a dwarf Meyer lemon tree and a dwarf finger lime, both of which are self fertilizing.

The Arbor Day Foundation trees arrived on Thursday and the gardener planted them on Friday. Two Kiefer pear trees and two American hazelnuts have been planted. We may get the hazels next year. The pears are like the artichoke, probably two years out.

The front has had the iris, croci, and other bulbs/rhizomes planted. The iris and tuberose should come up this year. They'll be a bit sparse, but they'll all fill in as the years go by. The saffron crocus will be up in the fall and the rest of the bulbs will show up next spring.

One of the Arbor Day Foundation trees has been planted in the front yard. It's a pink dogwood, the one sign of spring I missed when I lived in Europe. Then there are two lilac bushes. They're one of the few types that can even survive in this growing zone, so I hope that I'll have the sweet scent next spring, but more than anything else, the lilacs are a crap shoot. Several roses have been planted on the other side of the front door, all of them scent roses, all of them different heights with different bloom times.

This is my way of protecting my family. Next year, I'll know what I'm doing and can start another raised bed and one of the big bags for potatoes.

Nicky (male dog) had a cyst removed this week. I thought the scar would be about two inches. It's closer to five. Fortunately, it's on a part of his back that he can't reach, so we only put him in the cone of shame (it's really an inflatable donut) when we're not around to keep an eye on him.

Sis turned 61 yesterday. Our dinner reservations were changed by the restaurant from last night to tonight.

The Guardian is reporting that Republicans are exerting control over Washington, D.C.

That would be nothing new. When Republicans control both houses of congress they switch from bamboo utensils and compostable take out containers in the cafeteria and switch the congressional power plant -- which is only on in an emergency -- from natural gas to coal. The rates of asthma and elderly deaths in SW DC went up when the Republicans controlled congress and there was a snow storm. They also tend to take away money for needle exchange programs in a city where 1 out of 20 adults -- approximately 5% of the population -- was HIV positive in 2016.

I would like to take exception to one item in the article. It states that "It was unclear how the language approving Washington DC’s budget was removed from the federal spending bill, but just after it passed the Senate, the Republican Susan Collins described the omission as “a mistake”, and the chamber unanimously passed her legislation to fix it."

It wasn't a mistake. The lists that I'm still on for DC sent out a plea for people to call any representative or senator they could to beg them not to cut the budget for DC. Since I'm now a Georgia resident, I called both Senators and my Representative and asked that the DC budget not be cut.

The 2018 Federal Tax revenue numbers -- the most recent ones I could quickly find that included the District of Columbia -- showed that Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming combined paid 27,443,756,000. The District alone paid 28,443,717,000.

Let's be clear: this spending bill was NOT regulating federal monies. It was dictating how DC was allowed to spend its own "state" tax money. It will create illness, illiteracy, and unemployment because the monies are being take from healthcare, public schools, and the Metro system, aka how most of the Greater Washington Area gets to work.

The current president -- and if I accept the constitution, I must accept that he is my president -- says he wants to make the District "safe, beautiful, and prosperous." Prosperous? There are 17 states between DC and North Dakota, the most prosperous of the states I listed. Safe? The murder rates have been going down for years. This budget cut is likely to raise the rate of robbery and car theft, based on my experiences on the ANC and how the rates fluctuate with the economy. Beautiful? I've lived in or visited some of the cities widely considered the most beautiful in the world. DC beats them thanks to L'Enfant and Banneker's plans for city vistas. There are U.S. cities that have some gorgeous views, including Boston and San Francisco, but they don't have as many points of beauty, in my opinion, as the District of Columbia.

One item that I didn't find covered in the Guardian article is funding for clean-up after parades and protests. When I first lived in the District, Congress appropriated enough federal money to help cover security and clean-up for most public events to last from January to September. Anything in the autumn came out of DC's funding. Bear in mind, there are not enough Federal police or park rangers to cover this and the military isn't allowed to do it. Metropolitan Police officers are the main coverage for these events. DC Public Works empties the trash, cleans up the routes, etc. At the beginning of 2017, before Trump's inauguration, the newly Republican congress cut that funding so that DC picks up the tab for safety and clean-up from March.

This is important. It may not be high on your radar if you have no personal connection to the District, but if, as so many tourists said, "it's our city, too," then these issues need to be addressed.

The District was the last city in the country to be desegregated because Congress liked segregation. Our schools and families suffered greatly from AIDS in the 1980s because the homophobes also tended to damn IV drug users. And yet we built a rainy day fund that allowed us to process unemployment during COVID faster than any state in the union -- bear in mind that Vermont and Wyoming have fewer people than the District. This is a huge thing we managed during a pandemic. But DC is being punished for being Black, predominantly Democrat, and generally vocal about fairness.

I have cities I visit. I have cities in which I've lived and been happy; that doesn't make them one of "my cities." Boston is an example. I have more friends there than anywhere else in the country. It feels comfortable when I'm there. The Charles is beautiful. My mental map for walking is good. But it's not "my city." London is similar for me. I know it well. Some of the best experiences of my life were there, but it was never home.

DC is. Brussels is. Mannheim is.

I only lived in Mannheim for about 18 months. It's not as pretty as Heidelberg. Its University is younger than I am. It's not a major center anymore. And its street grid/address system confuses many, many people -- though I loved it. (I lived at J7.)

Mannheim City Center

Today, someone committed vehicular manslaughter (at least) in the city center. Several people, per the Guardian, have been injured, too. The driver sped up a pedestrian street to the heart of the city.

I used to catch the tram to my office near K1. I would buy a pastry at the bakery if I wasn't running late and stop for my groceries on the way home. On Wednesday, I went to the cafe on the top floor of the local department store and had apricot germknoedel mit zimt. They had the traditional type, too, but I liked apricot.

The area where the pedestrians were run down is the Parade Platz in the center, where the farmer's market was held on Saturday. They had the most beautiful cauliflower, I'd ever seen. Every Sunday I would walk the mile to the train station to buy The Observer and a schnecke pastry for breakfast. I'd often repeat the walk in the late afternoon to have Chinese food at a restaurant near the station.

The Rhein runs on one side of Mannheim. The Neckar runs into it. I still won't buy anything from BASF because they once poisoned the Rhein while I lived there.

It was only 18 months. I wasn't always happy there, but I loved my apartment. I loved my walks. I loved my city.

This is the third time in a decade that one of my cities has been attacked. Brussels was in March of 2016. DC was attacked on January 6, 2021. And now a senseless attack in Mannheim.

These are my cities.

I'm in the emergency room. I had overwhelming chest pain while driving. Will let everyone know more later.

Eta: just had a CAT scan. [I think Texaco Mike will do the reading.] They're more concerned about a possible pulmonary embolism than a heart attack. I should probably mention that Dad had TB.

Eta2: I am ensconced in a hotel. 7 hours in ER. No scarring on my lungs. No calcification in my heart. I already have a Primary Care appoint in 2 weeks, which I've been told is soon enough for a follow-up. I have a heavy duty Pepcid prescription.

I have five cousins on my father's side of the family; the three around my age are by Uncle's first wife. His only daughter is a year older than Sis and just lost her elder son. My oldest cousin, whom I will call Sonny, died this morning never having left the hospital after his admission for extremely low sodium, pneumonia, strep, and flu.

Cousine barely made it from the west coast in time to say goodbye. The brother between her and Sonny will get there tonight.

Sonny went into the navy at 18. He was discharged for mental health by the time he was 20. Schizophrenia runs on his mother's side of the family. Ships in the 1970s were easy to find drugs on. I knew about "drug-induced schizophrenia" (I'm pretty sure it would be called something else these days) from the time I was 13.

Sonny has been in and out of V.A. and charity facilities since he was released from the military. Uncle and, later, Cousine have looked after his finances so that it was virtually impossible for him to score drugs -- other than cigarettes -- and so that, unlike many of his contemporaries, he always had a roof over his head.

We can say that he smoked himself to death. It's true. We can say that he might have been treated differently if schizophrenia were better understood or if his family had realized he was prodromal when he enlisted. That's also true.

I saw him three years ago, for about five minutes, when we went to Blacksburg for Thanksgiving. The last I saw him prior to that was 1972.

This post brought to you by bronchitis! I stopped coughing two days ago, but my ribs hurt. The doctor has put me on three drugs, plus two shots and a nebulizer before I leave her office. If I'd waited until next week to be seen, it would have been pneumonia no matter how many preventive jabs I've had.

ETA: The memorial service is on Friday. Sis has midterms, so I'll drive up Thursday, hopefully with a cell phone.