France's Most Celebrated Immigrant

Apropos the earlier discussion of the Museum of Immigration in Paris as well as the current immigration issues in Europe, I thought I'd add these pictures of Napoleon's Tomb.

There are three main levels at Napoleon's Tomb - street level, down one where the tomb is, and up one to the chapel under the large church dome.

The bottom picture of the tomb was taken from the street level.

The Dome From Outside

The middle picture is from the bottom level.  It shows the tomb from below and up to the chapel, which has orange glass windows that color the setting sun's light an orange glow.

The top picture looks up to the dome.

Napoleon was buried in 1815 on the island of St. Helena where he was exiled.  His ashes were exhumed and brought to Paris in 1840.  But it wasn't until 1861 that the tomb was completed and ready for his ashes.


And here's a map to put some of the Paris posts into perspective.

A = the Eiffel Tower
B =  Napoleon's Tomb
C =  Rodin Museum and Garden
D = Pont Alexander III
E = Quai Branley Museum (coming)

All of these are close enough to walk if you're reasonably fit.

[History and map from Historvius]

[Some might legitimately question whether Napoleon was an immigrant.  See #1 at History.com for more on this.]

Is Climate Denial Really Republican Plot to Regain National Dominance?

In NY Times story by Justin Gillis printed in yesterday's Alaska Dispatch News about how climate change is now causing regular flooding of coastal area in Virginia and other states, and talks about local expenditures to protect communities being inadequate.  It talks about how the military has made protecting bases against climate change threats, but that Congress' gridlock keeps money from being appropriated.  Gillis writes that

"A Republican congressman from Colorado, Ken Buck, recently called one military proposal part of a 'radical climate change agenda..”

"Radical climate change agenda."  This guy seems to have a pretty narrow circle of friends if he uses trigger words like 'radical' and 'agenda' to enclose climate change.

Reading that caused me to think.  OK, this guy is in Colorado.  His district is the eastern 1/3 or so of the state.  So he's probably about 800-900 miles from the Gulf of Mexico and maybe 1200 miles from according to Net State:
the Pacific Ocean.  Furthermore,

"Colorado's low point, 3,315 feet above sea level at the Arikaree River in Yuma County, is the highest low point in the nation and is higher than 18 state high points."

So, Colorado will be the last state where the population feels the effects of rising oceans.  Though the ski industry is concerned about how climate change will affect them, but it looks like those areas aren't in his district.



But then it hit me.  The Republicans see their party imploding.  Demographics are against them (at least in their current mode) and their presidential candidate seems to be using his nomination as a branding exercise for his businesses rather than a serious run for the White House.

But.  But.  If rising seas take out liberal strongholds on the east and west coasts, that would leave the more inland and more conservative states.  Yeah, I know this sounds far fetched, but I'm adding it to my list of possible reasons people oppose climate change legislation like a carbon fee with dividend.

OK, I've used this (to me) unknown legislator's comment to make a rather light-hearted post.  And I am concerned that I not, out of ignorance, disparage someone who's doing a decent job and who's been taken out of context.  Actually, I don't think I have disparaged him, I just used his comment as a jumping off point, but I thought I should find out more about him.  We all should understand more about the people who are quoted regularly in the news - otherwise how do we know how to take the person's comment in the larger context?

So here's what I found out about him.

Buck had enough going for him that got into and graduated from Princeton, though on Wikipedia he is quoted as saying, he went there to please his father.  He moved west and got a law degree at the University of Wyoming.  (Still Wikipedia:)

In 1986, he was hired by Congressman Dick Cheney to work on the Iran-Contra investigation. Following that assignment, he worked as a prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.C.[5] In 1990 Buck joined the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Colorado where he became Chief of the Criminal Division. Buck was formally reprimanded and required to take ethics classes in 2001 for a meeting he had with defense attorneys about a felony case he thought should not be pursued.[3][6] Only one of the three men initially indicted on felony charges was convicted, for a misdemeanor offense.[6] Buck said he is "not proud" of the incident that effectively ended his career with the Justice Department,[6] but says he felt it was "unethical" to prosecute such a "weak" case against the three men.[7] One of the three men donated $700 to Buck's 2010 Senate campaign.[6]

The Denver Post tells us more about the case.  It involved illegal gun sales.

Then there's the case where he chose not to prosecute a rapist, even though the victim had a tape where the rapist acknowledges that what he did was rape.  He told her that she had 'buyer's remorse" and there was an allegation by the rapist that she'd had an abortion in the past.  Buck is against abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.  And he once said that homosexuality is a choice though it might be influenced by birth, like alcoholism.

 He introduced a bill this year to make attacking a police officer a hate crime.


This is one the men who helps pass (or obstruct) laws in Congress.  What do you know about the other 434 Members of Congress?

"Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was,” Wrenn said. “It wasn’t about discriminating against African Americans. They just ended up in the middle of it because they vote Democrat.'”

The point of this post relates to comments by a North Carolina Republican consultant about whether the changes in North Carolina voting rules were racist or not.  That's down near the bottom.  First is background to the quote.

Background of the Quote

A long Washington Post article by William Wan documents how the North Carolina Republican majority in the state legislature passed new voting laws that set up significant barriers to voting, mainly by African-Americans.  They changed what voter id could be used, shortened early voting including a Sunday when African-American churches helped their members vote early.  The reduced the hours polls would be open, even specifically saying that polls could not accommodate people who had waited in long lines prior to closing time.  At the same time the reduced the number of polling places in African-American neighborhoods, assuring that there would be long lines of people shut out when it was closing time.

The bill had been much more modest when it was passed by the state house and sat in the senate until a few days before the legislature adjourned.  The magic date was June 23, 2013 when the US Supreme Court in Shelby v. Holder ruled that Chapter 5 of the Voting Rights Act no longer was valid.  This act required that some identified states (including Alaska) were no longer required to have their redistricting plans and changes in the voting laws pre-approved by the Department of Justice.  I remember that well, because I was blogging the Alaska Redistricting Board and it was a big deal for them.

Once the word came out that Justice Department approval was no longer necessary, according to the article,  the North Carolina senate added a bunch of new voting barriers to blacks, held 20 minutes of public hearings, passed the law, and sent it back to the house which also passed it in record time.

And then they were sued.   A Federal District Court judge upheld the law, but the three judge panel of the 4th Circuit US Court of Appeals overturned his decision,

"calling it “the most restrictive voting law North Carolina has seen since the era of Jim Crow.” Drawing from the emails and other evidence, the 83-page ruling charged that Republican lawmakers had targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.”  

(The District Court judge was a Republican, the panel were all Democrats.)

The governor asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the voting restrictions in the new law stating it was too close to the election to change things.  But last week the Scalia-less US Supreme Court was deadlocked four to four, thus letting stand the Appeal Court's ruling.

Throughout the article the reporter quotes Republican legislators as saying the changes were made to prevent voter fraud, despite emails that came out in court where legislators and their staff were asking for specific information on black voters - the kinds of id they used; how many voted early; how many were university students, etc.  And despite the fact that there were only two cases of in-person voter fraud referred to a district attorney from 40 million votes cast from 2000 to 2012.


The Quote

"Longtime Republican consultant Carter Wrenn, a fixture in North Carolina politics, said the GOP’s voter fraud argument is nothing more than an excuse. “'Of course it’s political. Why else would you do it?' he said, explaining that Republicans, like any political party, want to protect their majority. While GOP lawmakers might have passed the law to suppress some voters, Wrenn said, that does not mean it was racist. 'Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was,” Wrenn said. “It wasn’t about discriminating against African Americans. They just ended up in the middle of it because they vote Democrat.'”

My Response:

1. Democracy is about the will of the people.  Any voter suppression, whether it be of African-Americans or Democrats is wrong.  Winning elections by preventing people from voting violates the spirit of American democracy.  
1. So Wrenn's admission that it was political (and not about voter fraud) exposes the Republicans' lies.  
2. His admission that what they did was voter suppression of Democrats, not African Americans acknowledges the voter suppression.
3. It's possible that shifting it from suppression of Democrats rather than African-Americans may be a ploy to avoid problems with the Voting Rights Act which, as I understand it, is aimed at preventing suppression of minority voters, not parties.  
2. The majority opinion of the Supreme Court's Shelby v. Holder decision focused on the idea that the list of states required by the Voting Rights Act to submit changes for pre-approval was a relic of history and that conditions had changed.  The Court said, knowing it wouldn't happen given the deadlocks in the legislature, that Congress could pass new standards that better the states with the problems requiring pre-clearance of voting changes.    
1. North Carolina's action, taken days after the Shelby decision demonstrate that, at the very least, nothing really had changed in this area in North Carolina.  
3. The fact that changes were aimed at African-American districts, not white Democratic districts, also undermines Wrenn's comments.
1. According to FactCheck African-Americans were only 38% of the registered Democrats in 2006.  That left the rest, mostly white, with some Latinos.  
2. It may be that because of housing segregation, and economic conditions that make it harder for African-Americans to get off work to get proper ID and to vote during the day, that it was easier to target blacks.  But the result is the suppression of the black voice in North Carolina politics.  

I'd note that the Alaska Dispatch News has been posting a number of important investigative reports from national media.  And I'd guess, important as they are, most people find it easier to read about the latest Trump insults, than to tackle a longer story that requires some thinking.  Not my readers, of course.  

Reports in recent days have included:

How spy tech firms let governments see everything on a smartphone
Tobacco industry works to block federal rules on e-cigarettes   (NYTimes online headline different from ADN print headline)
Flawed missile system produces $2 billion in bonuses
Exxon ignores near-term glut to play liquefied gas long game

Colin Kaepernick and 'Political Correctness' Conservative Style - Part 1

Conservatives are quick to cry 'political correctness' when their racist comments are attacked.  But they fail to recognize attacking others who they disagree with has long been a conservative indulgence.

The  disapproval expressed by many football fans and others of San Francisco football player Colin Kaepernick is very much in the vein of conservative 'political correctness.'  By their standards, he must stand up when the national anthem is played.  To sit is offensive because it is seen as unpatriotic and disrespectful to what they hold dear..  Just as using racist, sexist, and homophobic epithets is offensive to many liberals because they see it as perpetuating discrimination against different groups of (generally less powerful) Americans.

At its simplest, 'political correctness' today means to conservatives 'when liberals tell us what we can't say or do."

Simple may be easy, but it glosses over a much more complicated set of realities that underly the idea of political correctness.

I've written about this before - as in this piece on political correctness and Thanksgiving.

My most succinct take on this is:

When white, male, Protestants had most of the power in the US (probably they still do hold more wealth and positions of power than any other single group), they could say and do as they pleased.  Their prejudices and narratives were enforced by churches, schools, and the law.  Blacks had to tolerate the socially humiliating and economically devastating deprivations of slavery and then Jim Crow and the culturally embedded racism of US institutions.  The values of the dominant class were imposed on them.  And on non-Protestants.  A key impetus for the creation of Catholic schools, for example, was to escape the prejudice against Catholics and indoctrination to Protestantism in public schools.

The dominant culture, quite naturally, saw their beliefs as the only true view of the how the world is.  I say naturally because those in the dominant culture experienced their world view both at home and in the institutions outside the home.  Blacks, people of other religions,  experienced that dominant societal world view outside the home, but at home they had a second  world view.  The idea that there are more than one social realities is easier to grasp for people who grow up with two or more realities.  The dominant culture also had the power to impose their values  on everyone else.  And those who opposed them - whether women, or Indians, or communists, or atheist, or the poor - were censored or worse for opposing the power structure of the dominant world view.  

It's only been since those outsider groups gained greater strength and ability to stand up and protest policies and practices that make them second class citizens, that the defenders of the status quo borrowed the term 'political correctness' from left wing academic circles, and used 'political correctness' to label those actions which challenged their own belief system and power to enforce it on others.

That bubble of power - where your own beliefs are backed up by the economic, social, and political systems - coincides roughly with what Peggy McIntosh coined 'white privilege.'   Before the women's suffrage and civil rights movements was a time when white Americans, particularly male, straight, Protestants, could say and do what they wanted, because what they wanted to say was backed by the society of the US.  So what they said and did seemed to be obviously 'true.'

Women shared the white part, but had to put up with being second class citizens to males,  forbidden to vote and subservient in many ways to their husbands.  And looked down on if they didn't have husbands.  Atheists and homosexuals, if they identified themselves as such, could lose their jobs and face violence.

The civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights movements all worked to break down that privilege to  be able to abuse 'outsiders.'  The Jim Crow South is the most obvious example of that privilege, but it existed and still exists in many less visible ways.

White males usually haven't seen this as a loss of their privilege to compete for jobs without competition from women and people of color, or to make sexually or racially demeaning comments, and to be treated preferentially by banks, employers,  and universities.  They saw it rather as a loss of rights, since they'd always taken them for granted.  The other groups, according to the myth of self-made man simply were inferior to white males and thus didn't do as well.

"Political Correctness' is the term they began using when people called them on their privilege.  When the others demanded to be treated equally.


This is more than I intended to say about this, but it's a topic that I've spent time examining.  As I was writing this I came up with more dimensions for thinking about it and the conflicts raised with, say, free speech rights.  But I need more time to clarify those thoughts.

So for now, I'd just say that much of the conflict over political correctness really could be handled by Miss Manners and a few good kindergarten teachers helping their wards learn common courtesy.  But there are also more complex aspects.  I hope to look at those aspects in a follow-up post.

Check That Suspicious Link

I had a bizarre comment on my latest post.  It was a url.  It was enough to get me to call my email provider and ask some questions that got me to the security folks.  We think it was harmless, but I changed passwords.  But it did lead to him pointing out a website that checks suspicious url's for malware, viruses, etc.

I thought that was a cool thing to know, so here it is:  https://virustotal.com.

Yeah, you have to think about checking that link I just gave you, don't you.  But you have to go there to check it.  Such dilemmas.  But I've got you covered.  I already did it and here's what it said:

I am working on Part 2 of The Uncanny Valley and Paris Museums post, but it's by warm and sunny in Anchorage and it's complicated, so this is a break.  In fact I may leave it for a couple of days before I get it up.

The Uncanny Valley, The Museum of Immigration History, and The Quai Branley Museum Part 1

[Dear Reader, have patience with me.  I'm trying to pull together a number of thoughts and experiences in an attempt to make sense of all this.  I've done a couple of posts that mention The Flâneur, Edmund White's book on the Parisian pastime of wandering around exploring Paris in a relatively haphazard way.  I'm drawn to this idea - though I admit to also wanting to find greater meaning in my wanderings.  I'm toying with the idea of a fláneur, not necessarily wandering physically through Paris, but mentally discovering random ideas in no fixed location.  This particular wandering is triggered by a museum in Paris on the History of Immigration.]

As I looked through our Paris museum pass, I found the Museum of the History of Immigration on the list.  My sense, even before leaving Anchorage, was that beyond the obvious tourist sights of Paris, I ought to be exploring some of the immigrant areas that were more Arab or African than French.  It just seemed to me that was a significant part of what is Paris today.*  But I wasn't sure how. And the police officer (with the shades) patrolling the tourist area of Sacre Couer, with a great view of Paris, had pointed past Gare du Nord and said that was dangerous, and where we were was safe.  So I really hadn't figured that adventure out.  And now I saw there was a museum on immigration.   When I googled to figure out where the museum was,  my hopes were dimmed when I read two reviews of the museum.  The first was in the NY Times right after the repurposed museum opened in 2007.   It was pretty scathing.

"Sparsely devised with charts, graphs, interactive gadgets and odds and ends of memorabilia meant to humanize what is a fairly dry, lifeless display, the museum is a well-meaning dud. Its obvious reluctance to dwell on touchy subjects like the occupation of Algeria is predictable, this being a government enterprise."

The CBC, about eight years, later isn't much better.

It's a pretty harsh and honest account, but still incomplete. If there was anything said of the massacre of Algerians by Paris police in 1961, for instance, it wasn't presented to draw my attention, and I missed it. Nor was there much emphasis on why France should actually be proud to have immigrants settle here. Marie Curie, who was born in Poland and became a French citizen, gets some attention. So does the German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach. But the overall impression from the museum is one of "objectification, stereotyping and silencing," in the words of Sophia Labadi, a scholar of cultural heritage. She quotes the writer Ian McEwan to explain why it matters that a museum help us to understand the experiences of other people: "Imagining what it's like to be someone other than yourself is the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality."

Really, after such reviews, was there any need to actually go see it?  Can it really be that bad?

It was the longest Metro ride we'd taken and we came out in a somewhat different Paris - one that had  the patisseries and other Parisian delights, but was almost entirely devoid of tourists.

It turned out that the reviews were actually kind.

As the NY Times pointed out, the museum is in an art deco building that was put up for a 1931 world's fair to celebrate the French empire and the elaborate relief on the exterior walls shows colonized people working to exploit their natural resources for the benefit of the colonial power.  This is perhaps the most honest and straightforward part of the museum.

It was hot outside - in the 90s F (30s C) - and this was the only museum I recall being in that didn't have air conditioning. (The Cluny didn't have it in all spaces, but did in some.) In fact the temperature and feel inside reminded me a lot of buildings in Thailand in the 1960s.







The second floor displays were primitive - not the topic, but the way things were displayed.   Posters.  Other museums have small poster like explanations, but they are explanations of some object like a painting.  Here, it seems, the object was the building itself.







This floor basically was a history of the building, not of immigration.  The posters and pictures in this room tell the story of the evolution of the purpose and contents of the building.

Another poster tells us that in 2003 the collection of the Museum of African and Oceania Art museum moved  to the Museum of Quai Branley (where we went in the afternoon.)


The third floor technology got into the 1980s - there was even some video.

And the topic did get into immigrants to France.  There weren't many people at this museum but there was a black French teenager and a man I assumed to be his father.  I asked him what he thought of the museum.  His dad watched in what seemed to be proud expectation as the young man pulled out his school English to respond.  "It's all stuff I know already from school."

I couldn't understand the French in the videos, so I can only go by the English translations on some of the posters.

What was there was an idealized notion of immigration - how everyone was becoming French and contributing to the betterment of France.

The kind of thing that makes the people who support multiculturalism cringe and the people who oppose it cry out "political correctness."  Its focus on an idealized fraternity of humankind falls flat.  I'm not sure when the language was put up here, but given today's immigration and terrorist realities, it seems like a bad joke.  A sort of Disney narration that tidies everything up.

OK, so I'm saying this is a lame museum.  The medium is the message.  This is almost an orphan museum.  Relatively little money is spent on it compared to the other museums.  This unairconditioned (it was a very hot day) display using outdated technology and rhetoric in a building, far from the center of Paris, created to celebrate empire  is the message.  

I'd also note that the comments on the CBC article quoted above were largely defensive, and attacked the author and CBC for blaming the bombing, that had just occurred before the article was published, on colonialism.  Typical was this comment, which should also be part of the story:

"Palaan
Another pathetic attempt by the CBC to manipulate the reader and somehow link the bombing to French oppression.

Translation - if the French do not surrender their identity through mass immigration and multiculturalism then they are bigots worthy of justified political violence. This is what Boag and the CBC are saying. And the only through continued mass immigration and multiculturalism in the West, can our previous past 'sins' be appeased."

But what could be done differently in such a museum?  

It could be more honest and dare to take on the debate raised by Palaan's comment.  There are legitimate issues to raise.  While the US is a nation of immigrants, whose official language comes from England, France is the home of the French language and has a distinct culture that many see as threatened by Islamic immigration.  A great immigration museum would be a place to examine that argument and the realities of the immigrants, their lives, and that perceived threat.  It would examine the extent to which France's wealth came from the natural resources of its colonies and their people's labor and the moral obligations to the people of the former colonies.     

I'm not sure there are many such museums.  Close to home though, in Paris, is the Museum of Jewish History, which we had visited the previous day.  It does a much better job of portraying the culture and stories of Jews in France. Its focus is on the Jewish culture and immigration. 

The Anchorage museum also does a much better job of displaying the cultural history as well as the lives of individual people of the various cultures that were in Alaska prior to Europeans.  

One of the better museums in this vein is the  Peranakan Museum in Singapore.  It richly presents the lives and culture of people of mixed race in that area.  It pushes the issues further, but not too far.  

It seems to me that the point of a museum on immigration is to tell the story of the people who have come, in this case, to France.  Why did they leave their homelands?  What was their journey like?  What happened when they arrived in France?  Frenchmen should be able to see, in such a museum, the common humanity of individuals of Arab, African, Asian, and non-French European descent. The Ian McEwan quote in the CBC article says it well:  

"Imagining what it's like to be someone other than yourself is the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality."

From this museum we went to the Quai Branly Museum  (that's the name of the street it's on.)  This is where the African and Oceania art originally housed in the now immigration museum went.  I was hoping that museum would do some of what this one didn't.  I'll discuss what we found there in a separate post, including The Uncanny Valley, which explores the relationship between humans and robots, but may also be a useful way to think about the relationship between humans of different cultures.    

____________________

*That idea of getting out of the historic and touristy parts of Paris was later reinforced when I got to chapter 2 of The Flâneur:

"Perhaps the flâneur should turn away from matronly, pearl-grey Paris, the city built by Napoleon III and his henchman Baron Haussmann, and inhabited today by foreign millionaires, five-star hotels, three-star restaurants and embassies:  a phantom city.  For the real vitality of Paris today lies elsewhere - in Belleville and Barbés, the teaming quartiers where Arabs and Asians and black live and blend their respective cultures into new blends.  This book is dedicated to the random wanderings of the flâneur, but his wanderings will take him more often to the strange corners of Paris than to its historic centre, to the strongholds of multiculturalism rather than to the classic headquarters of the Gallic tradition."

This is a Paris I would have liked to have seen, but didn't.  In this ISIS era, the message I got from the police officer above, and others,  was to stay away from that area.  I know that areas with such reputations in the US are visited daily by 'outsiders' and there is no problem at all.  The news media only tell us when there is a problem.   With all there was to do in Paris, we just didn't get there.  And the night we'd wanted to try out a North African restaurant in Belleville, we ended up crashed from jet lag.  Next time.

4.0 Early Morning Earthquake Anchorage

I wouldn't have felt this if I hadn't been up.  About 4:27am.  So why am I up?  The body is still working on Paris time.  So I'm up sorting the stack of mail and paying bills.   I didn't post when it happened because I wasn't even sure it was an earthquake.  J didn't feel it.

But  the USGS confirmed it:

M4.0 - 40km ESE of Anchorage, Alaska 2016-08-30 12:27:58 UTC  [4:27am Anchorage time] 61.085°N 149.205°W 19.5 km depth

Pont Alexander III

From Edmund White's The Flâneur:

"At the turn of the nineteenth century the scientific flâneur (a contradiction in terms, since flâneurie is supposed to be purposeless) was Eugéne Atget, an obsessed photographer who was determined to document every corner of Paris before it disappeared under the assault of modern 'improvements.'  He had been born in 1857 near Bordeaux and as a young man had worked variously as a sailor, actor and painter.  Penniless but driven, Atget carried his tripod, view camera and glass plates everywhere with him, shooting all the monuments but also the fading advertisements painted on a wall, the dolls in a shop window, the rain-slicked cobbled street, the door knocker, the guay, the stairwell, even the grain of the wood steps."

[NOTE:  All the pictures get sharper when you click on them.]

This reminds me to stop complaining about dragging around my Canon rebel, which takes much better pictures than my Canon Spotmatic, but doesn't fit easily into my pocket.  Paragraphs like these help me figure out who I am and what I'm doing on this blog.  Though I can think of friends who would disagree, I don't think I'm as obsessed - my attention is too scattered over too many things - but I do think about documentation of things and people that are often overlooked.  And as patient and tolerant as my wife is, I need to mind her needs as well as mine.

I read the above passage on the plane, after taking pictures on the Pont Alexander III.  Reading about the bridge today, it's draw becomes obvious.   Andy Strote writes that there are 37 bridges in Paris

"By far, the most elaborate over-the-top concoction is the Pont Alexandre III which connects the Grand Palais . . . and the Petit Palais on the right bank with the Hôtel des Invalides on the left bank."

 But I didn't know that.  In fact the first two pictures I took were from underneath the bridge.

We'd been walking along the Seine and after going under the bridge, we decided it was time to cross over to the other side of the river.  I started noticing bits and pieces of the bridge.






These cherubs caught my eye, but I was too late to get the perfect moment with the sun breaking through the clouds in the background.

Then I looked back and saw how the bridge was perfectly aligned with the dome of the Invalides, under which Napoleon is entombed.  We'd been there the evening before.







And the bridge lights were incredibly ornate.

I looked back again and found the name Pont Alexander III  (pont is bridge).

There was this muscular female figure (actually there were two) holding a torch.  I've since learned from Wikipedia that these are the Nymphs of Neva.  You can sort of see them in the middle of the bridge in the picture below.

We did figure out this was not a run-of-the-mill bridge, but we didn't know anything specific.

I've since checked.  It was build to commemorate Russian-French friendship and Czar Nicholas II laid the stone for this bridge name after his father.

A View On Cities explains more:

"The bridge was built at the end of the nineteenth century as part of a series of projects undertaken for the Universal Exposition of 1900. The exposition took place on either side of the Seine river and the new bridge would enable the millions of visitors to more easily cross the river. 

Construction of the bridge, designed by the architects Résal and Alby, took almost three years. The structure was first prefabricated in a factory and later transported and assembled by a large crane. 

One of the requirements for the bridge was that it should not obstruct the view on the Invalides and Champs-Elysées. This resulted in a very low 40 meters (132 ft) wide bridge with a single 107.5 meters (353 ft) long span and a height of only 6 meters (20 ft)."

And on the other side of the bridge - from the Invalides - is the Grand Palais, built for the Universal Exposition.

I tried think about the grandiose nature of this bridge in the context of Paris.  All the buildings in the central part of Paris are huge five or six story blocks that house shops on the bottom and apartments above.  (Well, I don't know that exactly, but at least much of above are places people live.)  Most people live in these large, if ornate, buildings.  They don't have personal backyards - though in behind the street-side facade there are green areas - or personal garages for the most part.  But they have Paris - the trees, the streets, the cafes, the public places to walk or sit on the grass.  They have wonderful public spaces and a great transportation network that makes owning a car unnecessary.

All of the beauty and convenience is available to everyone, it's not hidden in people's privately owned  spaces.  Am I ready to give up my backyard?  Not yet.  And Anchorage offers access to much more natural spaces to flaneur.  

This idea of flâneurie would seem to be at least a cousin to the idea of meandering, I topic I wrote about after reading the introduction to David Copperfield.  It appealed to me then and does still now.


Previous Post:  My Head's Still In Paris, But My Feet Are Back Home In Anchorage - some good photos flying over Greenland, Arctic ice.

My Head's Still In Paris, But My Feet Are Back Home In Anchorage

It took Captain Cook almost two years to sail from England to Alaska, though he didn't really have a map and he went via New Zealand.

This morning, we walked along the Seine and had breakfast in a sidewalk cafe off of the Champs-Élysées.

It was about 8:30am, still a 'cool' 73 or 74˚F after the previous day's high 90s weather.

We left Paris at 2:10pm.  Can you find Waldo?  Or in this case the Eiffel Tower?

Three hours later we'd landed in Reykjavik, Iceland, where it was a brisk 53˚F (12˚C)  And hour or so later we were leaving Iceland.

And soon Greenland was below us.  

A while later we were flying over the sea ice in the Beaufort Sea over far northern Canada.
[You can enlarge and focus any of these pictures by clicking on it)

The sea ice was right up against the land.  Look closely below and you can see a pretty massive and sharp cliff.

Based on the inflight route mapper and Worldatlas, I'm guessing this was Banks Island

A little while later, we were flying over the Yukon River.

And then past Denali, though the plane's computer map still called it Mt. McKinley.

















We landed in Anchorage a little over ten hours after leaving Paris, and that included a change of planes in Reykjavik.

And although I'd been reading reports of rain and cold, when we walked over to the Thai Kitchen for dinner it was bright, sunny, and a warm 72 or 73˚F.

While this isn't as amazing as the Star Trek transporter, I'm sure Captain Cook would have had difficulty believing someone could go this far this fast.  Paris is still part of my reality, but I know it will fade soon.

[UPDATE Aug 29 7:24am:  Seems I jumped the gun when I reposted this.  It did get onto Feedburner, so I took down the repost.]

Travel Thoughts As We Leave Paris

1.  Package tour or on your own?

With the exception of a few short trips where a package was a better deal than booking on one's own, I've never really been on a package tour.  As I think about the time I spent figuring what hotels and train and rental car to book and how and when, I can understand why people like package tours where all those decisions are made for you.

But when I've looked at package tours offered from various organizations - from alumni groups to Costco - the daily individual price (not including airfare) ranges from $200-$400 double.  That makes a hotel room around $200-600 per night.  Our hotels - not five stars, but not shabby either - averaged about $100 per night.  There were a lot of good deals on-line if you look a little.  Even if you make some mistakes, you're still way ahead.  The only surprise from my online shopping was the rental car out of Brussels.  I never saw anything about a €50 site fee.

It was also nice to go at our own pace, not a group's pace.  We linger or rush off as we pleased.

Tours do give you more opportunity to meet folks, but half our trip involved people we knew who live in Paris, Brussels, and Germany.  And we met a number of interesting people - though there were lots of people on the Metro I would have liked to talk to, but didn't think I should.

I was lucky to get a good start on traveling solo when I was a student in Germany.

I would say there were a number of times of indecision and some concern, but that only means we were pushing ourselves into unknown territory and learning.  For instance, I felt terrible about not being able to speak French and I tried a bit, but people preferred English.  And I wasn't sure in the cheese shop if I could get just a few slices, but it was no problem.  And waiters were helpful in the restaurants.  The Metro was easier to figure out than the buses, but the buses were well marked at the bus stops and on the buses.  It was easy to figure out what stops you were at.

2.  Paris has a great bicycle system - Velib.

I only used it once, because J would rather walk, but it looks great and lots of people were using the
bikes.  You can sign up for a day or a couple of days or a year.  It cost about $2 for a day.  There are stations everywhere.  You can check online for ones near where you are going or where you are and find out how many bikes are available or empty spaces (if you want to return one.)  You can ride for 30 minutes free, then then start charging you, I think it was €1 for the first hour and then it goes up.  The idea is to keep as many bikes in circulation as possible - not to take long rides.  But you could just find a new station and drop a bike off before 30 minutes and get another.

The map shows where there are bike stations - these are staggeringly close together.

3.  Food

Seems a little higher than the US, but it was also really good.  Basics, like French bread and yogurt and packaged salads of all kinds, even sandwiches are available everywhere - there are restaurants and bakeries wherever you look.  And little markets.  And sidewalk restaurants have fixed price lunches and dinners.  Some were very reasonable, others a little pricier.

Here's the menu - the formula is €12.50 about $14.   You could choose a salad and the main plate or a dessert with the main plate.










Here's the melon salad.

And the au gratin fish with vegies.  It was sort of lasagna like and really good.

Our plane is now boarding for Reykjavik, so I'll post this now.  Really sorry to leave, but looking forward to the much cooler weather of Anchorage later.