This is a story probably little-noticed outside Michigan, the Midwest, and/or political-junkie circles, but the newly created Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission finished their work (for the most part) last night, approving new district maps for the U.S. House and state legislative districts.

The state is losing a district, which will make for some musical chairs. As for the Nall/Derringer co-prosperity sphere, we’ll move from the 14th to the 13th, expected to be a safe hold for Rashida Tlaib, the pottymouthed Palestinian-American squad member of impeach-the-motherfucker fame. The state districts are more of a we’ll-see situation, but most agree that the new maps, while still imperfect because of course they are, will make for a more representative state legislature and federal delegation than the disgraceful gerrymander they will replace.

There’ll be a lawsuit filed in the 13th, in fact, over the loss of majority-minority districts, and in fact, Michigan could end up with no black congressional representatives, which is startling for a state that contains America’s blackest city. On the other hand, “packing” is one of the ways to dilute black political power, and blacks have been moving to the suburbs for decades. Rashida is Arab-American, but she’s been a stand-up voice for people of color in her district so far. The courts will decide, I suppose. But for now, I’m pleased. (Tossup districts are way more competitive now — in that they exist. And if Trump tries to steal another election in 2024, we might have more of a fighting chance, at least in Michigan.)

This is the current 14th District:

And barring court modification, the purple-shaded area will be the 13th:

At least I’m no longer in a district with Pontiac, which would take me nearly an hour to reach by car. On freeways. In a densely populated urban area.

From the whining I’m picking up in rural areas of the state, I’m calling this a success.

That’s the good news. The bad? Kate went back to her house two days ago, after testing negative for five days previous AND the day after Christmas, started feeling bad, tested again and came up positive. So now we wait, and isolate. Oh well — we didn’t really have any firm plans for New Year’s Eve anyway. And she was feeling better within a day. Me, I’m fine-ish, in that I’m not sick but not not-sick, if that makes sense. Alan’s fine so far. Me, I’m running on about 87.5 percent, which is indistinguishable from the mildly bleh feeling I get after the rich foods, too much wine and scarcity of outdoor exercise during the holidays. But I’ll be safe. No socializing until I test negative and another week passes.

Some stuff to read in the slow week? Sure:

Here’s the always-interesting Olivia Nuzzi on Dr. Oz’s Pennsylvania Senate bid, which contains a hilarious long anecdote involving an improperly disconnected cell-phone call to Mrs. Oz:

To my surprise, she picked up — for about a second. Just as quickly as it started, the call was over. I had barely said hello. Unsure if we’d been disconnected or she’d hung up on me, I tried her back. The tone of her voice suggested it had definitely been the latter.

“How did you get my number?” she asked sharply. I told her that her number was listed in public records, and this annoyed her too. “Oh,” she said, “I should have gotten rid of that.” I was about to explain that public records don’t work that way, but she cut in. “Have a nice day,” she said, but it sounded like a cross between the way women of the South say “Bless your heart” and men of Brooklyn call some asshole “pal” after being cut off in traffic. Then she hung up.

Or she thought she did.

It may be paywalled, and if so, I’m sorry. Try an Incognito window.

Also, the battle over wind power in west Michigan. Not everyone thinks it’s wonderful.

Me, I”m off to work now.

Our favorite — OK, my favorite — cheeseburger place is one door down from a vacuum-cleaner shop. Lately when we walk by I say, “I am Dyson-curious.” The newfangled ones, the battery-powered stick vacs that are super light, cordless and work really well.

Do I need to tell you what I found under my Christmas tree this year?

But not a Dyson! Alan, our household’s shopping ninja, did the usual exhaustive research and reported that Consumer Reports — Consumer fucking Reports! — has blackballed Dyson stick vacs because the batteries give out after two years and aren’t replaceable. So mine is another brand, recommended by Wirecutter. It has an app. It’s very light. And it sucks like (insert vulgar expression here). I love it.

I also got a lovely scarf from Alan, and some new clogs. The vacuum was from Wendy, because Alan says he knows better than to give me a vacuum cleaner for Christmas, but when you really want one, who would mind? This is the time of year when, on clear days, the low winter sun blasts through the front windows like a spotlight and finds every stray dog hair and dust bunny in our house. I do not have to drag out the old one, plug it in, find the right attachment and the hose and all that. I can just zap it. So it’s a highlight of the holiday, in my book.

The other big highlight was just being able to see everyone again. We blew down to Columbus for an 18-hour visit, minus Kate, who was staying away because Covid is bouncing through her circles like a pingpong ball. She’s masked more than a surgeon, but it’s popping up in the clubs where she’s doing live sound, among her friends — everywhere. She tested every day last week and came up negative, but given that her uncle has COPD and another uncle isn’t in the best shape, she did the abundance-of-caution thing and stayed home. But she came over here for Christmas Eve and Day, and we had a wonderful time. I did minimal cooking, moderate baking and we all got plenty to eat and of course, to drink. We watched “Don’t Look Up” together, and I watched “The Courier” while Alan and Kate worked on a guitar-restoration project in the basement. I made this cake. (It’s easy and great, although mine looked like someone cut their finger over it, rather than artfully impressionistic peppermint swirls.) I recommend “Don’t Look Up,” even though it got some blistering pans. “The Courier” is best saved for Russophiles like me. Oh, and we watched “Lamb” because Iceland, and it kinda blew our hair back in the end, although very slow-moving in getting there.

So. Some of you are off next week, you lucky dogs. Some are in a very slow-moving workplace. Almost everyone is trying to vacuum up all the year’s dog hair, so to speak, before another one sneaks in. Maybe you’d like to take a break from closet-cleaning to read some longform journalism, and if so, I can’t recommend this piece highly enough. It’s about three January 6 defendants and what happened to them as a consequence of invading the Capitol. It’s very readable, very smart and very good. Enjoy. It’s from New York magazine, and if you’ve used up your article quota this month, do an Incognito window or whatever. Totally worth it.

I’m going to try for three appearances this week, so here’s hoping.

Who were you people who didn’t like “The Power of the Dog?” We checked it out over the weekend, and I thought it was pretty great. Such fabulous acting; Jane Campion must run her actors through Subtle Facial Expressions U. before she shoots a single frame. I loved the way the power shifts over the course of the story, I loved the scenery, I loved the way it put me in 1925-era Montana and basically posited: This is what it was like, here.

Otherwise, a weekend. Fuck Joe Manchin and I hope his stupid houseboat sinks. Actually, it wasn’t a shit weekend. We went to a Friday-night party — all vaccinated — but I will still get tested on Wednesday because Covid is running wild here, helped on by irresponsible behavior (like mine, maybe). Saturday was the Eastern Market and its associated pleasures, and Sunday I did a gift exchange with a friend. He has holiday travel plans and is being super cautious, so we tried to find a heated tent, but ended up in the back yard of a Cass Corridor bar. They wouldn’t turn the patio heater on because we were just two people, so we sat there and shivered for one round. It wasn’t all that cold, so it wasn’t terrible, and it wasn’t cold enough to drive us inside. Kate gave us notice yesterday that everyone she knows has Covid now, including someone she worked next to (masked) a few days back, so she’s testing daily and may not make it to Columbus at the end of the week.

It’s beginning to look a lot like a Covid Christmas, in other words. Everywhere I go.

I forgot to mention: While we were sitting on the cold patio? A sizable rat ran from under one section of deck to another. Happy Christmas in Detroit!

It hasn’t been a terrible holiday season, although I have yet to make gingerbread. Maybe tomorrow. But this cloud of doom hovering over all? That I can do without. It’s gonna be another long winter.

Wouldn’t it be nice to get some genuinely nice, happy news one of these days? A certain former president collapsing in a serious health crisis, maybe? Justice running down like water? That would be a present we could all open.

Speaking of presents, the GIF in this tweet makes me so happy:

Here's a great attraction at a great landmark. pic.twitter.com/u9C3CfxB3w

— Marco Schaefer (@mhschaef) December 19, 2021

For those who don’t get it, it’s the last move in the Ohio State marching band’s signature formation, Script Ohio. The i is dotted by a sousaphone player, and it’s considered a great honor to be the i-dotter. It’s really the only thing I’d watch the OSU band to see, but they don’t do it for every game. I feel like I have to start using this GIF in every text message now. Just to, y’know, emphasize things.

And now we’re in the countdown week, i.e. the second-dullest week of the year, unless Trump just lost an election. I realize these offerings have been a little thin of late. It’s not that I’m tired or not into it or whatever. The well simply feels a little dry at the moment. It’ll refill. I just can’t say when. Maybe time for another France picture.

Explanation: The market plaza in Nice had an installation of these poster-size photos, dedicated to local livestock breeds. The explanation placard stated that market forces were flooding meat and dairy markets worldwide with products from a relative handful of bloodlines, which anyone who drives in the Midwest country can see with their own eyes. Dairy cows are almost exclusively Holstein now, the breed which produces the most milk, and selective breeding of championship bloodlines has further increased the amount an average cow can produce. Semen collection, and sales of sperm and frozen embryos, have made some bulls and cows super-parents, with a few having hundreds of thousands of offspring. The dangers of this concentration into a few bloodlines are obvious, but it sure dollars up on the hoof, as they say in the auction ring. Yay, capitalism. This exhibit of less-popular, but beloved, breeds was one of my favorite things to look at as I was gathering provisions for the apartment. Not a great pic (by me), but this bull is so cool:

I get a lot of spam. Everybody does, I guess. On my Gmail account, which is rapidly becoming the one I use most, it’s generally sales pitches and the like, which at least fall into convenient folders. One or two clicks, and it all goes away. My Mac Mail account, the one associated with this site, is more of a pain. But sometimes, it’s fun to look deeper.

Most of it is pitches from crap outfits pointing out that something on this blog from, say, 2006 has a dead link, and would I like a replacement? They have a suggestion! (No.) I ignore these, of course. They generally come in threes — first pitch, second pitch (Hi, Nancy, just checking to see if you had any response to my offer last week…), third pitch (I know you’re busy, but I thought I’d circle back and…). Then they go away. Usually.

I also get an occasional threat from someone who claims to have hacked my entire computer and recorded me “wanking to YouPorn.” If I don’t pay up in a specific amount of Bitcoin, it will be sent to everyone on my contacts list. I keep thinking I should respond by asking to see some frame grabs from these recordings, just to be sure it’s me.

Then there are the poorly spelled and punctuated warnings from various entities offering me a $20 credit at CVS if I just click the big button. One had a return address that was something like kiVHeish@yahoo, etc. As the kids say: Seems legit.

Bottom line: 90 percent of my inbox is garbage. It strikes me that sooner or later, American capitalism + freedom ruins everything. When was the last time you answered an unknown number on your cell phone and the person on the other end was someone you actually wanted to talk to? We have this wonderful technology that allows us to make phone calls from a slender rectangle we carry in our pockets, but it’s mostly useless for communicating with anyone other than people we already know. All because we wouldn’t regulate.

I don’t have a transition from spam to turkey, but I guess I don’t need one. Thanks for the birthday greetings. The actual day is on Thanksgiving this year, so I’ll be observing my birthday by making a big meal with two desserts – pumpkin pie and birthday cake. I’ll be 64, which moves me into the Medicare Penumbra, during which your phone rings with odd numbers every day and the spam — oy, the spam. (I know this because for some reason Alan’s name was associated with my number, and I’ve spent the last year declining his calls.) Got my first call just the other day. It’s gonna be so much fun. Only 365 more days of this.

Happy birthday to me, happy Thanksgiving to all of us and happy weekend, likewise. Random France photo of the day, an unusual civic sculpture outside Nice city hall. Nice thumb, I guess:

I decided to try something new for me — learning from past mistakes, in this case — and do my Thanksgiving shopping early. I swam Friday morning, came home, dried my hair, tanked up on coffee and hit Kroger at about 9:30 a.m.

What a fabulous idea. The store was fairly quiet, but fully stocked on everything I needed, and while there were only two checkout lanes open, I was in and out in 40 minutes. The turkey I bought at Eastern Market the previous day. Such a strange feeling, knocking that out ahead of time; it seems the madhouse crowds the weekend before any big holiday always comes as a fresh surprise. But when I did my usual Saturday shopping last weekend, and the rush had already begun — bloated endcaps on every aisle, mid-aisle stacks of flour and sugar and canned pumpkin — I knew I had to have a plan.

My shopping experience would be improved immensely if my fellow grocery-getters would do two things: 1) Be aware of the space they’re occupying, which is my way of saying that if you want to have a long reading experience with peanut-butter labels, park your cart to one side of the aisle and don’t leave it sitting in the middle where no one can get around; and 2) I can’t remember the second thing, because the first thing is so much more important.

And if you’re still reading, be advised that groceries are very important at this time of year, and yes, that’s why I felt like bragging a little.

Unfortunately, Michigan is now number one in the country in per-capita Covid cases. With a bullet! Or maybe just a hissing ventilator, whatever. The caseload is exploding, and with the holidays bearing down. However, I read some interesting things over the weekend, which explained that vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans are birds of a feather. Which is to say that if you’re vaxed, chances are you hang with others who are, too, and probably have more protection than the unvaxed, who have similar patterns in their associations. That said, Kate’s second band, GiGi, has a Thanksgiving-eve show and I will probably go, but wear a mask the whole damn time.

How was the weekend? I made a fancy dinner Friday and ordered a pizza Saturday, but most of all, I cleaned for the coming holiday. We also watched “King Richard,” the movie about Venus and Serena Williams’ dad, and it was a bit overlong, but not terrible at all. By the end, I wanted to slug King Richard, but he had the courage of his convictions — you gotta give him that.

In other words, a pretty bleh weekend, but a holiday awaits. So there’s that.

Random France photo today is from Pere Lachaise cemetery, where you think everyone there died in the 19th century, but it turns out not: This young woman perished in the 2015 terror attack in Paris.

At Eastern Market Saturday, I saw a familiar face – a downtown homeless guy, temporarily relocated to a higher foot-traffic area.

If I recall correctly, he’s an addict, and he looked even worse than the last time I saw him, pre-pandemic. He’s also fairly young and pretty smart. Once he asked for money from my editor as we walked back from lunch, and my editor, the softest touch in the world, stopped to peel off a couple of bucks for him. He rarely just forks over the cash, however, and as a true journalist, likes to engage in some small talk at the same time. Soon he was offering to help the guy get a state ID so he could apply for jobs, and I ducked into a coffee spot for an espresso while they hashed it out. When I came out, the homeless kid was saying, “…but there’s an opportunity cost for me in that situation, too,” and all I could think was: Kids, don’t do hard drugs.

Tuesday is election day, and I’m working again. Same precinct. This will be my fourth one there, and I think I’m going to ask for a transfer to the absentee counting boards for 2022, where there will at least be constant work, rather than the long stretches of ass-numbing crickets in our sleepy little precinct. The area we serve is pretty poor, hit hard by depopulation, and turnout is generally abysmal, even by Detroit standards. I think we had 35 voters, total, in August.

But I’m doing my part. I got my Covid test, copied my CDC vax card, printed out my assignment, and will be there at 5:45 a.m. ready for 14 hours in a mask. It’s important.

I know the crowd here skews older, but I have to ask: Do any of you watch comic-book movies? I made it through “Black Widow” on the flight home a couple weeks ago, and at the end had the same reaction I have to all the previous ones I’ve tried: Well, that was a movie. They’re so, what’s the word? Boring. The hero’s journey, spiced with several action sequences, ending with the sequel setup. Plus, if you haven’t followed the Marvel franchise through however many films they’ve squeezed out of it, you get the sense you’re missing in-jokes and backstory the producers simply assume you are familiar with. It’s like millions and millions are spent on people who go to various Comic Cons around the country and stand in line for four hours to listen to colloquia on Spider-Man.

Honestly the most interesting part of “Black Widow” was examining Florence Pugh’s remarkable heart-shaped face. Talk about a movie-star mug. Now to see if she can continue to deliver performances.

If I seem a little aimless today, it’s because I just finished a long story and feel like I’m finally caught up with everything I missed during my time away. And I had too much to drink last night – didn’t rip the knob off, just poured two cocktails into an empty stomach – and feel like my best strategy for today is a bike ride and a nap and maybe some TV. So here’s my new favorite picture: Kate and the band at their show Friday night (which we missed). They were Josie and the Pussycats! I love it. See you later this week.

We discovered a new cocktail in France: the negroni sbagliato. A negroni, as fans of Stanley Tucci know, is very easy to make — equal parts gin, sweet vermouth and Campari, shaken with ice, garnished with an orange slice. Very refreshing. In a negroni sbagliato, you substitute sparkling wine for the gin, which lessens the alcohol content and makes it super-refreshing. (“Sbagliato” means “mistake” in Italian, and the legend goes it was invented when a busy bartender reached for the wrong bottle, but you know about legends.)

Alan bought a bottle of prosecco the other day, but it hasn’t exactly been refreshing-cocktail weather lately. Dreary rain and chill. (Also, you don’t want to open a bottle of sparkling wine if you’re not going to finish it, and so it’s best for when you have friends over.) I made the first soup of the season last night, if you don’t count last week’s chili. Cream of broccoli, because Vegetables. Probably should have served a hot toddy in the cold rain, but we just drank the remainder of the white wine after I added a cup or so to the soup.

And now I think I’m going to take the week off drinking. Got a little too accustomed to the 50cl bottle at lunch, and more at dinner, etc. Of course, in a country where McDonald’s and Haagen-Dazs both have alcoholic choices on the menu, you’re just going with the flow. Back home, you should stop drinking so much, you ol’ sot.

I’ve been reading a fair amount about Facebook lately. I said on my own page that I was ready to pull the plug on that hellsite, that once I stopped working for good and didn’t have to post stories for work, I’d be happy to step back and never post again. Maybe keep the account active for the Marketplace and because some people simply refuse to communicate any way other than via Messenger, but otherwise? Pfft. And I must say, the site is making this easy. My news feed is now disproportionately what’s known as “like farming,” i.e. stupid posts that encourage engagement. “Who remembers when the national anthem was played at the end of the broadcast day,” maybe, or “Come on – who here hasn’t gotten a DUI?” The idea is to get people agitated enough to interact with it, which boosts its position, which boosts the poster’s other material, etc. If this is Facebook, fuck ’em. If I want content like this, I can wander down to a local oil-change place and look at the 25th-generation Xeroxes on the break-room bulletin board.

But I realize I’m in the minority, that the site still has way more active users than detractors, and that it’s continuing on its path to destabilize western democracy, just the same. Social media in general doesn’t appear to be good for anyone, but as a Twitter addict I will say I enjoy the kitty videos, and Cats With Jobs (@CatWorkers) always pleases me. Anyway, back to FB, here’s the NYT today:

Apart from the Like button, Facebook has scrutinized its share button, which lets users instantly spread content posted by other people; its groups feature, which is used to form digital communities; and other tools that define how more than 3.5 billion people behave and interact online. The research, laid out in thousands of pages of internal documents, underlines how the company has repeatedly grappled with what it has created.

What researchers found was often far from positive. Time and again, they determined that people misused key features or that those features amplified toxic content, among other effects. In an August 2019 internal memo, several researchers said it was Facebook’s “core product mechanics” — meaning the basics of how the product functioned — that had let misinformation and hate speech flourish on the site.

“The mechanics of our platform are not neutral,” they concluded.

You don’t say. Elsewhere in the same edition, Ben Smith has a column on Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower. It mentions the platform’s role in fomenting sectarian violence overseas. Getta loada this shit:

Dozens of religious extremists burst into a Pentecostal church outside New Delhi in June, claiming it was built atop a Hindu temple. The group installed a Hindu idol in protest, and a pastor says he was punched in the head by attackers.

Members of a Hindu nationalist organization known as Bajrang Dal claimed responsibility in a video describing the incursion that has been viewed almost 250,000 times on Facebook. The social-media company’s safety team earlier this year concluded that Bajrang Dal supported violence against minorities across India and likely qualified as a “dangerous organization” that should be banned from the platform, according to people familiar with the matter.

Facebook Inc. balked at removing the group following warnings in a report from its security team that cracking down on Bajrang Dal might endanger both the company’s business prospects and its staff in India, the people said. Besides risking infuriating India’s ruling Hindu nationalist politicians, banning Bajrang Dal might precipitate physical attacks against Facebook personnel or facilities, the report warned.

Look on your works, Mark Zuckerberg, and despair. Have I mentioned how very very tired I am of “move fast and break things.” It’s given us piles of shit-tastic technology, and an overwhelming culture of shrugging and back-to-the-ol’-drawing-board and hey-don’t-blame-us-we’re-just-a-platform. It’s maddening.

Anyway. That’s Monday morning. How’s yours?

Finally, I think I’m going to drop some random France pictures in here until I – or you guys – get tired of it. Less-traveled Metro station, here. Love that tile:

My, I’ve been neglecting you folks since my return, no? I plead…jet lag. I always thought it was easier to travel west than east, but my experience is the opposite. I’ve been flattened with fatigue by 8 p.m., wide awake at 3 a.m., and these are not conditions ripe for productivity. My brain was so confused that for the first couple days, I’d doze off, then wake up and think, for a few seconds, “Man, this room in Paris looks a lot like my own back home.” That’s how tired I was.

Add to that the other chores that go with returning from a month away — sorting a pile of mail, paying bills, restocking the fridge, telling 1,000 people “yeah, we had a great time, it was just great, really great,” etc. and you can maybe see why I’m a little discombobulated at the moment.

Oh, and going back to work, and having to hit the ground running because I deprived my colleagues of 20 percent of the workforce for a month.

But I seem to have handled most of that stuff now, so. Back to the grind here.

Confession: I’ve been doomscrolling again. Talk me down.

It starts with this message from you-know-who. It’s really astonishing, in that it is almost entirely untrue. I mean, all the words, except for “rally in Michigan yesterday.” It wasn’t even that big of a rally. And then he says:

Detroit, considered for many years to be one of the most corrupt places in the United States for elections (and many other things!), had large-scale irregularities so much so that two officials, at great risk to themselves and their families, refused to certify the results, and were sadly threatened.

Nope. There were no large-scale irregularities. Much hot air was puffed over “unbalanced precincts,” but in truth, all were out of balance by fewer than five votes, which totaled fewer than 500 out of more than 200K cast in the November election. (We’ve been over it and over it here, so I won’t belabor the point.) But what kills me is the fixation on Detroit, which isn’t even where Trump lost Michigan. He actually outperformed his 2016 totals in the city, by a narrow margin. But he was slaughtered in the suburbs, in Metro Detroit but also in Grand Rapids. White people, especially white women, stampeded out of the GOP in 2020, at least at the top of the ticket. You don’t hear him talking about Oakland County, because he can beat the BLACK Detroit BLACK corruption BLACK bass drum and the message comes through loud and clear.

Again, though, we know all this. And yet, to this day, I see emails and comments on stories and elsewhere, echoing this bullshit:

Wasn’t it a fact that aside from other things, there were far more votes than voters? Even the RINOs on the Senate Committee found 289,866 absentee ballots that were sent to people who never requested them, “something that would be illegal.”

Nope, it’s not a fact. None of it. But as our own Jeff Gill mentioned when I tweeted about this last week, this is how the Trumpian rhetoric is going — simply unhitched from reality.

All of which would be easier to ignore if it weren’t driving policy. In Michigan, the GOP is replacing troublesome canvassers on the county boards, with “troublesome” indicating “able to read numbers and interpret their meaning.” The canvasser in Wayne County who first refused to certify was bounced just last week for one who flatly said he wouldn’t have certified the 2020 vote count. Because, that’s why.

I wish I could find a quote from Hillary Clinton, something she said after the August 2020 primary here, when there was, again, a hoo-hah raised over unbalanced precincts. It’s true that too many were unbalanced, but again, most were by very small numbers, attributable to human error, and didn’t affect any races. Having worked the polls now for three elections, I can tell you the procedures are filled with fiddly bits and little details and detours and side roads to cover every conceivable voting situation, and when the people working the precinct are doing it once, maybe twice a year, it’s a miracle that any of them come out balanced. In August, I caught two or three errors in my own precinct that were caused by nothing more than confusion or assumptions made in error. We easily corrected them, but still. It happens.

And Hillary said something to the effect of, “You watch, this unbalanced-precincts thing was a test run. They’re going to try it again.” And what do you know, they did. I have Googled and Googled, and can’t find the source, but I clearly remember her talking about it.

So bottom line: I’m waiting on 2022 with some trepidation. The talking-down I’m giving myself is that this is a very loud minority who will not succeed. I hope. Fingers crossed. Check me after next year. I may be selling my worldly goods and investigating expat life in a pleasant climate.

But for now: Back to work! Glad to give you all a new thread.

I was on the most frivolous of errands on one of our last days in France (trying to find drugstore beauty products that were worth bringing home) when I came across this marker.

My rudimentary understanding of Latinate word roots gave me to believe this commemorates the death of Seraphin Torrin, a member of the French resistance during WWII. A little googling confirmed that was, indeed, the case. You may have to auto-translate a few web pages, but the gist is this: Seraphin Torrin and a confederate, Angelo Grassi, were executed by the Nazis – hung, specifically – and their bodies left swinging from the light posts on a wide public plaza for several hours, as a lesson to others. This was in July 1944. If the two had survived another month, they might have hooked up with this fella:

The fella being Roger Derringer, my husband’s father, who rolled through this area on a mission of liberation in August of that same year. Note the camera around his neck; it was taken from a German officer, a POW, and Roger, Bud to his family and friends, used it to take some photos. (Then he was wounded, and woke up in a military hospital without it; he always assumed some doctor who outranked him appropriated it.)

I’ve written a little about him here in the past. He was an infantry paratrooper during the war, a position roughly the same as special forces today. They jumped in ahead of the forward forces and did what they could. Most of his battalion, the 509th, didn’t make it home, but he did. The few photos that survived are kinda amazing, although the scrawled pencil notes on the back are incomplete, alas.

This castle – those are German helmets on the ground – is now an art center outside Nice, which I regret to say closed for the season a month ago. It’s privately owned, by Americans, which seems fitting. But this may be my favorite picture of all:

The note on the back only reads “German emplacement.” Check out the swastika; Jerry was planning to stay a while, it seems. He put up a sign.

I’m sorry we didn’t get up to the art center/castle. It was a ways out of town and it might have been fun to find that vantage point for another photo. What is the purpose of war, after all? To win back the peace, and make the world safe for art centers again. More pictures were of victory parades in Nice, Cannes and elsewhere around here:

That toddler on her mother’s hip would be very old today, if she still lives:

And it all happened here. We’re at a strange time in history, in the history of all the world. It’s good, sometimes, to look back at these sepia memories and remember that in some sense, it was ever thus.

Back to America very soon.

Well, I’m ready to come home. I think. Not really, but for some things. I miss my washing machine, as the ones here are jokes. I miss my hot-water heater. And I miss my friends, dog and daughter. Otherwise, I could easily stay here indefinitely.

Last night we met an American couple who’s been here for three years. Older than us, but not by much. They’d gone from retirement in Florida to France, and seem set on staying. They explained how they sold everything they owned, transported the bare minimum to Paris, where they rented a storage unit and have apartment-hopped in several-month stints since. Trying to find just the right neighborhood, they said. They’re both on the French health system. “And if you’re over 65, they don’t even require you to speak French,” the man said. They’re going for permanent residency, and likely will get it.

This was one of several conversations with English-speaking people we have had in the past month. A British father/son pair in Segueret (the place we found the wine) explained the idiocy of Brexit, and I told them that if we switched just a few names around, they could be explaining Trumpism. One of the other people on the Paris bike tour was a feisty lady from South Dakota, who referred to Kristy Noem as “Governor Barbie.” She said she didn’t worry about offending anyone who might overhear, because no one who’d be offended would be in Europe in the first place.

So hey, the resistance lives.

But sooner or later, we have to leave the land of two-button toilet flushes behind, and for us, it’s this weekend. It’s been a great trip. We got our exit Covid tests today (both negative), so that was a relief. We’ve stood on packed subway/tram cars, walked through densely populated outdoor spaces, masked indoors, unmasked (mostly) outdoors, and have been fine. Vaccination rate here now tops 85 percent, yet mask compliance is pretty thorough. If you like, there’s a New York Times op-ed about the European mask situation that I more or less agree with.

What else do you want to know? How about the topless-beach thing, maybe? It’s been warm enough that on sunny days, there are a fair number of sunbathers on the beach, even in October. But topless women? Only a very few. When I was here as a young person, it was reversed. (Or so I was told, by my resident friend.) What changed? I blame camera phones. It’s one thing to sun your boobs if you are among friends, but if you know some creep can put you in a “Best Titties on the Riviera” loop on Pornhub without you even knowing, that’s a deal-breaker. I did notice that women will change out of their wet bathing suits into street clothes without excess modesty, and no one seems to look.

In our final days, Alan has turned into Jimmy Stewart in “Rear Window,” sitting on the terrace watching the square five walk-up floors below. There’s a strange woman who seems to be juggling, but doesn’t — she throws a ball from hand to hand and another up in the air. Two guys messed around with a drone this morning. There are domino games on the tables. And we watched an influencer with a full video crew walk and pose by the fountain through several takes. If there’s a murder down there before we leave, he’ll be a star witness.

Tomorrow, we take the train first to Marseille, then the TGV to Paris again. Maybe a final update from there.