REMINESCING; A CRUISE
ON THE CANAL D’EST 2008
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| Swing Bridge, manual |
Met our friends the Dodsons, who picked us up in a Hertz
car, Bill drove out of Paris (An insane thing to do!) To a small town,
Bains-le-Baines, a couple of hundred kilometers away to prep for our week long boat cruise on the
Canal d’Est:
On the way , we stopped off To check out Corbu’s iconic
chapel, at Ronchamp, built after the
original church was destroyed during WW2.
I could never reconcile Corbu’s change of style but it seemed to be well
wrought. There was a Sunday service going on so we went in and pretended to be
Catholics for a few minutes. More surprisingly, a small school that was
attached to it was really interesting;
rough concrete, sod roof and a few bright painted surfaces around. I
don’t remember ever seeing any photos of it.
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| Notice the scale! |
PHOTO OF BELFORT LION
After that, we stopped at Belfort to see the giant stone
sculpture by the artist, Bertoldi, who designed and built the Statue of
Liberty. A couple of years later, we saw his fountain in Lyon depicting Madame
France (Bare breasts, of course) reining in four horses, representing the great rivers of
France.
We stayed overnight
at the Hotel de la Poste, Next day Bill
& I went foraging for supplies for a our upcoming week on the boat. Contrary to all rumors
about Europe, we found the biggest super market we’ve ever been in. It even
took us a while to figure out how to get in the damn place. There was nothing
more we could have desired, even large selections of sliced bacons. We then
returned the car to Hertz, got a taxi back to the boat to unload our
stash. We set off for our adventure (Our
fourth) down the canal on our $100,000
42' cruiser, three staterooms and a bow thruster, (this little gismo
makes boat handling really simple).
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Joy is a genius at
scheduling, she had all our lunch & evening stops already planned. The
canal maps we get are extremely well documented, showing where boulangeries,
wine shops, etc. are located. Even notes what day the town markets take place.
When we got to the end of our trip a week later, we met Emma, CEO of the company (Hotels Afloat) we
deal with to rent the boats. She’s a Brit expatriate we have been dealing with for several years.
She brought over a bottle of wine and we learned a lot about the French method
of taxation and deprivation of small companies. She and Joy worked out a deal
for Joy to make up schedules for various canals that boat renters could buy
from her. These boats cost about 180
Euros per couple per day, about the same as a hotel room, but you have to drive
them.
THE REPUBLIC OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A VOTERS’ GUIDE
I give thanks
to AMERICA , USA (Researched thanks to Jon Stewarts’
‘America’)
There’s a lot
of noise regarding the next election in about a year, so let’s take a look at
our mysterious Political System;
The House has two chambers, called Congress (Bi-cameral, which means two rooms)
House of Representatives
“Lower House” (The Rif-Raf) Based on population , I think about one rep
per 30,000 citizens,(Does this mean voters or plan citizens? men, women, kids,
blacks) Re-elected usually every two
years.
Senate
or Upper House , two reps per State, get re-elected every six years.
Since the
Lobbyists actually run this country, let’s see where the money comes from.
Lobbyists $$ in 2004 (In millions)
Greenpeace 2 (These are the Tree Huggers)
NRA
guns 4 (This must be a phoney figure)
NAACP
? (I don’t know why
we can’t find out this )
Labor
Unions 90 !
Merck/Lilly 26 !! (This is the Drug
Cartel)
Christians ? ( May be irrelevant as all
Republicans are rabid Christians)
Planned
Parents 2.6 (Is this for or against
abortion?)
Hollywood 37 (We just think these
celebrities are so wise & beautiful)
AARP 102 ! (Let’s go, old
folks!)
Legal
ABA 112 !! Wow!
ELECTORIAL COLLEGE Does anyone really understand how
this works? I keep trying to make sense
of it, but just don’t get it.
435 reps?
Based on population? Plus 100 for
Senators? For instance, California has
about 55 Electorial College people. Who are they? Who picks them? Sometimes they elect a Prez over the Popular
Voters. (Like Busch?). It has happened a few times. If you have a even small
idea of how this works, please let me know.
So, unless you’ve got a million or so to
buy your favorite Politian, you might as well vote just for the fun of it so we
can say we are governed by a Republic.
VIDEO ALERT
The Ugly
American with Marlin Brando.
About
America’s medling in unstable countries. Kind of a Pre-Iraq story.
BOOK REPORT
Troilus &
Cressida by Geoffrey Chaucer.
Since it was
written in the 1380’s it needed translated to our current English. I’m re-visiting
Chaucer since High School and am enjoying him immensely. Shake sphere probably got the story of Romeo
& Juliet from this and Chaucer had gotten it from someone previous to him.
It’s the old story of a young couple of Troy who were desperately in love, the
ultimate betrayal and all that. This was probably about the first great English
novel (in kind of poem form) it is a joy to find phrases that Chaucer invented that are common
usage today, as well as his use of talking about himself (The author) during
some chapters.
GREEK GODS & HEROES
The Graton
Post Office is kind of a library as we all use it for a book exchange. Joy
& I were married in Greece (See my essay” Getting married the hard way”)
and have trod the very stones that Socrates & Plato trod. Therefore I picked up a small tome describing
all the Greek Gods and brushed up on my crazy story syndrome. Who thunk this
stuff up? These Gods where a bunch of rollicking, adultery minded group, always
sloshed on wine and killing and lusting around.
My first daughter was named after Io, supposedly the mother of most of
the rest of that crew. But what was most
fun, was finding stories that were the basis for many of the Christian bible
stories (Old & New). The difference may be the early Greeks & Romans
didn’t really believe all that stuff.
The old Gods didn’t have to perform miracles, as they could change you
into a cow or anything for fun.
