A Prayer to Geeks

image from  lendinggeek.com/

There is that new concept among you, Geeks, to anticipate what I want. As a result, Word changes my presentation without warning, and even if I disable all the "autocorrect" functions, you sneak in and try to do things better for me. Excel has become totally unreliable, it was such a sweet easy program, what have you done?

And Google tells me what I think all day long, finishing my sentences and telling me what I am searching for.

Most people think that the big government is stealing our freedom, it is not true, it is the Big Geeks.

When I was in my 50s, my Mom was still telling me "Don't forget your scarf!" and now in my 70s, I am surrounded by an army of young Geeks who tell me what I think. Let me breathe.

Please, dear Geeks, let me get a little bit of freedom. Freedom takes some time but it is precious to me,  and I am less stupid than you think.

The Charms of Old Age

Conductor Lorin Maazel  when I first saw him in 1960. He is now 82 (from bayreuther-festspiele.de)

There are many advantages in getting old: having more time, getting to see grown up kids and grands, having more freedom, getting a pension....
One advantage we often forget is that old people have witnessed important events There is value in that, if not always pleasure, because many events are unpleasant. I remember reading in the newspaper about the assassination of Gandhi: I had just learned to  read. From meeting victims of the Holocaust to seeing the towers fall, I have heard and seen plenty of evil.
But I also get pleasant memories, of people who met historical figures, and there is plenty of that too, because we live so much longer than in the past. So many of my "memories" go way back to 1900.

One of my grandfathers had seen Buffalo Bill.That was in France, probably in 1905.  My grandfather mimicked the whole show when I was a little girl, and he got just as excited as he had been 40 or 50 years before. Over the course of my life, I of course accumulated live memories of  many actors, singers, musicians who got very old or have now passed away and I wish I had been out more, because now these are very precious memories of pleasure to me.

I once knew an old man who was a little boy when Beatrix Potter was still writing the adventures of Peter Rabbit. He said she did not like children very much... She was a widow without children, and a business women at a time when they were rare, so I am not surprised that she was not very patient.

Of course in 1970, when I joined a science laboratory, there were still in France  scientists who had been students of Marie Curie, and even more who had been students of her daughter and her husband, Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie.  One of my bosses had known the scientist Langevin, who was rumored in 1910 to have an affair with Marie Curie. He used to call him "poor Langevin," because his wife was, according to him, a harpy and a virago.
My neighbor in Chateaufort near Paris had seen Einstein and Richard Feynman many times, when she got married to a mathematician and lived in Princeton.  She filled me with her memories, not of equations, but of sweet small stories.
One of the favorite professors of my daughter had once helped Einstein change a tire. He said that for a whole week, he had felt brighter than Einstein himself.

Viva Walmart! Down with Duke!

I love Walmart. Sure enough, for its prices, but also because of the jobs it produces. You should have seen the opening week of the last Walmart here in Savannah: every employee was smiling. Many of the new employees had been looking for a job for a long time. I liked these smiles: I knew what they meant. I also liked the fact that Walmart carried the products of a nearby Alabama delicatessen. Their products were not sold here in summer because that small producer could not afford to buy refrigerated trucks. Now they got the strength of Walmart behind them. Good for them.
What I am less fond of is Walmart CEO Mike Duke. He kept the mentality of his mentors.
During the Cold War, bribery was a way of life, the cost of doing business abroad. I still remember how Queen Juliana of the Netherlands was led to abdicate after her husband accepted a million-dollar-bribe from the Lockheed Corporation. The minds were starting to change, not only in the US, but in many countries, realizing that paying bribes abroad was counter-productive. For Pete's sake, even the Russians signed the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention! Lobbying to water down our anti-bribery legislation is a sign of old age, and I'm polite about this (see details in the Washington Post).
The same Mike Duke, I heard, refused to follow the politics of McDonald who fights the terrible conditions met by pregnant pigs. There is no need to torture pigs, and the fight serves McDonald image. Burger King has similar pledges. See, the end of the Cold War: no bribery, cage free: signs of progress. Wake up, Walmart! Don't linger in past ideologies!

Nowadays, you need not only to sell cheap, you need an image. The image of Duke-Walmart is terrible.
Time for fresh air.

Hypocrisy is tiresome

 Image from: http://www.thedogrescuers.com/statistics--facts.html

If nobody was using any contraceptive method, all women, Christian or not,  would have 14 children. So all these scenes and posturing against contraception, that is pure political garbage.
Thanks to the same guys, we already have one  million abused and neglected children in this country every year that God made: to pressure people who do not want children to have kids (you will love them when they are born) is not working. Worse: it is criminal. Some people are not meant to have children (like some people are not meant to have dogs and cats). We may not like it, but it is a fact. It is also their right. 

Smart gifts for older parents

Image from http://drawingclassesnewcastle.com.au/category/latest-news/

Amongst all the many gifts I get from my daughter and her hubby that I appreciate most are these precious not-overly-expensive and very smart yearly gifts. These are things I really appreciate, even if I would not have thought of buying them for myself, so here is my top list.

1. A cell phone for emergencies ($10.00/month). I hate the thing, but if I get lost or if I get stranded with my old car, it is obviously very practical to be able to call. It gives me a great sense of security.

2. A AAA membership card ($ 66.00). I got an old car (it is a car, by the way, that they gave me), so about once a year, I get stranded and the card becomes a great gift: it makes it so easy to know what to do, plus they care about your security, which is good to know. The card has also discount advantages.

3. A teeth cleaning gift card (about $60.00 to 100.00). Bad teeth can create arterial lesions and give old people heart disease, so it is a good incentive and a very smart gift!

4. Dog and cat food. It is expensive on a small budget: sometimes it costs more to feed them than to feed yourself, so a gift for them is really appreciated!

5. A Walmart gift card.

6. A movie gift card.  Suppose your parents don't go to the movies, but they won't want to lose the gift: it will do them good.

The Harlot of Babylon

Image from Wikipedia

Governor Perry has invited his evangelical friends from Texas, Kansas and Yonder to an evangelical day of prayer that we badly need.
As it happens, the evangelical view is there to divide, not to unite Americans. They call Oprah "the Harlot of Babylon" and from what I read in the New York Mag the statue of Liberty is "demonic "
We suffer through this under the magic subtitle "freedom of expression."
Well, the good side of insults is that they are flexible. If I was inclined to pick on this, I would choose Jerry Springer as the Harlot of Babylon: to each its own; the sex of the harlot has not been determined.
And we can reverse this too, we could call Governor Perry "demonic" and the Statue of Liberty would become the Harlot of Babylon. It is more poetic this way.
 I cannot remember that any candidate prayed in public for political gain when I was young. When I was young, prayer was different.

Did you know Churchill was a Saint?

Image from the dailymail.co.uk and a paper from Beth Hale, 15th June 2010

I confess, I confess, I smiled when I found a site called WinstonChurchill.org this morning, very intent at proving that Winston did not smoke, did not drink, did not stutter, and that his father did not die from syphillis. I bet that next, they are going to prove that Churchill did not try to eliminate the civilian population of Mannheim. The members of that venerable institution are sure much younger than me, because it is not at all how I remember Churchill. 

We all admired Churchill. I got my first glass of champagne the day our street became "avenue Winston Churchill": my father decided that we had to celebrate. But we had no need of changing his image, we liked our heroes with flaws.
It is all about image nowadays, which is probably why the famous cigar was airbrushed from the picture in front of the Winston Churchill's Britain At War Experience  museum in London. Well, go ahead! I have seen already poor Presidents Kennedy and Reagan sanctified, do it with Winston too!
There is no flesh left on our heroes, that is why American children are not interested in history.
I never smoked, but this makes me feel like going out and buying a cigar. Romeo y Julieta was Churchill's favorite.