ANOTHER BRAVE NEW WORLD

My wife and I are just back from a visit with two of our oldest and dearest friends, who are about to leave their small midwestern town where the husband once headed a highly successful private business run by three generations of his family. The whole family earned a wonderful living from this business, but it reached the point, after three generations, that too many of his brother and sisters all wanted their kids to run the business and the infighting and family snideness was rampant. My friend successfully negotiated a sale of this business to a highly successful and reputable midwestern industrial conglomerate. Now everyone is happy, busily clipping coupons and counting their fortunes as the stock of the conglomerate is a real winner and provided the basis for diversified portfolios.

My friend and wife were civic leaders, deeply involved in good works in their community and in the area, including a progressive school for three to six year olds, developing a beautiful natural area of fifty acres of their property which is a real landmark for nature lovers and much used, supporting the arts generously--you name it, they're generous and active supporters to a host of good causes. And the number of people they have helped to cope and get on with life is legion.

But time and age have come for this dynasty to move on, and it has been a real heart-tug, especially for the husband, to make the move away from this dynastic setting. None of their children is in the town: five of the six kids and countless grandchildren live in the west and the other is in New England, so there are no family ties to bind them to the little town. It took several years of entreating by their kids, but now they are both ready to make the move---and they are off in a week or so to live in Colorado in a lovely community where they can be independent and still have medical assistance when that time comes. They are nervous but ready. Knowing what they bring to any community and group of friends, I know they will fit right in and be immensely popular and contributing to the betterment of that new community.

My wife and I went through this change of life eight years ago when we left our small midwestern town where my family had been well-known for almost 150 years and moved to our island paradise in Sanibel, Florida. It is challenging, exciting and fun to start all over again, even as old farts. Some years ago, a doctor friend of mine told me that the surest sign of old age was the inability to adjust to change and the need to maintain rigid patterns of living. We all, sooner or later, must face this challenge to enter a brave new world of change. My wife and I did it: I'm confident our dear friends can pull it off admirably.

Welcome to a new world, dear friends. Now enjoy.

POLITICS AS USUAL

It was really heartwarming, seeing that picture of John Boehner and other key Republicans in shirt sleeves with a background of a lumberyard---really the common touch, you know..."We're going to roll up our shirt sleeves and really get down to work for all Americans!"

What nonsense. This kind of political posturing makes me ill, it is so phony and staged. I was simply shocked that John Boehner took time away from the tanning booth for this photo op!

Any way you cut it, this new Promise to America is sameold-sameold, simply packaged in a new wrapping. Cut the spending, undo the health plan, keep the Bush tax cuts for all (including the very rich). It was long on promises, short on specifics on how to do.

With Medicare, Defense and Social Security among the major expenditures, how do you make major cuts? As for the health plan, why throw the baby out with the bath water? Is every provision of health care wrong? Shouldn't revisions to the current plan make more sense? Wouldn't it make sense to form a bipartisan committee to study, analyze and make recommendations for an improved plan? Oh no, bipartisanship is a dinosaur of a word buried in the ancient past.

I'm still catching up with the American political scene after three months in U.K. I understand while I was away it was declared in a cover article in Forbes that Obama was a neo-colonial Socialist/Commie influenced by his Kenyan father who died umpteen years ago. I swear to God: what are they smoking these days?

The more things change, the more they are the same...

I'VE BEEN HAD...

It's great to be home and begin to catch up with family and friends. I satisfied quickly my yearning for a good hamburger and corn on the cob: my daughter served it the first dinner after we arrived to visit her!

Then I got a cold water shock the next day when I received a letter from my bank, claiming that someone had hacked into my bank account. All of a sudden, I'm seeing bills for airline tickets to Bahrain, deposits to another bank account, not mine, and other expenditures far away from my base of operations---to the tune of over $5000.00! By the choice of air destinations, sounds like some Arab is enjoying the good life at my expense.

One really feels violated, financially raped. I'll get my money back, I am assured by my bank, but it will probably be over several months. Plus all the bullshit you have to go through---changing bank account numbers, advising social security and all the people with whom you have financial dealings.

This happened to me on a slightly smaller scale three years ago when someone got my American Express card number and had a ball in Brooklyn NY and the Long Island suburbs. Amex was quick to get on the ball and I was reimbursed.

This internet world is wonderful but, as we are all discovering, fraught with dangers and perils from the many cheats and vultures preying out there in the nether world. A brave new world---but also a vicious one at times!

WE'RE STEALING HOME!

Time is running out on my wife's and my time in England. We've been here in our. little house in Eastbourne, East Sussex, seventy miles south of London, since late June, so it's time to come home, see children, grandchildren and friends in Ohio where I was born and lived most of my life. In the case of my British-born wife, she spent more time in Ohio than any place in her life!


We've had a wonderful summer, but it's time to come home. We leave Saturday, September 18 and will be in Ohio until October 5 when we return home to Sanibel, Florida, our delightful island paradise. We're ready for a good steak. You can get good ones here from Angus beef, but the price is really astronomical. What you can't get is a decent hamburger; somehow they mince their beef, and it just doesn't work, so that will be a priority. Plus we hope there's some good Ohio corn on the cob still around, although I know it's getting late.


I try to keep posted by internet and by some good newspapers here on what is happening at home, especially the political situation, but I know I've missed a lot. That dingaling Sarah Palin must be strutting like a peacock as her Tea Party candidates made such political headway. I cannot believe the average man is so stupid to be taken in by her jingoism and patriotic platitudes. (On second thought, maybe I can...) Remember Abe Lincoln's bit about fooling some of the people some of the time but not fooling them all of the time. I hope good sense and reason will ultimately win out.


So, we're packing up, putting the stuff we leave here away in boxes. We have two German women students coming in to rent the house two days after we leave who will stay until the university year ends in the middle of June---just when we want to return. We have been very lucky with mature students who attend the University of Brighton, Eastbourne branch where they have excellent departments in physiotherapy and podiatry. The house is perfect for a couple of people, and we love collecting rent for nine months which helps cover our summer expenses here. it's a good deal for the students, for they are exempt from council taxes (property taxes), and we only pay taxes for the time we are here.


Yes, we're ready to come home. I'll be back at you soon again!

AUSTERITY---HERE AND NOW

In a recent blog about my recent trip to France, I referred to the French upset and day of strike protesting the proposed change of retirement age from sixty to sixty-two expounded by the President, Nicholas Sarkozy. I have read several analyses of this French rebellion, and one of the common threads of these articles has been the French refusing to face reality. I think this has been a problem for more than the French; it is certainly prevalent in England and in America.

In England, the new coalition government headed by Prime Minister David Cameron, a Conservative, and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, a Social Democrat, has proposed austerity measures for drastic fiscal belt tightening, the worst since the 1920s in the aftermath of World War I. The unions are up in arms and screaming for "civil disobedience” and strikes to protest and force the government to back off.

In the U.S.A. screams have come from both extremes of our basically two-party system, ranging from decrying government waste (so what else is new?) to exhorting for more governmental expenditures to stimulate the economy. Lots of talk and little action.

Let’s face it: the spectre of austerity is an international problem. It is only magnified by the size of the major world economies, such as the U.S.A. China, Japan, Russia, Germany, England, France, India---you name it. Especially in the major powers we thought the expansion and the good times would go on forever. It is as if we were in the middle of a riotous all-night party and, in our drunken craze, thinking at 3:00 a.m. the party would last forever---and then discovering at a bleary 6:00 a.m. that we were wrong.

Yes, folks, “The party’s over, it‘s time to call it a day…”, as the song says. Things are not the same, and I seriously doubt if they ever will be again. We’ve been greedy; we have not looked beyond tomorrow; we have ignored the lessons of the past. I’m not saying things won’t get better someday, but it is going to take a lot of work, a lot of belt tightening, and a lot of long-term planning and the guts to stay with those long-term plans before that day will come. So now it is time to go to work. Let’s stop bickering long enough to recognize that we need to cooperate for our future wellbeing. In the process we might try showing some tolerance toward others as part of this cooperation.

End of sermon. Austerity is here . Let’s recognize that fact. Let’s live with it. Let’s work together to mend and recover. Amen.

THE FRENCH ARE STILL THE FRENCH

My wife and I have just returned from a five-day holiday in France where, for the first time, we traveled by coach (bus). We were picked up in Eastbourne at the civilized hour of 11:05 a.m. Sunday by a “feeder” bus which took us to Hythe in Kent, about an hour and a half east of Eastbourne where we combined with other feeder buses to make up a party of thirty to board our Euro-Cruiser. We thought we might go the easy way through the “chunnel” from Dover to Calais, but instead we went by ferry, an hour and a half ride (as opposed to twenty minutes through the tunnel) to Calais and then faced a four-hour ride in our Euro-Cruiser to our destination of Cabourg in Normandy, so we were a tired bunch of puppies by the time we checked into our room at Le Grand Hotel in Cabourg.

Le Grand Hotel is truly grand, the product of la belle epoque, that era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when opulent palaces were the watering places of the rich. Marcel Proust, arguably the best French writer of the twentieth century, used to stay at the Grand in Cabourg with his family and has written many reminiscences of his times in Cabourg. There is even a casino next to the Grand. The beaches are sand but of an almost industrial grade, orangish and gritty, not the most inviting but still popular. We were there after the season, and most of the summer homes are boarded up. A long promenade along the front facing the beach makes for good walks and a vista of the summer mansions with their steep mansard roofs and dormers, often combining stucco and wood beams, similar to Elizabethan houses.

The main shopping street stretches north from a lovely garden and plaza in front of the hotel and has a variety of shops and restaurants where you can purchase, in food and drink, the wonderful cider produced in the area and Calvados, a potent brandy made from apple jack which can knock you on your can, as well as an assortment of cookies, pastries and bread for which Normandy is noted.

The first full day we drove to Mont St. Michel, a two-hour drive south, to see this famous castle built on a steep mount and surrounded by water. At low tide, the water recedes enough for the plethora of buses and cars to drive in park and infest the Mount with visitors. It is magnificent from a distance. Once you start the steep ascent up the cobbled streets, you are in a swarm of tourists and are exposed to an endless row of gift and novelty shops all selling the same tourist items at incredibly high prices. Some of the more avid shoppers in our group claim that every shop had identical prices, so I’m sure a bit of touristic collusion is going on. We found a delightful little inn and had a delicious lunch of les moules avec frites---mussels in shell in a cream sauce accompanied by French fries, all washed down with a delicious rose¢ wine. We were glad to see this picture postcard castle and mountain---but once is enough unless you just love being jostled in mob scenes.

The next day we were on our own in Cabourg and did the shopping/lunch routine. Once again we had mussels, this time in a meuniere sauce with more fries and, this time, bottled water. We had our dinners at the hotel where the food was delicious and creatively served, as the French do so well. The only drawback were the tables and chairs. Some efficiency engineer must have worked long and hard to devise a setting arrangement for thirty with two plus tables jammed together and stuffed almost immovable chairs in which to sit. It was a feat of advanced Yoga and contortion to get a seat, and then moving the chairs was like bench pressing.

The next day we went to Deauville, another exclusive resort town just a few miles from Cobourg. The weather started horribly with teeming rain just after we embarked from the bus. A compatible group of six of us spent forty minutes in a bus stop, trying to shield ourselves with umbrellas. Then we found a small restaurant/bar where we could have a drink and dry off. Fortunately, the weather later cleared and we were able to walk to the center of town where we saw scenic fountains and buildings. Deauville is very upper-class. There were American flags draped all around the main square in honor of an American Film Festival taking place that week. (Deauville is like the Cannes Film Festival of northern France.)

The last day was a wake-up call at 5:30, a quick breakfast, and the long bus ride to Calais where we connected with a noon ferry. Connections were smooth, and the feeder bus deposited us back in Eastbourne by 4:00 p.m.

My rating of coach travel; B-. Our driver was a nice guy, an amusing Yorkshireman, but he was a last-minute substitute for the regular tour driver for this area who was sick, and really didn’t know diddly squat about Normandy. It would have been nice to have had a director with some historical and local knowledge.

How do I rate France? Their politics are miserable and going through major convulsions at the moment. In fact, on the Tuesday they had a “national strike” to protest the new reforms President Sarkozy is trying to implement. The main grievance is raising retirement age from 60 to 62. 60 to 62---can you believe this crap? The poor darlings find it difficult to make such a change and join the rest of the world, which is talking about increasing retirement age everywhere. The people are fine individually. The Normands still fly in the major cities the flags of France, Canada, Great Britan and the U.S.A. in remembrance of D-Day and our liberation. The food makes it all worthwhile---ooh la la.

In other words, the French are still the French. In their own words, le plus qu’il change, le plus le meme: the more things change, the more they are the same!

THE BRITISH ARE COMING!

My Yankee blood got riled up today when I read a column in the Sport Section of The Daily Telegraph today by Oliver Brown. He was pissing all over Paul Casey, the Brit golfer who lives in America, which I think Brown views as a cardinal sin, particularly excoriating him for not playing at Gleneagles in Scotland last week but playing an American tournament. I don't mind him criticizing Paul Casey, but in the process he made some disparaging remarks about American golfers not caring about the Ryder Cup and chasing the almighty dollar.

The British sport columnists are frequently real shits, extremely opinionated and given to hyperbole. Oliver Brown just went one step too far, and my answer is below.

Dear Mr. Brown:

As a visiting American married to a Brit who spends and enjoys his summers in U.K., I must comment on your column of 1 September 2010 in The Daily Telegraph on Paul Casey. I can only say that I find your comments tasteless and mean-spirited, to say the least. You, quite obviously, do not like Casey, which is your privilege as a man and journalist, but I think, to use a favourite British phrase, you were a bit “O.T.T.”

You comment on the overemphasis of corporate involvement on the American tour, and I tend to agree to some degree, except for the fact that the corporations do provide economic security for the tournament promoters and a very good living for many golfers. I notice that many regulars on the European tour are quite willing to play some of these events, and I have also noticed that they have not turned down the money prizes. The true amateur spirit of “play up and play the game” is a virtuous sentiment, but a good number of European and American golfers also earn their livelihoods on the course.

I think Casey would have better served to have played Gleneagles to enhance his Ryder cup selection, but he was also in the running for the Fedex Cup, a Hobson’s choice which had to be painful.

I resent your assumption, which makes for colorful journalism but an unfair generalization, that all American golfers agree with Hunter Mahan and his frank but inaccurate comments regarding the Ryder Cup. A host of American golfers eagerly anticipate the opportunity to play for their country, ranging, yesterday, from Nicklaus, Palmer, Trevino, Watson and Crenshaw to, today, Furyk, Stricker, Crane and Johnson, to name a few. If you could stop dipping your poisonous pen long enough, you might realise that the spirit of clean and pure competition still lives in these mercenary, materialistic, dollar-grubbing Yanks on the right occasion.

Go ahead and take aim with your rifle at Paul Casey, but don’t use a shotgun that scatters ammo pellets on the whole of America golf. It is neither fair nor right.

We haven't fought the British for awhile---maybe it's time again!