Disaster Strikes

The retirement of Justice Kennedy is an unmitigated disaster.  We are now already virtually guaranteed a very right-wing court for a generation.  Roe v. Wade is toast, in spirit if not in letter.  If Trump or Pence gets to appoint a Ginsburg vacancy…. The Supreme Court is too powerful.  And its great power is combined […]

The Dignity of the chef de l’état

François Hollande is a highly inept politician.  He is impossible to respect. http://www.liberation.fr/france/2015/12/23/decheance-de-nationalite-itineraire-d-une-volte-face_1422728?xtor=EPR-500001&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=quot Let us deprive suicide bombers of their French nationality.  One can be sure that this deprivation will haunt them in their graves, or frighten future would-be terrorists into becoming law-abiding citizens. The terrorists are simply criminals of a particularly dastardly sort, but […]

My Turkish doppelganger

My brother sent me an email saying that a Turkish guitarist I had commended to him looks just like me.  There is, in fact, a strong resemblance.  I actually had not heard the fellow’s music until today, although I probably did commend him to my brother without having heard him.  So here is a picture […]

New French Book on Growing Inequality

It sounds like Thomas Piketty, who is French, has written an important book about the trends of distribution of wealth and income in 20th-21st century economies, primarily in developed economies.  The general story is that the “natural” rate of accumulation of capital is on the order of five-six percent per annum, while the natural rate […]

Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street”

I hope that the reader will allow me to offer a dissenting view of Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.”  It’s too long, much of it is boring, and considered even as satire or black comedy it is unconvincing.  I did laugh heartily at a few points in the movie, in particular at the […]

A visit from strangers

I happened to be picking plums from our orchard this afternoon when I was hailed from afar by a man of some years, accompanied by two ladies who were also on in years.  “Do not be alarmed,” he said.  He had worked on our property as a boy and wanted to see what had become […]

Race far from dead as major issue, the South far from new

Recent Supreme Court décisions occasioned the following excellent contributing editorials from liberals in today’s “New York Times.” Thomas Edsall on the marginalization of blacks in the South via gerrymandering and “bleaching.” http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/the-decline-of-black-power-in-the-south/ Linda Greenhouse on Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s dissent in Fisher vs. University of Texas: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/the-cost-of-compromise/?hp All of this gives the lie, in my opinion, […]

Our Most Recent Night in Marciac (last night)

We had received a letter from “Jazz in Marciac” notifying us that the order of appearance of the two groups to appear in the concert of July 28, for which he had purchased tickets, had been changed.  The headlining group, “The Bad Plus with special guest Joshua Redman,” would now be appearing first, at 21:00, […]

Netherlands Travelogue

Delft So we are back in Gascony after two weeks in the Netherlands, les Pays-Bas, where we partook of the joys of contemporary urban civilization.  For those who plan to spend more than three-four days in Holland, I can heartily recommend that they buy an annual museum subscription, at a cost of 45 euros, which […]