After covering the Tour de France years ago, while wandering around Paris, we discovered a Starbucks. We were not drawn in by the coffee, but by other attractions – air conditioning, a clean restroom for patrons, and the very visible signs: Défense de Fumer.
Not only was the sign posted, the rule was enforced. The male barista also spoke English – not that we needed it – but it was the lingua franca, you might say, for communicating with visitors who spoke Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese. Tout le monde parle Starbucks. Starbucks had previously made good (if expensive) coffee available in the deprived United States, and more recently it has made comfort available to people walking the streets of great cities in the world. It’s good business: in a chaotic and messy world, Starbucks offers comfort. Since our first trip, a couple of kids in our 20s, we have delighted in all corners of France – the food, the language, the antiquities, the art, the people. We have also had hundreds of meals ruined by strong Gallic cigarettes. Long ago, I learned to ask the proprietor, in French, if there was some little corner where there would be no smoking. The response was generally a Gallic shrug, to go with the Gallic cigarettes. At a nearby table, gallant men would hold their Gauloises far away from their own lady, thereby putting the smoke a foot from my lady. However, in Starbucks, owned and operated by Howard Schultz, American, you could go to the bathroom, you could breathe, you could sip your coffee. Half the patrons of that Parisian Starbucks were French. They, too, loved the ambiance, the comfort. I bring up my little epiphany about Starbucks because Howard Schultz is now making rounds of every television studio in the United States, exploring a run for president in 2020. He is not considering the hurly-burly of the Democrat stampede but is considering running as an independent. With the same rigidity that causes Starbucks to employ nonsense words for “small, medium or large,” Schultz is seeking voters who are sick of the two political parties – well, who isn’t? What is there about extremely rich people that makes them think they know how to govern the clumsy entity called a democracy? I pick up the same arrogance from Michael Bloomberg, who at least has condescended to be a Democrat for the moment. How does Bloomberg govern? The city where he was mayor for three terms currently has mass transit and public housing falling apart. Extremely rich people generally hate to see money distributed differently; they are not exactly Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. Schultz made his name in Seattle but sold his basketball team to rich people in Oklahoma City. That fact is not lost on the inhabitants of Coffee City, who might prefer to vote for the current governor, Jay Inslee. As for third parties, Americans remember that in 2016 somebody named Jill Stein attracted enough gadflies to help sink Hillary Clinton and elect a fraudulent and illiterate sociopath who claimed to be fabulously rich. Ross Perot. Ralph Nader. John Anderson. George Wallace -- enough to give “independent” a bad name. While Howard Schultz is “exploring,” I just want to tell him: “Pour l'air frais, les toilettes, et moins important, le café: Merci, mec.”
Randolph
2/1/2019 02:42:10 pm
Thanks, once again George!
George Vecsey
2/1/2019 02:57:35 pm
Randy: No fatwas here.
Gene Palumbo
2/1/2019 02:49:37 pm
This is actually a reference to the previous post. I just realized that the comments there on George's piece on Jackie Robinson, didn't include the link. Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/sports/baseball-jackie-robinson-integration.html Do check it out. It's very fine.
George Vecsey
2/1/2019 03:02:33 pm
Gene, thanks, I have heard from so many people after that special section on Jackie Robinson yesterday on what would have been his 100th birthday. GV
Hansen Alexander
2/2/2019 04:16:54 pm
A splendid piece of writing, George. Such splendid choice of words, a delightful look backs at days you and Marianne spent in Paris. Thank you.
Ed Martin
2/3/2019 02:09:37 pm
Georges, years ago Peggy and I were driving through central France and found a small hotel, restaurant in a rural village. As we sat in the dining room, Peggy, exercising our limited French, inquired about “Le salle de Bain.” The proprietor answered gently, “Does Madame wish to take a bath? Evidently, not the vernacular use at that time and place. Just saying....
George Vecsey
2/4/2019 08:44:27 am
Ed, quite right, my post was a classic example of garbage-in, garbage-out. I always consult Google Translate when I am being pretentious. I haven't been in France in a while, and being rusty, I asked Google Translate to confirm "bath room" and of course it did. I should have asked for the word for "toilet." And if I were casually asking in a public place, I might ask, "Ou est le vece, svp?" (accents not possible on this format.) Short for Double Ve Ce. or from the English Water Closet, but you know that. Thanks for pointing that out. In fact, I may fix it in the body of the essay. Please excuse my faux pas. GV
George Vecsey
2/4/2019 08:49:56 am
Hansen, thank you for the compliment. Turns out I committed a gaffe, wrong word for "toilet." Classic over-reaching. We did live there -- April with our kids decades ago, in a flat in Neuilly, and in a lovely rented top-floor flat in a quiet section of the 8th during the World Cup in 1998, commuting to the other cities. Plus a borrowed studio in the 5th in 1982, for a week or two. A deep love for the most varied and pleasurable country that we know....GV
Ed Martin
2/4/2019 07:51:51 pm
GV, not necessary at all, at all! “Je voudre Le crapper, S’il vous plaits” is my style.
bruce
2/4/2019 08:44:12 pm
george,
George
2/5/2019 07:57:51 am
Bruce: 2002 World Cup. Ginza. I love Japanese food; my wife allergic to soy..Friday Eve. we went to TGIF. Packed. With young Japanese. It was a thing.
bruce
2/5/2019 12:04:59 pm
george,
George Vecsey
2/5/2019 07:43:08 pm
Bruce, 3 weeks in 98 in Almost Heaven, West Nagano. (Olympics)
bruce
2/5/2019 09:13:49 pm
george, Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html |