Wasteland Wrap-up #43

Some thoughts on reading the news from abroad...

A friend recently wrote to me: “It must be so much nicer reading American news from France.” And I’ve been thinking a lot about that, even before he said it.

What has it been like to read the news from America, here? In some ways it is exactly the same as reading it back at home, except things are time-shifted by some 6-9 hours. That by itself changes the effect of it; the day’s news cycle in the USA is only starting by the evening here, and I only really see its full outcome the next morning. It does reduce that sense of urgency and that tendency towards doom-scrolling, unless I am foolish enough to go on social media at night.

The dogs allowed (or, more often, not allowed) signs in Paris show a quite jaunty dog with its clueless but happy owner.

But it’s still pretty horrible to read. It’s not like one severs the cord completely, certainly not after only a month, and I’m not on vacation. I still have many people who I care about in the United States, and I still believe in the values and institutions that are being attacked and undermined with cynical and ignorant gaiety by the vandals in charge. And I have the same frustration that I ever did at the failures of so many institutions to push back against it.

Lyndon, a dog, is not troubled by such things. He was, however, reprimanded by a park officer for sitting on prohibited grass. This was, to be sure, my fault, not his.

The main advantage, other than the time shift, is that I don’t feel like I am walking around in a society where people are either carrying the weight of all of this — or are just blithely ignorant of the weight they ought to be carrying. The French have their own political concerns and issues (show me a country that does not), and their own complaints (some of them really do fit the stereotypes), but their concerns aren’t (yet) mine. They’re aware of what is happening in the USA but they don’t really understand it, or take it to heart.

(And how could they? It is insane. They don’t even really understand how our healthcare system works, and hold a sneaking suspicion, I have found, that it can’t work the way they’ve heard it does, because that would be insane.)

My latest pedagogical theory: if I stare at the Eiffel Tower while doing my Duolingo exercises, will they “take” better? Probably not, but worth a try…

Now, if I were more firmly situated over here, perhaps I would feel even “better” about these things — that these events in the states couldn’t reach out and harm me. But aside from the aforementioned people and institutions I care about, I’m not really on the firmest ground here myself, yet. But that will change, eventually.

The up-shot, though, is that I don’t spend all day worrying about these things (just part of the day), and I don’t worry that the hammer is liable to fall at any time, which is what I think working in education in the United States today inevitably feels like if you are paying attention to things.

Another entry in my collection of indifferently-translated English… feels appropriate…

And the time that I am not spending worrying about this I am able to spend on my work, on enjoying the atmosphere, on enjoying learning new things. The Parisians complain about the noise and bustle of Paris but compared to NYC it is feels fairly relaxed, and the quality of life is very high.

Among other things I’ve been doing, I’ve been making the effort to catch up with my postings to Doomsday Machines, and in case you missed it, I did a short post last week on a webcomic that I used to have posted on my office door:

I am going to try to get another post out next week — we’ll see how that works out. If not, it’ll be the week after!