Humour lyonnais

J'ai trouvé une histoire drôle lyonnaise sur un forum.

Attention, ça va vite, et c'est pour initiés!

 

 

 

 

Un Parisien, un Texan et un Lyonnais regardent un entraînement de saut d'obstacles.

Passe une cavalière sur un cheval racé.

Le Texan s'exclame : "Quel beau cheval !".

Le Parisien répond "Et quelle belle jeune femme!".

Et le Lyonnais enchaîne : "C'est la fille de qui?"

28 novembre 1982

C’était une époque bénie, bien bien lointaine maintenant.

J’avais à peine conscience que ce  temps eût existé (j’avais 10 ans), temps ou les idées d’extrême droite étaient tellement « groupusculaires » qu’elles en étaient risibles.

On  pouvait ainsi inviter leur porte parole à une émission humoristique, sur France-Inter.

Aujourd’hui, j’ai entendu de nouveau le réquisitoire de Luis Rego, à la radio, dans ma voiture.

Claude Villers était le Président, Pierre Desproges, le procureur et Jean-Marie Le Pen, l’accusé.

Ca m’a fait un choc.

Mise au point

J’ai vécu dans un tableau de Derain pendant 2h30.

Il y a une semaine, Thomas casse mes lunettes en deux, alors que je change sa couche. Pour être plus exact, il déclipe le verre droit de la pièce centrale (si vous ne comprenez rien à la phrase, regardez donc  la photo au dessus de ces lignes !).

Je les ai un peu bricolées, mais ça n’a pas tenu.

Je me rends donc dans le centre commercial ou se situe l’opticien qui me les avait vendues.

« Oulààà, il y en a pour 2h30, au minimum, bon flou ! ».

Je suis donc prisonnier de ma myopie, incapable de déambuler dans les rues, et bien entendu de prendre ma voiture.

J’ai un souvenir assez ténu d’une soirée passée avec mon père au soir de mon CSCT. Nous remontions le Cours Gambetta, en contre sens, sur la voie de bus, non loin de la « fosse aux ours ». Il était un peu ivre, et nous étions tellement myopes tous les deux, que j’ai du descendre sur la chaussée pour lire la plaque en émail, le nez en l’air, les sourcils et le nez froncés.

Je déambule donc dans un centre commercial pavoisé pour les fêtes.

Tout est flou et vif, hormis les 15 cm devant mon nez.

Direction la FNAC, puisque je ne peux pas faire de lèche vitrine, à moins de m’appuyer dessus, à en faire tomber la vitre.

J’ai un peu musardé à la FNAC, au gré de ce que je croyais discerner.

J’ai feuilleté un dictionnaire sur le Che (je suis entrain de lire sa biographie : il n’était pas myope, lui, mais asthmatique à un stade avancé), le journal de Goebbels, sorti il y a peu, quelques bouquins sur les Valois.

Un peu plus loin, une ou deux BD (je n’en lit quasiment aucune) dont « Calvin et Hobbes » (ce n’est pas l’histoire du protestantisme genevois !), un Tintin en provençal, et, étonnamment, en polynésien (j’imagine qu’un commis de la FNAC a du se faire remonter les bretelles -pekapeka en polynésien- !).

J’ai aussi feuilleté l’annuel des montres 2006, rendu bien inutile avec l’avènement d’internet. Uhmm, je me ferais bien un petit calendrier perpétuel de « Jaeger Lecoultre ». Mon esprit musarde, j’en ai essayé un, il y a peu, chez un des bijoutiers de la ville. Sublimement discret, en or blanc. Mais 22.000 euros, totalement hors de portée.

Je termine sur quelques bouquins de peintres, ou de photographes (uhmm, elles sont floues ces photos !!!).

 

Retour chez l’opticien.

Ils m’ont retaillé les deux verres, mes lunettes étant encore sous garantie.

Je suis déjà en retard pour ma consultation à l’hôpital.

Ces petites poses « imposées » sont  bien agréables….

Les mots pour le dire

J'ai trouvé cet article absolument remarquable dans le "New York Times" en ligne du 24 décembre 2005. Il traite de l'attitude des médecins devant des patients dont le pronostic vital est engagé.

A la faculté, le dogme enseigné était simple, dérivé de l'enseignement d'Hippocrate; ne jamais tuer l'espoir, quitte à mentir. Justement, je ne me suis jamais vraiment résolu à mentir à un patient confiant, les yeux dans les yeux. En tout cas, jamais l'esprit en paix. Je pense qu’en cas de pathologie mortelle, et/ou débilitante à court/moyen terme il n’est pas éthique de ne pas prévenir son patient. L’ignorance rend impossible la préparation, l’assimilation de l’échéance.
Mon grand-père est mort, bouffé par un cancer du rein, sans le savoir. Ses questions pathétiques m’ont laissé une impression durable et amère.

Mais, bon, une fois édicté cette règle, plus morale que professionnelle, comment faire en pratique ?

D’autant plus, que les patients arrivent souvent bardés d’informations plus ou moins élaborées, glanées chez la voisine, ou sur Google.
Le « on a trouvé quelques cellules un peu méchantes » ne fait plus illusion depuis longtemps.

L’énonciation froide d’un diagnostic me répugne, tant il est difficile de connaître ce que le patient sait, ou croit savoir dessus.

D’ailleurs, que savons nous ?

Nous connaissons tous des patients qui ont échappé à la condamnation, censée être inéluctable, des statistiques.

Un de mes anciens patrons, en chirurgie digestive, fulminait contre ces chiffres d’espérance de vie, dont tout jeune médecin se gargarise, croyant ainsi pouvoir résumer la médecine en quelques chiffres.

« 15% de survie à 1 an, et alors ?
Si il survit, pour lui, cela fera 100% à 1 an,
Si il meurt, cela fera 0% »

Que dire aussi des variations en fonction des origines sociales, ou ethniques du patient ?

Comment peut-on imaginer que l’énonciation d‘un pronostic réservé puisse être compris de la même façon par un occidental, et sa vision linéaire de la vie, et un africain, avec sa vision circulaire, cyclique ?

Au rationalisme continental, on pourra aussi opposer le fatalisme méditerranéen.
Avez-vous remarqué, que quand vous annoncez une bonne nouvelle à un patient maghrébin, c’est vous qu’il remercie en premier, avant même Dieu, ou le Destin ?
Les divergences sont immenses, majorant d’autant la difficulté d’informer honnêtement, sans tuer l’espoir.

Comment aussi faire passer des concepts appris au cours d’un apprentissage de presque 15 ans ?

Enfin, résister à la tentation d’alimenter l’espoir par des thérapies nouvelles, mais dont l’efficacité n’a jamais été démontrée ?

Depuis le début de ma carrière, je suis passé par toutes ces ornières, mais je ne sais toujours pas ou est le bon chemin.
Je commence à penser qu’il est comme un passage au milieu des dunes, sans cesse mouvant.
Ne pas montrer trop d’espoir illusoire, ou au contraire de désespoir glaçant ; voilà la véritable difficulté du métier.
 

****************

December 24, 2005

Being a Patient

Doctors' Delicate Balance in Keeping Hope Alive
By JAN HOFFMAN

Dr. Joseph Sacco's young patient lay gasping for breath; she had advanced AIDS and now she was failing.
Assessing her, Dr. Sacco knew her medical options amounted to a question of the lesser of two evils: either the more aggressive ventilator, on which she would probably die, or the more passive morphine, from which she would probably slip into death. But there was also a slender chance that either treatment might help her rally.
He also knew that how he presented her options would affect her decision, the feather that would tip the balance of her hope scale.
As Dr. Sacco, a palliative care specialist at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, spoke to the woman on that chilly morning earlier this month, her eyes widened with terror: no intubation. He ordered morphine.
He agonized about his approach. "She's only 23," he said later that day. "Maybe I was too grim. Maybe I was conveying false hopelessness to her. Maybe I just should have said, 'Let's put you on the ventilator.' I may have spun it wrong."
The language of hope - whether, when and how to invoke it - has become an excruciatingly difficult issue in the modern relationship between doctor and patient.
For centuries, doctors followed Hippocrates' injunction to hold out hope to patients, even when it meant withholding the truth. But that canon has been blasted apart by modern patients' demands for honesty and more involvement in their care. Now, patients may be told more than they need or want to know. Yet they still also need and want hope.
In response, some doctors are beginning to think about hope in new ways. In certain cases, that means tempering a too-bleak prognosis. In others, it means resisting the allure of cutting-edge treatments with questionable benefits.
Already vulnerable when they learn they have a life-threatening disease or chronic illness, patients can feel bewildered, trapped between reality and possibility. They, as well as doctors, are discovering that in the modern medical world, hope itself cannot be monolithic. It can be defined in many ways, depending on the patient's medical condition and station in life. A dying woman can find hope by selecting wedding gifts for her toddlers. An infertile couple moves on toward adoption.
The power of a doctor's pronouncements is profound. When a doctor takes a blunt-is-best approach, enumerating side effects and dim statistics, in essence offering a hopeless prognosis, patients experience despair.
A radiation oncologist told Minna Immerman's husband, who had brain cancer, that he had less than two years to live. "That information was paralyzing," Mrs. Immerman said. "It wasn't helpful."
But when a doctor suggests that an exhausted patient try yet another therapy, in the hope that it may extend survival by weeks, the cost is also considerable - financially, physically and emotionally.
"We have to find a less toxic way to manage their hope," said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, an internist and Harvard professor who is writing a textbook about prognosis.
Efforts are being made across the medical community to grapple with the language and ethics of hope. Some medical schools pair students with end-stage disease patients so students can learn about anguish and compassion.
Numerous studies have examined what doctors say versus what patients hear and the role of optimism in the care of the critically ill. Patient advocates have been teaching doctors how patients can be devastated or braced by a turn of phrase.
A consensus is emerging that all patients need hope, and that doctors are obligated to offer it, in some form.
To Dr. Sacco's boundless relief, his patient rallied. He began counseling her to take her AIDS medications, to find an apartment, a job.
He wrote in an e-mail message: "We prognosticate because people ask us to and trust our judgment. They do not know the depth of our uncertainty or that no matter how good or experienced we are, we are often wrong. That is why choosing where to put the feather is so damn hard."
False Hopelessness
Robert Immerman, a 56-year-old Manhattan architect, knew that his brain cancer - a glioblastoma, Grade 4 - meant terrible news. After the tumor was removed, he asked the radiation oncologist his prognosis.
"The doctor was pleasant," Minna Immerman recalled, "as if he was telling you that hamburger was $2.99 a pound. He just said the likely survival rate with this tumor was, on the outside, 18 months.
"Bob purposely forgot it," she said. "I couldn't."
After radiation, Mr. Immerman began chemotherapy. But after one treatment, his white blood cell count dropped so precipitously that it was no longer an option.
"The medical oncologist said, 'The chances of survival with or without chemo are very, very slight,' " said Mrs. Immerman, a special-education teacher. "I think she was trying to make us feel better. What I heard was: 'With or without chemo, this won't end well, so don't feel so bad.' "
Mr. Immerman got scans every two months. Mrs. Immerman watched the calendar obsessively. Twelve months left. Six months. "As time passed, instead of feeling better, I felt like it was a death sentence and it was winding down," she said.
She sweated the small stuff: should they renew their opera subscription?
Mr. Immerman turned out to be one of those rare people who reside at the lucky tail end of a statistical curve. In February, it will be 10 years since he learned his prognosis. He is well. For years, Mrs. Immerman was shadowed by fear and depression about his illness, before she finally allowed herself to breathe out with gratitude.
Candid exchanges about diagnosis and prognosis, especially when the answers are grim, are a relatively recent phenomenon. Hippocrates taught that physicians should "comfort with solicitude and attention, revealing nothing of the patient's present or future condition." A dose of reality, doctors believed, could poison a patient's hope, the will to live.
Until the 1960's, that approach was largely embraced by physicians. Dr. Eric Cassell, who lectured about hope in November to doctors in the Boston area, recalled the days when a woman would wake from surgery, asking if she had cancer:
" 'No,' we'd say, 'you had suspicious cells so we took the breast, so you wouldn't get cancer.' We were all liars." Treatments were very limited. "Now when we're truthful," Dr. Cassell added, "it's in an era in which we believe we can do something."
Doctors in many third world countries and modernized nations, including Italy and Japan, still believe in withholding a bad prognosis. But the United States, Britain and other countries were revolutionized in the late 60's by the patients' rights movement, which established that patients had a legal right to be fully informed about their medical condition and treatment options.
Now, whether a patient comes in complaining of a backache, a rash or a lump in the armpit, many doctors interpret informed consent as the obligation to rattle off all possibilities, from best-case to worst-case situations. Honesty is imperative. But what benefit is served by Dr. Dour?
"There are doctors who paint a bleaker picture than necessary so they can turn out to be heroes if things turn out well," said Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford medical school, "and it also relieves doctors of responsibility if bad things happen."
The fear of malpractice litigation after a bad outcome, he said, also drives doctors to be stunningly explicit from the outset.
The medical community has nicknames for this bluntness: truth-dumping, terminal candor, hanging crepe. But some social workers call it false hopelessness.
Given a time-tied prognosis, many patients become withdrawn and depressed, said Roz Kleban, a supervising social worker with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. "Telling someone they have two years to live isn't useful knowledge," she said. "It's noise. Whether or not that prediction is true, they lose their ability to live well in the present."
Health care providers debate the wisdom of giving patients a precise prognosis: "There's an ethical obligation to tell people their prognosis," said Dr. Barron Lerner, an internist and bioethicist at Columbia University medical school, "but no reason to pound it into their heads."
Others say that doctors should make sure they can explain the numbers in context, with the pluses and minuses of treatment options, including the implications of choosing not to have treatment.
Though many patients ask how long they have to live, thinking that amid the chaos of bad news, a number offers something concrete, studies show that they do not understand statistical nuances and tend to misconstrue them. Moreover, though statistics may be indicative, they are inherently imperfect.
Many doctors prefer not to give a prognosis. And, studies show, their prognoses are often wrong, one way or the other.
Where does this leave the frightened patient?
Meg Gaines, director of the Center for Patient Partnerships, a patient advocacy program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, thinks false hopelessness is more debilitating than false hope.
"I tell people to ask the doctor, 'Have you ever known anyone with this disease who has gotten better?' If the answer is yes, just say, 'So let's quit talking about death and talk about what we can try!' "
Some patients do triumph against grotesque statistical odds; others succumb even when the odds are piled in their favor.
But willful ignorance, she cautioned, can be dangerous.
"People should know about prognosis to the extent that it's necessary to make good decisions about monitoring your health care," she said. "You can't be an ostrich in the sand. When the stampeding rhinoceri are coming, you have to be able to get out of the way."
False Hope
Perhaps just as harmful as false hopelessness, many experts believe, is false hope. "If one patient in a thousand will live with pancreatic cancer for 10 years," said Dr. Christakis of Harvard, and doctors hold out that patient as a realistic example, "we have harmed 999 patients." False hopelessness, in the name of reality, dwells on the dark view of a patient's condition, prematurely foreclosing possibility and a spirited fight. False hope sidesteps reality, leaving patients and family members unprepared for tragedy.
When Anna Kyle was in labor, the umbilical cord dropped ahead of the baby, who was deprived of oxygen for critical moments. Mrs. Kyle had an emergency Caesarean section. The baby had to be resuscitated.
The nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit told Mrs. Kyle, of Lonoke, Ark., that her son was a "good baby," because he didn't cry or fuss. Later, when he had developmental delays, her hopes were at war with her nagging fears. But doctors kept saying the child might outgrow them.
Her son, now 5, received a formal diagnosis last year. "Nobody wanted to say, 'Your kid has autism, your kid is mentally retarded, your kid will be in diapers most of his life,' " said Mrs. Kyle, whose husband earns $10 an hour as a truck driver. "It hurts, it's nasty, ugly stuff, but it has to be said, so kids can get the therapy they need as early as possible."
Because patients hunger for good news, experts say that doctors should choose their words carefully: "If you get into the language of hope, you run the risk of over-promising things," said Dr. Lerner of Columbia.
The more useful discussion for patients, he added, is, "what hopeful things can I do?"
In his November lecture on hope, Dr. Cassell said that patients do not need "false hope that is personified in useless therapy with nontherapeutic effect."
False hope is both a hangover from the centuries-old belief that doctors should withhold bad news, and a practice newly infused by the explosion of so many medical treatments and the tenuous promise held out by clinical trials.
Consider the cost of false hope, experts note: not only the physical and emotional agony of dying patients who try last-ditch, occasionally unproven treatments, but also the depletion, financially and psychologically, of the patients' survivors.
"The battle cry of our culture is, 'Don't just stand there - do something!' " said Dr. Richard Deyo, a Seattle internist and professor at the University of Washington who writes about the high cost of false hope.
He added, "Physicians have a natural bias for action, whereas it may be more honest to say, 'Whether I do something or not, the result is likely to be the same.' "
A 1994 study showed that Americans have greater faith in medical advances than people in many other countries. Thirty-four percent of Americans believed that modern medicine "can cure almost any illness for people who have access to the most advanced technology and treatment." By contrast, only 11 percent of Germans held the same belief.
Accompanying the medical advances, however, are an increasing number of physician subspecialties. One downside is that patients hear from a variety of voices, and they can become inadvertently misled.
Pat Murphy, a nurse and grief counselor who heads the family support team at University Hospital in Newark, said that, for example, when a patient has a critical stroke, a cardiologist, among others, will be called in for an evaluation: "The doctor might say, 'This is a strong heart' and then he leaves," she said. "The patient will probably never regain consciousness. But the 'parts people' talk to the family out of context, and the family thinks they're hearing good news."
Another result of this medical renaissance is thousands of clinical trials. Phase 1 trials often try out doses of an unapproved drug; perhaps only 5 percent of volunteers may derive any benefit. "Most people think they don't want to be an experiment," said George J. Annas, author of "The Rights of Patients." But, he said, when desperately ill patients learn about a trial, "all of a sudden there's no difference in their minds between research and treatment."
A 2003 study of advanced-stage cancer patients who volunteered for Phase I trials showed that at least three-quarters of them were convinced they had a 50 percent chance or greater of being helped by the drug.
Because patients listen selectively, it can be difficult to tease out who owns responsibility for false hope:
Patricia Mendell, a New York psychotherapist who works with fertility patients, noted: "A doctor can tell a patient she has a 95 percent chance of an I.V.F. cycle not working. But the patient will feel it's her right to try for that 5 percent. "
Indeed, false hope can represent a complex entwining between terrified patient and well-intended doctor: both want the best outcome, sometimes so intensely that what emerges is a collective denial about the patient's condition.
Hope
Elissa J. Levy was a winter sports jock, with a buoyant social circle and a power job on Wall Street. But in January 2002, she received a diagnosis of secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, a less common version of the disease, for which there are few treatments and no known cures.
Soon, Ms. Levy needed a cane, and could scarcely walk a block. Pain and fatigue dogged her. Her quick brain grew foggy, her right hand floppy. She cut back her new job as a deputy director of a Bronx charter school to three days a week. In the mornings, her mother had to help dress her.
But though her body sagged, her neurologist helped prop up her spirits. "Often I would come in crying," Ms. Levy said, "and he would hold my hand and say, 'We'll figure this out together.' Or 'We can hope that this treatment works.' "
Given the gravity of her disease, was it appropriate for the doctor to stoke her hope?
"Hope," wrote Emily Dickinson, "is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul."
Imprecise and evanescent, hope is almost universally considered essential to the business of being human.
Few can define hope: Self-delusion? Optimism? Expectation? Faith?
And that, say experts from across a wide spectrum, is the point: hope means different things to different people. When someone's medical condition changes, that person's definition of hope changes. A hope for a cure can morph into a hope that a relationship can be mended. Or that one's organs will be eligible for donation.
For so many, hope and faith are inextricably linked. "Truly spiritual people are amazing, " said Ms. Murphy of University Hospital. "Until the moment of death, families pray for a miracle and then at the moment of the death, they say, 'This is God's will' and 'God will get us through this.' "
As health care providers struggle with whether, how and when doctors should speak of hope, a consensus is building on at least two fronts: that what fundamentally matters is that a doctor tells the truth with kindness, and that a doctor should never just say, "I have nothing more to offer you."
More doctors are embracing palliative care specialists as partners who work with critically ill patients and their families to help them redefine their hopes, from the improbable to the possible. Many doctors, whose specialties range from neurosurgery to infertility, retain therapists to counsel patients.
"Hope lives inside a patient and the physician's behavior can either bring it out or suppress it," said Dr. Susan D. Block, a palliative care leader at Harvard. "When a patient has goals, it's impossible to be hopeless. And when a physician can help a patient define them, you feel like a healer, even when the patient is dying."
Dr. Spiegel, the Stanford psychiatrist, recalled a woman who knew her death from cancer was imminent: "She had 15-minute appointments scheduled all day with relatives, to set them straight on how to live their lives. Then she was going to die. This was a hopeful woman."
Harvard's medical school matches first-year students with critically ill patients - in essence, the patients become the teachers. One patient, Dr. Block recalled, was a high school teacher dying from lymphoma, who agreed with alacrity to participate. When her husband came into her room, the patient said, with tears in her eyes, "Honey, I have one last teaching gig."
Last April, Ms. Levy's doctor started her on a drug that is still in clinical trials, but has long been available in Europe. Shortly after she began taking the daily pill, she went for a checkup and lay down on his examining table.
He asked her to lift her leg.
Normally, Ms. Levy struggled to budge her leg. But having taken the drug, she flung her leg into a 90-degree angle. She gasped.
Usually, when her doctor pressed one finger against her leg, it collapsed. Now he pushed with his open hand. She held steady. Both she and her doctor grew teary-eyed.
Finally, she walked down the hall without her cane. Both patient and doctor wept openly.
The drug does not cure her disease; it treats symptoms. But Ms. Levy, 37, now walks 20 blocks at a clip, works four days a week, goes to the gym. She is dating. A recent test showed that her disease has not progressed.
In a sense, Ms. Levy's relationship with her doctor combined the best of the old and new worlds. He was hopeful but also candid. And he could offer her promising treatments, including one that, at least temporarily, seems to help.

"And if I start feeling bad again?" Ms. Levy said. "I have hope that I'll feel good again."

Image trouvée ici 

Noël

Nous sommes chez ma mère et ma grand-mère pour les fêtes de Noël.

Guillaume et Thomas ont été pourris gâtés par leurs mamies.

 

Guillaume et moi jouons sous les yeux attendris de ma grand-mère allongée et un peu souffrante et de Sally.

 

Ma grand-mère de 83 ans n’a jamais été malade, mais là, elle ne se sent pas bien, et a évoqué pour la première fois de sa vie son prochain décès.

Ma mère, rescapée de deux cancers attend chaque matin le troisième, et projette son angoisse sur tout le monde, surtout ma grand-mère, qui na pas besoin de cela en ce moment.

 

Guillaume me monte dessus, comme à son habitude.

Il touche mes cheveux qui deviennent poivre et sel et demande :

« Qu’est-ce qu’ils ont ?

- ils sont blancs

- pourquoi ?

- Parce que je vieilli

Il me serre dans ses bras, et me murmure un chevrotant « pas mon papa ! ».

- Et bien si, tout le monde vieilli

- Tu pourras plus porter de choses lourdes ?

Sally lui dit :

- Mais si, il ne pourra plus quand il sera très très vieux, et que toi tu seras grand.

- Et après ?

- on vieilli de plus en plus….

- Et après ?

Silence gêné, ma grand-mère pousse un petit soupir résigné, Sally ne sait pas quoi dire, le temps pèse de plus en plus lourd.

Guillaume se lève, et, sans transition, commence à jouer avec le garage Smoby tout neuf de son frère.

 

Bienheureux ce temps, bien trop bref, ou l’on oublie instantanément les questions auxquelles on n’a pas de réponse.

 

 

Et nous ?

Dans lemonde.fr d’aujourd’hui, je tombe sur cet article : « Elton John et son compagnon se sont dit "oui" ».

Rien de bien renversant dans cette courte dépêche de l’AFP/AP, que je parcours d’un œil distrait.

Du moins, jusqu’à la dernière phrase : « Le Royaume-Uni est le cinquième pays au monde à autoriser le mariage homosexuel, après les Pays-Bas, la Belgique, l'Espagne et le Canada. ».

 

« Et nous ? », ai-je dit dans mon salon désert.

Où on est ?

Quand va-t-on se décider à donner à chaque citoyen des droits et devoirs équivalents, indépendamment de la préférence sexuelle, qui relève à mon avis uniquement de la sphère privée ?

On va passer après l’Espagne de Torquemada ?

D’un autre côté, quand on regarde la chronologie de l’acquisition du droit de vote par les femmes, je ne suis pas très optimiste.

Memento mori

Ce matin, dans le centre ville, règne l’excitation des achats de Noël, malgré la crise, malgré tout.

Je fais queue chez Nespressso, parmi mes semblables ; les manteaux de cashmere se frôlent, les cartables et les sacs en agneau pèsent lourds d’attendre.

 

 

 

Je repense à la consultation que je viens de faire à l’Hôpital.

 

 

 

- Un homme de 40 ans, quasi paraplégique, les neurones bouffés par l’alcool

- Un homme de 75 ans, lui aussi bouffé par l’alcool, mais plutôt du côté du cerveau. En plus: 3 litres de liquide dans chaque plèvre, et dans l’abdomen

- Une femme, la cinquantaine, depuis le 15 novembre, elle sait qu’elle a une tumeur du sein gauche de 2 cm de diamètre, et un ganglion positif. Chimio avant les fêtes, d'où l'échographie cardiaque.

- Une femme enceinte, isolée, loin de sa famille, 23^ème semaine, entrain de perdre son bébé par la faute d’une tension artérielle incontrôlable.

-Une laborantine séropositive, qui arrive de moins en moins à contrôler sa jambe gauche (Elle a honte quand elle entend derrière elle: « regarde, maman, la dame, elle a bu »). Personne en sait ce qu’elle a.

- Un jeune homme consumé par une maladie chronique (je ne sais plus laquelle) et par la dialyse, qui a un bon litre de liquide dans le péricarde.

- Une anesthésiste qui m’emmène sa fille de 20 ans, déficiente mentale, pour savoir si on peut lui prescrire la pilule après une phlébite qui n’en était pas une.

- Une femme de 26 ans, 4 enfants, cardiopathie dilatée assez sévère. Son mari s’inquiète de savoir si il pourra avoir un cinquième enfant. Personne ne sait ce qu’elle a (moi non plus).

- Une femme de 45-50 ans, un bon quintal avec une phlébite historique du membre inférieur droit. Les symptômes ont commencé en Algérie : rentrez en France, on ne peux rien pour vous, ont dit les médecins de là-bas. Elle est rentrée en avion il y a 48 heures.

 

 

Et j’en oublie quelques autres, moins graves.

En fin de matinée, j'avais l'empathie un peu émoussée, et le "ce n'est rien, rassurez-vous", un peu mécanique.

 

C'est mon tour.

"Vous désirez, Monsieur?

Comme d'habitude...

Il n'y a plus de série limitée, peut-être de "l'Arpeggio"?

Non merci, du "Ristreto", plutôt.

Comme il vous plaira, Monsieur"

 

 

 

 

 

Memento mori.

Jean de Cahors

Qui c’est celui là ?

 

 

Jusqu’à il y a peu, pour moi, c’était le « méchant » Pape du « Nom de la Rose » de Umberto Eco.

Autrement dit, une ombre de souvenir adolescent, époque ou j’ai du lire ce bouquin une bonne dizaine de fois.

 

 

Et bien, je l’ai retrouvé !

 

 

Il fait partie des nombreux personnages évoqués par Druon dans ses « Rois Maudits ».

 

J’ai mis un peu de temps pour faire la connexion, car ce personnage s’est appelé Jacques Duèze avant son élection puis Jean XXI, ou Jean de Cahors pour ses ennemis.

Druon ne parle pas de Guillaume de Baskerville ou d’Adso de Melk, c’est bien dommage que deux univers imaginaires ne puissent pas ainsi se recouper (le roman de Eco se situe en 1327, l’élection de Jean XXII dont parle Druon a eu lieu le 7 août 1316).

 

 

Cette élection, au cours d’un conclave a aussi un autre charme à mes yeux.

Il s’est déroulé dans la bonne ville de Lyon, dans le couvent des Jacobins, aujourd’hui disparu. Grosso modo, il s’étendait de l’actuelle place des Jacobins, à la place Bellecour.

Enfin dernière connexion, ce conclave de cardinaux s’est tenu plus qu’à huis clos, mais à mûrs clos. En effet, Philippe de Poitiers, futur Philippe V le long, héros de « La loi des mâles » y avait emmuré les cardinaux pour les forcer à élire un pape, après deux ans d’interrègne débordant d’intrigues et de trahisons.

En gros, je suis toujours plongé avec délices dans cette œuvre monumentale.

 

 

Outre une meilleure connaissance sur une période totalement obscure pour moi, j’en retire quelques sujets de réflexion oiseuse et dominicale.

 

 

Le destin de millions de sujets (15 millions de « français » à l’époque) dépendait alors du bon vouloir de quelques uns, par le simple fait de leur naissance. Les assassinats, les accidents, les tares, nombreuses au sein de ses familles consanguines pouvaient ainsi faire basculer le destin d’une multitude de sujets.

A un ou deux chouïa près, nous pourrions être bourguignons ou anglais, si Edouard II, puis III, ou Agnès de Bourgogne avaient agi différemment. Je sais bien que cette réflexion n’amène pas particulièrement loin, mais elle incite à ne pas trop se targuer, par exemple, de notre anglophobie censée être atavique. De 1227 à 1485, ce sont les héritiers d’Isabelle de France, fille de Philippe le Bel qui ont régné sur ce qui deviendra bien longtemps après, la perfide Albion.

 

 

Je me rends aussi compte que tout ce que j’ai appris sur cette période était totalement déformé par le prisme anachronique d’un patriotisme de bon aloi dans l’éducation nationale.

Boutons les anglais hors de France !

 

 

Certes, mais la France n’existait pas à cette époque (sauf si l’on nomme ainsi le domaine royal d’alors), et tous les « méchants » anglais étaient de souche continentale encore récente.

Pour qu’il y ait nationalisme, encore faut-il qu’il y ait une Nation. Ceux qui se drapent dans le souvenir de la pieuse Jeanne (1412-1431), boutant l'étranger de notre patrie, n'en sont que plus risibles.

 

Nous sommes finalement en grande partie ce que nous sommes, que par conjonction de coucheries, tractations, reniements, tares familiales touchant une poignée d’hommes.

 

Enfin, pour devenir à Druon, celui ci cite une famille de bourgeois lyonnais, les Varay.

Cette famille, dite consulaire a occupé les plus hautes fonctions communales durant des décennies, voire plus (un Varay occupe encore une place pééminente en 1504, merci Google)

Qu'en reste t-il?

Rien, pas un place, pas une rue, pas une ruelle, pas une pissotière.

Rien que des lauriers de cendre.

  

Cela incite à la modestie individuelle et collective (attention, je n’ai pas dit auto flagellation !)

Quand l'homme ne fait qu'un avec sa caravane...

J’ai trouvé dans le Washington Post du jour une chronique délicieuse de la femme de l’Ambassadeur d’Allemagne aux Etats-Unis.

Cette femme aimante décrit avec une langue douce-amère la lubie qu’a eue son mari de tailler presque 1700 Kms en camping car, pour se rapprocher de l’Amérique profonde.

L’humour est bien sur le décalage entre l’univers feutré et luxueux entourant habituellement un haut diplomate et sa famille, si bien décrit par Ferrero®, et l’univers du camping, croqué avec talent par Franck Dubosc.

La conclusion explicite est délicieuse de décalage : pour réussir des vacances au camping, il faut avoir des amis milliardaires accueillants disséminés sur le chemin.

(Quelqu’un sait de quoi « RV » est l’abréviation ?)

*

*

*

The Ambassador & the RV
The Diplomatic Handbook Didn't Cover Dumping a Septic Tank.

By Jutta Falke-Ischinger
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, December 18, 2005; P01

 

It is one of those typical Washington fundraisers in a windowless ballroom: black tie, long dresses.
"Is it true?" one woman addresses me. "You and the ambassador are renting an RV for your summer vacation?"
That's what we want to do, yes, I say.
"My God!" She can hardly speak. "But who is going to drive you?"
"Wolfgang."
"Wolfgang? That is sooo wonderful," she replies, her expression betraying her true feelings.

Yes, this trip is my husband Wolfgang's idea. He is the German ambassador to the United States, and we've been living in Washington for four years. It's not that we haven't traveled around the country: Our official trips have taken us from airplanes and limousines to hotel rooms, dinner tables and ever more conference centers. But the real America, we felt, was happening somewhere else. Clearly without us.

That's how the RV idea was born. We decided to drive up to Haliburton Forest in Ontario with our 11-month-old daughter and the family dog, exploring Upstate New York and New England along the way -- a 2,800-mile round trip from Washington.

Wolfgang has done this before, renting an RV 30 years ago and touring the East Coast. He just loved the freedom, he said, even though the car roof was shaved off in an unfortunate encounter with an underpass. It's not something I'm particularly keen on experiencing myself.

This time Wolfgang is not leaving anything to chance. He has established a promising correspondence with AAA, which has sent us road planners and lists of campgrounds almost every day for the past two months.

Having successfully avoided camping all my life, I watch the preparations with some skepticism. "Stop worrying, campgrounds in America are not as cramped as they are in Europe," my husband says. "You don't even see your neighbor!"

* * *

On Aug. 1, after a nine-hour drive from D.C. in our family SUV and a night in a pet-friendly hotel in Newport, R.I., we pull into the KOA Campground in Middleboro, Mass., where our RV rental agency, Cruise America, has offices. Parked in front of the building is a huge motor home with "Cruise America" and a photo of a family at the Grand Canyon printed all over it. My chest is tightening. It is 10 a.m.

We unload our car and store our belongings in the 25-foot RV. Its interior is a mix of faux wood paneling and plastic. We tuck the baby in the safety seat, and Rocky, our Australian shepherd, under the table. Wolfgang takes the driver's seat. He tells the agent we do not need a navigation system because we have me.

At 2 p.m. we finally get going. We are headed for Peterborough, N.H., the first stopover on our 19-day trip. Wolfgang fights to hold the steering wheel steady, and the sound of rattling pots and cutlery is hard to get used to. But by early evening, we are driving up the dirt road to the home of our friends the Kaisers, a German American couple. Karl teaches political science at Harvard; Debbie inherited the 250-year-old antiques-filled farmhouse from her parents. "You must be excited to sleep in the camper," Karl says with a grin. "Or would the baby prefer a proper bed for the last time?"
"She would love it," I reply, before Wolfgang can say anything.

Next morning my husband insists on leaving early. Karl gives us a final goodbye, his mocking smile accompanying us in the rear-view mirror until the dirt road bends.

We decide to have a short look at the center of Peterborough, which Thornton Wilder portrayed in "Our Town," but our vehicle will not fit in any parking lot. So we continue west on Route 9 through Vermont and then north on New York Route 22, turning south after Fort Ticonderoga and heading to Lake George, N.Y, on a smaller road flanked by green pines. A steamboat with colorful flags is making one of its daily tours, and boat rentals line the shore. "Looks like a mix between Lake Starnberg in Bavaria and Lago di Como in Italy," Wolfgang says. A few months later, in October, a tour boat will capsize on this lake, killing 20 people. But now the water is alluringly blue and peaceful.

We arrive at Lake George Escape campground in late afternoon. According to our tour books, it's a five-star site with two swimming pools and "full hookup": electricity, sewage, water. There's even cable TV and Internet access.

Milky twilight is settling in. Men leaving the camp store with firewood in their arms walk along the driveway. Lake George Escape combines the traits of a super-size parking lot with an entertainment complex, intermingled with trees. RV next to RV. You don't see your neighbor? The truth is: You hardly see anything else. Smoke from more than 300 barbecue sites fills the air; clotheslines block the last bits of free sight between the cars. The only safe bet is to look up: The sky will remain our only view of nature for the length of the stay. Nothing is as I had hoped.

I keep these thoughts to myself. Night is falling, and the blue light of television flickers out of every motor home. We put hamburgers on the fire and eat in the glow of the yellow insect candle.

Next morning we look around. Our home is squeezed in between super-vehicles, some with tents serving as sunrooms, some with plastic porches decorated with living-room lamps and garden gnomes. Most of the license plates are from New York.

"Something has truly changed in the past few years," one of the Cruise America guys in Boston had told us. "People don't have much money to travel far. They come from nearby."

The scent of coffee is filling the morning air. Girls in bathing suits are cruising around on their bikes. Next to us is a party of 10. Grandpa and Grandma, each weighing more than 250 pounds, enjoy their first cigarettes of the day in camp chairs.

We undo the hookup as fast as possible and head for freedom: Route 28, which will take us across the Adirondacks on our way up to Ontario. The farther away from the campground we get, the better we feel. The road along the eight Fulton Chain Lakes showcases the Adirondacks at their best: pine trees on both sides, water sparkling through the woods, fishing boats hiding among the reeds. There are signs to the "white otter game fishing camp" or to a Boy Scout camp. We decide to pull in at a little hidden campsite on the last of these lakes. It is described as "primitive camping," meaning no hookups. This turns out to be the real thing: few RVs, many tents. It's your typical father-son-fishing-bonding situation.

Our site is only a few feet from the lake, and trees are the only neighbors. Wolfgang and Rocky embark on a canoe trip in the last beams of sunlight as the birds hum their evening chorales. It's time for a sundowner, I decide. Baby Josie gets a bottle of milk, and I a glass of chilled Sancerre.

Next morning we head northwest. Wheat fields, black-and-white Holstein cattle, green hills and silos: This northern tip of New York state feels like farmland back home in Europe. In the village of Copenhagen, we stop to take a photo for my Danish sister-in-law. Soon we pass Watertown and cross the bridge over the St. Lawrence River to Canada.

Eleven hours after we set out from Lake George, after a long drive through thunderstorms on Canadian Route 62, we reach Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve in Ontario.

Peter Schleifenbaum, with whom I played ring-around-the-rosie in a German kindergarten many years ago, is a professor of forestry and rules over 60,000 acres of land, including more than 50 lakes. He offers every activity wilderness fans dream of: survival training, canopy tours, a wolf center, sled dogs in winter, hunting, mountain biking and more. Visitors can stay in the base camp or cabins along some of the lakes.

But we are lucky: Peter sets us up in his father's old log cabin with a big stone fireplace. After several nights in the vehicle, it feels good to breathe the scent of cedar wood instead of the plastic from the RV. A few feet down from the deck lies the lake. No Internet, no phone, no cell phones, no TV. Instead: bears, raccoons, lumberjacks. We get up at 9, brew strong coffee, take the baby and the dog for a swim, eat, sunbathe, explore the lake with the canoe. It's Scandinavia with an Italian climate.

The downside: Whenever we want to go somewhere -- watch the wolves feeding, buy sunscreen or T-shirts at the base camp, have dinner at Peter's beautiful log home -- we have to travel in the RV, which somewhat disturbs the feeling of being out in the wild.

One attempt to do without is not exactly successful. When we walk over to Peter's one evening, he drives by in his Jeep and drags us in. "Didn't I tell you just yesterday not to walk too far because of the bears?" So much for that.

We stay as long as we can. But then withdrawal symptoms in my ambassador husband cannot be ignored any longer, and our trips to the base camp (which has a good phone connection to the embassy) become more frequent. Finally we move on, heading southeast across New York state, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, then back to Massachusetts and the RV's home town. Still several hundred miles to go.
At Cornwall, we cross the St. Lawrence River back to the United States. Nobody checks the vehicle to see if we are hiding any terrorists.

It is raining, and the border region of New York seems deprived: decayed houses, sheds without roofs, abandoned stores. Vermont looks much greener. Our campground in South Hero lies on an island in the middle of Lake Champlain. When we check in, it is still raining and we have to eat in the RV. While a teething Josie cries incessantly, Wolfgang cooks spaghetti and garnishes it with Newman's Own pasta sauce. We eat under the neon light from the car ceiling. At 10, the electricity is shut off and we climb five feet up to our mattress, which is over the driver's seat. Josie occupies the queen-size bed in the back of the vehicle, the only place where her travel crib fits without blocking the bathroom door. Our "bedroom," in contrast, is blocked by nothing; only a thin curtain hangs between us and the void of the vast RV.

We survive another night and take Interstate 89 south. After a stop near Montpelier, Vt., we head for Maine on Route 2.

Everything on Route 2 is about cars: car dealers, new cars, used cars, auto body shops, repair places, wrecked cars under sun umbrellas, garages, scrap merchants. It all seems to symbolize a mobile, throwaway society.
In Germany, people seem to be less ready to give up old things. Here you start something, give it up and go somewhere else. Buy, sell, tear down the old, build up the new. Are we in Europe too attached to the past? Wolfgang and I discuss these issues for 200 miles while the baby sleeps. Driving is good for talking. No escape. Or as the diplomats say: In together, out together.

We reach Maine's Atlantic coast and Mount Desert Island, my favorite stop of the trip. It's like the Norwegian fiords and England's Cornwall all in one. We stay in a beautiful, big old house on the ocean that belongs to a dear friend. Neighbors come by in their boats. Lobsters all day long. We have a great time. The success of such a trip clearly depends on one essential: to be equipped with a long list of friends. "You can park in our back yard," they would say, not knowing what they were getting themselves into. Because in the end, only the RV would stay in the back yard.

One campground and one visit to a friend's home later, after almost three weeks on the road, we return the RV, retrieve our car and take the ferry to Martha's Vineyard. We've rented a house there, and at dinner parties we share our vacation stories with British aristocrats, football team owners, Washington power brokers and writers who live on the island year-round. They all stare at us in disbelief.
"You did what?" one gentleman bursts out. "All alone, no help, with the baby? Thank God you did not bring the vehicle on the island!"
Yes, it is true, I do not lie sleepless in my Vineyard bed longing for the motor home or the campgrounds. But I wouldn't have missed our road trip. Let's face it: Between professional socializing, embassy functions and fundraisers, how else could we have ever felt so cut loose, so independent and so mobile -- so American?

Jutta Falke-Ischinger worked in Berlin as a political journalist before coming to Washington as the wife of the German ambassador.

Marotte.

Pendant que (future) femme et enfants sont au loin, je peux m’adonner à un petit plaisir qui permet de conjuguer deux passions : la photo et les montres.

 

Comme cela, ça parait simple, en tout cas, plus que le portrait par exemple.

En fait, je n’arrive jamais à être complètement satisfait.

La photo numérique a complètement changé la donne, en permettant de faire un nombre quasi illimité de clichés, et de les corriger immédiatement.

Mais bon, je ne dois pas être très doué, car, in fine, aucun ne me plait vraiment.

Je n’ai pas de coin « prise de vue », comme certains collectionneurs (Cf. liens du blog).

J’improvise donc un coin blanc avec 3 bouquins, et des feuilles blanches.

Autre difficulté, un cadran de montre est bourré de reflets fâcheux, de textures, de couleurs difficiles à rendre.

Pour obtenir les deux clichés dessous, j’ai pris environ 80 clichés !

L’un écrase trop les reflets de l’or rose, le second, meilleur de ce point de vue est trop sombre.

 

La montre est une « memovox », de 1952-1953. Très sobre, elle contient une complication tout à fait sympathique : elle sonne (ou plutôt vibre) à l’heure indiquée par la petite pointe de flèche sur le disque central.

La couronne supérieure droite permet de remonter le ressort qui actionne le mécanisme du petit marteau qui frappe sur le fond de la boite, la faisant vibrer. Elle permet aussi de sélectionner l’heure à laquelle on désire que la montre sonne.

La couronne inférieure droite permet de remonter la montre, et de régler l’heure.

Petite particularité, à cette époque, les restrictions sur l’importation de métaux précieux empêchaient Jaeger-Lecoultre d‘exporter des boîtiers en or de Suisse en France.

Ces derniers étaient donc forgés en France, par des orfèvres ; alors que les mécanismes venaient de Suisse. Ces « boites françaises » étaient d’une qualité légendaire.

 

Après bientôt 53 ans, cette  memovox est toujours aussi belle, insensible aux modes et à l’usure du temps.

Demain, je vais essayer de nouveau de capturer tout son charme.