Au bord du mer

I had a lovely weekend in Roscanvel on the Presqu'ile de Crozon. A woman I sing in choir with invited me to her family's house on the seaside. We visited a bunch of forts around the peninsula. The weather was typical crazy Brittany weather; sunny and blue skies then gray, wind and rain...back and forth.

Over the weekend I learned to dig for clams, play crapette and I even helped plant some apple trees.

Sunday morning we went to Mass at a Bendictine Abbey. It was pretty difficult to understand any of the chanting but I enjoyed it nonetheless.


For lunch, when we returned to Brest, we enjoyed the clams which we had found the day before.
Before heading back to my apartment we walked along the water down by the ports in Brest.
It was so great to spend so much time outside this weekend - being surrounded by nature (and military areas) and breathing in pure fresh air!

...and done!

The students voted (this time with ballots and all) and the blockade has ended. So one would think I'd be teaching today....NO. For some reason the dean decided there wouldn't be classes today. I suppose to give people a chance to find out and plan...? Who knows. So that leaves me next week for teaching, spring break and then two more weeks before exams. What a ridiculous semester!
Here's an idea of what the blocus looked like..

In other news last weekend was quite eventful for me. I had two concerts with Choer et Orchestre Paul Kuentz. Saturday we took a bus to Morlaix..had a 3.5 hour rehearsal, dinner and then the concert. We sang Mozart's Vespers and Requiem. Sunday we had a concert in Plougastel. One of the soprano's kindly offered to drive me there. She took me to the Conservatoire Botanique and we walked around the beautiful garden trails for a good hour before heading down to Plougastel. The Sunday concert went much better than the first. It was a full weekend of speaking French. By the time I talked to Derek Sunday night I had to really concentrate on speaking English!

Derek arrives in Brest in 2 weeks and one day!! I can't wait! Some of the choir members suggested different places for us to visit and even offered driving us there. We'll see what we end up doing. No matter what I'm sure it will be fantastic! I am praying for nice weather though :-) After two weeks of amazing temps and sunny blue skies the rain is approaching. Hopefully that's over by the time April 9 rolls around.

France --> America --> France ?

I thought this was a really interesting Op-Ed from the New York Times about France and America.
Not only can one make the argument that America is trying to become France but also France is trying to become America. Watching what Sarkozy wants to do with the University system reminds me of American Universities. I think that there are MANY problems with the French education system and I'm so thankful that I was able to get my education in America -- given my learning style and career goals. However, there are also so many problems with the American Education system. Anyway, my thoughts are not very organized right now so I'll just leave you with the article :-)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/opinion/05Cohen.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

March 5, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
One France Is Enough
By ROGER COHEN

WASHINGTON

The French writer François Mauriac once said during the cold war that he loved Germany so much, he was glad there were two of them. After what an undivided Germany had done to France in World War II and before, that was understandable.

To paraphrase Mauriac, I love France, but I don’t want there to be two of them, least of all if one is in the United States.

Don’t get me wrong, I think President Obama’s counter-revolution goes in the right direction. In fact, it’s less a question of right and wrong with his budget than of necessity. After the excesses of Reagan-inspired deregulation and the disaster that unfettered markets have delivered, the pendulum had to swing.

Still, the $3.6 trillion Obama budget made me a little queasy. There is a touch of France in its “étatisme” — the state as all-embracing solution rather than problem — and there’s more than a touch of France in the bash-the-rich righteousness with which the new president cast his plans as “a threat to the status quo in Washington.”

Of course, the budget proposal represents a maximalist position that Congress will claw back. Obama knows that. Still there was something breathtaking about the scope of the president’s targets and ambitions. For everyone from the oil and gas industry to drug companies, the message was clear: Off with their heads!

I’d thought of Obama as less Robespierre than Talleyrand. I still think he’s more bridge-building centrist than revolutionary. He needs to be. Money has never been more fungible than today.

Punish capital and it will punish you by saying, “Hasta la vista!” The former French President François Mitterrand learned that a little over a quarter-century ago when, after an initial wave of nationalizations, he reversed course.

Obama, too, will have to adjust and make trade-offs, while keeping his eye on core goals, like bringing health coverage to the country’s 45 million uninsured. As he does so, he should be careful to guard America’s spirit, without which recovery will stall.

I lived for about a decade, on and off, in France and later moved to the United States. Nobody in their right mind would give up the manifold sensual, aesthetic and gastronomic pleasures offered by French savoir-vivre for the unrelenting battlefield of American ambition were it not for one thing: possibility.

You know possibility when you breathe it. For an immigrant, it lies in the ease of American identity and the boundlessness of American horizons after the narrower confines of European nationhood and the stifling attentions of the European nanny state, which has often made it more attractive not to work than to work. High French unemployment was never much of a mystery.

Americans, at least in their imaginations, have always lived at the new frontier; French frontiers have not shifted much in centuries.

Churn is the American way. Companies are born, rise, fall and die. Others come along to replace them. The country’s remarkable capacity for innovation, for reinvention, is tied to its acceptance of failure. Or always has been. Without failure, the culture of risk fades. Without risk, creativity withers. Save the zombies and you sabotage the vital.

If America loses sight of these truths, it will cease to be itself.

When the Big Three automakers, their heads in the sand, have made the wrong models with the wrong technologies for years, while their competitors adapted, I think it’s inevitable that one — probably Chrysler — must pay the price. Bankruptcy is not necessarily the same as liquidation.

I know, this is an exceptional moment. Decidedly the “Decider” delivered a debacle. President Obama, its recipient, sometimes resembles the trustee-in-chief of national bankruptcy proceedings. Hope is on hold.

Trillions are the new billions and because 80 is the new 70, or so we are led to believe, you will get to live longer to witness where all the debt accumulated by throwing money into the bottomless pit of A.I.G., and its cohorts in leveraged fleecing, leaves the country.

We are told that the collapse of A.I.G. would pose a “systemic risk,” but it would be a tonic to my particular system if someone in the Obama administration could explain why in plain language.

The battle lines are being drawn. Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential candidate, said of the Democrats: “As they try to pull us in the direction of government-dominated Europe, we’re going to have to fight as never before to make sure that America stays America.”

Romney’s got it upside-down. The Republicans under Bush destroyed the American economy and what America stood for in the world. But that does not change the fact that Obama, in his restorative counter-revolution, must be careful to steer clear of his French temptation.

Greek tragedy holds that hubris, or overweening pride, leads inexorably to nemesis, divine judgment and at the last may usher in utter destruction. The United States is in full post-Bush nemesis. In its core values, un-Gallicized, lies the long road to redemption.

One more thing about the protests...

I think it's worth noting that the protests here in France that I mentioned in the previous blog are not violent. They are fairly laid-back and as long as I have no intention of teaching the students have allowed me to enter the building. I've had to go in to prepare lessons on the off chance that the blocage ends. They also lifted the blocage over the weekend so that the annual Open House (for high school students and their parents) could take place on Saturday.

Protests in France

Striking is a 'spécialité française" and we are certainly having a personal experience with it as of late. I haven't been able to teach in approximately 2 weeks due to students blocking the entrances and preventing classes from taking place. The 'blocages' tend to last for about a day and a half, then they vote to block for another day and a half etc...
I experienced this when I was living in Paris during the CPE protests. I was unable to go to class for a month - so I'm a bit familiar with this type of situation. However, I'm still shocked that the students have this much power. I also have trouble understanding how it is beneficial. They are depriving themselves and other students (who may or may not agree with the protest) of their education - which is more or less what they are protesting about: to keep their educational system in tact. Additionally, it seems to me that a protest would make more of an influence if it happened away from the university - near the people that have more control over the decisions that are being made. Perhaps I'm not understanding the situation in its entirety...but that's how it looks to me.
To be clear I do think they have every reason to protest. Their concerns are well founded. For example, the privatization of (especially) smaller universities could be very detrimental. Brest isn't located in an area with large businesses to provide funding. Additionally some of the potential changes to the teacher training program are unbelievable (but I won't get started on this topic because I already have so many issues with it as it is!).

Following is an article (not the best...but at least it's in English) explaining, in more detail, the political situation.


World Socialist Web Site
wsws.org
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
France: Protests continue against Sarkozy’s university reforms
By Pierre Mabut
11 March 2009

Five weeks of strikes and protests by university teachers and students against government reforms that undermine the status of teachers and the quality of higher education have maintained their momentum. This is despite Higher Education Minister Valérie Pécresse's watering down of the proposals and the trade unions presenting minor concessions as a basis for agreement.

On March 5, 20,000 university teachers, administrative staff and students marched in Paris. Another 23,000 took to the streets across 20 cities, notably in Lyon, Toulouse, Nantes, Rennes, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Nancy, Brest, Montpelier and Caen. Twice within two weeks the historic Paris Sorbonne University was occupied by 200 students before they were ousted by CRS riot police. Slogans and banners on the Paris protest included, "No to the break-up of universities and research! No to the destruction of teachers' status!" as well as "No to the destruction of teacher training—withdraw the Darcos/Pécresse reforms," referring to the higher education minister, as well as Education Minister Xavier Darcos.

One placard declared, "Guadeloupe everywhere, general strike," a reference to the French island's 44-day strike against the high cost of living.

The general secretary of the FSU (Federation Syndicate Unitaire, the majority education union), Gérard Aschieri, declared, "The movement in Guadeloupe, which succeeded in mobilising and obtaining results, can only help our mobilisation."

These comments are belied by the actions of the FSU, which has refused to mobilise workers and staff in the national education system over the last year to oppose the 13,500 high school teacher job losses imposed by Darcos, leaving students to fight alone.

Delegates of the universities' national co-ordinating committee, representing research teachers and staff from 67 universities, met last Friday after the protest. They vowed to fight on for the complete abrogation of the University Liberties and Responsibilities Law (LRU) on university autonomy. Delegates rejected the government concessions as "scandalously insufficient" and stated that "Nothing has been obtained on the master's degree [which replaces teacher training practice] and the reform of recruitment exams for secondary school teachers."

This position contrasts with the teaching unions (Sgen-CFDT, Sup'Recherche Unsa, Autonome Sup and Force Ouvriere) which Sgen-CFDT delegate Thierry Cadart said had reached a "consensus" with the government. The Snesup-FSU did not take part in negotiations but still declared it was "ready to meet the government."

The government found itself isolated when it tried to introduce a decree on a new status for university teachers five weeks ago. Up to that point, union leaders and the student union UNEF (close to the Socialist Party) had accepted the LRU law enacted in 2007. The revolt by teachers centred on the new powers for university presidents to decide who and how much teaching or research would be allocated to each teacher, based on performance data. Prime Minister François Fillon immediately told Higher Education Minister Valérie Pécresse to "entirely rewrite" the decree.

The teachers' university co-ordinating committee said on March 6 that the "rewrite of the decree is unacceptable in as much as it maintains the orientation of the first text." It called for further mass demonstrations on March 11 and the extension of the mobilisation to involve all teachers and staff from the nursery schools to universities.

The government has conceded that timetables for the division of work between teaching time and research in universities will not be imposed, but done with teachers' "consent," and assessment of performance will now be national and carried out by peers. But the issue uniting rank-and-file teachers and students is that of new teacher training qualifications and the status for trainee teachers preparing to enter primary and secondary school education. Unions are asking for its implementation to be postponed for a year.

The new training course is referred to as the "masterisation." This will lead to the deterioration of new teachers' job status and employment security in a context of developing mass unemployment. The traditional status of trainee teachers as state employees, with the prospect of lifelong job protection, will now be undermined. The number of permanent posts with full civil servant status has been halved. Those who have achieved the education masters degree will be qualified to teach and will constitute a reserve pool of teachers with much reduced rights, to be employed on short-term contracts and with no job security. Previously students were qualified to teach with a BA degree.

The proposals for teacher training in the LRU law spell the virtual end of teacher training institutes (IUFM). Currently trainees spend a year preparing the competitive teachers' exam at university and then undertake a year's course in teaching practise. This course, a fully paid post, will now be abolished and replaced by a two-year master's degree without pay.

University teacher job cuts are also strongly opposed. Although the government now promises to freeze reductions until 2011, 1,000 posts have already been lost this year. The CNRS (National Council for Scientific Research) is also set to lose over 800 research and engineering jobs. The unions hope to negotiate a compromise on jobs and teacher training, but leave intact the LRU law on university autonomy (a form of creeping privatisation) that is being implemented in 20 of France's 83 universities this year. The law gives university presidents powers to set budgets, seek private funds and dispose of university assets.

Student opposition to the LRU remains determined, but less massively supported than last year. Currently 25 universities are affected by student strikes, protests and lesson boycotts. The principal student union UNEF has opposed any political fight against the government. The UNEF leadership called off the student mobilisations against the LRU 18 months ago, after months of strikes. Its president at the time, Bruno Julliard, appealed for "the end of strikes and occupations ... due to advances obtained by students." He is now Socialist Party spokesman on education.

The student section of the SUD (Solidarity, Unity, Democracy) trade union recognises the government's objective of "submitting the universities to the logic of competition between them, and obliging them to have recourse to private financing." But it claims only that "the mobilisation must continue to grow and to make the government retreat" and says nothing about the isolation of the struggle by UNEF and the trade union bureaucracy.

The Sarkozy government has been weakened by the opposition to its reforms and the fear of social revolt spreading from the Antilles (French West Indies) to mainland France. Only the trade unions and the official opposition (Socialist Party, Communist Party/PCF) keep the government in office. The New Anti-Capitalist Party of Olivier Besancenot declares that a general strike is necessary to make the government "retreat" on jobs and wages. But its aim is to tie the fate of workers to the trade unions, who are calling another one-day strike on March 19, seven weeks after the 3-million-strong strikes and demonstrations of January 29 against Sarkozy's austerity policies.

Relying on the trade unions to put pressure on the Sarkozy government to make a fundamental retreat on his programme of social regression has proved illusory. Any real defence of social gains involves a break from these organisations and their left apologists and the building of independent organisations of struggle, with the perspective of the socialist reorganisation of the economy under the democratic control of the working class.

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Only in France

I can't teach today because students are blocking the entrances to the University. No class until 1pm tomorrow.

Park Photos

The weather in Brest has been outstanding during the last week. It's sure to return to it's rainy norm soon... so I decided to take advantage of this beautiful weather by going for a walk on my day off. I went back to the park that I found a few months ago. This time I brought my camera so that I could post some pictures (as requested).




Plants and flowers are starting to grow and I'm wondering if more people will visit this park as the weather continues to improve. So far it seems that most people use it as a shortcut to get from home to work etc or to walk their dogs. The park is surrounded by many apartment buildings. On occassion I've seen children playing on the playground and teenagers hanging around.



I wonder if the wade pool and the fountain will ever get filled with water...

Falling in love...with Brussels

Two weeks ago I fell in love with Brussels! Katie and I went to Brussels and Lille (a city in Northern France) during our February Break. The first two nights we stayed with a fellow Luther alum, Blake, south of the city. He is living in Brussels for the year teaching at the International School. I really enjoyed spending some time with an old friend and it allowed Katie and I to get a very different view of Brussels. We went out the first night with some of his friends: American, Canadian and Flemish. Monday we went to school and watched two of his early childhood pyschomotricty classes. I was in heaven :-) I even took some notes!
Monday through Wednesday Katie and I stayed at a fabulous hostel (used to be a 3 star hotel) just a few seconds from Grand Place. The first time we stumbled into the Grand Place the look of awe on our faces must have been amusing to watch. There are huge, ornate buldings surrounding a large, open, cobblestone square.
I'm going to just give you a list of the sites we saw and the things I loved about Brussels:
1) Belgian Waffles (they just melt in your mouth and have crystals of sugar in the dough)
2) Belgian Beer (during the 5 days there I managed to sample 12 different beers)
3) Belgian Chocolate
4) Multilingualism; so impressive to watch one person go from French to Flemish to English without any hesitation
5) French is spoken more slowly and clearly than in France; I felt much more comfortable speaking here.
6) We visited the Musical Instrument Museum: AMAZING! It is housed in the Old England building (a former department store) which I thought was just the coolest looking place! They had a very comprehensive collection of instruments and provided you with headphones to hear how each sounds.
7) I wish I lived in Brussels: what a fantastic location from which to travel!
8) Brussels is culturally vibrant city. For example, there is live music everywhere you look. One night Katie and I went to a place called Music Village for dinner and drinks. That night they happened to have a Salsa band playing.
9) We also went to the Comic Book museum...unfortunately neither Katie or I could truly appreciate it. We did however get some Belgian comics (TinTin, Titeuf, and I almost got an Asterix comic).
10) We went to the Musée des Beaux-Arts as well. I was quite disappointed to find out that the Magritte exposition doesn't open until June 2009. Oh well....

Thursday we made the 40 min train ride to Lille. Wow. The architecture in this French city is breath-taking. It's almost overwhelming to have so much to look at! Lille's architecture is very much influenced by the Flemish style. There was red brick everywhere and each building had it's own unique character. Perhaps it was so impressive to us because we are used to Brest...every building looking more or less the same. Lille is home to the second largest book store in Europe. It's very very commercial and 5 stories...Katie and I didn't love it but figured we should probably go! We also went to the art museum as well as a museum focused on the local history of Lille.
We stayed with an older French couple in their home filled with antiques, paintings and local history. They were a very interesting and adorable couple. (Katie took a picture of them ...so I'll post those once she gets them off her camera.) They even invited us to dinner with them our last night. They recited poetry for us (that they've been working on together) and told us stories about their lives. For dessert we had a Merveilleux, type of cake with meringue, whip cream and chocolate mousse. Not my favorite...but I managed to eat the HUGE slice they gave me. This was served with champagne to celebrate having 2 Americans staying with them and Obama's election.
I'm really glad that we chose to go to these places for our February break. It was a great change of scenery.
After a week back in Brest and getting back into the routine of life here again I'm ready for the next little trip. This coming weekend Katie and I are going to Paris. The weekend after that I am going down to Quimper for the open house at the sister university there. Two more weeks after that and it will already be April. I can't believe how quickly time is flying by this semester...and I'm not going to complain! I'm nervous, but looking forward to applying for teaching jobs back in the states!