Someone might think that the two have nothing to do with each other. Yesterday they did at least for me.
Manifestations in French. As news junkies my husband and I watch news from many countries. The demonstrations started in France with students who were upset about the quality of education.
It spread to other countries but not just with the students. Unionists, Yellow Jackets all are unhappy with the cost of living, housing, gas prices among other things including the lack of responsiveness from their individual governments.
It reminded me of 1968 when French students led by Danny Cohn Bendit, started protests that brought down DeGaulle.
We've been watching transfixed.
We are worried about our return to Geneva next week. National roads? Autoroutes? Leave early i.e. 5 a.m. to be home by noon before the protestors take to the streets blocking our path?
Our sympathies are with the protestors, the peaceful ones.
Life is out of whack. Costs have gone up, up, up in my lifetime. Corporations, dictators, billionaires have too much power. One doesn't need to be a Communist to know that without some regulation, those at the top will take, take, take. For example, coal mine owners forget without the miners digging the coal, it will stay in the ground.
Considering climate change that might be okay, but the idea that weather catastrophes hurts everyone.A tree in a hurricane will refuse to fall on a rich man but select a poor woman.
And with climate change no one will have clean air and clean water.
Halloween
How the day went
When I moved to Europe in 1990 Halloween was nonexistent. Nary a pumpkin was to be found. Friends who worked for an American company did throw a Halloween party. The Swiss rented costumes. Americans made theirs. A cultural difference.
Over the years I was called on to explain what Halloween was to co-workers. I said that it came from Ireland and Samhain the ancient celebration for the end of the harvest. It also comes before All Saints Day, La Toussaints in France.
The combination
Between newscasts, many featuring sociologists, historians and financial experts trying to explain what was happening to financial markets, wars, protests and a genocide, we admired the village stores that decorated themselves with spiders, ghosts, cob webs, zombies, pumpkins. It was like my New England childhood.
Once no children stopped for candy. Over the years children in costume trickled by for candy, without saying "Trick or Treat" or even "Des bonbons ou un sort." They just hold out their bags.
This year there were less little skeletons, witches and vampires than previous years. Parents stood back and watched. I talked to the kids, and they picked up on my American accent, I heard thank you in place of merci. Our village has not been part of the demonstrations. One has to go to nearby Perpignan for that.
Between the protest news and Halloween, it was a strange day. We still aren't sure when we are going north. We find the peace in the village a pleasure, an escape from the turmoil of the outside world that includes war and genocide, a totally corrupt government leading our birth country, which we are powerless to stop.
Yet there's much to do in our Swiss home: medical appointments, social events, another votation. Will we approve a new tax to finance a new pension payment, the 13th, that we voted on earlier? We need to vote on military equipment exportation and that fireworks need to be forbidden. And one that I like, can a husband and wife file taxes separately?
Our voting mail voting page will be waiting for us with detailed pros and cons to every citizen in the four national languages of their choice. We need to buy Auer chocolates for our Advent Calendar, go to a Christmas market.
Sometimes I feel guilty at the simplicity of my life. No bombs, no soldiers, no genocide around me. I can chat with a child in a Halloween costume. I have enough because of choices I made not be a consumer swayed by corporations to buy things I don't need.
Yet there are days, when the insanity of the world around me penetrates my consciousness and all I can do against it is to write a blog, calling attention to it.
Posts
