Kelly At Large #126 The arugula edition
Essential news from Paris. And a nod to lesbian visibility day.
Hello from Paris! Where the change in the retirement age has finally been knocked off the top of the news, though union bigwigs and the everpresent Mr. Jean-Luc Mélenchon vow to put the spoke back in Macron’s wheel with the biggest May Day marches ever held anywhere.
Meanwhile, I’m pleased to announce my window box arugula is growing like mad, as is the mint which I cannot kill (even though I sometimes try) which means I will have plenty for a bourbony julep on Derby Day, which I religiously celebrate the first Saturday in May along with those in far off Kentucky.
Sadly, the tiny tomato seedlings succumbed after an afternoon of hail. It was probably too early to put them outside on our unprotected window ledge, but them’s the breaks. We have no available surface space anywhere inside and I got tired of moving them around.
In other news, our elevator was turned off several days ago so an electrician could reconnect something to something else. Even though their visit was postponed, none of the powers that be thought it was important to restore it to service. That means my written French is getting quite a workout as I join with the other inhabitants of the building in sending angry emails cc’ed to everyone we can think of because some people here have mobility issues and are trapped in their apartments without it.
It’s too bad they don’t use situations like this in the French tests they make you take for citizenship. Instead, we get idiotic scenarios in which you must advise your friends on their vacation plans, weighing the considerable differences between the mountains and the beach while trying to prove your mastery of the subjective, as if that were necessary in most conversations among friends.
Another great option, which I faced in real life a couple of months ago, would be to role-play the panicked dialogue you will be sure to have when the elevator you are in makes this giant BOOOOMing sound, drops a couple of inches before stopping between floors and remaining there, at which point you push and push and push the red alarm button while telling yourself to breathe in, breathe out waiting for some disembodied voice to ask what she can do for you. To which you immediately reply, “Sortez-moi d’ici! Sortez-moi d’ici!” Get me out of here! Fuck.
Which brings me to the great revelation which came to me yesterday as I listened blindly to a TV program while doing the dishes. Namely, that if you don’t pay attention to the words, but just the speaker’s manner and tone, many of the programs of political commentary on French TV (and probably American as well) are indistinguishable from the over-urgent dialogue of that Canadian drama, Scorpion, in which a crackerjack team of geniuses episodically overcomes obstacle after obstacle to save vast swathes of the population from the likes of terrorist attacks and nuclear disaster, all the while delivering their lines in an authoritative, but near hysterical pitch. “You’ll need to hurry up and connect that gizmo to that thingamob! You only have four minutes and thirty-two point nine seconds worth of air left!” BOOM. “Are you okay!? Answer me.”
But what reads as pure camp in Scorpion, in real life really bothers me. Why can’t we emphasize something’s importance at a lower pitch? Is there, now, just one way to persuade? I can’t be the only person who, post-Covid, post-September 11, post-(a shitton of other stuff) feels as if their adrenal glands might be shot. Probably people should only be that screamy if, in fact, an actual tunnel really is collapsing and preventing you from escaping an actual nuclear plant whose core is in the process of melting down, or whatever it is that makes those things such gigantic glowing disasters. At the very least you should be trapped in an elevator which booms and drops and makes you think you might die. Or at least piss your pants. Which I very nearly did.
Whatever. Ugh. All I have to do grab the remote and turn it off. No Scorpions, no politicians, just a slow exhale while I scrub out the pasta pot.
In Honor of Lesbian Visibility Day, April 26…
I give you one of my heroines, the inimitable Costa Rican-born Chavela Vargas, who, with more lives than a cat, is said to have broken her leg jumping out a window to escape an angry husband, was Frida Kahlo’s lover. And above all sang Mexican rancheras like a fallen angel (without changing the pronouns), and after being re-discovered by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, in her later years, broke ground coming out as a lesbian at 81.
In Other News
These women ran an underground abortion network in the 1960s. Here’s what they fear might happen today Ah, the good old days.
Marital rape wasn’t legally considered rape. And, of course, women had no legal right to terminate a pregnancy until four states — Alaska, Hawaii, New York and Washington — legalized abortion in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade became the law of the land.
Illinois had no such protection, said Heather Booth, a lifelong feminist activist and political strategist: “Three people discussing having an abortion in Chicago in 1965 was a conspiracy to commit felony murder.”
A Piece on Mumsnet, and a look back at Postcards on the Edge
With a few very honourable exceptions, young female journalists were astonishingly unpleasant about Mumsnet right up until they announced the birth of their first baby on Twitter, at which point they would start writing articles like ‘Birth injuries are unpleasant!’ and ‘I’m so tired I want to vomit!’ and ‘Oh my god I’ve just discovered that maternity discrimination is functionally legal!’ Jeez, if only there’d been an organisation trying to get journalists interested in this stuff.
That’s it for this time. Think about hearting or sharing or subscribing or saying hello or something.
Disgruntledly yours,
xoxo K