They're "Considering" Us

Exactly one month before I was born (OK, you can do the math!), Charles de Gaulle proclaimed, "Je vous ai compris!" to a crowd in Algiers.

What, exactly, he understood--or whom he was trying to reassure that he understood--is not clear.  Was he trying to reassure les pieds noirs--French colonials who lived (and some of whom were born) in Algeria that they could stay?  Was he telling military personnel--French? Algerian?  French Foreign Legion?--that he had their backs? Or was he guaranteeing  Algerians that their country would become independent (as it did four years later)?  

Some would say that he meant all, or none, of those things--that, perhaps, "je vous ai compris" was a "weasel" phrase.

If the latter is true, then the phrase could also be interpreted, if not translated, as "I have taken it under consideration" or "I have considered what you've said."

I have spent enough time around academic administrators to know that, for them and other bureaucrats, "consider" is too often a synonym for "ignore" or "pretend to hear." 

What brought those locutions to mind is the recent law requiring New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority--which includes New York City's subway and bus systems, the region's commuter railroads and some of its bridges and tunnels--to "consider" bicycle and pedestrian access in its capital plans. Those plans would include not only new infrastructure, but also improvements to existing structures that currently lack such access.  

Call me cynical (Hey, I'm a New Yorker!), but I have to wonder just what "consider" means.  Or, for that matter, "access."  Some of the "access" I've seen to bridges is "access" in the same way that the stuff McDonald's and Burger King serve is "food."  

And, if the MTA actually does "consider" bike and pedestrian access, I have to wonder if it will be as poorly-conceived, -constructed and -maintained as most of the bike lanes I've seen in this city.

 

Pushed Boy Off Bike, Brags About It On Facebook

Though I respond promptly to friends’ Facebook posts, I rarely post anything myself.  I keep my page mainly to stay in touch with those people.  

A recent incident illustrated a reason why I don’t spend more time on the platform:  it gives a microphone to people who are clearly unhinged.

“It’s illegal for anyone over the age of 10 to ride a bike on a public footpath, so if your son comes home and tells you a crazy woman knocked him off his bike, it was me, he was riding full pelt at me outside Duke’s, refused to give way so I stood my ground and pushed him to the floor, teach him some manners, next time he won’t be so lucky.”

First of all, Helen Henry-Bond needs to learn about sentence structure.  Furthermore, the account she wrote “to big herself up”—and her claim that 15-year-old had “come flying around the corner” and “slammed on” his brakes was contradicted by witnesses who were customers at the Merseyside, UK bar.  One of them, Robert Hamlin, said the boy’s feet were on the ground and he was scooting along at a walking pace.

(Thankfully, the boy wasn’t seriously hurt.)

Those testimonies, and Henry-Bond’s history of mental illness, led the Sefton Magistrate’s Court to convict her of common assault. She was ordered to pay £814 , which includes a fine, court costs and a victim’s surcharge and £100 in compensation to the boy.  I hope that the Magistrate, if he or she has the power, ensures that Helen Henry-Bond gets the mental health care she needs—and someone to work with her on her comma splices.

First Ride Of The Year

The threat of rain loomed all day.  It fell, lightly, exactly in the middle of my ride, when I stopped to eat.  And it very kindly stopped just as I resumed my ride.

So went my first ride of the new year:  140 kilometers round trip to Greenwich, Connecticut and back.  The day was warm for this time of year:  temperatures hovered between 10 and 15 C (50 to 60 F), which I like at any time of year.  The air felt fresher than usual:  Perhaps the New Year's Day rain washed away some of the pollution.  It may also have had to do with the near-absence of traffic through most of my ride.  

On my way back, I stopped for the traffic light at Fenimore Steet in Mamaroneck, just across from the harbor.  When the light turned green, I proceeded and, on the other side of the intersection, noticed this:

I've noticed the De Lancey name (sometimes spelled as one word, as in the name of a Manhattan street) in the area.  Apparently, the French Huguenot family emigrated to the then-British colony of New York after the Edict of Fontainebleau, an order that revoked the Edict of Nantes, which gave the Protestant Huguenots most of the same rights French Catholic citizens enjoyed.

Given that, it's not surprising that the De Lanceys amassed such wealth and married other prominent families (whose names are sprinkled all over New York) after arriving.  One of the reasons, I believe, Louis XIV and much of the French establishment wanted to suppress Huguenots--who were Calvinists, like the Puritans--is that, because they emphasized education and didn't celebrate most of the Catholic feast days (meaning they worked more), they became, essentially, the merchant and technocrat classes of France in a similar way to  Jews in some European communities before the Inquisition.

The De Lanceys might well have remained one of the prominent families of New York, and America, had their allegiances been different.  In the Revolution, they were Loyalists.  In fact, James De Lancey--to whom the house belonged--formed, along with his uncle, a brigade that was known for its brutality against American revolutionaries. Once the latter won, the family had to give up their properties and fled to Nova Scotia and England.

Unless you are a member of an historical society in New York state or a graduate student in early American history, you probably hadn't heard of the De Lanceys before today.  But you have almost surely heard of the other name on the plaque:  James Fenimore Cooper, one of this country's first popular authors.  (During Edgar Allan Poe's lifetime, his poetry and fiction were more popular in Europe, especially France, than they were in the United States.)

I wonder how  De Lancey or Cooper would feel about the restaurant that's in the house.  I think Poe would have appreciated the view some of its patrons would have had yesterday: