A couple of days ago, Bernard Tapie, the celebrated national tycoon passed away in France.
In my view, his best achievement has been his singing career (see video below).
Explain that one to me? Is Macron so afraid about is upcoming reelection that he has to pander to a bandit?
His behavior is eluding, if not revolting me, and simply would turn me away from picking that man as my leader if I were still voting in France.
I landed at Noumea on October 4th and was lucky to stay with an Australian family that were among my Mt. Buller clients and happened to be vacationing there.
They were both very nice and generous to me! I stayed for a couple of days with them and soon was on my way to Tahiti, as my flight itinerary was firmly reserved and I wasn’t able to extend my stay at will.
I must say that I remember absolutely nothing about New Caledonia, except that it was the first time I heard French spoken all around me since I had left my home country on May 29.
In two years, that is… In recent years, though, Park City Mountain has built a reputation for congestion and long lines, not just because of Covid restrictions, but also as the number of visitors have increased, and its aging lift lift infrastructure is no longer up to the task.
So in order to make its clientele hope for smoother trips up its mountains, it announced a few days ago that it would update its uphill capacity season after next... Currently, the Silverlode Express, a six-people chair, can’t handle the crowds that land at its sort of dead-end, restaurant-equiped base.
On top of that, I have also noticed that the more skiers are lined up on a chair (six-packs are a good example, but 8 will exacerbate the problem), the more they tend to fall at the top as they don’t know which way they’ll turn, collide with each others or panic when the must unload, resulting in repeated lift stoppages.
The more beginner or intermediate the crowd, the bigger the problem. We’ll see how these issues are handled… Then that six-pack will replace the medieval triple, fixed grip chair called Eagle lift and will bring even more people faster to more or less the same spot, that base of Silverlode lift…
Sure it’s an improvement, but it might not help the current problem that much. In January of 2020, I had proposed a simple (although partial) fix for that clutter problem, but it obviously went ignored…
In a next blog, I will expand on this idea and, as usual, submit it to Park City Moutain’s management.
She was a petite brunette, wearing tons of makeup and married to a guy who, I was reminded, sold all kinds of clothes to the rest of us.
While down in the big city, we squeezed in a visit to the Melbourne Zoo to get a close-up view at its Koala bears. I also took care of my American visa and JP and I debated the rest of our trip.
By that time, after being daily with him since May 29, I need a serious vacation from JP. I loved the guy, but needed a sanitary break from his boundless energy. I decided to forgo the detour via New Zealand and let him have it all to himself.
I’ll never forget the sound of “Indian Reservation” by Paul Revere & the Raiders blasting on her car radio…
That’s in this terminal that we lost track of each other for quite a bit of time and wouldn’t get back in touch until the spring season, when JP had returned to Megève from the United States and was ready to depart for another season at Mt. Buller.
Up until recently, the majority of people, in every country, were pretty reasonable, had good common sense and constituted a stable, reliable mass of individuals that kept their nation in a safe and comfortable center.
With the advent and the deep popularization of the internet and the spread of disinformation, misinformation, fake news and a totally unpredictable as well as unregulated social media, much damage has been done to this once reliable and steady segment of the population.
Now big chunks of an otherwise well-behaved population are turning into brain-dead extremists. The advent of tyrants like Xi, Putin, Bolsenaro and Trump are, if we needed them, the new canaries in the coal mine and constitute some clear indicators that something is chipping away at democracy as we know it.
I don’t remember if Alexis stayed also till the bitter end, but by now, the snow was fast melting and business drying up, and except for the carnival and other end of season silly celebrations, business was dwindling.
As I had hinted before, we might have been allowed to stay a bit later in order to make up for the time we were delayed on the ship, and had a chance to earn a few more dollars.
As for me, I was focused on crossing and discovering America with the $99 unlimited pass I was going to purchase before leaving Australia, and doing part of the Pacific crossing with JP.
We still had to finalize our respective return trips, but our original plan was still to travel in tandem to America.
Often times, rich folks make a big splash by making huge donations, that are in fact far less as a percentage of their income or wealth than poorer people give.
A study by Independent Sector, a network of nonprofit groups, measured how much people gave based on what they had and demonstrated that poor household with incomes below $30,000 were giving about 4.2 percent of their wealth away, while richer folks were only giving 2.7 percent.
People who grow up in poor communities where communal life is key, and neighbors are helping neighbors, are more oriented towards others and are more hospitable as well as charitable. Even as soon as these same poor people are thinking hard about making more money, rising in wealth and enjoying materialistic benefits, they gradually become less responsive to the needs of others.
From there it’s easy to see that poor folks tend to value social connections because they are integral to their survival when they can't make it on their own. Studies after studies show that rural communities had strong social networks. But as individuals become wealthier, they seem to need one another less, and as a result, make fewer connections.
In wealthy enclaves, autonomy and freedom are replacing responsibility and obligation. Wealth is therefore poisonous. As America became richer, good things have happened. Diseases have declined, education has improved, women and minorities have obtained more equal treatment.
But it all came at the price of excessive individuality, self-expression, autonomy and freedom, but often a terrible sense of loneliness. This might not always be the case, but it probably means that the connectivity that came naturally to us in our modest, rural and deprived youth, might now need to be carefully and deliberately cultivated.
Jesus was right on that one too!
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