Butterflies

Nothing really interesting this week-end. Some pictures.

Oh, yep, I've seen a butterfly, in January... shit

Save water, share a shower: Ecologic activism

I wouldn't like to fatten up the internet with some useless blogs (I don't even know if my blog is worthwhile) but there are some posters of a mediatic French NGO for environment. Translations:
- Putting on a half loaded washing-machine destroys the planet

- Taking a bath instead of a shower destroys the planet

- Leaving a lamp turned on without any reasons destroys the planet

Ciao
yvan

Flea market and CO2

This morning, I was walking on my way to work on Via Petroselli, just before Piazza della Bocca della Verità, when I caught sight of a woman's legs, ankles and heel joined, in leather ankle boots, lying down on the ground. Passers-by walking ahead of me hide her face with their long coats; and their legs, crisscrossing as they walk, let only see the color of her jacket. Surrounded by a small group of people smoking and talking, totally indifferent, she lies down on the pavement, among the scooters that are protecting her. Two policemen wait a bit farther. Her dark ankle boots seem there to cut the white line of the road, cars slow down as they come closer, a lady shouts at the ones that don't let her cross the street. I understand that the ambulancy won't arrive anymore. Perhaps one will write about her in the news in brief, about this lady lying among the feet of those who protect her too late. Perhaps.

Saturday, my mood wasn't so dark, I roamed even merrily in the streets, for once empty of people: they were inside shops. Sales. I'll use the occasion to buy new shoes, my old ones hardly bear Roman pavement. The market under plane-trees, nearby, displayed its fishes and smelt good sea..

The National Geographic talks about deforestation in Amazonia, a happy-ending expedition to the North Pole, migration of humpback whales and hummingbirds. Things that soon nobody will talk about anymore, when the Mato Grosso will have changed its name (literally: dense bush) to Grande Campo de Soja Que Engorda os Proprietários Terrestres (lit.: big soyfield which fattens squires), when expeditions to the North Pole will be done by boat and will always end happily, and when whales and hummingbirds won't need to migrate anymore. What a wonderful world is that one, intended to facilitate our job.

In front of the Castel San Angelo, an ice rink. Despite the coolness of the ice, it's a hot day. Lili Allen "makes me smile". I conclude Senilità written by Italo Svevo on Piazza del Popolo, under the rays of the sunset.

Walking back, I find the bookshop Il Mare, which sells a large number of everything about sea. I'd like to do seakayak on Kamtchatka peninsula.

Sunday; that's when my dark mood came. Green mood rather. I had decided to gallivant toward the Trastevere, on the other side of the Tiber, so. I went there by il Gianiculo, to say hi to Garibaldi and enjoy the calmness of hills. The garden of one of the American embassies

Downstairs, a huge flea market straggles. One can find everything: scrap mercants, book mercants, people who seem to sell all they own, i.e, for some of them, a plastic dwarf or old trinket on a dusty blanket, forgeries sold at high price under the nose of policemen, kilograms of unusable clock's mechanisms, kilometers of wires from mobile phone chargers, one laptop which looks so strange on these stands that it must work as well as this half dismantled boat-engine, others suggest curtains, a bit of color, discs, a bit of music, watches and fake guns, mobile phone's bodies, electric components, memory sticks, plastic things, dvds, and all the stuff our occidental society send to Asia to build it up, that comes back to us and that we buy, use, stock, forget, sell again so that others buy it, sell it to those who will buy it, use it and forget it again and so on until it ends on the dusty blanket of an Italian bum or a lady from the Balkan, lean hope to feed a day or a family.
And me, in crowds squeezing and moving me, my green ideas make my mood darken: is ecology a thing of well-to-do? Who, in this thousand of people, thinks about the future of Earth? Rather, who has not much daily problems to think about our planet's future? North Pole's ices and the Amazonian forest? Which one of these faces I meet thinks like me that batteries costing 1€ for 5 are not a solution for industrial contamination? How a president-to-be will take into account these environmental problems while the half of French population lives with less than the Smig (official mimimum salary, almost 1400€/month) and a good part with something less than the Rmi (assistance for unemployed, around 500€/month)? It's a good thing to create washing-machines and fridges saving energy, but how many buy 2nd hand washing-machines and fridges that don't save, or don't save anymore, energy? Proposing tax-deductible assistance for those who use solar panel or transform their houses in HQE (French High Quality for the Environment); but how many are under the taxable income and consequently can't have this assistance?
Walking out, I follow the Tiber, which at the edge of the city grabs tatters of plastic to the branches of plane-trees. A bit farther, slums; heat escapes from a stove pipe.

ciao
yvan

Post Scriptum which has a lot to see : I recommend you (for the ones who read French) to read "Dol" written by Philippe Squarzoni. After "Garduno, en temps de paix" and "Zapata, en temps de guerre" (two comics books about globalisation and the way it affects our life -negatively and positively- that you can find in good bookshops or in my bedroom), Squarzoni is attacking last years' conservatory policies and eventually relates it to our "new" environmental problems. The English translation of "dol" is "wilful misrepresentation". A very good political comics book, soon in my bedroom.

Back in Rome

I have the impression that cities make me shrewish (I didn't know this word. It's a funny one though): cars passing by and never stopping to let you cross, stupid car-drivers who need to honk all the day and night-round, bunch of people who never walk fast enough nor straight enough so you can never overtake them, idiotic pigeons, parks that are closed you don't know why, guys driving 4x4 in narrow alleys, people who never care and put their rubish or their cigarette butt everywhere and above all in the only open parks, or policemen who park their cars wherever they want...
Saturday was a good day though: it was a free-day. Near the Vatican, a parade whith horses and guys wearing stilts, marching band and cheerleader celebrated, in a semi catholic-pagan procession, the arrival of the Three Kings and the Befana, a witch who gives present to good Italian kids and coal to mischievious ones. A band was playing "Ay ay ay ay, canta y no llores".
All of them headed up to the creche situated on Piazza San Pietro.

Sunday, I was walking, daydreaming, when an enourmous BANG! almost blew up my heart. The culprits: two olds, him, a lighter still burning in the hand, her, a smile crossing her face. Firecrackers are loved in this district.
On Piazza del Popolo : did the US signed Kyoto Protocol?

Snaking around...

Rome's antenas: almost a part of the architecture... In Trastevere district, a place I didn't know, but where I'll go back. A guy was playing "Ay ay ay ay, canta y no llores" on his accordion.

Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores

porque cantando se alegran
cielito lindo los corazones

De la sierra, morena
cielito lindo vienen bajando
un par de ojitos negros
cielito lindo de contrabando

Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores
porque cantando se alegran
cielito lindo los corazones

ciao

yvan

Sometimes...

Sometimes you just think that everything will go worse and worse.
It started well, though.
New Year's eve has been good, in a hutt, at 2500m (almost 8400 f).

Packe's hutt, from the name of an English pyréné-ist who funded the construction, at the top of a saddle, near la Coume de l'ours ("Bear's valley"), at heart of la vallée Toy ("Toy's valley").

We ate foie-gras, drunk white wine and enjoy beautiful sunsets and poetic moonrises.

The way down was great, we saw a partmigan (Lagopus mutus) and walked on the dark ice of a frozen lake. The weather was warm, like an early spring in the middle of winter; that's when you think about global warming.

And then, we drove back. I arrived at my house at night, unpacked my backpack of my my mountain's stuff, packed it with my city's stuff, ate a south-western soup; that's when you sleep the best, after a long day from mountains to plains, having seen family and friends, and when you think you won't see them before a while.

The train starts in time at Pau's train-station. We ran along snowy mountains and cold streams, then sunny plains, then the mediterranean sea, and then we stopped. A women had just thrown herself under the wheels. So we waited 5 hours, I missed my train in Nice, we slept 5h in Nice in a couchette, waited 1h to take the train to Vintemiglia, Italy, waited 2h to catch the train to Genova, waited 2h to take the train to Rome, arrived at Rome with 1h30 of lateness, spending the 6 hour of this last trip between two railcars. In Rome, I payed a 50€-fine for not having enough coins to pay my metro's ticket. Eventually, my travel lasted 35 hours from my house to my flat. Almost as long as going to New-Zealand.

Fortunaitely, my future Arctic supervisor remembered me and is going to send me some ar(c)ticles.