Locked down, but not locked in

Well - France has finally responded to the corona virus (more properly, SARS-CoV-2), with closure of all restaurants, cafes, bars, schools, and "non-essential" businesses. Prime minister Macron will address the nation tonight at 8PM, and it is expected that measures to mitigate the spread of the virus will be tightened.

Meanwhile: we still had the car that we rented last Friday. We called Enterprise and discovered that there would be no issue with us retaining the car through Thursday morning - so we will. This enabled us to spend the day hiking and visiting nearby ports on the west coast of the Cherbourg peninsula.

Regarding the virus, we figured:

• If one of us has it, the other does, or soon will, too, so there's no point distancing from each other.
• Travel by car isn't going to aid transmission in either direction.
• Walking in essentially deserted areas won't hurt anything, either.

The most potentially dangerous thing we did today was visit the downtown Carrefour first thing in the morning to stock up on basics (pasta, UHT milk, coffee, TP, tissues, etc.). It was not very crowded, and people seemed to be making an effort to remain at a distance from each other. There were lines taped on the floor at the checkout counters to remind shoppers not to crowd together while in line. It was all very orderly, and we felt much better once we were sure we had essentials for at least 2 weeks.

SO - into the car, and off to the west coast.

Our first stop was the south side of Cap Le Rozel, which has a spectacular beach. We walked the beach and then hiked on paths on the bluff above, and south of, the beach. The weather was spectacular -- an almost cloudless blue sky, warm sun, and very little wind - nothing like the weather we have come to expect from Cherbourg.

The beach at Cap Le Rozel, from the southern bluffs

From there we drove slowly northward, stopping to walk whenever the opportunity presented itself, such as at this B and B in Le Rozel.

North of Le Rozel we found trails that curve around steep bluffs, with the Atlantic crashing onto the rocks below for accompaniment.

Our final stop was the harbor at Diélette. I may be able to add pictures from Katy's camera at a later date.

France is beautiful. Spring is arriving, and hopefully it won't be entirely spoiled by disease.

Touring east of Cherbourg

Today we had the second partly-sunny day in a row, with no rain in the forecast until the evening, so we decided to rent a car and do some walking in the harbor towns east of Cherbourg. We have visited these before, but under less-than-ideal conditions, so being able to get out and walk without (much) fear of being rained on was really nice.

Our first stop was Gatteville Lighthouse (Phare de Gatteville), the second lighthouse east of Cherbourg. This picture is actually from our earlier visit, made shortly after we returned from our trip to Dusseldorf for the big European boat show.

The tide was very high, with waves crashing over the seawalls on the access road.

[See the update to this, below.]

From there we drove to the nearby town of Barfleur, which has a harbor with a nearly 10-meter tidal swing during spring tides (which is what we had today). Katy took some pictures (not shown here) of the boats actually floating; the last time we were there, they were sitting on the seabed.

There is a lovely church at the entrance to the harbor, which has this sad, if attractive, memorial.

In memory of the fishermen of Barfleur and the surrounding area perished at sea

It seems that all French towns, no matter how small, have at least one very nice Catholic church.

Our next stop was Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, which has an much larger harbor but, unlike Barfleur, well protected from the raw tidal swing by a lock at the harbor entrance. We walked around the harbor and through the town, and had lunch and coffee. Between lunch and coffee, we discovered this nearly-hidden semi-public garden. I just loved the rooflines from the interior.

We also shopped for some specialty foods at Maison Gosselin, which our landlord, Christian, had suggested we visit, and took in a shop near the harbor that had lovely hand-painted postcards. It also had a serving dish with this image, which really captures life on the Cherbourg peninsula in winter.

By then it was almost supper time, so we drove back to Cherbourg and our apartment, making a second, low-tide stop at Phare de Gatteville on the way. Fittingly, it started to sprinkle just as we were walking from the parking lot to our front door.

==========================

So much for the travelogue. You may be wondering how we are. Well, life in Cherbourg is quite pleasant. Our apartment is cozy (small, but comfortable),  there's an excellent farmer's market on Saturdays (and other days, too, but that's the big one), and our boat is coming along well. Katy and I are, IMO, adapting well to being together nearly all the time. We get pissy with each other occasionally, but actually less so than I think we did in Cambridge. We really enjoy cooking together, and with the excellent fresh ingredients we have here, we've been eating very well. We both have folding bicycles, and I've been riding at least 10km most mornings, and usually much more. I've lost a lot of weight, and feel great.

I am loving being retired.

That said - we miss our friends and family pretty ferociously, and that's been aggravated by the scary news we get regarding COVID-19. Given our somewhat solitary live style, I think we're unlikely to be stricken by it soon, and since we're both in pretty decent health, we're not terribly worried about it. But we do worry about all of you back in the U.S. It seems like this will hit the dance and music communities very hard -- not necessarily the illness itself, but the knock-on effects of cancelled dances and concerts. 

It's also strange watching the presidential election season play out from the other side of the Atlantic. We both voted via absentee ballots in the primary and will vote in the general election, but we don't really discuss politics much with each other. That's perhaps a good thing, since it's so generally unsettling. But events in the U.S. feel remote and somewhat unreal. 

We enjoy getting email from y'all, and we're also available on WhatsApp and Signal. Ping us!

-- Jerry

Update to our visit to Gatteville Lighthouse

The day after this entry was posted, we drove back out to Barfleur and walked up the lighthouse - 350 steps or so. The actual light is really nifty.

The view from the platform is pretty incredible.

Towards Cherbourg

Towards Balfleur

Our goodies arrive, and the boat gets a top

Today was a big day for us. Our two pallets of stuff from the U.S. were delivered to the Garcia boatyard, and the coach roof (the last big structural piece of the hull) was glued on to the superstructure.

Our pallets arrived in Rotterdam 6 days ago, and we honestly didn't expect them to reach Cherbourg as quickly as they did. Guillaume, our contact during construction at Garcia, texted us this morning to let us know that our goodies are here.

The "big" pallet

We toodled on out to the yard (Katy on our folding bike, me jogging) and spent much of the day pulling out critical items from our boxes: radio parts that Garcia will need very soon, cruising guides for the French Atlantic coastline and Scotland, Hanabi (a favorite game) and, perhaps best of all, Katy's folding bike.

Our bikes, at home at the apartment

Besides the arrival of our stuff, the coach roof was mounted on our boat today. There was a small army of workers spreading the glue, and then the roof was lowered and bolted down.

Cake frosting? No, lots of glue!

The hull for the coach roof attached

We also had a good discussion with the lead electrician regarding the SSB radio installation. All in all, quite the exciting day!

Domesticity

Today was all about getting settled into our near-term life in Cherbourg. We slept in until 10, still shaking off the jet lag from the trip over. We had a very late brunch at home and then went out for a walk around the marina. On the way back, I took this picture of Katy at the entrance to our apartment.

The apartment is small, but comfortable; the word "cozy" comes to mind.

It has a lovely view of our hosts' garden (complete with cat - can you find it?).

We did more grocery and houseware shopping, and upon return, Katy made a lovely dinner of risotto.

Tomorrow we leave for Brussels, and a visit with our friends Bill and Uschi.

Cherbourg - Day 1

We arrived yesterday evening in Cherbourg after a long day of travel. Owen drove us to the airport on Tuesday evening, along with our 3 huge bags to check and 4 carry-ons. We had no problems at the airport (some of you may know of our last minute ticketing woes...) and chilled for a few hours in the Lufthansa lounge (Katy scored business class tickets - well, la-dee-da!). The flight to Zurich was great in business class - we could actually sleep. The transfer in Zurich went smoothly, and we arrived in Paris in the early afternoon.

After a brief panic at the airport (I managed to leave a carry-on, containing my precious concertina, at baggage claim...), we were soon driving a rental car through the French countryside. We arrived in Cherbourg around 8PM (2AM human body time...) and found our apartment.

The

The host couple is very nice, and they left us with some starter food and drink. After a bit of initial unpacking, we hit the sack.

This morning (Thursday) we did more unpacking and figured out how to make the apartment work for us. We then headed over to the boatyard to meet with Kevin (the SwiftSure representative in France) and get a first look at the boat.

The walk to the yard takes us past the central harbor in Cherbourg.

This was about mid-tide; I'll try to get shots of high and low tide soon, to show off the astounding (to us Cape people...) tidal swing. 

The boat is in the main construction building at the Garcia/Allures yard.

She is very much still a work in progress, but she looks like a boat!

Kevin then took us out in the yard and showed us GX24, the boat built just ahead of ours, and launched this fall. It's now hauled out after its initial trials.

It's a purty thang, isn't it?

After lunch and more discussions at the yard with Garcia, we took off in the car to do some shopping. 

We bought very mundane stuff: some food (fruit, cereal, yogurt, milk, bread, cheese), a couple of pillows and pillowcases, some light bulbs, and extension cord, etc. But shopping was fun. reading labels in French was good for us, and we saw some entertaining goodies in the big "everything" store:

Need some PJs?

Or maybe some yogurt?

After shopping we didn't have enough time to go back to the apartment before meeting Kevin at a sneak preview of the program his SO's circus group is putting on. No photos or video, but it was fantastic.

The back to the apartment for a quick dinner, a little more organizing, and this blog post.

Our lives in pallets

We've spent the past month sorting though all of our remaining household goods, separating them into groups:

• Discard (and why did we bother moving these to Falmouth???)
• Donate to the Falmouth public library, Goodwill, or the Salvation Army
• Fob off on Re-gift to friends and family
• Pack and store at Gentle Giant for the duration
• Leave in Falmouth for our return in 2021
• Take with us on the plane, for our first couple of months in France
• Stuff into boxes for shipment via slow boat to France

Yesterday we nailed down that last category:

And a few minutes ago, off they went:

There were several moments of excitement. When the driver lowered the tailgate, it stopped about halfway down. He fiddled around with the control wiring for a bit and discovered that a fuse might have been blown, and he didn't have a spare. I asked to look at the fuse; it's the same style we use on the boat, and luckily we still have a box of stuff to take to the Bonnie lass, including this:

Yea, team - it worked.

The other moment came as he started to load the first pallet (the heavier of the two) onto the tailgate. The box tilted............and didn't fall over. Whew!

We're Out!

On Thursday we moved out of our home of the past 25 years to temporary housing in Katy's parents' house in Falmouth.

 In spite of our best efforts, we still wound up moving a lot of stuff that we KNOW we won't keep, whether in long term storage, on the boat, or in Falmouth. So we're now in the throes of still more weeding and organizing.

Thursday was also the day Alison had her jaw surgery. It was on my mind all day, and has been pretty steadily since then. I'm so grateful that Owen, Margaret and David are all with her through this; it's a pretty hairy procedure with a long recovery time. The word this morning, though is that Alison is much improved from yesterday, so things are moving in the right direction.

There's still so much to do before we leave: pack up the pallet of stuff to ship to France, learn enough French to not TOTALLY behave like ugly Americans, organize all the stuff we are leaving at the Cape house, and -- say good-bye for now to all of our friends and relatives. There are moments when I can't really believe we are doing this.

Being at the Cape, though, is a welcome respite from the past few weeks in Cambridge. Having the house gradually become less and less livable was stressful and discouraging. Here, we are certainly still surrounded by chaos, but we have a table to eat on, a kitchen to cook in, and a peaceful view out the windows.

We're steadily checking off the many bureaucratic boxes to complete before we leave: completing my Medicare signup, changing our mailing address with a gazillion organizations, getting our long-stay visa from the French consulate, setting up a Euro-friendly debit card, and on and on. But the list has gotten a lot shorter.

So - farewell, Orchard Street. Hello, Falmouth, and soon hello, Cherbourg.

Killer Rabbit Redux

Long ago, in an Internet far, far, away  --  sometime in the early 2000s -- there were no images of the infamous encounter between President Jimmy Carter and a "killer rabbit". The story was, at the time it occurred (1979), a bit of a Rorschach test of one's opinion of the president, but the image itself remained safely locked away in the Jimmy Carter Library, as Al Gore had not yet invented the Internet.

This was also very early days for blogs, and at the time I was doing my own crude blogging, which consisted of putting up pages on my own web site, narsil.org. The site was then hosted on a Dell computer in my basement, which has since gone Tango Uniform; the content does live on in the Internet Wayback Machine. The current site is a much less expansive site, as I've moved my blogging here.

Anyway - for some reason, in April of 2004, the "killer rabbit" incident came up, and I went searching for the infamous photo. It was unobtainium. With little hope, I contacted the Jimmy Carter Library and asked about the image.

To my great surprise, I received a prompt and very polite response, advising me that the photo was, in fact, in their archives, and they could send me a disk (remember CDs?) containing the image for a modest fee. A few days later, I had it.

See also my original web page about this.

Why bring this up now? Well, as we prepare to move out of our house, I came across the original disk.

The Cuttyhunk trip, 2019

As I noted elsewhere, Katy and I sailed the Bonnie Lass to Cuttyhunk and back this summer. Here are two pictures from that trip. First, sailing downwind on the spinnaker. Katy took this from the Pudge, which we were towing behind us:

While trolling underway, Katy caught our supper:

We got our new, temporary "boat business cards"

I decided to get some temporary "boat business cards" for us, since I don't yet have the new address memorized, and this will help me.

I took that picture of the spinnaker two years ago, when Katy and I sailed the Bonnie Lass from Falmouth to Chatham and back.

The emptying of a home

Today some gentle giants came to our house and hauled away a truckload of life.

It's strange walking through the house and seeing all the empty spaces.

RuthAnne's room

Owen's room

the basement

Katy's sewing room shelves (the plastic boxes will be filled with more stuff to move out)

A few days ago I took the bulk of the vinyl over to Stereo Jack's, and my AR turntable to Rockin' Bob's.

The front parlor and dining room are still full of things to give away. 

It's a strange mix of feelings: relief, sadness, excitement that we're getting close to actually moving to the boat -- a swirl.

Saying Goodbye

Tomorrow we will close on the sale of our home of the past 25 years. It's an odd feeling. On the one hand, I am SO EAGER to be starting this next phase of our lives, and we've been preparing for this moment for over a year now. OTOH -- these walls resonate with the lives lived within them for the past quarter century.

Our daughter RuthAnne was up from D.C. this past weekend for a Gyro training. As I said goodbye to her on Monday morning, she noted that this was the LAST TIME she would ever leave this house. That must have been strange for her, and I'm sure it will be for me, too.

We've tagged much of the furniture and many other objects in the house with one of three colors of painter's tape: green for "give away", blue for "send to long term storage", and purple for "goes to the Cape at least temporarily". We have movers coming next Thursday to haul the first batch of stuff off to storage. It's all going very fast now.

"But I've loved these days."

I'm getting my Technician class ham radio license

Today I passed the exam to get my Technician class amateur radio license. This has been a dream of mine since I was a kid.

I should receive my call sign in about a week.

Next stop: my General license.

Update: I am now KC1MCS. Woot!

Things I learned today

I keep learning unrelated factoids.

• The ship station license that we get for our on-board VHF radio winds up being used for everything radio-like on the boat, including AIS.
• Once a boat has been documented as a U.S. flag vessel, that documentation number is used for the life of the boat. It's not particular to a specific owner.
• The one rollover per year rule for IRAs does not apply to 401(k)-to-IRA rollovers. 
• Vanguard's hold times can be terrible.
• A deep cleaning (AKA root scaling and planing) isn't really as terrible as I expected, at least not at Gentle Dental in Porter Square. (Thank you, Lea Fontanella!)
• Manning Publications has a very decent policy on books: if you purchase a paper book from them, they will give you the book in any of several digital forms for free.
• Hey, my Hayden duet concertina has been tuned by The Button Box, and I can start playing again soon!

Hey, I'm retiring!

Long time, no update. Well, much has happened.

Katy and I are about to move onto a 45' sailboat, a Garcia Exploration 45. We will be moving to France early next year, and begin sailing in late April or May.

More to follow, but to say the least, we're very excited!

Just checking in...

For those few people who actually follow this blog - I'm still here, and I intend to start posting more regularly again.

Command Line Argument Processing

This is another in my series of "simple programming techniques I don't want to keep reinventing."

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(int argc, char**argv)
{
  opterr = 0; /* disable auto error reporting */
  char opt = 0;
  /* These copies are needed because optind and optarg aren't
     necessarily visible to debuggers, and you often want them. */
  int myoptind = 1;
  char* myoptarg = 0;

  int a = 0;
  const char* b = 0;

  while (((char) -1) != (opt = (char) getopt(argc, argv, "ab:"))){
    myoptind = optind;
    myoptarg = optarg;

    switch(opt){

    case 'a':
      a = 1;
      break;

    case 'b':
      b = myoptarg;
      break;

    default:
      {
        char erropt = optopt;
        fprintf(stdout, "unrecognized option '%c'\n", erropt);
      }
      break;
    }
  }

  if (myoptind < argc){
    fprintf(stdout, "unused arguments:");
    while (myoptind < argc){
      fprintf(stdout, " %s", argv[myoptind++]);
    }
    fprintf(stdout, "\n");
  }

  fprintf(stdout, "a: %d\nb: %s\n", a, b);
  fflush(stdout);
  return 0;
}

Thinking about gun violence in America

Embed from Getty Images

This week's edition of On The Media focused -- once again -- on gun violence.

The whole show is worth listening to, but the last segment really got my attention. It's entitled, "Stopping gun violence without new laws", and it describes a program for addressing urban gun violence - a massively unreported part of the problem. OTM refers to it as CeaseFire, but it changed its name in 2012 to Cure Violence. Cure Violence treats gun violence as a public health problem, and takes a very data-driven approach to solving it. What's really great, though, is that Cure Violence offers a way to do something about guns that the NRA not only can't stop but isn't even opposed to.

They have gotten my support, and I urge you to support them, too.

Tiny Desk Concerts

Today's Doonesbury at the Washington Post led me to NPR's Tiny Desk Concert series. Nifty! The one that hooked me is this one:

Scott Atran, again

In the aftermath of the November 13, 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, anthropologist Scott Atran has an article in the Guardian discussing how ISIs operates, how and why "the West" fails to understand the true nature of the threat posed by ISIS, and why this misunderstanding is so lethal.

I've written about Atran before; his 2011 interview with Krista Tippett is still timely.

Atran's Guardian piece led me to his comments at the U.N. in April 2015, which contains policy recommendations for Western governments. Those, in turn led me to the website of Peace Direct, an organization I intend to find out more about. A quick read suggests they are on the right track, but then the picture on this page about their work in Pakistan sort of screams "cultural insensitivity"...

People

Today's New York Times Magazine has an extended interview with Marilynne Robinson, an author I must confess I've never read. Parts of the interview are just brilliant:

This notion (fact?) that we are all mutually incomprehensible is at the core of the conflict, and resultant suffering, that pervades our lovely world.

"Apathy works like forgiveness"

A review in this week's NYTimes book review prompted me to re-read "Goodbye, Columbus." It's better than I remembered, and I'm just finishing "Eli, the Fanatic."

Roth is better than "Portnoy's Complaint." This book proves it.

Installing Ubuntu via the Internet using a small USB stick

I needed to install Ubuntu on a new computer that had no operating system on it, and my older, available Windows system does not have a reliable DVD burner. Further, the only USB stick I could find in the house is small - 512MB. No problem, I thought - I used to do network installs of Linux all the time. How hard could it be?

WOW - really hard! These days there seems to be an assumption that everyone is able to download a 2GB iso and burn it to either a DVD or a largish USB stick.

Eventually, though,  I found what I needed:

• A "mini ISO" for Ubuntu. This is a very small bootable image with just enough bits to be able to run a network install, and...
• The "LinuxLive" USB creator (aka "lili"), which creates a bootable image of an ISO on a USB stick.

Once I had these, all I had to do was run lili, "burn" the mini ISO to the USB stick, and boot the sucker. I was now in what felt like a late-1990s-era text-mode Linux installer. Hooray!