Blogging from Meudon, France - just outside of Paris

Friday, October 30, 2020

I just wrote a long description about what the first day of a country-wide shutdown is like, what we have to do when we go out to justify being out, and how much the government is doing for all the non-essential businesses that have been shut down and all the people who suddenly find themselves without jobs. Between finishing the text and trying to upload several photos I took on my walk this morning, I lost the entire post.

It’s probably just as well, since it was quite long. The point is that I wanted to draw a comparaison between France and the US when it comes to living the values that people expect and rely on from their government. The French motto is Liberty, Equality and Fraternity - not the kind where you get drunk and do destructive and despicably impulsive acts. Fraternity is supporting and having some empathy for others. There but for the grace of Buddha go I. People kvetch, but in they end, since Covid and the first shutdown, charities in France have seen contributions go up by over %30 on average.

Anyway, if I can figure out how to get Wix to add these posts to my website along with some photos I hope to be able to upload as well, I plan to track how things go. Our restrictions are pretty narrow. We must print and fill out an official justification for leaving the house. We can only go out for an hour each day and that can be no further than 1 kilometer from home. This being said, no one was controlling any of that while I was out.

I’m hoping to work from this iPad to finish the novel I started almost 3 years ago. I have written more than 128,000 words and I still don’t have an ending. So I have a lot of edition and revising to do. I also have another idea for a children’s book. I just hope I won’t gain a lot of weight and become depressed. I plan to keep writing a blog about all of it. I hope some of it will be of interest to you.

Please stay safe, and thanks for reading my blog.