|
Post by mickthecactus on Jun 17, 2017 18:43:02 GMT
And they won...
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Jun 17, 2017 23:23:16 GMT
Medina sounds: people walking, talking, a crying baby, some music ...
|
|
|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Jun 18, 2017 8:06:18 GMT
Sunday morning tv news....sparrows chirping along the back garden fence...dog snoring next to me on the sofa...
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Jun 22, 2017 10:04:32 GMT
I heard a lot more street noises last night, due to my windows being open and so many people out on that street at 3 a.m. due to both the heat and Ramadan. Looking outside, I saw that the boulangerie was open and was selling ice cream, drinks and pastries.
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Jun 22, 2017 14:14:19 GMT
yesterday was fete de la musique, so once again until 10 p.m. it sounded like a band is playing in our apartment, and then after they stopped, there were still lots of voices making noise for quite a while ...
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Jun 22, 2017 14:19:17 GMT
And I saw that you were logged on around 3 a.m. (2 a.m. in Morocco) just like me.
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Jun 22, 2017 23:42:48 GMT
actually 1 a.m. in morocco - during ramadan in summer, they change the clock another hour, so the difference to home is 2 hours ... but i was home already, trying to catch up with all the many internet things i didn't do while away. today i hope to be in bed already by 2 a.m. ...
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Jul 13, 2017 21:18:26 GMT
I can hear fireworks far away in the suburbs without being able to see any trace of them. Quite a few towns around Paris have their fireworks on the 13th because they know it is impossible to compete with the fireworks in Paris on the 14th. The far off booms make me think of how Parisians heard what they thought was Big Bertha in 1918. (It was actually another cannon with the specific name Pariser Kanonen.) These were long range cannons that could shoot more than 120 kilometres, and they fired 367 shells at Paris between 23 March and 9 August 1918, killing 256 people.
The booms have ended now, and the population can dance through the night to old fashioned accordeon music or new wave sounds.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jul 13, 2017 22:47:25 GMT
War. Shit.
Forgot it was That Time in France. Have fun, since you missed out on fireworks last year, Kerouac.
The sound in my house is the fan. It's hot & muggy outside.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Jul 14, 2017 12:20:53 GMT
Thunder boomers in Montana.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Jul 14, 2017 14:28:30 GMT
That's because you have such a Big Sky.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Jul 14, 2017 20:16:12 GMT
Guess so. We could use more rain, so I'm not complaining.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jul 26, 2017 2:32:18 GMT
I've got my own private Lila Downs concert going, as she is performing in the auditorium on the hill above my house. Can't say it's the best sound quality this way, though.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jul 29, 2017 4:16:41 GMT
I have really good next door neighbors -- two young guys who are very pleasant and not noisy. However, they have a young beagle who I think is very sad and lonesome. He's home alone right now, out on their small front porch. No lights are on & since they have a high wall in front of their house, it's pitch black over there. Every few minutes for about an hour now he lets loose with that loud beagle bark-howl. I feel really sorry for the little guy, but I wish his people would come home or that he'd just go to sleep until they do.
|
|
|
Post by mickthecactus on Jul 29, 2017 7:43:16 GMT
My daughter has a beagle and I know that bark-howl only too well. Particularly when he wants to get up in the morning....
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jul 29, 2017 16:07:16 GMT
Piercing, ain't it? Shortly after writing it about it, I finally went out there. I'm reluctant to interact with the doggy very much because ever since he arrived he has so badly wanted to come into my yard, where there is companionship and life. At any rate, I took him out some food and water. He absolutely ravaged the kibble, along with the big second helping I gave him. (I was wrong about it being dark -- they had left their porch light on.)
|
|
|
Post by mickthecactus on Jul 29, 2017 18:01:43 GMT
They are but they are lovely.
They live to eat and it doesn't necessarily have to be edible. Luca once ate a bag of bird seed with obvious consequences.
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Aug 3, 2017 21:11:38 GMT
the laptop, which is kind of noisy, and my mom walking around and now that she's sitting, talking to the cat. ah and now she just turned on the tv. now she turned it off again.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 3, 2017 21:56:44 GMT
Luca once ate a bag of bird seed with obvious consequences. He perched in a tree over the driveway and pooped on the car?
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Aug 4, 2017 19:30:51 GMT
my little nephew crying ...
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Aug 12, 2017 15:18:21 GMT
I heard the crowd from afar as another migrant march came along the street from Porte de la Chapelle. Maybe about 200 people. They were chanting something or other, impossible to make out the language. This group seemed to be all Sudanese and Somali and the fact that at my corner they chose the street behind my building instead of the street in front of it seemed to confirm this -- all of the Sudanese and Somali restaurants and shops are in that street, so probably some shopping was done at the same time. I would normally approve of such actions since obviously something needs to be done -- my neighbourhood is looking more and more like Lampedusa -- but these poor refugees are not acting on their own. They are being organised by a couple of French anarchist groups whose agenda (which can be seen in their graffiti and posters) is "burn police cars," "resist all authority" and "destroy all borders." Well, the marchers themselves are very calm and respectful, and they are probably bored out of their minds, so it is good for them to take a walk around the area from time to time.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 12, 2017 15:57:54 GMT
Oh, very interesting snapshot of your area along with excellent insight into not only that particular protest, but the good and bad of protests in general.
I know you've talked about the situation with asylum seekers in your neighborhood before, but from your comment about Lampedusa I'm wondering if there are more street-sleepers, soup kitchens, etc. now.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Aug 12, 2017 18:03:13 GMT
Here is the layout on a map. The red circle is where the official refugee centre is at Porte de la Chapelle. It holds about 400 people. The green rectangles are where all of the "overflow" migrants are camped out in dreadful conditions. There are about 1000 of them at the moment. Their camps have been dismantled 7 times already (last time was about 3 weeks ago), but they reform within 48 hours. When they are evacuated from their location (and the tents and blankets and other things are usually destroyed), usually at 7 a.m. -- but they are told the night before by the authorities what will happen; it is not at all a surprise police raid except for the fact that the information has probably only reached about half of the 'residents' at best. The police arrive with buses to take them to a variety of housing places. Since it is still the school holiday period, a lot of these are school gymnasiums, but as soon as school goes back in session, it will be a new problem again. The government offers longer term help with papers, housing, maybe even jobs but almost always far from Paris in groups of only about 20 or 30. That is where the plan fails, because 1) these people want to stay in Paris if they can't get to England through Calais and 2) they want to stay together with people they know or at least of their own culture or ethnic group. So a lot of them get bussed several hundred kilometres away, but it doesn't take them long to find their way back to Paris because they are often sent to warehouses or whatever, which is of course better than sleeping in the street, but these places are always far from the town centre (because hey, who wants migrants downtown when they might rape your women and eat your children?) -- nobody ever proposes a desirable place for them to stay because most of the local mayors or residents don't want these people in the first place and just had their arms twisted. So the camps reform again and again. Yes, there are NGOs feeding them and offering medical assistance and a lot of locals buying biscuits and fruit and water for them out of their own pocket, keeping in mind that it is officially a crime to help illegal migrants. My street is fuller and fuller of migrants because the ticket checkers in the metro and bus have gone into overdrive checking tickets due to the throngs of migrants piling in free of charge. Just today I took a bus through the area, and we had 6 ticket checkers working the crowd. They only captured two, because now the migrants prefer to walk between Porte de la Chapelle and Place de la Chapelle (a bit less than 2 kilometres) where they have most of their meeting areas. One new thing in my area is that every single bus stop or taxi stand has a migrant plugged into it, sitting on the pavement. When all of the shelters were changed a couple of years ago, a phone charging socket was added to the edicule and these are clearly extremely appreciated (and needed) by the migrants. But in terms of the sound around you, most of these migrants are suffering in silence.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 12, 2017 18:53:40 GMT
I so much appreciate your very considered response. Because Calais has been in the news again the past two or three days, I've been wondering how the migrant situation in Paris was unfolding. Your explanation of why people return to where they were ousted from in Paris is particularly pertinent -- and you'd think obvious to the powers that be.
It doesn't seem that anything crucial has changed or that anything new is being tried since the change of presidents. Of course it's easy to criticize any government in this kind of extreme situation, forgetting that there may not be any budget in place to address the problem meaningfully.
|
|
|
Post by mossie on Aug 13, 2017 16:24:07 GMT
Thanks for that explanation, migrants have become a fact of life. I suppose you can't blame them for trying to get to where they are led to believe is heaven, (but it very much ain't), but it must deprive their own countries of many able bodied people who would be better employed sorting out their own mess, rather than adding to ours.
The anarchists or rabble rousers, should be rounded up and shot.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 13, 2017 17:11:21 GMT
it must deprive their own countries of many able bodied people who would be better employed sorting out their own mess Yes, but ....... the overwhelming majority of migrants leave homelands they love because the mess is that of terrible government, complete national economic crisis, &/or war.
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Aug 14, 2017 11:44:02 GMT
The anarchists or rabble rousers, should be rounded up and shot. sorry, um ... but no matter who you are speaking about, "rounded up and shot" is not a remark i can just let go by ... as for staying to "sort out" their country, i would suppose young men is not usually what their countries are lacking ...
|
|
|
Post by onlyMark on Aug 14, 2017 13:43:58 GMT
Re: "rounded up and shot" - It is not a literal statement but used to express, in the UK, finding a serious solution to overcome a problem caused by a person/people, when most else has failed. Nobody advocates the literal meaning. It is a term used regularly, in frustration and can be in humour, and originated (probably) with WWI and WWII films where it was invariable the the German Obergruppenführer (yep, a rank from WWII, not WWI) at some point said to the captured prisoners, "You vill be taken outside and shot!" Every war film, every time.
In films associated with Erwin Rommel/North African war zone, "You vill be taken out into the desert and shot!" is more likely. "Casual drug users "ought to be taken out and shot," Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates told a Senate hearing. "A rail union boss has called for Conservative ministers to be 'taken out and shot'" "Rachel Sylvester quotes one Downing Street source as saying that the Health Secretary "should be taken out and shot." The list is endless.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Aug 14, 2017 14:40:00 GMT
In any case, most of the migrants want nothing better than to go home permanently if the political of economic situation of their country ever improves. Many go home anyway after being horribly disappointed after discovering that the West is not Eldorado.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Dec 23, 2017 4:07:44 GMT
Some of you know that I live just below the hill upon which Oaxaca's open-air auditorium is perched. All day today, as has happened on far too many weekends, there has been an over-amplified sort of ecstatic group mooing from up there which is shredding my noise hating nerves. It's after 10 pm now. They must. stop. soon.
|
|