THE TELL-TALE SLICED-LEMON SCAR

Etched in the flesh of the upper arm or occasionally lower buttock of any baby boomer who travelled overseas is an indistinct circle, a flesh-colored permanent tatoo from the years when smallpox had not yet been eradicated.
The vaccination left a impressive pock scar one bore as a badge of honor:  I travel and I have been marked for travel.

The campaign led by the World Health Organization to eliminate smallpox was successful, thanks to intelligent planning and management, dogged persistence, and adequate funding.
1972 was the last year travellers were vaccinated, and 1990 the final year for the US military.

I thought I'd photograph a couple of my vaccination scars for the record and show them here.
But I looked in the mirror and surprise! The proud scars that had lasted over fifty years are now indistinguishable from marks and freckles and insect bites of various origins on on my upper arm.
I thought I was an anomaly.

So I checked my husband's arm that had long born its lemon-slice over years of marriage and lo! his scar had also gone the way of all flesh!

So the request is out:

"Seeking genuine smallpox scar to record as photo-relic on blog"

But wait, there's always Google.

I search "smallpox vaccination scars photos" I find Flickr answers the appeal.
Yes, there is indeed at least one site that has over a thousand photos of people displaying, voluntarily or nay, their shots.

A fine example of two scars on one arm:

It is worth a visit to this website to see everything from demure maidens smiling shyly at the camera to vamps-with-scars (check out the thighs).
(The photos are protected, they cannot be displayed here).

Perhaps they were used to show just how sexy it was to get vaccinated, or perhaps it was a forerunner of today's rage to tattoo....

https://www.flickr.com/photos/49602798@N04/11499125306/in/pool-677958@N25/

Not to put a damper on the matter, it appears that quite recently some old vials of smallpox virus were found refrigerated somewhere on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in  Bethesda, Maryland. The battle against smallpox may be over, but perhaps not the war.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/smallpox-vials-found-in-storage-room-of-nih-campus-in-bethesda/2014/07/08/bfdc284a-06d2-11e4-8a6a-19355c7e870a_story.html?hpid=z1

FAMILY AND HISTORY

There but for the sweep of history......am I, born in Paris of second generation immigrant parents, just after the end of World War II. Well perhaps not.
My grandmother and grandfather made the difficult journey over land from Russia to France in the early twentieth century, looking for a better life. Despite rudimentary living conditions and tough piece-work sewing fur pelts together into coats, my fourteen year-old grandmother apparently adored the French capital. She learned to prepare French dishes, sew beautifully, enjoy the beauty of an incredible city and live the life Parisian, wheeling her baby girl, my aunt, through the Jardins de Luxembourg, singing her French lullabies at night. 

At the urging of relatives, the young family decided to join them in the US until the war was over. In 1915 they were certain it would be over within a year and they could return to Paris. My grandfather, having already been forced to serve for years in the Czar's army was not about to join another one.

If it hadn't been for the Great War, I might have been born French.
But then with deportations in World War II my mother might not have survived and I'd never have been born.

If Archduke Franz Ferdinand's coach hadn't (unpredictably) gone down the street where Gavrilo Princip was lurking, the murders might not have taken place, and no Great War. 
'Ifs' are debatable, but the terrible events of the Great War are not.
And the rest is history? Well not exactly.

"Despite his message of goodwill, Komsic presides over only a part of an ethnically divided city. Nineteen years after the war ended, Bosnia operates as two "entities", the predominantly Muslim and Croat Federation, and the overwhelmingly Serb-dominated Serb Republic (RS). The highly autonomous RS was recognised by the peace settlement. Many Muslims regard it as the product of ethnic cleansing, while for Serbs its existence is a guarantor of peace.

Swaths of the capital lie in the RS, where the administration of Istocno (east) Sarajevo operates separately, the two not even joined by public transport. In emergency cases, citizens of Istocno Sarajevo cannot be treated in the city centre's general hospital, Komsic notes, instead having to be taken 120 miles to Banja Luka, the capital of the RS."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/27/gavrilo-princip-sarajevo-divided-archduke-franz-ferdinand-assassination

The above article describes the great divisions within contemporary Sarajevo and the country as a whole. Princip as a revered and actively commemorated hero / Princip as a wild criminal who unleashed hell on the world.
Divided passions survive intact into the twenty-first century, fester and divide communities, cities, countries. Sarajevo is scarred, Bosnia is divided.

I never met my grandmother. She died young in Philadelphia in 1934. 
My mother, her second daughter, left America for Europe in 1945, and worked with the Red Cross in Greece, then in Geneva.
My mother died peacefully six years ago to the day at the age of 90 only three miles from the French border. 
You could say she was fortunate. She was born in the US at the end of the Great War. She did not suffer during the Second World War. She lived in Europe in a time of relative peace. The Europe her own mother had loved. The gorgeous flowers and bushes she cultivated in her country garden and her love of birds were intense expressions of beauty.

But she carried within her the collective memory of pogroms, the deaths from typhus, the struggle of immigration and poverty and the death of a young mother. She talked about this only occasionally, but her emotional struggle was patent.
My mother bore this history within her her whole life.

FREEGLOT and LIPPENHEIMER

I know everyone is busy, and time is out of our hands.
Still some things are worth spending what little time we have left on. (Can't fix that sentence)
Here's a flash pitch for my two favorite blogs:  

FREEGLOT AND LIPPENHEIMER


FREEGLOT
To be read and savored, quoted and shared. 
I know Freeglot personally, but I don't know Lippenheimer at all.
I don't even know if that's his name at all, and if not how he chose it.   

Freeglot is a brilliant linguist, a  lover of language in all its strange permutations, and writes on everything, including language of course, travel, books, gender issues, the Netherlands where he lives, twentieth-century history and politics, pre-twentieth-century history and politics, and you name it. 
His latest observational gem is Asparagomania
http://freeglot.wordpress.com/ 


LIPPENHEIMER
I stumbled onto his blog while preparing my Goldfinch piece. He'd already hit the ground running with "Bronzefinch, Maybe". 
He's read just about everything and ranges from just plain intelligent and witty to wet-your-pants funny. 
Try Sexy Chewing Gum Talent Scout. 
http://lippenheimer.wordpress.com/

Both writers are so well-read you wonder if they have time to do things ordinary mortals do, such as cutting their toenails or dawdling in the bathroom.

The President at lunch - vive la différence!

Micheline Calmy-Rey (part 1)

It was a lunch and book launch.

Brother Jeff sent me an invitation to the Forum Suisse de Politique Internationale, a sort of lunch club with monthly speakers. 
The date was February 28th, and the speaker was Micheline Calmy-Rey - the twice former president of Switzerland. So I cancelled gym that day.

One of the things I love about Switzerland, and one of the reasons celebrities love it here (besides certain tax advantages), is the utter naturalness that the Swiss have around celebrity. 

People here do not gawk at stars, they are rarely sycophants. And there is seldom need for a (showy) security detail. 
The Swiss may be less reactive as well as less passionate than the French (generalization), but there is virtue in this restraint.
A president or ex-president can circulate without hoo-ha, do what protocol requires, but still be an ordinary citizen. The president is elected from the Conseil Fédéral, who rotate the presidency - a full term is just one year. Not enough time to acquire illusions or delusions of power. A president represents, but in no way runs the country as such. 

Calmy-Rey was was a conseillère on the Conseil Fédéral from 2003 to 2011, head of the department of foregin affairs,  and president of the Swiss Confederation in both 2007 and 2011.
What is interesting about Calmy-Rey is her active, vocal involvement in foreign affairs, at times controversial at home and abroad. Despite being a woman, Switzerland's second woman president--Ruth Dreyfuss was the first -  and a socialist, she successfully navigated the waters up in Berne. 
(More about her politics in part 2).

The US president is a form of elected royalty. Americans love inaugurations -- the quasi-regal grandeur and the huge publicity. We tend to congratulate ourselves on how (US) democracy is such a success, on the fact that our presidents are not dictators (no they are not) and that we've somehow re-validated America. We vote therefore we are.
Americans love or hate the president, often changing opinion over the four years (or more). We sustain the belief that a president can truly make a difference, and are passionate, driven and more than a tad unrealistic in our view of what a newly elected official can do.
The Swiss president may be a calm diplomat for a neutral country, or as was Micheline Calmy-Rey and outspoken diplomat with a world vision -- the rotating Swiss presidency is a fine institution. 


* La Suisse que je souhaite by Micheline Calmy Rey, Editions Favre S.A., Lausanne

NAILYMPICS?? I kid you not.

Keystone/AP/Alessandra Tarantino

A model presents her, um, paw....

http://www.20min.ch/ro/life/lifestyle/story/Romande-championne-du-monde-de-nail-art-30713696

The Swiss gold-medal winner Heidi Roch-Burch, of Fribourg, was celebrated in the local giveaway newsrag 20minutes. She won in the free-style category known as "French Twist".

The competitors had only three hours to decorate their model's nails at the Nailympics in Rome!
(btw there were 600 participants from 38 countries, in case you think it's limited to just the fanatic few).

Unfortunately, in their excitement, 20minutes and lessentiel neglected to specify which nails had won! At first I thought it was the above talented talons, but I don't think so, as Ms Roch-Burch apparently won with a stiletto nail design (see example below).

Oh well, they're all spectacular in a sexy, spooky, slinky sort of way.
And other competitions are coming you way soon: The Swiss NailArt Trophy, then Dubai, then....?

http://www.lessentiel.lu/fr/lifestyle/dossier/beaute/story/Elle-est-la-championne-du-monde-du-nail-art-28935155

Heidi Roch-Burch

SWISS VOTE: THE CHEESE STANDS......ALONE

http://www.tdg.ch/dossiers/votations-9-fevrier-2014/dossier2.html?dossier_id=2517

Thank you Geneva -- you opposed the initiative by 60,9% ! 

In fact (see map) all of French speaking Switzerland opposed this disruptive initiative.

But all of Switzerland went to the polls on Sunday. And Switzerland approved the UDC's proposal "contre l'immigration de masse" .
"l'immigration de masse"  evokes images of salivating hordes at the border, waiting to rush in to trample the pristine landscape and take over all the jobs, housing and welfare.  And the voters who approved were scared.

The vote of approval is a powerful message with negative impact on a basically prosperous country. An overwhelming majority of Swiss economists, social experts, politicians and industralists have been against this xenophobic initiative.  

It was a vote of emotions over logic, and apparent self-protection over dynamism. 
Just like the vote back in 1992  not to join the European Economic  Area. 
Through extensive bilaterals as of 1999 (in effect as of 2002)  Switzerland has been able to recoup some of the losses. Students could now be part of the superb European Erasmus exchange system, filmmaking and theater and countless other activities were not culturally and economically isolated.
A certain equilibrium has been achieved, and unemployment is a modest 4%.  Foreigners are not exactly kicking the Swiss off the assembly-line.

A small for-instance: the HUG, the Geneva Cantonal University Hospital, employs a large number French nurses, doctors and aides. Because they need to. Staffing the hospital will be very problematic if the non-Swiss job-holders have their permits revoked. How does one handle those already holding work permits? Those who have been here three months, a year, four years? Or more? (I imagine it won't happen this way, as it could wreak havoc).

But no-one knows how this negative initiative will play out, and how it can or will be 'respected'. No one was prepared. On Monday politicians began meeting. All those bilaterals will have to be revisited. Back to square one? 
What was driving this vote? It's not so simple; it's not necessarily extremist xenophobia. 
Twenty-eight per cent of Switzerland is non-Swiss. That's hefty.
Gleaned from articulate letters quoted in "Le Monde":
http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2014/02/10/avec-ce-vote-la-suisse-montre-qu-elle-existe-face-au-poids-lourd-europeen_4363520_3214.html

« Il fallait dire stop » par Alexia

"C'est parfait que la votation soit passée serrée ! Oui, il fallait dire stop à une accélération de l'immigration, mais ne pas laisser croire que nous étions des rétrogrades non plus. Concrètement, la vie s'est quand même globalement compliquée ces dernières années, avec une énorme pression en Suisse romande sur les loyers, une grande augmentation de la circulation avec l'arrivée de frontaliers, d'immigrés. Il faut prendre le temps d'intégrer correctement les nouveaux arrivants".

She says life has become more complex, rents are higher, traffic is denser. Let's take the time to properly integrate the new arrivals.

• « Exister face au poids lourd européen » par Sebastien M. (Genève, employé de banque)

J'ai voté oui. J'y ai longuement réfléchi, ai pesé le pour et le contre, lu beaucoup d'avis contradictoires. Et je dois avouer qu'il n'y avait pas d'argumentation structurée au refus de ce texte. Le seul argument entendu (et rabâché) était : attention, l'Europe va sévir si le peuple suisse accepte l'initiative. Cela a attisé la défiance du peuple suisse face à une Europe se voulant hégémonique. Avec ce vote, il y a ce sentiment « d'exister » face au poids lourd qu'est l'Europe. Les conséquences ? On verra bien, mais il y a fort à parier qu'elles ne seront pas aussi catastrophiques que l'UE veut bien le faire croire...

He says the only argument against the initiative was that Europe would "sévir" -- sort of rise up against little Switzerland. Now he says the country has the feeling it "exists", facing up (a sort of David and Goliath) to Europe's heavy hegemony. He doesn't think it'll be as catastrophic as the EU wants us to believe. Hope he's right.
People have reacted to the spectacular and very rapid change in contemporary life, and have voted to slow it down in a particular way. 
It's a retro vote, but also a vote of perplexity and pain.

This all reminds me of the old children's song "The Farmer in the Dell":

Children circle round, hands joined, and one child plays the farmer, who then takes a wife, who takes a child etc.

The farmer in the dell
The farmer in the dell
Heigh-ho the derry-oh
The farmer in the dell!

The farmer takes a wife
The farmer takes a wife 
etc.
The wife takes the child
etc.
The child takes the dog,
etc.
dog takes cat, cat takes rat, rat take cheese, and...

The cheese stands alone
The cheese stands alone
Heigh-ho the derry-oh
The cheese stands alone.

The other characters then rejoin the circle and one child--the cheese chosen by the rat--is left in the middle......turning round and round alone as the song ends.

HEY JAY Z ......... DON'T RIP OFF AN OLD SWISS MAN

Flagrant - not even a word of apology or acknowledgment. 
Listen to these two recordings on YouTube. They're not long, but you don't need long to realize Jay Z has done more than borrow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxsnaamt6gI    Bruno Spoerri's   "On the way" 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1Sboc05DhA     Jay Z 's   "Versus"

Clare O'Dea writes on January 28th 2014:

 'Veteran Swiss jazz and electronic musician Bruno Spoerri has accused Jay Z, one of the United States’ most successful hip hop artists, of illegally using a 1978 music sample in the rapper’s latest album Magna Carta Holy Grail.

'"In a way I’m flattered that a relatively young rapper takes a sample from an old man, a sample that is about 35 years old,” 78-year-old Spoerri told swissinfo.ch, speaking from his home in Zurich.

“On the other hand I’m furious because it would have been so simple to clear the sample. All it would have needed was a call or an email to the company and I think it would have been relatively cheap.” 

...........The 1978 track On the Way was composed by Spoerri for the film Lilith. Financially, the two musicians are at opposite ends of the music spectrum.

In 2012, Forbes estimated the net worth of Jay Z – real name Shawn Carter – from music and other businesses at $500 million (CHF450 million). Jay Z and Justin Timberlake won a Grammy award on January 26 for their collaboration on another track from Magna Carta Holy Grail.

Spoerri, who still performs once or twice a month, says what matters most to him is an apology.'

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/Jay_Z_accused_of_stealing_Swiss_music_sample.html?cid=37830970

 See also http://www.srf.ch/radio-srf-3/musik/bruno-spoerri-jay-z-spielt-auf-zermuerbung

Bruno Spoerri is a serious working musician, the first electronic music composer in Switzerland, a sax player, and he deserves proper recognition!

SRF 3/Carmen Köppel 

            Getty Images

Getty Images