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Judge in theft case released from federal prison
Robert Gavin
1of5Richard J. Sherwood, town justice in Guilderland, is brought into City Court by police officers after being arrested on Friday, Feb. 23, 2018, in Albany, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren/Times Union archive)Lori Van BurenShow MoreShow Less
2of5Ex-Guilderland Town Justice Richard Sherwood, left, is led out the back of the Federal Courthouse for transport after his sentencing for his role in the theft of nearly $12 million from the accounts of elderly clients on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2019 in Albany, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren/Times Union)Lori Van Buren/Times UnionShow MoreShow Less
4of5Thomas Lagan is brought into City Court by police officers after being arrested on Friday, Feb. 23, 2018 in Albany, N.Y. (Brendan Lyons/Times Union) Show MoreShow Less
ALBANY – Disbarred former Guilderland Town Justice Richard Sherwood is out of federal prison less than six months after a judge rejected his request for early release and gripes that life behind bars was "far beyond the pale."
The 61-year-old convicted swindler, a former real estate and trusts attorney who ripped off nearly $12 million from elderly clients — including one with dementia – was sentenced to 4 ½ years in prison in December 2019. His expected release date was October 2023.
But on Dec. 16, Sherwood was released from a federal prison camp in Otisville, Orange County, and placed into the custody of a Philadelphia halfway house. Sherwood was placed on community confinement, which would permit him to be back in his Guilderland home.
"For privacy, safety, and security reasons we do not discuss any individual inmate's conditions of confinement, reason for transfer, or specific release plans," a federal Bureau of Prisons official at Otisville said in an email, adding that Sherwood will be under confinement until Oct. 17, 2023.
On Thursday, no one answered the door at Sherwood's home in an upscale Guilderland neighborhood near a country club. He could not be reached by phone.
In July, Sherwood asked Senior U.S. District Judge Lawrence Kahn for early release from Otisville, referring to himself as a "victim."
Sherwood complained that before being sent to Otisville – a facility that a federal prosecutor in Sherwood's case said was "hardly a rough-and-tumble prison" — he was subjected to incarceration at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and a prison in Allenwood, Pa., alongside murderers, robbers and drug dealers
Sherwood said his experience included a lack of human contact, as well as "extremely limited or long stretches of no use of TV, radio, computer or phone." And after being sent to Otisville, Sherwood griped, he was forced to be in his cell round-the-clock and was served underwhelming meals.
"While I certainly recognize that I am in prison and that the conditions will never be similar to life on the outside, nor should they be, these were never the conditions under which it was intended that I live when my plea was negotiated and I was sentenced," Sherwood told his attorney, Lauren Owens, in February, after the prison's warden rejected his request for release. "They are far beyond the pale."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Barnett, who said Sherwood "betrayed the dead and deceived the dying" in his crimes, filed a motion last summer to oppose Sherwood's request.
"Sherwood seeks to convert his 54-month term of imprisonment into a 19-month, time-served term but his crimes are no less despicable with the passage of time, and a 54-month term of imprisonment remains the correct sentence," he stated.
Kahn rejected Sherwood's request. "No one, regardless of which strata of society they belong to, should be granted special treatment or consideration when confronted with the inarguably stressful conditions extant in the prison system," Kahn said.
Neither the judge nor prosecution have any say in whether the Bureau of Prisons released Sherwood. The federal prison system has granted compassionate release to increased numbers of inmates due to the pandemic.
In early 2018, Sherwood and his former business partner, Thomas Lagan, were arrested and charged in two cases -- one led by the state attorney general's office, the other by federal prosecutors, FBI and criminal investigators for the IRS. That July, Sherwood pleaded guilty to second-degree grand larceny in Albany County Court to settle the state case. He pleaded guilty to in federal court in Albany to conspiracy to launder money and filing a false tax return.
He had underreported his earnings by $4.7 million. Sherwood and Lagan had since 2006 provided estate planning and financial advice to late Walter and Pauline Bruggeman, philanthropists from Niskayuna.
Sherwood admitted that he conspired to steal millions of dollars from the estate of Pauline Bruggeman and her sisters — Anne Urban and Julia Rentz — who died in 2013. Rentz, at the time, had dementia. And Sherwood and Lagan wrote eight checks (each for $14,000) to each other, their wives and children. And they sent tens of thousands of dollars from client estates to pay college tuition for Lagan's daughter.
Lagan, 63, who is serving a six-and-a-half-year term, is still listed as being in a federal prison at Fort Dix in New Jersey.
Reach Robert on
Robert Gavin covers state and federal courts, criminal justice issues and legal affairs for the Times Union. Contact him at rgavin@timesunion.com.


William York, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and member of UGA's Complex Carbohydrate Research Center.
Today, questions asked by genetic researchers are often answered using big data, through revealing larger patterns, trends and other connections. Thanks to a multimillion dollar research project, researchers at the University of Georgia and George Washington University are partners in a project that will soon be able to provide a way for questions asked by those studying glycoscience to be answered by big data, as well.
The National Institutes of Health has jointly awarded a $10 million grant to UGA and GW to build a glycoscience informatics portal, called GlyGen, necessary for glycoscience to advance. GlyGen will also integrate glycan data with gene and protein data, to allow for more effective analysis.
"It is impossible to do meaningful glycobiology research without including information from many different disciplines, including genomics, proteomics, cell biology, developmental biology and biochemistry, to name just a few," said William York, co-principal investigator, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and member of UGA's Complex Carbohydrate Research Center.
Currently, understanding the roles that glycans play in diseases such as cancer involves extensive literature-based research and manual collection of data from disparate databases and websites. GlyGen will simplify this process by providing scientists with a road map that shows key relationships among diverse kinds of information, allowing them to quickly find and retrieve the most current knowledge available and make rapid progress in their glycobiology research.
York, Mazumder and their research teams are working closely with researchers from the United States, Asia, Europe and Australia to build GlyGen. This will allow them to leverage work that has already been done in the field and receive input to make sure GlyGen is accessible to researchers without a glycoscience background.
The project, titled "Computational and Informatics Tools for Research in Glycosciences," will be funded through 2022. The project description is available at https://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?aid=9391499&icde=0.
For more information, visit GlyGen.org.


I chose this university based on the instructor who was here for my primary instrument. I was also drawn to it since it was close to my home in Kewaunee and I was able to get away from home while still being close enough to my house that I could go there if I needed to.
I am able to get things for school when I need instead of depending on my parents. I also have been able to afford my major. Other majors have to buy countless books for their degree, and so do I, but above that, I am also expected to buy all of my own sheet music. It is a good expectation to have, however it can be frustrating at times. Because of financial aid, including the Wisconsin Grant, I am able to buy the things I need for my major.
What will a college degree mean for you?
A college degree for me is going to mean that I have done something for myself. I struggle to put myself first, but I decided to go to college for what I truly had a passion for, which is music. Getting this degree will not only mean that I have become successful on my own. It will allow me to further my education so that I may go out into the world and share what I have learned with those who have the same goal in mind.
Have you learned something during college that you didn't expect?
I do think that I have learned more than I anticipated. I thought that going to college was going to be an experience where you learn, have fun, struggle, and make the friends that you keep the rest of your life. While all that has proven to be true so far, I also have allowed myself to be taught by experience and the example of those around me (professors and other professionals at the College) on how to live a professional and well-mannered life. I thought that was the life I was leading, but it turned out that I had quite a bit of growing up to do, but that's okay!!!
After I graduate from my undergrad, I will be completing a dual masters in euphonium performance and a masters in education. I am not sure where yet I plan to go, but I do have a few universities in mind.


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Corporate Transparency
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Is Marathon Seeking a License to Kill in St. Paul Park?
Posted Feb 14 2021
What is really behind the lockout of nearly 200 Marathon refinery employees in St. Paul Park? Marathon appears to be seeking a backdoor to avoid accountability for industrial accidents, pollution and damage to the environment.
One of the main points of dispute in the lockout centers around Marathon's ability to sub-contract jobs previously done by permanent well-trained employees. Generally, disputes over sub-contracting break down simply as job protection vs. money. In other words, the Union wants to keep their jobs and the company wants to save money by hiring cheaper less skilled labor. In St. Paul Park, however, Marathon's motivation may be far more sinister.
Refinery jobs are incredibly dangerous. Something Marathon and its employees in St. Paul Park know all to well. In 2007, Marathon employee Nick Gunter was burned alive in a tank after an explosion occurred. He was 29 when he died. Incidents like what happened to Nick are not unique to St. Paul Park or rare in the refining industry.
According to the 2015 EHS article "A Deadly Industry", at least 64 people died at refineries between 2005-2015. Its at least 64 because tracking incidents involving sub-contractors is difficult to impossible. According to EHS: "Oil refiners have increasingly contracted out some of their most dangerous jobs to companies that are classified elsewhere."
Rather than addressing issues to make their industry safer, Marathon seems to be re-structuring their workforce in order to give themselves cover in the form of plausible deniability and a scapegoat (the sub-contracting company) when accidents happen. They can continue operating dangerously with less accountability when there is an incident.
In March of last year an employee of sub-contractor Turner Industries died in an industrial accident at the CITGO Charles Lake refinery in Vinton, LA. The focus of the coverage around the accident focused far more on Turner Industries than it did on the parent refinery company. Liability and OSHA oversight for the incident would also presumably fall primarily on Turner and not the parent company that hired Turner and runs the refinery.
According to several sources this "pull the curtain" game is already being played by Marathon in St. Paul Park. For over a year, the company appears to have been systematically replacing skilled contractors with sub-contractors that have lower standards. Many of the previous contractors maintained certified apprenticeship programs to ensure employees were highly qualified and safe on the job. Very few of the new sub-contractors maintain those programs.
For a case study on why Marathon is doing this, look no further than STARCON International. Multiple sources state that since Marathon brought STARCON into SPP, its safety record has been abysmal. To keep the veneer of safety going, Marathon reportedly cancelled STARCON's contract and awarded it to a new cut-rate sub-contracting company. This new company appears to be hiring many of the same employees that previously worked under STARCON and its abysmal record. The new sub-contractor… (You guessed it) Turner Industries.
You see, by playing this sub-contracting game, Marathon will be able to "keep their hands clean" from some liability and accountability using the sub-contractor as a buffer. They will say STARCON was the bad actor, not Marathon. They will claim Marathon fired STARCON because Marathon is committed to safety. In reality, they are just changing the costumes on a rotating group of clown outfits that all appear to hire the same unskilled clowns.
Worse yet, the risk from these places isn't just to the workers inside the gates. In October of 2020, the Oxford University Press published a study that found a statistically significant correlation between several types of cancer in communities and the communities' proximity to an oil refinery. These accidents, these spills, these explosions don't just harm the workers. They harm kids and families in the surrounding communities.
Marathon's continuance of sub-contracting policies that result in accidents is abhorrent. For any other citizen, having a reckless disregard for human life that results in death is called Manslaughter. Our question: When the next accident happens, will Marathon be held to the same standard as the rest of us?
Here in MN, at least one legislator is planning to do something about this. State Sen. Karla Bigham, whose district includes the Marathon refinery, is proposing legislation to address the issue. Her proposal would require that sub-contractors at safety sensitive sites maintain a certified apprentice program to ensure a highly skilled workforce at these incredibly dangerous sites.
While this legislation won't entirely fix the problem of bad corporate actors running refineries, it's a start. And it needs to pass.
Companies like Marathon cannot be allowed to operate both unsafely and without accountability. No one should have a license to kill in our state.
(Pictured below credit EHS: Texas City Refinery Disaster)
Oxford Study EHS Article Turner Industries News Report
Why the Marathon Refinery Strike Should Matter To Every Minnesotan
Fleet Farm, Northern Tool, and Toro Face Tough Questions
SuperValu's Hopkins Distribution Center to Vote on Strike Authorization
SuperValu's Hopkins Distribution Center Authorizes Strike
MyPillow Cuts Ties With LME/FLE
Uber's Toxic Culture Harms Investors
Copyright 2015 Corporate Transparency

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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About Paris Tribune editor & publisher Paul Ben-Itzak, and how to contact him for ad rates & more
EXCLUSIVE! THE PARIS TRIBUNE SERIAL: MICHEL RAGON'S "TROMPE-L'OEIL"
THE LUTÈCE DIARIES: A POST-MODERN AMERICAN IN PARIS BY PAUL BEN-ITZAK
The Paris Tribune
See Paris through an Insider's Eye with New York Times and Reuters veteran journalist Paul Ben-Itzak
Category: Lutèce Diaries
The Lutèce Diaries, 19: "L'amour en fuite" or, As Romeo's teeth bleed, love leaks out
Posted on February 25, 2019 February 25, 2019 by danceblogger
by Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 20019 Paul Ben-Itzak
Written Monday, February 18. Re-written February 25 and dedicated to Pamela and Sabine in memory des belles moments passé autour de la rue des Martyrs. And to Emmanuelle Pretot, camarade en tout choses Truffaut. Like what you're reading? Please let us know by making a donation so that we can continue this work. Please designate your PayPal donation in dollars or Euros to paulenitzak@gmail.com , or write us at that address to learn how to donate by check. If we bring in $120 we can continue to mend our bleeding heart with a boxed set of the complete works of François Truffaut. To read this article entirely in French or any other language, just click the translation button at the right.
PARIS — So there I was at dusk, heart broken and sentiments seeping out, teeth throbbing and gums bleeding profusely into a bandage I was trying in vain to grit (hard to grit when half your teeth are gone), staggering up the rue des Martyrs towards the Montmartre cemetery and the grave of the man I blamed it all on: François Truffaut.
In the late French director's five-film, 20-year saga that began with the 1959 "The 400 Blows" and climaxed with "L'amour en fuite" (often mistranslated as "Love on the Run"; "Love Escapes" or "Love is leaking" are more exact) Antoine Doinel, played throughout by Jean-Pierre Leaud, is constantly running away: from school, from the army, from his teachers, from jobs ranging from pushing miniature boats in corporate ponds to spray-painting daisies to night-clerking to agency detective to t.v. repairman, and most often from the women in his life: His mother, his wife (the effervescent Claude Jade, whom Antoine, in the 1968 "Stolen Kisses," rightly calls "Peggy Proper" for her prim manner), his girlfriend (the eponymous Dorothée, who made her debut in the 1979 "L'amour en fuite" and would go on to haunt the dreams of generations of French children as the country's equivalent to Romper Room's Miss Nancy), his older mistress (the wife of his boss at a shoe-store — Delphine Seyrig at her glamorous apex), and various intermittent mistresses. The only one he chases, apart from Dorothée's "Sabine," whom he loves but whose love seems to frighten him (he finds her after patching up and tracing a photo of her an assumed lover tears up in a phone booth during an angry break-up call), is Marie-France Pisier's "Colette," whom we first meet in Truffaut's 30-minute contribution to the 1963 multi-director film "Love at 20." (They meet at a classical music concert; Antoine is working at the time in a Phillips record factory, the director letting us see the hot wax being spun into vinyl. In "L'amour en fuite," Antoine finally tracks Dorothée's Sabine to her work-place: a record shop where couples make out to Gilbert Becaud in the listening rooms, Truffaut's homage to the listening stations in Jean Vigo's 1934 "L'Atalante" where the – fleeing – newlywed bride takes refuge.)
In "L'amour en fuite," after Colette hails him from the window of a Lyon-bound train at the Gare de Lyon where Antoine has just dropped off his son by Jade for camp, Antoine jumps on the moving train without a ticket, surprises Colette in her sleeper car right after a fat middle-aged businessman, assuming she's a prostitute, rubs up against her in the aisle (a lawyer, she'd spotted Antoine earlier in the day at the court-house, where with Jade he'd just completed France's first no-fault divorce, echoing my own parents split-up in California a few years earlier). After they catch up, she upbraids him for the revisionist way he recounted their courtship as 20-year-olds in a barely fictionalized memoir he's recently published: "My family didn't move in across the street from you, you followed us!" (At the time of "L'amour en fuite," Antoine is working as a proofreader on a book detailing the 18 minutes that De Gaulle disappeared during the 1968 student-worker uprising. Because the project is top secret, he's working – literally – underground. The netherworld also figures in the 1968 "Stolen Kisses," in pneumatic messages from Seyrig requesting love assignations. It's as if Antoine can't get out of the lower depths; in "L'amour en fuite," his mother's lover from "The 400 Blows" surfaces to show Antoine, who was in the brig when she died, where she's buried – which happens to be right next to the tomb of Marie du Plessis, the real-life model for Dumas fils's "Camille." It's one of three of the five Antoine films in which the Montmartre cemetery features, and it's the last; shortly afterwards he'll reconcile with Dorothée's Sabine, returning to the land of the living.) He tries to kiss Colette – we're back on the train in "L'amour en fuite" — and she light-heartedly repels the attempt, scolding him, "Antoine, you haven't changed." The conductor comes around for tickets and Antoine flees again, pulling the emergency chord and jumping off the still-moving train. We see the now 34-year-old Antoine running across a field, an echo of the final, poignant, liberating moment in "The 400 Blows," when a 14-year-old Antoine, having escaped from a youth home/prison, is frozen on screen in flight and in our memories, a broad smile on his face as he runs along a beach, discovering the ocean for the first time (the emotional antithesis of the destiny of the hero in Chris Marker's 1962 "La jetée," forever doomed to helplessly watch a woman being killed over and over again on the edge of a dock).
In my own Bizarro universe re-make of the Antoine-Colette train scene from "L'amour en fuite," it was Colette who, after having chased me and captured my heart, had jumped off the train and was running out of my life.
So it was that last Monday found me staggering up the rue des Martyrs as the Sun set over the Sacre Coeur church (which the 1871 Communard rebels had been forced to build as penance by the ruling Versailles government) which slowly emerged above Martyrs, gums bleeding from the just-extracted tooth, heart raw and as hyper-exposed to its glare as the hero of Albert Camus's "The Stranger" walking on yet another unshaded beach and with — au contraire to Camus's hero — no one to take it out on … except Truffaut and the illusions with which his Doinel cycle (all five seen one week-end at New York's Anthology Film Archives just before moving to Paris) had filled me. Once at the grave, after filling my plastic cup at a nearby fountain and popping a dissolvable 1000 gram Paracetamol into the water, posing it on Truffaut's tomb (decorated with an unraveling 35 MM film spool and a worn set photo of Truffaut, Leaud, and a woman who might have been Claude Jade) and watching it fizz away like my love affair, I lifted my Green as Gatsby's Light cup and, echoing the Charles Trenet song which provides the theme for the 1968 "Stolen Kisses" – in which Leaud's Antoine and Jade's Christine fall in love – toasted François Truffaut with "A nos amours," to our loves. Looking over my shoulder at Zola's first tomb, I realized that I might have added: "Je t'accuse! This is all your fault."
Post-Script, 2/25: Having – like Antoine at the end of "L'amour en fuite" – just taken back the key from under the pillow, I now see myself less like Marker's hero, doomed to replay the same fate with the same woman over and over again, and more like Antoine in the final frozen frame of the final film in the Antoine cycle, which resurrects the end of the first, of a 14-year-old Antoine frozen in time joyously jumping into the air on a beach, his virgin visit to la plage. And looking for my own Dorothée to patch me up. Interested? Check me out here.
Lutèce Diaries, 17: Le malédiction de notre métier / The curse of our metier
Posted on February 20, 2019 by danceblogger
"And if I shed a tear I won't cage it
I won't fear love
And if I feel a rage I won't deny it.
I won't fear love."
— Sarah McLachlan
Copyright 2019 Paul Ben-Itzak
I see beauty everywhere.
Je voir de la beauté partout.
The Lutèce Diaries, 16: Love on the run, heart lies bleeding (unedited and uncensored version)
Posted on February 19, 2019 October 23, 2019 by danceblogger
First sent out by e-mail, and posted today for the first time. After getting more than half-way through with a re-edit seven months later, I've decided to leave this piece in its initial, raw, somewhat over-detailed initial state for the sake of authenticity… and for the record. — PB-I, October 23, 2019
PARIS — So there I was at dusk, heart broken and gums bleeding, teeth throbbing, staggering up the rue des Martyrs towards the Montmartre cemetery and the grave of the man I blamed it all on: Francois Truffaut.
In the late French director's five-film, 20-year saga that began with the 1959 "The 400 Blows" and climaxed with "Love on the Run," Antoine Doinel, played throughout the cycle by Truffaut's alter-ego Jean-Pierre Leaud, is always on the run, often from the women in his life: His mother, his wife (the effervescent Claude Jade, whom Antoine, in the 1968 "Stolen Kisses," rightly calls "Peggy Proper" for her prim manners), his girlfriend (Dorothee, who made her debut in "Love on the Run" and would go on to become the French equivalent of Romper Room's Miss Nancy), his older married mistress (Delphine Seyrig at her glamorous apex), and various intermittent mistresses. The only one he seems to chase, apart from Dorthee's "Sabine," whom he loves but whose love seems to scare him (he found her after patching up and tracing a photo of the girl a supposed lover had torn up in a restaurant basement phone booth during an angry break-up call he overheard), is Marie-France Pisier's "Colette," who we first meet in Truffaut's 30-minute contribution to the 1963 multi-director film "Love at 20." (They encounter each other at a classical music concert; Antoine is working at the time in a Phillips record factory, with Truffaut letting us see the hot wax being spun into discs. In "Love on the Run," Antoine finally tracks Dorothee's Sabine to her work-place. A record shop where couples make-out in listening rooms.) You may remember Pisier as the vengeful sexpot in the movie adaptation of Sidney Sheldon's "The Other Side of Midnight," in which she introduces an inventive way of hardening an older man's penis which might have come in handy in my own recent saga if I'd only have remembered it before now.
The first hint that I was starring in a sort of Bizarro universe re-make of, specifically, "Love on the Run" came when the woman in question — you know her as "Vanessa," whom I described picking up on (although I've since learned that she may have been picking up on me) at a vernissage a few blocks from the Pere Lachaise cemetery (cemeteries also figure in the Antoine Doinel cycle; the Montmartre one where Truffaut was eventually buried turns up in three of the five films, notably as the burial place of Antoine's mother, revealed to him by her former lover as being next to the real tomb of the model for "Camille.") and right after having three teeth extracted, e-mailed me from the Lyon train station before boarding a train to that city to visit her grandkids (like Antoine, I seem to have unresolved mother issues) to tell me that the night, our first together which had concluded the previous morning, and which we'd both exuded at the time was extraordinary and unique (she'd e-mailed me afterwards that she didn't understand why we weren't still together) felt "incomplete" (later she'd call it "inaccomplished") because I couldn't or wouldn't get it up. (My wording; she didn't put it so vulgarly.) In the Truffaut film, after Colette calls him from a window on a Lyon-bound train at the Gare de Lyon, where Antoine has just dropped of his son for camp, Antoine jumps on the moving train without a ticket, surprises Colette in her sleeper car right after a fat middle-aged businessman, assuming she's a prostitute, has rubbed up against her in the aisle (a lawyer, she'd spotted Antoine earlier in the day at the court-house, where with Jade he'd just completed France's first no-fault divorce, an echo of my parents' some years earlier). After they catch up, she upbraids him on the revisionist way he recounted their courtship as 20-year-olds in a fictionalized memoir he's just published — "My family didn't move in across the street from you, you followed us!" (At the time, Antoine is working as a proofreader at a – literally – underground publisher on a book detailing the 18 minutes when De Gaulle disappeared during the 1968 student-worker uprising. Letters requesting love assignations sent by underground pneumatics also figure in the 1968 "Stolen Kisses," in this case from Antoine's older, married lover – his employer's wife — played by the glamorous Seyrig.) He tries to kiss her, she light-heartedly repels the attempt scolding him, "Antoine, you haven't changed." The conductor comes around for tickets, Antoine pulls the emergency chord and jumps off the still moving train. We see the now 34-year-old Antoine running across a field, an echo of the last, poignant, liberating moment in "The 400 Blows," when a 14-year-old Antoine, having escaped from a youth home/prison, is frozen on screen and in our memories, a broad smile on his face as he runs on a beach, discovering the ocean (the antipathe of Chris Marker's ocean in "La jete") for the first time.
In my own Bizarro universe re-make of the Antoine-Colette train scene, it was Colette who, after having joined me in a mutually agreed upon and extraordinary kiss was jumping from our train.
I was devastated, as I thought we'd also both agreed that what made our first night together magical is that the things other couples often view as preliminary — hand-holding, snuggling, French kissing, hand-kissing — had for us been electric. (I'm purposely avoiding citing the many words and motions we exchanged which confirm this because this piece is not intended as an indictment – "If you don't love me, what was this?") After writing her an e-mail to ask why she chose to bring this up in an e-mail as opposed to face to face, and explaining that if you want your partner to get it up, the worse thing you can possibly do is tell him it bothers you that he couldn't get it up, and that a 57-year-old man can't just get hard on command, I said she should ask herself, "If he was impotent, would I continue with him?" and if the answer was no, get out. She misinterpreted this in a more dire manner, we made up Friday, but only for her to send me another e-mail Saturday — 20 minutes before she knew I was receiving guests, my artist friends K. & R. for the famous Palestinian and Jamaican chicken twins, breaking up. And adding if I wouldn't mind returning the scarlet scarf her Islamophobic friend had left at my home after I asked her and her husband to leave a dinner part I'd hosted for them all when they started going at French Muslims. So it was with misty eyes that I opened the door to K. & R., and found myself confiding my troubles of the heart with friends with whom I'd not yet reached that level of intimacy. Thanks to their and particularly K.'s good humor — leading the conversation to other subjects but ready to go back to consoling me, even suggesting, "We need to find you a woman!" — I did pretty well, considering a germinating girlfriend had just broken up with me by e-mail. But I guess I must have sounded worse than I felt, because when I asked what I should do if she contacted me again, K. said "Drop it! Do you want to end up jumping out a window?!"
After more e-mail exchanges last week, the tenor of which from Vanessa remained mostly consistent — she was still running from the love express our train had become — I finally ceded, agreeing it was better to cut it off as I couldn't return to the just-friends thing, she sent me an e-mail where she said that she too (as I'd expressed I was) was in tears, that her life had changed since "1/24" — the evening we met at the vernissage — that she'd never be the same again, that she knew she had a problem with loving, that she hoped I'd find someone but that it was probably too late for us.
This of course — the tears — brought me running, and I wrote her to say that I'd been blind, that she maybe thought she had a problem with love but that everything she'd done in my regard — particularly being ready to lose me — was done out of love.
On Friday we had another magical evening, organizing an impromptu, wintry pique-nique on the banks of the Ourcq canal. I assured her I wouldn't go all out but just bring what was already in the house; as it happened this also included a vintage wooden unfoldable pique-nique table in a valise that came with the apartment. I'd promised her to go no further than a chaste kiss goodnight at the Metro station. "Vanessa and Paul, round two!" she'd blithely announced over the hummus, and the rest of the evening kept to this light tenor, with lots of laughter. At one point I stopped the converation to note: "This is important. You see? When we're face to face, we understand each other. E-mail communication is really sinister." The night concluded with a chaste kiss at the Metro.
Wanting to diversify my world — I'd be making my famous Palestinian chicken for friends of Vanessa and bringing it to the house they were moving to that day, looking out over (I'm not making this up) the Pere Lachaise cemetery — on Saturday morning I decided to check out the vernissage for a group exhibition in my suburban Paris village of the pre Saint-Gervais. Life is more than women! Life is more than the women in my life over the past few years who seem to be Bizarro Universe interpreting the scripts for Truffaut's Antoine Doinel films!
After sensing that in lieu of the usual joy of discovery I still feel around art I was feeling incredibly wary after entering the art space, in the same room below the covered market where I'd scored my old aborted professor Jerome Charyn's "The Catfish Man" — I was increasingly regretting that I lacked the coping skills Charyn's hero (himself) had been inculpated with by being forced to tangle with the urban catfish in the mudflats of the Bronx of his come-uppance — when someone I didn't recognize at first, a woman in her '50s with a boyish hair-cut, rose up like one of Charyn's catfish and announced in wonder, "Paul." It was another V, the last girlfriend and who, in contrast to the current V., who never stopped blaming herself for being unable to love, had taken the opposite tactic with me when we last tango'd/tangle'd nearly three years ago, blaming it all on me, even though in this case the opposite was true; this was one sick puppy. I know this sounds like the usual break-up sour grapes, but I'm short-handing because she doesn't merit more time than this. I simply mention the encounter because it may have been an omen….
… And to introduce what I conveyed to "Vanessa" as we marched from the ill-advisedly chosen Pere Lachaise rdv to the dinner at the home overlooking the cemetery. I know it's not advised to mention an ex to a current, but for me this was a means of delivering a series of compliments:
"Where she doesn't assume any responsibility, you unfairly blame everything on yourself…. And even though she's 14 years younger than you, on looks there's no contest." Vanessa smiled widely at this. "She's skinny-ass where you have the body of a woman, uninteresting to look at where you are."
I was annoyed when …. No, I find I can't go into what annoyed me, nor any other details of the party related to my interactions with "Vanessa" because it sounds like evidence gathering, and this piece is not intended to be an indictment nor a reckoning, but a first step on the path out — out of heartbreak and out of "Vanessa" — for myself. I also believe that, like an American black-belt I once knew in Antwerp once explained to me in saying why the very fact that his hands are deadly weapons means he has a reponsibility *not* to fight, a writer doesn't have the right to use his considerable gifts in romantic reckoning.
So suffice to say that the evening seemed to end sublimely, with Vanessa and I getting lost in perpetual circling of a Paris roundabout, this one the Place Gambetta. We held hands from the moment we left the hosue; there was some warm French kissing. When I said I wanted her to come home with me, she responded that she "wasn't against" this, but reminded me that she had to get up early to go meet her grand-daughter at the train station.
We seemed to part in joy hands taking an extra clutch before separating…
…but..not before, unprompted, she asked out loud again why she was unable to jump into my arms, then answered her own question with "Is it because you couldn't get it up?," though not putting it that way, again sorting the demon.
Once home, in a letter I sent on getting home at 1:30 a.m., I felt compelled to repeat my earlier answers, both the defensive and proactive ones: If you want a man to get it up, the worse thing you can do is tell him it bothers you when he can't; and then detailing, explicitly, all the other ways I'd like to please her, and ending with, "Let's have fun with it!"
In the last e-mail I sent her Sunday before she let the hatchet fall again (and once again by e-mail), I wrote, rather poetically (she completed the beauty and humor before lowering the ax), regarding our lost midnight turnabout, "I'd rather be lost with you than found with anyone else."
Oh and I left out one important detail: After one embrace, I finally said the words in person for the first time: "Je t'aime," with a big smile on my face. "What am I supposed to say?" "You're not supposed to say anything, just accept it."
I mention this because since she broke with me after the late Saturday night letters, I've been torturing myself with: Did the letters, particularly the lasciciousness, scare her away? What if I'd backed off – after the happy Metro separating – and allowed her the space to come to me. So to counter this self-torturing (I even mentioned this possiblity in my last letter to her – if I'd backed off, I might not have lost you) I'm trying to tell myself that it was more this first face-to-face declaration of love that did it.
Ultimately I think this is the problem, the reason that Sunday and Monday morning she pulled out, saying she was arresting the histoire d'amour with me because she wasn't "at the hauteur" of my emotions and compliments to her, to a degree that it was making her sick: I don't think she has a problem with loving (at one point she told me she's never been able to love, that she ended her two marriages because of this); I saw this manifest from her towards me in copious ways over the past two plus weeks. I think she has a problem with accepting being loved.
Before starting this piece this overcast Tuesday morning, I'd determined not to read any new mails from V. because I knew if I read them I'd have to respond. (And that I shouldn't have given her the power to confirm or deny that my letters, sentimental and lascivious, of late Satruday had scared her off.) The one I did receive from her this morning, sent last night, confirmed this urge but so far I'm resisting. Not so much because I've convinced myself that it's unhealthy to continue on her roller coaster (I've left out the numerous things she's said or acts she's done which indicate a profound love because this is not intended to be a requisatory, but a first step towards my own healing .. and advancement / continuation in the search for the vrais amour) but because I've told the part of myself unable yet to fall out of love with her, unable to let go even though my brain and a large part of my heart realizes that this is unhealthy, to let myself be swallowed up by a heart that is really broken, that this is my last hope, I've decided to follow two precious pieces of advice dispensed to me by my New Zealand-bred horse chief on a pony farm along the Texas – Oklahoma border more than six years ago:
You can't blame yourself for the things you can't predict. All signs — all the signals she sent me — indicated that this woman was crazy about me from the moment she encountered me. I but responded to that with the joy in my heart this provoked.
If you want a horse/filly to do what you want, the worse thing you can do is keep barking at him. You need to give him/her time to digest what you just said, so that he ultimately makes the decision him/herself.
I don't know if she'll write me again. I don't know if I'll be able to keep from opening any mails she might send, or from responding if I do. But this is what I'm going to attempt, at least for a week. What I do know in my heart of hearts is that she's hurt me so much with the ups and downs that it will take more than an e-mail to convince me of any change of heart that she might have, or rather return to the previous obsession she announced with me. I need her to do what she'd refer to as a "Woddy Allen," running to me breathlessly along Fifth Avenue Woody at the end of "Manhattan," arriving panting and breathless at my door before I move on.
But to get back to the French director towards whose whose grave I found myself staggering up the rue des Martyrs as the sun set over the Sacre Coeur church which slowly emerged above it, gums bleeding from the just-extracted tooth, heart still raw. Once at the grave, after filling my green plastic up from a nearby fountain with water and popping a dissolvable 1000 gram Paracetemol into the water, posing it on Truffaut's grave (decorated with an unravelling 35 MM film spool and a worn photo of Truffaut, Leaud, and a woman who might have been Claude Jade on the set)and watching it fizz away like this love affair, I lifted the glass and, echoing the Charles Trenet song which provides the theme for the 1968 "Stolen Kisses" – in which Leaud's Antoine and Jade's Christine fall in love – toasted Francoise Truffaut with "A nos amours," to our loves. I might have added "This is all your fault," for setting a model of Antoines and his women I was continuingly trying to counter-act. I wanted to be the anti-Antoine, proposing a definite "OUI!" to all these French women I was encountering. Why did they keep behaving like Truffaut's Antoine, falling in love only to deny it and jump off the train, fleeing into the great French wilderness, fleeing love – mine and theirs – on the run?
Lutèce Diaries, 15: (In French & English) And if three out of five Parisiennes were addicted to crack? / Et si 3 sur 6 Parisiennes etait accro au crack?; "On ne parle que de liberté et on se confectionne des chaines de plus en plus"
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PARIS — J'ai vu quelque-chose d'effrayant hier soir rue St.-Martin, a l'extérieure d'une café qui s'appelle "Café des jeux." Il y avait une fille qui regarde dans la vitrine; au moins c'est ca que j'avais pensée mais en fait — et comme trois sur cinq filles que j'ai vu hier soir en marchant de l'Ile St. Louis jusqu'au le pré St.-Gervais en passant par la rue Belleville — elle était branché a son portable.
If three out of five Parisians were addicted to crack, the mairie would do something about it. And yet here three out of five Parisiennes (more the Parisiennes than the Parisiens) have their heads hooked by wires to something in their purses or pockets, and no one's concerned. So this lady that I saw looking at the games in the window of the "Game Café" on the rue St.-Martin in the Marais finally looked up and dashed through the door… letting it slam in the face of the man behind her — who was supported only by two crutches. He was left to try to nudge the door open himself with his body without losing hold of the crutches. Cette fille a tout a coupe bondi pour entre dans le café, en laissant la porte se ferme brutalement derrière elle sans se souci du type soutenu qu'avec deux béquilles, et qui a donc du essayer a ouverte la porte par/pour lui-même tout en maintiennent ses béquilles.
At one point high up on the rue Belleville, just before turning onto the rue La Villette, walking ahead of me I finally thought I saw a woman who wasn't wired, only to recognize on passing her the tell-tale thin chord running from her ears to her purse. I felt like Kevin McCarthy in Don Siegel's 156 film "The Invastion of the Body Snatchers": She's one of them.
Comme un ami / As a friend / m'a dit hier soir / said to me last night on hearing this story /âpres que je lui ai raconté cette scène horrible: "On ne parle que de liberté et on se confectionne des chaines de plus en plus." Everyone keeps talking about liberty, and yet we fashion more and more chains for ourselves.
The Lutèce Diaries, 14: Juliette of the Spirits
Copyright 2010, 2019 Paul Ben-Itzak
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PARIS — My last two months in Paris had not gone as expected. The first surprise was that I did not experience the exhilaration I'd expected when I'd stepped out of the Gare Montparnasse. Montparnasse! How could anyone, above all an American who had always felt the thread going back to Fitzgerald and Hemingway, not be moved? (My second place in Paris, just two months into my stay, was next to the Pasteur Institute in the 15th arrondisement — where the AIDS or SIDA virus had been identified — and thus not too far away from Montparnasse; I'd tried to find the bar on the rue Delambre where Fitzgerald and Hemingway had met, but it had changed hands so many times it was hard to distinguish. I'd settled with "Smoke," on the other side of the street — not where Scott and Ernest met but, with its pony-tailed Chinese bartender who looked like Wayne Wang, a fitting faux dive in which to smoke my first Cuban, a fact I'd announced to the bartender before correctly guessing that the blues on the juke was "Albert King!")
What was askew for me on this May 2010 return, though, was that this was the first time I was neither returning to cats or with cats. Sonia, my 20-something Alaska native Siamese — I always said that she and her soul brother Mesha were part-Wolf, born on the tundra (in Alaska, people invariably introduced the tired old mutt stretched out on the hearth as 'part wolf') — had finally run out of life, after living 14 of them. (Her last escape being when our last small heater suddenly shot out sparks at her — Sonia's hind legs had gone out when we entered 2010 and she her fourth decade, so I had placed her blanket next to the heater.) The last of the family I'd arrived with nine years earlier — Mesha had gone in 2007, after a two-week period where he lost function after function, Hopey three months later screaming in my arms — was gone. Sonia had been my train-mate for the last three years, as we moved or travelled from Les Eyzies, the capital of prehistory in the Dordgone department of SW France where we'd spent the past three years, to Montpellier and Paris, back and forth from Perigueux (the nondescript capital of the Dordogne), and a second extended trip to Paris the previous spring. Taking the train without her for this last return wracked and wrenched me. I lost it when I saw a woman with a dog in a sweater on the platform in le Bugue waiting for the train to Bordeaux. I had no one. (And as if this wasn't enough, Boo-bah, the neighbor's Australian shepherd/collie dog I'd adapted and who had been a particular solace to me after Sonia left, had been killed by hot-rodding youngsters the night before my departure.)
For a while — two weeks to be exact — I'd received a reprieve from this loneliness in the form of Sophie, the neighbor with whom the keys to his place had been left by Marcel, the bouquiniste – Seine-side bookseller — who I'd imagined to be my best friend. (Romanticizing Marcel because I liked it was cool to have a buddy who was a bouquiniste – one more indice that I was vraiment living the vie Parisien — I'd ignored his faults, and all the times he'd let me down before, and this was about to blow up in my face.) Sophie and I had bonded right away — she'd even given me the keys to her place the first night so I could use her state-of-the-art Mac — but it had really been too easy. It was the bond of someone looking for a life-vest and within two weeks she was trying to drag me down with her. (First hint should have been when in our initial conversation she informed me she was emerging from a depression — most French people won't talk about such personal things after five years of acquaintanceship, let alone ten minutes. Second should have been the note she left for me on her desk two days later saying she'd checked herself into the mental hospital but, "Not to worry.") Things got worse when Marcel came back briefly from Russia before heading off to Siberia. I won't supply the details because the wounds — the profound disappointment, oh how I'd missed him those last three years — are still too raw and I don't know that they're that interesting to anyone else. Suffice to say that an angel turned out to be, if not a devil, a bully.
This was not the light and charming Paris that had been my life — at least as I remembered it — the six years I'd lived at 49 rue de Paradis. Camille, the co-ed neighbor from a tiny village in the Lot, in Paris studying at the Ecole du Louvre, with whom I'd nearly set the apartment on fire when the cooking alcohol spilled all over the fondue set when I made her fondue bourgignone, Camille, to whom I'd confessed my love, her eyes opening in marvel as I took her hand after we watched Renoir's "Dejeuner sur l'herbe," was gone, moved to Marseille for school and not returning my e-mails. Omar, the light-hearted, hilarious buddy I'd met when he was a bartender at Le Valmy, was not returning my calls. Sandrine, my first friend, whose apartment at 33 rue Lamartine I'd subletted as our first, the cats running under the beds to hide as soon as we got there (at the airport, as if on cue a little French girl in red crinoline had looked into their cages and exlaimed, "Maman, maman! Des chats!") — I'd later learn Baudelaire also roomed there — was busy with a new boyfriend and the end of the year crunch at the school where she taught drama. (When Sandrine reproached me for attracting and being attracted to unstable people like Sophie and Marcel, practically blaming me for the mess I'd unwittingly walked into, I'd wanted to say, "Well, where were you the first two weeks I was back?") Katia, the Paris Opera Ballet dancer whom I'd befriended when we worked together on a project to properly remember Marie Taglioni, the first ballet dancer to dance on pointe, on her 200th anniversary — after collecting pointe shoes from dancers around the world to lay on Taglioni's crumbling grave at the Montmartre cemetery behind Nijinksy's and down the block from Truffaut's, we'd unearthed the fact that contrary to city of Paris claims, it was not Taglioni, but her mother that was buried in Montmartre; Taglioni was over at Pere Lachaise, where her grandson had moved her revered bones from Marseille in 1932 to entomb her with the husband who, according to an account by Edgar Allen Poe, had barred her from her home because she would not stop dancing) — Katia also was not responding to my invitations to get together.
Bref, I was fast coming to the conclusion that my connection with living French people was not as strong as it was to dead French people — particularly figures like Bernhardt, Montand, De Gaulle — and their country's artifacts. The ones I'd collected, including dozens and dozens of Pastis 51 and other Pastis glasses, carafes, and ashtrays, the historic speeches of General De Gaulle, and Bernhardt's personal mirror (scored at a vide grenier on the rue Germaine Pilon in Montmartre; Sarah had given it to her personal make-up artist who gave it to the father of the man selling it, who had been a photographer of artists, when she was living in a retirement home for artists), and more were in the house in Les Eyzies, which had been repossessed by its owner, gone crazy after his wife died of alcoholism and, after I'd already left for Paris, e-mailed me that I would not be able to come back. My music collection, garnered over 35 years and essential to my work as a DJ (monikers MC World Beat and DJ Yo Mama), was there too, and I was worried about how I'd get it back if I had to leave France, a distinct possibility as my work as an arts journalist — two strikes in the current climate — was not sufficient to maintain me here.
In sum, I had begun to wonder whether I might not be person number 248 to die on the streets of Paris. Such was the hopeless state I found myself in the morning Juliette and her music parachuted into my life just two blocks from the Pere Lachaise cemetery where both Bernhardt and Taglioni were enterred.
Persisting in trying to conjure up my old life, I'd walked the long distance to my old cafe d'hab, Le Valmy, up top the Canal Saint-Martin, where I'd met Omar. But this only reminded me, painfully, that this was not my old life, my family, Sonia, Mesha, and Hopey, were no longer here, I would not go home to them on the rue de Paradis once I finished my noisette.
To return to my current place, Marcel's bad karma-infested joint off the place Edith Piaf, surrounded by his books (he'd put his statue "L'Esperance" in the cave before he left for Siberia; yes, hope had been relegated to the basement; another tomb) I normally followed the canal to the rue de Temple, stopping along the way to watch a boat glide under a bridge from a lock, then up the rue Belleville, right over to the parc Belleville and the most spectacular view of the Eiffel, then up to the rue des Pyrenees and over to the place Piaf, surveilled by her statue. I decided to change the routine and continue along the green strip in the middle of the boulevard Richard Lenoir — where Simenon's Maigret had 'lived' for years (even Maigret had Mrs. Maigret) — did I mention I sometimes felt closer to historical French figures than living French people? — which covers the water as it continues its course to the Bastille before ultimately pouring into the Seine. Then left at the rue Chemin Vert, continuing on past the smutty but sophisticated erotic bookstore (diversions are essential on a long long walk), intending to either walk past or through Pere Lachaise to the Place Gambetta before heading 'home' to Piaf.
I was just two blocks from the cemetery when I noticed a small, slightly worn black valise sitting on top of a cabinet in front of an apartment building, evidently discarded. At first I thought to grab it as a nice jewelry box for Sophie (I was not completely free of her spell; she was crazy and depressed and destructive, but on a good day she was the spittin' image of Juliette Binoche). Then I thought…what if…there's something inside…I unlatched the valise and looked inside. It was filled with music — cassettes. And that wasn't all. Before I investigated further I decided to take the valise up to Pere Lachaise, where I found a sort of concrete ledge-bench just inside the first entrance, put the box on my lap and opened it.
The cassettes weren't just any music. They were my music. Music that had been important to me in one way or another over the past 40 years:
Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits.
Bob Marley's "Legend," with his greatest, including "Could You Be Loved."
The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Canada – Intuit Games and Songs (which went with my Native-oriented sojourn in Alaska.
Rainforest music.
The Doors, "In Concert" and "L.A. Women." (This just two blocks from where Jim Morrison was interred, at Pere Lachaise.)
Led Zeppelin/Led Zeppelin — the classic album with "Stairway to Heaven," my teenage anthem, "Going to California," and more.
Two full tapes of the Grateful Dead recorded live. (As Deadheads know, the Grateful Dead didn't just tolerate, but encouraged 'bootleg' recordings at its concerts, even setting aside an area upfront for the 'tape-heads.' As the band was more a live than a studio band, these recordings are emblematic; they spread the Dead gospel, making it the most successful touring band in U.S. history.) One set was from the Oakland Coliseum in 1990 – corresponding more or less with my own belated Deadhead period, when I was dating the widow of one of the group's lawyers. Another was from the 1991 memorial service for Bill Graham, who I'd interviewed. Among the many tiny notes handwritten on the cassette liner — in English — were "More than 500,000 people!" referring to this event. And "rarities from the vaults," including, evidently from the '60s, a duet with Jon Hendricks (who I'd see later in San Francisco performing "Evolution of the Blues" when I was in junior high school; Hendricks had participated in the Normandy landing on Omaha Beach) on "These are your sons and daughters" and "Fire in the City," and Kesey, Neal Cassady, and Ken Nordine.
But the real kicker — and where the question of angelic intervention stopped being a question but a certainty — was that the box also included the soundtrack to… "Wings of Desire," the Wim Wenders film all about angels come to earth to aid, even if just by invisible whispering, comfort the desperate and desolate living.
But this was not all.
The valise also contained a black and white passport photograph of an intense looking French woman, hair cut short in the 'Amelie' mode popular just after the turn of the millennium, a couple of business cards — evidently hers — a photograph of a building surrounded by snow with the same name from the cards — Juliette — scribbled on back of it. (Judging by the business cards Juliette is some kind of archeologist, so I imagine the photo was taken on an arctic expedition.)
There was also a tape with Juliet Greco on one side and on the other side, "Un homme et une femme," which I initially thought was from the film but which, on further listening later, appeared to be the voice of Juliet — she of the photo and the business cards – recording a message for her parents and grandparents before committing suicide. (My hope, encouraged by the scrawled "Delires 6eme," "High school foolishnesses," on the tape is that she reconsidered, but saved the tape. My practical theory for what all this was doing on the sidewalk is that Juliette had left these things at a boyfriend's, they'd eventually broken up, and the boyfriend was now evacuating all that was left to him of Juliette. My other theory is that my finding this box with this music was a "Wings of Desire"-genre intervention.)
There was also a thimble, a ruler, a woman's thin black leather choker, folic acid pills, a tiny metal object that looked like it could have been a triggering device, and a Euro centime (further confirmation that the contents had been left post-2000).
I sent an e-mail to the address on Juliet's business card and after explaining that I had found this valise at a particularly trying time in my life — with details — said, "So either this is yours or it fell from the sky for me." (I guess I imagined myself as Antoine in "Love on the Run," the fifth and last in Truffaut's Antoine cycle begun with "The 400 Blows," in which Antoine meets his Ame-soeur by reconstructing a photo a man in a phone booth tears up after violently breaking up with the person on the other end of the line and, using the detective skills gleaned in "Stolen Kisses," tracks her down.)
Deciding that Juliette was my newest guardian angel, I carried her photo with me in my wallet when I attempted to leave France to return to the US for the second time in a week one month later. Every time my confidence lagged that I would ever make it out, or that I began to doubt my decision, I took my wallet out and looked at the picture of Juliette, who told me I had to make it back because someone in the States needed me, and because Juliette wanted to see the Bethesda Fountain in New York, which the angels had been hearing about since it played a central role in "Angels in America," for its healing power. There was a moment in the Madrid airport where a U.S. security agent almost didn't let me on the plane because all I had as ID was my withered passport; an echo in JFK border control when I got passed around by three officers — more amused than concerned — because the lady in Madrid had apparently sent a note which popped up when they entered my passport number — before I was finally able to exit, whereupon I kissed the filthy beautiful New York ground. When I got to the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park the next day, after 24 hours in which I'd already been washed in the healing love and welcome of four friends and colleagues — including my oldest friend J., who I'd known since junior high and when we acted in plays (she was Anne Frank to my Peter, she a civil war wife to my Union captain), and who thus reminded me of who I was, and that I had not been weak but persistently, and consistent with my character, strong and determined — I took out my wallet, where I kept the photo of Juliet as well as that of Sonia, Mesha, and Hopey, and, in the midst of a business meeting, sitting on the scorching rim of the fountain on the hottest July 7 in NYC history, discretely faced Juliette's photo towards the fountain. The kitties bells on their collars I kept dangling on my wrist wrang out. We were home.
"Angels in America"
"L'origine du monde: Vie du modèle," Claude Schopp
"Paris," film Cedric Klapisch
"The Red Balloon"
"Tintin au Congo"
"Tintin in America"
"Trompe-l'oeil" par/by Michel Ragon
Abstract art movement in the 1950s
Accrochage aux portables
Actes-Sud
Albert Bartholomé
Alexandre Dumas Junior
Algeria / Algiere
Americans in Paris
Amsterdam 700th birthday
Anarchist History
anniversaire de la mort d'Albert Camus
annonce perso
anti-Semitism in France
Antique hunting in Paris
Art abstract des annees '50
Art and Society
Art exhibitions in Paris
Art figuratif des annees '50
art openings and expos in Paris
Art openings in Chicago
Art openings in Paris
Ateliers chorégraphiques pour enfants, Belleville, Paris
Étienne Dinet
Benjamin Stora
Boccaccio 'The Decamaron"
Canal St.-Martin Paris
Caroline Brouyer
Carson McCullers, "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"
Catherine Balet
Cell phone addiction
Cherche ame-soeur
Cherche logement Paris.
Choreography classes for children in Paris
Cimetaire Montmartre
Cimetere Montmartre
Claude Jade
Claude Schopp
Combat, underground Paris newspaper during the Occupation edited by Albert Camus
Constance Quéniaux
Correspondance Albert Camus – Maria Casarès
Cubism exhibition Centre Pompidou
Dance classes for children in Belleville
Dance classes for children in Paris
Daniel Mermet
Danielle Zemmour
Danny-w
Dating announcement
Dating in Paris
Death Penalty/ Peine de Morte
Editions Phébus
Est-ce que l'antisionisme = l'antisémitisme?
Eugene Sue "Les Mysteres de Paris" / The Mysteries of Paris
Exploratorium Orange-Jacketed Explainers
Expo Cubisme Centre Pompidou
Expo Fénéon Musée de l'Orangerie et Museum of Modern Art
Expo Fénéon Musée Orsay et MoMA
Expo Foujita
Expo Freud Musée de l'art et de l'Histoire du Judaisme
Fashion and Art
Fatima Khemilat
Felix Fénéon
Fitzgerald and Hemingway in Paris
Françoise Truffaut
Françoise Truffaut "L'amour en fuite" (Love on the Run)
Francois Truffaut 'L'amour en fuite" (Love on the Run)
Francois Truffaut Les Quatres Cent Coups, The 400 Blows
Frédéric Poincelet
French intellectual life
French Literature in Translation
French society
Galerie Catherine Putnam
Galerie Filles du Calvaire
Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger
Galerie la Genie de la Bastille
Galerie Thierry Bigaignon
Galerie Vallois
Galeries d'art dans le Marais / Art galleries in the Marais
Gallery Jeanne-Bucher Jaeger
Gertrude Stein by Picasso
Gillets Jaune
Gloria Emerson
Gustave Courbet "L'origine du monde"
Gustave Courbet "The Creation of the World"
Henry James 'The Ambassadors"
Hijabs images
Histoire d'anarchisme
Homeless in Paris / SDF
How do you mend a broken heart?
Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity exhibition at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Orsay Museum, Art Institute of Chicago
Is anti-Semitism the same as anti-Zionism?
Jacques Villegle
Jan Houweling
Jan Houweling at the Centre Pompidou
Jean Renoir "Dejeuner sur l'Herbe"
Jean-Frédéric Bazille
Jean-Luc Godard, "A bout de souffle' (Breathless)
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Pierre Leaud
Jerome Charon
Jerome Charyn
Jewish Immigration in the United States
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A clear sky. Warm and humid. Low 81F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..
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Scattered debris and other damage in a housing unit at the Tecumseh State Prison after a deadly riot on May 10, 2015.
RYAN SODERLIN/THE WORLD-HERALD
Transgender inmate sues Nebraska over sexual assault during 2015 prison riot at Tecumseh
By Martha Stoddard World-Herald Bureau
Martha Stoddard
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LINCOLN — A transgender inmate is suing the State of Nebraska and prison officials for failing to protect her during the 2015 Mother's Day riot at the Tecumseh State Prison.
The inmate alleges that she was raped by multiple prisoners after staff evacuated the building. The suit claims that rioting inmates pulled her from her housing unit, which was on fire, and put her in a cell near where two other inmates were being tortured and killed.
The suit also claims that prison officials have continually denied her treatment for her gender dysphoria.
The inmate, who is now at the Omaha Correctional Center, filed the suit under the name "Jane Doe" as an alleged sexual assault victim. She initially filed in Douglas County District Court.
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Attorneys for the state got the case moved to U.S. District Court because it involves allegations that the state had violated her federal constitutional rights to due process and to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.
The 2015 Tecumseh riot broke out on the afternoon of May 10, when prisoners from multiple housing units refused to return to their cells after being released to get medications. Trapped prison staff had to be rescued and all staff were evacuated from the area, leaving prisoners to fend for themselves.
Before corrections employees regained control 10 hours later, inmates had killed two convicted sex offenders, set multiple fires and trashed a housing unit. The riot was the worst in the state for at least a half-century and left more than $2 million in fire and vandalism damage.
More coverage: Riot at Tecumseh State Prison
According to the lawsuit, Doe was transitioning to be a woman when she was convicted in 2013 of second-degree forgery. She was sentenced as a habitual criminal, which added 10 years to her sentence.
The suit claims that corrections officials knew of her situation at the time of sentencing but that department policy required that inmates with sentences longer than eight years be classified as maximum security prisoners. Doe was sent to Tecumseh, one of the state's maximum security prisons.
The lawsuit also said Doe made repeated requests to get medical treatment for her condition. She allegedly was denied until 2016, when she started getting prescribed medications. The suit said she has not been able to get those medications as prescribed since May 2018.
The Nebraska prison system adopted a gender dysphoria protocol in November 2017, which requires a treatment plan for transgender inmates and spells out when hormone therapy should be provided. It says the treatment plan would determine whether an inmate could have any clothing other than what is provided for their fellow inmates.
The agency also has a policy on sexual assault and abuse, which calls for decisions about placement of transgender inmates to be made on a case-by-case basis to ensure the person's health and safety. The policy, which was last updated on April 30, says corrections officials will recognize an inmate's gender as listed on the person's birth certificate, unless the person has undergone gender transformation surgery.
The suit is the latest legal fallout for the state from the 2015 Tecumseh riot.
John Wizinsky, a former inmate now living in Grand Island, also has sued in connection with the 2015 riot. His case is pending in Lancaster County District Court.
A convicted sex offender in protective custody, he claimed that the riot had caused frequent nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder and that he went 17 hours without insulin. An initial trial ended in a mistrial in November, when the judge recused himself due to a conflict of interest.
A similar civil lawsuit filed in federal court by another protective custody inmate, Robert Clayborne, was dismissed before trial in 2016. U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf ruled that prison staff were protected from liability if it was determined that they had not violated an inmate's constitutional or statutory rights.
A former convict was charged with using a drone to attempt to drop marijuana into the Lincoln Correctional Center yard. Read more
A man walking home from work along the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge used a pocket knife to fight off two attackers, sending both to the hospital. Read more
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A mall security guard was arrested on suspicion of making terroristic threats after threatening to shoot at suspected shoplifters fleeing in a vehicle. Read more
Travis Fieldgrove, who had sex with a woman who was both his wife and his daughter, was sentenced to two years in prison. Read more
A 28-year-old Omaha man was accused of spanking a 2-year-old girl so hard that she suffered multiple internal injuries. Read more
A man walking in Lincoln was struck in the genitals by a bullet after he dropped a .22-caliber handgun and it discharged. Read more
An 18-year-old man who police say was driving a stolen car was fatally shot by a friend of the car's owner in Council Bluffs. Read more
A Tecumseh, Nebraska, man shot two former co-workers after they forced their way into his home and tried to fight with him, according to the State Patrol. Read more
crime, handcuff teaser
SARAH HOFFMAN/THE WORLD-HERALD
A North Carolina man was arrested by Lincoln police after they say he attempted to kidnap a 14-year-old girl and take her to live with him in Wisconsin. Read more
A Shelton woman was driving north on U.S. Highway 281 when a man who'd been kicked out of another vehicle forced his way into her van. The woman, frightened by the man, took her infant and left the vehicle. But the suspect didn't get far because the key fob remained with the woman. Read more
A staff member at the Tecumseh State Prison was attacked when an inmate's cell door was mistakenly opened. Read more
THE WORLD-HERALD
A Lincoln man who had ambitions of being a fighter has been arrested on suspicion of assault after authorities say he attacked a pro wrestling great during the Hall of Fame ceremony in New York City. Read more
More than 200 dead cattle and another 200-plus in questionable condition were found on property in Fillmore County, Nebraska, investigators said. Read more
The SUV of an Omaha woman was repeatedly rammed from behind in a Taco Bell drive-thru lane by a man who later got into the woman's vehicle and drove it into the concrete base around a light pole. Read more
A 17-year-old boy was taken into custody after he took an unloaded 9 mm handgun to school, La Vista police said. Read more
LA VISTA POLICE DEPARTMENT
A woman was injured after being put in the trunk of a car that fled police and crashed, police said. The woman had been reported abducted. Read more
REBECCA S. GRATZ/THE WORLD-HERALD
A trip to Arby's for lunch turned into a dangerous road-rage incident in Elkhorn when a driver got out of his car with a handgun and shot the tire on another man's pickup truck. Read more
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A 33-year-old man accused of leading Omaha police officers on a high-speed chase across the city had tried to run over officers, a prosecutor said, before the chase ended at The World-Herald building. Read more
A teenager was sentenced after luring a man for sex and fatally wounding him during a robbery. Read more
DNA helped lead police to man charged in a Guaca Maya slaying. Read more
A former U.S. Air Force counterintelligence specialist who defected to Iran has been charged with revealing classified information to the government in Tehran, including the code name and secret mission of a Pentagon program, prosecutors said. Read more
A masked man shot a clerk inside the Bucky's convenience store at 30th and Dodge Streets about 3 a.m. She was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center with an injury that wasn't considered life-threatening. Read more
A 25-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound after he went to confront a 50-year-old man at his home. Read more
An Iowa woman has been charged with five felonies after authorities alleged that she stole $3,535 worth of pull-tab lottery tickets while she worked at a convenience store. Read more
A 33-year-old man accused of cutting his girlfriend with a sword was covered in blood when police arrived at a house in Lincoln. Read more
A parolee is back in jail after punching a man who was a Tinder date for his girlfriend's friend, according to a court affidavit. Read more
A grenade found in a dumpster in southeast Nebraska was disposed of by Nebraska State Patrol troopers. Read more
A 26-year-old Lincoln police officer has been cited on suspicion of buying alcohol for a minor — his 19-year-old girlfriend, according to the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office. Read more
A Lincoln man upset that his wife and a friend were talking too loudly as he was trying to get to sleep walked downstairs and pointed a gun at his wife, police said. Read more
DNA evidence led police to issue an arrest warrant in an unsolved 2013 slaying of a Ralston woman. Read more
An Omaha man was arrested after an investigation indicated he had allowed two adult pit bulls to starve to death. Read more
A standoff with Omaha police ended after a man fell off an SUV, where he had been standing and shouting. Read more
Law officers from multiple agencies converged in rural Nebraska on Monday after a man exchanged gunfire twice with officers and escaped from a traffic stop by stealing a sheriff's vehicle. Read more
An Iowa woman who went to prison for sex with 17-year-old ward of the state said she feels shame and remorse. Read more
The former pharmacy director for Children's Hospital & Medical Center accused of embezzling more than $4.6 million from the hospital pleaded guilty to wire fraud Monday in U.S. District Court. Read more
A 22-year-old man reportedly drove drunk to the parking lot of the Lancaster County Jail, where his vehicle was spotted weaving and driving over an island. His blood-alcohol content was .172, Lincoln police said. Read more
An injured, naked woman was found outdoors in midtown Omaha on Monday and taken to the Nebraska Medical Center, said Officer Phil Anson, a police spokesman. Read more
A woman has filed a police report accusing Steve LeClair, an Omaha firefighter and the president of the firefighters union, of assaulting her in November. Read more
A Nebraska woman who has been charged with incest told a police officer that she wanted to have sex with her father because of a competition with her half sister to see who could do it first. Read more
Omahan 'rings' in the new year in prison for theft of $629,000 wedding ring. Read more
A club basketball coach who promised weekends of tournaments, personalized jerseys and cookie dough for fundraising took parents' money and didn't deliver, authorities say. Read more
Omaha ended 2018 on a high note not seen for decades — no one was criminally slain in Omaha in the final three months of the year. Read more
A reporter's notebook is filled with many stories of heroics, tragedy and the mundane. It can also contain some truly head-scratching instances of the weird and wacky. Click here to see some of 2018's weirdest stories.
Notable crime news of 2019
Read about some of the biggest and strangest crime stories in Nebraska and western Iowa.
Retrial begins in case of inmate suing Nebraska over deadly 2015 riot at Tecumseh State Prison
John Wizinsky alleges that prison staff were negligent in failing to take "reasonable care" to protect him from harm, and that he had suffered frequent nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder. An attorney representing the Department of Corrections disputed that Wizinsky had suffered any permanent damage and defended the actions of state prison employees as professional and safety driven.
Previously unreleased report says Tecumseh State Prison was primed for rebellion in 2015
Judge has conflict on prison overcrowding issue, declares mistrial in Tecumseh riot case
Former inmate sues state for trauma after deadly 2015 riot at Tecumseh State Prison
Inmate walks out of corrections center in Lincoln Saturday morning; his whereabouts still unknown
Transgender woman sues after Nebraska state officials refuse to cover transition surgery
Nebraska state hospital worker accused of having sex with patient
Nebraska fiscal year ends on high note, boosting cash reserve; Ricketts pitches property tax relief
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Martha Stoddard keeps legislators honest from The World-Herald's Lincoln bureau, where she covers news from the State Capitol. Follow her on Twitter @StoddardOWH. Phone: 402-473-9583.
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text:
Q: Spring boot jpa multitenancy with dynamic datasources I'm trying to create a multi tenant web application, and found a good tutorial  here. This explains me how to configure the MVC to find the new tenant (with CurrentTenantIdentifierResolver and a MultiTenancyInterceptor that extends HandlerInterceptorAdapter), how to configure three different datasources for three different tenants, and how to give the correct datasource to the server at runtime by extending AbstractDataSourceBasedMultiTenantConnectionProviderImpl
Now, this has been a great starting point to make me understand how multi tenancy in spring and hibernate work, but I want to push this further and I'd like to make it so that the tenants are completely dynamic, i.e. I don't make assumptions on how many tenants there can be for an application.
This is what I thought:

*

*The application is configured to scan a path (not in the classpath, e.g. /usr/data/config) at boot, and finds various application.properties files under various directories (one directory for each tenant) e.g. tenantA, tenantB, tenantC...

*For each application.properties Spring boot will create a datasource based on that file (that file will only have the boot property spring.datasource.url). Note that it would be great to use spring boot's property since it gives me all the information I need from the single URL, like JDBC class and such.

*I will register each of those datasources in a HashMap (as shown in the previous link)

After that, the basic multitenancy structure is already described in the link aforementioned: everytime an end user makes a request to the browser, the server will elaborate the tenant and give the correct datasource back to find the database that is to be used.
Anyone can point me to some resources, if this has been previously made (I googled a lot but nothing gets me started), or give some advice on which spring classes/configurations to use to achieve this?
Thanks in advance

A: That's what I ended up doing, if anyone ever has this need.
Any further expansion to this, or comments about best practices infringement will be most welcome.
The DataSourceProvider that extends AbstractDataSourceBasedMultiTenantConnectionProviderImpl has to override two methods

*

*selectAnyDataSource that returns back an @Autowired DataSource that is instantiated by Spring with the usual method of instantiating a datasource for an application.

*selectDataSource(String tenant) does the following:

*

*gets the path of the tenant's config folder

*Instantiates a DataSourceProperties with properties taken from the application.properties file that is found in the tenant's config folder

*Creates and returns a new DataSource via a DataSourceBuilder, using as properties the fields in the previously instantiated DataSourceProperties (useful because Spring gives you the Driver Class Name dynamically from the database URL)

Code provided here, feel free to use it:
String configPath = [...]; // Instantiate your configuration path
File file = new File(realPath);
DataSourceProperties dsProp = new DataSourceProperties();
Properties properties = new Properties();
try {
    properties.load(new FileInputStream(file));
} catch (IOException e) {
    throw new TenantNotConfiguredException(tenant); // Custom exception
}

PropertiesConfigurationFactory<DataSourceProperties> pcf = new PropertiesConfigurationFactory<>(dsProp);
pcf.setTargetName(DataSourceProperties.PREFIX);
pcf.setProperties(properties);

try {
    dsProp = pcf.getObject();
} catch (Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

return DataSourceBuilder.create()
            .url(dsProp.getUrl())
            .driverClassName(dsProp.getDriverClassName())
            .username(dsProp.getUsername())
            .password(dsProp.getPassword())
            .build();

A: This is the complete code. I hope it helps as I also suffered before I arrived at this.
  @RestController
  @RequestMapping(value = "/accounts", headers = "Accept=application/json")
  public class AppController {

    @Autowired
    UserService service;
    @Autowired
    AppService appService;
    ////////working on dynamic loading of datasource

    @Autowired
    Map<String, DataSource> dataSourcesMtApp;

    public void updateDataSource(String url, String username, String password, String tenant) {
        try {
            DataSourceBuilder factory1 = DataSourceBuilder.create(MultiTenancyJpaConfiguration.class.getClassLoader()).url(url)
                    .username(username).password(password)
                    .driverClassName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
            dataSourcesMtApp.put(tenant, factory1.build());
            System.out.println("Size:......................................................" + dataSourcesMtApp.size());
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            Logger.getLogger(AppController.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
        }
    }

    @PostMapping("/create-account")
    public Response createAccount(@RequestBody ConnectionParams request) {
        String tenant = ConnectionUtils.initializeDatabase(request.getDatabase(), request.getDbusername(), request.getDbpassword());
        updateDataSource("jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/" + request.getDatabase() + "?useSSL=false", request.getDbusername(), request.getDbpassword(), tenant);
        TenantContextHolder.setTenantId(tenant);
        Users user = new Users();
        user.setPassword(request.getLoginpassword());
        user.setUsername(request.getLoginusername());
        user.setTenant(tenant);
        user = service.save(user);
        String response = "Account Setup Completed TenantId: " + tenant + " Username: " + user.getUsername();
        Response rp = new Response();
        rp.setResult(response);
        return rp;
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


The 2018-19 Premier League season is just a few weeks old, but fantasy football leagues across the globe are already taking shape.
One or two players will have taken early leads, leaving those trailing behind to panic about their teams.
It can be tempting to invoke the Wildcard option and make wholesale changes but that is a risky tactic, especially at such an early stage of the season.
Each week, minor alterations - which don't need to cost you any points - can make all the difference and you can mould your team into a point-earning machine as you go.
If you're considering a few transfers ahead of Gameweek Four, Goal has taken a look at some of the best strikers, midfielders, defenders and goalkeepers to pick.
The month of August was historically a terrible month for Harry Kane, but the Tottenham striker appears to have overcome the psychological barrier, scoring twice in three games thus far. Spurs play Watford this weekend and Kane has a decent record against the Hornets, so he is worth backing if you want to change your attacking options.
Serbia international Aleksandar Mitrovic looks to be enjoying his football at Fulham and he has picked up where he left off, scoring three goals in the opening three games of the season. There is a fair chance Mitrovic will continue that form against Brighton on Saturday and he is available for a bargain fee too.
Crystal Palace are at home to Southampton this weekend and they will be relying on Wilfried Zaha to come up with the goods as they attempt to bounce back from consecutive defeats against Liverpool and Watford. Zaha is aiming to hit double figures in goals this season and he has already scored twice in three appearances.
Lucas Moura took some time to adjust to life at Tottenham since his arrival from Paris Saint-Germain last season but the Brazil international has dispelled any lingering doubts with a strong start to the 2018-19 campaign. Lucas has started all three games for Spurs and has three goals to his name too, including a double against Manchester United. At £7.1m, he is much cheaper than his team-mates Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli.
The departure of Richarlison to Everton has barely been felt at Vicarage Road this season thanks to the incredible impact of Roberto Pereyra. The former Juventus forward has three goals in three appearances and will be eager to carry on his impressive performances against Spurs at home on Sunday.
World Cup winner Andre Schurrle is a relative bargain at £5.9m and he could turn out to be one of the shrewdest pieces of business in the transfer window after showing glimpses of his ability in Fulham's opening three matches. The 27-year-old winger has a penchant for scoring goals, something he demonstrated in previous spells with Bayer Leverkusen, Chelsea and Wolfsburg, and got off the mark with a strike against Burnley last week.
Liverpool have kicked off the new campaign with a new-found defensive solidity, with the likes of Alisson and Virgil van Dijk taking the plaudits. However, the performances of Joe Gomez are worthy of mention too and the England international can be picked up for considerably less than his Dutch centre-back partner.
Dubbed the 'Bury Beckham', Tottenham's Kieran Trippier has carried his World Cup form for England into the new Premier League season. Not only is the attacking full-back a potent threat going forward on the flank, he possesses pin-point accuracy from dead-ball situations.
While Arsenal's defensive stability may be questionable, they possess a strong fantasy football selection in Nacho Monreal, who has been one of the most consistent performers over the past few seasons. The Spain international has been playing at left-back for Unai Emery's team and opened his account for the season with a goal in last week's 3-1 win over West Ham. He will be an outlet for the Gunners against Cardiff City this weekend.
The Maurizio Sarri era at Chelsea has started on a positive note with three wins from the opening three games, but the Blues have only managed to keep one clean sheet thus far. That should change in the coming weeks, with the likes of Bournemouth, Cardiff City and West Ham being Chelsea's next three fixtures, and the world's most expensive goalkeeper, Kepa Arrizabalaga, will have a good opportunity to earn more fantasy football points.
Brighton showed themselve to be a formidable defensive unit in their maiden Premier League campaign last term and, despite struggling against Watford on the opening weekend, they demonstrated that once again in recent games against Manchester United and Liverpool. The Seagulls host Fulham this weekend and they are particularly likely to keep a clean sheet at home.
Arsenal picked up their first league win of the season last week against West Ham and they will be aiming to build on that this weekend against Cardiff City. The Gunners have not managed to keep a clean sheet year this term, but their Welsh opposition are no real threat going forward as their return of zero goals in three games testifies.