ramses retirement

Newsletter 01/22/23

Figure 1. Our garden during hail storm

Bienvenue and welcome back to Musée Musings, your idiosyncratic guide to Paris and art. I’m on my way back to Paris this week, now that the thunderstorms and hail storms are over. The latter were very surprising since I thought (incorrectly) that it has to be below 0 Celsius or 32 Fahrenheit for rain to freeze and become hail. Turns out it has to be below freezing somewhere, but not necessarily in my garden where the hail stones fell and where they stayed for a brief moment before melting. So, the rain has stopped and the weather for the foreseeable future is sunny. (Figure 1) The forecast for Paris is gloomy weather and labor unrest. (Figure 2)

Figure 2. Labor Protests in Paris, January 19, 2023

Retirement age in France is the issue presently outraging anyone who works or hopes to find work someday. On Thursday the TGVs were mostly not running and the metros weren’t either. School teachers stayed home and so did the parents of the students they teach. The issue? President Macron’s intention to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Just ask an actuary. For every man who drops dead at 65, there’s someone else, like my mom, who retired at 62 and lived until 95. A system intended to provide for people during their golden years cannot be expected to provide an income for the last third of a person’s life. Right?

In the United States, the original Social Security Act of 1935 set the minimum age for receiving full retirement benefits at 65. Fifty years later, people were living so much longer, something had to happen. The age of retirement rose from 65 to 66 to 67. You can still retire at 62 but you are punished for your haste for the rest of your life by significantly reduced monthly payments. If you wait until you are 70, you are rewarded with much higher benefits. You won’t know if you made the right choice until you die and then it will be too late to do anything about it. The age when Medicare kicks in has remained the same. It was 65 in 1965 when LBJ signed it into law and it is 65 today.

In France where people work to live rather than live to work, working doesn’t have the same caché as it does in the U.S. My neighbor in the Dordogne left school at 15 and worked, mostly in the vines, until he retired at 57. His labor was manual. He worked hard, certainly a lot harder (physically anyhow) than I did. And he started earlier, a lot earlier than me. I didn’t have a ‘real’ job until I was twice his age. And Macron’s plan keeps early retirement in place for people like my neighbor. The younger you start working, the younger you can stop working.

So I didn’t understand why teachers and people with desk jobs or at least people who don’t get their hands and clothes dirty at work, think they should retire the moment they transition out of middle age. Especially since young people don’t find jobs right away in France. What’s wrong with working until you’re older if you start when you’re older? That’s what I did.

But turns out it may not be as simple as that. It may be that young workers are worried that what they see happening to their older compatriots will happen to them. Difficulty in finding employment in the first place, followed by job loss when they are too old to find another job. Age discrimination. One woman interviewed by the NYTimes talked about her job being eliminated when she was 59. She had been in the work force for nearly 40 years. And she wanted to keep working until retirement. But nobody would hire her, she was too old. She managed to survive on her savings until she was 62. She said she couldn’t have made it to 64.

One sign held by a protester had the words, “Retirement before arthritis” on it. But retirement and arthritis do go together. I think that’s not a very useful sign.

Talking about retirement, one guy who didn’t take early retirement or any retirement at all was Ramses II. He died on the job, in his 90s, having reigned for 67 years. He outlived the four sons he had with his first and most beloved wife. Eventually he was succeeded by his 13th son who had to wait until he was in his 70s before becoming Pharaoh. Historical precedent for the septuagenarian we now know as King Charles III.

When Ginevra and I saw the exhibition, we examined all the display cases, we read all the wall texts. I went again last week with Nicolas. It was a different experience. We concentrated on Ramses the Warrior and the Battle of Kadesh. (Figure 3) Turns out that the battle, which Ramses declared over and over again that he and his warriors had won, was a draw at best. After the battle, Ramses commanded his soldiers to cut off the hand of each fallen opponent (the dead ones I guess) to prove they had won. They did what a herald would do a couple thousand years later in medieval warfare. Count the dead bodies after a battle. The herald knew who was who based upon the colors, the blazons, the dead soldiers wore. I wrote about the beginning of heraldry here: Whose side are you on?

Figure 3. Re-enactment of Battle of Kadesh, Ramses II’s pet lionness joined the battle, too, De Young Museum

In other news, I had to stop watching Vera. I was doing the show a disservice by gorging on it nightly. It’s more of a once a week or less kind of show. In the meantime, I happened upon another English policier, a 6 part series called River. (Figure 4) Do you know it? It’s about a detective investigating the murder of his partner (professional not personal) and other murders which he is asked to solve. The detective is played by Stellan Skarsgård who sees dead people, his partner and those other dead people whose murders he is investigating. He doesn’t just see them, though, he talks to them and they give him clues about how they died. Once he solves their deaths, they disappear. He is kind of like a psychic. Like Whoopi Goldberg in the film, Ghost. But it’s not funny, especially since his colleagues see him talking to nobody and think he’s crazy - especially his boss. Excellent actors, interesting story.

Figure 4. Detective John River and his dead partner (only he - and we - can see her … she’s dead)

And drum roll please, I have begun to read A la recherche du temps perdu again. (Figure 5) This time, after all those Proust exhibitions, I am going to make it through at least a couple of the seven volumes. So far it’s great fun to read the full passages of those that I read snippets of at the various exhibitions. I’m learning a lot more about Françoise the cook and M Swann, the author’s parent’s friend. I am putting a little post-it every time Proust writes about art. I’m only at Combray and my book is already bursting with post-its. When I get back to Paris, I’ll be joining a Proust book club at the American Library. I’ll tell you about it once I get started.

Figure 5. Photograph of Marcel Proust in 1887, age 16 (nice bow)

This week’s article is about an artist whose work especially grabbed my attention at the Venice Biennale, who is currently enjoying a moment, whose work I have admired for years - Barbara Kruger, read it here. Gros Bisous, Dr. B

Below are some comments about last week’s newsletter. Thank you!

New comments on name that storm:

Reading that you have a house in the Dordogne (Perigord) and seeing that bottle of Monbazillac brought me back to when I was on an exchange with a French family near Montignac in July 1969. It was my last year of secondary (high) school and among the many memories are my exchange colleague Gilles and I polishing off a bottle or two of Monbazillac one afternoon when his parents were away, and later lying out on the dry grass looking up at a midnight blue velvet sky as Neil Armstrong took that immortal first step for (a) man ... That summer I also discovered ratatouille, home-made by madame, and that an Irish boy was not as fascinating to a French girl in France as vice versa. – David, Ireland

Oh, God! I SO, S-O want to have a few bites of that galette des roi!, Morris, N. Carolina

I am anxiously awaiting the film “ Living”. But Naples ( Florida) is sort of a back water when it comes to getting recent films. I have loved everything Ishiguro has written, even the creepy “ Never Let me Go”. “ KLARA” is my favorite so far. Deedee, Baltimore, Naples, FL

Dear Reader, I hope you enjoyed reading this article. Please sign up below to receive more articles plus other original content from me, Dr. B. Merci!

And, if you enjoyed reading this review, please consider writing a comment. Thank you.

See No Evil

Use your words

Musée Musings