Old Houses are Still the Best Houses

"A building properly conceived is several layers of longevity of built components."

Francis Cuthbert "Frank" Duffy, architect


If you are about my age and had hippy, soixante-huitard parents, you may remember The Whole Earth Catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972.  I believe that a dusty copy is still to be found in my parent's library in Seattle along with Lorenzo Milam's Sex and Broadcasting.

It was completely by chance that I stumbled on a book Brand wrote back in the 1990's called How Buildings Learn:  What Happens After They're Built.

A delightful book.  In it he turns the whole business of architecture on its head.  Instead of thinking of building projects as an attempt to capture the perfect house, office space or monument, he looks at these projects as just the beginning of the building's life and he asks how they be constructed to last and to evolve over time.  A dynamic, as opposed to a static, process.  New eras, new owners, new uses.

Brand has a rather jaundiced view of architects and he quotes Marvin Minsky who said, "The problem with architects is that they think they're artists, and they're not very competent."  I'm not qualified to agree or disagree with that comment but Brand's examples of bad buildings (or ones that in retrospect haven't aged well)  are well chosen.  The Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou (The Pompidou Center), for example, is one that when it opened in 1977 was a very impressive, exciting, modern structure.  Looking at it now in 2013, it  appears rather shabby and a bit dated.

Moving from monumental architecture to something a bit closer to everyday life (from art to craft, one might say) the best houses, he says, are old (or new) ones that start simple and are robust and built to last. He favors the "house as box" - a design that has been around forever and is still, in his view, a good one, "because it is profoundly adaptive."   Like the Saltbox which was a very simple U.S. style built between the 17th and 19th century. Or these two examples from my archives: an early 20th century stone house in Brittany, France and a small dwelling in our old neighborhood, Shirokanedai, in Tokyo, Japan:

Brittany, France

Tokyo, Japan

These are houses, "vernacular buildings", that can grow depending on the owner's wishes and needs.  They can be bumped out or up.   The "skin" can be changed and porches, verandas and extra rooms added.

It's not just the outside that can be changed but the inside, too.  The interior is very simple in these houses and is usually constructed with a corridor (or staircase) in the center with rooms on either side. "Let there be," says Brand, "a central passageway and stair hall, say, with roughly identical pairs of rooms on each side upstairs and down."

In the Brittany house, that is exactly what one finds:  a hallway with a very steep staircase and rooms (and stone fireplaces) on either side going up 2 floors.   The owners (my in-laws) didn't have to spend much to recuperate the attic space and turned it into bedrooms with windows and a small bathroom, thus making a four-bedroom vacation home out of a very basic two-bedroom fisherman's house. (House still doesn't have heat, though.)

Another good example is the house I live in now - a 1929 brick house that was previously owned by a laborer (a tiler by trade) and his wife.   We think there were remodels in the 1950's and in the 1970's. They clearly went down and dug out the basement to create a laundry room and bedrooms for their two sons.   Since water and sewer didn't start being installed on our street until 1929, we strongly suspect that what is the bathroom (salle de bains) today was something else when the house was first built.  Perhaps a second small bedroom for children or maybe the kitchen was bigger.

What we can see from the plan (and the size of the lot) there are an almost infinite number of changes inside and out that would be relatively inexpensive to make.  Not a lot of work frankly to make the kitchen larger, to grab the space that is today the front porch to make the living room bigger, or to tack a veranda onto what is called the salon in the plan. (Provided, of course that the architecte de la ville agrees.)

We are thinking about the last but we're taking our time.  The house was well-maintained for many years but the tiler's widow had to let some things slide and it seems prudent to tackle things like the leaking gutters, the rotten railings, and the peeling paint first.  Anything more complicated than that will have to wait because, to be honest, we have more will right now than wallet.

And that, according to Stewart Brand, is a Good Thing.  Why?

For one, Brand agrees with David Owen (The Walls Around Us) that all houses suffer a nervous breakdown when new owners move in.

"A few days after the deal is closed, water begins to drip from the chandelier in the living room, a heating pipe bursts, and the oven stops working.  The house is accustomed to being handled in certain ways.  Then, suddenly, strangers barge in.  They take longer showers, flush the toilets more forcefully, turn on the trash compactor with the right hand instead of the left, and open windows at night.  Familiar domestic rhythms are destroyed.  While the house struggles to adjust, many expensive items...unexpectedly self-destruct.  Then, gradually, new rhythms are established, the house resigns itself to the change of ownership, and a normal pace of deterioration is restored."

For another, Brand argues that the enemy of good preservation and prudent remodeling is money.

"Form follows funding."

Too much money and the owners do tout et n'importe quoi.  They indulge their fantasies and the results are often quite ugly, impractical, inflexible, and go out of style in just a few short years. These then become the nightmares of future owners who say to themselves, "What were they thinking?"  Too little money means that basic maintenance isn't done and the house suffers serious structural damage that new owners must try desperately to fix.

Music to my ears since that describes us perfectly (at least until the Frenchlings finish university). And here I was feeling guilty because there is so much to do and there just isn't any way we can do it all right now.

I'll buy Brand's argument that makes a virtue out of a necessity.  Fantasies cost nothing and,  “if dreams were thunder and lightning was desire, this old house would have burned down a long time ago.” (John Prine).

And if you're interested Steward Brand did a How Buildings Learn series for the BBC in 1997 which is up on Youtube.  Very well done and you can learn more about what he really thinks of the Pompidou Center:

Old Friends

I once joked that I knew more people in the French military than I ever did in the American one. Looking back over the past 30 years or so I see that this is not entirely true.  It's just that some experiences loom larger in my memory than others.

Years ago, through my father-in-law who was a retired French army officer who served in Europe, Indochina and North Africa, I often met other retired military at lunches or other family events and sometimes papa would read letters to us from the men he had served with and who were still on active duty.  It made for interesting listening, especially during the First Gulf War.

One gentleman I remember well was a retired colonel who was serving in French North Africa (World War II) when the Brits/Americans landed and he told me that they didn't really want to shoot Americans but, hey, orders were orders, right?

On the American side the only veterans in my family were my grandfather who served in the Aleutian Islands and my great-aunt who was in the Navy during World War II .  Grandpa was a medic and had this deep furrow in his forehead where he'd been shot in the head during his service.  He miraculously survived to come home and marry his sweetheart, my grandmother, from Naches in Eastern Washington. My great-aunt died before I knew her but I still have her rosary and a pin that belonged to her that says "Pistol Expert."

When we moved to Japan I met Americans serving in or retired from the U.S. Navy.  And it was after we'd moved back to France that I realized that the story of Americans abroad all too often does not include retired U.S. military.  Everyone seems to know (or think they know) quite a lot about American creatives in Paris but no one talks about about the men I met in Asia who were long-term expats (10+ years).  These were veterans who, after retiring and marrying local women or exploring business opportunities, just never went back to the U.S. to live.  You run into them occasionally in books written by Robert Kaplan, for example, but that's about it and that's a shame.
 
Returning to the French side this weekend we had some old friends over for Sunday lunch and as we talked and joked it came to me in a flash that I had known the gentleman sitting next to me for around 25 years now.  I first met him in Nantes in the late 1980's.  He was one of several room mates that my French spouse was living with at the time while they suffered their way through engineering school.  At that time France still had the draft and so when they finally graduated they had national service to look forward to.  My spouse did his service in the U.S. but this fellow decided to go into the French navy.  At the time I moved to France in 1989, he was on a ship, the Jeanne d'Arc and seeing the world (or at least a part of it).

http://www.netmarine.net/g/bat/jeanne/campagnesmod.htm

I know this because I remember vividly when he came back and stopped by our apartment to tell stories and give us a Jeanne d'Arc 1989-1990 campaign medallion which I still have.

He liked the Navy so much that he stayed and made a career there.  Over the years it was not easy to stay in touch because he was a submariner (yes, folks, France has subs including nuclear ones) and because they and we were on the move. Nonetheless, we were at his wedding and he had a special place at ours (he was the Best Man).  We had a very memorable visit with them when they were living in the south of France.  We went to Japan and they went to Noumea in New Caledonia for a couple of years.  

Not too long ago we discovered that they are living not too far from us - a rather rare occurrence. It just seemed right that we take advantage of the opportunity to get together and so we invited them for lunch. 

It was so good to see them.  So much to talk about and it turned out that their eldest daughter was in Quebec at the same as the elder Frenchling.  Ah, if we had only known that a year ago...

For every emigrant/immigrant there are two essential questions that are always asked:  "Why did you leave?"  and "Why did you stay?"  The second is, I think, more important than the first but the answer one gives changes over time.  What said at 25 is not what I would say today now that I'm nearly 50.  Today my rationales have to do with people.  Not just those who are alive but also those who have passed away. In my memories the countries of my heart and the people I have known are a tapestry where these experiences are not disconnected, but ones woven into a whole cloth from which I can extract threads and follow them back into the past. 

And that makes the present very rich, indeed.   

Concerned about FATCA or Confused about Filing US Tax Returns? Some Low-Cost Help.

U.S. tax season is nearly upon us and as FATCA gets closer and closer to being implemented many US Persons in countries around the world are desperately looking for help.

Not the individuals who can easily afford expensive cross-border tax experts, but those lower and middle-income U.S. citizens/Green Card holders who live outside the United States who have discovered to their horror that these matters are of direct concern to them.

It has come to my attention that there are organizations out there (some of which I work with) that are offering low-cost seminars to help US Persons understand the FATCA law and to offer assistance for first-time filers of US Tax Returns.  These seminars are free or low-cost (and that means under 50 Euros/70 USD/75 CAD).  Here is a short list by date with links to where you can get more information and register/pay.

 If you know of other free or nearly free events, let me know and I will happily add them to the list.

 And, above all, if you don't see a session/seminar/workshop near you, contact these organizations and see if it's possible to organize one in your city/country/region.

March 2, 2014 - London, UK:  Solving the problems of U.S. citizenship – Information session, The Church Hall, St Pancras Church House, Lancing Street, NW1 1NA, London, United Kingdom. Cost: 15 GBP/18 Euros (Posted at the Isaac Brock Society).

March 8, 2014 - Waterloo, Canada:  Solving the problems of U.S. citizenship – Information session, Conrad Grebel Univ. College, Rm 1300, 140 Westmount Rd. N., Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G6 Canada. Cost: 20 CAD. (Posted at the Isaac Brock Society.)

March 13, 2014 - Paris, France:  AARO Tax Seminar -Tax 101: An Introduction to Basic Tax Reporting Requirements for US Citizens Residing Abroad.  Help for first-time filers in a workshop setting. Forum 104, 104 rue de Vaugirard, 75006 Paris, Cost: AARO members €10; Non-members/Guests €15. (Association of Americans Resident Abroad event.)

March 16, 2014 - Montreal, Canada:   Foreign Account Tax Information Act (FATCA) Information Session. Professor Allison Christians and Toronto lawyer John Richardson will be speaking about disclosure, compliance, and other obligations raised by FATCA. McGill University, Chancellor Day Hall: Maxwell Cohen Moot Court (NCDH 100), 3644 rue Peel, Montreal, Quebec, Canada , H3A 1W9.  Cost:  Free.  (Event hosted by the McGill Heward Stikeman Chair in Tax Law.)

March 17, 2014 - Paris, France: AARO Tax 202: AARO Annual Tax Seminar.  This session is destined for those who have some familiarity with filing and just need to know what's new this filing season. Mona Bismarck American Center for Art & Culture, 34 avenue de New York, 75116 Paris, France. Cost: AARO Members 10€; Non-Members/Guests 20€.  (Association of Americans Resident Abroad event.)

March 22, 2014 - North Bay, Canada:  Solving the problems of U.S. citizenship – Information session, Legion #23,150 1st Ave W, North Bay, Ontario P1B3B9, Canada.  Cost:  20 CAD.  (Posted at the Isaac Brock Society.)

April 5, 2014 - Munich, Germany:   Solving the problems of U.S. citizenship – Information session,  Eine WeltHaus München, Schwanthalerstr.80, München, Rm 211-212 (top floor).  Cost:  14 Euros.  (Posted at the Isaac Brock Society.)

Woofie is Not Compliant - What to Do?

Last night I stayed up late and watched the entire 2-hour session of the IRS Oversight meeting and read the Senate Report on Tax Evasion.  It was riveting.  Really.

All this with the intention of posting something this morning about one or the other.

But you know what?  I need a break and I suspect you do, too.

So...

Petros (Peter) over at Isaac Brock posted this funny, New Form 1040-K9.  Check it out - it is hilarious.

And just for kicks (and to tempt you further) here is what Peter posted this on Facebook about Woofie's dilemma:

"Woofie finds himself in an embarrassing situation. He didn't know he was supposed to file his 1040-K9 for all the years that he lived in Canada. Now he has a compliance problem but is not sure how to approach it. Come to one of our seminars. We will have special session just for our furry friends. But Woofie's problems are just starting. He's found that he can't renounce his citizenship because US state department officials believe him to be incompetent or perhaps, that his owners are forcing him."

Woofie, my friend, je vous ai compris.

The Battle for Bi-lingualism

"Making sure my children are at least proficient in conversational French is a goal I have set myself despite the setbacks. A recent event has given me reason for hope. At a market in London's east end, overhearing excited shouts in French, we stopped to watch some boys playing football in a yard. They were being overseen by a group of besuited men on the steps of a nearby community centre. The boys and their fathers were from several Francophone African countries, the Ivory Coast, Congo, Guinea. Noticing my son’s interest, they asked if he wanted to join the game. As the football was kicked back and forth, I heard my son speak French, not just once, but several times over."

Ben Faccini
In a world that converses only in English, we’ll talk only of banal things: that’s why I want my children to be bilingual

This is a moment that a frustrated minority language parent will treasure forever - hearing the children use the other family language in public.  

When I listen to people in France or the United States who are shocked that there are innocent children out there whose parents are foisting another language on them at home, thus destroying any chance that they will learn the official language of the country, I literally erupt in laughter.

Their concern is misplaced.  The problem is not learning the official language which they will do because children are social creatures with intelligence and a desire to communicate with their peers, but that the minority language of one or more of the parents will be completely lost in a sea of English, French or whatever majority language the children are being exposed to.

This is the battle that many migrants and partners in a bi-national couple fight every day.   Not to make their homes a bastion of the minority language against the country and culture they live in, but to impart, however imperfectly, some of the mother tongue of a distant land that the parent or parents once called "home".

It's hard to raise children to be bi-lingual and the results of the efforts are uncertain.  Maybe the children will grow to be bi-lingual adults or maybe not. What I've seen is a continuum of children raised in bi-lingual households ranging from the ability to understand a little and say a few words in the other language to full fluency (accent, understanding, reading, writing, speaking). 

And that is just as true of children whose parents are trying to teach them a "useful" or "important" language like English or French, as it is in the transmission of other languages with less prominence and perceived utility.  A child doesn't necessarily understand those adult prejudices - all he or she knows is that mom (or dad) talks "funny". 

Faccini, a bilingual French/English speaker who lives in London and whose dreams of raising French speakers was crashing on the shoals of reality, describes beautifully the forces against the minority language parent:

"Introducing French into the family equation has undoubtedly been an additional complication. It skews mealtimes, often setting off lopsided conversations, pitting my French against everyone else’s English. It makes the children feel they are being judged and tested. And, despite their growing comprehension of French, they’ll find any excuse to walk a few steps behind me on the way to school in case I’m overheard. They stick their fingers in their ears when the Petit Nicolas CD is played in the car. They wriggle their way out of talking to French-speaking friends and family members by perfectly mimicking Gallic shrugs, sometimes accompanied by Parisian-sounding ‘errrrs’, or else they clam up completely. Most of their conversations end up wordless. A thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, offered with a cherubic smile, usually settles a wide range of issues."

One important omission in Faccini's post is the role played by the other parent which in this case is his wife.  From the article it appears she is a native English speaker and he neglects to mention how she feels about his effort to promote French in their UK household.  One thing I have learned from the readers of this blog and from Gabrielle Varro's work is that the attitude of the other parent is crucial.  

Where the native speaker parent doesn't value the other language, doesn't show any interest in learning it, and demonstrates by word, deed and attitude that this is not a common project, he/she subtly undermines the parent with the minority language.  In a bi-national couple this can become the source of much anger and frustration which may never be openly expressed, but festers at the heart of the marriage. 

Is the effort to transmit the minority language worth the trip?  Faccini thinks so and so do I.  He has his reasons and I have mine -  some of which I admit have a lot to do with my struggles as a woman migrant (guilt, pressure from the homeland, and identity crisis).

What we share, I think, is the utter delight we felt when all those efforts  paid off and we heard our mother tongue spontaneously coming from the mouths of our progeny.  Like Faccini  I had to wait many years for those moments and allow me to share with you one of the very best ones.

At the age of 14 the younger Frenchling decided to write a novel in English.  Took her two years of struggle but she finally finished it at the age of 16.  It's a fabulous first effort.

And when I read it, I cried.

French Finance Commission Talks FATCA

On February 11, 2014 the French government Commission des Finances met to discuss the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

FATCA is an American law that requires all foreign financial institutions to turn over lists of people with connections to the U.S. (US Persons) and their financial information. Generally, this kind of thing is illegal in most countries and a clear violation of basic privacy rights assured by many nation-state charters and constitutions. The intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) were necessary to making FATCA fly outside the U.S. because they set up a governmental framework that mitigates some (not all) of FATCA's problems with local laws AND offers at least some level of reciprocity - information exchange going in both directions and not just from the rest of the world to the United States.

The French government signed an IGA with the United States late last year (summary here).  And, as has happened in so many other countries where IGA's have been negotiated and signed, the account closures of US Persons have begun or accelerated.  

As some of the unintended consequences (and I feel very safe saying "unintended" since I am very sure that the French government never envisioned French citizens losing their bank privileges) have become clearer, the Commission des Finances invited testimony about the impact of FATCA in France.  

The speakers were Mathilde Dupré of CCFD-Terre Solidaire, Édouard Marcus from the Department of Finance Legislation,  Patrick Suet of the Tax Committee of the Federation of French Banks (Fédération bancaire française) and the secretary general of the Société générale (major French bank), and Jean-Marc Vasseux,  the director of Risk, Control and Compliance at AXA Banque.

Let's begin with Senator Philippe Marini's introduction to the FATCA discussion:

L'initiative américaine revenait à lancer au système financier une proposition, certes fort recevable, mais en usant d'une méthode pour le moins cavalière. La négociation intergouvernementale a heureusement permis de progresser, et les pays tiers ont finalement obtenu que soient signées des conventions bilatérales pour la mise en oeuvre de FATCA, prévoyant, pour certaines, une réciprocité. C'est ainsi qu'un projet de loi autorisant l'approbation de l'accord signé le 14 novembre 2013 entre la France et les États-Unis sera prochainement soumis au Parlement. D'où cette audition. 

Bien des ambiguïtés demeurent, en particulier sur la question de la réciprocité. Au-delà de la question de principe se pose la question de la mise en oeuvre concrète de la loi FATCA par les banques, avec ses difficultés juridiques, ses questions de responsabilité et ses coûts. Pour y voir plus clair, nous avons donc souhaité recevoir l'éclairage des quatre personnalités ici présentes. 

The U.S. initiative amounts to throwing a proposition at the banking system, certainly one for which there is a strong case, but uses a method that is, to say the least, arrogant. Government to government negotiations fortunately allowed us to move forward and countries finally got signed bilateral agreements for the implementation of FATCA, some of which provide for reciprocity. A bill authorizing the approval of the agreement [IGA] signed November 14, 2013 between France and the United States will soon be submitted to Parliament. And that is why we are holding this hearing.

Though ambiguities remain, particularly on the issue of reciprocity. Above and beyond the question of the principle of the matter, there is also the question of the practical implementation of FATCA by banks: legal difficulties, responsibilities and costs. In order to see more clearly, we have asked the four witnesses present here to shed some light on these  matters.

The testimony that followed that introduction is a unique look into how the different actors in France view FATCA.  Each sector had an important point to make and we'll examine their perspectives.  What is rather unfortunate (but we have already seen this at the OECD and the European Parliament) is that FATCA is viewed very narrowly as a subject that only concerns the finance sector and governments (with a token NGO thrown in from time to time).

What we know from experience is that there are stakeholders missing here, and these are the customers of these banks and the citizens of these countries.

CCFD-Terre Solidaire

Mathilde Dupré was the first to speak. She represented an NGO called CCFD-Terre Solidaire,  the Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development, which is a member of the Tax Justice Network.  

National Sovereignty:  She responded directly to the sovereignty question:  "Dans quelle mesure l'accord FATCA ouvre-t-il la voie à l'influence des normes américaines?" (To what extent does the FATCA agreement open the door to the influence of American standards?)  In principle, she said, French law still prevails and it will be the Conseil d'Etat et le Conseil constitutionnel (the State and Constitutional Councils) that will ensure that.  

Reciprocity:  A key problem, she said.  Reciprocity is written into many IGAs, however serious problems remain on the American side.  The U.S. Congress has to agree to reciprocity.  FATCA, the law signed in 2010 by President Obama, only provides for a one-way information exchange from other countries to the United States.  That's not acceptable to most countries and what France and other countries wanted (and got) was a bi-lateral information exchange with France getting information from the United States as well as sending information.  Thus far the U.S. Congress has not voted to permit information exchange from the U.S. though it has been promised by the negotiators on the U.S. side.  It was this issue of reciprocity and the list of exempt entities, she said, that delayed the signing of the French/U.S. IGA until November of last year. 

French Banks

Patrick Suet began by pointing out that although  transmission of financial information to the government is not new for banks,  FATCA is requiring serious and expensive adaptations to systems due to the nature of the information requested.   

IGAs - Help or Hindrance?  Since 2011 France banks have had to put into place some significant compliance projects that he described as "très lourds" (very heavy).  And consider, he said, the case of the French bank the Société générale which has a presence in 77 countries.  This means potentially 77 different IGAs that the bank must take into account.  

Cost/Benefit Analysis:  The definitions of "revenu financier" or of "compte-titre"  are not the same from one country to another, he said,  and he talked about the fact that a simple cost/benefit analysis, "nous conduit à clore les comptes américains dans certains pays" (is causing us to close American accounts in some countries).  Though he admits that is difficult to do when it concerns dual-nationals (France/US).  There is also a real issue with French account holders in France who have a connection to the U.S.:  for example, French citizens who have children living in the United States.

Legal Risk:  Suet raised the possibility that their clients will sue over the data transfer to the U.S.  "un client pourrait contester le transfert en se fondant sur la législation européenne relative à la protection de la vie privée" (a client may contest the transfer based on European legislation that protects privacy.)  A very important point and I personally think it will happen regardless of the IGA or the passing of legislation by the French parliament to implement FATCA.  A case (or cases) will eventually go to the European level to be decided there.

Compensation:  Now, this is a very interesting proposal.  Suet argued that since the banks and their clients are alone in bearing the cost of FATCA,  some compensation is needed here.  Since 2011, he said, the banks have spent 200 to 300 million Euros to get compliant and that's not fair.  "Ne travaillons-nous pas au service de l'intérêt général du monde entier?" (Are we not working in the general interest of the entire world?)

And that proposal led to this interesting exchange between Senator Marini and Patrick Suet:

M. Philippe Marini, président. - N'est-ce pas là un investissement concurrentiel, susceptible de vous acquérir de nouveaux clients ?
(Is this not a competitive investment which might help you get new clients?)
M. Patrick Suet. - C'est plutôt un investissement pour les perdre.... Nos clients pourraient être mécontents de ces nouvelles interrogations. Le coût, en moyenne, est donc au moins de 1 000 euros par client, qu'il faut comparer avec le rendement moyen annuel d'un compte : il faudra cinq à dix ans pour récupérer l'investissement.
(It's more of an investment to lose them... Our clients may be unhappy being asked these new questions. The price, on average, is at least 1000 euros per client, and we must compare to the annual return on an account: it will take 5 to 10 years just to recover the investment.
M. Philippe Marini, président. - Ce ne sont pas n'importe quels clients, cependant...
(But these are not just any clients, however...)
M. Patrick Suet. - Détrompez-vous. Tous les comptes d'expatriés sont concernés. Une banque nous a fourni le chiffre de 2 500 euros par compte en moyenne.
(Think again. All the accounts of expatriates are concerned. One bank gave us the figure of 2,500 euros per account on average.)

Jean-Marc Vasseux of Axa Banque added his concerns.  We are a small bank, he said, with very few American clients (some of whom were also French, I note).  Their logic was simply this:  "Conserver nos relations avec eux supposait des adaptations lourdes : nous avons donc choisi de ne pas poursuivre. Cette décision fut difficile à prendre, car il s'agissait de clients fidèles." (Maintaining a relationship with them meant important adaptations:  we chose not to [maintain the relationship].  This decision was very difficult for us because it concerned loyal clients).  

After the testimony of the banks the discussion went general with reactions and counter-reactions to the information presented.   To summarize the key issues:  cost, sovereignty, reciprocity and OECD/Europe efforts in the area of automatic information exchange.  

Toward the very end of the meeting, the French senator from the Val-d'Oise (Ile-de-France) Francis Delattre, made a statement that I thought went to the very heart of the matter.  He asked very directly the all important question:  why?  Why are doing this and does it make any sense at all?  

"Nous avons entendu, à plusieurs reprises, nos représentants auprès de l'OCDE. Soixante États ont signé un protocole d'accord. Quant aux Américains résidant en France, ils sont aussi des contribuables français. Pourquoi injecter du droit américain dans les relations interbancaires alors que la négociation devrait avoir lieu d'État à État? FATCA introduit beaucoup de confusion, et n'aide pas l'OCDE. Les États-Unis ont prouvé, avec les listes UBS, qu'ils avaient les moyens de contraindre les grands établissements financiers du monde. Ceux qui sont européens se soumettent. Pourquoi devrions-nous, dès lors, mettre en oeuvre FATCA, alors que ce qui compte avant tout pour nous, ce sont les standards de l'OCDE ? Nous avons besoin d'une régulation mondiale. Nos intérêts devraient être défendus par l'Europe." 

(We have heard many times from our representatives at the OECD. Sixty states have signed an agreement. As for the Americans residing in France, they are also French taxpayers. Why inject American law into inter-bank relationships when negotiations should take place between states? FATCA introduces a great deal of confusion and is not helping the OECD. The U.S. has proven, with the UBS lists, that it has the means to rein in the world's big financial institutions. Those who are European have submitted to these. Why should we now put FATCA into place given that what really matters for us are the OECD standards? We need a worldwide regulation. Our interests should be defended by Europe.)

Home at Last

Is it my meds or is it my age?

For some reason I don't bounce back from jet-lag as fast as I used to.  I got home last Thursday and have spent the past few days enjoying the lovely Versailles weather.  From -16 to +6 (Celsius) and the latter feels downright Florida-like to me after a week in Québec.

As always, I had a wonderful time in Montréal.  Most of my time was spent spoiling the Frenchlings with shopping trips (books and clothes) and a visit to the new planetarium.  In exchange the girls allowed me to sleep on the sofa bed and follow them about during the day.  I got to exercise my culinary skills learned from my American mother/French mother-in-law which involves making tasty nourishing dishes with very VERY cheap ingredients.  That, mes amis, is the real secret to French and good old-fashioned American cooking.  No matter how limited your budget, you can always make boeuf bourguignon and biscuits (or dumplings).

We shopped at  Provigo (discount supermarket), walked most places instead of driving (or taking the public transportation) and paid close attention to the thermostat and the lights (dark overcast days, electric heat, and no insulation).

The best part of coming home was seeing the changes to the garden.  The daffodils and crocuses are up, the forsythia is about to bloom, and the rose bushes are budding. Yesterday I decided to trust the universe and prune the roses.  And, as always, the French side of the Franco-American Flophouse came out and said, "Aren't you cutting them back too much?  We won't have any roses if you do that. Stop!"

Ahem.  The purpose of pruning is for the health and beauty of the plant. Roses (flowers) are merely a happy by-product of the process.  I prune hard (and if you think I'm bad you should have seen my grandfather who learned his pruning skills in the orchards of Eastern Washington) but I prune well.  Yes, it looks ugly at first but my roses look pretty darn good in the summer and that is the whole point of the exercise.  After 23 years of marriage, why do we still have this conversation every spring?  It's a mystery.

To my surprise I am now sharing my garden with wildlife (one welcome, the other not so much).
As I was lazing around on the back porch the other day a green bird with a red cap swooped down from the neighbor's apple tree.  At first I thought it was a parrot (an escapee).  Nope, it was a European Woodpecker:

From Woodpeckers of Europe
 http://woodpeckersofeurope.blogspot.fr/2008_09_01_archive.html

The other "guest" is a rat.  He/she is using the back perennial bed in front of the stone wall as a highway to get from the neighbor's yard to mine.  And what are our two cats doing about it?  Absolutely nothing and makes me wonder why I bother to feed them and let them sleep on my bed.  Ungrateful useless beasts...

The sun is shining and the garden is beckoning so I will leave you now with this picture of the garden I took early this morning.  Have a lovely Sunday, everyone.