Althouse

Said the French essayist Christian Salmon, quoted in "France’s Latest Way to Sound Anger Over Pensions Law: Saucepans/Protesters have been harassing the French government in clanky demonstrations that have gone viral in a country with no shortage of kitchenware" (NYT).

The noisemaking — "casserolades" — is over raising the age of retirement from 62 to 64.

Pan beating dates back to the Middle Ages in a custom, called “charivari,” that was intended to shame ill-matched couples....

A website created by a union of tech workers now ranks French regions for casserolades based on the level of cacophony and the importance of the affected government official....

Wikipedia has an extensive article "Charivari." It begins:

Charivari (... alternatively spelled shivaree or chivaree and also called a skimmington) was a European and North American folk custom designed to shame a member of the community, in which a mock parade was staged through the settlement accompanied by a discordant mock serenade. Since the crowd aimed to make as much noise as possible by beating on pots and pans or anything that came to hand these parades are often referred to as rough music....

I remember the TV show "Shivaree." Less well known than "Shindig," it had, as one of its "go-go girls," Teri Garr. I couldn't find video of Teri on "Shivaree," which aired from 1965 to 1966, but here's a great clip from the 1964 movie "Pajama Party" that has Teri Garr go-go dancing (beginning at 0:38):

Consider Michel de Montaigne, who in 1571, fed up with his job as a magistrate in the city of Bordeaux, quit at the age of 38. Retreating to his library, he inscribed his reason on the wall of his study. 

“Weary of the servitude of the courts,” Mr. Montaigne declared, “I am determined to retire in order to spend what little remains of my life, now more than half run out … consecrated to my freedom, tranquillity, and leisure.... I do nothing without gaiety.”...  

[I]n 2016, when demonstrators occupied public places across France to oppose the labor reforms proposed by the then-Socialist government[, o]ne of their demands was the creation of a universal basic income. This would, in effect, subsidize laziness — or, more accurately, a certain kind of laziness. 

While la paresse is a common word for laziness in French, so too is l’oisiveté. Deriving from the Latin otium, it means focused calm or even spiritual elevation, so very different from negotium, the sort of work that gets in life’s way. 

A few months ago, Sandrine Rousseau, a prominent member of the French Green Party, caused a stir when she called for a worker’s right to laziness.....

The article uses the term "the French" — 4 times. It never uses "French people," the term used in the headline.

I'm noticing this because over on Facebook, my son John posted this: 

From "Benedict’s Burial Leaves Francis Alone, and Unbound/Liberal supporters of Francis, a pope never shy about exercising power, now anticipate a late-breaking season of change" (NYT).

"But they quickly turned toward 'grappling with how we teach our students' to understand the Supreme Court’s reactionary turn.... A professor must say what the court claims it’s doing, then explain what it is actually doing, which is often something completely different. This technique can disillusion students, leading them to ask why they’re bothering to learn rules that can change at any moment.... Students confront a legal system in a crisis of legitimacy led by an extreme and arrogant court. Still, they must slog on, most gathering substantial debt as they go, pretending that 'law' is something different from politics, a higher realm of reason and rationality where the best arguments prevail.... My father, Nat Stern, retired from a 41-year career at Florida State University College of Law in May.... When I asked him why he decided to retire, he told me that he had no desire to explain the Supreme Court’s conservative revolution as the product of law and reason rather than politics and power.... 'For the bulk of my career,' he said, 'I’ve felt I could fairly explain rulings and opinions that I don’t endorse because they rested on coherent and plausible—if to me unconvincing—grounds. In recent years, though, I’ve increasingly struggled to present new holdings as the product of dispassionate legal reasoning rather than personal agendas.'"

Writes Mark Joseph Stern in "The Supreme Court Is Blowing Up Law School, Too/Inside the growing furor among professors who have had enough" (Slate). 

I got there via David Bernstein at Instapundit, who says: "We all know that left-learning lawprofs would be dancing in the streets if SCOTUS were equally aggressive to the left. And indeed, while Stern portrays discontent with the Court as a question of professional standards rather than ideology, he does not manage to find a single right-leaning professor to quote in his article."

I remember just before the 2016 election, when I was making my decision to retire.

Ironically, that was a vision of a return to what I had learned in law school. (I graduated in 1981.) I taught law school from 1984 to 2016, and the entire time, there was a fascinating dynamic on the Court — with a left and a right side and swing voters to keep things mysterious. A balance like that could happen again and give lawprofs something more to chew on, but as Bernstein notes, what most lawprofs want, I believe, is the Court I imagined before the 2016 election. I wasn't a typical law professor. I wanted the material to be challenging and interesting. But for most lawprofs, that's second-best. A solidly, predictably liberal Court is preferable. They'd still have something to talk about: how to go even more imaginatively far to the left.

"If I run out of money and I’m not a famous writer, I’ll come back and be a Starbucks barista or a Walmart greeter." 

Said Heidi Dezell, 57, quoted in "Want to Retire in Portugal? Here’s What to Know, as Americans Move There in Droves. Retirees are drawn by a low cost of living, healthcare, a sunny climate and tax incentives" (Wall Street Journal). 

For some, Portugal’s newfound popularity comes with a cost. “Americans are challenging the loudness scale,” says Susan Korthase, 71, founder of the Americans & Friends in Portugal Facebook group. She moved to Portugal from Milwaukee in 2010 and says she now sees the “Californiacation” of Portugal. “You hear them in restaurants,” she adds. “Americans laugh with an open mouth and they laugh out loud. Other nationalities have a quiet chuckle.”...

We're being updated on trends by a newspaper that can't spell "Californication." They're writing about laughing while not perceiving the contents of the portmanteau. Maybe the Americans who laugh too much for Milwaukeean taste are getting more of the jokes. 

I think every person in this article is female. It ends with the story of Linda Correll, 52, an Ohioan who found a small apartment in Porto where "When it rains heavily, all the water comes into my apartment."

“I don’t know if I have met any men over 50 who came here by themselves,” says Ms. Correll. “You get a lot of couples, but single women are much more common for some reason.... It’s a safe country, and the people are friendly,” she says. “The healthcare, the food, the whole vibe is the reason I’m here. I don’t have any desire to go back to the States to live.”

She says "for some reason," and then she, unwittingly, gives the reason. You're leaving your home country for some very bland comforts and no excitement. But maybe this article will prompt some older male Wall Street Journal readers to quit their job now and retire to Portugal. There are lots of health-and-safety-loving Midwestern ladies there longing — in their leaky apartments — for a man maybe something like you.

ADDED: For those who think the Red Hot Chili Peppers coined the word "Californication," here's the Wikipedia article, "Californication":

Californication is a portmanteau of California and fornication, appearing in Time on May 6, 1966[1] and written about on August 21, 1972, additionally seen on bumper stickers in the U.S. states of Idaho,[2]Washington,[3] Colorado, Oklahoma,[4][5] and Texas.[6]

It was a term popular in the 1970s and referring primarily to the "haphazard, mindless development [of land] that has already gobbled up most of Southern California",[7] which some attributed to an influx of Californians to other states in the Western United States.... 

On November 7, 1972, in a statewide referendum, Colorado voters rejected a bond issue to fund the hosting of the 1976 Winter Olympics. The venue for the games would have been spread over 150 miles (240 km), and was widely viewed as license for unbridled development. As part of the opposition to the bond, the slogan "Don't Californicate Colorado" was coined, appearing on bumper stickers and placards across the state. This rejection by Colorado voters followed a trend in the western states to blame California-style "mindless development" for the urban growth problems experienced in states like Colorado, Montana, New Mexico and Oregon.[7]

The Chili Peppers' album and song "Californication" came out in 1999. Anthony Kiedis was 4 years old in 1966. So was Flea. The 2 little Peppers were 10 in 1972.

"Fear of infection or lack of child care kept some workers home, where they discovered that the financial rewards of their jobs weren’t enough to compensate for the costs of commuting and the unpleasantness of their work environment. Older workers, forced into unemployment, decided that they might as well take early retirement. And so on."

That's the myth of "the great resignation," recounted by Paul Krugman in "What Ever Happened to the Great Resignation?" (NYT).

Krugman shows that the great resignation did not happen and observes that's a reason for 1. higher interest rates and 2. more immigration.

"... Murphy had said. 'All you have to do is look at the fucking Villages. Leave it at the front gate, you douchebag.' During the 2020 election, this standard was tested. The residents eventually passed an ordinance against lawn signage. Still, I encountered a range of opinions about the current President and his predecessor. There was at least one golf cart flying the blue-line American flag, in support of the police. Some rolled their eyes when it passed; others waved."

From "Retirement the Margaritaville Way/At the active-living community for Jimmy Buffett enthusiasts, it’s five o’clock everywhere" by Nick Paumgarten (The New Yorker).

“Who knew people wanted to live in Margaritaville?” Buffett told me. “I thought for a while it was a myth.”

ADDED: We were just talking about The Villages 11 days ago, here.