My train ride to Paris

I was visiting France and Monaco with 20 of my best students. April, who was 15 years old at the time, was joining us on her first trip to Europe. I was worried because she was so much younger than everyone else; I wanted her to be safe, but learn some independence and see the world outside of her American cocoon.

We were in beautiful Nice with the sloping, winding roads among gorgeous villas, white and pink blooms hanging from elaborate fences and trellises. We spent two nights in a four star hotel, with beautiful marble tiles, exquisite vistas, luxurious surroundings, sprawling gardens, delicious food, and rich tapestries and furniture from an area gone by.

I was mesmerized by the landscape, looking forward to the luxurious Mercedes bus ride to Paris, sightseeing the French countryside along the way. I knew it would be a long, long journey, but it seemed magical and I was full of trepidation, of discovering the wondrous unexpected.

To my surprise, our Italian guide, Giaccomo, who had driven us safely for 10 days within inches of our lives overhanging canyons miles deep, dangerous dead man curves, on winding roads that made us dizzy, pulled the Pullman bus within inches of the narrow walls carved into the granite of the cliff, into a parking area. That was the end of our journey under the care of Giaccomo. We had to take the overnight train to Paris, it was much faster. How much faster? A twelve hour train ride in a couchette, awaited us at the main train station in Nice. Some students were happy for the opportunity to sleep the night away, others were disappointed to miss the sights from the over sized Pullman windows. Either way, it was an unexpected twist and change to our carefully planned itinerary. I was sure, I would never hire this particular company on our next adventure.

We spent the day in Nice, visiting the sights, a perfume factory, and a famous porcelain manufacturer. At nightfall, we headed for the train station. We said our goodbyes to Giaccomo, took our luggage and started loading up on the train. To our surprise, a group of Canadians took our accommodations first and we were relegated to a long open car with sleeping recliners. It was an adventure, so we reluctantly agreed. Not that we could have done anything about it, the French were very unpleasant and unwilling to help the despised Americans.

We took our seats shortly before the 7 p.m. departure. Our arrival time in Paris was 7 a.m., on time to have breakfast in the Grand La Garre. April sat by the window, I took the aisle seat so I could get up and down the car, checking on my 20 charges. There were some adults with us from Texas, a couple of nurses, husband and wife, which eased my anxiety in case someone got sick.

I had a parent with us whose supervision proved to be much more difficult than all the other students combined. She kept disappearing for hours on end, always returning with bottles of wine which she consumed constantly and some giggolo she picked up on the way. No doubt, she was having a good time, no care in the world, her daughter was taking care of her. I had to make sure, we did not leave her behind in Monaco.

We pulled from the station and the country side started rolling past the windows until we reached the port Le Havre. The tracks were so close to the water, the furious waves were crashing into the concrete barriers and breaking into the train tracks. Our windows were misted with sea water. A large contingent of gypsies climbed onto the train. I knew from that moment on that we would have trouble. I was not confident that the two French conductors would keep them under check. They walked from car to car trying to sell drugs to passengers, accompanied by a huge dog. I was terrified when the dog passed me, he was taller than I was in my chair.

Sure enough, the trouble-seeking mom got into an altercation with the gypsies and we found her slumped in-between compartments, with a half-empty bottle of wine, passed out. We were not sure if she was drunk or took drugs, we could not wake her. We dragged her to her seat and the two nurses checked her pulse, positioned her head so she could breathe unobstructed and checked on her from time to time. We never knew what happened with the gypsies. We did know that she slept the entire 12 hours until we reached Paris and could not remember anything at all. As a matter of fact, she was the most rested of the entire group. I was worried and took catnaps of 10 minutes each before waking to make sure the gypsies had not returned.

To everyone's delight, at the last stop before Paris, a contingent of French legionnaires climbed aboard and filled our entire car. The students were relieved that they were now safe - the mere presence of the tall and buff legionnaires was enough to chase the ticketless gypsies off the train. But I knew better. The French legionnaires were soldiers-for-hire from all over Europe, killers and murderers with the training to break someone's neck on a whim if necessary. And they were not paid that well, 20,000 euros per year.

Across from April and me were two fierce looking soldiers-of-fortune. I decided to strike up a conversation with them under the belief that they would leave us alone if I, the leader of the group, befriended them. One was Irish and the other one was Ukrainian. I spoke Russian and French so I was comfortable with Igor and his Irish bunk-mate. As a matter of fact, they helped me with the passed-out woman, she was hefty to pick up, and she kept falling out of her seat.

I still did not sleep much, waking every 15 minutes or so out of sheer worry for my April and my student's safety. When we reached Paris, these legionnaires, who were on leave to spend fun time in Paris, helped us off the train with all of our luggage and were perfect gentlemen. I was so pleasantly surprised, we invited them to have breakfast with us. There was a happy ending to my twelve hour turmoil on a French night train to Paris.

We loaded another bus, another driver, another guide, and we started to tour Paris immediately. When we got to the Louvre, all the exhaustion and the previous night's travails were forgotten, until now when they flooded back into my memory.

Thirty years of fun

It is hard to believe that I spent thirty years doing what I enjoyed most - teaching. I have done this many times for free - it came so easy to me and I felt that I owed back to society my expertise and the experience I had gained through many years of education both in Europe and the United States, living and traveling overseas. I spent twenty-five years as a full-time teacher and five years as a private teacher and graduate teaching assistant.

I remember playtime always involved me as the teacher, while my friends had to be dutiful students. There was no time in my mind that I contemplated very seriously doing something else.

I remember the trepidation of the first day of school, entering the classroom and seeing the anxious eyes of my students, wondering who is going to be the class clown, the brilliant but quiet student, the brown-noser, the know-it-all, the goth, the shy, cannot-fit-in, the non-conformist, the loud-mouth, the creative, and the beauty queen who excelled at being popular.

My reputation preceded me, one generation of students told the other about the Romanian teacher who spoke 14 languages. It seemed that every year, the number of languages increased with my fame. I started with six and it had reached 14.

Meeting with parents twice a year on Parents and Orientation Day was also a whirlwind of fun since there were anxious expectations on both sides. I knew I would do my job in an exceptional way but I had to reassure the parents that their children will receive world-class education, unlike any institution they attended before. None of the teachers were unionized, most of them had Ph.D.s and considered teaching a vocation and their life's calling.

As a perfectionist, I did not want to teach unless I did it to perfection, unless I went far beyond the call of duty. No matter how much I was paid, my salary was never enough to compensate for the long hours and effort I put in to prepare my lessons and my delivery. I was always on a stage, giving 150%, whether it was 8 a.m. or 8 p.m., whether I felt poorly or terribly, my students deserved and got the best.

I had regrets often that I could not spend more time with my children as they grew up so fast. I cried when I could not spend time with them but I brought them with me into the classroom all the time. Since first grade, they were a fixture in the back of my classroom, doing their homework, rolling their eyes at mom's delivery and antics, after all, I was mom, I could not seriously be a teacher, a teacher is a goddess on a pedestal, and I was just "mom." How could I be anything else?

I allowed students to be themselves within certain understood parameters of classroom behavior. I allowed them to think, be creative, and express opinions in a non-threatening environment, while respecting the views of others. We traveled to far-away places and brought lessons back that were forever etched in their memories.

Some of the names have faded from my memory but their faces are still in my mind's eye. I have pictures of every class I've taught and, as I look at pictures of what some of my students have become, it is hard to match the high school or college photo with the adult of today.

I associate some students with minor mishaps such as accidentally shining a laser beam in the teacher's eye and blinding her for four days with minor permanent damage to one eye, special clothing they wore, hilarious hairdos, projects they completed, trips they took during which time they've gotten lost in a foreign country, winter formals, Tales from the Crypt, and Depression Day.

My students kept me young, smiling, laughing, and eager to go to work every day even though I disliked my colleagues who indoctrinated students every day into the vile communism that I had escaped in 1978. I closed my eyes and focused on the positive aspect of the job, teaching young minds to become proud and productive Americans.

Most of my pupils were naive idealists, socialists and communists at heart, wearing Che Guevara t-shirts, not really understanding the reality of what they believed in and advertised.

My former high school and college students are now productive members of society, with families, responsibilities, and I am proud that I was a tiny part of what they have become today, I am in essence touching the future, even though I have retired.

Fill her up!

I pulled up to my corner gas station and noticed that the price of gas had inched up ten cents more. Every day the price goes up by a few cents. It is now over three dollars a gallon. I thank God I no longer own the Toyota that only accepted premium gasoline. If I tried to cheat and mix it with lower grades, it sputtered and jerked unhappily until it stopped.

I noticed the few Prius owners giving me superior looks of "I am saving the planet, why are you driving something else?" I am picturing the huge battery in the trunk of a hybrid that is very toxic and expensive to dispose of, actually causing more damage to the environment than my conventional exhaust spewing engine. Who thinks that a Prius is a nice-looking, muscle car?

I asked the gas station owner why his prices are going up every day. He tells me that there is a tacit collusion between owners, he would get chewed if he did not charge the same price as the other owners. As far as why he thinks gas is going up, he shrugs his shoulders and goes about his morning routine.

I am thinking of OPEC and their overt collusive successful attempts of controlling oil prices and production. The 11-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has reduced production of oil times and times again in the interest of raising prices world-wide. In a sense, since they are producing 40% of the world's oil production, they have the power to control how we live and what we pay to fuel our economy.

OPEC is a cartel and economists in general view cartels as terrible forms of market organization as it is inefficient and flies in the face of consumer welfare. They control somewhat the price and certainly the flow of oil. History has shown that price controls on various commodities have caused painful shortages.

A war in 1973 between Israel and Arab nations caused OPEC to quadruple oil prices. Prices of raw materials shot through the roof while food prices increased as well in part due to poor harvests in various parts of the world. As energy became more expensive, businesses cut back, causing a reduction in productivity and thus a recession.

Things are never as simple as they seem because there are too many variables coming into play. If one adds enough variables, just about every economic theory proves to be wrong and so are the textbooks espousing them.

In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt established that the U.S. would buy and sell gold at the constant rate of $35 per ounce. Officials at Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire turned to the dollar as the basis for a new international economic order after World War II since the U.S. held the lion's share of the world's gold reserves.

When Richard Nixon ended in 1971 the dollar to gold convertibility, Pandora's box of ills was opened wide. The dollar had been fixed at $35 per gold ounce for a long time. Anybody knew how to convert foreign currencies on any given day into gold and into dollars. There was no fluctuation between currencies on a day by day basis. Money was always worth a certain amount of silver and gold and that never changed.

Nixon opened a huge can of worms, allowing politicians in Washington to print paper dollars out of thin air, without any backing by goods and services, thus causing inflation. And the out-of-control spending began.

Gold is a commodity in relative short supply as all the gold that was ever mined can fit into the cargo hold of a large petroleum tanker. We are not likely to find any huge reserves to be mined any time soon. Mining for gold is a very painstaking and expensive process as it takes the removal of tones of dirt and/or stone to harvest one ounce of gold. Gold prices go up and down, currently most up, in the stratosphere of $1,300 plus per ounce, but its worth as commodity money never changes. It is the value of the dollar with which gold is purchased that fluctuates wildly since the dollar is a currency deemed "worthy" by "fiat" by the American government. "Fiat" is a Latin term for "let it be." Otherwise the dollar is only worth the cotton/linen paper it is printed on and the labor and ink involved in printing it. The wild fluctuation in value has to do with the amount of currency in circulation and the faith and trust in American government and its investments.

The worth of a currency is determined by many factors such as inflation, demand for investment and goods in a specific country, interest rates in that country, just to name a few. The most interesting variable that makes a currency desirable or not desirable to have is the faith in the government of that country and the political stability of its government. We all know right now how much faith American people have in their own government, its policies, and its ability to run the country. If Americans don't trust their government, how worthy is the U.S. dollar? If public confidence sinks, the dollar devalues. This devaluation of the dollar by printing money without backing of goods and services is called inflation. And the Federal Reserve System, our central bank, is doing just that at the moment, in order to deal with the vast spending that the 111th Congress engaged in 2010. As a matter of fact, this Congress has spent more this year than all the previous 110 Congresses had.

Complicating the picture are petrodollars, or oil dollars. Petrodollars are U.S. dollars earned by a country from the sale of petroleum. The term was coined in 1973 by Ibrahim Oweiss, a professor at Georgetown University.

The Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire established the dollar as the world's "reserve currency." This is a fly in the ointment because oil is bought all over the world using the U.S. dollar as an international currency, a global medium of exchange. OPEC keeps increasing the price of crude to guard themselves against future drops in the value of the U.S. dollar which is the international currency that oil trades in.

If the U.S. allows the free fall of the dollar by printing huge amounts to deal with its government out-of-control spending, OPEC sees its revenues plunge and has no other choice but to raise oil prices. Add to the problem the speculating on the Chicago Board of Trade of oil, currency, and gold commodities futures and you have a severe crisis.

Since gold is a reliable commodity, people are buying it in larger quantities, including oil rich Arabs who see their dollar holdings worth less, day by day, thanks to the American government's inept handling of the economy and out-of-control spending. Whether this is done on purpose to bankrupt our country, that is another issue.

After 1971, U.S. could buy crude oil for as little as $1 a barrel - now it is approaching $100 a barrel. Consumers could buy premium gas for as little as 28 cents a gallon in the early 70s. Gasoline is now approaching $4 a gallon in some states.

Are we a self-sufficient nation that could drill its way out of this problem instead of shipping our wealth and prosperity to oil rich nations who wish as harm? The seven year moratorium on drilling in the U.S. imposed recently by the Obama administration certainly dooms our ability to become self-sufficient in oil production. Many nations such as China, Russia, Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, Brazil, to name just a few, are furiously buying oil leases and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, right in our own back yards, exploiting our reserves while we are forbidden by our own government to drill.

There are rich oil shales that could be exploited as well, but environmentalists lobby Congress constantly to forbid drilling and exploration in their zealous attempt to either protect the environment or some endangered species of rodent, amphibian, bird, or fish. In the process, the interest of protecting humans becomes irrelevant as humans are seen as more expendable. According to environmentalists, there are almost 7 billion of us, and we are straining the resources of the planet. White House czars advise that population must be culled drastically in order to reduce the permanent damage we cause to the environment by our mere existence.

As we watch the price of oil escalate yet again, our economy and standard of living will suffer immeasurably, since crude oil is the engine that drives the energy behind our productivity. Our way of life and survivability are inexorably threatened.

Education or Common Sense?

When I was a little girl, having a baccalaureate degree meant something. Although literate, most people were not college educated. Graduating from a professional high school that actually taught a trade was highly respected. Attending and graduating from a two-year technical school was an achievement. Few people attended college in spite of the fact that it was free. There was no shortage of people wanting to go, just a shortage of colleges, professors, and resources.

The competition to attend a university was so fierce, there were at least 10 students viying for one seat. You really had to be the creme de la creme - perfect grades, perfect scores on high school exit exams, and stellar scores on college entrance exams.

Socialism promised equality and free education for the masses, but resources were limited and thus rationing had to be instituted through very tough entrance criteria - only a select few could attend. Often, those select few were children of the ruling elite and thus automatically admitted in spite of their mediocre scores.

People were proud and content to have an eighth, tenth, or twelfth grade education. Each represented a different ability level and professional track. I say twelfth grade because many students were unable to get their high school diploma as they could not pass the baccalaureate exams.

When mom was young, under the monarchy, education was not free and most college students were children whose parents could afford, managed to borrow, or saved to pay the tuition. Most families were large and could ill afford to send so many children to college. Perhaps one of out six siblings attended college, the rest chose professions or trades with less education.

Villagers had large families - their children cared for their younger siblings and raised and harvested the crops that provided the family's survival. There was no birth control and religious beliefs forbade abortion.

Children skipped school a lot to help on the farm; their education was not up to par and many dropped out of school completely by the seventh or eighth grade. Most of my mom and dad's siblings had to complete their education as adults in night school during the communist regime.

People tend to confuse education with intelligence by assuming that anybody who is college educated must be very intelligent and those who are school drop-outs must be unintelligent. That is certainly not true.

Common sense and intelligence are also misunderstood - one can be intelligent and have no common sense or conversely, have common sense but not be particularly bright. Stereotypes and human values are assigned to all people based on their educational level, perceived intelligence, and common sense or lack thereof.

The wisest sage in my grandpa's village was the shephard who walked around half-enabriated most of the time, with a happy smile and an infectiously positive life view that astonished everybody. He never completed fifth grade and had difficulty signging his name, it was painful to watch him scrawl his name for five minutes. He had a lot of common sense and innate intelligence.

I've met my share of educated people from prestigious universities who had no common sense, a warped and shallow world view, and superficial knowledge in general. Their only claim to wisdom was the diploma that stated the potential to learn.

Green Salad in December?

I am staring at my beautiful ceramic bowl filled with a luscious chicken Cobb salad. The lettuce is crisp and fresh green, the cheese aromatic, the balsamic vinegar is divine, small strips of organic chicken, diced fresh tomatoes, bits of eggs, and the piece de resistance, real bacon.

The room is cozy and the fireplace radiates warmth from the dancing flames. There are smiling, glowing faces all around me. I let the moment sink in as I ponder where all this abundance comes from. It certainly is not from the government or my garden, but the hard work of so many people driven by their self-interest of the "evil" capitalist system. Here I am, an ordinary citizen, having a wonderful green, fresh, and colorful salad in December.

Could I have had this delicious treat that we take for granted every day in my former country, communist Romania? Not by a long shot. The ruling elite would be able to eat anything they wanted but not the "unwashed masses." We were relegated to dried beans, bones stripped of meat, or canned vegetables - if we were lucky.

Government bureaucrats told us how much we could and should buy on the market via five year plans that failed miserably to provide enough food, nutrition, and goods for the needs of the population. Central planning did not take into account demand and size of the population, it was based solely on perceived need and centralized supply, randomly and haphazardly determined by people who had no idea what they were doing, beyond the ideological rhetoric of communism.

There was never an abundance of anything. The best food was shipped to export for hard currency and the rejects were brought to the market to be divided unfairly between the large substrata of the population. Luck, barter, rationing coupons, black market prices, patience waiting in interminable lines were some of the variables determining whether you ate or not that day.

The hard currency bought industrial equipment and expertise, to develop an industry that had no chance of flourishing because factories were never run on a competitive model, they always lost money, and were bailed out by the government.

I wonder how liberals would feel if they had to do without their organic food, fresh food, or food in general? Would they change their "save the earth" tune or "capitalism is evil" tune if they were starving? Do they realize that abundance does not just happen, it is not willed or ordered by the government bureaucrats, it is the coming together of many self-interests driven by the lure of profit? We are successful because we work hard, knowing that in the end, we get to keep part of our hard-earned labor. We don't have to wait for the government to bring us what we need because, frankly, they cannot do so.

I thank farmers for growing my lettuce, tomatoes, chicken, pigs, grapes, dairy cows, and olive trees. All gave me the opportunity to buy this luscious salad today. Less than 3% of the population feeds the rest of us. It is an unsung profession but highly respectable and important to our survival. They work very hard to provide the fruits of their labor to the market with the lure of profit in mind. It is not evil, it is justly theirs for getting up very early every day during the growing season and going to bed very late at night during harvest. They are unsung heroes who give sustenance and blood to our way of life, the highly successful capitalist model.

Social Engineering

Government dictated land use under the guise of sustainable development, sustainable communities, and social engineering are seemingly innocuous euphemisms. The reality is much more sinister, it is communist control of land use, agriculture, and housing.

I see in my mind's eye the grey landscape of drab and dirty concrete apartment complexes, crowded on the periphery of towns, close to polluting refineries, black smoke spewing steel factories, chemical plants, and other noxious industrial platforms.

The occupants of the small, one bedroom, one dining room, one bathroom, and one tiny kitchen apartments, had been living in villages surrounding large cities. They had been forcefully moved so that the land they had previously occupied and owned could be confiscated, controlled, and farmed by the government for the "good of the people." It was learned soon enough that the "good of the people" did not really exist, it was just an euphemism to enslave everyone to the communist party and its "caring" for the downtrodden.

A few villages escaped this social engineering because they were either too remote for practical mass agriculture or too scattered across the hills and mountains. Such was the case of my paternal grandmother's village, perched high up in the Carpathian Mountains, a rocky but rich soil. Scattered patches of land allowed the locals to grow grapes and fruits, undisturbed by the confiscatory land grab of the communist party. Farmers were able to make wine, jams, preserves, sell fresh fruit, while keeping all income. Being so isolated from the beaten path and being connected to the world by one weekly bus, made it impossible and impractical for communist revenuers to come claim their lion's share for the "good of the people."

The neighborhoods that had been developed by the government "largess" on the outskirts of towns were very poor and a sorry excuse for city living. Some did not have paved roads, running water, plumbing, or electricity. The mayor did not care about their fate although it was his job. Over time, buildings decayed from lack of maintenance, updating, painting, roofing, earthquake damage, were eventually demolished or left abandoned just like a ghetto area in the U.S.

Row houses separated by wooden fences looked respectable on the outside but were not connected to any modern conveniences and lacked bathrooms. A wooden shack, the outhouse, loomed very smelly in the back.

The apartment blocks fared a little better because they had electricity, water, sewage, and garbage pickup when the government provided them. The problem was that the government could shut them off any time it wished, without prior notification. This included water, hot water, steam heat, electricity, and garbage pickup.

People had to maintain everything, clean, and provide security. Many blocks turned into ghetto areas, best to be avoided. Some became really dilapidated especially if occupied by gypsies who stripped them down and sold all interiors for spare parts, then abandoned them. What was the law going to do? There were not enough jails for all recidivists. Besides, gypsies could come and go as they pleased, they were feared by everyone.

Before the arrival of the communists to power, people had bucolic life styles, sufficient food, homes they called their own, a small plot of land which they farmed and produced enough food on for their families and extra for the city market. Communist social engineering changed that - most became poor, needy, hungry, cold, homeless, landless, and certainly lacking their human dignity as they became totally dependent on the government for all their needs. Nobody would own much of anything, everybody had to rent from the government.

If, in your American naivete, are ever persuaded to even think that social engineering is a concept worthy of discussion, consider this - it is a communist code word for mass poverty and government dependency in perpetuity. Don't take my word for it, study history and review the same failed experiments in Cuba, formerly Iron Curtain countries of Eastern Europe, North Korea, and China, to name a few.

You can even take a short trip to Cuba to see the blight and dilapidation of formerly beautiful homes. So many inhabited buildings in Havana are in such bad shape that even Roman ruins like the Coliseum, are better preserved. These buildings that would be condemned in this country, were "socially engineered" and fundamentally destroyed by Fidel Castro's communist regime. Cubans owned homes, hotels, and land before it was confiscated through clever rhetoric, finally by force, and distributed as rental property to the "proletariat." All fell in a sorry state of disrepair and remain that way to this day.

Analogies between communism and U.S.A. today

What are the analogies between the progressives agenda today and communism? Why do we have czars in a republic? Czars are certainly elements of Russia, not the United States.
Why do we need total government control or the nanny state? Can we not make decisions for our own lives and families?
Why do we need to be told what to eat, how much to eat, and when and where to purchase our food? Why do we have to be controlled how much sugar or salt we eat? Why do we have to be taxed more if we smoke? If smoking is bad, why are most pension funds invested in tobacco companies?
Why do we need to connect our homes to the power grid? Should the government tell us how much electricity we consume and when? Should we give them control over our thermostat at times when we like to use our heat or cooling the most?
Why do we allow government to brainwash our children that spreading the wealth is good and fair? Why do we allow them to be indoctrinatedd that religion is bad, that sex before marriage is good? Do we need the government in our bedroom as well?