Fascicle 12, Livre III – 2025 La vie continue

2025 Decembre – Nous vous souhaitons un joyeux Noël,
des joyeuses fêtes, et nos meilleurs vœux pour 2026 !

The holidays are a magic @me in Montpellier. Above : Place de la Comédie, below : Le Marché de Noël in Peyrou.

2025 has been quite a journey Top Image: (clockwise from upper left) Marseille, Paris, Arles, La Grande Motte, Annecy, Strasbourg, La Grande Motte (encore)

Bottom Image: (clockwise from upper left): Marseille (encore) Collioure, Palava-les-Flots, Sarlat et le Périgord et Rocamadour,Barcelona, Reims et la région Champagne – aventure fabuleuse !

Recently I have taken the plunge into Apple world; abandoning my HP laptop with its Windows 10 and Samsung cellphone for a MacBook Air and iPhone 16 — but because I can’t seem to resist a challenge, I decided to go with a clavier français instead of the QWERTY I have been attempting to master for some 75 years. And despite the hype about A.I. I still prefer to rely on real intelligence — even though some of you may have some questions about mine: for example, le clavier français has two additional keys called (appropriately enough) «option» and to type guillemots (those symbols that are used in French instead of “ — the quotation mark symbol) in WORD you press an option key
and the è7 key in the top row and voila « — and for » you repeat that while pressing the shift key.

But when you’re not using WORD, then you type g plus “ and then the space bar for « and f plus “ and then the
space bar for » — but to sort this out was not that easy. APer trying various op@ons (trial and error) I finally
discovered which keys were the keys for « and » to use with WORD and which to use for everything else and now I’ve got it — and with a little practice, I will get it. A ridiculously small victory I agree, but a victory of sorts, nevertheless.

The brain, like every other body part, must be regularly exercised in order to continue to be useful, which is why I have a disdain for A.I. and for many other aspects of modernity that have come into being: they seduce us with their promises of leisure, of easy living—and rob us of our ability to really live. The vast majority of life, human and all the other forms of life on earth—as much as 99.9% of all life, is engaged in a daily struggle to just survive that day. We, the one tenth of one percent, can have the kind of lives we enjoy only because of that struggle we scarcely acknowledge. Nowhere is it promised that any life will be either fair or easy — the real joy of living only comes from the struggle together every day of it to overcome the unfairness of it. May our struggles together bring us joy in the coming year!

À bientôt en 2026 !
John