Cool (and resourceful)

This Converted Cave in France Cost $1.35

Faced with steep rents, young couples are renovating abandoned troglodyte homes in the French countryside, like this 11th-century structure nestled into the side of a mountain in the Loire Valley

Alexis Lamoureux was 23 when he returned to Amboise, an idyllic town once home to Leonardo da Vinci that sits on the banks of France’s Loire River. Forced to leave another village after the bar he was working in closed down, he began looking for a job and a place for him and his girlfriend, Lotte van Riel, to live.

Lamoureux heard about a troglodyte home that had once belonged to his great aunt and went to check it out. The abandoned space, left in ruin for the past 25 years, was a crude network of unstable rooms carved out of a large rock face. Littered with trash and having no electricity, running water or sewage system, it was a dream come true. Lamoureux headed straight to the government agency that handles abandoned dwellings and was excited to discover it was up for auction the very next week. He offered the princely sum of 1 euro, which the agency accepted.

No bank would loan the money to fix the place up, so he and his girlfriend worked their butts off for three years to make the money necessary. There's a nice gallery on the article's webpage of some of the rooms and the exterior.

A despicable act

Gunman Kills 4 at a Jewish School in France

The same gunman is suspected of killing several French soldiers, all of whom were black or Arabic. Killed were a rabbi who taught at the school, his two sons, and the daughter of the principal. A teen was injured. It happened while kids were being dropped off at the school by their parents. I cannot imagine the horror they felt as this played out, and I feel for those who lost loved ones, especially the rabbi's wife, who has lost three at once. I hope they can catch this person before there are more deaths.

How a book's wording can change lives--for better, or worse

New Definition of Autism Will Exclude Many, Study Suggests

Proposed changes in the definition of autism would sharply reduce the skyrocketing rate at which the disorder is diagnosed and might make it harder for many people who would no longer meet the criteria to get health, educational and social services, a new analysis suggests.

The definition is now being reassessed by an expert panel appointed by the American Psychiatric Association, which is completing work on the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the first major revision in 17 years. The D.S.M., as the manual is known, is the standard reference for mental disorders, driving research, treatment and insurance decisions. Most experts expect that the new manual will narrow the criteria for autism; the question is how sharply.

Psychiatry is not an exact science, and has in the past been (and surely will, in the future, be) subject to fad diagnoses of one sort or another. But just because a diagnosis becomes popular does not mean that it isn't devastating on a personal level. I hope a compromise can be found in terms of making the diagnostic criteria meaningful and still helping those who need assistance.

Somewhat on topic, I saw this: A French Film Takes Issue With the Psychoanalytic Approach to Autism

The documentary, the first film by Sophie Robert, follows two autistic boys: Guillaume, who has been treated with the behavioral, or “American,” approach; and Julien, who has been kept in an asylum for six years and treated with psychoanalysis. Guillaume, though challenged, is functioning at a high level in school. Julien is essentially silent, locked out of society.

Since Sept. 8, when the film first became available on the Web, it and Ms. Robert, 44, have been the targets of criticism from both the analysts who appear in the film and from within the country’s psychoanalytic establishment. Three of the psychoanalysts whom Ms. Robert interviewed for the film have sued her, claiming she misrepresented them in the 52-minute documentary, which has not yet been screened in cinemas or on television.

On Jan. 26, a court in the northern city of Lille will decide whether Ms. Robert must remove their interviews from the documentary if she wishes to keep screening it. The plaintiffs are also seeking damages of €300,000, or $384,000. The lawsuit might be futile, since the film is widely available on the Web (with English subtitles), having been viewed on YouTube more than 16,000 times. (Ms. Robert argues that the plaintiffs, all of whom appear in the film, signed detailed releases.)

The article takes an interesting look at how some disorders (say, ADHD) or treatments (like behavioural therapy or mediciations) have a stigma of being thought too 'American'. It's worth a look. The film, Le Mur (The Wall), is viewable on YouTube with English subtitles.

A very complex issue, but one that seems primarily politically motivated for now

Expulsion of Roma Raises Questions in France

About 100 French riot police officers swooped down on an encampment of Roma here at 7 a.m. Thursday, taking names and filling out expulsion orders. Fully padded, but without helmets, the officers were aggressive but polite, accompanied by a Romanian policeman and three interpreters.

Mihai Lingurar, 37, and his wife, Rada-Soma Rostach, were ordered to leave France within a month for overstaying their three-month allowance as Romanian citizens and being unable to prove that they had full-time work. Their fourth child, however, Marc, 5 months old, is in intensive care at a hospital here, on the northeastern edge of Paris. Marc weighs about 8 pounds and has been in and out of a coma.

The police were not interested in hearing about Marc this morning, Mr. Lingurar said, through an interpreter. But he will get help to challenge the family’s expulsion, citing medical grounds, from Doctors of the World, said Livia Otal, 29, a Romanian who works with the Roma for the nonprofit organization.

The thing about the Roma (also known as Gypsies, although the term is not favoured by them) is that they are, unlike in our own immigrant issues, entering France completely legally, but in many cases are overstaying the three-month window to find a full-time job. On the other hand, there is discrimination against them, making it difficult to find such a job, although life is often preferable in France than from where they have come. As citizens of countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, they are completely free to enter the country, but are subject to special rules since those countries have only recently come into the European Union. These rules are largely set to expire in 2014. But for now, people are being thrown out largely because of pressure on the government to remove a minority seen as foreign and distasteful.

Mass expulsions based on ethnicity violate European Union law, Mr. Kushen said, and the failure of France to do individual assessments of each case — as opposed to cursory examinations of papers by the police — also violates European Union rules.

Another problem is that there are plenty of Roma who are French citizens, and it's easy to confuse them with their foreign brethren. And the government has vowed to break up camps used by the citizen Roma as well, targeting their transient existence.

European countries have always struggled with Roma in their areas, attempting to regulate, expel, or in the case of Nazi Germany, annihilate the Roma there.

It is one thing to expel people who have over-stayed their regulated time. It is another to do mass expulsion of people because of their ethnicity, especially because you want to be re-elected.

The article examines a lot of the factors contributing to this, and certainly, because of living on the fringes for centuries and their transient existence, the Roma's reputation has not totally been baseless, as it's hard for them to hold down a normal 9-5 job, given the prejudice and the travelling, but overall I think they should be left in peace, and certainly each case should be handled individually, such as the couple whose son is ill who are mentioned in the article.

Of course, I'm not French, so I don't think my opinion matters much to the Sarkozy government.

Remarkable, especially for her time

Pearl Witherington (or as she was after her marriage, Madame Cornioley) led a faction of the French Resistance during WWII, working as a spy for the British government. Given a civilian award because it was not possible then for a woman to receive a military equivalent, she returned the award saying that she had done nothing remotely 'civil' during the war.

That was later rectified, and she received others, but the one she cherished most was her parachute wings, for the jumps she'd made six decades before.

She definitely sounds like someone I would like to have met. She died on Sunday.