Titanique, Larry David, and listening to justices
Decided to go to New York for an unexpected weekend trip. Saw Titanique off-Broadway. Got to spend time with good friends. Finished a nice project at work about public transit data standards. Didn't get myself to the pool for a swim, but otherwise it was a pretty good week.
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➔ Last week I wrote about language in Quebec. G replied: "I feel like if I lived there, I would get angry about silly stuff like this very, very quickly!" And you know what? Yeah, it's easy to get sucked into the excesses of language politics here. And yet, state promotion of the French language is fundamentally worthwhile in Quebec.
If you think this island of francophonie in a sea of English is in fact distinct and worthwhile, collective action is required to sustain it.
Quebec isn't engaged in a fight against the inevitable dominance of English — despite the fact that many people, both francophone and anglophone, might see it that way.
Instead we must recognize that, in fact, nothing is inevitable. We must make an affirmative decision, one way or another, about the future we want. For French to thrive here, it requires a collective decision to forge a culture, an identity, an economy, and a society that distinguishes and uplifts us all, rather than to assume that a dominant language, attitude, or culture is destined to wash over us.
I find it's a beautiful lesson that Quebec can teach us, no matter which language we speak. I just wish we would teach that lesson to ourselves more often here in Quebec, rather than battening down the hatches and seeking out zero-sum battles against our imagined enemies.
➔ I also wrote about the Supreme Court. Tea leaves all but indicate the court is leaning towards a decision that would prevent states from acting on their own to bar a presidential candidate due to acts of insurrection.
I listened to some live audio of oral arguments on Thursday. The court only began live-streaming audio in 2020, and hearing such a high-stakes legal exercise unfold in real time was riveting. As James Poniewozik wrote in the Times, the ability to hear "the voices of the justices, live, unmediated and crackling with life... as people doing a job, probing, sparring, even joking... may not have exactly been soothing, but it was a kind of respite." Hearing the arguments back and forth, and the lines of questioning, made me think more broadly about this case. I was grateful for it.
➔ Finally, Larry David is making the rounds to promote Curb Your Enthusiasm's final season. This short Vulture piece from 2017 about the origin of the show's theme song tickled me. Sometimes, decades after its creation, a work can get picked up in a completely new context and used in just the perfect way.
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Have a great week.
