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Watertown, NY State

The US is a fascinating country, mostly because it has two sides—glamour and power as seen in many Hollywood movies and political moves on the world stage, and internal weaknesses one that most people around the world don’t even suspect.

Like most people, I grew up thinking I knew the US. I mean,  I watched American blockbusters dubbed in French, we chewed American gum, smoked American cigarettes, peppered conversations with trendy English words and adopted concepts straight from the States. We both admired and loathed Uncle Sam. Like the popular kid in school, we loved to criticize anything coming from America but at the same time, it was hard to resist the leader of globalization and everybody wanted a piece of it.

And then I moved to Canada. I can’t say I know the US that well, we don’t go there often and the country is huge and diverse. But let’s say I caught a glimpse of it, of how it really is.

And I was shocked.

For instance, I had no idea that Americans have a really shitty healthcare system. A few years ago, I watched a documentary about a team of health professionals, doctors, surgeons, specialists, who travel the world and help those in need for free. They stopped in Central America, Asia and… the US. Somewhere in the South if my memory is good. And there was a huge line-up of “purebred” Americans, waiting to see a doctor for free because they had no health insurance and couldn’t afford paying for basic health care. Crazy, isn’t it?

I also learned that the US had the highest incarceration rate in the world, 3.1% of adults in the resident population. That as of November 2010, 43 million of Americans were on food stamps. That some US states had something called “at-will employment,” a doctrine according to which “the employer is free to discharge individuals ‘for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all’”.

The superpower has feet “part of iron and part of clay” and it never ceases to amaze me.

Last weekend, we took a drive to the US and headed to Watertown, a small town in New York State. A manufacturing centre in the early 20th century, the city was said to have more millionaires per capita than any other city in the nation. This is where the little trees air fresheners were invented! Today, 19.3% of the population live below the poverty line…

We parked in the town centre where time seems to have stopped. There were many small businesses, such as a shoe-repair service (proudly displaying a sign saying “army boots repaired here”), a barbershop, a beauty salon, a bicycle shop… But façades were crumbling and we saw more police cars than residents. The library, Masonic temple and city hall seemed to belong to another era, a more prosperous one.

Small town, USA…

Steve Weed Productions and the US Flag
Pepsi-Cola
Vending Machine and Mailboxes
Museum and Historic House
Road Signs
We don’t have a state law but we still don’t run over blind people, I swear!
Masonic Temple
Watertown Daily Times
Town Hall
Library
Taming A Lion
Street Photography
Crumbling Building
Shoe Service
Colourful Buildings
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Zhu

French woman in English Canada.

Exploring the world with my camera since 1999, translating sentences for a living, writing stories that may or may not get attention.

Firm believer that nobody is normal... and it’s better this way.

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