Postcards from Languedoc

Dogs Bites Dog: Sic her!

2012-02-05T04:59:00.000-08:00

The latest word from our local village chat room, aka boulangerie-épicerie:

Madame T's dogs attacked and wounded the baker's dog,

after which

the Mayor,

who witnessed the attack,

knocked on Madame T's door to complain,

only to hear Madame T reply that he could stick his opinion là où tu penses...

where the sun doesn't shine.

Erreur, ma pauvre! The gossip — in this case true — has created a chain reaction unleashing a stream of heretofore undisclosed (openly) incidents with the infamous new-comer Madame T.

1. "She takes advantage of everyone." Clearly lacking in details.

2. "When the temperature dips, she doesn't bother to walk her dogs, just lets them out the door to do as they wish, where they wish." Note speaking to Madame's T's mentality: her house is smack in front of La Mairie.

3. "She scammed the butcher." Unforgivable. Our butcher is one of the kindest, most trusting and generous souls in the world. If you forget your checkbook or don't have enough cash on you, he tells you not to worry about it, hands you the bill and trusts you to pay him the next time he passes through the village.

4. "When she walks her dogs, she lets them poop right in front of private residences." She is reported to have said to one outraged villager, "It's no big deal; the poop dries out." That makes it OK?

5. "One of her dogs bit me when I made a delivery to her house." This supposedly happened months ago but is only now being told? Hmm...

6. "She borrowed a liter of milk from X and never paid it back." In itself insignificant since a liter of milk costs under 1 euro, nevertheless fuel for a building fire.

7. "She has her own car but let's Madame R. take her into the city every market day."See criticism #5. Clearly Madame R's concern.

etcetera, etcetera, etcetera

Incidentals: Madame T's dogs were off-leash and unaccompanied when the attack occurred. The baker's dog was on-leash and accompanied. The baker's son was also attacked as he rode by Madame's T's house on his bike; there is no other way into the village. It is illegal to let your dog(s) run free in this village. It is a well-known and accepted practice to walk your dogs along a road leading out of the village so their crottes won't pollute the village environment. Yes, Madame T has been informed.

I have my own issues with Madame T, not to be shared here because so much less amusing then those above. One lingering question however: Why would a single woman in her 70s settle into a tiny, remote village — where she knows absolutely no one — and immediately alienate her fellow citizens? It's tough enough, if not impossible, to break into an established French circle. Perhaps she's doing research for a book? Or maybe she's a witch? Alliteration, folks, alliteration.

Blue Laws, French-style

2011-08-07T08:14:00.000-07:00

BLUE LAWS? Most in the U.S. have either been repealed, declared unconstitutional, or are not enforced, but they haven't all disappeared. They persist, in the U.S. and all over the Western world. Even in post-Revolution guillotinons-les France, where separation of church and state is, in theory, sacrosanct.

Blue laws were created to enforce religious (Christian) standards and ensure the observance of Sunday as a day of worship or rest, and to that end, restrict Sunday shopping.

I'm most familiar with the Massachusetts Blue Laws, which place restrictions on business openings on Sundays and holidays. In the past, retailers weren't allowed to open before noon on Sundays, but a 1994 change to the Massachusetts' laws permits retailers to open at any time on Sundays without specific approval by the Department of Labor, and without a special local police permit.

[Amusing aside: click on the link dumb laws in Massachusetts to go to a web site listing laws such as the following, not necessarily Blue Laws, but well deserving of a brief aside:

At a wake, mourners may eat no more than three sandwiches.
Snoring is prohibited unless all bedroom windows are closed and securely locked.
An old ordinance declares goatees illegal unless you first pay a special license fee for the privilege of wearing one in public.
Taxi drivers are prohibited from making love in the front seat of their taxi during their shifts.
All men must carry a rifle to church on Sunday.
It is illegal to go to bed without first having a full bath.
A woman can not be on top in sexual activities.
No gorilla is allowed in the back seat of any car.
Tomatoes may not be used in the production of clam chowder.
Quakers and witches are banned.

A few comments: 1) even though I love a good Manhattan chowder, if you don't get the tomato-chowder law, you're clearly not a Yankee; 2) the law banning witches probably has no real impact on the activities of those practicing the craft (my brother can verify); 3) the ban on going to bed without a full bath is eco-insensitive; and 4) the law permitting snoring in premises where the doors and windows are locked down tight should in fairness be extended internationally to protect those inside the premises as well. Snoring is not culture-specific...sigh.] End aside, back to France.

A semblance of Blue Laws exists in France, as well as in other European countries. If you've ever visited France, you know that most retailers are closed on Sundays, especially in the tiny towns and villages around the countryside. They close up shop at 7 p.m. on Saturday and don't re-open before Monday or Tuesday morning. Sunday shopping is supposedly a no-no. However (surprise, surprise) there are exceptions in certain zones and municipalities of larger cities like Paris, Marseilles, Lille, Nice, Bordeaux, and in numerous smaller cities that have been declared as tourist sites. And most major stores across France open on the Sunday just before Christmas. Are you noticing a trend here? "Money, money, money...it's a rich man's world"

French supermarkets are allowed to open on Sunday mornings but have to close by 1 p.m. En principe, hypermarkets are not allowed to open. In 2009 French laws were relaxed to allow all stores to open in tourist areas; pre-2009 only sports, toys and cultural shops could open. Now clothing stores open every Sunday in hot spots such as the Champs Elysées and La Défense in Paris, for example...

So why can supermarkets open Sunday mornings but not hypermarkets? Because French laws governing Sunday shopping are convoluted. Articles L.3132-13 and R.313-8 of the code stipulate that only establishments whose exclusive or principal activity is the sale of retail foodstuffs have the right to open on Sunday mornings.

The French hypermarket Cora, similar in size and style to a Fred Meyer/Walmart store in the U.S., is testing that law in the south of France, and the CGT (Confédération générale du travail = French trade union) is taking legal action. If you read French, check the article in last week's Midi Libre: "Bataille de procédure autour de Cora Alès"

CGT attorneys are requesting that Cora cough up facts and figures concerning employees and sales affected by the Sunday openings, which continue despite the legal action underway. Cora is countering by arguing that it doesn't need to provide any such information since the request is inadmissible and illegitimate. Their attorney is claiming that the requested data is highly sensitive information.

One figure Cora is willing to share: 53% of its sales are alimentary. Will this suffice to successfully challenge the current selective Blue Law allowing benefits to some establishments while barring others? Apparently the law does not clearly state exactly what percentage of sales must come from foodstuffs to qualify the establishment as one whose primary purpose is alimentary. I warned you: French laws are convoluted. Legalese is legalese; like witchcraft and snoring, it is not culture-specific (mes excuses to all my attorney friends, whom I hold in the highest respect).

The court date is set for early September. Meanwhile, Cora Alès remains open Sunday mornings and the Alèsiens are shopping. They don't look particularly blue about it either.

Take a look at the employees, though: Sunday shoppers require Sunday employees. The rise of establishments open on Sundays is provoking a devaluation of life outside the workplace. That's the real bottom line. Social benefits fought for hard and long are being lost as France backs up to a world of privileged power, where too many of its citizens are forced to play a hardball game of work or sink.

Blackmail in D.C.

2011-08-06T06:31:00.000-07:00

Le Monde diplomatique's Serge Halimi recently published an insightful analysis of President Barak Obama's back-peddling during recent debt negotiations between the White House and right wingers. My translation of the editorial appears below, along with the original French.

août 2011: Chantage à Washington

August 2011: Blackmail in Washington D.C.

by Serge Halimi

Where the reduction of the American national debt is concerned, the dispute placing President Barack Obama in opposition to the Congressional Republican majority conceals what’s really at play: giving in to adversarial blackmail. Mr. Obama immediately conceded that more than three quarters of the budget for the next ten years – 3 billion dollars – would come from budget cuts to social programs. The American right wing could have settled for this win but it always wants more, even at the risk of losing popularity.

Relative à la réduction de la dette américaine, la querelle qui oppose le président Barack Obama et la majorité républicaine au Congrès dissimule l’essentiel : cédant au chantage de ses adversaires, M. Obama a concédé d’emblée que plus des trois quarts de l’effort budgétaire des dix prochaines années, soit 3 000 milliards de dollars, proviendraient de coupes dans les budgets sociaux. La droite américaine aurait pu se satisfaire de ce triomphe, mais elle veut toujours plus. Y compris quand son intransigeance risque d’entamer sa popularité.

In December 2010, in a first buckling to pressure, the President of the United States opted to maintain the very unequal tax cuts of predecessor George W. Bush, for a period of two years. Four months later, sounding like Ronald Reagan, Mr. Obama delighted in “the biggest annual reduction of expenditures in US history.” He continued negotiations with the Republicans of the Congress, announcing that he was prepared to be reprimanded by his party in order to get results. Result: more White House back-peddling…

En décembre 2010, cédant une première fois à sa pression, le président des Etats-Unis avait prolongé de deux ans les baisses d’impôts très inégalitaires décidées par son prédécesseur George W. Bush. Quatre mois plus tard, parlant cette fois comme Ronald Reagan, M. Obama s’est réjoui de « la réduction annuelle des dépenses la plus importante de notre histoire ». Il a ensuite enchaîné les cycles de négociations avec les parlementaires républicains, annonçant : « Je suis prêt à me faire taper sur les doigts par mon parti pour arriver à un résultat. » Résultat : de nouveaux reculs de la Maison Blanche…

The right wing is opposed to any debt reduction that would call for tax hikes. This preliminary condition may seem odd in a country where the avalanche of fiscal privileges heaped on the wealthiest results in a level of global deductions at its lowest point in fifty years. In reality, beyond a determination to target expenses only, Republicans want “to starve the beast,” that is, in the words of one of their strategists, “to reduce government to the size where [we] can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

La droite s’oppose à toute réduction de l’endettement qui passerait par un relèvement des impôts. Ce préalable pourrait sembler farfelu dans un pays où l’avalanche des privilèges fiscaux déversés sur les plus riches fait que le niveau global des prélèvements n’a jamais été aussi bas depuis cinquante ans. Mais, au-delà d’un entêtement à ne cibler que les dépenses, les républicains veulent en réalité « affamer la bête » — c’est-à-dire, pour reprendre l’expression d’un de leurs stratèges, « réduire la taille de l’Etat de façon à ce qu’on puisse ensuite le noyer dans une baignoire ».

How can the recent soaring of the American public debt be explained? Firstly, by the economic crisis, largely provoked by decades of financial deregulation. Secondly, by the consistent renewal of temporary tax reductions voted in 2001 (2,000 billion dollars income loss). And finally, by the post-September 11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (1,300 billion dollars). The party of Reagan and Bush nonetheless claims to resolve the debt problem by protecting both the rich, whom they call “job creators,” and the Pentagon budget, that has increased (in real terms) by 67% in ten years.

Or comment s’explique l’envol récent de la dette publique américaine ? D’abord par la crise économique, que la déréglementation financière des dernières décennies a largement provoquée. Ensuite, par la reconduction régulière des baisses d’impôts provisoires votées en 2001 (2 000 milliards de dollars de manque à gagner). Enfin, par les guerres de l’après-11-Septembre en Afghanistan et en Irak (1 300 milliards de dollars). Le parti de Reagan et de M. Bush prétend néanmoins résoudre le problème de l’endettement en protégeant à la fois les plus riches, qu’il appelle les « créateurs d’emplois », et le budget du Pentagone, qui a augmenté (en termes réels) de 67 % en dix ans.

Last April 5, Paul Ryan, president of the House Budget Commission, in fact outlined Republican projects for the coming decades. His plan proposes that public expenses, presently equal to 24% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), will not move beyond 14.75% of the GDP in 2050, with the maximum tax rate moving from 35% to 25% (the lowest level since 1931). All the tax havens for the privileged would be preserved, but health benefits for the elderly and the poor would be frozen.

Le 5 avril dernier, M. Paul Ryan, président de la commission budgétaire de la Chambre des représentants, a d’ailleurs détaillé les projets des républicains pour les décennies à venir. Son plan prévoit que les dépenses publiques, actuellement égales à 24 % du produit intérieur brut (PIB), n’atteindront plus que 14,75 % du PIB en 2050, le taux d’imposition maximal passant de 35 % à 25 % (niveau le plus bas depuis 1931). Toutes les niches fiscales des privilégiés seraient préservées, mais les remboursements de santé destinés aux personnes âgées et aux pauvres seraient gelés.

If Mr. Obama continues to avoid this battle, the social missions of the American government may very well soon look like the cadaver in the bathtub.

Si M. Obama continue à esquiver ce combat-là, les missions sociales de l’Etat américain risquent bien de ressembler sous peu au cadavre dans la baignoire.

Serge Halimi on the Western Intervention in Libya

2011-04-02T08:33:00.000-07:00

Serge Halimi's editorial "Révoltes arabes, chaos libyen : Les pièges d'une guerre" appears in April's online edition of Le Monde Diplomatique.

Click on the above link to read the original article in French. Continue here to read my English translation.
---
Arab Revolts, Libyan Chaos
The Snares of War

by Serge Halimi

For several months now, the Arab revolts have been reshuffling the political, diplomatic and ideological cards of the region (read “Une région en ébullition”). Libyan repression was threatening this dynamic. And the UN authorized Western war has just added to the landscape a factor with unpredictable consequences.

Even a broken watch shows the correct time twice a day. That the United States, France and the UK have taken the lead in the Security Counsel resolution authorizing the use of force against the Libyan regime is insufficient in and of itself to object to it. An unarmed movement rebelling against a regime of terror is at times reduced to calling on disreputable international police forces for aid. Focused on their own problems, they will not refuse this aid, even though it comes from who turn a deaf ear on the pleas of other victims – the Palestinians, for example. The rebellion will even forget that the international police force is better known for repression than for support.

That which logically guided the Libyan insurgents facing extreme danger is not enough to legitimize this new war by Western powers on Arab soil. The intervention of NATO member countries constitutes inadmissible means for trying to reach a desired end (the fall of Muammar Qaddafi). If these means seem obvious, a “choice” between Western bombings and the crushing of Libyan rebels, it is solely because other possibilities – the intervention of UN, Egyptian or Pan Arab forces alongside the rebel forces – were rejected.

Past results of Western armies prevent us from regarding them them as motivated by the generosity they claim today. Who believes that States, no matter which ones, consecrate their resources and armies in order to accomplish democratic objectives? Recent history is enough to remind us that if wars claiming such motivation initially achieve dazzling success, with equally dazzling media attention, what follows is more chaotic and sober. In Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting has not ceased, although Mogadiscio, Kabul and Bagdad “fell” years ago.

The Libyan rebels would have preferred toppling despotic powers on their own, as their Tunisian and Egyptian neighbors did. Franco-Anglo-American military intervention threatens to force them into a debt towards those never before concerned themselves with Libyan freedom. The responsibility of this regional emergency, however, lies with Qaddafi. Without the repressive rage of a regime that, over the space of forty years, moved from an anti-imperialist dictatorship to pro-Western despotism, without his tirades treating all opposition as “Al-Qaida agents" or "paid moles and informants working for foreigners,” the fate of the Libyan uprising would have depended solely on the Libyan people.

The 1973 Security Council Resolution authorizing the bombing of Libya will perhaps prevent crushing a revolt condemned by the poverty of the insurgents. It resembles nonetheless a dance of hypocrites. For it is not because Qaddafi is the worst or the most murderous of dictators that his troops have been bombed, but because he is also weaker than others, with no nuclear arms or powerful friends likely to protect him from a military attack or defend him in the Security Council. The intervention against him confirms that international law does not lay down clear principles, the violation of which, in every case, would lead to disciplinary measures.

The same goes for diplomatic and financial whitewashing: the moment of righteousness permits the erasing of decades of turpitude. Thus the French president has his former business partner bombed, the partner he welcomed in 2007 and while everyone knew the nature of his regime – we will be grateful to Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy for not having proposed to Mr. Qaddafi the “savoir faire of our security forces” offered last January to Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali… As for Mr. Silvio Berlusconi, the “close friend” of the Libyan Guide who made eleven visits to Rome: he is rallying the righteous coalition by dragging it by its feet.

A majority of old men contested by the democratic thrust are headquartered in the heart of an Arab league that joins the UN movement then pretends consternation when the first American missiles are fired. Russia and China held the power to veto the Security Council resolution, to amend it in order to reduce its reach and the risks of escalation. Had they done so, they would not have had to “regret” the use of force. Finally, to size up the honesty of the “international community” in this affair, it must be pointed out that the 1973 resolution reproaches Libya for “arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances, tortures and summary executions,” naturally things that do not exist in Guantanamo, Chechnya or China…

The "protection of civilians” is not simply an indisputable demand; in times of armed conflict, it also imposes the bombing of military targets, that is of soldiers (often civilians obliged to wear the uniform…), mingled among the unarmed population. Control of a “no-fly zone” for them means that planes patrolling the area risk being shot down and their pilots captured, which will then justify their liberation by the ground commandos. Scrub the vocabulary as you will, war cannot be eternally euphemized.

And in a final analysis, this war belongs to those who decided it and who lead it, not to those who recommend it, dreaming that it will be short and joyous. Drawing up spotlessly clean plans for a war without hate, without “blunders," is a charming notion, but the military force to whom falls the task of executing the plans will do so according to its own inclinations, methods and requirements. It may as well be said that the corpses of Libyan soldiers machine gunned during their retreat are, as the joyful crowds of Benghazi, the result of the 1973 UN resolution.

The progressive forces of the entire world are divided on the Libyan affair, according to whether they stress their solidarity with an oppressed people or their opposition to a Western war. Both standards of judgment are necessary, but one cannot always demand simultaneous satisfaction of the two. When there has to be a choice, it remains to be determined just what an internationally obtained “anti-imperialist” stamp of approval authorizes its people to be subjected to each day.

In Mr. Qaddafi's case, the silence of several leftist Latin American governments (Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia) on the repressions ordered by him is disconcerting, just as much as the Libyan Guide's opposition to the “West” is pretense. Mr. Qaddafi denounces the “colonialist plot” against him -- after reassuring the former colonial powers that “we are all in the same fight against terrorism. Our information services work together. We have helped a great deal these past years.”

Like Hugo Chávez, Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro, the Libyan dictator claims that the explanation for the attack against him lies in the desire to “control oil.” And yet the oil is already exploited by the American company Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), the British BP and the Italian ENI (read Jean-Pierre Séréni’s article on this subject: “Le pétrole libyen de main en main”). A few weeks ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was hailing “Libya’s strong macro-economic performance and its progress in the reinforcement of the private sector's role." Mr. Ben Ali, Qaddafi’s friend, had received comparable compliments in November 2008, served up personally by IMF’s General Director, Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, arriving straight from... Tripoli.

Mr. Qaddafi’s antique revolutionary, anti-imperialist spin, fed in Caracas and Havana, no doubt equally escaped Mr. Anthony Giddens, a theoretician of Blair’s Third Way. He announced in 2007 that Libya would shortly become a “Norway of Northern Africa”: prosperous, egalitarian, turned towards the future.” Compared with the very eclectic list of his dupes, how is it still possible to believe that the Libyan Guide is as crazy as he is purported to be?

There are several reasons for some leftist Latin American governments' mistakes about Mr. Qaddafi. They wanted to see him as the enemy of their enemy (the United States), but that should not have been enough to make him their friend. A mediocre awareness of Northern Africa – Mr. Chavez says he informed himself about the situation in Tunisia by calling Mr. Qaddafi… – led them to position themselves opposite the “colossal campaign of lies orchestrated by the media” (according to Mr. Castro). All the more so because this campaign took them back to personal memories whose pertinence was questionable in this particular case. “I do not know why this is happening and has happened in Libya, the Venezuelan president declared to me. It reminds me of Hugo Chavez on April 11.” On April 11, 2002 a coup d’état had attempted to overthrow Chavez; the media supported it through manipulated information.

Other factors leaning towards poor analysis of the Libyan situation include: a model for reading events that was forged by decades of armed intervention and violent domination on the part of the United States in Latin America; the fact that Libya helped Venezuela gain a foothold in Africa; the role of the two States at the heart of OPEC and Africa-South America summits; the geopolitical approach of Caracas aiming to re-balance its diplomacy towards closer relations between Africa and South America.

To this one must also add the tendency of President Chavez to consider the diplomatic ties of his country as a personal, close relationship with chiefs of State: “I was a friend of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, I am a friend of King Abdallan, who was here in Caracas (…). A friend of the Emir of Qatar, a friend of the president of Syria, who also came here. A friend of Bouteflika.” When Qaddafi’s regime (“my friend for such a long time”) engaged in the repression of his people, this friendship weighed in the wrong direction. In fact, Mr. Chavez missed an opportunity: of presenting the rebellion on the African continent as the younger brothers of leftist Latin American movements he knows well.

Beyond this error, diplomacy is no doubt the domain that best reveals, in every country, the flaws of exercising a solitary power made up of opaque decisions, no parliamentary control and no popular deliberation. Moreover, when diplomacy pretends to defend democracy through war, as in the Security Council, the contrast is necessarily striking.

After having exploited, and not without success, the geopolitical, anti-Occident recourse and the progressive argument of the defense of natural resources, the Libyan director did not long resist the temptation to play the ultimate card of religious confrontation. “The big Christian powers,” he explained last March 20, "have engaged in a second Crusade against the Muslim people, with the Libyans at their head. Their objective is to wipe Islam [off the map].” Thirteen days earlier, Mr. Qaddafi had nonetheless compared his work of repression to the repression suffered by one thousand four hundred Palestinians.” “Even the Israelis in Gaza had to resort to tanks to combat such extremists. It is the same for us.” That must not have increased the Guide’s popularity in the Arab world.

At least this last about-face has one virtue. It recalls the political noxiousness of the approach that reproduces, by inverting it, the neoconservative thematic of crusades and empires. The Arab uprisings, because they mixed the religious and secular – and because the religious and secular were opposed therein – may announce the death of a self-proclaimed anti-imperialist discourse that is nothing more than anti-Western. In its hatred of the “West,” it confounds what is the worst in it – gunboat diplomacy, the disdain of “indigenous” people, wars of religion – with what is best in it, from the Enlightenment philosophy to social security.

Barely two years after the Iranian revolution in 1979, the radical Syrian thinker Sadik Jalal Al-Azm scrutinized, in order to refute them, the characteristics of a “backwards orientalism,” that, refusing the path of secular nationalism and revolutionary communism, was calling for a fight against the West through a return to religious authenticity. The main postulates of this "culturalist" analysis, summarized then submitted to criticism by Gilbert Achcar, stipulated that “the degree of emancipation of the Orient must not and may not be measured by the yardstick of Western values and criteria, such as democracy, secularism and the liberation of women; that the Eastern Muslim cannot be understood through the epistemological instruments of Western science; that the factor that moves the Muslim masses is cultural, that is to say, religious, and that its importance surpasses that of economic and social factors that condition Western political dynamics; that the only path of Muslim countries towards rebirth is through Islam; and finally, that the movements brandishing the standard of a “return to Islam" are not reactionary or regressive, as perceived by the Western eye, but rather progressive, in that they resist Western cultural domination.”

Such a fundamentalist approach to politics has perhaps not had its last say. But, ever since the shock wave that began in Tunisia, one senses that the relevance of such an approach has been shaken by the Arab people who do not want to position themselves “against the West, nor in its service ." They prove this by sometimes targeting an ally of the United States (Egypt), and sometimes one of their adversaries (Syria). Far from fearing the defense of individual freedoms, freedom of conscience, political democracy, unionism, feminism as constituting as many “Western” priorities dressed up as emancipating universalism, the Arab people take hold of these things to mark their refusal of authoritarianism, social injustices and police states that treat their people like children, all the more spontaneously since they are lead by old men. And all this – recalling other great revolutionary upsurges, that day after day make social and democratic gains being lost elsewhere – is undertaken energetically, at precisely the moment when the “West” seems split between its fear of decline and its lassitude in the face of a dead and stagnant political system. A UN resolution as much for the struggles of Western peoples…

Nothing says that this Arabic energy and courage are going to continue to score points. But they are already revealing unexplored possibilities. Article 20 of the Security Council’s 1973 resolution, for example, stipulates that the Security Council “declares itself resolved to insure that (Libyan) holdings frozen (by a previous resolution) are at a later date, as soon as possible, made available to and used for the people of Arab Libyan Jamahiriya.” It would therefore be possible to freeze financial holdings and return them to the citizens of a country! Let us wager that this lesson will be remembered: States have the power to satisfy the people. For some months now, the Arab world has been reminding us of another lesson, just as universal: the people have the power to constrain States.

http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2011/04/HALIMI/20379 - avril 2011

In my secret life...

2011-03-11T10:03:00.000-08:00

…there are times when I hate France. Here’s why:

Up until a few months ago, the only Internet option in this village was a pokey dialup. Dropped connections, unreliable phone lines, frequent outages, fried modems. Then France Telecom installed DSL. Hallelujah?

Not so much. Every time a new customer’s hooked into the system, someone else is bumped out, disconnected. Yesterday it was our turn. Again. No phone, no Internet. No Customer Service you could count on either. Modern times, modern angst – French style. No wonder they so frequently take to the streets here.

Which is what I did: with research to do, online lessons to teach and promises to keep, the wretched and the weak (aka me) gathered up heart and France Telecom file, hiked over to the Post Office and called 3900 (Customer Service) from the PO phone. The odds are there to beat…

An accent from northern Africa answers. At least we both speak French and he seems to have a sense of humor. He runs through the list of standard questions, the last of which: “Are you calling from your landline?” I hear the edge in my voice as I tell him again that the reason I’m calling is because our phone is OUT, as in “it does not work,” so no, I am not calling from our home phone because it does not work. I am calling from the village Post Office phone. “Are you near your computer and router box?” he asks. No, I am not, because I am not at home, I am at the Post Office, I politely reply.

He asks for my cell phone number and tells me he’ll call me at home, on my cell, in five minutes. Twenty minutes go by before my cell rings. Pretty good, almost record time in fact and I appreciate it. He asks me to turn off the router box, wait three minutes then turn it back on. This, he says, will re-boot the system and all will be fine. I tell him that I’ve already done that, twice, before calling Customer Service. He decides to test the line. Announces that it’s not functioning normally. I don’t say that it's a good thing he’s on the other side of the Mediterranean.

Next, he proposes that we uninstall and re-install the router box. He is trained to assume the customer is in the wrong. He is trained to avoid confirming that the problem lies with FT’s phone line or Internet service. I do not share his illusion. Still, perhaps a reinstallation will fix the problem, so I follow his rather odd and lengthy instructions. Over an hour later, nothing has been repaired and now the router box is not working at all.

Mr. Customer Service calmly concludes that there “may” have been an “incident” and that, according to the report he’s reading on his computer screen, our phone service will be re-established in two weeks. Two weeks. No phone service, no Internet service for two weeks. This is unacceptable, I tell him with equal calm, explaining that I work online, that this is far from the first time our service has been interrupted and that I will be sending a very large bill to France Telecom. He gives me the appropriate department number and asks if there is anything else he can do for me, to which I reply: “What else can you do for me?” He can check back in the morning to see if the system is working (he doesn’t call). Bonne fin de journée, au revoir, madame. No wait, I need you… I don’t need you… I need you… I don’t need you…

I need music. Now. At least the electricity’s still working (not always the case). I put on The Essential Leonard Cohen. There is no Essential Guide to France Telecom. No one would know where to start. So I’m counting on Leonard. Nothing can kill you in his tower of song.

He’s wrong though about that “ain’t no cure for love” thing. There’s a cure for Francophile love: going toe to toe with France Telecom on a regular basis. Descartes be hanged; these are Post Modern times and logic is dead. Even the French are pulling their hair out. Especially the women. Ever notice older women in France? Thin hair. Thin. Their service provider is probably France Telecom.

I listen to Cohen through both CDs then head to bed. As I drift off, I’m hearing France Telecom chant, “give me absolute control over every single living soul.” I punch back with: “I’ve seen the future, it is murder.”

When I wake up, I glance at the router box. Nope, the Internet angels have forgotten to pray for us. So I get dressed and head for the Mairie, where I ask Monsieur le Maire to call someone important, use a little muscle to rectify this mess once and for all (it’s election time). I learn that ours wasn’t the only line disconnected yesterday. But ours is the only line still out. The secretary tells me she’ll call France Telecom, give them our info and have them call me on my cell. Hours later the Mairie is closed and no one’s called. Sublimating, I eat M&Ms by the fistful, including the blue ones. Living in France sometimes drives you to drastic measures.

I make a command decision, to do exactly what France Telecom tells you never to do without their assistance: un-install and re-install our router box. The Customer Service guy from yesterday probably did something wrong, left out a step. He’s the expert (ah-hem) but who knows, maybe he screwed up. I glance through the manual, toss it on the floor and go to work.

Fifteen minutes later, it’s V-day in the trenches. We're back on boogie street.

In my secret life, I can count on Cohen.

Pour les nuls

2011-03-07T02:01:00.000-08:00

The For Dummies folks are celebrating ten years of success. Back in the 90s, an American editor had the brilliant idea of publishing a practical manual for those who knew absolutely nothing about computers, at a moment when personal computers were not quite a household fixture, but were rapidly becoming so. They started in 1991 with DOS for Dummies by Dan Gookin, and now cover a wide range of topics. The collection is published in France under the title Pour les nuls, .

The French title was a brilliant translation coup: the word nul is as omnipresent in French life; it conveys a variety of meanings, from the obvious "null/nil/invalid" to "useless," "hopeless" and even "worthless"; it's a catchy word that rolls off the tongue as easily as dumb and dummy, with the same double edge of humor and disparagement.

Initially the books were translated into French for the French speaking market. Then in 2000, Vincent Barbare of Editions First was given the green light to expand the collection, using French authors on subjects culturally specific to the French. According to an interview with Barbare in last Friday's Midi Libre, success was modest at best until, in 2004, L'histoire de France pour les nuls exploded on the market.

Not all that long ago no self-respecting librarian in France would consider putting a Pour les nuls book on their shelves, whereas today the series is highly visible and collaborates with icons such as the Louvre (Le Louvre pour les nuls). Barbare attributes the Nuls' success to an interesting, fun approach that lets curious, modest French souls learn without knocking themselves out.

In the beginning, it was difficult to find authors to pen the French books, but now experts are clamoring at the gates. Some even consider a Nuls collaboration a veritable feather in their cap, un titre de gloire, as Barbare puts it. So much so that Barbare, reluctantly, is forced to refuse proposals by some very well known authors. Obviously being an authority on a subject does not suffice; to be a Nuls writer, you have to know how to adopt the right tone, a nul voice that explains the subject matter with both expertise and humor.

The For Dummies collection is published in thirty-three languages, but its greatest sales -- and by far -- are in France. Why the French are "the most nuls" is an inviting question. Are they more curious than other cultures? Are they lazier readers (shorter chapters) or -- ahem -- are they more into efficiency (shorter chapters)? Is there a connection to the emphasis that French culture places on personal responsibility? Is it tied to the French tendency to claim (some) knowledge on (almost) every topic? To the French aversion to saying je ne sais pas ?

I don't know. Perhaps someone should propose the subject to Pour les nuls.

A "Barque de Poste 1818" is Reborn in the Cevennes

2011-02-26T06:44:00.000-08:00

With the very passionate and eloquent Robert Mornet at the helm, local fans of the 1818 model boats that used to run on France's famous Canal du Midi banded together in the Cevennes to build their own 1818 barque. No real vestige of the historic wooden vessels remain.

At Mornet's request, ship builder Alain Dorado recreated construction plans for the 1818 barque. Blueprints in hand in 2007, Mornet began to build an exact replica of the boat in his backyard, under the protective cover of an agricultural greenhouse. This weekend -- four years later -- the nearly complete vessel is being unveiled in order to paint it and finish the roof. Supporters gathered last night in the Médiathèque Intercommunale in the small town of Le Vigan, to honor the historic moment and the man who made the dream come true.

The Barques de Poste were canal boats, similar to stagecoaches in function: they were water coaches harnessed to one or two horses that pulled them from a towpath running along the canal. The same type of towing system was used along the famous Chesapeake & Ohio canal in the United States; many other examples exist worldwide.

The French system was put into service in 1681, between Toulouse and Agde; other routes were added later. In the beginning, the journey took 4 days, traveling at a speed of 8 kilometers per hour. There was a boat change at each lock, to save both time and water. In all there were nearly 25 locks and a fleet of 40 Barques de Poste. The number of passengers transported on the canal reached 100,000 a year. Each boat could hold up to 50 passengers; there was no meal service, nor any sleeping accommodations. Travelers either brought food aboard with them or ate and slept in inns (auberges) along the way. The advent of the rail system spelled the end of the canal transport system: unable to compete with the speed and efficiency of the trains, Barques de Poste service was terminated in 1858.

Voyages on the new Barque de Poste will maintain historic authenticity: the crew, coachman (postilion) and all personnel will be dressed in period costumes. The boat will be pulled by horses when possible along the towpaths. For stretches where that isn't possible, a motor will be used.

The maiden voyage plans to make the historic Toulouse-Sète trip in 8 days, and if possible, go as far as Beaucaire in 8 more days. Round-trip. Under no obligation to book passage for the entire trip, passengers will have the option of getting on at one lock and off at the next. As in days long gone by, transportation will be charged by the kilometer: if you ride for 10 kilometers only, that's the distance you pay for. In the spirit of supporting local tourism and businesses, meals will be taken in local establishments along the route. The same goes for overnight lodging, for passengers and crew alike.

The Barque de Poste plans to offer daily on-board activities, with musicians, story tellers, historic commentaries and exhibits. Monsieur Mornet refers to the presenters as "clandestins" (illegals), in a gesture of open criticism of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's hotly contested campaign against illegal immigrants.

You can find more information about the Barque de Poste on the web site for the project: http://www.barquedeposte.org/index.html It's in French, but even if you can't make sense of the text, you can still enjoy the numerous photos!

Foires aux Vins 2010

2010-09-15T08:13:00.000-07:00

It’s September and that means, among other things, that supermarkets all over France have set up their foires aux vins displays.

At the outset, the foires aux vins were an obvious marketing ploy for supermarkets to unload unsold wine stock at low prices. However the foires have changed over time. One of the most notable changes is price: some of the loss-leader wines are indeed marked down, but for many others the sale price differs little from the normal price. This year is different. YOUPIE ! (yippie)

With sales generally down for wines at “normal” prices, real bargains are more numerous at this year’s foires aux vins. Big buyers apparently purchased large stocks of certain vintages several years ago, hoping to rake in profits in the future. The financial crisis has forced them to change their game plan. For example, as last week’s Le Monde Magazine reported, some 2005 Bordeaux (on the market in 2006) are currently being sold below their initial 2006 market price, especially at this year’s (fabulous) foires aux vins.

Another lucky break for wine lovers/bargain hunters concerns ’06, ’07 and ’08 vintages that are often considered as less stunning than the 2005s.

Kick snobbery out the door! Individual taste is what matters. You can find deals in France right now on very good and/or excellent, very diverse wines from Bordeaux, Bourgogne, Côtes-du-Rhône, Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, the Loire…reds, whites, rosés, even some bubblies and ciders.

To quote Arthur Vassincourt: “Ne ratez pas le coche !”
Don’t miss the boat…which for some means buying a plane ticket for France. Value is so very relative...

Reds featured in photo:

MOULIN-à-VENT: Château de Chénas 2009, Appellation Moulin-à-Vent Contrôlée
http://www.cavedechenas.com/
Gamay
Grapes are hand harvested
13% vol.

BROUILLY: Hospices de Belleville 2009 Thévenot, Appellation Brouilly Contrôlée
www.beaujolais-wines.com/
Gamay
13% vol.

TOURAINE: Domaine des Clémendières 2009 Appellation Touraine Protégée
http://www.vinsdeloire.fr/
Gamay
13% vol.

FITOU: Domaine Comerade 2007, Cascastel, Appellation Fitou Contrôlée
http://www.cru-fitou.com/
Carignan, grenache, syrah
Vendanges manuelles (hand harvested)
13.5% vol.

COSTIERES DE NIMES: Les Grandes Cabanes 2008 , Château Lamargue, Appellation Costières de Nîmes Contrôlée
Featured on various wine web sites
Syrah
14% vol.

Laurent Tirard's 2007 film MOLIERE

2010-06-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

In 1644, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, dit Molière, is a twenty-two year old actor whose talent for tragedy is obviously outweighed by his talent for comedy. However, despite his undeniably bad acting, the future founder of the Comédie Française stubbornly continues to stage tragedies. One day, after being imprisoned by impatient creditors, he disappears. Thus begins a

mysterious ten-year period unaccounted for in experts' records of Molière’s life.

French film director Laurent Tirard’s scenario imagines what may have transpired during those ten years and suggests that the experiences lived during those years fed the playwright’s genius to develop the psychological depth of the characters for which he is so well known.

The film resonates with Molière’s language as it situates some of his wittiest and most powerful retorts in the dialogue of everyday life. It sings and singes on the lips of the talented cast, beginning with Romain Duris as the young Molière. Fabio Luchini incarnates to perfection Monsieur Jourdain, a phantasmagorical bourgeois gentilhomme. Towards the end of the movie, Luchini is nothing short of spectacular in his finessing of a scene where the usually bumbling, too-eager-to-impress-nobility Jourdain drops his charade to express himself frankly and with such unexpected truthful wit that the Marquise (played by Ludovine Sagnier) is left uncharacteristically speechless. The scene is a key moment in the film in its depiction of the age-old French binary opposition of être and paraître (being over appearance). Edouard Baer and Laura Morante give equally notable performances: Baer as the opportunistic, back-stabbing but ever elegant marquis and Morante as Jourdain’s wife and Molière’s insightful, provocative muse.

Like Molière’s plays – intelligent, amusing music for the eyes, ears and mind – Tirard’s Molière puts its finger on an unchanging humanity. The cleverly imagined period piece is in perfect harmony with today’s values… listen up for the zinger on commerce with China….

Two web sites, in French, about the film:

http://www.evene.fr/cinema/films/moliere-3582.php

http://www.evene.fr/cinema/actualite/interview-laurent-tirard-moliere-duris-984.php

Coularou commérages

2010-05-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

commérages = rumors

Winter is reluctant to loosen its grip. It snowed in the foothills last week, snow is forecast for tomorrow… and I’m beginning to wonder (again) if Montesquieu wasn’t onto something in connecting climatic conditions to people’s behavior. Geopsycho.

I’ve noticed of late an occasional Shining gleam in my reflection, not to mention in my neighbor’s eye. Now that the first two stones have been cast:

This past Wednesday, the “Coularou” club members (that really is their name) met for lunch at the village’s S. Restaurant, for their annual spring bash. The Coularous being civic-minded senior citizens, they alternate the meal’s venue every year. That way each of the three local eating establishments is equally patronized. This year it was the S.’s turn. The seniors were off and grumbling weeks beforehand. They say the service there is inadequate, the server cranky, the prices inflated, the food just barely average and the wine just barely drinkable.

Bref, word is that the owner-hostess-server is cheap and out to scam the clients.

The seniors must like to play the game. They grumble and criticize with confidentially reprobative eyes and knowing nods. Some develop post-meal digestive problems once every three years. And yet, every three years, they’re back at the S., forks and tongues on the ready.

The occasion was animated by the multi-talented Hervé. Composer, lyricist, pianist, singer, imitator and pharmacist…, he delighted the seniors with his talent and humor. The first course – steamed mussels – was met with decidedly less applause.

The mussels had surreptitiously decamped, leaving the diners’ bowls with mostly empty shells and broth. Complaints were politely registered. The chef/co-owner agreed that it wasn’t acceptable, while blaming the fishmonger, and offered to replace the mussels with another dish. No dice, countered the wife/server/co-owner (and my neighbor), “it’s not our fault.” Gazes averted.

Next course: lamb stew, with an original twist: one of the principal ingredients seemed to be pork. More knowing looks exchanged.

They say there were also problems with the wine, but the finale dessert and coffee were quite tasty. A good finish...

In lieu of a break on the bill, D. the proprietor-server, proposed to deliver éclairs to this week’s club meeting. The gesture was accompanied, however, with a request for a list of diners who’d ordered mussels. Most of them only attend the annual dinner and are not regulars at weekly club meetings. Apparently this is common knowledge ‘round these parts.

Who wouldn’t find this amusing?

Djemila Benhabib on the recent attacks on women in Algeria's Hassi Messaoud

2010-04-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

Algerian author and activist Djemila Benhabib wrote the following text in reaction to the recent violent attacks on women in Hassi-Messaoud, in Algeria. The French version is followed by my English translation. Please get involved by sharing either or both versions as widely as possible.
____________

«Une femme libre, les scandalise! » Kateb Yacine

J’ai frémi de douleurs lorsque j’ai appris l'horreur dont sont victimes des femmes travailleuses à Hassi Messaoud. Une fois la nuit tombée, des dizaines de lâches armés jusqu'aux dents se sont transformés en justiciers de l’ordre moral, en traquant des travailleuses jusque dans leurs modestes logements pour marquer leur chair du sceau de l’infamie et leur infliger les pires sévices. Singulièrement, pour m’extraire du choc que je venais de subir par cette lugubre nouvelle, Kateb Yacine est venu à ma rescousse pour me dire : «Une femme libre, les scandalise! ».

Lorsque la ville sombre dans le noir, une pluie de malédictions s’abat sur ces travailleuses venues des quatre coins du pays pour gagner leur pain. Soutiens de famille pour la plupart, elles ont renoncé à leur milieu de vie habituel pour parcourir des centaines de kilomètres et nourrir plusieurs bouches. Leurs gîtes ont été saccagés et leurs effets personnels volés et, comme si cela ne suffisait pas, les viols et les tortures se sont multipliés et banalisés sans que cela n’ébranle, outre mesure, les services de police complices de ces atrocités. Qu'arrive-il à cette ville, l'une des plus sécurisées du pays où se bousculent les compagnies pétrolières étrangères? La ruée vers l’or noir obscurcit-elle tant les esprits? Que se passe-t-il dans cet îlot orangé du Sahara où poussent le laurier-rose et l’eucalyptus et qui fait courir les touristes européens friands de méditation, de nuits étoilées et de thé vert? L’histoire retiendra qu’à l’ombre de l’oasis où les torchères crachent leurs volutes de fumée vers le ciel et où le dollar est roi, coule le sang des femmes, témoins d’un âge qu’on pensait révolu. Les corps de ces travailleuses porteront, pour toujours, à tout jamais, les stigmates de ces nuits rythmées de leurs cris de souffrance. Saigner les travailleuses et ouvrir grands les bras aux compagnies étrangères pour pomper les richesses du pays, est-ce la conception du développement économique version 2010? Hassi-Messaoud aurait pu devenir une source folle d’espérance, elle qui a su transformer cette terre ingrate en symbole de richesse. Et pourtant le miracle n’est que mirage. Qu’est-ce que la richesse d’un pays lorsqu’elle se bâtit sur la douleur des femmes ? Aujourd’hui, au delà des maux qui submergent mon être, je suis traversée par une immense colère car j’ai le sentiment que la barbarie qu’a connue Hassi Messaoud en juillet 2001 (et qui a fait une cinquantaine de victimes dans le quartier d’El Haïcha - toutes des femmes - à la suite d'un prêche virulent d'un obscur imam) se répète.

Comment se faire une raison lorsque la vie des femmes n’est que broutille? Comment se faire une raison lorsqu’on les identifie aux tares de la société? Comment se faire une raison lorsque le travail des femmes est érigé en crime et que le meurtre est promu en norme sociale? Comment se faire une raison lorsque les commissariats de police se transforment en lieux de lynchage pour crucifier les victimes et célébrer les bourreaux? Comment se faire une raison lorsque la justice s’égare et que l’injustice est érigée en système? Que faire pour déchirer le voile opaque de l'indifférence? Que faire pour crever le monstrueux silence des interdits, cache-sexe de l’islamisme? Est-ce possible que la représentation qui rend sataniques les femmes, si chère aux islamistes, ait triomphé? Est-ce possible que la politique de l’amnésie générale du président Bouteflika ait fini par faire son œuvre? Est-ce possible que l'Algérie marche à reculons? Est-ce possible que l’Algérie régresse cruellement?

Il y a, au moins, une évidence qui rebondit à chaque fois que l’histoire balbutie à l’ombre des interdits et des injustices, nulle lumière, nulle aube ne peut se lever. En effet, le Code de l’infamie adopté en 1984 continue de nourrir les violences à l’égard des femmes en les subordonnant aux hommes. Si l’on ajoute à cela l’intoxication intégriste et la vétusté des sphères éducatives, sociales et culturelles à commencer par le système éducatif, inutile de se surprendre des terribles dérives actuelles. Tout ce qui permet à l’être humain de se construire et à un peuple de s'épanouir est proscrit et banni par le régime bouteflikien. Est-ce de cela dont ont rêvé les moudjahidates de la guerre de libération? Est-ce de cela dont rêvaient les marcheurs du 22 mars 1993? Est-ce de cela dont rêvaient les victimes du terrorisme islamiste? J’en doute fort. Aujourd’hui, j’ai mal à mon Algérie pour le sort qu’elle réserve à ses femmes. Le degré de développement d'un pays se mesure au degré d’émancipation des femmes, disait Engels. Et nous en sommes loin en Algérie, terriblement loin. Le développement y est tel un mirage. Exactement comme Hassi-Messaoud m’apparaît… comme un mirage, le mirage du développement. Quelle désolation ! --Djemila Benhabib, auteure de Ma vie à contre-Coran.

English Translation of Djemila’s text:

I trembled with pain upon learning of the horrors suffered by women working in Hassi Messaoud. As night fell, dozens of cowards, armed to the teeth, turned into dispensers of moral justice, hunting down these women in their modest homes, marking their flesh with the seal of infamy, inflicting the worst abuses on them. As I reeled from this lugubrious news, Katib Yacine’s words came to my rescue: “A free woman offends them!”

As the city sinks into darkness, a rain of curses crashes down on these women who have come from the four corners of the country to work. Most of them are the sole providers for their families; leaving their lives behind, they relocated hundreds of kilometers away in order to feed hungry mouths. Their cottages have been ransacked, their personal belongings stolen, and as if that were not enough, the rapes and tortures perpetrated against them have multiplied and have been trivialized – without inordinately troubling the police force, a party to the atrocities. What’s happening to this city, one of the country’s most secure, where foreign oil companies are nearly tripping over each other? Have people’s minds been that darkened by the rush for black gold? What’s going on here in this Saharan oasis of orange, oleander and eucalyptus, this haven for European tourists partial to meditation, starry nights and green tea? History will remember the blood of women flowing in the dark corners of the oasis where flares spit their curls of smoke up towards the sky, where the dollar is king. These women bear witness of a time we thought in the past; their bodies will forever carry the stigma of these nights punctuated by their screams of suffering. Bleeding women and wide-open arms welcoming foreign companies to drain the country’s wealth: is this 2010’s conception of economic development? Hassi-Messaoud, whose hostile land was transformed into a symbol of wealth, could have become a wild spring of hope. But the miracle is merely a mirage. What is the wealth of a country when built upon the suffering of its women? Today, above and beyond the pain engulfing me, I am filled with incredible anger, because I have the feeling that the barbarism that took place in Hassi Messaoud in July of 2001 (with 50 victims in the neighborhood of El Haïcha – all women – following a virulent sermon by an obscure imam) is happening all over again.

How can we accept it when women’s lives count for so little? How can we accept it when they are considered as a defective element of society? How can we accept it when the work of women is set up as a crime and murder is promoted as a social norm? How can we accept it when police stations are transformed into lynching stations for crucifying the victims and singing the praises of their hangmen? How can we accept it when justice goes astray and injustice takes its place? What can we do to rip the opaque veil from indifference? What can we do to break down the monstrous silence of what is forbidden, the G-string of Islamism? Can it be that this representation of women as satanic, so dear to Islamists, has won out? Can it be that President Bouteflika’s political posture of general amnesia has finally done the job? Can Algeria be moving backwards? Can it be that Algeria is regressing cruelly?

There is at least one obvious fact that rebounds each time history falters in the shadows of bans and injustices: no light, no dawn can rise. The Code of infamy adopted in 1984 continues to foster violence on women in subjugating them to men. If we add to this fundamentalist intoxication and obsolete educational, social and cultural circles, beginning with the educational, we shouldn’t be surprised by today’s terrible trend downwards. Everything that permits human beings to develop, all that allows a people to grow is proscribed and banished by the Bouteflikien regime. Was this the Moudjahidate dream during the war for liberation? Was this the dream of the March 22 protestors in 1993? Is this the dream of the victims of Islamist terrorism? I very much doubt it. Today, I ache for the fate my Algeria’s women. The degree of a country’s development is measured by the emancipation of women, Engels said. And we’re far from that in Algeria, so very far. Development is like a mirage there. Exactly as Hassi-Messaoud appears to me… like a mirage, a mirage of development. What anguish!

--text written by Djemila Benhabib, author of Ma vie à contre-Coran

--English translation of text by Jean Leslie Baker

Out with the Cold, in with the New

2010-03-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

CARNAVAL !

Our village school teacher and his students spent a couple of weeks making the enormous papier-mâché Monsieur Carnaval they paraded around the village this past Saturday afternoon to celebrate Carnaval: a festival that takes place anywhere between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, to encourage winter's demise and the advent of spring.

The word "carnaval" has two origins, one Christian and the other pagan. The former (carne levare levamen) is connected to the beginning of the Lenten fast… a binge, a last chance to indulge in whatever cannot be done and/or consumed during the de-privileging of the carnal that Lent requires.

The other, older origin (carrus navalis) is connected to the god Dionysius and the passage from winter into spring. Historically in France and especially before the imposition of Christianity on pagan customs, people disguised themselves as parts of nature: animals, plants, fruits, vegetables, etc.for the festival. Daniel Vigne's 1982 film Le Retour of Marin Guerre has a wonderful scene depicting men decked out in animal skins for carnavalesque festivities. Today's carnaval disguises look more like American Halloween costumes (also unfortunately transformed over the years), but the fun and spirit of the festival is still alive and well.

So this past Saturday, a noisy fanfare of drums, whistles and horns called us out onto the village square, where a rather cheery looking Monsieur Carnaval was watching over his kingdom from the back of a pickup truck. Costumed and un-costumed villagers of all ages joined in the fun. After about an hour of chit-chat, dancing and candy-throwing, the procession made its way up the village's main street towards the Mairie and schoolhouse, where it turned around to march out of town for the big finale: Monsieur Carnaval was consumed in a big bonfire.

Au revoir l'hiver, bon débarras !

Women's Rights Threatened in France

2010-03-18T04:17:00.000-07:00

This month's issue of Le Monde diplomatique has a number of interesting and important articles. Four in particular caught my attention immediately: "Traité secret sur l'immatériel" by Florent Latrive (treating intellectual propriety rights and the sharing of ideas), "De la valeur ignorée des métiers" by Pierre Rimbert (weighing what people are paid for their work against their contributions to society), "Et pour quelques tomates de plus" by Pierre Daum and Aurel (the plight of farm workers in southern Spain, pointing to a multitude of reasons to boycott tomato sales in Europe), and lastly, the article I chose to translate and post below: Sabine Lambert's "Le droit à lavortement menacé, 'une affaire de bonnes femmes.'" Some of these articles are found in this month's online issue of Le Monde diplomatique. Not all are available in the International issue in English. The LMD's legal office granted me permission to post my translation of the article on this blog. I thank them for their consent.

I strongly believe that women have the right to decide what they do and do not want for their lives and bodies. That right is not always respected; it is constantly being put back into question.

It's a despicable power game that perpetuates inequality. How can such injustice still exist? Let us take the time to speak out more strongly and surely, towards a stronger and surer society for both women and men.

The Right to Abortion Threatened

written by Sabine Lambert, student in sociology / translated by JL Baker

On the set of Les maternelles, broadcast by France 5 on January 21, a woman emotionally describes the abortion she had undergone, in a hospital but without the benefit of anesthesia. She isn’t talking about an abortion that took place 40 years ago: she’s under 25 years old and lives in the Paris suburbs. On the verge of tears, she recalls the details of her ordeal, from the usual struggle to get an appointment, to the operating table where she had the abortion – amidst the incessant comings and goings of hospital personnel and without any anesthesia. She wasn’t given the option. As she tells her story, the journalist interviewing her, aghast, exclaims repeatedly, “unbelievable!” Finally the interviewer turns to the doctor on stage with them and asks him how such a situation can still be possible in France. The gynecologist wearily admits that there are indeed some doctors who use pain and humiliation to make women pay for their decision to abort their pregnancies.

Of course abortions without anesthesia are not numerous – or so one would hope. If knitting needles and blood poisoning seem to be things of the past in France, what about being shown your “baby” on the ultrasound or being asked with disdain how you “managed to get pregnant anyway.” What about the question of how to abort? Drugs, for example, are often presented as progressive in offering women an alternative to surgery. Given the current shortage of beds, drugs may become a means of “freeing up the operating rooms,” as we sometimes hear it more prosaically put. Evicting abortion patients from the holy site of the operating room, delivering the immaculate temple so to speak of this irrelevance, might give the bigshots more time to remove tumors in peace and implant eggs in courageous yet infertile women – which, truth be told, is more lucrative and gratifying than an ordinary suction abortion.

Abortion, like contraception, remains “a matter for women.” What happens behind the bathroom door when women see that their pregnancy test is positive and decide to have an abortion is their affair. Those for whom this question is, above all else, a woman’s problem will respond “obviously” – since it concerns women’s choices and women’s bodies. They asked for this freedom, so let them deal with it. Only an exotic sexuality, very vaguely subversive, seems able to emerge from the domain of the “private.” And little does it matter that women spend more time cleaning toilets, taking care of children and slaving away for a devalued salary than they do playing with the latest fashionable sex toy.

A woman’s life has no interest, it seems, unless it smacks of glamour and excitement, not quite hallmarks of abortion. Abortion is too often left as fodder for militant anti-abortionists, who are all too happy to take it on with seriousness. While they certainly aren’t numerous in France (more so in Spain, the US and Latin America, under the weight of religion), their views are blossoming on fertile ground. It helps that the media often shines a soft light on them. And they are developing modern tools with which they can isolate women by relegating them to the dark corners of their fragile psyches. Taking advantage of this favorable climate, pro-lifers increasingly use their Internet sites to advance their anti-abortion goals, by responding with subtlety to women “in distress.” We are mistaken if we consider these groups simply as a mish-mash of reactionary crackpots: they are progressively abandoning too flagrant lies, shocking slogans and illegal provocation. Their web sites look more and more like genuine ancillary sites of the Ministry of Health…to the point of being mistaken for them. With the help of names such as the “National Rating Center,” toll-free numbers and Anglophone university studies, they are building a very real respectability.

This is how they easily insert themselves into the “psychological turmoil,” notably the famous “post-abortion syndrome,” that supposedly hits all women following a voluntary abortion. Those that elect to have abortions are depicted as veritable wrecks susceptible to every danger, for example: alcoholism, suicide, poverty, loneliness, or job loss. These apocalyptic descriptions are generally supported by grandiloquent statements, waxing lyrical on the “urge to bear children” that is some sort of natural occult force, for any self-respecting woman…and whose emergence at times requires forceps. It’s on this point that the discourse of anti-abortionists joins the more common and omnipresent discourse of those that describe motherhood not as a choice, but as a force that goes beyond women. The recent debate on “pregnancy denial” has contributed to accentuating this psychologizing vision. It once again calls into question, by a very practical magnifying glass effect, women’s capacity to decide what is good for them.

If we add to that the pile of articles regularly consecrated to the sublime fertility rate of French women, why would it surprise us that, in such a climate, deciding to have an abortion may be painful? And consequently, how can abortion be experienced as anything but the “obligatory drama” that the experts describe to us on glazed paper as a villainous and indelible scar on female nature, the failure of a woman’s life? How surprising is it, then, that this necessarily painful act becomes so? Skimming through Internet forums to read the long lament of women who have had abortions reveals the effects of these self-fulfilling prophecies. Those who dared go against the dictates of nature and their “female instincts” seem to have perfectly internalized their punishment. It is translated through nightmares or imaginary babies who grow up, have birthdays; it expresses itself by heavy feelings of guilt, anxiety, loneliness and shame. As for those women who do not experience this pain and regret, they are reduced to silence if they do not wish to be seen as abnormal, heartless or mentally ill.

The threats weighing against the right to abortion go beyond the waiting period and the list of the latest abortion clinics shut down, even though physical access to abortion remains an obviously crucial issue. This diffuse threat, more often indirect than head-on, consists of overlapping, multiple factors. Among them, a division between “private” and “political” – or “public” – that hangs on like a village of very gallant Gauls. It is highlighted, for example, in the attitude of the OFPRA (French office for the protection of refugees and stateless people), which argues that the rape and violence suffered by women are not valid reasons to ask for asylum, since they concern problems related to “their private lives.” (1) This dichotomy is made possible by the constantly updated anchoring of women in nature and family circles, as “less social” beings than men. It excludes them from history and submits them to specific and implicit laws. It is this division that sends battered women back to their responsibilities and allows shoulders to be shrugged in the face of the lamentable figures on the division of household tasks.

This last issue, which often provokes sarcasm from those who rarely pick up a broom, is not trivial: on the contrary, it reveals that relations between the sexes, while perhaps individually harmonious, are nothing less than social and, whether lovers of social light-mindedness like it or not, they are the fruits of a power relationship. If it were a matter of “attitudes” needing a tweek then “we would have to undertake the education of supervisors and managers so that they would do their part of the typing and industrial work,” writes French feminist Colette Guillaumin humorously (2). This way, “by reforming people’s attitudes,” we would see “a benign society” emerge. In a word, this dichotomy allowed a doctor to decide, according to his good grace and his mood of the day, with complete impunity, that the sub-patient on his table could very well go without anesthesia.

1) Jean-Marc Manach, “Le viol des réfugiées ‘relève de leur vie privée’”, Bugbrother.net, December 11, 2009.

2) Colette Guillaumin, Sexe, race et pratique du pouvoir. L’idée de nature, Indigo et Côté-Femmes, Paris, 1992, p. 231.

The Renaissance Revisited, sort of

2010-03-10T07:19:00.000-08:00

While Robert De Niro was preparing for the inauguration of an art expo in Nice showcasing his father’s work*, to the west in the chilly Cévennes, people were revisiting an historic period known for its religious fervor. Note the particularly creepy reincarnation of Richelieu...who looks more like a monk from The Name of the Rose. Someone confused the Middle Ages with the Renaissance?

Last week, at Fort Auban in Alès, local artisans, actors and history buffs donned 16th-17th century costumes – some made by the participants themselves, others dating back hundreds of years – to explain to spectators the who, what, how, and whys of the personages they represented.

The most horrible spun around the tortures of the time, most of which were not designed, as we would assume, to bring a confession to the victim’s lips, but rather to cause suffering in the cruelest and most prolonged fashion as punishment for not toeing the religious line. And then there were the soldiers and Musketeers, war machines, guns, lances, canons… There's a rat in that cage, folks, the cage is an instrument of torture and not (so much) for the rat...

On the less violent side of the event were cooks, shoemakers, masons, and our somewhat quirky, charming and very talented story-teller friend Christiane displaying how she uses plants and roots to dye and decorate fabric naturally.

At the end of such an event, one cannot help but wonder why this tendency to so glorify the past. Fascination, escapism, voyeurism and perhaps a need to understand what once was and is no more? Hallelujah amen. Alas, “history” repeats itself, over and over and over and over...

*The RDN exhibit runs until May 31 at the Matisse Museum in Nice; De Niro senior, an abstract expressionist, was strongly influenced by Matisse.

Next blog entry on tap: an incredible article on abortion rights, from this month’s Le Monde diplomatique.

1, 2, 3 foreward march

2010-03-01T05:23:00.000-08:00

We have our own personal version of the Farmers' Almanac here. Early on during last fall's onion harvest, for instance, she told us that since the onion skins were thin this year, the winter would be a mild one.

The latest scoop was announced this morning to the handful of us city folks waiting in line at the Poste: today is an important day in the world of weather prediction. It's the first of Les Remarques, the first three days of March...which, says Simone, indicate what the weather will be like for the next three months. March 1 mirrors May, March 2 points to April and March 3 to the rest of the month of March. Today started out frosty, then sunny, now overcast and threatening to rain. A bit of everything. March.

I really want to believe Simone. It's comforting to think someone has insight into the future.

But the winter was bloody cold and how thick an onion's skin is depends on the variety (so says my Dr. of plant physiology).

The floor goes to Farmers' Almanac fans and ADW... I'm all ears and not too thin-skinned about weather issues.

Djemila Benhabib speaks out eloquently and strongly

2010-02-09T02:43:00.000-08:00

Algerian-born Djemila Benhabib is the author of Ma vie à contre-coran. She is vehemently opposed to the wearing of the veil by Moslem women and has been an outspoken advocate for women's rights in Quebec, where she currently lives, as well as in the international arena. The issue has been/is a heated one in Canada and France.

Some argue against Bebhabib's reasoning; they insist that lifting the veil will not liberate women. Are the veil and the burka symbols of religion or are they symbols of subserviance? Therein lies the ultimate question.

France, home to over 5 million Moslems, and its government officials have long been divided on the subject. On January 26, the French parliament recommended a partial ban on women wearing Islamic face veils in France: in public buildings such as hospitals, schools, government offices and in vehicles of public transport. It also recommended that anyone showing visible signs of "radical religious practice" should be refused state benefits and citizenship. Requiring women to cover their faces, they say, runs counter to the values of the French republic's principles of secularism and equality. Opposition against a ban claims such a step will stigmatise Muslim women.

I agree with Benhabib; I oppose the veil, for all the reasons she so eloquently sites in her November 2009 address.

Benhabib was invited to speak in Paris, France at an event organized by Femmes Solidaires -- web site: http://www.femmes-solidaires.org/ -- and the Ligue du Droit International des Femmes -- web site: http://www.ldif.asso.fr/

Benhabib's web site is found at http://www.djemilabenhabib.com/

Her November 2009 address appears below in full, first in the original French, followed by my English translation, also available at http://www.yourfrenchlife.net/

MISSION PARLEMENTAIRE SUR LE VOILE INTEGRAL

read at the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris, on 13 November 2009

by Djemila Benhabib

Mesdames les sénatrices, Mesdames les présidentes, Mesdames et messieurs les dignitaires,

Chers amis,

Merci mille fois de ce grand honneur que vous me faites, aujourd'hui, de me consacrer parmi les Femmes debout et de permettre à ma voix, celle d'une femme de culture musulmane féministe et laïque de résonner dans cette prestigieuse institution de la République.

Merci à vous, mes amies de Femmes solidaires et de la Ligue du droit international des femmes pour votre travail acharné, permanent et indispensable que ce soit dans les quartiers, auprès des femmes victimes de violences et discriminations, des sans papiers ou encore au sein des politiques et des instances onusiennes. C'est dire que c'est ici, localement que prend racine le travail pour les droits des femmes pour se répercuter à l'échelle internationale. C'est dire aussi que la Marche des femmes pour la liberté et l'égalité est une et indivisible. Lorsqu'une femme souffre dans un quelconque endroit de la planète, c'est notre affaire à toutes et à tous. Merci de nous faire sentir de mille façons que nous sommes les maillons d'une même chaîne.

Voilà encore quelques années, je n'aurais jamais imaginé que ma vie de femme, que ma vie de militante serait si intimement liée au féminisme et à la laïcité.

Je vous surprendrai peut-être en vous avouant que je ne suis pas devenue féministe en tournant les pages du Deuxième Sexe, ni en me plongeant dans ce magnifique roman d'Aragon Les Cloches de Bâle, où il était question entre autres de Clara Zetkin et de Rosa Luxembourg, deux figures de proue du féminisme et de la paix dans le monde.

Je ne suis pas devenue laïque en m'abreuvant de Spinoza, de Ibn Al-Arabi, de Descartes, de Ibn Khaldoun, ou de Voltaire, mon maître. Absolument pas.

J'aurais pu tourner mon regard ailleurs pour me perdre dans cette enfance si heureuse que j'ai eue dans une famille généreuse, cultivée, ouverte sur le monde et sur les autres, profondément engagée pour la démocratie et la justice sociale.

J'aurais pu m'égarer dans la beauté de cette ville qu'est Oran où il faisait si bon vivre au bord de la mer. Cette ville qui a propulsé la carrière littéraire d'Albert Camus, avec son célèbre roman La peste, jusqu'au Nobel de littérature. J'aurais pu ne rien voir, ne rien entendre des brimades, du mépris, des humiliations et des violences qu'on déversait sur les femmes.

J'ai choisi de voir et d'écouter d'abord avec mes yeux et mes oreilles d'enfant. Plus tard, j'ai choisi de dire les aspirations de toutes ces femmes qui ont marqué ma vie pour que plus jamais, plus aucune femme dans le monde, n'ait honte d'être femme. Pour vous dire vrai, à l'enfance et surtout à l'adolescence, je n'ai jamais rêvé de mariage, de prince charmant, de robe longue, de grande maison, d'enfants et de famille. Les quelques mariages auxquels j'avais assisté, en Algérie, me faisaient sentir que la femme était un objet bien plus qu'un sujet. Inutile de vous préciser que ma perspective était ultra-minoritaire, car les femmes sont formatées à devenir des épouses puis des mères dès l'enfance. Je devais avoir, quoi, cinq, six, peut-être sept ans tout au plus, lorsqu'on me somma de rejoindre ma grand-mère dans la cuisine, car ma place naturelle était à mi-distance entre les fourneaux et la buanderie, de façon à pouvoir faire éclater mes talents de cuisinière et de ménagère le moment venu.

En 1984, l 'Algérie adopte un code de la famille inspiré de la charia islamique. J'ai 12 ans à cette époque.

Brièvement, ce code exige de l'épouse d'obéir à son mari et à ses beaux-parents, permet la répudiation, la polygamie, destitue la femme de son autorité parentale, permet à l'époux de corriger sa femme et en matière d'héritage comme de témoignage, l'inégalité est érigée en système puisque la voix de deux femmes équivaut à celle d'un homme tout comme les parts d'héritage.

Question : L'Algérie est-elle devenue musulmane en 1984 ?

Réponse : Je vous la donnerai pendant le débat tout à l'heure si vous

le souhaitez.

Pour ce qui est de la laïcité, j'ai compris sa nécessité lorsque, au tout début des années 1990, le Front islamique du salut (FIS) a mis à genoux mon pays l'Algérie par le feu et par le sang en assassinant des milliers d'Algériens. Aujourd'hui, on est forcé de constater que les choses n'ont pas tellement changé.

Trop de femmes dans le monde se font encore humilier, battre, violenter, répudier, assassiner, brûler, fouetter et lapider.

Au nom de quoi ?

De la religion, de l'islam en l'occurrence et de son instrumentalisation. Pour refuser un mariage arrangé, le port du voile islamique ou encore pour avoir demandé le divorce, porté un pantalon, conduit une voiture et même avoir franchi le seuil de la porte sans la

permission du mâle, des femmes, tant de femmes subissent la barbarie dans leur chair. Je pense en particulier à nos sœurs iraniennes qui ont défilé dans les rues de Téhéran pour faire trembler l'un des pires dictateurs au monde : Ahmadinejad.

Je pense à *Neda*, cette jeune Iranienne assassinée à l'âge de 26 ans. Nous avons tous vu cette image de Neda gisant sur le sol, le sang dégoulinant de sa bouche.

Je pense à *Nojoud Ali*, cette petite Yéménite de 10 ans, qui a été mariée de force à un homme qui a trois fois son âge et qui s'est battue pour obtenir le droit de divorcer, et qui l'a obtenu.

Je pense à*Loubna Al-Hussein* qui a fait trembler le gouvernement de Khartoum l'été dernier à cause de sa tenue vestimentaire.

La pire condition féminine dans le globe, c'est celle que vivent les femmes dans les pays musulmans. C'est un fait et nous devons le reconnaître. C'est cela notre première solidarité à l'égard de toutes celles qui défient les pires régimes tyranniques au monde. Qui oserait dire le contraire ? Qui oserait prétendre l'inverse ? Les islamistes et leurs complices ? Certainement. Mais pas seulement !

*Il y a aussi ce courant de pensée relativiste qui prétend qu'au nom des cultures et des traditions nous devons accepter la régression, qui confine l'autre dans un statut de victime perpétuelle et nous culpabilise pour nos choix de société en nous traitant de racistes et d'islamophobes lorsque nous défendons l'égalité des sexes et la laïcité. C'est cette même gauche qui ouvre les bras à Tarik Ramadan pour se pavaner de ville en ville, de plateau de TV en plateau de TV et cracher sur les valeurs de la République.*

Sachez qu'il n'y a rien dans ma culture qui me prédestine à être éclipsée sous un linceul, emblème ostentatoire de différence. Rien qui me prédétermine à accepter le triomphe de l'idiot, du sot et du lâche, surtout si on érige le médiocre en juge. Rien qui prépare mon sexe à être charcuté sans que ma chair en suffoque. Rien qui me prédestine à apprivoiser le fouet ou l'aiguillon. Rien qui me voue à répudier la beauté et le plaisir. Rien qui me prédispose à recevoir la froideur de la lame rouillée sur ma gorge. Et si c'était le cas, je renierais sans remords ni regret le ventre de ma mère, la caresse de mon père et le

soleil qui m'a vu grandir.

L'islamisme politique n'est pas l'expression d'une spécificité culturelle, comme on prétend ça et là. C'est une affaire politique, une menace collective qui s'attaque au fondement même de la démocratie en faisant la promotion d'une idéologie violente, sexiste, misogyne, raciste et homophobe.

Nous avons vu de quelle façon les mouvements islamistes, avec la complicité, la lâcheté et le soutien de certains courants de gauche cautionnent la régression profonde qui s'est installée au cœur même de nos villes.

Au Canada, nous avons tout de même failli avoir les tribunaux islamiques.

En Grande-Bretagne c'est déjà la norme dans plusieurs communautés. D'un bout à l'autre de la planète, le port du voile islamique se répand et se banalise, il devient même une alternative acceptable aux yeux de certains car c'est tout de même mieux que la burqa!

Que dire de la démission des démocraties occidentales sur des enjeux primordiaux à la base du vivre-ensemble et de la citoyenneté tels que la défense de l'école publique, des services publics et de la neutralité de l'État ?

Que dire des reculs en matière d'accessibilité à l'avortement ici même en France ?

Tout ça pour dire qu'il est toujours possible de faire avancer les sociétés grâce à notre courage, notre détermination et à notre audace. Je ne vous dis pas que ce sont là des choix faciles. Loin de là. Les chemins de la liberté sont toujours des chemins escarpés. Ce sont les seuls chemins de l'émancipation humaine, je n'en connais pas d'autres.

Cette merveilleuse page d'histoire, de NOTRE histoire, nous enseigne que subir n'est pas se soumettre. Car par-delà les injustices et les humiliations, il y a aussi les résistances. Résister, c'est se donner le droit de choisir sa destinée. C'est cela pour moi le féminisme. Une destinée non pas individuelle, mais collective pour la dignité de TOUTES les femmes. C'est ainsi que j'ai donné un sens à ma vie en liant mon destin de femme à tous ceux qui rêvent d'égalité et de laïcité comme fondement même de la démocratie.

L'histoire regorge d'exemples de religions qui débordent de la sphère privée pour envahir la sphère publique et devenir la loi. Dans ce contexte, les femmes sont les premières perdantes. Pas seulement. La vie, dans ses multiples dimensions, devient soudainement sclérosée lorsque la loi de Dieu se mêle à la loi des hommes pour organiser les moindres faits et gestes de tous. Il n'y plus de place pour les avancées scientifiques, la littérature, le théâtre, la musique, la danse, la peinture, le cinéma, bref la vie tout simplement. Seuls la régression et les interdits se multiplient. C'est d'ailleurs pour ça que j'ai une aversion profonde à l'égard des intégrismes quels qu'ils soient, car je suis une amoureuse de la vie.

Rappelez-vous une chose : lorsque la religion régit la vie de la cité, nous ne sommes plus dans l'espace du possible, nous ne sommes plus dans le référentiel des doutes, nous ne sommes plus dans le repère de la Raison et de la rationalité si chères aux Lumières. Séparer l'espace public de l'espace privé en réaffirmant la neutralité de l'État me semble indispensable, car seule la laïcité permet de se doter d'un espace commun, appelons-le un référentiel citoyen, loin de toutes croyances et de toutes les incroyances, pour prendre en main la destinée de la cité. Avant de conclure, permettez-moi de partager avec vous une lettre destinée à un de vos élus.

J'ai longuement hésité avant de vous écrire. Peut-être, par peur d'être perçue comme celle venue d'ailleurs qui fait indélicatement irruption dans les « affaires françaises ». Au diable les convenances, je n'ai jamais été douée pour la bienséance surtout lorsqu'elle est au service des plus forts, des plus puissants et des plus arrogants. Puis, s'il avait fallu que je vive en fonction du regard des autres, je n'aurais rien fait de ma vie ou si peu. Lorsqu'il s'agit des droits des femmes, nulle convenance ne doit primer sur l'essentiel.

L'essentiel étant : la liberté, l'égalité et l'émancipation des femmes. J'entends encore des copines françaises me dirent avec insistance : parle-lui, dis-lui, écris-lui. Étrangement, leurs propos me rappellent le titre de ce magnifique film d'Almodovar : Parle avec elle, où dès les premiers instants, le rideau se lève furtivement, pendant quelques secondes, sur un spectacle de danse, mettant en scène le corps d'une femme, celui de Pina Bausch. Elle qui exprimait si bien dans ses chorégraphies crûment la violence exercée à l'encontre des femmes.

Monsieur Gérin, c'est à vous que je m'adresse, je voudrais vous parler, vous dire la peur que j'ai connue le 25 mars 1994 alors que j'habitais à Oran, en Algérie et que le Groupe islamique armé (GIA) avait ordonné aux femmes de mon pays le port du voile islamique. Ce jour-là, j'ai marché la tête nue ainsi que des millions d'autres Algériennes. Nous avons défié la mort. Nous avons joué à cache-cache avec les sanguinaires du GIA et le souvenir de Katia Bengana, une jeune lycéenne âgée de 17 ans assassinée le 28 février 1994 à la sortie de son lycée planait sur nos têtes nues. Il y a des événements fondateurs dans une vie et qui donnent une direction particulière au destin de tout un chacun. Celui-là, en est un pour moi. Depuis ce jour-là, j'ai une aversion profonde pour tout ce qui est hidjab, voile, burqa, niqab, tchador, jilbab, khimar et compagnie. Or, aujourd'hui vous êtes à la tête d'une commission parlementaire chargée de se pencher sur le port du voile intégral en France.

En mars dernier, je publiais au Québec, un livre intitulé : Ma vie à contre-Coran: une femme témoigne sur les islamistes. Dès les premières phrases, je donnais le ton de ce qu'est devenue ma vie en termes d'engagements politiques en écrivant ceci : « J'ai vécu les prémisses d'une dictature islamiste. C'était au début des années 1990. Je n'avais pas encore 18 ans. J'étais coupable d'être femme, féministe et laïque.» Je dois vous avouer que je ne suis pas féministe et laïque par vocation, je le suis par nécessité, par la force des choses, par ces souffrances qui imprègnent mon corps car je ne peux me résoudre à voir

l'islamisme politique gagner du terrain ici même et partout dans le monde. Je suis devenue féministe et laïque à force de voir autour de moi des femmes souffrir en silence derrière des portes closes pour cacher leur sexe et leur douleur, pour étouffer leurs désirs et taire leurs rêves. Il fut un temps où on s'interrogeait en France sur le port du voile islamique à l'école. Aujourd'hui, il est question de voile intégral. Au lieu d'élargir la portée de la loi de 2004 aux établissements universitaires, nous débattons sur la possibilité de laisser déambuler dans nos rues des cercueils. Est-ce normal ? Demain, peut-être c'est la polygamie qui sera à l'ordre du jour. Ne riez pas. Cela s'est produit au Canada et il a fallu que les cours (de justice) s'en mêlent. Car après tout la culture à bon dos lorsqu'il s'agit d'opprimer les femmes. Ironie du sort, j'ai constaté dans plusieurs quartiers que les jupes se rallongent et disparaissent peu à peu. La palette des couleurs se réduit. Il est devenu banal de camoufler son corps derrière un voile et porter une jupe, un acte de résistance. C'est tout de même une banlieue française qui est le théâtre du film : La Journée de la jupe. Alors que dans les rues de Téhéran et de Khartoum, les femmes se découvrent de plus en plus, au péril de leur vie, dans les territoires perdus de la République française, le voile est devenu la norme.

Que se passe-t-il ?

La France est-elle devenue malade ?

Le voile islamique est souvent présenté comme faisant partie de «l'identité collective musulmane ». Or, il n'en est rien. Il est l'emblème de l'intégrisme musulman partout dans le monde. S'il a une connotation particulière, elle est plutôt politique surtout avec l'avènement de la révolution islamique en Iran en 1979.

Que l'on ne s'y trompe pas, le voile islamique cache la peur des femmes, de leur corps, de leur liberté et de leur sexualité.

Pire encore, la perversion est poussée à son paroxysme en voilant des enfants de moins de cinq ans. Il y a quelques temps, j'essayais de me rappeler à quel moment précisément, en Algérie, j'ai vu apparaître ce voile dans les salles de classe. Pendant mon enfance et jusqu'à mon entrée au lycée, c'est-à-dire en 1987, le port du voile islamique était marginal autour de moi. À l'école primaire, personne ne portait le hidjab, ni parmi les enseignants, ni surtout parmi les élèves.

Voilà 12 ans que j'habite au Québec dont la devise inscrite sur les plaques d'immatriculation des voitures est « Je me souviens ». A propos de mémoire, de quoi la France devrait-elle se souvenir ? Quelle est porteuse des Lumières. Que des millions de femmes se nourrissent des écrits de Simone de Beauvoir dont le nom est indissociable de celui de Djamila Boupacha. C'est peu dire. Il ne fait aucun doute pour moi que la France est un grand pays et ceci vous confère des responsabilités et des devoirs envers nous tous, les petits. C'est d'ailleurs pour cela qu'aujourd'hui, tous les regards sont tournés vers votre commission et que nous attendons de vous que vous fassiez preuve de courage et de responsabilité en interdisant le port de la burqa.

Pour notre part au Québec, on se souvient qu'en 1961, pour la première fois dans l'histoire, une femme, une avocate de surcroît, est élue à l'Assemblée législative lors d'une élection partielle. Son nom est Claire Kirkland et elle deviendra ministre. En invoquant un vieux règlement parlementaire qui exigeait des femmes le port du chapeau pour se présenter à l'Assemblée législative, on la force à se couvrir la tête pendant les sessions. Elle refuse. C'est le scandale. Un journal titre : « Une femme nu-tête à l'Assemblée législative ! » Elle résiste et obtient gain de cause.

Il faut comprendre par là que nos droits sont des acquis fragiles à défendre avec acharnement et qu'ils sont le résultat de luttes collectives pour lesquelles se sont engagés des millions de femmes et d'hommes épris de liberté et de justice. J'ose espérer, monsieur Gérin, que la commission que vous présidez tiendra compte de tous ces sacrifices et de toutes ces aspirations citoyennes à travers le monde et les siècles.

A vous chers amis, s'il y a une chose, une seule, que je souhaiterais que vous reteniez de ces quelques mots, c'est la suivante. Entre une certaine gauche démissionnaire, le racisme de l'extrême droite et le laisser-faire et la complicité des gouvernements nous avons la possibilité de changer les choses, plus encore nous avons la responsabilité historique de faire avancer les droits des femmes. Nous sommes, en quelque sorte, responsables de notre avenir et de celui de nos enfants.

Car il prendra la direction que nous lui donnerons.

Nous, les citoyens. Nous, les peuples du monde. Par nos gestes, par nos actions et par notre mobilisation.

Toutes les énergies citoyennes sont nécessaires d'un pays à l'autre au-delà des frontières. L'avenir nous appartient. La femme est l'avenir de l'homme disait Aragon. S'agissant d'homme, je veux en saluer un présent aujourd'hui, c'est mon père à qui je dois tout.

Et je finirai par une citation de Simone de Beauvoir :

«On a le droit de crier mais il faut que ce cri soit écouté, il faut que cela tienne debout, il faut que cela résonne chez les autres. »

J'ose espérer que mon cri aura un écho parmi vous.

*Djemila Benhabib*

Mesdames les sénatrices, Mesdames les présidentes, Mesdames et messieurs les dignitaires,

Chers amis,

I thank you wholeheartedly for this great honor, for being counted among you today, among the Femmes debout; thank you for this opportunity to allow my voice – the voice of a woman from a Moslem culture, a feminist and an advocate of secularism – to resonate in this prestigious institution of the French Republic.

I thank you, my friends from the Femmes solidaires and the Ligue du droit international des femmes for your relentless, endless work that is so very essential. I thank you for your work on the local scene, with women who are victims of violence and discrimination, for your work with undocumented immigrants. I thank you for your work in the political arena and with officials from the UN. It is on the local level that the work for women’s rights takes root and then resonates on an international scale. Women’s March for liberty and equality is one and indivisible. When one woman suffers somewhere on this planet, it concerns us all, men and women alike. Thank you for making us feel in a thousand ways that we are links in the same chain.

Several years ago, I would never have imagined that my life as a woman, that my life as a militant, would be so intimately connected to feminism and secularism.

I will perhaps surprise you in admitting that I did not become a feminist by turning the pages of The Second Sex, nor by plunging myself into Aragon’s magnificent book Les Cloches de Bâle, where he talks about, among other things, Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxembourg, two hallmark figures for feminism and world peace.

I did not become a secularist by bathing myself in the light of Spinoza, of Ibn Al-Arabi, Descartes, Ibn Khaldoun or even Voltaire, my teacher. Absolutely not.

I could have averted my gaze to lose myself in the happy childhood of my generous, cultured family, so open to the world and to others, so deeply engaged in the cause of democracy and social justice.

I could have lost myself in the beauty of the seaside city of Oran, where life was so wonderful. Oran is the city that propelled the literary career of Albert Camus towards a Nobel prize in literature for his renowned novel The Plague. I could have seen nothing, heard nothing of the anger, contempt, humiliation and violence poured out on women.

I chose to see and to hear, at first with my child’s eyes and ears. Later, I chose to voice the aspirations of all these women who marked my life forever, so that no woman in the world would be ashamed of being a woman. Quite honestly, when I was a child and especially when I was a teenager, I never dreamed of marriage, of a Prince Charming, of a long gown, a big house, children and a family. The handful of marriages I had attended, in Algeria, made me feel like women were objects more than subjects. Needless to say, my perspective was very much in the minority, because women are programmed from childhood to become wives and then mothers. I must have been around five or six, possibly seven years old at most, when I was summoned to join my grandmother in the kitchen – because my natural place was at the stove and the laundry… so that my cooking and cleaning talents could shine when the time came.

In 1984, Algeria adopted a family code inspired by the Islamic sharia (canonical law). I was 12 years old at the time.

In short, this code demands that the wife obey her husband and his parents. It allows polygamy and the repudiation of the wife, strips her of any parental authority, allows the husband to punish her. As for inheritances and giving testimony, inequality is systematically established, since it takes the voice of two women to equal the voice of one man… the same inequality applies to inheritance.

Question: Did Algeria become Moslem in 1984?

Answer: I’ll give you a response shortly, if you wish, during the upcoming debate.

As for secularism, I understood its necessity when, in the early 1990s, the FIS (Extremist Islamists) brought my country Algeria to its knees, through fire and blood, by killing thousands of Algerians. Today we must admit that things have not really changed.

Too many women in the world are humiliated, beaten, assaulted, repudiated, assassinated, burned, whipped and stoned.

In the name of what?

Of religion, of Islam to be specific, and in the name of its exploitation. For refusing an arranged marriage, refusing to wear the Islamic veil or even for asking for a divorce, wearing pants, driving a car or going out without the permission of the male, women, so many women, are subjected to the barbarity of physical cruelty. I am thinking in particular of our Iranian sisters who marched in the streets of Tehran, causing one of the world’s worst dictators – Ahmadinejad -- shudder.

I am thinking of Neda, this young Iranian assassinated when she was 26 years old. We’ve all seen the image of Neda lying on the ground, blood flowing from her mouth.

I am thinking of Nojoud Ali, this little ten year-old Yemenite girl, who was forced to marry a man three times her age. She fought to obtain the right to divorce and won.

I am thinking of Loubna Al-Hussein who shook the government of Kharoum last summer because of the way she dressed.

The worst feminine condition in the world is in Moslem countries. This is a fact that we must recognize it. That is our first responsibility towards all women who defy the worst tyrannical regimes in the world. Who would dare say otherwise? Who would dare claim the opposite to be true? Islamists and their accomplices? Assuredly. But they are not the only ones!

There is also a current of relativist thought claiming that, in the name of culture and tradition, we must accept the regression that confines the other to the perpetual role of victim. This thinking tries to make us feel guilty for our social choices in labeling us racist and Islamiphobic for defending secularism and equality between the sexes. It is this same left that opens its arms to Tarik Ramadan, for him to strut from city to city, from one television stage to another, spitting on the values of the French Republic.

Know that there is nothing in my culture that destines me to be hidden under a shroud, that ostentatious emblem of difference. Nothing destines me to have to accept the triumph of the idiot, the fool and the coward, especially when small minds, the mediocre, are set up as judges. Nothing that prepares me for having my sexual organs butchered without my indignation. Nothing predestines me to a life of physical punishment. Nothing says I must repudiate beauty and pleasure and accept a cold, harsh blade against my throat. And if that were the case, I would deny my mother’s belly, my father’s caress, and the sunshine of my childhood days, without a moment of regret or remorse.

Islamic politics is not the expression of a cultural specificity, as some people in this world claim. It is a political matter, a collective threat that attacks the very foundation of democracy in promoting a violent, sexist, misogynistic, racist and homophobic ideology.

We have seen the way that Islamic movements, with the complicity, cowardice and support of certain political sectors, guarantee the profound regression that has settled into the very heart of our cities.

And yet, in Canada, we came very close to having Islamic courts.

That is already the norm in several communities in Great Britain. From one end of the planet to another, wearing the Islamic veil is spreading and becoming commonplace, even becoming an acceptable alternative in the eyes of some, because it is at least better than the burqa!

What can be said about Occidental democracies that abdicate their responsibility to protect the primordial issues upon which community and citizenship are based: the defense of public schools, public services, the neutrality of the State, for example?

What can be said about the retreat on the accessibility to abortion, right here in France?

However, it is still possible to make societies move forward, thanks to our courage, our determination and our audacity. I am not telling you that these are easy choices. Far from it. The pathways to freedom are always steep and uphill. They are the only pathways leading to human emancipation; I know of no others.

This wonderful page of history, of OUR history, teaches us that suffering is not submitting. Because beyond the injustices and the humiliations, there is also resistance. To resist is to give oneself the right to choose one’s destiny. For me, this is what feminism is about. A destiny is not individual but collective, for the dignity of ALL women. This is how I give meaning to my life, in tying my destiny as a woman to all those who dream of equality and secularism, as the very foundation of democracy.

History is full of examples of religions that go beyond the private sphere and invade the public sphere to become law. Women are always the first to lose in this context. But not only women. Life, in its multiple dimensions, suddenly becomes sclerotic when the law of God meddles with the law of men in order to control our every move. There is no longer any room for progress in science, literature, theatre, music, dance, painting, cinema. In short, there is no room for life. What grows is regression and restriction. Moreover, this is why I have a profound aversion to all fundamentalists of any sort, because I am in love with life.

Let us remember something: when religion directs the life of a community, we are no longer in the realm of the possible, where there is room for doubt, where Reason and the rationality so dear to those of the Enlightenment guide us. Separating the public and the private by affirming the State’s neutrality seems indispensable to me, because only the secular provides for a common space – a system of reference where the notion of citizenship is central, removed from beliefs and disbeliefs, in order to take in hand the fate of the community. Before I conclude, I would like to share with you a letter addressed to one of your elected officials.

I hesitated for a long time before writing to you. Perhaps out of fear of being perceived as a woman coming from somewhere else, bursting into “French affairs.” Let propriety be damned. I wasn’t given any talent for propriety, especially when it’s in the interest of the strongest, the most powerful and the most arrogant. Moreover, if I had had to live according to what others thought, I wouldn’t have made much of my life. When it comes to women’s rights, what is suitable must give way to what is essential.

The essential being this: liberty, equality and the emancipation of women. I still hear my French friends insisting: speak to him, tell him, write to him. Curiously, their words remind me of the title of a magnificent film by Almodovar: Talk to Her, where in the opening moments, the curtain is furtively raised for several seconds on a dance featuring the body of a woman – Pina Bausch, who so well and forthrightly expressed in her choreographies the violence trained against women.

Mr. Gérin, my remarks are addressed to you. I would like to talk to you, to tell you about the fear I felt on March 25, 1994 when I was living in Oran, in Algeria and the Islamic Army Group (GIA) ordered that the women of my country must wear the Islamic veil. That day, I and thousands of other Algerian women, marched with our bare heads, to challenge death. We played hide-and-seek with the bloodthirsty GIA. The memory of Katia Bengana, a young 17 year-old high school girl who was killed as she was leaving school on February 28, 1994 was hovering over our bare heads. There are founding events in a life, that give a particular direction to the path of every one of us. That was one for me. Ever since that day, I have a deep aversion for everything having to do with the hidjab, veil, burqa, niqab, tchador, jilbab, khimar, in all their forms. Today you head a parliamentary commission charged with studying the wearing of the full veil in France.

Last March in Quebec, I published a book titled Ma vie à contre-Coran : une femme témoigne sur les islamistes (My Life Against the Coran : One Woman Testifies about the Islamists). From the very first sentences, I used the tone of what has become my life, in terms of political engagement, by writing this: “I have lived the premise of an Islamist dictatorship, in the early 1990s. I wasn’t even 18 years old. I was guilty of being a woman, a feminist and secularist.” I must tell you that I am not feminist and secular by vocation but by necessity, by the strength of things, the suffering that impregnates my body because I cannot abide seeing political Islam gain ground here and everywhere else in the world. I became feminist and secular through seeing around me women suffering in silence behind closed doors, to hide their gender and their pain, to suffocate their desires and silence their dreams. There was a time when France considered the question of the Islamic veil being worn in its schools. Today it is a question of the full veil. Instead of expanding the 2004 law to university establishments, we are debating about the possibility of allowing caskets to walk around in our streets. Is this normal? Perhaps tomorrow polygamy will be the order of the day. Don’t laugh. That’s what happened in Canada; the courts had to intervene. Because after all, it’s easy to blame culture when it comes to oppressing women. By a strange irony of fate, I noticed in several neighborhoods that skirts are getting longer and are disappearing little by little. The array of colors is getting smaller. It has become commonplace to camouflage one’s body behind a veil; wearing a skirt has become an act of resistance. Just the same, the film “The Day of the Skirt” takes place in a French suburb. While in the streets of Tehran and Khartoum women are uncovering themselves more and more, risking their lives, here in outlying areas of the French Republic, the veil has become the norm.

What is going on?

Has France been taken ill?

The Islamic veil is often presented as part of a “collective Moslem identity.” It is nothing of the sort. It is the emblem of the fundamentalist Moslem everywhere in the world. If it has a particular connotation, it is political, especially since the advent of the Islam revolution in Iran in 1979.

Let us not be mistaken about this: the Islamic veil hides women’s fear, their bodies, their freedom and their sexuality.

Worse yet, the perversion is pushed to paroxysm in veiling girls less than five years old. Some time ago, I tried to remember at which moment precisely in Algeria I saw this veil appear in the classroom. During my childhood and up until the moment I started high school, in 1987, wearing the Islamic veil was only marginal around me. In grade school, no one wore the hidjab, not the teachers and especially not the students.

I have been living in Quebec for 12 years. Its motto, written on car license plates, is Je me souviens, “I remember.” Speaking of memory, what should France remember? That it is the messenger of the Enlightenment, that millions of women are nourished by the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, whose name is inseparable from that of Djamila Boupacha. That’s an understatement. I have no doubt that France is a great country; this confers on you responsibilities and duties towards all of us, the smaller countries. Moreover this is why today our eyes are on your commission and why we are expecting you to be courageous and responsible, by forbidding the burqa.

As for us in Quebec, we remember that in 1961, for the first time in history, a woman, and moreover an attorney, was elected to the Legislative Assembly in a bye-election. Her name is Claire Kirkland; she goes on to become minister. An old parliamentary rule mandating that women wear hats to appear in the Legislative Assembly was invoked; she was told to cover her head during sessions. She refused. A scandal. One newspaper headline read: “A woman with uncovered head in the Legislative Assembly!” She fights and wins.

What we must understand from this is that the rights we have gained are fragile and must be fiercely, relentlessly defended. We must understand that they are the result of collective battles fought by millions of women and men committed to liberty and justice. I dare to hope, Mr. Gérin, that the commission over which you are presiding will take into account all these sacrifices and all these socially aware aspirations around the world, over the course of centuries.

To you, dear friends, if there is one thing, only one, that I would like you to retain from these words, it is this: despite a certain resigned left, the racism of the extreme right and the laisser-faire and complicity of governments, we have the possibility of changing things. More, we have the historic responsibility of advancing the rights of women. In a way, we are responsible for our future and our children’s future.

Because it will take the direction we give it.

We the citizens. We the people of the world. By our gestures, our actions and our mobilization.

All socially aware energy is necessary, from one country to another, beyond borders. The future belongs to us. The woman is the future of the man, Aragon used to say. And as to men, I want to salute one present here today: my father, to whom I owe everything.

I conclude by quoting Simone de Beauvoir: “We have the right to shout but our cry must be heard, it must hold up, it must resonate in others.”

I dare hope that my cry will echo among you.

*Djemila Benhabib*

Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé

2010-01-04T04:39:00.000-08:00

"I'm not here to be loved": a defiant (or disappointed) declaration to ring in 2010? No; with the holidays over and the house awash in a much-welcomed tranquillity, we stoked the fire, made a pizza then settled in to watch a movie.

Je ne suis là pour être aimé is the title of an excellent French film by director Stéphane Brizé.

Brizé's highly nuanced work spins around communication and the (seeming) lack thereof. We see and feel balance and finesse in all aspects of this film: each detail plays into the theme, with expertly controled performances by each actor, right down to the smallest part. Patrick Chesnais is superb, as is his counterpart Anne Consigny. Cudos for script by Brizé and Juliette Sales and for the original music by composers Eduardo Makaroff and Christoph H. Muller.

The synopsis on the back of the DVD tells us that 50 year old Jean-Claude is tired of just about everything in his life... until he starts to take tango lessons. Sound familiar? Remember Masayuki Suo's 1996 film, Shall We Dansu? and Peter Chelsom's 2004 American rendition of it (Shall We Dance?), with Richard Geer, Susan Sarandon, Jennifer Lopez and Stanley Tucci as leads.

Brizé's Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé is in that vein but ever so much more. If the holidays (or life) have you sighing with fatigue, give this film a watch. In French, with English subtitles. It's cinematic art in top form.

In My Father's Footsteps, by Sebastian Matthews

2009-12-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

This post is not about life in France; it's about a book. Literature and life communicate, so my guess is that, although unplanned, some reference to France will find its way into the comments that follow.

I've just returned to my village after a too-short month's visit with my family, my head more prone to dancing with recent literary adventures than yet another how-to-survive-the-cold-winter-months-in-an-uninsulated-house-with-no-hot-water-in-the-bath" adventure... go figure.

I've just finished reading Sebastian Matthews' gem of a book, In My Father's Footsteps. Thanks for the loan, Basil, good call. I appreciate being introduced to Matthews - Harris - Matthews poetry.

Sebastian Matthews is the son of Marie Harris and William Matthews. Here's a link for each poet; your own Google search will take you to many others:

http://3bythefire.blogspot.com/
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/132
http://www.marieharris.com/

In My Father's Footsteps is a memoire of sorts. I qualify it like this because part way through the book, it takes a turn into literature. This is a blog and I have lessons to prep, so let's forego the irritation of having to define "literature." I've had that argument one too many times with too many elitist French folks (told you so!).

Midway or so through the narrative, Matthews' focus turns away from the father's life towards the son's, a change of direction that, for several pages, felt like an aside that would shortly end, with the narrative turning its attention back to the father. I could have been looking over Sebastian's shoulder at a party waiting for his father to show up, while trying to stay tuned in (and look tuned in) to what S. was telling me about himself. The change of (apparent) narrative focus caught me saying, "wait a minute, I'm interested in your Dad; enough about you, what about your Dad? When's he supposed to show up?"

I don't know if the provocation was intentional, but I found it an exquistie marriage of form and content, of literature and life.

The focus turns to Matthews' quest to better understand his father, his relationship with him, and Matthews' relationship with himself. Matthews' narrative evolves adeptly -- and in sometimes uncomfortable forthrightness -- towards equilibrium: the father fades more into the background as the son puts himself in the psychological limelight. The transition/change up, while remaining very personal, takes the narrative to a more universal level that spins around self-identity and choice, and ultimately acceptance.

I particularly appreciated the risotto passage at the end of the book, on pages 268-270. It reminded me of the one and only time in my life that I made risotto for my own father. During the course of that meal preparation, complete with music and a glass of wine (in my hand not his: he doesn't drink), we found a moment of common ground. Nice feeling...and the risotto was a success, too.

The International PEN Report on Translation, Globalization and the English Language

2009-11-24T22:26:00.000-08:00

PEN American Center is the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization. There's a quote from Arthur Miller on the PEN web site calling the organization "the voice of cultures truthfully addressing one another rather than governments or armies in confrontation. The object is not to win something, but to illuminate something." The belief that a healthy society is based on free expression is the backbone of PEN's programs. They reach out to the world and into diverse communities within the United States to promote writing and literature at all levels.

Why am I talking about this in a blog on life in France? The reasons are several. I live in a small community where English is not spoken by most people. However it's a community whose elderly citizens and some of its younger ones are bilingual; they speak both French and Occitan and are richer for it. As for English, it's a mandatory subject in the one-room school for kids from 9 to 11 years old; I'm the (volunteer) English teacher. The villagers in general understand some English and would like to learn much more, as a second language. They don't want to replace their native language, they want to broaden their connections to the world. Why? Even in this remote area, where many people pass through during the summer and winter months, English is the language of common ground, the fall-back language: if visitors don't speak French well enough to make themselves understood, they rely on English to communicate. English has become the language Esperanto aimed to be.

I've had mixed reactions to this reality, mostly because of the infiltration of American culture into other cultures. I've been in Foucault's camp for years, ever since I read his ideas about the flattening of American culture and the implication that, as American products (including particularly music, films, literature, and pop culture) are consumed globally, cultural differences are flattened. I like color and difference. But cultures have always invaded each other, adopted and adapted. What makes now different? Accessibility, power, money...

I also believe that we should speak the language of the culture in which we live (not to the exclusion of our native language), out of respect and for the many doors it opens both literally and figuratively. This leads to better cultural understanding and societal participation as we more effectively interact with our fellow citizens: a multicultural environment with multilingual citizens. Not speaking the language is disempowering, creating disequilibrium on many levels -- not the least of which is psychological.

The positive aspects of this melding are effectively exposed in the PEN Report on the international situation of literary translation. It presents some very convincing arguments about how the growing presence of the English language around the world can foster a sharing of ideas between cultures, enriching rather than flattening them, through literature in translation.

The international PEN report refers to literature as the "common currency among nations" and the "unhampered transmission of thought." You can find a pdf of the report on the University of Columbia's Center for Literary Translation web site: http://www.centerforliterarytranslation.org/ Scroll down to the bottom on the left hand side of the page and you'll find the correct link.

The sixty-seven page document discusses the global presence of the English language and the complex, perplexing reality of why so little literature is translated from other languages into English when the predominant language of our planet is English. The number of those who speak English as a native language coupled with the number of those who speak it as a second language topples the billion mark. And that's growing. An obvious reality is that literature published in English has the potential of reaching a very large, international audience and therefore translations into English of literature originally written in other languages have the potential of weaving together ideas from multiple cultures by making them accessible to readers worldwide.

The Report's Introduction, written by Columbia's Esther Allen and Carles Torner from the Institut Ramon Llull (Barcelona, Spain), quotes from Shakespeare's Richard II, Act 1, Scene 3, where Thomas Mowbray reacts to his being banished from his native land and hence his native language, his only language:

A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,

And all unlook'd for from your highness' mouth:

A dearer merit, not so deep a maim

As to be cast forth in the common air,

Have I deserved at your highness' hands.

The language I have learn'd these forty years,

My native English, now I must forego:

And now my tongue's use is to me no more

Than an unstringed viol or a harp,

Or like a cunning instrument cased up,

Or, being open, put into his hands

That knows no touch to tune the harmony:

Within my mouth you have engaol'd my tongue,

Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips;

And dull unfeeling barren ignorance

Is made my gaoler to attend on me.

I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,

Too far in years to be a pupil now:

What is thy sentence then but speechless death,

Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?

Allen and Torner state that with the passing of four centuries, Mowbury's lament has been nearly reversed: today odds are that an English speaker will be understood in more places on our planet than any speaker of any other language. It has become important to master English to avoid exclusion. Research shows that lesser-spoken languages and dialects are disappearing. We cannot blame that entirely on the growing presence of the English language; as the Report accurately points out, many other widely spoken languages, such as Spanish and Chinese, have replaced lesser spoken languages. But does this trend necessarily bring with it an eventual disappearance of cultural differences as well?

I would say that that is indeed the risk we're facing, unless the trend in publishing changes, unless publishers increase the number of English translations of works originating in other languages. If their motivation for publishing spins around the financial -- obviously a primary concern that cannot be discarded--, then why not publish more English translations of foreign works to sell to an ever-increasing global market of English speakers, thereby diffusing ideas from different cultures while making money as well? Illuminating while winning, winning by illuminating. Read the report and let me know what you think. I'm off to edit a translation.

Philippe Claudel: author and film director

2009-11-18T15:00:00.000-08:00

If you've never read anything by Philippe Claudel, you're missing something. You may know his Ames grises, published in English under two different titles for each of its two translations: Grey Souls and By a Slow River. And then there's Brodeck, a Novel (French title: Le rapport de Brodeck).

My favorite Claudel novel to date is La petite fille de Monsieur Linh, unfortunately currently unavailable in English. You'll need an intermediate to advanced level in French to understand and appreciate the story. Stick with it if you're intermediate only; it's a beautiful story of great humanity, well worth the effort... a love story like no other I've ever read and a poetic indictment of the ravages of war. To read more: http://incurablelogophilia.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/philippe-claudel-la-petite-fille-de-monsieur-linh/

Claudel is on my mind because I just saw his first film: Il y a longtemps que je t'aime ("I've Loved You so Long"), with Kristen Scott Thomas in a stunning, understated performance that caught me from the very first scene. It tells the story of two sisters getting to know each other after a fifteen-year separation. Juliette (Kristen Scott Thomas), the older of the two, has spent those years in prison...for murder. Her younger sister, Léa, welcomes her into the home she shares with her husband, two adopted daughters and father-in-law. As always with Claudel, the story is anchored in the unsaid, the unspoken and the unexplained. The visual aspects of communication, so present in Claudel's writing, are center stage in this film. Don't watch it when you're tired; you need to pay attention to the nuances. Chapeau, Monsieur Claudel, et merci.

No Crash for Chocolate

2009-10-12T05:08:00.000-07:00

OHHHHH if only I had time to write what I wanted to write, when I wanted to write! When I started this blog, I thought it would be easy to keep up. Not true. I find myself so dispersed trying to make ends meet that my energy is shot to pieces. Why is it that, when we live in a foreign country and speak a foreign language far more than our native language, we find ourselves using idioms in our native language that we would never use living in the US? Some linguist out there surely has a theory or two or three.

Today I'm updating websites, taking a break from my usual tasks; that break includes writing a new blog entry. At last.

One of the most reputable newspapers in France is Le Canard enchaîné, a tongue-in-cheek, hard-nose, well researched look at the week's news. In this past week's issue, I found a great little article entitled "Pas de krach pour le chocolat!" Here's my rendition, ultra short version:

Companies may be not selling cars or refrigerators, but sales for little moments of happiness are on the rise. It seems that even in difficult times, you can sell happiness.

Chocolate moguls are rubbing their hands together gleefully. Since the Crash-Crise, the giants of the candy world have never sold so much chocolate candy. Why? Because chocolate is an inexpensive mood booster. Some ad campaigns have used this spin to boost sales, claiming: Times are tough, give yourself have a little pleasure. The tactic is called "indulgence marketing." Apparently people swallow such TV ploys more easily when the they have less money to spend on going out to dinner or the movies. Apparently they're glued to the TV set instead, eating chocolate.

Chocolate makers in particular among candy makers are making a double killing on the market: chocolate costs less to make since 2000, thanks to the European commission. Manufacturers are allowed to replace some of the cocoa butter with vegetable fats such as shea butter, which is 7 times cheaper. They can also use palm oil, which is 10 times cheaper.

And the taste, folks? What about the taste? If the "chocolate" coats your tongue and throat so thickly with these non-chocolate substitutes, where's the pleasure?

American Kraft has been trying to take over British rival Cadbury for the sum of 12 billion euros (back in September, Cadbury hadn't yet ceded), to become king of a chocolate market that weighs in yearly at 88 billion euros and is rapidly growing. Conclusion? The future will be an obese one.

http://www.lecanardenchaine.fr/

http://www.jeparlefrancais.net/

http://www.yourfrenchlife.net/

A Cultural Difference Survey

2008-11-11T05:54:00.000-08:00

Some months ago, I sent a rather enigmatic email to a number of my American friends. My partner sent a French version of the mail to his French friends. The query read as follows: "Would you please take a moment to make a list of 15 animals, without asking for any explanations at this point and without thinking about your responses. Just make a quick list of the first 15 animals that pop into your mind." We added that an explanation would be sent as soon as all responses had been evaluated.

Whereas Americans responses were immediate, I'm still waiting for responses from the French end of the survey. My guess is that they'll never show up, so I've decided to finally divulge what our little cultural difference survery was all about.

We wanted to see if there would be a difference between what Americans put on a list of the first 15 animals that came to mind and what French people would put on such a list.

Our curiosity was prompted by an agument -- a heated one -- that took place around a dinner table last summer. I was the only foreigner; all the others were French. We had just visited an excellent local aquarium with my partner's small children, so the conversation naturally led to fish and animals. I mentioned that when we talked about animals, we weren't necesarily talking about fish as well, that we could be talking exclusively about mammals. That's not quite how I worded things, but you get the gist.

Apparently it was a huge gaff. I was immediately attacked, no questions asked as to the why of my statement. It was a hot moment -- hot, hot, CHAUD, and not because of the summer temperatures. I had a moment's reflection, then decided not to take the French reaction seriously. After all, they were probably just teasing. On what grounds could they be expressing any real criticism? Sometimes when we say "animals," we mean "mammals." Who doesn't know that? They had consumed too many pastis, too much rosé, or the heat was getting to them. I didn't see anything to get all steamed up over, nor did I feel like explaining myself. If they wanted to be that bornés (obtuse), it was OK by me. The stars were shining, the food was good, the wine chilled. I let it drop.

Erreur! The gauntlet was again thrown down the next day. Someone who had been at dinner told me that I must be absolutely stupid to think that "animal" did not always refer to "fish" as well. The French are big fans of superlatives. Curiously they are also big users of the word peut-être (perhaps).

I couldn't believe the accusation. I replied that in the United States, we sometimes used the term "animal" to refer solely to mammals. I called one of my daughters to ask her what she thought. In short, she had the same reaction as I: "animal" refers to mammals in some settings, to the animal kingdom in others. My Frenchies were not ruffled. They concluded, and not without some very real concern, that we must be victims of a serious family deficit. And they weren't joking. They chalked it up to our Mormon background. Or to the American educational system in general, assuming that American science and textbooks must be "different" due to our puritanical origins.

What???????!

How could these people draw such conclusions? They were intelligent, thinking, educated. I was aghast and spitting mad. Firstly, they knew me and knew that I wasn't an idiot, so why weren't they open to a more reasonable explanation to this "animal" question? Secondly, why would they think that a large portion of the western world would have a completely different scientific and educational take on what "animals" were?

It was obvious to me that there was a linguistic-cultural difference at the heart of the issue. And it turns out that I was right.

I got out two dictionaries: one exclusively French, published in France, one exclusively English, published in the United States. Ah, hah! The stupid American (aka me) read to the closed-minded French that the term "animal" is used in American English to refer to the kingdom of living organisms including fish but not plants AND that it is also used to refer broadly to mammals alone. The French dictionary doesn't show any such difference.

Be that as it may...

My French tablemates insisted that any French person -- that is, all French people everywhere, including little kids -- would automatically include fish on a list of 15 animals. Not one of their colleagues followed through on the survey, though, whereas, as I've already said but want to point out again, the Americans to whom the survey was sent all responded immediately. Most of them did not include fish on their lists. Out of 20 people to whom I sent the survey (one German-French-American, all the rest American), only 3 put "fish" or the name of a fish on their list.

I think the same would be true of French lists, despite the French dictionary's definition of "animal." The reason has absolutely nothing to do with scientific definitions, either. At least not in my opinion.

The reason is very simple. It spins around usage. We tend to separate fish-animals and mammal-animals into two separate sets in our everyday conversation. Therefore, what we're thinking of USUALLY when we say "animal" is mammal: cat, dog, bear, otter, giraffe, elephant, cow, zebra, etc. If we want to talk about fish-animals, we say "fish."

This story points to other cultural differences between Americans and French. For instance, in my experiences, the French assume at the get-go that the other person is wrong, especially if the other person is a foreigner, especially if the foreigner is an American, especially if the American is a woman. And this is the house that Jack built.

There's often no entertainment of another perspective. There's seldom any opening to the possibility that the French person may be wrong. This seems to be a European posture in general: your best defense is offense, so attack and don't yield. Like football. Great, I don't get that game either. Football may be an American sport, but try this tactic here and see how far it gets you. A French person is respected for it; a foreigner is criticized, so choose your battles well.

What happens if you persist and don't accept the French person's posture as the one and only one allowed on the field? What happens if you go even further and actually succeed in showing that you are not only correct but that the French person is wrong? You'll probably not get an apology for any insults slung your way during the conversation. In fact, you'll probably not get any acknowledegment of any sort. Instead the topic, now apparently insignificant and unworthy of continued discussion, is changed.

Here's another possible scenario: you recede or concede at the first sign of a confrontation. Americans often do this because arguing with a French person can be a decidedly uphill battle, the source of frustration and even angst. Try one of these tactics and you are often considered as weak, unintelligent, insignificant yourself and therefore not worth talking to. Lose-lose.

I've seen this happen between French people, too. It's a power game that I find particularly annoying for two reasons: one, I don't see what "power" is at stake and two, I don't like confrontations. Sometimes, though, more often with French women than with French men, you need to play the game and hold your ground, maybe even tread on theirs. Dumb.

Yes, Americans too know that fish are part of the animal kingdom. Our educational system does not teach us otherwise. However our language allows for another spin on the word. Language and culture are inextricably intwined.

Is there a moral here?

"Walk softly and carry a ...... big dictionary?"

France Reacts to Our President-elect, Barack Obama

2008-11-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

To read about France's reaction to our election of Barack Obama, please go to my YourFrenchLife web site. Here's the URL: http://www.yourfrenchlife.synthasite.com/

A new story about village life will be up soon! Promise!

This Old French House

2008-10-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

The whole village is gearing up for winter, gleaning vegetables, gathering fruits, winterizing doors and windows, and mostly bragging about not turning the heat on yet. It's a game played all over France: who can go the longest without touching that thermostat? Personally I'd rather be warm. That said, I haven't turned my heat on yet and am typing this wrapped up in two layers of wool sweaters, a down vest, thick wool socks and shearling-lined slippers purchased at a local grocery store for the low price of 9 euros (what you don't spend is also a game here). It's not that it's particularly cold here yet, not outside anyway. Inside these thick walls is a whole other climate...

I don't think that the annual heat/no heat contest is solely connected to the high price of oil, gas, and electricity, at least not in the Cevennes. I think it's deeply embedded in the culture, where suffering is equated, consciously or not, to how good a person you are -- or are not. No suffer, no good, or not good enough. That interpretation may have its roots in a strict Protestantism dating back to the 1500s.

Wikipedia link about Protestantism in the Cevennes: http://enwikipedia.org/wiki/Camisard

I've recently moved to a quirky old house built in the early 1800s, with cold air easily making its way in through a Brazilian weak spots (homage to George oblige). The windows are all single-paned glass and there are three fireplaces, all of whose chimneys were wide open to the skies and none of which was functional. But the house is roomy, bursting with charm and the rent is low because the owners don't want to be bothered with fixing things up to charge more. That's just fine by me. Mr. Bricolage, the handyman's dream store, is just 45 minutes away -- and is now one of my favorite places in France.

The house is located smack in the middle of the village, whereas my former home (which I despised) was just on the outskirts. The distance between the two places is no more than a few hundred meters at most. However, I've experienced a distinct change in how the villagers interact with me now versus then. I am now a neighbor; I was then an outsider. I don't get it, but that's how it is.

To come into my new old house, you first open a hefty double wooden door at street level, then walk up a flight of stairs, open another thick wooden door and walk onto the floor where the kitchen and sitting room are located. Cross this space and open another sturdy wooden door to another flight of stairs that lead up to a landing, two bedrooms, and two fireplaces. Open two more heavy doors, with locks and huge keys (that work), go up three steps and you're in the bathroom. This house is not for the incontinent. I think that the bath used to be an outhouse, attached to the main house at some point in the not so distant past. It's been modernized into a more or less (less) conventional bathroom, depending on what your idea of conventional is, but there's no disguising those heavy, keyed doors that once led to somewhere outside the house.

There are two more doors near the bath, one leading back down a tiny staircase that eventually takes you back to my front door, the other leading up a narrow and somewhat frightening stairwell to the terrace on the roof. From there you can see the beautiful mountains surrounding the village, but no one can see you. In this tiny village, where everyone knows and sees everything you do, a private terrace is truly a piece of heaven.

Back to the cave, which, despite its name, is on street level: I always imagine them as below street level, underneath the house. In fact, this street level cave is indeed below the house, just not underground, so I suppose all is well in my world of images. At any rate, take two steps down from the street entrance into the cave and you're in a space that smells exactly like your grandmother's or great-grandmother's coal basement. Everyone who's come by to visit has made that comment. Everyone -- this house is instant nostalgia. Hidden back in a corner (of the cave) is a deep cupboard with some very old, very large bottles containing who knows what inside. I think it's some kind of Cevenol moonshine, stashed away to age at least a century ago -- something to check out one of these chilly winter nights if ever the courage comes to us. Perhaps some things are better left untapped?

The oil tank and controls for the old but central heating system are located in the cave, next to the mysterious bottles. The system seems to work, although it gives off quite a bit of heat even when set for hot water only. There's apparently no repairing that flaw, so we decided to focus on preventing the heat from escaping into the street through the huge gaps in the wood-planking of the door, as well as all around the door. Our hope was to force the heat upwards into the house.

And so, as of last Sunday, the door is no longer functional. The gaps are all blocked up thanks to high-pressure foam in a can from Mr. Bricolage. The stuff is not easy to manage, but it's cheap and efficient. More importantly, it's fun, like trying to smoosh melted marshmallows into cracks and crevasses. Admittedly, that may not be everyone's idea of fun, but when you live in a teeny, tiny village with a bike as your primary mode of transit, you modify your standards -- actually, they just gradually change all by themselves.

French Grrrrrrrrrrrammmar!

2008-03-31T05:28:00.000-07:00

OK, sure it's been months since my last entry. My excuses? Don't need 'em, but raising them gives me a chance to vaunt the arrival of an exquisite new family member, the lovely, chatty, and absolutely perfect Nora. And preparation for a gin rummy fest in Paris with my sister. I haven't played in so long that I had to read up on all the rules to be the worthy opponent one should be if participating in a gin rummy fest. Goes without saying. And a zillion (I counted them) ongoing projects essential to daily life, that keep my mind too occupied for anything creative.

As for the title of this entry: no, the "r" on my keyboard doesn't stick, although given the humidity of the climate around here, I'm expecting keys to start sticking any day now.

The title's tongue-in-cheek angst comes from a recent experience that started out as a calm evening reading Fred Vargas, a French author of very intelligent detective novels. She's been translated into English, so check her out in either language. My partner and I read together most evenings (in French) and a couple of nights ago, we came across a passage in which the very common word gens was treated several times as feminine. We looked at each other, both wondering the same thing: Mais attends là, gens est bien masculin, non? = “Hey, wait a minute, isn’t gens masculine?” Side note: our lives are really less boring than that makes it sound.

We could have, should have let it drop, in the interest of continuing what was a very good story, but instead, our reading came to a screeching halt and out came the dictionary. Neither of us could conjure up a viable explanation for this gender switch on our own, although both of us had some faint recollection of a strange grammar rule governing gens. As far as we could remember, gens was masculine: Les gens du nord, ils ont un accent plus pointu que les gens du sud.

Jean-Paul was as perplexed as I. Neither of us had ever noticed gens in the feminine. We’d surely come across it, but it hadn’t registered with us. Lately these little oddities of the French language spring out to grab us by the throat, ever since we discovered an interesting, not-so-little book by Jacqueline de Romilly, of The Académie française. It traces the evolution of the French language. Yup, winter nights are long here in this village... Some of Romilly’s chapters are very recherchés, but others are truly stimulating – short reads, too, at just two pages each, since they originally appeared as articles in a fairly ordinary French magazine whose readers aren’t particularly interested in intellectual mumbo-jumbo. You can probably find a copy of the book on Amazon, but be forewarned that it’s in French. Here’s the info: Dans le jardin des mots, published in 2007 by De Fallois Editions, prefaced by philosopher and journalist André Giovanni. The preface is great, by the way.

Retournons à nos moutons, “let’s return to our sheep” = let’s get back to the point: the bi-gendered gens. The explanation we found is reason enough to drop to your knees in gratitude for our neutered English. Apparently even the French, including some celebrated authors, make mistakes when it comes to gens.

That gens is both a masculine and feminine noun is not hard to swallow. There are other everyday nouns that take both genders. Change the gender, change the meaning: la manche = the sleeve; le manche = the handle / la poêle = the frying pan; le poêle = the stove / le livre = the book; la livre = the pound. The list goes on, but it’s not especially long and is really just a matter of vocabulary. The story’s more complicated for gens.

Here are the Rules:
Gens is masculine, unless preceded by a plural adjective. In that case it’s feminine, as is the adjective modifying it. Remember that list of BAGS adjectives from French class? The ones used to describe, in general, Beauty, Age, Goodness (or lack of it), and Size: beau, belle, joli, jeune, vieux, vieille, bon, mauvais, grand, petit, etc. Those types of adjectives are generally placed before the noun they modify, whereas most others follow. Example: C’est un vieux monsieur. But: C’est un monsieur respectable.

According to the Rules, when one of those adjectives precedes gens, gens and the preceding adjective take the feminine form: Ce sont de vieilles gens. = “They’re old folks,” using the feminine form of the adjective vieux. But, ce sont des gens français, with “français” in the masculine. If we continue to talk about these old folks, using a pronoun, we need to use elles: Mes voisins sont de vieilles gens, elles sont françaises. Note bene: “voisins” is masculine, “vielles gens” is feminine, “elles” and “françaises” are feminine. Grrrrrrrrrr…

You may want to pour yourself a glass of wine before continuing down the not-so-logical road of this French grammar rule.

Next scenario to consider: gens preceded by two adjectives, the second of which ends – in the masculine and the feminine – in a mute “e.” Re-read that a couple of times. What we’re talking about here are BAGS adjectives like brave, whose masculine and feminine forms both end in a mute “e,” that is, BAGS adjectives whose masculine and feminine forms are identical.

In this seemingly, but only seemingly complicated and limited case, you use the masculine form for the first adjective. Who cares about the gender of the second adjective since you can’t tell if it’s masculine or feminine anyway – the forms are identical. JP and I felt victorious just for having grasped the scenario; understanding the Rule and its application was icing on the cake. Here are two examples to help clarify: Ce sont de vrais braves gens, les étudiants de français ! / Ces prétendus honnêtes gens nous ont trompés. You see, brave and honnête are absolutely the same, whether they be masculine or feminine. The adjectival form that matters is that of the first adjective in the pair modifying gens. And as you see, in these two examples anyway, there’s no difference there either when it comes to pronunciation. The only difference between the masculine and feminine forms of vrais-vraies and prétendus-prétendues lies in their spelling. With BAGS adjectives like “petit-petite,” you hear a difference, so if you make a mistake, everyone in the room knows it -- a (perhaps) gross exaggeration, but let's note anyway that those who bring the error to your attention are not worth talking to. Chances are, you’ll quite naturally use the masculine (correct) form of the first adjective anyway. Here’s why: trying saying, ces petiT(es) braves gens. It doesn’t exactly flow off the tongue. Now try, ces peti(ts) braves gens. It’s easier to articulate and therefore what you would naturally tend towards saying. I'm not a linguist, but that makes sense to me.

That said, on to the next gens Rule: when gens is qualified by the adjective tout, to designate specific people, you use the masculine plural form tous: tous ces gens, tous les gens sensés. On the other hand – there’s almost always an “on the other hand” in French grammar – you use the feminine plural form toutes IF gens and toutes are separated by an adjective whose masculine form differs from the feminine form by the absence of a mute “e” (e.g. bon-bonne): J’aimerais remercier toutes les bonnes gens qui nous ont aidés. Notice that the past participle agrees with gens… in the masculine plural, despite the feminine form of bon. Chorus: Grrrrrrrrrr…

Perhaps you’re beginning to see, though, that the whole thing comes down to a question of pronunciation, that is, to making it easier to pronounce gens in combination with certain adjectives. English does the same kind of irritating stuff, but we don’t notice it because we’re so used to it.

Last gens Rule, finally: what happens if we’re using the adjective jeune? Bring it on, you'll respond, mellowed by that glass of wine I suggested. Ah, but this is an easy one, a hard and fast, easy to grasp rule: use the masculine. Youppie! Example: de joyeux jeunes gens.

Fortunately for non-native speakers of French, the native speakers, who rely more on their ear than on their Bécherelles to guide them, don’t manage to perfection all these rules. Conclusion: non-native speakers are allowed some leeway. Those readers who have spent some time living in France will recognize this seemingly logical conclusion as wishful thinking. And why is that anyway?

One last word, in the form of a quotation I found on a French chat site for writers, a smile-provoking observation left by a professional, native-French translator trying to digest the rules concerning gens: “Cela m'amène à conclure que le mot gens, étant un mot difficile à faire précéder, les règles ont pour but de le faire précéder autant que possible par un adjectif finissant par le son "e". Si ce n'est pas possible au masculin, alors on met l'adjectif au féminin... Sans être une féministe obsédée, je trouve que ça aurait été beaucoup plus simple de décider que le mot gens est féminin! Ah la la ! quels gens!” [“This leads me to conclude that the word gens is a difficult word to modify by an adjective preceding it; the rules’ purpose is to impose, as far as it possible, an adjective ending in a mute “e.” If that’s not possible in the masculine, then you use the feminine form. Not to be obsessive feminist, but it would have been much easier to just make gens feminine! …”].

France is all about aesthetics, baby.

It's Beaujolais Time

2007-11-15T09:16:00.000-08:00

I had planned on writing an article on French etiquette this week, but when I realized that it was already the third week of November, I decided to put off etiquette to a later date, in favor of writing about Beaujolais wines. Those of you who have come to my home for wine tasting parties, or to France with me for dégustations, visits to vineyards and caves coopératives will not be surprised by my choice.

For some years now, the third Thursday of November marks the appearance on the market of the much touted Beaujolais Nouveau. I’m all for the celebrations the event brings about worldwide. For you Seattle readers, check out Voilà Bistro or Le Pichet for a lively evening.

That said, I’m in no way a fan of the Beaujolais Nouveau wine itself. It’s not bad (well, sometimes, yes, it is bad) -- the problem is more that it’s just not very good. Its success isn’t connected to its taste, but rather to the clever marketing skills of Georges Dubœuf, et al. If you’re bent on trying the Beaujolais Nouveau (and you should at least once), be sure to chill it well and to serve it with anything but elegant dishes: French fries and sausages, for example, are a perfect match, kind of like beer and nachos. For that matter, Beaujolais Nouveau would probably work well with nachos, too. For something a bit more delicate, you might try a spinach salad dressed with walnuts, Roquefort, and a light balsamic vinaigrette. In this wine drinker’s opinion, though, that $10-20 you’re paying in the States for a bottle of the Nouveau could be better spent on a bottle of non-nouveau Beaujolais. Some of them are truly wonderful and almost always lower priced than a decent bottle of Burgundy or Bordeaux.

The densely planted Beaujolais fields are located in eastern central France, just a tad bit northwest of Lyon. Beaujolais wines are produced through an apparently unique method of vintification. I say “apparently” because I’m a wine lover, not an expert. My wine knowledge, as opposed to my wine experience, is limited: I’m familiar with numerous excellent small vineyards here in the south of France, as well as some from the Loire valley, Bordeaux, Alsace, and the Nantes region, some Italian, Californian, a smattering of South American and African wines. An expert, though, I’m not. When I take folks on wine tours here, I leave the technical explanations to the real experts: those who make the wine. What I can tell you about Beaujolais comes from some deliberate recent research for this article and from an American pianist, a real lover of Burgundies and Beaujolais, to whom I gave French lessons for five years. Hats off and merci, Monsieur C.

There are four classifications of Beaujolais: Beaujolais Nouveau, Beaujolais (a step up), Beaujolais Village (getting better), and ten Crus du Beaujolais (miam-miam): Brouilly, Chénas, Chiroubles, Côte de Brouilly, Fleurie, Juliénas, Morgon, Moulin à Vent, Régnié, Saint-amour. Specifics on these different Beaujolais are given towards the end of this article. First let’s take a look at what makes Beaujolais Beaujolais.

Of initial importance is the wine grower's choice of Gamay grapes for the encépagement (the ensemble of vine types in the field). Next is the very dense planting of the vines and the hand harvesting of the grapes. Some 35,000 harvesters are used during the ten to twenty-day harvesting period (vendange) in mid-September. Finally, Beaujolais is defined by a vintification process that uses the entire cluster of grapes -- as opposed to removing the grapes from the clusters, I would imagine. This technique encourages the best expression of Gamay fragrances and flavors.

At harvest time, the grape clusters are carefully loaded into vats made of cement or stainless steel, varying in size from forty to three hundred hectoliters. The juice that’s initially released fills between 10 to 30 percent of the volume of the vat. This quantity increases during maceration, to reach between 40 and 70 percent with the draining of the lie. Two fermenting processes take place at the same time in the vat: classic fermentation in the liquid portion and an intracellular maceration within the whole clusters of grapes. If I understand correctly, it’s this combination of methods that marks Beaujolais vintification as unique.

While the use of whole grape clusters is a constant in the Beaujolais wine-making process, variances in other elements create the spectrum of Beaujolais wines. Some are designed to be drunk immediately; some can be put down for short periods, and others for up to five years or longer. Beaujolais Nouveau, for instance, is drunk within several months of the grape harvest. Beaujolais and Beaujolais Villages have a longer life, while Beaujolais crus can and sometimes should be cellared for several years.

After fermentation, the grapes are pressed; the juice from the vats is mixed with the juice that has been pressed out. A second fermentation then takes place. Once completed, the wine can be filtered and bottled. The Beaujolais Nouveau is immediately bottled, since it’s put on the market the third Thursday of November. The other Beaujolais aren’t bottled for several more months.

The specifics that follow include suggestions for pairing the different Beaujolais with food. I personally don’t follow them too closely, since taste is very subjective. A “best” rule is to match wines and foods according to your own tastes; if you like the marriage, it’s a good match for you. What could be more obvious? You'll notice that Beaujolais is typically served between 50-57 degrees, the colder temperature being best for the Nouveaux. That, too, should be subject to your own tastes.

Brouilly
Acreage: 1200 hectares
Soil : granite and alluvial sand
Full-bodied, with a deep ruby color, nuances of red fruits, plums, peaches and mineral notes
Serve at 53°, with wild fowl and red meats

Chénas
Acreage: 260 hectares
Soil : granite sand
Well-bodied, with a ruby-tinted garnet color, floral and woodsy nuances
Serve at 57°, with lamb, sauced meats and strong cheeses

Chiroubles
Acreage: 350 hectares
Soil: granite and porphyry
Elegant, delicate body, vivid red color, very fruity with a floral nose (peonies, violets, lilies)
Serve at 53°, with charcuterie, poultry, pork

Côte de Brouilly
Acreage: 290 hectares
Soil : granite and schist
A Beaujolais thoroughbred, purple in color, with nuances of fresh grapes and iris. Ages well; should not be drunk too young
Serve at 55°, with charcuterie, rabbit stew or similar dishes

Fleurie
Acreage: 800 hectares
Soil: granitic sand
Smooth and elegant, carmine colored, with floral and fruity notes: iris, violets, roses, peaches, cassis, red fruits
Serve at 55°, with lamb, poultry, pork

Juliénas: one of my favorites
Acreage: 580 hectares
Soil : schist and granite, some clay
I read that this is a bit of a nervous wine (whatever that means) that can be drunk both young and aged for several years; strong red color, with a nose of peaches, red fruits, floral notes
Serve at 55°, with coq au vin, wild fowl, sauced poultry dishes

Morgon: another favorite of mine
Acreage: 1100 hectares
Soil : granitic schist, broken rocks
Rich and full, with a garnet color and aromas of cherry, peach, apricot, plums
Best aged
Serve at 55°, with sauced meats and game

Moulin à Vent: the Beaujolais of Beaujolais, one of my favorite wines (hmm, I have a lot of favorites...)
Acreage: 650 hectares
Soil: manganese-rich granite
Deep ruby red in color, big taste, with floral, spice, and ripe fruit nuances
Ages exceptionally well
Serve at 57°, with red meats, game, full-bodied cheeses

Régnié
Acreage: 650 hectares
Soil: sandy granite
The most recent Beaujolais, classed in 1988
Supple, well-structured wine, cherry color with a touch of violet, fruity nuances of currant, blackberry, and raspberry
Serve at 53°, with terrines, white meats, and dishes with cream

Saint-amour
Acreage: 280 hectares
Soil : siliceous clay
A lively, well-balanced wine, ruby colored with aromas of kirsch, spice and reseda
Serve at 54°, with organ meats, poultry and wild fowl

Beaujolais-Villages
Acreage: 5850 hectares
Soil : crystalline
39 towns can use this appellation
Cherry-red color, smooth in the mouth with nuances of red fruits (most notably cassis and strawberry)
Serve at 51-53°, with charcuterie, poultry, and a wide variety of dishes

Beaujolais
Acreage: 9700 hectares
Soil : chalky clay and granite
This is the porte-drapeau (standard-bearer) of Beaujolais; they tend to be floral and fruity, a good go-with-everything wine
Serve at 51°

Beaujolais Nouveau and Beaujolais-Villages Nouveaux
2/3 of these come from Beaujolais acreage, 1/3 from Beaujolais Villages acreage
They are brightly red, currant or cherry colored, are typically fruity and floral
Serve at 50°

OK, now that you know a bit about what you’re in for, go have some fun at your local Beaujolais Nouveau party. My village isn't celebrating, though -- yup, that happens in some French villages --, so I'll have to wait till a later date to try out this year's production. If you're testing it out this evening, please raise a glass for me, hopefully to the tune of Chevaliers de la Table ronde. Then go hunt down a bottle of good Beaujolais.

Peyre

2007-10-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

Just 7 kilometers southwest of Millau is the troglodyte village of Peyre. Typically you won’t find it listed in the Michelin Atlas France, whose index does however list a Peyre that’s located near Pau, not far from the Pyrenees. The troglodyte Peyre is in the Aveyron, a stone’s throw from the Parc Naturel Régional des Grands Causses. While it may not appear in the Michelin index, it does appear on the Atlas’ map, so before you mistakenly head off towards the Spanish border, locate Millau in your Michelin, then look a bit to the left to find Peyre just off the D-41.

The name means “stone” in Occitan, also known as and langue-d'oc and provençal; it was the language of the medieval troubadours of southern France, and bears an obvious similarity to the French word for stone, pierre. Like Breton and Catalan, Occitan is still alive and kicking, having survived 19th and 20th century government measures to standardize French, to the detriment of anything other language spoken in the country. Classes, music, and literature of all sorts are available in Occitan; there are festivals that spin around its culture, and local bilingual publications where articles appear in both standard French and Occitan. Its melodious sounds are distinctly Mediterranean and carry with them the historical French-Italian-Spanish influences of southern France.

It’s not particularly easy to pronounce “Peyre” correctly if you’re an Anglophone: try saying “PAY” followed by “re.” You’ll notice a bit of a stop in your throat and a dramatic change of lip position between the two syllables if you’re on the right track. Stretch and tighten your lips for the first syllable, then purse them to pronounce the clipped “-re.” Correctly pronouncing the village’s name will help you immensely when you stop to ask for directions, because, once you’ve located Peyre in your atlas and are en route, you may discover that it’s just as difficult to find the village in the actual countryside as it was in the Michelin. It’s an easy matter for French and foreigners alike to miss the one and only, poorly positioned road sign. If you’re hesitant to ask for directions, just wander around the Millau viaduct area and you may eventually bump into Peyre on your own.

Rupestral Peyre is principally known for its troglodytic church and the spectacular view it offers of the Millau viaduct. The unusual juxtaposition of ultra-modern and medieval will instantly prompt you to reach for your camera, like many other visitors to the region. Beware: I’ve read that since the viaduct’s inauguration in 2004 by none other than former French President Jacques Chirac, car accidents in the area have increased sharply, with motorists hopping out of their cars along the départementale to snap pictures of the panoramic oxymoron. This surely has nothing to do with Chirac…

It’s best to leave your car in one of the parking lots near the new church at the base of the hill leading into Peyre, then hike the short distance up to the medieval St. Cristofol. It's not a long hike, nor a particularly steep hill either, whereas it is difficult if not impossible to find parking in the village proper. If you try, you're likely to annoy those who live there – to whom the handful of parking spots rightly belong – and, if (when) you discover that the spots are all taken, you'll have to maneuver a tricky about face, drive back down the hill and park your car where you should have left it in the first place.

You’ll notice that the narrow, winding streets of Peyre, called calades, are made of stone, and that the houses are made of limestone. Some have maintained their troglodytic aspects, with doors leading into compartments carved into the cliffs. As I wandered through the small village specifically looking for photo ops of such compartments, I found myself uncharacteristically wanting to knock on private doors for some personal insights into cave dwelling. I really wanted to see the interior of one of these troglodyte homes. My only experience with troglodytes up to that point had been literary: via an 18th century Montesquieu text, an interesting social commentary from Les Lettres persanes. You can read about this book and those letters specifically concerning the Troglodytes on one of the Wikipedia sites indicated below. I resisted my impulse, but learned to my great dismay that some visitors, usually photographers, do indeed intrude on the private life of Peyre's small population.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troglodyte_(peuple)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Letters

Once you reach St. Cristofol, position yourself at the low wall just in front of the church -- vertigo sufferers, breathe deeply --, with your back to the limestone cliff (tuffa) into which the church is etched. As you gaze out over the Tarn River, you’ll see before you British architect Norman Foster’s 2460 meters long, 343 meters high miracle of modern technology, the Millau Viaduct. This is a safer point from which to take a photo than on D-41. FYI: the viaduct photo attached to this article was taken halfway up the hill between Peyre’s two churches.

St. Cristofol was named for its patron saint, whose relic, apparently brought from Spain in the tenth century by Crusaders returning home to the Aveyron, was re-located to the newer church when the troglodyte church was recently restored for non-religious use by the Communes de Millau Grands Causses. The tombs whose stones can still be seen in the floor of St.Cristofol were also re-located to the newer church. The town council auctioned off the cave-church in 1872 in order to fund the newer place of worship. Today St-Cristofol plays host to local art exhibits. During my visit, Line Bonfils' acrylics were on display. Her magical paintings open onto quite another world; they can be seen online at: http://www.line-bonfils.com/

The Romanesque-style church’s location was well chosen; it’s elevation and situation allowed approaching potential attackers to be spotted long before they arrived at the village’s base. Those who constructed the edifice in the 11th century took advantage of the overhanging, corbeled cliff to reduce construction needs and also to take advantage of the security the cave could provide. To what already existed naturally, they added a projecting bell tower and a small perpendicular wall for entrance into the church. All was fortified in the seventeenth century to provide for better defense of the site and the village’s inhabitants, who took shelter there during menacing times. Before going inside, take a moment to stroll off to the left of the church’s present entrance to see the wonderful inscriptions around the older, no longer used door. They are witness to the blending of paganism and Christianity in the region many centuries ago.

Inside Saint Cristofol, you’ll find some beautiful stained glass windows. They’re a very recent addition to the church, designed by master glass maker Emmanuel Chauche, and installed in 2001. In reading about Chauche’s design, I learned that the artist drew his inspiration from the site’s natural surroundings: the rain gently passing through rock fissures, the different levels of the cave-church’s interior, the staircases leading nowhere. The windows associate drops of richly colored, heavy leaded crystal with granite to create sculptures of light that are perfectly in sync with their surroundings.

A trek to Peyre will leave you time for other activities, so if you’d like to visit additional sites in the vicinity, try the (very) tiny truffle museum in Comprégnac (La Maison de la truffe), where you can learn about everything truffle and purchase a wide variety of truffle products. I'd avoid the truffled chocolate drops, although the truffled hazelnut butter, also chocolate, is exquisite; idem for the truffle oil. You may also enjoy a visit to the Roquefort caves, where you will discover some very practical uses of the region's limestone caves. Check out the following website, available in both English and French, for more information: http://www.roquefort.fr/

A New Skill to Add to My CV?

2007-09-08T07:56:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long while since my last entry on this site. Contrary to what one might think – that I’d have time on my hands living in a lost-in-the-middle-of-nowhere village –, this back to basics life can be quite time consuming. On the other hand, both the setting and pace are relaxing, at least in the warmer months: I’m writing this on my laptop, seated on a sun-drenched stone terrace next to my tomato garden.

That sounds better than it actually is. The wind is starting to whip up and there are only three tomato and four basil plants in the garden, bordered by drooping sunflowers and lots of dahlias and zinnias, all unfortunately orange. I dramatically limited the size of my garden because seeds are pricey here and mostly because I don’t have any water faucets for outdoor purposes. At least, that’s what I thought in the spring when I dug up all the weeds and ivy next to the terrace to make a small garden spot edged in large stone slabs. I managed to carry those heavy (heavy!) slabs from the front yard, down the steps to the terrace by constantly visualizing how lovely they would look there. This mentality exasperates some folks and is absolutely incomprehensible to others. Happily none of those people belong to my inner circle and everyone found my insanity quite normal. Hmm…

Back to why the garden is so small, albeit prolific. I didn’t realize that in France, the outdoor water faucets are often located in the garage, and only mid-way through the summer did my upstairs neighbor fill me in on that important detail. I’ve spent quite a bit of time living in France, but I’d never bothered with gardens here till now. The water faucet-in-the-garage is apparently a given for the French; my neighbors and partner alike found it odd that I didn’t know. I found it odd that they had all seen me going back and forth between my kitchen and garden with large plastic bottles of tap water, for months, yet no one had mentioned the faucet in the garage before now. Feeling unjustly criticized, I countered with the obvious question: “So, where are the water faucets in the United States?” Blank looks all around, I tried to suppress a smug smile. I didn’t try all that hard.

Like any intelligent soul, I walked all around the premises to locate the water faucets when I first moved into my little apartment. Seeing none, I assumed that the garden plants had to be watered the very old fashioned way: with watering cans filled at the river or the kitchen sink. I never considered catching rainfall in barrels. I’m patient about many things and ecologically minded, too, but catching rainfall in barrels would be way too much trouble for a few tomatoes. For a brief moment, though, I considered buying a really long length of hose to siphon water from the river into my garden. I know how to do that from all those years on a farm way back in another life. But I abandoned the idea as folly because the distance to cover was uphill, too long, crossed someone else’s garden, and the hose cost too much anyway. I resigned myself to a garden small enough to water by hand, with water from my kitchen. Besides, I reasoned that Jean-Paul and I had a large garden spot at his house – and I thought it would be relaxing at day’s end to make a "few" trips back and forth from kitchen to garden. Maybe village life is deteriorating my brain cells.

The short of it is that I put in a few tomatoes, some herbs and flowers at my place, and we put lots of tomatoes, basil, and other big, sprawling stuff at Jean-Paul’s, where there is no garage, and where the faucets are indeed outside – so why all those surprised looks when I expected faucets at my place to be outside? (Va comprendre ces Français, même ceux que l’on aime. Go figure, those French, even those we love.) And I’ve been filling containers with water at the kitchen sink to keep my plants happy and growing. What seemed an easy chore has become an annoyance and I find that, even though I am melancholic to see summer’s end, I’m not dismayed to see the leaves on my tomato plants starting to die off. Just to be clear, it’s not from lack of water.

These past months have brought me other new experiences as well. The most out of the ordinary was working in a small honey extraction facility. I hesitate to call it a “factory” because that would conjure up something much larger and more organized than the actual place. I remember my first thoughts upon stepping inside and seeing the machinery and equipment, some of which could definitely be termed hazardous: “Ah, no phone lines, no cell phone reception, no emergency gear, hornets and bees flying about menacingly, you’ll be here alone much of the time – fais gaffe! Watch out!"

The bees, boxes and combs belong to a friend of ours whose back is shot from years as a beekeeper. He couldn’t do the extracting himself this year, so he asked us if we would help out. Even with our very limited experience, we can empathize: we’re both in dire need of a visit to the local kiné. Thankfully the extracting is in hiatus at the moment.

There are numerous apiculteurs and apicultrices in the south of France and all kinds of honey produced. Chris’ honey comes mostly from chestnut trees, although all his jar labels say otherwise. Here’s his very practical explanation: he sells most of his honey in bulk, in large vats, and only a small quantity currently goes into jars for sale to individuals. When he first started out years ago, that wasn’t the case. Back then, he sold his honey in different sized jars, mainly to individuals, so ordered a large number of labels for the kind of honey he was then producing: a blend coming from different flowers. Even though his production and marketing have changed, he hasn’t used up all the labels he bought years ago, so sticks those on his limited jar production, noting the correct year. He reasons that anyone who knows honey will know that it’s chestnut honey and will be intelligent enough to understand that the label means nothing; it’s just a bearer of his name and the year. On top of that, most of the folks who buy jars of honey from him are from the area anyway, so know him as well as his honey. He told us that occasionally someone driving by will come into the extracting facility out of curiosity and will purchase a jar or two. Out of these customers, a handful come back to complain that the honey in the jar is not what’s indicated on the label. Chris just shrugs. He figures they just want to act like experts. Who in their right mind, he asks, would drive all the way back up into the mountains to make such a dumb complaint?

He also talked to us about the honey market, saying that although it’s fairly good these days, to actually make a living beekeeping, you have to have many, many hives (ruches) and take dramatic and often costly measures against diseases. Entire hives can be wiped out nearly instantly. Eco-friendly measures are in general expensive and time-consuming. He and his wife practice ecologically sound beekeeping, just barely eking out a living from their 500 hives. Other local beekeepers tell us that that’s a respectable number and that you can’t live on fewer unless you have a second job or also sell your honey on the village market circuits, and for that you have to get up at 5 every morning, load your goods into your van, travel to that day’s market (there’s a market to be found somewhere every day in the region), then spend long hours pitching your product. Chris refuses that life-style, even though it might increase his income. He prefers having some free time for other pursuits. He composes incredible jazz and blues numbers on his guitar, just for pleasure – being timid about such things, he’s never played in public. His wife shares his perspective about the market circuit. She suffers from lumbago and no longer works in the miellerie, although she still goes out into the fields with Chris when she’s able. She supplements their income by working as the village librarian for our closet-sized stash of books.

We learned that the bee scene requires a certain steady nerve. Decked out from head to toe to fingertips in white beekeeping garb, Chris and Dom, along with a Dutch friend of theirs, go out into the fields to collect the hives when it’s extracting time. They load the hives onto their truck and cart them off to the miellerie, which Chris financed and built with help from the local government and the European Union. Other apiculteurs use the miellerie as well, but it’s not a co-op. It’s Chris’ project and his equipment for the most part, too. The others book time to use the space and equipment, then come in with their hausses (bee boxes filled with honey-laden frames, and a few still very buzzing bees) to process.

One Sunday morning while I was working in the miellerie, expecting to be entirely alone, Nadou the apicultrice showed up with her hausses. Ready to retire in just a few years, she’s owned and run her own small honey business most of her life, with a few sideline gigs teaching French to foreigners. She sells her honey and pollen in small, hand-labeled jars, mostly to individual buyers at the local markets and in a couple of village shops. Her hands, gnarled by arthritis, betrayed her hard beekeeper’s life. Her attire did not. She was dressed in a lovely skirt and snazzy sandals, whereas I was dressed in an old pair of roller-blading shorts, a tank top, and a pair of plastic tongs. It was hot and humid and the work messy, hence my choice of clothing. Nadou donned an apron and went to work. I doubt that an apron would have covered me sufficiently for the tasks with which Chris had charged me. There was honey dripping everywhere, off of everything, including every one of my fingers. There’s no way to extract the honey without getting some of it on you – a lot of it in the beginning, when you’re just learning how. Nadou was mostly tapping her honey into jars that she then labeled. I like to think that it's easier to be elegant pasting a label than scraping honeycombs with a big hand rake to knock off the seals the bees have made (they’re very efficient little creatures). That’s what I was doing when Nadou arrived, prepping the honey boards for the centrifuge machine that would spin the honey out of the combs.

If you’re working on a small scale, you can do all the scraping by hand, then put the honey frames into a small spinner. If you’ve got a lot of honey to extract, though, like we did, a large spinner and a cutting machine are more practical. The cutting/scraping machine we used could hold 50 honey frames; the centrifuge machine could hold 30 at a time.

Here’s the process, with my apologies to anyone reading who knows the correct vocabulary in English. I’m writing with the handicap of having experienced honey extraction in French only. You lift what can be a heavy-with-honey frame from a bee box, to place it into the scraping machine. Carefully. There are blades at the bottom that can take your fingers off. And the metal rods that hold the frames in place can easily crush your hands. I quickly figured out that it was easier to stick my fingers directly into the honey combs in order to correctly position the frame between the (moving) rods instead of trying to do it by holding the outside edges of the frames. The machine moved the frame down between the blades that scraped most of the seals, then was pushed along into a holding bin. Occasionally the machine got out of whack, sending a frame down a bit sideways. If you were quick enough, you could send the frame back up by setting the reverse button, enabling you to re-position the frame. Sometimes, though, the frame broke, its pieces caught between the rods. That was not fun to fix.

In fact, the first time it happened to me, I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to fix it. I thought I’d broken the machine. I was the only one in the miellerie, no one was around, I had no cell phone (which wouldn’t have worked anyway since you couldn’t get any reception in the place), and was therefore very, very wary of putting my hands into the machine to dislodge the broken pieces of wood. I knew that Chris was skeptical about having a woman working there, too; he’s a great guy but a tad bit sexist. That factored into my determination to fix things on my own, even though I was nervous about just how to do it.

I turned everything off, unplugged everything, too, then studied the machine. It seemed to me that it was out of balance on the right side, causing the frame to drop more on the left side rather than uniformly. Figuring that out would help me repair the machine to make it run more smoothly IF I could get the stuck and now broken frame out. Nothing was plugged in, so it was unreasonable for me to be afraid of the machine suddenly lurching into motion. However, that’s exactly what had me frozen. I could almost feel my hands being squished between the rods. “Ouch” does not express what I was imagining. This is not the kind of work you’re trained for if you have a PhD in literature…

BUT I took a deep breath, told myself that there really wasn’t any danger – which was true, since the machine was both off and unplugged – and with the help of a metal spatula and a hammer was able to pull out all the broken pieces of wood. I then re-set things, plugged the machine back in, ran alternately the reverse and forward motions until the machine was unjammed and running smoothly again. That was a good moment. It was a better moment when I positioned a new frame of honey and it dropped down evenly between the scraping blades, allowing me to continue the job. I remember asking myself aloud what I was doing there in that miellerie anyway. Good question.

Next step in the process: once you’ve run enough scraped frames into the holding bin, you lift them one by one to check that the seals have all been adequately scraped. If some remain, you scrape them by hand with a pronged metal tool – very sharp, by the way, very slippery, too, since it’s covered with honey. If a frame is substantially laden with pollen, you set it aside, to be placed in the spinner in a particular fashion. Once you have the frames all prepped, you load them into the spinner, ten per arm of the spinner. Then comes the hard part that requires some muscle power. You have to lift up the full and very heavy arm in order to position it in the spinner. It's a backache in the making. Once all three arms are full and a few other details taken care of, you can (finally) turn on the spinner, first at a slow speed to make sure all’s well, then kicking up the speed little by little to full blast. The honey flows and flows, running through several filters and finally into a huge vat. It's lovely to see, especially when you've done it all yourself without too much mishap.

The post-centrifuge process involves removing the spun frames from the spinner, placing them back in the bee boxes, then stacking the boxes. Not so interesting. Once you’ve emptied all the frames and are down to the metal catch-tray that protects the floor from being covered with dripping honey, you head outdoors to deposit the tray on the ground. Hoards of bees descend on it to eat up the remaining honey. Everything is recycled, nothing wasted.

I’ve never been a honey lover, but found myself licking my fingers and liking the gooey stuff. I’ve not touched a drop since my last day of extracting, even though we have several jars of it in the kitchen cupboard. It’s not the same. My guess is I won’t eat anymore honey till next season, and then only what drips its way directly from the combs onto my fingers.

For those more constant honey lovers, I’ve included below two honey bread recipes, one in French and one in English. Bon appétit.

PAIN D’EPICES AU MIEL
Ingrédients :
* 125 g de beurre
* 250 g de miel
* 75 g de sucre roux
* 2 oeufs
* 225 g de farine de blé complet
* 2 pincée de sel
* 1 cuil. à café de levure chimique
* 1 cuil. à café bombée de cinq-épices (ou d’épices spécial pain d’épices)

Préparation :
1. Faites chauffer le miel, le sucre et le beurre, en remuant, jusqu’à ce que le sucre ait fondu.
2. Dans ce mélange légèrement refroidi, ajoutez les oeufs battus en omelette.
3. Incorporez, enfin, la farine tamisée avec la levure, le sel et les épices.
4. Versez la pâte dans moule carré de 18 cm de côté et faites cuire, à 170° C, pendant 1 h 30 environ : votre pain d’épices est cuit quand ses bords se détachent du moule.
5. Démoulez et laissez refroidir.

HONEY SPICE BREAD
Ingredients for 2 loaves (10 slices each)
* 2-3 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
* 315 ml (1 1/4 cups) whole milk
* 250 ml (1 cup) packed brown sugar
* 375 ml (1 1/2 cups) buckwheat honey
* 1 liter (4 cups) unbleached flour
* 2 tsp. baking powder
* 1 tsp. fennel seed
* 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
* 1/2 tsp. salt
* 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
* 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
* A pinch of ground black pepper
* 2 tbsp. candied ginger, finely chopped
* 1 large egg + 1 yolk, at room temperature

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 125° C (250° F). Butter two large (9 1/4 x 5 1/4 X 2 1/2) loaf pans, line the bottom with parchment paper and butter the parchment. Everything must be well-buttered or it will stick. Set aside.
2. Heat the milk, sugar and honey in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and set aside until slightly cooled.
3. In the bowl of a heavy duty mixer fitted with the paddle attachment combine flour, baking soda, fennel seed, salt, cinnamon, cloves, ground ginger and pepper. In two batches, add the tepid honey mixture and candied ginger. Scrape down the sides as needed, and blend on low speed until just combined. Add the egg and egg yolk and beat on medium speed until well blended.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pans, dividing the batter evenly and not filling the pans more than half full. Transfer to the heated oven and bake until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, 2 to 2 1/2 hours. (Watch the last 30 to 45 minutes, and cover with aluminum foil if the bread starts to become too dark).
5. Remove the loaves to a rack to cool slightly. Turn the loaves out of the pans and remove the parchment paper. Slice each loaf into 10 slices. The bread keeps well very tightly wrapped in plastic wrap for up to 1 week.

Elections

2007-06-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

I missed posting during the entire month of May, having bottomed out at the end of the first week when France elected right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy as its next president.

Even though statistics published during the two weeks between the first and second rounds of voting pointed to a probable victory for “Sarko,” May 6 saw most of us in this village still hoping that he would be defeated by his opponent, Ségolène Royal, who had, in our opinion, won hands down the final hours’ Presidential debate. Both candidates had finally shown their true colors, but ALAS, too late. To paraphrase what my sister wrote in a recent email: you would think that, given what’s transpired in the United States over the past several years, people everywhere would open their eyes and think seriously about the direction the world is taking for its (our) future… and not support another version of Bush. No comment.

The evening of May 6, my partner and I joined several members of his family to watch the returns after the polls had closed. Everyone was glued to the TV screen as the French flag began to unfurl, disclosing the image of the nation’s newest president. Even the little kids in the room were on pins and needles, their faces buried in their hands, chanting, “not Sarkozy, not Sarkozy.” One of them, stoically optimistic, remarked, “Tiens, au moins ce n’est pas LePen.” An évidence? I can only say peut-être, since Sarkozy stands to the right of even LePen on some issues. He cleverly succeeded in leading a campaign that seduced LePen supporters into voting for him. Let me nudge your interpretation of that observation along by noting that in no way am I applauding Sarkozy’s intelligence.

Everyone around me continues to lament the path upon which France has set itself. Well, not quite everyone. The couple that runs the local bakery and one of my neighbors are notable exceptions. They didn’t divulge their political leanings until I’d already put both feet in my mouth: while waiting in line one day just after the big debate and before the final election, I voiced my opinion about the candidates, giving high marks to Royal's intelligence and poise. I don’t generally allow myself that kind of freedom of expression because this is a very small community across which the smallest morsel of information travels quickly.

On the heels of what I thought was an open and innocuous conversation (because the town is so liberal), the normally warm and chatty baker’s wife stopped speaking to me. It was thankfully a short-lived cold-shoulder; after all, France is a country where arguing different viewpoints is a past-time as popular as boules. I couldn’t figure out what gaff I’d made, so chalked it up to some bee-in-a-bonnet that had nothing to do with me. Not until after Sarkozy’s victory did I learn that the bakers were two of the few folks in this village who had voted for Sarkozy. One of the others is my neighbor, who was in the bakery the day of the “foot-in-mouth” incident. She and her husband canceled each other’s votes, which they've apparently been doing since they were married 30+ years ago. Since every conversation we'd ever had pointed to more liberal tendencies, I was surprised by her support for Sarkozy.

She’s not the only quasi-liberal in France to have made such a choice. The explanation for this may lie in the rather centrist position of the Socialist Party, which has become more and more conservative over the years. The shock of yet another Socialist defeat (remember how Jean-Marie LePen trounced Jospin last time around) may finally move the PS towards some serious re-evaluations. In the meantime, however, France has five-5-cinq years under the Sarkozy regime.

And regime it will be: he’s not known for discussing ideas; a recent cartoon image in the Canard Enchaîné depicts him as Napoleon wearing tennis shoes. There’s already a buzz about that measures will be drastic. For instance, the talk last week was that the policy allowing free entry into museums once a month may already be on the cutting board. The reasoning is that it may not be a “good idea” to let people have something for free. OK, sure, no problem – after all, the arts are for the elite, n’est-ce pas? The rest of us more humble folks could never understand them anyway. I don’t think this is the reasoning behind the proposed cut, however; I think it has more to do with the government’s posture on the workweek. This is a complicated idea to explain in a short blog. Suffice it to say that, apparently, those who are “financially challenged” have been promised the opportunity of working more hours. On the surface, this seems like a logical solution. It’s an illusion, however, since there’s no talk of raising the minimum wage and there isn’t any more work out there that would allow one to earn more money. One gentleman, the owner and director of his own company, told me that he’s already hard pressed to find enough for his employees to do during the current 35-hour workweek (which Sarkozy will do away with). He doesn’t have enough business to offer supplemental hours. And his employees have no desire to work longer hours. They’d rather stick with the 35-hour week and a lower income in the interest of going home early to be with their families. Curiously, many of these same folks voted for Sarkozy. His promise to provide them with more buying power lured them in. He never explained how he’d realize the goal of providing more work; this sticking point either went unnoticed or didn’t bother a considerable number of French voters.

My comments end here in favor of sharing an email that's been circulating this week in liberal circles. I’ve translated it into English, but if you scroll down, you can read the original French version. It’s a conversation between an American banker and a Mexican fisherman, but it takes little to imagine the same conversation between two people of other nationalities, or even between two people sharing the same nationality…
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A little village on the Mexican coastline. The sun is shining and there’s a slight breeze. A boat comes back into the harbor with several freshly caught tunas. An American compliments the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asks him how long it took him to catch them.

“A few hours,” replies the Mexican.

“So why didn’t you stay longer in order to catch more fish?” asks the American.

The Mexican explains that his family only needs a few fish.

The American then asks: “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

“I sleep late, I fish a bit, I play with my kids, I take naps with my wife. At night I go into the village to see my friends. We drink wine and play guitar. I have quite a busy life.”

The American interrupts him to say, “I have an MBA from Harvard and can help you. First, you should start fishing longer hours. With the money that will bring in, you’ll be able to buy a bigger boat. And with the money the bigger boat will help you bring in, you’ll be able to buy a second boat, and so forth and so on… until you own a whole flotilla of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish through an intermediary, you could negotiate directly with the factory. In fact, you could open your own factory. Then you could leave your tiny village for Mexico City or Los Angeles, then maybe New York, where you yourself would lead all your own business dealings.

The Mexican then asks: “How much time would this take me?”

“Fifteen to twenty years,” replies the banker.

“And then?” asks the Mexican.

“Then things get interesting,” says the banker, laughing. “When the moment arrives, you’ll be able to introduce your company into the stock market and you’ll earn millions.”

“Millions? But what then?”

“Then you’ll have a well-deserved retirement, you’ll come back here to live in your little seaside village to sleep late, play with your grandchildren, fish a bit, take naps with your wife, and spend your evenings drinking and playing guitar with your friends!”

“….????”
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Au bord de la mer, dans un petit village de la côte mexicaine. Il y a du soleil et une petite brise. Un bateau rentre au port avec quelques thons fraîchement pêchés. Un Américain complimente le pêcheur mexicain sur la qualité de ses poissons et lui demande combien de temps il lui a fallu pour les capturer.

« Quelques heures », répond le Mexicain.

« Mais alors, pourquoi n'êtes-vous pas resté en mer plus longtemps pour en attraper plus ? » demande l'Américain.

Le Mexicain répond que ces quelques poissons suffiront à subvenir aux besoins de sa famille.

L'Américain demande alors : « Mais que faites-vous le reste du temps ? »

« Je fais la grasse matinée, je pêche un peu, je joue avec mes enfants, je fais la sieste avec ma femme. Le soir je vais au village voir mes amis. Nous buvons du vin et jouons de la guitare. J'ai une vie bien remplie ».

L'Américain l'interrompt : « J'ai un MBA de l'université de Harvard et je peux vous aider. Vous devriez commencer par pêcher plus longtemps. Avec les bénéfices dégagés, vous pourriez acheter un plus gros bateau. Avec l'argent que vous rapporterait ce bateau, vous pourriez en acheter un deuxième et ainsi de suite, jusqu'à ce que vous possédiez une flotte de chalutiers. Au lieu de vendre vos poissons a un intermédiaire, vous pourriez négocier directement avec l'usine, et même ouvrir votre propre usine. Vous pourriez alors quitter votre petit village pour Mexico City, Los Angeles, puis peut être New York, d'où vous dirigeriez toutes vos affaires ».

Le Mexicain demande alors : « Combien de temps cela me prendrait-il ? »

« 15 a 20 ans », répond le banquier.

« Et après ? »

« Après, c'est là que ça devient intéressant, répond l'américain en riant. Quand le moment sera venu, vous pourrez introduire votre Société en bourse et vous gagnerez des millions ».

« Des millions ? Mais après ? »

« Après, vous pourrez prendre une retraite bien méritée, revenir habiter votre petit village en bord de mer pour y faire la grasse matinée, jouer avec vos petits-enfants, pêcher un peu, faire la sieste avec votre femme, et passer vos soirées à boire et à jouer de la guitare avec vos amis !!! »

« .....???? »

[H. Thomas, Genève]

The Annual Village Community Newsletter

2007-04-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

Our local newsletter, le bulletin municipal, is an annual publication that showed up in my mailbox at some point between December and January. Given that it’s marked Numéro 12, Année 2006, it’s apparently only been around this centuries-old village for the past twelve years.

In this latest edition -- which I’ve only recently opened -- the Mayor and the Conseil municipal present an administrative account of their activities on behalf of the village and surrounding hamlets during the year 2006 and send their meilleurs vœux for 2007. Some of the featured articles communicate information on the annual budget, expenditures, taxes, improvements made to local roads and community properties, social activities and volunteer work done by the inhabitants of the village and outlying areas.

There’s a page dedicated to entrepreneurs new to the community. The village’s one and only café changed hands this past year. A photo of the new owners, a young couple from Paris, headlines the short article announcing the changing of the guard. There seems to be some kind of buzz surrounding the former owners and their decision to sell. Now and then I hear, “The X’s don’t really belong here.” Whether or not that’s true, the X’s are still here. Since selling the café and the home attached to it, they’ve been living in a rental house just next door, while looking for another café they can afford elsewhere in France. Every once in awhile I hear one of the elderly women in the village declare in a lowered voice that “Their” rental contract is nearly up and that “They” will have to leave by the end of May because the property owner will be coming to spend the summer months in the house. The outgoing owners are ostensibly named a such, but that’s all -- no farewells, no well wishing for future ventures. The “best of luck” expressed is for the newcomers only. The three-line article is great reading, with an exquisite tension between what’s expressed and what’s omitted. The caption “Jeunesse et enthusiasme” above the new owners’ photo just begs to be interpreted.

Being an outsider myself, I can’t help but think of Dr. Seuss’ Star Bellied Sneetches, and a star on my belly I surely have not. This shortcoming doesn’t keep me awake at night, though; in fact, I feel that I’ve been warmly welcomed here. I was surprised when the conseiller fiscal at the Post Office, who’s French but not native to these parts, asked me a couple of months ago if I didn’t feel that the people here were cold and closed off. That hasn’t been my experience. However, when I mentioned the conversation to my partner, whose family has lived in this mountainous region for centuries, I learned then that the people who had so easily befriended me had come here themselves from other regions of France. According to him, the banker, who has since left, was right on the money. JP attributes the somewhat suspicious nature of the people here to the region’s history of religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. I’d say it’s pretty common in small communities of all types and nationalities. We human beings seem to have a need to delineate “us” from “them” and to assure ourselves that “they” just don’t measure up to our standards. Montesquieu wrote a great little book in the 18th century called Les Lettres persanes that takes a serious yet tongue-in-cheek look at our perception of others and their cultures. From the viewpoint of Persians visiting France for the first time, Montesquieu criticizes French society and showcases just how relative one’s norms are – anyone who’s spent time in another country (with an open mind) knows that it’s a great way to clarify our vision of ourselves and our own culture. I highly recommend the Montesquieu book: even if you’re not into philosophy, it’s a fun read. Back to the bulletin…

...which tells us that the second 2006 arrival to the world of village commerce was our new electrician and handyman, a local fellow returning home after being certified in plumbing, heating, and apparently all things electrical and solar as well. His business card showcases a long list of qualifications and skills. This same kind of touché-à-tout may still exist in the USA, but my guess is that the American tendency to specialize has whittled the numbers down considerably. Here in this isolated mountain village, even the do-it-yourselfers were happy to see Joachim take up residence. The rest of us were ecstatic.

Next to the photo of Joachim on the job is a box marked “Quoi de neuf?" Inside the box are the following village statistics for 2006: 5 marriages, 3 deaths, 4 births.

The page that really caught my eye, however, is the one exclaiming Comité des Fêtes en peril! The Party Committee is charged with a serious mission: to keep alive the social life of the village. Last year one of the headlines congratulated the new Committee and wished its new President all the best. This year, with incredible understatement, the article announces that 2007 is looking dismal for the Committee… since the entire board has resigned. The French are discrete: there is no explanation. This is a very small community where nothing goes unnoticed or unknown, so there’s no need for an explanation anyway. There’s a call to fill the vacant seats, all six of them. In justifiably dramatic language -- there’s not much to do here without the activities organized by the Committee --, the stakes are laid out: the death of the Committee will entail the end of the chorale, the Nature Festival, Story Nights, the Folk Dance, the Belotes Competition, the fall Mushroom Feast. The Easter Egg Hunt will disappear and Father Christmas will no longer visit the children of the village. Two pages of photos of smiling villagers happily participating in these events during 2006 illustrate what we are on the verge of losing.

The village rallied and filled the seats, with the baker and his wife at the helm. They just pulled off a very successful and altogether fun Easter get together that included a terrific chocolate egg hunt. Religious rites and pagan tradition mix easily in this village: after church services, villagers and visitors alike took advantage of the occasion to mingle and catch up after a long winter, as the children scurried around the park looking for the chocolate eggs that had been hidden earlier that morning. Beverages of all kinds were sold for the modest price of 1€, after which dozen after dozen of eggs were cracked to make omelets for all present. This part of the festivities had been billed as a giant omelet, but when it came right down to the practical aspects of making an omelet for a sizable crowd, the giant omelet was transformed into many smaller ones. We all laughed about it and no one had a negative comment about the change in plans. I can’t remember ever having enjoyed myself more over a plate of eggs.

French Mini-Lesson

2007-03-23T02:35:00.000-07:00

March 23, 2007
French Language Mini-Lesson: the verb aller

The French verb aller (“to go”) is used for talking about moving from one place to another: On va à la boulangerie chaque matin. = “We go to the bakery every morning.”

But it’s also used in numerous and sundry other ways. If you’ve read my story about mushroom hunting, then you know that aller aux champignons is a way to say “to go mushroom hunting.” Literally the expression means “to go to the mushrooms,” which is what you’re hoping will happen when you head out into the forest. You can also say, aller chercher des champignons. On sad days of abject failure to find more than a few scraggly specimens, this latter expression more accurately describes the frustrating quest – at least once last fall, when the too-brief cèpes season was drawing to a close, the only mushrooms I found were poisonous and even those were few and far between. Je suis allée aux champignons, je cherchais, cherchais, sans rien trouver.[I went mushroom hunting, I looked and looked, without finding a thing.]

Aller is used in numerous expressions in French. It’s used to talk about the near future, just like we use “to go” coupled with an infinitive in English: Bientôt, je vais écrire une histoire sur mon rendez-vous avec un conseiller fiscal à la Poste. = Soon I’m going to write a story about my appointment with a bank counselor at the Post Office… et vous allez en rigoler (peut-être)! And you’re going to laugh about it!

Put aller in the imparfait to talk about what you were going to do: J’allais ouvrir un compte à la Poste, mais le conseiller fiscal a été tellement bizarre que j’ai change d’avis. = I was going to open a (bank) account at the Post Office, but the personal banker was so strange that I changed my mind.

Of course you can also use the simple future form of the verb that follows aller, just like in English you can either say, “I’ll tell you the story later” or “I’m going to tell you the story later.” There’s a slight nuance between the two expressions, but they mean basically the same thing. Ditto in French: Je te raconterai l’histoire plus tard is more or less the same thing as Je vais te raconter l’histoire plus tard.

Aller has an irregular conjugation in the present tense; here’s a quick review:
je vais
tu vas
il va
elle va
on va
nous allons
vous allez
ils vont
elles vont

If you want to say that you’re not / you’re never / you’re no longer going to do something, position the negation ne pas / ne jamais / ne plus around the conjugated verb aller: Je ne vais pas ouvrir de compte à la Poste. Je ne vais jamais revoir ce conseiller fiscal. Je ne vais plus lui demander de conseils. = “I’m not going to open an account at the P.O. I’m never again going to see that personal banker. I’m no longer going to ask him for advice.” Basta!

Moving on… aller is also used in the following useful expressions (and many others not listed):

aller droit au but = to get straight to the point (no beating around the bush)
un aller simple = a one way ticket
un aller-retour = a round trip ticket
des va-et-vient = comings and goings
Ça va, ça vient. = Win some, lose some.
Qu’est-ce qui ne va pas?= What’s wrong?
Cette couleur ne te va pas. = That color doesn’t suit you.
On y va? = Shall we go? / Let’s go?
Je m’en vais. = I’m leaving.
Allez-vous-en! = Go away! / Get out of here!
Va-t’en! = Go away! / Get out of here!
Il en va de meme pour les autres.= Ditto for the others.
Plus ça va, moins ça va. = Things are going from bad to worse.
Ça va de soi. = That’s obvious.
Il va fort. = He’s exaggerating.
Il se laisse aller. = He’s letting himself go. / He’s getting lax.

Any questions? Any interesting aller expressions to share? You can email me via my web site – the address is on the top left column of this page.

Allez, ciao, à la prochaine.

2007-03-16T03:13:00.000-07:00

Moving to France

Making the decision to move to France is much easier than making your way through all the official paperwork necessary to live there legally. That requires patience, tenacity and a pretty good sense of humor, so adapt a flexible and creative frame of mind before embarking on your visa adventure. If you cling to linear thinking and appealing to logic as necessarily effective communication tools, you’re going to run into more than one difficult-to-circumvent roadblock and probably provoke a few migraines, not to mention a few French civil servants.

Why? Because the usually overworked, under-experienced, few in number and often very young French Consulate personnel treating your visa request will more likely than not discard anything you have to say before it even leaves your lips. Never mind that you are older (even much older), more experienced and possibly wiser.

I was lucky enough to deal with a delightful and very knowledgeable woman when I applied for my visa. She was the Visa Section’s supervisor. The young woman working with her, however, fit the stereotype for a young, attractive French fonctionnaire (civil servant). Haughty and self-important, she made no effort to hide her disdain for those seeking visas. She seemed to consider us all guilty of some crime and our very presence in the Visa Section as an inexcusable, offensive intrusion into her own personal space.

West Coast Americans are generally far too polite and too easily intimidated when faced with this kind of behavior. That’s probably true of Americans in general, who tend towards excessive politeness, at times even to the detriment of realizing their goals. North-Easterners, who can be aggressive in their interactions, would be an exception to this generalization. This is an observation I allow myself as a native New Englander who lived many years in the Northwest and several in the South.

At any rate, the interaction between a “typical” French fonctionnaire and a “typical” American can be a tricky dynamic to negotiate. If you overreact, you’ll never get anywhere, but if you present yourself as willing to be walked all over, you won’t get anywhere either because you won’t be respected. In France, it’s your job to elicit [read: impose] respect. This is a generality, of course. Know that the French person with whom you’re interacting is not necessarily going to treat you with respect simply because you yourself are well mannered and respectful. Unless you’re already familiar and comfortable with this dynamic and/or are an older, charming and well-dressed man, I suggest that you just take a deep breath and keep your comments to yourself, while inwardly chanting your mantra of vouloir c’est pouvoir, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” If you have the required documents, there is no reason for your file to be refused and therefore you can consider the visa process as a series of hoops through which to jump, gracefully or not. Some hurdles are directly linked to French culture, but most are simply the result of typical administrative exigencies. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy; the visa process for non-Americans asking to stay in the States is just as unclear and bumpy a road to travel. Chapeau to all who make it through the ordeal intact, in their country of choice.

Some important details about a visa for France
Americans are allowed to remain in France for up to three months with just a passport. Anything beyond that requires a long-stay visa and a carte de séjour (a green card). Make your life easier by following this inviolable rule of order: first comes the visa, then the carte de séjour. In the past, if you were tenacious enough and knew the right people, you could sometimes score a green card without a visa, and even do it while in France. Nowadays, though, you absolutely must have a visa first and your visa request must be made while you’re in the United States. The subsequent request for a carte de séjour must be made within eight days after your arrival in France, visa in hand. Be sure to open your passport to the page where your visa is affixed so the French authorities see it and stamp it when you go through customs.

Both the visa and the carte de séjour require almost identical paperwork. You’re perhaps tempted to think that this goes towards efficiency, the assumption being that the branch of the French government that treats your visa request forwards your file to the authorities that will process your carte de séjour request. Erreur! Yes, that seems logical; nonetheless that’s apparently not what happens.

You submit your paperwork twice: first, in the United States to the French Consulate, who sends your file off to France for a yea or a nay. The files are only expedited to France every two weeks, not systematically as requests are made, and not electronically as you might think would be the case, given all the technology at our disposal nowadays capable of dramatically facilitating bureaucratic procedures.

In the eventuality of a yea from France, you’ll then submit pretty much the same documents to your local Préfecture when you arrive in France. If you live in a small village like I do, you can leave your file with the Mayor’s Office. They’ll either send it off to the Préfecture by mail or the mayor himself will deliver it in person. This is one of the many real advantages of living in a small convivial French community. I lived a long time in a fairly cosmopolitan American city and am amazed and delighted by the mayor’s genuine availability to his constituents here in the village. He even stopped by late one night after a long day of work and meetings to counsel Jean-Paul and me about the paperwork with which we were faced. Perhaps there are still towns in the USA where that happens, but I’ve never experienced it.

If you live on the West Coast of the US, you have to travel to San Francisco to file your visa request in person. This can be costly if you’re out of state, so be sure your file is complete. The Consulate usually won’t accept incomplete files, although they’ll sometimes allow you to fax supplemental information post-visit. Check the web site for a list of documents required and take at least 3 photocopies of everything. You’ll need several visa request forms – not photocopies -- each filled out identically; you can download the forms from the web site. The San Francisco Consulate requires four, if I remember correctly. Contrary to logic, not all the French Consulates require the same number of forms; information you find on their individual web sites does not always match… Va comprendre.

If your original documents are in English, translate them into French and make 3 copies of the English translations. It doesn’t seem to matter if the translations are perfect. Two of my students planning a long ski vacation in the French Alps did all their translations themselves. They contained errors of grammar and syntax, but were quite understandable and were accepted by the Consulate. Be aware, however, that some French agencies demand professionally translated, officially notarized documents. It all depends on the type of request and file being made.

Three passport-size photos are required for the visa application, then four for the carte de séjour. It’s practical to have the copies made all at once, but if you forget, as I did, you can easily have more photos made in France. Don’t waste your money on a photographer – just look for a Photomaton at a local supermarket, shopping mall or train station. It’s quick and cheap: six color ID photos for about four euros. Be sure to press the right button, though: the machines take several kinds of photos and the Préfecture requires photos specifically formatted for legal documents. Click on the photo d’identité button or you’ll find yourself back there popping more coins into the Photomaton.

As of September 2006, you need an appointment in order to file a visa request with the San Francisco Consulate. This is an easy step if the Consulate’s web site is up and the links are all working. Access the English page for visa info and you’ll see a link to click on to make an appointment on line, the one and only way to make a visa appointment, at least with the San Francisco Consulate. Be sure to print the information once you’ve set a date, and then take that paper with you to San Francisco; you won’t get past the guard without it. Don’t count on the Consulate’s having a copy in case you forget yours. They probably do have a record of your appointment, but since their site instructs you to print the appointment document and take it with you, showing up without it will be clearly perceived by the Consulate as your error – never a strong negotiating position from which to begin, especially not for dealing with fonctionnaires.

Try to wrap your mind around this irritating reality: despite the fact that the phone number and email address for the Consulate and Visa Section appear on the Consulate’s web site, the Visa Section in San Francisco does not answer the phone, nor does it respond to emails. Once you’ve filed your request, however, you may be given the direct desk number of someone working in Visas. This won’t necessarily allow you to speak with anyone, but at least you’ll be able to leave a message and may receive a return call. You can also fax the Visa Section, although you’re unlikely to receive any acknowledgment of your fax.

In case you forget to buy the catastrophic health insurance required for your visa (and carte de séjour) or in case you don’t have all the photocopies you need of your documents, there’s a travel agency next door to the Visa Section where you can purchase insurance and/or have photocopies made for $1/page. They probably have to frequently replace their copier, judging from all the visa applicants I saw heading over there for additional copies of essential documents.

Once your file is accepted, you’re fingerprinted then asked to pay for your visa -- you pay before the visa is granted, not after. Hmm… You’ll be given a receipt that you’ll be asked to reproduce later on when you go to pick up your visa (no appointment necessary for this step). That caught me off guard, although as I hopped on the BART and headed for the Consulate the day before I was planning to leave for France, I had a sinking feeling that I should have grabbed the receipt out of the file I’d left on my hotel room bed. It didn’t make any sense since I’d already paid, wasn’t returning anything, had submitted numerous pieces of identification, had been summoned by the Consulate…

Nonetheless, when I presented myself at the Visa Section, the haughty young woman I’d met during my first visit told me in a condescending voice to present my passport, my plane ticket … and the receipt for the visa. It was the one thing I didn’t have with me. The Visa Section was not open that afternoon, I wouldn’t have time to go back to my hotel room for the receipt and was supposed to fly out the next morning. I stated these facts in a polite yet assertive fashion and was met with a steely regard and a repeated demand for the receipt. I certainly was not going to re-schedule my departure to France because of this absurd detail. Of course the Visa Section had a record of the transaction. On top of that, I had been told in a phone conversation with the Section Supervisor two weeks earlier that the only documents I would need to present to pick up my visa were my passport and a travel itinerary (plane ticket). This was the next information I politely yet assertively gave to the younger fonctionnaire. She wouldn’t budge, so I calmly reiterated that I had been told by her supervisor to bring my passport and itinerary, that indeed I had the receipt but not with me, adding in a surprised tone, “Vous n’en avez pas de copie ici au Consulat?” [“You don’t have a copy of it here at the Consulate?”] She didn’t respond, merely shrugged her shoulders and told me not to bother about the receipt. I understood that she indeed had a copy and that I had trumped her by invoking her supervisor’s name and instructions.

Off to the right stood the supervisor,smiling.

"Aller aux champignons"

2007-02-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

Colorful expression, aller aux champignons. More on that in an upcoming French mini lesson. Today the topic at hand is mushrooms, specifically the glorious September-October hunt for cèpes in the Cévennes mountains.

When I was a little kid in New England, I thought mushrooms only came in one form -- canned. I'd certainly never heard of a cèpe. Although I must have known a priori that mushrooms existed in some pre-canned world, my limited childhood experiences told me that mushrooms were tiny white buttons purchased in cans and sometimes jars at the local A&P grocery store, to be subsequently served on my parents' rare steaks. Understand "rare" as "infrequent." Like many Americans and to the horror of most French, my parents ate their steak any way but rare.

Moving into the high school years, I learned from a Dr. Kildare episode (or was it Ben Casey) that one could die, and painfully so, from eating home-canned mushrooms. Kildare inspired more than a few teenage fantasies of a romantic bent on my part. My long-term paranoia over botulism was directly linked to that specific episode.

As a young adult, I had another vicarious mushroom experience. Not the drug-induced sort, although mildly illegal activity was indeed involved. My new husband and I, poor students sorely in need of a Saturday night out, sneaked over the back fence of a drive-in movie theater. From a cold damp seat on the ground, way in the back and huddled under blankets we had smuggled in with us, our senses heightened by the rush of our daring act, we thoroughly enjoyed Clint Eastwood's The Beguiled. It's one of his under-appreciated films, in which he's taken down not by flying bullets, but by mushrooms ... deadly poisonous mushrooms.

Years later, I had my first experience eating mushrooms of the non-commercial kind. I was on a day trip with friends in Bretagne visiting the countryside home of their elderly parents. The weather was unseasonably warm and so we decided to take a walk after lunch. On our way back to the house, my friends' parents declared that it was exactly the type of fall weather that produced an abundance of mushrooms -- in their yard. And indeed there were many that had apparently sprung up overnight. The four of them set to gathering them up with what seemed to me an exaggerated excitement. That night at the supper table, my skepticism matched their enthusiasm as we prepared to feast on the first of the season's wild mushroom omelets, accompanied by dandelion greens also gleaned from the yard. I admit that my appreciation of the repast did not manifest itself until the following morning when I awoke, with relief, in a perfectly normal state of health.

Since that Sunday in Bretagne so long ago, I've met many wild mushroom aficionados from around the world. Their stories and the relish with which they told them certainly piqued my curiosity. Nonetheless, when Henri invited us to go mushroom hunting with him this past fall, I didn't exactly react with a carpe diem.

It wasn't the prospect of having to get up before sunrise that deterred me, nor the possible botulism that might grow in our future jars of mushrooms. Neither was it a fear of eating the mushrooms we would find; I trusted Jean-Paul's and Henri's knowledge of which were edible and which provoked Clint Eastwood contortions. What gave me pause was something entirely different. In addition to Kildare and Eastwood, my younger years had been sprinkled with Walt Disney movies. Remember those wild boars in Old Yeller? They're called sangliers in French. They live in the Cévennes (among other places), where those folks not out mushroom hunting in the fall are out hunting sangliers. Occasionally the two worlds collide.

I studied the pros and cons of the impending adventure. When we climbed into bed the night before the big day, I still hadn't made up my mind, although I was definitely leaning towards sleeping in. However when the alarm went off the next morning, I knew I'd regret not going, so got up, dressed warmly, then gulped down some coffee by way of breakfast. Pushing a knife into the front pocket of my jeans, I grabbed the basket Jean-Paul had set out for me "just in case," then joined him where he was waiting out front with a very dapper-looking Henri. In contrast to the jeans, windbreakers and boots Jean-Paul and I had donned, Henri was sporting a pair of wide-wale corduroy trousers, an old tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, and dark brown oxfords. Lisa, Henri's wife, waved from an upstairs window as we backed out of the yard in Henri's old beater car, headed for a prime cèpe hunting spot.

Ten minutes later we were in the mountains. It was still dark when we parked at the end of a narrow road, not far from a river. Together we headed uphill into the chestnut trees, crossing the river along the way. Jean-Paul and Henri immediately spotted several large, juicy cèpes, real beauties that suggested the morning would be a rewarding one. They showed me what to look for and also pointed out a few types of mushrooms that were poisonous even to the touch. Nature is a tricky witch: the most beautiful mushrooms can also be the most deadly; some of them look just like those big red spotted ones in Disney's Snow White. They practically beg you to caress them. Don't. They may not kill you, but their poison will enter through your skin and make you darn sick.

There are also mushrooms that do a great impression of the edible cèpe, except for the underbelly: theirs is ribbed, the cèpes is smooth. For a good hour or so at least, my mushroom hunting talents seemed to be limited to finding nothing but these ostensibly omnipresent frauds.

For awhile we all stayed in a group, soon however each ventured off on our own personal quest. Henri amazed me: at 80 years old, cane in one hand, basket in the other, he was having the time of his life. The cane, by the way, was not for support, but rather for checking the underside of the mushrooms he came across. He had grown up here and knew every inch of the terrain by heart. Later on when we met up again at the top of the peak, he told us stories about gathering chestnuts as a child with his father, then about the French resistance fighters who had hid out in these hills from the Nazi soldiers during World War II.

We moved back down the slope in another direction to the family's cled, a tile-roofed hut used for centuries to prepare the gathered chestnuts for future sundry and creative uses. It's in ruins now, the roof and walls caving in. Jean-Paul set his basket down and began to explore the area. He has a PhD in plant biology, so I wasn't surprised when he stooped down to gently stroke the moss covering the ground next to the cled. Suddenly he laughed gleefully and called to Henri and me to come quickly. He had found the most beautiful cèpes of the morning, so young that their firm heads had not yet peeked through the moss. Henri and I began to pat the ground, too, hoping to share the luck. Disappointingly, I didn't find a single one and meandered off to search other promising spots.

About an hour later, Henri announced that Lisa was expecting him for lunch, so he was going to head back to the car where he'd wait for us. He explained the trail that would lead us to where we could safely cross the river, cautioning us that the ground was covered thickly with fallen leaves hiding potentially dangerous rocks and crevices. Nonetheless Jean-Paul was bounding about like a gazelle, occasionally losing his footing in his enthusiasm to gather as many cèpes as possible in the little time remaining. I was wearing old boots with slippery soles, so moved down the hill less sure-footedly. (This may not be the only reason.)

Following Henri's trail, or so we thought, we continued our descent towards the river. When it was finally in sight, however, it was clear that mushroom fever had led us astray. Were we to cross the river at that point, our baskets of precious mushrooms would be lost in the churning current, with us not far behind. We decided to climb up to a crest to get our bearings and happily found a different trail that led us -- more or less safely -- back to where Henri was waiting. We heard him calling out to us long before we saw him. His concerned look quickly vanished when he saw our smiling faces. On our way home, I noticed that Jean-Paul and Henri were grilling the roadside for any mushrooms they could add to our already bulging baskets.

After a much-savored lunch of garlic-laced sauteed mushrooms, red wine, bread and cheese, we spent the rest of the day sorting, weighing, cleaning, cutting, cooking, and bottling until the wee hours of the morning. There were mushrooms everywhere: in already processed jars, in jars waiting for the canner; there were mushrooms drying on wire mesh pallets lining the floors of the living room, office, and hallway; they were on the front steps and covered the picnic tables in the back garden. When we fell into bed entirely spent, the whole house and its perimeter were saturated with the heavenly, earthy perfume of cèpes... as were we.

Post scriptum: Hunting for mushrooms is a delight in itself; consuming your finds is equally satisfying. Here's one of my favorite recipes for a mushroom sauce to be served over steaming hot polenta. [Polenta with sausage is a traditional dish of the Cévennes -- the following recipe is delicious with a bit of sausage tossed in at the end.]

Wild Mushroom Sauce
1 1/2 ounces dried mushrooms
1 cup very hot water
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup chopped or thinly sliced onion
1/2 cup dry Marsala (sweet is good, too)
1/2 cup dry white wine (or chicken broth, as you prefer)
1 teaspoon fresh, chopped rosemary
1 cups chicken stock
1 cup beef stock
1 tablespoon butter (room temperature)
1 tablespoon flour

Rinse the mushrooms, then soak in hot water to reconstitute (30-60 minutes). Remove them from the liquid, squeezing excess moisture back into the bowl. Set both mushrooms and liquid aside in separate bowls.

Heat the oil, add the onion and garlic and cook over medium heat till tender and slightly brown (10-15 minutes). Stir frequently. Add Marsala and white wine, increase heat. Boil till nearly all the liquid evaporates (5-8 minutes). Add the mushrooms, mushroom liquid (strained), and the two stocks (you can use chicken stock only, omitting the beef; the flavor of the sauce will be different, but still good). Boil until the liquid is reduced to 2 cups.

Meanwhile, if you want to add sausage to the sauce: brown either whole sausages or slices in a bit of olive oil or butter. Deglaze the pan with a small amount of wine. You'll add this to the sauce just before serving. [I use low-fat, low-salt chicken-basil sausages.]

Whisk the flour and butter together, then mix it into the sauce, stirring constantly over lowered heat until sauce thickens. Add the sausage if you're using it, then serve over hot polenta (coarse is the best for this dish).
Bon appétit!

French Language Lesson: "-ing"

2007-02-23T21:51:00.000-08:00

Before the story about hunting for mushrooms, here's a mini French language lesson. It attacks a point that's often a stumbling block for native English speakers of French: how to express "-ing." Nota bene: I rarely use English to teach French grammar, so take advantage. Pour yourself a nice glass of wine and read on.

1. Some English "-ing" verb forms are expressed by the present or the imperfect tenses in French: Tu parles trop fort. = "You're speaking too loudly." You can also use the expression être en train de + an infinitive: Je suis en train d'expliquer quelque chose. = "I'm explaining something."

OK, that's probably easy enough to digest; on to point #2, the gerund. Remember that term from your high school English classes? If you never quite figured out what it meant (way) back then, here's a second chance. You've been waiting for this day, right?

2. A gerund is an "-ing" verb used as a noun; it can be a subject or an object. Ugh, so what does that mean? Take a look at these examples: "I like knitting." "Knitting" is the object of the verb./ "Swimming relaxes me." "Swimming" is the subject of the verb. To express these ideas in French, you would use the infinitive form of the verb: J'aime tricoter. / Nager me détend.

So, how would you express -- correctly -- the following in French?
a. "Eating too many chestnuts can make you sick."
b. "Reading the news sometimes aggravates me."
c. "We love eating dinner in the garden."
d. "Instead of working, I read this blog."
[The answers are at the end of this blog entry.]

One last point and you're on your way to becoming a master of -ing. There's more to it than I'm letting on here, but you'd need at least one more glass of wine to swallow the rest in one sitting.

3. Take a look at these sentences:
"I read this blog while listening to NPR." = J'ai lu ce blog en écoutant NPR. The two actions took place at the same time.
"My neighbor hums while working in his garden." = Mon voisin fredonne en travaillant dans son jardin. Again, the two actions take place at the same time.
"We can relax by doing yoga." = On peut se détendre en faisant du yoga. This sentence is different: one action leads to another. First comes yoga, then the relaxing.

To practice, go back and read all the French examples aloud several times, then make up your own sentences by following my examples as models (...en suivant...).

If you have questions, open my web site and send me an email -- the address is to the left, towards the top of this page. Be brave and ask your question(s) in French.

Answers to above translations:
a. Manger trop de châtaignes peut te rendre malade.
b. Lire les actualités m'agace parfois.
c. On adore dîner dans le jardin./ On adore souper* dans le jardin.
d. Au lieu de travailler, j'ai lu ce blog.

*souper is often used instead of dîner in the south of France, especially in the Cévennes.

Willingly displaced to a tiny mountain village

2007-02-22T21:41:00.000-08:00

February 23, 2007

Hands down, the first question people ask me when they learn that I've left west coast American city life to settle into a tiny mountain village in France is: "Aren't you bored?" The second is a spinoff of the first: "What do you do all day?" The unspoken sentiment behind both queries is that I can't possibly be happy on the heels of such an obviously destabilizing change. However, life here -- busy -- fits me well. I am very, very happy.

I live just above a river, surrounded by trees, many of them chestnut trees. In the fall when the mushroom hunting is no longer enticing us out of bed early in the morning, we can gather up chestnuts. Unlike the cèpes, they're everywhere; the hillsides are carpeted with them. Last year, while during my first visit to this village, my partner proposed that we make chestnut butter. We are both displaced PhD city dwellers who feel curiously at home here in the mountains. To us, this chestnut gig was a small adventure we definitely did not want to miss. I should probably mention that my partner is French and I am American, in case you were picturing two starry-eyed Americans romantically bumbling around the woods of southern France. What we were, and remain, are two people tired of the pressures of too-fast city life. That being said, back to the chestnuts.

I hadn't packed anything into my traveling bag that even remotely resembled appropriate chestnut gathering garb. Italian leather heels and black silk skirts don't quite allow for the bending that would be required. I ended up wearing a pair of worn men's shoes, many many sizes too large, an equally large sweater with a few holes in it, and, of course, a scarf. Jean-Paul is a charming soul and, as we wandered off up the mountainside, he smiled at me and told that me I was beautiful. It was a good moment.

We spent a couple of hours gathering our precious chestnuts, then headed back home, cold and wet from the rain storm that had caught us off guard. A good dose of pastis and we felt much better. The next day, we dumped all our bags of nuts onto the kitchen table. The first step to making chestnut butter, as it turns out, is long and arduous, a process that weeds out the less devoted among us. I suggested that it would be more practical to buy the butter in a market... We continued on: we peeled, peeled, and peeled until my thumbs ached. The next step required cooking, followed by another peeling session. Chestnuts, as you may know, have two layers of skin that must be removed before the real butter making part comes in.

We had decided to take a few days to complete the entire process and so set the partially prepped nuts in a box high up on top of the armoir in the hallway. When we took them down the following day, we noticed tiny white objects squirming around in the bottom of the box. Then we noticed that more of those same tiny white objects were squirming all over the floor all around the armoir. They were everywhere; some had even made it all the way into the living room. Apparently we had gathered up every worm-infested chestnut in the forest. At least it looked that way to us.

We couldn't decide what to do. We'd put a lot of work into this project. Not to be defeated by these little white creatures, we decided to carefully inspect every one of the hundreds of nuts, turning each over carefully. Not all were unusable, or so we thought. We continued the peeling process until finally we had to concede. Even the chestnuts without any holes -- and therefore, in theory, without worms -- were being eaten from the inside out. There was a worm in even the most seemingly perfect of them. Exasperated and not a little disappointed, we piled the nuts and their squiggling companions into plastic bags, hiked back up into the mountains and dumped them all out. Then we drove into town to buy some chestnut butter. I thought it tasted just fine.

Next entry: mushroom hunting. Now that's a good time! And I do not say this tongue in cheek -- if there were a healing clinic for those around here addicted to mushroom hunting, it would be full... and I'd be one of the patients.