FrenchKate

October 20: Belle-Île experience during the pandemic

Belle-Île has a year round population of around 5,500 people, but in the summer months, the population swells to 25,000 - 35,000 people.

Since tourism is obviously the driver of the local economy, I wondered how the Belliois have fared in the pandemic. A google search suggests that the last six months have been fraught...but not for lack of visitors. At the start, the island was covid-free while the rest of France was experiencing uncontrolled spread. Then, in March, Parisians fleeing the pandemic--swamped island resources.

"Their arrival led to pushing and scuffles in supermarkets with several locals complaining that they were inconsiderate."

“As soon as they got off the boats they poured in," the manager of one of the island’s few supermarkets told Le Figaro newspaper. “They didn’t stay at a distance from people and they emptied the supermarket shelves. We were completely unprepared and overwhelmed. We had no police or security presence whatsoever because we had never needed it. Before everything was very orderly....Lockdown does not mean going to the beach, yet we have seen Parisians racing about on surf boards and bikes. I bet they won’t follow any of the rules,” said one resident."

In response, the government restricted travel to the island, and that seemed to have helped in the short term. In July and August, tourism was flourishing; Hotels were at 80% capacity. In July, four cases were discovered, in one family, but seemed to have been contained.

Recently, covid-19 cases have surged in France since the end of August, 104% increase in cases over the past two weeks. The Moribhan--the departement in which Belle-Île is located--is currently experiencing a case load of 70 per 100,000 people. Recognizing the threat, the mayors of Belle-Île's four villages--Le Palais, Sauzon, Bangor and Locmaria--have strengthened guidelines: masks are mandatory, social distancing, no parties, beaches and paths closed overnight, no more than six people in restaurants. 

The first and second images are maps of Belle-Île, a tourist map and an administrative map that provides the topography. The third picture is pretty Sauzon. 

April 11: Update on Coronavirus in France

According to Wikipedia, as of April 11, France has 93,790 confirmed cases of Covid-19, 13,832 deaths, and 26,391 recoveries. That number is high because France began to count suspected cases and deaths in retirement home as of April 2 (unlike many countries)--a decision that added 30, 902 cases to the national tally. They had just--just!--1561 cases when I wrote about the pandemic in France a month ago, a sixty-fold increase. France now has the fifth largest number of cases in the world, after the USA, China, Spain and Italy.

Though the USA has nothing to boast about. The USA had 1100 cases a month ago, fewer than the French, but now we have 528, 301 cases, an increase of 480%.

A church gathering in late February in Mulhouse in northeastern France appears to have been been a significant factor in the spread of disease. Over 2,000 of the roughly 2,500 people who attended have contracted covid-19, but, they had returned to their homes unaware, and spread it throughout France. One nurse who attended the event launched a secondary cluster of 250 Strasbourg University Hospital employees. Five returnees brought coronavirus to French Guiana, and five others brought it to Corsica.

French President, Emmanuel Macron, announced the closing of all schools and universities on March 12. On March 13, the prime minister banned gatherings of more 100 people, and the following day, he closed all non-essential public places--restaurants, cafés, cinemas and nightclubs. On 16 March, President Macron announced mandatory home confinement for 15 days, a lockdown that has been extended to at least April 15. Fashion Week shows were cancelled, the football season was suspended, the Paris half-marathon scheduled for March 4 (with 44,000 participants) was cancelled, French cultural institutions--the Louvre, Centre George Pompidou, Musée d"Orsay, Versailles--closed on March 14. 

As of March 23, all residents are required to complete and carry legal documentation to leave their homes. While essential journeys are permitted--shopping for food, traveling for work, accessing healthcare and exercising within 1 km of their home--residents can be fined for non-essential journeys. 

These strict measures seem to be working, and I sincerely hope so. ICU admissions have been declining, and France seems to be stabilizing new cases, but the French already have lost .02% of their population, and that loss will grieve the country. If .02% of US population die of covid-19-- that would be 68,000 people. It is unthinkable.

Note: When I first posted this, I calculated that France had lost 2% of her population. But my math was wrong, and I realized my error overnight.  I have made corrections now.

March 22: FrenchKate in the time of Coronavirus

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, my husband, sister and I have been isolated since Friday, March 13. That's ten days ago.  

We decided to quarantine ourselves because the virus is spreading rapidly. Above all we want to avoid catching the virus; we are in a higher risk group. At the same time, we want to help "flatten the curve"--to keep infection rates low enough that medical staff, hospital beds and supplies remain available for those who do contract the disease. 

I haven't left the house at all; my husband went out to the grocery store once, but returned so shocked by empty shelves and general group anxiety that he hasn't ventured out again.  My sister has left three or four times on various errands--to pick up supplies, pick up dinner, drop off compost--that kind of thing. She also took a gift to the staff at the Willows, where our mother lives. We can't see mother--the building is under a complete lock-down to protect the vulnerable residents, but we are grateful to the staff. I figure I can begin to associate with others who have been staying away from the world once 14 days have passed (to confirm that I don't have the disease.) In the meantime, I have lots of time--in theory--to putter, read, write, exercise, practice French, practice the piano, chat with friends, cook and clean, organize. It is an introvert's holiday!

Not that I am doing all that much; I am mostly glued to my news sources from morning to bedtime. I read that Newton developed the theory of gravity when he was isolated during one plague, and Shakespeare wrote King Lear when in isolation during another. Talk about raising the stakes high!

In mid-February, before all this emerged, I was planning to take up the French Revolution, but I find myself distracted by the pandemic. So I have decided to set Revolution aside for the time being and return tomorrow with lighter topics.

"For God is deaf nowadays, and will not hear us,
And for our guilt he grinds good men to dust."
              --William Langland, Piers Plowman, circa 1370
                Translated Siegfried Wenzel

April 17: More on the fire

The enormity of the the fire at Notre-Dame continues to stagger the imagination.

What is astonishing, as the damage reports trickle in, is how much was spared--the medieval rose windows, the organ, the sacred relics, most of the art. I have not yet learned the fate of the beautiful medieval screen that stood between the choir and the ambulatory.

The French pompiers, the firefighters, did an extraordinary job. I feel that hasn't been celebrated enough.They evidently had done training exercises for exactly this crisis, and they knew exactly what to do.

The fire began in the rafters, sandwiched between the vaulted ceiling of the church and the lead roof. So once the fire had started, there was no way to reach it, much less put it out.

What they could do, they did. They removed art from the interior, and contained the fire. Thus they were able to preserve the stone building. The greatest damage was caused by the fall of the spire through the transept. A great gap in the roof was left, but the smoldering fire must have been extinguished quickly to prevent it spreading to other wood structures inside the cathedral. So the vaults held, and these protected the interior, and the firefighters did no further damage. 

Meanwhile, a group of French billionaires have donated close to a billion dollars for the repairs and restoration of Notre-Dame. The building has been in need of repair and maintenance. Strange to think that this devastating fire--although the 12th century timbers of the rafters and the spire were lost--may permit its resurrection. I am sure that what will come next will be brilliant and prepare the cathedral for its next 850 years.

The first two photos show the charpente, the wood "forest" found between the roof and the vaults.

The third photo shows the roof that was consumed.

The fourth and fifth photos are after and before of the north transept.

The 6th shows the medieval screen separating choir from ambulatory--whose fate is unknown to me at this point.

The 6th photo shows the debris on the floor of the cathedral, looking towards the transept and altar.

 

T. 

Aug 13: What makes a nation?

Although my last official day of work at the University was July 7, I have had family visiting until yesterday--sister from Massachusetts, brother, niece and nephew from Idaho, son from Pittsburgh--and we've been engaged with various family projects--cleaning our lake place on an island, my mother's house (preparing it for painting and new carpeting), helping my niece complete her kitchen and bathroom, helping our daughter with her move to a new house. So it hasn't felt like retirement at all. The 40+ hours a week that I have gained have been consumed by the blessings and responsibilities of family.

But, today, all family has departed, so I picked up Mack Holt's Renaissance and Reformation France (2002) and continued to try to make sense of the turbulent French 16th century. 

Holt starts by trying to define the French state in 1500--a tough task because the very concept of a "nation-state" didn't emerge for another 300 years. The modern markers of shared language communities and territorial boundaries didn't apply. Only 33% of Frenchmen spoke French (others spoke Breton, Occitan, Flemish and Basque) and 25% of the territory known as France had been acquired in the previous fifty years as follows:

--Guyenne, Gascony and northern France rejoined the French Kingdom in 1453 at the end of the Hundred Years War

--the Duchy of Burgundy was seized by the French King in 1477 when Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was killed at the battle of Nancy

--The counties of Provence, Anjou and Maine were inherited by Louis XI in 1481 upon the death of Charles IV d'Anjou

--the duchy of Brittany came into the Kingdom when Anne of Burgundy married King Charles VIII in 1491

Holt proposes that the "state" was based on the King's authority over his subjects and their acceptance of the King as their sovereign rather than on fixed territorial boundaries. It was a community of people, not bounded by political boundaries.

Holt also proposes that the French nation was an "imagined community"--a term coined by political historian Benedict Anderson in 1983 to explain nationalism. An imagined community, according to Anderson, arises when a social group is too large for its members to personally know all members of the group. Membership in such a group, then, is abstract, an imagined social reality based on shared culture and social structures. In France in 1500, French was defined by accepting the French King as sovereign, and through shared rituals and ceremonies, language, law, religion and common enemies. 

This concept, "imagined community," seems to me to be relevant to the political battles occurring in the contemporary USA. I am writing the night after a Neo-Nazi demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, tacitly condoned by Pres Donald Trump, resulted in three deaths. The Neo-Nazi's are an "imagined community." 

And the day before this violent demonstration, the journal, Foreign Policy, published the full text of a memo written by an NSA staffer and circulated in the White House. The memo argued that President Trump is suffering under “withering information campaigns designed to first undermine, then delegitimize and ultimately remove the president." These campaigns are led by the forces of “cultural Marxism” who benefit from the prevailing cultural narrative (aka, diversity): establishment Republicans, establishment Democrats, the mainstream media, the "deep state," Universities, "Global corporatists and bankers (aka Jews), and Islamists. Their goal is to destroy the USA from within. Though the author was fired for writing this memo, the memo itself reveals the mind-set of the neo-Nazi "imagined community" that remains firmly planted in the WH.

Frightening times.

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 3: Bonhomie

Andre le Nôtre's father was a gardener, and he also was a gardener, royal gardeners who had moved  Yet he was also someone whom Louis XIV considered a friend--from 1661 until Andre le Nôtre retired in 1690 (at the age of 74) he and King Louis XIV spent hours daily planning the gardens of Versailles.

He won the approval of Saint-Simon: "He was illustrious, as having been the first designer of those beautiful gardens which adorn France, and which, indeed, have so much surpassed the gardens of Italy, that the most famous masters of that country come here to admire and learn. Le Notre had a probity, and exactitude, and an uprightness which made him esteemed and loved by everybody. He never forgot his position, and was always perfectly disinterested. He worked for private people as for the King, and with the same application--seeking only to aid nature, and to attain the beautiful by the shortest road. He was of a charming simplicity and truthfulness."

According to my source, Éric Orsenna, Le Nôtre seemed to have "Bonhomie" -a word that has disappeared to describe personal qualities of kindliness, even temper, humor, lack of pretension, warmth, trust and simplicity (at the risk of being deceived), and a peaceable familiarity with nature.

And yet, as Superintendent of the King's Buildings, he oversaw the work of as many as 36,000 workmen, representing all trades, as the labored on Versailles. His span of responsibility included all the properties of the King from a crumbling wall to a rainspout with a hole in it. He pursued his career and enlarged his fortune without alienating anyone--Orsenna observes, "Anyone who has had some experience of contact with the great and mighty...can only applaud long and loud the perfect career path of our master gardener. Beneath his unpolished exterior, he was a better courtier than any of them, guiding his little boat successfully thought the shoals of royal demands without sacrificing one shred of his genius."

Le Nôtre's rule number one for survival in that hierarchical society: Know your place and stay in it. Saint Simon again, "Never did he step outside  his condition or forget himself." When Louis XIV ennobled him in 1675, he could have alienated nobles who would take offense at his movement up the social ladder. He chose to put snails on his coat of arms.

July 17: Sad times

 What is going on in the world right now is breaking our hearts. In just the past two weeks we have experienced the apparent execution of a restrained man by policemen in Baton Rouge (July 5), the murder of an individual stopped for a traffic violation in Minnesota (July 6), five policemen assassinated as "payback" by a lunatic in Dallas (July 7), a terrorist attack in France that murdered 84 men, women and children who were celebrating a fireworks display in France (July 14,) a coup in Turkey (July 15) and, this morning, the death of three police officers in Baton Rouge (July 17.) It is a mad time, a violent era.

This morning, Le Monde published a brief essay by Antoine Leiris, a journalist whose wife was killed by the terrorists in the Nov 13 attack at the Bataclan night club. I found it wise, and, so, FrenchKate takes a break from the history and culture of France to share this essay. It is a perspective like this that make me admire the French and gives me hope for the resilience of French culture in the face of such senseless attacks. The culture contains such infinite patience and cherishing of life. 

The translation is mine.

"I can no longer bear the scent of candles. They make me want to vomit. In Nice, Paris, Orlando, Istanbul, Brussels, and everywhere death has been sown, we see the same scenes. The same photos of the dead are hung up. The same flowers are laid. The same candles are lighted. The acrid scent leaves the taste of spilled blood in my mouth."

"I thought I had no more tears. I thought that the worst had passed. I thought I was hardened. But I was kidding myself. With each new attack, I cry. These were men, women, children. They had dreams, fears, desires, lives. They are dead. And, so, we light candles."

"Against a truck hurtling at full speed, against Kalachnikovs loaded with hate, against explosives ready to blow, a candle is a small thing. And yet, it is a weapon more powerful than any that they can use. Because the day on which the death of another leaves us cold, the day when we no longer bother to light candles, that day we will have become like them, beings without fear in the face of death."

"Because in order to not fear death, one must tremble with fear before life. Thus, fear death and embrace life. The next day I lit a candle and put it in my window. It still burns today. It reminds me of the smell of fear, of hate, of renunciation. It reminds me of the urgency of life." 

Nov 29: Paris, 1877, Brussels, 2015

I was fascinated by this comparison of a famous painting and a photo taken in Brussels recently.

I don't think even a clever photographer could manage this shot intentionally, but the reference takes my breath away.The couple under the umbrella fill up about the same amount of space. The triangular building at the back is echoed by an architectural structure today. The soldiers today, in their camo, fill up the 2/3s space that is empty pavement in the 1877 painting.

Of course, bourgeois Paris in 1877--represented by this comfortable, prosperous couple--is a gloss. The Paris commune--when as many as 20,000 Parisians were killed by the French government--had taken place just six years earlier. So it is wrong to imagine that Paris in 1877 was a happy, peaceful place in contrast to the police state of Brussels today.

As the French lurched confusedly towards a true republic in the 19th century, the special forces were not in the picture, but their presence was felt. In this way, the new photo imposes a clear meaning on the 1877 painting.

Nov 28: Get educated for the glory of France

André and Julien have been learning important personal life lessons--be clean, be kind, look for ways to be helpful and work hard--and the value of these life lessons is clear when they encounter and win the friendship of the suspicious Madame Gertrude.

But the stops are pulled out in chapter 21. André has picked up work for a locksmith. His job is to maintain the fires of the forge and heat the iron bars until they are red hot. The locksmith takes these and shapes them into keys and locks on the anvil. A big metaphor, this.

One evening, Madame Gertrude speaks to him, "André, you no longer go to school, you are a young worker now, but there is no reason for you to stop learning, is there?" She tells André about an evening class for working adults that teaches them what they didn't learn in school. "Things can be learned at any age if you apply yourself two hours a day."

So Andre begins to attend the class for adults each evening after work.

Meanwhile, young Julien begins to attend regular school, and each day, when his homework is done, he helps Madame Gertrude in any way he can. She calls him "her right arm"! What Julien loves most is listening to the old woman tell stories as they snap  beans together. One day, she admits that she has told him all the stories that she knows, and she suggests that he could read stories to her instead.

"Yes," responds Julien, plaintively, "but books are expensive and we have none of them." 

Madame Gertrude explains to Julien that he can borrow books from the school library, so the following day Julien visits the library--like a big party for him--and borrows a book of stories. He reads aloud to Madame Gertrude from that book every day thereafter.

Julien, we are told, reads very well aloud. He knows to stop at the periods and pause at the commas, understands that he needs to elide s & t before vowels, and he doesn't mumble like a little boy who doesn't know how to read.

The days pass by happily. Madame Gertrude asks Julien if he knows where the book came from, the book he borrowed from the school library.  "Julien, have you thought about this?" 

Julien is stumped, "I have never thought about it," he admits.

The voice of Madame Gertrude suddenly morphs into a rather heavy-handed stock speech.  "Julien, the school, the evening classes for adults, and the library for scholars are the blessings of your country! France wants all her children to be worthy of her, and every day she increases the number of schools and evening classes, founds new libraries and prepares teachers to educate the children."

"Oh!" cries Julien, "I love France with all my heart! I would like her to be the number one nation in the world."

The stock speech rumbles on: "Then, Julien, think of one thing. the honor of France depends on the worth of her children. Work hard, get educated, be good and generous; if all the children of France did this, our country would be the first in all the nations." The only thing missing is the swelling background music, like some patriotic 40s film or a paid political advertisement.

Still, although the patriotism seems heavy-handed to my modern ear, two things stand out. First, the reminder that the state provides valuable benefits (something too little acknowledged in modern America), and, second, that citizens have an obligation to make an effort in return. What we are accustomed to in contemporary USA is fake patriotism accompanying attacks on our institutions of self-government.

But here we are in chapter 21, and eight words summarize the French national character: "Work hard, get educated, be good and generous." 

--Hard-working...today, second only to Germany as the most productive nation in the world

--get educated...consider the famous French intellectual tradition. The brilliant thinkers preceded Le Tour de la France par Deux Enfants, but one goal of this widely read primer was to disseminate the elite tradition to all French citizens and to embed it deep in the French cultural DNA. "Even workers can learn if they spend two hours a day at it." 

--be good and generous. Consider how the French responded to the terror attacks of 11/13. Fearful, yes, but not cowed. In America, we see anti-Muslim bigotry and hostility to Syrian refugees. In France, the government agreed to increase the number of Syrian refugees that they are accepting and Parisians returned to the cafe terraces. A planned march in Paris to support action on global climate change was cancelled due to security concerns, but 10,000 pairs of shoes were left to remind us of the absent marchers.

The chapter starts with a description of a forge that heats the iron bars used to create locks & keys. It ends with a reminder that universal education forges the national character that ensures that the French are good citizens. Big metaphor, yes?

Nov 19: "No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land"

This poem needs to be repeated. What kind of sick cowards respond to the terrorism in Paris by turning on Syrian refugees? 

Home by Warsan Shire

...you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled 
means something more than journey.