Rue Rude

Siberia in Paris

2012-02-07T15:25:48+01:00

It is cold right now in Europe-- there is a vague de froid from the east, an unusual direction, that has killed hundreds of people in Russia and Ukraine. The cold is hardly glacial in Paris although everyone has been moaning about it. Today on the radio I heard a government-issued warning in a soft feminine voice: "Don't go outside in the cold if you can help it. Don't heat your home too hot. Be sure to cover your extremities well. Don't exercise strenuously outdoors." Anyone would think we were north of the Arctic Circle, but in fact, it's only 28º F/-2º C, quite a bit warmer than most winter days in Colorado or not especially cold even for New York City.

But it is a miserable time for the SDF*. Today I accidentally went down to the bottom floor of a parking garage in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, taking the elevator to the wrong floor. Just inside the door, where he would bother no one, and considerably warmer than he would have been on the street, was a homeless man, his head covered up, trying to hibernate in his sleeping bag.

*sans domicile fixe, or homeless. The right to housing is legally an enforceable right in France, an admirable law shared by only a few countries, but one that is not in fact enforced.

Anomalies of French life: loving Obama

2012-02-03T19:58:54+01:00

In general I try to avoid politics on this blog, partly because I have relatives and even friends of extreme persuasions in both directions. But I don't think it's controversial to say that President Obama is not overwhelmingly popular in the U.S. right now and is by no means sure of being reelected.* However, the same is not true of France. The French love, or at least loved, Obama, can't understand why anyone would even think of voting for most Republican candidates, and tend to ask about Americans' preferences in a black-or-white way (haha!): if you don't like Obama, it's a dealbreaker. I can only compare it to an ordinary American's finding out that a French person they were meeting was a communist.

Part of this is the décalage between the American and French political mainstreams. Sarkozy is quite far to the right in France, and Obama quite far to the left in the U.S.A., but in fact they are very similar in their politics. It's their countrymen who are different.

Having lived through most of the George W. Bush years in Paris, I must say that the change in atmosphere towards Americans after the election of Obama was remarkable. George W. was so unpopular in France that when he won in 2004, one headline read, "George W. Bush reelected, the French disappointed."

But when Obama won against all French predictions of American racism, an American suddenly went from being persona non grata with many French people (much like the French in the U.S. when they were "cheese-eating surrender monkeys") to being a rather cool person to know. While a lot of Obama's original supporters here have become disillusioned, they still prefer him to Mitt Romney (Mormons are unusual and the religion considered a cult here) or any of the others.

If Obama were running here, he'd do just fine. This won't help him.

*Full disclosure: I voted for him and plan to do so again.

Anomalies of French life: the code

2012-02-01T21:01:48+01:00

Standing in front of our outer gate this evening were two shivering girls I didn't know. It's been really cold in Paris, below freezing. They looked relieved to see me.

I opened the gate for them and one of them assured me in a delightful Spanish accent, "I live here, but I can't get in. I don't know what is wrong." I'd heard about these neighbors, a family from Madrid who is in Paris only occasionally.

"The code has changed," I said. I gave the girl the new code and she tapped it into her iPhone to be sure to remember it.

"They should change it in the summer!" she said. I couldn't agree with her more. Like an idiot I had to stand outside in the cold myself this morning, flicking through my phone's contacts list trying to remember how I had listed the new code, which we had been informed would change this morning because of a recent burglary in the building. But of course I had forgotten, and was standing there stamping my feet and desperately pushing all the combinations I could think of... I think it ends in A? After what felt like a very long time, the concierge came out, saw me and opened the door, but it took me half an hour to warm up afterwards.

I've written about the code before, so suffice it to say that if you don't have the code or your cell phone, you are not getting into most residential buildings in Paris! Always remember to ask if you are going to someone's place.

America: Why she doesn't think like the French

2012-01-29T17:07:37+01:00

This was a while ago. The question is just as valid as ever though.

Anomalies of French life: reverence for psychoanalysis; or Le Mur, autism, and the shrinks

2012-01-28T09:49:00+01:00

In the past few days and weeks, a French documentary about the use of psychoanalysis to treat autism, Le Mur, has been raising hackles and consciousness all over France. I was surprised to learn that psychoanalysis is still overwhelmingly the method used to treat autistic children in France. To put it mildly, it is old-fashioned, like phrenology, and not known for impressive results. You could call it the French exception.

In psychoanalytical treatment of autism, the mother is blamed for the child's autism: she was too cold, or possibly too warm (emotionally "incestuous"), and this terrible behavior made her child psychotic. The nicer shrinks say that the mothers didn't severely damage their child on purpose.

Le Mur is a Michael-Moore-style documentary in which well known French psychoanalysts who treat autistic children find themselves hoist by their own petard and are made to look arrogant idiots, or at times well-meaning ones, in their very own words. To be fair, some of them seem like kind people; but the things they are saying do not come off as sensible. Furious at the movie, three of the psychoanalysts who had agreed to be interviewed sued the documentary maker, saying their words were taken out of context. Yesterday the tribunal in Lille agreed and ordered the documentary maker, Sophie Robert, to pay them €30,000 and to remove the incriminating passages from the 52-minute-long film, which as she points out means no movie. She plans to appeal. She also plans to reveal all the footage, including some she said was worse than what she put in the movie.

Crocodile representing the mother. The psychoanalyst says she is happy when the child hits it.

However, it was a Pyrrhic victory for the shrinks, because the lawsuit itself made the film far better known. Le Mur is making headlines in all the media this week, and is being shown to people involved with autism around the globe (making France look ridiculous). It has now become a cause célèbre, with journalists calling the Lille judgment a dangerous precedent for censorship, and a French lawmaker sponsoring a bill to make psychoanalysis illegal in treating autism. As it should be.

In the meantime, the film will be banned from the sites where it is still available in France, so if you are in France when you read this, and want to see it, check it out now. (There are subtitles, although not by an English speaker.)

If you don't have time, you can get a bit of the flavor of it by these little tidbits. I'm going on and on a bit because the film made me angry. I'm sure you, too, know people with autistic children. Do they strike you as so cold and evil so that they could turn a child psychotic? That is what these shrinks believe. They have forgotten their Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm. Think how many divorces and how much misery they have caused in the families of these children. Psychoanalysis is basically a set of unprovable and undisprovable beliefs: the trademark of a religion, not a science.

The pregnant mother does not think of her child as a person

The child is treated coldly and becomes autistic

The mother does not want the child, and this causes autism

or she wants the child too much, and has an incestuous relationship with him

This shrink declares that all mothers have an incestuous relationship with their child, "whether they are aware of it or not" (well, that's that then, isn't it?)

As Marie-Antoinette famously said when she was accused of incest toward her son, "La nature se refuse à répondre à une pareille inculpation faite à une mère. J'en appelle à toutes celles qui peuvent se trouver ici." [Nature itself refuses to answer to such an accusation against a mother. I call on all the mothers who might be here."] And the women in the room were furious, and for once supported her; the claim of incest was withdrawn from the accusation.

Note that this shrink is talking about emotional incest by the mother, versus actual incest by the father.

They come clean if they talk long enough.

Literally admitting that a shrink can't actually educate or treat a child with autism.

Progress is not expected from the child. According to psychoanalysis, this liberates the child. Or... just leaves it incontinent and speechless as an adult.

Psychoanalysts try to make you happy with your humdrum little lives; it would be unrealistic to have big hopes for a child with autism.

O.M.G.

Quai d'Orsay, the cartoon

2012-01-27T18:11:53+01:00

I have just been reading the bande dessinée, or rather graphic novel, Quai d'Orsay* (volume II), and laughing all the way through. It's a fabulous roman à clé depiction of an all-too-real French foreign ministry in the run-up to the Iraq war, with a bull-headed George W. Bush determined to invade with or without United Nations support. It's clear that "Abel Lanzac," the pseudymous co-author, had privileged access to the top levels of the Quai d'Orsay and that is what makes it so fascinating. In an interview with L'Express, he said that he had worked there and is close friends with Bruno LeMaire, the "superpen" of the ministry in those days, "whose presence permeates the book."

The larger-than-life character of Dominique de Villepin ("Alexandre Taillard de Vorms"**), then French Foreign Minister, dominates the book. It leaves you with a grudging respect for him, in spite of his habit of lecturing to crowds on his Club Med vacations. George W., Colin Powell, Berlusconi, and the Russian foreign minister also make appearances.

What strikes an American is, among other things, how important America is in the story. And how anguished the other countries were about the Iraq war. Along with a recent British black comedy, In the Loop, the focus is completely on what the Americans are doing. The other countries think what the U.S. is demanding is stupid, crazy, ignorant; but they are like little kids being dragged by a brutish big brother to somewhere they don't want to go.

Captions:

1. Alexandre Taillard de Vorms, French Foreign Minister

2. "I was hoping that the people at Club Med would take fright and put a stop to it. The problem is, they were actually really happy. They started noticing that their customers ate it up, to the point that they would try to guess which Club Med the minister would choose for his next holiday so that they could book there."

3. "The United States of America aspires only to world peace." [In English in the original]

4. "French, too." "Oh good. You reassure me. I recognize French women."

5. "Okay, I see you're getting me now. This is a negotiation with the U.S. over peace versus war.... not an anchovy crisis in the Bay of Biscay.... Sorry, Sylvain."

*Christophe Blain et Abel Lanzac

**To me this sounds like tailleur de worms, but apparently it's borrowed from Luc Tayart de Borms, a Belgian aristocrat.

Anomalies of French life: la gastro

2012-01-26T15:11:00+01:00

Every winter since I've been in France, like clockwork, there is an épidémie de gastro ("stomach flu"). People disappear for days at a time and reappear looking pale and exhausted. Children are especially susceptible. La gastro can hide more severe problems. A 13-year-old girl I know recently had to have her appendix removed in an emergency operation-- her family had thought her bad stomach-aches were caused by the usual gastro.

In France, it's not usually a serious disease, of course. But in Africa, it still kills millions of people a year. One of its major causes is not washing your hands, and it's hard to if you don't have access to clean water.

I've never had it. My family doesn't seem to get it. I don't think it's because we're more resistant, but just because we wash our hands more. (My mother was a public-health nurse.) I'm always astonished in public bathrooms here by how few people wash their hands. I have even met people who say they don't because it makes them stronger; when they go to India or Africa, they don't get sick!

Americans are not so wonderful at hand-washing either. The number four cause of death in the U.S.A. every year is hospital-acquired infection, which can be almost completely prevented when hospital health-care workers wash their hands properly. But study after study shows that only about half do.

It's winter, and la gastro is back again. In the past three weeks more than half a million people in France have consulted a doctor about it. The average age of those who get sick is 24. Wash your hands!

The king is dead. Vive le roi!

2012-01-25T16:59:15+01:00

The king was executed in what was then called Place de la Révolution.

Last Saturday night, Virginie, a very pretty teenage girl I know, was invited to an exciting party with a few other girls from her school. But her best friend, a girl from a grand old family, the kind where the children still call their parents vous, was not allowed to go. It was the anniversary of the death of King Louis XVI.

Almost the same spot today, looking toward the Hotel Crillon (far left), Automobile Club, and the French Navy Ministry

Elephant House: U.K., U.S.A., France

2012-01-18T11:46:16+01:00

Birthplace of Harry Potter, Edinburgh, Scotland

Lucy the Elephant, still there in Margate City, New Jersey

Did you know that Paris might have had an enormous elephant instead of the Arc de Triomphe if Napoleon had not been defeated? He loved the idea and wanted a huge bronze elephant to stand where the Bastille fortress had been torn down. A large plaster elephant was erected in 1814 and stood for more than thirty years-- in Les Misérables, the tattered urchins of Paris, including Gavroche, take refuge inside it.

The house called "la maison de l'éléphant" (because an elephant was carved over the door) was built by the doctor to King Louis XI. I love how you can just walk around Paris in a touristy street, Saint-André-des-Arts, and see that the house was built in 1467. Even better, by now it has good plumbing!

Dîner at eight (-thirty)

2012-01-15T09:31:00+01:00

An American woman I know here was complaining that she invited some people for dinner at 7:30 p.m. and that at 8:30 p.m. they were just arriving. That is because in France, dinner is always (sauf exception) at 8:30 p.m., which means the guests will start to trickle in at 8:45. (If you are rude enough to arrive at 8:30, you will find your hostess flustered and possibly even still in the shower. This, by the way, proves that the American's friends knew they were invited at an earlier-than-usual time. They probably forgot exactly when and just retained "early" --thinking "eight."

In France, there are times for things. The American management at Disneyland Paris, when it first opened (and was still called EuroDisney), was astounded to discover that everyone, everyone, stopped for lunch at exactly one o'clock. (And expected wine with the meal; but that's another story.) Dinner starts at eight-thirty, 20h30.... If someone invites you, you don't even need to ask. If tourists go to a French restaurant at 7 p.m., much less 6 p.m., they will discover the waiters and cooks eating.

This reminds me of the time I got sick and tired of how all French children's birthday parties (for lo, it is written) run from 3 to 6 p.m.... a horribly long time to keep a horde of small children amused. So I wrote on the invitation "15h à 16h30."

Of course, all the parents showed up at 6 p.m., except for the usual stragglers at 7.

Well-dressed? Parisian style is ...uniform

2012-01-11T19:36:24+01:00

A lot of what foreigners think of as Parisian stylishness looks a great deal like conformism. When I first moved here, I thought the other mothers at my children's school were wearing a uniform. They weren't, not exactly; but they did all have the same coat. All the children also wore the same coat. If anything was different about it, it stayed the same color: navy blue or black.

Last winter, all the students in my bourgeois neighborhood were wearing this doudoune, from the French company Moncler [pronounced mon clair]. It costs only three or four hundred euros....

This year, Moncler is selling the jackets at a deep discount. Why? Because this winter, the thing to have in Paris, which is having a remarkably warm winter by the way, is a Canada Goose, created, according to the company's website, for postwar bush pilots in the Arctic.

But in black, of course.

Christmas-tree recycling center, Paris

2012-01-10T10:57:00+01:00

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that my Christmas tree is still up and twinkling. I haven't had time to take all the ornaments off, and as long as it's still up, why not keep it pretty? I believe in keeping Christmas till Epiphany or Twelfth Night anyway....

But just when I was thinking how sad it was to leave my little tree on the other side of the street, amidst the dog poop, for the éboueurs to pick up, I walked by a Recycling Point for Trees. This is new, in our neighborhood at least. Paris has not been famous for being green. I remember how horrified one of my relations-in-law was ten years ago when visiting Paris from Oregon-- roughly speaking, the Vatican City of recycling-- to find me throwing everything straight into the trash. But things are gradually getting better and this is one more step.

A block away, two young, handsome, buff policemen had parked their white motorcycles on the sidewalk and were monitoring a tricky intersection. As I watched, a motorcyclist in his late teens came roaring through and did not stop at the red light... until he saw them. Too late! "Au trottoir!"

They wouldn't let me take their picture, though, so trees it is for today.

Madeline's city

2012-01-08T18:51:18+01:00

I was shocked when I got here to discover that the French had never heard of Madeline. The little red-headed Parisian in a cape, who says "Pooh, pooh!" to tigers at the zoo, is known to almost all American children of the reading classes, but is nobody to children in her native city (who would no doubt call her Madeleine. By the way, the hyper-fashionable name is not currently fashionable in France).

It's still fun to recognize scenes from the books now that I know Paris. The tiger in the zoo is on the quais near the Botanical Gardens. The zoo is still there; sometimes when you are stuck in a traffic jam or on a bus, you can look over and see an ostrich looking back at you.

Of course the twelve little girls in two straight lines are obsolete now, as is Miss Clavel with her veil-- she is not a nun but a governess, by the way; and yes, governesses did used to dress like that. But not that long ago there was an all-girls school in Paris not far from my house where the little girls had to wear hats and walk in lines two-by-two as they went out, just like the girls in the book. "I get so many parents with those hats," the headmistress once said to me.

One of the loveliest things about Paris is that if you go away and come back, Paris will still look much the same; the central city is preserved as if in amber, and only the storefronts change with the times. So even though Madeline was written in 1939, it gives Americans who read it as children a shock of recognition when they finally see the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides, the Opéra, and the quais of the Seine, where Madeline fell in and was dramatically rescued by that noble mutt, Genevieve.

Anomalies of French life: marrons glacés

2012-01-07T17:50:59+01:00

The first Christmas I was in Paris, which now seems very long ago, a friend of ours showed up for a Christmas party chez nous with a huge box of marrons glacés, which I had never seen before. There must have been fifty or sixty of the candied chestnuts in the box. The other guests oohed and aahed and I felt much as Europeans or Americans feel when presented with such Chinese delicacies as shark-fin soup or sea cucumber (which are often served at Chinese banquets so that the Chinese, not the foreigners, can have them...). I don't even remember what happened to the box-- I know we didn't eat the marrons. I can only hope someone else got them. Marrons last a pretty long time, although not at my house.

Oh! how I wish I could have that box now! It must have cost the equivalent of a hundred euros. Marrons glacés are such a luxury that you mainly see them during the holiday season, wrapped in gold foil with prices to match. I have developed a taste for them and greedily buy my local bakery's brisures de marrons (pieces that fall off accidentally when they're making them), which are still quite expensive.

I was reminded of this when I saw an American girl at the airport today being given one by a French friend who didn't tell her what it was. "Eeew! What is this?" she said.

Paris CDG in the rain (getting wet)

2012-01-06T16:38:51+01:00

As we flew into French airspace, I woke up and looked out the window. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing to see but horizon-to-horizon gray clouds covering the landscape. (A friend of mine from L.A. calls northern Europe "Grayland".)

We landed and deplaned to ... the nasty surprise of a steep flight of stairs into driving rain on the tarmac. By the time I realized I would get wet, it was too late to hold back till I could dash for it. People go down the stairs ve-e-e-e-ry slowly when they are old, or have heavy carry-ons, or are carrying little children and multiple bags. Plenty of time to be drenched. I was one of the last ones off the plane, so I couldn't take a photo of all the passengers trying to get their stuff down the stairs and over to the bus in the downpour.

Was the bus parked close to the plane? No.

After getting soaking wet, we had a literally 15-minute bus ride to the terminal. I saw a sign on the inside of the bus that said it had 20 seats and 90 standing places. So most of the 100+ wet people on the bus had to sway and hold on uncomfortably to their bags for the long drive to the terminal. Judging by the comments of my fellow passengers, this arrival did not create a positive first glimpse of France.

Rows of Air France planes in the rain at CDG

Uncle Sam, French version

2012-01-04T01:10:07+01:00

"It's him."

"Uncle Sam as himself...."

Bonne année à toutes et à tous!

2012-01-01T21:56:27+01:00

A's "little friend" (that's one way to say boyfriend or girlfriend in France) has been keeping a list of all the things A has been worried about. This includes the scary airborne fatal flu virus created by a Dutch lab, the possible explosion of the Yellowstone supervolcano (which makes me glad I never could afford to buy that longed-for real estate in Jackson Hole), and the end of the world which the Mayans are said to have predicted for December 21, 2012.

So here is a reminder that the world usually does go on.

Happy New Year, Bonne Année to you!

Lazy post: Spanish bus scraping its side mirrors in Montmartre

2011-12-30T19:05:36+01:00

Just because the street is there doesn't mean it's big enough for your vehicle.....

Joyeux Noël everyone!

2011-12-25T02:00:46+01:00

Sedulia

Anomalies of French life: transport strikes during the holidays

2011-12-19T15:45:47+01:00

The airport of Lyons is closed. Planes are taking off from Paris CDG three hours late. Lines at the security checkpoints are madhouses.

It must be Christmas in France!

This year and last year, it was the agents de sécurité, subcontractors hired by Brink's, complaining that salaries are higher in Marseilles than in Paris. Another year, it might be Air France, or as threatened this year, the cheminots of the SNCF or French national trains, who have issued as many as 400 strike threats a year, almost always during holidays and school vacations.

But their technique is always the same. Make the crowds of travelers suffer to put pressure on their bosses to give in.

The French are extraordinarily tolerant of this misery. Maybe they're just used to it, or can put off their travel more easily. Not so the foreigners taken hostage by this craziness that they have nothing to do with.

In the early 1990s, I knew a foreigner in Paris who loved France so much that he got his company's board to consider moving their headquarters there. The day the men arrived, there was a huge transport strike and the roads to Paris CDG were blocked by demonstrators. The board members had to drag their suitcases all the way to the autoroute to get a taxi. Needless to say, the headquarters went elsewhere.

Yesterday I spent five hours at CDG in lines and waiting on the plane for the missing passengers still in line. The lines were very well managed and the crowds for the most part civilized although you can always count on a few obnoxious people pushing their way to the front, harangued by the Americans and Brits. Passengers were called forward in the order their flights left, but there was still an advantage to getting to the airport very, very early.

Once I was on the Air France plane, it was a haven of calm. The flight attendants were kind and attentive, the food was good, the entertainment system excellent. On Air France, your first glass of champagne is free and they still hand out pillows, blankets, eye masks and earplugs even in economy. I fell asleep in my comfortable seat with its supportive headrests and slept all the way to the U.S. It was a good example of the two sides of French life.