Rue Rude

Paris drops Halloween

Over the years, my relationship with Halloween has had its ups and downs. My father was Irish and it was a big deal to him. As a child in Boston, he and his friends ran wild with tricks and treats, and they would hoist someone's gate onto his roof if he was nasty to them. My Irish grandmother said that back in the old country, people made jack-o'-lanterns out of turnips and carried them around on a stick. My grandfather believed in fairies (the scary life-sized kind) and to this day people where he grew up do not go near a fairy circle on Halloween night. When  the doors are open between the worlds, and it's best to stay home in lighted rooms and give anything they ask to passing strangers....

My mother grew up in rural Louisiana. Halloween was a new and slightly foreign holiday there, américain, as the Cajuns said. She and her brothers rode from house to house on horses asking for treats.

When I was a child, my father would gather us all together about a month before Halloween for the Halloween Council. Fall and the turning of the leaves met Halloween was coming. What anticipation! We carved out pumpkins, decorated the whole house, and spent weeks planning our costumes and doorway. It was a highlight of our year. My grandfather's best friend wired his whole yard so that when children opened the gate, voices came out of the trees and ghosts howled. He dressed as a wizard and reached into a smoking cauldron to bring out the candy.

When I moved to Paris, Halloween was my favorite holiday. I organized a big Halloween party for my kids' French classmates. None of them had ever heard of it. The big kids did not want to come in costume. The little kids were afraid of me when I answered the door in a witch costume and a green face. That first party was the high point, and the children's friends still come up and tell me how much they enjoyed it. In 1998, some commercial organization decided to bring Halloween to France. Suddenly Trocadero was full of the right kind of pumpkins (the first time I ordered Halloween pumpkins from my greengrocer at the marché, he delivered ten completely flat specimens about six inches high and a foot wide). French children were now all learning English and their parents saw this as a cultural experience. For a year or two I had hopes that Halloween would return to its Gaulish roots in France (Astérix and Obélix would have celebrated it, folks--why do you think Toussaint is tomorrow? The Church could not eliminate Halloween from people's minds, so it coopted it by making the day of the dead into a holy day).

For a few years, you could buy Halloween decorations, and some neighborhoods even organized Halloween parties and let kids go trick-or-treating among friends. Stores realized they could make money with this, and decorated their vitrines in orange and black. But things quickly went south. The graft failed.

In 2004 the French Catholic Church conducted a campaign against Halloween, called Holy Win. Of course, Ireland is a far more religious country than France and lives in peace with this fun pagan holiday, but the Church had an enormous asset on its side: the knee-jerk anti-Americanism of the "chattering classes." Rabid anti-clericals rushed in to defend French religious tradition. It didn't help that the one place you could count on a big Halloween celebration was Disneyland. The next year, Halloween was subdued in Paris. You were lucky if you found an orange-and-chocolate display in a pâtisserie. This year, Halloween is gone. I haven't seen a single sign of it in Paris.

All these years of prejudice against Halloween have affected me. I'm tired of defending it as crass commercial American paganism. I have given up the fight.

My father and our wonderful Halloweens are just memories now.

Delanoë disaster. The Mayor is killing Paris. Oh, and me, too.

"Aren't there any taxis in Paris?" asked my innocent visitors from Rome, who had walked all the way to my house from the Place de la Concorde (about 45 minutes) in the middle of the day without finding one. On a Friday.

 

 

"I hate the mayor! I hate the mayor!" I have taken to chanting in the car as I sit in interminable pointless traffic jams whenever I venture out of my neighborhood. Pointless, because the traffic jams are produced for the sole reason of making my life hell, as you can see from the citation* above. Merci, Monsieur Delanoë!

For example, a left turn is the obvious way to get to the boulevard Magenta [the major thoroughfare in and out of Paris to the north] from the Gare du Nord parking lot.

So-- let's block it! says the mayor.

Make all the drivers go around the block onto the completely snarled boulevard de la Chapelle! (Snarled because of the mayor's innovative bus lanes now completely hogging the avenue.) A maneuver which now takes half an hour. All the while,  the cars honk; they get into accidents sliding past each other with centimeters to spare; they run their engines; they clog the intersections so pedestrians can't cross; they block the buses.

Going around the block would take even longer if there were not a disgusted-looking policewoman making everyone run the red lights.

This mayor, who has no driver's license, is creating a city in which drivers waste 62.2 million hours a year in traffic jams.  But that's okay, because drivers are bad!

He has absolutely no understanding of what it takes to be a mère de famille in a large city. I think he hates us. We're not cool. We're not his image of young, fun Paris, zipping around on our bicycles going to museums and gallery openings, or riding to work on the metro with a newspaper as seul bagage. (The mayor is a confirmed bachelor.) 

Not mothers doing the shopping for a family, or bringing children to different schools the same morning, or picking up people at the train station with large suitcases.

Not foreigners who are passing through Paris for a day or two in their car. Not an old person who can't walk easily. Not a delivery man who has to work longer hours and is late for appointments because the traffic is deliberately stalled. Not inner-city shops and restaurants who need customers from too far away to walk home. (I scarcely go there any more.)

Especially, not anyone from the suburbs. The suburban commuters are suffering the most, but they don't vote in Paris, so the mayor doesn't care about them. Even though most car drivers in Paris work there. And even though most people in Paris use their cars because they NEED them.

This is a city where large packages are forbidden on the bus. Anyway, buses are stuck in traffic jams despite the mayor's giving them two-thirds of the road (which is the reason there are traffic jams). So that most people who do take the bus are people without jobs. (Did I mention that buses have two-thirds of the road?)

A city where you cannot get a cab at night, in the rain, during school holidays, on weekends, if there are more than three of you, or after the metro closes. [Shortcut: each word is a link to people complaining how you can't get a cab in Paris.]

A city where there are no elevators or escalators into most metro stations, and where a current "respect" campaign pictures as public enemy number one a mother trying to get onto the metro with a baby stroller. How dare she?

Today I had the malheur of having to go to the Gare du Nord and the airport in one day.

*Update: Here is the quotation, which was posted under "Today's Quotation" for that day:

Ce n'est qu'en leur faisant vivre l'enfer que nous obtiendrons un jour des automobilistes qu'ils renoncent à leur bagnole.

The only way to get drivers to give up their cars is by making them live through hell.

--Yves Contassot, the deputy mayor for the environment under current Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë

The Americans all went home

"You work too hard," I said, scolding my friendly neighborhood "arabe" as I bought some milk late last night (he's actually a Berber; but a lot of French people call the corner grocer an "arabe" --most small grocery stores in Paris are actually run by North Africans).

I really do worry about him sometimes. He smokes, and coughs, and works six days a week.

"You have to work hard," he said, shrugging. "Otherwise, you go out of business."

"Everyone else is shut," I pointed out. It was Saturday night.

"Ils sont des employés," he said.

Then we got into a discussion about the various nationalities in the neighborhood. "There used to be lots of Americans," he said. "I liked them, they were nice, polite people. Non, je ne plaisante pas. But they all went home. There aren't any now.  And the Japanese-- there are very few Japanese around here now. They are very decent people too.

"It's Spain now," he went on. "Everyone is going to Spain. Spain and la Grande Bretagne. It seems it is much easier to work and make money there.  If I were young, I'd leave too."

The fair and open face of heaven

I'm not a city-lover, even though I live in one of the most beautiful cities on earth.

On days when I long to escape, I look up.

To one who has been long in city pent,
'tis very sweet to look into the fair
and open face of heaven....

You can get used to anything

A few things I can't do any more, living in France so long

--pour my own wine at dinner
--put on lipstick in public
--go out of the house without thinking about what I'm wearing
--walk into a store (even in the U.S.) without saying hello to the salesperson
--get on a bus without saying hello to the driver
--buy gas at a service station without getting out of the car to talk to the guy who is pumping gas
--ask a question without saying "Bonjour, Madame" or "Excusez-moi, Monsieur" first
--talk to strangers in public, even if they're American (unless they need help)
--drive politely

Things I'll probably never be able to do, even though I've lived in France so long

--cut in line
--scream at foreigners
--make my own mayonnaise

Things I've learned in France

--to appreciate opera and art (en passant, this morning I heard the D.J. at Radio France Classique refer to Herbert von Karajan as sa majesté)
--to give a formal dinner party
--never to take "no" for an answer: it's just the beginning of negotiations
--to appreciate French rule-bending: it can work for you!
--to wear a skirt when I take my car to the garage

Vive la France!

The principal who hates children

Olivia, a young woman I know, was telling me about her children. "Do they like their teachers this year?" I said.

"Mm--ouais," she said, "but the directrice of the school is malade. She should not be allowed to be around children.

"For example," she said, "my friend's little girl was supposed to eat at the cantine one day. The child forgot to bring her card for the cantine . The directrice said, 'You're not on the list,' and then just sent the child outside on the street and left her there."

"Sans un sou?" I asked.

"Yes! A little girl of nine, on the street alone for an hour and a half, with no money or telephone! Luckily one of the other mothers saw her and brought her back inside to eat lunch. Then when the girl's mother went to see the directrice later to find out-- just to find out what happened, not to make a fuss-- the directrice was very aggressive and said it was the child's fault. And she revenged herself on the older son."

"Your friend should write a complaint letter," I said. "Suppose something had happened to the child?"

"She does things like that all the time. She hates children. A lot of people have written letters about her. She has a huge thick dossier of complaints against her, but c'est l'Éducation nationale! They can't fire her, so they just keep transferring her from school to school.

"She told a little boy in my daughter's class," added Olivia, "in front of the whole class, 'You're worthless, not even good enough to be a cashier in a supermarket.' He is six."

I wouldn't give much for their skin

Everyone is worried about a renewal of the violence of last November. Yesterday a bus was set on fire in the middle of the day in one of the "sensitive" suburbs, Grigny in Essonne, and about 300 people stood around and watched as the firemen put it out, protected by policemen who themselves were the target of stone-throwing. The local reaction, even from older people, seemed to be, "Why don't the police leave?"

Most people in the suburbs think that everything could explode again-- all it would take is one new episode like the one that set off last year's rioting. In case you don't remember: three teenage boys were chased by policemen looking for suspects in a burglary, even though the boys had apparently done nothing wrong (these details are contested but the boys are not now considered suspects in the burglary); two of them were electrocuted and the third severely burned when they escaped into an electrical power station, even though it is said to have been clearly marked with Danger de Mort. In a recording just released, one of the policemen who was following tells his station, "And if they go in there, I wouldn't give much for their skin.' [Je ne donnerai pas cher de leur peau.] But the policemen didn't call an ambulance or help the boys; the one who was burned managed to get help on his own.

Then Nicolas Sarkozy, visiting the suburban projects of Argenteuil, replied to a woman who yelled to him from a window, "Get rid of this racaille for us!" [racaille means scum, but nowadays it is often used as shorthand for young suburban male trouble-makers of immigrant origin]. Sarkozy called back, "You've had enough of this gang of racaille? Then we'll get rid of them for you!" He also said something about cleaning out the racaille with a power-hose [nettoyer au Kärcher]. These words, quoted widely in the media-- which is not fond of Sarko--, enraged the young men of the suburbs, and a month of riots ensued.

Afterward, a lot of promises were made and there was a lot of talk about improving the lot of the jeunes de banlieue, but nothing has really changed. The only real hope is for the economy to get better, and it is inching its way up at the moment.

What has changed since last year is that there is starting to be more violence directed at the policemen individually, including traps set for them. In the past week several policemen have been wounded badly. It's remarkable to me, as an American, to see that these policemen, all armed, have not one single time drawn their guns to shoot the men and boys attacking them.

Over everything is the cloud of the présidentielles on the horizon, so that there is scarcely a politician who can say anything without being accused of electioneering. Tuesday night is the second debate of the three socialist candidats à la candidature: Dominique Strauss-Kahn (who came off best in the first round), Ségolène Royal, and Laurent Fabius. [In the cartoon, from the first debate: Ségolène says, "I agree with Dominique, I agree with Laurent....but I especially agree with myself"]

* Courtesy of Placide

Remembering Yorktown in Paris

On Thursday it was the anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown, which won the Revolutionary War for the Americans.

I live not too far away from the statue of the Comte de Rochambeau, on the rue de Chaillot in the 16th. A few years ago, in my role as patriotic American mother overseas, I realized my France-raised kids knew virtually nothing about American history. It was up to me. I decided to teach a history lesson by explaining about Yorktown, how the Americans had the British cornered on the peninsula and how Rochambeau saved the day. "Imagine the dismay of the British as they realized that the sails belonged to the French navy and not the British!"

I bought a bouquet of flowers and dragged us all over solemnly to the little square at the rue de Chaillot, in front of the Post Office. The statue was gone from its socle. It had been taken away to be renovated.

The French student

I am taking a class this fall. There are people of many different nationalities in it, including Ukrainian, American, Spanish, Irish, English, German and French. It's not a class taken for credit, but just to learn for fun.

That's why I have been watching with what the French call an oeil malicieux the behavior of the single "Franco-French" student in our class.

The teacher, who is also not French, will say, "All right, write down three examples from what we have just learned." The French guy's hand shoots up in the air as soon as the teacher has finished talking.

"Do you mean this kind of example, or this other kind of example?"

"You are free to choose!" says the teacher.

"Do you want us to write it in the format you used on the blackboard?"

"Do it however you like!" says the teacher. "I just want to see if you know it or not."

The student insists. "Shall we use only material we learned today?"

"No, you can use anything you have learned."

"Do you want us to write the rule?"

His fear of doing things wrong makes the rest of us smile, as well as sigh with impatience, but I also feel for the man. Think of the years it would take to create this kind of fear of a teacher and respect for a rigid way of answering questions.

Once I took a high-level class at the Goethe Institute in Paris. The students had all passed a rather rigorous written test. To my surprise, only the foreigners and the people who had lived in Germany could actually speak German. But all the French, without exception, could recite aloud in unison a list of prepositions and their cases.

Basques

"Vous êtes Euskadi?" asked a man in the grocery store. I must have stared blankly at him because he rushed on by, embarrassed.

Afterwards I realized he was asking me if I were Basque.