It's been weird weather this week. I was at the airport Sunday evening and suddenly there was a huge roar overhead as if a plane were about to crash on the roof. Everyone rushed to the windows and saw-- a sudden hailstorm with hail the size of large pebbles bouncing two feet off the ground. Then only five minutes later it was sunny again. The same thing happened yesterday.
Sunday was May Day and the streets of Paris were empty except for tourists and people selling lilies of the valley. It is the only day of the year when ordinary people are allowed to sell flowers on the street without a permit. May Day is the French equivalent of Labor Day and it is traditional for all sorts of political groups and unions to march. I avoided the various parts of town where they were and went to Notre Dame where there were so many people that there was a long line to get in, stretching past the statue of Charlemagne.
The parvis of Notre Dame, as the open area in front of the cathedral is called, is the spot from which all distances to and from Paris are measured. There is actually a small bronze marker in the ground which shows the exact spot.
Notre Dame is not the most beautiful cathedral in France but it is still always inspiring 
to go there. I like to go when there are a lot of people, as it was made for that. I love to think of all the generations that have passed through and will pass through. Some people believe that the Church of the middle ages was oppressive in building these cathedrals, but I think very differently. At a time when almost everyone was terribly poor, there was one beautiful place that belonged to everyone.
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Google's initiative to put 15 million English-language books online is curiously viewed by many French intellectuals as an attack on French culture. They want the European Union to respond by putting as many "European" books as possible online. (These people always present themselves as defending "European" culture, but they really mean the French language, since no other speakers seem to feel threatened by English. Of course the real reason for the whole debate is that Swedish and Welsh and Italian never aspired to be spoken worldwide, but French once was the international language and lost the battle.) Google's admirable move is presented thus in the French press: "Europe defies Google." "The counter-attack." "The digital counter-offensive." "Forcible homogenization of cultures." "The menace of Google." "Google launches the war of the books."
Whatever they say, if it results in more books online, and if it results in protecting real endangered languages-- like Irish and Occitan, not like French--so much the better.
This constant intellectual anti-English/anti-American discourse is very annoying. I try not to take it too seriously, but that's not really my style. My consolation is that the generation that was told it didn't need to speak English is dying out. (You can recognize them because they studied English long ago in lycée, probably the kind with inkwells in the desks, and always refer to notre cher Shakespeare to explain why American English is not real English, as if somehow Shakespeare, if faced by an automobile, would inevitably have chosen the word "bonnet" over the word "hood.") And their children find that they can't get a good job without speaking English.
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