Rue Rude

A Tale of Two Movies: German business vs U.S. business

D went to see a German movie called "Barfuss," which some friends of ours had told him they loved. He called me up in disgust afterwards. "It's just another one of those movies where the businessman is the villain," he said. "The movie ends with the hero deciding not to take a high-paying business job because it would be selling out." He described the plot to me and I said, "But how is he going to support the girl? She's mentally ill, she can't work?"

"No, instead they just live happily ever after on welfare, I suppose. The problem is that they can, in Germany," D said. "It's the trouble with this country! Their whole way of life is made possible by those evil businessmen, but they just don't get it!"

I had just watched a very different movie under duress. It was called "Mr Deeds" and is about a hick from New Hampshire who inherits his great-uncle's multi-billion-dollar company. All through the movie, the assumption is that the great-uncle was a pretty cool guy and ran a good company. Of course, the villains were ALSO evil businessmen (yawn) who were trying to destroy the good company. It wasn't just assumed that all businessmen were evil. I think that Americans identify with entrepreneurs much more than Europeans do.

In France I don't think I have ever seen a movie where the high-level businessmen weren't evil, either.

I heard on the radio that in the last three months of 2005, France created a total of 900 new jobs. Nationwide.

I love New York

[New York City]

I have been loving New York! Today is another beautiful day, with that crisp clear wind and sun that I miss about American winters.

On this trip it has come home to me how much I miss by not living in my own country. It's so much easier to see old friends, to make connections, to get ahead, when you're in your own country and know the ropes and can meet the friends of friends and their friends. Even though I speak good French, and even good German, and have lived in Europe a long time, here everything is easy and comfortable like putting on an old pair of slippers. I am sure that if I had had a place to go back to, I would have wanted to come back to the U.S.. But I don't have that place, and the only place for me would have had to be New York, and I've never wanted to live in New York.

It's a fun place to visit, though. Yesterday I went to MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art, with a friend who is an artist and museum employee and got us in for free. That was nice, because admission is twenty dollars per person. I guess that explains why the museum had that empty feel about it. Even the most famous paintings, like Rousseau's sleeping gypsy or Dali's watches or Van Gogh's starry night, had no one in front of them. I hadn't been back to the museum since it was renovated a few years ago. It had completely changed inside and was very pleasant and easy to get around, but I was happy to see the sculpture garden was the same.

It was the last day of the Pixar exhibit, which showed the art of the people who created "Shrek," "Toy Story,"  "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles," and "Monster Inc." There is a new "Cars" movie, with cars as characters, coming out that was advertised during the Superbowl, and it looks fun too, with a snaggle-toothed hillbilly demolition-derby truck and a cool sports car. The exhibit did a good job of making you appreciate the artistic talent and effort that goes into these movies. My artist friend has no children and had not seen any of the movies. I'm afraid I have seen all of them. I noticed that almost all the artists featured in the show were either born abroad or over forty years old. My friend said that that is because in the United States, no one has been taught how to draw for the past forty years. The art schools have emphasized other things. But now there is a gradual return to it.

The most wonderful thing I saw at the museum is something that you can't see, only hear. It was a roomful of speakers on stands, an installation by Janet Cardiff. But it made tears come to my eyes, it was so beautiful. It is a choir singing "Spem in alium*," a forty-part motet written in the 1500s by Thomas Tallis, and performed by forty voices of the Trinity College Choir of Cambridge University. Each speaker is one voice. You walk in and you don't know where to look. When you walk around the room, you hear each speaker as a separate part and as part of the whole. The speaker nearest the door is a vibrating bass that sounds like the earth itself. It was something I would love to own. It was awe-inspiring.

My friend doesn't have much money. A artist of this success in France would have a government-subsidized studio apartment in Paris, and probably a guaranteed income. Much pleasanter for the artist, but it's true that France is not the art scene now that it was when Van Gogh had to beg from his brother to live and Henri Rousseau was buried in a pauper's grave.

Blarney

"Non, non, non, that won't make a good picture!" said my hostess before dinner last night as I propped my little camera on her balcony. Maybe so, but it gives you a little aperçu, non?

I was seated between an Irish priest who doesn't speak French and a Frenchman who is  a graduate of "Eeks" [X,  or Polytechnique, the Number One prestige school in France], hates dinner parties and doesn't speak English. Challenging? Oh ye of little faith!

"She didn't just kiss the Blarney Stone," said the priest, "she had an affairrr with it!" The Polytechnicien insisted on driving me home.

And some people think I don't work!

Understanding the average Jeau

The French are deeply shocked that in New York the transit unions might face legal problems for bringing a great city to its knees at Christmastime. Several people have remarked to me how glad they are to live in a country where people are free to strike. One has to defend the acquis sociaux [the status quo]. That's why, as one commenter said on Guillemette's weblog, the French are not yet all part-timers sleeping in their cars!

I have often thought that the real test of whether you feel at home in a foreign country (or maybe even your own) is whether you understand the most ordinary citizen and his or her beliefs, prejudices and tastes. By this test, I am very American. I do understand rednecks and people who support the NRA, hillbillies and people who don't believe in evolution, working-class New Yorkers, policemen, messengers, grocery clerks. I grew up with them, I worked with them, I lived with them. A lot of my American friends from the east or west coasts really do not get these people. That's why they believe Hillary Clinton is a viable Presidential candidate....(I don't know anyone from the South who does).

I even feel I understand the ordinary German (or at least Bavarian) to some extent. In a lot of ways, Germans are more like Americans than anyone else in Europe. What you see is what you get in Germany, with an extra dose of lack of irony. The young Germans are well-traveled and tolerant and as cosmopolitan as anyone in the world. The British are still largely a mystery to me. They don't say what they mean. Le perfide Albion! One of my American friends who has lived many years in London gave me the following advice when I had to take care of a problem over there: "Just talk r-e-e-e-eally slo-o-o-o-owly and smile a lot. They're terrified of dealing with American women." (That's one way to put it.)

With the years I have spent in France, I have learned a lot about the average French man or woman. I know why Le Pen came in second in that election (it wasn't anti-Semitism). I know why the jeunes rioted in November (it wasn't Islam). I even love the quirks and kindnesses of the French. They will step up to help you, break the rules for you,  treat you like a human being, the way Americans won't  ("I'm sorry, but that's the RULE."). But I never will understand the French profoundly, the way I deeply understand my compatriotes in Wyoming or Louisiana. The strikes bring it out in me. My father raised me never to cross a picket line. But things go too far in France, where all the strikers are public servants who serve people a lot poorer than they are. How can they not see that they're hurting their own people, the future of their own jeunes, employment in their own country, with these strikes? Yet the strikes have immense support here. People just sigh and go on with their lives. Il faut défendre les acquis sociaux! Yes, but will the Chinese and Indians let them?
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Here's some graffiti I saw on a mailbox today. The first person wrote: "Islam=AIDS" and the second wrote: "That's a new one!"

L'ambassadrice: Pamela Harriman

We Americans abroad, as late U.S. Ambassador to France Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman often said in her plummy British voice to us Americans in Paris, are ambassadors for our country.

You are a walking, talking Uncle Sam, whether you like it or not. Even if you don't even notice.

(Didn't she live the good life till the very end, dying as she climbed out of the pool at the Paris Ritz as American ambassador to France? The U.S. embassy residence here never looked so beautiful as when she ran it, with fresh flowers everywhere and paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Rousseau, Cézanne on the walls.)

Which is why it annoys me when I see American children rolling around on the floor of Charles de Gaulle Airport, or when two loud American voices are the only ones you can hear on a crowded bus, or when a fat person in a purple nylon jacket waddles up to a stranger with a huge smile and you just know what accent you are going to hear. I have become too French!

One of the odd and rather endearing consequences of the American stereotype is that French people who scarcely nod to their own neighbors will pour out their hearts to Americans they have just met. They will also shamelessly inquire about Americans' ages, jobs and even salaries (it is a well-known "fact" in France that Americans tell everyone their salary, although in real life my own mother never dreamed of asking, and no one but French people ever has) and confidently state that in America, "Life revolves around money," "American friendliness is hypocrisy," "There is no culture," whereas in France, "We like black people! We are not racists like Americans."

Tonight I had to go to the area near Beaubourg and on the way home I bought some books, in fact way too many books on a very nerdy subject. They were heavy, and I took a taxi to get home. The guy did an illegal U-turn on one of the busiest streets in Paris. Someone had just parked and left his car in the middle of the intersection for a delivery, much like the van (right) which I saw earlier today. (Je travaille, moi!)

"Where are you from in America?"

I hate it when they can tell right away. I like at least to be a mysterious foreigner.

"Louisiana."

"I have an American girlfriend."

"Ah."

"I might go live over there."

"Ah?"

Next thing I know, the guy is telling me about his sex life. "She is a beautiful ex-fashion model, divorced from this very rich older guy, have you heard of X X?" (I had.) "I showed her around Paris, all the most beautiful places. I didn't touch her. After two hours, she said to me, 'You are the man of my life!' Then we talked every day on the phone for months. She came back to Paris last summer. She came for a few days and she stayed with me for two months. I treated her like a queen! Now I am going to the U.S. for Christmas. I am learning a lot of English. I love the words I am learning. She says she likes my too shee."

I burst out laughing. He meant "tushy."

"Teu!" I said. "Eu, comme Europe!"

"Ah oui? Alors, qu'elle aime mon teu-shee."

But it went on. A blow-by-blow account of their first night together (it was her period, so they just cuddled: "I had already waited for months, so what was another few days?"), and her money problems, and his big house in Paris, and her jealous rich ex-husband: "He told her, 'That French guy is a-soul!'"

That mystified me. Then I realized the ex must have said "Asshole"!

"Qu'est-ce que cela veut dire, a-soul?"

"It means con," I said. (Technically incorrect!)

And his trip to the States at Christmas-- she hadn't answered the phone for three days, was she trying to tell him something? "I already bought the ticket, what will I do if she doesn't come and get me at the airport? I'm screwed," he said laughing, "I've never been to the U.S. before. The immigration agents are correct, though, n'est-ce pas? They are not corrupt? I will have my papers in order, there won't be any problems?"

I tried hard to be sympathetic and not too personal, smiling as I held the door open, waiting to get out. This was not a conversation he would be having with a French woman. He was in love and my accent reminded him of her. I couldn't help wondering how much she was in love with him, and how much just with Paris.

Little did the handsome taxi driver know that, far from being the friendly, open American he talked to, I am a judgmental European woman inside. An ambassador for my country.
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Ambassador anecdote

I was volunteer-teaching a class of French 8-year-olds and asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. The boys wanted to be firemen and sailors and stunt men in the movies. The girls all wanted to be pharmacists-- probably because the prettiest class maman was one. Only Alexandre said, "I want to be an ambassador when I grow up!"

"What an intelligent boy!" I thought. "Most kids his age don't even know that word." Out loud I said, "That's interesting, Alexandre. What makes you want to be an ambassador?"

"The motorcycle escort!" said Alexandre.

Parliament up to mischief again

How annoying! Today the French parliament voted in that stupid tax on airline tickets. The money it raises, a pet project of Jacques Chirac, is going to help AIDS prevention in the third world (I'll believe that when I see it).  It starts next July. 

The assembly is not worried about getting in trouble for this vote because the French don't need to fly much: it's a little country (although I did once see in an British book the phrase, "The French, in their vast country...."). No skin off their backs-- it is we foreigners who will be paying it. This tax is going to cost my own family hundreds, maybe even thousands of euros a year. The airlines that fly into France are freaking out. They say they could lose 3000 jobs, and therefore the law was approved for two years only and will be reconsidered at that point to see if the airlines have been hurt. Well, what do you think?

A NOUS de vous faire préférer le train!

Another annoying thing that happened today is that when the CNRS recommended that for safety reasons cars in France should be required to have their lights on at all times, guess what! The motards objected! Only they are allowed to use this well-proven safety measure. (Driving like a law-abiding mortal creature instead of a foolhardy maniac weaving between cars is also a proven safety measure. There are whole countries where it works.) So you know what the next step will inevitably be. The motards will--guess what! have a big demonstration in Paris! And then-- guess what! the government will cave in again!

By the way, I hear that the truckers are en colère too and between now and the middle of January we can expect some action on that front. What fun!

Also en colère today: emergency room doctors.
 
A third annoying thing today is that I heard Dominique de Villepin on the radio talking about the parliament's recent vote to require that history classes in French public schools talk about the "benefits of colonialism." This has provoqué un tollé (caused an uproar) in the DOM-TOM (overseas departments of France, like Martinique), where most of the population is descended from former slaves. "It may be that colonialism did not leave a totally negative legacy," I heard one Martiniquais official say on the radio, "but no one can say that the French set out to make colonialism beneficial to us." Nicolas Sarkozy was forced to cancel his planned trip to the Caribbean for fear of an unpleasant reception.

Dominique de Villepin made the point that politicians should not be interfering in school subject matter (surely he was referring to the U.S. evolution vs creationism controversy). Even though I agree with him about this, he just sounds so smarmy and smug, I can't stand it. Does he stand for anything at all? Or is he just one of those sensitive types who likes to comment in an ethereal fashion from a great height?

No Christmas carols

Here's one thing that is really different in Europe: I haven't heard a single Christmas carol yet, on the radio or anywhere else. Even after visiting two German Christmas markets and several department stores in France and Germany in the past two weeks.

I bet Europeans in the U.S. find the ubiquitous carols invasive and annoying. But I have to admit that I miss them.

Literally Jet Set

Charles de Gaulle/Roissy airport, where I have to spend a lot of time, has the triste distinction of being the worst place I know of for men invading the women's bathrooms. For some reason, almost every time you go into one, there are men standing there at the sink or coming out of the stalls. "Ne vous inquiétez pas!" they always say. "There's no soap in the men's room," or "There's no paper in the men's room," or "They're cleaning the men's room." Funny, the women don't seem forced by those same circumstances to march into the men's bathrooms. It bugs me and would scare a lot of women to have a strange man (and I do think these guys are strange) rattling at the door of their stall in a public bathroom.

The airport has a new symbol. I think it's cute.

Thanksgiving in Paris; disaster in Harbin

Thanksgiving in our house is a little different from the typical American Thanksgiving. It's true that we celebrate it on the same day as other Americans, which is unusual in Paris-- most Americans here don't have the day off, so they often have their Thanksgiving dinner on the weekends. Only the American companies and the U.S. government offices, like the consulate, take Thanksgiving as a holiday. The embassy and consulate take not only all American holidays but also (as legally required) all French holidays as well-- nice work if you can get it!

For at least the past ten years we have begun our Thanksgiving dinner with champagne, sauterne and foie gras en gelée. I knew that E from New Orleans would be here (although she and her friend had to come late because of work) and I made an even more Louisianan Thanksgiving than usual:

        --turkey roasted by our neighborhood rôtisseur (I don't like turkey, so I love being able to farm out that job) 
        -- rice and gravy
        --a sort of spoonbread made with asparagus, zucchini and corn
        --cranberry sauce
        --green beans and pecans
        and for dessert: pecan pie, apple pie, and pumpkin pie (I don't like it, so I bought one) with ice cream; chocolate pots de crème with whipped cream; and bread pudding with hard sauce.

The last, Buffin assured me, is as British as they come, and called bread-and-butter pudding there; but it is also a famous old New Orleans specialty, and I remember how, when I was a waitress there,  I used to sneak into the walk-in refrigerator whenever I could, to get a bite or two of the delicious bread pudding of our chef Joe. He had a vile temper and once chased his sous-chef out of the restaurant with a carving knife. He also got one waitress fired: he made sure her orders always came up last, so her customers were constantly complaining to the manager.

E and her friend came late from a teachers' meeting. They are both teaching English in suburban French public schools. They have been asked to teach British English, which is ridiculous: if the French are fixed upon British English, they should hire Brits to teach it. The two had both, sensibly, refused and said that it would be too unnatural. I certainly understand two of the reasons for teaching British English here: Britain is across the channel, not 3000 miles away; and the exams the students must prepare for are in British English. But the French often seem to get the idea from this that American English is a sort of inferior English, or even not English at all.  (If you believe this, please go away right now to another blog and don't ever come back.) Anyone who understands how languages evolve knows this is nonsense, and even for those who don't, how is it possible to believe that "I have a dog" (American version) is inferior to "I have got a dog" (British version, as taught in schools in France)? or that "lorry" is  the correct word and "truck" incorrect? (because the queen says it, I suppose? because of geography? that's what this argument comes down to.) All differences between British and American dialects are variations on those two examples, along with the differences in local accents.

After dinner we sat around the living room absolutely stuffed (Buffin and O had to go on to an office party afterwards. I felt so sorry for them). D read out Art Buchwald's famous article, which has been reprinted in the International Herald Tribune every Thanksgiving for at least fifty years. (While I add the links, the others are watching the first episode of the television series "Lost," which we can get only on DVD.)
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Le Jour de Merci Donnant

One of our most important holidays is Thanksgiving Day, known in France as le Jour de Merci Donnant.

Le Jour de Merci Donnant was first started by a group of Pilgrims (Pélerins) who fled from l'Angleterre before the McCarran Act to found a colony in the New World (le Nouveau Monde) where they could shoot Indians (les Peaux-Rouges) and eat turkey (dinde) to their hearts' content.

They landed at a place called Plymouth (now a famous voiture Américaine) in a wooden sailing ship called the Mayflower (or Fleur de Mai) in 1620. But while the Pélerins were killing the dindes, the Peaux-Rouges were killing the Pélerins, and there were several hard winters ahead for both of them. The only way the Peaux-Rouges helped the Pélerins was when they taught them to grow corn (maïs). The reason they did this was because they liked corn with their Pélerins.

In 1623, after another harsh year, the Pélerins' crops were so good that they decided to have a celebration and give thanks because more maïs was raised by the Pélerins than Pélerins were killed by Peaux-Rouges.

Every year on le Jour de Merci Donnant, parents tell their children an amusing story about the first celebration.

It concerns a brave capitaine named Miles Standish (known in France as Kilomètres Deboutish) and a young, shy lieutenant named Jean Alden. Both of them were in love with a flower of Plymouth called Priscilla Mullens (no translation). The vieux capitaine said to the jeune lieutenant:

"Go to the damsel Priscilla (allez tres vite chez Priscilla), the loveliest maiden of Plymouth (la plus jolie demoiselle de Plymouth). Say that a blunt old captain, a man not of words but of action (un vieux Fanfan la Tulipe), offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of a soldier. Not in these words, you know, but this, in short, is my meaning.

"I am a maker of war (je suis un fabricant de la guerre) and not a maker of phrases. You, bred as a scholar (vous, qui êtes pain comme un étudiant), can say it in elegant language, such as you read in your books of the pleadings and wooings of lovers, such as you think best adapted to win the heart of the maiden."

Although Jean was fit to be tied (convenable à être emballé), friendship prevailed over love and he went to his duty. But instead of using elegant language, he blurted out his mission. Priscilla was muted with amazement and sorrow (rendue muette par l'étonnement et las tristesse).

At length she exclaimed, interrupting the ominous silence: "If the great captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, why does he not come himself and take the trouble to woo me?" (Où est-il, le vieux Kilomètres? Pourquoi ne vient-il pas auprès de moi pour tenter sa chance?)

Jean said that Kilomètres Deboutish was very busy and didn't have time for those things. He staggered on, telling what a wonderful husband Kilomètres would make. Finally Priscilla arched her eyebrows and said in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you speak for yourself, Jean?" (Chacun à son goût.)

And so, on the fourth Thursday in November, American families sit down at a large table brimming with tasty dishes, and for the only time during the year eat better than the French do.

No one can deny that le Jour de Merci Donnant is a grande fête and no matter how well fed American families are, they never forget to give thanks to Kilomètres Deboutish, who made this great day possible.

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Here is an interesting account of a real-life pilgrim.

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Most people here don't seem to understand the magnitude of fast-developing disaster in Harbin, China. It is a city with almost 4 million people (Chicago has 2.8 million)--9 million in the metropolitan area-- in Manchuria, at roughly the latitude of Edmonton or Winnipeg in Canada, and just as cold: 12 degrees Fahrenheit (ca -11 C), well below freezing, right now. It's known as the Ice City. China already has less drinking water per capita than most other countries, and it's not as if the population can just go out and buy Evian, or move elsewhere; the Chinese government is also very unlikely to have the toxic spill cleaned up in a few days. Maybe this will force through some much-needed environmental measures. But meanwhile millions of people are suffering and could even die.

An Indian saint; three-star restaurants.

While I was in the U.K., an Indian saint came to Paris, and D went out to Rungis to see her, along with his brother and sister-in-law from the States. Rungis is out near Orly airport, kind of a pain to get to, and it's where the old Les Halles food market moved.  It was a huge place because thousands of people turned out to be embraced by Amaji, or Mother Meera. She is famous for just hugging people. The caption on the newsletter says, "Hugging the world for peace and harmony."

New Age is not really D's kind of thing, so I was curious what he thought. "I thought I'd be totally turned off," he said. "But it's amazing. She just stays there for hours, hugging literally thousands of people a day. I must say I felt something when she hugged me. Not a revelation, or enlightenment, or losing all my troubles, but really a sense of very deep unconditional love." The other people there were another kind of revelation. "All these nice, polite French people,  smiling and talking to strangers and not cutting in line!  I really have to get out of Paris more often."
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After they left, D found out that his brother and sister-in-law were really disappointed by the place we took them for dinner. They had wanted to go to a three-star Michelin kind of restaurant, but they had just told us to pick a good restaurant. So we went to the Balzar, a pleasant brasserie near the Sorbonne. It hadn't been good enough for them. They had wanted to go to a really good restaurant and had been willing to pay a lot of money for a Michelin three-star kind of experience. They are real foodies,  and D had misunderstood their understated midwestern request.

I realize I had a double standard. They just don't look like the kind of people you see in a Michelin three-star restaurant. They wore teal and purple clothes and thin nylon jackets, and the wife is grossly obese. I felt very badly when I discovered afterwards that she has a chronic, dangerous disease and that this may be her last trip to Paris.