Am I nice?

 

When you straddle continents and an ocean, you end up asking yourself where you belong. In my case, I wonder if I’m French or American. The best answer would be that I am both. I have two cultures and two languages. I’ve also finely honed my powers of observation because, when in a foreign country, it’s up to the foreigner to adapt.

Many years ago, fifty to be exact, I was invited to a formal dinner in Paris by the friend of a friend of a friend. There were many pieces of cutlery on the table and far too many hermetically arranged around my plate. This was a dinner where we were assigned seats by our hostess and I was flanked by a gentleman on each side. While my neighbor was telling me about his stables and the purebreds he raised, I only half listened, keeping an eye on the main dish circulating around the table, chicken swimming in pineapple sauce.

I watched the other guests (there were about 20 of us) grab hold of two utensils, a silver serving spoon and fork, and expertly, with one hand, serve themselves a piece of chicken and then cover it with a layer of sauce. It looked tricky. One utensil I could handle, but how could I hold them both in one hand and get the food to my plate?

The truth is, I couldn’t. My chicken got away and there it lay on the white tablecloth in a puddle of sauce.

My neighbor, a true chevalier, immediately came to my rescue. Expertly, he took the utensils from me, whisked the chicken from the table to my plate, added a dash of pineapple sauce, served himself, and then passed on the dish. Much like a magician, he discretely poured some water on his napkin and flicking it over the stain, barely touching it at all (this was truly an act of legerdemain), he made it disappear!

How nice of him! Comme c’était gentil!

But was I nice? Was I gentille? I felt like a country bumpkin among the golden youth of the French aristocracy.

The answer to the question? No, I was not nice. How do I know? Before this dinner, the hostess had invited me to tea and we exchanged “bristols,” calling cards, just like in an Edith Wharton novel. After this dinner, I was never invited again, neither to tea nor for a meal. I had committed a faux-pas, my lack of savoir-vivre excluded me from that society…forever.

“Nice” is a funny word, as is the French equivalent “gentil.”

My Merriam Webster tells me “nice” has its origin in the French word “niais,” and the French word has its root in the Latin nescius, meaning ignorant. When first used in English in the 14^th century, “nice” was a word you’d most likely apply to a prostitute. It meant “wanton, bawdy, lustful;” it could also mean “undisciplined, unruly,” words far removed from its current usage.

But what exactly does “nice” mean? Today it is associated with appropriate or pleasing behavior; applied to things, it signifies they are agreeable to us. Yet it’s also a word that hints at mediocrity.

          “How was your evening?”

          “Oh, it was nice,” said with a shrug of the shoulders.

The meaning of “gentil” has also evolved. Centuries ago, it referred to those of noble birth—and we find this root in the word gentleman. Not so long ago, in the last century, when applied to a young girl, it meant pretty, cute, but not outright beautiful.  

Today it has taken on the same meanings as “nice,” right down to the taint of mediocrity. Every time I hear a French person use the word “gentil,” I wonder if it’s a compliment or a veiled way of saying “it’s not the best, but it will do.” When someone thanks me for an act of kindness with the words “c’est gentil,” I only feel half-thanked.

On April 6^th of this month, the MAGA candidate for the presidency was speaking at a fund-raising dinner in Palm Beach. That evening, he was surrounded by millionaires and his host, John Paulson, is a bona fide billionaire. In a speech to guests, the candidate lamented that the United States does not welcome enough immigrants from “nice countries,” and gave as examples Denmark and Switzerland.

In the past 200 years, immigration from those two countries has represented but a fraction of the Europeans who left their native land to settle in the United States. The number of Swiss Americans is estimated at about one million; the number of Danish Americans, about 300 thousand more. If you asked the Swiss or Danes to immigrate to the US, I’m not sure they would come.

In comparison, 19 to 20 million Americans consider themselves Polish Americans, and Chicago is known as the biggest Polish city after Warsaw. In the coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania, during the 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike, Polish miners, many having just arrived on American soil, were brought in to work in the mines. They wanted work. They did not know they’d be considered scabs in one of the longest strikes in UMW history. 

Troops sent in against striking miners in 1902

It took time for the taint of being strike-breakers to wear off, and prejudice against Polish Americans continued in the coal region for decades. You can be sure they were not considered “nice.”

A Polish immigrant with her child, Ellis Island 1913

In the 1920’s, when the movie industry was taking off and filmmakers were on the lookout for new talent, California was advertised as “Italy without the Italians.” Italy was not a “nice” place either.

An advertisement for a very successful Italian restaurant where my family dined when I was a child.

Going further back to the 1840’s and 1850’s, when the Irish arrived in droves on “coffin ships,” where often half the passengers died in transit, “true” Americans saw them as dirty and dangerous. The men were rapists; the women, spreaders of disease. Yet today, 32 million Americans proudly declare themselves of Irish ancestry. 

How political cartoonist Thomas Nash depicted the Irish in 1871

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries they were “Micks, Dagos, Polacks,” and “true” Americans looked down on them. In the 21st, the descendants of former immigrants look down on “Wetbacks, Mojados, Beaners.”

And just as words change—nice has travelled from ignorant to lustful to pleasing—so do immigrants. They adapt, they become citizens, they love their new land, and finally, they couldn’t care less if their neighbor finds them nice or not.

         

         

Easter past, present and future…

 

 

There is a French poem from the 15^th century by a notorious poet named François Villon, who is also remembered for being an assassin and a thief. It is called “The Ballad of the Ladies of Yore” and has as its refrain a line well known in France: “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?” But where are the snows of yesteryear?

We all feel that way sometimes. Things used to be better. The snow was whiter, in winter the storms were bigger, and when spring arrived, the tender beauty of the season blossomed quietly, taking us by surprise.

I remember frosty Easters when we covered our fluffy new dresses with winter coats and worried about slipping on patches of ice as we walked to church in our patent leather Mary Janes. I remember sun and warmth and springtime flowers as well. Back in those days of yesteryear, on Good Fridays, between 12 and 3 PM, all the stores in downtown Pottsville (and there were many) turned off their lights and locked the doors in respect for the Passion of Christ.

On Easter Sunday, after church, just like on Fifth Avenue in New York, Pottsville had its Easter Parade on Centre Street. Ladies strolled in pastel suits with matching hats. Back then, we girls and ladies were proud to wear our Easter bonnets on Easter Day, straw hats with ribbons and artificial daisies or cherries for the girls; for the ladies, hats that would have made the late Queen Elizabeth II proud.

When we sat down to Easter dinner, many of us ate the same meal: baked ham, potato salad, pickled eggs and other trimmings, according to family tradition. As our parents and adult guests drank their coffee after the meal, we children, unsupervised, ran out to play. 

The good old days, some might say, back when Pottsville was a real community. It was also a de facto segregated town. I don’t remember strolling in the Easter parade with African American families. Their community lived clustered around Minersville Street and the rest of us, well, we had the run of pretty much the rest of town. Back in those days, even Catholics and Protestants kept their distance. Some Catholic children on my block were not allowed to play with me. In my Protestant household, it’s true, we didn’t make it to church every week.

In my family both my parents worked. In the early 1960’s, my father did not have a good job. We depended on my mom’s salary as a teacher. When she began teaching in the 1940’s, elementary school teachers earned $1,000 dollars a year. My mother told me that when she was first hired, she was warned that having a baby was not compatible with the job.

By the 1960’s, many teachers did marry and it was a given that their husbands worked, a reason for keeping teaching salaries low. If they didn’t have a husband, their teaching was considered a vocation; they themselves, secular nuns. In general, in 1960, women earned 60% of what men earned for the same or comparable work.    

The snows of yesteryear may appear whiter, but were we really better off then?

Yes and no, would be my answer. Until the Reagan years, the wealthiest Americans paid 70% of their earnings to the tax man. Since that time, their share of the tax burden has plummeted while their overall wealth has increased by 140%. In contrast, over the same period, the poorest Americans have gained about 20%, this according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity published in November 2022 (https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/taxes/unequal-burden/how-four-decades-of-tax-cuts-fueled-inequality/ ). As for the middle class, their tax cuts have been modest as have been their gains.

Before the 1980’s, when it came to wealth and taxes, the United States was a more equitable place. The middle class, today declining in number, and the poor, a growing segment of the population, had a better chance of getting ahead. With the passage of the Economic Recovery Act of 1981, President Reagan initiated a series of tax cuts for corporations and the rich that were supposed to have a “trickle-down” effect. Since then, such theories have been exposed as bunk. 

But tax breaks for the rich are not the only reason for changes in Pottsville. Many other factors came into play. Coal was dethroned as king a century ago. When the economy went global, it became cheaper to produce many goods overseas. First the mines, then the factories closed. There was also, there always has been, greed.

If I were going to “make America great again,” I would return to those days of fairer taxation, when rich and poor alike carried their fair share of the burden of making the United States a better place. I would not, however, do away with any laws or progress that have made life better and fairer for African Americans or for women. And I would certainly wish that everyone could receive good medical care at a fair and reasonable price. Society is close to rock bottom when insurance companies, and not doctors, can decide the life or death of policy holders through the rationing of care.

But we must not forget that Easter is a day of boundless hope. It is a day for laying aside fear. Pope John Paul II exhorted Christians, “Do not be afraid. Open, I say open wide the doors for Christ. To His saving power open the boundaries of states, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization, and development.”

You do not need to be a Christian to be moved by these words. In the place of Christ, we could substitute “the common good,” bigger than any one individual.

When I was a child, I never saw a woman in the pulpit. Even in Protestant churches, men preached, women taught children in Sunday School, played the organ, sang or directed the choir.

In wishing for a better world on this day of boundless hope, I think of Mary Magdalene, the first to have seen the risen Christ. For so long, it’s been a man’s world. Might this not have been Christ’s way of saying, “Give women their fair chance and the world will be a better place.” 

Noli me tangere, Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614)