French coverage of US elections: a window onto how they see us

Published November 25, 2012

When I was a little girl, if my teacher had asked me to make a picture of France, I would have drawn a man with a beret and a baguette, standing next to the Eiffel Tower. A French child, asked the same question about the USA, might have drawn the Empire State Building, with lots of tiny stick figures at its base, or a cowboy with horse and lasso in the wide open spaces of the Wild West. Those were the stereotypes then and some of them are still alive today.

The French media, covering the recent US presidential elections, painted a different picture of American life and politics. Some were stereotypical and clichéd, others, downright wrong. For example, on election night, broadcasting direct from Washington, the anchorman of France’s major public television newscast sagely commented on a map of the United States, showing states won by each of the candidates, except that the blue states were attributed to Romney, the red to Obama, giving Romney a significant lead and a chance for victory.

That blunder was the exception, not the rule. On the whole, the reporting was thorough and insightful, a rare chance “to see ourselves as others see us,” which is why, at November’s end, I’m looking back on the recent elections to take a look at how the French see us.

In April of this year, the French elected Socialist François Hollande President. Tea Party advocates might imagine that the French, at the news of “four more years,” were dancing in the streets, except that for the French, President Obama is a political figure who stands slightly right of center. They see him as a pragmatist, ready to compromise with Republicans to get a political job done.

As for his “socialist medicine,” the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, to French eyes, this is yet another manifestation of Barack Obama’s pragmatism. In a global economy, an American with good health coverage becomes a more healthy competitor. If serious illness does strike, he or she is not knocked out of the race by crushing medical bills. Some commentators wryly observed that a Romney victory could have actually given a competitive edge to Europe. His “less government” ideology most likely would have weakened, not strengthened, America’s ability to compete, causing the nation’s infrastructures to crumble and pushing the middle class towards poverty.

Wary of change, the French admire Americans’ relative optimism in the face of globalization and envy the US move toward energy independence, in part thanks to shale gas, extracted from Marcellus shale. However, on November 13, in his first press conference, President Hollande expressed his intention to respect the 2011 law outlawing hydraulic fracturing, despite large reserves of shale gas in France. He remains willing to reconsider the issue if safer methods of extraction come into use, but for the moment, fracking poses serious risks to drinking water supplies, as many Pennsylvanians know all too well.

A less religious people than Americans, the French were curious about Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, a religion they largely discovered thanks to election coverage that included informative reporting about The Church of the Latter Day Saints. During the campaign, there were reports about Joseph Smith’s revelation, Brigham Young’s great trek from Iowa to Utah, and the hit Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon.”

Analysis of Mormonism has been interesting too. Anne-Lorraine Bujon, a French researcher in international relations, describes it as an American tradition with Judeo-Christian roots, one which practices the Protestant work ethic, while celebrating the joys of earthly life. Also, Mormons have succeeded in creating a truly American mythology, built around the frontier and manifest destiny, with Salt Lake City as their New Jerusalem.

Other religious matters have also attracted French attention. For example, one of France’s weekly news magazines, Le nouvel observateur (The New Observer), in a recent issue devoted to what the French like best and least about the USA, points out the surprising information, at least to the French, that atheists are held in greater scorn than Muslims or homosexuals by certain segments of the American population. In a country where fervent religious belief is more the exception than the rule, the French have a hard time understanding the omnipresence of God and faith in American life, even though the American wall of separation between church and state is “sturdier” than that of France.

They also can’t quite get the gist of multiculturalism, a word the French translate as “communautarisme,” a slightly pejorative term that emphasizes voluntary separation from society, to form a community where members practice and preserve beliefs and customs different from those of the majority. In France, emphasis is placed on allegiance to a national community of shared republican values (in reference to the Republic) which take precedence over individual or group systems of belief. This explains in part why the French don’t like Muslim headscarves, a visible mark of difference displayed in public space.

As early as 1835, the great French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book Democracy in America, warned against the dangers of democratic individualism, when differences are carried too far, as can sometimes be the case with multiculturalism.

Another example Le nouvel observateur gives is the philosophy of Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate. Here’s a man who has chosen “my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I can decide for myself and define happiness for myself.” The analytically inclined French point out that this form of hyper-individualism goes against the very collective values he defends. How can he exclude other Americans from making the same kind of personal journey? In his case, happiness has meant a heterosexual marriage. On what grounds, then, can he deny others choices different from his own?

On the whole, the French are pleased by Obama’s victory, though their reasons may not be those Americans suspect. For them, President Obama personifies a victory of the 21st century. He represents a new kind of president and a new kind of American, biracial, multicultural in the best sense of the word, focused more on the Pacific and on Asia than on Europe—and that’s where his re-election hurts. The French, and Europeans in general, feel forgotten and hope that in his second term, Obama will turn to the Atlantic world as well.

Views of Paris shaped by Hollywood

Published: October 28, 2012, Republican Herald

We all like to believe we’re original or unique. We all like to think there’s something about our life that sets us apart from everybody else. For example, in my case, it was my choice to uproot myself from Pottsville, PA and move to Paris, France. How daring, how courageous, how different!

Well, that’s what I used to think until I saw “Paris Seen by Hollywood,” an exhibit filling an immense gallery at the city hall of Paris (Hôtel de Ville), open free to the public until December 15th. There I discovered I am simply a child of my times, the 1950’s and early sixties, the golden age of Paris-Hollywood. An American in Paris with Gene Kelly, Moulin Rouge, named after the famous Pigalle cabaret, with Zsa Zsa Gabor, Gigi with Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier, Love in the Afternoon, Sabrina, Funny Face, all three with the radiant Audrey Hepburn (my role model since a very early age?), Irma la Douce, with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, who plays a hooker with a heart of gold—that’s a lot of Paris to take in at a young and impressionable age.

Though my memories are vague, I think I started going to the movies almost as soon as I could walk. There were still Saturday matinees at the Capitol Theatre on North Centre Street and, after our parents dropped us off out front, we would run down the red-carpeted ramp to the popcorn stand, buy our buttered or plain, and then settle into the worn red velvet seats for a long afternoon of newsreels, cartoons and a feature film or two. Even before the lights went out and the screen lit up, the Capitol itself, shabby and exotic, a gilded Moorish palace going to seed, had the power to transport us far from home.

Bouncing on those seats (Saturday matinees lasted for hours and we had a hard time sitting still) or on those of the Hollywood, just a couple blocks south on the opposite side of Centre Street, we travelled around the world, into the past, into the future, and, very often, far from reality. With no teachers or parents to guide us, we put together our own ideas of the world, of life and of love. All those moving pictures, worth thousands, millions of words, marked us, I believe, for life.

Take Funny Face, for instance (many readers, I’m sure, enjoy watching these “old” movies on Turner Classic Movies, which often programs Paris-Hollywood classics). This 1956 film with Audrey Heburn, playing an American ingénue, and Fred Astaire, a sophisticated fashion photographer, is a modern take on the “ugly duckling” theme. In her home surroundings (New York City), Audrey Hepburn is a homely girl, working in a bookstore. Whisk her off to Paris and she is transformed! The gawky girl becomes the very model of Parisian elegance. Dressed in Givenchy fashions created especially for her, she embodies the spirit of the city, carefree, beautiful, sophisticated, and intelligent, no less. Gee, no wonder I’m here. Who could ask or wish for more?

Funny Face, directed by Stanley Donen, marks a turning point in Paris-Hollywood. It is the film which made Audrey Hepburn a star. It is also one of the first Hollywood films actually shot in the streets of Paris. Up until that time, nearly all were shot on lots in and around Hollywood. MGM had the “biggest” Paris, located in Culver City, where An American in Paris was made. This 1951 musical, with Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, sings and dances us through the city, serving up delightful clichés about Paris that American tourists are still searching for today.

Gene Kelly plays a World War II vet, come to Paris to make it as an artist. He lives in a garret beneath those famous Parisian rooftops immortalized in dozens of Hollywood films (remember Disney’s 1971 AristoCats or the more recent Ratatouille?). He falls in love. There’s another man in the picture, but everything works out in the end. But before that can happen, Kelly and Caron, the film’s true lovers, dance soulfully to Gershwin music beneath a bridge over the Seine, and Kelly imagines a happy ending for their love. In this 30-minute dream sequence, set entirely in painted decors, Kelly dances in and out of Impressionist paintings by Renoir and Monet. In one scene, he brings to life a dancer in a painting by Toulouse Lautrec, truly animating the work with the genius of his dance.

Americans have an on-going love affair with Impressionist painting and I’m ready to bet that An American in Paris played a part in keeping that love alive, as did the 1954 film French Cancan, directed by Jean Renoir. In this movie devoted to the cabarets of Montmartre in the year 1900, Renoir pays a tribute to his father, Impressionist painter Auguste Renoir, who immortalized one of the most famous in his painting Le Moulin de la Galette. This film also revives the French cancan, a forgotten dance brought back to life thanks to the silver screen.

The year 1900 also marks the beginning of American filmmakers’ love affair with Paris. That year, Paris hosted the World’s Fair and Thomas Edison travelled to the city with cameras and a team that filmed Paris in motion. Dominating the skyline, the Eiffel Tower, only 11 years old, begins its career as the symbol of the city, destined to appear in hundreds of American films.

In all, there have been over 800 Hollywood movies set in Paris and it would be no exaggeration to say the city has become a part of us. Lon Chaney as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Greta Garbo as Camille, “la Dame aux Camélias,” Audrey Hepburns’s Funny Face, Maurice Chevalier in Gigi, all of them Hollywood icons, though, among those actors, only Chaney was actually born in the United States.

Does that mean I can thank the former Hollywood and Capitol Theatres of Pottsville for my being in Paris today? Yes, in part, without a doubt. Have I found the mythic Paris of Hollywood I came looking for? Yes and no, but mostly no. It only exists on screen and in our hearts.

But I have found something else, a subtle ingredient of many of those films. I’ve discovered a great big world, composed of many peoples, cultures and languages. That’s what Paris has become today. And I got my first taste for it, bouncing on a red velvet seat at a Saturday matinee at the Capitol.

Celebrating good, bad of autumn

Published in The Republican Herald, September 30, 2012

Last Sunday, on my way up the hill to my neighborhood farmer’s market, I found myself dodging falling horse chestnuts, a sure sign, despite unseasonably warm temperatures, that autumn has arrived. At the market, there were further signs: mountains of plump green “Italia” grapes from Sicily, bunches of deep purple Muscat grapes from France, fresh figs, and vine peaches, an early autumn variety, whose fruit is blood-red.

I buy some of each because I know they won’t be around for long. Soon the choices will be limited to oranges, bananas, pears and apples, winter staples, which is nothing to complain about. One of my fondest childhood memories is of Sunday excursions to Blazer Orchards, in the Hegins Valley, to buy McIntosh apples. We couldn’t wait to get home to eat them, we couldn’t even wait to get back into the car. From a bushel basket, we’d grab an apple and bite into the crispy fruit, through the red skin into the white flesh, tinged here and there with a pink blush. Sweet and tart all at once, those apples captured the perfect bittersweet flavor of early autumn, a gift of sun and warmth, a frosty tang as an aftertaste.

I haven’t experienced a Pennsylvania autumn in more than twenty-five years and it is something I deeply miss. Autumn is not vacation time for teachers, so I’ll have to wait for my still distant retirement years if I hope to once again observe, first hand, leaves falling in a symphony of colors.

For the Parisian I have become, autumn has taken on other distinctive shades. Besides horse chestnuts and the bounty of my local market, there’s the annual International Dahlia Show, which takes place each year in late September at Parc floral, a botanical garden at the eastern edge of Paris. There, in a confined space, when compared to the Pennsylvania hills, I can immerse myself in a riot of intense color, which partially satisfies my yearning for a crisp, sunny autumn day, taken in, let’s say, from the southwestern slope of Sharp Mountain, looking out over Indian Run.

Unfortunately, autumn in the city also means crowds. All those who fled the dog days of summer have returned and in the metro, we’re back to riding cheek to cheek, conscious of fellow travellers who had garlic or a glass of wine with their most recent meal. Only last evening, I stepped into a crowded car permeated with the sickeningly sweet odor of urine. As we all do, I’ve noticed, I looked around for the source, for the “culprit” (of course, it couldn’t be me!), but, unable to find one, I just grabbed onto a pole (sitting in the metro is a luxury of summertime) and limited myself to shallow breaths. That’s when I noticed “he” was standing next to me, a poor soul, dressed in drab clothes that were giving off “that odor.” The car was too crowded for me to move away. What if people began thinking it was me! I forgot all about the smell and began to worry about guilt by association!

Luckily, he got off at the next stop, clearing the air and clearing me of guilt because he took the smell away with him. For the last part of the ride, I could concentrate on pleasant memories of the day I had just spent visiting hidden treasures of Paris, open to the public one weekend each year. In fact, all over Europe, the weekend of September 15th and 16th was “le weekend du patrimoine,” “heritage weekend,” another annual fall event I always look forward to.

In Paris, for two days, buildings generally closed to the public open their doors to welcome us. Those ready to stand in line for five hours can step over the threshold of Elysée Palace, home to President François Hollande. Rumor has it that on Sunday, he was guiding some of the tours himself. Those with a bent for law and order and its inseparable opposite, crime, can penetrate the inner courtyard of 36, quai des Orfèvres, the “Scotland Yard” of Paris, located on Ile de la Cité, the island at the city’s heart. For those seeking treasures on a smaller scale, every city neighborhood holds surprises, some unusual, others of unexpected beauty, many in our own “backyard.”

That’s why my friend Nathalie and I decided to concentrate on hidden treasures close to home. Our destination was some nearby “hôtels particuliers,” once the elegant townhouses of wealthy members of the French aristocracy, located in the Marais (which means “swamp”), on the Right Bank of the Seine. At the beginning of the 17th century, it was the most fashionable neighborhood in Paris, but then as now, trends in fashion are quick to change. By the end of the century, those same aristocrats were abandoning their homes for the Left Bank, which had become the new “quartier à la mode.” The townhouses of the Marais were transformed into warehouses, apartments, workshops and shops. It was not until the latter part of the 20th century that many were restored to their former glory.

In 1813, one of the most elegant became the barracks of a company of fire-fighters, members of a national corps created by Napoleon in 1811, a function it continues to serve. Hidden from view, located in a street where I’ve often walked, never suspecting its existence, this elegant townhouse, “Hôtel Bouthillier de Chavigny,” occupies part of a large inner courtyard, once a formal French garden, today a dusty plot where fire-fighters’ children can play and firemen park their cars.

Their home is a magnificent palace in the pure French classical style, designed by François Mansart (1598-1666) who sought to adapt the architecture of Antiquity to his times. On the ground floor, former reception rooms are today the fire-fighters’ gym. The upper floors have been divided into apartments. In one wing, there is a small museum devoted to the brigade’s history, in another, a recreation room. An adjacent building, off-limits to visitors, houses all the fire-fighting equipment Many Parisians would love to live in such a setting, but few would be ready to do a fire-fighter’s job.

Next weekend, autumn festivities continue with an annual festival of American literature with Toni Morrison as this year’s special guest. In the city, there’s certainly lots to do, but I’d throw it all over for a walk in “Penn’s woods” on a perfect fall day.

Ramadan celebrated in France

As I write, it is Ramadan and my neighbors are fasting. One of them gets up early and leaves for work around 5:30 to catch the first metro of the day. The other works late, usually returning home around eight or nine, perfect timing during the month-long fast of Ramadan, which ends this year on August 19th. Each evening, he can participate in the preparation of iftar, the meal marking the end of the daily fast stretching from sunrise to sundown. During that time, Muslims freely give their time to God, practicing the self-restraint encouraged by the Quran.

My neighbors are from Mali, a land-locked country of northwest Africa. They live and work in France so their families can live better in their native land. They do not take month-long vacations nor do they go out very often. They work, share meals, rest, and send money home. Northern Mali has recently been taken over by Taliban affiliated with Al Qaeda, sending thousands of refugees fleeing south. I wonder what it is like to be so far from home in time of war and strife.

My friend Karima is fasting. In less than a week, she is leaving for the United States, where she will begin work as a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin. This will be her first extended stay in an English-speaking country. She speaks our language well but has never practiced it on a daily basis. In other words, she has yet to be immersed in American life, where the real business of language learning takes place. Naturally, she is nervous and sometimes afraid, but mostly she is busy, wrapping up one life before she begins another in a new language and land.

After a gray, cool month of July, August in Paris has been hot and muggy. Karima, with dozens of things to do before stepping on her plane, has been hurrying through the hot streets and down into the steamy metro several times a day. I wonder what it is like to face the heat and crowds with stomach empty and throat dry.

In my neighborhood, all around me, people are fasting. At the local outdoor market, is it just my imagination or are veiled Muslim women, pushing baby carriages or pulling shopping carts, truly walking more sluggishly? What about the workmen renovating an apartment in my building? I’ve met the foreman. He is from Tunisia but has lived in France for the past twenty years. Some of his workers are French, others, Tunisian. All are Muslim, working long hours during Ramadan.

On the subject of working and fasting, there has been a controversy this year involving four Muslim camp counsellors. They were laid off for not taking in adequate quantities of fluids and food during work hours, as stipulated in their contract. Located in the Parisian suburbs, the town of Gennevilliers that hired them argued that three years ago, a fasting counsellor was involved in an accident while transporting children. Feeling faint, she lost control of the vehicle. The town did not want to risk similar accidents. The counsellors’ lawyers are arguing that such a requirement to eat and drink is a disguised form of discrimination against Muslims.

As France’s Muslim population grows, surely there will be more conflicts of this type, requiring negotiation and compromise as France’s approximately six million Muslims and the sixty million Frenchmen of other faiths or of none (atheists and agnostics abound) learn to better live and work together.

During Ramadan, I like to descend from my hilltop neighborhood, Buttes Chaumont, to Belleville, the heart of Arab Paris. There, street vendors sell fermented milk and dates, fresh cilantro and mint, special breads and crepes made from semolina, soups, salads and all kinds of cakes. In late afternoon, hours before sunset, crowds jostle each other on the sidewalks and, instead of concentrating on self-restraint, I’d say those around me have a one-track mind, eying mountains of fresh mint or trays of honey cakes, anticipating the first sip of something cool, the first bite of something sweet.

Following the advice of Muslim friends, I do not make my purchases in the street but step inside established shops. My favorite is “Délice de Sfax” (“delight from Sfax,” a city in Tunisia, the name of a pastry shop located at 9, rue Couronne), where Madame Boussa always greets me. She too is fasting while working in the kitchen and in the shop.

During Ramadan, besides cakes, she also prepares special crepes filled with grilled vegetables, a kind of Tunisian quiche called tajine, made with cheese, meat and vegetables, and the traditional chorba, a delicate barley soup. I’ve tried them all and shared them with friends. Unanimously, we find her cooking délicieux.

However, her spécialité is dozens of varieties of cakes made from pistachios, pine nuts, walnuts, almonds or hazelnuts, most of them bite-sized, true works of art to be popped into the mouth. There are also almond-flavored crescents and doughnuts, but if ever you pass by her shop, I would highly recommend the bite-sized cakes made from honey and nuts.

At the beginning of August, I headed south to a friend’s wedding, taking place near Clermont-Ferrand, a city of central France. There I visited the Romanesque basilica Notre Dame du Port, built in the 11th and 12th centuries. It is a beautiful church and its underground crypt is filled with a spiritual presence that mysteriously took hold of me.

Upon leaving the church, I met a woman and began talking with her about the crypt. She had many times experienced that “presence” and often went there to pray. Having struck up a conversation, I decided to ask her if she knew where I could find a branch of my bank. Early that morning, in Paris, I had had a worrisome problem with my bank card. After reflecting, she said to me, “The route is complicated, I’ll take you there.”

Walking through the streets of Clermont-Ferrand, this very attractive woman, the epitome of French elegance, told me a bit about herself. She is Muslim, she was fasting and during Ramadan, she often visited Notre Dame du Port, preferring it to mosques where men and women pray separately. She took me to my bank and then continued on her way, a woman glowing with vitality who, just like in Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount,” did not appear to fast.

When this article goes to press, Ramadan will have already ended, but I hope it is not too late to say “alf mabrouk,” 1,000 congratulations, to Muslim readers who fasted during the holy month of Ramadan.

Simple vacations are sometimes the best…

Published in The Republican Herald July 29, 2012

Paris in Song

Published June 24, 2012

It’s not often I walk through the streets of Paris, humming, singing, swaying to a melody. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like to draw attention to herself in the street, but today is different. I’m walking on air, care-free, my heart full of song. No, I haven’t just fallen in love, nor have I hit the jackpot playing Loto, the French national lottery. Today, I simply stepped outside and headed to the library!

Yes, to the library. There, at an exhibit organized by the public libraries of the city of Paris, I discovered Paris en chansons, Paris in Song, one of the most joyful exhibits I’ve been to in years and readers with a computer can discover it too at www.chansons.paris.fr. And there’s no need to understand French. The range of emotions expressed in the more than four hundred recordings that make up the exhibit (out of a selection of 2,800 songs about Paris) speak the universal language of music, transcending words and borders, capable of touching hearts everywhere.

Before we enter the exhibit, those who would like to read and listen at the same time can go to the homepage of Paris en chansons. At the bottom of your screen you’ll see an orange bar for Radio Deezer, a French-based music streaming service, which, till July 29, the day the exhibit closes, will be streaming non-stop songs about Paris spanning a period of nearly five hundred years. The most ancient is “Voulez ouyr les cris de Paris,” “Hear the cries of Paris,” a song written by Clément Janequin in 1530, which provides a mouth-watering inventory of all the food and drink sold by hucksters in the city streets nearly 500 years ago.

At the other end of the timeline, one of the most recent is “Gare du Nord,” “North Station,” recorded in 2009 by Malakoff, a French rock group that grinds out a hard-rock ballad about the misery and excitement found in this Parisian train station, the busiest in Europe, the most dangerous in France.

In between, there are lots of familiar faces, voices, and songs for both the French and Americans. I listened to Cole Porter’s “I Love Paris” and heard Petula Clark sing “Hello Paris.” Everywhere, in photos, video and sound recordings, I met Maurice Chevalier, star of the 1958 MGM movie “Gigi,” where he sang “Thank heaven for little girls.” Considered a typical “French lover,” he inspired the Looney Tunes character Pepé le Pew and remains one of the best known French singers in the world. I stopped to admire a photo of the frail Edith Piaf, “the little sparrow,” weighed down by her accordion. I also listened to Yves Montand as he strolls along the boulevards of Paris, Charles Aznavour singing about why he loves Paris in May, and Brigitte Bardot celebrating “les p’tites femmes de Paris,” the elusive women of Paris who always know how to keep a man on his toes.

Many names familiar to the French may be less so to Americans, such as Juliette Greco whose 1951 rendition of “Sous le ciel de Paris,” “Under the Paris sky,” is my favorite. There’s also Barbara (1930-1997), a singer for whom “Seine” often rhymed with “peine” (Seine and pain went together). Going further back in time, three legendary figures stand out: Aristide Bruant (1851-1925), Mistinguett (1875-1956), and Josephine Baker (1906-1975).

The painter Toulouse Lautrec immortalized Aristide Bruant, the father of French popular song, who sang in the language of the streets of Paris, protesting against injustice, celebrating the life of the working class. Surely, many readers will recognize his portrait or a poster of Le Chat noir (The Black Cat), the famous Montmartre cabaret where he performed. At the exhibit, I listened to an 1889 recording of him singing one of his compositions, “A la place Maubert,” “On Maubert Square.”





Mistinguett, singer, dancer, actress, star of stage and screen, sang at Moulin Rouge and, in 1926, was the star of the opening ball of the Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro. That same year, “Ça, c’est Paris,” “That’s Paris,” the song that became her “anthem,” was composed. Performing it, she belts out that Paris is a blond who makes everybody happy. Her chief rival, Josephine Baker (1906-1975), the African-American singer who, in the 1920’s and 30’s, took Paris by storm, might have disagreed. At the Folies Bergères, she sang “Paris, Paris, Paris” and “J’ai deux amours,” “I have two loves” (France and the USA), and brought the house down.





Ernest Hemingway wrote that Paris is “A Moveable Feast.” Parisians might argue that, above all, “Paris is a song,” and every neighborhood has its own. The website of Paris en chansons provides an interactive map (carte interactive), where, district by district, decade by decade, from the 1870’s to the present, you can discover how each Parisian neighborhood was turned into song. Mine, near what were once the slaughter houses and the meat market of the city, has been immortalized in “Les joyeux bouchers,” “The Happy Butchers,” a 1954 tango whose refrain is “it’s gotta bleed, it’s gotta bleed.”

In the past, before Parisians began tuning out the world and tuning into music only they can hear through headphones plugged into electronic devices, they actually joined together in song. Paris en chansons also documents how sheet music was sold in the streets, a practice developed by Aristide Bruant who would send out singers with a bundle of his songs printed as sheet music. They, in turn, would set up shop on street corners, singing the songs, distributing the music to bystanders and encouraging them to join in. If the melody “struck a chord,” Parisians were ready to pay a few pennies to take the sheet music home to play on the piano or sing with family and friends.

I’m tempted to sigh, those were the good old days, but perhaps that’s what many songs devoted to Paris are all about. They make us feel nostalgic about a mythic city that only exists in song and in our dreams.

As for Pottsville and song, this exhibit got me thinking about George Korson, a reporter at The Pottsville Republican in the 1920’s and a life-long collector of anthracite folklore and song until his death in 1967. The songs he recorded are available on the CD “Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miners” (Round Rounder 1502), and, on You Tube, you can hear Pottsville miner William E. Keating singing “Down, Down, Down,” recorded by Korson in 1946. Those too were the good old days.

France's new president already busy at work

Published: May 27, 2012

Well, President Obama has met him and I suppose, by this time, you may have caught a glimpse of him, too. I'm referring, of course, to France's new president, Francois Hollande.

On May 18, he and Barack Obama had a chance to meet and get acquainted over lunch at the White House before heading to Camp David for the G8 summit. Socialist President Hollande arrived with a particular message: he is pitching a pro-growth, pro-stimulus package to get faltering economies back on track. Only time will tell if he can make his ideas work.

For now, he is busy proving to the world and to France, to the near 52 percent of voters who chose him and the 48 percent who did not, that he is the right man for the job. So far, so good. Hollande appears energetic and devoted to the French Republic. From candidate, he got down to the business of being president almost overnight. Officially in office since May 15, he has deliberately played down the regal side of the French presidency, where the commander in chief lives more like a king than a citizen. Instead, he has promised to live a "normal" life, rejecting many presidential privileges, presenting himself as the No. 1 public servant of France. Once again, only time will tell if the new president can resist the sense of privilege that comes with inhabiting the gilded halls of Elysee Palace, the official presidential residence, once home to Madame de Pompadour, the "favorite" of King Louis XV, his official lover at the French court.

From my American point of view, Hollande has set his presidency in motion in a hardworking yet low-key way. On May 6, a mere three weeks ago, the man was still a candidate. On that day, like millions of the French, I made my way to my local polling place, a classroom in an elementary school a few steps from my home, to cast my vote in the presidential election. First, I presented my voter registration card and then I picked up an envelope and three squares of pale blue newsprint, one blank and the other two printed with the names of the candidates, the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialist Francois Hollande. From there, I headed to a voting booth, put one paper in the envelope (and I'll let readers guess who I voted for) and crumpled the two others before dropping them in a waste basket placed in easy reach (no problem with hanging chads or computer fraud).

The next step was the most solemn. I approached the "urn," a locked transparent ballot box. Once again I identified myself, demonstrating I had only one envelope in hand. After I slipped it into the box, an observer called out "a vote" (has voted). Then, for the final step, I moved off to the side to sign the register containing the names of those authorized to vote in that particular polling place. On May 6, I was one of the 36,562,072 French women and men, more than 81 percent of registered voters, who observed this ritual.

By eight that evening, the results were in: for the second time in the Fifth Republic, formed in 1958, a Socialist candidate could claim victory. This had not happened since 1981, the year Francois Mitterrand was elected president. That evening, supporters rallied at the Bastille, to sing, shout, dance and drink the night away. A little after midnight, Hollande showed up to thank his electors and reiterate his promise for change. The next morning, bright and early, he was at work, meeting with advisors to begin putting together his new government. The following day, May 8, V-E Day, he was walking up the Champs Elysees in the company of President Sarkozy. Side-by-side, they placed a spray of flowers on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

One week later, on May 15, the official transfer of powers took place. Observing this process, but also participating as a citizen for the first time since my arrival in France 25 years ago, I had the feeling things were happening too fast. After all, in the United States, a newly elected president has more than two months to get used to the idea before he actually takes the reins of power. He has time to rest after a hard campaign and wrap up one life before beginning another. And Inauguration Day, although not an official holiday for all Americans, has all the ingredients: the solemn swearing-in ceremony on the steps of the Capitol, the parade along Pennsylvania Avenue, the many inaugural balls and banquets, spanning a period of 10 days.

A French friend provided me with one explanation for this hasty transfer of powers. He reminded me that in the days of the monarchy, between the time a deceased king was put in the grave and a new king mounted the throne, the country was ruled by an effigy, a mannequin stuffed with straw made to look like the former king. Obviously, straw men don't have much power and it was important to get a new, flesh-and-blood king on the throne fast. Likewise for a new president. Others, however, believe Hollande has been doing his best to not behave like former president Sarkozy, who, on election night, celebrated with the rich and famous in a very expensive Parisian restaurant and, the next day, continued to celebrate on a rich friend's yacht in the Mediterranean Sea.

Whatever the explanation, Hollande's "Inauguration Day" was all work and no play: lunch at Elysee Palace with former prime ministers and Nobel Prize winners, speeches in the afternoon and then a flight to Berlin (the airplane was struck by lightning - an inauspicious sign?) to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the woes of the European economy. Conspicuously absent from the day's ceremonies were the new president's four children and their mother, his former companion (no, not wife), Segolene Royal, who lost to Nicolas Sarkozy in France's 2007 presidential elections. At his side, was his new companion (no, not wife), Valerie Trierweiler, a journalist.

A mere three weeks after elections, the new government is in place and busily working to bring about change, Hollande's main campaign theme. As for how the French look at elections, inaugurations and the private life of their presidents, their attitudes are very different from ours.

To conclude, I'll just say, "Vive la difference."

(Honicker can be reached at honicker.republican herald@gmail.com)