Love (and marriage?) in the Parisian metro

Spring has finally come to Paris after the longest winter I’ve ever known since my arrival in the city over twenty years ago. Temperatures, the weathermen and women promise, will soon rise to 70° and tomorrow we’re going to see the sun! Yes, this winter has been bleak, cold and dark, relentlessly so, day after day, and Parisians have behaved accordingly. Already famous (or infamous) for their unfriendliness towards each other and towards strangers, they have outdone themselves this past winter, freezing facial muscles into a permanent frown.

Luckily, to ward off the cold and escape the blues, we can always head underground. There, riding the more than 130 miles of the Parisian metro system, travelling between its more than 300 different stops, we can benefit from sauna-like conditions year-round, while participating in a form of urban theater, complete with surprises, laughter and tears.

For example, about two weeks ago, when temperatures were still hovering around freezing and we were all wrapped up in winter coats, a young man in shirt sleeves stepped into the car and launched into a speech, beginning with the customary “Mesdames, messieurs.” Shuffling our feet, turning away from him, we all closed in upon ourselves, prepared to listen to yet another appeal to our hearts and to our wallets, stiffening up in anticipation of him rattling a cup filled with coins in our face.

But no, he began by assuring us, our loose change did not interest him. His was a different mission. He was asking us to listen, appealing to our hearts, but his message was unique and he soon managed to put a smile on our faces and even got us talking, perfect strangers in the metro carrying on a friendly exchange.

He had entered our car with something to offer, not to sell, he told us, and it was up to us to choose if we were interested or not. He was offering, in fact, himself, which he did in about two minutes, the time it took to travel between two stations before he stepped off at the third.

He told us his age, 28, and his profession—he was trained as an engineer. And I can attest he was a nice-looking, clean-cut young man. Though he did not tell us his nationality, I would say he was from what the French call the Maghreb, Tunisia, Algeria or Morocco, all countries where French is a second language spoken by almost everyone. He spoke it extremely well and quickly got his message across.

He was single, serious and available and what he was looking for was a potential bride, a woman standing or sitting in that stuffy car of the metro interested, like him, in tying the knot. He wanted a wife, a home, a family, and there he was in the flesh, not like on those on-line dating sites, where you never know if what you see is what you get.

All the while he spoke, he smiled, and soon we were all smiling too. And talking. The woman standing next to me expressed her surprise. I commented he looked like a nice young man. Both of us, hitting sixty, were spectators. He was not addressing himself to us, but to some young woman sharing his desires. All she had to do was follow him onto the platform when the train came to its next stop.

And when it did, the doors opened and the young man got off, alone. No woman followed him off the train. No bites, at least not on that ride.

He did, however, brighten our day and lighten our hearts. He surprised us, in the best sense of the term, shaking us out of our commuter lethargy at the end of a long, hard day.

Strangely enough, the very next day, as I was walking down the street where I live, I was attracted to a sign posted on a phone booth (they still exist in Paris, though rarely do I see anyone inside making a call. Most often, phone booths serve as shelters for the homeless, offering protection from rain but not from the cold). Printed in bold letters on the sign were the words CHERCHE FEMME, in other words, “WOMAN WANTED.”

Was this an ad offering work to a cleaning woman, a babysitter, a companion to accompany an elderly person to the market? I was curious so I approached to read the fine print and discovered the ad offered none of the above. It was another offer of marriage, direct and to the point: 42-year-old Czech psychotherapist would like to meet a woman for marriage. Serious offer, children welcome. At the bottom, there was a cell phone number to call.

A few days later, another man stepped on the metro, begging not for money, but for a bride. This time I was less surprised by his plea than by the fact that it was happening again, three times in the same week, three unconventional offers of marriage. I said to myself, this qualifies as an urban trend and on-line dating services should take note. The search for love may be moving away from phone and computer screens and back into the real world.

Now it has been about two weeks since my last spotting, but I am still on the lookout, hoping to further document this trend, which, if sincere, surprises both by its directness and its old-fashioned appeal.

But springtime has arrived and it is natural that “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” above ground and below. There is even a Facebook page called “Spotted”: dans le métro parisien (in the Parisian metro), with over 20,000 fans. There you can leave a message for that intriguing person you spotted during your commute to work, with hopes of receiving an answer and meeting him or her again.

All in all, Parisians spend a lot of time underground, at this time of year, cut off from the sounds, sights and smells of spring. Luckily for us, everyday we descend into an urban theater, where we can find the best and worst of life, spectators and actors despite ourselves.

For those of you back in Schuylkill County who climb into your car, turn the key, turn up the music and drive, keep your eyes open, don’t shut out the spring. And at stop signs, look carefully in all directions. You never know whose eyes you’re going to meet.

Appeared in The Republican Herald, April 28, 2013

France’s Gothic cathedrals, rooted in a far distant past

Published in The Republican Herald, March 31, 2013

This year, Notre Dame de Paris is celebrating its 850th birthday and millions of visitors are expected to drop by to pay their respects, though there is nothing unusual about that. Every year the cathedral receives more than 14 million visitors, making it one of the most visited monuments in the world. Also, though France is a country where many Catholics have deserted the Church, you would never know it at Notre Dame. When it’s time for mass, whether it be on Sundays or weekdays, the rows and rows of straw-seated chairs are always filled with worshippers.

Other churches in France, though equally beautiful, are not so lucky. Many are deserted, some open for the occasional mass, others are being destroyed. Still others, though their doors are always open, attract few visitors inside.

In the town where I work, there is such a church. Its façade is a bit shabby and its sanctuary is often deserted. That may be why, after teaching, I like to go there to sit, resting my mind, restoring my soul. Contemplating the play of colored light against stone, I’m convinced I am sitting in one of the most beautiful churches of France (the photo following the title illustrates the church's interior).

The church is the basilica of Saint-Denis, named after the patron saint of the French monarchy. He also gave his name to the town and his story is inseparable from its origins.

In the third century A.D., Saint Denis was named the first bishop of Paris. At that time, the city was still a Roman colony, with public baths and an arena, a miniature version of the Coliseum in Rome. The Romans also imposed their gods on their subjects and forbade the worship of the Christian god. Saint Denis, whose true identity remains a mystery, brought many to the Christian faith and for this, on the Mount of Martyrs, also known as Montmartre, he had his head chopped off.

That might be the end of his story, but it is not. After his beheading, he simply bent down, picked up his head and, holding it firmly in his hands, began walking north. After travelling about two miles, he collapsed, died and was buried in a small settlement that became the town of Saint-Denis.



Two hundred years later, a chapel was erected on the spot. Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, wished to honor the martyr who had saved so many souls in the city she saved from physical destruction. In 451, joined by other women who rallied to her call, she stopped the advance of Attila the Hun, not with weapons, but with prayer.

Today, in 2013, the chapel she ordered built is the core and the heart of the basilica of Saint-Denis. It is located beneath the present-day altar, enclosed within not one, but four different churches. Archaeologists have excavated the foundations of that first church and there they discovered the bones of a man who was indeed beheaded. No one can ascertain that these bones belong to Saint Denis. But there is no doubt that, at one time, an axe came down on the neck of the person buried there.

In those early days of Christian France, it was an honor to be buried near a saint and soon the chapel became too small for the kings and queens who desired to rest near Saint Denis. In the sixth century and then again in the eighth, the church was enlarged. Today, the painted walls of the eighth-century basilica surround the altar and tombs of the earlier chapels.

I often visit that basilica with my students. They find it strange and mysterious to stand within that church within a church, with its thick walls and its tiny windows, both considered architectural marvels at the time it was built. The Emperor Charlemagne visited that church and walked on its stone and marble floor, decorated with porphyry, brought all the way from Egypt.

Further enlargements and additions came in the following centuries but in 1135, nearly thirty years before the first stone of Notre Dame was laid, construction began on a totally new church, built atop the others. The basilica was under the care of an adjoining Benedictine abbey and its abbot, a man named Suger, had some very big ideas about how he wanted to transform “his church.” His plan was to build the nave higher and open the basilica to light, making the “light of the world” visible through the use of stained glass.

Using intersecting arches and flying buttresses, he was able to elevate the ceiling of the church and open the walls of the sanctuary, creating space for immense stained-glass windows. For the western wall, Suger designed a rose window, the first in architectural history. He calculated that at sunset, the sun’s rays would flood the altar with the colors of the rainbow, renewing God’s covenant with the earth.



Suger’s church was one of the wonders of his age and he made sure he would be remembered for it. In a stained-glass window, today at the Louvre, we can see him, at the foot of the Virgin Mary in a scene of the Annunciation. He is also present in the Church’s main bronze door, where we find him kneeling among the disciples at Emmaus.

In his lifetime, Abbot Suger did everything he could to assure the glory of his church, but in 1789, with the French Revolution, the basilica of Saint Denis came upon very hard times. For centuries, it had been the official burial ground of the kings of France and for that reason, the tombs were sacked and the church vandalized. Legend has it that children in the town used the bones of kings to play jacks, called “osselets” in French, a word that has its root in “os,” bone.



Today a large part of the church is a national monument, a museum of funerary art, where visitors can admire the refurbished tombs of the French monarchy. That visit also includes the earlier churches hidden beneath the Gothic cathedral.



Certainly, Notre Dame de Paris is more imposing and its façade, far more beautiful, but on a sunny, spring-time afternoon, I’d rather be sitting in the basilica of Saint-Denis. There I watch the dance of colored light, the work of Abbot Suger, who, nine centuries ago, strove to abolish the boundaries between earth and sky.

US, France fight war against terror

War used to be different. It was neither more nor less tragic, but it was different from today, as the example of the Battle of Gettysburg shows. During the first three days of July, 1863, 51,000 soldiers died, nearly a third of the forces engaged. Around the little town of Gettysburg, the hills ran with blood, but in the town itself—and here’s the difference—only one civilian died.

When I was a child, we often visited the battlefields of Gettysburg and I remember visiting her home: Ginnie Wade, a 20-year-old woman, killed by a stray bullet, while she was in the kitchen kneading bread.

Since January 11, 2013, France has been involved in a military operation in Mali, a land-locked country of West Africa. On that day, the Ministry of Defense launched “Operation Serval” (the serval is a wildcat native to that region). In an official statement to the French people, the Defense Minister explained that the intervention was in response to a request from the government of Mali to help stop the advance of rebel and terrorists forces upon its capital, Bamako, and to aid the Malian army in re-establishing control over the entire national territory.

In a matter of days, French forces made it “all the way to Timbuktu,” the legendary Malian city whose name was once a synonym for the most distant place imaginable. At this time, after more than a month of operations, with about 4,000 French soldiers on the ground, only one of them has died in combat—which, of course, is one too many, but that figure attests to Operation Serval’s success so far.


The Gandamia Massif, northeast of Timbuktu

In mid-February, however, as French troops headed further north and east into the Sahara, the nature of this war began to change: landmines, suicide attacks, a sharp rise in civilian deaths. Back in Paris, the government reinforced homeland security, deploying more troops in airports, train stations and the metro, in response to a heightened risk of terrorist attacks.

Operation Serval, as the Minister of Defense Jean-Yves le Drian announced on Feburary 6, 2013, is a “real war” against “terrorists.” And, in “the war on terror,” as opposed to the Civil War, civilians are fair and often easy game.

Yet, in Paris, in the metro that I take almost every day, riding cheek to cheek with perfect strangers, we are all our usual, indifferent selves, more worried, at the peak of flu season, about germs from a neighbor’s sneeze or cough than the risk of a bomb going off in our midst. In general, I’d say, we’re indifferent to this war. I don’t hear many people talking about it nor do I see any outward signs that the French are supporting their troops—no banners, no flags, no ribbons, all signs of excessive American patriotism to French eyes.

This may be one of the reasons members of the French military are feeling discouraged, be they in the army, the air force or the navy. France has its “West Point,” a prestigious army academy called Saint-Cyr, founded in 1802. It also has its “Annapolis,” Ecole Navale, a naval academy founded in 1830. Its officers are among the best in the world. The military’s code of honor is strong and all its branches project an image of highly qualified professionals. The problem is, French society at large doesn’t seem to really care.

Blame it on former President Jacques Chirac, some would say. He’s the one who, in 1997, abolished the draft in favor of an all-volunteer army. He’s the one who put an end to what was once two years of compulsory service to the French nation (later reduced to 16 and then to 10 months), where young men of all backgrounds, races and classes came together in what many considered France’s “melting pot.” In a recent survey, 62% of the French regretted Chirac’s decision. This would appear to be an implicit wish for the draft’s return—though people may simply be feeling nostalgic about the “good old days” when a Frenchman knew what it meant to be French.


Recruitment poster for an all-volunteer army

In 2013, believing their glory days are behind them, feeling pessimistic about the future, the French are no longer so sure of who they are. Back in the days of the draft, when almost all young men served, the army was an essential component of French identity. Today, pushed to the periphery of society, the military, despite its annual budget of 43 billion dollars, placing it fifth in the world in terms of defense spending, is like a poor relation you’d rather forget about—and, in some important ways, the French have.

Last October, for example, French army wives began “battling bare,” inspired by Ashley Wise, the American who went to battle for her husband suffering from PTSD, spelling out her demands for better care on her bare back. These French women adopted her methods to bring national attention to the fact that their husbands, many on duty in Afghanistan, had not been paid for almost a year. They called themselves “un paquet de Gauloises en colère”—a angry pack of Gauloises, a reference to France’s best-known brand of cigarettes, but also, very literally, an angry pack of French women.



Their “bare-backed” methods worked. Just before Christmas 2012, emergency funds were unblocked so military wives could get creditors off their backs while, far away, their husbands served the nation.

Members of the French military are subjected to another strange injustice. Though medical care is excellent, if a soldier loses an arm or a leg in combat, he or she cannot be sure of who is going to pay for its replacement. Neither the health insurance nor the complementary insurance available to members of the military covers the costs. The national veteran’s association, as well as private charities, has stepped in to make up the difference, helping to pay for artificial limbs for those gravely injured in service to their country.

In early February, President Hollande, France’s Commander-in-Chief, paid a visit to Mali, where he was welcomed as a hero. In a speech, he proclaimed “terrorism has not been vanquished,” promising French troops would stay in Mali as long as necessary.

No one can tell how long this will be. That is another difference between the “war on terror” and past conflicts. As Americans know from their experience in Afghanistan, policing the world in the name of justice is an endless, often thankless task.

Paris art exhibit recalls home

Published in The Republican Herald, January 27, 2013

A current art exhibit in Paris, a “blockbuster show,” as it has been called in the French press, has carried me back to Schuylkill County, filling me with strong nostalgia for home. The exhibit, which will end on February 3rd, is devoted to the work of Edward Hopper (1882-1967). The French have proclaimed him the greatest American painter of the 20th century.

In the Grand Palais, an enormous exhibition hall between the Champs Elysées and the Seine, 128 of Hopper’s works have been brought together from all over the United States, being exhibited together for the first time ever. To see all these paintings, engravings and watercolors on American soil, it would be necessary to travel from sea to shining sea, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, visiting museums and art galleries from coast to coast.

In Paris, under one roof, we can see them all—if we’re ready to stand in line for two or three hours, or, once inside, stand on tiptoe to catch a glance of Hopper’s most famous painting, “Nighthawks,” which measures a little over 50 inches in length but is only 22 inches high. Hard work, waiting and then battling the crowds, but the French are up to the challenge. Hopper has been dubbed “an American for the French,” presenting them with images that correspond to their idea of the United States, a nation of loners lost on a vast continent.

Their vision, however, is not mine. For me, Hopper is inseparable from my memories of growing up in Schuylkill County, of how it used to be and still is.

I first discovered Hopper’s work when I was in high school, thanks to my art teacher, Mr. Robert Koslosky, fondly remembered by anyone who had the good fortune to study with him. Each year, with members of the sketch club, he organized a trip to New York City and there, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, I first met Hopper, though I had the feeling I already knew him, his paintings immediately haunting me with a sense of “déjà vu.”

I recognized the streets of redbrick buildings rising no more than two storeys high, the railroad platforms (in those days there was still daily train service between Pottsville and Philadelphia), the Victorian homes, the vacant lots overgrown with weeds. As a child, I used to play at one on Greenwood Hill, next to the fire company, a gravel and coal dirt field later replaced by a “real” playground.

After that trip, after that encounter with an artist I knew would count for me, I went to the Pottsville Library and looked for more of Hopper’s paintings (today, if you scroll down the Wikipedia site in French, you’ll find a long list of links to Hopper’s works, more than on the English-language page: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Hopper). There, what I saw in art books reconfirmed my initial sense of “déjà vu.” Discovering other paintings, I discovered places I already knew.

His 1927 painting of a drug store reminded me of Cable’s Pharmacy, once located at Second and Market Streets. In the display window, dominating the bottles of perfume and boxes of chocolates, were two suspended glass globes, each filled with colored water, catching and reflecting light. They were natural beacons, which is how they were used before the invention of electricity.

Hopper painted many streets and building façades that would look familiar to residents of Schuylkill County, including, in 1947, a street in a Pennsylvania coal town. He is also well known as a painter of interior scenes associated with transience: hotel rooms, motels or restaurants. Looking at some of the restaurant scenes, painted in muted tones of gold and burnished brown, I’m reminded of my all-time favorite restaurant in Schuylkill County, once located in the building home to the Brass Tap Tavern today.

I’m wondering how many readers, like me, often crossed the threshold of Joyce’s, turning into Logan’s Alley and pushing open the door of the “Ladies’ Entrance.” Hard drinkers entered on East Norwegian Street to gain direct access to the bar, but those of us who wanted to sit down in a booth for a meal entered on the side. Once inside, we were greeted by chef Joe Talpash, who was on a first-name basis with everyone.

“Got some fresh blue fish for you, Mary,” he often announced to my mother as we slid into a wraparound booth, and following Joe’s suggestion, that’s what she ordered, a sizzling filet of fish, served on the plate on which it was broiled, along with julienne fries, thin and crisp. Joyce’s Restaurant also reminds me of my father, Lewis, who died in 1968. He often took us to “Joe’s,” as we called it, for steamed clams, oysters or lobster tail. Thanks to Joe Talpash, my family became lovers of seafood and shellfish, what I’d call “coal region food.” When we wanted crab cakes, however, we deserted Joe and headed to Melnic’s in Saint Clair.

Looking at Hopper’s black and white engravings, I have a different kind of memory. I’m reminded of Schuylkill County artist Nick Bervinchak, whom I had the honor to meet before he died in 1978. Though he is best known for his mining scenes, I remember in particular one of his etchings of a ticket counter at the Reading Terminal in Philadelphia. The atmosphere and the angle of the scene (we see a heavyset woman from behind, leaning on the counter, waiting to purchase a ticket to the shore) could have very well been chosen by Hopper himself.

I am a child of the second half of the 20th century. Of course, I am also my parents’ child and Hopper’s work has the power to intimately connect me to their world, to that first half of the century when they were growing up and, in my father’s case, going to war. Though limited to an instant frozen in time, Hopper’s paintings tell stories, suggesting past and future, speaking to us about his world, but also about our own.

I don’t think Hopper ever visited Schuylkill County, but to those of us born or living here, he has many stories to tell. His work, viewed in Paris, poignantly carried me home.

Everyone deserves a place to call home

Published in The Republican Herald, December 30, 2012

When my mother was the reading teacher for the fifth and sixth grades at the Lengel Middle School, every year at Christmas she read her class The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. This 1971 novel for young readers tells the Christmas story from a different angle, that of the worst kids in town, who get involved in a Christmas pageant when they hear the rumor that chocolate cake is served on a regular basis at the local church.

Those children, the Herdmans—and they are quite a herd—live over a garage on the wrong side of the tracks. At school, they steal from their classmates’ lunchboxes and at home they try to crush each other beneath the automatic garage door or sic the ferocious family cat on any social worker who comes to call. Their dad left home one evening, never to return. Their mom works two shifts in a factory, surely out of need, but mostly to get away from the kids. Needless to say, the Herdman children, two girls and four boys, had never been to church before they heard about the chocolate cake.

At the first rehearsal for the Christmas pageant, the story of the Nativity, they bully themselves into all the main roles, Mary, Joseph, the wise men, and the angel of the Lord. There’s just one problem: they are the only ones who don’t know the story and, hearing it for the first time, hearing how on a cold winter’s night a pregnant woman and her husband were turned away from the inn, the Herdmans are up in arms. Where were the social workers? Why was no doctor around? And how could anyone leave that poor couple in a stable, with, as the carol goes, “no crib for a bed” for their baby, nothing but a dirty trough filled with straw? What kind of people could do such a thing to a couple of refugees, cold, hungry, and with no place to go?

Bethlehem, a mountain city, is a cold place in winter, but not nearly as cold as Paris has been this December. Winters are generally mild here, compared to Pennsylvania, and snow, since my arrival in the city in 1991, has been rare. December 2012, however, has been different. Snow, intense cold and freezing rain have become our daily lot and fashion-conscious Parisians have taken to wearing hats or caps, pulled low on the forehead, putting at risk (for men and women both) stylish coiffures.

For the city’s contingent of over 5,000 SDFs, a French acronym referring to the homeless, sans domicile fixe (without a permanent home), the cold and snow have added yet another layer of difficulty to their daily struggle to survive. Between the time those lucky enough to have a bed for the night are turned out of shelters early in the morning until they line up to get into a shelter the next night, they have a long day in front of them.

In warm weather, they can take refuge in city parks. In cold, they head underground, into the metro. There, they tend to melt into the woodwork, or, more accurately, into the white tiles which cover the walls of the corridors and stations of the Parisian subway system. As for us commuters, unless one gets in our way, we hardly notice them, so used have we become to the presence of the homeless in our midst.

On crowded subway platforms, we turn our backs on them. Craning our necks, on the lookout for the next train, we stand poised to elbow our way inside. Once the train pulls in and the automatic doors slide open, we surge inside, leaving the homeless behind. We’re heading home, they’re left to sit on the incredibly uncomfortable seats provided by the transportation authority ever since benches were done away with, in order to prevent the homeless from lying down. Since the cold has set in, they’ve set up camp. Wrapped in blankets, they picnic on the platform, washing their meals down with cheap beer or wine, staying till closing time (the Parisian metro closes for about five hours each night).

Inside the train, we commuters travel with beggars. They’re not as easy to ignore as the homeless, who sit and stare but rarely speak. Beggars, on the contrary, speak out. They make speeches, describing the difficulties of their life, how hard it is to keep clean or find a bed for the night. Some go on and on.

Gypsies, for example, go from car to car, all the while shaking a paper cup from Starbuck’s or McDonald’s, repeating monsieur-dame, s’il vous plaît, aidez-moi, please help me, help my baby. And that’s the worst of it—these beggars, mostly women, usually balance a baby on one hip and are often pregnant with another. For weeks, every Tuesday, at the same hour, I cross such a woman, wondering if she may soon give birth before my very eyes.

On another occasion, a woman, a Rom, as gypsies prefer to be called, sang in a keening voice, while her little son worked his way through the crowd, holding a dirty paper cup. Nobody was giving so I reached in my pocket, found a fifty-centime coin and dropped it in. The boy said “merci” and gave me a beautiful, genuine smile. I’d just given him a little more than fifty cents. Did I really deserve so much in return?

Since 1997, the homeless in France have a special number to call, 115, when they need a place to sleep or urgent care, except that, these days, no one’s picking up the phone. Too many requests, too much need, no room at the inn, which, in this case means a shelter where the homeless are offered disposable sheets and a “kit propreté,” containing what it takes to keep clean. What’s even more disturbing, more young people than ever are making the call. Homeless, without work, often alienated from their families, many would join their voices to that of one homeless young man who recently said on the evening news, all he’s asking for is electricity, running water, and a place to lay his head.

I guess there has never been enough room at the inn, not in Jesus’ day nor our own. Then as now, a too large majority has ignored the homeless, the way we commuters do in the metro today. Should we offer them our garages or tool sheds, contemporary versions of the stable of long ago, or the extra room in our apartment or home? Like the Herdmans, should we all be up in arms because so many men, women and children sleep out in the cold? Wouldn’t 2013 truly be a better year if all of us had a place to call home?

You can watch the 1982 made-for-TV movie of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, with Loretta Switt, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4KSXrz28uE

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.