Immigrants Everybody Wants and Needs!

Imagine you are a Roman foot soldier back in the year 65 B.C. You are far from home, fighting in the Caucasian Mountains of Central Asia between the Black and Caspian Seas. You are hungry. On the ground you find some nuts, each one about an inch in diameter. You crack the ridged shell, sniff and inspect the contents. You take a risk, extract the fruit, pop it in your mouth. It tastes good!

You put some in your pack. You are among the lucky soldiers who return home intact. Once back, you unpack your gear and there they are, the last of the nuts. Some fall to the ground and a tree grows. In that way, after having disappeared during the last Ice Age, the walnut tree is reintroduced in Western Europe from the Caucasian Mountains where, in a milder climate, it survived. In fact, the Old English word for walnut, weallhhnutu, means “foreign nut.”

Trees travel. Their seeds travel on wind and in water. Animals and birds carry them from place to place, often in their droppings. Men and women have carried seeds around the world. European immigrants to the USA in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries packed the seeds of their favorite apple trees in their bundles. Navigator-explorers often welcomed botanists and scientists on their ships. King Louis XIV of France counted on the Royal Marine to return home with the seeds or saplings of exotic trees.

Take the expeditions of the English sea captain James Cook (1728-1779), buried on the island of Hawaii, where he was killed because of tensions between his men and the island’s inhabitants. That was during his third voyage to the Pacific. On the first in 1770, he discovered what is today’s Australia. One of his botanists, Joseph Banks, returned to England with seeds of the eucalyptus tree and succeeded in raising certain varieties in London’s Kew Gardens.

The eucalyptus emigrated from Australia to the United States at the time of the 1849 Gold Rush. It quickly took root and was used for fuel, manufacturing and construction. In 1975, on my first visit to Los Angeles, I encountered eucalyptus everywhere. At first, I’ll admit, I didn’t feel “at home” with this tree. Its bark peeled off in long ribbons and it gave off a pungent minty scent. Its leaves had a pale bluish hue but when they fell, they became brown and dry and almost rattled as I dragged my feet through them.

Some Americans left their native soil for Europe. I met one in a beautiful arboretum at Chateau Bellevue, set atop a hill near where I live. Who knows? Perhaps it came from Pennsylvania. In the late 18th century, seeds of the tulip tree were transported back to France from the colony of Nouvelle France, which covered parts of western Pennsylvania. Today tulip trees grow all over the state and I’ve seen some beautiful specimens in Schuylkill County. 

 

In this same arboretum, I met other transplants from North America, the Douglas fir and false acacia, which I used to call “acacia” until Philippe, our guide, set me straight. This tree is also known as “Robinia,” a name that honors the French botanist Jean Robin, the apothecary and gardener of three French kings, Henri III, Henri IV and Louis XIII. In 1601 he was the first to successfully cultivate seeds of this tree brought from North America. We all know (false) acacia honey. In France, the flowers are also used to make a sweet fritter.

“April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom,” sings Ella Fitzgerald. What could be more typically Parisian, more French? I may disappoint you, but those chestnut trees are just another “immigrant.” They were introduced to Western Europe in the 17^th century. A diplomat brought them back from Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire, where they were native to today’s Albania and Greece.

The same goes for the majestic plane trees that line roads and canals in France, a cross between the American sycamore and the Oriental plane tree. Canker stain, another “immigrant” brought from the USA to France during WWII, has put these beautiful trees in mortal danger. They die from the fungus 6 months to 5 years after having been attacked, and I fear the plane trees of France may go the way of elms worldwide. Some readers may remember the beautiful elm-lined walks leading to “Old Main,” on the Penn State campus in State College. Back in the early 1970’s, I loved walking in their shade. I also remember watching the trees disappear.  

Philippe showed us some elms being cultivated in the park. They take root, sprout up, but fall prey to the Dutch elm disease that killed their ancestors. He pointed to the top of the trees, where the branches were dying. Yet, some smaller elms manage to survive. 

 

Philippe is a tree lover and his passion for trees is infectious. He reminds us of all trees provide, shade, pure air, an abundance of goods, edible and other. They live much longer—and more peacefully—than us and once dead, allow other lifeforms to thrive. Trees, we could not live without them. We should welcome them everywhere.

Philippe is also an idealist and a political activist, a member of a French political party Lutte Ouvrière, the Working Class Party, as it is known in the USA, with headquarters in Detroit, Michigan. The way Philippe feels about trees, well, that’s the way he feels about us. Give humans a chance and we will thrive anywhere, giving back to our environment much more than we take away.

Once a year, during the annual festival of Lutte Ouvrière, Chateau Belleville and its arboretum are open to the public. The chateau and park belong to a collective whose owners, if not members, are close to this left-wing party, which places its faith in the working class. It also calls for the union of workers and immigrants to overcome capitalist domination.

It would be hard to find a person, be it in the USA or France, who does not like trees, the largest and oldest living organisms on Earth. They are also among the best and most widely travelled, welcomed wherever they take root.

I wonder, I just wonder, if we could learn to treat each other that way.

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.