Auction fever (2)

The sale begins. The pros and the most avid bidders crowd around a big wooden table dragged out from the garage. This, along with the wooden chest where the auctioneer stands, is the auction block.

The rest of us line the stone walls separating the driveway from a raised garden. This gives us a bird’s eye view of the table and the auctioneer, a highly trained professional who often behaves like a carny. I’m standing on the edge and every once in the while an impatient bidder pushes forward, throwing me off balance, forcing me, if I hope to avoid a fall, to take a quick step backwards into the flower bed where well-tended rose bushes are taking their winter rest.

But this pushing and jostling is all part of the game, a game of combat. An auction is physical; literally, you must be on your toes, poised for action, eyes and ears open, arms stretched forward to grab your newly acquired possessions, passed from the auction table above the heads of the crowd once the auctioneer, with three strikes of his gavel, has proclaimed “Adjugé, vendu!” (going, going, gone).

It rains, the rain stops, a crisp west wind blows in clear skies. The sale is moving fast. Little by little, I begin to follow and understand, with regret—my feet are already numb, that the objects that interest me will not go on sale till afternoon.

For the moment, up for auction are a lifetime of knickknacks, paintings, statuettes, busts, a porcelain dinner service and many sets of everyday stoneware, copper pots and pans, several dozen wine carafes, carved African stools and masks, a collection of minerals and one of magnificent conch shells, a full collection of the acts of the historical society of le Perche, a few fine and ancient maps of the region, and some delicate 18th century lace, carefully mounted and framed.

I follow the proceedings, moving fast. Some items, such as the lace and a pre-revolutionary map of le Perche go for several hundred euros. Others, sold by lots piled in cardboard boxes, for twenty or thirty, and I begin to understand that those boxes are a lot like grab bags. Nobody, not even the auctioneer, knows exactly what you’re going to get: there may be a treasure hidden among the crockery and bibelots.

A woman standing next to me hits the jackpot. Rooting through her box of glass and stoneware, she pulls out two crystal wine carafes with the imprint of Cristal Saint-Louis, the oldest glassmakers in Europe. For thirty euros she walks away with the prize.

I watch her bid. She is experienced. She knows what she wants. She buys lot after lot, and her cardboard boxes, buckling beneath the weight of their charge, are passed to her and then piled up on the lawn behind us or at the foot of the wall where we stand.

When I ask her if she is in the antique business, she vehemently denies it, explaining she is buying for her children, for nieces and nephews, all setting themselves up in life.

I know she is lying; she must know I know, but this is not a world where you trust your neighbor. Everyone at the sale is a potential rival and she has no idea who I am. And who knows? I could be a secret agent from internal revenue sent to crackdown on antique dealers who, notoriously, hide much of their business from the taxman.

The young man standing on the other side of me is more forthcoming. He sells on line and is looking for objects from the first half of the 20th century. He buys an art deco vase, paying more than 200 euros, and a telephone from the 1930’s. He’ll post these items on his site and, I hope for him, make a profit.

There are other professionals bidding on what to my eye are atrocities, a horrible 16th century statue of Sainte Barbe, a Christian martyr who had her head and her breasts cut off, and an equally ugly signed 19th century terra cotta bust. Both go for close to 1,000 euros.

Then it is time for lunch. Because this is France and no one can imagine going without a hot meal, the doors of the maison bourgeoise are locked and the crowd disperses to cars or to the center of town. I head for the bistro where I had a coffee in the morning. Packed, all the tables reserved, but if I’d come back in about a half hour…

I explore the village of Longny-au-Perche, discover a 16th century church, Saint Martin, with a painted wooden nave. At the edge of town, I walk past a Renaissance chapel where each year, on September 8th, a pilgrimage takes place to venerate the Pieta inside. There are also many streams and old mills with mill wheels turning and half-timbered houses that look like they belong to Shakespeare’s time.

The village is sleepy, many storefronts are empty, but time passes quickly, despite the damp cold, and when I return to the restaurant, a little table is waiting for me.

And once again I have a bird’s eye view of the auctioneer. He and his employees dine together. He has removed his padded coat, and beneath it wears a mustard-colored hunting jacket that reminds me of a famous 1939 French film, Jean Renoir’s “Les règles du jeu” (The Rules of the Game), where aristocrats and the wealthy gather for a weekend of hunting in a country château. He could be a part of that world and several remarks he makes during the sale make me feel he regrets its passing.

While I observe, I warm up and eat an excellent salade de gésiers, a chicken gizzard salad with two vinaigrettes, one raspberry and the other mustard, both extremely fine. I drink a glass of red wine and, for you, dear readers, sample a dessert. I try the homemade lemon tart with freshly whipped cream, a “délice.”

But then it’s back to the cold. Clear skies have replaced the rain and the sun shines on me, bringing me a stroke of luck. Though most of the furniture will be auctioned off inside, the armchairs I want are already out on the auction block. I take out my number and I’m ready to bid.

Perhaps not everybody is back from lunch. Perhaps wooden armchairs are not a hot item. For a little more than 100 euros, I walk away with two beautiful cherry-wood chairs that, once I get them home, immediately find their place in my living room.

Now I’m ready for the next sale. I’m ready to swoop down on another man’s life and pick over the remains, acutely aware that someday my precious belongings will suffer the same fate.

Auction Fever (1)

Early one summer morning, a couple of years ago, I was walking along the railroad tracks off route 895 near the village of Molino. It was early, before 7 am, but the air was already warm and heavy with moisture. Mist rose off the Little Schuylkill and floated in wisps above a marsh where two blue herons were busy fishing. Looking around me, I was filled with a sense of the beauty and harmony of Nature.

Then I rounded the bend. Atop five or six utility poles sat a committee of vultures. On the ground, the skeleton of a deer, what had recently been its carcass, lay next to the tracks, picked dry to the bone.

The vultures followed me with their eyes, and as I advanced further down the tracks, they changed positions, spreading their wings, rising into the air and settling on the next pole, not letting me out of their sight.

They were waiting, for another train, for another strike. They were waiting for me to turn into a carcass. They were hungry and saw me as a potential next meal.

This month, in the dead of winter, I got to feel what it’s like to be a vulture. I went to my first public auction. I joined a “committee” and honed in on the prey.

I’m partly joking of course, but only in part. Above all, I’m not criticizing or making fun of others, because the “vulture spirit” swooped down and took hold of me.

It all started with a newspaper, a weekly called Le Perche, the name of the region where I have my country home. I buy the paper faithfully every Wednesday, the day it appears, and read it on the train to Paris, paying special attention to the classified ads. For months, I’ve been on the lookout for a particular kind of auction, a sale of the contents of what the French call a maison bourgeoise, the home of a family belonging to the upper middle class.

About a week ago, eureka, I found one. I cut out the ad, visited the on-line site, and printed the photos of objects that interested me.

On the Saturday morning of the sale, under a dark sky, in pouring rain, I set out for the town of Longny-au-Perche, driving about twenty miles through hills and forests that reminded me a lot of Schuylkill County.

Once I arrived, I drove in circles looking for the site of the sale and only found it once I parked my car in the municipal parking lot and set out on foot. I had believed I was looking for an auction house. I ended up in front of the maison bourgeoise. All its contents and the house itself were up for sale.

We, the “committee,” tramped through the house, opening drawers and closets, trying out chairs, testing mattresses, rifling through boxes, elbowing anybody who got in our way. We handed over blank checks in exchange for a bidding number. Then we continued to comb through the contents of the house, waiting impatiently for the sale to begin.

A rich life had been lived there, rich in terms of experience and love. A happy couple had spent a long life together, some of it abroad, in Asia and Africa, at a time when France still had colonies in those parts of the world. The house was filled with their souvenirs.

And they had cherished their home and organized it with great care. I recognized a sense of order, not rigid or obsessive, but put in place so the inhabitants of that house could get on with the more important things in life. Monsieur played pool in the billiard room; Madame was an amateur pastry chef and had a veritable laboratory for baking in the basement of their home.

Then they got old. They moved from the master bedroom upstairs to a back bedroom off the kitchen, perhaps once meant for domestic help. They went from a double to single beds. Medical equipment filled the last room they shared. One died; then the other. Their grown and already aging children had no use for what they had lovingly accumulated throughout their long life together.

Sensing their story as I studied their things, I felt like one among a horde of intruders, soiling with our muddy boots and shoes a lifetime of intimacy.

But my scruples were superficial. I wanted to be there as much as the rest of them, the professionals from the antique barns that pop up regularly along the main roads in the region, a few Parisians with upscale antique shops, lots of young people selling their wares on line, the curious, those looking for a bargain, a crowd where most people seemed to know the rules.

Despite the rain and the cold, in a house with all the doors thrown open, the rooms were heating up. I had to wait my turn to go up and down the stairs and there was a line in front of certain rooms. The billiard table had a lot of success, as did a 19th century children’s bed, a cross between a cradle and a boat, perfect for Winkin, Blinkin and Nod “setting off in the night into a sea of dew.”

So many things awakening so much craving for what we did not yet have! But if we were wily bidders, not bidding too much but just enough to clinch the deal, we could leave at the end of the day, our craving satisfied.

I know what I want but have no idea how to get it. I’ve never bid at an auction before and hold tight to the number issued me in exchange for my signed blank check.

The agents of the auction house are entering the rooms, pushing us towards the doors, down the stairs, locking doors behind them, chasing us outside, into the rain and cold, where the sale will take place.

The auctioneer, called a commissaire-priseur in French, member of a tight-knit and exclusive corporation, is the only one who looks dressed for the occasion (I’m not, I thought the sale would be inside and once it’s underway, I’m shaking like a leaf). He’s wearing a handsome flat cap made of Harris Tweed, a padded-jacket to keep out cold and rain, wide wale corduroy trousers, and thick-soled black boots.

Standing on a wooden chest, gavel in hand, he is about to set the sale in motion (to be continued March 26th).

Touching the Past

In the year 1587, 430 years ago, France was torn and bleeding. For more than a quarter century, religious wars pitting Catholics against Protestants, involving torture, famine, massacres, assassinations and calls to regicide, had been the cause of near 3 million deaths.

In the same year, across the English Channel, Queen Elizabeth I signed the death sentence of her cousin Mary Stuart, fervent Catholic and the once Queen of France, married to King François II, who died in 1560 after having reigned for only two years. On February 2, 1587, she is beheaded, accused of plotting against Queen Elizabeth. An inept executioner has to make three attempts before succeeding in chopping off her head.

It was a violent year in violent times, a year marked by fanatical religious violence, at once close to us and very far away.

How would you like to touch it, actually hold it in the palm of your hand, trace it with the tip of your finger, sense the subtle vibrations of that time?

Walking through the fields and woodlands of le Perche, my new region where I have my new home, I met someone who has done just that.

He is what the French call a “poêleux,” an amateur archeologist with a passionate interest in local history, who spends all his free time with his “poêle à frire,” his frying pan, slang for the metal detector that accompanies him on all his nature walks.

Here, the two go together, nature and history, in a country where they are inseparable. Once the Roman province of Gaul, later a mosaic of duchies and kingdoms, then the united Kingdom of France, and finally the Republic that it is today, France is an ancient civilization whose soil is rich with treasures of the past.

François, the “poêleux” I met on a trail that was once a Roman road connecting what are today the cities of Chartres and Le Mans, began prospecting when he was 15 year old. Back in those days, he was the class troublemaker who always ended up in the corner. Not meant for the very long and very sedentary French school day, which can stretch from 8 in the morning to 6 pm, he had a hard time concentrating on the subject he loved best, History.

Today, at age 30, he is making up for lost time, pursuing his interest in that subject while he learns the techniques of archeology.

During summer vacations at the shore, I’m sure many readers, have noticed lone men, heads bent, walking along the beach with metal detector in hand, on the lookout for spare change, a watch, a piece of jewelry inadvertently dropped in the sand. They are scavengers in a situation where one man’s loss is another man’s gain.

But what about a coin minted in 1587, one that has been buried beneath the earth for over 400 years?

First there is the beep of the metal detector. François hones in on the area and circumscribes a clod of earth. The next step is to remove it “cleanly” and carefully.

Then the most delicate step in the process begins, the one where François becomes what he describes as a “natural surgeon,” un chirugien de la nature. With the utmost care, he begins to break down the clod, scraping gently, bit by bit, holding his breath, holding his hand steady, still unsure of what he will find, hoping as all “poêleux” hope, that soon he will hold a piece of the past in his hand.

Piece, add an accent and you have the French word for coin, “une pièce.” François has quite a collection, including a fine specimen from 1587 and others dating back to Roman times. Once the coin is extracted from the soil, it must undergo a cleaning process. It is important that the coin retain its original appearance, and the patina must be preserved.

The safeguard and preservation of these coins have become part of François’s passion. Though never a reader in high school, he has become one now, subscribing to specialized journals on the subject, keeping abreast of recent finds and new technologies in his field. Each object he finds is a “piece” of history with the power to deepen his interest in the past.

All “poêleux,” he tells me, are on the lookout for the “big find,” a rare gold coin (François has yet to find one), a hidden treasure, or an even more ancient piece of France’s Celtic past. He explains that yes, they are looking for treasures, but even more so, he and his fellow “poêleux” are searching for what I would translate as the purity of our personal pasts, the kind of surprise and wonder we felt as children, too often absent from adult lives.

This sensation, François has known it over and over again, and not only with coins. In a region where American fighter pilots were shot down during the 1944 Normandy invasion, he has often come across bullets from the Second World War.

These finds belong to a more recent past and are easily identifiable, right down to the year and the plant where they were manufactured.

There are curiosities as well, a copper match box, a piece of art deco jewelry, a fine piece of enamel and gold filigree; lead musket balls, a tiny bell, thimbles, rings and brooches, a solid silver bust of a crucified Christ.

When François holds a piece in his hand for the first time, he connects immediately with the past, sometimes he connects with a person long gone, touching what no one else has touched, in some cases, for hundreds of years.

For a nature and history lover like himself, claims François, there is no better way to spend his time. Once in a while, there is the adrenalin of a find, but mostly there is the calm and beauty of nature, hills to climb, valleys to explore, always with the permission of the landowner in a country where “treasure hunting” is strictly regulated.

Living in a region rich in limestone fossils, François collects them as well and has promised to show me his collection. I’ve already shown him mine, pieces of Sharp and Broad Mountains, fossils engraved in schist, rocks of Pottsville conglomerate, hundreds of millions of years old, pieces of a prehistoric past, pieces of my past that remain dear to me.

Christmas: A Day of Hope

When I was a student at Jackson Street Elementary School, each year there were Christmas rituals, always the same. At the start of the holiday season, Miss Gotwals, our beloved art teacher (at least, she was mine), arrived with her box of thick colored chalks and, with a few swift strokes that never ceased to amaze me, she turned an entire blackboard into a field of bright reds and greens inhabited by Santa, his elves and eight tiny reindeer.

We also sang Christmas carols and made decorations, cutting Christmas trees or wreathes from green construction paper. We shared scissors to cut out ornaments from scraps of colored paper or tin foil. Then we pasted them on our trees with thick white glue that some of us liked to eat.

Finally, on the eve of our Christmas vacation, came the day we were all waiting for. Our teachers herded us into one big classroom, where we doubled or even tripled up on the benches of desks solidly welded to the floor. The room was dark, the green blinds were drawn. We chattered and giggled and, exceptionally, no teacher scolded or shushed us because Christmas was in the air.

At the back of the room, our principal, Mrs. Violet Davenport, was expertly winding celluloid film into the unwieldy, old-fashioned projector. Once that was done, she called us to order and we all fell silent: the show was about to begin.

Each year it was the same, the program never changed, but rather than bore us, this only increased our pleasure: two films from the early 1950's, with wooden puppets as actors who had the power to enchant us over and over again.

The first film was “The Night Before Christmas.” Because of it, I can still to this day recite a large part of “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” by Clement Moore. The second was a story of the Nativity. I remember the words because of the first film. For the second, it's the images that have stuck.

As I write, I can still see Mary sitting on a donkey, tottering along, with an unsteady Joseph leading the way. Watching them, I worried about them. They looked brittle, fragile, and oh-so-vulnerable. If danger were to strike—bandits or wild beasts roaming the hill country around Bethlehem, with their slow, jerky movements, they would be an easy prey.

“No room for them in the inn” provided another source of worry. In the summer, my family often spent a week in a motel in Wildwood. The weather was hot and muggy and I could imagine a night of sleeping on the beach. But what about in the dead of winter, with freezing temperatures and snow on the ground? That's what Mary and Joseph were up against.

Fortunately for them there was the manger, the bed of straw, the warmth of the animals, the first humble home of the infant Jesus. The shepherds too were ready to help. They may have contributed blankets, food or drink, any help that was asked.

That little film marked me, I might say, for life. It gave meaning to expressions like “homeless” or “no vacancy.” No room at the inn, no place to go. Apparently, for the French, there is no greater fear than this: to find themselves in the street or on the open road, without a home of their own.

Only last Sunday, walking from my apartment to the metro, I was stopped by a young man. In halting French, he asked me if I could help him, give him some money, so he could buy something to eat. He was a refugee, one of the many who fled to Paris after France's biggest illegal refugee camp in the port city of Calais was closed. He was cold and hungry and probably sleeping in the street with temperatures around freezing.

Near the village where I have my country home (Two homes! Two addresses! Imagine the luxury...), in a region where there are many vacant lodgings, refugees are housed in apartments and assisted by the Red Cross and volunteers.

In other regions of France, in the Valley of the Roya River, for example, a mountainous terrain that marks the border between France and Italy, citizens have come together to help refugees attempting to cross from Italy into France. Many of the migrants are minors, traveling alone, with families thousands of miles away in the Sudan or Eritrea.

Citizens of the beautiful, rugged Roya Valley, where snow can fall heavily at Christmas, could no longer bear to encounter the homeless, the isolated, some mere children, wandering alone. They put in place a sort of “underground railroad,” a network of “safe houses,” of citizens ready to feed and house the refugees, to take them to hospital if necessary, to aid them on their way.

I used to live in Nice, not so far from this region. I know the freshets that cut deep ravines in the mountain slopes as they rush towards the Mediterranean Sea; skies so blue as to be harsh; a burning winter sun that, once it disappears behind the mountains, leaves the earth frozen and cold. I wouldn't want to be wandering in those parts alone and without a home.

On December 2nd, Eric Ciotti, a member of the French National Assembly and President of the “département” of the Maritime Alps, where the Roya Valley is located, declared that those who help refugees are “delinquents.” Already on November 23rd, Pierre-Alain Mannoni, a university professor, was put on trial for having attempted to obtain hospital care for three of them. His crime, he says, is not against, but “for humanity.”

Today, many in France and in the US are putting up “no vacancy” signs. There is no room in the inn and if Mary and Joseph were seeking shelter, they might not find even a stable to lay their heads.

Yet, today is Christmas, a day of peace and goodwill towards all. It is also a day of hope as we remember the utter helplessness of a newborn child come to save the world.

In that spirit, I wish all my readers a merry Christmas and renewed hope for the new year.

YouTube link to “The Nativity”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM1UWUapOuo

Carpe diem (2)

Since Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States, for some, it's the best of times; for others, the worst.

Commentators, specialists and ordinary people are asking, "What's next?"

Who knows? Only time will tell.

That's why I write today, as I wrote a month ago: carpe diem, seize the day!

And that's just what I'm doing, sitting on a marble bench, surrounded by marble columns in a park in the very city that gave "la dolce vita," the art of living easy, to the world.

For the past few days I've been in Rome, walking, observing, learning from the Romans, who seem more concerned with friends and family than work or the state of the world.

In restaurants, even late in the evening, families dine with small children. As the meal progresses from antipasto to primo and secondo courses, on to salad, cheese and dessert, children are passed from the laps of parents to grandparents, to aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, and each time they are cradled with love.

I also observe how parents often stroke their children's cheeks, a frequent tactile assurance of their affection and care.

Friends too show each other affection. Girlfriends wrap their arms around each other's shoulders. Boys are not afraid to touch, because touching is simply the Roman way of showing that you care.

Romans also have their own way of behaving in churches. In God's house they meet to rest, relax or chat, as if it were an extension of their home and living room.

Commerce too is more relaxed. I entered a supermarket to buy a snack of taralli, doughnut-like crackers brushed with olive oil, a bottle of water, and an apple. When I arrived at the checkout, the cashier, a simple employee, charged me for the water and the crackers, but gave me the apple as a "regalo," a gift.

In public transportation, young people jump up to offer their seats to gray-haired ladies (like me), and people make eye contact with strangers and sometimes even smile. This kind of behavior is unheard of in the Paris underground.

In Rome, people get sick and die. Some are rich and some are poor. Some sleep in the streets or in makeshift tent cities beneath umbrella pines. The city has its homeless and its refugees; it has danger and violence as well.

Yet Rome is different. This is a city that has been around for nearly 3,000 years: first Romulus and Remus, then the Etruscans, then the glory that was Rome.

Yesterday I visited the Ara Pacis, an altar built by the Emperor Augustus to glorify himself and the peace and prosperity of his reign. Facing it stood an obelisk whose shadow, once a year, fell on the very center of the altar. This happened on September 23rd, the first day of autumn, the day Augustus was born, proof the gods had destined him for glory.

At that time, the time of Chirst's birth, Rome was a city of one million inhabitants and the Empire extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red and Black Seas.

By the fifth century, after the barbarian invasions, the population had dropped to about 25,000, that of Pottsville in its heyday.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the once-great capital of an empire was a sleepy city of 500,000, surrounded by pine groves and swampy valleys infested with mosquitoes that spread "Roman fever," a particularly virulent form of malaria.

A few decades earlier, in 1871, the city had become the capital of a newly united Italy, created in 1861. In 1911, to celebrate the first 50 years of its existence, Rome organized an International Exposition of the Arts. Each region of united Italy had its pavilion, with local art and folk traditions on display.

Today those collections are housed in the Museo Nazionale delle arti e tradizioni popolari, the National Museum of Folk Art. I am sitting on its steps to write, in a part of the city far from the historic center and Rome's most famous monuments.

Known as EUR, this district of Rome was a project of Mussolini, who chose the most talented architects of his day to build a new city meant to become the setting for the 1942 World's Fair.

The fair never took place. World War II got in the way. Mussolini, the Duce, leader of Italy's National Fascist Party, never finished his grandiose project and died on April 28,1945, executed by a firing squad.

In Italy, leaders, governments, kingdoms and empires come and go. Carpe diem. The people, their art and traditions, remain, still as alive today as thousands of years ago.

Across from the museum of folk art, in another white-columned building, is the Museum of the Early Middle Ages. Its collections document Roman art and culture from the fall of the empire to the year 1000, a collection unique in Italy.

On a Saturday afternoon in late November, I am all alone in this museum, as I was in the museum of folk art.

When I leave, the cashier, the museum's guard, and an office employee are taking a coffee break. They invite me to join them. Carpe diem. I tasted the best coffee I've had in Rome.

Today the sun is shining. Yesterday the air was heavy with rain. A thunderstorm broke around midnight. The rest of the night was calm.

Before dawn, in the pine trees outside my window, a nightingale began to sing. I've rarely heard this mythic bird's song, but thanks to my English friend Libby, I know how to recognize its call. And with John Keats and the Romans I can say:

"The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown."

Carpe diem: seize the day in difficult times

Early this morning, listening to the news on the radio I said to myself that war is at the portals of Europe: a new offensive is underway against ISIS in Libya, a country less than 300 miles from Italy; Russia continues to bomb Aleppo in Syria, a mere 750 miles from Athens, Greece.

Other battles rage in the Middle East: American troops have joined Kurds, Turks and the Iraqi army to chase ISIS from Mosul, a city with over one million inhabitants. In a civil war that kills mostly civilians, Saudi Arabia fights alongside the currently ruling power in Yemen at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

And before winter sets in, refugees ready to risk their lives continue to board leaky vessels and sail the Mediterranean Sea. In Greece and Italy, the bodies of those who have drowned continue to wash up on the shore.

That’s a lot of war, suffering, destruction and death.

In France, “Plan Vigipirate” has become a part of our daily lives. It is a government program to fight against terrorism first put into place in 1978 in response to terrorist attacks in France and Europe at that time.

Since January 2015, marked by two deadly attacks in Paris, we also live with “Opération Sentinelle,” which has mobilized 10,000 French soldiers to patrol sensitive points throughout the country. In the Paris region alone, 6,000 soldiers walk the streets with their assault rifles slung over their shoulders, barrel usually (but not always) pointed to the ground.

In the town where I take the train to travel back to Paris from the country, Nogent le Rotrou, whose population is about that of Pottsville, I sometimes see soldiers patrolling the avenue that leads from the train station to the center of town. Very serious, they stare straight ahead, avoiding eye contact with the locals who wonder about the reasons for such a military presence in their town.

France also has its refugee problem. On October 24th, French authorities evacuated its biggest refugee camp located near the English Channel. Built by the refugees themselves, it is a sprawling shanty town on the outskirts of the port of Calais. In existence since 2002, this tent-city known as “la jungle” sprouted up when the French government closed an official camp nearby. It has recently been home to close to 10,000 refugees.

Between 6,500 and 8,000 are being willingly transferred to other towns throughout France. In some places, such as the city of Béziers, a few miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea, the mayor and some citizens are trying to keep them out.

Earlier this month, on October 13, the Catholic Bishops of France released a new document encouraging the French people to “rediscover the meaning of politics.” They call for a “new social contract” that would “accept cultural differences” so that people of all backgrounds and religions could learn to live together in a more generous spirit than the one that currently prevails in France.

Making no apologies for terrorism, the bishops point out that contemporary French society is failing to integrate the children and grandchildren of immigrants. They also emphasize that for the past 30 years, France’s number one problem is its high unemployment. In certain neighborhoods home to those the French call the “immigrant population,” it can rise to over 25% of those able and willing to work.

Finally, the bishops characterize the French as “anxious and on edge,” claiming that “sadness” pervades French society today.

Yet, and this is the mystery of life, despite the sorry state of the world, the wars, the threats, the dangers, the depths to which politics has sunk on both sides of the Atlantic, the endemic unemployment in France, I don’t feel sad. I feel happy and grateful to be alive. In that, I may simply be a piece of data, one of those Frenchmen who feel pessimistic about the outside world but largely satisfied with their personal lives.

I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. The French love to analyze social trends and I recently heard that we’ve become too individualistic to feel sufficient empathy for those suffering in the world. If their religion, skin color or culture is too different from our own, we’re all too likely to feel unconcerned by the trials they undergo. The refugee crisis is unfortunately a case in point.

Whenever I am in Paris, I see refugees at bus stops where the city has installed electric outlets where anyone can recharge their phone. That’s what they’re doing, two young men or a young mother with her child, huddled together on the edge of a bench. People hand them sandwiches, bags of food, but what they need is a home.

In a Bible story about Abraham and Sarah, three strangers show up at the entrance to Abraham’s tent in the shadow of the Mamre oaks and he does what is perfectly natural to him. He washes their feet, slaughters a calf and prepares them a copious meal. In this passage, Sarah laughs when she hears one of the strangers say that within the year she, an old barren woman, will have a son.

This is also where Abraham bargains with God and makes him change his mind. Through dialogue, he convinces an angry and destructive Lord to become more compassionate.

A few years ago I had the chance to see a 1930 German silent movie called “People on Sunday” with musical accompaniment provided by an orchestra. Billy Wilder, best known for “Some Like It Hot,” wrote the screen play, a simple story about how ordinary people spend a Sunday in Berlin. I loved that movie, made with amateur actors. Yet I marveled at the calm of those Berliners at a time when the power of Hitler and the Nazi Party was exponentially on the rise.

Sometimes I wonder if we are living in such times, but I don’t have an answer. Sometimes I wonder about my capacity for generosity when confronted with refugees in need. I know, though, these are not times for building walls and barriers, neither physically nor in our hearts.

Today I set out to write an article about autumn in le Perche, my “new” region. Instead the outside world came pouring in, along with sunshine and the scent of autumn. That’s life, the good with the bad. Carpe diem. Let’s seize the day while we can.

Home at last!

I'm sitting at an oak table in the living room of my new home. Yes, I can live here now and work is almost done. Me too, done in, that is, by months of working and waiting and learning how to be contractor-in-chief. I've also learned a lot about France, more than I ever expected, having quite presumptuously considered myself an expert on the country where I've lived for almost 30 years.

For those who read me regularly, you may remember those antique terra cotta tiles I chipped away at some of winter, all of spring, and part of summer, to the point of spraining my right wrist. The real contractor-in-chief of this project, Monsieur Béatrix, wanted to carry them off to the dump, but I got my way, piled them in a shed in my garden, and ended up with just about enough to cover the floor in my living room.

For the two square yards or so that went uncovered, Monsieur Béatrix and I found a solution while I was panting my way up an Alpine slope in early August (during that trek I made the discovery that cell phone service follows you everywhere, even when you're at eye level with Mont Blanc high up in the French-Italian Alps). My contractor suggested a tapis, a “carpet” of tiles in different shapes and sizes at the entrance to my home. I was too far away to do anything else but give him the go-ahead.

When later that month I opened the door to my new home, I almost sobbed. No, I was not disappointed. I was simply too happy, overwhelmed by the sight before my eyes: the expanse of those terra cotta tiles I had so lovingly retrieved. They were finally in place; and at my feet I discovered a perfect little “tapis” at the entrance, smaller tiles surrounded by a triangular border that set them off from the rest of the room.

A lot of hubbub for a few floor tiles, some might say, but for me, the experience of hammering, chiseling, brushing and washing over 500 tiles while, in the process, saving them from oblivion and bringing back to life a substantial piece of the past, has filled me with a sense of accomplishment I've rarely felt. I admire them as I write. I am happy and this simple happiness is teaching me a lot about what really matters in life.

I also have a kitchen from Ikea and to me it is as beautiful as any custom-made model I've seen. It is simple and functional with everything I need (except a stove, but that will come). It was installed by my “gentlemen craftsmen,” two Ukrainians, Radu and Victor.

One day in Paris when my water heater was leaking all over my bathroom, I asked them for help. They were working in a 1st floor apartment in my building and obligingly climbed the stairs to my 6th floor outpost to have a look. It didn't take me long to realize I was in the company of two exceptional men so rather than having them repair my water heater, I asked them to remodel my apartment instead.

I remember Victor being surprised by my snap decision, but he and Radu are two men who have never let me down. In two days, they installed my country kitchen and thanks to them, I have the kitchen of my dreams.

So far, it is the only room in the house where I've had time to hang a picture and my first impulse was to put a “Pottsville-Perche” connection in place. On one wall you can discover a tribute to my native city, the poster created by artist Nanette Major, a picture-map of Pottsville that I'm sure many readers know. Each time I pass by it, I stop and “explore,” identifying streets, houses, and places in a town that occupies a big place in my heart.

I have the feeling my new region, “le Perche,” may soon have its place as well. This past weekend, I explored its hills and valleys in my cobalt blue Peugeot 206, a used car I bought the last day of August. It has lots of miles on the motor and I would not trust it from here to Paris, but it is perfect for getting around a region where, very much like in Schuylkill County, a car is a must.

On Sunday, first stop the home of my friend Jacques. In front of his chimney, where a fire crackled and flamed, we sat down for Sunday dinner: grilled blood sausage as an appetizer, fresh rabbit cooked in mustard and cider as our main course, followed by salad and cheese, with for dessert, grapes from his garden.

On Sundays, Parisians brunch on salads and “terrines,” avocado whip, a mini-cheese soufflé, a mouthful of pâté, a mouthful of fish, served in tiny glass or crockery bowls. Hardly a meal, a Parisian brunch is more a “tasting,” where you can whet your appetite without really feeling satisfied.

In le Perche, on Sundays, people sit down to a meal. For years I've been a nibbler, a true Parisian. It feels good to be eating real food again!

Though it is a bit difficult to get up after such a meal and immediately hit the road, once we drank our café, we set off again in my little blue Peugeot to visit a 16th century chateau where Percherons are raised.

These horses were first found in the Huisne River valley, the very same river that gives its name to the village where I have my home (Condé sur Huisne). On Sundays, their day of rest, these hardy animals graze peacefully in the fields around the chateau.

Today, once I wrap up this article, I have to return to Paris (after all, it's my job at the university that is paying for all of this!). First, though, I'd like to do some work in my garden. It's is the time of year to plant tulip bulbs and I also have some anemones. By next spring, I hope to have flowers.

Less than a year ago I bought my ruin. It has become my home and, I'm starting to suspect, the threshold to a new life. Soon I'll have to add another “P” to my Pottsville-Paris connection: “P” for “Perche.”