LES MANIFS!

While I don't usually reference (or read) the Wall Street Journal, there coverage of the French strike & demonstrations-turned-riots has bee great. This photo from Paris is wonderful, & the article with it explains what's been going on quite well.

This has been by far our most interesting week in France. Starting last Tuesday, my students have been protesting, demonstrating, distributing materials & spray painting sheets to make banners. They brought these banners to the streets and, surrounded by police (protecting them rather than blasting them with tear gas) they marched back into the school while chanting that there should be NO no CHANGE change TO RETIREMENT yeeeeaaaah... They then marched themselves across the grass & into the building for class.

I thought that would be the end of it. I thought last week's demonstrations (or in French, manifestations) were their last big go. The government has decided to change the retirement age from 60 (unheard of in the States) to 62 (at present the absolute minimum age for minimum Social Security benefits in the States). People are refusing: They see what's coming. Soon it will be 65. Then 67. Then they die behind their desks... Like in the States, where 67 has long been the age of FULL retirement for people born after 1960.

For we Americans, this is seeming like small chickens. Most people work until their 65 to get any benefits, and most people are responsible for their own retirement. In France, retirement benefits are paid for with your wages–like your doctor visits & your college education. This means massive debt for the country. (This also means that the nation's debt has helped the citizens instead of the war efforts. I'd rather have debt that supports the people than supports a war–check this debt calculator or this Washington post article to look at our country's debt & what we got for it.)

I've had a chance to talk to several of my well-informed students about what's happening, and I understand their frustrations. Currently, the job prospects for those aged 50+ are not good in France–so the real fear is that they will not be working more, but that they will spend more time as figures in the unemployment calculations. My students aren't yet in the work force, and they're not among those students screaming to stop additions to their workload. My students are getting very concerned for their country.

"Something has to change," they tell me. "Two years, it's not a big thing. But we need more negotiations." If things keep going as they have been, by the time my students enter their 30s & are workin' hard for the money, they'll be paying two retirements: one to fund the baby boomer generation & one to create another fund for themselves. The situation, at the core, isn't much different than in the states: People get benefits now. People my age won't. People are hesitant to change the system, because it's scary & unfamiliar.

So while the French have been getting their strike on, Joe & I have been soaking it all in. We went down to the demonstrations today en route to shop for bicycles & stopped to talk to a French friend. He's a photographer, so he's been in the middle of the (highly organized) demonstrations, which were starting to look like a really outstanding, crowded block party surrounded by police & lots of sirens. We got to talk to him for a minute about the strikes–how they're scheduled to end tonight but probably won't... and how if they don't end tonight, the gasoline strike will stop Charles de Gaulle. (This is uncannily like Atlas Shrugged, so it's extra exciting for us as we get deeper into the book!)

While at the "manif" as they say, I grabbed a sticker from the Parti Socialiste & resisted the urge to immediately plaster it to my coat forever. Say what you will about their strikes, it's hard for the States to hold a candle to the French passion for their government (with the exception of the terrifying Tea Party)... & hey, at least their letting the country have more than two (real*) parties.

*This is not a dig at "third parties." This is a dig at the Tea Party. Just to clarify.

20: howdy from Chicago

(thank you)

I have made the drive back from St. Louis. This is a small adventure compared to the MegaBus filled with Pampered Chef employees that carried us from Chicago to St. Louis. For now, Joe and I are still hours apart... but fewer hours. He made the drive to Evansville today after moving out of his studio apartment.

He'll spend the week with his family before coming to Ohio for wedding preparations gone crazy. Before all of that starts, we had a few days in Chicago–a mix of work and play.

My good friend Kristen opened her apartment to us and showed us the way around her neighborhood (near Lincoln Park). The trip was great from start to finish. While I don't normally just chat about my day(s), there were so many great discoveries we made and places we saw that I have to share them.

Tuesday started with a long walk, a stop by Intelligentsia. I'm a huge fan of the coffee–I hesitate to use this word–chain. Their storefronts/cafés are incredible for their design and branding. I envy the person that created their logo.

While the crowd tends to make me a bit uncomfortable and insecure (because, let's face it, they know they're cooler than I am), everything about the place reminds me why I want a coffee shop. Good coffee is the heart of a good, social community. Good pastries are the heart of a good morning. Good staffs that recognize that are essential. I was soaking up the employee's contentment like my pain au chocolat was soaking up my macchiato.

While eating fresh falafal from Zad, we watched Once. Kristen and I had worked on a documentary project together, so it was nice to call out bits and pieces of the film (made with two cameras in two weeks) that reminded us of our own experience. I immediately fell in love with The Swell Season and wished them every success.

After the movie, we headed back out into the world for dinner. And what a dinner it was. La Creperie is a definite treasure in Chicago, with a true French style, flavor and atmosphere. The humble building and long back patio put you immediately at ease (ease then furthered by a bottle of white wine). All I can say is that I hope millions of people go here.

We sat at our patio table, sipping and savoring slowly–very slowly. We pulled ourselves from the seats two hours later, better people for the time and the conversations we allowed ourselves. This is a problem the three of us have–not allowing ourselves the pleasure. While the sight-seeing and food in Chicago were lovely, they were nothing compared to the conversations about feminism, marriage and finding yourself in a city that the restaurants allowed us to have without rushing us from our table or asking too many questions.

Dinner was in sharp contrast to dessert at Baladoche, where we wolfed down $30 of Zücher waffles topped with gelato topped with whipped cream smeared with crunchy Nutella in less than ten minutes. I don't even know what to say really, other than I hope my dress still fits and I can't stop thinking about pearl sugar. (Go there and you'll understand.)

We were up and at it early again on Wednesday, meeting up with another friend in Rogers Park at a delightfully hippie hub, Heartland Café. If you're into food that's filling and does the body good, you've found the right rundown building. Rundown in that established way that seems oddly, confidently permanent. My fruity nutty pancakes (which I could almost make it through one of) were packed with walnuts, strawberries, peaches, bananas, blueberries, whole-wheat flour and pure maple syrup. I know.

I know.
I'll accelerate here.

We waddled our way down to the beach (right, with its painted benches), around a sculpture garden made of kid's meal toys and recycling, up to the café again and into the car, which took us to Heaven.

Architectural Artifacts could easily become my second home if I were living in the Windy City. The two sprawling warehouses are joined together to create a design lover's fantasy playground. You never know–never–what you'll find in the next room. Like an entire cauldron of letters from the typesetting days at the University of Nottingham.

Our nails turned a bit black as we dug through the letters for a lowercase 'e' to complete our backwards spelling of Betz. I may or may not have come away with a semi-colon. Sometimes I can't help myself.

Dinner was again hours of conversation and relaxation–and calling out the fact that we were conversing and relaxing. This time, we were surrounded by picnicing families and friends in Ravinia's lawn for a Swell Season concert. The whole experience, from the fresh salad and fruit dinner to the perfect weather and trees surrounding us, made it impossible not to love the band all the more, and love Kristen for creating such an amazing experience.

Wow. Exhausting, right? So we crashed. And we crashed hard. And the next day, we were off to convince the French Consulate to give us visas... which ended up being free of complication, cost and complaints. Merci, Chicago and à bientôt, Nancy!

46: A Year in Provence

I've been writing a lot about what I'm reading lately. I've been reading a lot to help my writing lately. I've been writing a lot to start understanding how I work as an essayists or what it means to start a memoir. I have not been journaling much. This is a problem for another post.

To keep myself thinking about my first year of marriage (a.k.a Year in France), I've been reading books related to travel (though I usually shy away from travel writing, as I'm of the party that believes it's tooting one's own horn most of the time). I've been reading about France, about people's time there and how it changed them.

My professor, a very dear man who might as well be French for all the time and love he's given the country, recommended A Year in Provence. Year is a memoir by Peter Mayle, and when I went to the library to snag a copy for a quick summer read (and break from Stein) I discovered how many books Mayle has written about France.

I'll admit... I'm a bit skeptical about some of them. But reading through his long list of novels, it's obvious that he's in love with Provence. He's dedicated a large part of himself to that place, and I'd love to know what that feels like (and how it translated to writing).

That afternoon at the library was also a day of putting 2 + 2 together. Most of my trips home from college have included an afternoon watching A Good Year with my mom and sister. There's something about Russell Crowe's big flop that we adore. I don't know if it's the scenery (and how gorgeous Marion Cotillard looks in it), the quick jokes, the idea of landing a vineyard in France... I could go on.

So we love the movie, and it wasn't until that day that I figured out the book behind the movie was written by the author my professor had been pushing me toward for years.

Mayle wrote A Good Year and got it published only two years before the movie was made. Powell's has one used copy of the book in their warehouse. I want to snag it! I want to start a Ladies of the Family reading club and go to town on some Mayle novels.

This has been an awesome book for summer reading (and other misc. projects). Now if I could just this peacock journal (to use as our personal recipe book) that I ordered from the Burgundy District, I'd be one happy Bride-to-Be.

And I will be a bride in a little over a month. Joe and I now officially have less than one month of days in separate states. To continue with countdowns, my bridal shower is this Sunday!

47: My Life in France

I've mentioned My Life in France several different times over the life of this blog, and I've finally gotten my nose deep into it. (Granted, I haven't finished Gertrude Stein yet... but it was the weekend. I needed a break.)

Julia Child is one of the most endearing women I've ever heard, seen on television or read from in my life. Her stories flow through My Life in France as if you were sitting next to her on a worn out loveseat or at Parisian café. Child and her husband, Paul Child, had a love so deep and so perfectly matched that you can't help but envy them and be greatful for their marriage and what it gave to American pop-culture.

Child was in her mid-30s when she moved to Paris with her husband. They were newlyweds. She was humbled by her husband's rooted understanding of the culture and language, but she was not to be held back. She was awed by his talent, but she acknowledged that she was still growing and discovering who she was meant to be.

I hope to use The Julia Child Approach to Language Learning when Joe and I arrive in France. Child threw herself into Paris full-force. She devoted time each day to studying and utilizing the language. Of course, her favorite place to learn new phrases and bits of culture were the fresh food markets.

Each page is basted with flavors of specialty shops and seasonal food choices. What is important is Child's gracious and humble approach to the knowledge that she gains. She acknowledges her unknowing, roots her desire to know in her new marriage and her desire to develop as her own person, and invites us to learn along side her instead of asking us to watch her--as she watched countless cooking demonstrations at Le Cordon Bleu.

I am more excited than ever to return to France, to step into the bread shops, the creameries, the butchers, the seasonal markets, and do as she did--ask the French to share their recipes and culture and knowledge, engage with the world a round me and use my time in France to discover the person I am meant to be.

I will not come back the next Julia Child, but I will come back more sure of myself, more rounded as a person and more in love with my husband. I hope that my heart can be opened a fraction of what Child's was, and I hope equally that you will take the time to fall in love with her and her Life in France.

49: Gertrude Stein

I am working my way through Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Allow me to explain the title for a start: Stein wrote the novel to talk about (1) herself and (2) her time in Paris with lots of famous friends; she used her long-time partner, Toklas, as the narrator.

There are things that I love about Stein's work. Her influence on modernism and her elimination of commas. Her discussion of language and how these thoughts exhibit themselves in the text.

There are things that I cannot get over, that appear frequently in The Autobio of Alice. Her love of herself. Her lists of famous friends. Her life in Paris that I can't have. Okay, I'm digressing and getting a bit bitter.

There are times when Stein's poetry bleed into her prose, and you find yourself wondering What would it be like if, for one day, you heard these words in your head; you felt these thoughts come from your pen onto paper? My favorite example is on page 237 (Modern Library's edition), when she is discussing the people they gave rides during WWI.

It was not only soldiers, a chauffeur would get off the seat of a private car in the place Vendôme and crank Gertrude Stein's old ford for her. Gertrude Stein said that the others looked so efficient, of course nobody would think of doing anything for themselves. Now as for herself she was not efficient, she was good humored, she was democratic, one person was as good as another, and she knew what she wanted done. ...The important thing, she insists, is that you must have deep down as the deepest thing in you a sense of equality.

I will admit, at times I am tired. At times I make it through four pages before the book falls to my lap and I wake up an hour later.

I will admit that I am not yet, at page 250 of 324, sure how I am supposed to feel about the woman who knew long before others, and told them so, that she was a genius. I am not yet sure if I am meant to envy or understand or love or despise the Gertrude Stein so loved by our narrator.

But here's the thing. I am learning much more than expected. This is to be expected with bio/autobio writing. As Joe and I start planning our time in Paris, I'll be referencing The Autobio of Alice to find the hauntings of the Lost Generation. I'll be referencing it when I think of painters, of the rue de Fleurus where they visited and Stein lived, of WWI and the American war effort.

I recommend the oeuvre with its scattered French. I would recommend it on its staying power alone. If you have any interest in the modernist movement of literature or the writers of WWI & WWII or Paris or painting or interesting play with (and at times over-use of) language, The Autobio of Alice will stay with you long after you've stopped being tired and started looking forward to the next page turn, long after you've closed the book and returned it to the bookshelf--indeed, I would say, long after you've gone to and returned from Paris.