Paris Journal 2008

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What’s new? Why was there no journal entry yesterday? Read these: Cyclist attacked on way to work Local cyclist is victim Motorist attacks cyclist Dan is Tom’s son, my stepson. He described the guys who attacked him as rednecks. It gets worse. At about the time that Dan was hit, two little girls were killed by a hit-and-run driver, a crack addict, elsewhere in town (Louisville, Kentucky). The girls were crossing the street with one of the girl’s mother, Angie. The plan for the day had been to go to McDonalds, and then go to the Natatorium for a swim. They never made it to the Natatorium. Well, Angie survived with a broken arm, but I’m sure she has a broken heart, too. Angie is Dan’s next door neighbor. The two little girls were playmates of Dan’s daughters, our granddaughters, “the twins.” Here’s the news coverage: Louisville police arrest hit and run driver Hit and run driver has long criminal record Hit and run suspect held on bond Dan’s wife, Mary, just sent us a nice note. I’m hoping Dan will be okay, but you know how it is after a trauma. The injuries noticeable right away often are not the only injuries. No, all of this isn’t about Paris. But it put a huge damper on the spirit of things here. We walked over to Art and Joyce’s apartment last night and then walked to dinner with them at La Petite Chaise. I did tell them about Dan’s incident, but I just couldn’t manage to talk about the other one. I don’t think they understood why we weren’t quite our usual selves. After dinner, it was raining a bit so Art and Joyce took a taxi home and we took the metro. We see bicycles on the streets of Paris everywhere now. Not all of them are the Vélib bicycles. But the presence of thousands of Vélib bicycles has encouraged other bicyclists, and it has changed the nature of motorists’ expectations in Paris. Where they used to be angry with the occasional bicyclist who would get in their way, now motorists have come to expect them, even if the motorists are still are routinely annoyed. We still consider it to be too dangerous for us to ride bikes in Paris. We can walk almost everywhere, and we aren’t in a hurry, generally. When we are in a hurry, the metro is much faster. We are used to a more idyllic environment for bikes, Sanibel Island, where there are separate, wide bike paths that keep the cars and bikes mostly apart. And for the bicycle racers who must use the roads, motorists on Sanibel are very tolerant because, after all, it is Sanibel and bikes are expected. I hope that cities like Louisville become like Paris, Lyon, and Berlin, where bicycles are expected, tolerated, and ubiquitous. This isn’t to say that there have never been any road rage incidents in which a motorist has attacked a cyclist in Paris. I’m sure there have been a few. But with the vast numbers of cycles and cars here, I think the number of such incidents is insignificant. Louisville, and much of the region near where I was raised (southern Ohio, southern Indiana, and Kentucky) have way too many rednecks. In my mind, two of the characteristics that a person must have in order to qualify as a “redneck” are lack of tolerance and a tendency toward violence. I’ll throw ignorance into that bag, too, to further define what I mean by “redneck.” In other words, if a person is not ignorant, violent, and intolerant, that person is not a redneck – that’s how I define the word. (My sister-in-law likes to say she and my younger brother are rednecks, but I just laugh. They don’t qualify. They are just too smart, nice, and thoughtful.) There just aren’t hardly any rednecks in Paris, as far as I can tell. I wish Dan, Mary, and the twins could be here with us now, safe and away from those dreadful people. Sign my guestbook. View my guestbook.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008 The Cooleys: Dan, Mary, Barbara and Tom. This was taken at the Lazy Flamingo on Sanibel, not long before we left for Paris this summer. The Eiffel Tower on a slightly gray day. Statue honoring Edouard Pailleron in the Parc Monceau. He was a 19^th Century French poet and dramatist who wrote a volume of satires called “The Parasites.”

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