Paris Journal 2008

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Yesterday after working we packed up some of our belongings and hopped on the metro to go to the other apartment. We joined Wendy for drinks and to discuss some real estate business we have back on Sanibel. She had prepared some nice snacks, so we weren’t all that hungry for dinner. We just wanted something light, so we walked up to the Nicolas café at the Marché St. Germain. That whole part of town is just hopping with activity. Paris has come back to life. Summer is over. The rentrée is happening. The Parisians are back. So are the university students. We arrived at Nicholas after 9PM and were fortunate to get a table. I just had a brandade de morue, Tom had carpaccio de boeuf, and Wendy had gazpacho. After, Tom and Wendy had dessert. The food is good, prices are cheap, and wine by the glass is unbelievably inexpensive. I had a glass of Pouilly Fumé, ordinarily one of the most expensive white wines, for just €3.90. I tasted Tom’s dessert: a dark chocolate flour-less cake in a pool of crème Anglaise. It was every bit as good as what you’d find in a fine restaurant. Wendy’s dessert, however, was slightly disappointing. The lighting inside the café is a bit too bright, and with the wooden chairs and tables, with no linens, it is a bit utilitarian, but you know, even in this highly touristy part of town, the place was full of French speaking people. The servers did not attempt to speak English to us, and we were pleased with that. Tom and I had a lovely walk home in the dark, through the very peaceful 7^th arrondissement. It had been a hot day, so the night was the time for walking. We like the city life. I do get home exchange requests from people who live in French villages, but I am wary of spending too much time in a French village. Mostly, this is because I’m afraid I’ll become quickly bored. Paris even seems small to me sometimes. That’s probably because of its neighborhood orientation, everywhere you go in this metropolis. But there is another thing which we are wary about; Tom calls it “small town meanness.” He grew up in a small town, and so he knows about this from experience. I grew up in a transient upper middle class suburb, so I have never experienced much of this “small town meanness,” but I’ve seen enough to know what it is. Here’s a tale of small town meanness from France. It was reported in yesterday’s edition of Le Parisien. A young farmer, Jean-Hugues Bourgeois, from the Hautes-Alpes (southeastern France) moved in 2006 to a farm in Saint-Gervais-d’Auvergne (central, slightly southern France, not terribly far from the Hautes-Alpes department) were he began raising goats and making organic cheese. Then he moved to Teilhet, a neighboring village, with a population of about 300. Jean-Hugues is on good terms with his neighbor, Gérard Message, so when Gérard decided to retire, he made arrangements to sell his land to Jean-Hugues. But the other farmers from the area were jealous to see such good land go to a “stranger.” Jean-Hugues said that not only is he considered to be an outsider, but “I have tattoos and I make organic food,” he notes with irony. This makes him very strange in the eyes of the provincial local farmers. On the night of March 31 to April 1, someone with a pistol made for slaughtering animals killed ten of Jean-Hugues’ goats. “The work of a professional,” says Jean-Hugues, who sees this act of cruelty as a declaration of war. In addition, a graffiti tag consisting of an untranslatable warning was painted on his house. The young farmer, who had just begun to produce his first cheeses, found himself in debt after this attack. Fortunately, a number of people in the region were horrified by what had been done to him, so they and some local associations collected €15,000 to help him out of this tough spot. “I then thought that everything would be normal again,” said Jean-Hugues, “but I was way off.” His anonymous aggressors continued their bad deeds. They slashed the tires of his tractor, stole material from him, put rats in his mailbox. On August 9, they set his barn on fire. Fifteen firemen spent several hours putting out the fire. Fifteen days later, a note was left on the seat of his tractor, threatening to rape and kill his wife and 8-year-old daughter. The mayor of Teilhet, who had until then been silent on the matter, finally “left his reserve” and denounced “these ignoble acts” even though, according to him, “nothing proves that this was the work of local farmers.” A complaint has been filed with the local prosecutor, and the local police say they are “very occupied” with this matter, but they refuse to comment while the “climate is so heavy in this local microregion.” In spite of all, no arrests have yet been made. Jean-Hugues says, “I hope that all this will be made clear soon, to put an end to this situation worthy of Zola. What’s going to happen is, I will continue with my goals. One must not give in when faced with people like that.”

Sunday, August 31, 2008 And yet more night shots of the Eiffel Tower. Goldfish in the garden at the Musée Branly. Sign my guestbook. View my guestbook.

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