So that's it. And the reaction on the part of the protest movement remains to be seen. Even before the vote, students had already called for another day of protest next Tuesday. The reports keep being that rail service is improving (though this varies by region; 6 out of 10 trains running seems still a bit iffy), and that the Métro will run normally over the weekend.
I walked to buy some groceries this morning (it's getting to be that "calculating what you will use up before you leave" time). I walked to the little creperie where I ate the first day; now its windows are closed against the chill, though eventually the staff began leaving one door open, on the side where the sun was shining. I watched the three young American children with their "hot dogs," enormous long things grilled open-face on bread. Onion soup weather now, personally. On the Pont St. Louis afterward, I watched a young man dipping long strings attached to two sticks into a bubble mixture and letting the wind make enormous bubbles. Other people who tried their hand at it had trouble getting the knack. I walked to the Luxembourg Gardens, and walked around there--walked. Sat. Walked. Sat. Watched people watching people.
Late yesterday afternoon when I came in from--walking, around the Marais (tracking down the Archives Nationales--don't think I hadn't tried to concoct some alternative to the aborted Normandy trip, but all the records for French overseas territories, i.e., Canada, Louisiana, are housed in a completely separate branch in Aix-en-Provence, which I had about as much chance of reaching as I did Normandy. And I'm completely unprepared to walk into the main archives, not having combed in advance through the massive listings of its holdings--online--to see whether there might be some scrap of information related to anyone whose blood I share; having no research plan whatever), I for the first time succumbed to the little library here in the apartment, of various books people have left behind over time. I began reading Middlesex, and proceeded to stay up until 2:00 this morning doing just that. Out of everything that I could say about it (how beautifully written--woven--it is), what haunts me the most, I think, is the sacking and burning of Smyrna, about which I was completely ignorant. About the complicity of all the so-called "neutral" countries (the U.S., the U.K.) in the slaughter of perhaps 200,000 Greek and Armenian civilians (now I've been reading up on it online, you know), and then the cover-up, so that good relations could be maintained with Turkey.
My daughter turned me on to 'Middlesex'. Great book, made me reassess the Oprah book club. Currently reading world history, 20th Century prior to WW1, it's one ethnic cleansing after another in the Balkans. Waiting for a mention of Smyrna but none yet. Those found books can be a real treasure. 'Cloud Atlas' in a Catania pensione comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteThe focus in the US re the strikes is on the inconvenience of it all, which I know is a hardship when you're in the middle of it. But very little is said about the government breaking long ago made promises vis a vis the Sarko proposed tax cuts for the very wealthy.
Exactly. God knows I'll testify to the inconvenience, but I've seen lots of signs saying that with full taxation there wouldn't be a funds shortage. My seller (a Wharton Business School product) has no patience with the French workers, thinks they're just lazy, etc. There was one moving (to me) side article in Le Monde a few days ago, about the students in a poor working-class Parisian suburb, with horrible schools, who see their futures already in place, working in factories all their lives. Yet their comments were so intelligent and aware; they know burning a few cars in the street isn't the answer; there needs to be a whole longterm reform of the system.
ReplyDeleteAnd actually, reading testimony online from eyewitnesses, one Red Cross nurse in particular who said the evacuation of the survivors was worse than anything she'd seen in WWI, is just about as horrifying: scores of women giving birth, tens of thousands being herded onto boats, mothers separated from screaming children and then beaten with rifles when they tried to get to them.
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