Amerloque

Homerun

2009-04-06T01:11:00.000-07:00

Received wisdom would have it that American baseball was imported to France during World War I by the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), which landed at the French port of Saint-Nazaire in 1917 under the command of John J. 'Blackjack' Pershing. Numerous eyewitness accounts of those times state that behind the front lines, from the beginning and all the way up to the Armistice with Germany on November 11, 1918, American troops devoted themselves to their national pastime. After pacing out diamonds as best they could on flinty dirt fields and erecting perfunctory but readable scoreboards, they joined in with wild enthusiasm at the umpire's shout of 'Play ball !' Histories of the American participation in WWI asserting that the first organized AEF baseball game in history was held at Aix-les-Bains in March, 1918, help perpetrate the urban legend that American doughboys 'introduced' the French to baseball.

Yet the first baseball game organized on French soil actually took place on March 8, 1889 during the Universal Exhibition. Promoter Albert Spalding (yes, he of sporting goods fame) and two American baseball teams traveled around the world to put on baseball exhibitions; one of the French games took place near the Eiffel Tower in Paris. One might say, then, that the doughboys, both white and black, enabled baseball to be appreciated -- along with jazz ! -- on a far wider scale by the French public than before. Nevertheless, previous to the AEF there were at least two French baseball players in the Majors: Ed Gagnier, born in 1882 in Paris, who apparently played shortstop in 1914 and 1915, and Claude Gouzzie, who had one at-bat for the 1903 St. Louis Browns.

The first French team, the chicly named 'Ranelagh Baseball Club', was founded in 1913 in Paris, while the French Fédération de Baseball was founded in 1924 - the year that the Olympic Games were held in Paris. A league was even established in 1926 - the mandatory step to officialize a sport under the French system. (By the way, the reader might want to know more about the reason(s) baseball has now been eliminated from the Summer Olympics, at least for 2012. A contingent of Major League Baseball and international officials are reportedly lobbying the International Olympic Committee hard for a return in 2016.)

Of course, interest in baseball grew substantially after World War II, when troops (and their children !) on the many American military bases throughout France would gather for serious jousts on Saturdays and Sundays. Mme Amerloque recalls going to a base near Chateauroux in central France in the '50s and staring with a small child's wonder at les américains playing a strange game, governed by almost incomprehensible rules, which required a bizarre baton and oversize, misshapen gloves.

There were two ways for the American expatriate in France during the 1960s through much of the 1980s to follow the US Major League Baseball season - and all American professional sports, for that matter.

The first was to consult the sports pages of the International Herald Tribune. If one didn't have enough centimes to hand, one could hustle over to the IHT building on the rue de Berri, just off the Champs-Elysees, and read the pages displayed two by two in purpose-built windows. The second was to stay up very late, and, if the atmospheric conditions were suitable, tune into medium wave and locate an Armed Forces Network (also called the AFRTS) station broadcasting from a SHAPE base in Belgium - or, more usually, from a frontline base beyond the Rhine, in what was then West Germany.

Baseball blasted off here in France during the 1980s. For example, Japanese teams, playing in well-organized leagues, took over the Bagatelle playing field in the Bois de Boulogne on Sunday afternoons from April to October. Officials from the Consulate would come out to open the season with due ceremony; after all, each team's uniforms (and sometimes a goodly part of its sporting equipment) was heavily subsidized by one or another Japanese organization, from local restaurant to international keiretsu. French players organized leagues throughout France; somewhere along the line the slumbering Fédération de Baseball morphed into the Fédération Française de Baseball et Softball. In 1992 Sports Illustrated published a comprehensive article detailing the impressive growth of baseball in France.

Satellite and cable TV in the latter part of the 1990s made it easier to watch US football and baseball. Canal+, the first cable subscription channel, showed summaries of World Series games. More recently the Sports+ channel – available on cable – has shown important games such as the All-Star Game and the World Series.

In the autumn of 2007 a new TV station called NASN (short for North American Sports Network) became available through several cable and satellite providers. From April through October, the network broadcasts American League and National League games as well as the playoffs and World Series games – in their entirety!

Recently the NASN became ESPN America, with basically the same coverage - and sports reporters - as NASN. Last month Amerloque was quite pleased to follow the World Baseball Classic, which saw the victory of the Japanese team - their second win in a row, the first having come in the WBC inaugural event in 2006.

Philosophically speaking, of course, Japan's back-to-back victories come as little surprise to Amerloque. The vast majority of field and indoor team sports currently played involve moving a ball, or other marker such as a puck, into some sort of goal. The team is focused on moving the marker to the scoring area, whether goalpost, net, or cage. In baseball, however, the team is focused on moving an individual - not an inanimate object but a real live human being - to score. For countries such as Japan and South Korea, which pride themselves on group harmony, baseball (introduced by the American military) is a game which reflects the values of their society. It is a logical extension of their cultures, in which individual wants and needs are sacrificed somewhat for the benefit of the group at large.

Amerloque has attended baseball games in France from time to time. Not only are there French players, but Venezuelans, Cubans, Koreans, Dominicans, Canadians, Panamanians, Japanese, Americans and, of course, Italians. The game is particularly well developed in Italy: apparently American soldiers working in burial details at the cemetery in Anzio, after the battles in 1944, would recruit local youths to help out - and taught them to play baseball on their breaks.

What's missing, of course, from every game played on French soil, is the players' chatter, crowd background noise and organ music. There is no seventh inning stretch, either. Finally, real hot dogs - especially footlong chili dogs - are unfortunately absent as well. Mme Amerloque usually prepares a few hotdogs and some fixins' ahead of time: real buns can be found in Paris if one looks hard enough, but genuine Oscar Mayer franks are unavailable here, to Amerloque's knowledge. The Amerloque family uses a small blue Camping Gaz device to bring water to a boil and cook the wieners and heat the chili on the spot.

No longer does the Parisian-American find Dick Roraback's unforgettable opus 'Crack of a Bat' published in the IHT on opening day of the US baseball season, as it was for many, many years. The New York Times has swallowed the old IHT hook, line, and sinker, and its masthead makes no bones about it ('The Global Edition of the New York Times') - in spite of management's pious bleating to the contrary immediately after the heavy-handed takeover several years ago.

Dick Roraback, who passed away in 1998, was Sports Editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris from 1957 to 1972. He reportedly penned his poem when seated at the storied Café de la Paix, over near the American Express office on the rue Scribe, near the Palais Garnier which houses the Opéra de Paris.

THE CRACK OF A BAT
by
Dick Roraback

Away on this side of the ocean
When the chestnuts are hinting of green
And the first of the café commandos
Are moving outside for a fine
And the sound of spring beats a bolero
As Paree sheds her coat and her hat
The sound that is missed more than any
Is the sound of the crack of a bat.

There’s an animal kind of feeling
There’s a stirring down at Vincennes Zoo
And the kid down the hall’s getting restless
Taking stairs like a young kangaroo
Now the dandy is walking his poodle
And the concierge sunning her cat
But the heart’s with the Cubs and the Tigers
And the sound of the crack of a bat.

In the park on the corner run schoolboys
With a couple of cartons for props
Kicking goals à la Fontaine or Kopa
While a little guy chikies for cops
“Goal for us,” “No it’s not,” “You’re a liar,”
Then the classical shrieks of a spat
But it’s not like a rhubarb at home plate
Or the sound of the crack of a bat.

Here the stadia thrill to the scrumdowns
And the soccer fans flock to the games
And the chic punt the nags out at Longchamp
Where the women are dames and not dames
But it’s different at Forbes and at Griffith
The homes of the Buc and the Nat
Where the hotdog and peanut share laurels
With the sound of the crack of a bat.

No, a Yank can’t describe to a Frenchman
The rasp of an umpire’s call
The continuing charms of statistics
Changing hist’ry with each strike and ball
Nor the self-conscious jog of the slugger
Rounding third with the tip of his hat
Nor the half-smothered grace of a hook slide
Nor the sound of the crack of a bat.

Now, the golfer is buffing his niblick
And the tennis buff’s tightening his strings
And the fisherman’s flexing his flyrod
Like a thousand and one other springs
Oh, the sports on both sides of the ocean
Have a great deal in common, at that
But the thing that’s not HERE
At this time of the year
Is the sound of the crack of a bat.

Today is opening day in the USA, and readers of these lines can bank on several things this year: after reading 'Crack of a Bat' to a few close American and French friends invited over for the occasion, Amerloque will invite them to watch a game on ESPN America on TV. During the seventh inning stretch, Mme Amerloque will bring out and serve her astoundingly tasty hotdogs. Ice-cold root beer and Dr Pepper will be offered as well, but in all these years Amerloque has never seen a French person drink more than a (very) few polite sips. Yet more testimony to cultural differences !

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2009 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Paris

2009-04-01T01:11:00.000-07:00

The Paris Mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, backed by the increasingly powerful warmist/ecofascist lobby, has unveiled his plan for a new and improved Eiffel Tower in 2012, just in time for the Presidential election.

One wonders if visitors to the City of Light will be impressed if his project comes to fruition.

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2009 by L'Amerloque

Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

La Primavera II

2009-03-21T01:11:00.000-07:00

It's the first day of Spring today: Saturday, March 21, 2009.

Today, with the running of the 100th Primavera, the annual Milan-San Remo bicycle race, "Official" Spring is here once more. Another Winter has passed.

Four years ago, on the first day of Spring in 2005, Amerloque began this blog to share his experiences, correct exaggerations and misunderstandings, and inform his readers about France and its differences from the USA. Things were going fairly well, blog wise, although pounding out a weekly entry soon came to resemble ‘work’, rather than being the ‘fun’ he expected. Too, Amerloque participated frequently in selected blogs and discussion groups about France which interested him, which took up a lot of time. Yet Amerloque continued ...

However, in the middle of a frigid, rainy night in February, 2008, seated in his living room, Amerloque had trouble breathing. Serious trouble, so serious that Mme Amerloque called the pompiers. It should be noted that when such problems occur, calling the fire department is a well-honed reflex in France. Far better than SOS Médecins, in Amerloque's view. A squad was dispatched to the scene and arrived in seven minutes (so Mme Amerloque attests), ready to administer immediate first aid and take the measure of the situation. The accompanying trained medic decided that an ambulance was required, and the SAMU (Service d’Aide Médicale Urgente) arrived forthwith. The living room was crowded: Mr and Mme Amerloque, one adult child, five burly members of the pompiers (well, OK, the medic was female and far less, er, burly that her teammates), and five members of the SAMU.

The SAMU doctor (in general they are considered to be among the best in France) examined Amerloque and said: “It’s three thirty in the morning, Monsieur. If you remain here like this, you’ll be dead by seven. Off you go, Monsieur !”. The attentive reader will correctly assume that such a statement focused Amerloque’s attention immediately - and irrevocably !

So Amerloque was unceremoniously bundled onto a stretcher and equally as unceremoniously trundled down several flights of stairs in no uncertain manner. He was then quickly gurneyed into the SAMU ambulance parked in the middle of the street, blocking traffic – where he remained for an hour and a half, while he was stabilisé. This is standard French emergency medical procedure, by the way: these SAMU vehicles are wonderfully equipped and designed for treating the patient immediately. Only after the stabilisation phase does the vehicle wend its way with blaring three-toned horn and flashing blue gyrophare to the hospital which offers the most specialized care … and has an empty bed. Not the nearest hospital, necessarily – the one offering the best chances for the patient.

The diagnosis of Amerloque’s illness finally turned out to be - well, not particularly joyful, as the French say. It’s the kind of illness that can be treated, but not cured. M and Mme Amerloque’s lives have been radically changed: what with physiotherapists, daily medications and nebulizer sessions, doctors' visits ... the lot. Bouncing from clinique to maison de repos (rest home), with, fortunately, significant periods at his own home, Amerloque found himself somewhat cut off from the world that he had constructed for himself. Today, walking is difficult, for example; only in June of 2008 was Amerloque able drive a car, as a matter of fact. His visits to the country became few and far between, alas, and are only now resuming with any kind of regularity.

Amerloque's internet access and participation were also substantially affected, alas, becoming sporadic and ephemeral: not too many French medical establishments offer links to internet for their patients ! Not too many even offer facilities as basic as cable TV. Amerloque was exposed for days and weeks on end - far, far too long, to his way of thinking - to the standard French media: TV, radio, newspapers, periodicals. In some venues, the food was excellent - copious four-star !- while in others it was less good: say two- or three-star, but no less copious. Nowhere was it unacceptable or tasteless.

Finding himself in a world totally unknown to him - the French medical system - Amerloque spent an enormous amount of time conversing with those around him: hospital personnel, therapists, other patients (and not all were French). Always with a smile on his face and in his eyes, too, since in a hospital or clinique, no matter where in the world, a patient is fully at the mercy of the staff. Always. Amerloque must confess that playing a role became somewhat wearing at times, especially when le petit personnel, generally non-French, explained gleefully to Amerloque how many supposed brothers and sisters and children they had brought to France to take advantage of the social system and collect unemployment insurance. Since Amerloque was not French, they assumed - quite incorrectly, of course - that Amerloque would be of like mind and was prepared to suck everything he could from the French social system.

Amerloque had a relapse during Thanksgiving week, 2008; he was hospitalized in réanimation ( i.e., in the ICU) for several weeks. He missed participating in his usual Christmas activities in Paris, although one of his children went to many of them and described them to him during visits. Mme Amerloque visited him every day. He can also state that spending Christmas in the hospital is no fun at all ! Fortunately the family was able to smuggle in smoked salmon, oysters, goose with stuffing, and the inevitable buche de Noel, as well as the mandatory Christmas gifts !

Be it said in passing that the French social safety net is indeed well developed. Amerloque's medical expenses - 100% - are taken care of by the state. Since he is on a congé longue maladie , his full salary - yes, 100% - has been and will continue to be paid to him for three years. Naturally Amerloque has been paying his fair share into the system for nigh on forty years, so Amerloque is pleased to see that what goes around, comes around.

Amerloque rarely frequented the web (including blogs about Paris). He did, however, do a lot of reading and thinking during his forced sojourns in various hôpitaux and cliniques. During the past year, Amerloque found himself rubbing his eyes in disbelief many times, but three instances stand out.

The first is M Bertrand Delanoe's re-election to the Paris mayoralty. He is a committed leftwinger and internationalist with ambitions for the Presidency of France. The Delanoe administration has devoted itself to making Paris a venue for the politically correct, almost unlivable for productive businesses, business people and people who think for themselves, while driving out investment and significant taxpayers and speeding the day when Paris will be nothing more than a museum for tourists and bobos.

The second is the great global warming scam. Amazingly, the media has managed to convince the gullible populace in France - and around the world, apparently - that global warming is man made (so-called 'AGW') and that the human race can do something about it, notwithstanding scientists' flawed and dishonest computer models and skewed or bowdlerized data. With the whole AGW scare - and the attendant upcoming 'water shortage' - the politicians' and their fellow travelers' intentions are clear: tax and control. Over in the United Kingdom the concept of the 'envirocrime' is alive and well. Amerloque was flabbergasted to learn that the new water laws voted upon and coming into effect here in France mean that, after filling out the proper form at the local city hall, Amerloque will pay an annual tax on the pipes and barrels that have been used for several centuries to harvest rainwater from the roof of his country house. (Fat chance of any declaration to the Mayor, states Mme Amerloque.)

The third is the nomination and election to the US Presidency of an arrogant, incompetent, inexperienced, fast-tracked-affirmative-action, smooth talking nostrum salesman from Chicago's South Side and its Cesspool Politics. Did America voters even glance at the man's suicidal program, almost guaranteed if completely implemented to reduce the status of the USA to that of the Third World ? Do Americans understand just how much they stand to lose ? In his own mind Amerloque called the man 'Chrysologus' from the very beginning and thought him a man of many words but very little substance; his only asset during the campaign, after all, was that he wasn't George Bush. Amerloque remembers that old saying "Salute the office, not the man" and hopes that the wheel will turn - as rapidly as possible.

Nothing he has seen since January 20th has caused Amerloque to change his mind. Alas, it even looks like the realities of the upcoming catastrophe will be far worse than feared, what with the man's about-faces and blatant backtracking, and politics-as-usual. As Shakespeare would have it:

"...the spring, the summer,
The chilling autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world
By their increase, now knows not which is which ...”

For readers of an even more classical bent, Plutarch was clear enough, too:

The real destroyer of the liberties of any people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and largesses."

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2009 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Return II

2008-04-26T01:11:00.000-07:00

After very, very serious health problems, Amerloque is on his way back, but at a very reduced pace …

Not having kept up with anything on the internet (since there wasn’t any), Amerloque will be speaking in the near future to what he found in the traditional press and on TV, and plans a gradual return online ...

Amerloque is back … (smile)

L’Amerloque

Noel

2007-12-10T01:11:00.000-08:00

France is nominally a Christian country. Although separation of Church and State is enshrined both in French law and in daily practice, some national holidays – as well as school vacations - are based on the traditional Roman Catholic Church calendar: for example, Easter Monday, Whitmonday (lundi de Pentecôte), the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin (le 15 aout - Assomption), and All Saints' Day (Toussaint) spring immediately to mind.

Known in French as les fêtes de fin d'année, the holiday season at the end of the year encompasses both Christmas and New Year's and can be considered to extend to Epiphany on January 6th (yes, the Twelve Days of Christmas !). Upon arrival, the American expatriate here is surprised – even dismayed, sometimes dumbfounded - to find that some facets of the traditional American Christmas and New Year's are simply not reproduced here. The French celebrate in other ways and, of course, over the years a winnowing process takes place: just what will the expatriate keep for her/himself from the American festivities, and which French holiday traditions might s/he adopt ?

The short answer to the first question is that one preserves the holiday traditions that one is comfortable with. Frequently some modification takes place, due to local circumstances.

Take caroling, for example: the French are not prone to gathering in groups and moving from house to house while lustily belting out "We wish you a Merry Christmas !", "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen !" … or even Petit Papa Noel. On the weekends before Christmas, homesick Americans can find Carol services and gatherings at American churches (American Cathedral and American Church of Paris) and well as at least one English house of worship (Saint George's Anglican). There are also Christmas arts, crafts and bake sales at these institutions – and others, including the American Wives of Europeans Annual Holiday Bazaar - during the weeks preceding Christmas. For several years now the Choral Society at American Cathedral has put on a wonderful Handel's Messiah Singalong at the beginning of December. Clearly Americans looking for traditional Christmas activities can find them relatively easily and quickly, if they so desire. One need not remain isolated.

Sending Christmas cards to all and sundry is also a tradition unknown here. One will not find a huge selection in the shops, no matter how hard one tries. However, the French do traditionally send greeting cards (Bonne Année or Meilleurs Voeux only) during the month of January. By the way, here it is considered unlucky - as well as excruciatingly bad form - to wish someone a "Happy New Year" before the New Year has, in fact, rung in. However, one can extend one's New Year's greetings throughout the entire month of January – as long as they arrive before January 31st, that's OK. The French certainly know how to take the stress out of such things. In Amerloque's experience, American expats are quick to seize the advantages of the French system, even going so far as to send French New Year's cards back to the family in the States, much to the receiving family's disapproval.

Long term expat Americans en mal du pays equip themselves expeditiously with recipes for Christmas cookies (and appropriate traditional cookie cutters !), wassail and eggnog, all of which are absent from the French tradition … and the shops.

Ah, the shops, and the shopping ...

There is no Thanksgiving here, so there is no kickoff day to open the Christmas shopping season, such as Black Friday in the USA. Sometime in November, generally after Toussaint but before Armistice Day (le 11 novembre, a national holiday), department stores and shops begin unpacking, installing and unveiling their Christmas decorations and products. The increased commercialization of Christmas seen in America, the United Kingdom and other Western countries over the past few decades has been mirrored here. Hence the media is filled with items about best-selling gifts (le palmarès des ventes), dangerous toys (les produits non-conformes), addresses of the "best" places to shop, and other information designed to separate the consumer from her/his euros without too much pain. Shopping is very much an individual affair, and an expat can do in France exactly what he or she would do in the USA.

As in America, along with the shopping come the open-air Christmas decorations, of which there are many to be seen and appreciated, from simple Christmas trees (les sapins de Noel), with artificial snow and presents, to city-sponsored outdoor Christmas lights on lampposts and buildings. Some of the designs and colors are uniquely, inimitably French; in Paris the lights on the Champs-Elysées are always worth a visit. Nativity Scenes (les creches) and the associated figurines (les santons) are usually fairly elaborate. It's always enjoyable to view the decorations at the major Parisian department stores ... just like in New York, Chicago or LA !

Now, the second question: which French holiday traditions might an American expat adopt ?

In the USA, Thanksgiving is a time when families come together, while, in France, Christmas is that time. Hence the Christmas Eve dinner (le reveillon de Noel) is a special moment when all the members of the family gather 'round the table – perhaps after having attended a Midnight Mass or other service – to feast on traditional French dishes, ending up with the Yule log cake (la bûche de Noël). After opening the gifts found under the tree on Christmas morning, the family shares the Christmas Day luncheon / dinner, which nowadays usually includes turkey. New Year's, on the other hand, is an occasion to make merry with one's friends. New Year's Eve festivities (le reveillon de la Saint-Sylvestre) are generally devoted to eating, drinking and partying well into the morning hours. Many restaurants have special menus for both the Christmas and New Year's reveillons and it is not unusual for childless French couples (or emptynesters !) to simply dress to the hilt and go out for a great meal and celebration at a nice establishment – sometimes at considerable expense.

Given the vast variety and top quality of French foods, the American expat rapidly discovers - depending on the region and the weather - that traditional fare such as smoked salmon, caviar and foie gras can be amply complemented by simple boudin (blood sausage) or boudin blanc (white pudding), escargots (snails) and specialties such as cornues, springerle, Winachtsbredele and fougasse (one of the thirteen traditional Provençal desserts).

In Amerloque's experience, the expat adopts the partying and the food with nary a qualm – and why not ?

The cornucopia of French foods is huge and takes more than one lifetime to discover. A French food tradition worthy of note – and adoption if one wants to be part of French life forever - is the inordinate attention paid to the price of the truffle (la truffe), an essential ingredient in many a holiday dish. Weeks before Christmas, the media begins speculating on the quality of the truffle in the current year … Was there enough rain ? Was it not too dry this year - almost droughtlike – for a bumper crop ? Are there fewer truffes this season, or will it be a bounty year ? The focus then shifts to the local farmer and his truffle-sniffing animal, traditionally a pig. More and more dogs are being trained as truffle hounds, and the media is always ready to run a report on a local rustic (usually down Sarlat way) who has switched from pig to canine. Then come the inevitable reports about "foreign" truffles, from China, Italy or an unnamed "Eastern European" country, and their perceived – or real - lack of quality. The culmination of the truffle saga, every year, is inevitably the first day of the truffle market in the Perigord at the beginning of December: a secretive business run on words and handshakes among those in the know, virtually closed to outsiders – but one which the media penetrate so that the price per kilo can be triumphantly announced to the waiting world. Knowing the (usually astronomical) price of the bit of truffle one is eating adds a decided fillip to the Christmas boudin and paté.

Not yet a nationwide tradition – but rapidly becoming one – is the Christmas Market. Based on the German Christkindlmarkt with its Saint Nicolas, glühwein, gingerbreads, wooden market stalls, Black Forest-like Christmas decorations and inimitable folksy atmosphere, the marché de Noel is particularly well developed in Alsace and Lorraine, in the east of France – for obvious historical reasons. The attentive marketgoer can find glassblown ornaments, holiday handcrafts (including puppets and nutcrackers and cuckoo clocks), jewelry and, naturally, a staggering assortment of cookies, cakes, muffins, strudels, nuts, crepes, chocolates and beverages. In the past decade or so, millions of tourists have been drawn to Alsace to visit the numerous Christmas Markets in season; in recent years, municipalities and organizations throughout the France have jumped on the Christkindlmarkt bandwagon. Instead of lasting weeks, though, local markets might last an afternoon, a day or a weekend. They vary widely in quality and commercialism and, while most cannot but weakly rival the "real" markets in Eastern France and Germany, they offer a uniquely French and European experience for American expats who wish to deviate slightly from the beaten track. Sometimes one will even find that any profits from a city-organized marché de Noel are used to help the less fortunate: solidarity in action.

Finally, the French economy takes a significant breather during the Christmas season. Moreover, school holidays usually begin on the weekend before Christmas and generally end several working days after New Year's. In America, members of a given family might arrange to "be home for Christmas" for a few days. Here, with five weeks paid vacation the general rule, many families arrange things so that members can take the entire Christmas week off together, perhaps on a skiing holiday, ... or simply at the country house (la résidence secondaire). Amerloque, among other expats, has wholeheartedly adopted this French tradition.

Of course, each American expat has her own story, his way of celebrating Christmas, depending on factors such as job, current financial circumstances, family ties, location in France, interest in Christmas and time spent in both the USA and France. More or less emphasis is placed on American and French traditions, local and national - choices are much more personal and relevant, when two cultures coalesce in celebration. Amerloque has found that binational families try to combine the best of both worlds and develop unique traditions, so that each Christmas past - and each holiday season - can be remembered with happiness as each member grows older.

Joyeux Noël ! Merry Christmas !

L'Amerloque

This is an updated repost of Amerloque's 2005 Christmas entry.
He is currently overwhelmed.
Text © Copyright 2005/2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Escadrille

2007-11-12T01:11:00.000-08:00

As every year, November 11 is the commemoration of the Armistice which put an end to World War I, that most terrible of conflicts. Not too much appeared in the French media in June and July of this year, which was the 90th anniversary of the arrival of American troops in France to fight at the side of the French to save civilization. A genuine oversight, or perhaps a reaction against the media presence of Sarko l'Américain ?

Of course before the arrival in France of General "Black Jack" Pershing and the vanguard of his army at Boulogne-sur-Mer on June 13, 1917 (Lafayette, nous voila !) there were Americans in France fighting and dying at the side of French troops and civilians. Probably the first American organization to help the French was the American Field Service, a group dedicated to supplying ambulances and other humanitarian vehicles. Originally created as an ambulance arm for the American Hospital of Paris, the AFS severed its connection with the hospital to become a volunteer organization providing ambulance and transport services to the Allied forces. Over the duration, the American Field Service had more than eight hundred volunteer ambulance drivers and a number of transport sections. It actively recruited its drivers from the campuses of American colleges and universities, with individual ambulance units made up exclusively of drivers from particular universities. American Ambulance vehicles were invariably in the front lines of the fighting, picking up the wounded and taking them back to the field hospitals in the rear. There were 151 drivers with the AFS who were killed - and a number of others earned the Croix de Guerre and the Legion d'Honneur for their selfless actions.

Another civilian organization coming to the aid of French troops was Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, a smaller unit. The Corps was created through the merger of the Harjes Formation of the American Red Cross and the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps organized in 1914 by Richard Norton, son of Harvard's Charles Eliot Norton. Harjes was A. Herman Harjes, a French banker. (Norton-Harjes reported no fatalities among its drivers). Some alumni of the various ambulancier organizations in France were soon to become famous individuals: Louis Bromfield, Malcolm Cowley, Harry Crosby, E. E. Cummings, John Dos Passos, Dashiell Hammett and Robert W. Service spring to mind. It should be noted that Ernest Hemingway was an American Red Cross volunteer in Italy, not in France.

There were also American volunteers in French fighting units, including the French Foreign Legion. One very special group of American fighters has come to signify bravery, commitment, and gallantry. When pronounced, its name alone is enough to make American expatriates in France stand a bit straighter - all the while asking themselves whether they, too, would have been able to demonstrate such courage and mettle when faced with such a war.

The Lafayette Escadrille (L'Escadrille Lafayette) was the name of this group of men, formed in April, 1916. The original name, which prompted German diplomatic protests, was L'Escadrille Américaine. The members of the Escadrille were fighter aircraft pilots, trained and equipped by the French to fly against the Germans, including their feared pilots Max Immelmann, Oswald Boelcke, Ernst Udet, and the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen (known in Germany as Der Rote Kampfflieger, i.e., the red fighter pilot). In 1917, the USA entered the war, and the Lafayette Escadrille was eventually absorbed in February, 1918, into the U.S. forces as the 103rd Pursuit Squadron. Many Americans flew with other French units; in general, these volunteers were called the Lafayette Flying Corps.

When Amerloque was growing up in the early 1950s, the vast majority of stories and anecdotes dealing with World War II had yet to be written. Certainly their wartime experiences were fresh in the minds of those who had been there, in the European and Pacific theaters of operations, but only major stories from the period 1939 through 1945 had really been treated in any depth by the media. Memoirs had yet to be written; legends had yet to be spun. One of the most famous films about World War II, From Here to Eternity, was only made in 1953, while the film The Caine Mutiny, from the eponymous 1951 novel, made it to the Hollywood screen in 1954. Furthermore, television was but a nascent medium; only major American cities, such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, had more than two or three TV channels. The weekly warzone sitcom had yet to become popular. What war literature, legends and anecdotes for young boys that did exist dealt primarily with World War I, not World War II.

Thus it was that Amerloque grew up conversant with stories about Sergeant York, the Argonne Forest, the Saint-Mihiel salient, Belleau Wood … and the Lafayette Escadrille, which to Amerloque's way of thinking has always perfectly symbolized one facet of the special relationship that links France and the United States.

Several films have been made about American Lafayette Escadrille pilots in World War I. The earliest was Wings, a silent opus made in 1927 by the legendary director William Wellman. In point of fact, it was the very first film to win an Academy Award ("Oscar") for Best Picture. Until the 1960s, Amerloque had never seen it, but had only heard about it. An opportunity to see this mythical opus finally presented itself while he was attending a University on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay. On October 25, 1965, Amerloque unhesitatingly took an "F" bus across the Bay Bridge to attend a special event at the San Francisco Film Festival: the American Director Interview, which was basically a panel discussion followed by a screening of a feature film. Wings was the film scheduled that day. To Amerloque's vast astonishment, the auditorium was virtually empty; there couldn't have been more than ten or twelve people in attendance. When the time came for questions from the audience, such as it was, Amerloque didn't hesitate one minute ! Ever gracious, William Wellman - who had himself served in the Lafayette Escadrille –delivered a lengthy, detailed answer to Amerloque's query about "what it was really like being in an aircraft in France back then, during the war". A question which was only tangential to the topic of filmmaking !

Over three decades later, William Wellman made another film about his beloved group of flyers: his black-and-white Lafayette Escadrille, starring Tab Hunter - with Clint Eastwood in a minor role - came out in 1958. Although the film is ridden with clichés, there are some marvelous shots from the air. Of interest to American expats, too, is the fact that the film opens and closes with views of the Memorial to the Lafayette Escadrille, located in Marnes-la-Coquette just outside Paris, where every year on November 11th American and French organizations and individuals lay wreaths to commemorate the ultimate sacrifices made. Along with many other pilots, Raoul Lufbery, a commander of the Escadrille, is buried there, in the crypt under the Memorial itself, which is a triumphal arch inscribed with the names of the sixty-eight members of the Lafayette Escadrille and the Lafayette Flying Corps who were killed during World War I.

More recently, a third film based on the Escadrille came out: Flyboys. Amerloque must confess that he was quite prepared not to like it – from all the reviews he had read, it sounded as though it were a simple Hollywoodian hagiographic effort destined to glorify the American heroes in the air at the expense of the poor benighted French infantry on the ground. Yet when Amerloque fired up the DVD in the original American version, he was quite pleasantly surprised. The producer and director make no bones about it: the film is fiction. They state that the characters were inspired by the American Flying Corps and the Lafayette Escadrille. The scenario is straightforward and hews to the generally accepted histories and memoirs of American pilots participating in the War To End All Wars. An admirable inclusion is the role of Eugene Skinner, based on real life Eugene Bullard, the "Black Swallow of Death”, who was the first African-American military pilot. There are some clichés, of course; there always seem to be, in films about France made by foreigners. A couple of technical glitches crept into the film concerning the German aircraft, most notably the portrayal of an entire German jagdstaffel of Fokker triplanes as being painted red ! A full squadron of Red Barons is hardly designed to increase that suspension of disbelief so necessary when watching a historical opus ! However, the aerial combat scenes are excellently filmed and it is quite difficult to determine how many of them use the twenty-five or so aircraft constructed by the producers and how many rely exclusively on digital imaging technology. By the way, Amerloque was particularly impressed by the performance of New Zealander Martin Henderson, who played the role of squadron commander, loosely based on the real-life Lufbery. Henderson's performance as Darcy in Bollywood's Bride and Prejudice, a remake of the Jane Austen story, was one highlight of the film. It is reassuring to see that Henderson has apparently chosen at least two of his roles carefully - and is able to deliver credible interpretations on screen. One could do worse than to see Flyboys, if one is interested in World War I and what a handful of Americans did in France.

Every November 11th Amerloque thinks about how American pilots left hearth and home to join the Lafayette Escadrille in France. It's surprising how many expats Amerloque runs into in Paris have never even heard of it.

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

October

2007-10-29T01:11:00.001-07:00

October is undoubtedly Amerloque's favorite month of the year. It contains quite a few milestones, and among them are family anniversaries, birthdays - and a traditional daylong family endeavor, one which is dear to Amerloque.

Twice a year – in the spring and in the autumn – the Amerloque family reserves an entire day for the making of traditional Eastern European sausage. Certainly one could go to almost any boucherie or charcuterie and purchase splendid French sausages, but these sausages are a very special kind. They are called kielbasa: traditional Eastern European sausages from Poland, Lithuania, Bielorussia and the Ukraine.

Every spring and every autumn during Amerloque's childhood, his Grandma would prepare her kitchen for sausage making. From under the sink she would pull out her old newspaper-wrapped meat grinder, the one that she had bought in 1917, just after her marriage. She would affix it firmly to a corner of the scarred wooden worktable in her kitchen. She would then produce cutting boards of various sizes, all reserved for the ceremony of sausagemaking, and place them carefully on the work surface. The appropriate cutlery was taken from a special drawer. Grandma's brother - that is, Amerloque's great uncle, a blacksmith in the old country before he came to the USA in the late 1920s - would handle the various knife- and blade-sharpening chores. When all the equipment was to her satisfaction, Grandma would remove serious quantities of fresh meat from the refrigerator and the cooling boxes behind her house: pounds and pounds of pork as well as bits of beef and veal.

After cutting the meat into pieces and adding various seasonings, including onions, Grandma would - as she always did - delegate young Amerloque to turn the handle on the sausage machine, while she or her brother fed the cut meats into the top of the grinder. Of course, it seemed a chore and rapidly became boring after the first hour or so. Why so long? Two passages of the meat through the machine were required: the first to grind the cut meat and the second to stuff the well-washed sausage casings with the seasoned meat, after the appropriate sausage horn had been attached to the grinder. At the end of the day, the sixty or so pounds of finished sausage, in links ranging from one to three feet, were hung for a couple of days to dry out in an old cupboard converted by her brother. As Amerloque grew older, he began to appreciate Grandma's sausagemaking sessions more and more, as she spoke nostalgically and volubly in her native language of the past and of the family both in the old country and her country of adoption. Of course, eating the sausage which had just been made that very day was always a special treat, well worth the hours of handle turning, while at Thanksgivings and Christmases the autumn sausage was always a big hit with family and guests.

When Amerloque had children, he decided to uphold the tradition passed down by his grandmother. Certainly it would have been easy enough back at the beginning of the 1980s to purchase an electric grinder, so as to save valuable time and to produce impressive quantities of kielbasa. Yet both Mme Amerloque and Amerloque, not for the first time, were immediately of one mind: a traditional hand grinder would be purchased and used, not a modern, efficient, electric machine. The point of the entire activity wasn't solely to make sausages; it was also to spend quality time together with other family members - talking, laughing, communicating - while one of the children turned the handle and the other fed meats into the top of the machine and tied off the casing ends. With that in mind, Mr. and Mrs. Amerloque marched down to the Samaritaine department store (closed down some time ago) on the Right Bank and purchased the best sausage machine they could find: a Spong, which has been in regular use down to today.

As the years went by, making sausages from scratch in March and October became an Amerloque family activity, one eagerly looked forward to and planned for by all. Many have been the problems solved, the decisions taken, the experiences shared, and the laughs echoed, around the sausage machine. This October's production is particularly tasty; Amerloque's children came back from university to cut meats, turn handles - and celebrate the family. Where travel is concerned, Amerloque has always felt that the voyage is as important as the destination itself, and so it is in the realm of sausage making. The sausage for Thanksgiving and Christmas is ready.

One peculiarly American event taking place in the autumn– one which Amerloque never really replaced by any other sports entertainment in his French expatriate life - is the Major League Baseball World Series. In spite of its somewhat pretentious name, of course, the best of seven series always pits one North American team against another, to the delight of those Americans and Canadians who have patiently followed the season since its beginnings in April. October, too , has always been the month of
US style football (not soccer !), with both professional and college seasons reaching their cruising speeds, after an exciting month of September during which each team harbored dreams of postseason Bowls (Rose, Cotton, Orange ! ) and fine-tuned their various offenses and defenses. Of course, there was no BCS (Bowl Championship Series) when Amerloque came to France. Moreover, state universities and colleges recruited players almost exclusively from their own states and population basins, rather than shopping for the best players throughout the country, as is done nowadays. Out West, for example, there were indeed serious differences in the levels of USC, Cal and UCLA compared to teams such as Boise State, Arizona State, and San Jose State. The latter three weren't even deemed fit to tread the football fields of the first three. When the Midwest champion from the Big 10 met the PAC 8 (now PAC 10) laureate in the storied Rose Bowl on January 1st, it was more than a simple meeting of teams: it was an encounter between two football philosophies, two ways of seeing the world, two discrete parts of the United States.

Before the 1990s, it was impossible here in France to watch a baseball game or football game in anything like real time unless one lived near the Belgian or German borders, where the Armed Forces Network (also called the AFRTS) TV broadcasts could be picked up, if one were lucky. Radio broadcasts, however, were another story entirely: after sundown, one could turn on a short wave radio (SW), or a decent medium wave set (MW), and pick up US armed services programs from the occupying forces beyond the Rhine. Frequently the programs from the military bases were static ridden, choppy, and fading in and out – but they were there. That was the most important thing for Amerloque.

Amerloque remembers staying up quite late one blustery October evening to listen to a crucial World Series game, he and a few other expats polishing off a hearty meal of filets d'hareng, filet mignon de porc, pommes de terre and cheese, all washed down with a bottle of allegedly down-market Préfontaine table wine. Few expats are really aware of the urban legend (?) that the wine in the Préfontaine bottles was not necessarily undrinkable plonk, but was generally a bordeaux déclassé ! For the French, by the way, filet mignon in the vast majority of cases refers to pork and not to a tender but tasteless cut of beef. One most assuredly wouldn't enter a French butcher shop - even today - and expect to receive beef if one requested a filet mignon ! One can be grateful for some limits to Americanization and globalization.

With the advent of satellite and cable TV in the latter part of the 1990s it became easier to watch US football and baseball. The French subscription channel Canal+ introduced football to France on a regular weekly basis, and even went as far as to show summaries of World Series games. In the past two or three years, the French Sports+ channel – available on cable – has been showing one NFL and one NCAA game per week in season, as well as a selection of bowl games at the beginning of January: one per week through the end of February, as a matter of fact. Sport+ broadcasts are not live: they are simple two-hour resumés, using French reporters who generally have more enthusiasm than knowledge. Alas, Sports+ has one big drawback: it is unable to keep to its posted programming times. A broadcast set for 22h00 might start at 21h30 – or 22h25 – or not at all ! This lack of reliability is hardly a manner of building customer loyalty, but it is guaranteed to engender deep frustration chez les téléspectateurs américains expatriés. One tremendously positive aspect, though, is that there is virtually no advertising in the two-hour programs. Each game is broadcast as a continuous thread from the opening kickoff to the final whistle, with only a quick break between quarters and at halftimes.

A major event this autumn in France is the arrival of a brand new TV station called NASN, which is short for North American Sports Network. It is available through many cable and satellite providers. Amerloque first heard about this station in September, when his cable provider offered a three-week trial period, at the conclusion of which he signed up immediately. This September and October Amerloque was able to watch all the American League and National League playoffs and all the World Series games – in their entirety ! For the final World Series game, he invited a couple of other expats over … for a 2 a.m. dinner of filets d'hareng, filet mignon de porc, pommes de terre and a variety of cheeses. Préfontaine having gone to that Brand Graveyard in the Sky, it was replaced by a very nice 2002 Côte de Nuits-Villages.

Traditional French life continues to fade into memory. This October has seen the disappearance of many courts (tribunaux d'instance) and commercial courts (tribunaux de commerce) throughout France, under a reorganization scheme being put into effect by the Minister of Justice, Rachida Dati. The plan calls for more than 10% of the courts to be merged or simply eliminated. One is treated on the TV evening news to the rare spectacle of lawyers in their formal robes demonstrating in the streets and in the courthouses - and sometimes being earnestly manhandled by the French riot police, as the Minister of proceeds on her tour of France, making announcements as she goes.

In recent years, many (thousands) of municipalities in France have lost their a) train stations (no more train services, period !) , b) post offices, c) schools and d) tax offices. City and town centers are being gutted, as local and national services pull out and shops close for good. Yet successive administrations in Paris – both on the left and right - have promised that government would be "closer to the people" and "more modern".

Will traditional French life – with all its strengths and weaknesses - have to be destroyed in order to be saved ? Or will only one of the best parts of French life – the proximity and responsiveness of its public services - be bowdlerized, expurgated, or downright eliminated so as to reach some ignorant European bureaucrat's idea of the lowest common denominator ?

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Return I

2007-09-17T04:09:00.000-07:00

As the summer of 2007 drew to a close and the daylight began to shorten, the seriously inclement weather improved. Far fewer al fresco meals were taken in the Normandy gardens this year, though. Nevertheless, at the end of August, as every year, ripe apples were on the trees, ready for picking and sorting.

Years ago Amerloque planted young Normandy heirloom apple trees. He chose the traditional varieties by not only looking at their evocative names, but also according to their harvest periods, so that apples would be ripe and ready for picking throughout the autumn season, well into November. Only apples for eating and cooking (pommes à couteau) were planted – Amerloque is not particularly interested in making cider so there no trees bearing pommes à cidre at the farm. All of these traditional apples have genuine taste and consistency, and are far removed from the insipid fruits available all year long in the supermarkets. How can one not be attracted to apples christened with exotic names such as claque-pépin, court pendu gris, calville rouge coeur de bœuf, benedictin de Jumièges or pigeonnet de Jérusalem ?

Among the first apples harvested this season, at the beginning of September, were the belle fille, the revers, the rambour d'hiver and, of course, the benedictin de Jumièges. Gathering and sorting the apples took up quite a bit of time. The bad apples had to be weeded out and the good ones carefully dried and arranged in a clean wooden crate, so that they could keep for several months. Using these Normandy apples in Sunday lunches and dinners, as well in various prepared Thanksgiving and Christmas dishes, is something that Amerloque looks forward to annually. This year the first applesauces and crumbles were excellent: the unusually wet weather added immense flavor to many of the apples !

Throughout the summer the local farmers in Amerloque's part of the world were tearing their hair out – metaphorically speaking - because of the horrible weather. It was only in the second week of September that grasses in some of the fields could be cut, since there had finally been enough sun over a period of several days to dry them out. One of Amerloque's fields still remained uncut - the neighboring farmer, after doing his own fields, finally found enough time to do Amerloque's last one, too, in early September. Usually this field is cut at the beginning of July, so the delay this year was more than a full two months ! Enfin !

On the surface, the rentrée this year seems to differ little from those of previous years. The media are filled with the usual stories: for example, how much the government's annual back to school subsidy (l'allocation de la rentée) amounts to, how much the cost for various regulated public and private services (such as electricity, gas, and transport) increased over the summer, and how many parents are upset about the closure of one or more local classes due to the failure to reach the minimum number of students. These issues all belong to what the French term la rentrée sociale and la rentrée scolaire. If one is an attentive expat with children, one pays close attention, naturally.

There is also, of course,la rentrée littéraire. The média has already begun speaking of the possible winners of literary prizes (les prix littéraires) later in the fall, the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Renudot allegedly being the most sought after, although there are others, most notably the Femina, the Médicis, the Interallié and the Académie Française. If one follows - or is tangehtially interested in - Parisian intellectual life, the nominations and subsequent jockeying for a prize is the subject of many conversations in café and salon.

Newly elected Président Sarkozy is bound to have an effect on the rentrée this year, since he now has to fulfill his campaign promises, has to fish or cut bait. At least one of his initiatives, the proposition for more independence for the universities, was seriously watered down during the summer Parliamentary sessions. It remains to be seen whether other of his promises receive the same treatment – and which ones, and by whom !

As always, the vendanges have begun, somewhat earlier in many parts of France due to the weather. Though the French wine industry is in crisis, quite a few young people still make a September pilgrimage to the vineyards to pick grapes, especially the university students whose classes don't begin until October. If one has other plans, one can also wait for the vendanges tardives, the late grapepicking season. In any event, the pay is minimum wage, the working conditions tough, and the labor backbreaking: Amerloque went down to the south of France to work in the fields, once, many, many years ago in his youth and can testify from personal experience. Actually, the best times are the mealtimes - at lunch but especially in the evenings, when the winemakers and owners generally feed their vendengeuses and vendangeurs very well. It is definitely the kind of experience to be fondly looked back on when one is older and wiser, in front of a nice roaring fire on a chilly autumn evening, as one sips a glass of a vintage wine that one could never have afforded back then !

The various alarums and excursions on the international financial markets do not seem to have thrown a damper on any French activities, at least not yet. Perhaps it is simply the calm before the storm – or perhaps the media are simply not doing their job, preferring to concentrate on the pipolisation of French society, on affairs of pedophilia and/or child abandonment, on dogs running amok, and on other issues of lesser but spectacular, paper-selling, audience-building importance. France is changing: the increasing dumbing down of the country seems more obvious at this rentrée.

Is it because of newly-elected President Sarkozy and his ministers, one of whom asserted back in July that "the French think too much" ?

Or is it, perhaps, simply that Amerloque has aged another year, and that his cynicism quotient has increased markedly ?

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Selections

2007-08-20T01:11:00.000-07:00

The horrible summer weather, with its overcast sky, brusque winds, and unpredictable rains continues apace, as do indoor and outdoor maintenance activities at the farm, broken by trips to Paris and back. Yet there is one pleasurable summertime task which doesn't depend on the weather: slowly going through the stock of wines, reverentially rotating a couple of bottles - and carefully choosing the ones to be consumed during the year.

Amerloque has a collection of wines which in France is summarized by the word cave (wine cellar): there are well over three hundred bottles of reds and whites, along with a smattering of rosés. Starting up and sustaining a serious cave over the long term implies a level of enthusiasm and interest in the subject that sometimes borders on fanaticism, and Amerloque is not a fanatic wine drinker by any means. His cellar is simple in the extreme, literally a dark basement with a constant temperature. In keeping with French mores, Amerloque simply feels that wine is not just a beverage: it is a food, with its own well-defined place in the scheme of things. He and the Amerloque nuclear family don't drink wine every day but only with meals that might be termed special: those that require lengthy or complex preparation, or those in honor of a memorable occasion, such as passing an exam, receiving a promotion, celebrating a birthday, or observing an anniversary. Inviting guests over for lunch or dinner implies serving wine, too; during the holiday season offering a crate of wine as a year-end gift to the concierge or to the chef d'atelier at one's garage is rarely taken amiss.

Since the French consider wine to be food, one of the advantages of living in France is that there are literally thousands upon thousands of different, reasonably priced French wines to choose from – almost at arm's length. Practically speaking, one does not have to spend $40 or $50 per bottle (€25 to €30) to obtain a high quality wine or a perfectly respectable vintage. For under $10 (roughly €6) one can usually find a truly decent VDQS (or even an AOC) wine for the day's lunch or dinner - and for about $25 (€15, say) one can purchase a top quality bottle which can be put away and drunk in several years' time, if not in a decade or more.

It is when one lives in France and starts purchasing and putting wines aside for future consumption that one realizes exactly how much a wine's price to the consumer is determined by transport costs and various middlemen along the way. One also realizes how high the quality of life in France can be ! Just as many French people do, Amerloque buys his wines in different venues - always with a view to obtaining the best price/quality ratio possible.

Amerloque learned years ago, during the 1970s, that one excellent place to purchase was chez le vigneron (at the winemaker's). Driving through the wine regions, one was able to stop and to taste various offerings chez le producteur and discuss them with the winemaker himself; one would usually go away several hours later with one or more six-bottle crates of the vintner's best, to be respectfully consumed in the fullness of time … while simultaneously offering an excellent topic for dinnertime conversation. (Ah, oui … ce vin, nous l'avons déniché chez un certain Monsieur …). 'Way back then there were fewer winemakers offering sales on their premises than there are today, of course: addresses of allegedly reliable winemakers could sometimes be found in various gourmet and other special interest magazines. The names of winemakers and their domaines were exchanged among friends and business acquaintances, religiously updated – or thrown away – as the years passed, or replaced by others when the circumstances warranted: it was not unusual to find out that a given vineyard had been sold off or been closed down because the owner had encountered hard economic times, or because the heirs were uninterested in carrying on the family tradition.

Today there are many, many vignerons all over France who have arranged facilities for on-site tasting and direct purchase - without reaching the proportions of wine tourism as practiced in the Napa Valley region of California, with its frenetic sales of baseball caps, tee-shirts, knapsacks and wine tasting paraphernalia emblazoned with the name and logo of the winery. With the improvements in road infrastructures, one can now easily drive from Paris to Burgundy or down to the Val de Loire and back in the same day - during which one can discover the wines at one or two vineyards with similar but not precisely identical terroirs. The French have a saying: Le vin est le reflet de la terre et d'un climat. L'homme n'existe pas. ("Wine is the reflection of the earth and of the climate. Man does not exist.")

There are also many local wine cooperatives throughout France, which make wines (usually VDQS or vin de pays, but sometimes AOC) from the production of many winegrowers, bottle them and sell them. A visit to such a well-run cooperative frequently enables one to stock up on top-notch table wines: excellent for drinking on a daily basis, although perhaps not quite memorable enough for that very, very special occasion. The price/quality ratio can't be beat, though: usually one can purchase ten-liter or twenty-liter jugs of wine, which must subsequently be rebottled at home using a corking machine. As one peels vegetables or grinds meat, so can one bottle wine …

In Paris, buying directly from the producer is actually quite easy, if one is willing to wait for one of the regular wine shows (Salon des Vins des Vignerons Indépendants) to come around. There are two major ones in Paris, in the Spring and in the Autumn, at which independent winemakers run stands displaying their wares. The atmosphere is generally far less relaxed than at a vineyard, of course: Amerloque finds the noise level is staggeringly high, and, as the day wears on, it increases to an almost unbearable cacophony. There are definite bargains to be had: one is not buying blindly: tasting is de rigueur. Frequently the price/quality ratio is astounding. One of the better times to taste and buy can be the end of the show, when winemakers might be somewhat reluctant to pack up all their bottles and crates and haul them back home. There won't be huge reductions in price, though one can reasonably expect a reduction of something like 10% if one buys in quantity.

Alternatively, one can attend a salon simply to taste and buy a few bottles – and make a fistful of worthwhile contacts for a subsequent trip to the winemaker's domaine. Calling up and visiting a winemaker after meeting him (or her – there are more and more vignernonnes) on a stand at a Salon means the initial ice has been broken, and that one is not just another customer, but genuinely interested in what the winemaker is offering: what goes into the wine – including the degree of personal commitment - and exactly how it is produced. In Amerloque's experience, winemakers usually make an extra effort for such customers, perhaps by granting an extra discount or by throwing in a few free bottles (le treize pour douze), or even inviting the customer to share the family meal. Usually a customer purchases at least a case of twelve bottles: four different vintages, from different parts of the domaine, is a common choice.

Another excellent place to purchase wines is at the Foires aux Vins (Wine Fairs) held by the hypermarket chainstores every autumn (2007 dates). The range and number of wines presented is staggering, the prices are keenly competitive, and the crowds are fairly heavy, at least on the initial days. Several weeks before the fairs, a printed catalog is distributed: the wines are photographed and listed: the prices displayed. If a wine has won an award at a show, the fact is prominently indicated: Medaille d'or Macon 2005, for example, or Medaille d'or Concours Mondial Bruxelles 2006. If a wine has received a favorable mention in one of the numerous annual guidebooks, that is stated, too: something like *** La Revue du Vin de France or ** Hachette Vins 2004 might be seen. There is also information as to whether a given wine can be drunk immediately or be kept a number of years before consumption.

Amerloque has found that the trick – at least to his way of thinking – for making the most of a given Wine Fair is: preselect several wines that appear attractive because of producer, vintage, terroir, or price; hustle over to the Fair on the very first day; purchase one or two bottles of each preselected wine; at home, look over the labels and bottles to see if there are any surprises (bottling by a négociant rather than a producer as expected might be one of them, as might having a screw-top cap rather than the traditional cork); open the bottles and taste them carefully, even though one or more wines might be "too young"; choose which wine(s) one is prepared to buy; return to the Fair and pick up one's chosen wine(s) – if there are any left, since other consumers are doing precisely the same thing ! Unless one is willing to "buy the labels and not the wine", as the old saying goes, there is really no other way to proceed at a Wine Fair, in Amerloque's view, especially if one intends to put the wines aside for a number of years. Amerloque has found that there is rarely anything more disappointing than to open a bottle of wine some years after purchase - only to find that the wine inside is not very good.

From time to time, Amerloque enters a wine merchant's shop (of which there are fewer and fewer, alas) to see what is on offer. Sometimes he even purchases several bottles on the recommendation of the person behind the counter. Amerloque has found that independent winemakers are turning increasingly to the internet individually to make their products known, and that initial contacts can be made quite easily. He also visits major websites on line, not necessarily to buy but more to see which vignerons and negociants are being featured, which terroirs are fashionable, and how prices to the consumer are faring. Nevertheless, he would be lying outright if he said that he hasn't been bitterly disappointed at times by some bottles recommended by the wine merchants. Yet he never loses sight of his goal: finding good wines with best price/quality ratio possible.

Of course, "buying the labels" is an easy way to purchase wines – millions of people seriously interested in wine do it every day of the year ! There frequently is no other way to judge just how good a wine is or will be: one pays attention to the winemaker's name and label as a criterion of quality. The same for recommendations: from a specialized publication such as The Wine Spectator to general interest newspapers, wine critics share their tasting notes and selected winemakers with readers. Wine connoisseurs (and social poseurs, of course) pay attention to – and sometimes act on - what is written as though it were Gospel. At a particularly chic dinner en ville one might hear "Oh, yes, the wine you're drinking was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal recently …" or "Oui, GaultMillau en a parlé …". However, the degrees of one upmanship, their desires to keep up with the Joneses, among many of these same wine connoisseurs (the same desires are found in, say, the realm of exotic cars or of vacation rentals) can be a bit offputting at times … especially when the meal is not up to the standard of the wine !

Amerloque appreciates wine hobbyists and connoisseurs tremendously, for they, like all enthusiasts in whatever field of endeavor, tend to pull the market upward for everyone. He also admires those who come to France to "do a wine tour", who seek their Holy Grails in Burgundy or Bordeaux: the French offer the whole gamut of wine touring products, from short trips to the Champagne country to luxurious sojourns aboard a barge. Under the enormous pressures of globalization - driven in some respects by these very same wine enthusiasts - some French wine producers have been modifying their labels, adding varietal information so as to be plus lisible (more readable) for the foreign consumer (it was illegal before the year 2000, by the way). Some have deemphasized the traditional terroir, while still others have even gone so far as to industrialize their production by calling on a consultant to "improve" the taste. The traditional French wine industry is suffering: there is no doubt about that. The recent (2004) award winning film Mondovino describes the crisis forthrightly; Amerloque advises those interested in France and the French not to stop with the film, but move on to the DVD television series, which admirably fleshes out the issues.

Amerloque - living in France and being interested in wine as food, and not as a measure of social status or peer interaction – invariably finds that his usual summertime task of gently turning a few wine bottles and selecting those to be drunk in the forthcoming year is a real pleasure, not a chore. Rain or shine.

L'Amerloque

Disclaimer: Amerloque is not involved in the wine trade in any way whatsoever. This post should not be considered as an encouragement or recommendation to purchase or to sell wine in Paris or anywhere else. Readers are advised to seek independent and competent professional advice before acting on anything concerning wine contained herein. Caveat emptor. "L'abus d'alcool est dangereux pour la santé. A consommer avec moderation."

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Maintenance

2007-07-23T01:11:00.000-07:00

Every decade or so, at least in Amerloque's experience, summertime temperatures in France take a dive. Unseasonable winds cause the clouds to scud rapidly across the skies and sometimes the same clouds deliver masses of unwanted rains in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, these make excellent excuses for remaining indoors a bit more than usual, doing things that must inevitably be done.

Old farmhouses - and their contents - require maintenance, for example. A traditional wood framed house, whether in Normandy or Alsace, needs to be carefully inspected every summer. Sometimes the torchis filling between the vertical timbers needs to be reworked and resealed with a layer of natural limestone-based plaster. Anti-termite and other anti-borer treatments must be applied to most timbers at regular intervals, too. Slate roofing tiles that have moved or shattered are to be replaced. Finally, the fireplace chimney needs to be swept - if for no other reason than to be in compliance with the typical French homeowner's insurance policy. Amerloque is content with leaving the roofs and chimneys to the professionals, while family members contribute to redoing the walls and applying various products in a safe, environmental fashion. In many cases, bad weather turns out to be an incitement to good maintenance - as long as the weather is not too bad, and as long as mealtimes are not given short shrift !

Interested as he is in food and cooking (ah ! the quality of life in France !), Amerloque a long time ago decided that if one is to be serious about cooking, one must be equally serious about the tools used. A good stove, as well as high-quality pots and pans and proper lighting, makes cooking a pleasure rather than a chore. Cookbooks and recipes must be chosen carefully, too. Yet it has been Amerloque's experience that amateur chefs – and Amerloque himself is no more than an amateur, make no mistake about it ! - frequently overlook one vitally necessary tool: cutlery - including the knives used in the kitchen.

In the Anglo-Saxon world he grew up in, there were two inescapably famous knifemaking centers in Europe: Sheffield and Solingen. Sheffield, in England, was already famed for the production of knives in the Middle Ages. It was even mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales. By 1600 it had become the main centre of cutlery production in England. In Amerloque's youth, a good kitchen knife necessarily came from Sheffield. Sheffield's main competitor was always portrayed as being the German city of Solingen, where to this day something like 90% of German cutlery is produced. The town's fame dates from medieval times, too. During the second half of the 17th century, a group of swordsmiths from Solingen did break their guild oaths and take their sword-making secrets to County Durham in England, thus contributing to the rivalry between the two countries.

After coming to France, Amerloque continued to use Sheffield and Solingen blades in the kitchen, although his table coutellerie was French and, in some cases, American, since he had quite some of the family cutlery sent over bit by bit. As he learned about the realities of French life and became more a part of it, he discovered that a city named Thiers, in the massif central, has for over 500 years been the capital of French cutlery manufacture, with over one hundred companies producing fully over two thirds of French cutlery. He also found that the French town of Laguiole was well known for knives. So Amerloque motored down to Thiers one fine summer day during the 1970s and spent a week or so touring the town and the shops. He purchased several robust kitchen knives, which stood him in good stead for years and years. Generally stainless steel (inox), dishwasher safe, and fairly well-balanced, French kitchen knives from Thiers are readily available, at all prices, for individuals as well as for professional chefs.

As with automobile and small arms enthusiasts, people involved in the knife world tend to have strong opinions. After visiting Japan over a decade ago, Amerloque realized just why one of his acquaintances had been swearing (both literally and figuratively) by Japanese kitchen knives for years and years. In Kyoto, Amerloque was given the opportunity to try out several traditional knives, as well as several series of mass-produced Japanese knives, and was very, very impressed. As a matter of fact, he became a convert.

Apparently today’s Japanese knives are fashioned using techniques that were originally developed for making katana, traditional samurai swords. The change to knife-crafting began in the mid-nineteenth century, and, when after World War II General Douglas MacArthur banned Japanese sword-making nationwide, numbers of highly skilled craftsmen turned their skills and attention to kitchen knives. Dedicated sword craftsmen began studying the ambitious creations of creative chefs. Japanese knives soon attained universal renown - the "unforgettable sharpness" of the katana is still the identifying mark of the Japanese knife and distinguishes the inimitable Japanese blade from its Sheffield, Solingen, and Thiers counterparts.

Over the years Amerloque has found that Japanese blades simply are sharper and are able to cut thinner slices of various meats, fowl, vegetables and fruits. However, what the Japanese call kirenaga, the "duration of sharpness" factor, must invariably be factored in when dealing with Japanese knives: they do not hold their sharpness as long as might be desired. Although today's knives – especially chef's cutlery - are forged with methods similar to those used by traditional sword craftsmen, using "white steel" (shiro-ko) and "blue steel"(ao-ko), they still must be re-sharpened more frequently than Western blades.

Yes – there's the rub: Japanese knives are high maintenance tools. They are definitely not dishwasher safe – they require careful had washing and hand drying, to avoid rust (depending on the steel "sandwich", of course) and possible putrescence in the wooden handles. The traditional sharpening process is no mundane affair, either: three different sharpening stones are used: it took Amerloque quite a bit of practice to get the hang of it. Furthermore, he has found that one can expect to sharpen a Japanese knife … every one or two days when used intensively in a home cooking environment and that the necessarily fastidious, frequent sharpening takes up a lot of time.

Genuine traditional Japanese knives can be quite expensive, too. One can easily pay well over €250 (250 euros - say US$325/350) for one good santoku, an all-purpose chef's knife used for slicing, dicing and mincing meats and vegetables. Nevertheless, if one is serious about cooking, one can do worse than to invest in a top flight santoku. With proper care it will last a lifetime, although tying up that much capital in a knife might not be everyone's cup of tea - unless one is involved in cooking professionally, of course.

Amerloque decided some time ago that he would use both Western and Japanese blades in the kitchen, the latter more sparingly than the former. He has the normal range of relatively easy maintenance French kitchen knives – a Sabatier does the job quite nicely – and a cleaver from Solingen. (By the way, if one is interested in personally choosing French knives - and other serious kitchen utensils - nothing can beat a visit to La Bovida at 36 rue Montmartre, 75001 Paris. )

Given the maintenance required, the Japanese contingent of knives is reserved for more difficult tasks and special occasions: cutting very, very thin slices of beef for barbecued-beef sandwiches, for example, and perfect slices of turkey on Thanksgiving, goose at Christmas, and gigot d'agneau at Easter. They are also peerless for cutting virtually almost transparent slices of tomato and cucumber for salads. Finally, they come into play when the Amerloque family gathers round the hand operated meat mincer for one of its semiannual sausagemaking sessions (La Bovida sells sausage skins, too.).

Amerloque uses knives made by Hiromoto, who has been producing professional quality knives for some decades in Seki City, Japan. Seki City, in Gifu Prefecture, is today considered the home of modern Japanese kitchen cutlery, where state-of-the-art manufacturing and technology has updated ancient forging skills to produce a world class series of stainless and laminated steel kitchen knives famed throughout the world. Hiromoto's workmanlike knives (santoku, deba, and yanagi) are forged from high carbon steel, chromium and tungsten. They are advertised as being " easy to sharpen … durable … perfectly balanced … can hold a razor sharp edge". Amerloque has found this to be true and can recommend Hiromoto unreservedly. He finds them particularly well balanced and the price is right. He keeps a second, more upmarket Hiromoto santoku for truly special occasions.

So the currently miserable summer weather makes it a good time to do maintenance in the kitchen, too: cleaning and sharpening knives is a profitable way to spend one or more rainy afternoons … before finishing the day by curling up in front of a warm fire in the evening.

Amerloque would prefer normal summer weather, of course. However, one can't have everything !

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyrights reserved to copyright holders including Amerloque

Commitment

2007-07-09T01:11:00.000-07:00

The truly abysmal, unseasonably cold weather has continued: rainy and windy – some days are genuinely March-like, with high temperatures hovering around a chilly 18°C (64°F). Nevertheless, the summer holidays, whether in Paris or in the provinces, are an ideal time to meander through the outdoor food markets, fill one's shopping bag, and cook at home.

Traditionally, French people who take their holidays during the summer months are divided into two waves: the juilletistes, who take the entire month of July (and not just a portion of it), and the aoûtiens, who – quite logically – take off all the month of August. The end of July is most definitely not a time to be on the roads or in the train stations and airports, with literally millions upon millions of people on the move. This is when the rested homecoming juilletistes meet the impatiently departing aoûtiens; the French have called it the grand chassé-croisé de l'été. In the past several years, with the advent of the five-week paid vacation for all, many French people – especially families - have been taking the month between July 14th (Bastille Day) and August 15th (Assumption). The days of the dyed-in-the-wool, purist juilletistes and aoûtiens appear to be definitely numbered; seasonal vacation rentals by the week are becoming more and more frequent, as opposed to the more traditional monthly house and apartment rentals, for example. There doesn't seem to be a nickname yet for this new breed of vacationer.

The annual kickoff to the summer holidays, even though school is still is session, is the Feast of Saint John, on June 24th. Known colloquially as Saint-Jean and Saint-Jean d'Eté (Saint John of the Summer as opposed to Saint John of the Winter: Saint-Jean d'Hiver, i.e., Saint John the Apostle on December 27th), it is traditionally celebrated as the birthday of Saint John the Baptist. (French-Canadians also have a special place for Saint John.) In many French villages, large bonfires are laid in a field during the week preceding Saint-Jean and on the evening of Saint Jean d'Eté, they are lit as the watching people, especially the children, applaud, oohh and aahh. When the ashes and charcoal remains have cooled, members of the crowd collect bits of the charred faggots and take them home - they are thought to bring good luck to hearth and household during the coming year.

Amerloque has appreciated the marvelous, ever-changing experience of strolling through the food markets for many years. In the summer there is far more time to do so, even if the weather is bad. Produce stall after produce stall overflows with luscious fruits and vegetables; farmers sell their production directly to marketgoers. Various middlemen, who have themselves stocked up at a wholesale market, do the same in similar stalls alongside. There is a government-established network (marché d'intérêt national) of such wholesale markets: in the Paris region the one at Rungis, which replaced Les Halles in the center of Paris, is the most famous, of course.

M and Mme Amerloque make a point of purchasing directly from the French farmer/grower as much as they can all year round, for two major reasons.

The first is simply to support French farmers and growers, and more particularly the small local ones. Crushed by insane European Union regulations designed to "help" them and by greedy hypermarket distributors, French farmers and farmworkers are disappearing at an alarming rate. From something like 3.8 million in 1970, their number had dropped to 1.1 million by the year 2005. Farms are vanishing, too: in 2000 there remained but 664,000 of the million counted in 1988. Overall, the population has risen, naturally: there are now about 63 million people in France, many of whom are perfectly happy to trundle weekly down to their local megastore and mechanically load up on imported industrially-produced fruits and vegetables, at prices subsidized by the intellectually dishonest European Union. Usually the cheap tomatoes, artichokes, melons and nectarines one sees are imported from Spain. It is not unusual at all for one to find oranges from Morocco, Chile and South Africa, avocados and oranges from Israel, and apples from New Zealand.

The French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) reports that in 2003 the French spent 17.4% of their disposable income on food, a figure substantially down from the 31.5% in 1960. According to one of the main farmers' professional organizations, over the past 40 years the amount spent by French people on fruits and vegetables produced in France has dropped by almost 30%. Given these figures, one does not have to be a whiz at math to visualize what the future holds for the small farmer - unless he and she are supported by both the government and the consumer.

The second reason that the Amerloque family always purchases from the farmer/grower is the quality. The principal reason that Amerloque has chosen to live in France is the quality of life, which for the vast majority of French citizens and residents is far, far better than that offered in the USA at equal levels of income - at least to Amerloque's way of thinking. In the case of fruits and vegetables, it's an open and shut case. There is no comparison – at least in his mind and tastebuds ! – between the industrial fruits and veggies available in the hypermarkets and those that the farmers/growers lovingly offer for sale, from their own well-tended farms. Certainly the latter cost a bit more, and are sometimes not as beautifully attractive and shiny and squeaky-clean as their industrial counterparts, but the bottom line is that they taste better. Nor are they waterlogged, or dyed, or covered in insecticides and preservatives, or underripe, or overripe, as are so many fruits and vegetables in the hypermarkets.

It should be noted that Amerloque is not necessarily speaking of bio products - what in the USA are called organic foodstuffs. He is simply speaking of the normal agricultural produce in France produced by small farmers and growers, who may or may not be bio.

Last year, from August to December, M and Mme Amerloque belonged to an Association pour le Maintien de l'Agriculture Paysanne, an AMAP. In the USA, the movement is called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). A CSA organization is a contractual partnership of mutual commitment between an individual farm or grower and a stable community of supporters. The paid-up members of a CSA/AMAP community cover a portion of a country farm's annual or semi-annual operating budget by purchasing shares of the season's harvest in advance. In return for this financing, the farm provides a healthy supply of fresh produce throughout the growing season. The CSA/AMAP group members receive a weekly or monthly basket of produce, flowers, fruits, eggs, milk, cheese, or even a selection of different farm products.

During the first two weeks of their membership in the AMAP specialized in fruit-and-veg (an Association 1901), M and Mme Amerloque received two different baskets containing strawberries, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, early squash, shallots, various heads of lettuce and chou chinois, a variety of cabbage. All of them were very high quality; some were even 100% "bio"; the cost per kilo was about the same as at a stall in a top-flight Parisian open-air market. Alas, from the fourth week, both the quality and quantity started declining somewhat precipitously. Since M and Mme Amerloque were primarily interested in quality, they decided to pull out of the AMAP, which by that time had turned into a real Parisian "bobo show", with more a m'as-tu vu ? ambiance than an honest effort to obtain tasty fruits and vegs.

Earlier this year, after taking the time to visit quite a few places and carefully sample the produce, exactly as one would taste wines before purchasing, M and Mme Amerloque worked out an arrangement with a maraicher bio (organic market gardener) just outside town, to the west of Paris, who brings in his paniers bio to a distribution point once a week. Since the beginning of his season in April, the maraicher has supplied tomatoes (beefsteak, plum, cherry), lettuce, green asparagus, carrots, cucumbers (Noa), radishes, onions (new, scallions), artichokes, Zucchini (long, round), eggplant, beets (cooked and uncooked), potatoes (new, Anais, Fuji ) strawberries, raspberries, melons (cantaloupe), and rhubarb. The farmers also make their own juices: apple, pear, and apple/raspberry.

Here are two typical weekly baskets.

- un kilo de courgettes rondes
- une aubergine
- 900g de tomates
- une botte de carottes nouvelles
- une botte de radis
- deux barquettes de framboises
- un concombre
- deux artichauts

and

- un kilo de courgettes vertes
- une aubergine
- un kilo de tomates olivette
- une botte de carottes nouvelles
- une botte de radis
- deux barquettes de framboises
- une botte d'oignons
- une bettrave rouge cuite
- un melon
-------------------------------------------------------------

The taste of each and every vegetable and fruit is out of this world and bears little relationship to the imported Spanish, Dutch and Moroccan stuff in the hypermarkets. Each basket is €15, by subscription. That might sound a bit high, especially when compared to hypermarket prices, but M and Mme Amerloque are in Paris, which is in the Ile de France, after all. The quantities are decent (well-filled barquettes of raspberries, for example) and the produce fresh: picked that very morning or, at worst, on the previous day. What more could one ask ?

When writing about Les Halles many, many years ago, Waverly Root, who discoursed so admirably and lovingly about French and Italian foods, stated:

... in the 1920s most of the vehicles were horse-drawn farm carts, driven by the same men who had raised the produce and picked it that very morning before daylight so that Paris could have fresh food from the market gardens that encircled it - white beans from Noyon, asparagus from Argenteuil, peas from Clamart, string beans from Bagnolet, cauliflowers from Arpajon, carrots from Crécy. The fields where they grew are buried now under the dormitory suburbs of Paris.

Root was right. Yet there are still maraichers to be found around Paris, not too far away at all, if one looks hard enough: women and men and their families who have made a commitment toward quality and not quantity, toward authentic, tasteful tradition and not ersatz, tasteless modernity.

They merit the support and commitment of those who care about such things and who are unwilling to be brainwashed into believing in the supposed virtues of industrialized food consumerism.

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyrights reserved to copyright holders including Amerloque

Reforms

2007-06-25T01:11:00.000-07:00

As expected, President Sarkozy's party (UMP) came out on top after the two rounds of legislative elections in June. Yet the margin of victory was smaller than expected, thus indicating that M Sarkozy might have a bit more trouble reforming French society than he had planned.

Overall voter turnout was quite a bit lower for the two rounds of the législatives (about 59%), than for the présidentielles (83% or so). Many French people apparently thought that the election of a pro-Sarkozy majority was a foregone conclusion, and hence there was no reason for them to bother voting. Others were undoubtedly put off by the truly abysmal weather: rarely in recent years has a spring been so windy, wet and, quite frankly, miserable. Springtime in Paris this year feels more like Automne en Paname !

Amerloque – and quite a few others – was happy to see that M Alain Juppé, an ex-Prime Minister, the current Mayor of Bordeaux and newly-named Minister of State (second in command after the Prime Minister) in charge of Ecology and Sustainable Development and Infrastructure, was not elected by the voters in Bordeaux. Many of them have seemingly had enough of convicted criminal Juppé (abus de confiance, recel d'abus de biens sociaux, et prise illégale d'intérêt), and preferred his Socialist opponent, Mme Michèle Delaunay by a narrow but winning margin. Prior to these elections, President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Fillon had stated that any Minister who lost his or her election for a seat in the National Assembly would have to resign. This M Juppé did on the Monday immediately after the second round, not without a petulant, ill-mannered comment to reporters: "You'd all be happy if I dropped dead !" (Si je pouvais crever, vous seriez contents !). Amerloque was quite naturally reminded of Richard M. Nixon and that amoral politician's memorably peevish phrase ("You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.") after his defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial elections. Perhaps politicians of this ilk are prone to making petulant pronouncements to journalists after an electoral defeat ?

Several days after the legislative elections, the second Fillon government (Fillon 2) was announced. In keeping with his pre-election promises, President Sarkozy made a clear choice of diversity, naming two ladies issues de l'immigration to cabinet-level posts: as sécretaires d'état (who report to Ministers): Mme Rama Yade (aged 30), of Senegalese origin, appointed Secrétaire d'État chargée des affaires étrangères et des droits de l'Homme (foreign affairs and human rights) and Mme Fadela Amara (42 years old), Secrétaire d'Etat chargée de la politique de la ville (urban policies). Having himself immediately and obviously engaged for "Europe" after the Presidential election, meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to redefine his version of a simplified treaty to replace the discredited, rejected Constitutional Treaty, President Sarkozy girded himself for the exhaustive rounds of meetings with European leaders to hammer out the final draft of the replacement document. One wonders how much more French national sovereignty, which took years of blood, sweat and toil to win, will be abandoned. M Sarkozy also pushed forward on his other reforms, notably those involving the universities (more autonomy), working hours (neither income tax nor social charges on overtime), transport (minimum service on strike days) and tax reform (maximum tax rate of 50% on all income, earned and unearned). These promised changes – as well as other reforms working their way through the pipelines in the various Ministries - will be debated and voted on during the special session ( session extraordinaire ) of Parliament, scheduled to begin on July 3rd and to last throughout the month, at least.

Some observers, Amerloque among them, wonder if M Sarkozy is biting off more than he can chew: everything seems to be happening at once, although in a low key manner for the moment. Trade unions, lobbying groups, associations, majority and opposition politicians, as well as mere citizens have stated – sometimes quite volubly - that they are unhappy with certain aspects of his reforms. President Sarkozy, ever the energetic activist, has not hesitated to multiply his contacts, meet with supporters and opponents, and explain his intentions so as to fulfill his promise of concertation.

The other day, Mme.Valerie Pecresse, the current Ministre de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche (higher education and research), pointed out that concertation does not in any way imply consensus. The French concertation is approximately equal to the Anglo-American term "consulting". In France, it simply means that people concerned by a government decision will be heard by those in charge of making a decision. It does not mean that their views will be taken into consideration. It in no way implies consensus, which is analysis, discussion, and debate – and perhaps, compromise - prior to the final decision. This consensus theoretically leads to a group decision that all interested parties can live more or less happily with, while concertation does not.

The Fillon 2 government's reforms will be debated and adopted in the National Assembly during July and, perhaps, part of August. These two months are the traditional vacation periods, when the French are less attuned to politics and more attuned to relaxation and play at the seashore and in the mountains. The media usually puts more emphasis on holidays rather than politics, and it should be interesting to see whether this holds true this year.

One issue the French media hasn't put too much emphasis on is the current one in the USA concerning the safety of Chinese exports, especially foodstuffs. Amerloque finds this strange and somewhat disquieting, for if there is one subject almost every French man and woman is interested in, it's food. Amerloque has been seen nothing aimed at the general public on television or heard anything on the major radio stations. Only in the financial press, buried among other "foreign news" and "European news", can short blurbs be found, most usually concerning the allegedly fantastic job the European Union customs services are doing when they seize counterfeit fashion items. Little is written about criminally polluted food or fake medicine.

Back in the autumn of 2006, in an article about Chinese investment in Europe, the International Herald Tribune spoke about a venerable farmers' cooperative named Le Cabanon in the south of France, an organization which has become Chinese:

Yi Liu has spent five long years trying to persuade Europeans that Chinese tomatoes can match the quality of produce ripened in the Provencal sun - and at a lower price.

…/…

The cost of tomato concentrate made in China and imported into Europe is about €550 a ton after processing, shipping and taxes, whereas the concentrate produced in France costs more than €650 a ton. The difference is mainly the cost of labor and regulations in France. Because of their access to less expensive raw materials, Chinese owners abroad can often operate at a lower cost than locals.

One wonders how many other Chinese food raw materials are being imported into France, and, indeed, if they are any safer than the ones currently being referred to in the American media. One wonders, too, if any food scandals will break out here this summer, and if the French media will talk about them (always excepting the usual litany of things vacationers should be careful of !) Finally, one wonders if the Chinese authorities plan to reform the food safety bodies now in place, if any.

For some years now, Amerloque has - as much as possible - been purchasing fresh foodstuffs "made in France", and avoiding imports, even from the European Union. Recent news from the USA has only reinforced his view: nothing could be more natural than to support French growers and breeders, from local market gardeners to national poultry and meat producers.

In a country where intense attention to the food one eats is a national trait, one almost can't go wrong. Eating well is an integral part of life in France.

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Dispassion

2007-06-11T01:11:00.000-07:00

As usual during the month of May, the quality of life in France comes to the fore, thanks to public holidays. From April 28th to May 31st, there were three four-day weekends and one three-day weekend ! None of these holidays or long weekends interfered with newly-elected President Sarkozy's initial actions.

Amerloque remembers thinking "Now, it's back to business as usual !" after M Chirac's triumphant re-election as President in 2002, when he obtained a crushing landslide victory over M Jean-Marie Le Pen. The next five years proved that Amerloque's pessimism was well-founded: not too much groundbreaking legislation was passed that would help France cope with its ever increasing problems. Major events during M Chirac's second and final tenure were France's refusal to accompany US intervention in Iraq (Spring, 2003), the French people's rejection of the treaty for the European Constitution (Spring, 2005), and the urban riots (Autumn, 2005). Otherwise things just seemed to putter along as usual, in spite of valiant attempts by M de Villepin, the Prime Minister, to move things along. As in any complex system, changing one parameter influences the system as a whole, and each reform had to be weighed and evaluated as to the desired results as well as to the possible side effects. It became quite clear that reforms take time.

In the weeks since the second round of the presidential election Amerloque has wondered almost every day whether the French came out in their masses to vote for M Sarkozy … or simply hastened to the polls to vote against the somewhat flaky Mme Royal . Certainly M Sarkozy's promise to implement sweeping reforms carries a lot of weight with the French. Those in favor feel that almost every institution in France needs reform. Those against state that only some aspects of French society must be reformed, while the best that French society can offer should be preserved and cherished. Frequently any common ground between the two viewpoints is a bit difficult to locate.

Amerloque - as well as quite a few French people - was a bit surprised by M Sarkozy's initial action after election. Well before the first round, M Sarkozy had stated that in the event of victory he would be going off on a "retreat" (retraite), so as to "inhabit the job" (habiter la fonction). Of course, one had difficulty imagining him haring off immediately upon election to a monastery such as Solesmes or La Grande Chartreuse, but one could easily visualize him quietly resting and mulling things over in a family house out in the country, for example.

What M Sarkozy did was jet off in a private aircraft for a few days' vacation on a luxurious yacht moored in the Mediterranean, a vessel put at his disposal by its owner, one of the more frenetic and rapacious robber barons in France, M Vincent Bolloré. This was quite badly perceived by certain portions of the population, who were already a bit ill at ease with M Sarkozy's penchant for bling and people: "sponsored holidays" and "a form of arrogance and insult" were but two of the epithets hurled at the newly elected President, and not just by the Socialist opposition. Subsequent polls, however, revealed that a majority of the French people didn't hold his three-day escapade against him, although it did contribute to a cynical feeling among those who thought that M Sarkozy was planning to be president of all the French, and not just the incommensurably wealthy.

After such an unpromising beginning, Amerloque wasn't particularly surprised when the members of Prime Minister François Fillon's first Government were announced. M Sarkozy had promised a "rupture" with the past … yet a huge majority of the ministers are chiraquiens and have served in previous governments ! Even more inauspiciously, M Sarkozy could find nothing better than to appoint a convicted criminal as a Minister of State (second in command after the Prime Minister) in charge of Ecology and Sustainable Development and Infrastructure: M Alain Juppé, convicted and sentenced for corruption (abus de confiance, recel d'abus de biens sociaux, et prise illégale d'intérêt) connected with his activities as a political leader and twelve-year stint as Assistant Mayor in charge of finances under the Mayor of Paris - at the time, M Jacques Chirac. An ex-Prime Minister, Juppé was sentenced to fourteen months in prison, suspended, and loss of his electoral eligibility for one year.

During his time in the desert, M Juppé was a guest professor at the École Nationale d'Administration Publique in Montreal, Canada. When the time was up, he came back to Bordeaux, where he had previously been the Mayor. He requested the City Council to resign so that new elections could be held. They did, and M Juppé was re-elected Mayor of Bordeaux in October 2006, suggesting that voters had forgiven him for the conviction. M Juppé resumed his mayoral duties as though there had been no interruption – and is now one of the most powerful ministers in the government.

This is not the first time that a French politician – whether leftist or rightist – has resumed public life after being tried and convicted for corruption or one of its variants. However, the scale of such returns to office (dozens and dozens) is particularly French – it is far removed from the relative handful of convicted politicians who, after serving their sentence(s), have returned to public life in the USA or in the UK. French voters apparently feel that corrupt politicians in question, although he or she has shamelessly betrayed the public trust, have "paid" for their crime(s) - and are perfectly willing to re-elect the miscreant to public office. It has never ceased to amaze Amerloque that, with over 60 million inhabitants, France is still willing to accept that its corrupt politicians return to public life, as though there were not hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of equally-qualified individuals ready to serve willingly.

The next surprise to come along was M Sarkozy's official photo, taken this time by a well-known paparazzo rather than an acknowledged artistic master of the genre. For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, the European flag, that symbol of supranational dominance which has done more harm than good to France (and as a keen observer and participant in French life for decades and decades, Amerloque weighs his words, here), was included in the official photo, which will henceforth be hanging throughout France in government offices and City Halls. The presence of the flag shouldn't, perhaps, have been all that surprising, since M Sarkozy stated immediately upon election that "France is back in Europe". The French have now been forewarned: the "livability", i.e, the quality of life, in France is set to drop even more than it has (in relation to the past in France, and not to other countries, Amerloque hastens to add) since the French voters approved the Maastricht treaty in 1992. Amerloque is tempted to ask if they even knew what they were voting for. M Sarkozy even announced that he was ready to negotiate a new treaty - to take the place of the European Constitutional Treaty rejected by the French people in a referendum - and have the French Parliament approve it, thus making an end run around French misgivings about the wisdom and current form of "Europe".

What put the cherry of unhappiness onto Amerloque's banana split of depression was M Sarkozy's gleeful announcement that he wants to "carry out all the reforms at the same time" (mener toutes les réformes en même temps). A poll stated that 67% of the French people agreed with him.

This augurs ill for France and the French way of life, in Amerloque's view. For decades and decades the French people and their politicians have been fine-tuning French society, so as to achieve a relatively fair sharing out of national wealth, to build and maintain an excellent educational system, and to devise and pay for a superb health care system (to name but three notable accomplishments of the French). There are links between each sector, each program, each social service. Furthermore, strengths and weaknesses must be coldly determined, and not analyzed or compared to some imperfectly understood "American" or "British" or "German" or "Swedish" system, because France is neither the USA, nor the United Kingdom, nor Germany, nor Sweden. Superficially the problem may appear the same, but it isn't: the context is different.

It is not clear at all to Amerloque that M Sarkozy - or the French political class as a whole - has correctly identified and analyzed the "problems" afflicting France, and it is even less clear to Amerloque that the solutions he is proposing will solve the putative "problems" at all. In some cases the latter will be exacerbated: that is blindingly obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the USA and the United Kingdom.

Another way of looking at all this might be from the perspective of cuisine, a subject much appreciated in France. When one wants to prepare a meal, one selects the various dishes to be served. Then one looks at each given dish: one seeks and finds recipes. (One can also, of course, prepare food from the ingredients to hand – but recipes are usually valuable in that case, too !) One obtains the necessary ingredients, one measures them out, and one follows the chosen recipe to a successful conclusion. Unless one is a master chef, with years and years of experience, one does not dispense with a recipe. Each part of a meal has its own dishes; hence a choice can be made among a number of recipes. That's how French society (the meal) is organized: a multitude of recipes, tried and tested. If the society has problems as a whole, it is perhaps just a given recipe which is at fault, not the entire meal. Each recipe can be considered a reform … so one reforms a society by varying a recipe or two, in order to change the balance within the meal. Of course, one can invent or develop new recipes at will, at any time.

With his wish to "carry out all the reforms at the same time", M Sarkozy is basically saying that he wants to change all the recipes simultaneously. He is saying that such a "meal" – with recipes not tested as to their effect on other recipes - will be better than the previous one.

Apparently the French people are buying wholeheartedly into this bizarre way of thinking, since as Amerloque writes these lines, the French have given a commanding lead to M Sarkozy's center-right UMP party in the first round of the legislative elections. Exactly 7640 candidates, in over 80 political parties, contested parliamentary seats yesterday, in what was a relatively dispassionate election: the question was not whether UMP would win the election but rather by how much. The UMP could take as many as two thirds of the 577 seats at stake: it is expected to win between 405 and 445 seats at the outcome of the second round next week, while the opposition Socialist party is projected to win only 100 to 140 seats. Fully 39.56% of the French voters abstained in these Parliamentary elections, one of the highest abstention rates in years - and in marked contrast to the first round of the presidential election several weeks ago. Seven of the eleven outgoing ministers who were candidates won handily, including the Prime Minister, François Fillon; 105 members of Parliament were elected in the first round, which is a record in the Fifth Republic.

The media has been publishing and broadcasting information about M Sarkozy's planned reforms throughout the run-up to this first round of the legislative elections. It's sometimes hard to determine whether such and such a proposition is for real, or is just a trial balloon to see what reaction it elicits. It also remains to be seen whether the reforms promised are really the reforms that will be carried out. Time will tell.

The French proverb about May is "In May, do whatever you like." (En mai, fais ce qu'il te plait) and Amerloque has taken it to heart. He is spending a lot of time out at his farm in Normandy, thanks to all the long weekends. This year the May the weather in France was less than ideal: a lot of drizzly rain and March-like gusts of wind combined to make each long weekend (pont) a bit disagreeable. There was even snow in some of the higher resorts in the Alps and the Pyrénées ! Fortunately out in Normandy it was possible for Amerloque to curl up in front of a warm fire in the evenings after puttering about during the blustery days. Tasks were numerous and varied: opening the house for the season; fertilizing apple trees, plum trees and rose bushes; cleaning out the winter's accumulated debris from the small stream running through the property – each day or weekend had its own springtime odd jobs.

With or without presidential or legislative elections, Normandy is still a calm place to be in May and June. Yet not a day goes by but that the delocalisation of still another company somewhere in France is announced – and far too often the company is in Normandy. More and more small shops are closing up for good, and the désertification of the countryside continues apace. Worrying indeed are more and more frequent press reports stating that young doctors are increasingly refusing to relocate to the countryside.

One hopes that among is bubbling cauldron of reforms M Sarkozy is offering there is at least one that will encourage doctors to move to the countryside to practice. Without adequate medical care, retiring there will cease to be a viable option for more and more older people - including the first wave of babyboomers.

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Mandate

2007-05-07T01:11:00.000-07:00

In their millions, the French went to the polls yesterday and elected their president for the next five years. M Nicolas Sarkozy, the 52-year old conservative candidate, obtained a clear mandate to carry out change – or what the French voters perceive to be change.

The French Ministry of Interior has released the final results

Registered Voters: 44,472,363
Votes cast: 37,343,469
Valid votes: 35,774,019
Participation: 83.97%
Abstention: 16.03%

M Nicolas Sarkozy / 18,983,408 votes / 53.06%
Mme Ségolène Royal / 16,790,611 / 46.94%

The first female candidate with a serious shot at obtaining France's highest elective office, Mme Royal attempted to run a campaign that would federate the Left against the Right and carry her in electoral triumph to the Elysée Palace. Some apparently minor errors were made, however, by her and by the Socialist Party backing her. Taken together, these mistakes might even have cost her thousands and thousands of votes.

The initial error was obviously an overreliance on the "vote for me, I'm a woman !" strategy. The French, forever Cartesian, saw that if such a strategy were deemed acceptable – voting for a given candidate because of her/his sex - then so was its obverse: voting against Mme Royal because of her sex. One cannot have one's cake and eat it, too, after all (On ne peut pas à la fois avoir le beurre et l’argent du beurre !). At the end of the day, it turned out that more women voted for M Sarkozy than for Mme Royal, according to the polling organizations. Perhaps this wouldn't have been the case had Mme Royal not taken refuge in her je suis une femme refrain when not knowing - or when unsure of - what to say, which happened far too frequently to be an accident.

A second, more substantial mistake – at least in Amerloque's view – was Mme Royal's strategy of demonizing M Sarkozy. Instead of concentrating on picking holes in his program, she and her campaigners focused on the man himself – even on his short stature. Asserting that he would be responsible for "civil war" in the projects, that the suburbs would erupt in protest should he be elected, that there would be "violence" and civil strife in French society throughout his term: these were felt by many French people to be threats and, by some, to be even calls for such violence. As one Frenchman stated to Amerloque: "Why should I and my family be hostages to the troublemakers living in the projects ?" (Pourquoi ma famille et moi devons-nous nous sentir comme otages de ceux qui vivent dans les cités ?). How many French people voted against Mme Royal because of her fatuous predictions of violence is for the moment impossible to say, but Amerloque wouldn't be surprised to find out that her threats were received very, very badly by some voters, not all of whom were leaning toward M Sarkozy at the outset – the centrist ones, for example. To his enormous credit, M Sarkozy never responded to Mme Royal's insults and jibes, but simply wondered aloud why she found it necessary to use such language about him.

A third error was not giving the appearance of leading, but of following. Mme Royal and the press made much of her hundreds of hours of consultation with voters from all walks of life and backgrounds, and her subsequent construction of her electoral platform based on what "the people" allegedly told her. Yet even up to the bitter end she never really appeared to grasp the fact that as president she would be president of – and responsible to - all the French people and not just her voters. An example: this was particularly obvious during the single televised debate against M Sarkozy which took place several days before the second round. Her lip curled, and her disdain was plain for all to see, when she spoke of the powerful French Employers' Federation, the MEDEF. This was not lost on entrepreneurs and the members of the business community, who of course, are voters, too. Her apparent reluctance – or perhaps simple inability - to estimate the cost of her reforms and entitlements, coupled with her general and repeated fuzziness about economic matters, reinforced the appearance of her being a follower of pure vanilla Socialist doctrine, rather than being a leader who was willing to modify classic tax-and-spend remedies and try something better. The French want a leader as president, not a follower.

Now it remains to be seen whether M Sarkozy can fulfill the promises he made to the voters to "break" with the past and pushed through a reformist program to "change France". It will be tough for him, perhaps even more difficult than it appears at first glance.

Although the French president has significant powers all on his own, he needs a majority in the Assemblée Nationale to present and pass the necessary laws. Legislative elections are scheduled during the month of June. M Sarkozy and his party will be pulling out all the stops to win those elections - and so will the Socialists. Whatever centrist party M François Bayrou, the third highest vote getter in the first round of elections, manages to cobble together between now and then will be contesting seats, too. The small parties, as well as the Front National, will also be in the electoral arena, attempting to persuade voters that they are relevant to and necessary for France. So M Sarkozy's first task is to transform his presidential victory into a victory in the forthcoming legislative elections. If he doesn't, then he simply won't be able to deliver on his reforms in the short term or medium term.

Other possible roadblocks for M Sarkozy are French institutions. Some of them have been in place for over one hundred or one hundred fifty years and represent bastions of privilege, power and inertia that will be hard to change. Many institutions of the Fifth Republic, though, date from only a half-century or so and are more malleable and ripe for reform. One relatively recent institution that M Sarkozy might have trouble with is the ENA (Ecole Nationale d'Administation), the training school for highly ranked civil servants. Contrary to quite a number of movers and shakers in the top ranks of French society (including Mme Royal), he is not one of its graduates - and hence will not be bound by its old boy network. This could be a double-edged sword for him. Actually the left – and most particularly Mme Royal, given her incessant personal attacks on M Sarkozy – should be very happy indeed that there are institutions that M Sarkozy will have to work with, for they will act as natural brakes on reforms which - perhaps – might be too "violent" or "brutal" to be palatable.

The French economy is sick, although not as ill as portrayed by the proponents of déclinisme, who have a tendency to fixate on simple figures rather than on the big picture. What is blindingly clear, in any event, is that one cannot cure an illness with medication if the medication applied is not the right medication because the diagnosis of the illness is wrong. Amerloque is far from convinced that M Sarkozy – and the conservative wing in France in general – has made an accurate diagnosis of just what is wrong in France, and why. Applying a made-in-the- USA (or made-in-the-UK, or made-in-Sweden) remedy to a given problem in France just might not do the trick. Such remedies might be tried and applied, but the expected results just might not be there, because the contexts are different. M Sarkozy will probably learn this very, very quickly. (One only has to look at how educational theories imported from the USA into French schools have changed the French educational system during the past twenty-five years, for example.)

Vox populi, vox dei, as the old saying goes, and the people have spoken. Stepping back and taking a hard look today, the day after the election, what does Amerloque see ?

He sees that France's new president is a first generation Frenchman: M Sarkozy's father was an immigrant from Hungary. This appears to be lost on the inhabitants of the projects who, in many cases, are first generation French men and women themselves. What better example could there be of integration into the French mainstream ?

He sees that M Sarkozy is apparently a convinced European - and that he refuses the entry of Turkey into the European Union, because Turkey is not in Europe but in Asia Minor. He sees that M Sarkozy believes in the proverb "better a good friendship than a bad marriage", insofar as Turkey is concerned, at least. He also sees that M Sarkozy wants France to resume its "rightful place" in Europe and European affairs.

He sees that M Sarkozy might be capable of surprising quite a few people. As a matter of fact, in his first speech, President- elect Sarkozy spoke specifically of America, of the United States. He stated:

I want to tell them that France will always be by their side when they need her …/… But I want to tell them as well that friendship is accepting that one's friends can act differently, and that a great nation like the United States has the duty to not obstruct the fight against global warming but, on the contrary, to head this struggle because what is at stake is the future of all humanity.

Amerloque sees a career politician for whom politics is the art of the possible. Hence the question is not really how much will M Sarkozy do, but how much he can do.

Bonne chance, President Sarkozy ! Vive la Republique, et vive la France !

L'Amerloque

Update on May 21, 2007: As usual in May, the quality of life in France asserts itself thanks to public holidays. From April 28th to May 31st, there are three four-day weekends and one three-day weekend ! Hence Amerloque is taking a short break. Back soon !

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Honor

2007-04-30T01:11:00.002-07:00

The two weeks between the first and second rounds of the French presidential elections are traditionally used by each candidate to amplify, explain, and refine her or his electoral platform. This time around however, the third-place candidate managed to hog the limelight, prevent the public from delving deeply into programs, and maintain the focus on personalities rather than issues.

With a tad over 18.5% the first round vote, M François Bayrou apparently felt that the time had come for him to demonstrate his supposed electoral clout. Hence he proposed a 'debate' with M Ségolène Royal, the runner-up to M Nicolas Sarkozy – her co-finalist in the second round at the end of this week. Theoretically, this debate between the second and third votegetters was to explore just which issues they diverge and converged upon, and by how much, and in what detail. Never before in recent French political memory had the runner-up and the runner-up-to-the-runner up come together in public between the two rounds of the presidential election, supposedly to 'help the voters make up their minds' and to 'clarify the issues'.

Last week the voters were thus to be deprived of any detailed discussions relating to M Sarkozy's and Mme Royal's programs, and were rather to be treated to the spectacle of M Bayrou desperately attempting to organize his 'debate'. Mme Royal, of course, was only too happy to acquiesce in M Bayrou's capers, since she needs all the centrist voters she can lay her hands on to overtake M Sarkozy on Election Day. On the day following the first round, the torrents of mud, vituperation, castigation, opprobrium, vilification, exaggeration and insults being poured onto M Sarkozy redoubled almost instantly in intensity; The TSS (Tout Sauf Sarkozy, i.e., Anything But Sarkozy) campaign orchestrated by Mme Royal and the Left quite naturally found a resultant echo with M Bayrou.

As the week wore on, voters were expected to believe that M Sarkozy used 'pressure', 'threats', 'intimidation', and 'aggression' - as well as 'scorn' and 'verbal violence' - on those people and entities likely to host the Bayrou/Royal debate. Notwithstanding denials by all the interested parties (including the media organization Canal+, and a major reporters' union, the Syndicat de la Presse Quotidienne Régionale - SPQR), who announced that they had not been pressured, and still less 'threatened', M Bayrou came up with a comment that will certainly go down in French history, if Amerloque is any judge.

Asked on a Friday morning RTL radio program whether pressure had been brought by M Sarkozy on Canal+ to ‘cancel the debate', M Bayrou in all seriousness came out with:

'I have no proof, but I am certain of it.' (Je n'en ai pas la preuve mais j'en ai la certitude.)

This kind of thinking should go a long way toward separating the French people from its politicians even more, in Amerloque's view. The same sort of reasoning could be – and is – frequently applied by UFO proponents, advocates of the well-known Conspiracy Theory of History, sundry religious fanatics of all stripes, and, more recently, some desperate seekers of weapons of mass destruction. After the failure of the French justice system in the Outreau Affair, during which alleged pedophiles were imprisoned for years before it came out in Appeals Court that a) there was apparently no real proof and b) the principal accusers had simply lied, M Bayrou could certainly have avoided such a disingenuous statement.

The fact that France is currently holding a presidential election, rather than mere legislative elections, seems to have been adroitly swept under the carpet - first by M Bayrou and then by those members of the media and the Establishment which found it politic to do so. At the end of this week the French people will be asked to choose between two deeply differing conceptions for the future of France. They deserve to have their political leaders and media address the numerous serious issues facing the country, not speak of a useless debate, or of alleged deficiencies in a candidate's personality, or of imagined Godfatherlike acts. Educated in the French manner, M Bayrou has probably never heard of the proverb 'every dog has its day', and so was blissfully unaware that this was neither the time nor the place to shift into pitbull mode and attack. His choice of words appears to rankle with many French voters and might even follow him to his grave, if they indeed prove to be career-changing. It was in his own future political interest for M Bayrou to portray himself at this time as a genuine statesman rather than as a parvenu gatecrasher spouting fairytales: he certainly missed the boat - and tarnished his reputation, and thus his honor.

After several days of M Bayrou's monkeyshines, and upon learning of the venue of the upcoming 'debate', between Mme Royal and M Bayou, M Sarkozy stated his opinion. No slouch himself when it comes to turning a neat phrase, he preferred the word 'discussions' and qualified them as 'petty Saturday morning deals in a Paris hotel', (petites combines du samedi matin dans un hôtel parisien). Actually, Amerloque breathed a small sigh of relief, since the hotel in question is, after all, an American hotel: the Westin Paris Hotel. The ill-intentioned might conceivably have made an issue of the American ownership but they didn't. Those familiar with the history of Paris will immediately recognize this hotel - which was once upon a time the majestically named Hotel Intercontinental, built in 1862.

The much ballyhooed 'debate' itself turned out to be rather anticlimactic. In talking heads format, it lasted about two hours. At its conclusion, of course, neither participant rallied to the other's point of view: they simply agreed to disagree on many points in quite a number of areas, while occupying center stage in the media – which, after all, was the point of the exercise.

In Paris proper, it is clear that any pretense to electoral neutrality – and thus to honor, cela va de soi - has been cast aside by Paris City Hall, under the command of the Socialists and their green allies. In its April 29/30 print edition (only !), Le Monde reports that the offices of the education authority (le rectorat) requested last week that the various banners and streamers supporting illegal aliens be removed from the facades of approximately fifty school buildings in Paris, all of which belong to the city. Paris City Hall refused to do so, stating that when the constitutional council inspectors verified the voting stations located inside the buildings, they made 'no comment whatsoever' about the controversial banners on the outside. So the banners are still there, and Paris City Hall has strikingly reconfirmed its politicization of the schools. To put this into an American context: imagine being a Kerry voter and, when going to vote on Election Day, finding one or more huge "Win In Iraq" banners at the polling station – or, being a confirmed Bush voter and seeing "Out Of Iraq” bunting. It's that egregious.

A French institution which has always taken the long view is the Army, while another is the Catholic Church. Republics and Presidents may come, and Republics and Presidents may go, but both the Army and the Church remain, guardians of certain French tradition, pomp, and circumstance. Amerloque was reminded of this when paging through the weekend newspapers:

On the day before the second round of the presidential election, at the Invalides in Paris, a commemorative Mass will be said for Napoleon 1st and the soldiers of the Grande Armée who died for France.

One is forever surrounded by honor - and history - in France.

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Strength

2007-04-23T01:11:00.000-07:00

Several lessons might be learned from the result of the French presidential election yesterday. The questions are which lessons, and who will learn them.

The Results

Here are the first round final results from the French Ministry of the Interior, awaiting validation by the Constitutional Council. (Note that the candidates are presented in the order that was determined randomly by the Electoral Commission in March, when each was assigned her/his numbered outdoor electoral billboard throughout France. In every venue, Besançenot was always '1', Buffet '2', and so on.)

Registered Voters: 44,472,867
Votes cast: 37,255,846
Valid votes: 36,723,900
Abstention: 16.23%
Participation: 83.77%

Olivier Besancenot / 1,498,780 / 4.08%
Marie-George Buffet / 707,294 / 1.93%
Gérard Schivardi / 123,577 / 0.34%
François Bayrou / 6,820,882 / 18.57%
José Bové / 483,062 / 1.32%
Dominique Voynet / 576,740 / 1.57%
Philippe de Villiers / 818,645 / 2.23%
Ségolène Royal / 9,501,214 / 25.87%
Frédéric Nihous / 420,759 / 1.15%
Jean-Marie Le Pen / 3,834,996 / 10.44%
Arlette Laguiller / 487,940 / 1.33%
Nicolas Sarkozy / 11,450,011 / 31.18%

Mme Royal and M Sarkozy are the candidates in the runoff election in two weeks' time.

The Voter Participation

All day Sunday the media focused on the lines and waiting times at the polling stations. With voter participation at 83.77%, the number of voters for this first round far exceeds that of the last elections in 2002, when only 71.6% voted. Since 2002, approximately 3.5 million new voters have registered to vote, bringing the total to about 44.5 million. It looks as though many of these new voters might have voted for change, or, at least, what they perceive as change.

The Rout of the National Front

After having been shamefully demonized in the media for a number of years, especially since his surprise second-place showing in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections, M Jean-Marie Le Pen only managed to obtain 10.44% of the votes yesterday. So, with more electors overall than in 2002 and with fewer candidates against him than in 2002, what happened this time ? It's clear that some of M Le Pen’s ideas and vocabulary now became part and parcel of what might be termed mainstream politics (nationalism/patriotism, national identity, security) and were addressed by the other three "big" candidates: M Bayrou, Mme Royal, and M Sarkozy. The French call the phenomenon le lepénisation des esprits. With a Sarkozy score over 30% coupled with the National Front's dismal results ('dismal' at least in their eyes), it can be assumed that many Front National voters bolted their party and jumped on what they consider to be the Sarkozy nationalist bandwagon. To paraphrase M Le Pen, the voters seem to have preferred the copy and not the original.

In some respects, perhaps M Le Pen has only himself to blame. Amerloque's sources dans les cités and en ville indicate that M Le Pen shot himself in at least one foot last week, politically speaking. After proclaiming to the immigrant community that "you are French à part entière, branches on the tree of France", he began for some reason (desperation ? racism ? senility ? panic ? pigheadedness ? stupidity ? reversion to type ?) to babble on repeatedly about how M Sarkozy, only one of whose grandparents was apparently '100% French' , was 'not French enough to be President', that he was 'not of the terroir'.Such utterances were certainly out of his strategic line of addressing 'all the French people', and probably put paid to any hope of ever playing a major role – or any further role whatsoever, perhaps – among French citizens under the age of 40 who are issus de l'immigration. One cannot with impunity assure them that they are 100% French one week … and during the following week state that a candidate with origins somewhat similar to theirs is not 100% French ! Ca ne fait pas sérieux.

The Eclipse of the Small Parties

Yesterday was a rude awakening for all of the small parties. From the far left to the far right, they were crushed, with only Olivier Besançenot achieving anything resembling an honorable score (4.08%). With just 1.93%, the French Communist Party as a viable political force appears to be dead for the foreseeable future. Even the ecologists – who it must be admitted are addressing issues crucial to France and Europe – scored but a paltry 1.57%. It should be remembered that under French law only parties scoring above 5% are entitled to substantial electoral subsidies from the government. It looks like hard times lie ahead for most - if not all – of them.

The Surveys

Agence France Presse (AFP) reports that since January 15 of this year there have been 123 published surveys regarding voter intentions. That's slightly more than one per day, which, it must be said, is remarkable ! Amerloque can't help but be reminded of the old French phrase: 'Info, ou intox ?' ('Information, or disinformation ?')

The Useful Vote

About two weeks preceding the election, Mme Ségolène Royal was somewhat bogged down in the polls: any expected groundswell in her favor simply hadn't materialized. She and the Socialist Party determined that the 'useful vote' (vote utile) strategy was the one to follow - coupled, naturally, with incessant ad hominem attacks on M Sarkozy. This revised approach paid off handsomely: by encouraging French leftist voters to cast a so-called 'useful vote' - and not 'waste' their precious votes on 'small' left-wing candidates such as M Bové, M Schivadi or Mme Laguiller - Mme Royal apparently managed to incite many voters to put the voting ticket with her name into their envelope on Election Day. One can't help but think that some Front National voters followed their own version of the 'useful vote' tactic, as well – and proceeded to cast their ballots for M Sarkozy, rather than for their champion M Le Pen. Does this 'useful' vote concept herald a significant change in French political life, i.e., the disappearance of the 'small' parties ? Today, observers are divided, but any judgment would be premature, before the June legislative elections have been held as scheduled.

The Next Round

The second round of the election is two weeks from yesterday, on May 6th. If one looks at the numbers, adds and subtracts, one comes up almost every time with a theoretical win for M Sarkozy, if the voters for M Bayrou split 50/50 Sarkozy/Royal … and if the same number of voters decides to go to the polls. Whether or nor M Sarkozy or Mme Royal represent any change at all from previous French policies remains open to debate, of course: one has only to read their programs to see that there are hardly any political innovations whatsoever and that they are both in the camp of 'Europe'. By voting as they did, perhaps the French people have simply indicated that they want a return to the past, to the times when the simplistic Left and the even more simplistic Right squared off to duke it out in the Presidential arena. Perhaps that's what the French really want, forgetting in passing that it's the policies of the past which have led to today's impasses.

As Amerloque (and others, obviously) expected, what worked for several decades against M Le Pen will now be used on M Sarkozy: demonization ! (diabolisation !) It was used during the first part of this electoral campaign, of course: M Sarkozy has repeatedly been described daily – almost hourly, even - as one who 'frightens' (il fait peur !), who is 'violent', who is 'agitated', who is 'worrying' (inquietant), who is 'brutal', who represents a 'threat to democracy' (une menace pour la democratie), who is a fascist (un facho).

Now, of course, with push coming to shove, the Socialists, other 'leftists', and the media, will redouble their insults and vituperation, hoping to distract the voters from the real issues (and there are many !). Why change a tactic which has already paid off quite well in M Le Pen's case, after all ?

Almost immediately after the polls closed last night, Mme Arlette Laguiller – who rarely, if ever, makes a recommendation to her voters after an unsuccessful presidential campaign – called raucously on national TV for 'Anything but Sarkozy' (Tout sauf Sarkozy). The other leftist candidates followed suit, lemminglike. Since yesterday the TV and radio news have dropped some of their pretense to objectivity. In interview after interview with a man or a woman in the street, the reporters ask the same question: 'And Sarkozy ? What do you think of Sarkozy ?' ('Et Sarkozy ? Qu'est-ce que vous pensez de Sarkozy ?'). The response is invariably the same: 'Il fait peur !'.

This, naturally, is set to continue apace, building crescendo, for the next two weeks, and will go a long way toward a lack of any public substantive examination of M Sarkozy's platform, toward a close study of its strengths and weaknesses. It is exactly what occurred in the two-week interval in 2002 between the first and second round of the presidential elections. As M Le Pen did in 2002, so shall M Sarkozy experience his own version, in 2007, of la diabolisation.

Of course, as a convinced 'European', M Sarkozy might take some comfort from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's immortal phrase: "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger".

L'Amerloque

Update:

On Wednesday April 25th, the Ministry of the Interior published the final figures. In general, the total number of votes for each candidate was slightly amputated, but the percentages remained the same.

Registered Voters: 44,472,834
Votes cast: 37,254,242
Valid votes: 36,719,396
Abstention: 16.23%
Participation: 83.77%

Olivier Besancenot / 1,498,581 / 4.08%
Marie-George Buffet / 707,268 / 1.93%
Gérard Schivardi / 123,540 / 0.34%
François Bayrou / 6,820,119 / 18.57%
José Bové / 483,008 / 1.32%
Dominique Voynet / 576,666 / 1.57%
Philippe de Villiers / 818,407 / 2.23%
Ségolène Royal / 9,500,112 / 25.87%
Frédéric Nihous / 420,645/ 1.15%
Jean-Marie Le Pen / 3,834,530 / 10.44%
Arlette Laguiller / 487,857 / 1.33%
Nicolas Sarkozy / 11,448,663 / 31.18%

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Homestretch

2007-04-16T01:11:00.000-07:00

While the candidates began girding themselves last week for the hectic run-up to the first round of the presidential elections next Sunday, the Postal Service did its job admirably. Alas, the same cannot be said for the press – at least, for some parts of it.

On Election Day, voting procedures in France are similar to those in many other countries around the world. One goes to one's polling station and presents one's voting card and ID. One enters the voting booth and pulls the curtain closed. One inserts a voting slip corresponding to one's choice into an envelope and closes it. One exits the voting booth, and finally deposits one's envelope in a (usually) translucent container. In France, as the envelope is inserted, a somewhat stentorian voice frequently rings out: A voté ! ('Has voted !'). One exits the polling station and goes about one's usual Sunday business.

This sequence supposes, naturally, that the voter has thought about the issues and individuals - and has had enough information to make a choice. All of the election procedures here are set by the Ministry of the Interior so as to ensure égalité among the candidates. Sizes, formats, and content of all electoral materials, whether audiovisual or printed, are regulated for everyone. There is none of this folderol about making an 'X' on a lengthy paper ballot, or adding the name of a write-in candidate at the last minute.

Approximately two weeks before each election, whether local, regional or national, a thick brown envelope is delivered by mail via La Poste to each registered voter in a French household. It contains what the French call les professions de foi ('professions of faith'). In the USA this might simply be called 'information about the candidates and their platforms' – 'voter information', in word. Accompanying these professions de foi in the envelope are the approved voting slips to be used on Election Day: there is one profession and one voting slip for each candidate, which can be taken to the polling place on The Day.

It should be noted that - interestingly enough for a secular country such as France - the term profession de foi has been borrowed from the religious sphere. It usually used to designate the credo of Roman Catholics, the Shema Israël for Jews, and the Shahada for Muslims. By extension over the years, the locution in French civil society has come to mean any public declaration of a given doctrine - that of a politician or a political party, for example.

If one is curious about the number and tenor of campaign promises allegedly made by a candidate, or if one is wondering just how the media have deformed or bowdlerized a given platform or misrepresented an individual or a party, or if one really hasn't made up one's mind about whom to vote for, the professions de foi are welcome indeed. Mme Amerloque has passed along her set to Amerloque for perusal.

For this election, each profession is 29.5 centimeters (11.6 inches) by 41 centimeters (16.2 inches), folded once in half. All of them, by the way, are printed on recycled paper: it is one of the conditions for obtaining campaign subsidies from the government. Eleven of the twelve candidates have decided to distribute a relatively basic four-page leaflet – but one of them obviously gave more a bit more thought to how to obtain more bang for the buck. Top marks for creativity in graphic layout this time around must go to M Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose profession unfolds neatly to make … a campaign poster, on one full side.

Amerloque wonders what the Socialist Party advisers were thinking of when they signed off on Mme Ségolène Royal's graphics (if, of course, they really did): her chosen colors are red, white and black, the very same as Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party of sinister memory. As a historical reference, it certainly leaves a lot to be desired, in Amerloque's view - and several older French people Amerloque frequents have commented bitterly on the choice. The 'Greens' (les Verts) quite naturally have a predominantly green brochure (little creativity there, alas !), while José Bové's flyer immediately reminds Amerloque of old Reader's Digest advertising, with fake yellow highlightings everywhere. Flyers from the Right generally contain quite a bit of blue, the traditional color of France. Only one profession is not in color, as a matter of fact: it belongs to the Trotskyite Gérard Schivardi, whose electoral propaganda had to be revised at the last minute by order of the Electoral Commission since it was outside the norm.

As might be expected, the texts emanating from the Left are quite earnest and turgid, written in a kind of political jargon seemingly designed for intellectuals rather than for that huge mass of modern voters who nowadays read far less but pay far more attention to the media. In many ways, these professions remind Amerloque of another age, of the rhetoric prevalent in France from 1968 and throughout the 70s right up to 1981, when François Mitterrand was elected. Just as unsurprisingly, the texts from the Right are heavy on keywords, buzzy concepts and photos. Both M Nicolas Sarkozy and M François Bayrou are pictured against the verdant French countryside in the background, attempting to instill a feeling of solidity and timelessness, much as M François Mitterrand did in 1981 with his force tranquille ('quiet strength'). Amerloque finds that M Philippe de Villiers' profession seems bizarrely unprofessional: it appears to be a series of short texts written by different individuals and combined on the pages at the last minute.

No candidate here in France can ever really say that the voters 'didn't know' about her or his message: all registered voters receive this package of professions de foi and it is simply up to them to become as informed as they desire. The French voter who genuinely wants information about the candidates and their platforms will take the necessary time to read and attempt to understand these professions. From Amerloque's experience, the information contained therein frequently contributes to animated discussions at the office: some candidates' words, phrases and positions can be examined and parsed in detail over several days – especially when they are at variance (sometimes significantly so !) with versions appearing in the media.

At first glance, not too much can be said about the voting slips, called bulletins de vote. Each one is 14.5 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 10.5 centimeters (4.13 inches): solid white, with black printing. Only the candidate's first and last names appear on the paper, and the last name must be capitalized. One is theoretically supposed to bring the slip corresponding to one's voting choice to the polling place and use it on The Day - but naturally the full range of voting slips is available there, should one forget.

It should be noted that one's vote can be invalidated for quite a number of reasons - and that quite a few of them depend on the voting slip, so its importance should not be underestimated. The law lays down complete guidelines: Article 24 of the Decree of March 8, 2001 provides that votes are invalid if:

1 – the voting slip is different from the one provided by the government;
2 – the voting slip is handwritten;
3 – the voting slip contains the name of a candidate who does not appear on the official list established by the Constitutional Council;
4 – the voting slip is blank;
5 – the voting slip is not contained in an envelope;
6 - the voting slip does not contain 'enough details';
7 – the voting slip and/or the envelope contain the voter's name or identity;
8 – the voting slip is contained in unauthorized envelope;
9 - the voting step is printed on colored paper;
10 - the voting slip (and/or the envelope) contains identifying marks anywhere
11 - the voting slip contains written insults of candidates or of others;
12 - several voting slips in the same envelope contain different candidates' names.

and, finally:

13 - Envelopes containing no voting slip whatsoever are null and void.

In the 2002 presidential election, there was a minor problem with the voting slips. No one had really expected M Jean-Marie Le Pen to reach the second round runoff; not enough voting slips had been printed ahead of time. As voters began receiving the updated professions de foi and voting slips in the mail, M Le Pen accused the government of printing his second round voting slips on 'cheap paper', of a quality inferior to that being used for the incumbent, M Jacques Chirac. As far as Amerloque could determine at the time from press reports, M Le Pen was both right and wrong, since only in some precincts were 'cheap' voting slips supplied to the voters: the majority were printed on 'normal paper' (although the one received in the mail by Mme Amerloque was indeed a cheapo !).

In Amerloque's view, it is fortunate indeed that there are the professions de foi. Any impartial observer of French political life would find it difficult to assert that the media is doing a truly honest job of reporting about the candidates and their positions. As in 2002, many observers of French political life – Amerloque among them – are watching in some horror, tinged with a great deal of sadness, as the allegedly 'independent' mainstream media reveal their true colors. In a word, they believe that the French voter is a fool and that she or he can be maneuvered at will. They seem to have forgotten that two major events have taken place in France since the last presidential election. One was the French people's vote against the adoption of the European Constitutional Treaty, and the other was the urban riots lasting something like three weeks. In Amerloque's view, these have forever changed the way a lot of French people look all the candidates' political programs and politics.

Over the past two weeks or so the media and the candidates have been ratcheting up the rhetoric, resorting to name-calling and ad hominem arguments, directed principally against M Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been the frontrunner in poll after poll for many months (M Le Pen, of course, is still treated as the zenith of human evil, a carrier of political plague beyond the pale, and is rarely given a fair shake), while M François Bayrou inches ever upward. Accusations against M Sarkozy are hurled daily in and by the press, ranging from corruption and dishonesty to being a semi-hysterical advocate of racism and eugenics. Mme Ségolène Royal and various Socialist Party representatives, including her designated spokespeople, have become increasingly shrill and vituperative: Mme Royal herself even accused M Sarkozy of being responsible for "civil war" in the projects. Her rhetoric has veered from 'vote for me and my 100 point Socialist program for France' to 'vote to stop the Right'. While such a plea may have pleased the voters in 1981, there is no guarantee that it will play at all to the electors of today. Times have changed, and it's a big world out there. Since 1981 both 'globalization' and 'Europe' have struck France in significant fashions – and the French in their majority are fully aware of that.

Part of the apparent Socialist desperation undoubtedly comes (at least in Amerloque's view) from the fact that there just doesn't seem to be a growing groundswell of support for Mme Royal, who quite clearly in the view of many lacks the competence - not to mention the gravitas - required for the Presidency. An anonymous group of Socialist Party members writing under the pen name 'Spartacus' stated last week that its members would be supporting … M Bayrou, and not Mme Royal. Another reason for Socialist gloom came from M Michel Rocard, a Socialist ex-Prime Minister (under Mitterrand) who is now out to pasture. A couple of days ago he called for an alliance with M Bayrou to "stop Sarkozy" ... and was almost immediately seconded by another Socialist heavyweight, Bernard Kouchner, a former Minister of Health and founder of the Nobel Peace Prizewinning Medecins Sans Frontières organization. While some might interpret the calls as those of rats leaving the sinking Socialist ship - or even as those of modern Brutuses plunging their sharpened blades into Caeser(ine)'s back - Amerloque will be a bit more charitable. Should M Bayrou win and attempt to govern from his imaginary 'center' with some sort of 'national union', both M Rocard and M Kouchner will have placed their pawns on the centrist chessboard early enough to have a bit of later influence. (Too, the Socialists must wonder just what real chances of success Mme Royal still has when Mme Dominique Voynet, the 'Green', and M Bayrou campaign jointly in the projects, as they have done.)

Amerloque has a few more observations:

Dirty Tricks - No political campaign is ever immune from dirty tricks, and disinformation about one candidate or another has been appearing with depressing regularity. One alleged 'survey' magically appeared several days ago, just in time to be featured prominently in the news over the weekend. A story appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur (traditionally on the Left) about an so-called 'poll' conducted by the Renseignements Généraux which shows that Mme Royal won't make it into the second round. Emails supposedly emanating from various prestigious organizations (for example, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Centre d'Etudes de la Vie Politique Française (CEVIPOF) speak of 'secret' surveys made that 'prove' that Mme Ségolène Royal 'will be eliminated' next Sunday and that M Le Pen would supposedly come in first with 20%, followed by M Sarkozy (19%) and M Bayrou (11%).

The general feeling is that the goal of both these tricks is to encourage leftist French voters resort to the so-called 'useful vote' (vote utile), i.e., a vote for Mme Royal - and not 'waste' their precious votes on 'small' left-wing candidates such as M José Bové, Mme Dominique Voynet or Mme Arlette Laguiller. Naturally the small left wing candidates took such interpretations very, very badly indeed - after all, the opposite of 'useful' is 'useless' ! They reacted instantly, all of them stating in no uncertain terms that voters should vote for their preferred candidate and platform - and certainly not Mme Royal. It remains to be seen if the tricks bring about the desired result next week. Amerloque is also wondering any other disinformation will be revealed during the upcoming week, in a paper such as the Canard Enchainé, for example, or in Le Figaro.

Surveys - With but one week remaining before the first round, the media and pollsters would have the French believe that something like 40% or 41% of the voters are still undecided. Amerloque learned long ago that there is no Santa Claus, that there are no free lunches ('TANSTAFFL'), and that he will still have to pay for a shave tomorrow in Paris, in spite of the quaint French saying: Demain, on rase gratis! From his own travels and movements around Paris and the Paris region over the last weeks, and from his encounters in offices and over coffee machine(s) and at diners en ville, Amerloque is convinced that few voters are really undecided, deep down. Many of them have made their choice and are keeping it to themselves. Some simply seen to be fed up with polls, and won't answer any questions. Others are voting Front National and just want to spare themselves any possible personal or professional problems that might follow a declaration of support for M Le Pen, no matter how lukewarm. All the polls are to be taken with many, many grains of salt, Amerloque feels.

Background noise – Violence is never far from the surface. At a carnival in Paris - the Foire du Trone, held annually for centuries (since AD 957 !) - a policeman was killed when he attempted to stop gang members from the projects from attacking a carnival ride operator. It is not clear whether one or more gang members pushed the officer under the heavy, moving arm of a fast-moving thrill ride, or whether it really was an accident caused by a 'movement by the crowd', as the state prosecutor termed it. A 15 year old has been charged and is in jail. Down in the center of France, near Lyon, a young (23) hypermarket employee was abducted and murdered by a person described on TV by a family member as being 'on parole for sex crimes'. Her body was found six days after the fact, casually cast in a ditch by the side of a minor road. In Algiers (Algeria) and Casablanca (Morocco), fundamentalist Muslim suicide bombers allegedly linked to Al Qaeda attacked without warning, exploding their devices with an enormous loss of life in Algiers (something like 24 dead and over 200 wounded) and no loss at all (except the terrorists themselves, at this writing) in Casablanca. The event in Casa is taken far more seriously indeed here. The Quai d'Orsay (French Foreign Ministry) immediately instructed French nationals living in Morocco - or planning on traveling there - to 'exercise extreme caution' and 'avoid crowds'. Over the past fifteen years, since the beginning of the current monarch's reign, millions up on millions of euros have been invested by French citizens and companies in Morocco, from call centers to industrial assembly lines to vacation apartments. The savvy purchase and subsequent careful restoration of coveted riads, the traditional Moroccan city dwellings, have been touted as 'safe' investments on financial pages and in lifestyle magazines for several years now: prices have skyrocketed. The country has become both an excellent business partner and a fashionable retirement destination for bobos - and even for less well-off French people, especially those who are hoping to find an cheaper lifestyle than the one they have here in France. Domestic crime and events in Morocco will probably influence the vote next week, in Amerloque's view.

Will the second round in 2007 be a faceoff between Mme Royal and M Sarkozy (as the bookmakers have it) ? Will M Bayrou reach the finals ? Might there even be a runoff between M Sarkozy and M Le Pen ? By this time next week, the die will have been cast and the votes counted.

These certainly are interesting times, in France.

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Countdown

2007-03-26T01:11:00.001-07:00

Fewer than four weeks remain until the so-called first round of the French Presidential elections, on April 22nd. After weeks of maneuvering, the initial phase of the campaign has come to an end.

Presented as a contest divided into two parts, with two "rounds" of voting, the French presidential election is really a three-tiered effort for each candidate, since the first fence that the putative candidate must hurdle is simply managing to put her or his name on the ballot. There follow the two rounds of voting to elect the president from the slate of eligible candidates. In France, it's a "one-man one-vote" in presidential elections: there is no Electoral College as there is in the USA. The two leaders of the French first round face off in the final a fortnight later, and the winner moves into the Palais de l'Elysée, the beautiful presidential palace.

The frenetic search for endorsements - along with the results of opinion polls and the presentation of each candidate's program, such as it is - has been the major topic in the media over the past month or so.

Having one's name appear on the ballot as an official candidate – this de facto first-round of the election - requires obtaining at least 500 endorsements from notables, i.e., personalities. Thousands of mayors of municipalities (there are something like 36,000 in France !), counselors general of departments and régions, Senators, and other elected officials, including members of the European Parliament, are entitled to give their signatures to a candidate.

The hunt for signatures has filled the front pages of the press sometimes to the exclusion of more important issues. Stories abounded that such and such candidate ("as usual ?", went the refrain) was having trouble obtaining endorsements because heavy political pressure was being applied by one of the major parties to their members who might have thought about endorsing an out-of-party candidate. Discussions in the media focused on the inherently antidemocratic nature of such pressure, and were frequently coupled with calls from all quarters for reform to the system. Other articles focused on numerous mayors' complaints that they, and their property, were increasingly subject to physical harassment and abuse from their fellow citizens if they were so foolish as to endorse a candidate from the "wrong" party – the Front National, for example. Other stories this year drew attention to several rural mayors who had stated that their signature would be given to the highest bidder, any monies being gained going into his or her municipality's coffers and not into the mayor's own pocket, bien entendu. Still other stories highlighted mayors who simply and publicly drew a name for endorsement out of a hat. The Constitutional Council quickly put a stop to most of these shenanigans, invalidating auctions of endorsements as well as random drawings without so much as a batting its collective eye.

In the middle of February 2007 there were approximately 45 self-declared candidates for president. Some were obviously off the wall, in the race only to further their personal, sometimes obscure political agendas or careers, and were never taken too seriously by anyone except a relative handful of acolytes. Others were far more credible, such as Mme Corinne Lepage, an ecologist who was on the presidential ballot in 2002, and M Nicolas Hulot, a journalist cum high priest of "ecology" - who is 100% beholden to one of the largest media groups in France, TF1. Even José Bové, the poster boy for the altergloballist movement renowned worldwide for attacking a McDonald's restaurant and dismantling it, declared his availability as a candidate.

It was beginning to look as though there would be as many candidates in 2007 as there were in 2002: back then, 16 were on the ballot. Every couple of days, though, a self-declared possible candidate would withdraw, citing financial difficulty or lack of publicity, and sometimes both. The experienced Mme Lepage, for example, desisted in favor of one of the up-and-coming frontrunners. The media marionette M Hulot backed out, stating that he simply preferred to remain "in the background" (of course, M Hulot's future marketing punch for TF1 - and its allegedly moneymaking "Ushuaïa" brand - would never have recovered from his losing run at the presidency – could there be a connection ?).

On March 19, the Constitutional Council certified signatures and issued the final list, that is, the names of the candidates who had submitted 500 or more audited endorsements and were thus entitled to have their names on the ballot. They also gained electoral subsidies and officially apportioned TV and radio airtime. There are 12 candidates this year, four less than 2002. To the surprise of many, M Bové just squeaked in, with 504 signatures.

The list is quite instructive of just how French society is split. Here they are, in alphabetical order by "left" and "right":

Monsieur Olivier Besançenot (communist)
Monsieur José Bové (alterglobalist)
Madame Marie-George Buffet (communist)
Madame Arlette Laguiller (trotskyist)
Madame Ségolène Royal (socialist, aka center-left)
Monsieur Gérard Schivardi (socialist)
Madame Dominique Voynet (ecologist)

Monsieur François Bayrou (center-right)
Monsieur Jean-Marie Le Pen (rightest)
Monsieur Frédéric Nihous (rightist)
Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy (center-right)
Monsieur Philippe de Villiers (rightist)

It is generally accepted that only four of these candidates (call them the Big Four: Royal, Sarkozy, Bayrou, and Le Pen) have a hope of making it into the second round. The voters' preferences, naturally but somewhat unfortunately for democratic debate, in Amerloque's view, have been the subject of opinion poll after opinion poll, survey after survey, rumor after rumor, speculation after speculation. Almost every day new numbers are hurled with gleeful abandon at the French public, which Amerloque feels is beginning to reel figuratively under the onslaught: Sarkozy is "up three", Royal is "down two", Le Pen is "down one-half", Bayrou is "up six". After several weeks of this, one has a tendency to want to tune out and attempt to focus gamely on the issues and on candidates' programs, rather than on the unceasing litany of evolving figures – which may or not be reliable, in Amerloque's view.

Suffice it to say that after a fairly good beginning, Mme Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate, has had to play fierce and increasingly strident catch-up ball, due in no small part to her own mistakes and misstatements concerning foreign policy and the fact that her program, the pacte presidentiel, reads more like a list of socialist entitlements for students and families rather than a credible platform for France and all the French people over the next five-year term.

Way back when the idea of a Ségolène Royal candidacy was confined to members of the Socialist Party – not that long ago, as a matter of fact – one of the more astute professional observers of the French political scene, Alain Duhamel , turned a neat phrase when he wrote about Mme Royal:

"She resembles those empty white spaces on those old-time maps of yesteryear, attractive by their mystery and their novelty, striking the imagination but heretofore unexplored." (Elle ressemble à ces taches blanches des cartes géographiques d'antan, attirantes par leur mystère et leur nouveauté, propres à frapper les imaginations mais encore inexplorées. )

Now, of course, Mme Royal has in some respects become terra cognita and the French are beginning to wonder about her, indeed. She sometimes comes across in public as a hateful, arrogant, egomaniac (Ségol'haine and Ségoiste are but two of her nicknames) , and one has some difficulty imagining her as a representative of France internationally. (Even her Socialist "friends" have recently called her haughty, calculating, lying, shallow, populist , and dangerous … c'est dire …) For many French people – notably the self-employed and the managerial classes - the fact that she has never held a private sector job in her life does little to confer believability on her ringing declarations about "conquering foreign markets" and "reviewing the 35-hour workweek" through "win-win negotiations between workers and bosses" and "financing entitlements and investments through economic growth". The fact that Mme Royal (the "gazelle") has had to call the Socialist Party heavyweights (the "elephants") to her rescue and ask that they show public solidarity with her has not helped the earnest image of independence and freshness that she wants to project to the electorate, especially since many voters feel that the Socialists are in great part responsible for the problems France is facing thanks to their periods of governance dating from 1981. Voters seem to be liking what they discover about her – and her program - less and less, and Amerloque feels that it is unsurprising that Mme Royal has constantly been trailing M Sarkozy.

Ah, yes - M Nicolas Sarkozy. As the current Minister of the Interior and leading presidential candidate – wearing two hats, in a word - he is in many respects "damned if he does and damned if he doesn't." In Amerloque's view M Sarkozy has quite clearly chosen to be himself and let the chips fall where they may, since no matter what he does or doesn't order when wearing his "law and order" ministerial hat, his political opponents find reason to criticize him and lay any and all responsibility directly on his doorstep. Some French people apparently feel that he is hardening some of his positions and moving "to the right", supposedly "to attract the Lepenist vote." His recent proposal to create a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity caused an enormous outcry: not only did he dare to suggest an examination of two virtually taboo subjects, but he linked them together.

M Sarkozy's response to most criticism is almost disarmingly simple. First of all, he states that candidates during a presidential election are supposed to talk about issues: that's why there are elections, to decide issues. He says that he is simply bringing up these issues - and then asks why some issue(s) can't be discussed in France, when in other countries the same subjects are debated out in the open. He finishes up by emphasizing that he wants to be the president of France, for France and the French people and that in France there are many currents of thought, all of which should be taken into consideration when making policy to solve the many problems France is faced with. For him, no one has a monopoly on the truth, and if problems are not identified and discussed, they will most assuredly remain unsolved.

Such statements might ring true and noble to many - but equally as many people are judging him by past performance and on somewhat debatable ad hominem criteria. He is felt to be an excitable, aggressive, vindictive, changeable individual, capable of the very worst on a bad day – and, his critics allege, of not much better on a good day, of which there have been very few. His good deeds are invariably overshadowed by his bad ones, they assert. He is seen as a representative of the "free market right", as a continuation of outgoing President Jacques Chirac's policy rather than a "candidate who represents a break with the past" (le candidat de la rupture), as he portrays himself to be. The president's recent endorsement of M Sarkozy is a genuinely two-edged sword, and is even considered by some to be M Chirac's "vengeance" for M Sarkozy's so-called betrayal in the 1997 Presidential elections, when M Sarkozy declared for M Chirac's rival on the right, M Edouard Balladur. M Sarkozy's position as a candidate might be somewhat clearer up from now to Election Day, nevertheless, because he is leaving his job as Minister of the Interior today. In Amerloque's view, it is unsurprising that M Sarkozy leads poll after poll. His discourse is one that speaks of France and the French people. Whether or not he can deliver on his promises, naturally, is an open question. Yet the fact that remains on top of the voting surveys, time after time, suggests that many French people think he can.

In 2002 presidential election, the "Third Man" was one Jean-Pierre Chevènement, an experienced Socialist politician who had been busily recasting himself as a centrist. He caved in the first round of the election , receiving only 5.33% of the vote and finishing in the sixth position among the sixteen candidates, although the polls had been giving him as much as 11% a few months prior to the first round. This time around, the Third Man is M François Bayrou, an experienced rightist politician … busily remodeling himself into a believable centrist who can offer an alternative to the two "entrenched" parties, those of Mme Royal and M Sarkozy.

M Bayrou, a farmer and horsebreeeder (from the Béarn, bordering on Gascony), who has a degree in letters and wrote an excellent bestseller about the French King Henri IV, has been in French politics for many years. He is a member of the UDF (Union pour la Démocratie Française), the mainstream political party whose members most notably include Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the third president of the Fifth Republic and François Mitterrand's predecessor, from 1974 to 1981. M Bayrou has been a representative (deputé) in the National Assembly since 1986, and, as a matter of fact, was also the Minister of Education from 1993 to 1997 in the center-right Balladur administration, as well as in both tenures of the center-right Alain Juppé. Hence he certainly does not lack political experience at the national level.

Nevertheless, M Bayrou is faced with basically the same problem as M Sarkozy: he is in no small measure responsible for some (or many) of the current policies because he a) served in past governments and b) still belongs to the center-right majority in Parliament. "With such antecedents," many French people ask, "just how he can magically present himself today as a candidate offering a credible break with the past ?". Certainly he is the image of what the French love to see in their public figures: a man who expresses himself unambiguously in clear, daily language, who can be as intellectual as necessary and has even written a book, who is close to the land (le terroir), and who has a discreet private life and six children (une famille nombreuse). One never, ever sees M Bayrou in the "people press". Perhaps these characteristics can go some way to explaining why, from a figure of 6% or so several months ago, M Bayrou has recently managed to garner over 20% of apparent voter intentions in some polls, emerging as a serious challenger to Mme Royal and supposedly nibbling at M Sarkozy's constituency. In Amerloque's view, the media has played a large part in M Bayrou's gain – he is invariably presented as a "new-but-credible" candidate, with his own ideas. Some observers feel that his poll scores reflect nothing more than media hype, while others feel that his candidacy is being pushed hard so as to keep National Frontist Jean-Marie Le Pen out of the "Third Man" position. Whether or not Bayrou's candidacy is simply a flash in the pan will be decided by the voters themselves on Election Day.

M Jean-Marie Le Pen is the fourth candidate who has a chance of reaching the second round of the election. Founder and leader of the National Front, he has been portrayed for decades and decades in both the French and international media as a "far right" extremist - a racist, anti-Semitic xenophobe desirous of establishing some sort of fascism in France. To the immense surprise of many observers and French people, including many in the media and cloud-dwellers in political parties who apparently were not paying much attention to what was happening on the ground, M Le Pen received 16.86% of the votes in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections, second only to outgoing President Chirac's 19.88%. M Le Pen was roundly trounced in the runoff two weeks later, scoring but 17.79% to M Chirac's 82.21%. For many years M Le Pen's political stock in trade has been his opposition to uncontrolled immigration and untrammeled capitalism; his desire for implementation of a "national preference" in housing, jobs, and acquisition of citizenship; and his wish for a renaissance of nationalism, including a revision of France's relationship to the European Union and other European countries. While it is generally asserted that many people vote for M Le Pen as a "protest", or out of "fear" or out of "racism", it is also clear that on any one day he can count on approximately 15% of the voters. Given the relatively recent past (the French vote against Europe in May 2005, and the weeks of suburban riots that same autumn), it is clear that some of the ideas he defends have now reached the mainstream, and are no longer beyond the pale of serious consideration. (le lepénisation des esprits) Some theses have even been deemed worthy of debate by the other mainstream candidates: M Sarkozy's suggestion for a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity (called Lepeniste by his detractors), and Mme Royal's singing of the French national anthem "La Marseillaise" at some of her campaign rallies are but two cases in point.

Unlike the other three main candidates, M Le Pen is against both immigration and Europe. These two issues have taken on great resonance among the electorate in the past several years, in Amerloque's view, and their influence on the outcome of the election should not be underestimated. For example, one cannot be "against Europe" and vote for Mme Royal, M Sarkozy, or M Bayrou. The three of them are pro-Europe, albeit in varying degrees. Presumably those "against Europe" can cast their vote in favor of a "small" candidate - some of whom are "anti-Europe" - but if one wants one's "anti-European vote" to count, one must necessarily vote for M Le Pen. The same sort of reasoning can be invoked for issues such as immigration, citizenship, globalization, offshoring, and defense: for better or for worse, M Le Pen represents a break with what has been done over the past 25 or so years. Too, the whole question of political correctness floats just beneath the surface: M Le Pen has never been too mealy-mouthed about how he feels or thinks (again, for better or for worse, especially insofar as his alleged anti-Semitism is concerned) and has never hesitated to call a spade a spade. Several of M Le Pen's past analyses have turned out to be "true", in some respects, and this has not been lost on the population at large. The feeling some voters have of being entrapped in the world of the politically correct should not be underestimated, either.

Amerloque has several other observations, which he will offer here in no particular order and with no particular emphasis:

Media - Perhaps the media organizations belong to the big-money capitalists, as the left never tires of pointing out, but the corporation of French journalists is quite obviously pro-Royal. It is unquestionable, too, that the media, (that is, those journalists out in the trenches) are certainly anti-Sarkozy. Ségolène is almost invariably presented in positive, sometimes glowing terms; many of her gaffes are minimized if not ignored outright, while flattering pictures of her are published almost daily. Nicolas and his policies are generally presented in negative terms; photos of him are unflattering in the extreme, almost always accenting his short stature and drawing attention to his somewhat shifty eyes. M Bayrou is generally portrayed as a reasonable man of dialogue, a sort of Diogenes-like seeker of truth and justice wandering in the Slough of Despond of moroseness and self-flagellation into which France currently seems to have sunk. Finally, M Le Pen is still the devil incarnate, the outcast of society: highly inflammatory photographs and devastating criticism, sometimes wildly untruthful, are his daily lot, as it has been for so many years. He is portrayed more as threatening bogeyman lurking just over the horizon than as a real alternative for France. Not a day goes by without the obligatory "Nous devons éviter un nouveau 21 avril !" ("We must avoid a repeat of April 21", i.e., the first round of the 2002 presidential election when M Le Pen qualified for the second round) uttered by a fawning but somewhat pompous talking head. The eight remaining candidates appear in the press, on the radio and on TV; their positions – no matter how extreme or unrealistic or backward looking - are described, examined and commented, but for the sake of form alone: only one of the Big Four will be grabbing the brass ring.

Buzz - There is little workplace buzz compared to that preceding the elections for the European Constitution in May 2005; these presidential elections are a bit low key. Debates and discussions certainly fill the papers and the airways, but the feeling of making history just doesn't seem to be there, in Amerloque's view. This dovetails badly with the reality of this election, which is that the older generation represented by M Chirac (b 1932) might be yielding power to a younger generation represented by Royal (b 1953), Sarkozy (b 1955) and Bayrou (b 1951) – unless Le Pen (b 1928) were to win the whole enchilada. In the latter case, it would be back to the drawing board for many, many people.

Youth – There apparently will be many more young voters this time around than in 2002. The 2005 riots in the projects (les banlieues) were a call to arms for many of the young people living there, while the early 2006 demonstations against the CNE (Contrat Nouvelle Embauche, the new hiring contract for employment) politicized others. The political parties picked up the ball and ran with it, encouraging those over 18 to register to vote. In spite of polls in newspapers showing that many young people will vote, it remains to be seen whether this in fact will be the case on The Day. It also remains to be determined is just who young people – as though they were a homogenous group - will vote for: in Amerloque's view, it probably won't be a tsunami for the left, and might even be quite surprising. This is not the 1968 generation, after all.

Background Noise – To put it bluntly, there doesn't seem to be much good news that the French can grasp to to help them make their decision. On the economic front, companies are downsizing and offshoring like there's no tomorrow, though government statistics show a drop in unemployment. Crime seems to be increasing – yet once more, government figures state the opposite. ("Can the numbers be believed ?", many ask around the coffee machine.) Public services such as train transport and postal delivery seem to be afflicted by cases of terminal incompetence. Small groups with various doctrinal axes to grind stage demonstrations and events to attract media attention during the campaign – it is the ideal time to make one's demands known to the world, after all. "Europe" is in trouble. One bothersome hum in the background that few refer to: as Amerloque had surmised back in June 2005 when he stated:

Amerloque's experience in France has taught him that it would be impolitic to underestimate or misunderstand the French people: they do not practice reform when the situation becomes catastrophic. Rather, they sweep away the existing structure and set up a new one. Future historians may very well look back at May 29th, 2005, as a landmark date during the tumultuous advent of the Sixth Republic.

plans for the Sixth Republic are well afoot and proceeding apace, if Mme Royal is to be believed. She has referred to it many times during the campaign, promising watershed institutional changes, including an assemblée constituante and new "powers to the people". One of her spokespeople, Arnaud Montebourg, is a major proponents. No one as yet, however, sems to have raised the debate about a Sixth Republic to the level of a major campaign issue. Amerloque remains perplexed as to why not, since the Sixth Republic appears markedly similar to the somewhat catastrophic Fourth Republic, that of spineless political parties and Tammany Hall-like maneuvering.

In conclusion, Amerloque has been wondering which of the 2007 Big Four he would find it interesting to have lunch with. Without a doubt it would be M Bayrou, simply because he seems far less a prisoner of his preconceptions and his own propaganda than the others. Would Amerloque vote for him, then, if Amerloque could vote in France ? Not a chance: a nice luncheon would be quite enough.

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Placidity

2007-03-05T01:11:00.000-08:00

The month of February in France is usually fairly calm, with its two certain "holidays" and a possible third, and this year of 2007 is no exception. The campaigning for the upcoming presidential elections, of course, provides background noise and ample fruit for discussion in all walks of French life.

Two of the February holidays – "special days" would be a more appropriate term - are based on the civil calendar: the Fete de la Chandeleur at the beginning of the month (February 2nd) and St. Valentine's Day (February 14th). The former is known in the United States and in other English-speaking countries as Candlemas. It celebrates Roman Catholic holiday of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple forty days after his birth: the name Chandeleur apparently comes from the Latin candelorum festum which means 'festival of candles', since vast numbers of these used to be lit in churches in celebration. The tradition here in France is to eat crepes on the day. While cooking the crêpes, one is supposed to hold a coin in one's hand and, with the other, flip the crêpe - and catch it while making one's wish for the New Year. Only if one catches the coin – ideally gold ! – will the wish be granted. Groundhog Day is unknown, although it's always fun to describe the tradition to French people (oui, oui, c'est 'la marmotte d'Amérique', et c'est 'le jour de la marmotte') who, although interested, may be completely unaware that the whole hibernation rigamarole is allegedly based on Celtic folklore.

After the relative success of Hallow'een in France over the last decade the marketing and merchandising busybodies apparently took a good, hard look at all of the business opportunities in the US and decided that le jour du Saint Valentin would be yet another excellent way to separate the consumer from her or his hard-earned money. The celebration of Valentines Day as a holiday for lovers dates from the Middle Ages: of course, before then it was considered to be a holiday for singles, not couples. The heretofore quiet, somewhat private holiday has now been turned into a small merchandising extravaganza à la française. Though the commercial possibilities are still nascent, at least compared to the USA, every year the media refer to it from the beginning of the month in increasingly glowing terms, for almost two full weeks. It will still take several more years before the buzz reaches anything approaching North American proportions, Amerloque feels (and hopes).

The third holiday occurring in February is mardi gras, which in the USA can also be called Shrove Tuesday – or even Pancake Day (once again, crepes are the dish of the day !). It heralds the end of Carnival: the following day is Ash Wednesday, that is, the first day of Lent, the forty-day season of fasting preceding Easter. Since Easter is a moveable feast, Mardi Gras is, too: the date can vary from February 3rd to March 9th in non-leap years, or from February 4th to March 9th in leap years. Hence Mardi Gras can even be in March, although it is very much associated in the public mind with February.

Why ? There are school vacations in February: these are called les vacances d'hiver, the 'winter break', and mardi gras is frequently associated with it (it was on February 20th this year). This 'break' is not just a respite of a few days, either, but a full holiday of several weeks. The entire country has been divided into three school zones, each of which has different but somewhat overlapping dates for its break. The Paris area vacation this year is from February 17th through March 4th, for example, while the children in Toulouse, say, are off from February 10th to February 26th, and the kids in Strasbourg are free from February 24th to March 12th. During these holidays, the ski resorts are jam packed (staggering the breaks by region ensures a nice ski season in the Alps, of course …), traffic is unbearable, and some parts of the economy even slow down noticeably. Why ? With five weeks paid vacation per year, plus the overtime accumulated for working more hours than the standard thirty-five during the week, some parents like to arrange things so that the family can take a skiing holiday together – and they do, en masse.

France is a secular society: there is no question of that. Its Christian traditions date back two millennia, and some 'holidays' are still based on that tradition. What should be clearly noted is that neither Chandeleur, nor Valentine's Day, nor mardi gras are legal or mandatory French holidays. They are simply "special' days" which come around regularly every year … just as the "winter break" does for millions of public and private school children. One is not forced to celebrate Chandeleur or Mardi Gras or St. Valentine's Day: one simply may, if one so chooses, during the quiet month of February.

Of course, if one is in the fashion business, February might not be too quiet at all, since one must prepare for the Fall/Winter 2007/2008 collections to be shown as from February 25th this year. If one is a farmer, one must put February to good use to prepare oneself, one's animals and one's products for the annual Salon International de l'Agriculure, which this year runs from March 3rd through March 11th. An American expat living in Paris who has never visited the Salon in depth can know but little of France and the French people, in Amerloque's view.

Oh, yes … as February segues into March, the campaign for President of France continues apace. TV program follows TV program and poll follows poll. The two frontrunners, Mme Royal and M Sarkozy, trade barbs almost daily, and vie with each other to attract prominent personalities to their causes. A third 'mainstream' candidate, the centrist M Bayrou, appears to be gaining in the polls and might soon be in a position to challenge one or another of the leaders, probably Mme Royal – if one believes that the polls indeed reflect reality. In Amerloque's view, they do, at a very, very precise time, just like a photograph freezes action for posterity.

Whether or not the current polls truly reflect the voters' genuine intentions in the first round of the election, several weeks off, is another story, of course.

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Disconnects

2007-02-12T01:11:00.000-08:00

Amerloque is a bit tired of hearing the same tired tales being propagated as gospel truth – and being swallowed by the gullible or intellectually slothful. One of the more lasting fables, slightly disconnected from reality, is: 'There has never been a war between the Americans and the French.'

Amerloque was reminded of this recently when he once again watched the wonderful old (1971) French film Les Mariés de l'An II, a somewhat free and easy evocation of various aspects of life during the French Revolution and its aftermath. Granted, it's a comedy – nevertheless the director and scriptwriters gave enormous thought to each scene and the accompanying dialogues, as well as to the music lyrics. In Amerloque's view, one must have seen and understood this film completely in order to begin one's comprehension of current France and the French people. "Flying Fish" was the name of the vessel on which Nicolas Philibert (played by the inimitable Jean-Paul Belmondo) returned to France to divorce his wife - and former dulcinea – Charlotte (Marlene Jobert).

Of course "Flying Fish" might today just sound like the name of a ship in a movie, or of a child's model schooner, or of a seafood restaurant, or of a company. It could, though, also be a reminder of Rudyard Kipling's immortal verses ("On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay! "). To those aware of the history of the relations between France and the USA, however, "Flying Fish" takes on another meaning entirely.

It was the name of a Danish vessel seized during the Quasi War between France and the USA in from 1798 to 1800. "The what war, Amerloque ?" The Quasi War – it is called the Quasi War simply because there was no formal declaration of war - but it was a genuine war, nonetheless, with shots being fired, people being killed and ships being captured and sunk.

The French had interpreted the Jay Treaty of 1795 as evidence of an Anglo-American alliance against her. Increasing post-Revolutionary radicalism in France led to France's seizure of nearly 300 (!) American ships headed for British ports in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Caribbean. At the same time the young United States was seeking to forge a Navy to protect American vessels from such depredations, and it was hard going indeed. In April, 1798, the infamous XYZ affair was made public by President John Adams: in 1797, US representatives had travelled to France to negotiate an end to the troubles … and were asked to pay a bribe in order to meet with the French foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. They flatly refused, and their refusal was metamorphosed by the American newspapers into that famous statement once learned by every American schoolchild: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute !"

Wikipedia sums it up neatly:

The Quasi-War started July 7, 1798, when Congress rescinded treaties with France. United States Naval squadrons then sought out and attacked the French privateers. Deeply infuriated with the U.S. for their actions against France, the French Naval Commander Jean de Baune counterattacked with the destruction of the USS Virginia. This ultimately led to a rise of national pride in the U.S. as they sought to avenge those who had died in that battle. The U.S. then retaliated with the killing of 25 French sailors aboard one of the French frigates that ran in between Quebec and the Country of France which led to the belief that it was the work of a Pirate Crew by the name of Genive"
…/…
In total, the US Navy captured 85 French ships.
…/…
By October 1800, the United States Navy and the Royal Navy, combined with a more conciliatory diplomatic stance by the French toward America, produced a reduction in the activity of the French privateers and warships. In mid-December 1800, news reached Washington, D.C., that a peace treaty with France (the Treaty of Mortefontaine, September 30, 1800, had ended the Quasi-War.

It should be noted that this war saw the first major victory by an American-designed and -built warship, the USS Constellation, one of the six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794. In February, 1799, Constellation fought and captured the frigate L'Insurgente of 36 guns, the fastest ship in the French Navy. From being friends almost two decades earlier, the French had become the enemy, but only for a brief time: since the conclusion of the Quasi War, the French and the USA have been firm friends and allies, and rightly so, in Amerloque's view. He feels that a lucid look at history can frequently be a salutary activity: it is always necessary to dispell myths when they might threaten friendship, especially if they are not dispassionately presented.

The "Flying Fish" ? Ah, yes: at a time when Americans are asking themselves about Presidential powers, Congress and military actions in Iraq, "Flying Fish" takes on particular resonance. Ca tombe à point nommé, as the French say.

Many people know the first Supreme Court decision to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional (It's 'Marbury v Madison', of course), but few people could identify the Court's first decision declaring Executive Branch action to be unconstitutional. Little v Barreme (1804), called the 'Flying Fish case', involved an order by President John Adams, issued in 1799 during our brief war with France, authorizing the Navy to seize ships bound for French ports. The president's order was inconsistent with an act of Congress declaring the government to have no such authorization. After a Navy Captain in December 1799 seized the Danish vessel, the Flying Fish, pursuant to Adams's order, the owners of the ship sued the captain for trespass in U. S. maritime court. On appeal, C. J. Marshall rejected the captain's argument that he could not be sued because he was just following presidential orders. The Court noted that commanders "act at their own peril" when they obey invalid orders--and the president's order was outside of his powers, given the congressional action.

Amerloque remembers learning about all this during middle school history classes in the USA, and he wonders if it is still being taught … or has it been replaced by something allegedly "more relevant"? The "Flying Fish" case is certainly not irrelevant if one is observing - with some puzzlement, Amerloque must confess, on his part - the hesitant actions of the Washington politicos. Amerloque also recalls hearing about the "Flying Fish" during the Vietnam War, when soldiers and civilians were ordered to do all sorts of things by Presidents uncaring of legality and morality. He was enormously pleased to see an op-ed reference to it recently in the International Herald Tribune. (Update: what Amerloque feels is an excellently researched article about the Quasi War can be found in the Naval War College Review.)

Of course, no one in France is looking at the "Flying Fish": the entire country is focused on the upcoming presidential elections here.

Last week, Amerloque noticed that the buzz around the coffee machine and over lunch and en ville concerning the French elections didn't really reflect the range of issues that the media and the international press were headlining. Certainly the Muslim caricature lawsuit, housing problems (la crise de logement), José Bové, and taxes were at the media forefront, but one issue seems to have fallen below the radar.

Amerloque is referring, naturally, to the French justice system and its perceived and genuine inadequacies. After the huge outcry caused by the "Outreau Affair" in 2004 and 2005 and the ensuing Parliamentary inquiry (alleged pedophiles, including parents, had been held in preventive detention for several years before finally being acquitted on appeal, when it was discovered that the accuser and the reportedly abused victims … had simply lied outright to investigators), one might have thought that the whole issue of responsive and responsible justice in France would have figured prominently in the media on a daily basis. It hasn't.

It certainly has, though, around the coffee machines at companies and in the lunchrooms.

The trigger this week was an incident which took place at approximately 10h30 at the Verbeau elementary school in Châlons-en-Champagne, located near Rheims. All the press and TV reports agree: at recess time, a 10-year old fifth grade student had been talking to his brother and a friend through the school fence. At the end of recess, though the other children returned to the classroom without a fuss, the 32-year old female teacher had to come over to the kid and request him to go back to class. The child simply ignored her and continued talking to his brother. She then took the child by the elbow and moved him along gently.

This was not to the liking of the brother (aged 23) and his friend (aged 18, the legal majority in France), so they simply entered the school and beat up, i.e., physically attacked, the teacher, who apparently ended up prostrate on the playground receiving kicks to the head. A female school colleague (aged 45) who attempted to intervene was also attacked and injured. The police were called and the two perpetrators arrested promptly and taken down to the local police station.

French law provides that those who commit crimes in such circumstances can be judged in what is termed an "immediate appearance" (comparution immédiate): they are held without bail until they are arraigned before a judge in criminal court. They have charges read to them and can then enter a plea; they are allowed counsel, naturally. The trial takes place immediately and the criminal (s) sentenced, if found guilty. Americans might think of this French system as an extended "police court" or "night court", depending on the state one is from, where one is judged after being caught in the act (in flagrante delicto).

The buzz at the coffee machines and the cafés on the day after the assault on the teachers was basically divided into two parts, while waiting for the court appearance which was scheduled for two days hence.

The first concerned the insecurity into which French society has seems to have fallen. Ten or fifteen years ago such an incident would have been unheard of: now, alas, the increasing violence and vandalism have become an unpleasant and continuing part of life here in France. The Ministry of Education has even been counting incidents of "incivilities" for the past several years so as to analyze what can be done: (press reports state that the Ministry quotes an increase of 1 % in 2005/2006 over 2004/2005, but interpretations of these statistics differ).

Over coffee or lunch then, every time an incident like this takes place, anecdotal stories are invariably exchanged. It is the topic of the day in the workplace, the event which that day can color, for better or for worse, an individual's perception of the surrounding society. After beginning with this week's schoolyard beating incident itself, the discussions Amerloque observed quickly moved along to the criminal justice system – how it simply doesn't seem to have a grasp of the situation, how it appears to favor the criminal over the victim, and how it looks like violence is increasing day by day, in spite of the statistics trumpeted by the media and certain organizations. There never seemed to be any divergence of opinion on this, at all: everyone agreed that the justice system was on the ropes. (For some time now Amerloque has been hard-pressed to find anyone – not a tourist or a visitor, but a normal member of French society - who has not had a close member of her or his family attacked on the street, in the subway, in the bus, at the bus stop, or in the schools. Many indicate that they have been attacked themselves. This hold true for Amerloque's family, as well, by the way.)

The second part of the buzz was anticipation of the sentence that would be requested from and, more importantly, handed down by the court to the two schoolyard thugs . The general feeling over the next few days was that a) the prosecuting attorney would request a relatively severe sentence, since the perpetrators risked up to seven years in jail but that b) the court would once again hand down an almost incomprehensibly lenient decision. If the presidential candidates – of all stripes - were referred to at all this week at the coffee machines, it was in the light of this schoolyard incident, and not in reference to some media-imposed issue such as retirement benefits or unemployment or gay marriage or high taxes.

On Wednesday, February 7th, the incident having taken place two days previously, charges were brought against the two youths in the Chalons criminal court: "voluntary violence causing a temporary interruption of work exceeding one week on state personnel carrying out a mission of public service" ( violences volontaires" ayant entraîné une ITT supérieure à huit jours, sur des personnes chargées d'une mission de service public). The prosecutor, (at approximately the same hierarchical level as a county District Attorney in the USA) requested eight months for the first youth, (who had a previous criminal conviction for violence against a police officer … with a suspended sentence overall), and six months, with three suspended, for his sidekick.

The judge decided on seven months in jail for the first man. The other received six months in jail - with five suspended. They were also banned from approaching the school for two years. The victims' attorney called the sentences "fit for apple thieves" (des peines de voleurs de pommes). (Americans used to the American criminal justice system might be surprised, to say the least, at this sentence, it is far from being out of the ordinary, here. )

Needless to say, the buzz at the coffee machine and in cafés on Friday was exclusively devoted to the leniency of the sentences handed down and the "incompetence" of the justice system. People were expecting short sentences – but evidently not that short. Apparently the procureur général de la cour d'appel de Reims (at very approximately the same level as a State Attorney General in the USA) thought that there was perhaps a flaw in the system, too, since he filed an appeal the day following the judgment – such promptness is almost unheard of here. (See update below.)

Although the media spoke of all this, it evidently wasn't their main concern. Overall, the story was downplayed: to a great extent, they preferred to headline the "big" issues in the presidential campaigns, rather than this one. Of course that is their right – there is no denying that. Yet when Amerloque sees the ever-widening disconnect between the people around the coffee machines, on the one side, and the press and the politicians, on the other, he can't help but feel that that the results of first round of the upcoming presidential elections might be surprising, indeed - and not just to a few people.

L'Amerloque

(Update: on April 3, 2007 the Reims Appeals Court handed down revised sentences. The first youth received a ten-month jail sentence (instead of seven), while the second was sentenced to eight months in jail, with four months suspended (instead of the original six months in jail, with five suspended). The appeals prosecutor had requested sentences of eighteen and twelve months, respectively.)

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Opinions

2007-01-22T01:11:00.000-08:00

During the election season, as happens in the USA, the French media publish stories, rumors, pictures, and surveys galore. An attentive reading of such sources can demonstrate to the aware American expat in France just how much the French society differs from the one he or she is used to.

One survey caught Amerloque's eye the other day, Wednesday, January 17, 2007. It was published in Le Parisien, a daily newspaper given far more to facts than to opinions. The complete article was titled "Can one engage in politics outside of political parties ?" (Peut-on faire de la politique en dehors des partis ?) and took up fully one page of the 36-page paper that day. Various questions had been asked of the participants and the results tabulated; the survey had been carried out the week previous to publication by a perfectly reputable polling firm.

Among the questions asked was "Do you generally have a good opinion of ... ?" Here are the results:

"Do you generally have a good opinion of ... ?"

(Institution / percentage of "good")

associations / 87%
the Army / 79%
private companies / 77%
public services / 74%
churches / 61%
Parliament (the Senate and National Assembly) / 54%
the justice system / 54%
trade unions / 53%
the media / 48%
the senior civil service / 47%
government / 47%
financial markets / 40%
political parties / 36%

(Amerloque looked in vain for a recent survey which has taken place in the USA and which has included an equivalent question, at least in its general phrasing. The best he was able to find was USA Today effort measuring honesty and ethics among 23 occupations, Each year Gallup measures honesty and ethics for 14 newsworthy occupations, and nurses topped the list the last time around.)

An American – or other expat – who studies the list of French institutions above will probably feel at home overall, while mentally replacing the words "churches" by "organized religion", "Parliament" by "Congress" (or an equivalent), and, perhaps, if one is particularly pessimistic or skeptical, "the senior civil service" by "entrenched career bureaucrats". "Political parties" are to be found at the bottom of the French list, much as they might be in the USA, Amerloque supposes, given recent history. Hence, apparently, the title of the Parisien article.

However, what must one make of the term "associations" ? Whatever are the French going on about ? Just what is an "association" – and why is it at the top of the list ?

A reporter assigned to France, sitting in her or his office, trolling through the local press and the media for ideas, stories, and viewpoints to wow the folks back home with, will undoubtedly underestimate -- or not even be aware of -- the importance of la vie associative in French society at large. So will the usual chirpy and breathless - and somewhat shallow for the moment, at least, in Amerloque's view - expat residing in Paris, in a chic quartier like the Marais or Saint-Germain-des-Près, wandering from flashy Opera production to artsy cocktail party to packed museum exhibition to self-centered windowshopping to fashionable restaurant or bistro, frequenting other American- or English-speaking expats. Some short- or long-term expatriates working in French companies might be unaware of the ramifications of les associations in France, although their "company committee" (comité d'entreprise) which might just have organized a week's skiing sojourn in Megève or a quick three-day air hop to Istanbul for all the firm's employees, probably addressed itself to a legally-constituted association for the best travel deal. Marrying - or living with - a French national, having or adopting children, dealing with "the system" on a daily basis, genuinely participating in French life 24/7/365, can only help along an expat's understanding of French society and reveal the enormous importance the French attach to this "associative life".

On July 1, 1901 there was published in France a decree governing the establishment of associations. In brief, two or more people could come together in a permanent group in order to share their knowledge and abilities – to carry out a wide range of activities, with the notable exception of "sharing profits". It should thus be understood then that when the French say assocation they mean "nonprofit association". The general locution in France is Association 1901 ("association dix-neuf cent un" or "association mille neuf cent un"). Such associations are basically governed by the principles covering general contract law.

Once a nascent association has followed very simple procedures and filed its statutes in the correct form at the local Prefecture, i.e., gone public, the Association 1901 acquires a legal personality, including responsibility before the law – much as any legal company, partnership, or other entity. The "freedom of association" is an accepted legal principle in France, a right which will not be disappearing anytime soon. If one is a member of an association, one acts in the association's name and not in one's own name. Financing is determined by the association's own statutes: membership fees are generally modest and, of course, services outside the Association can be provided to the public free, at cost or on a cost-plus basis; employees can be hired and fired; and real estate can be owned. Subsidies can be accepted, too.

Naturally, as in most human endeavors, no matter what the country, there have been major and minor abuses, and French associations have most certainly had their share: some of them were carrying out genuinely commercial, for-profit activities and competing fiercely with private sector firms – but not paying tax, including value added tax (VAT) and relevant social charges. The government has tightened up its control of Associations 1901 considerably over the past decade or so: associations' most egregious violations have been sanctioned, and the perpetrators punished.

How many associations are there today in France ? Answers vary. Some sources cite as few as 700,000, while others, including government sources, cite over 1,000,000. No one really seems to know precisely. Government sources stated that 70,000 new associations see the light of day every year – in Amerloque's experience this certainly reflects the reality of French life around him. One encounters associations almost every day in France.

"Just what kind of associations are there ?" the reader may ask. Certainly "Doctors without Borders" (Médecins Sans Frontières) is the most famous throughout the world, having been awarded the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize. Other well-known associations currently active in France are Les Restaurants du Coeur (aka les Restos du Cœur, dedicated to providing meals to the needy) and SOS Racisme (an organization "fighting racism"). These three associations, as well as the latest one to make the front pages here, Les Enfants de Don Quichotte (planting tents for the homeless in the middle of French cities), might also be called NGOs, in Anglo-Saxon parlance, but not necessarily.

The word associations in French covers far more than NGOs or Quangos.

Living in France and want to start up a local soccer or rugby team ? An association is the answer. Need a parents' organization to influence local schools, a French version of the PTA ? An association is the way to go, in parallel with the official representative bodies already in place. Unhappy with a new zoning ordinance, or local trash collection, or a proposed traffic circle, or the mayor's tree cutting policy, or the lack of safe bike paths, or the reliance on imported fur from China within the fashion industry ? Found an association and make one's protests known, as loudly and as often as one desires, while working toward a stated, achievable goal. Want to collect money for general charitable causes - or for sheltering the homeless, or for feeding the indigent, or for helping fellow citizens struck by misfortune, or for providing assistance to destitute African farmers, or for bringing a child with a congenital malformation to France to be operated on ? An association is just the ticket. Worried about where abandoned animals end up, or what happens to retired racehorses ? Une association est tout indiquée.

Thinking about erecting a stone or metal monument linked to a specific historical event, or putting on an art exhibit, or publishing a book, or running sightseeing tours of one's neighborhood, or promoting, say, Amerindian cultures or billiards or diamond mining along the Skeleton Coast or Jain cooking ? As long as an association's activity does not compete unfairly with the for-profit sector, and as long as the association pays the relevant levies and taxes (this is absolutely crucial), an association might fit the bill. Literacy training, minority rights, education in specific occupations or hobbies such as music, assistance to the aged and infirm, help and support for battered spouses, putting on an annual summertime retrospective of old cars open to the public -- all of these activities have associations working on a day-to-day basis, for the betterment of their members and of the society around them. The law on associations was promulgated over a century ago; they are part and parcel of France today.

The French government states that:

-- 10 to 12 million French work "without pay" within associations (NB: the French population totals approximately 62 million people);

-- 20 million individuals over the age of 14 are members of an association;

and, last but not least,

-- 1.6 million salaried workers are employed by initiations, with the social sector employment amounting to the equivalent of 380,000 full-time jobs and the education sector representing 167,000.

Amerloque belongs to many Associations 1901 and has participated in the foundation of quite a number of them during his decades in France. As a founder, or as a member of the Board of Directors, Amerloque has found that la vie associative is an inimitable way of learning about France and the French people. It is also a way to pay back France in some small measure for what it has offered him, of modestly contributing to what he feels is a wonderful place to live.

The number of French people having a good opinion of associations is more than twice as high as the number who feel the same about political parties, and Amerloque is not particularly surprised at all. The French are not passively "waiting for the government to do something", as is so often portrayed in ill-intentioned or misinformed media both in France and abroad. In their millions, they participate in Associations 1901.

Through their associations, the French people are able to influence events around them, and work for liberté, égalité et fraternité, every day.

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright reserved to copyright holders, including Amerloque

Thank you, Mr Buchwald

2007-01-18T07:41:00.001-08:00

When Amerloque was growing up in the USA during the 1950s, he took great pleasure in biking over to his local Carnegie Library and searching through the latest national newspapers for the most recent columns by Paris resident Art Buchwald.

Buchwald's perceptive humor about the French and French society always brought a smile to Amerloque's face. Along with Gene Kelly, Art Buchwald was a quintessential "American in Paris", for Amerloque, who promised himself that he, too, one day, would be living in Paris.

Reports on the USA Today website indicate Art Buchwald passed on today, at the age of eighty-one. Having now been an "American in Paris" for many, many years, Amerloque simply says "Goodbye Mr Buchwald, and thank you !"

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Image © Copyright reserved to copyright holder(s)

Wheels

2007-01-08T01:11:00.000-08:00

The Christmas season in France generally comes to an end with the feast of the Epiphany, which occurs every year on January 6th, twelve days after Christmas. It's the "Twelfth Night", made famous by William Shakespeare in the eponymous play.

Of course, as with every special day in France, the French have associated a culinary tradition: in this case it's the Galette des Rois, what is called in Louisiana - and in many dictionaries - the "King Cake". Actually, Amerloque has never really liked the "King Cake" appellation: he feels that there is very little romanticism in two consecutive one syllable words. They are somewhat brutal: far too short and sweet, overly ordinary to describe a delicious pastry which comes around but once a year.

For some time Amerloque has been seeking a replacement locution. Last year he finally sat down and invented one on his own: the "Wheel of the Magi". After all, the cake is in the form of a wheel, and the three kings are the Magi. What could be simpler ?

Amerloque is now seeking a suitable word to use for "fève", which is the French word for the "charm" (or "token", or "trinket") contained in the Wheel of the Magi. Perhaps by next year he will have found one !

The beginning of the new year is always a hectic time in the Amerloque household, what with wrapping up the old year and ringing in the new. This year has being particularly painful since Amerloque decided to upgrade all his computers. Part of the upgrade is brand-new dictation software, which had to be installed and, more appositely, trained. Sometimes Amerloque felt that he was simply spinning his wheels as he spoke into his computer and the hard disk drives whirred. Only after several days was he satisfied with the texts that the new software was supplying.

Amerloque can't help thinking that this year there will be many wheels within wheels in France, since presidential elections are scheduled for the Spring. Slightly more than one hundred days remain before the first round. Contenders are desperately maneuvering to obtain the necessary five hundred signatures required to validate their candidacies. Although the media proclaim that the second round of the election will see Segolène Royal lining up against current Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, Amerloque – at least as of today - is not convinced that this will necessarily be the case.

Rumors abound that Jacques Chirac, the current French President might run for a historic third term. Other more and more insistent rumors assert that Jean-Marie LePen, the rightist outsider, will end up being a finalist against Mme Royal when push comes to shove. One of the big questions this year is whether or not traditional ("parliamentary") conservative forces will be able to maintain enough unity to come out on top against the expected Socialist candidate. Yet other rumors state that François Bayrou, the centrist candidate from the south of France, will do much, much better than expected.

An interesting year in perspective !

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyright by copyright holders, including Amerloque

New Morning, 2007

2007-01-01T01:11:00.000-08:00

As Amerloque wrote last January, penning the first long post in the New Year is a delicate task. He made only one prediction for 2006 … and he was wrong. He will make no predictions at all for 2007 !

French tradition states that one should never extend New Year's wishes before the year has really begun, which is why Amerloque has refrained from doing so.

Now that 2007 is indeed here, Amerloque will keep his first post of the year short and sweet.

Happy New Year ! Bonne Année !

He thanks everyone for reading and participating here in the past, while hoping that they will continue to do so in the future !

L'Amerloque

Text © Copyright 2007 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyrights reserved to copyright holders including Amerloque

Hope

2006-12-18T01:11:00.000-08:00

Decorating the traditional family Nordmann sapin de Noel, usually over two and a half meters high (slightly exceeding eight feet), requires organization, dedication and care. While the Christmas season proceeds apace in Paris and throughout France, Amerloque has been leisurely going through the various crates and cartons of Christmas items and memorabilia gathered down through the years, both in the USA and in France.

Sipping on wassail or eggnog and munching on the season's first Christmas cookies, with CDs of Christmas carols and songs from the Amerloque family's extensive collection playing melodiously in the background, M and Mme Amerloque and the children (who welcomed a break from studying for University exams) spent the greater part of a weekend choosing various ornaments for this year's iteration of The Tree. Selecting les boules de Noel, stars, and figurines seems to be take a bit more time every year: the Amerloque family has made a point of collecting at least one Christmas bauble in many of the memorable venues they have visited individually and severally. There are quite a few indeed: a genuine silvered partially hollowed out ball from Copenhagen, purchased there in the 1990s, might end up hanging from a branch adjacent to a real 1940s postwar "Shiny Brite" ornament from the USA - or a simple folk ornament picked up in Transylvania in the late 1960s. A small, modern Norwegian elf might sit on a branch next to a gilded plastic San Francisco cable car - or a treasured santon de Provence.. A fragile elongated bauble purchased at the Nürnberger Christkindlesmarkt might find itself side by side with a small blown glass bird from Murano - or an ane berrichon from Limoges.

Of course, sometimes when an ornament is picked up, examined and exclaimed over, Amerloque or a member of the family might ask "Do you remember ... ?" - this does tend to ensure that things drag on a bit, as the story of the item is recalled. Two entire cartons alone are devoted to recipe books, Christmas cards (including a number of late Victorian and Edwardian ones), songbooks and sheet music.

Nowadays with the consumer society, the giftgiving, and the attendant media hype, one can easily tend to lose sight of what the Christmas holiday represented in the past to some people: belief in and hope for a better future, in some cases. Amerloque was reminded of this when, at the bottom of one large carton of Christmas souvenirs, he ran across a lovingly preserved copy of a selection of Polish Christmas carols called Najpiekniejsze Polskie Kolendy by Adam Harasowski, which he had picked up in London quite a few years previously.

The carolbook, in both Polish and English, dates definitely from December, 1940. World War II had been raging on for well over a year in Europe: the German panzers had rolled into and over Poland in September of 1939. They had swept all before them and had butchered the ill-equipped and even more ill-prepared Polish armies. Soviet Russia had treacherously stabbed the Polish people in the back by adhering to the non-aggression pact signed between Germany and the USSR in late August, 1939 – and leaving the Poles to their fate, before occupying the eastern half of the country.

Yet what of the Polish people ? What did Polish fighters do ?

Some went to France, where the Polish government in exile organized a new army of about 80,000 men. To no avail, since by that December of 1940, the low countries, a goodly portion of Scandinavia, and la belle France had fallen, too, under the Nazi yoke. Charles de Gaulle had called for the Free French to resist on June 18, 1940: French men and women from all parts and of all conditions had hurried to London - and to meeting points in the French Empire - to unite and thus give the truth to de Gaulle's then almost unbelievable assertion that France had lost a battle, but not the war.

The Poles ? Many of them in the West were to gather in Scotland, contributing to the defenses of Britain and preparing to fight for the Allies on the Continent when the time came. The town of Abernethy, between Edinburgh and Inverness was the headquarters of the Polish Army, some members of which married local girls and settled in the area. There was at least one Pole in nearby Newburgh, for on the 23th (sic !) of December 1940, he offered a book of Polish carols to one Elizabeth Brown. Was she a girlfriend ? A co-worker ? A nurse ?

The forward to the carol collection, penned one Zygmunt Nowakowski, a member of the Polish National Council, unflinchingly states what it was like, back then:

Poland today is under the rule of Herod. He gave orders to slaughter not only forty, but many thousands of youths. No star shines today over Poland, and the three wise men will not find their way to the Manger of Bethlehem ... there will be no shepherds to bring gifts ... The Nazis have made slaves of them and the Bolsheviks have deported them into far Siberia ... no songs will be heard over the Manger ... Even the straw from the Manger has been stolen by the Germans and the Bolsheviks ...

At one time – how long ago it was – boys singing Christmas carols went from village to village, from house to house carrying a golden star. They walked with that Star, one attired as a Bear, one as a Jew, one as a Highlander, one as Saint Joseph, singing gaily, happily. In Cracow, that most glorious of the towns of Poland, on the huge market-square, there was an artificial wood of Christmas trees, there were stalls full of spangles, Angel's hair, silver and coloured glass balls; there were puppet-shows under the monument of Mickiewicz, the bugle call from the tower of Saint Mary's Church sang ...

All that is now silent and extinguished in both halves of Poland. On both sides there is the complete darkness of a black-out. But in that darkness there is the glow of a fire under the ashes. Poland is in the state of Advent. Poland waits ...

These Carols will shine to us as candles on a Christmas tree, candles lit by our sorrow and yearning for all those who were left in the country, in the darkness of the black-out of slavery ... Our greatest poet was right in saying that

"The flames may destroy the painted pages of history,
The treasures might be stolen by the Teutonic knights,
But the songs will survive."

Hope was alive and well in the hearts and minds of those Poles, both before Christmas and during Christmastide. Similar hope was undoubtedly beating in the breasts of French men and women in London, in those black and unforgiving December days of 1940.

Today, it is a time of peace, at least in Europe. Those dark times of Christrmas, 1940 are but story and tale for most people, who learn a sanitized and bowdlerized history from the media and from textbooks, and remember very little of it, and care even less.

In Paris shops and stores are thronged with chattering shoppers, the shuffling lines at the cash registers are long and it appears, for the moment, as though the forthcoming weather will be like that old French proverb (Noël au balcon, Paques aux tisons) ... but – is it Amerloque's imagination, or do people seem to be a bit unhappier this Christmas than last year ?

Could it be that the upcoming two rounds of French Presidential elections April and May, followed immediately by legislative elections in June, are beginning to be a cause for worry ? Could it be that because prices of gifts and celebratory foods have seemingly skyrocketed this year-end, it might be hard to make ends meet ? Could it be because … the people – as some animals scent a forthcoming storm - feel unwanted and perhaps untoward changes looming in the New Year ?

Amerloque hopes that each reader of these lines will truly appreciate this Christmas what she or he has – health, family, wealth, peace – without having to lose it outright or to give it up for years, like the Poles in those dark days of 1940, of sinister memory.

Merry Christmas ! Joyeux Noël !

L'Amerloque

Interlude

2006-11-27T01:12:00.000-08:00

Frequently Advent begins on the Sunday immediately following Thanksgiving. This year there are ten days between Thanksgiving (November 23rd) and the first Sunday in Advent (December 3rd), the traditional beginning to the four-week runup to Christmas.

The end of the Amerloque family's Thanksgiving weekend usually means locating the boxes and crates of Christmas decorations, feverishly unpacking them, and putting various treasured items of Christmas cheer on display: wreaths: garlands, elves, reindeer. With a ten-day interlude until Advent ths year, there is far less hustle and bustle. Turkey leftovers usually figure prominently in the weekend table fare, as unpacking the boxes with a semblance of order is fiendishly hard work. There was a change this time around; though, given the leisurely pace. Last year the family had settled on a jambon de Prague to accompany the traditional turkey on The Day, given the supposed looming risks of avian flu. The ham turned out so well and was such a hit with everyone that it was decided this year to cook and serve a Prague ham for Sunday lunch to close out the Thanksgiving weekend. It was excellent, with a nice Burgundy (Cote de Nuits-Villages 2002) to accompany it.

The meal was followed, in the very late afternoon, by the first eggnog of the 2006 Christmas season.

One hears frequently that "l'eggnog est Anglo-Saxon - il n'y en a pas en France". Amerloque thought for a long, long time that eggnog was utterly unknown in France, until one day, when browsing in a somewhat run-down bookstore in a provincial French spa town, he came across a volume which now occupies pride of place in Amerloque's library. It's the Petite Encyclopédie du Restaurateur originally penned by one P. Dagouret in 1900. It is a fascinating compendium of information; collected from a wide variety of sources, providing the names and recipes of many dishes native to France - and from selected countries throughout the world. Just the names of the soupes are enough to make one's head spin: a selection from the letter "B" is typical of the author's thoroughness: Bagration, Balvais, Balzac, Batwinia, Bergère, Bière, Bisque(s), Bloum, Bohémienne, Bonne femme, Bortsch, Botzaris, Bouchère, Bouquetière, Brésilien, Britania, Brunoise,and Buséga. There are even recipes for bear (Cuissot Cumberland, François-Joseph, Grand Veneur and Venaison) and gazelle (marinée et piquée), if one is so inclined in this Year of Grace 2006.

On page 231 the list of "Nogs" begins. There are five in all , including the "French Egg Nog" ! Proof positive that "Egg Nog" was known in France a good one hundred years ago !

Needless to say, down through the years Amerloque has tried all the nogs given so willingly by Monsieur Dagouret . The "French Egg Nog" is actually not bad at all - if the eggs are freshly-laid. Given that the title of the recipe is in English, of course, it would be a rash commentator indeed who would assert that the eggnog is firmly rooted in French tradition: if it were, wouldn't its name be in French ?

If one is searching for a suitable beverage to accompany one's forthcoming Christmas meals, one can do far, far worse nowadays than settling for a good Australian wine. The varieties and vintages currently available are as good as any coming from any of the other so-called "New World producers", in Amerloque's view: California, Chile, and South Africa spring to mind. Apparently one hundred years ago, however, Australian wine was not very good, according to Monsieur Dagouret, who devotes a slew of pages to French wines and digresses but summarily into Austro-Hungarian, Mexican, Italian and Spanish wines. His comment about wines from down under is edifying:

"AUSTRALIA

Supplies a large quantity of very mediocre wines, but which have been christened with pretentious names such as: Burgondy or Burgoyne for Bourgogne, Claret for Clairet de Bordeaux, Hock for the wines of the Rhine, etc.

It is a good idea to beware of these wines and to refuse them mercilessly when dishonest or ignorant shopkeepers try to pawn them off in place of the genuine product."

One wonders indeed about the Australian wines available to Monsieur Dagouret in Paris in 1900 – perhaps at the Exposition Universelle ?

The Christmas season in Paris – and throughout France - is marvelous: Amerloque wrote about it at length last year, but he didn't address the issue of étrennes. In Amerloque's neighborhood, the week to come is the time when the doorbell rings in the evening (before dinner, of course !) … one opens the door to find a postperson, a fireman, or simply one's concierge, passing smilingly by to pick up his or her étrennes, that is, end-of-the-year gratuity. The postmen and postwomen, as well as the fireman, are usually selling calendars. They purchase these wholesale with their own money and are allowed by law to pocket the sums collected in exchange for the calendars. It a legal and honorable French tradition: one that the expatriate would do well to honor, in Amerloque's view.

If one doesn't want to give money for some reason, one is in good company, indeed: in 1847, did not Eugène Labiche come out with a one-act vaudeville play called L'Art de ne pas donner d'étrennes ?

The Amerloque family always dispenses étrennes, since the sale of calendars helps the sellers and the sellers' families, given the relative pittances they earn. It is also an annual gesture of appreciation to people working for the society – sometimes at quite a bit of personal risk, in the case of firemen - whom the Amerloque family sees every day. It should be noted, too, that the étrennes are generally considered to be part and parcel of a concierge's salary. A concièrge is not a gardien, by the way, and the terms should never be used interchangeably, since the work contracts, rights and duties are most definitely not the same. A genuine concierge expects a sum approximately equivalent to 10% of one's monthly rent. If one makes heavy use of one's concierge, one should give considerably more, especially if one requests the concierge to walk the dog, or water the flowers. or run errands to the pharmacie, or open the apartment and whip up a quick gouter when the kids come back from school on a drizzly afternoon.

There is some question as to whether or nor the éboueurs (trash collectors) are legally entitled to solicit étrennes. A prefectoral decree in 1936 apparently prohibits municipal employees from collecting étrennes. However, some case law has allegedly stated – if the newspapers are to be believed - that if the city has subcontracted out its trash collection to a private company, then those working for the private firm can collect étrennes. Certainly the system is subject to abuse: the homeowner should be careful when it comes to éboueurs, who should be able to present valid ID on request, even though they may be wearing a uniform.

"Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat !" Amerloque located and unpacked his collection of Christmas CDs (several hundred !) after the eggnog and jambon de Prague. He is now looking forward to weeks of traditional carols and classical music. Alvin and the Chipmunks (Christmas Don't Be Late), although quite memorable, are certainly not for him.

Now to the business of unpacking the other Christmas boxes and visitng the various upcoming American holiday activities in Paris ! A bientôt !

L'Amerloque

Vicissitudes

2006-11-13T01:12:00.000-08:00

In a Road to Damascus moment some years ago, Amerloque realized that he had become an expatriate, forever. This is to his liking – although it certainly may not be every Parisian-American's cup of tea.

The very essence of expatriation, naturally, is planting roots in one's adopted country, building bridges to people and institutions, accepting the surrounding culture, learning, experiencing, living. Property ownership is one surefire way to learn the ropes: working, marrying a French spouse and having children are others, each with its own fascinating web of arcana, pitfalls and rewards.

Nowadays there seems to be a least one trade show for every imaginable product and service – and even expatriates apparently have one ! Amerloque was reminded of this recently when he received a flyer inviting him "to register" to attend an "expatriate show" called the "Welcome to France Fair", organized by a website aimed at expatriates. The event was held at the Carrousel du Louvre on an October Sunday. Amerloque remembers when expatriation meant packing up one's treasured belongings in a figurative or literal "old kit bag" and hopping an airplane – or even a cargo ship – to a new country. Now one apparently can go to a day-long affair and be allegedly spared many of the vicissitudes, both agreeable and distasteful, inherent to establishing oneself sustainably in a new venue. One might be tempted to wonder, just a bit, about the real benefits of such "progress", since one learns by experience, which only very rarely can be short-circuited in one day.

On that Sunday, however, Amerloque the Parisian Expatriate was out at his Normandy farm, joyfully and carefully harvesting the last apples of the season. There are basically two kinds of Normandy apples: pommes à cidre, for making the delicious Norman cider renowned throughout the world, and pommes à couteau, for cooking (pommes à cuire) and/or eating. Many years ago Amerloque planted young apple trees of varieties traditional to Normandy, apples maturing at various times from August to November. He planted only pommes à couteau, preferring to leave cidermaking to others more enthusiastic and better equipped, such as local farmers. Every year around Hallow'een time Amerloque completes his recolte, carefully gathering and sorting the apples, weeding out the bad ones and shining up the good ones.

How evocative the varietal names are, echoing Normandy and the French douceur de vivre that Amerloque appreciates. Amerloque particularly likes - and recommends to those thinking of planting a few trees - the claque-pépin, the court pendu gris, the calville rouge tardif, and the marvellous calville rouge coeur de bœuf. Not to be overlooked by any means are the benedictin de Jumièges, the rambour d'hiver, the pigeonnet de Jérusalem and the drap d'or chailleux. These are all real apples, with genuine taste and consistency: a far cry from the industrial, insipid "Granny Smiths" and "Goldens" available in super- and hypermarkets. Certainly the industrial apples look better, to attract the gullible consumer …but they cannot hold a candle to heirloom fruit when it comes to taste.

Using these Normandy apples, from his own farm, in carefully prepared Thanksgiving and Christmas dishes is an immense pleasure in Amerloque's life, one that he would not willingly forego.

November is a time when American expatriates in Paris remember those who fell in that War To End All Wars, la Der des Der … World War I, from 1914 to 1918. It is a time, too, when Americans prepare for Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays along with the Fourth of July. It is also a time when Christmas events for the American community in Paris are being scheduled. Each American expat has her own story, his fashion of celebrating Christmas: more or less emphasis is placed on American and French traditions, local and national - choices are much more personal and relevant, when two cultures coalesce in celebration. American traditions are alive and well in Paris (click here for Amerloque's list): every year Amerloque tries to attend as many of these as possible, since both sorts of "Americans in Paris" attend and there are always new faces.

In Amerloque's view, there are indeed two kinds of "Americans in Paris": the permanent Parisian-Americans, and the transient Parisian-Americans. (Note that SuperFrenchie, a French expat in Washington D.C., recently invented the appellation "Parisian-American".)

In the former case (the permanent Parisian-Americans), one can include those persons who have lived here a number of years and who have integrated themselves successfully into French life. These individuals have the proper papers (residence and work) and many of the characteristics of a stable and rewarding expatriate life: a local career, a spouse/companion who is a French national, natural or adopted children in local public or private schools, local home ownership, local payment of income taxes, overall acceptance of local customs and traditions, and near or complete fluency in the French language. Almost all permanent Parisian-Americans have burned a certain number of bridges: they have chosen to make their lives here, and, in some cases, even taken French nationality. Moreover, they have adopted and embraced the normality of the French society around them. These are the ones who organize the annual events for the American community.

These Americans are both in and of Paris.

An American reading this might immediately ask: "Hey, Amerloque, what does 'a number of years' mean ?" Amerloque would answer: "Perhaps eight to ten, at a bare minimum"; he would then hasten to add that the time spent over here is not necessarily a cut-and-dried pointer to permanent Parisian-Americanism, since this category obviously would include an American woman who married a Frenchman in the USA, say, and accompanied him to France. This is where a significant "bridgeburning" quotient comes to the fore !

In Amerloque's opinion, Americans in Paris who do not fit the definition of permanent Parisian-Americans fall into the other category, i.e., the transient Parisian-Americans. This would include, for example, students studying in Paris for one or several years (whether at the Cours de Civilisation at the Sorbonne, a degree program in one or another French university or the American University of Paris; researchers finishing up their Masters or PhDs at a French educational or government institution; instructors and professors and executives who are taking some sort of sabbatical in Paris; individuals whose companies have assigned them to Paris for a two-, three- or four-year stint. One must also include those who have purchased real estate here - perhaps "an oh-so-cute-and-chic" pied-à-terre in Montparnasse or in Montmartre - and who spend three or four months a year "living in Paris", while renting the place out – or simply leaving it vacant ! – the rest of the time, relying on an increase in value to make a nice profit. (Might one simply call them "property speculators" ?) Many retired Americans might fall into this transient category, too. There are also those individuals living out their Parisian dreams in one fashion or another, perhaps attempting in a given period of time to experience a kind of "Lost Generation" literary or artistic epiphany (nothing wrong with that, of course: many of the permanent Parisian-Americans started off just like that).

While these transient Parisian-Americans might have limited residence or working papers of some sort, they might not be fiscally domiciled in France, nor will they have burned many bridges (if any at all !) to "live in France". Language fluency and adoption of local customs and traditions is not emphasized. French society – and its difference - is apt to be roundly criticized and/or unflinchingly ridiculed and/or gushingly or superficially commented upon, rather than seriously investigated for its advantages and drawbacks. French cultural parameters have not replaced their American cultural parameters.

Although these Americans may be in Paris, they are not of Paris … and therein lies the difference from the permanent expatriates, in Amerloque's view.

Amerloque is wondering if over at the New York Times and its International Herald Tribune there hasn't been some kind of rethink about the IHT, its raison d'être and, in a nutshell, its version of expatriation. Many observers, Amerloque, among them, feel that the current IHT is but a clone of the NYT, leading to the nickname "New York Times, Lite". Recently, however, there has been at least one change, and Amerloque, for one, will be watching closely to see if the news coverage is transformed as well.

Through Monday, October 16th, 2006, this was the IHT's masthead:

The paper was billed as "The World's Daily Newspaper". "Published by the New York Times", it was "Edited in Paris and Hong Kong" and "Printed in Paris".

To Amerloque's surprise, the next day, on October 17th, the masthead was simpler:

No longer is the expatriate's paper "Edited in Paris and Hong Kong" (luxury advertisers, who always associate Paris with luxury, might start wondering about this, eh ? Why bother to advertise in the Trib at all ?). It isn't even the "The World's Daily Newspaper" any more. It's simply "Published by the New York Times", as though that were enough.

Alas, the IHT is still the only game in town for a Parisian-American who wants a traditional newsprint paper alongside his coffee or her croissant: there is no other daily international paper in English publishing general news. (Sure, the Wall Street Journal offers news about money and the markets, but general coverage ? No way. USA Today is far too focused on America, tout de même and the British papers are too … British.) What rankles about the IHT is that many American expats are not from New York, and couldn't give a flying fig about news involving New York "cultural events", or Mayor Bloomberg, or real estate in Manhattan or New Jersey.

Since the NYT takeover of the IHT several years ago, the latter has simply paid lip service to its internationalism, in Amerloque's view: In essence, it simply pushes the parochial New York line. Certainly its coverage of France and Paris leaves more and more to be desired: one increasingly wonders just what the IHT is trying to accomplish, with its slanted, partisan coverage of events it understands shallowly and imperfectly.

Moreover, no longer does the Parisian-American find Dick Roraback's unforgettable "Crack of the Bat" published at the opening of the US baseball season in April, as it was for many, many years. In 2005, Art Buchwald's famous Merci Donnant column was reprinted for Thanksgiving, comme il se doit … but without the italics that imparted the flavor and, in some cases, easy understanding. Inadmissible, in Amerloque's opinion.

Amerloque assumes that the change in the IHT masthead - the elimination of any reference whatsoever to its international audience and Paris – is a harbinger of other, more deep-rooted shifts to come at the paper. Will the IHT soon be thrown into the dustbin of history ?

L'Amerloque

Perspectives

2006-10-23T01:11:00.000-07:00

Buying into the dream in a changing Paris is becoming more and more expensive, year after year.

As many young Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, Amerloque was attracted to Paris in part by stories and legends of the 1920s Lost Generation luminaries such as Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Beach. Given the economic conditions in the 1960s, it turned out that maintaining a purely hedonistic Sylvia FitzHemingway fantasy literary-artsy existence was not in the cards, since the currency exchange rates were far from being as favorable to the dollar as they were in the 1920s, when France was recovering from the gigantic economic dislocations caused by World War I. Even living in a garret chambre de bonne, Amerloque found it necessary all the same to take on authentic jobs with genuine paychecks. During such encounters with real life, he relegated some of his more artistic pursuits to evenings and weekends, returning to them when his bank account showed sufficient dimension.

In addition, back then no matter what the economic circumstances, Parisian life for the American expatriate presented a wide and continual range of novel social and economic activities, to be investigated, experienced, questioned – and sometimes adopted. Amerloque embraced Paris with a passion. Time passed … and one day he woke up and realized that his "stay" in Paris had become permanent. It was then that he knew that he was of Paris, as well as being in Paris. He had become a parisien, and has been happy here.

Year after year, Amerloque has watched waves of Americans come to Paris: students, teachers, researchers, artists, writers, singers, athletes, senior and junior executives ... What he has also observed are the skyrocketing prices of Paris real estate. Gone are the times when one could purchase and furnish a rudimentary pied-à-terre in the Latin Quarter or in Montmartre for a mere pittance. Nowadays, the market is hot, hot, hot. Many foreigners have purchased - or plan to purchase - in Paris, where real estate values were until relatively recently considered "undervalued" compared to major cities such as New York, San Francisco, London, and Rome.

Is there a real estate bubble here ? "To a certain extent, yes," is Amerloque's view. How much of a bubble is there, anyway ? An attentive reading of recent newspapers can furnish a response.

Paris proper is actually very small: its area of 105 square kilometers (about 40 square miles) contains a population of 2,163,535. It is divided into 20 arrondissements, i.e., administrative districts. The most expensive one used to be the 16th, a bastion of the bourgeoisie, with large apartments, small houses, gardens, and small shops. It is a residential area and borders the Bois de Boulogne. The Latin Quarter is in the 5th; "American Paris", with its ties to the Lost Generation, can be considered to be in the 6th and 7th; the Montparnasse area is in the 14th. The Marais is in the 4th, while the Montmartre district is in the 18th. Up and coming districts are the 11th, 19th and 20th, and, to a lesser extent, the 17th.

The Chambre des Notaires is the professional organization for the solicitors who by law take care of real estate transactions: titles, deeds, escrow, tax collection. At intervals they issue detailed information concerning prices paid for apartments and other properties. Recently the newspapers here heralded the fact that in two Paris districts the average price for a flat now exceeds 8,000 euros per square meter (say 10.7 square feet).

In the list below, the first figure is the arrondissement and the second figure is the average price in euros per square meter; the figure in parentheses is the increase since 1996.

1st 6,879 (+243%); 2nd 5,910 (+241%); 3rd 6,324 (+242%); 4th 7,569 (+236%); 5th 7,294 (+219%); 6th 8,099 (+219%); 7th 8,162 (226%); 8th 6,665 (+209%); 9th 5,549 (+247%); 10th 4,943 (+274%); 11th 5,153 (+244%); 12th 5,266 (+227%); 13th 5,271 (+217%); 14th 5,663 (+212%); 15th 5,857 (+220%); 16th 6,240 (+201%); 17th 5,366 (+222%); 18th 4,760 (+237%); 19th 4,456 (+245%); 20th 4,675 (+237%)

For those hoping to throw it all over in Podunk and set up shop in Paris to live their dreams, prudence might be the word of the day, in Amerloque's view. A quick look at one of the larger French real estate sites shows that a 28 square meter two-roomer in the Latin Quarter can be had for 175,000 euros, plus the 8% or so mandatory "taxes" on top of the purchase price. That's a sixth floor walkup, no elevator, and needs work. A third floor walkup studio in a 17th century building up the street from the first is going for 190,000 euros plus. That's quite a bit of money for places with no views and no lifts, that need renovations – perhaps substantial ones, at that. Due diligence is a must, and, as always, caveat emptor is the watchword.

Will the bubble burst and will property values come crashing down, as they did in the last French real estate bust in the early 1990s ? . "Perhaps, but probably not," is Amerloque's response. There is only one, unique Paris in the whole wide world, after all, so prices won't plunge to abyssal depths any time soon, in Amerloque's view. Ce qui est rare, est cher, as the French have it.

Of course, one can purchase a place in Paris, live in it a few months of the year, and rent it out furnished the remainder of the time. Many foreign real estate purveyors, Americans among them, have developed attractive sales and financing pitches built around this theme: one has only to look at a freebie publication such as Fusac to see numerous ads for rentals, all though the year, and especially during the summer, touristy months. Property financing in France has changed during the past decade, too. Mortgages used to be underwritten by banks for eight or ten years, tops. Nowadays, fifteen- or twenty-year loans are more and more common; the system has become more "American", although French banks are still far more conservative than their American counterparts. Currency exchange risks should be factored into any purchases, too: is one paying off a Paris mortgage in US dollars, for example ? Amerloque has heard both good and bad stories about buying and renting out, but as the old British saying has it, "location, location, location" appears to be the byword !

While there may only be one Paris, it is changing quite rapidly and, in Amerloque's view, not necessarily for the better. These changes might affect property values in the medium and long term. At intervals the French press reports the significant shifts in population: people are moving out of Paris and the Paris region (the Ile de France). The two major groups reported as leaving are retired individuals and families with children. This augurs ill for the Parisian economy overall since the former usually are in higher tax brackets and the latter are what makes cities vibrant, living, evolving entities. In addition, Paris is losing many of its distinctive small shops and restaurants: there seem to be fewer every year. There are more traffic jams, and there is more casual crime in some parts of town. Paris is being emptied of its working and middle classes – it is becoming a paradise for BoBos ... and tourists, of course ! Amerloque shudders to think that it might become another Venice !

If one has the money to purchase a place in Paris – or has already purchased ! – one should definitely pay close attention to what is happening in municipal government, which is responsible in part for setting local taxation rates. For the past several years, the city has been run by the Socialists and their ecoayatollah green allies, les verts. The clearest indication of the latter's presence, by the way, is the incessant war on the automobile. One has only to observe the massive traffic jams resulting from the roadworks - both for the tramway on the southern edge of the city and the huge, overwide buslanes on many central boulevards - to realize that the green political agenda is killing Paris and the Parisian quality of life. When delivery vans can't even make deliveries within a reasonable amount of time, a businessman or businesswoman can hardly see any benefit in setting up shop in Paris for a dwindling population – or a population composed of the bobos and the poor living off of city and state government entitlements !

The City of Paris, well before the tenure of the previous Mayors, M Jacques Chirac and M Jean Tiberi (whatever the alleged or real frauds committed during their administrations), owned and maintained many apartments in town, as well as quite a bit of real estate throughout France – tracts of land, forests, buildings and other properties left to the City in wills and testaments down through the decades after the establishment of the Third Republic in 1870. Since taking office in March, 2001, the Socialist administration has been selling off what some call "the inheritance of all Parisians": the real estate. At intervals the press reports on suchandsuch apartments being sold, soandso lands in the countryside being auctioned off … and it is sad indeed to see that such irremediable harm is being done to Paris and its heritage, with few voices raised in protest.

At equally regular intervals, too, rumors published in the press insist that the city finances are in catastrophic shape, compared to the healthy finances that the current administration found upon taking office in 2001. Amerloque was reminded of this when he was informed that over the weekend (on October 20th and 21st, actually) the Socialist administration is auctioning off many of the fine wines in the City cellars, vintage bottles that were patiently collected over the years (some bottles of which are even pre-Chirac). The Socialists would have the people believe that – ready for this ? – the wines in the cellar were in danger because "a sudden flood of the Seine river could destroy the wines forever". (une crue soudaine de la Seine pourrait détruire à jamais ces trésors). The Socialists and their ecoayatollah allies would also have the naive and gullible taxpayers believe that officials and underlings used to knock back vintage bottles every lunch- and dinnertime and that middle rank factotums were swigging Margaux and Romanée-Conti while feasting together in the basements of the city hall.

Hardly. The wines were served at diplomatic get-togethers, where important guests were invited to official City Hall luncheons and dinners. The entire world knows that French culture puts heavy emphasis on fashion, food and drink: what could be more natural than to serve the finest French vintages to distinguished foreign guests ? Until 2001, the City Hall practiced what it preached: that Paris was a special place in the world, one that represented fashion and cuisine, one that could – and did - offer the best of French wines to its guests. A visit to Paris was a memorable journey; the standing of Paris – and France – was enhanced. Now, of course, under the Socialists Paris is slipping rapidly downmarket: it is becoming quelconque, as the French expression goes, and France is the poorer for it.

According to the well informed daily Le Parisien, the two-day auction of a portion of the City Hall wines (4960 bottles in all) brought in almost one million euros before buyers' commissions, thus demonstrating that the individuals choosing the wines over the years made very, very shrewd investments indeed: they obviously knew what they were doing ! The most expensive bottles were a 1986 Romanée-Conti at 5,000 euros, a 1989 Château-Pétrus at 4,900 euros, a 1990 Château-Pétrus at 3,900 euros, a 1982 Château Haut-Brion at 3, 000 euros, and a 1988 Château-Pétrus at 2,500 euros. Foreigners – Japanese, Chinese, British, Americans – turned out in droves and kept the prices high, to the chagrin of French men and women who had hoped to take home a bottle or two. One of the major bidders – and purchasers – interviewed in the press was one Mr Stephen Williams, a wine merchant and founder of the London-based Antique Wine Company, who in many cases paid the top prices. He pointed out that the price of a great wine is composed of its quality, its year and … its history. He went on to state that "these bottles, marked Mairie de Paris, were stored in the City Hall in the capital city of the country of wine … it'll be a plus for my customers".

It certainly will, Amerloque feels. Mr Williams is to be congratulated (ah, sacrés anglais !). The monies raised from the sale will go to fund the Paris City Hall's demagogic entitlement policies, to the bitter disappointment and disillusionment of those, such as Amerloque, who have a far different idea of Paris, and of what it represents in the world.

L'Amerloque

Disclaimer: Amerloque is not involved in real estate in any way whatsoever, nor is he involved in the wine trade. This post should not be considered as an encouragement or recommendation to purchase or to sell real estate (or wine !) in Paris or anywhere else. Readers are advised to seek independent and competent professional advice before acting on anything concerning real estate or wine contained herein. Caveat emptor.

Text © Copyright 2006 by L'Amerloque
Images © Copyrights reserved to copyright holders

Touchstones

2006-10-09T01:12:00.000-07:00

October is the month when activities in Paris resume their normal course, after the summer months and the back-to-school season.

The rentrée is in full swing: children have been enrolled in school and are only really seen and heard when walking on the sidewalks in chattering groups, or when being escorted by maman, papa, or the nounou to and from their bahuts, their institutions of learning. Throughout the entire month of September, though, one invariably encounters gaggles of university students, both foreign and French, many of whom are desperately seeking suitable lodgings before their own rentrée universitaire during the first week of October. There are also the inevitable manifs: demonstrations in favor of or against a particular political point of view or action. Among the most common and repetitive this year are the continual demos in favor of the sans papiers, the illegal immigrants living in France. (One wonders just what these illegals will do should the government refuse to cave in to their demands. Leave France ? Stay ?)

Presidential elections are coming in April, 2007, and the French media are eagerly gearing up for them. Not a day goes by but that the two frontrunners – Mme Segolène Royal on the Left and M Nicolas Sarkozy, the Minister of the Interior, on the Right – are not mentioned prominently on the front pages of the papers or interviewed on radio and TV. The Socialist Party is preparing to select its official candidate: Mme Royal will apparently be squaring off against Messrs Laurent Fabius and Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the internal Party debates. M Lionel Jospin, the Socialist candidate the last time around, in 2002, has removed himself from contention. Over on the Right, M Sarkozy might find himself up against Mme Michèle Alliot-Marie, the current Minister of Defense, or even sitting Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. Rumors abound … that M Jacques Chirac might even be a candidate for his own succession ! Since the rightist majority UMP party does not select an official candidate, but only endorses its preference, the maneuvers on the Right will be far more interesting to the attentive observer than those on the Left. Currently opinion poll after opinion poll is being put before the people as though gospel, while other, more marginal candidates – including Olivier Besancenot, Arlette Laguiller, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and Philippe de Villiers - fight daily for the attention of the media.

As has been the case since the current Socialist city administration under M Bertrand Delanoe has come to power, in this Year of Our Lord 2006 there are more traffic jams in Paris than the previous year. The ecoayatollahs at Paris City Hall have simply declared open war on the automobile, creating enormously wide sidewalks and bus corridors, thus reducing the portions of the streets devoted to cars. Private passenger vehicles, taxis, and delivery vans of all sizes are in competition for the same shrinking driving space. More traffic jams mean more pollution, more frustration, and more disillusionment with Paris: the city has changed, and most definitely not for the better. The contrast with the Paris of twenty years ago is striking.

Every fall, however, there always seem to be a few new shops in each neighborhood. Blithely optimistic shopkeepers are invariably trying to make a financial go of an idea which seemed perfectly rational in the summer months, and this year is no exception. Amerloque is also struck by the number of small shops which simply closed down during the summer months of 2006: unless located in a rue commercante pietonne or in the equivalent of a shopping mall (such as a passage couvert or a centre commercial), stationery shops, bakeries, delicatessens, butchers, cheesemongers, pictureframers, seamstresses, shoemakers, booksellers and other such commerces are no longer able to make ends meet. They are being replaced willy-nilly by telephone boutiques, unappetizing ethnic sandwich shops, bland chain restaurants and soulless bank branches. Again, the contrast with the Paris of twenty or so years ago is quite pronounced.

There are several reasons for this, in Amerloque's opinion. The first is the vicious competition from supermarkets and hypermarkets, which are able to offer a far wider range of products - at far lower prices to the consumer. A second factor is changing lifestyle of Parisians: the pace is faster, more hectic and less urbane; they are massively reallocating their free time. In addition, many of them are simply shopping online for their staple groceries – canned goods, bottled water, wines – and having the items delivered; they are also having readymade meals, including pizzas, brought to the door. A final reason, in Amerloque's view, is the growing lack of solvent native shoppers: Paris is being emptied of its working and middle classes - those individuals who were used to patronizing such businesses. The boboisation of Paris is not an illusion, but very real, alas, and frenzied real estate speculation is but one of the results.

Fortunately autumnal Paris is filled with all sorts of cultural activities. After the relative desert of the summer months, museums, galleries, and antique shops vie with each other to put on the best show imaginable – and hence receive a favorable review in one of the daily papers, which immediately boosts attendance and, hopefully, genuine buyers. The art buff can spend almost every afternoon at a vernissage: an "opening" at a gallery or an antiquaire's, exchanging pleasantries and views with other enthusiasts. The munificence of the gallery owner is always a subject of conversation, naturally: canapés and wine can never go amiss during the later part of the shortening daylight hours, in the waning afternoons, entre chien et loup as the French phrase it so marvelously.

This autumn sees the opening of the eagerly awaited Musée du Quai Branly (the Musée des Arts et Civilisations d'Afrique, d'Asie, d'Océanie et des Amériques). For hundreds of years, French leaders have loved to leave the people an architectural memento of their tenure, and M Chirac is no exception. Contrary to his immediate predecessor, M Francois Mitterand, who unhesitatingly disfigured the Palais du Louvre and the Place de la Bastille, M Chirac's legacy will be this museum. Its design, by the iconic French architect Jean Nouvel, is not particularly Amerloque's cup of tea; however, it doesn't clash as much with its surroundings as do M Mitterand's horrors, and for that M Chirac is to be thanked.

Early October is also the time when "new" TV and radio programs are revealed to be hollow, pathetic remakes of previous successful efforts; when the inhabitants of Paris - and all of France - receive their local property and residence tax assessments, which ratchet upwards year by year; when speculation begins in the media concerning the nominees and possible winners of the major annual literary prizes, such as the Prix Goncourt; when the prestigious Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe horserace is run out at Longchamp racetrack in Paris; and when La Semaine du Gout ("the Week of Taste") takes place, showing clearly that the French interest and enthusiasm for good foods and haute cuisine is thriving.

It's a welcome, familiar touchstone in an increasingly unsettled, volatile world. Plus ça change ...

L'Amerloque

Speed

2006-09-25T01:11:00.000-07:00

France is quite rightly considered to be the home of food, fashion, culture and savoir vivre, but it is also a place where technological know-how is present in daily life. Transport is a case in point.

Recently the country celebrated the twenty-fifth birthday of the TGV: the high speed train (train à grande vitesse) that revolutionized train travel in France. Hitting an average top speed of some 250 kilometers per hour on certain routes, the TGV, in its various forms, has carried substantially over one billion passengers. One can now travel from Paris to Lyons, a distance of 463 km (287 miles), in just under two hours. By car, the same trip takes about four and a half hours, if the weather and traffic are favorable. By train from Paris to Avignon is now only two and a half hours … while on the roads it takes about six hours, forty minutes, if the gods of motoring look favorably on one's efforts. Marseilles – on the Mediterranean, mare nostrum ! – is only three hours away from the capital. Still, the flight time to Marseilles is about one hour twenty minutes, to which have to be added the airport commute time and possible delays at the airport, of course.

Certainly the TGV is a technological marvel and can be very well suited to one's lifestyle in France. It is great for singles, bobos, and suffering commuters. For example: Amerloque knows white-collar breadwinners who commute from Lyons to their jobs in Paris two or three times per week, thus benefiting from the economic dynamics of Paris while taking advantage of the excellent quality of life in the French provinces.

There are some serious drawbacks to using the TGV, all the same. If one is a family man or woman, hauling kids and the needed accessories and required paraphernalia on the trains is always a hassle, and it's even more of one on the TGV, which is not particularly baggage- or child-friendly. The cost can be high, too. There are various reductions in ticket prices: special rates for large families, for example, or when traveling at "non-peak hours", but voyaging as a family is expensive on the "normal" trains - and even more expensive on the TGV. If one has a pet that one wants to take along, and a considerable amount of bulky luggage, the hassles on the TGV, where the luggage areas are rather small, are truly frustrating. Finally, one is dependent on some bureaucrat's idea of schedules, which tend markedly toward commuter convenience.

Amerloque has always found the food on the TGVs to be quite removed from the greatness of the technology. He has accompanied foreigners on the TGVs and each time, without fail, they have been surprised and bitterly disappointed by the "cuisine" served on board. One wonders what the SNCF is thinking: here is a showpiece of French technology being abysmally betrayed by poor customer service, hostile sandwiches and almost undrinkable coffee. France's well-deserved reputation for tremendous dining really takes a hit, on the TGV. Back in the good old days, when taking the train meant leisurely travel in some comfort, the dining cars and the cuisine on French trains were eagerly looked forward to – and remembered. Nowadays, efficiency rules.

On balance, travelling by TGV might be great for some people – singles and childless couples - while an automobile is better – and cheaper, even with the ownership and running costs factored in – for families.

One major result of the TGV has been a certain decentralization of French activity - but perhaps not of power, per se. In some respects, Paris is now less the center of the French universe, since people are able to move faster and more easily between their homes in the provinces and jobs in Paris. On the other hand, a Parisian executive now thinks very little of going to Lyons or Marseilles in the morning, meeting with employees during the day, and returning to Paris the very same evening. Though some top schools have moved from Paris to the provinces, to which teachers and students can commute more easily, decisions are still taken at the Ministry of Education in Paris. Central control, that dirigisme dear to the French, is reinforced.

In recent years more and more people – especially families – have fled Paris and established their residences eighty or one hundred kilometers away. Naturally property values have soared along the TGV routes, and dwellings such as the traditional mas in the south of France, which were eminently affordable a decade ago, are now priced astronomically. The demand from weekending Parisians has simply been added to the background, Europewide real estate speculation. In the property markets, location is everything, as always.

American and French expats sometimes debate the desirability of TGVs in the USA. Constructing a TGV (or a TGV-like web of trains: perhaps mag-lev) in the USA is a waste of money, in Amerloque's view. There are several reasons for this, he feels.

The first is, quite simply, scale. The country is far bigger than France. When it's 21h00 in San Francisco, it's midnight in Boston. Imagine what four hours of flight time (that is, LA to NY) means from Paris ! After all, when it's 21h00 in Paris, it's 23h00 in … Moscow, which is two hours away by air. What cities are four hours away by air from Paris ?

A second reason is the cost. Too expensive. Many Americans feels that there are far, far better things for governments to spend money on than a TGV or two. Tax money is precious and not infinitely extensible; one can attribute the horrible gaps in US public services – such as those in education, roads, and power infrastructures - to the American desire for "low taxes". In Amerloque's view, American governments would do better to increase spending on healthcare and education. Amerloque remembers seeing figures concerning the purchase of possible high speed train rights-of-way in Florida and Texas, and they were astronomical. With the recent Supreme Court decision about eminent domain, state legislatures are having to take a renewed look at where, when, and why the doctrine might be applied, and for whose benefit – and are passing some new laws.

The third and final reason is freedom. The insistence on the TGV in France (and train travel in general in Europe) is a reflection of just how "government" is perceived: as the fount from which all good things flow, as the cornucopia of plenty. In the USA, "government" is not perceived in the same fashion.

Perhaps one or two well-defined corridors might be good places to build a US TGV, because they could receive a mixture of public and private financing. Maybe Washington DC -> NY City, for example, or San Diego -> San Francisco -> Seattle, or even the much shorter Orlando -> Miami. However, putting a plethora of TGVs around the country would be an egregious waste of money. With greenhouse warming apparently threatening the planet, arguments for building one or more TGVs in the USA might appear attractive, on the surface. However, TGVs will undoubtedly not "reduce the number of cars", nor would they "cut pollution" since only a portion of those commuters already using cars in the given corridors would be potential TGV users.

A few years ago, just before the turn of the century, thestreet.com came up with a list of the top 100 US business events during the twentieth century. In first position ? "Eisenhower creates the interstates: June 29, 1956". The judges sum up their choice nicely:

Conceived by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as he rode over the German autobahns as supreme allied commander at the end of World War II, signed into law on June 29, 1956 and built over four decades at a cost of $130 billion, the interstates bind us together even as they free us to move and dream. The frontier hasn't closed; it runs everywhere now, on those quiet, essential lanes of blacktop.

The US has interstates, and France has the TGV - as well as number of autoroutes, which have been built at a furious pace over the last fifteen years or so.

Now that the infrastructures have been constructed, the next step in both countries is to produce vehicles which pollute far, far less, and which use alternative energy sources as much as possible. Quite a challenge: one which each country will rise to magnificently - in its own way, of course.

L'Amerloque

Plums

2006-09-11T01:11:00.000-07:00

Returning to Paris after an invigorating summer season at the Normandy farm means reviewing any lessons learned during the vacation and easing back gently into the swing of things.

Out in Normandy, surprises are not rare, and this year's lot of them was no exception. The cool weather continued through the end of the month of August. Daily high temperatures were five or six degrees Celsius (say eight or ten degrees Fahrenheit !) under the norm. Evenings were chilly - sweaters were de rigueur for all - and the lengthening nights were, frankly, cold.

At intervals, the winds brought dark clouds aplenty, from which poured down chilly, oversized raindrops, drenching everything and everyone. After each rainstorm, the sky cleared rapidly to an azure blue, puffs of white scudding merrily across the heavens. Nevertheless, on the horizon could be seen approaching rain and mists, three or four hours away. From time to time a particularly strong gust would shake the trees and rattle the windows, reminding Amerloque that Norman weather has always been fickle and changeable. Traitre (traitorous) is the word the Normans use.

A particularly strong blast of wind one evening as the sun was setting in a crimson haze ("red sky at night, sailor's delight") carried away one of the farm's most venerable and much loved trees. In this case it was a plum tree, well over three quarters of a century old. Its delicious yellow fruit was always a welcome addition to the late August fare at the farm. Alas, the tree was blown down – the break is quite close to its base - just as this year's crop of plums (prunes) was ripening; only a few had been removed from the tree and eaten as a test. No more will Amerloque and the family speak of le mirabellier and its "possible fruit this year". No longer will "the prune tree" supply wondrously fresh and tasty mirabelles for the tartes and the confitures at the end of the summer season, and that is sad, indeed.

Every cloud has a silver lining, as the old saying would have everyone believe. Amerloque can testify that the maxim apparently holds in the highly arcane and very artificial subset baptized "Normandy winds and plum trees". Over ten years ago, on a stormy morning at the end of August after les grandes marées, another equally venerable plum tree on the farm was laid low by a vengeful gale. The main horizontal branch, heavily laden with ripening purple fruit and supported by an ancient Y-shaped metal bar, simply broke away from the gnarled trunk and fell to the ground. Amerloque and the family hesitated mightily about uprooting the tree entirely, since it was nicely positioned, not too far from the spot where the picturesque road enters the farm. Finally, going against the local farmer's advice, they did nothing and left it in place. The prunier stopped bearing fruit and led a merely decorative existence, relying on its ornamental attributes for survival.

Nonetheless, throughout the following years, and although he is no huge fan of gardening, Amerloque made sure that the prunier received its semi-annual quotient of natural fertilizer, obtained from a neighboring farm. Each year, the weather-beaten, distorted trunk seemed to grow a few fresh branches, with green shoots budding anew and remaining. During the past few years, the tree underwent a kind of pastoral renaissance: more and more branches appeared, while the leaves flourished, becoming larger, greener, healthier.

This year, the prunier bore fruit, for the first time in over a decade. It was delicious: far better than the plums which can be purchased in the super- and hypermarkets, and even far tastier than most plums generally available in the open-air markets. While saddened by the passing of the tired mirabellier, the members of the Amerloque family rejoiced together at the rebirth of the prunier while eating its wonderful fruit, and, just as in times gone by, putting the pits aside to plant.

Amerloque's Normandy plums remind him that, although France is a country avidly interested in food, things are changing, with the increasing constraints inherent in the French iteration of the "consumer society". Thanks to subsidies from the European Union, many seasonal fruits and vegetables offered to consumers now come from countries where labor costs are overly competitive with French ones. Not a week goes by but that one farmers' union or another is out demonstrating, complaining that French farmers cannot make financial ends meet when the price to the consumer at the hypermarket … is lower than the French farmers' production cost. In season, amazingly enough, apples from Chile and South Africa and New Zealand, are cheaper in the markets (super, hyper and farmers') than home grown apples from Normandy and the south of France, even with all that money from the European Union's Common Agricutural Policy collected by French farmers. Ca ne tourne pas rond. Nowadays, beautiful imported fruits are widely available at knockdown prices, but the tastier - and, it must be admitted, less squeaky shiny French ones - are not. Quantity and price have superseded quality, alas.

As in the USA, the small farmer in France seems to be a disappearing breed. Earlier this year the Wall Street Journal reported that, in France "… between 1993 and 2004, the number of arable farms fell by nearly a third. Wide swaths of neglected land are now home to unsightly scrub, and the farms people see as they drive down France's immaculate highways are often parts of major business enterprises." A recent report in France stated that " … since the beginning of the XXIst century, the number of professional farms in France has been decreasing by 2.5% per year, a slight slowdown from the annual 3% observed at the close of the last century." Milk producers are hurting, too. The number of dairy farms has been halved since 1988: fully 20% of the drop has occurred in the past five years.

While the servile yet adulated "consumers" seem content to pay less for beautiful but somewhat insipid fruits and vegetables, French farmers are not happy about their lot, and are increasingly making their views known. There are more and more demonstrations, from fruitgrowers to olive oil producers, to winemakers, to French oyster farmers ( ostréiculteurs). Farmers' manifs (demos), by the way, can be somewhat violent: foreigners are generally taken by surprise when they find themselves in the midst of one. Although used to it, Amerloque was still startled when, outside a supermarket this summer, masked demonstrators converged as if from out of nowhere and overturned lines of display bins containing hundreds of kilos of Spanish and Dutch fruits and vegetables. The merchandise was trodden underfoot and crushed by the furious manifestants. A less aggressive tactic used by some farmers' unions - and frequently reported in the press - is simply selling fruits and vegetables "at cost", directly to consumers. On a given day, with the time and place announced by the media, farmers come to Paris or one of its nearby suburbs, throw open their trucks on the street or in a convenient square, and sell hundreds of kilos of merchandise - which might otherwise be thrown away. Needless to say, the general public appreciates this kind of "demonstration" and the throngs arrive early.

Amerloque's summertime experiences with the prunes on his farm (he has apple trees, too, but that's another story entirely ...) only reinforced his conviction that local French fruits are better than imported tasteless and watery ones. It is clear to him – and Amerloque far from being alone in this - that one of the ways for high quality to be maintained is for small farmholdings to continue to operate successfully. They should not be disappearing into the dustbin of history, as has been happening all too frequently in the USA, Great Britain - and France.

Amerloque has been mulling all of this over for some time: after all, he came to France to enjoy the quality of life. Hence during August, Amerloque joined an Association pour le Maintien de l'Agriculture Paysanne, known here by its acronym, AMAP. In the USA, the phenomenon is called "Community Supported Agriculture" (CSA). Allegedly founded during the 1960s in Japan, a CSA organization is a contractual partnership of mutual commitment between a given farm and a stable community of supporters. Simply summarized, the members of a CSA community – usually in a city - cover a portion of a country farm's annual or semi-annual operating budget by purchasing a share of the season's harvest in advance. In return for the supporters' financing, the farm provides, to the best of its ability, a healthy supply of fresh produce throughout the growing season. CSA group members receive a weekly or monthly basket of produce, flowers, fruits, eggs, milk, cheese, or even a selection of different farm products.

During the first two weeks of his membership in an AMAP specialized in fruit-and-veg (an association 1901), Amerloque received two different baskets containing strawberries, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, early squash, shallots, various heads of lettuce and chou chinois, a variety of cabbage. All of them were very high quality; some were 100 "bio"; the cost per kilo was about the same as in a top-flight stall in a Parisian open-air market. For the moment, Amerloque is pleased, and is now seeking an AMAP whose specialty is meat and poultry.

Note to expats living in Paris who are interested in excellent food and might be reluctant to join an AMAP: Amerloque recommends a visit to a pick-your-own farm (une ferme-cueillette). There are many to be found in the Paris region; they offer quality at competitive prices. If the weather is nice, a day outing can be a lot of fun, especially with children who are apt to find gathering vegetables enthralling and exhilarating, rather than grueling - if out outright backbreaking – labor as so many adults do.

Ah, yes, Paris … the restaurant world in Paris has changed exceedingly over the past several years, and it's not just all the fault of McDo and KFC. With all the private capital groups gobbling up the choicest plums, i.e. the "name" restaurants, Amerloque, in self defense, has been following the continual shakeout in Paris for quite a while. He simply does not feel that "chain restaurants" run by hedgefunds and private equity groups – whether in the USA or in France – can be considered in any way as the epitome of gastronomy. He is of the opinion that the concepts "chain food" and "excellent dining" are mutually exclusive; he is frankly astonished to see so many of the chain establishments being fulsomely recommended in allegedly "independent" guidebooks and on many gushy "oh-isn't-Paris-great !" blogs and websites.

During the summer, Amerloque's favorite French morning daily, Le Parisien published a revealing "who owns which restaurant" article. When one sees that a single company owns: Au Pied de Cochon, Le Grand Café, L'Alsace, Charlot, Le Procope, La Fermette Marbeuf, La Taverne, L'Arbuci, La Lorraine, Le Petit Zinc, Chez Jenny and L'Appart, and that a second company's portfolio contains Bofinger, La Brasserie Flo, Julien, La Coupole, Le Bœuf sur le Toit, Les Grandes Marches, Le Vaudeville, Les Beaux Arts, 80 Hippopotamus restaurants, 40 Bistrot Romain restaurants, and 6 La Table à Pizza restaurants, one is entitled to ask oneself in all seriousness if traditional Parisian dining has not been thrown into the trashcan of history, preceding the traditional small French farmer, perhaps, by only a few years.

L'Amerloque

Perseids

2006-08-21T01:11:00.000-07:00

Out at Amerloque's residential farm in the lush French countryside, the vacation month of August continues tranquilly. Cadenced as it is every year by several events, the period is ideal for reflection, relaxation and renewal.

To everything, there is a season, and for the farmers in Amerloque's part of Normandy, the time to reap – the harvest season - is generally drawing to a satisfactory close. Among the usual crops nowadays are hay, corn, rapeseed / colza, and sunflowers. Fields still green are being emptied of the remaining huge bales of hay (and even more massive roundballs !) left out in the sun to dry. Farmers pile their haycarts and trucks to impressive heights and then, at snaillike speeds, repatriate the precious fodder to their barns, which are frequently some distance away.

Unlike the vast agribusinesses so prevalent in the USA, the farms hereabouts are not enormous. Lower Norman holdings are far, far smaller, indeed; parcels of land used by the one given farmer might be scattered around the countryside, thanks to strict applications of French inheritance laws which, since the French Revolution, have provided for equal division of property among all the children. The size of an average dairy herd in Amerloque's region is something on the order of 30 head, for example.

In August, one is well advised to drive with extreme caution on narrow rural roads. At normal speeds, turning a blind corner – and there are many, in this verdant land, with its remaining traditional hedgerows - can be quite dangerous, since one might find oneself suddenly facing an oncoming tractor hauling a mountain of hay on a hay trailer. One must then screech to a halt and back up carefully until the farmer and his cargo are able to pass easily. It is equally dangerous to round a corner and come up behind a diesel-smoke-spewing tractor/trailer hayhauler. In the latter case, on prend son mal en patience, as the French locution would have it, making a virtue out of necessity. One should take special care at the end of the afternoon, when farmers manifestly overload the hay trailers on their last trip of the day.

Amerloque had once thought seriously about becoming an astronomer; but he realized quite early on that the enjoyment of the occupation for him risked being the pleasant solitude on the mountaintops rather than the austere beauty of the required mathematics. He nevertheless took enormous interest in the skies and in calendars; he became an enthusiast of astronomy rather than an amateur astronomer. Seasoned skywatchers – and attentive enthusiasts – look forward every August to the Perseid meteor shower, which has taken place each year for something like 2000 years, The shooting stars (étoiles filantes) are called "Perseids" simply because the point they appear to be coming from is in the constellation of Perseus. Although the meteor shower begins near the middle of July, the bulk of the celestial activity falls between August 8th and 14th. The peak is usually on August 12th, when perhaps a hundred or more meteors per hour can be observed. In olden times in France, the Perseids – which almost undoubtedly instilled fear and awe among the ignorant - were known by the reassuringly poetic larmes de Saint Laurent ("tears of St. Lawrence"). Since 1991 throughout France, on the first or second Friday in August – Perseid prime time ! - there has been an organized nuit des étoiles, designed to increase interest in astronomy among the general public.

For a number of years now Amerloque has made an effort on the farm to observe the August meteor shower, which can be quite spectacular after midnight. An outdoor barbecue of freshly-made summertime saucisses et merguez, and baguettes, accompanied by the traditional Lower Normandy cheeses camembert, livarot, and pont l'eveque; homemade cider from a local farm; comfortably padded extensible lounge chairs; several cozy blankets; and excellent company: how basic are the ingredients for a successful Norman Perseid night !

However, the weather is a crucial, inescapable component of the evening: in some years, it has been quite cooperative: balmy temperatures, a gentle breeze combining the foreground odors of the countryside with the background tang of the ocean, a scant 50 kilometers distant. In July, France was hit by a heatwave lasting several weeks, and Amerloque was counting on warm temperatures for Perseid Day. This year Zeus/Jupiter must have been either in a foul mood or simply eager to compensate for the previous hot weather, for the frankly chilly breezes and low scudding clouds on the day prevented any meteor spotting except at rare intervals. Amerloque usually observes until the constellation Orion rises – it is the only time in the year that he indulges his enthusiasm for direct astronomy, after all, unless a comet transfixes the heavens or an eclipse darkens the earth - but after a particularly brutal series of rainy gusts, he and the guests proceeded indoors, where a roaring fire - and an unopened, unplayed Trivial Pursuit boardgame - fortunately awaited.

The unseasonably low temperatures - still continuing - reminded Amerloque that the third annual August event – after the harvests and the Perseids – is the change in the weather, which invariably seems to take place on or about August 15th. In Amerloque's experience, the weather changes somewhat abruptly but almost like clockwork around Assumption, the traditional August 15th national holiday. The local farmers have informed Amerloque that the colder, cloudier weather is somehow linked (!) to the grandes marées, the "big tides" - what is called in English the "spring tide".

Of course, it's not the exact calendar date, stricto sensu, that determines the size of the spring tide; August 15th is just a convenient, coincidental touchstone, easy to remember and pass along as folk wisdom. Around new and full moon when the sun, moon and earth form a line (called "syzygy"), the sun's tidal forces bolster the moon's. Hence the range of the tides is then at its maximum, causing the "spring tide", les grandes marées. The biggest spring tides take place shortly after the new and full Moon closest to the equinoxes – about the 21st of March and the 23rd of September. They are called the "Equinoctial Spring Tides". Whether or not the weather is influenced by the tides is another story, naturally: it is clear, though, that weather does have an influence on the tides !

In France, tides are rated on a scale from 20 to 120, and any tide with a coefficient over 100 is considered to be a grande marée; August, September and October are months when the tides are grandes. The French – especially those in the countryside and on the seacoasts – pay careful attention to the dates, which are even published and broadcast by the media. For during the grandes marées, French people love going to the seaside and, at low tide, harvesting shellfish, notably mussels and clams, but also cockles, shrimp; prawns, and crabs. Thousands upon thousands of fishermen-for-a-day, cityfolk included, throng the beaches, striding out beyond the usual limits, sometimes several kilometers from land. The experienced old-timers help out the green firstimers – quite easy to spot because they are carrying inappropriate implements or tools. All that is required are buckets and nets, as well as a prying tool or two. A modicum of wet weather apparel is needed, too high gumboots, a rainslicker, and a waterproof hat are de rigueur.

Amerloque never goes on a shellfish gathering expedition during the August spring tides (far too many people !), and he made no exception this year. The grandes marées were August 11, 12 and 13 (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, with tidal coefficients of 105, 106 and 102 respectively). Not only was this the vacation month of August … but the tides fell right in the middle of the four-day long Assumption Holiday weekend. (Yes, it was another long weekend !) The traffic in France on such an August weekend is unbearable: tanned vacationers heading back to Paris after having taken the month off between Bastille Day and l'Assomption; other people enjoying the four-day weekend as, perhaps, their only vacation at all; yet others driving to the coasts to hunt for shellfish …Amerloque stays off the roads at such times.

This year, as every year during August, a local farmer did bring liters of freshly harvested mussels, from his big tidal adventure, over to Amerloque. Mrs A applied her inimitable recipe for moules au bouchot marinées à la façon du Pays d'Auge to transform them into an exquisite delight - which, of course, was shared with the farmer: cela va de soi. Basically, cider and a slice of apple (as well as usual onions, pepper and sundry seasonings) are added to the water the moules are cooked in. The mussels are then taken out of the shells and chilled in a white sauce (with a chouia of Normandy cream, tout naturellement) containing a few slices of Normandy apple from Amerloque's farm and other seasonings. It is served chilled, not hot.

On vacation in Normandy, the Amerloque family eats more fish than during the year in Paris. One reason is that local farmers – or their spouses - . seem constantly to be trundling off to the seacoast for some agricultural reason. For example, the farmer up the road from Amerloque sells quantities of his butter and cheeses on the open-air markets in Caen and Bayeux. He drives up there three or four times a week … and usually manages to bring back fresh fish, landed that very morning. Amerloque has a kind of standing order with him during August, for fish and real scallops – the latter generally frozen, alas, since the season in France is only about seven months long, from October to April. Fresh unfrozen scallops found on the summertime markets in Brittany and Normandy are generally from the Isle of Jersey.

"What does Amerloque mean by 'real scallops' ?", the attentive reader may ask. "When is a scallop not 'real' ?"

The fishing village of Port-en Bessin is famed throughout France for its Coquilles Saint Jacques – aka the "scallop". This is the renowned pecten maximus, which is really the only true French variety. Several years ago (1996) the World Trade Organization bureaucrats shamefully decreed that a number of varieties of "scallops" can also bear the name Coquilles Saint Jacques as long as the proper Latin name(s) appeared as well. So nowadays in France one can encounter all kinds of processed and unprocessed "scallops" from all over the world, including but not limited to the following varieties (Amerloque keeps his hit list updated):

pecten novazaelandia
placopecten magellanicus
argopecten purpuratus
chlamys islandica
chlamys nobilis
zygochlamys patagonica
patinopecten yessoensis

Nowadays, in season, if one requests Coquilles Saint-Jacques at the open air markets inland, one might receive any or all of the above, or one might receive a real French scallop, a pecten maximus. Amerloque offers this trip to travelers, a tip not found in the guidebooks: to be certain of obtaining the real French scallop, ask for pecten maximus and accept no substitutes. If one is lucky, the fishmonger's face will light up and an impassioned conversation will begin. Usually s/he will throw in copious advice concerning a suitable recipe, en plus.

In Normandy, in August, it is indeed "A time to gain, a time to lose". In one quiet month, one is able to gain perspective, peace and repose, while at the same time to lose the stress, tension and anxiety accumulated throughout the year.

In addition, one is able to prepare for what might be termed the French annual rebirth in September: la rentrée.

L'Amerloque

Summertime

2006-08-07T01:12:00.000-07:00

Amerloque is enjoying his annual quality time in the country. As every year, Amerloque has migrated with the family to Normandy for the summer and is living at the farm.

It didn't take Amerloque long to discover several decades ago that the quality of life in rural France in the summer season is incomparably better than it is in the cities. Back then, in the late 1960s, small French villages and towns were venues unto themselves, with closely-knit populations and a full range of shops and services. Each town had its own medecin, its pharmacie, its PTT and perhaps more than one banque. Wearing their inevitable bleu de travail, local farmers would come into town on tractors for the once or twice weekly outdoor markets. Priorities were different. People took their time.

A lot has changed since then, of course: what passes nowadays for modernity has struck with a vengeance. There are far fewer shops and schools, for example. Populations have aged and become more heterogeneous. There are fewer farms – and farmers now come into towns in their cars. They don't wear bleu de travail anymore, either, and they do their shopping at the local super- or hypermarket. People are more rushed.

Still, compared to Paris and its suburbs (and to the larger French cities) the advantages of the French summertime countryside are absolutely undeniable: no major traffic; no parking problems; no squawking car alarms at any hour of the day and night; no street people extorting supposedly spare change from passerby; no slow-moving lines at supermarket checkout counters or at La Poste. Less air pollution, less noise, less crime, less hassle. Too, out in the country, the food seems fresher. The bread seems more flavorsome, the coffee more pungent, the produce more tasteful, the meats more succulent, the wines more flavorful. Not heaven on earth culinarily speaking, by any means … but not far off, in Amerloque's view.

Amerloque's farm is at the end of a road that he and his family surfaced themselves, not with some sweat and toil. Many years ago, for the sum of 1000 francs or so (at the time about US$100), Amerloque purchased 10,000 old bricks that had once formed the walls of a local pressoir, the Norman building in which apples were crushed to make cider. Amerloque and the family summarily cleaned the bricks and laid them out onto the roadway, in the long, narrow furrows that wheels had previously made. A mixture of sand, lime and ground mollusk shells was scattered for strength as necessary. Hedges using local flora were planted on each side of the "paved" road. Room was left for wild blackberry brambles (mures), which were carefully transplanted at regular intervals from neighboring farms.

Now, at the end of each summer, kilos and kilos of wild blackberries are there for the gathering; to add to pancakes, muffins, and cakes, and to make jams and jellies. Neither signpost nor placard indicate that the road leads to an inhabited farm: passerby are none the wiser. Pour vivre heureux, vivons caché ("To live happily, live out of sight."), goes the old French proverb, and Amerloque has made it his own.

In addition to reading, writing, cooking, motoring and picnicking in the countryside and general pottering about, Amerloque is relaxing in his usual way. For some years now he and his family have been repairing and restoring the woodframed walls of the house and outbuildings. This must done during sunny weather. The torchis, mixed in the spring, can now be adroitly stuffed into the prepared recesses in the walls and covered with a thin layer of lime based plaster. This type of ecologically sound construction is traditional in Normandy and in other parts of France (notably Alsace). It's even coming back into style, as a matter of fact. It is low tech, though labor intensive: ideal for the vacationtime dog days. Progress in building is not measured in meters, but rather in centimeters, from day to day, from week to week, and from season to season.

According to the media, this year the French people in general have decided overwhelmingly to take their summer holidays in France rather than travelling abroad. It's quite clear to Amerloque that this is indeed the case, at least in his part of Normandy. There are more French estivants in the towns and on the beaches, more bicycles in the country lanes, more hikers on the footpaths. The somewhat lemminglike rush to holiday in the countryside (les vacances vertes) is said to have three causes.

The first in the economy. With the rise in the cost of crude oil, the price of gasoline has hit new highs. One liter of 95-octane gas now costs a whopping 1.43 euros. That makes 5.41 euros per gallon … or US$6.97 at current exchange rates. Naturally airplane tickets to foreign parts are more expensive, too, thanks to oil prices - and to the Chirac Tax on tickets, applicable in France and in some other countries starting on July 1st.. In spite of the government announcements that unemployment is dropping, there just doesn't seem to be a commensurate uptick in business: people are incessantly mentioning that they just don't see any jobs being created around them. They are worried about the future in a general way - and hence are sticking closer to home this vacationtime.

Another reason is that apparently the popularity of the films Les Bronzés III (after a 27-year hiatus, the actors reunited to make a third film in the somewhat slapstick comedy saga) and
Camping has spilled over into real life. The latter film, directed by Fabien Onteniente, has already had more than 5 million paying spectators, a huge figure here. This year reservations are mandatory if one wants to obtain a space in a given campground. Youths, oldsters, families, pets: in a word, camping is in, this summer.

Finally, RVs (known as camping-cars here) are à la mode, too: sales this year have increased by something like 40% over 2005. Though not strictly speaking authentic Geritol Gypsies, many of the drivers and passengers that Amerloque has seen are nearing or have passed retirement age; there seem to be few young people involved. RV campgrounds and assembly points are seemingly full – to the surprise of foreign tourists who, until recently, were the major users of such facilities.

As to the weather … once again this year, there is a severe drought (secheresse) in most parts of France. Only three of the 96 départements in metropolitan France are untouched by the phenomenon; while 54 have seen the authorities impose drastic restrictions on water use. The rest of the départements are ranked as "worrying" or "under observation". Apparently water tables in 2006 are low; the rains in the winter season were allegedly not enough to counteract the dry summers of the past three years. The July heatwave which hit Europe with record high temperatures, from Warsaw to London, aggravated the situation; authorities are concerned indeed. In some circles the drought this year is said to be as bad as the ones of 1996 and 1999, and some observers - notably the farmers out in Amerloque's neck of the woods - are unhesitatingly comparing it to the legendary one of 1976, known in the French collective memory as la Grande Secheresse de 1976.

Amerloque remembers 1976 well: days and days of sunshine and heat, nary a cloud in the sky, hardly a breath of wind. In the countryside to the south, crops withered in the fields. Prices for produce - fruits and vegetables – skyrocketed due to scarcity. Grazing land and pastures turned brown overnight. Streams dried up, while major river levels fell to historic lows. Meat and poultry farmers were forced to cull their herds in order to survive (but the price of fresh red meat and chickens never really dropped as much as it should have, Amerloque recalls …). Dairy herds suffered, too. Norman farmers, not as affected because of the naturally high underground water tables, suffered a bit less than their counterparts in the south of France. In solidarity, the Normans sent truckload after truckload of feed south, for the livestock. Solidarity is a leitmotiv, in France, et tant mieux.

The 1976 drought was so severe and caused so much grief that the French government even imposed what has since been called the "drought tax" (its real name was l'impôt solidarité secheresse). It wasn't really a tax at all, of course, but a mandatory loan decreed by the government. Each taxpayer was billed for 1% over and above the year's income tax due. The monies raised were used to assist farmers who had suffered severely from the drought. Several years afterwards, the so-called "tax" was repaid to the bemused taxpayers, along with (very) nominal, and taxable, interest.

In summertime Normandy, whatever the weather, Amerloque has a standing daily order for one liter of fresh unpasteurized milk at a neighboring dairy farm. Both freshly churned farm butter (nature and demi-sel) and properly cured cheeses are available at another farm nearby, while yet a third provides newly laid eggs and homemade cider.

Vacationing well means eating well too, in Amerloque's world. He wouldn't have it any other way.

L'Amerloque

Risk

2006-07-03T01:12:00.000-07:00

After several years of living in France, the American expatriate might conclude that the country is more risk averse than the USA. The French – and European - aversion to risk is both very true … and not true at all, Amerloque feels. It all depends on the issue.

In Amerloque's view, probably no recent event symbolizes European aversion to risk as the story of Bruno.

In at least three European countries (France, Austria, Italy), the European Union, over the past decade or so, has piloted a program to reintroduce bears into the wild. Born in Italy just over two years ago, Bruno the brown bear, weighing 90 kilograms (about 200 pounds) apparently migrated sometime in late April or early May to the Austrian Tyrol. For several weeks, he snacked bloodily on sheep, chickens and rabbits, as he moved from Austria into the Bavarian Alps, where no bear had been seen for 170 years. He became a media sensation, providing much-needed counterpoint to the World Cup coverage, while officials became increasingly worried about what would happen if Bruno came into contact with a human. The International Herald Tribune reported:

When Bavarian officials issued an order in May allowing hunters to shoot the bear, they were harshly criticized. The chairman of the German Environmental Protection Federation, Hubert Weinzierl, described the decision as "typically German."

A week ago, Bavaria rescinded the order.

In spite of the continuing media circus, and the fact that in the Tyrol, for example, a newspaper poll found that 90 percent of the respondents opposed killing the bear, Bruno's respite was short-lived. Just over a week ago the shoot-to-kill order was restored … and Bruno was shot by an unidentified hunter near a lake in the southern Bavarian district of Miesbach in the early hours of Monday, June 26. In its coverage the IHT said:

Critics condemned the shooting, with some demanding a police investigation. The president of the German Environmental Protection Association, Hubert Weinzierl, said it was the "dumbest of all solutions." Bavaria had rescinded an earlier order to shoot Bruno after coming under intense public pressure.

Ehlers said the episode would force Germany to develop a policy for handling wild bears, which had not been seen in Bavarian Alps for at least 170 years. Bruno's body, officials said, will be preserved and put on display at the Museum of Man and Nature in Munich.

Amerloque finds the whole episode particularly European – and frustratingly sad.

Here is a well-intentioned, successful European program: the reintroduction of a seriously endangered species into the wild. Bravo – well done ! Yet the movers and shakers and decisionmakers in Germany – supposedly the most ecologically aware, the "greenest" European country - could not even put together and manage a team skilled enough to track one bear, tranquilize it, cage it, and donate it to a zoo ! Furthermore, in their own words, the German authorities don't seem to have thought the consequences of the European bear reintroduction program through very well. What did they think was going to happen ? Did they assume that the wild bear(s) roaming in the Tyrolean Alps would stop at the Austrian border ?

Finally, the authorities are going to have Bruno stuffed and displayed in a museum ! Again, what do they think will happen – that "green" tourists will come to see him ? What is far more likely - this is Amerloque's hope, at any rate - is that at least one politically-incorrect German father or mother will bring the children en passant and say "Here is Bruno, you know, that bear you saw on TV. The pusillanimous, frightened authorities had him shot and stuffed - to protect you, so they say. Don't trust your lives to those kinds of unprepared people. Remember Bruno."

This was European risk aversion carried to a ridiculous extreme, Amerloque feels. The German authorities demonstrated arrogant incompetence, and Bruno paid the price. Museumgoers in Munich will henceforth be encouraged to gloat over his remains.

As far as risk in Europe is concerned, now might be a time to take a quick look at it, at least before Bruno is forgotten by the media.

For years, the Old World, i.e., Western Europe, has been perceived almost by definition as being more risk averse than the New World. The classic view, fostered and maintained by the media for many, many years and brandished as proof time and time again, is that one emigrates from a country in the stale, ossified Old World and arrives in the dynamic, open New World, where there are allegedly far fewer rules and regulations. The "individual" is "emphasized" in the New World, while he or she supposedly is not in the Old World.

By a quick, sleight-of-hand shift in reasoning (extrapolating supposed "individualism" to a general American case), the media, economists and politicians trumpet that the European societal model – and most particularly the French one – is antediluvian, out of date, and, in a word, "kaput". It has been "superseded" and rendered "obsolete" by the far more efficient American system. Columns of statistics and reams of paper are brought out almost ad nauseam to support this view. The pundits say that European economies are "struggling" because the Europeans are not willing to "take risks", that entrepreneurship is "unrewarded", and that Europe must adapt.

Amerloque feels that there are several things wrong with that perception of European attitude to risk.

One error is forgetting that the histories of Europe and the USA are not the same. There is a strong humanist philosophy in Europe, in many cases enshrined in constitution and law, which is absent from American society. One might even argue that this humanism – especially in France - has to some extent replaced organized religion, reserving to the state activities formerly carried out by religion – including but not limited to caring for and educating the poor and the disadvantaged. In the USA, organized religion has remained strong and vibrant, while humanistic values are somewhat absent from the law. Moreover, in Europe, sharing the wealth has become as important as producing it. The individual (as well as personal data about the individual by the way !) is precious and deserves nurturing and protection.

Amerloque feels that a second error in the US perception of Europe (shared by some untrammeled-free-market Europeans, of course) is that Americans simply fail to see how skeptical Europeans are concerning the wisdom of using force in all cases to resolve issues – at least where animals such as Bruno are not involved, Amerloque hastens to add. After two murderous wars in the 20th century, Europeans came together and decided that, at least among themselves, on the European continent, force would no longer be an acceptable method of solving problems. The American economic model is seen as a kind of social darwinism that rewards force and punishes weakness – attitudes which are no longer part of mainstream European thinking. For better or for worse.

A third error is misunderstanding – or simple ignorance of - the facts. Even some French politicians, CEOs and commentators (who should know better, after all, given the complexities of French society !) are prone to joining their American counterparts in mistaking their desires for realities. Take, for example, the incessant referrals to "the Scandinavian model", its alleged virtues and its possible adoption in France. On closer examination, the inadequacy of such as course for the current (economic) situation becomes apparent, at least to Amerloque: for the economic success of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden has everything to do with the fact that they are small countries with relatively homogeneous populations.

Denmark -- 5,450,661 (July 2006 estimated population)
Finland -- 5,231,372
Norway -- 4,610,820
Sweden -- 9,016,596

Total: 24,309,449 (estimated population)

That's something like 38% of the French nation (population is approximately 63,000;000) … and about 5% of the total population of the European Union (approximately 460,000,000) !

It's as though an American, referring to problems in California and Arizona and Texas, were to say "Hey, look what they're doing in New Hampshire as a solution to the suchandsuch problem – let's do it here ! We have the same problem !" without seeing a) what the problem really is and b) just why whatever "solution" it is works in New Hampshire and c) just what the ramifications are (e.g., brown bears don't stop at borders marked on a map, right ?). In France, upscaling Scandinavian procedures and solutions to the entire heterogeneous population – and the host of problems - would be no easy task, nor would it necessarily be successful. Danish unemployment is not the same as French unemployment, nor are Finnish natural resources the same as French natural resources, for example.

Finally, a fourth and last error in the American perception of Europe is simply disregard of human nature. Europeans – at least Western Europeans, and more particularly the French - basically have built societies they want, are comfortable with and intend to improve, slowly but surely. Voluntarily selling, giving away or otherwise disposing of the putative bird in the hand for the hypothetical bird in the bush is simply not the French way (un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l’auras), notwithstanding the French foundation and continuing membership of the European Union, of course. Not until all remedies, plans and correctives have been exhausted will the French accept certain aspects of the American model to relaunch the economy. Nevertheless, hearing politicians and pundits say "It'll be better tomorrow if you do this today !" is beginning to wear a bit thin in Paris. The French saying "promises only commit those who listen to them" (les promesses n'engagent que ceux qui les écoutent) is beginning to take on all of its meaning nowadays – and this will probably be reflected in the elections next year.

Perception of risk is different, here in Europe.

As Amerloque previously, there is a program to reintroduce bears in France, too. It's happening down in the Pyrénées, in the Ariège where in November, 2004, the last, the final, remaining native bear, Cannelle, was "accidentally" shot by a hunter during a boar hunt. Since then several Slovenian bears have been freed in the mountains, their traditional habitat.

The local French hunters and herdsmen have repeatedly demonstrated loudly and somewhat violently against the "new" bears, the last two of which were recently released in secret so that they wouldn't be blown away "by accident". The French Minister of Ecology has supposedly postponed the release of the fifth and last bear until the situation calms down … which is why the affaire Bruno was not overly emphasized on French TV and radio. To minimize the risk for French bears.

As Gabriel Schwaderer, director of the European Nature Heritage Fund, said after the shooting of Bruno:

"We consider the decision by the Bavarian government to be wrong, because it was based only on the fact that the bear was getting close to human habitation," Schwaderer said.

"If this is to be the yardstick for the right to life of brown bears then the outlook is bleak for European bears."

L'Amerloque

Update on July 24th: Off on a break to prepare for vacation ! Back soon !

Quality

2006-06-12T01:12:00.000-07:00

There was another pont last week: the Pentecost weekend, with its holiday Monday (lundi de Pentecôte). Once again, France slowed down a bit. This year, though, celebrating the off day was a bit more challenging, but quite possible for many. A modicum of planning was required.

Until 2005, le weekend de Pentecôte was celebrated nationally. Those readers following events in France will recall the exceptional summer heatwave that took place three years ago, in 2003. Thousands upon thousands of people (14,802 according to an official report), mostly vulnerable senior citizens, died. After much debate and media hairshirting, the government subsequently decided that one holiday on the French calendar would be a day of solidarity with the senior citizens. It would be transformed into a normal working day – and employers would pay the social charges and salaries due for that day into a special fund devoted to helping senior citizens and retirement homes. The Pentecost Monday of 2005 was chosen as the day sacrificed, in spite of protests from tourist venues such as Nimes, for whom that long weekend represented serious money in the bank. The Education Nationale wasn't too happy about the change, either.

It turned out to be a catastrophe. Instead of opening, many schools and other educational institutions remained closed. In some areas, the schools opened – but there were no school buses. In other parts of France, yet other schools were open, with teachers, but few or no students showed up. Some shops and companies closed, in keeping with tradition, while others opened for business … but with fewer staff. Without the holiday Monday, tourists simply didn't travel and sightsee as they were used to doing: 40% less at Mont-Saint-Michel, for example.

The government studied the situation, issued a cacophonic report and moved the goalposts. It said that in 2006, celebrating the holiday would be "optional". Each business and its workers could together choose a different holiday to express solidarity (i.e., work), but if they couldn't come to an agreement, le lundi de Pentecôte would be a holiday by default. So during the year, discussions were undertaken in government offices and businesses and shops throughout the land to come to some kind of agreement as to whether le lundi de Pentecôte would be a holiday, or not – and, precisely, for whom.

According to media reports, this year approximately 60% of French workers, including almost one in two in the private sector, did not work on Pentecost Monday 2006. Many civil services were closed (no mail !); schools were closed, too. Most transport was unaffected; however, as is usual in France, heavy trucks, with the exception of those hauling perishable goods, were prohibited on the roads during the weekend, and the ban held good through the lundi de Pentecôte. Hence, while construction sites were open and functioning on Monday, no trucks were allowed to deliver wet cement. Generally speaking, the Pentecost weekend went off without a hitch. On the roads, compared to the same holiday weekend in 2006, accidents dropped by 8%, injuries by 10%, and deaths by 24%.

The quality of life in France is indeed strange and wonderful: in 2006, from May 1st to June 5th, there were five calendar weekends. Thanks to public holidays, three of these were three-day weekends, while one additional weekend was a long, four-day weekend.

Amerloque has been spending a lot of time at his farm in Normandy. There is always something to be done; the long holiday weekends are ideal for starting and finishing a precise task. Gardening is always needed; fortunately Mrs A appreciates trees and flowers and so Amerloque is generally more than happy simply to observe and kibitz.

This year he and Mrs A called in a professional woodsman since an old, old apple tree had fallen over during the winter winds. Cutting it up into firewood with a gasoline-powered chainsaw is not part of the Amerloque family's skill set – nor do any of the family members want it to be. As in most endeavors, practice makes perfect, and using chainsaws is no exception. It's cheaper and safer to call in a professional to do the job than to learn by oneself, with perhaps dire and – in the chainsaw world - irremediable consequences.

The wood-framed dwelling and associated buildings require as much maintenance – if not more ! – as a wood-hulled family sailing craft and its associated rigging and sails. Repairs on walls are impossible during the rainy season, which generally ends in late April or early May, so Amerloque waits until May to start mixing torchis. After having checked and replaced any wood showing severe deterioration, the Amerloque family stuffs the torchis into the recesses in the walls and covers it with a thin layer of lime-based plaster. This has been going on for some years now (since the house was erected several hundred years ago, as a matter of fact: Amerloque is just a 'caretaker' ...) and will continue as long as the buildings are standing.

Motoring to Normandy and back did not prevent Amerloque from listening attentively to the media commemoration of the French referendum on the European Constitution, which took place a year ago. The Brussels eurocrats apparently couldn't care less about the French people's vote and the economic destruction being wreaked in France and in other countries thanks to "Europe": they're acting as if nothing had happened, as if there had been no massive rejection of their "constitution".

In a news brief on the French Yahoo site, in an article about the addition of the eight new member countries in 2004, titled "Two years later, the EU hails the success of the enlargement" (Deux ans après, l'UE salue le grand succès de l'élargissement), the EU refers to the new members:

… Already strong before 2004, their growth has increased since then. In the last quarter of 2005, when the GDP of the entire euro zone was growing 1.4% over one year, the new countries posted growth figures of 11.1% in Estonia, 10.5% in Latvia, 6.9% in the Czech Republic, and 7.6% in Slovakia, according to the Eurostat institute.

Amerloque cannot help but smile. The Eurocrats have a simple way of programming "success". Here is an imaginary "sell", one that symbolizes the recent "enlargement", at least in Amerloque's view:

EU Representative: "Hail, Prospective European Union Member !

So, you want to join the EU, eh ?

Do you realize that in exchange for all that money we will be giving you outright – billions and billions and billions of euros over many years - you will have to construct new, modern factories ? That you must build new, modern infrastructures? That you will be able to attract new investment by setting (almost) artificially low tax rates ? That in certain fields, depending on your size and your people(s), you will leapfrog current member countries' capacities and leave them in the dust ? That you will have to bootstrap your country up to a far higher standard of living, at our expense ? That many of your highly trained people will emigrate to the older EU countries and dislocate the job markets ?

Oh, yes, and – we know that you really don't care about this, but we'll ask you anyway … Did you know that the richer countries of the European Union will see their economic growth stagnate, their public services go down the drain in the name of 'competition', their manufacturing economies turn into unstable consumer economies, their standard of living drop ?

So you don't give a damn about that other question, in that second paragraph, and just want your big fat check ? Well, here you go, pal. We knew you'd see it our way ! Welcome to Europe !"

Amerloque feels that the imaginary hard sell is not as far removed from reality as it may appear. Two more countries (Romania and Bulgaria) are lined up to join soon - it is obvious even more countries want to join the EU. They'd be insane if they didn't. When your next-door neighbor, who used to make a habit of regularly beating the crap out of you, invites you over for free barbecues, every day of the year for the foreseeable future, while your own house is demolished and rebuilt up to the most modern standards, wouldn't you go over and chow down at his expense ?

That's Europe, today. One wonders just how long it can last.

L'Amerloque

Amerloque

Homerun

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Paris

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La Primavera II

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Return II

Noel

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Escadrille

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October

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Return I

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Selections

Maintenance

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Commitment

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Reforms

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Dispassion

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Mandate

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Honor

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Strength

Homestretch

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Countdown

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Placidity

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Disconnects

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Opinions

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Thank you, Mr Buchwald

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Wheels

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New Morning, 2007

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Hope

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Interlude

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Vicissitudes

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Perspectives

Touchstones

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Speed

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Plums

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Perseids

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Summertime

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Risk

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Quality

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This is an updated repost of Amerloque's 2005 Christmas entry.
He is currently overwhelmed.
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