A Tragic, and Heroic, History

The 70th anniversary of the Rafle de Vel d'Hiv, arguably the single most shameful day/event in French history, has just come and gone. Even though it's a tragic affair, I stumble across the fact that one of my best friends here has an incredible family history that puts at least a glimmer of hope back into one's opinion of humanity, in general. To read all about it, check out A Year in Fromage.

 

 

Game Theory

I've talked about Ticket to Ride, a board game about trains around Europe. But that's just the tip of it. We're big into family game time, especially on cold, rainy winter weekends, and we especially love games that tie in thematically with our lives here.

Memoire de France is a memory-match game with special places around France, including many Paris spots we know and love -- one of which we can see from our window, and exactly half of which we can walk to in five minutes or less:

 

To read about more great French- and European-themed games, check out the post at A Year in Fromage.

Pride, Finally

I thought the last posting on gay marriage would be my last, but now with the Gay Pride parade marching right by my island and coming on the heels (often very high heels) of the U.S. Supreme Court rulings, I simply cannot resist.

 

 

This year, the marchers are proud to fly the French flag freely alongside the rainbow flag. And I must say that I'm pretty proud of the Supreme Court (well, 56% of it anyway!) and am not surprised to see more pro-American sentiment than might have otherwise been expected.

 

Some of my favorite signs of the times:

 

 

"Liberty, Equality, Secularism" and a float promoting condom usage that says "Liberty, Equality, Protected" and sounds better in French.

  

 

 

"Fascism, even for sexual orientation, is not French." And Renault's commercial attempt to jump-on-the-band(station)wagon, with the slogan "Cars for all" mirroring the gay rights slogan "Marriage for all."

 

 

 

Some winners from what I call the religious correct (as opposed to the religious right): "God loves us all (men and women)", "We read the bible gaily", and "Jesus also had two mothers." But my very favorite sign of the parade:

"God is a black lesbian." And why not?

I'm not only proud to be American, and proud to be a gay marriage and gay rights supporter, I have to say this float walking by, complete with rainbow chuppah being carried by yarmulke-wearers, makes me proud of my liberal Jewish heritage, too.

 

And, not to be outdone, my husband's Christian upbringing is represented. Here, the American Cathedral's float makes me proud of their Americanism and their very christian (distinct from Christian) openness.

 

 

I don't know if my support of gay marriage stems from my liberal upbringing, my moral values which not only tolerate but celebrate diversity, or the fact that I have good gay and lesbian friends. But sometimes I suspect it's just my love of colors, choreography, theatrics, and flamboyance in general.

 

One thing that's very nice about Paris Pride as opposed to San Francisco Pride is that you can actually get up to the edge of the parade and wander about fairly freely. It is crowded and lively, and I don't have the official numbers, but it feels like the crowd must be 1/10 the size here. However, that doesn't mean Paris doesn't have some of the same characters, even down to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, here indulging in a very French cigarette and sneer.

 

  

 Let's not forget the drag queens...

   

...and in one case, the drag Queen of England....

 

...or the men in uniform. Any uniform. I am thoroughly entertained by the UNIFS's slogan: "Guys in uniforms, and those that love them."  

 

 

Not to be confused with these guys, who are honestly guys in uniforms -- the guards patrolling the parade to keep everything safe. At least I think they're the real deal. But they are pretty darn hot. 

 

 

What kind of a place is this to bring children? A mighty fine one, mostly. Very colorful and friendly.

 

 

Of course, Gigi is a little confused by the guy in zippered leather bikini briefs (perhaps he thinks he's in San Francisco at the Folsom Street Fair, which makes a Pride parade look positively tame). She is also confused when the guy giving out free condoms very pointedly passed her by; it may be the first time in her life that being a cute kid has NOT earned her free swag. It gives me the fun opportunity to explain what a condom is and does. The fact is, there are lots of men here in not much more than underwear -- and skimpy French underwear at that. Of course, some of it is rather skimpier -- and more Folsom Fair -- than others.

 

  

She's not the only kid here, though. In some ways, it's business as usual. With a lot of rainbows. People drink their canned beverages, hang out with their loved ones, and chat on cell phones -- at least when the electronic club music is not blaring so loud it makes your heart thump. Isn't that nice, though? That gay pride, and gay marriage, should have attained this degree of normalcy? Someday it will be downright boring. But the parade itself won't be.

 

   

 

 

 

Spectacle Debacle, Act II

It is the nearing the end of the school year, and that can only mean one thing: a seemingly endless string of performances for which we are ill-prepared. Of course I love every second of the half dozen 3-hour shows in which my child appears for a total of 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

This year, we know better than to plan trips during this time, since many of the dates will be conveyed to us by the directors (or our own children) only at the last moment. For instance, I am writing this very sentence on June 25, with only 6 school days left, and I am just realizing that I have no idea when Gigi's theater class production will be. [Ed. update: it's tomorrow, on June 27, so at least she hasn't missed it.]

Gigi gets in a panic over costumes for a dance performance at school, for which she's been choreographing and rehearsing for three months, yet somehow the night before the dress rehearsal, we are still scrounging for costumes. And, oddly, you would be amazed at how difficult/impossible it is to find plain white T-shirts for kids in Paris, even at the kind of stores that sell cheap basics. I am told, "Ah, we are out of white T-shirts, because it is no longer T-shirt season. It is tank top season." Pause. "Plus, all the children who need them for end-of-year costumes have bought them out." Yes. Those would be the families who did not wait till the last second. Thanks for rubbing that in.

In the end, we find her a white tank top she can write "Les Trois Girls" on for her performance (because it's much cooler than the true French "Les Trois Filles"), after she gives away to her fellow dancers the two good T-shirts that I had managed to find. For the second plain white T-shirt she needs, she therefore wears the rather tight size 4-5 T-shirt found at the bottom of her little sister's drawer.

 

At the school performance, Anthony gets an extra special show when the mother sitting right in front of him holds up her smartphone in camera mode to take pictures, but accidentally clicks on an album of naked photos of her crotch. My husband tells me he's not sure who she is, but he is sure she isn't the kind of person whose private parts he really wants to see in public -- or private, for that matter. After the unwanted groinal exposure (in a Catholic school no less), he goes on to enjoy Gigi and her classmates in a West Side Story medley. "I Want to Live in  America" sung in real French accents with fake Puerto Rican accents is my particular favorite. And, if you've ever had the thought while watching the Jets fight the Sharks that a bunch of theater boys dancing and singing is not the most terrifying of gang conflicts, you should see the entire thing staged by a bunch of fifth graders, including four in glasses, one slightly Aspberger's spelling savant, one on crutches, and one in a wheelchair.



The day before the free, outdoor hip hop show that the girls do for the Fête de la Musique on June 21st, we find out what the rest of the families have known all along, somehow: that there is another hip hop performance on the 30th. We are currently scrambling to get tickets, add it to our schedule, and figure out how to gracefully avoid going to the mandatory rehearsal on the 29th for which they have schedule conflicts.

 

At kermesse -- the end of year school carnival, I do some face painting, Gigi does her West Side Story medley and "Les Trois Girls" routine, and Pippa does her own class song and dance performance. We then literally run from the school over to the gymnastics gala, where they both perform. Pippa's group does a tango number which uses plastic roses I searched for in a panic a week ago and finally found at a local funeral home. Then we run home to rest up so Pippa can do a gymnastics competition early the next morning (and yes, thanks for asking, she does very well; she has improved so much from last year she is now one of the strongest, on a more advanced team).



I know we're not done yet, since there's still one more hip hop show, Gigi's theater class performance, and my own hula show at a restaurant (though I have to miss two other hula performances this week because of conflicts). Let's add in four birthday parties, visiting cousins, the final week of school, and last-minute summer vacation planning, and now it's a real Spectacle Debacle.

Four Cs of Languedoc

If Normandy and the Dordogne can both be defined by their four Cs, why not Languedoc, in Southern France? It's the land of Carcassonne, Catharism, Collioure, and Catalan.

Catalan:

Our next Cathar fortress -- Salses -- doesn't have the pizazz of Carcassonne, especially since we are forced to take an hour-long tour in a French so thickly accented with Catalan that not even the girls or I can understand it. Well, we're pretty sure it's French.

 

In architecture as well as language, there's a definite Spanish/Moorish flavor here. I love the arches and doors at the 11th century Abbey de Fontfroide, where the assassination of a monk was the catalyst for the crusade that wiped out the Cathars (they were Christian -- just not Catholic):

    

Cathar castles:

 

Suffering from castle-overload, we only have the heart to visit one real Cathar castle, but it's a doozy -- the nearly unpronounceable Peyrepertuse, which was built high in the Pyrénées Orientales starting in the 11th century. It's pretty easy to see why it was a good defensive spot. It's practically impenetrable even with a car and admission tickets. In order to get up to the top, there is sweating, and some whining, involved.

 

 

Collioure:

The girls' favorite part of the whole trip is at the end: two really magical days in the Mediterranean beach town of Collioure. Anthony works on all-important rock-skimming techniques with the girls, and Pippa decides it is of utmost importance to collect every possible piece of sea glass. She goes at this task with the dedication of an athlete training for the Olympics. She is a champion sea-glass-finder. It's a charming town and, frankly, we are glad for the respite from education and castles -- so much so that we never even manage to step in the 800-year old Château Royal here, though we walk by it dozens of times and certainly photograph it enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SOME BONUS Cs: COLD & CLASSMATES:

In this unbelievably rainy and cold spring (throughout all of France), Collioure is a bright spot, quite literally. It's warm enough to hang out on the beach, but only a child could go further in the water than their ankles. I once got hypothermia (true, profound hypothermia) by scuba diving just a tiny bit further south from here in a Spanish small town with a big name -- Torroella de Montgrí i l'Estartit. And I'm not about to make that mistake twice. Don't believe what anybody says about the Mediterranean; if you want to swim, it's South Pacific all the way, baby. This sea is cold!

We are starting to feel like real Frenchies: We are about as far south as one can go and still be in France, over 800km from Paris, yet Gigi runs into a former Parisian classmate on the beach.

   

And now goodbye to the cultural Cs and the cold seas, and we're on our way back to the land of the four Ps: Paris, pollution, and pavement. Yes, I know that's only three.