Sud de France 4.3.2: 10 Tips for House Hunting French Style

Part 2: Driving Miz Crazy

There is nothing more exciting than speeding down a one lane country road while your driver is talking and looking you in the back seat. It’s the fun part of looking for houses with estate agents--realtors. They know the roads and love being out in the French vineyards and sunshine. And since they want to show you several houses in an hour or so, they go as fast as they can between them. 

It adds a touch of danger to house hunting that you won’t find anywhere else.

So if the itch hits you, here are some more tipsfor finding a house in the South of France.

Tip 6. Negotiation. The asking price of a house is usually negotiable but estate agents don’t like lower prices because they cut into their fees. In France as elsewhere owners think their homes are worth more than they are asking for anyway but you need to bargain. The current recession means there’s a surplus of houses and not too many (or any) buyers. It is truly a buyer’s market.

Looks good but it the whole top floor of a house.

Tip 7. Notaire Fees. On top of the price of the home you the buyer has to pay for a “notaire” or a notary to do the paperwork; title searches etc… The notaries represent the French state and not either party in arranging the sale. The work of the notaire takes about two months. It’s all paperwork and grind slowly indeed. The notaire’s fee varies (it’s about 7-9% of the selling price) but it will adds thousands of Euros to the cost of the house. 

Often when buying directly from a seller an under the table payment is negotiated to reduce their taxes and your notaire fee. For example, if the asking price is 175,000 Euros the seller might take 150,000 officially and you’ll give them a separate check for 25,000.

How did this big bed get to the 3rd floor?.

Curiously some notaries will leave the room once the officials papers are signed to "go out for a smoke’.' But it is really so that the extra check can be passed between buyer and seller in private.

Tip 8. Furniture Issues. When buying a village house consider negotiating with the owner to have them include the furniture in the deal. When you see a big bed in a third floor bedroom you have to wonder how it got up very narrow circular stairway. Owners are often happy to avoid having to remove things by including them in the sale.

Tip 9. The Crazy Brits. There are a lot of homes around the South of France that were bought by British people in the last decade or so. They’ve remodeled them and many are now on the market. You can tell a Brit’s home the second you walk into it. They have cut every corner possible and have create a little British village house in the middle of France. Paisley and floral wallpaper (to remove), faux ”oriental” features (to trash) and all sorts of strange tinkering (see photo). The Brits also favor small electric “hobs” with convection no oven to actual stoves.

No stairway to heaven it's the attic access.

My favorite corner cutter is the jet toilet. An ugly, water saving toilet that sounds like a jet plane taking off each time you use it.

Buying a home from a Brit add 10% for the work you’ll need to do to make it a tolerable place to live.

Tip 10. Size Matters. We all grew up on movies like the Three Musketeers with sword fights up and down huge staircases. Well those were Hollywood sets. Rooms in real castles are tiny and a village house can be really very small. When you’re looking for a house in France you need to scale back your size expectations. Our 3 bedroom house in Washington State had 2000 square feet (200+ sq. meters) of living space and was as one realtor put it “kinda small.”  Now that we’ve been in France we are excited when we find  a place with 1100 sq.ft.(120 sq.meters) of living space.

No room for the 3 musketeer fights.

But when you find that place in the village of your choice you’ll find that life takes on a whole different dimension. And after all that’s why you go through the whole exercise in the first place.

Sud de France 4.3: 10 Tips for House Hunting French Style

Part 1. Location, Location, Location.

Man cave circa 500 AD

If was a surprise to see the ruin of a 500 A.D. Roman home, with its vaulted ceiling and stone wash basin, in the garage of the house we were looking at. But while I was amazed at this bit of ancient history in the house’s basement, the realtor shrugged and said that it was no big deal, there were ruins all over the place. 

Things like this make searching for a home in France an eye opening experience. We’ve seen about two or three house a day for eight weeks and are still looking for the right place. We’ve learned a lot along the way and I’ve come up with a list of tips for the prospective home buyer wishing to relocate to a cute little village in the vineyards of Sud de France.

Finding the right village for you is the first thing.

Tip 1. Find a village. Even before you look for a house, look for a village. Spend some time in different villages. Get a feel for them hanging out at the local café or bar and walking the streets. Don’t do this on a Sunday or Monday or during the 12-2 lunch break when most towns are totally shut down. Think about how much village you need. Do you want a very small village with only a tabac and a bakery or do you need a larger, more lively place?

A typical big village house with two faces or sides.

Throughout the South of France from April to September there are village festivals, concerts and activities. Around Christmas even the smallest village will have celebrations. It is up to you to choose the place where there’s just enough activity to suit your tastes.

 Tip 2. Village Center Issues. There are 12^th or 13^th century village every couple of miles around here. The houses at their hearts have been renovated dozens of times over the centuries. They are very small spaces. Hilltop villages are particularly compact with narrow streets you can’t get a car down and there is no parking. Seriously consider how much claustrophobia you can handle.

No place to park is the usual state of affairs.

One person we met bought a village house with a garage only to discover that his 4 meter long car could turn in the three meter wide street to get into the garage.

 Tip 3. Look for “à vendre” signs. One of the best ways to find a house is to walk through a village and look for “à vendre” (For Sale) signs. Lots of people sell homes without an agent to avoid fees and you can save thousands of Euros dealing directly with the owner. Most signs list a phone number and it is perfectly okay to call the owner and say that you are standing outside the house and would like to see it. Another resource for finding private sales is the community bulletin board at an area supermarket or at a local convenience store. 

A terrace hemmed in my the neighbors.

Tip. 4 The Old, the Dead and the Mayor. France is undergoing a population shift and young people are leaving the old villages for job opportunities in the cities. When old people go into a retirement center or die, the families usually wants to get rid of the old house as soon as possible. They need cash to pay taxes and are often willing to lower prices just to get rid of a place. A good way to find a place for sale is to go to the mayor’s office as they know who in the village has died or moved.

Tip 5. “Immobiliers” or real estate agent each have their own distinct listings within a region, there’s no multiple listing service in France. If you want to use an agent, consider dealing with half a dozen to get a wider choice. Realtors work for the seller not for you and their commissions are paid by the seller and can add 5000 to 20000 Euros to price of the house.

Many French people prefer not to work with estate agents.

To be continued….

Sud de France 4.2: Twisting the world away.

It was announced today--23 November--that Ireland is accepting the European Union’s bailout plan. That's like getting offered a ride home from the drunk on the next bar stool; probably neither of you will get home safely. The problem only gets worse when you consider that among the other drunks who are offering you rides there's Greece, Italy, Spain, England and Portugal. 

In part the problem is the European  bureaucracy. In my blog posts I’ve poked fun at the French bureaucracy and the European Union--which is like the French model on steroids. These structures have done little to contain the bank crisis but a lot to frustrate and anger the populations of Europe. In response to these vast regulatory organizations individuals figure ways around the rules, the taxes and the letter of the law. I'm learning the game of getting around roadblocks but I'm still not comfortable with it.   

Which brings me to today’s new French word; “tordu.” This translates roughly as twisted and in many ways it sums up the situation here in France and around Europe.

A legume tordu

I learned this word and experienced it first hand when my wife and I went looking for a car. We’d found one we liked, negotiated a price and sat down with the dealer ready to write a check. It made him very happy. We gave him our passports, our RIB (proof of a bank account) and credit card info. He began to do the paperwork and after a few minutes asked us if we had a “facture” that is a utility receipt, usually one from the electric company. In France it’s proof of your address. 

This is tordu number one, we don’t have any utility bills because we are renting a place and the owners pay those expenses. We explained this and the dealer who made an unhappy face and said the law requires a facture to get the license plates. When I asked him why the address on our bank checks wasn’t sufficient he said with a sneer,

“Tout est tordu en France.” In France everything is twisted. 

See that’s the twisted part because to get the bank account open we had to get the bank a facture. Since we had been in France for only ten days and had nothing with an address on it, we got our kids to send us the closing electric bill from former home in America. Despite it being a closing bill for a place we no longer lived in or owned it worked for the bank. 

So a facture from a place 4500 miles away was put in our bank dossier or file probably never to be seen again. We got our checks although they had our US address on them. But that was easy to change because we now had an account we got our French address on the checks just by asking

Following this? Even though it took a facture to get our bank account open, we still needed another facture for the car because the account isn’t a facture, a receipt, but an account. Now that’s tordu! Zut alors!

It is kind of like the line in the movie, “Jake, you can’t do anything its Chinatown.” Don’t to try to understand it, it is just the way it is.

Since we couldn’t use the U.S. electric bill again (it was too old by now) my challenge was to figure how to get a facture. This called for thinking outside the box and I arrived at a solution that any Frenchman would be proud of. We had gotten a promotional letter from the bank thanking us for opening our account and asking how much money we wanted. I’d thrown it into the garbage but now made a mad dash to retrieve it.

The trick was to turn the promotional letter into a facture and to do this I went to the local phone store to get the Blackberry phone I had been thinking of buying. When you get a phone you sign up for a two year contract and they give you a receipt with your address on it.  

At the store I chose a phone and gave the clerk our passports and the bank letter. I watched as he copied the address from the letter. Then he made a photocopy of the letter for his store dossier and gave me the phone and receipt—a facture! We went immediately to the dealer who took the ten minute old facture and made a photocopy of it for his dossier, saying that the car would be ready in a few days.

That’s the real lesson. In response to all tordu culture the place is full of phony dossiers. Big paper files for everything that just end up sitting in some huge Kafkaesque warehouse somewhere gathering dust. None of the information gathered in the dossiers is ever connected to another dossier. 

I think this happens because no one in Europe wants to be the decider; to take responsibility for decisions. Instead they generate piles of PAPER with which they cover their asses. The byzantine nature of the law forces everyone to collect paper pretending it has some purpose. It’s a Dickensian world of thick files, fountain pen bearing clerks and photocopies of photocopies. Sadly Europe is at a tipping point. If governments can’t make their systems transparent enough for people to trust them and use them how will the compete in the global market place.

Devices like my Blackberry are the tools of the future. The big, thick paper dossier is a dinosaur, out of the information dark ages, a sad reminder of the rigidity of the old world.  

Bureaucracy at work is best illustrated by this EU poster. The area on the globe that is highlighted is the Balkans, Russia, Ukraine and the Middle East. Most of the EU itself is stuck in the dark behind and under the flag.

Sud de France 4.1: It Takes a Mayor

Saint-Genies, a village in the Herault

One of the things that makes living in France so different from America is the system of village Mayors or “maires.” It’s something an American living in France needs to understand to make it easier to get along. 

In France the mayor is in charge of his or her village or city. He or she and their adjunct or vice mayor have an enormous amount of power. When you want something done you go to them. They are the fixers, the people who get things to happen. Mayors get the money from the State to build roads, operate schools and hold festivals. They are so important that in a large city like Paris there is a mayor for each neighborhood (arrondisement) as well as one for the whole city.

The Hotel de Ville

In America mayors are often just ribbon-cutting figureheads whose authority is limited by hundreds of regulations, layers of law and fractious city councils. In the States if you want to put an extension on your house you go through a permit process. In France you ask the maire and if he or she says it's okay, you’re on your way. You don’t even need a piece of official paper. The position is so important that if you pay property taxes in a village, even if you are a foreigner, you can vote for the maire, although you can’t vote for anything else. 

Want to add a driveway, ask the mayor.

As a foreigner one of the things you do have to do is to present yourself to the mayor and tell them who you are, show them your papers and get “permission” to live in the village.

Our village celebrated St. Martin’s Day on November 11^th and our maire held a reception at City Hall, the Hôtel de Ville. (Our City Hall is an old chateau with a Roman wall.) I took a lot of photos at the event, some of which I posted in my last blog. A few days later we were in Beziers for lunch and I stopped at the local camera shop and had a couple of enlargements made of the fanfare band seen in the group shot. 

The next day I was going to the bar, the village has only one, to drop the photo off for the band when I ran into our maire, Mayor George. I almost walked passed him because he wasn’t wearing his mayor’s suit from the celebration but his winemaker work clothes; a big jacket, traditional “flat” hat and muddy work boots.

The St.Martin's Day gathering at the Hotel de Ville

I showed him the photo and his face lit up. “What a beautiful photo” he said to me. He patted me on the arm and beamed at my appreciation of the event (which was his event). Then he said, “You are among us now.”

He took the photo and went on his way. I stood there dumbfounded. Just like that I was “street legal.’ From that moment it was okay. No formal presentation of forms and passports and such, just Mayor George’s okay. 

Last weekend French President Nicolas Sarkozy shuffled his cabinet resulting in a more right of center government. He appeared on TV and tried his best to appear calm and thoughtful, remarkably losing his temper over reporters' questions only three or four times. The next day the Midi-Libre, our local regional paper, ran the results of a poll in which they had asked if the changes would make any difference. 80% of the respondents said "non." 

I read that and saw it as reflecting two things. First of all people are not fooled by “kabuki” politics and know that the cabinet shuffle was just a charade. And secondly they know that the State government doesn’t affect their daily lives as much as their village government does. In a way, the mayors protect the people from the whims and fancies of that big "French" government. 

Now before you begin to think that these mayors are little tyrants who run towns like private fiefdoms, let me tell you a true story that points out the good side of this arrangement.

The mayor hosting the celevration.

Not so long ago in a nearby village, there was an elderly couple who had lived together for twenty years but never gotten married. They finally decided to get married only to have the man suddenly take ill and be rushed to the hospital.

The woman went to the mayor distraught. She knew that her partner was dying and said that they had decided that they wanted to conduct the wedding ceremony as soon as possible. But there was a problem.

In France the mayor of your village is the one who must preside at marriage ceremonies. But this authority is limited to the boundaries of his or her village. The hospital was in another village where this mayor had no authority. 

So the mayor asked the woman to wait and went off to call the mayor of the village where the hospital was located. A few minutes later he came back and told her that he and the other mayor had agreed and he had declared the man’s hospital room to be a part of his village for the day. That meant he could perform the ceremony in the hospital room that afternoon.

Which he did just a few hours before the old man passed away.

Sud de France 4.0: St.Martin’s Dead and Gone Left Me Here to Sing This Song.

Some St.Martin's Day Singers

It is one in the afternoon and I’m already two glasses of wine over my limit and to make things worse, I am being followed home by a band of crazy musicians.  Today the village is celebrating Armistice Day soberly and it's patron saint’s day, --St. Martin--with a lot of local wine. 

So after a brief ceremony at the cemetery everyone gathers at the Mayor’s office for wine and, well, more wine. Mayor George is a charming man who keeps refilling my wine glass as he tells stories about the village. 

After several stories and a lot of wine I feel the need to excuse myself. This provides a lot of laughs especially from members of for the ceremonial band. It a 'fanfare' and calls itself “100 Grams a Head” (100 G de Tete) which should give you an idea of their musical tastes. They decide that in my condition they should escort me  to my front door, about 100 or so yards away. They also get me to promise to join them later at the bar at five for more music and some beer and well more wine.

100 G de Tete

Now a fanfare is made up of amateur musicians who get together to play music and perform at local events. It’s a brass band that typically consists of a tuba, trumpet, trombone, drums and tambourine and they play whatever they like. Today our own Puimisson fanfare starts their day with a rousing and surprisingly on key rendition of that old French? favorite “Cieto Lindo” and follows it up with a tolerable “Saints Go Marching In.” Take a listen for yourself.

While I headed straight home the fanfare took off to continue to perform around the village. Going door to door, they will play a tune or two for a few coins and for, you guessed it, a glass of wine. 
Beside the fanfare, the day was celebrated with rides for the kids and a little amusement area--set up next to but touching at any point the boules field.

For the older folks there were activities like a "Loto Nite" and an Oldies Dance.

For some reason Mayor George had closed the village's large parking area at the Place de la Mairie, for ten days around St. Martin's day. An annoyance for everyone, especially since you’d think you’d want more parking not less for a village event.

Like so many other things French, this is one of those unknowable mysteries that one just has to learn to accept.

Puimisson, St.Martin's Day 11.11.2010

Sud de France 3.9: Sex At The Vide Grenier

An old poster for an island vacation

Barbie and Ken lay there naked in the hot, French afternoon sun. Another Ken and Barbie, more modestly dressed in shorts, lay beneath them. It was a classic “mise en scene” orgy and it would have been a bizarre except that it is a common sight at French "Vide Greniers". Translated as an “empty attic” sale it like a garage sale on steroids. 

A vide grenier  fills a village for blocks

Vide Greniers are popular throughout France and it seems that there are one or two every weekend in different villages throughout the Herault. Although similar to an American garage sale there is one big difference, a grenier sale involves an enter village and naturally when dozens of people empty out their attics you get a pretty surprising glimpse into their private lives.

One thing that is constant with these greniers is that there are lots and lots of dolls for sale. I guess French women, more than their American sisters, hang onto their doll collections well into adulthood. Occasionally the dolls are neatly sorted, labeled and wrapped, but most of the time they are simply piled on top of each other; inadvertently creating scenes of wild sex and odd juxtaposition.

A wide range of tastes here for certain

It is ironic of course because a vide grenier sale is usually put on by the local PTA or a church group as a village fundraiser. The moms sell snacks and sandwiches at the local “Salle des Fetes” (community center) while the dads direct traffic and parking.Yet for all this wholesomeness just a few minutes into a grenier you begin to notice the odd stuff.  

Lawrence and Florence of Arabia I suppose

Usually a grenier will fill an entire village center with tables as far as the eye can see down every street. There are piles high with stacks of old books, mountains of old clothes, boxes of old vinyl records, CDs and DVDs, old car parts, cartons of electrical wiring bits, used kitchenware, big wooden boards of pin and badge collections as well as display cases of coins.

A Barbie anyone?

But there’s no order to the grenier. No one seems to feel the need to put clothing sellers in one area and record sellers in another. It would probably be too hard anyway as each seller’s table is a hodgepodge of stuff with lots of different kinds of things to sell.It is like stepping into the largest open air junk shop imaginable enhanced with wine and baguettes. 

The noir side of Noir.

So there I am at a grenier on the lookout for the provocative stuff, the subtle stuff that goes beyond the piles of sexy lingerie. That doesn’t interest me, actually I’m a little put off at the thought of buying someone’s used risqué undies for the one I love. 

As you can see from the photos my search went pretty well. 

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 3.8: A Day in Sète, the “Venice of the Languedoc.”

Someone wrote once that Sète “smells of fish.” Ptolemy mentioned the town around 75 A.D and he didn’t seem to notice that. But Sète's never smelled of fish when I’ve been there, just a delightful hint of salt in the air from the sea that surrounds the town. 

Sète’s has a unique location, nestled up against the 577 foot (176 meters) high Mount Saint Clair and bordered on one side by the Mediterranean and on the other by the Bassin de Thau a very large, salt water lake.  

 These elements make for a strikingly beautiful setting. Mt. St. Clair stands out high above the nearby landscape that it can be seen from miles off the coast, making it a convenient coastal landmark for sailors for centuries. Today the mountain is home to a number of restaurants and hotels with spectacular views of the harbor and sea. 

The Bassin de Thau is filled with thousands of crisscrossed mussels and oysters growing racks. It is separated from the Med by an eight mile (13.5 km) long sand spit full of sandy beaches and bird filled marshlands. In the past the beaches were packed in summer with campers from all over Europe. Their parked camper vans often blocked traffic but today a newly completed parking and traffic revision has eased the problem. 

Sète is the largest French fishing port on the Med and is called the “Venice of the Languedoc” because of the system of canals that thread through the town. Bridges cross these waterways and while not as Renaissance pretty as Venice, it still makes Sète a lovely water loving city. It’s also the southern end of the Canal du Midi, a manmade waterway that goes all the way through France to Bordeaux and the Atlantic. The Canal is a favorite of boaters who kayak or rent barges to take leisurely up the Canal on a summer vacation. 

The other day we went to Sète for its annual used book fair. Our first surprise  there was parking our car in the underground or rather under the canal lot that was literally cut out of the rock beneath one of the city’s waterways. We drove down through what looked like a cave tunnel. Happily like other parking facilities in France, calming classical music was piped in to the chambers of the lot to reassure drivers that all was okay.  

We were parked under this lady's dog.

 

The used book fair is a modest affair held in the Place d la Republique, a small park with the Mayor’s office on one side of it. Across the park is the main office of France’s second major political party, the Parti Socialiste. I guess the arrangement allows the Socialists to keep an eye on the Mayor. 

The book fair was a small and easy event. A dozen folding tables were set up under the trees and books were laid out in piles. The texts ran from manga Japanese comics to 16^th century travel guides.

Browsing the book fair's offerings

 We went through the fair but didn’t find anything special to buy. So we next set off to Sète’s “Les Halles.” Like the Halles found in most large French towns and cities this is a covered produce market with a high glass and iron framed ceiling. Inside the Halles are the usual vegetable and meat stand as well as a number of lively restaurants. 

The sports bar in Les Halles

The owner of Chez Leon Louis on les Halles

In Les Halles we got some olive oil and preserved fruits and then headed out for lunch. Despite it being a late fall Sunday the streets were full of people. Many were shopping others just strolling along the canals. 

We walked a block down from Les Halles to the Quai de la Resistance along one of the main canals. We chose a small sidewalk place from the four or five restaurants that were open. As we entered the place, a waiter dashed by us with a huge tray of clams and oysters perched on his shoulder, evidently he was off to deliver a take-out order. We took a seat under a large tent like canopy facing the restaurant so we could watch the owner standing one side of the sidewalk shucking oysters. He worked calmly and meticulously but always stopped for a minute to greet and chat with passersby. He seemed to know everyone on the street.  

For me the treat is not oysters but the local mussels. I ordered a bucket of moules (mussels) in a light cream sauce that was incredibly fresh and tasty. One of my favorite things about living here in Mediterranean France is access to totally fresh, locally caught seafood. Especially mussels, that are petite and delicate and about a third the size of the monsters mussels (read older and tougher) we’d get back in the Pacific Northwest. 

Finishing lunch and our “demi piche”, half pitcher, of rosé we got up and strolled along the Quai. The whole meal for two us came to under 20 euros.

About a block from the restaurant we came upon “La Biscuiterie, Sucré & Salé. It’s a new shop that’s only been open for a few months and it was doing a lively business. Sucré & Salé bakes and sells only biscuits and Madeleine cakes. 

Seemingly simple things you’d think, but they make these two humble cakes something of a culinary art form. They have Madeleine cakes flavored with lemon, with apricot, pistachio, walnut, olive oil, spice, honey, chocolate and more. And the biscuits receive the same treatment spiced with everything from paprika to Provençal herbs.

The two young couples that run the place are taking Proust’s humble Madeleine and improvising on it in a most delightful way. 

Their whole presentation is whimsical and most theatrical.

Naturally we loaded up on cakes which made for a sweet way to end a very pleasant day in the Sud de France.

Sud de France 3.7: Puimisson Village Life

We were driving from our small village of Puimisson to Saint-Genies, the next one over, and we had turned a corner scaring the birds that were eating in the vineyards with the noise of our car. The birds exploded into the air, rising up in the thousands, darkening the sky and setting it in motion. The sound of flapping wings filled the air. It was nothing I had ever seen in America. I grabbed my camera but by the time I got a shot off they had mostly settled down again. This photo hardly does the moment justice.

Traveling the single lane country roads of France in autumn you wind your way through hectares of grape vines that have burst into the most astonishing reds and oranges, browns and yellows. Who knew that the leaves of different varieties of grapes would turn different colors? 

Different grape varieties, different colors

Who knew how simply beautiful it would be?
 

Later sitting in a bar, still dazzled by the vineyards, I thought about our move to France, life, the universe and everything.

I turned 65 earlier this year and had a late life crisis. I felt that I wanted things to be different. Easier perhaps or just what’s a good word?--gentler? We had been to the South of France before and decided that if we were ever going to have the good life we wanted, we needed to move here.

Life in America had grown increasingly expensive and brutal. For example although we lived in an idyllic setting it the Northwest surrounded by big trees, deer and friendly neighbors. Neighbors who were nice enough but had big dogs and were armed to the teeth—a good friend had a loaded Uzi he enjoy showing around to folks. These were hard people who didn’t laugh much. They had money and instead of feeling secure they were paranoid.

And we had grown tired of the rat race that was all about more money, more stuff and more more. The striving for more reminds me of a scene from the movie “Key Largo.” At one point good guy, sailboat captain Humphrey Bogart asks bad guy gangster Edward G. Robinson what he wants.

Robinson thinks for a minute and says, “More.”

Bogart replies, “More what?”

Johnny Rocco just wants more

Robinson pauses and then in an annoyed voice responds, “I don’t know. Just more.”

That goes right to the heart of America. What do Americans want? More? More of what? Who knows, just more.  More cars, more homes, more money more home theaters.That’s the big difference here in Sud de France. 

Our village has a bar, a bakery, a butcher and a tabac. And it is sufficient. Villagers don’t want more shops in the middle of town. These few shops and the local winery, provide them the basics of daily French life. There’s a supermarket a couple of miles away and the big city of Beziers is twenty minutes away so it’s not that people don’t have access to stuff.

It’s just that they don’t equate how much you have with how well you live.

Our rental village house has a little kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a terrace that overlooks a vineyard filled valley. It is perhaps 700 square feet of living space. It plenty of room for us and our cat and one we use one bedroom mostly for storage. It is a great place to have as a home base and to go out and photograph and write. 

That’s the trick to the French good life for me I think. Getting to that place where you have enough, where you turn off the “more” machine and it’s just okay.

Hanging out Sud De France style

Sud de France 3.7: American Politics as Kabuki Theater

It’s rather pleasant today here in the South of France, partly cloudy with temperatures around 60F. Lovely weather that hardly feels like the end of fall to a Northern bred North American. Yesterday was November 1^st, All Saints (Toussaints) Day and as in many Catholic countries it’s a day to go to the cemetery and remember those who have passed. 

But that was yesterday and today is America’s midterm elections. The date got me thinking about politics and how I grew up in politics. 

My dad was a district “captain” for our neighborhood in the Bronx. All Saints Day was often the day before Election Day, we didn’t go to the cemetery to visit the dead, instead visited the living-the electorate.  My dad would drive his 1948 black Pontiac sedan slowly though the neighborhood, flashing the car lights and honking the horn and I’d pass out little voter choice cards to anyone within arm’s reach. The cards urged people to vote for the Democratic Party the next day. Yes, in those days you voted for the party and not simply for the candidate. The total cost of a Congressional campaign was a few hundred dollars for the cards. 

But what the hell, the Congressman and other elected officials were people you knew. They’d turn up at weddings and funerals and you knew them by their first names. Who needed to see them in a campaign ad on a Black and White TV set?

Well, I’m rather glad to be far away from America’s political kabuki theater and 24/7 news cycle coverage. It’s sad that people have to vote for people they hardly know on the basis of bizarre TV ads. I mean how believable is an ad that says “vote for Tom Brown or the world will end and the Muslims will impose Sharia law.” 

In New York the political parties understood real grassroots politics. You supported the people in your District. All politics was local. At Thanksgiving and Christmas we’d fill the Pontiac up with turkeys bought by the local Democratic “club” and deliver them to neighbors who were having hard times. I even came to believe that helping a neighbor was a really good kind of political corruption.

Since those days in New York I’ve worked on a lot of campaigns as a photographer and over the years watched politics change. I discovered that no one who got elected to office ever became poorer. A shabbily dressed “man of the people” would inevitable turn into a Brooks Brothers suit in a few months.

Part of it is about the power relationship. Campaigners want your vote. They will kiss a baby’s ass and promise two kitchens in every house. They will swear to throw out the rascals- you name ‘em- and clean up government.

The 2008 Campaign got people excited but now they've lost heart.

 Anything, just please, please vote for me. They will stand on street corners and shake hands until their hand’s ready to fall off. Once in office though the situation flips. (And trust me despite any of pledges of the TEA party or the left this is how it will be.) The people who were begged for their vote have to sign up to see their representative. And if you are lucky enough to get to see the elected one you discover that they can’t do much for you. 

“Well you know that just how things are,” they say or, “I’ll see if one of my people can help you.”

It’s all a kabuki theater now with grotesque figures in painted masks playing out a well rehearsed script, feigning deep feelings and wildly gesturing and it’s successful because it works on that cool medium of TV. A medium that needs big gestures and sound bites. 

On the Right and Left, American politicians have lost touch with their own communities. I’ve seen it happen to Republicans and Democrats. The cheerful newsletter of accomplishment has replaced the presence of an actual person.

Maybe things would be better if politicians were required to attend constituents’ weddings and funerals or to deliver turkeys at Thanksgiving to families in need or every once in a while to sit with a foreclosed family as their stuff is thrown out on a sidewalk.

At least the French are cynical about politics and have little expectation that anything a politician does will improve things. That’s why they go out into the streets.

A humble patriotic gesture

And it’s no wonder Americans are angry. They’ve been left behind. Today no matter who wins--Democrat, Republican, Progressive or TEA party-- the kabuki play which is bigger than individuals and go on. Same show, same costumes, just with a different cast. 

P.S. The results are in and the Republicans have"taken" the House and some Senate seats. I'll bet that an awful lot of those 'rebel' TEA party types will get their Brooks Brother suits and their professional staffs and their media training in no time at all. 

As G. Flaubert wrote, "Stupidity is unshakable." Damn right.

  

text and photos ©2010 Steve Meltzer