Le Sud de France 5.9: Searching for The Moon and Molière.

Martine

Wednesday night, after sundown, with tripod on shoulder, we set out to “chercher la lune.” Tonight there was to be a spectacular  total eclipse of the moon and I hoped to get pictures of it. However as we crossed the village square, we ran into a bunch of our friends who were sitting outside the village café finishing their dinners. After ten minutes of kiss-kiss-kiss and many “bon soir,” I explained our mission to them. 


Immediately, several  looked up into the sky to find the moon. As locals, they felt certain they could show us, we Americans, where their moon was on this special night. But there was no moon to be seen. Everyone looked and looked, and then pondered this mystery. A small boy was even sent off to see if perhaps the moon was hiding behind a building or tree. But he found no moon either, anywhere.


A great deal of conversation followed this strangeness as it was not like the moon to disappear like this on important nights. Our discussion lasted late into the night and despite the talk, there still was no moon to be seen. It turned out, we were told later, that the moon was low in the sky and visible only from the vineyards beyond town.  


Setting out to find the moon and ending up  discussing its loss instead, is the kind of  redirection of intent that often happens in Molière's plays. Which made it a fitting way to end a week of music and theater productions that made up the Molière Festival in Pézenas. 

I hadn’t read much Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) before we got to France and I hadn’t understood his importance as one of the major figures in French literature and theater.

the Place Gambetta

We live near the town of Pezenas in the Herault and it just so happened that in the middle of the 17^th century, Molière and his touring company, l’Illustre Théâtre, stayed in here, under the protection and support of the Prince of Conti--Louis XIV’s governor of the Languedoc. Molière famously spent his time performing his works and seducing the noble ladies of the region.

A couple of hundred years later, Pézenas realized the treasure it had in that visit and today the town has a Hôtel Molière, a Brasserie Molière, a Restaurant Molière, the Caveau Molière (with its Vins Molière) and the Molière Festival.

Martine and Sganarelle

That would be a lot of Molière, perhaps too much, if not for the fact that he is a great, funny playwright and his plays are wild combinations of broad slapstick comedy--with real slapsticks--and very complex language. His goal was to undermine received wisdom and opinion and poke fun at the pompous. His plays have aged well and I think still resonate today as powerfully as when he wrote them.

The photos with this post are from Molière’s “The Doctor in Spite of Himself” (le médecin malgré lui) as performed by the maniacs of the Théâtre de l’éventail (the theater of the hand fan) of Orleans. The performance was held outdoors in the Place Gambetta in the heart of Pézenas' historic district of Renaissance era buildings.

looking for a doctor

The play starts with the protagonist, Sganarelle beating his wife Martine, with a slapstick. Two men accost him and berate him for this, but then things are soon stood on their head when Martine objects to the men's presence and tells them to mind their own business. She says that she just might enjoy a beating every once in a while and who are they  to interfere?

Then it turns out that the men are on a mission to find a doctor for a  rich man who will pay well for one’s services. Martine, seeing a chance to make some money tells them that Sganarelle is a doctor. Sganarelle is the cunning, over-the-top country wiseass, who ultimately gets the best of all the other characters, and it was role Molière always took on for himself.

Sganarelle find a doctor’s costume--a black smock, white ruffle collar and pointed black hat--and goes off to be a doctor. He soon finds that he likes being a doctor, saying at one point, that being a doctor is the best job ever. The main reason is that if the patient lives the doctor is hailed and praised, and if the patient dies, the doctor simply shrugs and says that it is the will of God, in either case the doctor gets paid. Hmm…sounds a lot like modern medical care.

Sganarelle and his patient

the beautiful wet nurse

Later, when he asks a beautiful wet nurse to undress for an “examination,” her husband objects and Sganarelle says to him derisively, “How dare you contradict a doctor’s commands!” Even his lack of any sort of medial knowledge doesn’t stop him. He tells one patient that the heart is on the right side of the body and the liver on the left. When the patient points out that he has it backwards, Sganarelle’s response is the haughty and elegant line, “We have changed all that!” (Nous avons changé tout cela.)

Molière is anti-establishment and sarcastic, making fun of religion, the aristocracy, the peasantry, and anyone else he could squeeze into a play. I like that and I enjoy feeling Molière’s presence around me here in the Midi, in the richness of the language and the way people play with it. He's also alive in the cynical attitude people have towards poseurs and pomposity.

Next year, the Molière Festival will take place again  in Pézenas in early June and I have been asked to create an exhibition of the photos in this post--and others from the Festival—for the event. So, despite misplacing the moon, we found Molière; which I think made for a very good week in le Sud de France.

Nous avons changé tout cela!

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Le Sud de France 5.7: Kafka’s Radar

Over the last 30 years, the number of fatalities on the world’s highways has gone down thanks to safer cars and new technologies. But, when there was a recent uptick in the numbers of road deaths in France, the suave and sleek French Prime Minister, François Fillon came up with a plan he said would help to increase highway safety and solve the budget crisis at the same time, well sort of.

Fillon's traffic proposal is simplicity itself and incredulous to any outside observer. The “plan” consists of putting thousands of additional radar units on the country’s roads and then, taking down all the existing radar warning signs and forbidding the use of radar detectors and GPS radar detectors in vehicles. Fillon is an upper class dandy with a huge ego, which makes him the perfect type to be the head of a tone deaf government. He is France’s answer to that very tan John Boehner, America’s Republican Speaker of the House, and it's just the sort of craziness Boehner would love.

In the looking glass world of Kafka's Radar, Fillon wants to slow down traffic  by removing some of the very things that slow down traffic. In a country where to begin with there's a lack of actual speed limit signs, the best way to describe this plan is that it is one gigantic, extortion scheme, a"sting" operation, aimed at making money off the nation's drivers--good and bad alike.

To support his insane idea, Fillon maintains that the decades long decrease in highway fatalities is due to radar ticketing. In America, where highway deaths have also decreased, sane people point to studies that show that better auto design (crumple zones and air bags), mandatory seat belt use, lower speed limits and public awareness programs, like "Stay Alive, Drive 55", are the reasons for the decrease. 

Robbie the Radar Bandit

France’s radar based highway “safety” system is simply highway robbery carried out by a gang of mechanical bandits that the French populace rightly calls, "le Racket." That's one of the reasons the Prime Minister, pointedly avoids speaking about how very profitable the French radar business is.

What sort of money are we talking about? At just one radar site in the North of France, Robbie the Radar and his pals (who are noted for their errors and malfunctions) produced nearly 170,000 speeding tickets in last year, that’s nearly 500 tickets a day! The fine for these tickets is between $75 and $225 which means that this one location brings in something like 15 million Euros ($21 million) a year—and it’s just one of thousands of radars around the country. Here in the Herault, Robbie's southern brethren earn about $14 million a year. 

I speak about this subject from personal experience, because, I got one of these traffic infractions the other day and it was incomprehensible to me how it related to traffic safety. Tickets are mailed to violators and I got mine a mere three months after the date of the infraction. It said that I was speeding somewhere on the Agde-Marseillan road doing 58 in a 50 zone. 58! Zut alors, that’s a hair raising 35 miles per hour somewhere on a road in the middle of nowhere!

I stared at the ticket and realized I couldn’t even remember where exactly I was three months ago, much less that I was “speeding”at 35. I was defenseless to defend myself. The machines had spoken. It was like something out of Franz Kafka's novel, The Trial, where the protagonist, Joseph K, never knows exactly what he is accused of and or how to fight back. 


So like most people I went online to pay the 144 euros ($225 USD) fine. That’s where I saw more proof that the radar system is truly a golden goose. The website is very professional looking and it’s in French, as well as perfect English. Excusez-moi? English?

Goodbye Warning Signs

Looks likes someone was expecting a lot of English speaking speeders to be paying tickets here. The site takes your credit card information and proceeds along without a word about traffic safety and it is all very efficient. It is the only government entity in all of France that is actually efficient.

There is opposition to Fillon. One group against the new law told the press that the effect of Kafka’s radar and its draconian fines, to date, has been to produce an estimated 300,000 drivers on France’s roads without valid licenses or car insurance. Working people can’t afford to pay repeated 144 Euro tickets and often lose their licenses. When people have to drive to work, if you take away their licenses they simply go "under the radar" and drive anyway, making the roads even more unsafe.

The new radar law hasn’t been passed yet and there was an outcry against it by some fifty of Fillon’s fellow UMP ministers who, rightly, fear it will cost them votes in next year’s elections (please see Update at the end of this post). But "Le Racket" exists because it makes too much money and dealing with the real causes, high speeds and alcohol abuse, are both costly and politically risky. 

Speed is the big issue, The legal speed limit on France’s highways is 130 kilometers per hour, that’s 80 miles per hour or 15-25 miles per hour faster than American highways. With a posted speed limit of 80 mph traffic moves a lot faster than that. Cars pass each other at 85-90 mph (150 kph) and the real speeders are often doing a breathtaking 100 mph (160 kph) or more. 


You’d think that someone in the government could make the connection between tiny, little Euro-cars doing a 100 mph and the high death rate?

But talking about lowering the highway speed limit and you feel that you are with a bunch of six year old children. Immediately everyone points to the Germans, who have no highway speed limits on many roads and they say  “Nah, nah, I’m not going to slow down if those German  don’t have to.” Truth is that most German roads have a top speed of 120kph-10kph slower than France.

Just lowering the speed limit to 110 kph (66mph) would save lives.

Speed kills all by itself but  here, as elsewhere, it is aided and abetted by alcohol use. As the economy of France continues to weaken, with more layoffs and factory closings, not surprisingly, there's more alcohol consumed and more high speed auto-suicides. 


Radar speed traps don’t do anything about these problems. After all, a dead drunk speeder won't be paying the 144 Euro ticket they get in the mail two or three months after their demise. Stopping them in the act, you might make a few bucks and save a few lives.

France’s gendarmes, to their credit, work very hard at trying to control drunk driving. On weekends there are hundreds of nighttime traffic checkpoints all around the nation. But police are costly and increasing their numbers in the face of tight national budgets is unlikely. And while you always see State Troopers on America’s highways, which for my money is the best speeding deterrent possible as just their presence slows traffic down, you rarely if ever see a gendarme patrolling a French highway. A real way to reduce highway fatalities would be to have more cops to stop speeders before they kill themselves and others.


There is still some small hope that sanity will prevail and this law won’t be passed. But both Fillon and his boss, President Sarkozy, are adamant that it will. They are snarly men who appear to shut out things they don't want to hear, like any opposition. Fillon has gone a little crazy and begun spouting things like “traffic safety is a sacred trust,” "we will stand firm, "and “there can be no debate.” He has personalized the issue to the point that it has become a simple case of "I am right and everyone else is wrong."

 Bon chance France!


Update May 25: The headlines of this morning's newspapers screamed, "Victory over the Government." This is bizarre because it was actually 80 ministers of the government ruling UMP (many from the Sud de France) as well as the Minister of the Interior who came together and shut down M. Fillon's folly. Radar warning signs will remain up and/or replaced by hundreds of "teaching" signs. Teaching signs are those radar devices that indicate your speed and flash SLOW DOWN if you are over the speed limit. 


It doesn't solve any of the real problems of traffic safety but it least it is a step away from an automated totalitarian state and one that at least addresses real world situations. 

Le Sud de France 5.5 : The Chateau Abbaye de Cassan.

Goats

It is Spring in the Herault and the grapes are growing, the goats are kidding and the karaokes are singing. On the bright side of life, Carla Bruni is complaining that Sarko is ruining her "career" but on the downside of things, it was a rainy Easter weekend. We were determined to get out of the house and since it was a dark and stormy day, we had to look for something to do indoors. 

Fresh Ginger root at the foire

Turns out that just up the road from us, in a very old chateau, there was a “foire de saveurs et odeurs.” That is French for a “flavors and smells fair” which sounds much tastier to my ears than the American “food fair.” It was held at the Chateau Abbaye de Cassan near the town of Roujan and we decided that it’s just the thing we needed to brighten up a gray day.

Charlemagne

History envelops and embraces you in the Herault and the Chateau-Abbaye is a good example of that. Back in the first to fourth centuries the Languedoc was called “Septimania,” which does not refer to an XXX rated movie “Seven Maniacs,” but rather to veterans of the Roman VIIth Legion who conquered most of this area and settled here. They took possession of the Languedoc from Narbonne to the Rhone. The Chateau site was originally a  Gallo-Roman outpost dating from about the 4^th century  and then in 805 A.D Charlemagne built a priory on the site. A Romanesque church was added in the 12^th century and in the 18^th century, years before the American revolution, a grand chateau was constructed. For a thousand years, the Abbaye priory was one of the most celebrated church structures in the region and a stopping off place for travelers making the long and arduous pilgrimage to Saint-Jacques de Compestelle in northern Spain.

The Abbaye de Cassan today is a huge estate set amidst vineyards and a working winery. The Chateau has rooms available for meetings, concerts and events like weddings, and there are  plans for creating a full scale corporate retreat and conference center that are still several million Euros in the future. 

Arriving at the Abbaye, there wasn’t much to see from the parking lot, just an old wall and an sign with an arrow marked “Visitors” that led to a gift shop. Eek, a gift shop before you’ve even seen the place, that's very American. Slipping through the gift shop, avoiding the tourist ware, we ended up in a large tree shaded courtyard and a path to the Chateau.

The outer corridor

So far, this didn’t seem like much but entering the Chateau you suddenly feel as though you have stepped into the unfinished set for a Three Musketeers movie. What we hadn’t realized was that the parking lot and the gift shop were tucked into the backside of the building. Seen from the front the chateau’s a different story. It is a huge building with long, curtained corridors stretching its entire length. Nestled within the corridors are several large rooms that were the living quarters.

The dining room

In the wide corridor that the path led there were a dozen or more stalls selling artisanal food products. This was the heart of the “saveurs and odeurs” and in the middle of the corridor we found the stall of “Roses et Délices.”

Created by a couple from Massac Hautes-Corbières named, Bernard and Marie-Laurence Million (honestly), "Roses et Délices" is a line of handcrafted confits (jellies) and syrups made from flower petals--the petals of thyme, rosemary, mint, violets and roses. These are the most delicately flavored jellies and syrups imaginable. Just a tiny spoonful on a piece of chévre or some ice cream, explodes with the flavor of the flowers. M Million suggested with obvious pride that the rose confit when sprinkled on foie gras or duck breast is simply spectacular. Marie-Laurence added that a few drops of the syrup added white wine makes a heavenly “kir” and mixed with champagne produces the most “royal” of all “royal kirs.” To learn more about the Million’s petal jellies and syrups take a look at their website at www.RosesetDelices.fr.

These handmade chocolate was sold at the foire!

Flower petal jelly and syrup are just one of the incredible culinary treats that keep popping around the Herault. Producing artisanal food in this part of France reminds me of home beer brewers in the States. They are passionate and committed; and only a little crazy.

The Romanesque church

Walking on we came to the crafts fair. It was set-up in the Abbaye’s 12^th century church. As you can see from the photo, with it’s high arched, Romanesque ceiling, it was the most extraordinary venue for a crafts show imaginable.

A 12th century fresco in the abbey

Finally, we got to the table set up with a display of the Chateau’s own wine named fittingly enough, "Chateau-Abbaye de Cassan." 

This fortified tower looks like a chess "rook"

The Chateau winery produces several wines that are blends of different grapes, like syrah, Grenache, cabernet. Their least expensive wine is named “Le Jardin des Simples.” This name refers to a medieval herb garden. A more complex wine is called “Le Jardin de Labyrinthe" or the Garden of the Labryinth and above it in price (15 euros) and complexity is “Le Jardin de Songes” or “the Garden of Dreams.” I just love these wines' names, they are a lot classier than “Yellow Tail” or “Two Buck Chuck.”

And then there was a lovely rosé called “La Rosé de Madame de Brimont” which was made entirely of cinsault grapes--one of the most important local grape varieties in the Languedoc.

After tasting the rosé, one of the winemakers pulled us aside to tell us the story behind the wine's name. Madame de Brimont, was the beautiful mistress of the Prince de Conti who was the King's administrator for the l'Herault. His palace was in Pezenas some ten miles away and with a little string pulling he obtained the Chateau for his lover in the middle of the 18th century. Over the years she visited the Chateau and her prince often and, the wine guy went on, it is said that years after her death, Chateau servants would see her ghostly figure playing the piano in the Chateau salon.

At that moment, after rose petal jellies and rosé wine, standing in a haunted castle at a flavors and smells fair, it seemed to me that we could not have found a more perfect way to spend a rainy day in the Sud de France.

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Le Sud de France 5.4 : She Sings Hard for Her Honey.

Carla at work at her last job.

It has been a good week. The worst of the  Japanese reactor leaks has been sealed and in the local Canton elections, the l'Herault stayed firmly on the left, voting for the Parti Socialiste. 

However, the best news of the week was the announcement that Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s new album will not be issued this year.

Some commentators speculated that Carla’s disk was being held back so it could be released to coincide with the 2012 presidential election. Her husband’s center right party, the L’UMP (the acronym seems quite fitting--lump) didn’t do 

Vox Populi

well in the Canton elections, losing seats to the leftist Parti Socialiste (PS) and the far right National Front (FN). Some l’UMPers worry that in 2012, Sarkozy might not even make it into a second round runoff.

This concern explains in part France’s lead in creating a no-fly zone over Libya and sending troops to Ivory Coast. It is a George Bush moment that M Sarkozy wants to exploit, perhaps hoping to win reelection as a “wartime” President. However, as one opposition PS minister put it, Sarko’s domestic policies show that he has an “attitude d’autisme.” He is as politically tone deaf to his people as much as Ghaddifi and the other presidents-for-life he’s trying to oust from power.

The other reason Carla’s album may have been pulled from distribution is, well, Carla. To see what I mean, go to YouTube and search for Carla Bruni singing the Rolling Stones song “You’ve Got the Silver” (or try this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXQy8WoTyVw)

N'est pas Joan Baez

Before you go to YouTube though, why not make this viewing opportunity a fun party for friends? Invite folks over and mix up a big pitcher of “Pineapple TGV.” It’s easy and fun. Just peel a pineapple and cut it into ¾ inch chunks. Put these in a large pitcher with some ice. Next pour a bottle of vodka over the fruit. Serve cold.


The TGV is a great drink, fruity and smooth, that hits the nervous system like the bullet train it’s named after.

Now for the party game I'll call, “Oops. She did it again.” Have everybody sit around your laptop and watch Carla’s video. Each time she goes off key, misses the beat or simply loses her accompanist, take a big swig of TGV. By the end of the three minute and eight second video, no one will remain standing; she’s just that kind of an artist. 



If anyone survives “You’ve Got the Silver” move these hardy souls on to her brain damaging version of “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” 


Oh, the irony. If anyone has a right to sing the blues, it certainly must be the daughter of rich Italian parents, who after a career as a highly paid “fashion” model, became France’s First Madame. This girl sings from her heart, wherever it is, and from that imaginary time when nobody knew her and she was down and out.

The Real Deal

Bruni calls herself a “folk singer” although from the photo above, you can see she looks nothing like Joan Baez or Big Mama Thornton. Paris Hilton styles herself as a “rapper” (and a movie star) and both these women are self-deluded rich girls who, thanks to their money and their willingness to remove their clothing, have reached similar heights of celebrity.  

This new disk was going to be Bruni’s fourth album--which tells you a lot about the state of French music--and it’s stirred up a lot of bad feelings. The disk contains Mme BS’s version of the beloved “Douce France” by the late Georges Brassens. 


Brassens was born here in the Herault in Sete and is held in reverential esteem by the local population. Trying to be a true folk singer, Bruni sings this French tune in her native Italian. The center of the controversy is that Brassens was a leftist who would never have voted for Sarkozy and wrote the song during WWII. It is about the occupation and it is an anti-fascist piece. For those of you too young to remember, fascism is an Italian creation, so you probably shouldn’t sing this song in Italian.

Perhaps, without irony, the Sarkozys think that Carla singing Brassens will be a political masterstroke that will win over the hearts of French voters. However, it is hard to imagine what positive effect Mme BS singing this song badly could have on the campaign.

The Le Pens Performing Political Karaoke

Perhaps what it will do is drive even more voters into the warm, waiting arms of Marine Le Pen of the FN. Marine (soft “a” if you please) is a smiling, twice divorced, blonde who’s trying to re-position the FN as something other than the neo-Fascist, immigrant bashing party of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. To the best of my knowledge, Marine hasn't  posed nude like the First Madame, and that alone should get her more votes than Le Petit Prez. Zut alors!

I raise the issue of singing because it’s spring and there’s a lot of singing around our village. Many residents here have "Midi" accents that make spoken French sound almost as though it is being sung. The accent involves lots of rolled r’s and a lot of inflection. A simple word like “merci” becomes “mer SEE,” with the voice rising merrily around the “see.” This Southern accent also adds the syllable “ah” to all sorts of words. My name becomes “Steve-Vah,” baguette, “baguette-TAH,” Pezenas, Pezenas-ZAH and so on.

Music 101

With the warm weather, more people are out and about in the village and you hear them singing a lot. Just the other day, I came around a corner and found a group of moms standing outside the door of our Ecole Danse, softly singing the words to the music their daughters were dancing to inside.

It is this kind of experience that makes me wish that Carla and Nikko would spend some time down here so they can learn how important singing is and how much it holds people together. The Sarkozys might even get to like actual French life (not Parisian) and end up a lot less tone deaf to the needs of the real folk.

Hey! Sarkozys! You're invited to shower at our place.

Note: You can hear some of "Dolce Franca" on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbYErGTB0cA



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Le Sud de France 5.3: Home is Where They Break Your Heart.

Claude Michel is in his seventies, five feet tall and one of the few villagers who wears a jacket and tie when he goes out for a drink at our tiny bar. He is a sharp dressed man. He's also a former mayor of the village and a retired Captain in the French Foreign Legion where he received a Legion of Honor medal for his service in the brutal Algerian war. He came to the village thirty years ago.

He is a man out of another time and another world. When he meets a woman, he bows his head and kisses her hand. I'd never seen this done before and when he kissed my wife’s hand, I was startled. Then I watched him closely as he kissed another woman’s hand, and realized that the way he did made it a lovely gesture.

Today most women don’t expect to have their hands kissed, but Claude Michel’s method is as disarming as it is simple. He takes the woman’s hand, slowly lifts it up, so the woman has a moment to realize what is about to happen, and then he barely touches her hand with his lips. This gesture is an elegant sign of respect rather than of eroticism and most women seem comfortable with it.

Another one of the short men in the village is Liam Gonzales whose family, like half a million others, fled Franco’s Spain in 1939. They were the losers in the Spanish Civil War and they fled across the Pyrenees to seek asylum. Instead of sanctuary, the Vichy government put them in internment camps and then sent to the German ovens. A little over 100,000 avoided that fate by hiding in villages and in the hills. When WWII began many of them fought as part of the Maquis, the Spanish underground. The allies assured the Maquis that after Hitler they’d deal with Franco, but they broke that promise. Liam’s family and thousands of others were left stranded in the South of France. Many settled here in the Herault and I would guess that today about a third of our villagers have Spanish surnames.  

Liam’s first name is also the result of another war--the Napoleonic War of the 1800s-- when the British sent Irish troops to Spain as cannon fodder. Rather than face Bonaparte's cannons many deserted into the Pyrenees with Spanish ladies, the results were Spanish kids with names like Liam, Patrick, and Sean.

 

  The other night when we stopped at the bar for a drink, Claude Michel was there and after kissing my wife’s hand, he came over and shook mine vigorously. He held my hand with his right hand and my elbow with his left, which recognized immediately as the old politician’s hand-lock. 

I bought him a drink and he told me that he played piano and violin and that we should come over to his place for drinks one evening. I told him I played “American guitar” and he replied, “Ah, tu devr’apprendre à jouer de la guitare française, maintainent!” (Ah, you must learn to play French guitar, now.)


I struggle with my understanding of French but I realized that Claude Michel had just used the familiar “tu” for “you” instead of the formal “vous.” Tu is how family people and friends address each other. 

Paul has a guitar like mine

Just then, a big woman who had been talking to Liam, stood up and with a nod to Claude Michel, began to sing. She stood very straight and sang very slowly at first--and very loudly. The song she sang was about a terrible battle that took place near here in 1943 between resistance fighters and the Germans. It recalled the horror of the occupation and that dark night of the soul that the French bear for their collaboration with the Nazis. At this battle, the partisans were defeated, this is a song of loss and sorrow. Nonetheless, it is an uplifting song that urges listeners to carry on, to remember those who died, and to never give up hope. 

At its heart, it is an anti-war war song.  

As the woman sang the passion in the her voice grew and with each chorus, more people stood up and joined in; soon everyone was on their feet. Claude Michel was standing next to me, his back straight and stiff, his right arm waving in front of him. In the dim glow of the bar, I could that see his eyes were damp. Liam linked arms with him and the two rocked back and forth, and then Claude Michel reached out and took my arm and began rocking me in time to the music.

I stood there singing in French or at least trying to sound like I was singing in French, but I had no idea of the words I was singing. The music and the crowd just carried me along and soon enough I was singing at the top of my lungs. 

A strange thought struck me there as I sang. We Americans have no comparable songs of war, songs of remembrance with which to honor Americans who've died in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam. Without songs of sacrifice and remembrance I thought, we numb ourselves to war's madness and that makes it too easy to go war and to do it without feeling a thing.

In our small village bar, the sorrow and the passion of that awful moment in 1943 was alive again. I stood next to Claude Michel and I was sobbing too, not for the partisan’s losses, but I think for my own.

But this was not what I came to France for, I came here to take pretty pictures, eat cheese, and write funny blogs- not to dredge up old memories and open old wounds. Certainly, I didn’t come here to have my heart turned inside out by a bunch of semi-sloshed town folk in some hole-in-the-wall bar in the middle of nowhere.

Later as we left the bar, Liam patted me on the shoulder and tapped his heart with the palm of his hand. 

Above us, a bright crescent moon floated in a star-filled sky, lighting our way.

"Yeah,” I thought as we walked off, “home is where they break your heart.”  

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Le Sud de France 5.2: Me and My Magic Black Hat

N'est pas un chapeau noir!

Sebastian is a big guy like me, six foot tall and a bit on the chunky side. I met him at a party, where he lumbered in wearing a black “gardien” hat and carrying a guitar case. I had been asked to bring my guitar and seeing him, I realized that he was the other musician for the night. So I went up to him, and standing there eye to eye, introduced myself and said “C’est un beau chapeau.” He nodded slightly and said, “D’accord.”

Now I am not a hat guy. Never wore baseball caps or fedoras, certainly wouldn’t be caught "morte" in a beret on a bet. Nevertheless, the Midi spring was upon us and the sun was already bright and hard. Since I don’t like to wear sunglasses--they interfere with my photography-- a hat with a brim had possibilities; and there was something about Sebastian's that caught my fancy.

Cody's Coming!

A while ago, I wrote about Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show getting stranded here in France by a terrible winter storm. They ended up wintering about 60 miles from us in the Camargue, the beautiful, marshy Rhone delta that's full of flaming pink flamingos, big black bulls, and wild white horses. It’s the traditional home of the gardiens—French cattle ranchers--and of French gypsies.

During Bill’s sojourn, the gardiens fell in love with the cowboys--mad, passionate male love. They admired the Americans skills at ropin’, ridin’, and shootin' and soon, they were trying to be just like them. The cowboys, of course, fell hard for the French mademoiselles.  

A mademoiselle Gardien with her black hat.

The gardiens’ embrace of all things cowboy is still evident  in the Western tack shops of the Camargue, in town like Les Saintes- Maries-de-la-Mer where they sell American riding saddles, cowboy shirts (although made with colorful Provençal fabrics) and gardien hats. Sebastian is from the Camargue--he’s a French-Spaniard—so naturally, he wears a gardien hat modeled on the American cowboy’s Stetson.

Thinking about his hat, I knew that I needed one. Somehow, it just felt right. Unlike a beret, the gardien nicely expresses an American heritage with a French flair. It would make me stand out as an American who living here. C’est parfait!

Lee's the one

I asked Sebastian where I could get a hat locally and he directed me the Pézenas Saturday market where three days later, I stood in front of a stall full of rain caps, deerslayers, fedoras, flat caps, and berets. I spotted the “gardiens” in a in all sorts of sizes and colors and with a variety of decorative bands. I rummaged through the stack looking for a hat, in unknown territory, relying on “bon chance” to find me the right one.

I tried on a few and then picked up one that seemed a little different from the rest. I put it on and it fit as if it had been born on my head. It looked cool and rakish, making me feel a bit edgy, like Lee Van Cleef on his way to a shootout with Clint Eastwood. 

I bought the hat and strolled home through the market, little suspecting how the hat was going to change my life.

Later that day, I stopped at a supermarket to get some things for dinner and  I entered the store in my black gardien expecting to get a lot of stares. I usually do, as I am taller and bigger than most of the local French folk. However, no one even glanced at me. I walked passed them and they stared right through me. I had become invisible.

At the meat counter, when I asked for a 200-gram slice of dry sausage, the woman at the counter nodded and said, “Une pièce?” “Oui.” I replied. Now, usually when I speak French, people are polite but I can see them wince or cross their eyes at my pronunciation. Sometimes they’ll politely repeat what I said but say it correctly. This time there was no eye crossing and before I knew it, the woman handed me my sausage and I was off.

The Hotel Lacoste

That evening, we went to a gallery opening and I parked in a municipal lot in Pézenas. I went to pay for a time ticket and was about to put money in the machine when a voice behind me rang out, “Monsieur, attendez!”

I turned to see a forty-something brunette in a Mercedes waving her arm at me. In her hand was a piece of paper. It turned out to be her unexpired parking ticket, which she was giving me to use. I took it, she smiled, I smiled and she drove off. Was this luck, I wondered, or the work of the hat?

The opening was in Hótel de Lacoste, one of the oldest buildings in Pézenas and the site of newly discovered ritual baths, once used by Jews during the Renaissance. The gallery itself-- Galerie Anne Cros--is an airy modern space with large windows that overlook a courtyard and gardens.

A black beret--boring

Climbing a long curved stairway, we entered the gallery where were immediately surrounded by a curious crowd. The gallery owner Mme.Cros came over and introduced herself as the gallery's co-owner joined us, vigorously shaking my hand. The two of them chatted us up like long lost relations. When they turned to talk to others, new people came over and struck up conversations. In fact, people came over all evening and several  made a point of praising my hat.

Later looking around the gallery I noticed another man wearing a black hat and beyond him a man with a straw hat and beyond him another with a beret. However, no one seemed interested in them. Very curious.

The show was an exhibition of paintings by a French artist, Christine Trouillet. Her work is delightful with a strong use of color and the blending of abstract and representational elements. I really liked her work, as did the other opening attendees. 

When Christine got to the gallery, I corralled her for a few photos for this blog. In my fine French black gardien hat, I naturally had the authority to do that.

Christine Trouillet

Moi et mon chapeau noir.

Today my black hat and I are still getting to know each other.

It’s finding its way around my head and practicing it’s grip to prevent flying off in the  winds that roar through the Herault.

In fact, while I was adjusting it I walked by our café and Therese the owner waved at me and shouted, “Eh, Steve! Mr.Cool. OK!”


Clearly, the hat makes the man.

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