Game nights

Instead of those languid summer days we had in Provence the past few summers or that I seem to remember from my own childhood, I've had an exceptionally full June and July.  My teaching schedule is much lighter and my kids are out of school, but those same kids seem to have more activities than ever, plus we had a French exchange student for a few weeks.  So, the food and organizational demands on this household have been much greater than ever before.  That said, over the past weekends, we haven't done anything too much out of the ordinary for a summer spent in the U.S.: some swimming, some shopping, some fishing, a summer solstice festival day in town, a World Cup and birthday party, a day trip to Mt. Rainier, and a 4th of July weekend on Hood Canal.  From our visitor's perspective, several of the activities were probably no different from the ones he and his family would participate in at home, such as the various summer festivals and day trips.

The big difference though is in the weekday activities this summer, especially the scheduled kids' activities that persist year-round in the U.S. In France, music lessons and sports trainings are on hiatus for the summer so the weekdays are much, much quieter.  Being inner city dwellers the past few summers in France, our only real recreational options on foot during the day were to the neighborhood pools or parks, which weren't that attractive, to be honest.  There wasn't much to do at the parks in the broiling heat, and the pool area wasn't even properly shaded.  (This summer, that same pool in Aix is closed for renovations, which I really find to be strange timing!  See my blogger friend's post on this at Aixcentric.com.)   Here in the U.S., we easily fill each summer weekday and evening with sports camps, trainings, music lessons, games and competitions.  Just this week, I've already driven a carpool to soccer camp, am attending two evening swim meets, and am sending a child off to a five day national soccer tournament in North Carolina. I am hoping to fit in a water aerobics class or two for myself, make some raspberry jam, and get to the grocery store again, before I collapse on the weekend!

Apparently, our U.S. style summer did not overwhelm our exchange student like I thought it might; his father reported that his son arrived home to Marseille this past weekend radiant and 'very pleased' by his visit to the U.S.  I think that our activity level here in the U.S. does appeal to many: we just don't sit still much around here. (I've commented earlier on my quieter and more reflective life in France: En famille Oct.2013, Un été en Provence Aug. 2013 )  Even unscheduled activities seem to be more engaging or involved here: musical jam sessions between the boys (our guest brought his saxophone, one of my sons plays piano and guitar) became recording sessions and mini jazz concerts for the rest of us, casual fishing off a dock became a game of how many can you catch, the lighting of an enormous pile of safe and sane fireworks (the only kind I buy) morphed into a late night teen campfire circle, and the pile of board games in our basement led to a few game nights à la façon Américaine.  The fireworks and the game nights were especially novel to our guest because such fireworks are interdict in France and playing board games en famille is just not a common activity.  Both ended up being great ways for our guest to practice English and for us to share how we spend our time here, in this family, in this community, in this society.  And that is what a cultural exchange is all about.

Les feuilles mortes

The season of les feuilles mortes (dead leaves, or autumn leaves) is suddenly upon us, even in Provence where as recently as this past Saturday, we were swimming in the Med and attending some football 'friendlies' along the still hot French Riviera.  By the next day though, I noticed that leaves were falling and floating, slowly, but inevitably, to the ground.

A similar theme, of inevitability and floating leaves, or rather, dollar bills, appeared in a blog post by a Seattle Times writer last week (see Guzman "Are wallets on their way out?" The Seattle Times, Sept. 7, 2013).  The post was about how cash, and the wallets in which we carry it, are both becoming less necessary, maybe even obsolete, as we rely more and more on credit cards, automatic payments, and our smartphones, rather than hard currency.  I haven't been in the U.S. in over two years so I am not sure about the demise of U.S. bucks. Certainly here in France, online bill paying, barcodes, and the bancaire (debit card with a chip)  that I carry means I can easily shop in most large stores, buy gas, order a train ticket online or at an automatic machine, and run through an autoroute toll booth much more quickly than I could with cash.  (Sometimes, the automated payment systems seem less than efficient, as I pointed out last August in Les files d'attente.)  L'espèces (cash) though is still used widely in France, especially monnaie (change).  After all, the single euro unit is a coin, not a paper bill.  Preparing for that, I had invested in a new wallet with a large coin compartment before coming here.  The wallet was a good investment; it carries the requisite personal identification and the copious change that I go through very quickly, particularly with our near daily baguette purchases (80 to 95 centîmes each, so that's a euro coin each time) and my biweekly or sometimes daily produce market purchases which range from 3-12 euros each time.  I also use change at some French highway toll booths where special cash baskets accept payments of tolls of less than a few euros. You just throw the coins in! Interestingly and archaically, I have a chequier (checkbook) here too, as the French still use them.  (Are they the last ones in Europe to do so?!)  I still have to write checks to the boys' school, for lunch fees, and for sports' fees, and I wrote two tax payments to the government, by check, which were reimbursed by check as well.  (Our other French bills are paid online, like we do in the U.S.)  Paper money is still necessary here also; a blogger friend recently posted about on-the-spot cash fines throughout the EU for some traffic infractions (see Speeding in Spain on Aixcentric.com, 9 Sept. 2013).  It's always a good idea to have some cash on hand for those speeding and other emergencies.  (This is true in the U.S. too: I think about the time my family had just arrived from Europe after a vacation and was stranded at a horrible run-down airport hotel in New York around midnight.  I somehow managed to convince a passing shuttle driver to take us away from there to a better lodging, and thankfully we had some cash to pay him, even though, embarrassingly, it was not in U.S. currency.)

I suggest that hard currency will continue to be important despite the prognostications.  For one, it remains the means by which we purchase, sell, and exchange goods and services with many people, such as the market vendors I visit each week in Aix en Provence.  And, besides its obvious instrumental value, currency is also a social artifact, one that is closely tied to a people's values and identities. Societies spend time (and money!) designing currency that reflects their social values and origins.  (We can see this in the old coin collections of national and historical museums as well.)  For example, Americans continue to proclaim their Godly trust in and on their money, while the face of the long-living Queen Elizabeth graces the many different currencies of her current and former dominions.  Even in Europe where the European monetary union has submerged numerous national currencies into a shared regional one, the member countries reflect their national identities by taking turns designing the backs of euro coins (above, starting clockwise from the top left, 2 and 1 euro coins designed by France, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Spain).  For many of the members, a kind of nostalgia seems to persist for their old currencies which keeps alive some aspects of social identity.  For example, in France, prices are often still listed in francs and euros and the names of even older currencies like sous (from the time of Charlemagne) are used in casual speech to refer to money or cash.  These currencies may have gone the way of les feuilles mortes, but they remain important symbols of French identity and daily life.

And on that nostalgic note, here's a youtube clip of Serge Gainsbourg's lovely, melancholic song Le chanson de Prévert inspired by Jacques Prévert's poem about those fallen leaves of autumn.

Un été en Provence

One summer in Provence is often like any other; they seem to have a timeless quality about them.  The many old rituals that mark the beginning of summer here are one contributor to that sense, as I recounted a bit breathlessly last summer. (See L'estival, June 2012).  This year, the images presented in artistic and literary works, especially those by Provençal natives, have revealed other ways in which Provençal summers have eternal qualities.  For example, at the major two-part art exhibition in Aix and Marseille right now called Le Grand Atelier Du Midi, I saw scenes and portrayals of Provence by the painter Paul Cézanne, and others, that were astonishingly similar to sights we can see today even though they were painted up to 100 years ago--the gorgeous seashores and ports at Marseille or Cassis or Nice, and the hilly and mountainous landscapes of scrubby pines, olive groves, red soil near Aix and in the Luberon, the baigneurs (bathers), the agricultural workers, the people reposing on verandas or near open windows.  The artists who make up what is being called 'the studio of the south' all saw, despite their different styles and portrayals, the same amazing azure color of the Mediterranean sea, and the light, that famous Provençal light, that we ourselves can see here every day in 2013.  (See my earlier post about this exhibition, Les oeuvres d'art, June 2013.)

The timelessness of Provençal summers is also echoed in literature.  I've recently completed two parts of playwright Marcel Pagnol's memoirs in which he describes summer holidays in le midi (the south) starting in 1903 when he was the same age as my boys, about to enter quatrième (4th grade, or U.S. 8th grade). In La gloire de mon père we learn about the magical first summer at la Bastide Neuve  near La Treille with his aunt's family, and the epic opening day of hunting season which brought unexpected glory to his teacher-father and a new friendship to Pagnol himself.  The second book, Le chateau de ma mère describes how Pagnol's family managed to continue their visits to the beloved Provençal summer place during the school year despite the difficult and long distance from their home. (Both books have been translated into English: My father's glory, My mother's castle.)  The ways in which Pagnol described the landscape, the daily routines, the summer foods, even the melancholia associated with the end of summer holidays, continue to be evocative of Provençal summers today.  Not a day has gone by this month that we haven't heard descendants of the cicadas that Pagnol described, and the heat in August continues to bake the ground as it has each late summer since time immemorial.  Likewise, 21st century late summer days seem to be as languid as those experienced by Pagnol's family, with slow, lazy afternoons, drinks enjoyed outside, and the late and leisurely market-fresh dinners.  Even that first bit of sadness marking the end of the holidays has begun for us as it did for young Marcel many summers ago.  Some of the details differ, as Pagnol was describing a time when transportation and electricity were still fairly primitive and not widely accessible.  Our end-of-summer melancholia is reflected by the need to turn on electric lights as darkness cuts our dinners on the terrace a bit shorter each night, and by the filling up again of the empty parking spots on our street as locals return from their own holidays.  However, just as Provençal summers have always been marked with a sudden influx of fêtes, special market days, and boules tournaments that then gradually lead to slower, more relaxing days in the sun and shade, the end of summer, or any season really, is also both sudden and gradual, but in reverse. This is as true today as it was in Pagnol's and Cézanne's Provence, and one could even say it is true anywhere.  Gradually, we make small daily adjustments to our daily routines to accommodate shorter summer days and windier or rainier weather and calendar dates that come closer and closer.  Sometimes we may even try to ignore the signs a little as Pagnol himself did.  But then, suddenly, we have to accept, just like every year, that another wonderful summer, in Provence, or elsewhere, has come and is almost gone.