Cobain et Cézanne

Last week, a flurry of news stories reported the real estate listing of a childhood home of Kurt Cobain, the singer of Nirvana (see "Kurt Cobain's Childhood Home...." Sept. 25, 2013, The Guardian.).  He grew up in the town adjacent to my childhood hometown, and I recognized the house for sale as one like many other working class homes in the area, small and modest.  The asking price however significantly exceeds the property and building value, so some people are obviously attaching more value to this little house because someone lived there who later became famous.  This is another excellent reflection of how we construct and re-construct the social meaning of things, places and people (for other examples, see De l'eau Jan. 2012, or Les âmes des vivants et des morts Oct. 2012).  The passage of time especially influences how we come to understand and re-imagine certain people's contributions and even the places they passed through.

It's a little like this in Aix en Provence, where native son Paul Cézanne was long unappreciated for his art, and his family didn't really fit in as they were seen as interlopers in old Aix society.  Cézanne himself was known as a difficult person so that may also have contributed to the lack of enthusiasm for him or his art. Even the early director of the local art museum refused to acquire any of Cézanne's oeuvres for its collections. Today though, Cézanne's image has been significantly rehabilitated.  He is often portrayed as the godfather among the artists who came to the south of France or who were inspired by his use of color and landscape themes (see my post Un été en Provence, August 2013 ).  His studio, artworks, the sites where he painted, his family's estate, all are cherished parts of this town and renowned tourist attractions. Plaques on walls tell where Cézanne was born, where he went to school, where he died, we know where he was baptised, we can see the signage from his father's hat shop, and his statue on the Rotonde is a good meeting spot.  Cézanne fans can even follow his footsteps through town guided by golden plaques embedded in the sidewalks and farther afield, one can walk on trails to his favorite painting spots.

The plaques on the sidewalks go right past the building in which my family has lived for nearly two years. For many months after moving here, I wondered what exactly the tourists were gazing at on our relatively plain and modest building.  I figured they were misreading their guidebooks or maps as there are two former private mansions with ornately carved doors and elaborate window trims just to the west of us, and the famous French revolutionary Mirabeau's mother-in-law's mansion with its grand gate is situated across the street at the next corner in the other direction.  It turns out that we are living in a former residence of the Cézanne family, a detail that is very briefly mentioned on some tourist office information, but not on any signs on the building or street.  Even our flat's owner did not know the historical provenance of the building. Apparently, Cézanne's mother owned the building from 1878 and lived here briefly and then gave it to her daughter Rose as part of her dowry in her marriage to a local lawyer, Maxime Conil.  The Conils had four children while living in this private residence, so it is very possible that Oncle Paul himself passed some time in the house.  Now the mansion has been carved up into multiple apartments and there is no clear evidence that a great artist may have visited or even that a successful Aixois family raised its children here, just like Cobain's childhood home has very few traces of him.  Yet, for those of us with broad imaginations, reconstructing what might have happened in a home where someone famous passed through is fun, (it's what museums do for us sometimes too).  That the famous person may not have been well-understood or appreciated in his time does not preclude us from imagining that he, on some level, was just like us: he probably looked out these same tall windows in this Aixois mansion, or through the front window of that drafty little Aberdeen house.  As a sociologist, this is often enough for me, to imagine the common experiences among people of different times and places.  For others, the excitement lies in the further possibility that maybe, by association, some of the creative genius of past inhabitants might rub off on them. After all, where did Cézanne and Cobain get their artistic inspiration if not from what they saw when they looked out those windows--that luminous Provençal light for one, and the gray Pacific NW drizzle for the other?

Une canicule

The French call a heat wave une canicule, and the central part of France is suffering from one at the moment.  Météo France has the yellow alert showing on its map, while NE France is on orange alert for severe thunderstorms, and we in the southeast, where it is hot, hot, hot, (34-36 degrees, or mid to high 90s Fahrenheit), do not have any particular weather warning. My body tells me though that if we are not quite at a canicule we must be close, as I seem to have contracted an often heat-related illness, a kidney or urinal tract infection.   Unbeknownst to me, these are more common in hotter climates due to the dangers presented by dehydration, and some even predict we may see an upswing in such illnesses with global warning.  (Here's one article about this, "Could Global Warming...." Scientific American 2008).  I wonder how the French avoid dehydration because it seems like all they drink are small coffees, glasses of wine, and water just at mealtimes.  (And I won't go into the paltry and often archaic public toilets.)  As for me, I'm back to the American habit of lugging a water bottle around with me (something the French just don't do), and then there is the small matter of avoiding the sun (in Aix?) and sports while on medication.

The reason we do not have a heat wave warning here despite many days above 30 degrees is that the definitions of a heat wave are subjective, and are often geographically and culturally distinct.  According to the French definition of a heatwave, the temperatures for day times must be above 30-35 degrees and the night time temperatures must exceed 18-20 degrees, for more than 3 days.  This definition is presented in terms of health, as the French look to the nighttime temperatures to see if these get cool enough to bring relief to bring down body temperatures, whereas definitions elsewhere seem to focus on a consistently high daytime temperature.  (See this discussion in French, in Futura Science magazine.)  I presume that the nighttime lows have been low enough here in Provence to avoid the designation of canicule, and that we must need to reach a higher temperature reading than say Cherbourg, in the north of France, before we qualify for the designation. Otherwise, I supposed we'd be in heat wave range every week here.  In any case, the national weather service points out that heat wave designations are rarely made (Phénomènes Météo, Les Canicules, Météo France).  Wikipedia offers some interesting examples of the subjectivity associated with heat wave definitions, showing that high temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit qualify for a heat storm in California, for example.  I particularly like the Swedish definition, of 5 or more days above 25 degrees (77 degrees Fahrenheit).  That just about matches my personal threshold for heat, yet it would be very funny to the Aixois to think that such a low temperature could qualify for a heat wave.  Heat wave or no, we are surviving the current heat with fans blowing throughout our apartment, and by drinking copious amounts of homemade granitas with our cute Magic Freez' mugs.  (Congelez, pressez, dégustez! Freeze, press, and enjoy!).  And this weekend we escape to the north ourselves, where we will gladly take a Finnish heat wave or something less dramatic, just to cool off for a few days.

Who is barmy over what?

This week, an article in the NY Times suggested that Americans are sprinkling their speech with ever more British English phrases.  (See Americans are Barmy over Britishisms, by Alex Williams, Oct. 10, 2012.) The author attributes this in part to the coolness factor, that it's posh these days to sound British.  Also, we have more knowledge of the hippest British vernacular given the proliferation of media available on so many personal technology gadgets, and we mimic the expressions and fashions of American celebrities who have settled in Mother England.

I know another place where British things are posh, and that is in France.   Here, all the way down in the south, department and home furnishing stores peddle lamps and dishes and throws and knick-knacks with Union Jacks or pictures of British teapots or cute British phrases printed on them.  I know it's not the British ex-pats in town who are buying these up!  American symbols are also extremely popular here, especially on clothing.  In this regard, the Stars and Stripes trumps the Union Jack, I'm afraid.  I've seen more people wearing Stars and Stripes t-shirts here in Aix than I ever did in Seattle, and I've seen a few red-white-and-blue bikinis on sale in town and worn at the beach.  I have even seen U.S. flag scarves(!) wrapped carefully and elegantly around the graceful necks of older French women.  (I don't love this last fashion, but somehow the French seem to pull it off, as usual).  Anglophonia is popular here too, but limited mostly to the kind of vernacular one might pick up from American and/or British music videos, like the f-word that is spouted frequently around town by the younger set.

While I can't say for sure if Americana is equally popular in the British Isles, I am realizing that the popularity of Britishisms and British symbols is at least matched by the popularity of French symbols and expressions in Britain.  The effect on language is the most obvious, from my vantage point.  We certainly use French phrases here and there in U.S. writing, but the dropping of French expressions seems especially common in British writing (and I've been reading a lot of British authors lately).  This week I finished reading a serialized novel by the entertaining Scottish-Zimbabwean writer Alexander McCall Smith (44 Scotland Street, 2005) whose fictional portrayal of daily life in Scottish capital was quite interesting to me given my limited knowledge and I learned some new Britishisms although I wondered if these were in fact Scottishisms?  (Do you know what a coeval is?  Someone of the same age; we'd call them contemporaries in American English.)  I was struck by two other things: a discussion between two characters about how revered the Americans are in Scotland, because they are seen as a 'special race', and the many French bon mots (witticisms, literally good words, here I'm using this to refer to simply French phrases) sprinkled throughout the installments.  (Smith explains that one character liked to use French phrases, but I felt that the use of these began to extend even beyond just this character.)   I somehow did not expect to read such a sentiment about Americans nor did I expect to find so many French expressions in a Scottish novel.  Actually this is a bit silly of me, especially in regards to the latter; I often have to remind myself that here in France, my family really is relatively close to the British Isles (much closer than we've ever been), and the history of the countries and nations there, Scotland included, are inextricably linked to the French in ways that I have not adequately appreciated earlier.  In U.S. schools we learn about the ties between Britain and the U.S. which perhaps gives one a mistaken sense of the singular importance of the U.S. to Britain when in fact, the French have always been the ones right here, across a much smaller pond.  And, even though the world is much more accessible to more of us, thanks to a digital shrinking of the social and cultural,  if not the physical, distances, it's still physical proximity and history that perhaps matter the most.  A French college student can buy that cool Union Jack coffee mug in France, but even better, she can spend just a few hours actually going to Great Britain, and the French have been doing that for centuries.  (Remember William the Conqueror?)  And the Brits have been coming south for an equally long time, to enjoy French food, wine, culture, sandy beaches, etc.  Evidemment (obviously), it's not just the Americans who are barmy...

Villeneuve

The two Washington towns in which I have spent most of my life are quite young.  Seattle was established in 1869, and Hoquiam, the coastal logging town in which I grew up, was incorporated in 1890.  My birthtown, Helsinki, is considerably older, having been established in 1550, and I've always loved that I originally come from an old settlement.  Perhaps that was why I was so attracted to the old town of Tallinn, Estonia, for my dissertation fieldwork.  I was there about five years after Estonia regained its independence, and I wandered the streets of the beautiful Hanseatic old town daily (it dates from the 1200s).  I lived outside the historic city center, in a residential part of town that was both old and relatively young, with centuries-old wooden buildings interpersed with Soviet-era highrises from the 1940s and 50s.  Today, parts of Tallinn look much newer, even though I have not yet witnessed its metamorphosis into a truly contemporary European capital.
   

Luckily for me, moving to Aix gave me another opportunity to live in a really old city, with some Roman ruins sprinkled here and there, and lots of quaint old X's bracing walls, as in the photo above.  I describe our family's move to our current location in a post from last December (Emmenagement).  It's funny to think that the quartier (quarter) in which we live is in fact called the villeneuve (new town).  The villeneuve was built up from 1590 until the 1700's, as compared to la vieille ville, the 'old town', which dates back to the Roman period up until the 14th century.  This notion of new towns and old towns offers a wonderful example of how we construct different social meanings, sometimes for even the same words, depending on the time and place in which we live.  To the Aixois in 1600, our part of town was the new town, and it remains one of the younger parts of this old city, even though currently some very new construction is taking place just south of the city center.  On the other hand, if we want to talk about new towns in a more global sense, Seattle is definitely a villeneuve! 

I'm currently pre-occupied with one other villeneuve and this one is not so much socially constructed as it is creatively constructed.  I mean that it is not a real town, but it's the name of a fictional town that is the subject of a French television series called Un village français (A French Village).  One can even visit the fake town virtually on the official website.  I learned about the series from my Finnish friend here whose family first followed the show on Finnish television.  (Not a single French person that I've asked knows the series, despite the fact that it features some well-regarded French actors.)  The series imagines the experiences of the French in their small towns during the Occupation in World War II, and the first season's episodes are each followed by some short historical reminiscences of actual French citizens who lived through the Occupation.  ("They were there...." says the caption under the title in the photograph below.)  I was able to purchase the boxed dvd set of seasons 1-4, thinking that I could improve my French comprehension by following engaging story lines, and learn about some French social history at the same time.  (I've just begun the second season and have discovered that I'm going to have to do some seriously listening because the subtitles suddenly end after the first season's dvds.)

So far, I understand that the Occupation brought about some significant changes in the relationships among the people in town and in the ways in which the town operated.  As a mirror for the French war experience, the series shows how all kinds of different private interests came to the fore as a result of the Occupation.  For some French, the urge to go on as before was strong but impossible to do fully, given the restrictions placed on ordinary activities.  New rules governing social activities forced some French to leave or lose their jobs, and others to adjust their diets, their daily movements and their hopes for the future.  Other French saw opportunities not only to survive but perhaps even to prosper, by cozying up to the Germans or by dabbling in the black market, perhaps even at the expense of their fellow neighbors (a point that has often been conveniently overlooked by the French until very recently).  And then there were those who saw the openings for other kinds of clandestine activities, on behalf of the French resistance or the latent communist movement.  As the series progresses, Villeneuve is becoming a new town because of the Occupation, and I suspect that when the series is over, the town will no longer look like or feel like the one in the opening episodes.  I suppose this is true of all human settlements; they are always in flux, but sometimes external forces, or violence, or new ideas, bring about change more quickly than at other times.  In some ways, this is exactly what I was thinking about in my last post about Marseille, a real French town that seems to be on the brink of something new (see Du Shit). 

Du shit

We've been smelling du shit all summer, at home and at the beach.  Attention (beware), Anglophone readers: I'm not talking about doggie do-do on the sidewalks.  Du shit is marijuana, a substance with its own distinctive smell.  (Du shit is another one of those faux amis, or false friends, where the same words mean very different things in French and English).  A neighbor seems to have an insatiable appetite for l'herbe (grass or marijuana), and luckily for that neighbor, the drug capital of Europe just happens to be down the road from our town (as well as from the beach), so a direct supply line isn't too far away.  That supply line, however, is probably one source of the violent conflict that has been taking place between rival drug gangs in Marseille all summer, resulting in nearly two dozen deaths.  (Update to my post: Click here for a NY Times article summarizing the situation, 9/19/2012.)  A new national level police commissioner has been appointed just for Marseille in an effort to get a handle on the situation, while a news magazine today has called Marseille, which is France's second most populous city, a 'lost territory', and ponders how we have arrived at this point.
 

I do not know Marseille well, having visited just a few times, and I have yet to feel drawn to it, despite its potent sociological appeal.  Demographically, it is an extremely diverse city, both in terms of ethnoracial identity and age.  About 20% of Marseillais are foreign-born, and they come from all over: Spain, Italy, Corsica, Armenia, Turkey, the far East, northern Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco), central Africa (Ivory Coast, Mali), southern Africa (Comorros).  We got a glimpse of this rich variety last fall at the prefecture in Marseille.  I felt very white, blonde and boring, as I watched families enter and leave the waiting room for processing work and residency permits.  I was entranced by the colorful veils, scarves, saris, caps, headdresses, bangles, beads, gold jewelry, and by the huge variety of skin tones and ethnic backgrounds (the ones I could surmise anyway).  On the other hand, I also recognized the impoverishment and subtle desperation in the demeanors of some in that room and on the steps outside the building.  In fact, Marseille will not be the promised land for all of these comers.  Because of the persistent immigrant flux, the unemployment rate is high and the city is relatively poor by the standards of other French cities.  One sees this just by looking at the city's urban core; parts are dirty, dingy, and gray, with copious graffiti adding rough swatches of color both to once-elegant apartment façades and to newer cement apartment blocks.  I have also felt, more than once, a slightly menacing ambiance along some streets, particularly those that appear virtually empty in the center and those that are filled with idle men sitting at cafes passing the time while nursing their pastis (the famous Marseille anise-infused aperitif).  When legitimate or lawful economic opportunities are few, illicit ones, like drug trades, will exist and persist (as may drug wars and other related phenomena).  Unfortunately, the social and physical environments will reflect those.

Does this mean Marseille is a city lost to drugs?  It has always been an unusual French city because of its grittiness and multiethnic character.  Perhaps the civic pressure is reaching a bubbling point right now, as Marseille is just about to become the 2013 European Capital of Culture.  It feels like there is still much to be done, with significant construction underway, creating persistent traffic problems in major parts of the city, not to mention the security issues posed by the criminal activities in a few districts.  I am sure Marseille will eventually ascend to its role as capital of culture, and perhaps it will shed its other 'capital' reputation, if for a short while.  As I have discovered, sometimes the paths to achievements here in France are those that are the most sinuous and least expected.

Speaking of such paths, I took one last Friday evening in Marseille, in a part of the city I had never seen before.  We drove into and through the urban center, then along the beach in the 8th arrondissement (district or section of a city), all the way south until the road narrowed and became bumpy and then ended.  We left our car and hiked along a rough-hewn rocky path through a calanque (rock formation) for about 100 meters, towards the very tip of the calanque, to the very tip of France in fact.  And there we found a little Marseille restaurant, hidden truly at land's end, where we ate the freshest dorade (snapper or bream) we have ever tasted, while looking down at the roiling turquoise sea just meters away and at the dramatic rocky islands in front of us.  What other 'lost' treasures does this city have for us?

A pied

Despite my current obsession with the French driving rules that I must master in order to get a French driver's license, I do not regularly use the one car our family owns here.  (I tell why I need that license in an earlier post, April 2012 A is for Autoecole.)   Some know that in Seattle I was a keen urban walker, walking the mile to and from elementary school with my children nearly every single day, rain or shine, usually with my black and white floral Marimekko umbrella in hand.  (Even in physically-active Seattle, some thought we were remarkably dedicated.) My spouse and I selected our Seattle neighborhood in part because of its sidewalks and the walkable proximity of grocery stores, a post office, and a pub.  In true U.S. fashion though, I used my car for my main grocery shopping, the transporting of kids to after-school activities, and my commute to work. 

In contrast, in Aix, I take care of virtually everything à pied (on foot) or en ligne (online).  European cities are generally more walkable because of how these cities' cores developed over time, and perhaps also because of different social priorities.  I appreciate that I can faire mes courses (to run my errands) on foot relatively easily here (with a little help from delivery services and friends with cars), and I am of course grateful that I can do my professional work and occasional shopping at home in front of the computer screen.  Another factor in Aix that makes errands easy is that the weather is much more conducive to walking, so there is little need for parapluies (umbrellas), although a hat and a water bottle are often necessary during the hot summer months.  Yet, for many Aixois, driving to work and to run errands, rather than walking or trying other transportation alternatives, seems as common as it is in the U.S.  Many drive themselves to work, clogging the ring road out of Aix in the morning and into town in the evenings.  As for errands, we don't have Costco, here, but the parking lots at the supermarchés (supermarkets) and warehouse stores outside of the urban center are always quite busy.  On my big walking days when I cross town and walk a bit over 4 km, trying to catch the end of one boy's sports practice at a stadium near the center, and then hoofing it south across the autoroute (freeway) to the end of the other boy's sports practice, I am in the minority as a walker.  Just a few parents may walk to the stadium (I've gotten my share of strange looks and questions even here), and I am the only parent that retrieves her son at the other sports field on foot (we walk back across the autoroute to catch a bus home).  Walking beyond the general urban core, I am quite alone on the trottoirs (sidewalks) and passages du piétons (pedestrian crosswalks), except for the many, many voitures, camionnettes, motocyclettes, cyclomoteurs, and cars zipping by (cars, vans, motorcycles, mopeds and buses).  Even the relatively few urban bicycle riders (in contrast to those in training or exercising) seem to stick pretty close to the urban core.

In the U.S. but also here, walking has largely been "engineered out of existence," as aptly noted by Tom Vanderbilt in a recent Slate Magazine article (The Crisis in American Walking, April 10, 2012).  We have created other means to get where we need to go and we use them when we can, because they require less physical effort, or they feel faster, easier and more convenient.  Some confer more social status than others too.  Like a flashback to my own childhood, nothing elicits groans more than my suggestion of a family walk on a quiet provençal Sunday afternoon; after all, why WALK when we can drive, and what if someone sees us?  Furthermore, the bus-riding son tells me that riding the bus just isn't that cool, even in Aix.  It may be that Aix doesn't have enough well-developed, attractive alternatives to cars because there aren't enough people here to popularize them.  Paris, on the other hand, is full of stylish walkers, and then there are those incredibly hip business men and women on rented vélos (bicycles), while in the center of Lyon a few weeks ago, I couldn't help gawking at the half dozen grown women zipping around elegantly on foot scooters.

As a consequence of the continued love affair or dependence on the car, traffic in Aix is significant in and around town, as are the struggles and creativity to find places to park.  These issues are typical in many old European cities, where labyrinthine, dense urban centers have tried to accommodate motorized vehicles.  In the larger cities like London and Paris, restrictions against cars in certain zones are becoming more common, to ease congestion, pollution and the wear-and-tear of historic centers.  For us here in the south, the increasing cost of gas (even diesel is at nearly 1,50 euros/liter, that's about $7.87/gallon, The Connexion, April 17, 2012), the difficulties with navigating narrow 300+ year old streets (in our case, resulting in a nice dent and missing door handle and a costly repair), and the limited traffic and parking options (to run some simple errands last week, I spent three hours, mostly circling, to find short-term parking, to drop off groceries, and to get back to our 110 euro/month parking garage), being a piéton (pedestrian) may not be hip, but it is definitely smart.  Sometimes it's even really fun, such as when pedestrians take over the main thoroughfares, as they did on Cours Mirabeau last weekend after a very joyful carnaval parade covered the street with lots and lots of paper confetti. 

Sources:


The Connexion. 2012, April 17. "Sales drop as fuel prices hit record." The Connexion. http://www.connexionfrance.com/Fuel-petrol-diesel-prices-record-Doubs-13628-view-article.html

Vanderbilt, Tom.  2012, April 10. "The Crisis in American Walking." Slate Magazine. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t_americans_walk_more_the_crisis_of_pedestrianism_.html

Département 13

As with foreigners everywhere, we are often asked where we are from.  We say we are Américains or in my case, Finlandaise-Américaine, and we usually add the detail that nous venons de Washington (we come from Washington).  People here often think we mean Washington D.C., and we swiftly correct them, clarifying more specifically that we are from the WEST coast, from SEATTLE, yes, from Microsoft country (in my childhood, I remember the business reference was Boeing).  For us, it has been important that we establish our national and regional identity correctly.  In one way, this shows that we feel connected to certain places and the people within them, and we want to affirm, if just to ourselves, that this connection still exists even if we have left.  People who have not left their homes also often invoke their social connectedness to particular regions and places, to perhaps reinforce or reassert their ties, out of pride or when challenged.  French sociologist Emile Durkheim considered such social ties vitally important.  He suggested, over a century ago, that social solidarity, or that 'we-feeling' among people in a particular area, sustained communities and gave their members shared purposes and meanings.  Social solidarity is not a natural, intrinsic quality but one that is socially created, in part by the human desire to belong and to survive.  It is also something that starts at the local level, in one's village or town, where we establish connections to those with whom we interact personally and regularly, and it is only through great social, economic and political changes that we have come to a point where social connections can occur on the national level.

Revolution and the eventual creation of la République française contribute in part to the importance of national identity in France today.  We have found that many French are keen to know our nationalities (even if they are less interested in the distinctions between the two Washingtons).  To our faces, most are kind and nod knowingly when we explain where we are from.  (We've heard our share of derisive comments about being American, mostly from French middle school kids and we ignore these as much as we can).  The French also seem to assert their nationality proudly, and many want to know how we, as Americans, like France.  We are asked this almost weekly.  Many seem satisfied when we tell about our appreciations for French food and the French lifestyle.  Others agree with our frustrations with French bureaucracy.  Still others want to know more; last fall I had a conversation with a doctor who spoke in generalizations with me about what "the French" think about politics and feminism, and she wanted me to comment on what "the Americans" think.  It was very difficult for me to speak for Americans on any of the issues we discussed without carefully qualifying my remarks.  I thought it was interesting that she did not qualify whom she was speaking for, when we do know that being French does not have the same meaning for all who live here nor does it seem to include everyone, especially those who don't necessarily look or act the part.

As for regional ties among the French,  I'd known, from the little reading I'd done, that for a long time, the French citizenry was seen as consisting of those from Paris and those from the rest of France.  (The desire to begin understanding the rest of the French is what spurred me to read Graham Robb's prize-winning people's history last fall, The Discovery of France, 2007).  The rest of the French are actually a complex lot, just like the wines they produce!  The French state recognized this when it began to create the administrative geographical divisions that still persist today.  In fact, it seems like regional French identities have in part been forged or socially constructed by the state.  Today there are 27 régions and within them are a total of 101 départements.  We live in the région Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, and within our région, there are 6 départements.  We are #13, also known as Bouches-du-Rhône, which is highlighted in red on the map above.  #13 identifies our postal code, the number appears on our license plates, and the number has popped in school and other affairs.  This past weekend we were skiing, in #73.  It was a saleswoman who explained the numbering on my spouse's souvenir shirt and the red shields with the white crosses that were displayed everywhere in the villages we visited.  These are both emblems of the alpine département Savoie, also known as #73, which lies within the region Rhône-Alpes.  It is probably true that the départements in France have some social salience to the people who live in them, especially if the numerical identifications appear over and over on the things that make up everyday life.

I suggested in my initial paragraph though that most people feel their strongest, most meaningful social connections with others in their immediate locality.  Unfortunately, I haven't been in France long enough or spoken to enough people to be able to offer insights yet on local connections.  My strongest indication that local ties matter is the response we've gotten from other French when we tell them we live in Aix-en-Provence.  More than a few times, we've been told that while Aix is a fine town, it's a little 'bourgeois'.  I've been really curious to know what the speakers mean by this, and I'm guessing I may get a better idea very soon.  As the French go the polls in the next three weeks, to elect that person who will be their President and represent them all, as French, as denizens of this région or that département, and as town dwellers and villagers, I am hoping the voting returns will show more clearly some of the other ways that the people here relate to each other and to their communities.  Perhaps I'll also learn what makes some of them think that our little town is so bourgeois.

Image of U.S.: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Washington_in_United_States.svg/270px-Washington_in_United_States.svg.png

Image of France: https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRjZ6Kt7_6rCwbYsL1-Wrf2M_gtNWzu7wkZzVL-zGWqc7WIFwIh

Image of Aix-en-Provence: http://en.aixenprovencetourism.com/photos_provence/355-plan-centre-a-imprimer.jpg

L'état

We continue to freeze here in the South of France, we were up to -9 degrees C this morning in Aix(!), with orange weather alerts around France from Météo France (the French national weather service), and yesterday, l'alerte rouge EcoWatt (red alert) from Réseau de transport d'électricité (RTE, the network that tracks the transmission of electricity), due to record-breaking electrical power usage nation-wide.  People are staying in, sports teams are cancelling trainings, and even the professional football matches this weekend are all being moved up to earlier daylight hours when the temperatures might rise out of the negative degrees.  In some areas, school buses are still not running (although the schools seem to be open to receive any students who do make it in), citizens are being asked to turn off all standby electronic devices, and the Nice airport reportedly took itself off the power grid yesterday and ran on generators in order to ensure enough power to the Cote d'Azur! (See  The Connexion for this and other weather-related stories, http://www.connexionfrance.com/Weather-Meteo-France-school-buses-freezing-power-13436-view-article.html).  It's COLD!  Here's the beautifully ice-encrusted Rotonde fountain in the center of Aix.

I was one of many amateur photographers out yesterday snapping photos.  Despite the freezing temperatures, Aix has actually been a hopping place, primarily because we are nearing the end of les soldes (the four-week sale season).  I'd wondered about after-holiday sales in a post back in January, and several French friends made sure I knew about the annual sales starting on a set date in early January and lasting five weeks, until mid February.  This is one of two national sales seasons, allowed by the state, in which retailers are allowed to sell their goods, get this, at a loss(!).  Retailers can run promotions at other times, but may not sell items below cost at those times.  Each week during the sale in Aix, new signs have appeared in shop windows, revealing a new demarque (price reduction).  If you could brave the cold and stand the lines, there were deals to be had, for sure, especially by the dernière demarque (the final mark-down).
 

The state-regulated retail sale season and the national alerts related to le grand froid (the big cold spell) have really gotten me thinking about the relationship between l'état (the state) and its people.  France is one of the most centralized societies in Europe, and the government is much more present in the daily lives of its residents.  While I wondered why my kids were left out in the cold at school on that first snowy day last week (see my previous post), since that day, it's clear that the national weather and power alerts are being taken seriously, almost as directives from the state, especially in regards to children and to health (my boys' rugby and soccer tournaments and trainings have been canceled several times already due to the extreme cold, and not just due to the field conditions).  And while I don't know any French retailers, I find it interesting how normal it seems to everyone, to have twice-annual sales.  In contrast, in the free market U.S., no retailers would ever accept such conditions about when one could clear out merchandise at bargain basement prices, and consumers certainly expect sales year round.  And while there is a U.S. national weather service and no single power supplier, the weight of the weather service announcements are diluted by the many private weather forecasters and news station reports, so there is no one organization whose alerts are the end-all, be-all ones.  (In the U.S. we do have that funny U.S. Emergency Broadcast System now apparently replaced by the Emergency Alert System, that makes its monthly beeping tests on the radio and some t.v. stations, but I cannot ever remember being alerted by it for real.  Maybe a presidential directive would carry some weight, but in general the U.S. president does not make pronouncements for activities at the local level.)  This means that weather-related decisions are made by governors, individual organizations, and private companies, based on a variety of sources.  Think of the U.S. public school districts which are soundly criticized at every turn, whether they take the advice of the weather services or television stations or not, while private sports organizations rarely cancel due to economic obligations, and may do so only when lives are actually at stake, such as in the case of imminent lightning storms or tornadoes. 

Is this telling me that the French care more about their kids, or their health, or how money is made here, than say, North Americans do?  I am not sure, but the weather and retail examples highlighted here are, to me, reflections of an enhanced, protective state role in private life, one that is accepted broadly in French society.  The U.S. and modern French states are both products of similarly-conceived notions of liberté, égalité et fraternité (liberty, equality, and brotherhood), but how those ideas are interpreted and "lived" in the resulting societies vary considerably.  We can make arguments for greater or lesser degrees of state influence in private lives.  From what I've seen, under the French system, people do live comfortably, eat well, and play for four weeks each summer.  And they clearly are not greatly hampered in their everyday lives by infringements on their freedoms.  I've already suggested in earlier ruminations that rule-following in France seems somewhat arbitrary.  Or maybe it's like this: as free democratic citizens, the French have the liberty to prioritize which concerns are their most important ones and thus which rules (government-made or otherwise) they will follow.  Are parking rules, or rules about picking up after one's dog worth following!?  Maybe.  How about rules that affect children's well-being, or health, or how one spends one's leisure?  Bien sûr! (Of course!)

Le temps

A central principle of sociology is that the social environment has a great deal of influence on human behavior and social attitudes.  Who we are is in large part a factor of our social environment.  That said, the physical environment also affects human interactions and behaviors, even if this environment in and of itself is not a central sociological concern.  I myself have paid attention to and been affected by le temps (the weather)  for most of my life, perhaps because much of this life has been spent in the northwestern coastal state of Washington, in the U.S.  The western side of this state gets a good share of rain each year and is subject to unpredictable environmental conditions because of the proximity of the Pacific Ocean so I am accustomed to rain and variations in weather.  The ways in which Pacific Northwesterners dress, interact, spend their time, and talk, all are influenced by the weather.  My family continues to be obsessed with weather, and we often check the weather news from home.  This past weekend we saw what seems like perennial news footage from the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.: salmon swimming across the road after another series of heavy Thanksgiving weekend rainstorms.  (See http://shelton.komonews.com/news/pets/692468-we-have-salmon-over-road ).

We had a little bit of weather excitement here in the South of France, a few weeks ago, in the form of a very wet tempête (storm) , which led to un vigilance orange (an orange alert, one away from the most severe alert) for the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur région (province), as reported by Météo-France (the French national weather service).  Major roads and fields were flooded and the driving affected my parents' return to Aix from Mougins where they had been vacationing.  On that November weekend, the rainwater gushed out under the traditional roof tiles all over Aix, filling gutters and straining the capacity of city drains.  Sports events were cancelled even, something that rarely happens back in rainy western Washington.

We've also experienced a few small mistrals, the famous wind that screams southward down the Rhone River valley to the Mediterranean many times a year, and which cleans the air and brightens the light here.  The winds I experienced many weeks ago were cold and uncomfortable and people seemed to stay indoors.  Some mistrals can blow between 1 to 3 to 7 days, which has been known to make people mad here; now that is an extreme case of one's physical environment affecting human society! (But gray skies and constant rain can do this too.)

I'm still waiting for a proper 3- or 7-day mistral, or even one from the northeasterly direction that is supposedly very cold, to tell me that it is nearly winter.  The holiday display on the main boulevard in Aix, along Cours Mirabeau, is lit and the chalets de Noël (christmas market stalls) are in operation, but it feels so....warm, on this last week of November 2011.  Last Saturday afternoon, we watched most of our son's rugby tournament at Berre L'Etang (about 30 minutes west of Aix) without our coats on until the sun began going down, and the boys finished the games with faintly dirty knees but nothing like the mud they would have been caked in if this had been a rugby tournament back in Washington state.  I ate lunch, outside, with a friend in Arles yesterday, wearing my sunglasses because le soleil d'hiver (the winter sun), well, it's really bright.  The upside is that with such unvarying, dare I say, ennuyeux (boring) weather, there is a great deal of predictability in our activities and the brightness does keep one's spirits high in the shorter daylight hours of winter.  And, I shall appreciate the dry weather this week as our family lugs suitcases across the center of Aix to our new apartment.