Too French

This morning is very beautiful, although I think the rest of the day will turn out to be a miserable scorcher. The church bells are ringing now, telling everyone to start working. The birds are singing and I’m still waiting for them to stop so that I can hang out my laundry in safety. When the birds are singing their little bodies are also busy digesting and eliminating.

Yesterday evening, I was just about to step out the door to go to an aperitif party, when I heard louder than normal sheep baaaaaing. I opened the door and there stood Blanche. She was polite though. She didn’t eat the flowers but was simply calling at the front door to have me come out and play. Luckily, my son and I were able to easily herd her back to her pasture. I wish she didn’t eat flowers. I’d love to let her wander around the near the house all day. (Later: We just came back from a two hour walk and she’s yelling at me from her pasture.)

I watered the flowers at seven this morning, and picked some blackberries off of my bushes for my morning yogurt. Blanche and I will head out for a walk as soon as I finish this post. Hopefully, we’ll be back before the sun turns Blanche into a mouton roti. (Later: I took a large bottle of water with us and gave Blanche water in a little plastic cup.)

The house is quiet because my husband and my son’s girlfriend left yesterday.

This week is the nineteenth annual cello festival in our tiny village. The place is buzzing with excitement as the famous Parisian cellist Roland Pidoux is here with young musicians from all over France. The festival puts on four concerts and then there is a daily master class that the public can attend. Last night, the head of a famous French corporation together with his wife put on their annual aperitif in honor of the musicians and the local people who work on the festival. (Later: I found out that the party ended up going until midnight.) They had their two French grandchildren with them who speak incredible English. The grandchildren have been living in the United States where their mother is a researcher at a famous institution. I asked the man if his company had had problems because of the Americans boycotting French products last year over the invasion of Iraq. He said that of course they were financially hit by the boycott. He said that while his daughter didn’t have any problems at her work, because her co-workers come from all over the world and are highly intelligent people, she didn’t experience any problems. However, the ten- year-old-daughter came home from school crying because she was verbally attacked for being French.

When I was introduced to the ten-year-old, I was standing with a Scottish man. The little girl told us that they were in the process of moving from California to Florida. The Scottish man asked her if her parents were going to vote, and she said, “We can’t because we’re French.” That little exchange highlights the importance that everyone I meet over here, French, British, Dutch, Tasmanian, places on the American Presidential election. Everyone, from seventy-five year old Scottish retirees to ten-year-old French girls, is conversant about it.

The French friends I spoke with the morning after Kerry’s acceptance speech were absolutely ecstatic about his performance and the radio reports I heard were breathlessly saying that Kerry had the election wrapped up. I told them to hold their horses, that half the people in the United States support Bush.

The French just can’t see how Bush can win the election here. I’m afraid they’ll all be very disappointed when he continues being President for four more years. My French friends point out to me that Kerry is ahead in the polls, and then I deflate their naïve views by pointing out that Bush didn’t really win the last election either, so they shouldn’t get their hopes up.

I don’t have television here, and that’s probably a big reason why I’m so blissful here; but from what I can gather from my discussions with people, the Democratic convention was covered in its entirety on French television. Isn’t that amazing? The American networks decided this year to barely show any of the convention proceedings and the French citizens were treated to gavel-to-gavel coverage.

I see that the French/Evil/Bad meme is still being trotted out in the U.S. I read today where Trent Lott attacked Kerry saying he was “a. . .French speaking . . .” liberal from Massachusetts. Oh, how I would relish someone for attacking me for the same reason, “. . . she’s a French speaking liberal from San Francisco.” Hopefully that attack will come soon. My French skills have deteriorated since I’ve been speaking English all day with my family for the entire month of July. But after my son leaves on the 12th, I’ll be able to run around speaking only French. And then, let the attacks begin.

We had lunch with a friend who exports Bordeaux wines, and she said that her specialty, high end, very high end Bordeaux wines, are still selling well in the United States. So the people who can buy $10,000 bottles of wine aren’t buying into this anti-French crap which seems to agitate the Republicans in Mississippi where the Honorable Senator Lott’s line got a big applause. (I’m not exaggerating that price!)

When he was at the Moulin, my husband commented that he wasn’t noticing any American tourists this year. And that observation was confirmed when his plane arrived at SFO and the foreigner customs line was many times larger than the American line. I think that a large part of the absence of American tourists in France is mainly due to the difference in currencies, not to a boycott. My husband said last year that he felt as if he was from a Third World country whenever he exchanged the dollar for the Euro. I pointed out last night to my son that the 41 Euro shirt he bought the other day was purchased with the equivalent of 51 dollars. Back when we purchased the Moulin, he would have only had to have forked over 37 dollars. You can see how painful the surge of the Euro is for Americans. However, the Dutch and the Germans are taking up the slack created by the American absence.

I just got my son out of bed to turn on the water sprinklers for the walnut trees. Hearing that the birds had quieted down, I bravely hung out my laundry. And now, I’m going to take Blanche for a walk in the bright morning sun. Have a beautiful, French day.