N﻿ous Sommes Tous Français

Nous Sommes Tous Français

1/10/2015

Wait a minute, that’s my city.
I seem to be saying that a lot these days.

Boston in 2013, London in 2005, New York in 2001, Sydney recently, and now the most beautiful city in the world.

If you have walked a city for a few weeks, you have lived there, it is yours.

The horror raised memories:

The first time, my wife and I, still kids, wandering on the theory of $5 a day, back in 1966, criss-crossing the river, bridge by bridge, just because.

Taking our children in 1976, five of us, walking to the Louvre on a chill April day, thinking, This is as good as it gets.

Our friend Roby and his grandson David driving us to our hotel, seeing the lights flash by, Paris at night.

Another friend had a corner apartment in a quiet district, a walkup, just high enough to feel we were looking out on an Impressionist painting.

And the most recent time, a full moon, our pal had the top down, and we circled the Eiffel Tower around midnight, just laughing at how outrageously gorgeous it is.

We know the block in Boston. Our London rellies live not far from the bus line the nihilists blew up in 2005. My wife knows the coffee shop in Sydney, a stopping point in her long walks in 2000. How could one not take it personally, when a few people hate so much that they could do this kind of harm? What do they hate? What do they resent?

Paris is our city, built on the arts and the sciences of the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the emerging Europeans. It shimmers for all of us.

The faces on the BBC and Euro News are familiar, so is the language. It’s our home, too.

So far away, I could only dig out the French national cycling shirt Roby gave me, 30 years ago. He was a national cyclo-cross champion in the 40’s, and later coached French cyclists. In 1982 he drove a few journalists on the Tour. When we had a question, he would pull alongside Bernard Hinault and ask why he was making his move at this time.

Roby loved his country. The first time he came to the States, he saw the Washington Monument up ahead and he started to cry.

“J’adore l’Amérique,” he said.

Today I put on Roby’s jersey – it’s way too tight, from too many washings, too many races – but I put it on, and I thought, “J’adore La France.”

(My friend in Rio, Altenir Silva, in the Comments below, recommends this clip from "Casablanca." I would add, let us also note Angela Merkel, front and center among world leaders, on Sunday.)

Nos Couleurs

Thor A. Larsen

1/10/2015 07:14:03 am

George,

Paris will always be our favorite city to visit. It was the first European city Arlene saw when we went there in April 1966, staying in a very inexpensive hotel ($6/night) near the Champs-Alysee. (my favorite photo of Arlene was taken when she entered the circular, tiny elevator dressed for an evening on the town. I have kept the photo on my desk since 1966!)
We were able to spend about 5 days that time and returned in 1979 with our two children.
In each visit, we were overwhelmed by its beauty and charm.
It has been on our list to return, and I would like to return this April to enjoy this magical city, not to be intimidated by the recent tragedy as we were never intimidated to frequently visit NYC!
Thank you for reminding us of this unique city!

George Vecsey

1/10/2015 08:22:29 am

Isn't that bizarre, two classmates from high school and our wives both going to Paris in April of 66. Lovely photo. I am sure we have a photo album somewhere, but not digitized. It was dank when we got there but warmed up by the weekend -- Marianne made a picnic lunch and we took the Metro out to the Bois de Vincennes. I recall paying 30 NF (around $6) for a room on the Left Bank. Bath extra. Great days. GV

Greg Amante

1/11/2015 03:38:59 am

George,

Thanks for the picture postcard from one of the world’s greatest cities. Paris has that unique ability to make anyone who visits feel as if it is “his or her city”. The minute any visitor begins strolling the boulevards, parks, or passageways they feel as if they are fluently blending into the colors and landscape of the city; that they "belong" there. The two years I lived in Paris were simply great. Whenever I would wander past the Eiffel Tour I would be reminded of all the magic Paris consistently produces and how fortunate I was to call that home. Thanks again.

George Vecsey

1/11/2015 03:55:17 am

Greg: Wander past? I seem to recall a few 360-degree views of the Tour Eiffel around midnight. Inspired wandering, to be sure.
Merci, G&M

Sam Toperoff

1/11/2015 08:05:08 am

Dear George--I'll respond here if I may, and if my thoughts are scrambled, it's pure emotion talking.
Yesterday we went to a rally and march in Gap, the nearest big town,15 kms away. Six thousand people marched, mostly in silence for the principles of the Rights of Man (Droits des Hommes), which emerged from the humanism and the enlightenment that were given birth here after centuries of cruelty and ignorance. Which also, by the way, helped create the beauty that is Paris. Thankfully those principles also found a home on our shores with the founders of America. We saw those principles threatened when we were kids and our country was saved by the bravery of the Great Generation and the sacrifices of millions. Many French then were not so brave or so committed to their own best principles. One small reason may have been that they did not want to see their beautiful Paris destroyed. Another, that for the ruling class and others, fascism and anti-Semitism wasn't such a terrible thing.
But that was then, this is now. Those things are no longer true.
Today we marched again, this time with our grandson and this time in our own town, a town of 1,500. In today's march I counted well over a thousand. The whole damned town! We were mostly silent as we just walked some very, very old streets. Then people sang the Marseilles in unison. The dignity of civil society is a very beautiful thing to witness and be a part of, George, These people are so far ahead of and more decent than their politicians. Our grandson carried a "Je Suis Charlie" sign but the A in Charlie was a Jewish star. (If I knew how to do it, I'd send you a photo.)
Tolerance and dignity are of course the key elements, but so are jobs and self-respect, which not all citoyens are offered here. We Americans do that much better.
One lesson I have gleaned is that we, myself included, tend to let our guiding principles lose their power when we get too comfortable or too busy or too self-involved. It takes a blow, a hard smack in the face, to make a democratic civil society wake up and realize what really matters. That happens periodically. We certainly had ours. It happened here this week.
. The 17 now confirmed dead cannot compare in number to 9/11 casualties but something deeply and indelibly human was felt here this week. French society is not American society; the response will not be a headlong, emotional rush, guns blazing, into a trap in the Middle East that has only made a bad situation far worse. Here there will be every attempt to create a wedge between legitimate Islam and fascist Islam. Not easy to do but possible. Defeating fascists unfortunately means boots on the ground, somewhere, somehow. But that is for another discussion.
Of all the great signs I saw in the marches and on TV the best for me was
NO PROPHET FOR MURDERERS.

Your piece, George, was very touching.. And true. But for me Paris was never as beautiful as when it was flowing today with millions of decent people today..

George Vecsey

1/11/2015 09:24:51 am

Bien fait, mec. Je regardait par le TV. Tu as raison. GV

Ed Martin

1/12/2015 03:57:17 am

Ed Martin GV- it has been a special city for us for almost 50 years since our first visit
The old Jeu de Paume-magical! Les Halles, the Picasso museum in the Marais, and baguettes, cheese and wine
Vive la France
Like · Reply · 15 hrs
Facebook GV.

George Vecsey

1/12/2015 06:19:22 am

In the mid-60's Paris and France were still quite close to WWII. The rebuilding and upgrading hadn't really taken hold. You could connect to past decades. Still can, but that was a long time ago...
GV

Altenir Silva

1/12/2015 10:10:50 pm

Dear George,

In moments of tension worldwide, this scene of Casablanca shows very well that the song has be more strong than fear.

http://youtu.be/HM-E2H1ChJM

Peace ever!

Altenir

gouverneur

1/19/2015 10:24:47 pm

Bonjour,
Roby is the grandfather of my husband David, so Thank you for your publication … et Merci d'aimer la France !

bruce

11/21/2015 09:21:56 am

George,

I don't know how I missed this piece, but I did.

unfortunate that it stands up twice.

thanks for the mention in the recent column. I've called off my lawyers.

bruce

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
More and More, I Talk to the Dead--Margaret Renkl

NASHVILLE — After my mother died so suddenly — laughing at a rerun of “JAG” at 10 p.m., dying of a hemorrhagic stroke by dawn — I dreamed about her night after night. In every dream she was willfully, outrageously alive, unaware of the grief her death had caused. In every dream relief poured through me like a flash flood. Oh, thank God!
Then I would wake into keening grief all over again.
Years earlier, when my father learned he had advanced esophageal cancer, his doctor told him he had perhaps six months to live. He lived far longer than that, though I never thought of it as “living” once I learned how little time he really had. For six months my father was dying, and then he kept dying for two years more. I was still working and raising a family, but running beneath the thin soil of my own life was a river of death. My father’s dying governed my days.
After he died, I wept and kept weeping, but I rarely dreamed about my father the way I would dream about my mother nearly a decade later. Even in the midst of calamitous grief, I understood the difference: My father’s long illness had given me time to work death into the daily patterns of my life. My mother’s sudden death had obliterated any illusion that daily patterns are trustworthy.
Years have passed now, and it’s the ordinariness of grief itself that governs my days. The very air around me thrums with absence. I grieve the beloved high-school teacher I lost the summer after graduation and the beloved college professor who was my friend for more than two decades. I grieve the father I lost nearly 20 years ago and the father-in-law I lost during the pandemic. I grieve the great-grandmother who died my junior year of college and the grandmother who lived until I was deep into my 40s.
Some of those I grieve are people I didn’t even know. How can John Prine be gone? I hear his haunting last song, “I Remember Everything,” and I still can’t quite believe that John Prine is gone.
-----
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/death-grief-memory.html
Jan. 30, 2023