Faith

One day, back in the early years of the eighteenth century, word reached the people of Guaratinguetá that 

Dom Pedro Almeida, the new Governor of the Province of São Paulo, would be making a journey that would take him through their little village.

On the eve of the Governor’s visit, the local fishermen were recruited to secure fish for a banquet, something the nearby Paraíba River provided in abundance.

But not on that day.

On that day, the 16^th of October, 1717, there seemed to be no fish at all.

Then, just as it was getting dark, the three persistent men who remained on the water agreed to try one more cast.

And brought up a statue from the bottom of the river.

The head was missing, and small enough to pass through the holes in their net, but it suddenly appeared floating in the water next to their boat - and they were able to recover it.

They wrapped both pieces in their shirts, cast again, and their net came up full of fish.

A miracle!

This is the statue, made of fired terracotta, some 40 centimeters in height, weighing about four kilograms, and now venerated as the image of the patron saint of Brazil, Nossa Senhora de Aparecida.

How she wound-up in the river, no one knows.

But, many years later, the clay of which she’s made was analyzed - and found to have had its origins in Santana do Parnaiba, a little town about a hundred kilometers away.

Which gave a clue to both her age and her authorship.

More than a century prior to the statue’s discovery there lived, in Santana do Parnaiba, a Benedictine monk and sculptor, Frei Agostinho de Jesus.

The monk’s style is well-defined. His works display smiling lips, cleft chins, flowers, (and a broche with pearls) in the hair.

And all of those details are characteristics of the statue found by the fishermen.

The color of her skin, a golden chestnut brown, is thought to be symbolically linked to the Brazilian racial mix – and to one of the miracles brought about by the Lady’s intercession – the freeing of Brazil’s slaves.

The influence of the cult of Our Lady of Aparecida upon Brazilian Catholic society can’t be overestimated. There are about 300 parishes dedicated to her – and five cathedrals. In addition, many towns are named after her and so are many Brazilian women and girls.

Her first church in Guaratinguetá was a simple chapel, built in 1737.

In 1834 work on a larger church was begun, which became the “old Basilica” when work was undertaken on the “new Basilica” in 1955.

A walkway connects the two.

And the new one is big, very big.

Second only to St. Peter’s in Vatican City.

The building is in the form of a Greek cross, 173 meters long and 168 meters wide. The tower is 100 meters high, the naves top out at 40 meters and the dome at 100 meters. The surface area is a little over 18,000 square meters, enough to hold up to 45,000 worshipers at one time. The 272,000 square meter  parking lot can hold 4,000 buses and 6,000 cars. And it needs all of that space, because the Basilica receives more than 8 million pilgrims a year.

It’s pretty ugly though.

Here, however, is one that isn’t.

Another cathedral dedicated to Our Lady of Aparecida.

Most of the walls are of glass, so looks just as good at night as it does by day.

And from within, with daylight streaming through the glass, it's spectacular.

The building stands in the federal capital, Brasilia, and was designed by Oscar Niemeyer.

A confirmed atheist.

Leighton - Monday

The Writing Life at $2.99 a Pop

My brother Michael is a painter.  He lives in Laguna Beach and, for years, maintained a house in Mexico, until it got too crazy down there.  He works every day, just as I do.  He thinks constantly about how to get better, just as I do.  He experiments endlessly with his technique, just as I do.  And any time a new subject occurs to him, he just sits down and executes it.

Just as I don't -- at least, until now.

As a painter, Mike sells his work directly to people who like paintings.  I sell my work to an intermediary, a gatekeeper, a publisher -- a corporate entity in a risky business that has its own ideas about what people do and don't want to read.  Publishers certainly know what they want to buy and what they don't want to buy - and the only thing they want to buy from me (if anything) is a thriller.  For my entire 25 years as a writer, I've effectively been pigeonholed.  I can't put up the hundreds of thousands of dollars required to buy, design, print, and distribute my own books, so that means the publishers -- with the best will in the world -- essentially define what I can and can't write.

And now, if I choose to, I can write anything I want without considering the restrictions of the publishing industry and sell it direct to people who might want to read it.  Why?

E-books.

About eight weeks ago, as an experiment, I decided to offer e-book editions of two private-eye mysteries I wrote in the 1990s that had been out of print for so long that the rights had reverted to me.  Much to my surprise, they sold - and I mean, in significant numbers.  Sure, they only cost a reader $2.99 each, but I make a flat 70% of that; if I sell a thousand or more copies a month, I'm making some actual money.

There are four more books in that series, which features an over-educated Los Angeles P.I, named Simeon Grist.  The third goes up in 2-3 days, and the fourth will follow in a week or two.  Then there's another series, featuring a burglar named Junior Bender who works as a private eye for crooks.  If you live in a dreary little stucco box in Panorama City and someone steals $500,000 in already-stolen emeralds out of your house, you're not going to go to the cops; you go to Junior. My agent tried to sell this series for a couple of years while I simply continued to write them because they were so much fun.  We got offers, but the sense was that comic mysteries weren't hot, and none of the offers was good enough.  So I'm putting them up on my own.

By the end of the year, what with one thing and another, I'll have nine or ten e-books online, probably all priced at $2.99.  That's very cool for me, because if they sell in the quantities in which the Simeon Grist books are selling, it'll be a very substantial boost to my income.  But what's coolest is that I CAN WRITE ANYTHING I WANT and not have to give a moment's thought to a publisher's "list" or the conventional marketing wisdom of the moment.  Whatever it is; I'll write it, have a cover designed, and put it out there, and people can decide for themselves whether they like it.

I need to make it clear here that I'm not knocking publishers. I actually love publishers; I'm deeply grateful  and somewhat amazed that major publishers have agreed to print and distribute ten books I nursed into being, and publishers have paid my way, or part of my way, for years.  But publishing is a precarious enterprise; all books are expensive to produce and most of them fail.  It's inevitable that the marketing potential of a book is a major factor in the decision whether to publish it.

Nor am I in any way saying that the books I published weren't the best books I could write, or that they weren't books I wanted to write. I wanted deeply to write all of them.  The point is, there were lots of books I didn't write because I knew I couldn't get them to readers.

At the moment, in addition to the next Poke Rafferty thriller, which will be conventionally published, I'm writing two books I don't even plan to try to sell through the usual channels: they'll go direct to readers.  I have a list of a dozen more I want to write.  It feels as though I've been cooped up in a small room for years and the walls suddenly fell down.  There's space to swing my arms.  I don't have to reject exciting ideas because they're not ideas I can sell.

This is a big deal for writers.  Yes, the e-book market will probably be flooded with unpublishable junk -- I may even write some of it.  Yes, it imperils bookstores, and I love bookstores.  But this is the first time in modern history that a writer can put his or her work out to a global audience for a few hundred bucks in startup costs.  This is the beginning of a revolution.  Everyone in the industry is focused on it as an economic revolution, but I think it's primarily a creative revolution.

Writers are now as free as painters to speak directly to the people who might be interested in their work.  We might even make enough money at it to write full-time, which for most writers is a succinct definition of paradise.  Nobody knows how this market will shake out, but right now it's capitalism at its most primitive: put it out and see whether anyone likes it.

It's been some time since I could be even charitably described as a spring chicken, but this literally makes me feel twenty years younger.  Just me and the reader, whoever he or she is.  Instead of tossing those ideas, write them and sink or swim on my own.  At $2.99 a pop.

Guest Author Zoë Ferraris

Please welcome Zoë Ferraris whose new book, City of Veils,I inhaled on a flight to Paris. The transatlantic hours disappeared, I was totally in another world and culture-shocked to find, upon landing, I had to go through customs at Charles de Gaulle, not Riyadh.

Zoë takes us behind the veil in Saudi Arabia, into a culture and world with it's own rules and harsh treatment of women as only someone who's lived there can. Zoë lives in San Francisco some of the time and we met at a book event, the next time we met was at the Los Angeles Times Book awards where she won the Best First Novel for Nouf - read it if you haven't. It's an honor, Zoë, thanks for visiting.

 

Gender segregation in Saudi Arabia presents a lot of weird problems, but the weirdest is lingerie. How does one buy bras and panties in a country where women are not allowed to speak to men, and where men own and operate all of the country’s lingerie stores?

When I lived in Saudi, the women I knew would come home with huge bags of lingerie that some store owner had given them on the honor system. They’d spend an afternoon trying everything on, basically using their homes as a fitting room. Whatever they didn’t want to keep, they brought back the next day.

The other alternative, which everyone knew was a disaster right up front, was to send your husband to buy the lingerie for you. You’ve all seen that boyfriend at Victoria’s Secret, yes? He’s the guy who lingers by the door, looking like a small, scared animal. I briefly worked at Victoria’s Secret myself, and discovered that dealing with male customers was one of the most awkward things on earth – for them.

But there are plenty of women in Saudi who do their own shopping -- and who are then left to discuss cup sizes and panty preferences with strange men. For a country where women can be jailed and given 40 lashes for being in public with a man who is unrelated to them, this seems like a glaring oversight.

Unlike the Victoria’s Secret employees in America, you won’t see men walking around with pink measuring tape dangling from their necks. There’s no touching, so no one gets measured in a lingerie store. You just sort of guess. As for fitting rooms, the presence of strange men prohibits that. These days, you either have to buy the lingerie up front, take it home and try it on, or take it to a public restroom and do the deed there. In either case, a pain.

Over a year ago, women started to complain. Loudly and publicly. Saudi even has a law stating that only women can work in women’s apparel stores, but the law has not been implemented. So a campaign emerged to get women working in lingerie stores, but it was shot down repeatedly by a religious establishment that opposed women working outside the home. Apparently, it’s more appalling to have female workers than it is to have women purchasing thongs and corsets from strangers.

What struck me as weirder still is the fact that I often saw completely brazen items in Saudi lingerie markets. Everything from see-through bras to S&M couture -- things you would only find in a sex shop in America. And the lingerie industry is massive and growing rapidly. It all serves to remind me that while a cloak and veil may look conservative on the outside, what goes on beneath it is anybody’s guess. And if my own experience is any guide, the longer I wore the burqa, the more dangerous and risky my own behavior became. I just longed to get out, to express myself, to be noticed. The result? Not exactly a modest Muslim anymore.

Clearly there are more pressing issues at hand for women in the Kingdom, but the good news is that the lingerie debate was merely one of the first shots fired in the battle women are now waging in Saudi to demand more opportunities to participate in public life.

 

Cara for Zoë - Saturday

From Aaron Hill to Zoffany Street

I got lost in London this week. It didn't bother me in the slightest. I wasn't late for anything, so there was no stress, just trying to catch a tube train home. I wandered away away from the area around Victoria coach station in search of Sloane Square. My sister used to live around there in the 1990s, so I thought I knew the area. But a few wrong turns and I had no idea where I was going. A few more random turns and I regained my bearings and eventually emerged near Sloane Square station, and had one of those 'I never knew that road led here' epiphanies common to anyone who does any extensive walking around the old city.

I don't carry an A-Z anymore, though I always used to and I really still should. It is a thing of beauty. It's the first thing I recommend any visitor to London should buy. Get it, put it in your bag and set off walking; then stop, pore over it, work out where you are, and set off again. It's almost impoosible to get lost, but more usefully, when you do get lost - and there is something great about being lost in London - it helps you get back on track. It also has a tube map on the back, so it really is the only thing you need.

1949 version

The person behind this wondrous creation - which rivals Harry Beck's tube map as one of essential icons of London  - was a woman named Phylis Pearsall. The story is a remarkable one. One rainy night in 1935 she set off for a dinner party in Belgravia. She couldn't find her destination and she stood, soaking wet, unable to make head nor tail of the 16-year-old map she was carrying. When she eventually arrived at her party, bedraggled and thoroughly miserable, she had decided London and its labyrinthine streets needed another kind of map: detailed, indexed, user-friendly.

I don't know about you but when I'm hacked off about something, I occasionally have bright ideas, or grumble about how something should be done about it. Then someone gives me a glass of wine and I forget about it. What I would never do is what Phylis did. She walked the length and breadth of the city and with the help of a friend and draughtsman, James Duncan. This is in the age before satellite imaging or aerial photography. It was all done on foot and by sight. It took a year. She walked 3000 miles, 18 hours a day and chronicled 23,000 streets. She get lost each and every day, but made note of where she had been, what streets she saw, and how they linked up.

Eventually she had her map. It wasn't perfect, far from it, nor was it even complete. Just before it went to press, Phylis realised she had left out Trafalgar Square. I think most writers and publishers will empathise - we've all had our Trafalgar Square moment. But eventually, there it was, the first definite map of modern London. A wonderful idea, a guaranteed bestseller. Which is why it was rejected by every publisher took it to. Undeterred, she ran off 10,000 copies and persuaded the newsagent WHSmith to take 250 of them, delivering the map to them herself in a wheelbarrow (again, as an author, here I nod sagely - we've all had our wheelbarrow moment too). Of course, when people bought it and used it, word of mouth spread, and save a period during the Second World War, when map-making was restricted, the A-Z became a success. Phylis started a company to publish it in bulk, updated and revised it, and was still working for the firm when she died aged 90 in 1996.

So, here's to getting lost. And here's to Phylis Pearsall. Google maps is all well and good, sat nav useful in certain circumstances, but the beautifully designed A-Z is indispensable, and it never runs out of power or batteries.

cheers

Dan - Friday

Food from the deep south

I am delighted to see that this blog is now dealing with one of my favorite topics – food!

And an interesting topic it is in the South African context.  So many influences, great diversity, and in a state of flux.

I start with an invitation:  in terms of value for money for eating out, there can’t be many places that can offer more than South Africa at the moment.  Restaurants offer delicious food in a variety of cuisines, with superb wines, at prices that startle visitors with their modesty.  Even though the South African rand has appreciated nearly 30% against the dollar and euro over the past eighteen months, prices are still a bargain for tourists.  A 3-course meal for four with a couple of bottles of good South African red wine and a cup of coffee can be had at many fine restaurants for US$35-40 a head. 

For example, one of my favorite restaurants in South Africa is Cape Town’s Buitenverwachting (pronounced sort of like Beau – tin – fur – vugg – ting, where the ‘gg’ is the typical Dutch sound that sound like clearing one’s throat.).  It means “Beyond Expectation.”  It was originally part of the Constantia wine estate which was founded in 1684 by the Governor of the Cape, Simon van der Stel.

Buitenverwachting Estate

Here is a current winter menu from the elegant restaurant at Buitenverwachting.

Winter Special Soul Warmers

~Starters~

Cape Malay pickled Fish Salad

Seared Ostrich in Pumpkin Seeds with a Mesclun Salad

Endive Salad with caramelised Pear & Gorgonzola Polenta

Creamy Butternut Soup with roasted Beef Brisket Ravioli

~Mains~

Fish & Chips

Chicken Curry with Indian Delights

Wiener Schnitzel with Potato Salad, Parsley Potatoes or Chips

Braised Springbok Shank with Servietten Knödel

~Desserts~

Milk Tart with Sour Cherry Compote & Milk Foam

Salzburger Nockerl

Malva Pudding with Vanilla Ice Cream

Spägat Krapfen with Caramel Mouse & Raspberry Coulis

~Pricing~

~A la Carte~

Starters – R 49 ($6.50)

Mains – R 116 ($15)

Desserts – R 39 ($5.75)

~Set Menu~

2-Course – R 149 ($20)

3-Course – R 169 ($23)

4-Course – R 199 ($27)

A glass of Buitenverwachting Buiten Blanc or Meifort is served with any set menu option from the Soul Warmer menu.

Buitenverwachting dessert

As an interesting aside, it was never acknowledged in my history classes in apartheid South Africa that Simon van der Stel was of mixed blood (Dutch and Indian), what South Africans refer to as Coloured.   One of the bastions of Afrikanderdom, the town of Stellenbosch, is named after him.

Leg of lamb

As a child I grew up eating English fare because three of my grandparents were from Britain (two from Scotland and one from Wales).  We never ate any Norwegian food, though, in honour of my one grandmother.  Nor did we eat haggis!  Regular as clockwork we ate roast beef, roast lamb, fish, stews, roast chicken, and over-cooked vegetables.  Occasionally we would have roast turkey or cold meats, but never anything that was spicy.

This fare was typical of my English-speaking friends.  At that time, most Afrikaners (typically of Dutch descent and usually farmers, or boers) ate farm fare.  Plenty of meat, potatoes, and whatever vegetables that were available.

The only exception to our normal regimen was when the family went away to the Natal coast on holiday – usually in July to avoid the oppressive summer heat of December and January.  Almost all hotels on the Natal coast had chefs of Indian descent.  Large numbers of Indians had been brought to South Africa to work on the sugar cane fields, and with them they brought their curries.  My brothers and I always befriended the cooks and shared their own food, which was hot and delicious.

So curry is a big part of South African cuisine now and is widely popular among all but the Black groups.  Indian restaurants are plentiful and serve a variety of dishes.

Growing up, I knew very little about what Blacks considered normal fare.  Now I know that one of the most popular dishes is pap (pronounced ‘pup’), which is a stiff corn porridge eaten with fingers and dipped it into either a meat gravy or a tomato-onion sauce.  This is widespread throughout southern Africa.  As one would expect, there is a variety of ways of preparing the pap and numerous variations of sauces.  It is gradually finding its way into White households, usually at a braaivleis (or braai), which is the South African barbeque.  More on that later.

To my palate, the tastiest South African food is called Cape Malay cuisine.  It originated way back in the 1600s and 1700s, when the Dutch brought slaves to work at the Cape mainly from Indonesia.  Although I love Indian curries, the spicing of Cape Malay cuisine is more subtle.  It is perhaps the only really South African cuisine. 

Sosaties

Of the many Cape Malay dishes, such as sosaties (kebabs) and bredie (spiced slow-cooked stew), the best known is bobotie – a curried ground-lamb casserole.  Of all the curried dishes I have cooked for my American friends, it stands alone in being enjoyed by all.  Even the cook at Jackalberry Camp in the second Detective Kubu mystery (The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu ( in North America. A Deadly Trade elsewhere) knew how to please his clients.

Here follows Stanley’s recipe – a closely guarded secret!

2 lbs (1kg) ground lamb (Works with beef also, but not as good)

1 slice bread

3 cups milk

4 eggs

1 medium yellow or white onion chopped

Curry powder

1 tablespoon brown sugar

Salt

Ground pepper

Lemon juice

1 tart apple grated

1 cup seedless raisins

½ cup slivered almonds

Several bay leaves

1.    Put bread into bowl containing all the milk.  Let stand.

2.    Lightly brown the meat in a skillet, breaking up any chunks.  Transfer to large container with slotted spoon.

3.    Cook onion in remaining fat in skillet until translucent.  Don’t burn!

4.    Add curry powder, salt, sugar, and pepper to taste.  I suggest 2 tablespoons of curry powder to start - more can be added any time up to step 7.  Cook for a couple of minutes.  Add lemon juice to moisten.  Cook for a few more minutes.  Pour over meat.

Bobotie

5.    Take bread out of milk and squeeze out the milk back into the bowl.  Put bread with meat.

6.    Add raisins, almonds, and apple to meat.  Add 2 eggs to meat.  Combine.  (I use my hands to do this because it feels great and I can lick my fingers afterwards!)

7.    Pack the mixture into a casserole dish.

8.    Combine the remaining two eggs with the milk and pour over meat. 

9.    Push a few bay leaves into the meat.

10.    Cook for 45 minutes at 300° F.

Serve hot over yellow rice, with chutney on the side.  Leftovers are great hot or cold.  Also leftovers can be put in pita bread with sour cream or used as a filling in an omelette.  Yummy.

Typical braai fare

Only two things left to mention.  First, among all groups, because of the great weather, the braaivleis (or braai, as we call it) is very popular.  It means ‘cooked meat’ and is the South African barbeque.  However it is no longer just cooked meat.  It is now very common to cook fish on the braai, as well as a variety of vegetables.  Where beer was the traditional drink with braais, now both beer and wine are usual.  And why not, when a good bottle of red can cost as little is $8 - $10.  With a decent white in the $5 - $8 range.  Even the $3 bottles are drinkable.  Although most cooking in South Africa is still done by women, the braai is the dominion of the male, and woe betide anyone who criticizes the king when he is in action.

Biltong sticks

 The final typically South African food is biltong – a dried, spiced meat, similar to but far superior to jerky!  Initially dried with salt, then covered with pepper and coriander seeds and other spices, it is hung out to dry.  The joke is that it is only ready when there are at least several blue-bottle flies embedded in the meat.  For foreign visitors: that is only a joke – it’s not really true.  Biltong comes in a variety of tastes and is often eaten while drinking beer.  It is also a topping for salads.  Delicious.

And now I am ravenous.  Got to run and find something to nibble – probably a pizza and beer.  After all I am in the United States.

Stan - Thursday


PS.  The invitation still stands - come and visit South Africa and enjoy the landscapes, the animals, the people, AND the food.

Can't someone else to do it?

A few years ago there was a lot of criticism floating around regarding what appeared to be reluctance on the media’s part to interview women. The discussion has resurfaced every now and again, usually following some all too obvious example of this,  like an article about bras where the people interviewed were be a man who had once worked in a factory that produced the hooks on the back, a male doctor working on breast augmentations and a transvestite. No woman provides comments and the female angle is totally left out.

Every fall on TV we have two series of weekly quiz shows that are immensely popular and run through to the spring. One has all of the junior colleges competing against each other, two at a time, until one comes out the winner. The teams are made of three contestants and these are predominantly boys, with the occasional team having one girl member. The other is a competition between Icelandic towns working the same way, two teams at a time, three members per team. Again men are in the majority although a little less obviously, as most teams consist of two men and one woman.

Every time this criticism regarding the blatant gender bias arises the media promise to do better but note that it is not completely their fault – women shy away from giving interviews or participating in media events. The same replies are heard when political parties dish out their electoral roosters which usually read like a list of invitees to a gathering at a Freemason Lodge. According to these sources the usual reply from a woman who is approached to obtain a comment or run for election is: Oh no not me, can´t you get someone else to do it?

Despite Iceland being pretty advanced when it comes to women's rights, for some reason women are more reluctant than men when it comes to giving their opinion, standing up for office or even tooting their own horn at job interviews. This shyness or form of reserve might be a social influence from early childhood, something genetic or merely a coincidence; I have seen various theories but none fully conclusive. Being a woman myself I have my own opinion on the matter and believe it has a lot to do with some female reluctance in appearing stupid or making a fool of oneself. Before going further I should point out that as always when generalizing about groups one should keep in mind that the variance between the individuals in the group is often much more that the variance between the groups themselves. That being said, men do not seem to place as much standing on how they are perceived for some reason. They don’t mind if someone reading the paper thinks they are a fool. Women do. When asked to participate on the quiz show the female brain will go into the fifth gear thinking something along the lines of: No I can’t , I can’t. I don’t know anything about animals, plants, history or geography, I am horrible at dates and suck at poets. A TV screen adds five pounds so I will look fat, my hair is too crummy and I don’t know anything about dead painters and less about the live ones. I will get my hometown/school kicked off the competition and have to hide, maybe even move. And I know nothing about the Olympics. Processed the answer comes out as: No thanks, I am sure you will find someone else.

If this is a genetic thing, try as I might I cannot see what in our prehistoric roots could have set our genes in such opposite directions. Unless. Maybe the men used goofiness as part of their hunting skills acting the idiot by jumping up and down, sticking their fingers in their ears, poking out their tongues or in some other less-than-cool manner diverting a mammoth’s attention while the rest of the posse sneaked up on it. Thus the less a man cared about looking stupid the better hunter he would have been and the better his chances of survival and reproduction. As the rare photo of an actual caveman here above shows, they obviously also cared little for appearances. The women on the other hand would probably have wanted to keep a low profile, remember how cavemen asked cavewomen out on dates? Clubbed them on the head and pulled them by the ponytail held in place by a bone behind the next bush. Not exactly the romantics our ancestors.

When I first heard the explanation regarding the reluctance of women to give reporters comments or provide specialized opinions, I decided that I would be different. I am not going to be part of some complex suppressed self esteem routine that has absolutely no merit whatsoever and nobody really understands. Who cares if the odd comment will get on someone’s nerves? If little girls grow up seeing only men interviewed in the papers, on the news and replying to trivia on the quiz shows this will never change. If they see a better mix they will come to perceive it as the norm and the lay low genes inherited from the hapless cavewomen with their cracked skulls will cease to have an effect.

This stance has gotten me into numerous situations I would love to have been without. But never as much as now. You see I have been asked to be on the TV quiz show for my town team. And said yes. The only problem is: I don’t know anything about animals, plants, history or geography, I am horrible at dates and suck at poets. A TV screen adds five pounds so I will look fat, my hair is too crummy and I don’t know anything about dead painters and less about the live ones. I will get my hometown kicked off the competition and have to hide, maybe even move. And I know nothing about the Olympics.

tis the season

This month Paris claims its literary persona: la rentrée is also la rentrée littéraire and all French publishers release a spate of new books. There will be 701 titles published (85 first novels) with particular hype around the new Michel Houellebecq a famous enfant terrible and Amélie Nothomb, who sports photos of herself on all her book covers. In celebration of the literary flurry Paris hosts the Salon des Livres where these 701 authors will discuss their work and be interviewed all over the radio and on TV...authors are like rock stars, their faces and books on magazine covers, huge sections in the newspapers devoted to reviews.

But that doesn’t make them, or the man next to them at the corner cafe, exempt from the realities of French life, it’s the season of la grève first and la négociation after a while. The French strike first and talk it over later.


More than two million people today are staging walk outs, demonstrations and striking in France. Workers who don't have their particular issue will stage sympathy strikes so in the end everyone usually joins in. Unions call it a big national day of strike action against pension reforms which affect schools, transport and other public services.


The teachers walkout started Monday, a day early at many schools, where teachers are also protesting against job cuts. Today’s strike also affects courts, Pôle Emploi job centres, post offices and energy supplier EDF. There's protests outside hospitals, and the paramedics will maintain a minimum level of service for 24 hours.
Air France will keep 90 % of flights at CDG and 50% out of Orly since the air traffic controllers are joining the strike. Only minimal service on the Paris Metro and slowdowns on trains throughout the country.

So it's not a good day to die in Paris or mail a letter or take the train, bake that cake using all that electricity,
or go to court for that traffic ticket or think your child will be at school.
I’m thinking of parents whose children were back in school; twelve million students finally returned to class last week after a long summer — or so their parents thought. But the unions representing France's 850,000 teachers have walked out and schools are closed.
So why would you want to live in France? A nuisance, a pain if want to get something done right?
But the French don't think that way. According to polls 70% support the strike!

Dealing with strikes means acquiring an acceptance that you can’t change the way things are done. People learn to go with the flow or try to without going into cardiac arrest.

Teachers' unions are protesting against the government's pension reforms and the job cuts. Approximately 16,000 jobs have been axed for this academic year. 30,000 posts were cut between 2007 and 2009. There’s serious talk of 16,000 additional cuts next September and teachers and other members of the staff aren’t happy. Nor are the parents who want their offspring to go to school and actually have the opportunity to learn.

No one is happy. This year’s reforms mean that large parts of curricula at all levels have been rewritten, and several textbooks aren’t ready for distribution. There’s talk of extending the school week so children will be less exhausted and many other changes. Change is generally unpopular.

Also today there's a general strike planned by people who don’t want to see the retirement age raised from 60 to 62—which may give the teachers a hard time deciding which strike to join today. All of the other unions are joining, and if you want to get from here to there, forget it. Whether or not President Sarkozy will be successful in getting this reform passed is more than problematic. There’s been a lot of yelling and screaming even though the French trade unions’ protests failed to rally enough street power against the proposed crucial reforms regarding France’s costly pension system. Anyone who reads the economic news is aware that an economic crisis is spreading across Europe and needs to be contained. Being required to work two or three extra years, he says, will ease the problem.

But strikes and turmoil do mean something in France and affect the government outcome. People strike and something gets done. Politics is a sport and a science of its own here. A lot of people’s futures are on the line (including President Sarkozy’s), and French society’s future is resting on which reforms are adopted and which aren’t.

I once asked a French women next to me on the Metro what was going on when the train slowed down, then stopped in the middle of a tunnel. But no one looked up from the books and newspapers they read.
Is there a problem with the train?
It's la greve...the strike
But it's museums that are striking (at least that week)
Eh she shrugged. They strike in sympathy, support.
But how... I sputtered will making everyone late for work, doctor's appointments help museum workers?
C'est la principe..it's the principal of the action.
It was hot in the jammed train car of commuters, people stood, children held their parent's hands yet no one grumbled.
Twenty minutes later when the train jumped back to life she grinned at me, see we'll get there. We did. When I got to my meeting late, no one minded, la greve and we ended up in a cafe since the others couldn't make it due to the trains and had a great time.
What do Parisians do? How do they manage?
My friend Anne-Francoise, who has two small children and takes the train, stays home, they ride bikes, pick up items at the charcuterie, go to the park and oh, read one of those 701 books.

Cara - Tuesday