Posts tagged ‘demystifying the French’
Paris Is Always a Good Idea…
That famous line, attributed to Audrey Hepburn, is actually a line she spoke in the 1954 movie Sabrina. So it is perhaps more accurate to give credit for the sentiment to Billy Wilder, Samuel Taylor, and Ernest Lehman, who wrote the screenplay. (Let’s give some credit to screenwriters here! 🙂 ).
In any case, it is a very true statement, at least for me it is. (My most-often stated feeling about Paris is that all things being equal, I am always just a little bit happier when I am there.)
And so I was very lucky–and very happy–to spend a few days there last week. I don’t need much to make me happy when I’m in Paris; it’s enough to just be there, sitting in a café, reading, writing, sipping on a café crème or a vin chaud, surrounded by French conversation. Enjoying the warmth inside, watching the world go by outside the café windows; appreciating the reflection of lights on rainy streets and sidewalks, the occasional colorful umbrella passing by.
But this time I was also lucky to be able to spend time catching up with friends I haven’t seen in a while, and even participate in a special event at the wonderful Red Wheelbarrow, my favorite bookstore in Paris. Penelope Fletcher had asked me to introduce Cathy Yandell, who would be reading from her new book, The French Art of Living Well: Finding Joie de Vivre in the Everyday World, and I was delighted to do so. Cathy is a scholar of French literature (Renaissance poetry to be precise), and professor at Carleton College in Minnesota. Her book is a wonderful blend of stories about her experiences in France over a period of many years as a student, a teacher, a parent of American children in French schools. It also includes appreciation of and really interesting information about French literature, art, music (including contemporary and pop music); and her personal reflections on French ways. Finally it is a cultural guidebook that offers readers great ideas for off-the-beaten-track adventures in France, from thalassotherapy in Royan to the hammam in the Grand Mosque of Paris. (And she doesn’t just tell you you can do these things; she does them and tells you what the experience was like.)
The selections of the book Cathy read that night included a reflection on what Montaigne would have to say about the concept of joie de vivre and a very funny story about how she learned some choice French vocabulary in an episode of (thankfully controlled) road rage between her French “brother” and another French driver on a mountainous road in the south of France.
So. You see what I mean? This book offers intellectual stimulation; valuable information about interesting things to do in France; and it is also just plain fun to read.
Left to right: 1) Penelope Fletcher introducing me; 2) Me introducing Cathy; 3) Cathy Yandell, left, me, right. Photos courtesy of Mark S. McNeil.
I also had the chance while I was there have tea with another author friend, Penelope Rowlands, who curated the wonderful collection of essays, Paris Was Ours. Having tea (or in my case, latte) at Ladurée on the rue Bonaparte is one of those delightfully civilized experiences that momentarily places you in another world altogether. Have you ever seen such a beautiful latte? Stirring the foam felt like an aesthetic crime! At least I captured the artistry before destroying it.
A couple of days later, it was time for me to return to Essoyes. As I waited on the platform for my train to pull into Gare de l’Est this magical vision of what train travel can be glided into the station…and captured everyone’s attention and admiration. You would think that the people on the platform had been transported back to childhood, where a sense of wonder at the beauty of the world shows so openly on the faces of children. We all watched, and dreamed, and appreciated–and who knows? Maybe some of us will be lucky enough to travel on that train one day…
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France, and coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home.
Home again
My US book tour was a 49-day, whirlwind cross-country trip that offered the opportunity to introduce A Long Way From Iowa (AND Demystifying the French) to readers across the country, from Mystic, Connecticut on the East Coast to Seattle on the West.
Also (and equally important for me) it gave me the chance to reconnect with friends and family I hadn’t seen in some cases for more than five years. That was wonderful!
Now I am back in France, back in my quiet little village in Champagne, and I am beginning to reorient to a totally different pace, and a totally different way of life–but it is going to take a while. I’m not ready yet to write about the still-tumbling thoughts I have about the experiences I had on that cross-country journey, and the things I noticed along the way. One day I will be, and this is where you will find my thoughts and reflections about it when that time comes.
In the meantime I need to focus on building the momentum created during the tour, during which I found that every group of people I met with came up with unique and interesting ways of responding to A Long Way From Iowa, and asked such interesting questions about it. It’s wonderfully rewarding to know that people have read it and had it spark thoughts and memories about their own lives, their own families, their own grandmothers and mothers! And I hope that some of the conversations I had with the people who came to my events will encourage others to write their own stories too. It’s a wonderful thing to do.
Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays, is this week. This year I will be celebrating Thanksgiving with my sons in Paris. And giving thanks for so many things, too many to name here. Here’s wishing you and yours a warm and wonderful Thanksgiving wherever you are. And all good things in the weeks ahead.
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France, and coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home.
Au Revoir, Portland, Bonjour Seattle!
After a 36-hour trip across the country on the Empire Builder –two nights on the train, and one full day–I arrived in Portland, Oregon.*
I boarded the train in St. Paul (Minnesota) at 11:00 pm on Friday night, and arrived in Portland Sunday morning shortly before noon. I had been warned that Amtrak trains are notoriously unreliable in terms of on-time arrival: nevertheless, this train was not only on time, but a bit early. Therefore I had plenty of time to get cleaned up and rested up enough to be the guest of honor at the book party my friends Ginnie and Rick hosted for me in their lovely home the following evening.
This party was a great success! The guest list was composed of a nice mix of Ginnie’s friends and mine–including one friend from my first neighborhood in St. Paul, a woman I had not seen since before we were even women, still just girls (we figured out that the last time had been when we were about 14 years old!). Another was a dear old friend from my time of living in New York. A third was actually someone I had never met, the friend of a mutual friend. And the fourth was Linda Witt, who served as moderator for a couple of panel discussions I organized about Demystifying the French–with Linda’s help–for the Fédération des Alliances Françaises USA.
I enjoyed meeting with this group so much! The questions they asked, and the comments they made proved to me yet again that there are many ways into the story I tell in A Long Way From Iowa, and each individual reader tends to find the path that is most interesting for him or herself. Therefore, as usual, when there is the opportunity to discuss a book with a group of readers, all kinds of interesting and alternative ways of reading it tend to be discovered.
The next night, Ginnie and some of her friends and I went to a Barbara Kingsolver event sponsored by Literary Arts. Kingsolver was discussing her latest novel, the Pulitzer prizewinning Demon Copperhead. Prior to this event I had had no opportunity to learn anything about the book, but I was very interested to see that it has strong connections with the theme I am exploring with my students in my current online class for Politics and Prose bookstore, “Bootstraps.” That is, poverty in America. I’ve since started reading Kingsolver’s book and it is very compelling.
The next day was spent on some furious catching up on reading and preparing for class. Being three hours behind most of the students in my class meant that this time I had to be ready to teach at 6:45 am. It also meant that once class was over, I had a good deal of daytime ahead of me in which to explore Portland, and happily it worked into my friend Larry Kirkland’s schedule. He invited me to join him and some friends on a trip to Portland’s famous Japanese Garden, which was amazing!
By Friday my friend Ginnie and I were finally caught up enough on our various professional responsibilities that we were able to do a little bit of sightseeing. Ginnie’s husband Rick generously offered to be our chauffeur and tour guide on a drive to, and through, the beautiful Columbia River Gorge. His knowledge of both the geological history of this amazing area of protected natural beauty, and the political history of how it has been preserved made the trip so much more interesting than it would have been without him.
Saturday morning it was time for me to say goodbye to Portland and get back on the train–this time for a short and very pleasant three-hour ride to Seattle, with lovely forest all along the coast. (The train was once again right on time, yay Amtrak!)
I’ll have a few days here in Seattle and environs, staying with dear friends; and one visit to a book club hosted by another friend–then it’s onto a plane and on my way back to France, with a layover in Calgary.
Stay tuned for my report from Seattle. So far it is a very interesting town!
*I’ll comment on the name of that train–(the Empire Builder?!)–in a future post, when I report on my Amtrak experience. Teaser: Mostly it was a good experience. 🙂 )
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France, and coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home.
Books that will help you understand and appreciate the French
For any of my readers who are looking for good books about the French for holiday gifts (or whatever), take a look Shepherd.com, which is a new book recommendation site. I was asked to contribute five of my favorite books about some aspect of life in France.
Here is the topic, and the books I chose:
You can read about why I chose these books here:
https://shepherd.com/best-books/understanding-and-appreciating-the-french
Once you’re on Shepherd.com, do stay a while to check out this site. It’s a wonderful new endeavor by some very creative, book-loving, monopoly-challenging heroes of the book world. So take a few minutes to browse around and see what other lists they have available. (Just a few examples of some of their many, many topics: “The best books to understand modern Iran” “The best books on enjoying wildlife when traveling.” “The best travel books when you need escapism.”)
I’m honored to have been invited to do this, along with some very impressive authors from one of my favorite niche genres: books about France. (Martin Walker? Mark Greenside? Stephen Clarke? Wow!)
You might want to also take a peek at the “bookshelf” posts on my blog for additional ideas. Here they are! https://janethulstrand.com/?s=bookshelf&searchbutton=Go%21
PS: Be careful out there everyone. Wear those masks! (I didn’t wear masks as much as I should have in a recent trip to Paris, and I am regretting it. 😦
Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divides her time between the US and France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You. Her memoir, A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France, will be published in early 2023.
September in Essoyes, Paris, and Nice!
My goodness, what a busy month this has been!
First of all, there was the vendange (the grape harvest) which of course is always a busy and important time of year in Essoyes. This year, despite a very dry summer, there was a very abundant harvest, which made everyone both relieved and happy.
To add the excitement for me, this year one of my oldest and dearest friends in the world came for a visit. She and her husband were lucky to finally, on their third try, be able to take a Rhine River cruise to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary, after two previous cruises were postponed due to Covid restrictions. And I was lucky that after their cruise was over they chose to meet me in Paris and then come with me to Essoyes for a couple of days before they had to head back home to Colorado.
They had a whirlwind couple of days in Paris, in which they were able to make it to two of the three sights that Colleen’s 95-year-old father had told them were “must-sees”: the Basilica of Sacré Coeur in Montmartre, and the rue du Bac. We weren’t able to work in a visit to Chartres, Mr. Foy’s third must-see, in the short time they had, but we did stop in the beautiful medieval city of Troyes on our way to Essoyes. Troyes has many beautiful churches, as well as a cathedral, a synagogue, and a mosque. I took them to see my favorite church, the Eglise de la Madeleine, and they also were able to visit the very cool Musée de l’Outil et de la Pensée Ouvrière (Museum of Tools and of Workers’ Thought).
Then it was on to Essoyes. My friends got there too late to see the grapes being pressed, but not too late to be given a wonderful private tour of the pressoir owned by our friends Bethsabée and Léa Roger, which they declared a highlight of their visit.
Their visit to Essoyes was wonderful, but short. And almost as soon as they left I had to leave Essoyes again, to go to Nice, where I had been invited to present on Demystifying the French at a conference my friend Adrian was hosting. It was a very interesting, friendly and responsive audience, composed of (mostly) Americans who are considering the possibility of moving to France. We had a great time discussing some of the cultural differences between the French way of doing things, and the American way, that can lead to confusion and even sometimes dismay not only for Americans, but for French people as well. I tried to give them some tips about how to understand these differences and how to avoid cultural clashes over them, and I was very happy that quite a few people told me afterward that they really enjoyed my presentation.
The day after my presentation I was invited to join the group in a one-day tour of the lovely Côte d’Azur area before they went on to Provence and Occitanie. What a treat! Here are just a few images from a lovely day.
Then it was back to Essoyes, and time to settle into autumn activities: stacking wood, resuming my writing projects, and preparing to continue exploring the history of France with the students in my online class. There’s room for more students this time, so if anyone is interested in learning about how France recovered from World War II, we’ll be reading three very interesting books and we’ll have a couple of great visitors to the class who will share their expertise to augment our learning.
Wishing everyone a happy, safe, productive autumn. (You can keep wearing your masks if you want to 🙂 )
Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divides her time between the US and France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You and will soon publish her next book, A Long Way from Iowa, a literary memoir.
“Couvre feu” means curfew
I was in Paris again last week, mainly to see my eye doctor, and get my glasses adjusted to my new post-cataract-surgery vision, but I also had the chance to do a few fun things while I was there: to celebrate a friend’s birthday, to have a couple of meals with my son, to take a turn around the lovely Square du Temple during a break from my work, to attend my friend Adrian Leeds Après-Midi meetup, and see the documentary Meeting Jim, about Jim Haynes.
Life in Paris has changed a bit since I was last there. As the number of COVID cases has started to rise, too quickly for anyone’s comfort, new restrictions, and stronger and more frequent reminders of all the ways we are supposed to be keeping ourselves and everyone else safer are ubiquitous. Every restaurant and cafe that I went to had a bottle of sanitizer on every table, as well as at the entrance to the establishment. Stores and Metro stations also have bottles available as you enter: the ones in the Metro have foot pedals so no one has to touch anything. There are also sign-in sheets in restaurants for anyone coming in a group, which is to make it easy for the establishment to help with contact tracing should the need arise. No group can be larger than six people, and physical distancing rules between tables must be adhered to. And everyone, well, pretty much everyone, is now wearing masks throughout the city, inside and out. If you get caught not wearing one, there’s a hefty 135 euro fee. That helps with compliance!
There was a fair amount of suspense during the few days I was there, since it was announced that President Macron would be addressing the nation again, on Wednesday evening, but not what he would say. So of course everyone was dreading a return to a national general confinement, and the necessity of filling out permission slips if we strayed more than a kilometer from our homes. As it turns out, the most concerning areas, not surprisingly, are nine big cities in France (Paris, Lille, Toulouse, Marseille, Lyon, Montpelier, Grenoble, Rouen, and St. Etienne ), and as of Saturday they were put under a curfew, which means that everyone, with very few exceptions, has to be in their homes, and stay there, from 9 pm until 6 am. The curfew will last at least four weeks, more likely six. (It took me a while to realize that the “couvre feu” I kept hearing about on the radio was the same thing as “curfew.” Voila: another new term learned.)
This of course is very hard on restaurateurs and also anyone in the broad category of culture (theater, music, dance, cinema). I’m not going to try to say whether or not I think this measure will meet the government’s objective. I hope it will, because the idea is to try to keep the hospitals from getting overcrowded, health care workers overwhelmed, and everyone in less danger of the virus spreading. One can only hope…
Anyway, I left Paris one day before the curfew began, so I didn’t get to see the unusual sight of the “City of Light” suddenly quiet and dark at 9 pm.
On Sunday I had the chance to talk about my book, Demystifying the French with the wonderful Jennifer Fulton of Bonjour Books DC, in Kensington, Maryland, just outside of Washington D.C. Jennifer had gathered a great group via Zoom, and we had lots of fun discussing with them the finer points of how to appreciate the French, and how to learn and understand the rules that guide their behavior.
You can buy my book, and a host of other wonderful books (mostly in French, but also some books about France in English) from Jennifer online, and I urge you to do so. She is, as an indie bookseller, one of the champions in the world of publishing. And we readers (and writers) need to support our champions!
And so I am back to my quiet life in a little village in Champagne. The trucks going up the hill alongside our road are mostly hauling wood now, and my wood for the winter has been delivered: so I have my work cut out for me, to get it properly stacked.
Wednesday was a national day of homage and mourning in France, after a horrific act of terrorism took place last week in a town not far from Paris. A middle school history teacher was brutally murdered in the street as he was walking home from school. I won’t go into the awful details of what happened; there’s a pretty good account here. I will say that this tragedy is one more symptom of a terribly difficult, complex social and cultural problem in France, and a subject that is very difficult to discuss with the calm perspective that will surely be needed in order to begin to solve it, though people are certainly trying. It was, among other things, an attack on one of the most beautiful aspects of French culture–that is, respect for the life of the mind, and the ability to debate controversial topics in a way that is intellectually challenging, reasonable, respectful, rational, and sound.
It was also the tragic loss of a husband, father, and much beloved teacher who was devoted to his work, teaching French youth about those values. It is hard to know what to say. It is very, very sad. The teacher was, as President Macron said in his homage to him, “un hero tranquille” (a quiet, peaceful hero). He will be sorely missed, but it is clear from the testimony of his students that Samuel Paty, and his deep belief in tolerance, understanding, respect for others, and the importance of the continuing pursuit of knowledge will not be forgotten. And the lessons he taught, and the values he inspired in hundreds of students over the years will live on.
Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divides her time between the U.S. and France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and is currently working on her next book, a literary memoir entitled “A Long Way from Iowa.”
Demystifying the French, via Zoom!
Today’s the day! I’ll be chatting with Jennifer Fulton, of the wonderful Bonjour Books DC today at 11 am Eastern Standard Time, about Demystifying the French. Want to join us? Here’s the link!
Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divides her time between the U.S. and France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and is currently working on her next book, a literary memoir entitled “A Long Way from Iowa.”
Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road 