Those were no Muslims: It’s Election Time

In 1983, working on a spec piece for the New York Times on the 1938 “War of the Worlds’ broadcast which landed Martians in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, located in West Windsor, part of the Princeton area I was covering, I interviewed Howard Koch, who had written the broadcast, based on H.G. Wells’s novel of the same name, for Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater of the Air. He told me that Welles had selected the area for the Martian landing by blindfolding his eyes and throwing a dart at a map. I also interviewed Sheldon Judson, the eminent Princeton Geology professor who, as one of my predecessors 45 years earlier (that is to say, a student cum news stringer), had been sent out by the Associated Press to Grover’s Mill to investigate the landing.

One of the reasons this dramatic presentation, much of which was delivered as a mock news broadcast,  was believed by millions of Americans was because of the lethal combination of fear of foreign invasion and economic insecurity which then cast its shadow over Americans.

Today of course, the real fear is financial and the bogeymen are Muslims, but the fear factor which is our heritage is the same. Welles’s briliant broadcast Svengali has been replaced by a refugee from another horror drama, “The Stepford Wives,” as Sarah Palin tries to make us believe that the Martian, er, Muslim, er, terrorist in our closet is the black man on the ballot. But really, the devil is in the Republican details.

The road to Le Bugue is paved with fugitive jackasses

But first a word about me and donkeys (also sometimes referred to as jackasses in the U.S.): Back in my state natal of California, these were humorous, big-eared creatures whose voice, even, was hilaroius: Hee-haw! Here in France, I first came to know and appreciate the animal called the ane in a culinary fashion; the best salami/saucisson I’ve ever tasted is ane, brought back for me by my Yank buddy Pam from the Haute Savoie. The ideal formula is 50 percent donkey, 50 percent pork; smells like donkey-dung but tastes sublime. Not so sublime was the sight I beheld last fall at the Foire de Bestiaux, Faire of farm animals in Le Buisson one Friday morning. Alongside the cows, horses, birds and other animals was one incredibly depressed and sad looking group of donkeys. I don’t mean sad as in they were in sad shape, although they were kind of that, but that their heads were hanging down and they… just… looked … sad. No more donkey salami for Paul!

Par contre, roundabout where I live, or lived, until yesterday (I write you now from new digs in the big city a.k.a. Perigueux, the departmental seat of the Dordogne. Yay 24! ((Same number as Willie Mays. Say Hey!)), at the far end of the wide-ranging horse farm looked over by towering cliffs, across from the deshevelled former gite down the little dirt road, is one pair of happy, eager-looking dark brown spry long-eared jackasses. My guess is that they’re happy, or rather not sad, because far from being destined for my mouth, they’re riding-donkeys for kids at the former gite.

So last Tuesday morning, I’d just started down Tobacco Road (so-named by me because there used to be a ballfield, er, tobacco farm there), with Boobah the neighbor collie/Belgian sheep-dog faithfully prepared to follow me the 12 KM to Le Bugue for the King Charles V declared Tuesday market, when down the road I perceived a pair of romping, well, either very large dogs, very large sangliers (wild boars) or donkey-sized donkeys. As soon as they saw me, or so it seemed, they hastened their trot and headed straight down the road, on which they were indeed driving, towards me and my adopted dog. “About-face, Boobah!” I declared as we made a 180-degree turn. By the time I got to the house near the train crossing and yelled at the serene but lively 95-year-old lady (I mention her age only because she’s as spry as those donkeys), “The donkeys are coming! The donkeys are coming!” the donkeys had turned into the short underground tunnel that leads from Tobacco Road to the horse farm and were heading for home.

Playing this week-end in Perigueux: “It’s a Riot” (VF*) or, Riot of Spring

There are demonstrations, there are manifestations, there are riots and there are emeutes, but this week-end in Perigueux, the departmental capital here in the southwest of France, there was a riot produced entirely by the police, and that’s no joke.

It happened, fittingly enough, in the plaza in front of the Odyssey Theater, which last week had hosted Israeli choreographer Emmanuel Gat’s version of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” or “Sacre du Printemps.” Even if you didn’t notice the “Securité Routiere” tables set up, foire (fair) style, the orderliness of the shield-bearing police, not to mention the orderly er ‘rioters’ or manifestants, not to mention that the ‘t.v. cameraman’ was being left alone to do his work as opposed to being roped in and toppled with the rioters, might have tipped you off that, evidently, this was a police, or securité organized demonstration of how the police handle a, er, riot or demonstration, even though it bore little resemblance to my experience.

But to be fair, first a distinction: My limited experience participating in demonstrations here in France, mostly before, during, and in the immediate afermath of the U.S. illegal invasion of Iraq, and in support of Lebanon when Israel invaded that country in 2006, contrasts favorably with the same in the United States. The closest the police came to anything that could even remotely maybe be considered to have an aspect of intimidation was in filming one of the manifs and in sending civilian ops to monitor another. I was actually more frightened *covering* the 1992 demonstration in San Francisco reacting to the Rodney King verdict, to the point of getting off the street — with little confidence that my SF Police press card would protect me. Since then, police tactics in repressing demonstrations in the U.S. have gotten even more out of hand, particulary during and at the presidential nominating conventions, with pre-emptive arrestations, reporters being beaten and arrested, people being jailed in unsanitary conditions, bystanders being arrested just for being in the ‘wrong’ place at the wrong time, and more. Also, as I’ve previously written, during the 2008 Olympic torch relay, Paris stood out as just about the only city which refused to buckle under to Chinese pressure and allowed people to demonstrate for Tibet and against Chinese repression there.

Still, I have to make fun of Saturday’s mock manif for its one-dimensional aspect:

First, what was this demonstration (or demonstration of a demonstration and the police response) doing as part of a securité routiere foire? I mean, would a group of random people really assemble at the scene of an accident with the ends of trampling on and kicking the victim of the vehicle accident, trying to prevent the police from putting him in an ambulance, and egging on the police (in a sort of Vinny of Brooklyn, arms hanging down, hands cupped, fingers beckoning come and get me copper manner)? And why would the police show up at the scene of an accident in full riot gear? And would police at a riot really do a sort of carefully choreographed (usually I hate that term as applied to anything but dance, e.g. war, but here it’s appropriate) Busby Berkeley array, four lines across, six or so police deep? And would their batons stay in their belts? And what exactly was the, well, motivation of the demonstrators?

What’s scary about this is that it suggests that for the police, demonstrators, or manifs, have just one goal in mind, to egg on the police — and if they can do it by kicking an innocent road accident victim, all the better! People demonstrate for a reason. Even if one allows that there is a separate cadre, a sort of sub-set if you will, of ‘emeuteurs’ or rioters who exploit legitimate manifs just to spread chaos, the politicians — the government — evidently needs to do a better job of educating the police as to the reasons behind such manifestations of discontent. (I think the funniest of these I ever saw — not counting the time when the striking firemen battled the police with firehouses — was when a group of about 15 sans papiers were followed by at least 50 police in a manif that took place last year in my old Paris ‘hood, a couple of blocks from where (then) candidate Nicolas Sarkozy had set up headquarters.)

*Version Flic

Between loud rock and a bee’s place

If I’ve not written in a while it’s for the good reason that I’ve been obsessed with finding a new place, which I thought finally happened at about the beginning of the month. It’s in Perigueux, which, after more or less a year’s research — it’s the departmental seat and about a half hour by train from Les Eyzies — looked pretty good to me. To paraphrase Donny & Marie, it’s a little bit country and a little bit city; a decent-sized town — pop. 30,000 — plopped in the middle of the countryside. A decent river runs through it, the Isle — not the Seine, but neither the city-side of the Loire (as I caught it in Nantes). There’s even a canal, which, as it turns out, is not far from what I thought would be my new place; one one side of the farm-dominated island in the middle of the canal, one sees the forrest, from the other, mundane housing.

My place is in an area called the Four Paths, after the roads that intsersect at the tiny fountain-topped round point nearby. It’s two minutes from the train station, across the street from the first bakery I’ve found in France that sells ‘French bread’ like we used to have in San Francisco — sourdough — up the avenue from a ‘hard discount’ super-market, a few steps from another medium-sized super-market with my preferred generic brand of cheeses and other Frenchy stuff, the house of a thousand beers, a Portuguese bar which sells Brazilian style roast chicken for take-out, a French-Arab butcher’s with cheap tangy and spicey olives, a reasonably priced gourmet take-out pizza place with a zillion flavors, and, best of all, the new cafe-library Marco Polo sur son velo, which offers themed tartine lunch specials every week (e.g. Woodstock with a Santana and a Hendrix, giving me a chance to break out my close enounters with each) and theme nights like speed-dating, Belgian beer at Belgian prices, a vareity of cofffees that also evoke San Francisco, ditto the counches and easy chairs, and even the latest edition of the New York Review of Books.

The best part of the apartment itself is the view from three large windows, including one, in the bathroom, from which one can step out onto a kind of roof terrace. I figured out that this view actually has a little of most of the places I’ve lived or thought of living in the last few years.

From left to right: a line stretching forward of terra cotta roofs adorned by chimneys and telvision antennae (recalling an apartment I almost took in Lyon); then, in the center, a large plot of backyards that, with trees as tall as the ones here looks more like a densely green park (ditto in Montpellier). Then ’60s-style mammoth Corbusier-style apartment buildings that, while ugly in themselves, for me evoked — like one of my first Paris apartments in the 15th arr., from which I could also see close-up the Eiffel and the Pasteur Institute — the ’60s of Godard. Then to the futher right, green hills dappled with occasional cottages (Pau). And beyond it all, mountains.

The problem is that the apartment building is also inhabited by an escapee from a Godard film, except without the charm of, say, Jean-Paul Belmondo. No Pierot, just the fool. In place of dynamite his weapon is loud rock music strategically deployed between midnight and two in the morning, and occasionally accompanied by blaring television and/or a batterie of fists against the wall.

The first time I descended to his floor to ask him if he could tone it down, Thursday a week ago, “Andre” as we’ll call him answered, “Okay, but stop walking back and forth!” “Uh, I’ve been asleep for the last hour,” I replied.

The next day at my request the landlord spoke to Andre, and also ensured me cheerily that he was being evicted anyway. He also explained that Andre drinks. And occasionally forgets to take his medication.

Two nights later, returning and preparing to open my door after midnight, I heard Andre throw open his door and yell up, drunkenly, “Why did you speak to the landlord!!!??” When I reported this incident to the landlord, he said, “Don’t worry, Andre will be out of here ‘d’ici peu.” in no time at all.

This past Thursday I was again awakened by Andre’s loud rock after midnight; it continued until about two in the morning.

Friday I called the landlord and left a message reporting what had happened and adding “I’m heading back to Les Eyzies. Let me know when Andre is gone and I’ll be glad to come back.”

That’s more or less where it’s at now. More or less.

Because there are a couple of cricks in the system. A, having dispensed a good portion of my $ for the first and last on the new apartment, insurance, etc., I don’t have a lot left to put first and last down on a new place if I have to (for I’m not counting on the landlord being able to evict Andre quickly; it’s hard to evict people in France and beginning in about two weeks, it will even be harder, as that’s when the law kicks in that says you can’t kick people out during winter.) And B, I thought that notwitstanding the imminent cold I could wait it out here in Eyzies — and en plus, it looks like the same France Telecom/Orange employee who forgot to tell them to turn on my Internet in Perigueux forgot to tell them to turn it off here — but then I remembered the bees.

It seems that the bees who for the last year or so have resided in the dead walnut tree just to the left of the house are now commuting to a crook in the roof. I thought I could deal with it until I realized that bees were showing up in my bedroom even with the windows closed. (Did I mention that I can also hear them snoring, or sleep-walking, at night?) After reconnoitering outisde the house and in the living room I determined the two holes from which they’re likely dropping in. I tried nailing something to the ceiling that would cover these holes, but the bees didn’t like that as the buzzing immediately increased. So instead I’ve just lodged a few flat things between the wood beam and the cieling — the frame/backing to my copy of the poster for Leonor Fini/Roland Petite’s “The Ladies of the Night” (starring Margot Fonteyne), Terese’s Mom’s apres Matisse in Coulieres painting (sorry Cats), etc.

Hopefully this will do it and I will not have to choose between the industrious but more than occasionally straying bees and the determinedly obnoxious neighbor.

Update: I just consulted with Monsieur Marty, the farmer across the road and his visiting friend to see if there is a person dans le coin who gets rid of bees. They said to call the firemen, who used to do it, and ask where I’d call now, the guy at the firemen’s urgences number said to look in the phone book and gave me a bad page but fortunately, calling on 30 years experience in investigative journalism, I figured out that it was probably a de-something, looked in the index and discovered ‘desinfection, desinsectisation, deratisation,’ and that there’s a guy in Le Bugue that does it. So maybe I can have the house without the sting. D’ici la, Monsieur Marty says, he is happy to come over with his fusil and knock ‘em off one by one.