Kinship Mapping -- or not?

In my attempts to complete a kinship map, I learned quite a bit about the structure and culture of family in France.  Initially I was frustrated by the assignment because I knew early on that questioning people about their families was contrary to French culture.  However, my inability to explain how I knew this sent me on a search that lasted my entire field study.

Ultimately, I didn’t ask any French people about their family.  To do so would have been to completely miss the point about understanding the French and the relationship to family.  Families are private, and you don’t ask about them in France.  I was talking to a woman who was telling me that she had been working with another woman for five years and had never known she was married or had a daughter about the same age until knowing her for FIVE YEARS.  Because you don’t talk about or ask about someone’s family.  They’re private; they’re not you’re business.  I was talking to another girl who said that you will never ever see pictures of a French person’s family on their desk at work.  Ever.  I thought that was odd, until remembering what the first woman said about never knowing.

I was talking to my landlady over coffee one day, telling her about how frustrated I was about this assignment because I had learned and understood that you just don’t ask people about their families in France (she’s American and married a French man).  She confirmed my understanding, she said that she had been married for eight years and she just felt like being an outsider having married her husband that her mother-in-law was only just beginning to trust her.  Now mother-in-laws are notorious for being difficult on their son’s wives.  But she said that she wasn’t sure she could even get her husband to share with me about his family.  And he was her HUSBAND.  She told me about how French people will talk to you about almost anything, but asking about their families is a serious breach of privacy.

I had experienced this before, with a boy I met.  My family is important to me, so I usually think of them often, and talk about them if given the chance.  He didn’t, and when I was sitting with him talking to him for the third hour, I finally asked about his family, and though he had been speaking with me rather openly about all sorts of things, he closed up and was tight-fisted about his family.  As soon as I moved away from the topic, he opened up again.

I knew that cutting corners and doing a kinship mapping with some American family at church was perhaps possible, but would kind of defeat and miss the purpose of the whole Field Study and learning about another culture.  I can tell you that my landlord is French, that he has an Ameriacn wife, and a young daughter.  He has a mother out in the country where he takes his daughter often, and a sister living in Paris, which I know because she had to collect my key from me when I left.  But these are all things I deduced over three months, and by talking to his wife, an Amerian, who is much more open about family than he was.

It sounds like I just didn’t do an assignment, but I honestly tried for three months to find someone I felt I could ask about their family, but I just wasn’t willing to ruin a perfectly good conversation by asking them about their family when it was something that just wasn’t done.  When in Rome, as they say.  And so I gleaned my understanding of family by watching and paying attention to the people around me.

I learned children are very important.  I learned that the family is the responsibility of mother and father, not just mother.  There were children everywhere, much more a part of the streets of Paris than I’ve ever recognized in London, or Los Angeles or even Provo.  In American cities and towns, children are hidden away at home; but Parisians live their lives and let their children be a part of them.  They take them everywhere, in strollers, and on walks, and they listen to their every word, and take them to play afterschool in the park down the street.  So attentive.  Parisian children are so very loved and encouraged in that love.

I saw fathers in parks with their children always; children are not the woman’s responsibility, but a family responsibility.  At home it seems you only see American fathers with their older sons—when their sons are old enough to play a sport, be taken to the park.  This does not seem the case in Paris.  Rather, fathers take their daughters and their very young children out into the city.  Fathers have a place, even with babies.  And they are attentive to their daughters as well as their sons.  They really play with their children, too, which I hadn’t seen very often elsewhere.

On several occasions while sitting in the tube in London during the months I spent living in London, a child would call out to their parent (you rarely saw children on the tube, but when they were there, I had seen this happen) and the parent would entirely ignore them.  The child wasn’t complaining, they just wanted to tell their parent something, and they were ignored leaving everyone in the carriage wondering why they’re not just answering the child so she’ll stop saying, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.”  Children are on the metro in Paris often, and when they call after a parent, they are listened to and typically answered.  Chances are I always saw the circumstances in London in which children were ignored, and always saw circumstances in Paris in which children were given some heed.  But regardless, it shaped my idea of how children were regarded in Paris, in ways I hadn’t seen them regarded elsewhere.

Though the family is not typically spoken of, it is very apparently an important structure in Paris.  Grandparents are just as important as they are in the closest families here.  Weekend visits to Grandparents was a typical occurrence for my landlady’s husband and daughter.  In a world where people are not let in very often, family members become necessary and indispensable parts of life.

Education

April

Learning through Personal Growth: On several occasions I met with April, the wife of my proprietor, at a café for some conversation and coffee.  She is American, but has been living in France for 14 years, married a French man and has a daughter with her husband.  Having worked in France for 14 years and having a growing daughter in France, she had some interesting things to say about the French education system, and learning in general.  She and her husband were moving apartments in Paris, to an apartment closer to the school where their daughter attended.  They had put her in a school in this area of Paris with the knowledge they would want to move to a larger apartment soon.  Now that they had an older daughter (she was an old toddler, by this point, about 5) April was concerned about her daughter having her own space, and some semblance of privacy, and being able to lead her own life.  This was very important to April, and indeed is an important value in France.  The autonomy of children is of a different caliber in France, and as such, as a five year old, her daughter would begin to need things like a room away from the dining room where her parents might entertain guests, so she could sleep.  She might need a door, which could be left open or closed at her daughter’s desire.  When I was in high school, living in a very small house where my parents did not have the ability or means to give me my own room as the oldest of three, my mother decided to give up her work area so that I might have a desk and a computer; this became my domain until I went to college.  But this autonomy and domain that was given to me was not afforded to me until much older than is typical in France, where April said she had recognized very young children were treated not as cogs in a system, or even members of a family, but downright entities of their own being.  There were things she both liked and disliked about this.  It fed into her American belief, she said, that every person is an individual and deserves treatment as such.  But it was of a different variety, and oftentimes she had noticed French children were unkind to each other, each of them believing life should go their way.  (This she had noticed in dealing with her daughter going to school with other French children.)  French children learned, she said, that they were their own person, very early in life, not in the way that they were individuals with spirits and wills all their own, but that they were entities with the right to have what they wanted.

Values of Learning: She mentioned this again when talking about how this translated to the work place.  The French were not good at working in groups, she said.  Whereas in America, children are forced to do group projects and learn how to work with other people, how to split up that work, and how to keep each other on the ball, in France the education system is so individualized—and is a series of test-taking—that they often never learn how to work with other people on projects, and when it is asked of them at work, they go about it in odd and inefficient ways.  I found it interesting that someone was making the assessment, basically, that though the French education system is efficient, sometimes that doesn’t the most efficient student create.  The American school system, railed on constantly, is more then inefficient, but, she said, often makes for very efficient workers.  Trial by fire, she assessed.  Americans learn how to get through all the crap of American school system and float or sink; they become efficient, or they don’t become anything.  The French learn facts through their school system but they oftentimes don’t learn much else.  I thought this shed, whether entirely true or not, a very interesting light on values of French education and values of American education.  Indeed, for better or for worse, neither has changed in a long while, and that reveals what each culture values in the end.

Naomi

Formal Education: I spoke to Naomi today.  She’s been in France for eight months, doing her International Relations study-abroad year.  She was in Toulouse for 6 months, and now will be in Paris for 6 months.  Her mother is Swiss, so she has been speaking French in the home since she was a child, and knows the language well, like she knows English well.  At University in the UK, which is usually a 3-year program, apart from the study abroad, they study one to two languages, and if their emphasis requires it, they go abroad in the country of their language study for a year.  She’s also been to Spain for six months, to learn Spanish, which was her other language.  The way she explained it is less as a requirement, and more as a step.  You do your first year and university, and if you pass (40% or higher), you do your year abroad, and if you do that, then you go on to your last two years and university which determine how well you do.  The first two years are not factored in, but are just marked as ‘done’ more or less.  Because she grew up in Africa as the daughter of missionaries she grew up with a lot of Americans, speaking French in the home and English at the mission school.  When she was 16 and all the Americans were preparing to take SATs, her parents decided it was time to move to England so she could take the correct tests and go to University.  They now live in Northampton, which is not terribly “home” to Naomi, but she enjoyed her first year at University and did well in Spain and is doing well here, but is excited to go back to the UK and go to “Uni” as she calls it—University.

Spiritual Learning: Another interesting aspect of education for Naomi, however, is that of a religious education.  Growing up as the daughter of missionaries, she believes very strongly in a relationship with God, rather than blank beliefs in him which require attendance to church but no particular life-style choice.  She identifies very strongly as a Christian and sees that as being a very good and righteous thing.  She questions and doubts, but not God.  She roots her spiritual knowledge in the Bible, and in her experiences with God, with others, and with her family.  She believes God is good, and merciful, and doesn’t believe in church authority the way Latter-day Saints do.  When I speak with her, I connect with her on levels of identifying myself as a Christian, and even by identifying as a Protestant, on most counts, though we usually abstain from identifying ourselves as Protestant—because it implies reformation—our history most closely relates to that of a Protestant, and is something she better understands.  She’s open to talking about religious beliefs, even ones we disagree on, and she gives them thought.  I try to ask her, too, what she believes, and we find we agree on most things.  I think that she considers part of her knowledge and education to be spiritual is rare in people our age, but shows a multi-faceted understanding of where knowledge is found, and how it can be used.

Thibaut

Learning by Living: Thibaut is French, and went to lycée (high school) which finishes around 18, then went to University.  He was involved in Amnesty International at University, and is about 25/26.  He seems to have gone to school because it gives him something to do, and though he said he was interested in making the world better, getting rid of guns, stopping war, I couldn’t decipher if he had a passion for education, though he had done University, a masters, and was about to do a second masters.  It is cheaper to go to school in France because much of it is subsidized, very much like BYU for church-members; French universities for the French.  Thibaut was particularly adamant about travelling being the crux of his education.  He’s lived all over the world for months at a time.  He talks about them as vacations, but its apparent that the people he met, talked with, and partied with in the cities and countries he visited has shaped what he thinks of the world, and has shaped why he wishes for peace.  He thinks everyone is different, but in thinking that believes that everyone is more alike that we give them credit for, and therefore war is ridiculous to him.

Living by Loving/Spiritual Love vs. “Just Benefit”: Being French, he believes strongly in love, affection, and in some ways this manifests itself in terms of learning.  He said his mantra is “Just Benefit.”  Of course this is the opposite in many ways of a religious or spiritual mindset, but in ways where Naomi and I agree that spiritual knowledge can be a large portion of where our learning and reasoning centers are housed, the idea of “Just Benefit” implies that one need not overthink anything, but go with the flow, and love others, and let things happen.  There is no reasonable argument against this.  It is a sound and reasonable mantra to live by when one lacks a sense of spiritual learning, and I think in the place of spiritual learning, it serves many people well.  In many ways, he taps into human learning sans religious institution, and that reveals basics of human nature that are God-given, which he understands and many religious people do not.  He believes showing love equates to treating people well; this is of course true, when coupled with respect and intent to understand.  Unfortunately the former is usually held only by non-religious, and forgotten by those who value the spirit, while the latter is one that is forgotten by the non-religious, and with which the religious still struggle.

Browsing

He was very concerned about it.  So concerned, in fact, that he dragged me out of Luxembourg Garden, where we had been talking for over an hour, down Boulevard St.-Michel to the main and largest Gibert-Joseph bookstore on the Boulevard and took me inside.  Until that point, I had only been in small French bookstores, akin to the small quaint bookstores in the small coastal towns of California or the Mom & Pop stores of small-town America.  But even this is not a particularly effective description.  Bookstores in Paris are actually called Libraries and what we typically call a Library is called a Bibliothèque.  There’s a librarie near my apartment that looks exactly like the bookshop in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, which is supposed to be set in France, isn’t it?  And if you can imagine a small store-front room off of a little road, with paned windows, a painted façade, and the word Librarie painted in white or gold letters, you’re closer to the idea of a typical bookshop in Paris.

Gibert-Joseph, on the other hand, is a large store and is too large to look anything like the little libraries throughout Paris.  I’d seen the stores along St.-Michel, some for books, some for DVDs, some for music, and one a papeterie—where one buys paper and the necessary tools for writing—others for school books, some for selling and some for buying, but because there were so many, I didn’t expect the store he pulled me into to be as large as it was.  Seven floors; but that didn’t keep it from being packed with books.

In our conversation in Luxembourg, lasting a little over an hour, we had talked about literature mostly, for he had read everything.  Like most of the people who I like, and who like me, they all read more often than I do.  I’ve found through them that I’m not much of a reader.  He spoke to me about American writers, English writers, and French writers, and he wanted to know what I’d read, and what I thought about it.  I told him I’d read Zola’s L’Assemoir, which is so depressing its impossible to forget you’ve read it, and I’d read Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron, Chronicles by Jean Froissart—the original historian of the Hundred Years’ War, and La Cité des Dames by Christine Pizan.  We talked a long time about some of these, but he had not read all of them.  He also spoke to me about some of the American writers he’d read—the one I remember now was Virginia Woolf.  He’d read To the Lighthouse in English.  I was impressed, to say the least.

Have you ever read Woolf’s To the Lighthouse?  He said it was beautiful writing, but that he was lost on some of it.  I told him it was stream of consciousness and he asked what this meant.  So I explained, using her book as an example.  It’s when she writes everything that comes into her head, as it comes into her head, exactly the way she thinks it—rather than filtering the thoughts through organizations of structure like accepted sentence syntax and punctuation.  It was her feminist response to male structure.  He found the term ‘stream of consciousness’ most interesting.

And after we talked about literature for a while, and he shared with me that his favorite writer was Marcel Proust—and had I read anything of his?  I said I hadn’t, but for those of you who know me, this shouldn’t surprise you, since I never seem to have read what people ask me if I’ve read—and he’d seen the English cover, and are all English covers that way?

I stopped him.  « Qu’est-ce que veux-tu dire? » He responded again, “They are ugly.”  “What are?” “English book covers!”  And that’s what it was, that got him so riled, we had to leave the garden and go into several bookshops so he could prove his point.  He went the Gibert-Joseph showing me the nice, expensive French editions of books which were bound in cloth, and which he admitted were too expensive for a typical purchase, and then he went to the French translations of English books, which covers were clean and simple.  They usually had a picture on the front, with a white bar at the top with the book title, and a white bar at the bottom with the author’s name.  They all looked very much like Penguin’s Classics Series--except white, instead of black.

I had realized this before while walking by the libraries that the books all seemed to be white, and difficult to tell apart.  It occurred to me that the must be technical books of some kind, since some libraries sell merely les livres médicaux (Medical), or livres anciens et rare (Ancient and Rare), livres jeunesse (for Children).  I’d also seen people in the garden reading books, all of which seemed to have the same cover, and took them all for classics.  In fact, I’m sure I have somewhere in my notes: “The French all seem to be reading classics.  Either they’re all very cultured, or they’re catching up on the reading they should have done as young-adults.”  It turns out, and I learned through this tour of Gibert-Joseph that any French literature had these book covers, and it had nothing to do with them being medical books, or law books.  He proceeded show me all sorts of French books, all of which looked very similar.

Then, he spent a long time trying to find the English-language books, and when he did, he was proud of himself.  He touched the flashy book covers and confirmed, “See?  Ugly.”  I admit, I kind of laughed.  I liked the French literature book covers.  They were simple and clean, the way I often like my book covers, and far be it from me to purchase a book with an ugly book cover—no seriously, I won’t—but as always, in comparisons, you realize the mentality of your own culture.

I proceeded to explain that we had book covers like the French ones, too, and pulled out a few of the classics off the bookshelves to show him the covers which looked similar to his beloved French book covers.  Then I told him that we had artistic covers for best-sellers, classics, historical-fictions or non-fictions, and the like.  I pulled out a few books for some other covers, things written by Jack Kerouac or John Steinbeck which often require a book cover more artistic than the ‘classics.’  Then, of course, there were the books whose covers intended to catch your attention so you’d see them and pick them up while waiting in line, or while passing the bookshop into work.  This apparently was not the scenario of his book-buying experiences.

I realize, in retrospection that books have to be this way now.  At least in the United States, book stores are going out of business rapidly, thanks to the likes of ‘digital’ books.  And for those of us who are still holding on to our desire to turn physical pages, amazon will always save us a trip out of the house.  Except for the even smaller population of persons who regularly go into bookshops, wander the books, and purchase one or two to keep the whole thing going a little longer—my father is one such person—bookstores are becoming unnecessary.

Since coming to Paris, I have come to appreciate bookshops a little more.  There’s an art to the proper browsing of books in a bookshop which I observed my father do my whole life, but never tried or put into practice until I came to Paris.  To properly browse a bookshop and then make a purchase, one firstly needs to be somewhat knowledgeable either about books or authors and secondly cannot be searching for any book in particular or else you will never find it.  One must scan the book titles and authors until something strikes a chord, and then one must pull the book off the bookshelf, page through it, and decide if it’s something one wants to buy.  Sometimes walking around the bookshop while carrying said book helps make a decision about the purchase.

The problem with five easy steps to perfect browsing is that most Americans are rather impulsive buyers when it comes to their entertainment, and also, most working Americans don’t believe they have the time to meander through a bookshop.  If we need a cook book we go to the cooking section and find one we like.  If we’ve read a review about a good book, then we go to the bestseller stands and buy it.  But we rarely browse, we rarely have an infinite bank of knowledge about authors and we rarely buy a book we’ve never heard of or read about.  And that’s why we need catchy/flashy book covers.  If we’re in line, and something catches our eye, we’re more likely to read it and decided within seconds if it’s interesting enough to spend time reading.  The French book covers would never do for a working-class American who has so little time to spare.

Or else, that’s what we believe.  Thanks to my French friend from Luxembourg gardens, I now know this about French culture: the French don’t think that way—that they have little time to spare.  I mean, I’m sure they do think they don’t have enough time, but it doesn’t keep them from taking their time.  They browse.  They browse everything.  I found out early on that if I stood in front of the cheeses section of the grocery store for five minutes, no one would find that strange.  The old French woman next to me was doing the same thing.  Browsing the cheeses.  Furthermore, Paris is an entire city of shop windows and if something catches your eye, it’s not so strange to stop and look.  Shoes. Clothing. Jewelry. Food.—and books.  There are stalls outside of bookshops for browsing, something you rarely see in a big city in the United States.  And to me, that’s a significant cultural difference.  Browsing.  Who knew?

*13/7/12 Update: My neighbor gave me this gorgeous french phrase used to express 'window shopping': faire du lèche-vitrines.  Literally it means to lick the showcases (or shop windows).

Who you are.

You don’t seem very happy.  I think maybe a lot is worrying you.  I want to care, and I do care, but I’m afraid to show it, since there is so little I can do about it.

I want to be thoughtful, considerate, kind, but those things I associate with a prior me, a weaker me.  And so I will be those things, when I feel you understand me, but until then I’ll show you the roughness, and there isn’t a way for you to get in until you give me a reason to let you.

I’m eating cinnamon yogurt pretzels from the corner market. They’re not a terribly dignified food, I’ll give you that, but they’re addictive.  There might be cocaine in them.  Which brings me to another point: I think I do more eating in private than I do in public.  I hear this is a major difference between me and France.  We may not get along.

Honestly, how many people have this opportunity?  I’ve done this to myself, so to speak, and I know this is not something most of the people in the world, let alone most of the people in history get to do.  I need to stop treating this as difficult and start regarding it as a chance.  That’s what it is, a chance.  And I think there was a time and place for realizing how difficult this trip was/is going to be.  I don’t think that culture shock should be ignored; I don’t think that safety should be ignored.  However, I also think that I get to live in Paris for three months, and that’s exciting.

Americans have gone to Paris for a lot of different reasons; artistic endeavors, racial equality, social freedoms, a need for inspiration, a love of French culture.  But the great things about France were not introduced to me through war; nor am I escaping some terrible prejudice; neither am I facing financial or social ruin.

Turning 19 was hard for me.  Turning 20 was a million times worse.  I wanted to do something significant in my life because I felt I’d done nothing significant thus far, and that desire has led me down a lot of paths.  I turned 20, and then I went to London.  I turned 21 and I went back to college; moved in with new roommates; became a new person.  I turned 22 and I started planning my trip to France.  I’ll be 22 for a month and nine days before I turn 23.  Sometimes I just feel like time is passing too quickly, and if I don’t hold myself to doing something interesting or memorable, my life will pass without anything in it.  For my first two months of being 23 I’ll be living in Paris; I’ll graduate from university; I’ll hopefully get an internship in a Museum in LA county, I’ll hopefully get a job that makes me want to get up in the mornings.  Hopefully I’ll make enough money to move out to DC, take the GRE and begin applying to graduate programs back East.

But really, everything is in flux and none of these things could happen.  So what do I know?  I know that I’m a different person than I was when I was 18.  I’m a different person than I was in high school.  I’m meaner, I’m more abrasive, I’m more offensive, I’m less likely to give a crap about you or anyone else, I’ve been told I’m mysterious (that’s not really very true).  I’m less religious.  I’m less kind.  I’m less often loved and less often lovable.  I’m less patient.  But.— I’m also less likely to be used or manipulated.  I’m more spiritual.  I’m less likely to let other people dictate to me how I feel.  I’m more long-suffering.  I’m writing my own script for life, and so although the grammatical mistakes and bad cadence are mine, so are the jokes, and the sincerities.  The deep and abiding love which I am capable of feeling is better funneled into the people I know will appreciate it.  I love deeper and know better how to show it.  Some of my relationships are actually fulfilling.  When people say they like me, it’s because they actually like me.  I’m more relatable.  Mistakes don’t bother me.

And it’s not that I don’t have my problems, and it’s not that I don’t feel lonely most of the days of my life but that none of that matters, because it’s just the way life is and I might as well take those opportunities for joy that are so few and far between.  “Such is the life of a man.  Moments of joy obliterated by unforgettable sadness.” – Le Château De Ma Mère (1990).  But if you don’t look for and enjoy those moments of joy, you will have nothing to offset the sadness.

I feel like I should be writing something a little more epic, given this is my last blog post until I go to France, given that this is my last week and a half in Provo (at least for a while), given that I’m finishing up and undergraduate degree, and that I’m starting a whole new part of my life.  But I can’t think of anything at the moment.  As Don Draper of Mad Men says, “Fear stimulates my imagination.”  So I’m sure that when I become terrified again, something will come.  Until then, I’m leaving you with these thoughts, and perhaps to think about yourself and how much you’ve changed since you started school.  Are you better?  Do you like yourself more?  Because sometimes those answers are different.  I think the latter is more important, and let me tell you why: you are the only person you have to live with for forever.  If you like who you are better, chances are you’re more yourself.  And if you’re more yourself, you’ll have an easier time being better in the long run.

No worries, more to come.  Until then,

Signing off.

Jen

How do they do it?

There is nothing to say there is nothing to say there is nothing to say there is nothing to say there is nothing to say there is nothing to say there is nothing to say there is nothing to say there is nothing to say there is nothing to say there is nothing to say there is nothing to say.

Someone told me once that if you just start typing whatever you're thinking or feeling that eventually you'll think of something to write.  I don't KNOW that that's true, but then again, I only typed 'there is nothing to say' a dozen times (I'm not counting to make sure) before becoming bored, so maybe that's the cure for writing.  Boredom.

I've been reading a couple of IRB Applications for class tomorrow and have acquired  a few ideas from see how others dealt with the application for my own application, particularly in the Methods and Procedures section, Michael's IRB gave me some ideas of how to explain my methods a little more completely.  I've always been rather cautious so making plans I know will change seems like a waste of time to me.  This is why I have a hard time 'proposing' a project that I don't know for sure will work, and I have a hard time 'proposing' how I will do things, when in reality I have no idea if that's how they'll get done.  It's debilitating for me in this class, since so much of the class is merely 'proposing.'  I just have to get used to the idea that everyone else, not just me, knows that the project will change, and they don't expect me to stick to the proposal once/if I find a better way of doing things.

--

I read today about "The Unforgotten War," that is WWII and its application in France.  Did you know that in France, on paper, citizens do not have a religion, a skin color or an ethnicity?  This was a policy put in place after the second World War to keep the Holocaust from happening again.  If anyone asked the French to round up all their Jews again they could simply say, 'We have no idea who is Jewish.'  If someone asked them to round up all their Arab immigrants they could say, 'Once someone receives their French citizenship, they are French.  We do not know who is Arab.'  And if that someone said to take everyone in with dark skin, they could simply respond, 'But they are French, too.'  I love that.  I love that on paper there is no distinction between any French citizen.  I think this, also, that this is a significant governmental and cultural shift because of history, and there's a lot of that in France, but this is more recent.  A 20th century upgrade, as it were.

I also learned that while the largest number of Jews were rounded up and killed in France than any other Western European country, more than two-thirds of France's Jews survived World War II, meaning many of the French never turned in their neighbors, hid away children, or smuggled Jews out of the country.  This is in comparison to the less than 25% of Jews in Holland or Belgium surviving the war.  I think this is heartening given the anti-Semite reputation the French have.  That's another thing about learning about people and culture: stereotypes may exist for a reason, but they're so much more complex than that, and one must never assume a stereotype for any individual because its assumed of the group.  I would add, that stereotypes ought to be discarded all together, though caution should always be taken with everyone you come into contact with.

War is kind of a bizarre thing, and I think every culture is significantly altered by their history of war, the way they wage war, whether they've been beat or whether they've been victorious, whether they're proud or ashamed of said victories or defeats, the money they've received, the men they've lost, the way in which a war was ended whether by marriage, treaty, or stalemate.  I think this is why we organize our study of history often times around, during and between major wars.  In France, we study the Gallic Wars, the Hundred Years War, the Wars of Religion, the Thirty Years War, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, World Wars I and II, the Wars in Indochina, the War in Algeria.  And Honestly, most wars that France has been involved in, they've lost. They've LOST most of their wars.  But they're France, how is this possible?  What I find so fascinating about the French is that most countries, heck, most CULTURES would be decimated and destroyed and scattered and lost by such staggering wars.  Not the French.  They're still one of our leading "cultures" one of the Western European countries we still find synonymous with the word "culture."  What makes France so fascinating is that despite all their loss, the elements of their culture have always pulled them out ahead, have always dug them out of the rubble so to speak, have always persevered.  That isn't easy, and what's more they make it LOOK easy.

What is it about their culture that does it?  I guess what's what I want to find out.

Privacy

The French close their shutters every night so no one can see into their homes.  They don't talk about money, they don't talk to people on the metro, they don't give out their names, and it doesn't matter what they do for a living.  But they'll invite you in to their dining room, feed you, have a conversation with you about their children, their house in the country, and give you a jar of fig jam if you show interest.  This is the gist of the chapter I read today.  And I love it.

It's privacy.  It's a different notion of what is private, and what isn't private.  The home, the family, personal decisions--those are all private, to the extent that 'scandals' aren't really scandals at all but simply not your business.  And yet arguing, disagreeing, eating are not private matters, but in fact more public than we as Americans would think.

Hospitality is expected on many accounts, but only if you do it the right way--the French way.  Saying bonjour and au revoir as you enter and leave a shop, for example, will get you good service.  What has this to do with privacy?  Well, you're coming into someone else's private domain, and in doing so, it is only polite to greet and give farewells to the person whose home or business you enter.  However, asking someone outright what their name is will create immediate barriers.  Why?  Because whether they want to be contacted by you again should be their decision--not yours.

Also, it seems to me, the French are not worried about finding and keeping people they like to share company with, or converse with, because they figure that those people will find and gravitate toward each other.  And they seem less worried about wasting time with the wrong sort of people, because I don't think there's a worry about wasting time, or a worry about "wrong people."

Nadeau and Barlow point out one interesting difference I really enjoy: that is, the conversation between couples.  "They typical American couple seeks to display harmony. . . . The French expect exactly the opposite: . . . a relationship should be strong enough to withstand differences" (43-44).  It's not that American relationships aren't strong enough to withstand differences, because in fact they withstand all sorts of differences all the time, but that arguments in public seem distasteful to them.  And thus the French seem to value idea-oriented discussion rather than relationship-oriented discussion.  Meaning, they attack ideas, not the person.  And in doing so, a little arguing is hardly anything to bat an eye over.

This is an interesting cultural difference to me and it reveals how to go about talking to people in different ways.  Knowing and remembering someone's name in our culture is not only a sign of respect, but engenders trust.  Not so in France, where asking for someone's name is a breach of privacy.  Eating in our culture is our business, we eat what we want when we want it.  Not in France.  Eating is important, and therefore is something you do a particular way, something you allot time for, something you do communally with others.  I don't think either is inherently wrong or right, but different for explainable reasons.  So I better master bonjour and au revoir if I want to make people in France happy, which I do.

Terrien: french ideals in application

Still reading Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong.  This chapter was about the tie the French feel to their land.  Wherever they are, where they are from means more--they are never from 'France' but from a region of France, as if the region they are from is really the country they are from.  The equivalent would be to say, Mon pays est de Los Angeles.  And yet I've been thinking about this a lot in the last few years of my life: being an American means very little.

The book quotes an instance when Charles de Gaulle said in an interview, "'How can anyone govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?'  What he meant was, 'How can anyone be expected to govern 246 different kinds of French?'" (21).  We don't think of Americanness in these terms, though we really ought to.  Because there are 50 states, about 300 cities of a population of more than 100,000, and between 30,000 and 35,000 cities and towns, depending on how interested you are in population, whether its "incorporated" etc.  And there are 196 countries in the world (give or take a few, depending on the year, who is deciding, who is at war, and whether or not we're being politically correct), and at least one person from every country is most likely represented in the United States whether they have been here a day or their family has been in here for generations.  An American can be any, and several of all of these elements mixed into ONE person.  Point being, in what way can we say "I'm American" with an meaning at all?

I'm not even a complex example of this, but see what I mean: I'm not just an American, I'm an American from Los Angeles, born of a Californian and a New Englander, a Westerner and an Easterner, a Mormon and a Congregationalist.  My ancestors come from Massachusetts, Maine, Utah, Canada, and before that England, Denmark, France, probably a thousand other places.  And we could try to narrow it down by saying I'm an American from Los Angeles.  But I was born in Culver City, and I grew up in West LA, and I went to school in Santa Monica, and I commuted the 405 for years, and I lived in the San Fernando Valley.  I went to church in Van Nuys, and the movies in Winnetka, Northridge, and Burbank.  I went shopping in Glendale, and I spent time with my friends in Reseda, or Lake Balboa, or Granada Hills.  We went to Downtown LA or Hollywood for shows, and Westwood for day-trips.  And we're still in Los Angeles.  But I have to tell you--those kids from Granada Hills were not my favorite, and we had dances with the kids from Canoga Park, but whenever I meet someone from there I don't particularly like them, I never went to Beverly Hills on my days off, and the Sherman Oaks people were always a little snooty.  North Hollywood was kind of a sketchy place to go, and I never got to know Studio City.  Yeah.  We're still in Los Angeles.  It also matters where you go to school in Los Angeles--Did you go to your homeschool?  Because that's odd.  I went to Elementary school in Culver City and Sherman Oaks, and Middle School was in Northridge and High School was in Lake Balboa/Van Nuys/Reseda--you could put any of those names on the envelope and it'd get sent.  And did you go to a public school or a private school? Was it a magnet or a charter?  Did it have an honors program?  What about a swim team, or a football team?  A robotics team or a Humanities magnet?  I mean WHAT KIND OF AN ANGELENO WERE YOU!?  How long did it take to get to school, or to your best friends place?  Yes--including traffic.  Do you like Mexicans?  What about Armenians?  Blacks?  Did you have all white people at your school?  Or all sorts of people?  Did you mistake the Salvadorans for Mexicans?  Did that get you in trouble?--Hope so.  I'm even going to get started on food.  And every person from Los Angeles who could possibly be reading this post right now would tell me about the hundred things I missed that makes people from Los Angeles different.  AND I KNOW.

Breathe.

Maybe there's one thing we agree on: How do you feel about LAUSD?

Yeah...

Point being, I'm hardly an American, and maybe the French have it right.  Because I don't know what the heck I am.  But if we're going to start somewhere, 'American' just doesn't cut it.  What does it tell you?  About some national loyalty?  Patriotism?  And I don't know if you can tell but I love mon pays.  I particularly love the part of it I know really well--the part of it I'm from, Los Angeles.  And I don't love all parts of America equally.  Because they're not mine.  And so I can understand that while this desert I live in is far more beautiful that most of what I saw every day in Los Angeles, it still can't win and it never will.  But because Los Angeles resides in the United States of America--I love America too.  It's just that . . . it doesn't mean as much.