Dateline France, 2 October 1989
Report 3

Life is not yet routine, but is becoming enough so to allow a little time
for frivolous diversions.  One that Kaye instigated is reading French
sweatshirts.  It is apparently chic in France now to wear shirts that
appear to come from the US.  There is a certain genera we see all over:
US place names, American colloquialisms and icons, lots of changes of
color and typefaces.  However, the writing is more Anglo-babble than
English.  We see things like: Capitol Sports--It's a funny business
(graphic of Washington DC), Kids Street--God bless it (Manhattan(?)
skyline), Snow boys--going good--FunSki, High School--University--Sports
Competitors (picture of a coach), Pretty girl fabulous--everyone else
floweret.  [Three of those are verbatim, two are approximations.]  I
thought maybe they were coming from Taiwan, as the English had an oriental
cast to it,  but I checked some labels in shirts on the rack and most are
from France.  I think I will have one made that says "Famous Yosemite Flamingo"
with a picture of two trout jumping ove Mount Rushmore.

We have started to take some car trips to places near Paris.  I already
reported on Versailles.  Two weeks ago we drove down to Chartres, mainly
to see the cathedral.  It's a very interesting view approaching the city
by car.  The cathedral is on the top of a steep hill in the center of
the old part of town; no other tall buildings are on the hill.  Thus you
get the impression that the church sits by itself out in the middle of
wheat fields--it's the only part of town you see from a distance.  Chartres
proclaims itself the center of the world for stained glass, probably justly.
In addition to all the glass in the main cathedral and the many other
churches in town, there are a lot of local artisans working in the craft
and a museum that has exhibits of recent pieces.  While the kids liked
the windows, Luke seemed more interested in the sculpture, and Sarah liked
the labrynth laid out on the floor of the nave.  You couldn't walk the
whole thing because of chairs set up over it, but the kids and I tried
to trace the route by pointing.  If you squint, it looks like coincentric
circles, but on examination there are radial segments and a lot of switch-
backs.  I wouldn't call it a maze, though, because the path doesn't branch
anywhere.  We plan to go back, to see the 12th century crypt under the
church and some of the other churches in the town.

I also saw a sign for an exhibit of "Objets Introuvables" by M. Carelman.
If any of you are familiar with his "Catalog of Fantastic Things," this
exhibit was actual constructions of many of them: form-fitting cat carrier,
portable anvil (hinged in the center), language-translating carbon paper,
calculator for the 0-ary number system (the answer is always 1), toilet
for people on stilts plus new inventions.  The kids thought this was
better than the church.  It was a bit trying for the parents, as for each
item Sarah either wanted to tell us what was different about it or have
us tell her.  The exhibit had toured the US at some point, and I was sorry
to have missed it, so I was glad to get this chance to see it.  ["Objets
Introuvables" could be translated two ways, as "Unfindable Objects" or
something like "Matchless" or "Priceless Objects".  I am going to propose
some extensions to the O2 database system to handle objets introuvables.]

Another car trip we took was to Giverny, where Monet spent much of his
life, and where he planted extensive flower gardens and put in a lily
pond.  The flowers, lilies and Japanese bridge over the pond show up
in many of his paintings.  There is a childrens' book, "Linnea in Monet's
Garden" that talks about a little girl visiting Monet's house and garden.
We had planned to read it to the kids before we left, but didn't find the
time.  Luke read some of it in the car on the drive there.  I finished
reading it to them later.  A sidelight of the trip was my first driving
on an AutoRoute, with a speed limit of 130 kph (80+ mph).  Also encounters
with three-lane roads: one lane each direction and one to fight over.
Kaye has a theory that the French drive the way they do because there
is testosterone added to the gasoline.  Hi-Test doesn't mean high octane...

The reason the book didn't get read was that Luke's long days at school
and massive amounts of homework had been keeping him up close to 10pm
every night for the days before.  Part of the problem is that the American
section teacher is trying to get in a years worth of English reading and
writing in two half-days a week.  That leaves a lot to be done at home.
Also, Luke has to write in cursive, which is slowing him down.  Things
are getting a little better, but I still feel like I don't get a lot
of time with him during the week.  I think that many French fathers
(and some mothers) are in the same situation.  Traditionally, people
would go home for two hours or so at lunch time, and the children would
come home from school as well, which gave a chunk of family time at the
end of the day.  The kids then go back to school until about 5 and people
work until 7 or later.  There's dinner around 7:30 or 8:00, after which
it is almost time for bed.  With people living farther from work and
commuting, they don't come home from work for lunch.  Since the parents
aren't home for lunch, the kids have lunch at school, and then a long
play period (two hours total) and come home late.  So now you have a
system with little time spent together during the week with working parents,
except at meals.  One compensation is longer school breaks: four breaks of
about 10 days each during the year.

We also manage to get into Paris about once a week.  We have seen the
Orsay Museum, a converted train station (impressively done) that houses
much of the National Art collection centered around the late 19th
century.  It's what wouldn't fit in the Louvre and was too old for the
Modern Art museum at the Pompidou Center.  Almost every room had a piece
I recognized.  Probably the best known for Americans is Whistler's mother.
Luke wanted a guide book badly, so we got him one and he spent a lot of
time trying to read about the different pieces.  (Dad, what does 
"scandalized" mean?  Mom, what's a prostitute?)  Sarah was more direct:
"Why are the men wearing clothes in this picture and the women are naked?"
"That's an excellent question Sarah.  Many art critics of the time posed
the same..."  My favorite parts were the Art Deco furniture and a cut-away
scale model of the Paris opera that showed all the backstage, and traps
and flys [understage and overstage] and such.  We also rode a tour boat
on the Seine, which is a very touristy thing to do, but interesting and
you get a rest from walking, and a different view of the city.  We saw
many barges tied up along the river.  Most contain living quarters for
a family--you see plants and picnic tables on the hatch covers, lace
curtains, bicycles lashed to the deck and even an occaisional car (I'm
still figuring out how it gets on and off.)  The next day the kids and
I went for a walk and had a picnic by the Seine near our house.  We
saw the same kind of barges sailing up the river, and could see the families
in action: cooking, hanging out the laundry, watching TV.  Some people
are converting these barges to all cabins, and offering leisurely trips over
the river systems of Europe.

Last Sunday we went to the Technology Museum.  Much of it is instruments
and models from 70 years ago with lots of dust.  Some of it is very important
artifacts from the history of science, such as much of Lavosier's lab
equipment.  There were also exhibits on the French invention of television.
[I have now seen exhibits on the French, German and American invention of
television.  I have heard of a Russian exhibition of the same, and I suspect
there may be British and Japanese versions somewhere.]  [So why do all these
countries want to take the blame?]  Another good exhibit, recently done,
was on standards for weights and measures.  There were many examples of
old standards that were localized to a single country or city, such as
a unit of lenght purportedly equal to the height of Charlemagne.  They had
a station where you could see what you would weigh in the pounds of different
cities in 1789.  Sarah would have weighed 6 more pound in Barcelona than
in Brussels.  I'm glad that gravity has smoothed itself out since then...

Dave Maier