Dateline France, 9 October 1989
Report 4

Some of my former secretaries have remarked that Davey is having all
play and no work in France, judging from the previous reports.  It is
true I have cut back a little in the hours per week I spend at work this
year, but it's still a long way from 0.  INRIA turns out to be an excellent
place to meet scientists from the US.  John Mitchell, Mike Brodie, Lee
Osterweil and Rick Adrion have all been through since I arrived, and
Alan Borning and Peter Buneman are due to pass through later in the month.
Also, Dave DeWitt and Victor Vianu are in residence here.  I could go into
the excuses they give for having had to come to France, but I am more
discreet than that.  However, once they are on site here, it is usually
not hard to get them involved in a technical discussion.

My main job here at the moment is working on a team that is reviewing
the most recent prototype of the O2 object-oriented database system and
considering changes for the product versions.  A lot of design decisions
are being revisited: storage manager architecture, choice of method
language, interface toolkit, pre-compiling versus writing their own
compiler, schema generation and management.  There is also about eight
inches of reports on the system that I am trying to get through, and
I am trying to learn the ins and outs of the current prototype.  Altair is
putting on a big show on 16 October to declare the success of their
prototype before rewriting it, and I am supposed to give a talk for that.
I am trying to get some time to think about types in databases, in addition
to keeping up with research projects back home, reading drafts from students,
editing for TODS and the usual spate of requests for faculty evaluations
that appear every fall.

So you see that I have my hands full trying to prevent the business side
of things from intruding into the true purpose of my stay here, which
is assimilate as much of French culture as I can in ten months:

Last Wednesday we spent the afternoon walking around the Petit
and Grand Trianons and the surrounding gardens in the park at Versailles.
These structures are at a much smaller scale than the Palace, and seem
to have originally served as an escape from the bustle and formalism of
the court, a refuge from the smell of open sewers in the summer, and
a hideway for the occasional or frequent tryst.  Since that time they have
been sacked, fallen into disrepair and then restored, and have been used at
times to lodge state visitors.  I believe that Louis XIV built the Grand
Trianon on the site of the former Porcelain Trianon (they weren't much into
historic preservation then), and Louis XV built the Petit Trianon.  Louis
XVI gave the Petit Trianon to Marie Antoinette, who had a small farming
village built near it, called the Hameau (Hamlet).  The Hameau was modeled
on the village of Chantilly, but looks more like a set from a Walt Disney
movie than a peasant village.  It's a very tranquil place to stroll through.

Kaye got a bad cold after that, so we stayed close to home most of the
weekend, but did drive out Sunday to see the Chateau and Gardens at
Vaux-le-Vicompte.  This estate was built by Nicolas Fouquet, who was
finance minister to Louis XIV at the time.  When the buildings and gardens
were nearly finished, Nick threw a big shindig, and invited Lou.  Lou
sized up the situation and, ten days later, tossed Nick in jail, where he
died 19 years later.  Lou made off with many of the nicer paintings,
furnishings and tapestries, and Mdme. Fouquet eventually had to sell
the place.  Lou also retained the architect, painter and landscape designer
from Vaux-le-Vicompte, and them build him a bungalo and yard, which we
now know as the Palace and Gardens at Versailles.
In reading various books and pamphlets, it seems like Nick made three mistakes:
  1. He built himself a house that was arguably nicer than anything the king
     had at the time.
  2. He made enemies in the king's court, who were given to wondering out
     loud "I wonder were Nick got the bucks for his place?" in earshot of
     the king.
  3. He was sweet on some courtesan that the king had designs on.
Number 1 was probably an innocent mistake, and number 2 was likely a bunch of
lies.  (Nick made his bundle by putting up his own money along with that
of other investors to persuade them to invest in various state projects.
He had to do that to gain the investors' faith, as France was bust at the
time from bankrolling contra guerillas in the American colonies.)  But
Number 3 just shows poor judgement.

Anyway, the chateau and gardens have been maintained in much better shape
through the various revolutions than have most.  This seems mainly due to
a series of owners who were well-liked by the populace of the area, and
who were thereby spared much of the looting and desecration handed out to
others.  It was a beautiful day, and the gardens seemed an especially
tranquil and removed place.

There are a lot of little things that stick in my mind.  Luke has taken
to bringing home samples of cheese for us when they serve some that he
thinks is particularly good for lunch at school.  The problem is that he
brings it home in his pocket.  I guess a coating of lint is not that
different from a coating of ashes or white mold.  I got my first haircut
in France, which was finished up with the barber going over my head with
a straight razor.  It had the sound and feel of someone carving my scalp
(but the haircut looks good).   French school playgrounds are wild places.
The French believe in letting the kids work out most of their problems
without intervention (but with sticks).  There will be aides watching the
playground (as many as 1 for every 150 kids), but as another mother told
us, "She is there only to pick up the bodies."  I see many lovers in the
parks, woods and museums I've been to, mostly locked in passionate embraces.
I think the difference in French and American couples is that in America
if you came upon a couple necking they would stop and pretend they had
been doing something else, whereas in France they are serious enough about
what they are doing that they don't notice you.

I am watching the OGC name change drama with ambivalence.  Kaye says that
Oregon Science and Technology Institute sounds like a trade school.  Maybe
the administration could print up matchbooks to help publicize the change.

Finally, for those who didn't notice, my latest book is out: "Readings
in Object-Oriented Database Systems," edited by Stan Zdonik and me, published
by Morgan-Kaufman.