Dateline France, 20 November 1989
Report 7

I'm still running way behind on the news here, but we haven't been
traveling quite as much lately, so maybe between this report and the
next one I will catch up.

Errata: The French name for the Mona Lisa is La Joconde.  I think the
spelling I used last time was Italian.

Sweatshirt of the week:
  Compagnie de Californie
     Bloomington
      Country
ITS A WAY OF LIFE
    Deer Ranch

Various and sundry observations:

1. There are no apartment numbers in our apartment building.  The mailboxes
might be in the same relative relationship as the apartments, but if someone
came looking for us, I doubt they would know this, and would have to scan
the names on the doors.

2. When you buy produce in a supermarket here, it is always labeled with
its country of origin (often in Africa for fruit) and sometimes with its
calorie count.

3. I have met a number of unmarried couples here with children.  This situation
doesn't appear to seem unusual to other French people.  However, French
seems as lacking as English in words to describe the situation.  I had
someone introduced to me once as "This is the father of my children."

4. However, once you are married, it seems hard for a woman to keep her name.
Kaye is finding this out.  After being very explicit on applying for her
identity card that she was Kaye Van Valkenburg (period), the card showed
up with Kaye Van Valkenburg Maier, which is a problem since it doesn't
agree with the name on her passport.  Also, it has led to a hassle with
getting checks.  The check has room for four lines for name and address.
However, the law requires that one of the lines indicate that this is an
account in francs held by a foreigner.  That leaves one line for both our
names.  Since they didn't both fit, the bank just left off Kaye's name.
She asked for new checks once; the new checks came without her name.  She
went and made a fuss, finally convincing the clerk at the bank that
"D MAIER & K VAN VALKENBURG" would fit in the allotted space.  However, he
was clearly taken aback that it wasn't "M. D MAIER and MME. K VAN VALKENBURG".
Americans are so unrefined.  (Kaye loves dealing with our bank.  It only
took them three months to issue our bank cards, and they scold her when
she asks for too much cash in 100 franc bills.  This is a bank; what would
we be doing with large sums of money.  Its always a feeling that they are
doing us a favor by taking our account (and not paying any interest).)

5. They run ads before movies in the movie theatre here.  The most interesting
ones are for cigarettes.  But they aren't really for cigarettes.  They are
adds for things like "Marlboro Lighters" and "Lucky Strike Matches".  Obviously
some kind of advertising restriction is being cleverly circumvented here.

6. Many men here carry purses.  For a purse to look masculine, the rule seems
to be that it must be deeper than it is wide.  Also, beards on men are
uncommon, at least around Paris.  (Spare me the cracks about beards on
women.)

7. I think the French don't consider an occasion properly done unless there
are some plants or flowers about.  Nor is it really proper to put in a path
somewhere without a border of flowers or a hedge.

8. Judy Bayard Cushing asked me to take a look at L'Etang la Ville where
she used to live, and which is just across the river from Le Vesinet.  I told
her that had once seen signs to it and would investigate someday.  Kaye
reminds me that we investigated thoroughly the streets of L'Etang la Ville
one day.  We had left Luke at a birthday party at the next town, Mariel-Marly
(or is it Marly-Mariel).  We had gone off to explore another town, Marly-le-Roi
and on the way back ended going around L-Etang la Ville several times (it
has an interesting grid of one-way streets at the center of town), had
tried to leave it only to find ourselves coming back to it, and got generally
lost.  Unfortunately, my mood at that point was not such that I appreciated
its finer points passing through.  I shall have to go back for a better look,
if I can ever find my way there again.  (The situation is not enhanced
by the way the standard map book of Paris suburbs is organized.  It doesn't
show which streets are one-way.  It doesn't distinguish the quality of roads
well.  The last 1/4 mile taking Luke to the party was on a dirt road through
someone's orchard.  It distorts geometry around complex intersections.  And
each town is on a separate page, so when you cross from Marly-le-Roi to
Mariel-Marly, say, you have to quickly flip back and forth to see how the
roads match up.  If they match up.)

9. I am learning to drive the French way.  There is a certain logic to it.
You always assume that another driver will do the most personally advantageous
thing, and, to be a good citizen of the road, you must always do the
personally most advantageous thing (or else you confuse people).  So I
am getting good at pulling up three abreast waiting to make a left turn,
whizzing through traffic circles and weaving around obstacles in my lane.
The hardest thing is to get used to the right-of-way customs.  In the US,
the person on the right has priority as well, but it seems secondary to the
order in which you arrive at the intersection.  In France, you dare not get
in the way of anyone coming out of a road to the right, no matter how
much sooner you reached the intersection.  (Admittedly, most intersections
are now marked to give the more major road right-of-way, but you don't
always know which side streets are so marked, and the guy on your right
knows that you don't know if he has a yield sign...)  The basis for this
rule was established in August 1789 in La Declaration des Droits d'Homme
(The declaration of the rights of man).

10. I got my picture in Le Monde Informatique (French counterpart of
ComputerWorld) recently, in connection I gave with the technical seminar
that Altair did in October.  I am still working my way through the article
with dictionary in hand to figure out what I said.

Back to our travels.

At the end of the All-Saints Day break, we took a long weekend up to
the Calvados coast in Normandy.  Calvados is so named because of a shipwreck
of a ship named El Salvador and some subsequent lexical mutations.  We stayed
in the city of Bayeux.  Bayeux figures prominently in the last successful
invasions of England and of France, which were in 1066 and 1944 respectively.

Bayeux is the home of the Bayeux tapestry, which recounts the events
surrounding William the Conquerer leading the Norman invasion of England.
The French are very fond of comic strips (Bandes Desinees) which mainly
take the form of hardbound books with glossy paper, and come in childrens'
and adults' versions.  The Bayeux tapestry is not really a tapestry at
all, but the first French bande desinee.  (Well, actually, it was probably
made in England.)  It is a long strip of linen, with 53 or so different
scenes embroidered on it, each with a caption.  It was likely commissioned
by Odo, archbishop of Bayeux and brother (-in-law?) to William.  Odo shows
up in the tapestry in three places.  (He wields a club and not a sword, for
a cleric shouldn't spill blood, after all.)  The tapestry was hung around
the nave of the Bayeux cathederal during certain holy days, probably from
the dedication of the cathederal (around 1072?) until the French Revolution.
It is in remarkably good condition for its age, with just a few tears in the
cloth here and there, and lacking probably 3 panels at the end.

Back around the turn of the millenium, the Normans (or Norsemen) were
generating excitement throughout Europe and the Mediterranean.  They
originated in Denmark, and originally contented themselves with raiding
coastal towns and returning the same summer.  Later, they started going
further afield, and camping over for the winter.  Camping over gardually
turned into settlements, and perhaps taking over the country.  They spread
to Scandinavia (Norway), France (Normandy), England (Norwich??), Greenland,
Iceland, and several other places, even ruling Sicily at one point.  When
William, a Norman from France, conquered England, it was from other Norsemen.

The Bayeux tapestry is a propaganda pamphlet masquerading as a religious icon.
It seems largely an attempt to justify the Norman invasion, while claiming
to teach a lesson about religious fidelity.  As the story goes, Edward, the
King of England, was without direct heir.  William was related to Edward, and
thought he had arranged matters to be named king on Edwards's death.  Ed sent
Harold, his right-hand man, to Normandy to confirm the succession to
William.  William didn't really trust Harold, and through various connivings,
got Harold to swear alliegence (sp?) on a stack of the most holy relics that
Normandy had to offer.  (Other sources indicate that the relics were covered
over by a cloth, so that Harold didn't know what he was swearing on.)  Harold
goes back to England, whereupon the King dies, and Harold has himself crowned.
(Halley's comet appears in the tapestry at this point, as a bad omen for
Harold.)  William considers this treachery and heads off to conquer England.
The tapestry stretches the point (embroiders the truth?), and plays it more
like William carrying out the vengence of God on Harold for having violated
his most sacred oath.  Harold gets killed in the battle, if you didn't guess.

There is a very good exhibit and slide show we saw before actually viewing
the tapetstry.  The tapestry itself is 230 feet long; there is a commentary
in the exhibit about that same length.  It explains the panels in French
and English, contains quotations from texts of the time, and tells you how
to distinguish the Normans (short haircuts) from the English (mustaches) from
the clerics (tonsure) from the women (only three of them, long gowns).  The
exhibit also has some maps to show movements of William and the Norman
spread in England, displays of what clothing and armor were like, and models
of what Norman fortifications, villages and churches looked like.

At the end, we bought a postcard of the whole tapestry in the gift shop.  It's
about three inches high, and about seven feet longer than the hallway in our
apartment.

In Bayeux we also visited the cathederal (which has a delightful spire/bellfry
over the transept), a museum of religious treasures, a lacemaking workshop
(Bayeux is famous for lace and porcelain) and a small municipal art museum.
At the art museum, Sarah at one point raised her hand and instructed "Please
stay with me, I am your guide."*  She then explained the paintings to us:
"This is Jesus, this is some fruit, and this is, um, Cinderella."  Later,
"This the drawing room" (she was right).  Whenever the rest of the family
tried to talk, she would shush us.

[*Brings to mind a person I saw at Versailles who had an umbrella in the
same colors of a tour guide, and who tried to use it to hijack the tour group.]

We ate well in Normandy.  Specialities include cream, butter, Camembert,
cider (alcoholic, both apple and pear), and Calvados, a kind of apple brandy.
One of the best things we had were mussels with a cream/Calvados/shallot
sauce.  Tres yum.

The rest of the trip was spent exploring some of the beaches from the
D-Day invasion.  At Omaha beach, we saw the American cemetary, and also
some remaining German fortifications.  The troops at Omaha beach had some
of the hardest going, because, unknown to the Allies, an extra German
division had been moved in.  We bought various pamphlets to find out
more about D-Day.  A couple things I found real interesting.  One was the
airborn and commando landings shortly after midnight on the day of the
invasion.  Two groups came in, at the west and east ends of the landing
area, to secure the flanks.  A good portion of the early vanguard landed
in 30-man gliders, which I only vaguely knew about before.  The gliders
had to contend with "Rommel's Asparagus," 30-foot poles that dotted most
of the open fields near the coast.  The parachutists had to deal with
fields that Rommel had artificially flooded.  Another was the logistics
of supplying the invasion.  The first wave of troops that formed the beachhead
basically only had as many supplies as they could carry.  Once these troops
advanced and other came in behind, food, fuel, ammunition, medical supplies,
tents, etc, etc, had to be brought in.  The problem was that there was
no natural port in the landing zone, and airlifting supplies wouldn't
meet the projected demand.  Part of the problem was dealt with by developing
landing craft that could either drive ashore or put to ground in shallow
water.  Another innovation was stringing a pipeline from England to France
to pump petrol under the Channel.  But the really unusual part was that
Churchill decided that the Navy would bring its own harbors along.  The
main artificial port was created at Arromanche; there is an excellent museum
there describing the operation, and pieces of it are still visible offshore.
The first part of it was scuttling a row of ships offshore to form a breakwater
for the small craft that could shuttle between large ships and the beach.  The
second part was a series of huge concrete caissons that were floated accross
the Channel and sunk to form a getty almost 8 kilometers long.  Inside the
getty was the third part, which was pierheads that were towed over and
then put down four legs to anchor themselves, along with floating piers
that ran between the pierheads and shore.  There was also a row of
floating breakwaters, but they broke loose in a severe storm 10 days after
they arrived.

There is also a large D-Day museum at Bayeux, which was the first city
liberated in the invasion.  (Of course, there are other places that claim
to be the first town and the first village liberated.)  The Bayeux museum
has a tremendous collection of documents, uniforms and armament.  However,
it is mainly organized geogrphically, by which of the five sectors items
went with: Utah (US), Omaha (US), Gold (UK), Juno (Canadian), and Sword
(UK and Free French).  Also, it is almost all artifacts; there is little
added commentary to explain the chronology of events, nor to explain the
significance of various documents.  There was a good movie, using film
clips from the time, that helped with the order of events.  Luke was
interested in the K-rations and what the different uniforms indicated
(panzer driver, artillery captain, airborn infantry, signal corps, etc.).
I saw him poring over one display case for ten minutes.  I asked him later
what he was looking at.  He was reading a pamplet handed out to Allied
soldiers to tell them how to behave if captured.  Now he will only tell
us his name, grade and serial number.

One thing we didn't see much on and want to learn more about is the activities
of the French Resistance.  Several of the booklets we had talked about how
useful the resistance had been in preparing for the invasion and during,
but they did not give many particulars.