Old & New
You’ve achieved healing when you can tell your story (even to yourself) in a new, calm, and balanced way.
This is our right, and our obligation to our descendants. Today’s featured photo is from a sound and light show called “Murmurs of the City” put on by Moulinois at a château outside of town. It starts with the German occupation of the château (which did happen), and the grandmother of two children telling them the story of their history there as a way to calm their fears. My new landlady played the grandmother, but more about that later.
Having made a gentlewoman’s agreement to lease for a year, thus skipping the realtor’s fees and a lot of government paperwork, I needed to buy some sheets and pillows for my new place. My AirBnB hostess kindly offered to take me shopping, to find the best deals. I found some antique linens at a big charity bazaar, and then we went to what seems like the French version of Walmart, called LeClerc. M. LeClerc must be as rich as the Walton family. It was a monstrous store, with additional purveyors of premeditated landfill attached just like a strip mall. But the parking lot had covered parking made of solar panels, and the interior lighting was much more stylish.
This shot shows less than half of it, but note the whole departments for just cheese, and just charcuterie, etc. There was the biggest glassed-in room devoted to wine that I’ve ever seen. And the quality of the products is very good. But Sabrina said there used to be five butcher shops in town, and now there is only one.
Speaking of wine, at one discount store we found some Bordeaux, and she sent a picture of the label to ChatGPT to find out how good it was. It got a good review, so we each got a 5 euro bottle. Haven’t tried it yet.
At her place, she showed me how to wash the new/old linens in the traditional way to get the whites pristine white by putting them in boiling water with something called percarbonate. Then you dry them in the sun in the back of the garden. Everyone line dries here because nobody has a clothes dryer. Electricity is taxed at over 30%, so one economizes. The French love to economize.
On one of my last days at Sabrina’s I passed a milestone in my evolution as a resident. You’ve seen the old bridge into town, which I’d used a lot on foot. One day I went the other direction and used the new bridge. It’s a slab of steel and concrete with no adornment, so you don’t need a photo to imagine it. It had wide, smooth pedestrian walkways and a pleasant view from its greater height. On the other bank I could look down on the big public swimming pools and a large sports complex. The outdoor pool looked great, with big slides and fun for local kids. The admittedly ugly modern construction has always harshly ruined the fairytale French ambiance that I, like most Americans, want to feel. But it finally became very clear that they should have new things. Modern things aren’t bad things–we have always sought to improve our ways of living. But they’ve been wiser about not destroying old things, at least wiser than we have. These people really are fond of their past, even though it has horrific parts. Maybe this partly explains their deep hesitation to have ubiquitous air conditioning, even in the face of our ongoing and frankly awful heatwaves. But cobblestones are a bitch to walk on all the time.
After a quick trip to Paris to see a concert, I was presented with the chance to experience two events that would bookend the national celebration of Bastille Day. To mix metaphors, this was a nothingburger, because Bastille Day was canceled due to drought and heat. This feels like more bullying from the French government to me, but I’m a skeptic. Some arsonist lit the truly gorgeous Forest of Fontainebleau on fire, a national treasure I’d marveled at as my train passed through it on the way to Paris. Glad I saw it once. 
The first event was the aforementioned son et lumière show. In daylight the château is a normal, nineteenth century dwelling for Prince Charles-Henri de Something-or-Other, a Bourbon descendant of Louis XIV. He’s known by the people here, including my landlady Marie, who showed me a picture she took of him with his “wife” as she said, a much younger man. The show ambitiously took on all of the history of the region, as it touched the history of France. Here we have Vercingétorix, who lived nearby over 2,000 years ago, galloping around the children with a torch, whilst singing.
After telling the boy that “…the enemy marches on our homes, but they don’t know who we are. Each tree of this forest, each stone, each river in this valley carries the breath of our ancestors. This breath is also ours. It is time to stand up…” he passed the torch to the boy, saying something about the flame being their soul. I was struck hard by the similarity to Chief Seattle’s famous speech. And by the fact that there were no tourists here, just people who were related to those Celts. And the Celts lost to the Romans, too. But later we had Joan of Arc passing the flame to the little girl, and we all know she helped beat those damn British.
Apparently this is a brazen show of nationalism and stuff that the local people support and cannot be tolerated. There were national police at the entrance, in case of more protests, which I guess occurred at some local government meeting. Le Monde (the New York Times of France) even had an article “about our little, insignificant town” as a lovely young woman put it to me later, accusing the organizers of anti-republicanism and pro-Catholicism and just general extreme right thinking. They pointed out that many bad historical events had been left out, and I did giggle out loud when it jumped straight from the Sun King to Napoléon. At the end they said that yes, France had stumbled many times, but it always had righted itself and carried on in a way to be proud of.
Crazy to hear non-self-flagellating history. They did say that Napoléon left many wounds in Europe, but the contrast with the opening ceremonies of the Olympics was stark. Those organizers wanted to look at their history with mockery, these people don’t. Ok, fine. Based on what she said about kings, I do believe the young woman who spoke with me is a Royalist. But as a typical 20-something, she also knew that we Americans are living “on stolen land,” as she said.
The next event, two days later, was the Tour de France passing right through Moulins for Stage 11, and right at the end of my block! They change the route every year, so this has not happened much at all in this obscure department.
Marie called me and we met down at the end of the street to first watch all these crazy cars built like parade floats meant to advertise a huge range of products, with fun, loud music and people throwing swag and candy. It was like a parade if you can imagine a parade zooming by at 40 mph. They have to stay well ahead of the cyclists.
Some of the cars, like one built as a giant bottle of Orangina, were swaying on their little wheelbases. Insane. A guy next to me would sometimes, when he liked the look of a company, start yelling “Oui, oui, oui, oui, oui!!!!” I think he was trying to get a handout. I have chosen to share this poor man spending the day in a local Charantais melon, for Lidl, a big grocery chain. The huge chicken and cow mobiles looked borderline terrifying.
I had been tracking the cyclists on my phone and got ready when I saw they’d crossed the old bridge into town. Good thing, because it was a thrilling forty seconds of spectator sport. The leaders of the pack were averaging 36 miles per hour, uphill. I am not sure why I imagined them puffing their way up the street, but it was as if they were going downhill!
They flashed by, and then fairly soon came the main pack. Being in the crowd of Moulins and whooping along with everyone when the people on the parade cars yelled “Allez Moulins!” was the best part.
The main pack was also going very fast, and were then followed by a great many cars that each had from four to eight bicycles mounted on their roofs. Of course they would have backup bicycles in case of inevitable mishaps.
I don’t think we got the big name media presence nor the big name sponsors here on this stage, in insignificant Moulins. But it was more fun that way. It had to be the easiest, most low-key experience of a major world athletic event possible. I saw two cops, and not at the same time. I’m glad the French will resist common sense things like climate- and crowd-control. They seem to be wired to always look for the sweet spot, the happy, balanced medium, and they are quite good at it.
The pack zipped by and it was over. Forty seconds. I went back to my hot, dark apartment to watch videos and wait for this latest heatwave to be over. If you look closely, you can see the name of the street that I live on!
