Meeting an American Author in a Paris Bookstore

 

Author, professor Nita Wiggins at 

The Red Wheelbarrow bookstore opposite Jardin Luxembourg in Paris.   

My first full day in Paris, I walked to Jardin Luxembourg to visit The Red Wheelbarrow bookstore.  I have visited the store several times since 2018 when Penelope bought the store and moved it to this lovely location near the Pantheon and the Sorbonne.  

Penelope, owner of The Red Wheelbarrow

When I arrived at the store it was not open. A woman was waiting outside and said the store would open soon in English that was very American.  Penelope arrived a few minutes later.  While we waited outside the store, Nita Wiggins and I began talking about The Red Wheelbarrow and the beautiful day in Paris.

As we talked I learned that Nita is a professor. She teaches journalism in Paris at l’Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme de Paris. she moved to Paris in 2009 to teach journalism and has lived here ever since.  

Before moving to Paris, she was a sports reporter for all of the major US networks. Her book: 

Civil Rights Baby: My Story of Race, Sports, and Breaking Barriers in American Journalism

was published in March 2019.  It is the story of her career as a sports reporter and all of the difficulties she faced in the very-white-male-dominated world of sports reporting.   

Nita and I talked about living in Paris, loving Paris, journalism on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and how badly American journalism failed in predicting the rise of Trump and the cult he created.  I am looking forward to reading the book on the plane back to America.  

For more about the book and the author, her web page is here.

The Movies in Paris

 

A year ago on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I drove southwest of Paris on a cold, cloudy day to visit the Circuit de Sarthe, the site of the annual 24 Hour Race at Lemans, France.  

In a delightful coincidence I had just seen the movie "Ford v Ferrari" ("Lemans 66" was the title outside America) in a Paris theater. It is a great movie that was nominated for Best Picture.

When I arrived at the track, I hoped to walk the 8-mile circuit, but found in another delightful surprise, that there was a 24-hour race nearing it's end and I could watch an amateur competition at Lemans. I visited the museum and saw many laps of the race.   

In another coincidence of timing the movie "Midway" debuted in theaters while I was on the trip.  I saw both movies in their original format with French subtitles.  With "Ford vs Ferrari" this gave me a chance for some French practice and some extra laughs with the translations of Carroll Shelby's Texan English.  

In the movie "Midway" the Japanese sailors spoke in their own language, sometimes in complex speeches. The subtitles were, of course, in French.  My French definitely got a workout trying to follow translated Japanese dialogue.    

It is strange to think how much the world has changed in the past 12 months.  No more movie theaters, the annual race at Lemans was delayed for months and who knows when I will travel across the ocean again.  

But with all that, the memories are wonderful. 

The French Unaware Americans Think French Only Surrender in War

Freedom Fries in the Congressional Cafeteria. 

Talking with French friends, I mentioned visiting the War Memorial at the center of the town of Foix in the Pyrenees.  The small town had memorial for war dead from both World Wars, Indochina (Vietnam) and Algeria.  As I walked around the memorial, I remembered the Republicans who started the “Freedom Fries” campaign and poured out bottles of French wine.  The draft-dodgers and never-servatives at the center of the campaign said the French were afraid to fight in Iraq.

The truth was, the French understood the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld lies behind the war and its ill-conceived plan and refused to be part of it.  The French view was the correct view.  Worse still French troops were on the ground in Afghanistan from the beginning of that war, because fighting the war that made sense. They fought and died in Afghanistan from the beginning of what has become America’s longest war.

I mentioned that the Republican cowards were using the stereotype common in America that French only surrender in war; my friends were surprised. They knew about the Freedom Fries foolishness but did not know that it was a stereotype with a 70-year heritage. 

When their protests began: “Lafayette; Napoleon; a million dead, five million wounded of 66 million population of France in World War I…”  I said this stereotype was as ubiquitous as the stereotypes of Russians, Germans and Brits that were part of their culture. 

The anger I feel when I remembered Freedom Fries is both because I have trained with and respect French soldiers and because the Republicans in question were and are such manifest cowards: now led by their Draft-Dodger-in-Chief.  When I hear that stereotype, I see cowards like Trump, Limbaugh, Cheney, and hundreds of other Pansy Patriots who send Americans to war and death and never served themselves, the worst letting another man take their place. 

Although a few more French intellectuals now know the low esteem in which the French military and French manhood is held by Americans, most residents of our allied nation are blissfully ignorant.  Which is certainly for the best.

A Visit to Circuit de Sarthe: Race Course of the 24 Hours of LeMans

A Ford GT40 from the movie "LeMans 66" 

with yarn taped to the car to show airflow during testing

After seeing the movie "LeMans 66" in Paris (English with French Subtitles) I rented a stick-shift Opel and drove west to the town of LeMans, where in June of every year the 24 Hours of Lemans is held.  I have watched parts of the 24 Hours of LeMans on TV, but had never seen the circuit. I have been a fan of motor racing all of my life, primarily Formula 1 car racing, but also sports car racing at various times in the last six decades.

In most of the history of motor racing, the race tracks are known for curves.  The curves "Eau Rouge-Raidillon" at Spa Francorchamps in Belgium, "The Corkscrew" at Laguna Seca Raceway in California, Tabac curve on the street circuit of Monaco, the Maggots-Beckett-Chapel curves at Silverstone and so many more. 

But the signature of Circuit de Sarthe is not a curve, but the Mulsanne straightaway.  Originally run on roads closed for the race, the entire circuit is now a purpose-built race course, except the Mulsanne Straight which is Route D388 in the French highway system. It is open to traffic when no races are underway.

Until 1988 the Mulsanne straight was the longest straight stretch of race track anywhere: 6km or 3.7 miles of full-throttle.  Then in 1988 a Peugeot WM P88 reached a speed of 405km/hr (251mph) and the governing body decided something had to be done to slow the cars down. In 1990 track officials added two chicanes breaking the circuit into three consecutive 2km straightaways. This kept top speed at a safer 225mph.  At 250mph the downforce from the rear wing is so strong it can cause catastrophic tire failure. One car approaching those speeds famously went up into the trees. The car was completely destroyed, but the driver was unhurt.

The website says visitors can walk the track and go the museum. The museum was great with a century of cars and motorcycles, a few of which are in this post.  As it turned out I could not walk the track because there was a 24-hour sports car race in its final hours during my visit. I watched almost 50 cars ranging from race prepped Porsche 911s to a nearly stock BMW sedan circle the track at speed and under a yellow flag. 

Several of the cars spun at the second of the two chicanes on the Mulsanne straight.  They either went into the gravel or onto an escape road and rejoined. Even the cars that collided continued. I saw no race-ending crashes.

Next June I can watch LeMans 2020 and know what the track looks like in person as the top class 800hp race cars circle the 8.5-mile course for 24 hours and as much as 3,360 miles--the race distance record set in 2010.

Motorcycles have raced for 24 hours at LeMans since 1978

Thousands of scale model race cars fill the display cases in the museum

Paris Training Race and West Along the Seine

Today I am back in Paris and riding longer distances getting ready for Israel. I rode 42 miles from the south side of Paris to the daily training race at l'hippodrome in the southwest of corner of Paris.

After an 8-mile warmup ride, I joined the with a small group going about 18mph. A half-lap later a faster group went by so I sped up and joined.  At the end of that lap, six guys went by going even faster, so I sprinted onto the end of that group that was averaging 22mph.

I stayed with them for three laps.  I was using Strava so riding with this fast group meant I set a half dozen personal records, and I moved up to 9,500th of 19,500 riders who set times on the two-mile oval.  I also moved up to 43rd among the 140 riders who set times in the 65-69 age group.

After five laps I turned off and made a tour of my favorite towns west of Paris. I rode up and over Mont Valerian through the town of Suresne. I used to stay there when I was in Paris on business 20 years ago because I could wake up early, roll down the hill and ride the daily training race.

After Suresne, I rolled down the long hill into Rueil-Malmaison. The company I worked for had an office there. It's a lovely town on a bend in the Seine.  After that I rode west along the Seine to Saint Germain-en-Laye. This town has an amazing park and Hotel d'Ville and is the setting for the novel Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin--my favorite book by one of my favorite authors.

I rode back through Chatou and stopped for lunch a Maison Fournaise. I'll write a separate post about that.  Paris is a lovely pace to ride.

Cold War Hero Who Served After 1991

Armand Lattes, Professor Emeritus of the University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the world faced a plethora of problems. In retrospect, the world did not handle the demise very well. Russia and the other former Soviet states were broke and in collapse and armed with uncountable Weapons of Mass Destruction.  

In the 1940s and 50s, before the Soviets had nuclear weapons, their counter weapon to American and European nukes was nerve gas and other chemical weapons.  The Soviets manufactured thousands and thousands of tons of chemical weapons and stored them for the Doomsday attack.

In 1992 these un-dropped bombs and un-fired shells were rusting and leaking in storage across the former empire that had no money.  If these chemicals leaked into waterways and into the air, illness and death would spread through and out of the former Soviet Union. 

The answer to the problem was a massive, long-term decontamination program.  One of the chemists who volunteered for this dangerous work was Professor Armand Lattes of the University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse. Every September from 1992 until I met him in 2006, Lattes flew to secret sites in the former Soviet Union and worked with international volunteers to neutralize this terrible stockpile of weapons.  Lattes continued his unheralded work for several years after we met until his  retirement.  

I kept in touch with Armand in the years since and still hope to visit him and his wife Isabelle at their home in Toulouse. I almost made it to Toulouse on my trip around Europe last summer, but never got to that part of France.  

When we hear of the latest terrorist attack on the news, we know that dozens more attacks were foiled by law enforcement working secretly to disrupt the terrorists.  Armand and the men and women he worked with saved countless lives and the world itself from the disaster of chemical weapons leaking into the air and water or being stolen and used by terrorists.  

Armand did his part to keep the weapons of the Cold War from killing after the demise of the Soviet Union.

French Soldier in Afghanistan Writes About His Admiration for American Soldiers

The article below was sent to me by my friend Julian Richter.  It's a real tribute to American soldiers.  Here is the link, but I am pasting the whole thing so dead links won't be a problem.

Here is the original in French.  If you read French the last two paragraphs are beautiful.

I trained with French soldiers in Germany in the 1970s.  Those soldiers were the grandsons of the French Army that lost a million dead and five million wounded in World War One.  This young man would be the great grandson of those men who defended France in the horrors of the trenches.

What follows is an account from a French ISAF soldier that was stationed with American Warfighters in Afghanistan sometime in the past 4 years.  This was copied and translated from an editorial French newspaper.

A NOS FRERES D’ARMES AMERICAINS

"We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a while - they are the first and fourth companies of a prestigious infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other. But we live with them and got to know them, and we henceforth know that we have the honor to live with one of the most renowned units of the US Army - one that the movies brought to the public as series showing "ordinary soldiers thrust into extraordinary events". Who are they, those soldiers from abroad, how is their daily life, and what support do they bring to the men of our OMLT every day? Few of them belong to the Easy Company, the one the TV series focuses on. This one nowadays is named Echo Company, and it has become the support company. 

They have a terribly strong American accent - from our point of view the language they speak is not even English. How many times did I have to write down what I wanted to say rather than waste precious minutes trying various pronunciations of a seemingly common word? Whatever State they are from, no two accents are alike and they even admit that in some crisis situations they have difficulties understanding each other. Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins and creatine- they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo. Our frames are amusingly skinny to them - we are wimps, even the strongest of us - and because of that they often mistake us for Afghans.

And they are impressive warriors! We have not come across bad ones, as strange at it may seem to you when you know how critical French people can be. Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how. Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seem to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest. On the one square meter wooden tower above the perimeter wall they stand the five consecutive hours in full battle rattle and night vision goggles on top, their sight unmoving in the directions of likely danger. No distractions, no pauses, they are like statues nights and days. At night, all movements are performed in the dark - only a handful of subdued red lights indicate the occasional presence of a soldier on the move. Same with the vehicles whose lights are covered - everything happens in pitch dark even filling the fuel tanks with the Japy pump.Here we discover America as it is often depicted: their values are taken to their paroxysm, often amplified by promiscuity and the loneliness of this outpost in the middle of that Afghan valley.

And combat? If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all - always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and always in the shortest delay. That is one of their tricks: they switch from T-shirt and sandals to combat ready in three minutes. Arriving in contact with the enemy, the way they fight is simple and disconcerting: they just charge! They disembark and assault in stride, they bomb first and ask questions later - which cuts any pussyfooting short.Honor, motherland - everything here reminds of that: the American flag floating in the wind above the outpost, just like the one on the post parcels. Even if recruits often originate from the hearth of American cities and gang territory, no one here has any goal other than to hold high and proud the star spangled banner. Each man knows he can count on the support of a whole people who provides them through the mail all that an American could miss in such a remote front-line location: books, chewing gums, razorblades, Gatorade, toothpaste etc. in such way that every man is aware of how much the American people backs him in his difficult mission. And that is a first shock to our preconceptions: the American soldier is no individualist. The team, the group, the combat team are the focus of all his attention.

(This is the main area where I'd like to comment. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Kipling knows the lines from Chant Pagan: 'If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white/remember it's ruin to run from a fight./ So take open order, lie down, sit tight/ And wait for supports like a soldier./ This, in fact, is the basic philosophy of both British and Continental soldiers. 'In the absence of orders, take a defensive position.' Indeed, virtually every army in the world. The American soldier and Marine, however, are imbued from early in their training with the ethos: In the Absence of Orders: Attack! Where other forces, for good or ill, will wait for precise orders and plans to respond to an attack or any other 'incident', the American force will simply go, counting on firepower and SOP to carry the day.

This is one of the great strengths of the American force in combat and it is something that even our closest allies, such as the Brits and Aussies (that latter being closer by the way) find repeatedly surprising. No wonder is surprises the hell out of our enemies.)

We seldom hear any harsh word, and from 5 AM onwards the camp chores are performed in beautiful order and always with excellent spirit. A passing American helicopter stops near a stranded vehicle just to check that everything is alright; an American combat team will rush to support ours before even knowing how dangerous the mission is - from what we have been given to witness, the American soldier is a beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe.

To those who bestow us with the honor of sharing their combat outposts and who everyday give proof of their military excellence, to those who pay the daily tribute of America's army's deployment on Afghan soil, to those we owned this article, ourselves hoping that we will always remain worthy of them and to always continue hearing them say that we are all the same band of brothers".

PERSONAL THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ARTICLE:

For much of this article, the various veterans reading will go 'Well, duh. Of course we do our 'camp chores' and stand our posts in good order. There's a reason for them and if we didn't we'd get our heads handed to us eventually. And, yeah, we're in shape. Makes battle easier. The more you sweat, the less you bleed.'

What is hard for most people to comprehend is that that attitude represented only the most elite units of the past. Current everyday conventional boring 'leg infantry' units exceed the PT levels and training levels of most Special Forces during the Vietnam War. They exceed both of those as well as IQ and educational levels of: Waffen SS, WWII Rangers, WWII Airborne and British 'Commando' units during WWII. Their per-unit combat-functionality is essentially unmeasurable because it has to be compared to something and there's nothing comparable in industrial period combat history.

This group is so much better than 'The Greatest Generation' at war that WWII vets who really get a close look at how good these kids are stand in absolute awe.

Everyone complains about the quality of 'the new guys.' Don't. The screw-ups of this modern generation are head and shoulders above the 'high-medium' of any past group. Including mine.So much of 'The scum of the earth, enlisted for drink.'

This is 'The Greatest Generation' of soldiers.

They may never be equalled.

Dissing the French

One predictable form of stupidity I have to hear when I am on active duty is jokes about the French and France.  One of our instructors can't get through a class presentation without a French joke.  At least he is a veteran.

The more virulent anti-French feeling goes back to the beginning of the Iraq War.  The French joined the Afghan war from the beginning.  They are still fighting and dying there today.  The French decided that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the others who cobbled together the lies that got us in that war were full of merde.

The French were right and since they did not fall for lies in 2003 they are willing to join us now. The British decided evidence from us still smells like Iraq.  They voted NO.

The same instructor who makes French jokes says the job of the military is to "break shit and kill people."  He knows we are not well suited to peacekeeping.  The French know that better than we do.  When they went into Mali, they fought the terrorists and killed them.  They were not winning hearts and minds.

The French lost 1 million killed and 5 million wounded in World War I out of a population of 66 million--double the casualties on BOTH sides of the American Civil War.  France does not go to war since then without a clear objective.  I think we should do likewise.

Without Marquis de Lafayette there would be no America.  To me, dissing the French is stupid and ungrateful.

But then, then main group of public people dissing the French dodged the draft during Viet Nam and became patriots later when they could no longer be drafted.

C'est la vie.