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It was pretty cool to be alerted by a fellow blogger, Maxwell Dumaurier, of a new blog featuring expat book reviews. It’s called Foreign Tongues and Chocolate Tartes.
www.Foreigntonguesandchocolatetartes.wordpress.com.
My novel, Ladyfingers is also featured in her blog.
Thanks for the plug Maxwell.
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First let me emphasize the fact that I neither designed this Tee Shirt nor coined this phase. Nevertheless, it brings up the topic of why there are such troubling conditions and conflicts in the European Union.
For those of you who don’t know, the expression White Trash is an American English pejorative term referring to poor white people in the United States. It suggests lower social class and degraded living standards.
The definition “white trash” emphasizes the person’s moral failings.
If you’re living in Europe, I think you can probably already see where I’m going with this!
I was a wide-eyed Green Horn, in the South of France, enjoying one of my first dinners chez des copains francophones, the first time I became involved in a discussion of the EU many, many years ago. To be more precise, it was sometime in the 80s.
The host and hostess and two other couples were French, the language of the dinner party was French but several other European countries were represented at the table: German, Italian, Danish, a French Swiss and then there was me…the lone American.
They explained to me how a United Europe would give them the kind of market base which would rival the US. That it would be a sort of “United States of Europe”.
Then I emphasized the fact the despite regional differences, and that although we didn’t actually have an official language, that we in the US spoke American English. They then informed me, with pride and enthusiasm, that the language of business and commerce would indeed be English.
A vague disturbance rumbled quietly among the diner guests when I asked which English they would be using in these business transactions.
No one ventured to tell me, on the other hand, which language would be that of diplomacy among their leaders.
When some said that a United Europe would protect them from “The Yellow Menace”, I wasn’t sure whether they were being sarcastic or actually being polite. Perhaps they meant someone or something else since there were no “yellows” sitting at the table.
My preference for life in France, I told them, had a lot to do with the fact that I found more compatibility with the Gallic way of life than of the Germanic definitions of order and precision or the Spanish concept of time, Belgian randomness and uncertainty, or the dubious Italian sense of business etiquette.
When I expressed my enjoyment of the diversity and uniqueness of each national culture of Europe, I was told that a United Europe would prevent war among them in the future….or something like that anyway… if I remember correctly.
It was quite an enjoyable dinner, actually, despite the fact that I could see the seeds of familiar discord among the Europeans beginning to spout.
Nevertheless, they appeared to be unanimously excited by the prospect of all of Europe going into business together in order to better compete with the Yellow Menace…whatever that is… and the economic clout of the US.
Years later, after the EU became official, I was taking a business class here in the South of France. My French business professor explained how the high level of unemployment in France was causing apathy among job seekers to the point where many had simply given up searching for employment. The City of Nice, for instance , had become a proletariat town with new residents from all over crowding into the area seeking the promise of “the Good Life”…whatever that is…
She described in great detail how the general quality in life in France for the French was “en train de dégringoler (Going into the sewer…Caput! Fini! Bye bye!)
Then there is the issue of some snide members of the EU.
Let’s take Great Britain, for example.
How can The United Kingdom be a member in the EU when the English don’t even consider themselves in Europe: “I’m visiting Europe this summer,” or “I’m moving to Europe,” they say.
Imagine the rationality around something like this: Great Britain is composed of four countries, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
In additiona to all this, England doesn’t even acknowledge the importance of the Euro as their unit of monetary exchange.
They might as well let Turkey in. Who knows whether they, too, are on the continent of Europe.
The English have always cracked me up with their wily ways.
Why does Europe seem to be teetering on the edge of an abyss? Perhaps this is what happens when a population reacts to concepts of color instead of the possible incompatibilities of various cultures. Of course this stance probably magnifies my personal viewpoint from a purely American color-conscious perspective.
Why would one tear down all the picket fences which protect the privacy and sanctity of ones’ neighbours’ property?
What the EU represents to me the is the joining of the hands of a polyglot confusion of economically unequal, white people, semi-white people and wanna- be white people for absolutely no reason at all.
Some things are just logical sequences of events!
THE EU BLUES 2012!
“Get that guy out of our organization”
~unknown
“Get this guy out of our orgaization!”
~unknown
“Yo man! How in the hell did that guy get in here?
~unknown
“Pay your bills!!!! Leave Us Alone!!!!
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or some one like Angela McGlowan
as a running mate?
No…I’m not a devil’s advocate. I just found 2011 quite dull!
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It has been over a year since I posted on this blog. I had forgotten all about it, being immersed in number of projets over the past year.
Nevertheless, I’ll have you know that my husband and I are still living in the South of France, although one of our main projets has been searching for a new property closer to the sea.
Still searching.
Then there is the fait accomplis of having comleted my third novel. No small feat.
After seven longs years of absence from the United States, this past Spring we finally decided to revisit our last home in New York City.
Quite an eye opener.
http//blaxpatauthorinfrance.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/115
New York Revisited
The rest of the year just passed swisftly away into 2012.
Looking forward to the events that 2012 brings for us.
Hope you are, too.
“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.”
~Bill Vaughn
Enjoy 2012!!!!
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Writing is a lonely job, unless you’re a drinker, in which case you always have a friend within reach.
Emilio Estevez
Enjoy the holidays!!!
cartoon by David Horsey 2009
As a long-time expat in France, I need to pose several unanswered questions which have been causing me some sleepless nights, lately:
1) When some groups of people demand that they intend to take America back, who exactly do they feel has invaded and whose culture do they feel has come and colonized our own?
2) When did this begin?
3) Are Native Americans demanding this? Americans of European descent? Of African descent? Of Asian descent?
4) Who are they talking about?
5) When I read that some other groups are demanding that they get their country back, who exactly is demanding this? People who are victims of our previous foreign relations? Reluctant immigrants and other refugees perhaps?
6) Who are they talking about?
I would appreciate the feedback, since it is probably apparent to you that I have become completely out of touch.
School me on this one people!
(Post script :. I have just been informed that America does not actually have an official language. “ English is the de facto national language of the United States, with 82% of the population claiming it as a mother tongue, and some 96% claiming to speak it “well” or “very well”.[3] However, no official la
nguage exists at the Federal level. There have been several proposals to make English the national language in amendments to immigration reform bills,[4][5] but none of these bills has become law with the amendment intact.” Wikipedia
People…help me on this one as well…
Which English are they talking about? American English? British English? Australian English? Canadian English?
What are they talking about? It appears to me that the majority culture for hundreds of years were so preoccupied with repressing minorities and policing foreign nations that they forgot to give themselves an official language! Geeez…)
In case you don’t know…
(Josephine Baker was an American-born French expatriate entertainer and singer. She became a French citizen in 1937. Most noted as a singer, Baker was a celebrated dancer in her early career. She was given the nicknames the “Black Venus” or the “Black Pearl”, as well as the “Créole Goddess” in anglophone nations. In France, she has always been known in the old theatrical tradition as “La Baker”.
Joséphine Baker is noted for being the first woman of African descent to star in a major motion picture, to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world famous entertainer. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
Baker worked with the NAACP.[4] In 1963, she spoke at the March on Washington at the side of Martin Luther King, Jr.[17] Wearing her Free French uniform emblazoned with her medal of the Légion d’honneur, she was the only woman to speak at the rally.[18] After King’s assassination, his widow Coretta Scott King approached Baker in Holland to ask if she would take her husband’s place as leader of the American Civil Rights Movement. After many days of thinking it over, Baker declined, saying her children were “… too young to lose their mother, “ as she was the mother of 13 adopted war orphans.[3]
(Paris, Rome, Berlin)
Recently an acquaintance of mine who lives in Germany commented on my blog concerning the “Chic of French Women.” To encapsulate his quite lengthy response which was sent to me through my private email, he basically stated his opinion on what he felt was the self -deprecating tendency of American women to use facelifts as beauty enhancements in order to combat the aging process.
What came to mind was how ironic his opinion was considering the fact that we both live among the antiquities of Europe.
Image what living here would be like without the nips and tucks of European restoration efforts. The way I see it is that we’d all be living as if we were in the bowels of the slums of Cairo.
Hello Ladies of the diaspora. Is it just me or do you find a curious pattern in the following images?
We decided to profit from a clear, beautiful, warm November day by driving out to the harbor of Saint Laurant du Var, for lunch.
Enough said.
