Firehalls and Foxholes

Because it’s July 14th, la fête nationale in France, check out my new favorite blog written by Charles Bremner, Paris correspondent for the London Times. His Bastille Day musings on Sarkozy’s power plays are interesting. But I was most interested to read his note that traditional July 14th celebrations in neighborhood firehalls are back in style. Brought back memories of Bastille Day 1995: after a picnic in the Buttes Chaumont park with friends, I went to the party at the firehall in the 10th arr. with my Polish boyfriend Ireneusz. He was delighted because all the pompiers were congratulating him on having me for a date. I was, after all, a 24 year old knockout. Shortly thereafter, I wound up in the hospital with a kidney infection and dumped the polonais because he was utterly unsympathetic and kept telling me that (at 6 ft tall and 135 pounds) I needed to lose weight. It was a lovely night though…

A worldly, well traveled friend of mine (I’ll call him Monsieur Blasé) passed on an interesting piece from Slate on how McDonalds has taken over France.

Blasé contends that international travel is hardly worthwhile any more, as cities in Europe and elsewhere have been utterly homogenized by globalization/consumerism. He, however, continues to live abroad as he’s done for most of the past twenty years.

Anyway, the last time I was in France (2005), the food was still wonderful. Processed foods have not made anywhere near the kind of inroads they have here. Moderation is still operational, portions are still small and the French are still thin.

Meanwhile, here in Lovetown: big excitement this morning--a (presumably) rabid fox at the playground.

Pretty much everything that happens around here goes down at our community center, which truly is the hub of the community and boasts a swimming pool, preschool and a nice clean playground. (No Bastille Day celebrations unfortunately but they put on a mean July 4th carnival). Anyway, we were at the pool for Hank’s swim class and Coco was running around in a picnic area that abuts the playground when someone spotted a small red fox. A fox in broad daylight is not usually a good sign, and sure enough, he attacked a woman who tried to shoo him away. A very nice caregiver grandfather with whom I’d been chatting at the pool rushed over, tackled the fox (also getting bitten in the process) and held him down with his foot until the animal control people came.

We used to have a family of foxes and an extensive network of burrows in one of our fields. Don’t really see them around much anymore which leads us to believe that they’ve been eaten by the coyotes.