The French Journal

C'est La Folie

There are certain mainstays about France which have been around forever but which somehow have escaped my attention. Such is the case with C'est la folie, Michael Wright's column about life in rural France. I probably overlooked it because it appears in the property section of The Guardian (U.K.) and I tend to avoid items which extol the virtues of purchasing real estate in France; in Wright's case, you might think of it as a blog that being subsidized by a major newspaper -- a sweet gig if there ever was one.

Wright's latest column is about the onset of winter and the departure of much loved neighbors:

"The farmhouse that Gilles and Josette called home for 29 years stands empty; the farmyard silent, the windows shuttered - except on the upper floor, where they still hang (as they have always hung) broken from their hinges, like the doors of an Advent calendar opened by an over-excited child. I know this, because I have just driven down there, in the rain-swept darkness, to take a look.

"I suppose I need to see for myself, to believe that Gilles really has left. But as I shine my torch over the broken pots and buckets in the yard, and the light picks out the wan glitter of a strand of last year's tinsel above the front door, it's impossible to believe that he is gone."

There's much more to read by him in the newspaper's archives; simply put the name of the column in The Guardian's search engine. Not surprisingly, Wright has a book about his adventures, too, at this point published only in the U.K., I believe, (I could be wrong), but copies are available through Amazon.

Lastly, Craig McGinty of This French Life conducted an interview with Wright a while back; you can listen to it here.

Oradour, continued

I've written before about the haunted town of Oradour. In 1944, Nazis executed the inhabitants of the village, a horrific act, and since then the little town has not been inhabited. Instead, Oradour has been preserved as a commemoration of the tragedy of World War II; visitors can now walk its mostly empty streets; looking into the homes, you see life suddenly and permanently interrupted.

Last week, one of the officers responsible for the massacre died (Yahoo/AP). Heinz Barth had been identified in the 1980's as a perpetrator and sentenced to life in prison; he had been released in 1997 for health reasons.

For a further impression of Oradour, an article taken from the South Africa Independent On-Line tells of a visit to the village, where "the loudest sound heard is the trill of birdsong from an attendant choir in the trees." The article ends on odd notes, with a contrasting visit to the still vibrant village of St. Junien, and a further trip to Limoges. The information is helpful, yet it's jarring when juxtaposed against the sorrow of Oradour.

Chirac's Museum

While most of us struggle to find a place for our tschokes, when you're a president, you have a better option: open a museum. And so it is that -- lest you've forgotten Jacques Chirac already -- you can visit the President Jacques Chirac Museum in the village of Sarran in the Limousin, not far from the ex-president's "retirement chateau." The museum houses the gifts that Chirac has received from other heads of state. An article from the Sydney Morning Herald takes an amused tour of the museum: amused because next to the gem encrusted falcon given to Chirac by a prince from Saudi Arabia is a two-footed ashtray (or is it paperweight?) presented by Tony Blair that is good for a laugh.

Among the other gifts:

"Japan thought the French leader would like the jock-strap or belt ("mawashi") of their top sumo wrestler, Takanohana. The Senegalese president gave a headdress. Brazil touchingly gave him a naked woman. In granite...Perhaps the strangest souvenir on show is the stuffed coelacanth fish in a case given by the President of the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean."

The article also makes an odd side trip to a bar in Limoges and notes that Richard the Lionheart's bowels were once the biggest tourist attraction in the area. In any case, some day you'll be able to see a lot of the Chirac Museum's collection on its website and in English, but not yet.

Regions of France: Limousin

The small, central region of Limousin is the most rural in France. It's the least populated area of the country, and its inhabitants include a notably high percentage of people over 60 and a notably low number of immigrants. Limousin has been used in French literature as a kind of "Hicksville," but that image is contradicted by some of its notable products, its often leftist leanings, and its current efforts to modernize.

So let's take a look at Limousin.

Oradour: Site of a Tragedy

Photo by Dennis Nilsson

On June 10, 1944, four days after the D-Day landing in Normandy, Nazi soldiers rounded up and slaughtered over 600 inhabitants of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane. Women and children were gathered in a church which was set on fire, and the men were shot. The exact reason for the massacre has not been determined; it is speculated that the killers confused the village with another which was a hub of the Resistance, or that it was a reprisal for the death or abduction of a Nazi official.

When Charles de Gaulle saw Oradour, he declared that it should remain as it was on that dreadful day, a reminder of the horrors of war. And so it has. Roy Masters, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, tells of the haunting experience of walking through the Oradour streets, the homes in the village with their artifacts frozen in place.

A memorial center has been built which offers information on the war and the tragedy.  Its official site has a virtual tour of that building; unfortunately, English translations were not working when I tried them. Another site, www.oradour.info, is maintained by someone with a great interest in the event and has extensive information about the village.