Such an interesting book. I’m going to have to get a copy to read one day.

chenséliser \ʃɑ̃zelize\ (verbe intransitif) : se balader à Paris comme touriste

Among my least typical but most cherished souvenirs of the time I lived in Europe are the legal and quasi-legal documents I picked up along the way. In my campus office, I have a French residency permit, a Swiss driver’s license, lots of public transportation passes…

Hier soir, juste avant de me coucher, quelqu’un a posé une question sur r/French: Pourquoi les non-Francophones choisissent-ils d’apprendre le français ?

J’ai vu la question peu après qu’elle a été posée, et j’ai dit la vérité : On m’avait offert le choix entre les cours de français et les cours d’espagnol. Il y avait plus de monde qui voulaient étudier l’espagnol, et j’avais envie de contrarier. J’ai donc choisi le français comme acte de rébellion.

I saw this book at a bookstore on a recent family vacation and immediately made note of it. I’d read Robb’s The Discovery of France in college and really enjoyed it, so I was sure I’d like this one, too.

I checked it out from the library and then had to read it in a rush when I was alerted about someone else’s hold on the book. I ended up turning it in about a week late, but oh well.

I have never understood the panic about burkinis. It’s one of many examples where French laïcité goes further than appropriate and desirable secularism.

Today, I heard from a student that I had a couple of semesters ago asking for a letter of recommendation for a master’s program. I only had the student in one class, his attendance was spotty, and I didn’t have a lot of sustained interactions with him, so I am questioning whether I would be the best letter writer for him. However, while I said as much to the student in my reply, I also told him that despite all of that, I would still be willing to write him a letter. It looks like he’s taking me up on this.

Like its predecessors, this volume was interesting, and I appreciated what it had to say, but there was just too much that was weird about it for me to really love it. I don’t regret reading it, but I have no plans to buy the physical versions like I thought I might in the past.

The story seemed to get more and more speculative over time, and while I appreciated the intent, it just felt like more and more of a stretch, which felt like it weakened the goals of the author. The art was still weird, and things came off as overly didactic. The main characters lost more and more of the spotlight and their personalities, simply becoming vehicles for ideas.

I read this volume of the series much faster than the last one—perhaps because it was new to me and perhaps because the second round of the election motivated me to finish it—though I clearly won’t finish the series before today’s results were announced.

Thematically, I thought the book was stranger. It put more emphasis on how laws and politics established under mainstream parties could become terrifying in the hands of far right extremists. It was also helpful for learning more about other elements of France’s far right.

I think this is the third time I’ve read this BD, but given the ongoing French presidential election and the possibility that Le Pen will pull off a win on the 24th, I wanted to revisit it—and read the other volumes in the trilogy, which I’ve never done.

The BD isn’t the best—it’s overly didactic at times and the art aims for a photorealism that sometimes verges on the uncanny valley. The digital adaptation also complicates things—there’s no panel-to-panel swipe like many Kindle comics, and it’s hard to read on a phone.

Interesting read on potential stakes of France’s presidential election.

Faut pas oublier ces liens quand-même.

Keeping an eye on France’s elections in April and then Idaho’s in May, I guess.

This is worrying. There’s a long tradition of open far right movements in France, and if the U.S has something to teach them, it should make us think twice about what’s happening here.

Passing a car through an intersection or keeping up with it in a roundabout is one of the greatest pleasures of commuting by e-bike.

Spent my morning commute today thinking about how U.S. Christian nationalism and French laïcité (secularism) sometimes end up serving similar functions.

This passage about the anti-Semitic Dreyfus Affair (from a book I’m reading on the French Third Republic) is coming to mind today:

Long before the end of the Affaire, as the French called it, the question of the guilt of Dreyfus became almost lost in the melee, giving way to a fundamental conflict over the very moral concepts of French society which cast its shadow over the Third Republic from then on to the end. For to the Army leaders and their backers in the Church, and among the conservative classes, the supreme issue became not whether Dreyfus was guilty (though they believed he was) but that even if he was innocent it were better that he suffer the tortures of the damned (as he was literally doing on Devil’s Island) than that the prestige and the honor of the French Army, on which the defense of the country depended, be impugned. Of what significance was the life and honor of one individual compared to the life and the honor of la patrie? Of what significance indeed were naked truth and naked justice for the individual and even respect for the human personality regardless of race or religion if adhering to them undermined the confidence of the people in the leaders of the Army and sapped their faith in the constituted authorities and thus weakened the fiber of the nation? Above everything else lay the national interest and throughout history individuals had been sacrificed for it, as had truth and justice.

Just learned that there’s a French cover of “Raindrops Falling on My Head,” and now I want to know if they use it in the French dub of Spider-Man 2.

I hope the Disney+ Ms. Marvel show will have an episode set in France where Kamala fights a local super who believes her burkini-based costume to be « une atteinte à la laïcité »

Il y a une cathédrale magnifique qui brûle, et le président américain se permet de donner des conseils aux sapeurs-pompiers. Je n’en peux plus.

Highlight of Paris airport this morning is the Scottish “hey Europe, can we still be friends?” ads that I keep seeing.

J’ai déjà atterri à Roissy, j’ai déjà fait le contrôle des passeports et la douane, mais je viens d’entendre le « jingle » de la SNCF, et c’est donc maintenant que je sais vraiment que je suis en France 😍🚉

Thanks to my upcoming presentation at a conference in France and the different ways different countries do Daylight Savings, I have the dubious honor of getting to “spring forward” twice this year.

Je viens d’acheter des billets pour visiter le Québec (pour les vacances) et la France (pour un colloque) au mois de mars. J’ai trop hâte !

Lexington has a sister city in Normandy, so I’m currently applying to our sister cities organization in the hopes it will provide opportunities to keep up my French. 😊🇫🇷