Déconfinement, Paris-style
It was time for another trip to Paris last week, and oh how lovely (and interesting! and joyful!) to be there again.
There are lots of new rules to be followed: the main ones are keeping one’s distance (ideally, at least one meter away from others), and wearing masks when such distancing is not possible. (In any case, masks are required on all public transportation, including in taxis, and in stores and other public places). The city has extended the limits of the sidewalks so that restaurants can put more people at outside tables, meaning that there is MORE room for people, less for cars. (It’s a move in the right direction…).
With these rules there has been a gradual, and very welcome, return to life in Paris as Parisians (and people from around the world) love it: with lots of time to enjoy the beauty of the parks, the river, the buildings, and to be surrounded by people enjoying life.
[image error]Sous le ciel de Paris. Champ de Mars. Photo by Janet Hulstrand.
The French are known for being very organized (and also rather bossy, to be honest). These qualities are quite beneficial in times when everything needs to be rethought and reorganized, in order for people to stay well and healthy, in order for life to begin to return to some kind of “new normal.”
So, everywhere you go in Paris, there are reminders of how to honor these gestes barrieres: tape on the floors of stores marking out the places where people should stand when in line, stickers on the seats in the buses so that you don’t forget, and sit down too close to someone else. And so on.
And it’s working pretty well: people need to keep following all these rules in order for the very good work everyone has done at beating back the virus to remain. But: so far, so good. Although it is not gone, and the danger is not past, for now France seems to have the situation more or less under control.
I had a wonderful time enjoying Paris with my pal Adrian Leeds: she wrote about some of it here. One of the highlights was an afternoon spent in the Luxembourg Gardens with an obligatory (for me, anyway!) visit to the wonderful Red Wheelbarrow bookstore which is just across the street from the gardens. Penelope Fletcher is there, doing what she always does: making excellent suggestions of books for people to read, ordering new ones on request, filling the shelves, creating an atmosphere of lively, intelligent, friendly interaction among a community of readers. She is the quintessential perfect bookseller!
I had the chance to see my son, also, while I was there. And I even got interviewed for a second time by the wonderful Oliver Gee, and finally got to meet his wife, the “lovely Lina.” (She is indeed lovely, in every way. I knew she would be from the way she is described in his new book.) After the interview we had dinner together at a lovely restaurant Oliver took us to, the Fontaine de Mars, a very sympa restaurant that apparently is a favorite spot of Robert DeNiro, and has been graced also with the presence of the Obamas. How I managed not to think of taking a photo of us on this occasion I guess is that I was simply enjoying our time together too much. (You see, that is the problem always about photography: you can either be in the moment, or take a picture of it. Which means we should all be very grateful to the dedicated photographers of this world, who seriously devote themselves to capturing beautiful, poignant, important moments for the rest of us and let some of those moments pass them by so that the rest of us can enjoy them forever. (I’m talking to you, Roger Foley, and David Schroeder! 
