The Continent Gets Covid Fatigue
Originally published in The American Scholar There are two lessons to be drawn from Europe’s second wave of Covid-19: 1. Getting it right the first time isn’t enough. 2. Messing with dinner time doesn’t work. In the summer, the countries of continental Europe seemed...
Spinning My Wheels
I bought a bicycle so I could move around Paris without risk from COVID-19. A month in, I’m not sure the safety tradeoff is working in my favor. Paris, it turns out, is no Amsterdam. While Mayor Anne Hidalgo has opened many new bike lanes and so have surrounding...
“The Realm of the Impossible”
President Emmanuel Macron announced a new set of COVID restrictions last night that took aim at one of the most sacred French traditions: dinner hour. Macron imposed a curfew in Paris and other large cities from 9pm to 6am in an effort to reduce the soaring number of...
The Aesthetic French Bureaucrat
I just found a spark of joy from an unexpected source: a French civil servant. Not only is my native country a mess, France isn't filled with joy these days. Cases of COVID-19 are on the rise, about 12,000 a day on average. As a proportion of the population, that’s...
The Lost Weekend
How do you say mixed messages in French? On the one hand, the government here, desperately concerned about a record surge in COVID-19 cases, is telling older people to, in the words of the health minister, “protect yourselves even more.” Parisians should “rethink...
Une Rentrée à la COVID
The autumn return to school and work in France is famously known as “La Rentrée,” when vacations are over and real life resumes. Stores fill with school supplies, bookstores with newly published works and the Assemblée Nationale with politicians finding new ways to...
Madame, Your Papers Please
Thomas Jefferson is teaching me about French bureaucracy. In a few days I will attempt to fly back to France from the U.S. When I left, I had every expectation of an easy return, immigration-wise, even during this time of pandemic border restrictions. French citizens,...
Going the Distance
Dedicated to Christopher Dickey, who embraced every journey. “You’re going THERE?” This was a common response among our Europe-resident friends when we told them we intended to travel to the U.S. this summer. Why would we go to the country that was handling COVID-19...
Driving in Circles
One silver lining of the pandemic in France: Driving around the Place de l’Etoile is not nearly as scary as it used to be. This is even though France has almost entirely reopened, as of this month. Stores and restaurants are open, as is the Louvre down at the other...
Who Is the Real Étranger?
In late 2005, I was invited to be a panelist on an evening news show called Mots Croisés. The topic was the riots across France in the low-income, predominantly Muslim ethnic suburbs that surrounded big cities. There were about 10 participants, representing every...