"La vague est déjà là."
The comments are open. Let's check in, mes amis.
Bienvenue and welcome to The Land of Quarantine! This is not the newsletter I was planning to write, and I keep thinking people might want to be distracted by something that isn’t discussion of The Outbreak but I am only human and cannot think about anything else. While I’d like to be able to churn out my King Lear at this time, the reality is more like this:
What I’d really rather do right now is…talk about it. How are you all doing? Are you safe? How are things where you are? In what uniquely weird way is your neighborhood coping? The good news is, Substack must have seen this whole social distancing thing coming, because they recently rolled out comments to all subscribers. So this newsletter is going out to everyone, free or paid, in the hopes that we can all chat for a bit about this ridiculous and scary time that we’re all living in. In particular, I’d like to hear from my listeners living around the globe! I know 5% of my February listeners tuned in from France, and I’d like to know more about what it’s like on the ground there right now:
Look at those empty streets. Bien fait, Parisiens.
So let’s talk. Click the blue “View comments” button to join in:
In the meantime, here are a few things you might not have noticed in the firehose of coronavirus news which is our day-to-day:
In one of many examples of “This was the most important thing until it suddenly wasn’t” we’re seeing around the world: the pension reform bill which led to so many weeks of protest across all of France is now on hold while the nation tackles the outbreak.
The Louvre is closed but you can still take a tour online.
All the great perfume houses of the LVMH empire are using their production lines to create hand sanitizer:
They’re not the only fashion house stepping up to the plate right now: Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga will be producing surgical masks.
Here’s a sobering comparison: the lockdown in Paris on March 15 - look at all of those people having dejeuner sur l’herbe! - vs the lockdown in Paris today. Paris is by far the hardest hit region of France, home to one third of the country’s infections.
Here’s one woman’s description of daily life in Paris under lockdown restrictions. I know that this is obviously because I’ve spent the past few months working on “Women At War” but it is striking to me how much resemblance this bears to Occupied Paris - so many restrictions, quiet streets, and the need to keep your papers on you at all times.
Amazon no longer ships anything to France except essential goods.
An infectious disease specialist from Paris speaks to the New Yorker.
Filming for Adieu Monsieur Hoffmann halted so quickly that it’s now a time warp…of a time warp:
Before closing this out and jumping into the comments section, I’ll note one more thing. It’s hard not to see historical parallels in this moment - the Black Death, the Occupation, the flu of 1918, even the tuberculosis epidemic of the 19th century - but that doesn’t mean we are doomed to repeat the past. It’s hard to notice in the middle of the chaos, but the world changes - too slowly, it often seems, but it changes nonetheless. There have been so many times, especially during the last few years, when I’ve found myself wondering whether history is a folly - whether humans ever learn from their mistakes, whether they ever change. And then every once in awhile, I’ll see a story which knocks me down:
A small city in eastern France, overrun with coronavirus cases, reaches out to its neighbor for help. The neighbors look at their own resources, realize they have capacity to spare, and immediately offer hospital beds to patients from the neighboring town. A little tale of brotherhood in the face of grief.
But the small city in question is Mulhouse, sitting within the wide plain of Alsace. The neighbors are Freiburg - across the German border. Mulhouse was once German. Freiberg was once French. The two fought each other in the 17th century, the 18th century, the 19th century and the 20th. In 1940, the German army began occupying Mulhouse. In 1945, the French army began occupying Freiburg.
Now, in the 21st century, France and Germany are finally fighting the same war, on the same side. The clinic in Freiburg now treats French patients in need of ventilators. So do clinics in Heidelberg, Mannheim, and Ulm. If those clinics run out of space, the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland are ready to step up to the plate with their hospitals, too. “In a crisis,” the German prime minister of the region announced, “solidarity is required.”
Bisous - and bonne santé,
Diana
I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm checking in from Provence in the countryside. I live outside a small village full of people I've become quite fond of, therefore I try to keep my quarantine so I can stay healthy should anyone need help. Carrying my paperwork is a bore and too often I forget, but I'd rather be here during a pandemic than anywhere else.
This seems to be an appropriate time. I just began reading « La Peste » (The Plague) by Albert Camus.