"Do You Hear the People Sing?" (Yet another French Revolution)

"A la volonté du peuple
Et à la santé du progrès,
Remplis ton cœur d'un vin rebelle, et à demain ami fidèle!"-Claude-Michel Schoenberg,"à la volonté du peuple" (Les Misérables) 

"To the will of the People, 
and to the safety of progress,
Fill your heart with a rebel wine, and until tomorrow, faithful friend!" 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRp-Opp2Peg

The Storming of the CDG Customs (January 12th, 2013)

Angry Frenchman Leading the People  by Delacroix, ruined by Gilmer

06:45: Disheveled and heavy laden, the weary travelers of Flight 2043 JFK-Charles DeGaulle filed out of the Boeing 747 and into the artificial light of Paris’ largest airport. For most of the bedraggled mass, freedom was in sight; the City of Lights shimmered through the terminal’s plexiglass windows and with it the promise of fresh food and plein air.  Yet one final obstacle stood, implacable, between these pilgrims and their promised land: a customs checkpoint. I was among that multinational band when it reached the bastion of French bureaucracy and will endeavor, God willing, to chronicle the heroism and sacrifice of the brave men and women who tried to storm it.  

Know first, dear reader, that we approached the checkpoint in peace, thoughts of insurrection drowned out in a haze of fatigue and vague recollections of in-flight films, and in peace we marched through the maze of queue barriers that led us onward. In an instant, however, our progress halted. From my vantage at the head of the crowd, I saw the cause; an agent of the airport---a pawn of the oppressor and an enemy of progress---had sealed off our line’s exit. With a callous sweep of his hand he barred the way to liberty for dozens of men, women, and children who had patiently waited for a half hour for the chance to present their passports and be admitted into the Republic. As his fabric barrier snapped taut, righteous indignation sparked and flared (cue the Youtube recording). “This line is closed!” he cried out to those he had wronged “Go back to the beginning! This line formed incorrectly!” The crowd held fast, and from it revolutionary voices fired back in the bold tradition of Danton and Marat: “We will not go back!” “Let us pass!” “Get out of the way, you bastard!” To their cries I added my own “This is your fault, not ours!” Seeing his authority rapidly eroding, the agent summoned his partner, and together they repeated their orders to the seething crowd. They had challenged the will of the people.  

“FORWARD!” shouted a middle-aged Frenchman at the head of the line as he cast down the barrier, and like Liberty incarnate he led the crowd of aspiring National Guards(wo)men towards their rightful place at the customs checkpoint. Oh how glorious victory was in sight at that first charge! The agents fled before our wrath (presumably towards Austria)!  Yet, what match were our passports, approved carry-on items, and rolling suitcases against the armed security guards who had closed ranks in place of the routing ushers? Despite our fervent hopes, those soldiers---relics of the Ancien Régime---did not defect to our side. The revolutionary tide was checked, and Liberty himself was captured and sent to the back of the line. With our leader fallen in battle, the mob gave up the fight ignominiously. I, too, surrendered the place I had secured at the front and withdrew to the middle of the newly-forming line.  I tell you these things with a heavy heart; would I were to have fallen to the back of the line among the others who strove for freedom. To their memory I dedicate this blog post.

Fin 

P.S:

Haha, I doubt anyone had as much fun reading that as I did writing it, but I can assure you that it’s at least 73.6% true, and it was exhilarating to be part of what I can only describe as a near riot in an airport. Word to the wise: don’t ever think that a fabric “crowd-control barrier” will hold back pissed off travelers (particularly the French) any longer than it takes them to call you and your entire family every hate slur that has ever existed in their respective languages. 

All that said, please forgive me for having taken a 2 month hiatus...taking care of final exams, grading, and Thanksgiving/Christmas plans distracted me. Oh yeah, and there was that whole thing about my laptop breaking for the entire month of December; that might have played a role in it, too. Haha...

As I write this, all is well here in Nantes, and my coworkers and I are all gearing up for another round of classes (which started this week). I'll post more about them---my classes and my dear coworkers---as soon as my shattered revolutionary heart mends. In the meantime, please accept these recent pictures of Nantes-beria (snow is almost as much a novelty here as it is in Mobile) :

View from my apartment...I was caught out in the snow when it first began to fall and used bar matches to light a  newspaper on fire for warmth; it was extinguished almost instantly, and I started thinking of myself as less of a survivalist and more of a dumbass.

Stalingrad-Dalby Intersection

It takes more than snow to stop TAN, a weekly strike/protest for example.

Winterfell on Nantes

The long walk to the Fac ("Uni" in French) 

A cute, misspelled quibble---Ayrault=the socialist prime minister, porc=porc spending---on "Death to the Airport," a massive grassroots movement that opposes the construction of a new airport in Notre Dame des Landes...I like to think that they would have opposed the ushers at CDG, too. That second piece of graffiti mocks the "Socialist" government of Hollande for "expelling and suppressing" like a fascist government (the French are rarely satisfied with anything the government does)  

Louis XVI as a snowman, Pre-Revolution.

Post-Revolution.