0.1. HOW THESE VIEWS BEGAN

I GREW UP IN NEW JERSEY...

Where my French maman ignored my saddle shoes and "Seventeen" and detested Elvis. She raised me as if I were French —  the ways of Middlesex County and Paris were so different! Dealing with two truths encouraged reflection.

My junior year was in Paris. I loved its past, which I saw as a series of exploits by individuals in largely political contexts. But a young man I met at the Sorbonne thought differently: to make sense, he insisted, events, attitudes, beliefs had to be placed in their underlying economic contexts, with the practical interests they reinforced or challenged. “And that,” he said, "comes from Karl Marx." 

My fascination for Paris lasted longer than our marriage and I have lived in this magnificent city ever since.

 

My father was a professor and I expected to become one (B.A. Vassar, Masters Harvard, Ph.D. Columbia, all in history). But teaching in a French university then was impossible without a French degree. So I became a tour guide, and this blook is the result.

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A memory: 

Toward 1955, a French aunt, Magda Trocmé, 

whom my dad called "Hurricane Magda" 

came to visit us when on a speaking tour.

She and her husband, André Trocmé, were well-known for their anti-Nazi pacifism and after the war were critical of President Eisenhower's Cold War policies. My father, a stoical New Englander, would leave after dinner, leaving Maman and Aunt Magda to "discuss."

Harald Wolff

"Eisenhower is an old trousers of a general."  "No!!!"

I would listen from the top of the stairs and remember their enthusiasm for exchanging ideas, without expecting to persuade. (But the discussion may have nuanced their extremely vehement points of view.)

There's a space for comments at the end of each page,

and I'd like to know what you think. 

Political critiques are welcome.

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0.2.

Thanks!