Cola and I went out to go Xmas shopping. As we walked to Republique, we noticed a godawful traffic jam with even more horns blaring than usual. A bunch of garbage trucks were blocking the path of traffic around the Place de Republique. There were a bunch of people waving communist flags around, lining up in the street. Somebody with a bull horn was chanting something about the Catholic church. There were signs that said something about “1905\/2005” and “Ni Eglise Ni Ma\u00eetre Ni \u00c9tat” I could not figure out what was going on, except that there were a lot of pissed off drivers and a lot more people showing up all the time with red and black flags.<\/p>\n
So I bought a communist newspaper for 2\u20ac. I didn’t notice at the time, but the woman gave me a July\/August issue and a September\/October issue. Sheesh, you’d think communists didn’t like Americans. Anyway, since I’d purchased a magazine, I could ask her what was up. And I could not understand anything she said. So her english-speaking comrade came over and explained that in 1905, France passed a law mandating the separation of church and state. The protesters wanted to re-affirm that law. (It was then I noticed the “Ath\u00e9isme” banner.) They also told me the march route. I am 100% in favor of secular states in every country. But France is not my country, so I did not join the march. Instead I walked to le Marais and did some window shopping, but not much actual shopping. My goodness, it was crowded! We bought falafels and then walked home. Cola and I went out to go Xmas shopping. As we walked to Republique, we noticed a godawful traffic jam with even more horns blaring than usual. A bunch of garbage trucks were blocking the path of traffic around the Place de Republique. There were a bunch of people waving communist flags around, lining up … Continue reading Today in Paris<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3114,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions\/3114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nCola looked up Harry Potter on the Version Originale website<\/a> (which I leanred of from the ex-pat blog Dispatches from France<\/a>) and so we hung around for a bit and then walked to a movie theatre by the Place d’Opera. The website gave us entirely the wrong address, so we went to a later movie than we meant to, but we did get to see it in English. It’s nice to see a movie with such a strong feminist subplot. There was a real gender-balance of champions in the wizard tournament and the women always placed first or second. Ha. Sorry. I meant to say that the only female contestant came from a single-sex school and placed last in every event. Oh, and the magic of the school mostly involved being feminine and doing cheerleading routines, as far as I could tell. Also, they’re French and we all know that French culture embodies femininity in every way. And, every single Hogwarts student is straight.
\nGot out of the movie too late to go back to le Marais, so maybe tomorrow we’ll go to the 3w bar. That stands for Women with Women. Hopefully, no wizarding challenges will pop up while we’re in such a helpless, female environment.
\nTags: Paris<\/a>, Secularism <\/a>, Harry Potter<\/a>, Celesteh<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"