Food News

In France there is always food news. Statistics released in early March indicated that French sandwiches, most of them made with baguettes, were outselling hamburgers 8 to 1. What the French could be especially proud of was the continued resilience of the parisienne, a butter and ham on baguette staple. The venerable jambon-beurre makes up 72% of the non-burgers consumed.

News was good in general for sandwich purveyors. Growth was 11% last year. Grabbing a sandwich and eating it quickly, it must be noted, is not called “fast food” here. “Fast-food” is a label mostly reserved for anglo-saxon imports. The long-standing, home-grown market (eat a baguette sandwich quickly) has its own name. It's called the marché de l’en-cas. En-cas means literally “in case.” The expression, tough, has come to mean “snack,” i.e. “in case you are hungry.” So, when it comes to the en cas market, the French, anchored by the parisienne still proudly hold their own.

This does not mean that the “fast-food” folks are falling behind. McDonald’s of France has been doing well during the economic downturn. It actually plans expansions in 2009. Right now there are 1134 McDonald’s in France. Another 30 are expected to be added in 2009, many looking to the professional and educated crowd by offering unlimited, free WiFi.

An offhand comment by the American president about food also made the news. Apparently, Barack Obama asked that Air Force One be supplied with dijon mustard. While not the most portentous of remarks, it caught the attention of another politician, the mayor of Dijon. He put together a gift pack and immediately sent it off to Washington.

The mayor faces a major headache. Despite its name, dijon mustard need not be made in Dijon. A 1937 French court determined that the label “dijon” applied to a recipe, not a location. Thus, unlike Champagne which is a protected name in France (only the bubbly made in a particular geographical area qualifies), the mustard can be made anywhere in the world. Even the seeds which make up the basic ingredient come from elsewhere, mostly from western Canada. Because of the economic downturn, the town of Dijon could soon see the disappearance of the last link to the actual fabrication of its famous product, the Amora factory. Unilever, the Dutch-British multinational has announced plans to close the factory by the end of the year. Workers have protested and there have been demonstrations in support of keeping the factory open, but the end of a long-standing tradition seems inevitable.
One French tradition which does endure is the Guide Michelin. It just issued its 100th anniversary edition. The first edition was published in 1900. This raises the question of whether these people have refined tastes but can’t do simple math. Shouldn’t the 100th edition have been the millenial one? Well, yes, but only if the 20th century had been war-free. Wartime, besides its other bothers, interrupted the Guide’s publication. For this lean economic year, one highlight is the ever popular Bib Gourmand selection. These are quality restaurants which, though not worthy of stars, offer good food at reasonable prices. This year, there are 86 more Bib locations than were listed in the 2008 guide. There is now an almost equal balance between starred restaurants, 548, and Bib ones 527. “Bib” by the way, is short for Bibendum the name given to Michelin’s trademark little tire guy.

The “look for food bargains” attitude that marks the Bib selections has sort of taken hold all over France. The economic crisis may have helped the en-cas and the “fast food” crowds, but standard restaurants have seen dwindling customers. Some of them have responded by offering bargain meals, at least during especially slow times. One restaurant in Cherbourg is offering a 5 Euro (about $6.75) lunch special consisting of the main dish and either an appetizer or a dessert. A Lyon restaurant, taking a lead from a British example, does not bother to list prices. Patrons pay what they think the meal was worth. Finally, a tv story recently featured a baker who thinks that any savings should get passed on to the customer. Since the price of flour has come down, he is now increasing the size of his baguette and still charging the standard price of 80 centimes (about $1.00). Now if he were to make a parisienne with his larger bread, that would really be a good deal.

Marathon up Mt. Ventoux

When a village is nestled at the foothills of a famous mountain, many of its events will be related to the looming giant. Our mountain is Mt. Ventoux, the “Giant of Provence.” The biggest event involving an ascent will be this summer’s Tour de France. Lately, in a sort of “we too can take on the mountain” there have been several preliminary ascents. Well, I say several even though I am not actually sure of the first. It involved antique cars. One day last week while heading for the grocery store, my wife and I noticed a series of classic cars, old racing cars it seemed, driving through town. Some, like the one pictured, had been parked while the owner took a coffee break. What were they doing here? My guess: they were involved in some sort of rally that involved taking the twisting road up Mt. Ventoux. That’s only speculation, though. If they were headed up the mountain, at this time of the year, they could not make it all the way to the top. Those roads are still closed because of snow.

If they were headed for Ventoux they were continuing a venerable tradition. The first motorcar race up Ventoux took place in 1902. Winning the race required a speed of 47.5 kilometers per hour. The tradition has continued recently with a race in early June through 2007. There is little information available about 2008 or this year.

Besides vehicles with wheels, people under their own power have sought to reach the summit. Francesco Petrarch in 1336 was the first famous figure known to have reached the summit. The Provençal poet, Frédéric Mistral, whose name matches (coincidentally) the “mistral,” provence’s famous wind, engaged in a pre-dawn 1859 climb so he could experience sunrise from the summit.

Besides the many hikers drawn to the mountain, there is also a yearly foot race that takes participants from pavement, to trail, to rocky terrain, to snow before descending again. It’s called “The Trail of Ventoux,” or in French Le Trail du Ventoux. Why the French use the word “trail” when they have at their disposal the perfectly good piste is a mystery. What is not a mystery is the popularity of the event. The most recent one took place on Sunday March 22. One thousand runners massed in the square just in front of the village school for an 8:30 a.m. departure. There were two itineraries, one of 24 kilometers which avoided the summit, and the other of 42 kilometers which reached it.
The fastest Boston Marathon was run in 2 hours and 7 minutes. It would take a speed faster than 2 hours 3 minutes and 59 seconds to beat the world record. Such times make little sense when the race is marathon length but over the kind of varied terrain covered by the Trail du Ventoux. Unlike the more famous marathons where water is offered to runners at regular intervals, competitors in the full-length side of the Trail are required to carry water with them. On Sunday the fastest time was just under 4 hours and 3 minutes. When we wandered over to the finish line, 6 hours into the race, runners were still arriving.
Since it is not yet tourist season in this area, runners can find inexpensive housing in a large vacation village/campground which has various kinds of permanent emplacements. It also has a restaurant and lovely grounds so that families can accompany the participants and make a kind of holiday weekent out of it.

One major rule of the vacation village is violated in this pre-season occupation by runners: clothing is allowed. The village, during its regular summer season, is a large “naturist,” read “nudist,” vacation site. At that time, the naturist philosophy is strictly enforced, as can be seen in this poolside reminder. Everyone was fully clothed on Sunday. The runners certainly were since they had to deal with snow. For the rest of us, either naturism is not our option, or mid-March is still a bit cool, with the mistral blowing a bit too strongly, for a clothing-free afternoon.

Local Wine

Recently, my wife was reflecting on what we miss while here in France. One surprising answer: good wine. How is this possible in the land of Château Haut-Brion, Petrus, Puligny-Montrachet, and Château D’Yquem? Well, there is a strong tradition of localism in wine making. The locals support their neighbor vinters. Now if one happens to live where the regional wine is, let’s call it so-so, then a homogenized, mass-produced California product does not seem so bad.

The surrounding area does have wines with an official “appellation.” In France, wine areas are granted an AOC, appellation d’origine contrôlée, as a way of setting a certain standard of quality. A suspicious outsider might also think that it serves as an effective marketing tool. To receive an AOC many conditions have to be met. Only certain grapes are allowed in certain areas, yield is controlled, as is sugar content, alcohol level, and the proportion of blended grape varieties.

In most wine growing areas, even those producing inexpensive wines, AOC’s mean something. Typically, the more limited is the area covered by the appellation, the better the wine. Thus a label reading “appellation Beaujolais contrôlée” means that the grapes could be drawn from the entire Beaujolais. For “appellation Beaujolais Villages contrôlée,” the range is narrower. For more specific locales, the name Beaujolais may not appear at all, e.g. appellation Juliénas contrôlée or appellation Morgon contrôlée. Understanding the narrow versus wide range of appellations is important. A wine whose label reads “appellation Bordeaux contrôlée” might have very little in common with its more famous neighbors whose grapes are drawn from very specific locations.

Around here, the wines fall within the appellation Ventoux contrôlée. Until last year, it was appellation côtes du Ventoux contrôlée but the shorter, more direct change was thought to identify better the area from which the grapes derive, an area dominated by Mt. Ventoux. Most of the area’s wines are red. The white grapes approved for carrying the appellation are not at all the ones associated with some of the fine whites made elsewhere in France. No Chardonnay, Semillion Blanc, or Chenin Blanc here. Rather the grapes carry less propitious names like Clairette and Bourboulenc, from which a less propitious product results. There is also a robust production of rosé. This last is a good thing because, as an easy drinking wine, rosé does not require the kinds of subtleties associated with whites or reds. Rosés are also typically inexpensive, although a famous one, like Garrus, can sell for around 80 dollars.Provence in general tends to provide a large percentage of French rosés. Lately, the “industrial wine types,” always a worry for artisanal producers, managed to get provisional approval from the European Commission for a handy way of dumping surplus production: the sale of a wine that looks like rosé but is made by mixing white and red wine. A real rosé derives strictly from red grapes whose skins sit in the fermenting juice hardly at all. Mixing red and white wines thus provides a counterfeit. A final vote by the European Commission will take place April 27. If the French cannot prevail in getting a vote to forbid the mixing, they would at least like to mandate a label which would say “traditional Rosé” for those deserving the name as a result of production, not just appearance.

Wanting to be loyal local supporters we regularly make our way to the village’s cave cooperative where wines from surrounding vineyards are fermented and bottled. We call it our “stop the developers” project. So long as vineyards remain profitable, then so long does the land remain safe from bulldozers and concrete. When there, we gravitate to the rosés. There is also a sweet apéritif wine that is quite successful. The whites are mostly hopeless. In a twist that indicates the kind of wines made here, the non AOC whites tend to be a bit better than the AOC’s. That’s probably because the vinters have more flexibility about grapes and procedures. A local sparkling wine also offers both a good taste and good bargain. For reds, we are still experimenting. So far, though, when we want a red to serve guests, we opt for the AOC just north of here the côtes du Rhône, an appellation that uses mostly the same grapes but whose terroir (soil composition, sunshine, drainage, elevation) makes all the difference. It’s not extremely local, but still way more local than Burgundy, Bordeaux, or California.

Néoliberalisme

As France has just undergone another day of widespread demonstrations, a word keeps popping up, a word that identifies a target of many demonstrators: néoliberalisme. An American observer might be forgiven for thinking that the demonstrators, asking for government intervention in economic matters, would favor “liberal” and updated “neoliberal” policies. This would be a mistake. In one of those twists of linguistic history, the term “liberal” here in France means the opposite of what it means in the U.S. Asked to name a “liberal” politician, French commentators would immediately focus on Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher. Milton Friedman would be the quintessential “liberal” economist.
How can the same term indicate such opposites? Tracing its genealogy is helpful. It all starts in the 17th century with thinkers like John Locke and a position technically called “classical liberalism.” Wanting to liberate the newly emergent commercial and urban classes, the “bourgeoisie,” Locke suggested something straightforward: remove restrictions. His guiding image was the freedom enjoyed by humans in what was known as the “state of nature.” This was a time before kings, aristocrats and various political authorities were able to impose rules and regulations. Getting back to what was more natural, removing artificial state restrictions, would restore that freedom which was a birthright. This led to a neat inverse proportionality rule. As state intervention increased, freedom decreased. Locke thus married a desire for reform with a specific agenda for that reform.

In the 19th century, thinkers like Herbert Spencer allied this liberalism to some elements in Darwinian evolutionary theory, especially the view of life as a struggle for existence. What resulted was “Spencerism,” better known as “Social Darwinism.” The struggle for existence would lead to the survival of the fittest. This would all play itself out naturally. Left alone, the process would ultimately be beneficial. Artificial rules and regulations would only distort the proper functioning of the natural process.


This system worked well especially for a those folks who had a knack for accumulating wealth. By the early 20th century the beneficiaries of “liberal” reforms had become the dominant economic class. It was they who controlled capital and industry. If reform was now to be proposed, it had to be directed against the heirs to classical liberalism. Here is where the two dimensions of the term “liberal” sprung apart. Reformers, seeking to liberate the wage laborers working under difficult, poorly paid conditions, continued to be called “liberals.” But this reformist aim was now disconnected from the classical liberal agenda. Liberal reform came to be identified with getting elected public servants to serve their publics by imposing regulations and restrictions on industry. Those who defended the status quo, who held on to the notion of the-market-left-alone-best-regulates-itself, became “conservatives.”

In Europe there was no such split within the ranks of liberals. Unlike American reformers whose roots in classical liberalism kept them loyal to capitalism, albeit in a modified form, many European reformers sought more radical solutions. Many of them simply wanted to eliminate liberalism all together, preferring socialist or communist programs on the left and fascist ones on the right. As a result, here in France, the term “liberal” has preserved its 19th century sense.

The great depression and the subsequent New Deal programs put an end to classical liberalism as a dominant ideology in the U.S. By the middle of the 20th century, the literary critic Lionel Trilling could even declare that liberalism was not only “the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition” in America. This was true from the 30s to the 70s. In the 1980s a resurgent economic conservatism (as we call it in the U.S.) took hold. It is this resurgence that came to be identified here as néoliberalisme. Protesters recently taking to the streets, believing that the current economic crisis marks the end of neoliberalism’s heyday, hope for a return to big government intervention.

Back in the U.S. and on a smaller scale, people who urge us to “buy local,” “buy American,” think about our “carbon footprints,” “conserve farmland,” “halt outsourcing of jobs” are most likely to be labeled “liberal.” They could just as easily be labeled “conservative” in its traditional rather than “be friendly to whatever big business wants” meaning. But the many connotations of “conservative” offer another tangled mess.

buses and trains

When Jerry Brown ran for the presidency one of his favorite lines was “I’m not conservative, I’m just cheap.” In a parallel way I could say “I’m not making a fetish of my carbon footprint, I’m just cheap,” (thrifty, economical, living within my means—there are better ways of saying it.) The result, though, is similar: when my wife and I travel, we leave behind a light carbon footprint. No private automobile for us. It’s all about trains and buses.

Fortunately, the Vaucluse recently inaugurated a program to encourage bus riding. Their form of encouragement, lower fares, spoke directly to those of us who are (select one: cheap, frugal, thrifty, parsimonious, living within our means). As a result, we can ride from here to Carpentras about 15 kilometers away, for 1 Euro 70, (85 centimes apiece). A longer ride from Carpentras to Avignon costs only 2 Euros apiece. From Avignon we can catch a train to anywhere in France or Europe. Since I have now reached the age of 60, I am automatically qualified for a discount.

What are the drawbacks? The biggest one is adjusting to pre-set timetables. Sometimes that does not pose much of a problem. Buses between Avignon and Carpentras run every half hour. In our village, however, the schedules are set for middle and high school transportation. That means buses leave early in the morning, 7:00 and 8:00. There is also a bus that leaves at 1:00 p.m. Coming back in the evening, buses leave Carpentras at 4:10, 5:10, and 6:10. Travelling by train thus requires planning that allows for the ride to Carpentras, transfer to an Avignon bus, and then to a train.

As far as advantages, there are some beyond the economic and ecological ones. We have no worries about getting lost, finding parking places, deciphering strange road signs, or dealing with French drivers. During the trip we can read, relax and meet some interesting people. Sometimes, of course, “interesting” is good and sometimes, well, just “interesting.”

Our local bus ride has made us appreciate the general politeness of French schoolchildren. Imagine being on a bus full of middle schoolers. The first impression that comes to mind is probably “loud.” Here the bus is quiet. The schoolchildren generally greet the driver as they board and thank her as they leave. The driver knows them well, having ferried them back and forth for many years.

On a recent train ride from Montpellier, one individual shared our compartment between Montpellier and Nimes. He was pleasant and a helpful guide, pointing out to us, Vergeze, the town where Perrier bottles its water. Normally, we would have assumed a mountainous source, but this sparkling water comes from near the Mediterranean.

At a different point on the “interesting” scale is a recent conversation I had with a benchmate as we were each waiting for a different bus. This was a friendly, talkative young man. He had come into town he said on “business,” actually using the English word. When I asked him what the employment was, he admitted it was a different line of work and made the sign for smoking dope. Apparently he is a lower level marijuana and hashish vendor. “Vendor” may be a bit of a fancy word here. “Dealer” is the more correct one. “Business” was good he said, plenty of demand. Also, unlike other “vendors” he offers a first rate product, not one adulterated with fillers to add a few grams and increase profit margins.

Sometimes a train ride can also be nostalgic. The cars on our last ride were of the older sort with eight person compartments, not the two-row seating, the bus and airplane look, that now dominates train design. I had thought that France had sold most of these cars to Eastern European countries, but apparently some are still operational. It reminded both of us of being students in the late 60s when these sorts of cars were the rule. Imaginatively, the nostalgia can even send us back to scenes from Hitchcock movies, at a time when carbon footprints were not yet a recognized problem.

All roads lead...

“All roads lead to Rome.” Indeed, for the Roman empire everything emanated from a specific center. The city even contained a pillar, the milliarium aureum or golden milestone, whose base is still visible today. It marked the absolute center from which all distances were measured. Other nations subsequently copied the practice. Here in France, “kilometer zero” can be found in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. Having a clear center is reassuring. It imposes unity while identifying the single locus of power and influence.

Here in the village, we have no comparable distance marker. What we do have is a church perched atop a hill. The street on which we live stretches horizontally alongside the hill. At regular intervals, perpendicular alleyways branch off. Where do they all go? Instead of “all roads lead to Rome,” it’s “all paths lead to the church.” The village had its own fixed center, a sort of mother hen, with the residences, like little chicks, clustered down the slope in front of it.


Seeking a single source to which everything can be traced, a single center around which everything revolves, marks a typical human tendency. Rome took its imperial ambitions for granted. It had a civilization to spread, roads to build, aqueducts to construct, markets to fill. It was all a grand periphery emanating from a great center. King Louis XIV embodies the cruelty associated with a focus on unity. He revoked the Edict of Nantes which had granted freedom of religion to protestants. His absolutist tendencies preferred practices consistent with the traditional slogan, “one law, one faith, one king.” (It rhymes better in French: une foi, une loi, un roi.)

The longing for a single foundation runs deep. Herodotus reported how a Pharaoh had children raised by deaf-mutes. His hope was that, unfettered by hearing any current language, the children would spontaneously speak the foundational, original language of humankind. When one of the children uttered something that sounded like Phrygian, the pharaoh pronounced it the one original tongue. The tower of Babel story also suggests the assumption of one and only one foundational language for humans. The imposition of multiple languages is there treated as retribution for human overreach. Unity as the original condition, plurality as punishment.

Philosophically, the great thinker Plotinus, living during the Roman Imperium, developed a schema which set a deep pattern in Western thought. Everything, he claimed, derived from an initial One. Ultimately our task, divided and separate as we were, was to rejoin the One that was the source of all. Descartes, in the 17th century, sought to base knowledge securely on one great irrefutable foundation. Everything flawed was to be eliminated until the single, solid source was discovered. Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” served as his milliarium aureum. The empire of knowledge would have its fixed beginning there.

Such a program might have had a good intention, but lots was loaded into the “everything flawed must be eliminated” dimension. When this got carried over into politics, ethnic and religious bloodletting was the result. Louis XIV, mentioned above, offers one good example. Prior to him, Ferdinand and Isabella’s Inquisition had already set a familiar human pattern. It aimed quite simply to eliminate all of those tainted by difference, in this case heretics, especially recent Jewish converts to Christianity suspected of insincerity in their new religion. In 1492, the year they funded Columbus, the monarchs completed their project ordering the expulsion of all Jews from Spain. The twentieth century, sadly, not only failed to reverse this tendency, but brought it to new heights of cruel efficiency.

Philosophically, the 20th century had begun, in American Pragmatism at least, with a challenge to the fetish with oneness. A founding member of American Pragmatism, William James, entitled his defense of religious sensibility The Varieties of Religious Experience. Another of his works was called, A Pluralistic Universe.

The fascination with a single, unitary source at the root of everything was self-serving, a construction of pure fantasy, and a recipe for totalitarianism. Experience, history, anthropology, archaeology and the physical sciences all point to complexes deriving from other complexes. However far we go, there is always diversity. The trick, aimed at in a democratic republic, is harmonizing and living with plural tendencies. Varieties and pluralism, to use James’s terms, should not be considered corruptions to be eliminated. Harmony, not unity should be the watchword for the 21st century. The “All roads lead to Rome” attitude dominated for several millenia. It was a good run, but it may be that the century following the bloody 20th offers as good a time as any to rethink our philosophical assumptions.

Virtue Ethics and Smelly Feet

Smelly feet and virtues may seem to have little in common. A recent story out of Holland, though, indicates how they can be connected, at least for those of us who are philosophically inclined.

We don’t make virtues that central anymore. For an American founding father like Benjamin Franklin, they were crucial. It was important to cultivate the proper habits for living a life in the service of good. Dispositions to act in patterned and appropriate ways, habitual practices that are not haphazard, but cultivated so as to become second nature, these were the virtues. One of the virtues listed by Franklin intersects with the story from Holland. The story involves a student. This particular individual was the target of complaint after complaint. Finally, the university decreed he be banished from lecture halls and the library. Why? Smelly feet. Yes, apparently the individual, a philosophy student sadly enough, made his presence felt by an immediate assault on the noses of his compatriots.

Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes once famously declared “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” What happens when odiferous feet replace swinging fists? Is it now a case of “your right to the foot hygiene of your choice ends at my nose”? Students and administrators at Rotterdam University thought so. The banished individual thought otherwise. He went to court and the Dutch judge, rejecting the fist to face/foot to nose analogy, ruled against the university. Probably basing his position on a notion of absolute rights rather than the virtue of practical wisdom, (prudence is its traditional name) the judge said that “professors and other students will just have to hold their noses and bear it."

The Dutch have a long tradition for upholding the virtue of tolerance. They also are a country of people known for cleanliness (the virtue high on Franklin’s list), and concern for others, the one sorely lacking in the smelly footed one. It is because virtues can often clash with each other that sensible judgment, prudence, needs to be invoked. At least, that is what the father of virtue ethics, Aristotle, taught long ago. He also pointed out that some kind of moderation is a trait that accompanies most virtues. Tolerance, for example, tries to strike the balance between completely open relativism on one end, and a narrow absolutistic imposition of a single strict mode of life on the other. Looking for some kind of legalistic wiggle room, the university now says that its moderate position will be to levy fines against those whose malodorous state wafts into neighboring noses.
The model individual, for Aristotle, was not the iron-clad logician who applied general rules ruthlessly and without exception. Justice and prudence, in the 15th century allegorical painting by Pietro Perugino share top billing, as if to emphasize how they have to balance off one another. Telling thugs that, yes indeed, the innocent young woman they seek is in a back room, may be the height of honesty. It is also an evil act. Rather than rigid machine-like application of universal dictates, prudential judgments seek the optimal realization of goods in particular circumstances. If they never give the absolute certitude that many humans long for, they do keep one dimension central, personal responsibility.

Of course, humans like to skirt responsibility. They would rather claim to be simply acting in accordance with rules, following orders, or applying universal maxims to a concrete situation. Aristotelian prudence will have none of this. Rules and general principles are crucial in the practical exercise of virtue. They provide social guidance which, most of the time, works well. But, concretely, a conflict of goods, extenuating circumstances, the simple need for good sense, intervene. Then, prudence must be brought into play. Responsibility must be assumed. Judges, unlike Holmes who left wiggle room, may be constrained by a strict legalism. Universities, like the rest of us, are thankfully not.

spectators and sports

In July the Tour de France will bring hundreds of thousands of cycling fans to this area. Local merchants will be happy, the sponsors will be delighted, politicians, if all the planning has gone well, will congratulate themselves, and philosophers, well, they will do what philosophers always do, wonder “why?” What is it that makes people travel thousands of miles to see a sporting event?

In one way the answer is simple: we are drawn to situations where individuals challenge limits. Gravity is a force that weighs us down: gymnasts defy it. Science says it should not really be possible for a batter to hit a baseball: Ted Williams managed to do it 40% of the time. Who could possibly race downfield, turn at the last moment, reach up and catch a ball knowing, with absolute certainty, that a major pummeling will immediately ensue: it happens every Sunday in the NFL. Beholding in wonder as our cousins from the human family stretch limits gives us a glimpse of the greatness to which humanity can aspire.

But that explanation is not enough. It would have worked for the Greek Olympic games or for games in various Roman arenas like the one in nearby Nimes pictured below. Today, though, we have television. If what counts is getting the best view, then television is the way to go.

Why then do we keep up the expense and the effort to attend sporting events in person? In part it is because presence “in person” means something. We are embodied creatures and physical presence is just something that is significant for us. Tangibility is not negligible, even if spectatorial precision is sacrificed. The model, haptic, activity is the human hug, an expressive gesture for which there is no substitute in times of joy, triumph, sorrow, or celebration.

Beyond the physical aspect, there is also what the philosopher Charles Taylor calls the “festive” side of human life. We are social creatures. Sharing in important events is something we long for. The festive dimension emerges at birthday parties, weddings, Fourth of July picnics, Mardi Gras, and sporting events. I was once in Lexington Kentucky the day of a UK/LSU basketball game. “Festive” was definitely the word. Thousands of fans dressed in team colors; plenty of food and libations outside Rupp arena. All in all, an opportunity for currents of enthusiasm to move electricity- like through the crowds.

Finally, there is another crucial dimension. The presence of an audience is not incidental to a sporting event. It is an essential component. A sporting event without an audience is like a play without an audience. Without the audience, the episode is incomplete and thus something other than a full-fledged sporting event. The word “spectator” is somewhat misleading here. “Spectator,” as mere onlooker, offers a good description of the TV viewer. It is a mistake to label, as we do, attendees at either the theatre or the stadium, as “spectators.” It was not always so. Historically, for the theater and Western culture in general, the moment of transition from audience to spectator can be dated to the stage design which made prominent the proscenium arch. BP, “before proscenium,” the stage actually jutted out into the audience. Not being sharply separated from the actors, the audience members known as “gentlemen in the pit” had a particularly strong reputation for their, let’s call it “dynamism.” Now AP, “after proscenium,” after the picture frame approach to theatre, audiences tend to be passive spectators.

In sports, the active, energetic, enthusiastic fan is still the rule. A sporting contest without an audience may be an occurrence or a happening, but it is not yet a sporting event in the fullest sense. The audience is necessary, not optional. To call the participant-fans “spectators” thus diminishes their significance. A sporting fan both is moved by and is a mover of the action. Together, fans and athletes make the event what it is. That way, in-person attendees become more participants than spectators. Without them there is no real event. No wonder they displace themselves willingly.

Tour de France and local life

The Tour is coming! The Tour is coming! Ever since last fall when it was announced that the Tour de France would be returning to this area, local officials and business owners have been preparing for an onslaught of visitors. According to some estimates the department of Vaucluse (English link) could see an influx of 500,000 people, just about doubling its population. Local business owners have been told to stay open extra hours to handle the hungry, thirsty throngs. Politicians have been figuring out the nitty gritty of dealing with so many people: how to get enough portable toilets in place; when to block, divert traffic; how to make sure the path is clear; where to put all the cars, trucks, buses that will accompany race fans. In our village a pre-Tour (see below) will, gasp, be coming through right on market day. The riders will be filling the main, market, street. What to do? No thought at all of cancelling even for just that one special day. Plans have instead been made for a one-time relocation. All this planning is being done willingly, though. These are tough economic times and the Tour’s fans bring with them euros to spend, euros the local promoters of tourism will be pleased to receive.

For this region the Tour brings three special treats. One is the return of Lance Armstrong. The other is hosting the last leg before the next day’s ride into Paris. This means the local stage could determine the winner. And then, there is Ventoux, Mt. Ventoux that is, 6000 feet of challenge in the summer sun made even worse if the Mistral is blowing. It’s an effort that Armstrong labelled, “the hardest climb on the Tour, bar none.”

Mt. Ventoux is well known to riders everywhere. Last Fall, in an Albany New York wine store a sales representative was offering samples, including a Côtes de Ventoux. When I told him I would be living in the area for a semester, the first thing he mentioned was cycling. Ventoux, the “giant of Provence,” has even exacted its own human sacrifice. In 1967 British rider Tom Simpson died while climbing Ventoux, a victim of heat, exhaustion, dehydration and amphetamines. Mourners at Simpson’s funeral included the great Belgian rider Eddy Merckx who, one year, after winning the Ventoux stage, had to recuperate at a medical station before he could take his place his place on the podium.

This year, not only will the riders on the Tour itself take on Ventoux, but, five days earlier another ride will take place. This one is called L’étape du Tour Mondovélo. It’s an opportunity for amateurs to take on the challenge. Some 9500 enthusiasts are expected to ride on July 20. Organizers are hoping for better luck than the last time l’étape Mondovélo took on Ventoux. In July 2000 the event had to be halted because of near freezing temperatures and hail as riders approached the summit.

For our village, pathway to Ventoux, the biggest pre-race change has been newly paved streets everywhere. On July 20 the main one will be set aside for the étape. A few blocks away, at the relocated outdoor market, others will be buying their weekly store of vegetables and cheeses. Some of them, no doubt, will look forward to the post-Tour peace and quiet that drew them here in the first place.