I'm melting!

I adore the long Paris evenings, when the sun doesn't set until 10:30, because picnicking (in French: pique-nique) is a great way to spend an evening, on the banks of the Seine or the Champ de Mars under the Eiffel Tower. That said, the heat is really beginning to wear on me. It's not that much hotter than it gets in New York or Chicago, but it is much more difficult to escape the heat, since ice cubes are a rarity in your drink and air conditioning is the exception rather than the rule. My brain feels like it's going to melt. David Lebovitz has a blog entry with some tips if you are thinking that a summer vacation in Paris would be good. I like that he uses the heat as an excuse to eat chocolate that might otherwise suffer and melt. I bet there's some ice cream somewhere that needs to be saved from melting...

Bastille Day

Bastille Day in France doesn't go by that name at all, it is either called 'Le Quatorze Juillet' or 'La Fête Nationale' and, at least in Paris, the parade involved only military troops. I shouldn't say 'only,' really, because they were every sort of troop of soldiers you could imagine. Of course, there were some on horseback and some playing marching music, but also the alpine units, firefighters, paratroopers, and others. I didn't get a good picture, but the Patrouille de France also did a flyover, as well as bunches of helicopters and other planes. After the parade, the military units dispersed to different neighborhoods to have closer contact with the public. I took this picture in front of the Opera Garnier. I wonder what they told that little girl about the purpose of that gun.

I watched the fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower, and it was the most magnificent fireworks show I've ever seen, partly because the music was great -- a tribute to the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birthday. I even took a video, which show some of the middle part, when they played one of my favorite Mozart piano concertos:



If you can't see the video as it is embedded, you can watch it here.

Stop Bush

At the Solidays Concert Festival, a benefit event for Solidarité-SIDA, and AIDS Awareness and Prevention Organization, I noticed this poster about French political courage. The statement is roughly translated as "We would like to be able salute the political courage of France in a new way. Sign the petition!" and, in the version I saw, included the following subtitle:
Nous sommes de plus en plus nombreux à refuser l'abandon de millions de malades du sida dans les pays pauvres. A un an des élections présidentielles, nous devons en faire la preuve.
Which is translated roughly as
"Increasing numbers of us refuse to abandon the millions of victims of AIDS in poor countries. In a year of presidential elections, we should prove it."
There was also an additional line which specifically pointed out the Bush administration's failure to make facilitating the distribution of AIDS treatments in Africa a priority, while preserving the profits of pharmaceutical companies.
I can appreciate that Bush needs to be stopped, but I found this sign a bit depressing, because the fact of the matter was that, despite all the courage that France can claim for standing against the war in Iraq, Bush wasn't stopped. A quarter million people died in the tsunami of December 2004, but 2.4 million people die in subsaharan Africa every year because of lack of treatment for AIDS. Courage is admirable, but it would be nice to have the power to change things.