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dimanche 9 mars 2003 |
margueritte miniclier dining with her meneclier cousins at the home of philippe and christine meneclier. [left to right] denise (mother of christian, philippe and yves), margueritte, christian, christine, philippe (hidden), vera, yves and delphine (philippe's daughter), with christine's genealogy poster in the background.
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christian and phillippe wanted to know if margueritte's father had fought at normandy in world war ii. margueritte said no, he was in the pacific fighting the japanese. christian said he was stationed in the south pacific when he was in the french army. christine explained that very few of the menecliers served in the french military. margueritte described the extensive military service in her family, with her brother jack as an engineer, her brother paul as a diver, her uncles, grandparents and even farther back.
yves politely asked, through vera, if he could ask about politics. we said yes. he asked what we thought about president bush and american foreign policy. there was, of course, no hotter topic in france than our president and his non-negotiable demand to attack iraq. it was the headline of every newspaper, and the lead story on every news broadcast.
i answered first, through delphine, explaining that in california 70% of the people voted for gore, not bush. i said my son was at a peace demonstration two weeks earlier in san francisco with over 200,000 people, but the t.v. news said there were only 50,000 people. margueritte explained that most americans get slanted news coverage and don't know how the rest of the world feels about america's violent foreign policy. delphine, helping adrian eat while minding the translations, became impatient, saying she would refuse to translate if we kept talking about politics.