<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the first things that French President Emmanuel Macron said about the coronavirus \u2013 and one of the only ones that a vast majority of people remember is that \u201cwe are at war\u201d with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt war\u201d may have seemed a bit much when he gave his speech in the early days of the epidemic. But as the days passed, my favorite city did indeed start resembling a war zone with roped off streets and closed restaurants and caf\u00e9s and parks and people wearing masks. Well, some people. I wear my mask everywhere, although I see many who don\u2019t. I try to keep my distance from people. I wash my hands regularly. When we were locked down, I obeyed the rules, dutifully filling out the affidavit with information on where I was going and when and why every time I left home..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was a good little soldier. But when we were finally given permission to go out of our houses without the affidavit, the full impact of the virus\u2019s effect fell upon me like a ton of bricks. Ironically, with the loosening up of the lockdown, I felt even more locked down. All of a sudden, not being able to get in the car and travel more than 100 kilometers felt insufferable, rubbing shoulders with masked (or worse, unmasked) people at the grocery store irritated me, seeing clothing stores open but not wanting to try anything on, knowing I couldn\u2019t take a long walk and stop in a caf\u00e9\u2013 all of it got to me. Will things ever get back to normal? Or will there be a new normal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I couldn\u2019t help but think about the heroine of my newest book, an historical novel that takes place between Paris and southwest France during World War II \u2013 a real war with real human beings for enemies. I started thinking about the lack of flour and sugar and toilet paper now compared to the deprivation of food and so many other goods during World War 2. During the coronavirus, at least, we weren\u2019t rationed! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I started thinking about how people\u2019s movements were hampered then because of curfews or other obstacles the enemy imposed. I thought about all the ways both then and now that people tried to circumvent the rules. My in-laws spent a great deal of the war out in the country and even there, in a tiny village, they were not allowed to go out after dark. Germans patrolled the little road in front of their house to make sure no one did. You could get shot if you disobeyed, but disobey they did, waiting until it was pitch black and then scrunching down and rolling under a hedge to get to the neighbor\u2019s house to play bridge and spend a nice evening. Today\u2019s equivalent of that would be the groups of young people I see standing on a nearby bridge puffing on joints, wearing no masks (natch) and standing as close together as they can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought about train traffic. At the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic, there were no trains. But now there are, although fewer of them, with riders seated at a proper social distance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in 1944 my heroine takes a train from Paris to her hometown in southwest France. Her friends and family warn her not to go; r\u00e9sistants are sabotaging railroad tracks and train trips are risky. But she defies the warnings and goes, setting in motion the tragic events that follow. Before taking that train, she is in Paris when the war begins. She and her sister and mother take to the road, running from the enemy. When they return, the Paris they knew has radically changed, with German soldiers lolling in caf\u00e9s or marching in neat files down the Champs-Elysees. She feels that she is in a different world – and she is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nothing is the same. In one scene she is sitting in the Tuileries Garden as two German officers stroll by. \u201cBonjour Mam\u2019selle\u201d, they greeted her with a nod of their heads as they appreciatively appraised her petite French frame, her highly colored cheeks, her big brown eyes, and her fashionable attire. She quickly bowed her head over the book she\u2019d brought with her. The conquerors returned to their conversation and strolled on.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n How do you deal with an enemy who occupies your country? She might have smiled and greeted them. Or showed her distaste. She took the middle ground to avoid their eyes. The point is, though, that she had to make a decision \u2013 for that, and for every other aspect of her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although it may be a stretch, there are indeed similarities between our current war on the coronavirus and the Second World War. How do you deal with an enemy? Our enemy now is a bug we cannot see, but we are at war with it and have to deal with it just as people do in real wars with enemies they can see only too well. There are rules to observe and penalties if you don\u2019t. There is danger, there are risks. If you play around with the risks, you may lose your life. We were made to stay at home and now, when we can finally go out, we still have to observe certain rules. Some people do, some people don\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n President Macron was right when he said \u201cwe are at war\u201d. No, we can\u2019t see the enemy but we can wage war on it. That is why nurses and doctors and all the people who are going to work at personal risk are our heroes and heroines. They\u2019re on a battlefield. If the current optimistic statistics on lower death rates persist, it is safe to say that for the most part, in spite of grievous defeats and way too many deaths, observing the rule of sheltering in place has resulted in winning many battles and soon, perhaps, the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harriet\u2019s book, Final Transgression<\/em>, will be published in June. Further announcements to be made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the first things that French President Emmanuel Macron said about the coronavirus \u2013 and one of the only ones that a vast majority of people remember is that \u201cwe are at war\u201d with it. \u201cAt war\u201d may have seemed a bit much when he gave his speech in the early days of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":783,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,8,13],"class_list":["post-1130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coronavirus","tag-france","tag-social-behavior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/783"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1132,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions\/1132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}