Say Cheese!

I grew up in the Midwest and as a girl, was afraid of strong flavors. To me, cheese was bright orange Kraft American slices, each pressed against its own raft of wax paper, ready to be melted in some margarine between two slices of Wonder bread, (with the crusts cut off, because I swore the crusts tasted different.) Or cheese was Wishbone Blue Cheese Salad Dressing, with was my father's favorite, though I would not go near the stuff. On my on wedge of iceberg lettuce, I preferred Wishbone French, which, looking back, might have been some variation on catchup mixed with oil and vinegar and sugar. Or cheese was Cheese Whiz in a can, shaken then squirted on girlfriends' fingers at slumber parties, or directly into each others' mouths, or else used to draw happy faces on Ritz crackers.  College exposed me to fondue and runny, hot brie baked in foil,  but I never really appreciated the wonders of cheese until I spent a year in Paris.


I showed up at Bernadette's door, a total stranger that a waitressing friend in Berkeley had told me to call as a last resort, and she kindly showed me to her daughter's former room and said I could stay as long as I needed. Those first weeks, having never been to Europe before and knowing no one, I did what most lonely Expats do: I took the Metro to Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, or I went to old French movies with no subtitles to try and improve my French. I also explored Bernadette's kitchen while she was at work. My first Cheese Faux Pas was to put her lovely little plate of cheeses protected by its glass dome into the refrigerator, thinking she had left it out by mistake. When she got home from work, she saw what I had done, and held out the plate in front of me as if it was evidence of a terrible crime. Mais non, mais non, mais non, she said wagging a finger at me, Jamais dans le frigo! 

She explained to me that the flavor of cheese could only bloom when room temperature. She told me the famous quote by Charles de Gaulle, How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese? After the cheeses had warmed up a bit and recovered from their trauma, she sat me down for my first lesson, slicing a fresh baguette and starting me on my journey towards real cheese appreciation. Some of the cheeses she put on a small slice of baguette, and some she proffered straight up. She spoke very little English and I was trying to speak only French while there, but I was pretty sure when she passed me a taste of camembert and urged me to smell it, she said a good camembert should smell like God's feet. This was the first time I appreciated how a flavor could be strong and delicious at the same time.

My second cheese faux pas occurred because I had rapidly become something of a camembert junkie. Soon after Bernadette's lesson, I ventured out to shyly navigate the cheese stalls at the street markets, wanting to treat her to some of the cheeses I knew she liked. The venders at first ignored me as regulars stepped right in front of me. After about ten minutes of this, I grew braver, and the vendors took my order, teasing me in French. I laughed, though I think I only understood about half of their humor at that stage. When I got back to Bernadette's kitchen, I arranged small wedges of the new cheeses on her platter,  always "one soft cheese, one hard cheese, a blue and a goat cheese," as I had learned, and awaited her delight upon returning home. But then I got hungry. Full disclosure: I did not like the rind of the camembert nearly as much as the delicious, soft interior, so in true scoffing-at-the-crust-of-Wonder-Bread fashion, I slyly worked the knife inside the triangle, leaving the pointed end in front sagging for lack of support. When Bernadette returned home, I sat her down in the kitchen and with a Ta-Da, lifted the dome off the cheeses I had purchased. She immediately honed in on the hollowed out camembert and threw her hands up in the air, scolding tu ne respect pas le fromage! And it was true, I had not respected the cheese, and vowed in that moment to have the entire experience, rind and all, if that was how the French did it.

I was making real progress in my cheese education, until the night of my third and probably not final faux pas. I had made some friends by this stage in my stay, and wanted to introduce mes amis to Bernadette, so asked her for a restaurant suggestion that was "typically French and really good," perhaps a redundancy. After a wonderful meal at a place that our little trio of expats never would have found without the help of a local, I pushed my plate aside and exclaimed that I was extremely full but might be persuaded to have dessert. Right about then our waiter showed up wheeling a silver cart and on top, about a dozen types of cheese. With great respect, he gestured to each one, as if introducing us to a dignitary, and told us its name, whether it originated from cow or goat or sheep. He told us the region it had come from, and described in succinctly whether it was strong or mild or medium. When he had finished I laughed and asked if he had anything that involved chocolate. I sensed a blunder. Bernadette rolled her eyes at the waiter, then calmly chose her little portions of three cheeses, as if I had not spoken. The waiter made his way around to each of us, and, cheeks burning, I asked him humbly what he would recommend.

I learned that night that cheese aids in the digestion of the big meal one has just eaten, and that the  average French citizen eats fifty-seven pounds of cheese a year! But part of me thinks that the cheese course is also there as a way to preserve that other great French tradition: the art of conversation and lingering with friends over a delicious meal.

Let French Ring

I am so heartsick about the bombings in Paris that occurred on Friday. I know many other countries deal with such atrocities even more consistently than Paris, and of course, my heart goes out to them as well, but I have always felt such a connection to and admiration for Paris. It is indeed a city of dreams, be they romanticized or realistic. I lived there as a young woman, and have returned whenever I can manage it. As Ernest Hemingway said: "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." I have two "Parisian Moms" to whom I dedicated my first novel, one who lives here in California, and one who now lives in Toulouse but happened to be in Paris when the attacks occurred. They were the first I reached out to after the terrible news started trickling in. 

Paris is an old, old city. It has survived so many atrocities, the Nazi occupation comes to mind, but still Paris remains a place where intellect, freedom, beauty, art, history, all are revered. There, now,  the word is that the biggest act of resistance they can enact is to continue to live their lives in the way they always have, working and playing in the light, never cowering in the shadows, to embrace their very special version of joie de vivre that the world loves them for, that makes them French.

I wrote this piece for a local paper in 2007 when Bush called France "ungrateful" and "cowardly" for not backing him on the invasion of Iraq. He said we should remove French from our lexicon, though Bush would not have used that word exactly. So I wrote this piece as satire, and today, it seems a good time to bring it out again. Vive La France!

“Let French Ring”

By: Jill Koenigsdorf

            It was a beautiful spring day and the sunlight was streaming in through the glass of my Freedom Doors and the fragrance of Freedom Lilacs was wafting into the kitchen.  My boyfriend and I only moments before had exchanged deep and lingeringFreedom kisses, and he was now out back, thinning the Freedom Ivy while I ground some Freedom Roast.  Birds were chirping, spring fashion was arriving at the malls, much of it designed by big-name Freedom designers from abroad, and, except for a pesky couple of million scofflaws and naysayers who had been protesting this “war on our terms,” (most of them probably foreigners,) one could almost believe that all was right with the world.  Perhaps, in a swift and forceful way, a way that would harm nary an Iraqi civilian nor a U.S. GI, a way that would both “shock and awe,”  America could, at long last, open blind eyes around the globe to the joys of democracy.   Democracy by any means necessary! Why in God’s name wasn’t EVERYONE on board with us?  I always thought the Pope was just automatically patriotic, but no! Heck, all great nations have been colonizers at one time or another, why were we getting so much flack for it now? The road to liberty is never without its bumps, I thought, spritzing a little Freedom perfume on my wrist.   The country of Turkey not wanting to be a launching pad, I could maybe understand, but I was truly baffled by the Gaul’s lack of team spirit in this America-at-War thing. 

I have always been a Freedomphile, to the point where I wore a beret in high school and wrote many college papers on topics ranging from: “The Freedom Resistance Movement in World War II” to “The Freedom Surrealist Movement in Paris in the 1920’s” to  “Freedom New Wave Cinema in the Sixties.”  I knew that those Gauls had given us everything from the Chevrolet, to the Statue of Liberty to a virtual blueprint for our Declaration of Independence to the invention of the MOVIES, for goshsakes, so I was saddened by the lack of the ole liberté, fraternité, and egalité they were exhibiting now!   Sure they were America’s friends and friends should be able to tell you when you’re making mistakes, but as Our Leader, or maybe it was someone else, once said: “Yer either fer us or agin’ us.” 

When my boyfriend came back inside and saw the state I was in, he put on a lovely classical  c.d. and soon the soothing strains of Freedom Horn and Freedom Harp filled the house.  We engaged in some more deep, soulful Freedom kisses to the point where I had to say “Honey, we’re going to have to unwrap a Freedom envelope tout suite if we don’t stop or conception will  certainly occur!”   We agreed to take the proverbial cold shower, and certainly all the news of war put a damper on any thoughts of romance.  We read the Sunday paper with heavy hearts, as it was filled with the grainy images the all powerful had allowed the embedded press to publish, fuzzy images of tanks in sandstorms and buildings obscured behind clouds of black smoke and a blur of white flags. It was all such a downer!  But as I poured some good old Canadian maple syrup on my Freedom toast, I thought to myself, hey, relax, congress would never have approved a war budget of eighty BILLION dollars unless they had confidence in our president’s motives and foresight.  So who was I to worry? “Ours is not to question why/Ours is but to do or die.”  Maybe the President said that one too and I must say, blind faith is certainly a lot less taxing for most folks in the long haul!

“Honey,” I said to the boyfriend, topping off his Freedom Roast, I thought I’d make Freedom Onion Soup with Freedom Fries and Freedom Dip for supper, can you swing by the grocery store?”

“Sure thing,” he said.

“Just pick out a nice bottle of Freedom wine you think would go with that menu.  And please stop by the Freedom Laundry for your shirts on the way.   Oh! And we’re also out of Freedom Dressing.”

He looked so sweet, yet slightly weary driving off to market.  No, this war was not going to be easy on any of us.  Sure, here we have clean drinking water and electricity and shelter and are not being invaded, but psychologically, it’s taking its toll.  And the hassle at the airports!  But I just know this one’s going to be an easy-in/easy-out type situation, because if we learned just one thing from that Vietnam thing, that would be: “keep it short, cut your losses, and bail.”  As I squirted some Joy into the sink, I told myself not be be such a Gloomy Gus.  I recalled one day long ago being upset that one girl didn’t want to come to my birthday party.  My mother hugged me and said: “Now Dearie, you can’t be EVERYONE’S best friend!” And I guess that’s sort of what America has to remember now: you can’t please ALL the people, ALL the time, and there will always be some party-poopers, both on the homefront and abroad.   Still, it was too bad about France.  I’d always liked that place.  We were planning a trip there this summer and, after much agonizing, had decided to go ahead with it, war or no war.  Maybe we could even act as ambassadors of a sort, show them we’re NOT that stereotype of the “Ugly American.”  I began to get excited about my mission: to teach, not to condemn.  But to do that, I knew I’d have to speak their language, at least a little bit.  I have to say I was somewhat amazed that no where in my entire Yellow Pages did I see a listing for what I needed: Freedom Lessons.

Life Along the Seine

Left Bank Writers Conference, Paris, June 2013

    There are so many reasons we say "no" to things. Fear, finances, time constraints, and the list goes on. In my own life, I had been saying no to too many things for too long. Yet my trying to be "practical," "disciplined," and "realistic," was not having the desired effect. Instead of feeling proud of myself and more secure, I felt itchy, anxious, hungry for the pleasure and the expansion that always comes from new experiences and challenges. 

SO: being a firm believer that nothing feeds the body/mind/spirit like travel, and that all writers benefit from writers workshops, I applied to something alternately called The Left Bank Writers Conference and The Left Bank Writers Workshop. At a workshop or conference,  I get so much out of being amongst my tribe, of immersing myself in words and communing with fellow authors for a full week. And this conference would also satisfy the yearning for France (I had not been back in 8 years.) Through amazing feats of budgeting contortionism, I soon found myself on a plane in San Francisco on June 14th bound for Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris. I would be staying above the best ice cream parlor in Paris, Berthillon, on the Île St. Louis, my favorite part of the city.

It was one of those magic weeks where synchronicity and happy circumstance seemed stationed around every corner. What a diverse group of eight we were! From the deep South to Australia, we had an ambassador from every school of writing: theater, poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. And we were all giddy to be a part of it. There is a little bit of "lost" in all artists, and as Gertrude Stein famously quipped "You are all a lost generation." We channeled Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Eliot, Picasso, Chagall, making daily pilgrimages to their haunts, their apartments, their studios.

We started each day by writing in the Jardin de Luxembourg. We touched the plaque on the bar at Café des Lilas where Hemingway used to write. (I touched the plaque there also dedicated to Man Ray) There is something very powerful about being in a city with so much history. You walk the same streets that others walked thousands of years ago. The age and beauty of the place is quite moving. And we ate long lunches, like the French, with copious crisp bottle of Rosé and unparalleled people watching. There was even a magnificent Chagall retrospective, "Between War and Peace" that perfectly aligned his art with what was taking place in his life at the time.

I came looking for inspiration and found it. Paris renews my spirit. My next book features Madame Curie as a character and sure enough, a block from my petite apartment, on the banks of the Seine, was the very apartment where she lived for a time. On my last night in Paris, the first night of Summer, the streets alive with people dancing and making music until dawn for the Fête de la Musique, I stood outside her building and looked up, most happy that I had said "yes."