Not a Happy Coincidence

Last week my memories were wound around Valerie's dear small village in France where I painted with Sandy's group first in 2004, and where Jac and Valerie's wedding will be, probably in February. Valerie is hanging out her upstairs window here, looking out at the small market place directly in front of her home.

 This week my mind can not get off the terror in Paris where at least 17 French citizens were killed in the massacre Wednesday. France is a country where political satire has long been cherished, perhaps in a more intense way than in this country. Though I have never seen the magazine Charlie Hebdo, I understand from Jac that "it makes you think." Jac shares that in recent years she has not often bought it at the newsstand because it has become for her, too vulgar, but that Valerie values it greatly. Valerie shares that a spontaneous rally broke out in the market right in front of her home in the night following the shooting, as I imagine it did in every French community, a rally that might easily have gotten out of hand, and that at her high school she had to get a boy to apologize to a Muslim girl for saying, insultingly, "Now see what your people did to us."
My deepest wishes are that the unity rallies scheduled tomorrow in all the major French cities will go smoothly, and possibly help to heal the wounds. However I can't say I'm not anxious.