Monthly Archives: January 2015

Here is an imperfect translation of an article in this week’s Charlie Hebdo written by Sigolène Vinson entitled “À Pas de Chien.”* It touched me, and since I know the magazine is hard to get, I’m sharing it with you.

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Tictictictic…At Charlie, we have a dog. A red cocker named Lila. Okay, really she’s not all of ours, only Eric’s. Of the team, she likes Cabu most. This Wednesday, 7 January, he’s throwing her one of his parties. It should be said that on the editing table there are Breton READ MORE…

The much sought-after Jan 14 edition of Charlie Hebdo.

You’ve probably been reading in the news about people fighting (!!) over today’s edition of Charlie Hebdo—the first edition of the newspaper to be released after the slaughter of much of its staff. I reserved ahead of time with my local newsstand, so was able to get 2 copies. (One for me, one for a friend who reserved 3 days ago!)

For those who can’t get their hands on one, or who can’t read French, I did a super-fast translation, most probably riddled with errors, but it will hopefully give you the gist of  the editorial that Gerard Biard wrote in the lead pages.

“In one week, Charlie, atheist journal, accomplished more miracles than all the saints and prophets together. The one we’re most proud of is that you have between your hands the newspaper we’ve always made, in company of those who have always made it. What made us laugh the most was the bells of Notre-Dame ringing in our honor… READ MORE…

What a week it has been. Not even week…it has been 5 days since the first terrorist attack in Paris. Sometimes it feels like something that happened long ago. And sometimes it feels like it just happened this morning. The shock is still fresh for everyone.

I have been giving my reactions on Facebook and Twitter, so I won’t repeat everything here. But what I will do is show you the result of the outpouring of support I got from you, my readers, for the people of France, and Paris in particular. See my last post to read about how it all started. I told you I would post your notes on the memorial, and it started with just a few notes, and then more, and then it totally snowballed. So to bring you up to date from the last post…

I put up the first 123 cards. And then the Daily Mail and Fox News happened. And then I put up 39 more notes. And then Brazilian reader (and journalist) Frini saw our wall on the Brazilian news.

And then the requests REALLY started pouring in, so I invited some friends over to help me write out your messages.

LoriAnn, Cassi (with baby Elio), Julia with Fay and friend.

We took 86 more cards over to the memorial and placed them on the wall.

While we were there, an elderly French man thanked us for being there.

Then reader Lucy told us that our notes were on the news in Romania.

And Annika from Finland sent me this article from the Finnish newspaper which included this picture:

Image used in Finnish newspaper Iltalehti.

And Karis sent me this newspaper article from The Star in Canada, using this photo:

“Handwritten messages are pasted to the wall of a makeshift memorial near the offices of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris.” David Azia / The Associated Press

Your notes kept pouring in. I finally finished the last batch late Saturday night, determined to get them up on the wall before the big march on Sunday, where the maximum amount of people would be able to see them. Early Sunday morning, I walked over to the memorial and began taping them up.

A French woman walked up as I posted the last one. She asked, “Are you posting a note for a friend?” I answered, “I’m posting a note for 300 friends.”

This is what it looked like when I finished:

I took up EVERY LAST INCH of space.

I was careful not to cover up anything left by other well-wishers.

The furthest three columns to the right were past the police barrier. I got told (nicely) by a policeman to get back on the correct side of the boundary JUST as I finished. (Whew!)

From further away (showing about 1/3 of the entire memorial site).

And then I went home and tallied everything up, getting more excited and amazed as I went along. Because there were—are you ready?—340 of you who left messages from 31 different countries. Of the United States, 37 states were represented.

I can reassure you that each of your messages was lovingly written out. (Someone asked why I didn’t just print them. Because they’re personal messages, and I wanted them to each be different, individual, and personal.) I can reassure you that I taped them all securely up in a spot where it wasn’t covering anything else, and where I knew people could read them. Once again…I am so honored to be your messenger.

Here’s a list of countries and states: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Finland, France (incl. New Caledonia), Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Mauritius, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom (incl. England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland),

United States (incl. Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin).

I am amazed and touched by your determination to reach out to the people of Paris. And I know that they saw your messages and were equally affected.

If you have been following me on Twitter or Facebook, you will know what has been going on in my life as a resident of Paris’s 11th arrondissement. You will know that I walked by the site of the terrorist attack just after it happened, while taking my 7-year-old daughter to dance class.

My kids’ school is a block away from where shots were fired at the police car. (There are bullet holes in windows at the end of the block.) My children’s father lives literally around the corner from the offices of Charlie Hebdo. You can see the memorial site from his living room window. This thing happened in our backyard.

My intention is not to draw attention to myself. I did not lose a loved one. (Thank the gods.) I do not know any of the victims. I can’t even imagine the pain their families and colleagues are going through.

But I have not hidden my reactions or feelings. And, as a storyteller, I needed to tell what I saw during the last two days. In my tweets and FB messages I have been reacting…just like anyone else would…to a horrific terrorist attack happening way too close to home.

However, telling the story through words and pictures has not been enough. Reassuring my friends and loved ones that I and my children are safe has not been enough. I have been hit HARD with the impuissance—the powerlessness—of those who sit at the edge of a disaster and can’t do a damned thing about it. I’m not a firefighter. I’m not a policeman. I’m not a policy-maker. I’m a novelist.

As soon as news got out about the massacre, the outpouring of support from my readers was overwhelming. For many, I am the only person they know who lives in Paris. For a few, I had the honor of introducing Paris to them through my books. Everyone who has read the DIE FOR ME series knows how I feel about the city. My love for it is jam-packed into every page of those books. So the messages of support and love and care started pouring in.

And in many of the notes, I recognized the same desperation I was feeling. People wanted to DO something. But what is a teenager in Missouri going to do? Or a grandmother in Canada? Or a college student in India? Without really thinking it through, I offered to write down personal messages and take them to the memorial where the people of Paris could read them.

You—my amazing readers—jumped on the idea, and very soon this happened:

and then this.

But when I was done, I looked out the window, and thought, What in the world am I going to do? I just wrote 123 cards from 17 countries—in non-permanent magic marker—and it’s pouring down rain and shows no signs of stopping.

My friend Cassi had seen the photos on Instagram and texted, offering to help. When I told her my quandary, she suggested that we “laminate” the cards with clear packing tape. I bundled up my precious cargo, took it to her place, and we spent the next hour wrapping each message in tape.

We finished just in time to pick my kids up from school, and I enlisted them to help me tape the messages up to the memorial site. Barely one day after the murders, the site was already starting to overflow with messages and flowers.

(Thanks Cassi for all the action photos!)

My kids jumped into the project with enthusiasm and this became…

this. And…
this.

And then this guy asked me what we were doing…

I explained that I am a writer, and that my readers from all over the world had asked me to pass on their messages of goodwill to Parisians. And because of my conversation with him, this happened:

Daily Mail, Night That the Lights Went Out on Eiffel Tower

(Thanks Jo Fouracre for the photo!)

And then this guy…

who had no ID and didn’t introduce himself like the Daily Mail guy did (okay, the Daily Mail guy didn’t introduce himself until I balked when he asked my son’s name) started asking me unanswerable questions like, “What is the overall feeling here about the events?” (Umm…)

My son was simultaneously bugging me for more scotch tape, and too much was going on, so I gave some really distracted answers and later thought, “I hope that whoever that was doesn’t use the footage.” But then my 5th grade teacher from Alabama wrote to say she saw me on TV, and writer Amy Parker sent me this picture.

In any case, when my kids and I left the site yesterday, it looked like this:

Yes those are YOUR cards taking up one whole wall of the memorial.

Well, someone wrote to say they had seen the cards on Brazilian TV, and someone else saw them behind Anderson Cooper’s head:

(Thanks Lissa Price for this photo!)

and then everyone who hadn’t yet written a message wanted to join in. So I got back on the case this morning, and this happened:

33 more notes from 14 countries (and then 6 more arrived just after I took the picture). As you can see, I ran out of white note cards and had to start improvising.

So I returned to the memorial and posted the new ones.

But before I did, guess what I saw.

People were reading yesterday’s cards. Carefully. They were filming them. Photographing them. They were visibly touched by the outpouring of support from people all over the world.

As soon as I posted those pictures to Facebook, I began getting more requests. And you know what? I can’t say no. I just can’t. I’m going to keep on posting your messages.

I want to do this for my readers: for people who are far away and feel just as horrified and helpless as I do.

I want to do it for Paris: to show them that support is not just coming from other governments and nameless faces. It’s coming from real people who are signing their names to their notes—people from all around the world.

And finally, I admit, I am doing this for me. This is the best therapy I can think of. I can’t bear to just sit in my apartment minutes away from where a group of smart, courageous and creative men and woman were slaughtered. And thanks to you, I don’t have to.

Thank you with all of my heart for giving me the gift of action.

Thank you for helping me empower my children. They see that they can actually DO something to help people heal after something horrific happens. They see that everyone can have a voice.

Thank you for the honor of passing your words on to people who will be blessed by reading them.

Thank you.

From Paris, with love.

Amy

This post is continued here.

I’m doing one of those book shuffles right now – moving from book to book and back without reading linearly from one to the next.

Right before Christmas I read Sophie Jordan’s NA trilogy “The Ivy Chronicles” since she had given me the first and third one and I quickly Kindled the second. Whew! *fans self* I didn’t know NA could be so sexy. As in lots and lots of sex. With big sexy “bad boys” with tattoos, who of course become wonderful and sensitive and the Best Boyfriend Ever by the end of the book. *opens windows to let breeze in* I wrote Sophie to complain that those guys don’t actually exist and she’s giving all us single ladies false hope. Pages and pages of false hope. She apologized.

Then I read Godforsaken Idaho on and off (interesting and weird and random)…

…while reading Holly Black’s Coldest Girl in Coldtown (awesome).

Then All We Have is Now (Lisa Schroeder) (inspiring),

but at the same time King of the Badgers, which I put back down and haven’t picked back up. Yet.

I shot through Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs (Molly Harper, who I met in Arizona) (reminiscent of Sookie, very funny),

while reading the stories from My True Love Gave to Me (some jewels in this).

Then A Bright Moon for Fools (weird in a Confederacy of Dunces kind of way), which I finished while in a hotel

so traded it on the trade bookshelf for The Dinosaur Feather, which I picked up and put back down.

Then a history of Monty Python (the only other slightly interesting book on the hotel book trade shelf). I now know everything about the Pythons. Everything. Just try me.

Started getting desperate in Helsinki because my Kindle wasn’t working, so read more Dinosaur Feather. Simultaneously finished reading Mr. Gum book 7 (Mr. Gum and the Cherry Tree) aloud to my kids. (Awesomely weird, as usual.)

Got home and started reading an Irish novel (Spinning Heart) which I was enjoying until I lost it. (How can you lose a book in your bedroom?)

So started in on Chabon’s Wonder Boys.

Then a friend came over yesterday afternoon and suggested Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. WHICH I AM LOVING!!!

So I kind of want to keep reading Wonder Boys, but can’t put down Let’s Pretend.

Do you do this? And if so, how do you not get brain fry? It’s like an orgy of books, which I suppose is the only kind of orgy that doesn’t leave you with a cloud of regret and the urge to take a two-day bath. Ah well, onwards and upwards…in a zig-zaggy path.