“Is the fifth arrondissement in Paris losing its soul?”  screams the headline in a recent issue of the French magazine Le Point. My reaction- non, non seasoned with a little bit of oui! Independent bookstores are threatened here in the fifth as in the USA. Okay ya’ll, you do not go to readings on Amazon. Keep buying books. I know Kindle is the rage and the future. Maybe that will be good for books but not so for bookstores. Thursday night in Paris we will go to a fiction awards ceremony co-sponsored by Shakespeare books.

Is food threatened here in the 5th- well we still have the Maubert street market near where I live plus a few French chain supermarkets. As for dining, there is the excellent, good, and tourist trap ugly, just like any major city.

So what is soul to me, Crepes, croissant amandes and authentic cuisine just as my grits and biscuits soul food in Savannah, GA, and real grouper sandwiches in Florida; the back streets of my nieghborhood and Montmartre instead of major thoroughfares, just like the cobblestones in Savannah, and waterfront streets in St. Petersburg.

See life is not so different no matter we live on the right or left bank of the Seine or the Atlantic.

Pamela

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