Remember how things kept changing in "Labyrinth"? It's like that, except without the Jim Henson characters.

Time to give a bit more of a description of Marseille, now that I've had a few afternoons and evenings to walk around.

Whether one travels to Marseille by plane or train, one generally arrives at the Gare Saint Charles, since that's also where the navette (shuttle) from the airport drops you off following the half-hour ride into town. ("Gare" means "station". "Garer" is the verb "to park", whence the word "garage". Yep, it's not just geography, it's etymology! I love languages.) The front of the gare is actually quite beautiful, with lovely statues and ironwork. I don't have pictures facing the gare, but here you can see the view from the top of the stairs leading down from the station into the city:

The main road leading straight out from the escalier is the Boulevard d'Athènes. Just to the right of center you can see Notre Dame de la Garde. Brilliant location, yes? The Vieux Port is just outside of the scope of this picture, off to the right. The golden statue atop the tower is supposed to represent Mary (la bonne mère) watching over the ships in the harbor and at sea. You can read more of the basilica's history (including speculations as to that hill's religious and military use in ancient times) on the website linked above.

Behind the gare is one campus of the Université de Provence, the one where we spend our Friday mornings in Dr. Hubbard's class and the Teichmüller seminar. Describing the path to the campus is how I can begin justifying the title of the essay. If I had turned around from where I was at the top of the stairs and taken a picture in that direction, you would have seen a plastic wall zoning off a construction area. All along the western side of the gare (the stairs face south, by the way) is a hefty amount of construction. The plan, I think, is to add stores and a parking area. Somehow this construction is taking over the entire street along that side. What should be wide pedestrian areas have been transformed by metal fences into a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. On the far side of the street, more construction walls abound, and in recent weeks have begun diverting pedestrians farther and farther away from various intersections, thus necessitating the introduction of more crosswalk signals. I'm convinced that eventually the entire area will be construction, with no room for either walking or driving.

If instead of going around the gare to the campus you begin walking down the Boulevard d'Athènes, you'll reach the Place des Capucines:

This is not far from where we live. There's a patisserie we're fond of just a few meters back up the street from the Place des Capucines. Once you're there, turn left and you'll see the Eglise des Réformés:

(I have to take a picture of it at night sometime, when the rose window is lit up from inside.) Despite what its name might suggest, it is a Catholic church, and was named for a Reformed Augustinian monastery which existed on the site previously.

Here is where my pictures end. I'd like to keep walking down the Boulevard d'Athènes just a bit, however, until we get to La Canebière. This is the major road leading down to the Vieux Port (on the right); to the left, it also leads to Les Réformés (the street I showed you isn't parallel to La Canebière). La Canebière is a mess right now, with massive construction again encroaching on pedestrian areas. "Encroaching" is perhaps not the right word -- "engulfing" might be more accurate. Marseille is in the process of installing a new tramway system. This involves a complete redesign of the sidewalks along with the basic work of laying down the rails. Along this road, the effect has mainly been squeezing the traffic. In other places around town, the construction involves frequent changes in the routes and direction of traffic. As one postdoc who's working here said, "I ride my bike around here a lot, and it's like the topology changes every day."

Enough complaining about construction. (Mostly it makes me glad not to be driving.) I want to describe the Vieux Port, because it's a nice place for evening walks. I wish I had pictures of it right now. I've been down there twice by myself (in very different moods), and a couple of times with friends. It's a popular gathering spot; one finds many couples and groups of friends chatting on benches along the waterfront. During the day lots of fishmongers line the waterfront.

At night a few people fish in between the docked ships. Once I saw a couple struggling to get their fishing line to work, and they asked another man to help them out. By working together, they discovered that the casting mechanism just didn't work well. So they just kept the line in close to the shore. I believe they and the other fisherfolk I saw were using bread as bait. A couple small schools of perhaps twenty or thirty fish moved mysteriously about. The man in the couple watched a small fish dart towards and away from his hook, until he pulled the line out and the hook was stripped clean. His wife/ladyfriend chortled, and they began discussing what kind of bait would be better. Crevettes (shrimp), one proposed. Then the man who was helping walked over to a nearby puddle of standing water, and pointed out that it contained a handful of tiny fish, which could be used as bait for the larger fish. He caught one for them, and they gave it a try. While their new bait bobbled in the water, I walked over to the puddle, as well. The man noticed my somewhat bemused air, and explained that when boats come in and dump fish on the quai, these little fish are left in the puddles after the rest are taken away. The woman came over and pleaded for him to catch another piece of bait, because the one they were using had died and stopped wriggling. He did, and the guy in the couple exclaimed, "Putain! Tu es plus rapide que le poisson!" ("Putain" is the mild vulgarity of choice in Marseille.) The new bait secured, he dropped the line back in the water and started saying, "Viens, viens, grand poisson, mange le petit poisson." ("Come, come, big fish, eat the little fish.") That was enough of that story for me. I sort of wished I had stayed to see if they caught anything, but I wanted to move on and see other things.

One of my favorite sights at the Vieux Port is a massive school of silver-scaled fish swimming about just at the top of the harbor. In sunlight or lamplight, their writhing motions occasionally turn each of them so that they reflect light off their sides to the observer. It's like watching aquatic fireflies. Also at night, Notre Dame de la Garde is brilliantly illuminated and stunning from the harbor. (I tried to get a picture of that one night, but the battery in my camera was worn out.)

Out past the mouth of the harbor rests the Château d'If, a former island prison made famous by Dumas when he unjustly imprisoned his Count of Monte Cristo there. I do have a picture of this from a distance, taken from a spot where the Hubbards often like to swim:

I certainly plan on making it out to visit the château sometime.

The population of Marseille is dominated, at least in our neighborhood, by North Africans. You're as likely to hear Arabic on the streets as French. Lots of stores had special offers and special hours while Ramadan was happening a couple of months ago. A fortunate side effect of this demographic is the presence of lots of couscous restaurants. In about a four block radius of our house, I've found at least a half-dozen, without really looking hard. The two nicest ones I've been to are Le Femina, on the Rue du Musée, and one down by the Vieux Port whose name I don't know (although inside they have posted a brief story on the 7th century Berber princess Kahena). I've tried a handful of others, and there are two in our neighborhood that I like and are reasonably priced to eat there once a week or so.

The major type of restaurant one encounters on the streets here serves kebab sandwiches. A kebab in this case is an immense amount of lamb skewered, roasted, and left to rotate next to a heating grill in the storefront for who knows how long. It's the sort of thing Americans might find slightly sketchy, but delicious once you try it. My favorite is near the Eglise des Réformés; their sauce and seasonings are the best, and the seating area is spacious and clean.

I've already talked a bit about the open fruits and vegetables market, of which I still highly approve. The metro system is convenient for us (since we live so close to the train station). Lots of little things make this a good place to live. Lots of other little things make it really hard, but I'm not going to share those here right now. This hopefully gives you a picture of what I find fascinating about Marseille.

le vent souffle

A week ago, Sarah and I were outside the prefecture's Bureau des Etrangers shortly before 7 o'clock in the morning to stand in line for our cartes de séjour, documents that serve as extended-stay visas for several kinds of people, notably students. Our three-month visas with which we entered won't last until Christmas, so this was a necessary trip. It was also surprisingly painless once we got in the office. In that sense, it was rather like our trip to the consulate in New York to get the original visas. (It's still not clear to me why the French government has decided this process of getting a short-term visa in the States, then applying for a different document once in country, is good for either them or the students.) We had been quite nervous that the process would be painful, since the last time we went to the prefecture, in the late morning, we found an incomprehensible mess of lines, signs, and windows inside. We learned then that applicants are called in a very orderly manner from numbers they pick up on arrival, and one must arrive early in order to get a number. Hence our arrival before 7:00 at an office that opens at 8:15. It was another windy day in Marseille; when we arrived, it was still cold and well before dawn. We also weren't the first there; about fifteen or twenty people were ahead of us. (It's hard to tell exactly, even though we went up in order to pick up numbers, because the line was a bit porous for a while--not quite as amorphous as it would have been in Africa, nor as rigid as it would have been in the States.)

The line formed among snaky railings labelled "Séjour" at their entrance. By 7:30, we were at about the halfway point of the line, and by 8:00 sixty or seventy people were there. For a while, people strung themselves out a couple of meters apart, until sufficiently many people (a half-dozen or so) took advantage of the space to pleasantly say "Excusez-moi" to those who had been waiting and to fill in the closest gap to the head that they could. This is an activity I don't think most Americans would even consider; we have been socialized remarkably strongly to have a innate sense of "FIFO" and to place ourselves behind those who arrived earlier--we call it "respect". But from a certain point of view, one understands those who just want to get as close as they can. What advantage is it to them to stand at the end of the "line", especially if that line is essentially ficticious (which it is when people are so scattered), and the people in that line aren't expressing a particularly firm interest in holding their positions? It was actually somewhat amusing to watch as those waiting collapsed into a densely packed formation following a notably egregious application of this principle of self-advancement. Despite this newly-found physical camaraderie, it seemed to get colder as the time went on and the sky got brighter. I didn't quite reach the point of doing jumping-jacks to warm up, but I was bouncing on the balls of my feet for a while.

Wisely, police appeared at the doorway ten or fifteen minutes before it was time to go in. They made sure the stairway of the sortie was clear (it could easily have been a means to forming a new line to merge with ours, the real line) and cleaned up the queue so that everyone had a clear sense of his or her place. Once the doors were open, they acted as valves, permitting eight or ten applicants to proceed at once. We headed upstairs and got the requisite number tickets. We ended up numbers 20 and 21.

From there, things were easy. The numbers went by quickly; so quickly at times that it seemed some people had taken a number and just left. A young man approched Sarah and me, asking if we wanted to take his number 19, which we did. Never figured out why he wanted to move back a couple of places. He just kept hanging out in the waiting room. After only a half-hour or so, we went in to guichet 8. We weren't sure at first if Sarah and I could go up together and get all the information simultaneously, but that worked out. We showed that we had all the necessary papers, and learned that we only had to photocopy them, fill out a couple of brief forms, put all that in an envelope they provided with four identity photos, mail it off, and our cards will be sent to us in a month or so. We don't even have to go back to the bureau. All we need in the meantime really is evidence that we've submitted the applications, for which our receipts from the post office count. Not bad at all.

Our experience with the préfecture is to be completely contrasted with the treatment we got from France Télécom. Whereas the government office gave a stern front initially until we reached the end and received friendly assistance, our dealings with France Télécom started with warm smiles and passed into misinformation and incomprehensible stalling. We were attempting to get internet access at our apartment. This story has a happy ending, too, since we now have said access, but the customer service left much to be desired.

We made no less than five trips in four weeks to the France Télécom store before we had everything worked out. First, a friendly young lady (who apparently had little experience dealing with non-native French speakers, because she was clearly amused by how I didn't understand certain things) explained that we could get internet, telephone, and TV all in a package with a machine called the Livebox. We knew we wanted internet, of course, and unlimited telephone over the 'net sounded like a good deal. Whether or not we get a TV remains to be seen. It would cost more to get just the internet and phone, however, because of a special deal being made, so we opted for Madame la Livebox. We were told we'd have access within ten days. It was suggested we go ahead and set up the Livebox with the enclosed CD and wait until the "error" messages went away.

A week later, we went back. I had tried to set the thing up using the CD, except the CD didn't work on either my or Sarah's computer. Turns out Macs need a different CD format. I'm fairly certain I had said on the first trip that our computers were Macs. So the salesperson called some technical assistance line, and they said they'd mail us a new CD, which should arrive the following Tuesday. We never got the CD.

So the next week I went back again. I explained the problem with the CD again. The man with whom I was speaking went and got me another one, which naturally didn't work either. So he tried to get another. At this point I began to realize that the people in the store were purely salesfolk, with no technical knowledge whatsoever. (I should have realized that on our first trip, when I completely shocked the women behind the counter by knowing what their credit card machine was doing better than they did. First, they didn't know how to handle the magnetic stripe; most cards in France have a chip on one end that is inserted into the machine. Okay, that's just lack of familiarity and I can excuse it. They tried swiping it several times, then watched fervently for the result on their computer screen. I was just reading the display on the machine itself. And so when I suggested they swipe the card in the other direction, and announced immediately that it had registered, they asked in awe, "How did you know it worked?") I also said it had been two weeks since we had applied, and so we should have service, which according to the lights on our box, we still didn't. (Now I have to turn the tables on myself, because even if the service had been established, we couldn't have known from where our box was plugged in. There are three phone line outlets in our apartment. Two of them are non-functional. Those are the two I tried. The third was hidden behind our couch, and we found it eventually. But more troubles would have come anyway...) This was when I discovered that the waiting period was not ten days, but three weeks. Huh? How did that manage to get so completely miscommunicated? The one piece of useful information the man gave that day was that the CD, despite all the warnings on the instruction packet, was not strictly needed to access the Livebox. Later in the day, when I was talking with Dad, he suggested the same thing, so I just plugged in and found they were right.

One major problem was still occurring: the Wi-Fi on the Livebox wasn't functioning. The instructions declared that by pressing a certain button on the back, the wireless would be available. I pressed, and nothing happened. A little light was supposed to start flashing indicating broadcast. It didn't. And I certainly couldn't find the box with my AirPort. This became a big contention point the next week, on my fourth visit.

We finally found a salesperson who at least acted sympathetically towards our situation, even if her answers weren't always consistent. At this point, it had been three weeks, so they couldn't give us that excuse anymore. It was decided that the best thing was for us to come back on Tuesday when she would make a phone call to the technicians who would check our line from a distance. Many times when one chooses a service, one has to decide whether it's worth investing a little more on hope, or if one should just cut out and find a new provider. We decided to stick with it for one more chance.

What about the Wi-Fi? Well, I asked why it wasn't working. The fantastic response I received (this time from another man in the store, who looked remarkably like he should be a techy geek) was that it was because we weren't connected to the internet. The communication between my computer and the Livebox doesn't depend on whether the online connection is working or not, I explained. Oh, this is a completely different kind of technology from a modem, he claimed. The box has to get online to initialize itself before that stuff will work. I pointed in the instruction book to where it said I could connect to the box via wireless in order to give my id and password to start the internet connection. He stared blankly at the page, presumably trying to come up with some other explanation. He took me over to one of the computers in the store and brought up the homepage of the Livebox (what you get at 192.168.1.1) and said that once the box was online, I'd be able to get to that page and adjust everything. I'd already been to that page, I said. That's not online. That's on the box itself. He was looking more and more confused, and decided to stick with his answer that the problem with the wireless was the lack of internet access. Well, it didn't make much difference as long as we didn't have internet anyway, so I left it at that.

Tuesday morning we went back. The lady had already called the technical people, who claimed that everything should be working. She checked several times that on their end they had done everything necessary. For a while, there was a struggle to get them to understand and accept that we had no telephone, because we were waiting for their service. The usual thing to do would have been to call their service line 39 00, but we couldn't. So what should we do? No answers. I asked if no technicians were available, and was told that they are, but that it would be expensive for them to come over. If their service wasn't working, I asked, why should I have to pay for the technician? Once again I was assured that from their end, all was in order and the service should be available. Who knows if it was? We were still plugged into a dead outlet, which again I admit was my fault (gotta make sure the next tenants know about those useless slots). But I pressed them to consider that there might be something wrong with the box. There was, of course; the wireless wasn't working, so at least it was worth asking them to change it. At last she did give us a new box, as an "exceptional case," she said, because normally a technician would have to decide that a new box was necessary.

This new box had wireless that worked as soon as it was turned on. And once we found the real line phone line, we were hooked up. At last.

So this story definitely has points of foolishness on my part. But the representatives of France Télécom were for the most part ill-informed and quite unhelpful. I had the distinct impression throughout that they were making up answers. Our internet access, in the end, was probably only delayed by a few days by the whole mess, because it did take nearly three weeks to get established, according to what we learned from the phone call Tuesday morning. And now, we denizens of this information age feel at last like we have a normal home, because we have internet.

Along with getting registered as students at the university, these were the last of our "settling-in" tasks. The length of time to accomplish all this seems entirely typical, based on what I've heard from others. Next semester we'll not have these distractions. We'll come back from Christmas and New Year's break and have an established location. It'll mean a different and hopefully more productive situation. And we'll know the city already. That's what I'll write about in the next essay: a few things I've learned about Marseille.

got it made

This entry is partly by special request. Hannah’s opinion is that I don’t write enough about her. She has a fair point, since any kind of accurate description of my life here must include the fact that I talk with her and write to her every day. Let me begin by quoting a song of the blues artists Paul Rishell and Annie Raines:

When that girl starts tellin’ you
The things that she wants you to do,
Buddy, you've got it made.

In that spirit, I fulfill Hannah’s suggestion.

Actually, I wanted to write this anyway to share with you two pictures I really like.



The first is from the gorge at Treman Park outside of Ithaca. It was taken (by Hannah’s mom) the week Hannah was moving back into Cornell at the end of the summer. We were at the time (at the very moment of the picture, I think) discussing how we didn’t think we were going to start dating. So much for that conclusion. I remember distinctly Hannah’s reaction to the falls at the park: coming from a suburban background, she didn’t believe one could actually live so close to such natural beauty.

The second photo was taken at Pangea, one of the nicer restaurants in Ithaca, while I was back visiting Hannah this fall. It is now one of about four pictures taken of the two of us since we’ve been a couple. It’s also currently the background for my computer screen.

(In an attempt to echo the title of a previous entry and to tie this title with the above photos, I considered naming this entry “she and he, hanging out at Tre–man…” or “she and he, eating at Pange–a…” Because, y’know, it’s cute and it uses the “e” sound in each of those words. But it turns out that’s not just cute, it’s far too cutesy for my tastes, and besides I could only have used one. In fact, forget I came up with those names.)

One of the wonderful things about our relationship is that we have lots of overlapping interests, but different specializations. I majored in mathematics and music; she’s studying mathematics and English. She adores poetry, which I like but haven’t taken much time to read on my own, and I like 20th century music, some of which she’s begun appreciating. (It’s essentially entirely due to her that I have any interest in learning more about opera, however. That’s one genre that fell outside of my tastes for a long time. But last spring, after we had discussed Der Ring des Nibelungen for several weeks, she basically handed me the disks and said, “Here. Listen to these at home.” I enjoyed them a great deal, much to my surprise. Let this be a lesson that brief selections of four hours works can’t in general give you a notion of what experiencing the whole thing is like.) We’ve filled up substantial portions of our Gmail accounts with poems and mp3s. (Thank goodness for modern communication.) And, of course, we talk about math. I’m a geometer; she’s leaning towards becoming a topologist, which makes for overlapping but not quite identical interests there, too. It’s marvelous to share things you love with people you love.

Hannah was a student in a class for which I was the teaching assistant last fall. So she developed the habit early on of challenging me to explain mathematical ideas well and to her satisfaction. She’s not easily satisfied: she has very high demands on her level of understanding before she’ll admit that she’s mastered a topic. I, naturally, being a teacher (I’ll always be a teacher, even if it doesn’t stay my profession), am happy to explain, to search for new explanations, to examine an idea from several perspectives until we fall on one that she approves of. In the process, of course, she pushes me like no one else to seriously engage with every single detail, and in the end my understanding has grown nearly as much as hers has. I know she’ll be a stupendous researcher.

Hannah is a dancer. She’s been dancing her whole life, mostly folk dances and almost always with her mom. I like to dance. I aspire to learn all that she’s learned. I was never good at sports growing up, but this sort of coordination I have. This sort of movement makes sense to me. And it’s another way to participate in art. Have I mentioned I’m a liberal arts student at heart?

I’ve said before that’s it’s hard to be so far from her for so long. Of course it is. Who would think it should be otherwise? That, indeed, was one of the frustrations I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Though it hasn’t gotten easier to be apart, recent days have granted us an easier time going about our lives and studies. We look forward to our reunion with great hope and joy. I would never recommend this kind of separation, nor deciding you’re going to start dating someone five days before one of you is about to leave for a long, long time. But I wish this kind of love for everyone. I am completely and totally (and apparently pleonastically, as well) in love with this woman. That’s why we talk for at least an hour per day, and send messages back and forth as often as we can. The above description I’ve given doesn’t begin to explain why I love her, or how wonderful it truly is to have her in my life. These are just the things I imagine you would like to know about her, and special treats we get to enjoy from being together.

And that, I think, is the sappiest essay you’ll get for a while. Unless, of course, Hannah insists I write another one. In any case, I am exceedingly happy.

Adrien's funeral

We returned Thursday night from Paris, where we spent all day visiting with others who knew Douady, sharing stories, and trying to process the events. The day began at the Institut Henri Poincaré, where approximately 25 mathematicians, mostly from the field of holomorphic dynamics, gathered. Roland, Sarah, and I took turns explaining what had happened. Two editions of Le Monde were produced, from last Wednesday and Thursday, which between them held five announcements of Douady’s death: they were placed by the family, l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, l’Université de Paris-Sud (where Adrien was a professor), SUNY Stony Brook, and Nicolas Bourbaki (the famously secretive French mathematical society, of which Douady was a member). Someone brought a great number of photos from the past couple or three decades, mostly amusing, and all capturing the conviviality of Adrien and his friends and students.

The funeral ceremony was held in the crematorium of the Père Lachaise cemetery, perhaps the most famous cemetery of Paris. (Their website has a virtual tour. You’ll find the crematorium towards the north-west corner; it’s the largest building on the site.) I’m not usually good at estimating numbers of people, but having discussed it with a few others, I can claim that there were about 250 people in attendance, nearly half of whom were standing in the back of the hall.

In my mind, the ceremony had four major pieces. First, the response of the mathematical community. This included childhood friends, collaborators, and students of Douady, as well as some who had simply felt his influence. Roland was the first to speak, and related the story of our visit to Les Arcs. He found a beautiful way to express the final hours. Adrien had told us, as we were contemplating going swimming that day, that it was for each person to decide if they would find it pleasing, and if so, then they should plunge in and enjoy it. Roland said perhaps Adrien was talking about all of life, too; one doesn’t hold back from doing what one loves. And Adrien loved to swim.

After the words of the mathematicians, the casket was carried to the top of the stairs at the front of the hall and placed in the furnace. There was a long respectful pause, during which was played music from Don Giovanni. (Hubbard has told me Douady liked singing the part of the Commendatore.)

Next the family members and other friends spoke. Adrien had three children, eight grandchildren (of whom four gave brief speeches), and four siblings (one of whom spoke on behalf of them all).

The final piece, which occurred somewhat in the middle of the family’s words, was the presentation of four brief film clips Adrien had been part of. Two were from the biographical film Adrien Douady, mathématicien, and the other two were from films intended to popularize mathematics. In all, Adrien’s humor and love for the sea were well-represented. One scene showed him on a staircase, singing heartily his setting of Baudelaire’s “Le vin de l’assassin”. Another watched him dive into the water, and subsequently to arrive on the boundary of the Mandelbrot set, which he clambered along barefoot just as he would the rocks of l’Esterel. A recurring image was the rabbit fractal, a Julia set given its name by Douady.

In the evening, Régine hosted all those interested at her and Adrien’s house. We were there briefly before we had to catch the TGV back to Marseille. Work has continued since Adrien’s death, even if it has slowed a bit to accomodate the necessary arrangements, travel, and memorial. Hubbard gave his class lectures both of the last two Fridays, and so we had to be back Thursday night. He says he believes continuing to do math even at this time is completely in the spirit of Adrien. Plans for conferences in Douady’s honor have already been born. He was loved, and he will be missed, but I believe those who worked with him and knew his passions will pay him due respect by carrying out those passions to the benefit of future generations.

the end of a good man's life

Adrien Douady, professor of maths at the University of Paris, and friend and advisor to Dr. Hubbard, died on Thursday. Sarah, Roland, and I were with him on an outing to see the region near his vacation home in Les Arcs. It was while swimming near a rocky shoreline at the base of l’Esterel. Roland was in the water with him and brought him into shore; I helped pull him from the water onto the rocks. I don’t feel at liberty here to share more of the details, but I would like to describe the time we spent with him (which I would have written about anyway).

Adrien picked up the three of us at the train station in Les Arcs in the mid-afternoon on Wednesday. He promptly drove us to the Medieval City in town and dropped us off at the bottom. He instructed us to climb the labyrinthine streets and to meet him at the top. Once we rejoined him, he began indicating some of the plants around the area: an olive tree, a rosemary bush, a prickly pear cactus. He indicated a balcony from which the Queen of the Night aria was sung in a performance of The Magic Flute, and persisted in humming that tune for the rest of the afternoon.

Once we arrived at the Douadys’ house, he led us through the surrounding woods, pointing out where boars had rooted in the ground and making us try to guess what a certain plant was (it was thyme). We became convinced we had heard a boar and began tracking it. We eventually came to where we thought it was, and discovered that most of the sounds we’d been hearing were made by trees rubbing against each other in the wind.


We returned to the house, and began cutting wood. Adrien had cut down a tree he thought was too near the house. Roland picked up the chain saw and worked on cutting up the tree. Sarah and I moved the wood over to a pile. It was nice to be outside, enjoying nature and doing some manual labor.

Adrien and his wife Régine invited a few of their neighbors over for dinner. Régine made a marvelous traditional Algerian couscous meal. It was a pleasant repast, with conversation topics varying among house construction, the arriving mistral, wind power, tides in Normandy, and voting in the States.



In the morning, at breakfast, I reminisced about singing “L’amant de Saint Jean” with Adrien in Denmark. (I meant to post the pictures above earlier.) They started teaching me another chanson, “Le vin blanc”. We headed out and saw some of Adrien’s favorite swimming places.


I knew Douady as a brilliant, supportive, fun-loving man. He loved to sing and to swim. He loved doing all sorts of mathematics, and people loved having him in talks for his insight and humor. He was here at the Université de Provence the week before he died to give a talk on the work of two of his students, Buff and Chéritat, of whom he was very proud. We were fortunate to hear his final lecture. He was always full of character, life, and passion. Sarah and Roland knew him better than I, but everyone who met him knew he was a special, wonderful man.

Rest in peace, Adrien.