Community at le Marché de Morlaix

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the damage it has caused in my beloved city of New York, I've been thinking a lot about community as a concept. There's a particular spirit and humanitarian support that arises from disaster. “I feel often that we don’t have the right language to talk about emotions in disasters. Everyone is on edge, of course, but it also pulls people away from a lot of trivial anxieties and past and future concerns and gratuitous preoccupations that we have, and refocuses us in a very intense way… In some ways, people behave better than in ordinary life and in some disasters people find [out about] the meaningful role of deep social connections and see their absence in everyday life,” Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell told TIME magazine in an interview.

On a smaller, much less intense scale, it reminds me of the incredible sense of "community" I have been observing and experience at markets within France. And even more so, of "the community" I most recently visited in Morlaix.

Morlaix is one of a handful of larger towns in the northwestern-most region of Bretagne. In the Middle Ages it was a center of trade between Brittany, England, Spain, and Holland. Today it is still surrounded by farms and open fields and the ocean is literally a hop, skip, and a jump away. As such, the various fish, vegetables, cheeses, breads, honeys, etc. offered by the same vendors who raised or caught or cut or made the products themselves are beyond fresh.

And beyond that, more than half the shoppers knew these vendors personally. "Comment allez-vous, monsieur/madame?" was just as quickly asked as it was followed by, "et votre famille?" Conversation ("how are you? and your family?") nearly triumphed transaction.

With that said, these rural industries appeared to be doing just fine. The products were selling quickly, perhaps due in some part to the strong bonds built throughout all sides of the market industry.

As Michéle de la Pradelle wrote in Market Day in Provence (translated by Amy Jacobs), "The markets themselves played a marginal role in distribution networks, but the modern public loved these powerful moments of local life, which gave them a traste of types of social interaction, sociability, that had more or less vanished. In the cold world of market rationality, markets offered a little extra soul."

Whether it is felt in a small city of France or a big city like New York, there is comfort in this nostalgia of a simpler time and closer human connection. If only it could be felt on a large scale outside the realm of hard times.

Le Marché de Morlaix

Où? Hotel de Ville, Morlaix

Quand? Saturday, 8am-2pm

Comment? TGV

Organic at Le Marché Batignolles

France isn't just a country that appreciates meal time, it's also a country that frowns upon many of the practices that have, in my humble opinion, spoiled the American food system. The French have been actively resisting GMOs and many of the pesticides which have been approved and promoted within agriculture in the U.S. Some have also gone as far as to jump on the organic, or rather, "bio" food wagon. Although I can't say I only eat organic--I neither have the budget nor the patience to do so--I do value it in the sense that I believe it's the way all food should be.

Lucky for me, Paris market culture has embraced the belief as well. Le Marché Raspail (on Sunday mornings) is the largest organic food market in Paris, but the second largest is at Batignolles... exactly two metro stops away or a brisk 20-minute walk from my humble abode. It is teeming with fruits, vegetables, cheeses, meats, flowers, clothing, dairy products, breads, raw nuts, dried fruits, honeys, jams, and lightly prepared foods. In other words, it's a pesticide-fertizilizer-GMO-antiobiotic-hormone-(etc)-free feast for the eyes. Seriously though:

Though there have been countless debates as to whether organic food really is more nutritious, my belief is that it is most likely safer for our bodies and most definitely better for the environment. I, like many Parisians it seems, am very much committed to supporting the two.

Le Marché Biologique des Batignolles
Où? Boulevard des Batignolles from rue Turin to rue de Moscou, Paris 75017
Quand? Saturday, 8am-2pm
Comment? Metro Rome, Place de Clichy; Bus 30

(Originally published on www.danielle-abroad.com)