I never really wanted to quote Gertrude Stein

Last weekend I visited Pere Lachaise Cemetery - most famous, I believe, for being the resting place of Jim Morrison. But, there are many more people buried there who were more than just burnt out rock stars: Moliere, the famous playwright of Louis XIV's court, for instance. Or Heloise and Abelard, the real life starcrossed lovers of medieval times. Marcel Proust, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Honore de Balzac, one of the greatest writers of the 19th century. Gertrude Stein - the woman I say the woman who was at the center of the Lost Generation. The cemetery's second most famous resident is probably Oscar Wilde, whose grave had a heartbreaking poem on the back. It wasn't far from what is called the Mur des Federes, the wall where many of the insurgents of the Paris Commune of 1871 were lined up and executed by the State. I stood there for a long time, trying to find the pock marks of bullets and thinking about the situation that Paris found itself in during that calamitous period of its history. The Franco-Prussian War had just ended with the months long Seige of Paris, wherein the city's residents were forced to eat the animals in the zoo to stay alive. Directly after the Germans marched through Paris (for the first time) as a ceremonial end to the peace proceedings, the humiliated working class revolted and for a brief time were in control of the city. What followed is known as La Semaine Sanglante - The Bloody Week - wherein the government systemically hunted down and executed about 30,000 people involved in this insurgence. The last stand of the Communards, as they were called, was in and about Pere Lachaise. I can't help but think of how dramatic this story is, and how nowadays people picnic next to this wall and in the Luxembourg Gardens where the rest of the Communards were shot. I can't help but feel, especially in Paris, how gleefully unaware we are of the blood and toil buried beneath all of us. It is not just in cemeteries that we have left our ancestors; it is below our streets, in our floorboards, basements, and cellars; it is in our manicured lawns and perfectly arranged parks. Tread carefully, for you tread on history.

I find it very interesting that The Mur des Federes is juxtaposed with several monuments to the Holocaust and the Resistance. I am constantly comparing the histories of France and America in my head, and this made me think how America had no Resistance, and the Jews living in our country that were victim to the Nazi concentration camps only came to America after World War II, already displaced from their original homes. This is not to say that our history lacks drama and tragedy, for that cannot be said of any nation, but I think in the specific case of America, it lacks the "fear of war" as Gertrude Stein said. We know the fear of war-time, but it has been generations since anyone in America has had to worry about foreign invasion. And despite the rasing of Washington DC in the War of 1812, our country has never known foreign occupation - the fear of that, is the fear of war. Gertrude Stein said this could be why we still think the world is flat - metaphorically speaking, that is.