#73: Voting time
Long time, no vote, my friends. Welcome to summer votestravaganza!
I’m writing to you from the thick of a Toulousaine summer. AC isn’t a thing here, and we live on a top-floor apartment with no other buildings casting shade to save us from our lovely east-west windows. To save our butts (and our bunnies), Rhody and I cut space blankets to fit each of our window panes to block out the heat. Let me tell you: it may be 32C/90F outside, but inside? A lovely 26C/78F. And it’s surprisingly cute, giving each room this retro spaceship vibe.
Honestly, the only real problem with the whole idea is that Rhody and I are ~artists~. We work in concepts, not structure. Sure, I can measure the angle between someone’s nose and shoulder for a portrait, and Rhody can talk about complex time signatures all dang day, but if you ask us to do geometry to figure out how many space blankets we need to cover our windows?
Folks, we bought at least fifteen blankets too many. Do you live in Toulouse and need some to block windows? Boy do I have the gift for you!
And hiding in my spaceship apartment, I’m bringing you voting time, just in time for summer, plus a bonus morsel on how France recovered from WWI.
In today’s newsletter:
💣 Sometimes, the French can hustle, 💣 let's vote, bbs, 💣 and remember: I love you!
Recovery isn’t an overnight process
In World War I, France and Belgium took the brunt of the battle misery, with most fighting unfolding in France or the then-contested area of Alsace-Lorraine.
The war hammered French soil - French homes, French industry, French lives. The relatively small region of the Western Front provided one-fifth of all France’s production1 - causing ripples across the rest of the country.
Remember last week when I discussed WWI’s financial impact?
#72: Cher Monsieur Caubet
Sometimes, after a hiatus, beginning is the hardest part. Hello, friends. How are you? May was largely difficult, until it became beautiful, thanks in no small part to a visit from U.S. shapeshifting wonder artist Xena Zeitgeist...
Last week’s graph illustrating French industry’s nosedive compared to every other country, is so stark, I had to share it twice.
When the war ended, the French looked around and realized: now that the battle was over, another one had begun. The battle of rebuilding.
Rebuild everything - but make it ✨cute✨
In the five years following the war, France got to work. Trench warfare had leveled much of the east. And while things may move slow in the land of bureaucracy here (just ask my visa status), when it comes to actually mobilizing against outrage or injustice, nobody does it quicker than the French.
And because everything here is a vibe, less than five years after the Great War, a public pamphlet was released in all its 1920s aesthetic glory, outlining every proud act of reconstruction the French had undertaken since 1918.
They don’t mince words about who they felt was to blame, and this illustration whacks you on the head with what I can really only describe as the hammerhead that is French pride. :
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