Celebrating the Escalade

A couple weekends ago was Escalade - a Geneva holiday. Not a Swiss one. Just for the people in Geneva. While the name may lead you to think it's the day the Genevoix celebrate full-size luxury sport utility vehicles, it's actually a little more interesting. In a nutshell:

In the middle of the night on December 11, 1602, the French mounted a surprise attack on the city-state of Geneva, hoping to plunder its wealth.

According to legend, as the French were climbing the walls of the city (escalade means to go up a ladder), a woman who lived above the town gate was up late preparing vegetable soup when she looked out her window and saw the troops approaching in the darkness. Not knowing what else to do, she dumped the scalding soup and the cauldron on them. The ensuing commotion woke the rest of the city, and with men called to arms, the invasion was unsuccessful.

In short, the French were beaten by a bowl of soup. They just can't win, the French.

Today, Escalade is celebrated by serving...wait for it...vegetable soup. But go anywhere in the city, and you can buy various sizes of chocolate cauldrons, which are filled with marzipan vegetables. The night of Escalade, the oldest person and the youngest person in the house each take a spoon and say in French, "So perish the enemies of the Republic!" and then smash the cauldron. (Kind of makes me wish we had something patriotic to shout before biting off the head of a chocolate Easter Bunny.)

Escalade has also become a bit of a costume party. Kind of a Swiss Halloween with kids and even teens wearing costumes to school and parties. Not sure what dressing up as Spiderman has to do with a 1602 foiled invasion, but, whatever.

The Fisherman

I see this guy around our neighborhood all the time. He's such a fixture, I had to take this stealth shot of him when I was behind him at the grocery store.

He only has two outfits that I know of:

1. In the summer, he wears shorts, a yellow t-shirt, and carries a fishing pole and a bucket of bait. (Not sure where his fishing hole is, but he takes the bus to it.)
2. In the winter, he wears this purple and pink coat - sometimes with a fishing vest over it. If the weather is warm, he pushes the sleeves of this big, puffy coat up to his elbows like an eskimo in a John Hughes party movie.

Shushed

Years ago, I went to an outdoor Dave Matthews concert. It was ear-ringingly loud. I was talking to my friend Brooke during one of the songs when a woman in front of us turned to shush us. I was a little stunned, but Brooke just looked at her and said, "Sorry. I didn't know we were in a library!"

Sometimes I feel like that at my office. The American agencies I've worked for are much louder. Or at least, less hostile towards volume.

Switzerland during World War II

Why didn't Switzerland take part in World War II? Was it because they were “neutral?” That’s a question I’d had in the back of my mind for quite a while, so I decided to look it up.

Switzerland's current neutrality kept them from entering World War II. But it had nothing to do with Germany not invading it. Honestly, would Hitler have said, “Well, it wouldn’t be fair to occupy a neutral country.”

Hilter had plans to annex Switzerland as soon as the Germans occupied the rest of Europe. German propaganda at the time declared Die Schweiz, das kleine Stachelschwein, nehmen wir auf dem Rückweg ein or "We'll take Switzerland, the small porcupine, on our way back home!"

But there were three reasons the Germans never invaded Switzerland (oversimplified here, of course):

1. The Swiss were overwhelmingly anti-Nazi. Their democracy was too conservative to accept a single-Führer regime. And Hilter hadn’t bombarded them with propaganda as he had Germany and Austria. Invading Switzerland would lead to massive civil disobedience. So the Nazis would have had to use more force than they did in other German-speaking countries. And that force was being diverted towards France and Russia.
2. The Swiss were better prepared militarily than its occupied neighbors. While German tanks could have rolled easily into Bern, a contingency plan had the Swiss Army fighting with guerilla tactics from the Alps, which was more than the French or Belgians had planned. So invasion was postponed.
3. The railways that ran through the Swiss Alps connected Hilter's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. Germany knew an attack on Switzerland would lead to the Swiss Army dismantling the railways, paralyzing trade indefinitely.

If the Nazis had attacked Switzerland, it would have been a short battle – even all of these together wouldn’t have been enough to keep the Nazi agenda at bay. But together they were enough to encourage them to postpone their invasion plans.

So it's not that Germany respected Switzerland's neutrality. The Swiss were just very lucky.

Je suis le concepteur.

Our agency and its work was recently featured in a regional industry magazine. I was listed not as "copywriter" but as "concepteur-redacteur."

I think I need to buy a beret.

Targeting Geneva

A couple weeks ago, Swiss voters helped bring about a constitutional ban on building minarets in Switzerland. So apparently religious freedom isn't covered by "neutrality."

A couple days ago the UDC representative who initiated the anti-minaret movement debated a member of Hamas on Al Jazeera. I wasn't able to watch, and I haven't been able to find a transcript. But I've got to imagine there are some gems in that debate.

While the Swiss I've spoken with are disgusted with the motion, a few are even morespooked by the idea that the new law and the recent debate will turn terrorist eyes onto Switzerland. One of the people I spoke to asserted that Geneva would be the most likely target because, as he put it, "Geneva is the heart of Switzerland."

In my mind, a more accurate geographic metaphor would be the "cowlick" or "skin tag of Switzerland." So I asked why not Bern, since it was the the capital where the law was passed. Or Zurich, because they have a nicer airport. But he was adamant - Geneva is the most likely target for a terrorist attack because it is "the heart of Switzerland."

The comment reminded me of two women I heard interviewed on NPR in the months after the 9/11 terrorist attack. They were from the Champaign-Urbana area of Illinois. When the interviewer asked them how the attacks on New York and D.C. affected them, they expressed concern that they might be next. "We're so close to the University of Illinois," they said. "And that could easily be a target."

I also remember receiving forwarded emails from friends in Salt Lake, convinced that al Qaeda's next target was the bobsled run for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

I remember as a kid thinking that a city had really come into its own when it got its own Hard Rock Cafe. A few years ago it was having a Frank Gehry building. Now, in a kind of perverse way, it's finding reasons radical jihadis should bomb you.

Coley Porter

Today, someone I work with made a reference to Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

But they said "Coley Porter." Twice.

I'm not a Crispin worshipper. But how can you work in this industry and mispronounce that name?

That's like saying you're going to search for something on Glibble.

Childhood terrors, and other gifts I've given my children

Yesterday, with a home full of sick kids, we turned on the TV, and I decided to introduce the kids to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. We put in the DVD of the George C. Scott version – which I had never seen – and sat down for a couple hours of edifying holiday mirth and merriment.

We ended up with kids who were too afraid to sleep alone, plagued by visions of Jacob Morley.

Thanks a lot, Chuck.