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One of the books I brought to read was a journal I kept during my first visit.  According to the journal, I arrived with only 20 British pounds and no job.  I did, however, have Ernest Hemingway`s A Moveable Feast, which enthused about being young, poor, and happy in Paris.

I expected to be constantly questioned about Barack Obama this week, but he`s come up less often than I would have thought.  To be sure, the bookstores prominently display books about his election with titles like La Victoire Historique and Les Secrets dùne Victoire.  But there`s been surprisingly little quizzing about him, which has made me wonder if we`ve been a little too obsessed with the significance of Obama`s victory back in the US.

The economic crisis, by contrast, has come up constantly, and I find myself thinking about it at odd times.  Walking down the Champs dÈlysses, which is decorated with beautiful violet lights for Christmas, I wondered how much the ritzy stores (and a Peugeot showroom, where a car with gull wing doors was surrounded by tourists taking pictures) have been affected by the crisis.  This morning at the Louvre, as I looked at an angel hovering above the crucified Christ in a Giotto painting, his hands covering his face in dismay, it occurred to me that I`ve seen that same expression on the faces of the beleaguered stock traders on the front page of the newspaper every few days this fall.

In a strange way, the crisis may do more than anything else (an exciting new president, a new foreign policy) to create a renewed sense of common, international bonds.  At least if it doesn`t spur a round of protectionism-- which so far, thankfully, it hasn`t.

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