The Other Paris, by the Kingston based author and teacher Luc Sante, charts the underground history of that city that's ended up on everyone's minds this past week. It gives a short history of the Bataclan concert hall in its early days as a place where classes mixed for entertainment, and speaks much of the neighborhood it's part of... in which my wife and nine year old son spent a week this past summer.

Sante's book is a lament for the past, but not in ways we would normally think of these days. It speaks about past times when people made their livings however they could, and had some form of dignity in their everyday lives whether they were ragpickers or petty thieves, letter writers plying their trade on the streets or acrobats plying their trade wherever. He looks to what life was like before it became self-conscious, ostentatiously altruistic, and controlling. Back before celebrity and the endless politicization of everything.

Luc says he's been asked to write op eds constantly since last Friday's shootings in Paris. But he can't, he adds. What he has to say about Paris is in his book, with its lists of past (and continuing) acts of violence, tragedy, and a constant human push to make things better. Life grows from its challenges, he seems to say.

Just as we've been thinking about his Paris, what we loved about that city last summer, and the way in which recent reactions betray ugly sides of today's discourse, we've also been thinking about how difficult real reportage on what's happening on American campuses has been these past few weeks. It's one thing to read angry denunciations from those who lived through student riots of the 1960s and 1970s, another to be in dialogue with second cousins at Mizzou or Ithaca College or other involved campuses.

Just as it's one thing to hear people saying we should ban all Syrian refugees because we can't tell the good ones from the bad, and another to talk to my friends' twelve year old son about his commute across a silenced, grieving Paris vowing to get back to normal this past Monday.

I guess it's normal for hypercharged politicos to use the Paris tragedy to scream at our president, and all those who shy away from involving the word "Islam" with terrorism. And yes, we've heard answers involving the sins of the Inquisition, or ways in which the word "Christian" entered into some of the messes radical sects and sordid priests have gotten into over the last half century. But we also find it heroic when our very adult Commander in Chief calls out those riling fears and reminding everyone of us here that reaching out to help others remains a patriotic impulse, and something we should be proud of.

We also think it's normal, and healthy, for students to question authority, especially as a means of moving beyond the racism they still see prevalent in their world. Just as it's become normal for older generations to poo poo the energy, and yearning for better futures, that our young have always had. Does it get us anywhere to insult students and their teachers? Maybe another demographic made to feel un-American, unwanted in the corridors of power these days.

Just as all those Syrian for now have been denigrated because someone found one of their passports in the carnage outside of the Bataclan Concert Hall and no one's figured out yet whether it was a plant meant to sow more seeds of discord or what. Didn't anyone stop to read about the big plans that had gotten underway to help rebuild the once-great city of Detroit with new refugees?

As usual, it all adds up to a lot to think about as we line up our thanks for our great American holiday next Thursday. Including who else we'd invite to our table these days, metaphorically and realistically. And whether we're ready to listen, finally, to all prayers, both young and old, both like ours and not.

We think it'll be a fine feast, as always, but maybe also a deeper one, as needed.

Note: The Shawangunk Journal will not publish the week of Thanksgiving, November 26, 2015. Our next issue will be December 3, 2015. Happy Thanksgiving.