Freedom, France and all that jazz

I am home now, processing what has happened in our country. But my last week spent in France, I was in Paris, the cherry on the sundae, the crescendo of a wonderful visit.
One day I walked past the Bataclan on Boulevard Voltaire.
It was a year ago this week that 89 people were killed in the legendary theater and rock-music venue. While I stood on the Paris street, pondering that unspeakable horror, a woman and her child stepped around me and quickly, matter-of-factly positioned flowers on the security fence that still surrounds the melon-colored site. Older bouquets drooped in the autumn sun.
The name "Bataclan" refers to an operetta by Jacques Offenbach, but it also is a pun on the French expression "tout le bataclan," or "all that jazz." Everyone from Buffalo Bill in 1892 to Jerry Lee Lewis to Snoop Dogg has performed at the Bataclan.
Despite the bizarre and forlorn appearance of the circus-y crime scene of orange, yellow and blue, all around the closed theater there is typical and lively street life. Nearby bistros and restaurants were packed the day I visited. Just across the boulevard a street sale, a French "brocante," was drawing a big crowd, the impulse to clear out one's closets and attics apparently being universal.
Paris friends who live a few blocks away reassured me later that the theater will reopen soon; a concert, they said, is scheduled this month, this week, one year and one day after the attack. Parisians take great pride in the fact that terrorists are incapable of changing the delightful Parisian way of life. The best revenge is continuing to live well.
It is a lesson we should take from the French. Terrorists and madmen win only when we allow them to change our ways, when they send us scuttling to cover, or to vote for political rascals all too willing to trade on intolerance and fear. That's when they really win.
Life goes on after the most horrendous and murderous acts, after wars, after disastrous elections. At times, we almost wish it would not, but life goes on. Always.
To limp to the sidelines is a temptation, but not the answer. Not as long as there is good music, good company, good books, beautiful sights and, well, a pulse. Did I mention good people? All that jazz.
So raise a glass to the Bataclan, a renovation that had to happen. The French knew that.
And while you're toasting, tip one to the United States, a country that withstood a bloody civil war, not to mention any number of involvements elsewhere that drained our best and youngest. This country may be young, but it's been around the block a few times. The good will rise again.
I am not ready to believe that most of us think all Muslims and Mexicans evil, women sex vessels, the disabled objects of ridicule, the Constitution a trifle, the highest office in the land a step up from "Survivor." Are you?
And if you say that comparing lost lives to a lost election is a reach, I'd only remind you that history is full of examples of elections that portended deaths of any number of innocent citizens. Those are extreme examples, true, but at our mental fingertips nonetheless.
I'm proud that music will play soon at the Bataclan, where narrow minds tried to silence it. And here, election Tuesday was not the day the music died. Just another verse in a long song called "freedom."