June 2025 Newsletter

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Volume 9, Number 5, June, 2025

Dear Friend,

You might remember the last newsletter ended with, “Donna and I did something people in Plobien have been doing the last few years that until now we’ve disdained.”

The story begins with Covid, which seems to be the beginning and end of everything. For two years, 2020 and 2021, Donna and I didn’t go to France (or New York, or anywhere beyond California.) We returned to Brittany in 2022.

I drove into Plobien taking my usual route and immediately spotted an addition to the village square. Not the square itself, which has been paved and turned into a parking lot, but facing the square, church, and Mairie, in front of the public restroom, next to the river/canal and the World War I statue of Le Poilu lingered a brownish, trying-to-hide-or-fit-in, five-foot-tall vending machine.



On the face of it, this wasn’t surprising. French people like new gadgets and technology, modernism, and the avant-garde, a French phrase, after all. It’s another of those French paradoxes: a most-of-the-time conservative people who prefer the new, though vending machines themselves are not new. In 215 BCE—2000 years before Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker—Hero of Alexandria invented a coin activated device that dispensed holy water; in 1867, Simeon Denham invented a machine that dispensed stamps; in 1883, Percival Everett made the first modern vending machine and sold envelopes and postcards. Horn and Hardart’s Automat opened in New York City in 1912. No, it isn’t the vending machine that’s new, it’s what’s in it: baguettes.

I’ve seen a vending machine that sells fresh eggs by the dozen and half dozen in the parking lot of the Jack in the Box like drive-through boulangerie in Loscoat. On a walk in the countryside of Auvers-sur-Oise, after visiting the Van Gogh brothers’ graves, Donna and I saw a vending machine selling single heads of broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower, cabbage, and bunches of cherry tomatoes. Villages in Brittany and throughout France have pizza vending machines that sell six, ten, and fourteen different kinds of pizza 24/7. I understand, I really do: ready access, no lines, availability, and accommodation—But a baguette! A symbol of France, like the Eiffel Tower! A national treasure, like Notre Dame! UNESCO listed, defined, and protected! Photo-immortalized by Elliott Erwitt. Wars have started over them, and the lack of them, awards given for them… THIS in a vending machine—Oh, my!

For three years Donna and I, newcomers who prefer the old (our own paradox) avoided and disdained this intrusion. Then, on a walk in the countryside, Sharon told us she used the machine once when the boulangeries were closed, and the bread wasn’t bad. “Pas mal”, she said, Not bad, which French people say when they mean something is terrific, the best ever, and they want to be understated funny, or it is good, but not that good, which would be, “Bon”.

Not sure which connotation Sharon meant, Donna and I decided—individually and together, on our own free wills—to go to the Machine of Knowledge and bite the proverbial apple.

At one o’clock on a sunny Sunday afternoon, when all real French people are eating their four-hour family dinners and the bar across from the square is closed (so no one will see us), Donna and I walked along the river/canal tow path, under the viaduct, a mile into town. On the way, I thought about other forays with French technology, like getting connected to the internet (which took weeks) and paying an electric bill online (which never happened), and expect difficulties and calamities comparable to Shackleton’s, or worse….

Turns out the machine is simple and easy to use. There’s a coin slot for actual money and a touch screen for virtual money, as in tapping a credit or debit card to pay. There’s a green button to start the process, a silver button to stop/annul, and another green button for I don’t know what. Like a Coke machine, the machine houses the product. Unlike the pizza machines, it doesn’t make the product. A boulanger artisan from a nearby village fills the machine, but unlike in the U.S. when a public bathroom is cleaned or an elevator’s safety examined, there is no timesheet to tell me when the machine was filled and how often, two things I’d like to know. Most importantly, though, I want to know how the baguette tastes. That’s why we’re here: is it as good or better than the always fresh, sometimes warm, crunchy crust with squashy interior baguette from the two (used to be four) boulangeries in Loscoat?

I put a two-euro coin in the slot for money, push one of the green buttons, and the machine, like giving birth, pushes the head of the baguette against a door that says ici—here—above it.

I hear a familiar tinkle—the sound of money—and take my half euro change from another slot in the machine. One euro fifty—a few centimes more than at the boulangerie; two, three, and four times the price of the air they call bread at the supermarché—the price of convenience and compromise.

On the walk back to the house we each tear a chunk of baguette, chew, and confirm Sharon’s meaning: pas mal, not bon. It’s dry, good for croutons, dunking in coffee, and feeding the goats in the park across the road from the house. But even if it was as good as the boulangerie’s, I’d miss seeing the welcoming women behind the counter, hearing their, “Bonjour,” and ogling—and occasionally buying—an almond croissant, pain au chocolat or raisin, tarte aux fraises or abricots, or a brioche.

Now, Donna and I can say been there, done that, and probably not again. We know where we are and are not buying our daily bread, and you, dear reader, armed with our experience and your new knowledge can decide where you buy yours.

P.S. You may or may not know about this or care, but instead of you going to maBaguette, maBaguette may be coming to--for!--you.... AJ, my amazing techie guru friend, the fellow who makes sure you get your Substack, Mailchimp, and Facebook newsletters found the link below. Check it out and tell your local baker to pay attention--Attention!--the Amazoning of bread is here: https://mabaguette.com/bread-vending-machines/

News about I Am Finally, Finally French, My Accidental Life in Brittany

  • Jane Bertch (author of The French Ingredient: Making a Life in Paris One Lesson at a Time), Craig Carlson (author of Pancakes in Paris and Let Them Eat Pancakes), Adrian Leeds (author and publisher of Adrian Leeds Nouvellettres ®, and #1 French agent on HGTV’s House Hunters International), Leonard Pitt (author of Walks Through a Lost Paris: A Journey into the Heart of Historic Paris, Paris Postcards, and Paris, a Journey Through Time), and Linda Witt (Vice President of the Fédération des Alliances Françaises USA) have generously agreed to write blurbs for the book jacket.

  • Janet Hulstrand (author of Demystifying the French and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France) has been assigned to review the book for France Today, the largest U.S. circulation magazine about life and living in France.

  • Terrance Gelenter, author, producer of The Paris Insider and Your American Friend in Paris, is going to review the book on his blog and online magazine;

  • The official publication date of the book is October 28, 2025. Pre-Order a copy HERE.

  • On November 4, Charlottesville, Virginia chapter of Alliance Française will host a zoom conversation book launch;

  • On December 4, Napa, California chapter of Alliance Française will host a conversation at Bookmine bookstore in Napa;

  • May, 2026 (date TBA) I’ve been invited to a ‘Meet the Author’ event at the Nice book fair in Nice, France;

  • June, 2026 (date TBA) I have been invited to the Book Fair in Budapest, Hungary, the city where my grandparents lived and my father was born.

Meanwhile, don’t forget the contest I wrote about in the last newsletter: if you buy the book, review it on Amazon and/or Goodreads, and send me the review—good, bad or indifferent—by December 6, your name will be placed in a hat and you will be eligible for one of four prizes: First prize, a freebie month’s vacation at the house in Plobien; second prize, three week’s stay; third prize, two week’s stay, and fourth prize, one week. All at a time of your choosing—assuming someone else isn’t already there.

Please, feel free to share this newsletter with anyone. If you’d like to read previous newsletters, they are available on my website and on Substack. Thank you.

Yours Sincerely,

Mark


Copyright © 2025 Mark Greenside
Illustration by Kim Thoman

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