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November 9, 2005
Socialists fiddle while the "banlieues"
burn..
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Breakfast this morning
with the Anglo-American Press Association who hosted Socialist
Jack Lang, Minister of Culture under President François
Mitterrand and a front runner in the upcoming Presidential elections. |
Lang is 69 but you'd never guess it.
Someone said he looks like " Detective Lang " with
his open collar blue shirt, dark blazer, blow dried hair, and
gorgeous tan. I mean, this guy looks healthy (I leave speculations
on face lifts to others and besides, if he had one and those
are the results, I'm going to ask him the name of his doctor).
Coming as it did right smack in the midst
of the worst rioting this country has seen since May 1968, naturally
the questions turned mainly around what the Socialists thought
about the riots and what they'd do about the problems in the
" cités " once they're in power. Oh yes, and
did the the Socialists share the responsibility for the failure
of both left and right governments in taking care of the problems
in these grim urban outposts surrounding Paris ? " Not at
all ", said Lang who points out that everything the left
set up to improve life in these suburbs community police,
social centers, special employment conditions for young people,
etc. was taken away by the right.
Although these measures are to the credit
of the Socialists, the Socialist Party is not the big fuzzy warm-hearted
woolly defender it would like itself to be, and if problems in
the housing projects have festered for years, it's their problem
as well. When you think that the projects were built in the late
1950s and these problems have been growing since then, you might
just ask yourself why there are only a handful of representatives
from the projects in the Socialist Party and why the ones that
are there are tokens.
Lang says he and his Party are going to remedy
this in the coming months. I hope so - but I wouldn't hold my
breath.
The Right isn't any better. When Interior
Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said he'd clean out the projects with
a " karcher " " an industrial cleaning tool "
and called certain inhabitants " scum ", he was literally
pouring fuel on the fire.
And in spite of promises from both the Right
and the Left, I'm not sure either will be able to come up with
the solutions. Don't forget that 75 per cent of the French people
think their politicians are out of touch with reality. And that
the overwhelming majority of French politicians are old, white
men.
France isn't going to have a government of
color for a long time to come if things continue as they are.
Something's got to give and fast.
How long will it be before the " banlieues
" burn again ?
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October 6, 2005
When in Paris, Eat Japanese
! In Which Our Longtime Resident Chooses Sushi Over Chèvre
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The French are up in arms
about the high cost of living, as well they should be but
it hasn't stopped them from frequenting restaurants and cafés
in droves and curiously, hasn't resulted in a move to ask for
more for their buck. |
In a country that is so obsessed with
food and has so much good fare, I'm surprised to see how undiscrimating
and undemanding French diners can be. I would think they would
turn up their collective noses at the sight of brown, wilted
lettuce. Mais non ! Not to mention their benign acceptance of
the ubiquitous and expensive " salade de chèvre ".
I personally love goat cheese and I love lettuce
and I love " pain Poliane " or any other good, hearty,
made with love bread. Sadly, most of the time, these salads are
dreary assortments of mediocre cheese placed on a slice or two
of plain white bread (well, at least it's not Wonder Bread) accompanied
by a few limp lettuce leaves.
Happily, good ones exist. Way off the tourist
track in the funky Menilmontant district, I was served a tasty
and abundant " salade de chèvre " complete with
well-chosen goat cheese placed on delicious chewy Poilane type
bread and surrounded by fresh lettuce, tasty tomatoes, pine nuts
and bacon. No comparison to the totally dry and outrageously
expensive " salade de chèvre " I was served
for lunch the previous day at Les Deux Magots, That one was the
nadir of the genre: bread so hard I could hardly cut it without
huge pieces flying all over the restaurant, goat cheese with
no taste, and a few miserable pieces of greenery for the effect.
For 12 euros.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not a foodie (hate
that word can anyone out there find a better one ?) who's
switched culinary allegiances from France to Spain. I still think
French food is marvelous and nothing can beat it when it's top.
Unfortunately, middle range meals, the things people eat for
lunch every day in brasseries, tend to be uneven.
So to be sure I get a delicious lunch that
hits the spot when out and around in Paris, I've gone Japanese,
especially when I'm near the avenue de l'Opéra. The rue
Sainte Anne, running parallel to it, is Japanese-land, not just
restaurants, but hairdressers, bookstores, and food shops. Most
of the restaurants are hole in the wall. Some are better than
others but in my wanderings, I've rarely gone wrong. Basically,
what I've discovered is that for 8 euros (compared to our 12
euro goat salad) you can get a whopping bowl of soup composed
of homemade noodles and fresh vegetables and broth. It's an entire
meal : hot, healthy, and filling. Plus, when you get up from
the table, you don't feel like killing the owner either because
you're still hungry or you're bankrupt.
What more can one ask ?
All this being said, I live in France permanently
and I can and do have French food all the time. A suggestion
to tourists who, after all, come to France for French food :
check out what other people have on their plates and if it looks
good, ask what it is and order it. A good and interesting
- way not to go wrong unless, of course, they're eating
sweetbreads or the head of a calf or some exotic specialty you
don't want on your plate or in your stomach. In that case, go
for an omelette, a croque monsieur (beware of the croque madame
it's got an egg on top of it), or a good old " sandwich
jambon ". Rarely do you see a major screw-up on that tried
but true triangle.
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October 7, 2005
Just Another Long, Hard Day
in Paris : Tea tasting on the rue du Cherche Midi, a bistro lunch
near the Bastille, and some comments on Paris's polluted air
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I didn't realize that tea
tasting is as serious as wine tasting until I strolled into Le
Palais des Thés tea shop on the rue du Cherche Midi. It's
a lovely shop with efficient, patient salespeople dressed in
brown (like tea ?). |
The tea of the day was " Margaret's
Hope ". A beautiful name and a good tea but the salesman
(clever little fellow) assured me there was better. Which is
how I ended up with a little sachet of Darjeeling named "
Puttabong " which cost the price of a pair of shoes. OK,
I'm kidding but we're definitely not talking Twining teabags
here. For the price, though, you do get a colorful description
and instructions as to how long to steep your tea. My Puttabong,
I read, is " An exceptional, very tippy plucking, producing
a very pleasing balance between floral, fruity, almond and vanilla
flowers along with a fresh plants note, very long in the mouth
".
Tippy plucking ? I think they need some translating services.
The French is much better or, at least, it sounds better because
it's in French : " Cuillette exceptionnelle, très
riche en bourgeons. Superbe équilibre des notes florales,
fruitées, amandées-vanillées associées
à une note végetale fraîche, très
longue en bouche. " Now we're talking !
The tea buying jaunt occurred while I was
waiting for a congenitally late friend to arrive. When she finally
did, in her car and not by metro as I had thought, we took off
and went looking for a place to park so we could have a light
salad in the neighborhood. It was not to be - no available places
in the street and all the parking lots were too far away. We
headed East toward the Bastille and found a parking space right
in front of a little bistro on the rue de la Roquette where I
tucked into a " steak tartare " and my friend feasted
on " magret de canard " and sinfully delicious potatoes
sautéed in goose fat. And we accompanied it with a pichet
of the house red. Well, hey, it was a hard morning with all that
tea tasting and driving. We deserved our break !
Actually, we can thank Paris Mayor Bertrand
Delanoe for that 3-course lunch stop. He's opened up the streets
of Paris to buses and bicycles but has made it a difficult city
to drive and park in so I, for one, eat wherever I can find a
parking place !
I do wish he'd go all the way and just purely
and simply ban cars from the center of Paris. It would certainly
help the pollution. Airparif, the air monitoring agency of the
city of Paris, recently published some edifying figures on pollution
in Paris. They show, not surprisingly, that the Boulevard Saint
Germain is mega polluted, as is the rue Belgrand, right smack
in my neighborhood in the east of Paris.
I personally didn't need the survey to tell
me what I already know and see and smell. So, Bertarnd,
if you're reading these lines, take a tip : ban those cars and
rachet up the tramway lines.
Merci d'avance !
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October 8
Sourpuss Parisians ! Get A Life
Go to Bhutan !
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I love week-ends in Paris.
Why take to the roads with all the crazy, rushed, hassled people
driving like mad to get out of Paris when you can stay in it
? |
Of course I know the answer to the question
: Most of those people a) have children and prefer a spacious
house in the country than a confined apartment in town and b)
after working all week long, want to go somewhere where they
can get rid of their stress - even if getting there and coming
back in bumper to bumper traffic ruins the effect.
This week-end was about as typically Parisian
as you can get. On Saturday I braved the crowds on the rue St.
Placide near the luxury department store, Le Bon Marché,
to check out this year's fashions in shoes and clothes (not bad
if you like orange and chocolate brown and flouncy skirts and
cowboy boots). I don't usually shop on Saturday (let's correct
that one I NEVER shop on Saturday if I can help it) but
I had to run an errand in the area et voilà.
So why am I talking about " Sourpuss
Parisians ". Aren't they all relaxed and gay and having
the best old time ?
No. Or it sure doesn't look like it to me.
And that's something I really can't figure
out about this town. You take a nation of people, most of whom
have jobs ( I know, I know the unemployment rate is 10
per cent but I don't think the people shopping on the rue St.
Placide fall into that category), all of whom benefit from splendid
health care, a 35 hour work week, 8 weeks of vacation and a number
of other perks and advantages we Americans can only dream about
and they manage to look as if their best friend had just
died. How do they do it ? How can they live in a country that
is so prosperous (France ranks fifth in terms of world economic
power) and complain so much and look so down in the mouth ? Are
things really that bad ?
Maybe they should take some lessons from Bhutan.
In 1972 the king of this small Himalayan nation decided to focus,
not on GNP, but on GNH, Gross National Happiness. Sound crazy
? Maybe not. At a recent meeting in Nova Scotia, 400 experts
gathered to discuss the elusive question : what is happiness
?
One fellow, a senior official in the Bhutanese
Ministry of Education, summed up what happiness is not : "
There is no necessary relationship between the level of possession
and the level of well-being, " he said.
Which brings me back to the rue St. Placide.
Maybe those hectic, harried, unsmiling shoppers should take to
the country for the week-end after all. A bit of fresh air, green
grass, and quiet living might make them, well.happier.
Or, better still, maybe those Supreme Shoppers
should catch the next plane to Bhutan. They might just come back
and give France a sorely needed dose of GNH.
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We moved on to the rue Mouffetard on a pilgrimage
to number 104 where I lived in a small studio in an ancient building
in my student days. Quite by coincidence, when we were looking
to buy a studio a few years ago as an investment, an ad in "
Le Figaro " described a place on the rue Mouffetard that
sounded remarkably like the one I'd lived in. So remarkably alike
that I called to inquire and found that it WAS the studio I'd
rented as a poor student.
What a turn of the wheel it would be to buy it some thirty years
later and have my son live in it, I thought. That was until I
re-visited it and looked at it with the eyes of a future "
propriétaire ". Last floor. Not many other apartments.
Repairs to be done in the hallway. No concierge. None of this
was major, of course. I was just looking for excuses not to re-live
my past. We ended up buying a studio on the 9th floor of a modern
building in the trendy rue St. Maur in the 11th. It's bigger,
quieter, less expensive, has a better floor plan, and is a good
investment. But I still get a funny feeling when I walk down
the rue Mouffetard and look up at the third floor window of "
my " studio.
How I love the fifth arrondissement. I'd forgotten
how many institutions of higher learning and religious congregations
are concentrated in just a few streets. And coming from my neighborhood
which is multiethnic and crowded and litter strewn, I'm always
amazed at how few people are on the streets and how quiet and
clean it is. No wonder the fifth is one of the most expensive
places to live in Paris !
One last stop : the Institut Curie which was
holding an Open House. We peered at slides showing cells and
watched the young scientists and researchers greeting visitors
and explaining their work. Our modest contribution to the Institute's
cancer research came in the form of an orange tinted rose plant
named " Marie Curie ". It's waiting outside to be planted
and we hope it will take to our garden in the east of Paris,
which, unlike the streets around us, is quiet, clean, calm and
not litter strewn !
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Monday, October 10
The French Are Smarter than
their Politicians - Out with the Old, In with the Young, Women,
and People of Color !
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I always thought the French
were smarter than their politicians. A poll published in this
morning's newspaper proved me right. It showed that an astounding
85 per cent of the French think that their politicians "
are mostly concerned about their careers " as opposed to
only 19 per cent who say that they " are aware of the preoccupations
of their fellow citizens " |
In answer to the question : " Do
you have a good or bad opinion of. ?" categories ranging
from nurses to teachers to journalists to union leaders and politicians,
the politicians came in last, with 71 per cent of the respondents
saying they had a bad image of them as opposed to 97 per
cent who have a good image of nurses ! "
And to the question " Among those elected
to the Parliament, for example, would you personally prefer more
women, more young people, more people from immigrant populations
? ", the answer was a resounding 89 percent for more women,
84 per cent for more younger people, and 55 per cent for people
from immigrant populations. Considering the scandalous macho
reaction politicians had to Socialist Party leader Segolene Royal's
tentative announcement to run for President in 2007 (see my October
Letter From Paris, www.paris.org/Kiosque), this was a heartening
sign. And the fact that one out of two French persons would like
to see a black, an Arab, an Oriental in politics isn't bad either,
considering that there are so few now you can count them on two
hands (or maybe one). Maybe the U.S. could lead the way on this,
by electing a woman or a black as President. Food for thought.
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October 20
The Village Voice, an American
Island in the Heart of Paris, Paris
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I love this store so much
I try not to go there too often. If I did, I'd end up buying
even more books than I already have and there'd be no room to
move. |
But I was happy to go hear my friends
David Downie and Alison Harris, a writer-photographer couple,
talk about David's just published collection of essays about
Paris illustrated by Alison's superb black and white photos.
The book is called " Paris, Paris Journey Into the
City of Light " and if you love Paris, it's a must. David's
writing is entertaining and erudite and Alison's unusual views
of Paris and Parisians perfectly complement his prose
I'm not the only one to think the book is
fabulous : Diane Johnson, author of " Le Divorce ",
wrote the foreward to it and travel writer Jan Morris called
it " perhaps the most evocative American book about Paris
since A Movable Feast. "
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Sunday, October 23
Philippe vanishes during a Paris
bike ride
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A beautiful day, a scrumptious
day in Paris. Get out the bikes ! Off to the Canal de l'Ourcq
starting at the Parc de la Villette, the home of the former Paris
slaughterhouses which was transformed into an urban park some
twenty years ago and just keeps getting better. |
From our place in the 20th, we ride up
the rue des Pyrénees past the boulangerie, boucherie,
fromagerie, all of which are buzzing hives of activity
on this lovely Sunday, skirt the Parc de Buttes Chaumont, and
continue on past the kosher foodstores on the rue Manin to La
Villette.
Easy.
Especially when you stay together.
Unfortunately, my husband in his enthusiasm
ran a couple of red lights (strictly against the law there's
a 90 euro fine) while I stopped for them. I was looking forward
to catching up with him to read him the riot act about the danger
of going through lights and the 90 euro fine butno trace of him.
He and the cell phone, money, and keys
to the house - had disappeared. Poof, no more Philippe !
I headed on to the Canal de l'Ourcq, figuring
we'd surely meet at the entrance to the Parc de la Villette.
Still no Philippe.
I pedalled on along the Canal a good ways
thinking I'd see him there.
Still no Philippe.
I headed back home ( a good thirty minutes)
and on the way mulled over grim thoughts : perhaps he'd been
crushed by a car or a bus or had a massive coronary - or
got arrested by the cops for running the red lights and was taken
to the police station where they were torturing him in a small
rat-infested cell.
With these black pensées in
mind, I stopped off at the shop run by a Kurdish fellow who does
some of my sewing repairs and asked him if I could use the phone.
Yes, I could, and no, still no Philippe.
I thanked my Kurdish friend and pedalled on
home. I buzzed our apartment. No answer. As I was buzzing again,
I saw my better half running toward me, a look of relief on his
face.
" I was just calling the police ! Where
were you ? "
" And YOU ? "
We fell into each other's arms (because even
after 32 years of marriage, we're still very glad to be with
each other), took the car, re-traced our trail, and discovered
that I'd gone in one direction and he'd gone in another.
In the future, we decided we'd EACH take a
cell phone, money, identification. We'd decide on a meeting point
should we get separated. But we'd do everything to stick together.
Oh yes - and the Vanishing Philippe has solemnly
sweared not to run any more red lights.
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Monday, October 24
The joys of beeing a "co-propriétaire"
or a cement mixer in the bedroom
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" Never say never
". I reminded myself of that adage this morning when I was
ripped out of a sound sleep at 7 am by a cement mixer plowing
through my bedroom. |
I rubbed my eyes, stared at the alarm,
emitted an unprintable word, and turned over and tried to go
back to sleep. But the cement mixer kept churning and vibrating.
Every once in while it would stop and I would think it was over.
But minutes later, the sound started again.
I knew what the sound was. It wasn't a cement
mixer (or a 747). It was the washing machine of one of my neighbors
but which one ? Ever since we moved to this apartment three
years ago, I've been trying to identify the perpetrator.
This morning I grabbed my robe, opened the
shutters, and rushed outside to see who on earth was up at what
for me is an ungodly hour (especially for machines). Ah, ha !
My sleuthing paid off I now have three new suspects.
So why don't I go see them instead of writing
this in " Paris Toast " ? That's where the " never
say never " comes in. Years ago I vowed that there's one
thing I would NEVER do : be a co-owner in an apartment building.
Right. And now I am one.
Which is why I haven't stalked down and strangled
the owner of the Mad Machine. Because I make noise too, with
my machines, my phone calls, my loud conversations, my dinner
parties. If it turns out that the Mad Machine owner is my upstairs
neighbor with whom I get along swimmingly, I wouldn't want to
get into a " your machine is too loud ", " yes,
but I can't sleep at night because you and your husband are talking
in his study which is right undernearth my bedroom. "
It's all part of being a co-owner.
Never say never.
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Sunday, October 9
Open House at the Institut Curie,
and Falling in Love Again with the Fifth Arrondissement
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I slightly revised my harsh
judgment of the Parisians on Sunday, a beautiful sunshiny fall
day. We met friends for brunch at Les Deux Magots. How Parisian
can you get ? Actually we never do brunch, a concept my Parisian
husband's French brain and French stomach has not yet processed,
and we rarely go to Les Deux Magots so the change of scene was
fun and enlightening. Not only that, but I'd forgotten that a
" dame pipi " still lurks down there in the basement
toilets to make you feel guilty if you don't give her a "
sou ". I did. She smiled. See how simple it is to make someone
happy ? |
From there, we went on an impromptu outing
to St. Sulpice, that capacious light-filled Delacroix decorated
17th century church immortalized by the Da Vinci Code. Fed up
with visitors making a beeline to a certain " P " and
an " S " inscribed in stone, the church elders have
posted a typed note in French and English that politely and firmly
states there's not one word of truth in what Brown wrote about
the meaning of those initials. I personally am not disturbed
by this controversy but then I'm probably one of the few people
in this world who couldn't get through the book
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