Too Big to Fail

I've been here ever since the serious part of the American primary season began and it hasn't taken long (I'd say 5 minutes on average) for long-term expats and new French friends to ask me, in essence, what the heck is going on with Donald Trump?  My initial reaction has been to say that (a) I am as astonished by Trump's popularity and durability as they are and (b) he has a serious chance of winning the White House.  The shock experienced by the politically engaged population here has led me to understand that not just the Wall Street banks, but the United States itself is too big to fail.  French people (and I suspect most Europeans) may not agree with our policies (most notably George W. Bush's war in Iraq) but they expect the United States to be a serious, dignified, and intelligent leader in world affairs.  Somehow, Donald Trump fails the test in the opinion of all with whom I've conversed.

Since I'm trying to read as little English as possible, I've forsaken the International New York Times, but am suffering from such a US news blackout that I finally followed a friend's advice and signed up for the English newspaper The Guardian on line (it's fabulous and free).  There I found an interesting analysis of the situation that is worth your consideration:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/08/angry-white-men-love-donald-trump.

The attacks in Brussels have led to another conclusion:  the European project itself is too big to fail but is facing enormous challenges.  I am coming to agree with many that the expansion of the European Union into Eastern Europe (the former Soviet fiefdoms) was a mistake.  It put Russia on the defensive and added to the EU too many states with insufficient fluency in democracy to be reliable partners and/or insufficient transparency (read: lack of corruption) to create modern economies.  The economic meltdown of the so-called 'debtor' nations like Greece remains a serious threat.  But terrorism and the refugee crisis are challenging the European structure even more.   For example, the Brussels attacks have let to a staggering amount of finger-pointing, in spite of the extraordinary coordination of the French and Belgian security forces in capturing the missing French bomber Salah Abdeslam, also implicated in the Brussels attacks.  

It is clear that nationalism is on the rise everywhere in Europe.    On the security front, there has not been enough information sharing, nor enough common purpose and now the equivalents of Donald Trump are rising with their partisans in countries all over Europe.  Some member states from the former Eastern block of the Soviet Union are seeing truly neo-Nazi parties coming to the fore and the right in more benign forms is resurgent elsewhere. The European Union seems to have asked too much of, and delivered too little to, its member states.  The problem, of course, is that on both sides of the Atlantic, we're all in it together at this point, like it or not.

Unhappily, the timing of the attacks in Brussels prevented me from going to visit my dear friends Ellen Wallach and Tom Darden, who were to be there on their way from Amsterdam to visit Ellen's daughter and her family in Luxembourg.  But there has been no other lasting impact in Paris, other than the heightened security one sees everywhere.  In France, it is polite to establish eye contact and nod one's head or say 'bonjour' when encountering people on the street, but the armed men I see around the city avoid eye contact and seem constantly on alert.  They take me in, decide I'm not worth worrying about, and go on to scan the street and the rooftops for somebody who might be real trouble.  It is both reassuring and disconcerting.

In the meantime, I've had some wonderful experiences near to home.  I went to the remodeled Picasso Museum to see the exhibit of Picasso sculptures that premiered at MOMA to much acclaim last year.  I particularly liked some of the smaller pieces, like these two.

And I just loved this drawing.

The newly refurbished museum is definitely a cut above the older version as the remodeling has revealed some of the beautiful features of the structure itself, but it remains a building in which it is very difficult to operate an art museum -- one is constantly getting lost.

The Impressionists in Normandy

Not long after, I saw a wonderful exhibit at the Musée Jacquemart-André titled "The Impressionists in Normandy".  It was absolutely beautiful -- the light so different from the paintings done in the south of France.  The museum is in an old mansion and the dining room is particularly lovely for lunch or tea.

I also took a cooking class that was a load of fun and included making (or at least eating) a Grand Marnier Soufflé.                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                                                                   



But the greatest fun of all was a big dress-up 20th anniversary party for an organization called the Women's International Club (composed of women from throughout the world living here in Paris).  It was held in the Salon des Arts et Métiers on the Avenue d'Iéna, a really beautiful place with a superb kitchen.  I went with my friends Sharon and David Perry and had a hoot of a good time.  That's Sharon and David in the background (sorry for the shadow on David's face) and yours truly in an outfit Chris rescued from a box I'd left at home and shipped over.

And now for a vacation from my sabbatical;).  I'm off to Portugal on Tuesday where I plan to meet up with my good friend, Judy Ostrow,  another member of the Women's University Club, for a tour of Lisbon, the Douro River and a bit of Spain.  Stay tuned for more blogs.





                                                                                    

The Sweet Life

There is nothing I like better than chocolate and in the last decade or so, I've become a devotée of the dark chocolate that is so much more available in the U.S. than it once was.  Even Hershey does dark chocolate these days.

But on a delicious tour of some of the great chocolate shops in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, I discovered that we just don't know the half of it.  In spite of the renown of Belgian and Swiss chocolates in the U.S., France is really putting in a bid to become (and some would say it already is) the best country for chocolate in the world.  And they talk about it just like wine:  grand crus and paying attention to the terroir; whether or not one should mix beans (as one often mixes varieties of grapes to make wine); and so on.

Gosselin

I'll give you all the details in this report so you can follow the tour yourself when you're next in Paris.

The tour began at Gosselin, 123-125 rue Saint-Honoré.  Gosselin won the best baguette contest a year or two ago and makes a wide assortment of chocolates and pastries.  From there we walked past the Passage Vero Daudet, the oldest in Paris, which is between the rue Boulol and the rue de Jean-Jacques Rousseau.



The Coté de France chocolate shop at 25, rue de l'Opera was the next stop.  The packaging of these yummy little bon bons was particularly attractive.

Chocolates from Le Coté de France

Chocolates of Michel Cluizel

The Normandy family of Michel Cluizel is gaining quite a reputation in the chocolate world as well. The shop we visited is located at 231 rue Saint-Honoré and I understand they've opened one in New York (don't miss it there if you can't come to Paris)!

Jean-Paul Hevin

Finally, after tasting a palet d'or, a bite of opera cake, a bit of éclair, praline and ganache espolette at the successive shops we'd visited, we hauled our aching tummies to Jean-Paul Hevin at 231 rue St. Honoré where we were ushered upstairs to what I think of as one of the best kept secrets in Paris:  a tea room where one can order real hot chocolate.  This chocolate has no condensed milk in it (an essential ingredient of milk chocolate and a part of every hot chocolate one finds in the U.S.).   This chocolate comes in a chocolate pot just as it would have been served to France's aristocrats.  In their day, chocolate was only known as a liquid and often not sweetened, but spiced with cinnamon or peppers (as the Aztecs did).  And if one is an utter glutton for punishment, it is also possible to order pastries with chocolate as well.  In short, a day of wretched excess -- which is the kind I like best:).

But sweet doesn't only apply to chocolate; it can also apply to candles and just the other day, I had the chance to join a private tour of Cire Trudon, 78 rue de Seine, a candle maker whose history dates back to 1643.  In the days when ordinary candles were made from animal fat, which made them smelly, dirty and short-lived, Cire Trudon was making candles of bees wax for the royal court at Versailles and the great churches.   When Louis XIV commissioned books to be created describing the processes and tools of each of France's domestic manufactories, it was the candle-making of Cire-Trudon that was used for the book, a copy of which is still in possession of the firm and which we had a chance to see.  I found the picture of the 17th century machine that waxed the wicks particularly fascinating.

Cire-Trudon Candles

Today, Cire-Trudon is probably best known for its scented candles and we were lucky to meet the perfumer who creates the scents.  He is from Grasse, the world capital of perfume, and spoke only in French so I got just the gist of what he had to say.  They no longer make candles exclusively of bees wax because it has its own scent and doesn't mix well with other fragrances.  Today, their candles are a blend of materials (secret) and the recipes for the scents are closely guarded.  We got to smell both the candles and the scent right out of the bottle of their balsam, mint, camelia, tuberose, and odalisque scents, the latter a combination of several citrus fruits and bergamot.  It was a really extraordinary experience.  If you were to walk down the street, you might walk right by, but do stop in if you get the chance.  It is a marvelous experience:  78 rue de Seine, 75006.

Discovering the Latin Quarter

Since I've arrived, I've mostly walked the streets of Paris with my long underwear on, my head down against the wind and an umbrella obscuring most of the view but for a square of sidewalk and my feet.   Friday the 11th was a simply glorious late winter day.  Bright and sunny with a breeze that was so light you could hardly feel it but which nonetheless held definite hints of spring.  Saturday and Sunday were equally glorious, though the lion of March is breathing wintry gusts today.

Saint-Germain-des-Pré

A month ago, the walking tour I took of the Latin Quarter was fascinating but an altogether different matter as it was bitterly cold and pouring buckets.  Four people had signed up and only two, Meg and I, showed up.  We started at the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which is the site of a 6th century abbey that was located in fields outside the city wall of Paris.  The Abbey's donation of land for construction of the University of Paris in the Middle Ages led eventually to the the area becoming known as the Latin Quarter.   We then moved on to St. Sulpice, the second largest church in Paris and one of my favorites.  It sits on a lovely square with a beautiful fountain.  There's a charming little Café de la Mairie there where one can enjoy the view on a nice day (naturally these photos were taken on one such) but there was no time for such luxuries on our tour.                                                                              
          

Saint Sulpice

One of the streets running off the square in front of the church is the tiny rue Férou where a poem by Rimbaud, one of France's great 19th century writers, has been carved in a stone wall.  As one walks away from the square, the poem unfolds alongside.

Poem by Rimbaud, rue Férou

From there, we walked through the Luxembourg Gardens, passed what is now known as Sorbonne I and the Panthéon, to the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, another 6th century abbey that is now a parish church.  According to legend, St. Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, is buried there.  It is certainly the case that from the church there is a beautiful view of the tower of St. Jacques, which is located on the Right Bank.  We don't think of Paris as having hills, but there are little ones and the church sits on one of them.  The interior of this church is utterly enchanting, with its lace-like marble carvings.  How often these little gems are tucked away in little squares or down side streets and we more often than not never find them.  This was a fortunate day indeed!

Interior of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont

Settling In

The move from my temporary apartment on the rue de Solférino to rue Jacques Callot was carried out with military precision by France Homestyle on February 15.  Marie-Noël Desbordes showed up with a taxi driver in a van and a big guy on a motorcycle.  They got the 7 suitcases down in the elevator, the two largest sitting in the tiny elevator cabin in solitary splendor as the guys rushed downstairs to unload them at the other end.  Once we got all the keys sorted out, Marie-Noël and I jumped in the van and took off.  We arrived to find the guy on the motorcycle standing in the only available (and illegal) parking spot practically right at the front door.  Each suitcase was hoisted up on a shoulder and up the stairs they went.

M. Mazzoni, the proprietor, was there to greet us.  He is a debonair Italian in his late sixties or early seventies with impeccable manners, beautifully dressed and sporting brown suede shoes (a must among sartorially correct European men).  I was feeling a certain amount of embarrassment about invading his beautiful home with so many suitcases but if he was bothered he was too polite to show it.  He is also a man of considerable accomplishment, having taught law at Michigan, Boston College, the Sorbonne and I'm not sure where in Italy and he gave me his card with his two homes in Italy listed, one in Fiesole outside Florence and the other in Rome.  He wanted to show me everything, including how to take out the garbage.  We had a lovely conversation and, of course, I told him about our family's connections to the two American universities at which he'd spent some time.

My desk at the window

Then, all of a sudden, I was here all alone and the question of where to put all this stuff began to seem urgent.  Miraculously, it all fit in -- if not perfectly, then nearly so.  M. Mazzoni had purchased a small book shelf for me rather than dislocate his art books and it is a blessing to have my own spot.  Managing all the technology was less easy.  The printer here is serviceable but old (black and white and no scanning) and I soon had wires running all over this beautiful antique desk, which sits in the window, as I plugged in my two phones, an ebook, Ipad, the keyboard and mouse and the connection to the printer.

Enter Thomas, bequeathed to me by M. Mazzoni.  Thomas is a giant young Polish guy who has lived in France since he was about 5 and speaks French at the speed of a flying bullet.  He's been doing the IT work for M. Mazzoni for years and the next thing I knew, he had set up my Ipad and cell phone service, and pulled the printer out of the cabinet, put it up on a shelf, moved some books around and generally remade the space so that there are a minimum of wires in view, the printer is easily accessible and tout va bien, as they say here.  I love sitting in the light of the window as I write this to you.  It is especially lovely in the afternoon.

I quickly retired the toaster to the top of the tall cabinet in the kitchen and set out to buy a microwave.  In the heart of Paris, one does this on foot.  So I journeyed to the nearest D'Arty (the place to shop for all sorts of appliances) at the rue de Rivoli and found a cunning little thing for only €34 (less than $40) that would fit on top of the refrigerator, but of course they didn't have it in stock.  Instead they suggested I try the store at Les Halles.  So, I walked over there (not far), stood around forever, and finally got my microwave.  Only it weighed more than one of my super suitcases!  So much for my idea of taking it home on the Métro.  A taxi stand near the entrance to the shopping mall (all underground) solved the immediate problem and off I went to the Left Bank.  The driver took a route across the Pont Neuf -- and there I sat in the back seat with my micro-onde in the trunk looking at the Eiffel Tower and the beautiful buildings along the river, thinking -- ah, this is the life.

The Left Bank of the One Butt Kitchen

Of course, there remained the job of getting it up two flights of stairs and on top of the refrigerator without the benefit of the burly guy on the motorcycle.  I managed the two flights of stairs on my own but relied on a timely visit from Thomas to put it on top of the fridge, where it now sits in quiet splendor;).

The Right Bank of the One Butt Kitchen

I've also re-fallen in love with French coffee and decided that one of those little coffee machines with the pods (called ampoules here) would fit on the counter without taking up too much space.  So, a few days later, I added that to my acquisitions.  Now I'm totally equipped.  With milk heated in the micro-onde and coffee from my little espresso machine, each day begins with a noisette (café macchiato) in my little corner of heaven on the rue Jacques Callot.

Welcome to 5 rue Jacques Callot