Wow, just Wow

October 17, 2017

This past weekend, Glenn and I had an amazing opportunity, really a once-in-a-lifetime event.  Kate's school, Ecole Jeannine Manuel, hosted a gala at Versailles to benefit the school.  The evening began with private tours of the palace for the Gala attendees.

  The sun was setting as we arrived, and we walked through the hall of mirrors as it was bathed in a soft light of dusk.

We proceeded through several rooms, listening to guides and looking out at the grounds and courtyards.  As darkness fell, we walked through the gardens to the Orangerie, where cocktails and dinner would be served.

The scene as we entered the Orangerie can only be described as stunning.  The halls were lined with palm trees and orange trees and topiary.  Pyramids of champagne flutes were flanked by staff with magnums waiting to pour, and others came by with trays laden with gougeres, sables, and tartelettes.  Tables were laid almost as far as the eye could see---over 800 guests attended.  The entire scene was suffused with a soft amber glow.  My photography does not do it justice, but I include several attempts here, nonetheless.  

Our amazement at the evening continued, as a fanfare announced a column of waiters marching out and bearing every course, and we were served an extraordinary meal by Alain Ducasse.  At our table were several parents of children in the adaptation program, as well as two couples with children in the regular class, whom we had not met.  The conversation was lovely and interesting and convivial throughout the evening---we could not have been happier.  

After midnight, dessert was served.  The dancing was set to begin shortly.  Ambivalently, Glenn and I decided to slip out at that point---it had been a long day and we were both quite tired.      

We were given boxes of Ducasse chocolates and fancy perfume as we left.   

Notre Dame

October 16th, 2017

On Saturday, Glenn and I took a tour of Notre Dame sponsored by Paris Accueille les Etudiants et Chercheurs du Monde.  It is an organization established to help visiting students and researchers with all aspects of their stay.  (We only found out about them recently.  Their services would have come in hand earlier!)  

Glenn and I had both been to Notre Dame before, but it had been many years.  Our tour guide was a funny guy, a German artist living in Paris, who warned us that art, not history, would be the focus of the tour.  He then proceeded to tell us many interesting facts about the history of the site, the actual physical building process, the glass-making process, the characteristics of the environs at the time, and the historical evolution of Catholic doctrine.  He did also touch on the symbolism in the colors used in the paintings and windows, red to symbolize the earthly, blue the heavenly, and purple the meeting of the two.  He noted the use of purple in the church, especially in vestments during Lent and Easter, but I also wondered if the liberal use of purple by royalty had the same origins, to suggest it as the confluence of mortal and divine. 

 

Soirée Exceptionnelle

October 12th, 2017

Last night Glenn and I attended a celebration for the Tenth anniversary of the Toulouse School of Economics.  It was held here in Paris, at the Banque de France headquarters, and it was a very lovely evening.  We heard four TED-talk-like research reports from four young faculty.  (We got somewhat more out of the two of them that were delivered in English.)  We also we able to catch up with various friends and acquaintances on the TSE faculty, most particularly Jean Tirole and his wife Nathalie, whom we have known for almost 30 years.  

The food was elegant and delicious, the wine and champagne were very nice, but the highlight was a recital by Rafael Pradal.  He is a pianist from Toulouse whose repertoire and style borrow liberally from southern Spain and Latin America, especially flamenco.  One piece, tango-inspired, involved vigorous toe-tapping and even reaching into the piano with his left hand to manually dampen strings while he was playing.  It was a fortunate coincidence (or perhaps entirely intentional) that the recital took place in a part of the bank with mirrored ceilings, which allowed us a great vantage from above to watch the playing and the inner workings of the piano in addition to the normal view from the front.  

Rafael and the inside of his piano

   

The crowd shuffling out

 

The Traveler's Quandary

October 10th, 2017

Arriving in England 30 years ago last month, I was daunted by a number of challenges, none as great as the ubiquitous charge I faced of cultural imperialism.  I was a 22-year-old who had barely been out of Indiana and had no intention of imperializing anyone or anything.  On the contrary, I was charmed by many of the differences in our nations' histories and cultures.  I didn't understand how I or any American could be accused of cultural imperialism when, for the most part, American culture existed passively and was being actively consumed by the rest of the world.  No one was forcing jazz or rap or hip hop or Meryl Streep or Jack Nicholson on the British---they simply liked those things and were listening to and watching them.  I understood, on some level, that my accusers knew this and simply were annoyed that they now had to deal with unfamiliar and un-British music, movies, slang, food, clothing.  (There is obviously also a rich irony associated with British charges of any kind of imperialism.)  

Thirty years on, the coin has flipped.  The crime to be avoided at all costs now is not cultural imperialism but cultural appropriation.  After all, my attempts at assimilation could lead to caricatures of the target culture, like what has happened in the US with Cinco de Mayo, or the fetishization of Native American artifacts.  

So what is a traveler to do?  Whenever one is outside one's native culture, daily decisions must be made about, for instance, doing things the American way or the French way, sticking with English or trying to speak French, dressing like a local or wearing the clothes you brought, eating cheese after dinner instead of before, etc., etc.  One choice always has a slight taste of the British charge levied against me while the other choice is tinged with the same lack of authenticity as the cafeteria workers at Oberlin trying to serve sushi (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/the-food-fight-at-oberlin-college/421401/).  

And yet travel is essential.  Travel is the way we learn, the way we see our own experiences from a different perspective, the way we develop empathy.  I don't feel like I have a clever answer to this quandary, but I guess I come down on the side of more dialog, more understanding, more exchange, and, yes, maybe even some cultural appropriation if that aids the cause.  Jeremy Lin, I think you've got it right:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/10/06/after-kenyon-martin-rips-his-dreads-jeremy-lin-kills-him-with-kindness/?utm_term=.fe3849a45f28  

And it seems like Kenyon Martin has come around, too.  

Courtyards

October 9th, 2017

The view of our courtyard upon entering the gate from our street

I've written about our apartment before, but today I want to focus on one characteristic in particular, the courtyard.  Courtyards have been a feature of certain types of architecture since, well, probably the beginning of architecture.  Here is how Wikipedia defines a courtyard:

A courtyard or court is a circumscribed area, often surrounded by a building or complex, that is open to the sky.  Such spaces in inns and public buildings were often the primary meeting places for some purposes, leading to the other meanings of court.  Both of the words court and yard derive from the same root, meaning an enclosed space.

I have been trying to determine what it is about the courtyard that I like so much, which in turn made me think about the history and function of courtyards.

In rural areas, I suppose buildings built around a central courtyard provided a bulwark against thieves, invaders, wild animals, or other pests, while still affording those inside the outer walls natural elements of sunlight, rain, and plants.  They could also serve as a communal space to gather, especially if many people lived or worked in the buildings surrounding the courtyard.  

Protection against invading armies and wild animals might have been less important in the urban architecture that has featured courtyards for centuries.  But still they afford security while providing access to nature, light, and the outdoors.  If you think about a building or buildings occupying an entire city block, it could be that those buildings would be too thick for natural light to penetrate deep into their interior.  One way around this problem would be to, essentially, leave the deep interior unbuilt, as a courtyard, so that light would flood the void and penetrate into the buildings from the middle as well as the exterior.  

Of course, anytime that you increase the surface area to volume ratio of a building, it becomes more expensive to heat (and cool), so buildings with internal courtyards are especially popular in temperate climates.  (We may feel differently about the courtyard in the middle of Parisian winter.)

A view of the courtyard from our apartment

So what do I think is so great about them?  First, they're ideal for domesticated pets.  We have a black cat who prowls around in our courtyard, a much safer place for her than the streets of Paris.  Likewise, when we determine that the black cat is not out, we sometimes let Sandy run off-leash in the courtyard, one of the few outdoor places in Paris that he can do so.  (If we lived in a rural area instead of the middle of Paris, the threat might be coyotes, not cars, but a courtyard would provide similar protection.)  Second, they serve as a (partial) protection from unwanted natural elements.  The wind is blocked and street noises are mitigated.  Also, a partial or temporary roof could be easily erected using the existing buildings as sides, if one wanted to provide protection from sun and rain. Third, they provide security for possessions.  A man who works in the restaurant on the ground floor of our building leaves his bicycle in the courtyard every day, and he doesn't have to worry about it being stolen.  Fourth, unwanted pests, like rats, raccoons, and squirrels, could be kept out.  (In fact, all of the trash from the buildings surrounding our courtyard is stored in the courtyard, disguised by a covering of greenery, and I haven't seen a rat or mouse so far.) 

I love the cobblestones of the courtyard and the ancient stone urn and column.  I would, though, make a few changes if it were my courtyard.  I would put a dining table and chairs (or maybe multiple tables) out for the residents' use during nice weather.  And I would add a bit more green, perhaps some additional planters or even an area of grass, to contrast with the cobblestones.  

I guess in a broader way, courtyards are a particularly convenient device for bridging the gap between the indoors and outdoors, creating an intermediate space which is neither but has some of the best aspects of both, something that I am always trying to do.  

         

Astrid Dick

October 6th, 2017

Astrid in her studio

I just got back from visiting a good friend from many years ago, Astrid Dick.  She finished her Ph.D. in economics at MIT a few years after me and had a successful career, first at the New York Fed and then as a professor at INSEAD.  Then her life took an unexpected turn.  She found she had a compulsion to do art which she could not repress or even satisfy as a hobby.  She had, in fact, been painting in her spare time for years, even keeping a studio in Queens when she lived in New York.  She took a sabbatical from INSEAD to explore her art, and decided that she would not go back.

I visited her studio in the 20th, and we talked about hair, MIT, tea, economics, birthdays, and families.  Perhaps most interesting for me, though, was our discussions about the artistic process and parallels between that and doing economics research.  She talked about how academic research prepared her psychologically for the process she engaged in when painting, the uncertainty and unexpected turns it entailed.  She talked about the intellectual challenge of producing a painting, how she sometimes saw it as an impossibly difficult puzzle to solve.  She talked about her frustration with how some of contemporary art seems not to be about discovery but rather about knowing the truth before one begins.  And, of course, I thought about how performing research with a particular answer or agenda in mind produces the worst kind of research.

I don't want to draw out the analogy too far.  Academic research is not art.  We talked about the different roles collaboration serves in both.  Also, she touched on how important expression and self-discovery were in her drive to make art. These are not the motivating forces in my economics research.  (Discovery is certainly part of it, but not self-discovery.  I think for me, the motivation is the intellectual challenge of having a hard problem, thinking deeply about it, coming up with some sort of solution, imperfect as it may be.)  We discussed the relationship between the author and reader of an economics paper and the relatively thick buffer that the structure of a research paper provides.  Then she contrasted that with the thinnest of membranes that a piece of art provides between the artist and those viewing it.    

I felt like I learned some about how different her life is from mine by spending an afternoon in her studio, but also how it's similar in some unexpected ways.

I look forward to renewing our friendship this year and learning a lot more about being an artist.  I hope you enjoy these photos of her studio.  Here is her website:  http://astriddick.com/