A Walk with Barbara

January 31st, 2018

I wish I had had a tape recorder.  Yesterday, my friend Barbara, French professor, scholar of 18th century French philosophy, longtime visitor to Paris, and expert on shopping and eating, took me on a walking tour of her corner of Paris.  We started at the archives where she is currently reading original accounts of people imprisoned at the Bastille, Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal.  It is a beautiful old residence, grand and neoclassical, which was commandeered by the revolutionaries at the end of the 18th century.  It even had a plaque commemorating the event with the date in the revolutionary calendar (month Floreal, year 5, I believe).  

 

  













The tour continued along the banks of the Seine, through the streets of le Village Saint-Paul, and throughout the rest of le Marais. She explained how workers would travel on barges into Paris to find work and that they would often disembark at le Marais.  Gentry who might hire them lived in proximity, on higher ground, and Jews, often working in finance, lived in le Marais, a lower, marshy, less desirable area.  She pointed out surviving medieval buildings and fragments of ancient fortifications juxtaposed with the Grand Boulevards and gracious houses of the Napoleon/Hausmann era.  We stopped at one of her favorite haunts, the teahouse Le Loir dans la Theiere.  (There she is below chatting with the son of the original owners of the teahouse.)

We had a cup of coffee and Barbara asked about their tarte tatin.  Unfortunately, they were out, but she ordered the carrot cake and I ordered a chocolate mascarpone tart that was as light as a cloud, not very sweet, and quite delicious.  We discussed gender and ethnic politics in the US and France.  

We saw the site of the Temple.  I had always assumed it was a Jewish temple because of the existence of the Jewish community there, but found out instead it was the fortification to protect the Knights Templar and all the treasures that they looted and brought back from the Crusades.  

She has been visiting and living in this part of Paris for so many decades that she could point out the best falafal shops, the interesting new restaurants, the former location of a hammam that was now a Cos store, and the street that used to house horse butchers and now was the site of very chic cafes.  We walked by a large and airy iron structure sheathed in glass, Crystal-Palace-style, that had been a gym but was recently renovated and now used as gallery space for artists, among other things.  We walked through the Marche des Enfants Rouge, which had started to close up by the time we arrived.  She pointed out a nice cafe there.  We walked by Jean-Paul Gaultier's atelier, all lit up like a haunted house (pictured on the left below).   

We finished up near the Musee des Arts et Metiers.  Maybe this is a sign:  I reeally need to make time to visit that museum.

What a wonderful way to spend a late afternoon.  I look forward to exploring more of Paris with Barbara!  

Six Months In: Thoughts about Living in Paris

January 26th, 2018

the sidewalk outside a primary school in
our neighborhood

The year has been enormously enjoyable so far, in so many ways.  Challenges and annoyances are not absent but largely inconsequential.  My six-months-ago self is surprised to see my current self typing these words, but here they are.  Before we came, I was excited for the adventure, to be sure, but honestly expected much less from the year.  I had visited Paris several times for short periods and had never been overly impressed---I don't think it cracked my top ten places to visit.   

a carved door around the corner from us

I have been reflecting on what has made this year so enjoyable, both because I am reflective by nature but also for the very practical reason of wanting to reproduce the aspects of Parisian life that we have come to love upon our return.  I guess I would probably organize the advantages into four broad categories:  the rhythm of daily life, food and drink, language, and my job. 

The job is the easiest one.  I'm on sabbatical.  I come into work every day and decide what I want to work on.  I still have deadlines (mostly self-imposed) and obligations and sources of stress, but they're pleasant to manage.  I miss many of my colleagues at MIT, but, well, there are a few I'm happy to be six time zones away from.  (I should say that there is no need to miss two of my most excellent colleagues and close friends from MIT:  Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee.  They are here in Paris with us, also visiting PSE, and we see them very regularly!)  

One of the great things about being a visitor someplace is that you have no voice or stake in decisions, so you're never important enough to be dragged into disagreements.  I'm sure the faculty at PSE must have disagreements about issues all of the time, but we exist blissfully unaware of them.  Without exception, the people here at PSE have been very warm and welcoming and lovely.    

The language issue is a tricky and surprising one, because it really cuts both ways.  On the negative side, not being fluent in French causes a few problems and misunderstandings, although they are less frequent and severe than I expected.  (Google translate mitigates them enormously.)  In addition, I expected the language barrier to make me feel socially isolated.  Instead, I enjoy the many small social interactions I have with strangers and shopkeepers and servers and neighbors, facilitated by smiles and gestures, and only sometimes accompanied by words, les politesses.  These, I am sure, are the oil that keeps the machine of society running.  In addition, I have many friends here who speak fluent English, so I am not deprived of deeper discourse, either.  And, of course, many of the arts and cultural events are as accessible to us as to any French speaker.  

detail of Palais Garnier

view from our seats at the last opera we attended, Jephtha

detail of a Monet at l'Orangerie

The positive part of not being fluent in French is a kind of insulation.  I am sure that various anti-American sentiments swirl around me on a daily basis.  I would be sad and frustrated if I understood them.  Instead, I am blissfully unaware.  (Is blissful lack of awareness becoming a theme?)  

Another positive aspect is that, even though my French remains pretty rudimentary, it has improved enormously since we arrived, which gives me great satisfaction.  (I am hoping to retain the services of a tutor soon, even though increased facility with French could threaten my blissful lack of awareness.)  I am also very gratified that Glenn and I have been able to give Kate the opportunity to learn French.  Her French, I think, is getting quite good. 

a neighborhood tea shop

Food and drink in France is legendary, of course, and has mostly lived up to its reputation.  I find, though, that my favorite aspects of French food are to be found in the markets and epiceries and even convenience stores, rather than in the restaurants.  We have had many wonderful restaurant meals (and many forgettable ones), but we also have equally wonderful restaurants in the US.  In fact, in mentally contrasting comparable French and American restaurants, I prefer the American:  a less rigid rhythm of the American restaurant meal, a greater emphasis on vegetables, and a willingness to experiment and innovate that is absent in many French restaurants.   

cheeses at Marche Maubert

So, the restaurants, for the most part, will not be what I miss when we move back, but there is much to love about the food and drink here.  Perhaps it is the fact that the convenience store around the corner sells fresh pasta and whole goat milk yogurt and peppercorns and duck rillettes and chocolate mousse and very decent wine.  Maybe it is the fact that the guy at the Italian deli down the street has the most delicious finochiona and mortadella and ricotta afumicato and wants to tell you all about them.  It is also the fact that the green grocer near work can be counted on to sell fresh crisp apples from nearby orchards.  It is the fact that the butcher knows the very herd of cattle that produced the beef he is selling.  And, finally, it is the fact that all of these things are not expensive.  Many of these items might be available in the US, if you're willing to search and travel and pay dearly.  They're routine here.  There is a strong food culture that pervades everything, and people who care about food reap tremendous benefits from it.

Sandy on a walk

These points hint at my last category, the rhythm of daily life.  I have always known I love cities and how they shape one's day-to-day existence.  Growing up in the suburbs of Indianapolis, I longed for trips into town to see the (few) skyscrapers and go the Ayres department store and tearoom and visit the City Market.  In Cambridge (England), I lived at Churchill College but wished that Churchill had decided to rehab some old buildings in the center of the city instead of building a new campus a couple of miles outside when he established it.  Briefly, I lived in Boston's Beacon Hill, and I loved every minute of it, even though I couldn't afford it.  Our first house was in Cambridge (Massachusetts), near Harvard Square, but we outgrew it when our third daughter was born and, reluctantly, moved to suburban Newton.  Now I am living in the heart of Paris, and I could not be happier with my dense, urban neighborhood.  I love walking and taking the buses and the Metro, and I never miss my car.  Our commute is by RER or Metro, and I enjoy that it includes several minutes of walking on each end.  We have boutiques and bakeries and fromageries and restaurants and bookstores and cafes all within a five-minute walk of our apartment.  Kate or Glenn or I run out to get milk or butter or eggs or fruit or bread most days, because it's so convenient.  If we don't have anything interesting for dessert, we take a stroll out to the Amorino or Grom for ice cream after dinner.  We take walks in the Luxembourg Gardens regularly because we don't have a fenced-in backyard for Sandy.  We eat dinner late, we stay up late, and we sleep late.  We have two opera houses 20 minutes away.  The theater across the street is outstanding.  We can pop into a museum on a lazy Saturday afternoon.  I have not stopped being amazed and delighted by this abundance and how it dictates the routines of our daily lives.

There is, of course, another side to the coin.  There are serious criticisms, many of a political and economic nature, that I could levy against the French, but those issues mostly do not affect my daily life, perhaps because I'm foreign and white and Christian and upper-middle class.  I am not oblivious to them, but my focus here is more narrow, on issues that my own personal experience informs.  

Which brings me to my attempts at obtaining the appropriate visa.  For all of the griping we Americans do about bureaucracy and the competence of government, I can say that it is outstanding for the most part, compared with what I have experienced here.  As a general rule, all levels of government in the US try to innovate and increase efficiency and view their job as serving citizens.  Government websites in the US are clear, user-friendly, and designed to be helpful.  (I would say that website design in France in general is atrocious.)  For instance, the innovations that the Mass DMV has implemented in the last twenty years have made getting a drivers' license much simpler over that time.  Large construction projects in Massachusetts are now timed to avoid the worst disruptions, with lane closures often happening on nights and weekends.  This type of responsiveness seems largely absent here.  Another example:  the State Department's website for passport applications offers a clear flow chart (available in multiple languages) which leads one straight to the appropriate form, along with instructions for filling it out.  This type of process has not been invented in France.  French bureaucracies seem stuck in the 1970's and proud of it.  The process of extending our visas to allow us to stay a year has been entirely opaque, cumbersome, and frustrating.  It has involved obtaining and translating multiple documents, waiting in long lines at the prefecture, being told to submit the wrong forms, being corrected several weeks later, resubmitting different forms, all with weeks in between each step.  And we're not finished yet.  It is also about to become expensive, since we will have to pay a substantial tax to finally obtain the extensions.   

I will also say that we have experienced mixed quality in the educational system here.  Kate is attending a private school, but it follows the French national curriculum.  What is one inevitable result of a mandated national curriculum for everyone?  It's simply not very advanced.  The math curriculum for troisieme, for instance, seems to be a full two years behind where Kate was in Newton.  (Luckily, we are quite capable of supplementing, and we, mostly Glenn, has been doing so.)  Surprisingly, though, her most substantive and high-quality class seems to be her English class.  I wonder if that is due to the fact that there is not a mandated curriculum for English in the French schools.

I will also be happy to be able to access our networks of excellent doctors, dentists, optometrists, orthodontists, veterinarians, etc., back in the US.  (The medical system in the US is a disaster in many ways for many people, but my medical system in the US is pretty darn good.)  One aspect of the medical system here that I will miss, though, are the affordable and efficient house calls (SOS Medecins).  Luckily, we have made little use of them, but it's so nice to know that we could.

And the tap water here is terrible.  And I miss my ice maker.

So, can we reproduce the aspects of our life that we have come to enjoy so much here?  Moving into Boston or Cambridge from Newton is quite possible, of course, but will have to wait until Kate graduates from high school.  Nothing to be done about the insulating properties of not knowing the native language in the US, but I suppose I don't need as much insulating there as I might elsewhere.  And I will try very hard to maintain the French that I have acquired here and help Kate to do so as well.  Food and drink?  There are many things I will miss, but I'm pretty sure I will manage well enough upon my return to Boston, bringing with me a newfound love of various cheeses and other delicacies.  The permanent sabbatical is going to be the toughest to swing.  (Perhaps that's just another name for retirement.)

Even in this overly-long post, one thing that I cannot neglect to mention is the dear friends we have made this year and the connections that we have been able to renew.  These friendships have been so instrumental to the quality of our lives here, but I cannot say that they have been an advantage of Paris over Boston.  We left behind wonderful and dear friends there, as well, and anxiously await reconnecting with them when we return.  We are enormously fortunate.         


 

bench outside of Shakespeare & Co.

                      

Sandy's Guide to Paris Street Food

January 23, 2018

(I welcome my first guest blogger today, our dog Sandy.)

Adapting to life in Paris has been difficult at times, but one change that I really appreciate is the abundance and quality of the street food.  In Newton, I could walk around our neighborhood for hours and not find so much as a discarded scrap of baguette.  Paris, however, is a land of riches, with plentiful and delicious bites around every corner. 

Some tips: 

1.  Discarded bags from Paul or Eric Keyser sometimes contain morsels of croissant or other pastries.  McDonald's bags can have the stray french fry or two.

2.  For the most part, I could do without the rain, but it does have the benefit of softening up hard chunks of baguette.

3.  Bus stops and around benches are excellent places to look for a bite.

There is something under there that should be investigated.

4.  Jardin du Luxembourg, especially on a sunny day, has delicious offerings.  You can sometimes find a small child who would love to share some of his lunch.

5.  The choicest morsels, however, are to be found under the tables at sidewalk cafes.  The baguettes are fresher and the overall variety is better.

I think that's just a cigarette butt.

6.  It also turns out that the Paris rainwater, collected in puddles on the street, is much more delicious than Paris tap water.  

For some reason, Glenn, Sara, and Kate seem not to appreciate the bounty to be had on the streets of Paris, and I am constantly arguing with them over whether we should stop and have a bite.  I guess they're just too busy to enjoy these small pleasures. 

These pigeons found the baguette first, but I will have no trouble
asserting my priority over a few birds.

Look, I'm not proud of this photo.  I'm not sure how I missed the fries, and even the tell-tale
paper fries container, right in front of me.  This was not me at my best.

Renewing Old Friendships

January 22nd, 2018

We had two lovely events over the weekend where we were able to spend time with some long-standing friends of ours.  On Saturday, we were invited to the Paris apartment of Marie-Claude and Brian. I have known Marie-Claude since my arrival in Boston close to 30 years ago.  She was a chaplain at the Catholic church in Harvard Square and ran a charity, then called Earthen Vessels and now called EV Kids, which provides support and academic tutoring for at-risk kids in Boston.  I volunteered to be a tutor in the program, and did so for my entire graduate school career and beyond, until Caroline was born.  (I could write pages about Marie-Claude's amazing generosity, the others tutors, the kids we met, the experiences we had, different facets of the program, and so on, but I will just say here that it was a wonderful experience.)  

The apartment was on Boulevard Garibaldi, in the 15th near the Segur metro, the apartment that Marie-Claude and her five siblings grew up in.  The building was built in 1929, with strong art deco influences, and I assume her parents bought the apartment at that time.  I would guess she was born a few years after that.  She told stories about how two children slept in the bathroom and two in the living room until they were able to buy the neighboring apartment and combine the two into a larger one.  During WWII, Marie-Claude's partents harbored a Jewish housekeeper as well, when the Jewish residents of Paris were all being sent to Drancy.  The apartments are now separate again, and her sister lives in the neighboring one.  She and Brian keep the apartment for their annual visits to Paris, and also used it at times for various sabbaticals.  

We enjoyed hearing Brian's reminiscences about how they first met, and marveled at how travel has changed since those days.  In 1960, Brian was an undergraduate at Harvard studying classics.  He wanted to learn German and Italian for his studies and found the offerings at Harvard lacking.  So he took a leave, boarded a steamer, and set off for Europe.  It was a small boat, buffeted by the stormy Atlantic and North Sea, finally landing in Germany.  He had no personal connections, and, of course, no cell phone, no internet, and no hotel reservations.  He only had the letter of invitation to the school outside of Munich that he would attend.  He was able to find temporary lodgings along the way and transportation to Munich.  When he arrived in Munich, however, a festival was in full swing and hotel rooms were all booked.  (It was Oktoberfest, something that he had never heard of before.)  He was able to rent a room in someone's apartment and also discovered that he enjoyed beer.  

He met Marie-Claude at the German school.  She was also a student, learning German after having received her business degree.  Within three weeks, the topic of marriage had come up, and after their studies were over, Brian arranged for Marie-Claude to come visit the US to see if she would like living there.  The rest, as they say, is history.  

Marie-Claude prepared a lovely and delicious lunch for us, consisting of gratin d'endive au jambon, salad, cheese and baguette, and a berry tart for dessert.

At one point, our conversation turned to the Marquis de Lafayette.  We mentioned the biography that Kate just read, by Harlow Giles Unger, and how we learned that he was much more famous in the US than in France.  Marie-Claude mentioned that she has a French expat friend, living in Cambridge, whose mission is to evangelize for Lafayette, and she is working on bringing a ballet about his life to Boston.  I said we would be the first to buy tickets.  Brian also recommended a book called "When the United States Spoke French" by Francois Furstenberg.  It talks about Lafayette and other Frenchmen who were instrumental in shaping the nascent American democracy.  

Then on Sunday night, we had dinner with another dear friend, Barbara.  We met her and her husband David around 1993 when we bought our house in Cambridge.  David is a rabbi and Barbara is a professor of French at Suffolk University.  They are the loveliest and most generous of people.  Barbara is spending this semester in Paris running a seminar at the Sorbonne, doing research using original documents in the city's 18th century archives, and living in the 11th.  We invited Barbara over to watch the Patriots' playoff game.  (Glenn subscribed to the NFL Gamepass and can cast the internet stream onto our TV.)  I made chili, which seemed appropriate for the occasion, and Barbara brought beer.  It was so nice to see her and to hear about how she's settled in.  She told us about all of the things she loves in Paris, including shopping in les passages, walking the streets near Canal St. Martin , going to the bio marche in Raspail.  She also told us about a hidden museum in the basement of a Uniqlo.  I look forward to seeing Barbara over the next few months and accompanying her on trips to her favorite clothing boutiques and tea houses.  (Barbara has great taste.)  And the Patriots won.       

My Parents' Farm

January 12, 2018

Looking out over the pasture where cattle graze in the spring and summer

Farm sign my mother had made, featuring a herding dog

My plane landed at Charles de Gaulle airport this morning at 7am.  I am exhausted but feel like my busy week in the US was important and productive.  I spent the last half of it at my parents' farm, Stillfields.  I did not grow up at Stillfields---my parents moved there shortly after my father retired from his position as a corporate tax attorney---but my extended family has had many happy moments there over the past decade and a half.  It has become a summer gathering place for my siblings and me, along with our children, sometimes joined by spouses and our Chicago aunt and uncle.  As my parents age, spending time there with them is gaining importance. 

After his retirement, my father threw himself enthusiastically into his longtime hobby of fine woodworking.  My mother is a professional printmaker and a certified master gardener and has always had a keen sense of style.  Together, they have created a beautiful and distinctive and welcoming refuge.  

Down the allee of walnut trees

T-shirt proof

 By the way, the "FarmFest" print here is a proof of a t-shirt design, one in a long series we have made over our summer visits.  This has been a favorite ongoing activity at the farm.  Depending on our whims, we would use some of my mom's old wood blocks, carve our own linoleum blocks, or both.  Typically, I would make a "logo" for the t-shirts each year out of linoleum block.  Then we would buy a bunch of plain t-shirts at Walmart and use mom's professional printing press and inks to create runs of t-shirts.  There was always a lot of experimenting with t-shirt colors, ink colors, placement of logos and other images, etc.  I have amassed quite a collection of Stillfields t-shirts (Lazy Days at Stillfields, Dog Days at Stillfields, Pioneer Days at Stillfields, Farmfest, etc.). 

My mom's studio, and some of her prints

I took a number of photos while I was there.  I think these give a sense of place.  The furniture and artwork that my parents collect has always been an eclectic mix:  family pieces, other antiques, some of their own work, and many pieces from friends or artists or craftsmen that they have come to admire.

Three dogs, Skyla, Finn, and Gael

Another view of the studio

Their cat Starbuck and a watercolor by my
mother's first art teacher, Floyd Hopper

A pie safe that my dad made

The back porch with a print of Gael

One of my mom's award-winning prints

Watercolor by a friend of my mom's

A fold-out table made by my dad

Handcarved bowls, some by Bill Day

Japanese prints

Another watercolor by Floyd Hopper

Finally, here is a photo of the top of a table that my mom and I found at an antique store.  It was a sturdy extension table made of quarter-sawn oak, probably from the turn of the 20th century, judging from the style of its legs.  All of the extensions were missing, though.  We bought it and brought it back to the farm.  The next time I visited, the table was in the dining room, cleaned, with a full set of extensions (four in total, I think), and looking beautiful.  My dad had painstakingly chosen new quarter-sawn oak, fashioned extensions from it, and finished them to match the table.  

A Day in New York

January 8, 2018

Vignette at Red Rooster behind the bar 

The big annual national conference of economists was in Philly this year.  I might have skipped it, but I was asked to give a talk by a friend organizing a session (which provides both positive incentive and exposure effects, of course) and figured that it would also be a good time to tack on a visit to my parents afterwards.  As a bonus, I fit in a day trip to NYC.  I was giving my talk on Friday morning and not flying to Indiana until Sunday morning, so I decided to take the train up to visit Caroline for part of the day on Saturday.  And there was also a critically acclaimed exhibit of Michelangelo's drawings at the Met that I was interested in seeing.  Caroline made us brunch reservations at Red Rooster, Marcus Samuelsson's restaurant in Harlem, which I was excited to try. 

First, brunch at Red Rooster was great.  As you can tell from the photos, it has a very funky, eclectic vibe (which makes sense given that Marcus Samuelsson is a Swedish-African transplanted to NYC).  The vegetable dishes were especially good.  

We then braved the bitter cold to make our way to the Met.  I think the weather kept the crowds down because there was no wait at all to get in.  Once inside, we found the exhibit to be very crowded, but the traffic moved pretty well.  It was an outstanding exhibit.  I felt like I learned a lot about Michelangelo's career, life, skills, and techniques.  We were able to inspect the pieces very closely, which was one of the most instructive aspects of the exhibit.  The hatching and shading techniques he used in his drawing were so intricate and varied:  they differed in terms of color, pattern, length, width, direction, and spacing of hatches, sometimes all in the same drawing.  Here are a few examples:

Our Holiday Visitors

January 5th, 2018

The holidays have wound down, and I'm back in the US for a week to attend a conference and visit my parents.  It's nice to reflect on some of the activities of the previous two weeks, with Anna and Caroline both staying with us and my sister Katie, her husband Paul, and their daughter Roxy visiting as well.  Katie and Paul are shown above, with Katie wearing the crown from the galette des  rois, which we ate.  Overall, we ate well while they were here, some highlights being the braised beef mentioned in the previous post for Christmas, a casual dinner at our neighborhood Vietnamese place, pizza at Luisa Maria, and the moelleux au chocolate from The Smiths, a dense and deeply chocolatey cake that we love. 

Katie and Paul packed a huge number of activities in, with various ones of us along for some of them.  They visited the Louvre, L'Orangerie, Saint Sulpice, Saint Germain des Pres, Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, Musee des Arts et Metiers, Sacre Coeur, Rodin Museum, the Pantheon, and many more.  Paul raved about the Musee des Arts et Metiers and convinced us to go soon.  A few of us went along to L'Orangerie, and here are photos of one of Matisse's masterworks, The Three Sisters, Anna pondering a Monet, and a detail from Monet's Water Lilies Cycle. 

Caroline and I also managed a trip to the Jeu de Paume to see the current exhibition of photography by Albert Renger-Patzsch.  I loved it.  The subjects of his photography were so wide-ranging, but still each period of his career seemed to resonate with me in a different way.  He adored trees and landscapes but spent as much time featuring the jarring geometry of industrial objects, sometimes in contrast with more organic forms.  You can get a taste here:

http://www.jeudepaume.org/?page=article&idArt=2757

And I almost forgot to mention the baking class that Katie took Caroline, Anna, and me to.  Here we are, along with some of the results: