Paris Journal 2007

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Photos from the Garden of the Musée du Quai Branly

 

Primrose in the garden at the Musée du Quai Branly.

 

The garden at the Branly has many interesting nooks and
crannies.  Notice the thick vine tumbling down the end
of that weird modern wall.  The glass panel next to it
separates the garden from the busy Quai Branly street.

The glass has etchings of letters from strange languages.

 

Interesting grasses are used in the Branly garden.

Notice the stone pavers mimick water with stepping stones.

 

What we know are nooks that display special items in the
museum appear as colored blocks protruding from the
outside wall of the museum.

 

Windows in the museum have transparent landscapes
painted on them.

 

 

Wednesday, July 18

 

On Monday, we had a lovely evening with Sanibel friends, Kathleen and Steve, and with Elisabeth, the owner of the apartment in the 6th arrondissement where we stay in September.  Steve and Kathleen are in that apartment this month.  The four of us wanted to take Elisabeth out to dinner to express our appreciation for the opportunity to stay in that great little place.

 

We started with a glass of champagne at Steve’s and Kathleen’s, and then moved on to one of our very favorite Paris restaurants, l’Espadon Bleu (25 rue des Grands Augustins, 6th arrondissement, telephone 01-46-33-00-85).  Steve and Kathleen have been taking French lessons from tutors who come to the apartment!  Kathleen learned about this opportunity from Craig’s List.  They’re both doing very well.

 

Tom is quite interested in doing this, because he is a school boy after all, but I’d rather learn on my own.  Elisabeth, who is fluent in five languages, said the best thing to do is to read out loud in French for at least ten minutes a day.  That’s a good thing for me to do, since I read so much in French every day anyway.  I started that routine yesterday.  I understand now what she means.

 

We all insisted on having the menu in French, and then it took us a while to figure out what all the various fish offerings were.  But we finally succeeded.  Elisabeth and I had barbeau sauvage, which is a flat fresh water fish, about the size of a small dinner plate.  It was served whole, and was expertly prepared.  The “sauvage” part means it is caught in the wild, not farm-raised.  The barbeau came with hollandaise sauce and spinach, all beautifully displayed.

 

Before that, I had smoked herring that came with a pretty little lacey salad and tiny circles of marinated potatoes -- half of the circles were white and half were black.  That also made for an attractive plate.  I can’t remember what anyone else had for their first course because I was so enthralled with mine.

 

Tom had a filet de lieu jaune, which is pollack or green pollack, a fish in the cod family, which I think is the same fish that the English call “place,” commonly used in fish and chips.  This makes sense because “lieu” is the French for the English word place, meaning a Iocation or area.  Of course, the way Tom’s fish was prepared was nothing like fish and chips!  It was much more French, thank heavens.

 

Steve and Kathleen each had joue de cochon (pig’s cheek) – a very tender piece of pork served with a rich, dark sauce.  We all had a good time making fun of Tom’s inability to properly pronounce joue – he kept saying jus, which would have resulted in his being served pig’s juice if he had tried to order that dish.

 

The others had dessert, but not me.  I’m not much of a dessert person, and I just can’t eat all three courses anymore.  Elisabeth (who had no first course) had a seasonal tarte made with peaches, pears, and strawberries, I think.  Kathleen had a crème brûlée that looked to be very correct.

 

Last night, I cooked for dinner en famille again.  It was good to see Dan and Mary, who seem to love Paris as we do.  Earlier, Tom and I stopped in Monoprix to pick up a few things for dinner, and we were so pleased to see that it was not such a madhouse then.  This was around 3 in the afternoon.  I guess anytime after work up until closing at 10PM Monoprix is crazy, but during the weekdays, it is a much more pleasant shopping experience.  I don’t remember there being such a difference years ago, but I think unemployment was much higher then.

 

This evening, Karima is coming over for a drink at 5.  This is a young parisienne whom we met in Sanibel—she is a friend of our friends Myra, Wes, and Betty.  Her family owns a Jeff de Bruges (Belgian) chocolate shop at 5 rue Poncelet in the 17th arrondissement.  Dan and Mary should be here to meet her, too.  I plan to put out plenty of hors d’oeuvres, so maybe we can just forget about dinner and go for a walk later instead.

 

I’m amusing myself, reading about France’s efforts to fight for a lower euro.  I’m cheering them on!  They are up against some stiff opposition, Germany and the European Central Bank.  This summer, I’m enjoying this sport even more than the Tour de France!

 

Nicolas Sarkozy showed up for yesterday’s stage in the Tour de France.  Sarkozy is a cycling fan.  He and tour director Christian Prudhomme joined the peloton by car about 45 kilometers before the finish line at Briançon.  Sarkozy was very friendly with the crowds, as always.

 

Also in the news was more information about our local homeless lady, Denise, who is no longer living on the street.  As a young woman, it seems, she left her little hometown in Brittany to go to secretarial school in Oise.  She then landed a secretarial job in the Ministry of Finance in Paris.  Quite a coup for a country girl, I’d say!  She worked for a while as a secretary, but then one day her sister remembers that Denise suddenly had a great duplex apartment on the Quai de Grenelle (just a few steps away from her later home on the sidewalk of the rue Linois).   And, says the sister, Denise was no longer a secretary.  She’d become a high-class call girl.  This occupation lasted for several years. 

 

Then one day Denise showed up back in her hometown, very disfigured, toothless, and with a broken jaw.  Her brother-in-law speculates that a man beat her up, but she wouldn’t talk about it.  She sank into a life totally focused on being drunk.  She went back to Paris to find that she no longer had the great duplex apartment.  Instead, she staked out her place on the rue Linois where she lived for many long years until the Beaugrenelle reconstruction project necessitated her removal to a shelter.

 

The authorities finally finished counting all the money they found in her suitcases.  It was €70,000 – almost twice as much as they guessed initially!  The sister and brother-in-law were both a little surprised at the amount, but they said they knew Denise had a bank account and that she was putting money away during her high-earning years.

 

The bureaucrats have gone to work to establish a trust fund for Denise, and the family and others will attempt to get her to move back home to Brittany and to be sure she gets the care she needs in order to re-learn how to live.  It is going to be tough.  I wish her the very best.

 

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