Paris Journal 2013 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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On Tuesday morning, as I
was making coffee in the kitchen, I happened to look down through the window at
the retractable glass ceiling of the restaurant behind us. It was covered in opaque plastic sheeting,
almost black in color. I was concerned that
something must have broken the glass, until we discovered the filmmaking crew
and equipment a little later.
Obviously, the plastic was put up there to block the sunlight, so that
the film crew could absolutely control the lighting inside. The plastic sheeting was
just about the same color as another, sickening, ugly, light-blocking thing
that I’ve been seeing in many photographs that have been coming my way via
email. That thing is the water from
Lake Okeechobee, and instead of being where it should be, it is flowing out
in massive quantities into the coastal waters around my home, Sanibel Island,
from the Caloosahatchee (a river that has been artificially connected to the
lake). This disaster has nothing
to do with Paris or France, but I’m writing about it today because my readers
in south Florida might think I’m oblivious to the situation there, because I
never mention it in this journal. Au contraire. I’m far from oblivious. The organization that I preside over, the
Committee of the Islands, is active in encouraging its members and supporters
to attend meetings and rallies, send letters/emails to elected officials and
others, sign petitions, etc. I’m just sick about this
degradation; I’m sick that we’re still fighting an unresponsive system that
caters only to Big Agriculture and seems to care little for the coastal
environment (which is the true economic engine for Florida – “it’s the
environment, stupid!”). Still, we’re
fighting for change, and we’ve been fighting since 2005. I read every bit of my
email and keep up with the news, absolutely.
I’m in communication with my fellow board members, and we are doing
what we can, although many of us are not there in south Florida now. The Everglades must be
restored, and that includes the restoration of the natural flow of water from
Lake Okeechobee to the south, through the Everglades. This dumping directly into the rivers and
estuaries to the east and west simply must stop. Swamps can clean water;
rivers cannot. If you want to help,
please check out a couple opportunities on the Committee of the Islands page
on Facebook. So all of that has been very
much on my mind as we work each day at our computers, and as we go out
wandering in Paris in the late afternoon and evening. Other things happening in
our lives are also very much on our minds.
This journal only represents a slice of our lives, not the whole. Not by a long shot. Compartmentalizing again: We decided to walk up to
the Balzac museum yesterday, and I’d been wanting to walk along the rue
Rouelle to the Square Bela-Bartok. We
combined the two into a lovely, long walk, and ended up taking in the Parc de
Passy, as well. The rue Rouelle was named
for an 18th Century French chemist, Guillaume François Rouelle, in
1864. This is no surprise, since this
area, known as Javel, was home to a number of chemical and other factories when
it was annexed to Paris in 1860. Prior
to that, it was called the rue de l’Entrepôt.
The section of the older street toward the Seine was split into the
Place de Brazzaville (named for the capital of the Republic of the Congo),
which envelopes the Square Bela-Bartok.
The rest of the older street became rue Rouelle. The rue Rouelle changes
names to the rue Fondary where it crosses a now invisible line that once
separated the Javel area from the old village of Grenelle. I had always thought it was a reference to
an old foundary, which one would not be surprised to find in this formerly
industrial area. But no, it is named
after a person named Fondary who was a former mayor of Grenelle, and one of
its founders, according to the City of Paris. The Square Bela-Bartok was
created in 1981. When we first visited
it, probably in 1998 or 1999, the trees were younger. Now they have matured and are beautiful. The park has plenty of rhododendrons and
magnolias, as well as bamboo, grasses, and heather and a spectacular modern
metal fountain resting on a mosaic base (a work by Jean-Yves le Chavallier). Bela Bartok, the composer
for whom the park is named, was a Hungarian Catholic who became an
atheist. He was strongly anti-fascist,
and so reluctantly immigrated from Hungary to New York in 1940. The historians say he never felt at home in
the U.S., and so was not able to compose music much after he immigrated. But he died in 1945 at a young 64, from
leukemia, so I wonder if perhaps the real problem for him was caused by his illness. I wouldn’t be so quick to blame New York,
or the U.S. I don’t believe Bartok ever
lived in Paris (or in France, for that matter), but he was heavily influenced
by the work of the French composer, Claude Debussy, whose birthday is today. A statue of Bela Bartok by
Imre Varga was given by the City of Budapest to the City of Paris for this
park in 1982. The base of the statue
is particularly imaginative. We walked up the Quai de
Grenelle and then the rue de Nelation, by the site of the former Vélodrome
d’Hiver, where that horrible crime against humanity was committed by the
Vichy government in the summer of 1942.
I looked up at the Haussmannian buildings that overlook the former
site of Vel d’Hiv, and I wondered, “What were those residents thinking, when
they saw what was happening across the street?” We crossed the Seine on the
picturesque Pont de Bir Hakeim, and then we were in Passy, the neighborhood
that was a village outside of Paris until it, too, like Vaugirard, Javel, and
Grenelle, was annexed to Paris. We love to surreptitiously
use the RATP outdoor escalators for the Passy metro station to climb the hill
of Passy. Save the energy for more
walking, we rationalize. We climbed a bit more up
the hill to the Place de Costa Rica, and then began our walk along the
“ridge,” on the rue Raynouard. We
gazed down the stairways of the Passage des Eaux and the avenue de Parc de
Passy. What a steep hill that is! Attractive as those
stairways are, we went on to the La Maison de Balzac. I can see why this place
appealed to Balzac. It was a country
home, but was very near the gate into the city of Paris. He had the best of both worlds. The quaint old house with its squeaky wood
floors is charming enough, but we were also entertained by the display that
shows how a writer like Balzac had to work at that time: writing a first draft by hand, then getting
typeset proofs, editing heavily, getting revised proofs, editing more, and so
on and so on. Computers make this all so
much less tedious. We were also amused
by the many illustrations on display, drawings and cartoons inspired by
Balzac’s words. The home’s garden is rather
rough; probably much the way Balzac would have had it. Benches and seats are tucked away here and
there, and so the garden serves as a park for the neighborhood, too. People were having quiet conversations in
leafy, cozy corners. Because this is a City of
Paris museum, admission is free. We
were immediately presented with two tickets when we walked in, and the guides
stationed in a few of the rooms were friendly and informative. When we finished our visit,
we climbed the garden steps up to the rue Raynouard again, deciding to walk
back to the steps of the avenue de Parc de Passy to take a look at that park,
which we could not remember seeing. Created in 2004, this
fairly new park does not show up on many Paris maps. It is the former site of the ministries of
Transport, and of Equipment and Housing.
In includes a big lawn surrounded by decorative fruit trees. Arbors with wisteria and clematis vines
cover a gracious allée. It is landscaped as a Mediterranean garden,
complete with cypress trees. Basically
a big rectangle, it also has an arm that reaches to the the southeast, to the
avenue du President Kennedy, which we discovered after leaving the park on
its central steps down to that avenue. We’ll return to this park
soon, I think. But it was time for us
to make our way back to the apartment, to check up on messages, rest, and
relax a bit before dinner. We decided on l’Épopée on the avenue Émile Zola for dinner. There we found the young boss tanned and
relaxed from vacation, back at the top of his game again. The menu was new and appealing. We were given a mis en bouche made from scallops, so
Tom had to eat both servings since I’m allergic to just that one kind of
shellfish. We shared the rabbit
terrine, which was accompanied by a salad that included bright purple-red
cauliflower bits that had been marinated in beet juice! Very pretty. And tasty. I had the slices of duck
breast served on polenta for the main course, and Tom had a big, juicy,
tender veal chop served with several kinds of sautéed mushrooms. All of that was superb. Tom’s dessert, however, was
a rather unremarkable moelleux au
chocolat. I wonder if it was not fait maison. Oh well.
Most of the meal was amazingly good. Which, come to think of it,
is how I feel about Paris. Most of it
is amazingly wonderful. Back at the apartment, I
settled into the world of the Dordogne region, the setting of the mystery
novel that I’m reading now. My friend
Arnie has already read this series, which he says makes the Dordogne seem
ideal, except for a murderer here and there. And such is life. Most of it is amazingly wonderful, except for
a few trials and tribulations now and then. |
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Fountain
by Jean-Yves le Chavallier in the Square Bela-Bartok.
Below, maturing trees in the park, which is near the
high-rise district called the Front de Seine.
Statue
of Bela Bartok, by Imre Varga, a gift from the City of Budapest.
Square
Bela-Bartok, with its fountain.
Steps
leading down from the rue Raynouard to the avenue
Marcel Proust and the Parc de Passy.
The
duck terrine and colorful salad that we shared at l’Epopee.
Duck
breast slices on a bed of polenta with a honey-based sauce. Tom had to help me with this polenta.
Big,
juicy, tender veal chop with multiple kinds of sautéed mushrooms. |
