Paris Journal 2009 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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The name of the wonderful
singer we heard at the Café Laurent on Saturday evening is Déborah Tanguy,
and her myspace page is http://www.myspace.com/dtanguy. To find this information, I
e-mailed Christian Brenner, the pianist and leader of the ensemble at the
Café. He wrote a most pleasant e-mail
back to me, including in his signature block the web sites for organizations
he’s involved with: bonjour I checked out the Amalgammes
web site. It is a very interesting
concept, to match up those who need musicians for their establishments or
events with the appropriate musicians for that audience, all in the name of
keeping the music (i.e., the musicians) alive. Judging by the number of guest
musicians that Christian has scheduled to
play with his ensemble at Café Laurent, I’d say this guy has no ego
problems or insecurities. He’s doing a
great service for his colleagues. Yesterday, more news popped up
about the green algae problem in Brittany.
Some of it was repetitive with what had already been published, so I
gleaned the newer parts out and wrote up the following for our Sanibel city
officials, who are interested in the story: There is an official government
report that confirms that hydrogen sulfide released by decomposing green
algae can be mortal in cases where it is concentrated. This
report was ordered after the death of a horse at the end of August on the
beach at Saint-Michel-en-Grève, in the same department as the place where the
truck driver died in July. According to Claude Lessnée (or
Lesné), a public health doctor at the University of Rennes 1, the truck
driver had transported three caissons of green algae in a state of
decomposition and was surely exposed to the gas. (In another article,
Lesné was quoted as saying that ten years ago, two people died in a factory
that makes products based on algae.) He explained that "the
scenarios" for poisoning by green algae -- by the gas released in
decomposition -- strangely resemble the death of this truck driver.
According to him, the exposure to the green algae in purification can, among
other things, provoke a pulmonary edema or a heart attack. (At
concentrations higher than 500 ppm, the hydrogen sulfide gas can cause a rapid
loss of consciousness followed by a coma, sometimes with convulsions,
accompanied by respiratory difficulty and cardiac rhythm problems.
Above 1000 ppm, death can come rapidly, within several minutes.) The truck driver had left the
compost factory after emptying his third caisson of green algae and less than
ten minutes later, he felt badly and had an accident with his
truck. Initially, his death was attributed to a heart
attack. As of last Thursday, more than 300 complaints have been filed at the tribunal of Guinguamp against the prefect of the Côtes d'Armor, accused of not taking necessary measures in the face of the green algae proliferation. In light of the 300 complaints
filed with the tribunal, I’m sure we will be hearing more about green
algae. Sorry to those of you who
couldn’t care less about this subject;
it is a topic that we Sanibelians are obsessed by. On a more appetizing subject,
after our evening stroll and errands to buy things like bandaids and scarves,
we decided to see what was happening with the restaurants on the rue
Lanneau. First we walked up the hill
and down the rue Soufflot to the Panthéon, passing a possible brasserie
contender for the restaurant recommendations (to be checked out later). We skirted around the left side
of the Panthéon to take the rue Valette down past the College
Sainte-Barbe to the rue Lanneau.
The College is a medeival school originally built in 1460, but
recently renovated to serve library and research functions. I checked out the presentation (see link
above) and now I’m hoping that this complex is on the Patrimony Days list for
the third weekend of September. On the rue Lanneau we found our
old standby restaurant Le Petit Prince, and the restaurant across the street
from it, Le Coupe-Chou, which we’ve been wanting to try. Le Coupe-Chou is more expensive than Le
Petit Prince, but it looks interesting.
And wow, is it ever interesting!
The building that houses it dates from the 17th
century. Ceilings are low and
beamed. Floors slope. Glass windows are mottled and old. There are six different dining rooms,
arranged unpredictably and so that you have to bend and weave to get in or
out of them. There is even a tea salon
with plush armchairs. Each room seemed
to have an enormous fireplace – big enough to roast a pig. A coupe-chou,
by the way, is a short saber. We’re a bit tired of Le Petit
Prince, so we went into Le Coupe-Chou
and were able to get a table even without a reservation. But it meant that we were squeezed in right
next to a table of three Americans, and I had to put some effort into
blocking out their mundane conversation.
Behind me was a diverse table of about 10 young women, celebrating one
of the women’s upcoming marriage. They
were having a lovely time. The English-language
history on the restaurant’s web site is fascinating and worth reading in
its entirety. I found this part to be
the most astonishing: While the cellars were being restored, the owners discovered
the remains of the Gallo-Roman city. These date from the time of Marcus
Aurelius, 170 years after the birth of Christ, and include pipes for warm
water and a Gallo-Roman swimming pool. They also found 12th century pottery,
statuettes and plaques from the Middle Ages from rue Chartière and rue du
Mont Saint-Hilaire (the old name for rue de Lanneau), where the word “Saint”
had been chiselled away during the revolution. These plaques hang behind the
Coupe-Chou bar today. Ah, the food. I ordered the gaspacho of the day, which
was made with melon and served with a straw!
No spoon! Accompanying it was a
delicious little piece of smoked, marinated salmon, all rolled up. I then had the daily special, which was a
filet of a freshwater fish from a particular lake, with girolles (little tasty mushrooms, golden
chanterelles) that had been marinated before cooking. Tom consumed the hearty beef bourguignon, served in a rich broth
with gnocchi. We each ordered the
dessert of the day, quenelles of rich, dark chocolate mousse served with a
red fruit confiture on little buttery biscuits. It was not inexpensive; but it
sure was memorable. |
Monday, September 7, 2009
The
Luxembourg Gardens
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