Holiday Time of the Year 12-7-15

Today was dedicated to catching a little of the holiday spirit so we went to see the windows of the Grand Magasins; Galleries Lafayette, and Printemps.
Both stores have their street display windows decorated for the season, Galleries Lafayette is centered on Space, inspired by Star Wars no doubt and Printemps is centered on marionettes doing holiday type things.  Neither is Christmas oriented but the holiday atmosphere is definitely present.
Inside the stores are all dolled up as well, very festive.
The one building, since the stores each take up several buildings, was the Galleries Lafayette department that has their food courts, kitchen and home decorating, and a large grocery store with lots of festive delicacies.  Four floors of interesting things to look at and foods to drool over. It's interesting that the big department stores are only a little more expensive than the regular food stores on many of the same items, because I'm sure the overhead on the big stores is tremendous. Of course the markup on the luxury items will absorb a fair amount of small markups on the cheap stuff.

At Printemps, we ascended to the top floor where they have a little fast food restaurant with glassed in walls and an outdoor walkway around the roof so that one can see the skyline of Paris.  A little wine, a little water, and a shared slice of carrot cake in the sunshine was a quiet interlude before heading back to the apartment.

Weekend 12-5 & 12-6-15

This weekend was busy.  Our level of activity jumped up with Deb's being able to get better sleep during the nights.
On Saturday we started out with a visit to our favorite brocante market, that being the one that is just across the canal over on Rue de Flandre.  It is a several block parkway with a large area between the streets where the vendors can set up their booths.  It was a cooler day with a breeze so the urge to saunter along was not as strong as it might have been.  We walked through and enjoyed looking without buying anything.  Then we jumped on the bus over to the much more developed antiques market called "Paul Bert" which is up near the big flea market at Porte de Clignancourt.  It is covered and has permanent stalls for the dealers that reside there. This market is at least one maybe two levels up from the brocante markets in that pickers with comb the brocantes and if they find really good pieces then they will bring them up here to sell to the dealers.  So prices are in line with a second or third markup as well. Still it's fun to look, plus it got us out of the wind and was a bit warmer though not much.  So that was Saturday.
Today we wanted to honor our commitment to membership in the print club and made our way down to the Petit Palais to see a large print show.  It was a two part affair consisting of an overwhelming collection of Kuniyoshi prints belonging to a Japanese collector and then followed up with an exhibition of print making that was taking place in Europe at the same time period.  Like the difference between black and white television of the 50's and color television of the 60's.
There must have been over 300 Kuniyoshi prints covering every phase of his career and most major series themes I'd guess.   All in tip-top condition and showing brilliant colors and patterns, almost too many to encompass at one sitting.  Samurai, Dragons, Monsters, Geishas, Landscapes, Caricatures, and Animals, amazing and beautiful.
The second part was dedicated to European prints from Goya to Redon, and for the most part created before there was any real knowledge of print making from Japan.  So it is really focused on European themes, and to me for the most part, of the supernatural and death.  Grim!  But to be fair there were some very good prints.  I especially liked some of the Redon prints where a large single eye features in the overall theme, surrealistic and interesting.  I didn't take photos of the final section of prints, too dark and after the color of Kuniyosi too difficult to capture.
It was coming on 6:00pm when we got out so the sun was down and for the first time since Deb has been here we got to see the Eiffel Tower lit up.  Last week it was almost completely dark the whole time.   So that was an evening bonus for us.  We walked along the Seine to where our bus leaves from only to find that it was going to be almost 30 minutes before the next bus. So we took the Metro back and arrived about the time that the bus would have picked us up.  We celebrated a small Thanksgiving with turkey, potatoes, and home made cranberry sauce that Deb made from cranberries she brought back from Denver, delicious.  Also the last bottle of Nouveau Beaujolais from our wine merchant.

Still Catching Up 12-4-14

Today we had to actually do a shopping, going to all our merchants.  I had bought food for Deb's return and up until now with a couple small purchases, and of course bread.   But today we had to actually get our food stocks up to date.  A bit sadly we found that the man we almost always dealt with at the wine shop has left and we'll have to develop another relationship going forward.  So it was a quiet day again.
But we did have a celebratory lunch, outside on our kitchen deck in the sunshine.  Then after a bottle of bubbly, I guess our motivation to get out was lacking, that and the fact that it was after 3;30 and the sun was getting low in the sky.
So tomorrow we'll try to show a little initiative and get out to the brocante market over on the street across the canal.  It has yielded more interesting little tidbits than almost any of the other markets. Maybe we'll get motivated to do something else as well.



Notes from Deb - Paris desole, Paris defiant
* I've been trying to gather my thoughts as we move around post-attack Paris. Our most used bus goes by 4 of the sites where people were killed. At each site, there are mounds of fresh flowers and burning candles, both refreshed regularly by quiet people coming to stand and read the handmade signs and poems. Yesterday, a violinist stood playing meditatively by the shuttered Cambodian restaurant that was so devastated. There is an elementary school on the same block, and each day the little children walk by the memorials, and the bullet holes in the walls. Across the street at an open bistro, there were people determinedly and consciously choosing to sit outside for coffee.

*It seems to me that there are fewer people about on the streets, but it is December and perhaps it's just that normal tourist season is past. When I left it was sunny autumn, when I returned it was winter in season and in spirit.

*There are pleas for tolerance from many sources on the media here. An interesting theme for this most tolerant of cities. Perhaps that tolerance is the very reason Paris was targeted. Tolerance seems to me to be under threat is so many places in the world at the moment, not the least in my beloved US.

*I am not bright enough to figure this all out so I will change topics.

*A small pleasant interaction at the post office today. I went to mail things to our landlady in Cyprus, and also to get stamps for some Christmas cards I hope to send. The latter caused a bit of trouble. I showed the clerk my card and asked for some international stamps. She couldn't find any. She had to ask two other, more senior employees. They did eventually find some, but in the meantime they all passed my card around and we had an amusing little conversation about Christmas card design (my card's simple stylized pine tree was adjudged "classique",  "tres correct" and "habile" (skilled)), then types of pine trees, mountains in Colorado, skiing in Colorado and whether or not Warren looked like a typical "Colorado Savage" as I suggested. He was dressed in a cashmere turtleneck and Armani blazer so was somewhat of a disappointment.

*Just in the short time I was gone there are changes in the neighborhood (there were too many in Denver to count over the 8 months.) Here the newest street art, done by an artist named Levelet has been torn down, sadly and unexpectedly. However we discovered another, mercifully intact, just a few blocks away. The artist does witty installations utilizing odd bits of architecture as frames or structures on which to paste his figures of people. This latest one uses some projecting horizontal bars to act as "shelves" for sleeping or dead figures. One represents a dead king, another a street person. Witty. (Habile?)

*Both our old butcher and our charming wine guy are gone. Sad for us, Both were so gracious and nice to us, and added to our enjoyment of the neighborhood.

*Found the exact grapefruit knife I'd been searching for for months at a small cooking store not 4 blocks away. Foolishly, I'd given up and bought a couple of not-quite-what-I-wanted at one of the Grand Magazines. I should have known better. Everything you really want or need is available in your own neighborhood. A person could easily have outfitted a restaurant with what was available from this little store. And in all probability most of the neighboring restaurants have.

*A dear friend, Susan Noll, asked an interesting question: Aren't you guys getting tired of museums? After some thought I realized that I'm not. I guess for me, museums are just like books, each individual, some more appealing than others, but most worth at least a cursory look. Besides, with more than 450 museums in Paris, we haven't had time to more than scratch the surface.

* I owe apologies to so many of you who left kind voicemails and emails while I was in Denver. I'm so sorry I didn't get back to you. It was just such a hurried, pressured time. I'm quite an old dud anymore, and just had to ration my energy to cope with what I needed to do. I would have much preferred to have gotten to visit with you dears,  but just had to attend to other requirements on this trip. I do thank you so much for all your kind thoughts.

* And lastly I need to send grateful thoughts to all the people who helped me get so much done in my short time in Colorado. Bankers who went out of their way to find ways to work around stupid, nonsensical paperwork requirements. Nurses who worked us in for appointments. Moving men who were patient and careful. Legal people who answered dimwitted questions. Doctors who listened and answered carefully and caringly. Poor dear Elizabeth who picked my up at the airport, let me invade her house and then agreed to a much less than pleasant packing gig. And always, always Warren who supports me in all the stupid things I get myself involved in. And then has to put up with an exhausted wife who comes straggling home. A million good thoughts and thanks to all of you!

Getting back to the 20th and 21st Century 12-3-15

Today we made our first foray into the modernists of 20th and 21st century of art and went to visit the Pompidou Center, the National Museum of Modern Art in France.  Most of you have seen the controversial architecture, where all the mechanical, electrical, and structural systems are on the outside of the building instead of hidden away inside walls.  It's 6 stories high and basically clad in glass.
As before stated things like the escalators are on the outside of the building so to get to the main museum you take the escalators all the way to the top.  The museum itself is primarily on the top two floors, with a library on the floors below.  The top floor is dedicated the period from around the mid-teens up through the late 1980's, while the floor below takes off from there and has installations that go right up to almost today.
Over the years both Deb and I have gotten very attached to the artists that were post-impressionist and pre-abstract expressionist, the fauvists, the dadaist, the constructivists, the cubists, etc.  Although that said there are many abstract expressionist artists that are quite interesting as well.
It is quite easy to follow the development of modern art through the decades of the 20th century because the various schools are featured and the artists that were major proponents of them then serve as the prime examples.  It fascinating to see such good Matisse's, Picasso's, and Braque's in here since there are so many of their works in other major venues as well.  An artist I particularly like is Fernand Leger and the collection here is the best I've seen anywhere.

Two other artists that we've grown quite enamored with are Robert and Sonia Delaunay, husband and wife both of whom were active in Paris beginning in the 20's and made some very colorful works with an emphasis on geometric form.
On the next floor down things get much more contemporary and to be honest a lot of it is just too esoteric for me right now.
If I just look at the visual imagery there is much to be enjoyed but when I try to go through all the mental gymnastics to understand the minutiae underpinning it I get goggle-eyed.   If the artists are rebelling against the 40 character tweet mentality of our electronic age then they have to work out how to keep it withing a few paragraphs.  Just my untutored opinion.

Quiet Day 12-2-15

Today was a very quiet day, we did a little shopping and then Deb was too tired to get out to do grocery shopping so we spent the evening in.   We did however decide to spend a week in Sicily at the beginning of January, so I made reservations to fly from Paris to Palermo and rent a car.  That should be a fun time.  A week is a very short time but it's better than a day, n'cest pas?
Here was a christmas beer for my friends in the U.S. and Sunny in particular.  Brasserie du Mont Blanc, La Triple ( the big bottle on the left). BHV is very much into the christmas spirit, their theme this year is "God save Christmas, a British Celebration."

Rodin Exposed 12-1-15

The Rodin Museum has been closed for renovation for the past few years.  It turned out that when they decided to do some renovation and updating that the interior was significantly degraded.  So they gutted the place and redid all the interior.  Mechanical, electrical, plumbing, the whole enchilada, to the tune of over 15 million euros.  They had to rebuild supporting walls, floors and interior spaces, the result of which is an entirely new inside space that looks remarkably like the old space so bravo to them.
It also means that they can display significantly more of his work than when we first visited, significantly.  I think the first time we visited there were several rooms not open to the public, but now I think virtually all the rooms are accessible and they utilized them to the max.  Most people are not aware that Rodin was also a pretty fair painter, they display a lot more of his work on the walls now to go along with his sculpture.

Rodin by Laurens

In addition his monumental works he also did portrait busts of significant French citizens and fellow artists.  In return the artists painted portraits of him and these are displayed next to the bust, very interesting.  This Rodin portrait is by J.P. Laurens, a teacher of John Thompson when he studied here and in return there is a portrait bust of Laurens by Rodin

Laurens by Rodin

We arrived mid-afternoon, which meant almost a dusk in December, and it was dark when we got out around 6:00pm.  So we walked back to the front of Invalides and waited around to see the Tour Eiffel lit up.  But that never happened, for whatever reason (climate change conference?) the tower was not lit up for even the usual 5 minutes at the head of the hour.  Deb was a bit discouraged by that bit of bad luck, and I don't blame her.  But we did walk over to Concorde and then along the Champs Elysee to visit all the temporary Christmas Market stalls, it's a bit kitschy but still a fun walk as it was a very temperate evening.  After our walk we caught the bus back to our apartment and had a quiet evening.

The November Louvre 11-30-15

Well heck, here we are at the end of November, the time is flying.  Just over 9 months into our adventure and the short days are upon us again.  We went to the Louvre today because Deb was interested in seeing the Lyon collection which I mentioned in an earlier post.  It's the only group of Impressionist paintings still left on display in the Louvre because the Lyon's stipulated that the terms of donation were that the paintings must be constantly on display and that the collection cannot be split up.  It must be seen as a whole and it is quite impressive, given that it was collected entirely between the first and second world wars.
The numbers of visitors at the Louvre seems to be so low now, there is not the constantly crowded feeling that we had during the summer.  It is nice to sit in a room and not be constantly looking around people walking through, to view a painting.
There was a large demonstration in the Place de la Republic last night, of protesters demonstrating about the world climate change meeting and unfortunately the protesters trashed the memorial to the victims of the shootings last week that had been set up at the base of the large sculpture of Marianne, the symbol of the French republic.  They were picking up the candles and other objects and throwing them at the police, so some head-cracking ensued and over 100 were arrested.  Today the memorial was pretty much cleaned up and people were replacing broken articles.  It seems a bit disingenuous of the meetings to have corporate sponsors paying, like EDF and Air France since they are among major contributors to the emissions issues.  Like most corporately funded studies they tend to come out with rather skewed results.
In the evening we had dinner with a young friend of niece Elizabeth's, Sara.  She has been in Paris for 5 days, returning tomorrow, and had not had a proper Parisian dinner.  So we had her come out to our neighborhood and we went to Aux Arts et Science Reuniss, the little restaurant that we like so well. It was a very nice meal, Sara had duck, I had venison, and Deb had steak.  Afterwards we went back to our apartment for a little visit and around 10:00 we put Sara back on the Metro for her room.