Sundays with Richard and Polly -- May

The first time I ever visited the Parc de Bagatelle, over a year ago, I had ventured out on a self-imposed solitary expedition. Meandering among the the grottoes, the follies, the winding paths, the Orangerie, oohing and aahing over the strutting peacocks, I was transported. It was sublime, everything I'd ever wanted in a French park. Or any park. My garden-induced rapture was jolted by the ringing of my cell phone. It was the friend I was meeting for lunch nearby in the 16e arrondissement.

"Where are you?" he inquired.

"Uhh, I'm not sure," I replied breathlessly. "But I do I think I've died and gone to heaven."


So it's easy to imagine how much I was looking forward to returning to the Parc de Bagatelle for the monthly adventure of "Sundays with Richard and Polly." We'd had the plans lined up for weeks. Directions to the Parc, decisions about picnics on the lush lawns. I was burning to get back to that little bit o' heaven in the Bois de Boulogne on a lovely May afternoon.

Then SNAFUs struck. Logistical challenges, out-of-town guests, the usual Paris glitches. So at the eleventh hour, Richard and I decided to stay in the center of town and go to the Sainte-Chapelle for our monthly outing instead.

Bagatelle?
Logistical hell.
Oh well,
Sainte-Chapelle

Crossing the bridge from St Germain, I arrived first , and a sizable line confronted me outside the entrance. There is a security check to get into the Sainte-Chapelle and the Conciergerie because they are both located within the walls of the Palais de Justice, more or less France's equivalent to the Supreme Court. Patience is a virtue and a learned skill in trying to visit popular Paris spots.

Waiting for Richard and Vincent, I struck up a conversation with the couple behind me. Actually, they struck up the conversation: "Excusez-moi, parlez-vous Anglais?" asked the lady in a lovely Aussie accent. I gave her my basic I'm-an-American-living-in-Paris spiel.

Relieved, she sighed, "Can ya tell me, then, what IS it exactly that we're standing in line for?"

Ahem. I know I usually think I've heard everything in Paris, but this was a new one. She and her darling husband were obligingly standing in a long line of tourists -- let me get this straight -- because they saw a bunch of other tourists and figured it had to be a Worthwhile Thing to See? But they had no idea what? I sputtered as I sought a reply. Then I realized, hey -- come to think of it, maybe that's not such a bad tourism tactic after all. Ditch the guide books, and follow the crowds. Ask a knowledgeable person -- and presto! -- you've seen Paris.

Anyway, Richard and Vincent lucked out because by the time they arrived I had advanced our spot in line close to the front. We both admitted that we hadn't visited the Sainte-Chapelle since we'd been here, an embarrassment somewhat mitigated by the fact that the church had been closed for renovation for a while a few years ago. We chatted about our Hall of Shame -- the must-see Paris sites that we haven't visited yet.

We finally made it through the metal detector and experienced the mini-frisson of being frisked by the handsomest of the two gendarme security guards. At least one of us wanted to return for a repeat performance. I'm not telling who.

When you enter the ground-floor level of the Sainte-Chapelle, the first inclination is to hum along with Peggy Lee in "Is That All There Is?" The vaulted ceilings and the boutique are pretty, to be sure, and the medallion-maker tempting and very busy, but there isn't an automatically-revealed sense of some other incredible space to visit beyond the low-ceilinged chamber, with its enticing polychrome frescoes that look like like rich tapestries. Knowing the glorious stained glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle from Art History class eons ago, I knew we had to figure out how to get to see them somewhere in the building. We spotted an inconspicuous narrow stairway in the corner, and made the climb to the upper level.

Have you ever imagined what it is like to be inside the tumbler of an exquisite kaleidoscope? I hadn't. But that is precisely the whirling visual impression I got upon entering the chapel. There are practically no walls above about eight feet -- just stained glass. A myriad of jeweled glass designs and biblical stories far too detailed to write about here. I spun around and walked around and gazed upward until finally Richard urged, "Come, sit." I sat, in one of the chairs lining the length of sanctuary. A wise decision.

Please, if you visit the Sainte-Chapelle, do yourself a favor and take time to plunk down and simply stare at the glass. For a good long while. You'll see much more than if you snap away for photos of the stained glass with your digital camera. Slow down and absorb all the intense visual stimulus. There is no book, no slide show, no video tour that could replace the first-hand experience. Sainte-Chapelle was a good decision. I'm happy, in a way, that my photos of the stained glass didn't turn out well, because nothing can attempt to capture being there. I took close-ups instead of the fleur-de lys patterns and angels.

Finally oxygen depletion and sensory satiation forced us to reach the departure-decision. This meant descending the treacherous stairs opposite the ones we had climbed. So worth it, despite the vertigo.

Sainte-Chapelle was by no means an "oh-well" destination, it turns out. I realized why it's on the must-do lists of sites in Paris. So I'm now inspired to go to visit all the other sites on my Hall of Shame... after I take a quick jaunt to Bagatelle, of course.

Now, let's go see what Richard wrote about our Sunday.

Regard sur les Etats-Unis

I like to read the news. Online, I usually read the news about France in French, and then I read Art Goldhammer's French Politics for the timely analysis. To get the U.S. and world news I scan all my favorites: the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, any other on-line news source that lets me read for free.

Lately when I log into my Yahoo! account the Yahoo! News page pops up as Yahoo.fr. Yahoo! France is not merely Yahoo! US translated in French, of course. It's news deemed of interest to a French readership. Its tone and content lack the gravitas of regular French newspapers, somehow. I think it's! the! exclamation! point! I really miss all the major, life-altering headline stories on English-language Yahoo!, like Lindsay Lohan's missing mascara, or how to make perfect scrambled eggs.

But, in all earnest, one interesting feature of Yahoo! France is a great blog called Regard sur les Etats Unis, A Look at the United States from a French view. In my lifelong learning curve about France, I find it helpful in general to look at my own culture from a foreigner's perspective. And REU has news and commentary, as well as some interesting blogs on its blogroll -- French expatriates in the US writing about the American cultural and political scene from their viewpoint.

I applaud REU's effort to include an English version on their site. It's a noble effort, brought to you by Google translate. But try reading this English version of the latest Clinton/Obama story, where the possessive pronoun his or its is constantly applied to Hillary.

"The awkwardness of Hillary Clinton unworthy democrats

This is the latest controversy to date, across the Atlantic. Hillary Clinton has committed the blunder to justify its continuation in the race for the Democratic nomination through rapprochement with the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

The candidate wanted to make it clear that the Democratic campaign could be extended and that everything could still happen.

The problem is that his opponent, Barack Obama, is regularly subjected to death threats and is constantly under protection of U.S.
secret services.

As for Democrats is consternation. Even if the candidate has made his apology, particularly with respect to the Kennedy family (which also makes the headlines as a result of the hospitalisation of Edward
Kennedy), everyone's attaches to say that fatigue does not justify
everything.

This controversy is further proof that the campaign has gone on too long term."

Who needs Comedy Central when you've got automated translating?

Lights are on at Deyrolle

I stopped by Deyrolle today. Phoenix-like, it has risen from the ashes. Yay! They've opened again, on a temporarily smaller scale, after suffering a terrible fire in early February. As you can see from the photograph, the lights are on in less than half of the former space; the more damaged area on the left, the locus of the fire, will have to undergo more extensive renovation. The current space was repainted, floors sanded, and it seems just like the old, beloved Deyrolle.

Many of the lions and pigs and birds were there; some of the larger beasts are still in taxidermy hospital. Virtually the entire butterfly collection was wiped out in the fire -- a terrible loss.

I finally got a close-up view of "Plumes," the scarf created by Hermès to help finance the reconstruction of Deyrolle. The scarf, 265€, will be available in September; and for now can be ordered only in France, apparently. Here is ordering information for those who love Hermès and Deyrolle -- two classic Paris institutions. A third venerable Paris institution, Editions Gallimard, has lent a hand, and published a book on the future of Deyrolle for 15€, if that is more in your budget.

Ile Seguin

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One hundred years ago, Ile Seguin, an island in the Seine just outside Paris, was quiet and verdant. In the late 1920s, Renault built a car manufacturing plant on the site, where over 30,000 workers were employed.

Until 1992, the factory was in full production, with a barge of 500 newly-minted Renaults departing twice daily from the island. After the factory closed down, a plan was in the works to create a museum to display the vast art collection of billionaire financier François Pinault. Pinault abandoned the project in 2005, citing bureaucratic difficulties, and moved his art collection to Venice.

Then other projects were in the works, including an artists' residence, a four-star hotel, the headquarters for the CNRS and France's National Cancer Institute, a campus for the American University of Paris. Now caught in political crossfire, the fate of the island is still up in the air. It seems as though the now-desolate island is like a child caught in a bitter and drawn-out custody battle: the one who suffers is the child. Will it be a sculpture garden? A battlestar galactica superbuilding dominating the riverfront? Only the politicians know for sure.

To see a slide show of the old factory in production, click here. Now there is virtually nothing on the languishing island but bare earth. Tabula rasa.


"Ile Seguin, derniers éclats," is a superb exhibit of photographs of the Renault factory before and during demolition that has just opened at the Galerie Christian Arnoux. Hubert Fanthomme, a photographer for Paris-Match, was one of two reporters allowed on the site to photograph the final days of the factory building over a three-year period. The photos are poignant still-lifes that tell a rich tale. A deeply detailed and evocative expression of faded industrial architecture.




Ile Seguin, derniers éclats
May 22 - June 29
Galerie Christian Arnoux
42, rue de Seine
75006 Paris
01 56 24 31 37

Versailles

I had lunch on a sunny terrace at the home of a new friend who lives in Versailles, not far from the Château. Versailles: the very name conjures up gilt moldings and grandiosity. Before I got there, I expected a frilly, fussy, stuffy house, kind of Louis-something. Was I in for a surprise.

The side street was narrow and inconspicuous. Except for the fact that there was hardly any room to park, it could have been in a village in Normandy. Entering the outer cobblestone courtyard, I already began to swoon.

The terrasse was picture perfect.

The garden made me long for my old garden in the States. Since I've been an urban dweller, I've persuaded myself that my garden had mostly been a chore; I haven't missed the weeding and composting. Right?

And then this. I think I want a garden in my future. With a humble stone fountain at the end, like this, pleasing the eye and ear.

But, mostly,

I want a bathroom with a crystal chandelier.

Sabrina

Paris isn't for changing planes. It's for changing your outlook! For throwing open the windows and letting in... letting in la vie en rose.

This memorable line is from one of my favorite movies of all time, a movie whose transformed heroine made me believe in the transformative powers of Paris, very early on in my life. Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina. Of course it's a 1950's Hollywood fairy tale, but there are elements about Paris that director Billy Wilder nailed perfectly.

Sabrina, a chauffeur's daughter, has gone to Paris to learn to cook, and to forget about an impossible relationship -- her crush on the wealthy playboy son of her father's employers, played by the dashing William Holden.



The wise cooking instructor tells her he can tell she is in love.

"A woman happily in love, she burns ze souffle. A woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on ze oven."

After two years in Paris, Sabrina is indeed transformed. She has found a new recipe ... for life. In her letter home she writes,

"It is late at night and someone across the way is playing La Vie en rose. It is the French way of saying 'I am looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses.' It says everything I feel. I have learned so many things, Father. Not just how to make vichyssoise or calf's head with sauce vinaigrette, but a much more important recipe. I have learned how to live, how to be in the world and of the world, and not just to stand aside and watch. And I will never, never again run away from life, or from love, either."



Well, we'll all just have to run out and rent the DVD to watch the full Sabrina. I hardly need to, since I almost know it by heart.

My parting line, another favorite piece of advice (except the umbrella), is Audrey Hepburn saying to Humphrey Bogart, the stodgy businessman workaholic brother,

"We can't have you walking up the Champs Elysées looking like a tourist undertaker! And another thing, never a briefcase in Paris and never an umbrella. There's a law!"

Carrie Bradshaw en francais

Whodathunkit. Sarah Jessica Parker speaks French! Well, at least 10 words.

"Bonjour, je vous aime, enchantée, merci, merci, merci, merci, merci!"


La belle SJP was in Paree at the Sephora on the Champs Elysées to launch her new perfume, Covet.

The throng of fans was not disappointed, apparently.





Watch the video here.

Love Me, Love My Blog

One of the charming thrills of living in Paris is occasionally rubbing elbows with -- and even getting to know well -- people who are in the upper echelons of the literary, journalistic, artistic, diplomatic or business worlds. You get accustomed to it -- at a sought-after gathering there's usually quite a mélange of guests. One person who was interviewed in the New York Times or the Economist the previous week, for example, and another who wrote the article. And then there's me. And a pale guy still hanging on the social coattails of his late mother's international fame. And a blonde who announces she can't stay at the party because she has to catch a plane to Cannes. That's just the day-to-day world in Paris. The mighty and the lowly, tossed together like a macédoine at any given social function.

Yes, the lowly -- such as the humble bloggers. Not the famous Paris blogger-authors like Clotilde or Petite or David. Just random bloggers like me who are having fun sharing their version of Paris with the gullible dozen or so readers who actually believe that I live here. (I'm really writing Polly-Vous Français from my garage office in the suburbs of Spokane.)

Ha-ha, naturellement, I'm kidding. But really. Being a blogger in Paris. It's often hard to get taken seriously in this city of people who wield their impressive talents and get paid for it.

Not enough of a self-promoter, I don't pimp my blog in casual conversation much, but sometimes I do get asked about it.

Typical scenario. I am at a large weekday conference-soirée milling around with friends and acquaintances. "How's the blogging going, Polly?" asks one pal, with the same ever-so-slight pause after the word blogging, the same intonation, as if he had asked "How are you enjoying clown school?" When American friends in Paris ask "How's the blog?" there is often a suppressed smirk accompanied by a benevolent closed-mouthed smile and a bemused twinkle in the eye. Oh, yes, a blog. They gleefully mime the twittering of fingers over a keyboard when they say it. I want to reply coquettishly, "Goodness me, why are you asking -- don't you read my column faithfully, mon cher?"

But gosh darn, no, I don't say that. I'm so eager to please. I just chirp, "It's great!" with my usual perky all-American smile, and then I spew out some fictional weekly statistic to prove how respectable I am. Actually, this blog does have about 3,500 individual hits per week, about 5,000 page loads. Those numbers never fail to either a) impress or b) make people want to hook me up to the nearest polygraph machine. "On your blog?" they ask incredulously. Well, sure. Of course, I don't reveal that 25% of my readers are Boomers reading my post on Morticia and Gomez, and another 25% are Estonians googling for pictures of French babes in lingerie.

Then there are chums who have the opposite reaction: embarrassed, they say nothing about my blog, pretending it doesn't exist. It's as if they don't want to have been caught reading it, as if knowing what I have written on my blog is tantamount to sneaking a peek at my intimate diary.

Don't worry, folks, I yearn to say. It's published on the World Wide Web, over 1.3 billion internauts served daily there. So go ahead, it's okay to read it. More than okay -- encouraged, actually. Please pass it on. Tell your friends about my blog. Especially any publisher friends looking to find the hidden talent in me and sign a six-figure book deal.

And, blessedly, there are the kindhearted journalists or editors who occasionally express admiration, real or pretend. "Oh, you write Polly-Vous Français? Love the blog!" It's happened -- exactly twice, which isn't quite putting me on the superhighway to a Pullitzer. Sure they love blogs. Blogs are, of course, an excellent source of initial field research for writers at many august dailies and glossies. A recent statistic claims that about 70% of all journalists skim blogs for information and timely topics. I don't mind doing the legwork for them for free, for the most part. It doesn't pay the rent, but, heck, I'm flattered whenever a story or idea of mine gets borrowed and rewritten and put into print... usually. Don't any of these print publications want to hire an in-house blogger? I'm available!

Ah, blogging in Paris. No fame, no glory, no income. Quand même, I love it. I'm accustomed to the reactions or lack thereof at parties. So these days I don't mind it when a charming rascal mimics that keyboard-typing gesture when mentioning my blog. It's kind of sweet.

But if ever -- ever -- some fellow dares to ask about my "blog" while using his fingers in little-rabbit-Foo-Foo "air quotation marks," I hope I'm wearing my pointiest stilettos.

There goes education

I just heard the most incredible news. So incredible that I didn't believe it until I came home and researched it and found out it's true.

The College Board, administrator of AP exams, SATs, and all the other (supposedly) important barometers of high-school ability for college placement, has made a decision to cancel the Advanced Placement exam in French Literature, effective in 2009.

As a lifelong student of French literature, knowing how much I learned from studying not just the language but also the literature, I am not only outraged but totally depressed at the political dumbing-down of American education, by people who ought to know better.

Please join me in writing the College Board to protest this stupid decision, which they claim is final. And pass the word along to all your Francophile friends.

Please send letters to:

Gaston Caperton

President

The College Board

45 Columbus Avenue

New York, NY 10023-6992

email: gcaperton@collegeboard.org

and

Lester Monts

University of Michigan

503 Thompson Street

Room 3084 Fleming Building

Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1340

email: lmonts@umich.edu

Understanding French Body Language

Glancing up at a sizable group gathered on a fifth-floor balcony in the 8e arrondissement the other day, I mumbled to myself, "Il y a du monde au balcon." Then I laughed, remembering what that phrase means. Then came the flashback. To a black-and-white photo in a book, of a man in a turtleneck, miming the phrase il y a du monde au balcon to indicate seeing a large-breasted woman.

The book is called Beaux Gestes, and it is the Rosetta stone for deciphering French body language. Gallic puffing-out of cheeks or the finger-pulling-the-lower-eyelid got you confused? You'll find the answers in Beaux Gestes. An entertaining, witty, loving look at French gestures by probably the most avid American Francophile of all time, the late Laurence Wylie. The online version of Beaux Gestes and an excellent biography of Professor Wylie are found at an informative website called FranceInfo US.

I first discovered Professor Wylie's work when I read A Village in the Vaucluse, the tale of Wylie's family life when he was a teacher in Rousillon in the early 1950s. It was a tremendous hit with Francophiles well before Peter Mayle ever dreamed of writing A Year In Provence. (If you read both A Village in the Vaucluse and Mayle's books, you'll see the differences in their approaches. Professor Wylie was a witty and eloquent esteemed Harvard social anthropologist, chair of the Department of French Civilization. Mayle's background was as an astute advertising exec.) I loved A Year in Provence, though in parts I found it a bit condescending to the villageois. Mostly I wished that Professor Wylie's books could have had the same best-seller accolades. They deserved it.

Lucky me to have been a French major: Beaux Gestes was required reading for a French civilization course. Some of us have to do the hard work!