Weekly World News

A quick comment about last weekend: If ever a lame marching band smiled slyly just before a performance, the one that played “Get Lucky” in front of Trump and Macron at the Bastille Day parade did.

This modern art project is perhaps a comment on the city's motto: "Tossed but never sunk"?

And now back to food news.  It’s hard to believe, but the past seven days included a ham-cheese-béchamel pastry, duck kababs, unlimited pastis (one of those licorice-flavored alcohols), some eggs I flipped with technical precision, and real hot chocolate (a mug of cream + three chocolate bars).  Fear not—these delicacies did not distract from fermented and aged milk products: the rucksack was graced by six kinds of cheese before they slipped down my gullet.

breaking grammar news: I guess it’s not really any different than in English (“to make happy/sad/etc.”), but the operative word of expression in French is rendre, “to render.”  Perhaps the association in my mind is with rendering fat into soap, or some other very tangible, physical process.  Things got much sillier when our professor asked where he would party this weekend.  He was horrified by the outdated suggestion of la discothèque.  But none of us knew the amazing phrase the French use for “nightclub,” the term created either by forthright lesbians or thirteen year-old boys clumsily employing double entendre.  La boîte de nuit is literally “the box of night,” or colloquially “night-box,” and the cool kids just say they’ll meet up at la boîte.  Maybe our minds were in the gutter, but this all-too-apt name set off quite a bit of laughter.

Allow Me to Introduce Pierre

This week’s mini-journey was to the conjoined towns of Fontainebleau-Avon, to visit the Chateau de Fontainebleau, a royal palace for kings from the 1100s on through Napoleon Bonaparte.  I crossed one of Paris’s least-charming bridges to get to the proper train station, whereupon I was stymied by the variety of ticket machines.  (Thank you for psychologically preparing me for this day, NY Penn Station, with your three hostilely separate train lines.  Oh, you thought New Jersey Transit would take you to a destination in NJ?  Not if you’re between the Hudson and Mahwah…)  Eventually, ticket purchased and validated, we slowly creaked our way out of the city.

This is Dante, in Paris; I didn't take any good pictures at Fontainebleau

The chateau is decorated to the hilt: silk upholstery, 1,000-pound chandeliers, wall-sized tapestries of intricate weaving, and gilded curlicues abound.  I wondered how Louis VI* would feel about us plebeians in t-shirts and sandals shuffling past their magnificent acquisition of artisanship, pausing for five or so seconds when impressed by a sumptuous bedspread, and moving on rather indifferently.
*Louis the Fat, apparently.

In grammar news, I moved up to the A2 class and am once again proficient with the past tense.  The more wily imperfect (more delicious sounding in French: “l’imparfait”) is tough to pin down, though, as it is not only used for continuous past actions but also expressing emotions or states of mind.  As part of an exercise I didn’t realize was going to include explaining my deep inner motivations, I described to the nice Japanese woman behind me that I bring home rocks from places I visit.  A stone or rock is “une pierre.”  Now I will forever imagine all stones as small Frenchmen eagerly awaiting being picked up and carried in my pocket.

Les Kata

In ninth-grade French class, we each selected a typical French name, perhaps so that we would more likely stay within the confines of proper pronunciation, or to make the dreary task of learning such basic elements as the alphabet and how to say hello a bit more entertaining.  I chose Sabine because it sounded funny, not like a person’s name, more like a plant or mineral, and would allow for some disassociation/alternative personality.  I, Claire, was academically driven; Sabine was free to be mediocre, or formal, or whatever she may be.

I’m not nearly cool enough yet, but among those who frequently venture into the catacombs it is common to assume a name for the underground.  My second time down was less fraught and electrifying than the first (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQpz8kV3eZQ), but still enchanting.  We passed a memorial for a man that disappeared when retrieving wine from a basement, whose body wasn’t retrieved for 11 years; later, we explored a bunker built to protect civilians during the war that had poured walls and floors, finished with mosaic tile and had included plumbing.  We toasted each other with boxed rosé and cheap beer, and, because this is France, “junk food” included not only potato chips and M&Ms, but ham and cheese sandwiches, and a little jar of foie gras.

But most adventurously, we crawled, first on hand and knees, then pulled with arms and slid on bellies, through a narrow tunnel of earth adjoining our passage to the sidewalk grate (*note the backpack there for scale).  I was third in a line of six people.  Two more or less easily navigated that bit, and I would never be left for dead.  And yet I flushed with accomplishment—I hadn’t been afraid at all.

Les balcons

Things that happened in 48 hours in Paris:
----------

- Viewed approximately 8,000 charming balconies.

- Visited the doctor, almost effortlessly and at low cost, and got prescription face cream.

- Stumbled across a fancy Moroccan patisserie and devoured flatbread.

- The equivalent of an SATII aptly identified that my high school French of ten (oh shit) twenty years ago places me in the...beginner class.

- A brass band played outside Marta's apartment for an hour, including spirited renditions of Havanagela and Something to Talk About.

- Entertained a baby for nigh on forty minutes.  (*Well, was adjacent to baby while it entertained itself with wooden puzzle pieces and a book.)
----------


Don't worry, there's a whole month chock-full of grammar news coming your way.  Paris: Where Your Culinary Dreams and Scholarly Anxieties Come True.

News Brief: Cleaning Gross Things, Part 9 of 17

                                                                                                  Kelley Street ca. 1979

I have identified the home renovation equivalent of dicing bell peppers -- it is chipping tile.  A hammer creates the same callus as a chef knife, the repetitive motion exerts the same force on your wrist, and while it only requires 10% of your brain you must be careful not to obliterate the fingers of your non-dominant hand.  Though it would be fun to just smear a layer of concrete over the shitty old tile and go blithely on from there, it wouldn't be structurally sound; and so, we chip.

I washed ten-year-old, ten-year-old boogers off a wall.  And scraped, like a fine balsamic vinegar, 14-year-aged fridge goo from the floor.  But after steaming off the wallpaper and painting, the desperation that previously saturated every cubic foot of the place has ebbed away.  Once I wash the mold off the (never opened?) windows and new carpet is installed, we will have recovered the house from its midlife (geriatric?) crisis.

-----------------

*Background note: Mom and dad are fixing up our old house, which they've rented out ever since we moved, in 1990.  The front half (500 sq. ft. or so) was built in 1940, utilizing several tree stumps as footings.  Twenty years or so later, someone dug a basement, most of which is cinder block, but one side just disappears into the earthy gloom beyond.  The street remained unpaved until the mid-80s, and the driveway through next month.  It's located very close to popular downtown as well as the beach, yet the neighborhood languishes on the cusp of gentrification: seedy middle-aged men leer from their porches at all hours, and we think the house across the street is either a rehabilitation home for pedophiles or Mormon group living.  It is also near my favorite donut shop.

Maybe We'll Do In a Squirrel or Two

Pourquoi non? Who knows what we'll do?

Anything can happen.  The day may come when you find yourself, for the fortieth time, cadging a meal at a graduate school reception (despite never having attended any quaternary education)...or you stop off for a pork belly taco at a bougie cafe in Mississippi (guilt mounting for having expected crumbling infrastructure and Deliverance locals)...or you resignedly chew a stale bagel (your last MRE, woeful sustenance) to withstand endless, soulless, artificial, McMansion-stuffed suburbs a dozen miles outside Denver.

These happenings are neither tragic nor that bizarre, but you get the idea.  Plans change; but happily, your wonderful, strikingly tattooed friend welcomes you into her home, makes sure you have plenty of cabbage and cauliflower, and not only gets you on your feet but takes you on some great hikes.

So I missed a few states and many miles, but I was a temporary resident of Boulder before flying back to lots of nephew-kiddie-pool-time and wall washing with my parents.  And there's a few weeks to dream of all the cheeses I will stuff in my backpack when I get to Paris.

Training Day and the Big Game

I went on a sort of proto-roadtrip throughout New York City before embarking on the real one.  It's rather disorienting visiting the place you spent pretty much your entire adult life (14-Year Club Member), feeling as though you're just returning from another trip, but no -- you're not here to stay.  Shout-out to Alex for meeting me fresh out of the airport and calming my outsider status with colorful drinks and plantains in gentrified Harlem; to Katie for fabulous cheesecake and reminiscing that transported us from Utica back to the city; to Ted and Faye for a comfy couch and cooking in my own Union Square; to Shengning for the best bucolic skyline view in Sunset Park; to Matt for the first oyster I actually enjoyed; and to Julien and his endearing family for garlic butter and peace and quiet on the Upper East Side.

And then just as I was starting to elbow people in the subway again, it was time to go.  Past the industrial battlescapes of New Jersey, just a quick stop in Baltimore, and into that land amorphously referred to as the South.  Huh...Virginia looks a lot like the rest of the east coast.  Richmond, anyway, was cool, rainy, and full of trees.  And pretty brick buildings, some with patrician columns.  We wandered and partook of barbeque with fellow Antarcticans.  We stumbled upon the grave of Jefferson Davis.

Surprise: a roadtrip involves a lot of sitting.  In a car.  Luckily Julien is a good conversationalist and has lots of music.