FOREVER 29-PART ONE

I hope this will not come out as self-indulgence. I spent almost thirty years developing the Joie de Vivre catalog and I loved it. After I announced my retirement, so many customers told me they would be hanging on to their catalogs as souvenirs that I thought it might be fun to go down memory lane. A few (very few) of you will remember what my first catalog looked like. For everybody else, here is the complete JDV retrospective, broken down in three decades.  

10/1989 Premier Numéro

The very first catalog. Photography by Jeff Broome who will shoot the catalog until his death in 2006. 12 pages, duotone. Printed at Valley Color Graphics until they shut down twenty years later. Notable: Fallot mustards, A l’Olivier olive oil, Guinettes cherries, and Valrhona chocolate, all fantastic products that I offered in every single catalog until the last one. I also feature Delpeyrat canned goose foie gras and goose confit! Some people laughed at me when I declared I would be selling foie gras to private individuals…

04/1990 L’Artiste

The first (and last) spring/summer catalog that I published: a money pit. But the cover is still one of the very favorite pictures I took: that painter was sitting on the Pont des Arts in Paris and the Samaritaine department store (top right) was still open. I saw him at that location for a few years; then he was gone; then he was showing his works right outside the St-Germain-des-Prés church in October 2008. Notable: Suavor, a French specialty coffee when Americans were still drinking jus de chaussettes; L’Occitane soaps, waaaay before they decided to open their own retail outlets.

10/1990 Doisneau

I start working with Graphique de France (posters, cards, calendars) and use one of their images for the cover. 16 pages, duotone. Notable: Clément Faugier marrons glacés and crème de marron, La Perruche sugar cubes, dried green lentils and flageolets beans, herbs of Provence, cornichons, olives niçoises, and Apilco porcelain dishes.

10/1991 The Black One

First and only black cover. 20 pages, 4-color and duotone. In retrospect, a bit over dramatic but it seemed to be a good way to showcase André Renoux’s striking placemats and coasters. Notables: butter galettes and palets from Brittany, Delpeyrat pâtés, dried mushrooms, the famous St Dalfour trio, canned salsifis and flageolets, Emile Henry cookware –before it was on anybody’s radar– and my first curated book selection on France, including Patricia Wells’ Bistro Cooking. Oh, and Le Marché French vegetable seeds imported by Georgeanne Brennan.

10/1992 Belle Epoque

Renoux’s paintings serve as inspiration again. 20 pages, 4-color throughout. Notable: I introduce calissons, nougat, and dragées; Monin syrups, the first syrups to be introduced to the US, a couple of years ahead of the “Italian” ones. Provençal scent diffuser and lavender oil. And the Quo Vadis agendas in French!

10/1993 Cafés

Sensing the Americans’ developing interest in good coffee, I introduced Etienne Knopes collection box: excellent Belgian company. 24 pages. Notable: Bizac cassoulet, foie gras, confit, and pâtés. Escargots and lobster bisque. Savora mustard and grated celery root. First tilleul and verveine herbal teas. Sablés de l’Abbaye, Les Gavottes, stuffed prunes from Château de Born. Enamel signs and first foray into T-shirts. 

10/1994 Les Boîtes

Fabulous tins featuring vintage French posters. 28 pages. Notable: our first Saucisson Sec de Montagne and coarse salt from Guérande (nobody had even given a thought to salt before.) Capitaine Cook’s mackerels in white wine! Savora mustard! Dea harissa! Doucet pâtes de fruits, vacuum-packed chestnuts, madeleine, and charlotte pans. Le Petit Marseillais soaps. Christmas cards in French.

10/1995 Le Canard

I persuaded my friend Claude, CEO of Grimaud Farms, that I could sell fresh Muscovy duck and raw Sonoma Foie Gras to my customers. Six months later, he starts raising pintades and I sell half of his first batch. 32 pages. Notable: in addition to fresh meats, I offer our first selection of French cheeses. I’m also the first US retailer of Gabriel Perroneau’s honeys and pain d’épice. Arnaud specialty olives. Roger & Gallet eau de Cologne (still miss that one.) And I feature Linda Dannenberg’s French Country Diary for the first time! The rest is history…

10/1996 Les Fromages

Expanding on the French cheese offering and Président butter, a long time before it became (relatively) ubiquitous. 32 pages. Notable: marrons glacés from Confiserie du Périgord, madeleines, chicorée Leroux, and crème Mont Blanc. Our first exclusive T-shirts designed by my friend Nancy Liston.

10/1997 Scents of Provence

Cover is inspired by incense holders handmade in Provence. 36 pages. Obviously, some opacity issues with the paper… Notable: Amora mustard, canned coquilles St-Jacques (trust me, they were very tasty,) Mariage Frères teas, Révillon papillotes, praslines Mazet, chocolat Cluizel, and La Mère Poulard cookies. 

10/1998 Bonjour

Great porcelain mugs screened with scenes from Paris. 36 pages. Notable: Grimaud markets confit of duck legs based on my recipe. After Rougié buys Bizac, I switch to their brand for our French duck, goose, and foie gras products. Traou Mad is now my preferred choice for Brittany cookies. First fleur de sel from Guérande, biscottes, Fossier pink cookies, and palmiers. Conserverie de Haute-Provence jams, including gelée de coing and gelée de groseille.

Follow me to Part Two.

Vocabulary
Le premier numéro: first issue
Le jus de chaussette: (lit.) sock juice; weak coffee
La boîte: box, tin
Le canard: duck
La pintade: Guinea hen
Le pain d’épice: French ginger bread loaf
La gelée: jelly
Le coing: quince
La groseille: red currant
La biscotte: similar to Melba toast, often served for breakfast

THIS OLD HOUSE

After I announced my retirement from Joie de Vivre and my impending return to France after thirty-six years in California, I was deluged with phone calls, emails, and beautiful hand-written cards and letters from my customers: although sad to see me go, they wanted to wish me well on my new adventures. And many, many of them were also very curious about this old house I was returning to, the house that Rick and I (along with a team of skilled artisans) will be renovating.

I’ve known this place all my life. It’s located near Gourdon (in the Lot), about 15 miles south of Sarlat. Until moving to the US, I pretty much spent all my summer vacations there, along with most of Easter breaks, and a few very cold weeks at Christmas time (no central heating.) It’s a tiny farmhouse that my great-grandmother Françonette inherited. We don’t know exactly when the house was built but we do know that the (still existing) boxwood trees in front of the house were planted on Françonette’s wedding day, which was around 1870. So, the house is at least 150 years old. Originally, it was a typical stone house of the Quercy. Pigs and chickens were kept at ground level; an exterior stone staircase led to the upper floor where humans actually lived in one “large” room with a walk-in fireplace, and a bedroom to the side.

The house was extensively renovated in 1940. My grandparents were living in the Paris area with their four children at the time; they thought it would be prudent to update the house in case they needed to relocate to the Free Zone, below the demarcation line. At that time, Françonette was staying with one of her daughters; the house was vacant and no longer an “active” farm. The exterior staircase was demolished and the fireplace relocated downstairs. The lower level comprised the main room and a root cellar. An interior wooden staircase was built to lead to a couple of bedrooms upstairs. Running water was only brought to the house in 1966: until then, we relied on the cistern and the well. At that point, the cellar was partitioned to accommodate a tiny bathroom and toilet: we gladly abandoned the outhouse next to the rabbit hutch! An additional bedroom was eventually built on the west side, replacing the old shed. My aunt Maguy gave me a small painting of the house showing the way it looked in the 1960s.

From right to left: the linden tree planted in 1965; the main house; the late 1960s addition (downstairs bedroom); the shed; the cistern; and the 150-year-old boxwood trees.

In preparation for the remodel, we emptied out the house during our February trip. It’s tiny, only 750 square feet, but it has good bones: stone walls that are 18 inches wide and solid oak trusses supporting the roof. Pretty much everything else has to be redone. When the project is completed, we’ll end up with a 1250 sqft, 2 bedroom/2 bath house with a kitchen extension and an office: two essential rooms for me because I just can’t cook meals in the fireplace like my grandmother used to and, duh, I’m only semi-retiring!  That’s going to keep us busy for a while; I’m pretty sure the project will generate a few blog posts.  Stay tuned for updates.

L'ARGENT FAIT LE BONHEUR

I was quite disappointed when I went to the bank to exchange my francs for some dollars in preparation for my first trip to the USA: the images on the coveted billet vert turned out to be unexciting and confusing since all denominations were of identical size and, well, color. To top it off, the texture of the paper reminded me of Monopoly money and the $20 Jackson had none of the lovely crackling sound produced by a crisp 100F Corneille.

I felt the same way when the euro, la monnaie unique, was put into circulation through most of Europe on January 1st, 2002. I thought the new banknotes lacked personality and, again, seemed to be printed on "funny money" paper. It immediately made me nostalgic for the francs I grew up with, so I took the métro to La Bourse and did some lèche-vitrine on rue Vivienne in the 2nd arrondissement, where numismates congregate; I purchased six old bills that circulated in the early Sixties.

Those were the years where I stored the little money I had in my tirelire: not a pink ceramic pig that would have a fateful encounter with a hammer someday but a metal tree log with a lever to allow the coin to drop into the cylindrical container. Simultaneously, a metal chouette would come out from the side of the trunk. Oh, joy! I would regularly empty my piggy bank so that I could drop the coins into it again and watch the bird appear with each falling pièce. So, yes, I did feel that money brought me happiness; and yes, I was easily entertained…

Obviously, I prized coins more than billets. Besides, the 5F and 10F coins that my grandmothers would give me –in reward for my good grades– were made of real silver! Overall, these were interesting times moneywise: January 1960 marked the introduction of the nouveau franc which was worth 100 anciens francs. Old habits die hard: a couple of generations never got used to it and continued to talk in old francs for the rest of their lives. My porte-monnaie held new centimes, old francs (which were now worth 1 centime), and even older francs that had been minted during the Vichy government: the leftover coins from the Occupation displayed Famille-Travail-Patrie on the tail side instead of Liberté-Egalité-Fraternité. It took several years for the old coins and bills to be retired. From her portefeuille, my mother could pull out either the 1000 (old) Francs Richelieu, or the updated 10 Nouveaux Francs Richelieu, or the 10 Francs Voltaire.

The Voltaire note has always been my favorite probably because I used it the most; perhaps also because I particularly enjoyed Voltaire's sense of irony and his fight against intolerance . That particular bill was part of a series called Créateurs et Scientifiques célébres; all the new notes printed between 1959 and 1964 featured famous French writers. I can’t say that I fingered too many 500F Molière but my first allowance consisted of a 100F Corneille: of course, I recall that one with special fondness. What’s in your wallet nowadays? Like me, you probably carry mostly plastic. But if you are a nostalgic French person or a curious American, feast your eyes on the colorful banknotes below: as a bonus, I’ve paired each writer with one of their quotes.

Victor Hugo, 5 NF

Mieux vaudrait encore un enfer intelligent qu’un paradis bête
An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise

Voltaire, 10 F

J’ai décidé d’être heureux parce que c’est bon pour la santé
I have chosen to be happy because it’s good for my health

Racine, 50 F

Il n’est point de secrets que le temps ne révèle
There are no secrets that time doesn’t reveal

Corneille, 100 F

La façon de donner vaut mieux que ce qu’on donne
The manner of giving is worth more than the gift

Molière, 500 NF

Il n’y a point de pire sourds que ceux qui ne veulent pas entendre
There is no worse deaf man than the one who doesn’t want to hear

Vocabulary:
L'argent fait le bonheur: money brings happiness
Le billet vert: the greenback (lit. green bill)
La monnaie unique: common currency
Le lèche-vitrine: window shopping
Le numismate: numismatist; coin, medal, and banknote collector
La tirelire: piggy bank
La chouette: owl
Le billet: bill or banknote (in the context of money)
La pièce: coin (in the context of money)
Les anciens francs: pre-1960 currency
Les nouveaux francs: post-1960 currency
Le porte-monnaie: coin purse
Le centime: worth one-hundredth of one franc
Travail-Famille-Patrie: Work-Family-Fatherland
Le portefeuille: wallet

 
The opening photograph of this post is my own; the photos of the individual bills come from World Banknotes and Coins.

TURNING A PAGE

My friends and customers are always envious when I tell them I fly to France an average of four times a year. They probably imagine that I spend my time sitting in a bistro chair, sampling macarons, visiting world-class museums, strolling the streets of old villages in the countryside, enjoying superlative meals accompanied by excellent –and inexpensive– French wines, and collecting a bunch of moments parfaits along the way.

Well, there is some of that.

There is also something else: many expatriates easily eschew touristic activities in favor of just hanging out with family. Over the past few years, most of my trips have followed the same pattern: a few days in Paris attending trade shows and exploring a random neighborhood, followed by ten days (or more) around Gourdon to reconnect with my roots and visit relatives.

I expected our latest February sojourn to unfold in a similar fashion but everything felt a bit different from the get-go, just as if we were wandering in a parallel universe. Our arrival coincided with a rare snowstorm over Paris. The views of the tarmac at CDG1 are never spectacular but it felt like we were landing on some desolate planet: white skies merging into white grounds dotted with an occasional gray concrete building. It was beautiful and ghostly at the same time.

Otherworldly CDG airport in February 2018

It was still snowing when Rick and I boarded our train at Austerlitz station. We continued to travel through white-and-gray landscapes. An hour and a half into our journey, I heard a loud sharp noise unlike anything I had heard before. The train continued on to Chateauroux where it stopped for over an hour. Apparently, a very large chunk of ice had come loose from under the locomotive and hit a couple of windows on the last two wagons; they had to be uncoupled from the rest of the train and their passengers accommodated into the remaining cars. Onward to snow-covered Limoges, Brive, and Souillac. There were still a few patches on the ground when we arrived in Gourdon. As my aunt was driving us home, I filled my eyes with a sumptuous winter sunset: a brilliant red disk dropping behind black tree limbs tickling a clear blue sky.

Winter sunset at the farm

The main item on our agenda was to empty out my grandparents’ old house and prep it for renovation. We knew it would be a formidable endeavor: having experienced two world wars, that generation never threw anything away. The house is actually quite small in its current state and hasn’t been regularly occupied for the past twenty years. In my youth, the furnishings were a bit spartan; each object had its place and purpose. After my grandmother passed away, “the farm” gradually became a storage venue more than a truly functional home. While it provided adequate accommodations for a two-week vacation, it was now a mere shell of its old self, no longer imbued with charm, warmth, or soul. Except in my memories.

By the time we were done, we had made fifteen trips to the déchetterie and filled the neighborhood dumpsters with two dozen grands sacs poubelle. We emptied several cupboards, armoires, two attics, and one toolshed; I sifted through just about everything, not wanting to discard anything important. Not necessarily valuable, but meaningful to me. Grandpa’s pipes, still displayed on a horseshoe. Grandma’s scarf, the one she wore to go to Mass. A heavy cotton sheet embroidered with their initials in red thread, part of her trousseau. The wooden high chair that had been used by my dad and his siblings, by myself and my sister, and by my nephews: three generations of French derrières! Lots of letters, lots of Christmas cards, lots of photographs.

An empty attic

One of these photos is introducing the post. I think my grandfather took the picture in 1927. It used to sit on the chest of drawers in the small upstairs bedroom where I stayed. It shows my great-grandparents, pépé Basile and mémé Françonnette who inherited the house from her sister. Sitting between them is my uncle René. Françonnette is looking straight at me; rosary in hand, she seems to tell me it’s now my turn to take care of her house. Normally, I would have been elated to see this photo again after some twenty years but the moment was bittersweet: René died the day before the photo resurfaced. Odd timing; sadness; a sense of finality. People, their homes, their things.

I took one last glance through the bedroom window and closed the wood shutters. I walked down the old staircase, registering the distinct “note” of each step and committing the whole song to memory. I stared at the blackened walk-in fireplace where I had spent countless hours, book in hand. I rubbed my fingers over “1940 Lagarde” handwritten in the concrete threshold by the mason who had last remodeled the house during the war.  I locked the door and walked away, unable to hold back my tears. I turned around and found myself contemplating this familiar house as if I was viewing it for the last time. In a way, I was.

Vocabulary
Le wagon: railroad car
La déchetterie: the dump
Grand: large
Le sac poubelle: garbage bag
Le derrière: butt

Through the bedroom window

METRO ENTRANCES, ICONIC OR NOT

The first time I took the métro, I didn’t pay attention to the entrance. I’m pretty sure I was holding my mother’s hand and she told me to watch my steps when we walked down into the bowels of the earth. As I related in one of the “moments” in my book, I mostly remember the poinçonneur punching a hole in our tickets and the pile of confetti at his feet. So, no; sorry to disappoint. This is not a story about my falling in love with Art Nouveau when I was six years old. I’m not even sure I appreciated the beauty of the métro when I was a student and used it every single day. At that time, it was just a transit option, a convenient way to get from Point A to Point B –unless there was une grève, of course. With a one hour commute and classes starting at 8 AM sharp, I didn’t have the luxury of spending an extra five minutes to decide whether I really liked Guimard’s “style nouille.”  

The only original "édicule" entrance stands at Porte Dauphine but Abbesses also features the distinctive glass roof of the end-of-the-line stations as designed by Guimard. The most common stations (over 100 of them) have molded iron railway surrounding three sides of the stairways, without a roof, as shown on the Cité station at the top of this post.

The first métro line (Porte Maillot to Porte de Vincennes) opened in 1900 and Hector Guimard had been commissioned to design the entranceways. Their purpose was mainly to prevent people from falling down a large opening in the sidewalk! But Guimard also made them beautiful and uniquely recognizable. A century later, the large majority of the métro entrances still harbor that very familiar and inviting Art Nouveau look. But time didn’t stand still: as the métro network continued to develop, new stations were added, and sometimes it made sense to locate the entrance inside an existing structure. They may not show that classic Guimard style but I like to be surprised and some of them are actually quite beautiful. Here are a few examples I photographed as I walked in the city.

The Sentier entrance above is located inside a stylish building in the old garment district.

Station Volontaires in the 15th arrondissement opened in 1910. Truly one of a kind.

Station Saint-Georges in the 9th arrondissement seems to lead to the basement of the hôtel de la marquise de Païva, built in 1840.

The original entrance to station Monge is the 5th arrondissement is located next to the arênes de Lutèce, one of the few remnants of the city in Gallo-Roman times.

Le Kiosque des noctambules was erected in 2000 on place Colette. Made of aluminum spheres and Murano glass, it is an entrance for the Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre station.

This iron gate leads to an entrance to the RER-métro at Invalides. It's located under the pont Alexandre III, at quay level, on the left bank.

Please comment and let me know which other atypical métro entrances you’ve encountered: I’ll try to take photos of them on future trips and add them to this post.

Vocabulary
Le poinçonneur: the ticket agent who punches a hole in your ticket before they had magnetic stripes or chips; he usually sat in front of the platform entrance.
La grève: a strike, aka the French national pastime… kidding, just kidding.
Le style nouille: noodle style, a somewhat pejorative way to describe Art Nouveau 

LES VOLETS

As we usher in a new year, I realize I’ve become a California girl at least in one respect: after a couple of weeks of temperatures hivernales (50ºF), I’m now ready for warmth and blue skies. I’m a wimp. But I can’t spend all my time snuggling with Lily!

Rue Voltaire

This leads to my reminiscing about my week in Arles last October. I had only passed through the Antique city on a previous trip but my friend Raegan was renting a studio and provided me with the perfect opportunity to linger and explore.

Rue Chiavary

The studio was perfectly located in the old part of town, a stone throw from Les Arènes and the Rhône river. We found ourselves randomly walking the narrow streets of our neighborhood. I fell in love with the three-story maisons de ville built of blocks of ochre stone and decorated with colorful wood shutters.

Rue Pierre Euzeby

Shutters, how do I (still) miss you! Even after some thirty-five years, that’s one thing a French girl living in California will never get used to. Shutters serve so many purposes: they shield you from the elements, heat and cold; they provide noise insulation and air circulation; they give you privacy. First and foremost, I love how they block sunlight in a bedroom and give me a fighting chance to sleep past sunrise.

Rue Roulet. Check out the iron and glass marquise on the right side!

The Greek already used marble shutters. The use of wood became prevalent in Europe during the Medieval Ages and the Renaissance but shutters were set on the inside for a simple reason: the fenêtre à croisée was not invented until the 15th century: if you can’t open the window, you can’t open (or close) outside shutters either.

Place du Forum

When you visit Renaissance castles, you’ll usually see evidence of hinges on the sides of the windows. The stone walls were so thick that wood shutters usually opened flat against the side walls, perpendicular to the window.

Rue de la Liberté. Spooky in a beautiful way.

As construction materials evolved, larger panels of glass could be manufactured and exterior walls became thinner; shutters were moved to the outside of the windows, circa 1750. At that point, the French started calling them contrevents although most people continue to use the more generic word volets. 

Rue Voltaire. An example of volets persiennés, shutters with louvers.

Volets pleins are made from wood planks held together by a couple of horizontal boards or metal braces.  Often, but not so much in Arles, the boards will be shaped like a Z. Volets persiennés are made with angled wood slats that allow some air and light to filter in. 

Rue Molière. I loved the iron work on the shutters and the window!

To hold open shutters flat against the wall when le mistral blows, arrêts de volets are screwed into the outside walls. The most prevalent design is called Marseillais and looks like a pivoting wing. My personal favorite is the tête de bergère, a bascule design that can be lifted up and pushed down to release the shutter. I always liked the face with the hat and used to call it petit bonhomme until I googled the term.

Shutter stoppers: Marseillais (left) and Tête de Bergère (right).

I love that you can still shop for this kind of hardware in any decent French quincaillerie. Some twenty years ago, we brought back a few têtes de bergère in our suitcase and used one of them to hold our side gate open against the fence. Apparently, there are several different types of “heads” out there, featuring men and beasts and things. Next time I visit a French city, I’ll pay special attention to shutter stoppers…

Rue Genive

Vocabulary
Le volet: shutter
La temperature hivernale: winter temperature
Les Arènes: amphitheater
La maison de ville: house in the city that shares walls with other houses
La fenêtre à croisée: French window featuring two large, hinged, wooden sashes arranged to swing in
Le contrevent: shutter (lit. against the wind)
Le volet plein: shutter made of solid planks
Le volet persienné: shutter with louvers
Le mistral:  strong northwesterly wind that blows through the Rhone valley and Provence
L’arrêt de volet:  shutter stopper
Tête de bergère: shepherdess’ head
Le petit bonhomme: little man
La quincaillerie: hardware store

Place Voltaire

SUPERCALIFRAGILISTIC

While flipping the channels last Saturday I landed on an ABC broadcast of Mary Poppins. I hadn’t watched that movie for many, many years but it brought back vivid memories of my childhood. On a snowy Thursday of December 1964, my mother, sister and I took the bus to visit my aunt Ginette and her newborn daughter. I know it was Thursday because, back then, there was no school on Thursday and I had just bought my weekly copy of Le Journal de Mickey at the newsstand across the street from our apartment complex. For a few weeks, I had been reading the serialized “graphic novel version” of Mary Poppins. So, we took the bus from Vitry-sur-Seine to Thiais and I met my cousin Catherine for the first time. She was about a week old. I watched her in her crib; she was asleep; it was not very interesting. I was six years old and got my first lesson in anatomy when my aunt told me that babies must be handled carefully because the bones of their crâne are not completely sealed. Scary stuff: somehow, I pictured my cousin’s skull like a cracked eggshell with le blanc threatening to spill out.

To be completely honest, I was more fascinated by Mary Poppins. I couldn’t wait for Mom and Ginette to engage into their own conversation so that I could politely retreat to the living room, pull out my comic book, and see what Mary Poppins was up to after the horse race. Yes, that insane looking word popped up: Supercalifragilisticexpidélilicieux as the French version would have it.

 

The old Palace movie theater in 2013; not so palatial anymore...

A week later, my parents took me to Le Palace, our cinéma de quartier for a matinee with Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, and the penguins. It was the first picture show for me, my first venture into a movie theater and I was watching Mary Poppins on the silver screen! Le Palace in Vitry eventually became my favorite place for entertainment: the newsreel, the cartoons, l’entracte with the ouvreuse selling candies and ice cream, and then –at last­– the main feature. Three years ago, I took the RER to visit the old neighborhood, my first visit in some thirty-five years. I walked from our old apartment to Le Palace. Not surprisingly, it no longer is a movie theater. At some point, it became an appliance store. And now it was closed down. Shuttered. Defunct. Except for me. In my mind, it lives on with its grand lobby, its red velour seats, and that green pistachio ice cream that my dad loved so much.

Vocabulary
Le crâne: skull
Le blanc: (egg) white
Le cinéma de quartier: neighborhood movie theater
L’entracte: intermission
L’ouvreuse: husher (usually a woman; she did double duty selling candies before the era of concession stands)

CITY OF THE DEAD

Paris has the Champs-Elysées; Arles has the Alyscamps. In the Provençal language, Alyscamps means the Elysian Fields and refers to the entire necropolis that was developed along the via Aurelia. The road started in Rome and followed the Mediterranean coast all the way to Arles.

Alley of the dead!

Roman cities did not allow burials within the city limits. Roads immediately outside of the city were often lined with tombs and mausoleums. The Alyscamps in Arles are located just a bit south of the old city gates and the alley is dotted with sarcophagi.

Romanesque arch of Saint-Cézaire church

As Christianity gradually took over Roman theology, the site continued to be used for burials and the Saint-Cézaire church was built in the 11th century. Its Romanesque arch still stands at the entrance, at the western side; chapel Saint-Accurse was built next to it in 1520. 

Saint-Accurse chapel (1520)

Alley to Saint-Honorat church

Saint-Honorat church was built in the 12th century, on the western side.

Entrance to Saint-Honorat church. Check out the grotesque at top right. Gargoyles have waterspouts, grotesques do not.

Carved sarcophagus inside Saint-Honorat

The necropolis was looted during the Renaissance and pillaged again in the 19th century when sarcophagi were appropriated by farmers to be used as troughs for animals. But the most beautiful examples were preserved and are on view at the Musée Arles Antiques.

Courtyard at Saint-Honorat

We visited the Alyscamps shortly after opening hour and almost had the place to ourselves. The courtyard of Saint-Honorat was a bit spooky with its grotesque carvings, stark walls, tall skinny trees, and birds nesting between the stones. Even in daylight, the atmosphere of the Alyscamps was quite mysterious and yet serene. No wonder Vincent van Gogh was inspired by that location when he sojourned in Arles. But that’s another blog post…

THE CANNERY

Continued from Modesto, first look

We left Yosemite Park and returned to Modesto: after taking in the view from Glacier Point, mingling with very friendly écureuils, and driving through a giant sequoia it was time to get back to civilization and get ready for work. We were settling in Modesto for a few weeks to fulfill one of our business school requirements: we had to work for one month en usine, performing blue-collar tasks. Some of our friends had done seasonal work in California canneries during previous summers and we had a visa that authorized us to be employed. The procedure was straight forward: show up, sign up, and wait to be called. Hence the importance of having a domicile fixe and a phone number.

We drove to the apartment we had agreed to rent a few days before only to find out the manager no longer wanted us to be tenants: she had called the cannery and realized we would be leaving after a month. Que faire? We had to find another place. We hooked up with other students: they were renting an apartment on Paradise Road and another unit was available. We rushed over there to check it out and it was perfect: spacious and furnished, with laundry facilities and a swimming pool! Only ten minutes from the cannery with our Torino! It would truly be paradise.

A couple of days later, I was starting my first shift as a sorter: basically, I spent eight hours standing in front of a moving belt carrying loads of tomatoes. My job was to look for and remove any fruit that exhibited black mold and to discard anything that did not meet the definition of tomato: weeds, soda cans, small animals, etc. Since tomatoes were harvested by giant aspirateurs, everything that was present in the field would get sucked in. I must say it was the hardest job I ever had. Although I was assigned to the morning shift, August temperatures routinely reached 95ºF and the sorters’ lines were set outside, under a metal roof. Standing in one place for eight hours was uncomfortable and staring at tomatoes continuously moving before my eyes was making me dizzy and mildly seasick. To add insult to injury, my supervisor was not very impressed by my performance and kept urging me to “try to be a little faster with your hands.”

After a couple of days, she thankfully moved me to another position (clean up duties) and we eventually became good friends. We chatted during lunch and breaks; she had three French students working in her shift and she was curious about our native country and our travel plans after our stage. One day she asked me where we were staying; I happily shared our address on Paradise Road. She was absolutely horrified. Unbeknownst to us, our “paradisiac” apartment was located in one of the worst neighborhoods. In fact, a dead body had been found in our dumpster the week before we moved in! I’m happy to report that none of us got killed or maimed. We didn’t interact with our neighbors very much (we worked 6 days a week) but I’ll never forget that day in August 1977 when Elvis died: everybody seemed to congregate outside their apartments in disbelief and talk about what The King meant to them. Of course, all the radio stations were playing his songs. For some reason, it felt like the end of an era; we were not Americans but I felt we were all sharing a significant moment.

We spent four weeks on Paradise Road while working at the cannery. Tomato is still one of my favorite foods. I discovered turkey lunch meat, American cheese, and Mexican salsa. My coworkers looked at me with amusement at first but, eventually, took me into their fold and brought me plums, figs, and peaches from their gardens. They even threw a mini lunch party on our last day at work, bringing home-made sweets and cookies. As we were getting ready for our big road trip across the United States, I said goodbye to my supervisor. Five years later, she became my belle-mère…

Vocabulary
L’écureuil: squirrel
En usine: in a factory
Le domicile fixe: lit. a permanent home, a residence
Que faire: what to do
L’aspirateur: vacuum cleaner
Le stage: internship
La belle-mère: mother-in-law. Also, stepmother

BANLIEUSARDS

You will meet three different types of people in Paris: tourists, Parisians, and banlieusards. It’s actually quite easy to tell them apart. Tourists go to the Eiffel Tower because it’s there. Parisians don’t go to the Eiffel Tower because it will be there next week. Banlieusards don’t go to the Eiffel Tower because they don’t have the time. When I lived in France, I was a banlieusarde; I didn’t take the elevator to the top of la Tour Eiffel until I was 21 years old and my (future) parents-in-law visited Paris for the first time. Our house was only 7 miles outside of Paris per se; I studied or worked in the city; I had a full schedule during the week, spent two hours (or more) in public transportation every day, and aspired to “stay put” during the weekend. Living in the suburbs, I was always dependent on the last métro, the last RER, the last commuter train to take me back home. It changes everything. It affects the way you experience Paris: you don’t really belong there, you’re just passing through. It was indeed a special treat when I could spend the night at a friend’s apartment in Paris: the accommodations were usually far from luxurious (!) but not feeling the pressure of having to get home was liberating: for one evening, I could feel and behave like a Parisian.

Actually, there is another type of people you might meet in Paris: parisophiles. They’re a rare breed and they’re hard to spot. They were not born in Paris but they chose that city. Maybe they started as tourists but felt such an intense connection that they were drawn back many times. They don’t just come for a week: they stay for a month or more. They don’t book hotels: they rent an apartment. They don’t go out for dinner every night: they shop the outdoor markets and cook “at home.” They have their favorite neighborhoods but they want to explore every nook and cranny of the city. They want to see and experience everything whether glamorous or ordinary, beautiful or ugly, historical or avant-garde, popular or secluded, permanent or pop-up. They have the luxury of time: they can afford to make mistakes and “waste” an afternoon at a so-so exhibit because tomorrow is another day… still in Paris.

I started out as a banlieusarde; I’ll never be a Parisian but I’ve become a parisophile. What about you? Who are you? Who do you aspire to be?

Vocabulary
Le (la) banlieusard(e): commuter, living in the suburbs.