Paris July 29-August 3, 2007

This my first extended stay without a group of novices to guide offered me Paris on a platter, complex and layered beyond the marvels of the must-see first time view. I avoided the throngs queuing to gape at the gothic majesty of Notre Dame, though I couldn’t resist photographing the portal saints
and the stately silhouette, and never got around to the Arc of Triumph or the Eiffel Tower. I was too busy wandering in the Marais where I stayed for my first time in a youth hostel, a historic monument immaculately cared for with medieval stone arches in the dining hall!

The open structure and flamboyant colors of the Pompidou Center captivated me; my favorite photos are the reflections of the colors in the building across the street. When Georges Pompidou urged Paris to demonstrate her presence in the modern world with 7 modern projects, the response to the President’s plan for this modern art museum in the stately Beaubourg quarter was outright horror. Of course, that was their reaction to the I. M. Pei pyramid in the embrace of the Louvre, and to the Eiffel Tower in 1889! The contrast of styles is indeed bracing, but like carefully chosen spices in a French sauce, the results are exquisite.

Another contrast in today’s Paris is the City, sweltering in summer heat (in theory!) and the Beach, where city dwellers long to escape for all the seaside pleasures. Paris’ mayor has brought the beach to the city to benefit all the citizens unable to leave. Paris Plage brings tons of sand to the city, creating beach volleyball, soccer, and rugby courts in the plaza in front of city hall and an umbrella-strewn beach along the Seine. Young and old cavort or lounge on the beach in their swimwear. No one seems to notice or mind the absence of water. The Seine slipping by gives enough of an impression to complete the fantasy.

Another successful effort on behalf of the Parisian populace by the local government is the rental bike program. All over the city there are locked racks of sleek, sturdy bikes accessible to anyone with a prepaid cared for half hour jaunts across town for a Euro. Only inaugurated two weeks before my stay, the bike rentals appear to have taken off in huge numbers. Then there is the French answer to commuting efficiently, called the Smart Car. Food for thought.


Parisians are already active, walking far more daily than the average American. On a stroll along the Green Way, a landscaped path atop the old Roman aqueduct east of the central part of the city in an area utterly new to me, I caught this sweet moment of a gentleman taking his mother for a noon time stroll. I wonder if this is a daily routine or a special visit, and guess from the casual comfort of their comportment that it is a regular part of their lives. Beneath us there is a little part tucked away, enjoyed by young

sunbathers whose children sit in the shade of the Roman arches on stones cut by young centurions, playing a video game. Hand in hand, the present with the past.
It is difficult to verbalize the awe that sweeps over me when I come into the presence of the graves of the great figures of French history. When I reflect on the most memorable

moments, I go back to the graves of Marie and Pierre Curie, to Big Foot Bertha and Pepin the Short, Marie Antoinette and Louis, to the carved likeness of Charles Martel. How unspeakably surreal it seems to me to stand beside the remains of these people whose faces and lives rise from the pages of history books before me. Marie Curie, who ran from her lab to find her beloved husband in the street, his head crushed by a carriage wheel; she carried on their work,


raised their daughters, and became the first person to win 2 Nobel Prizes, buried in the Pantheon. The younger Marie who died with such calm courage as a sacrifice for the failed tradition of the monarchy. And Charles the Hammer, Lord Mayor of the Palace to the Do-Nothing kings, who led the French army to victory at Poitiers in 732, pushing the invading Arab armies back across the Pyrenees and forever changing the face of Europe. 732. That was one thousand two hundred and seventy-five years ago. I stand beside his tomb in the cathedral of Saint Denis, stunned at my proximity to what once seemed like a distant past but which now is clearly an unmistakable part of my present.

The list of voices from afar includes those at the Père Lachaise cemetery, Balzac and Delacroix, LaFontaine and Molière, Sarah Bernhardt and Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, Chopin, and Abelard and Heloise. I am stunned by the connection I feel with Pierre Abelard, whose book, Sic et Non, so touched me at the Scriptorial at Avranches. Here is the author, buried beside his beloved. I am reminded of this same awe when once before I stood by the grave of Leonardo da Vinci at Amboise, having visited his Last Supper in Milan. Back at Père Lachaise, this gentleman with his invention captivates me. What symbol would I chose to grace my likeness for all eternity?

The long row of grave markers to the victims of the death camps, each marking the burial of the ashes of those ghastly ovens, raises such a chorus of voices and images of families torn apart and devoured by brutality that the trees tremble. The beloved husband of our friend Paulette is here now, too, a survivor of the nightmare of those times that so scarred this land and her people. Paulette met us at the café near the Place de la Bastille, glad for the congenial visit, gravely willing to speak about the horror of her youth for the benefit of this generation. Her voice has been raised for those whose voices were stilled, for over 60 years, grimly recounting the truths of an unspeakable time to every possible audience. O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing! She is a blessing, a living voice that gives life to the past.
















As I rest for a moment in the gardens of the Palais de Luxembourg, I find a warmth of hope and familial bond, a sense of having walked into a family picnic. This grandfather and child exemplify the simple acts of living together well.

When I leave the children at play, I make my way to the Cluny Museum, a medieval collection housed on and beside a roman ruin. I sit in a carefully controlled dark coolness and wonder at the survival of this collection of tapestries whose iconic images are recognized around the world. Their story and symbols are intriguing, but the simple act of stitching such an enormous work stupefies me. In the face of that investment of time, what faith to just begin!

Ending and transformation occupy my thoughts as I look down on the Impressionist collections of the Orsay Museum, housed in what was once the central train station of Paris. What wisdom to preserve by way of transformation this place that once served as a hospital to those who had barely survived internment as enemy prisoners, and returning to Paris, could not do more than be lifted from the trains? I am transported to an idyllic visit to my daughter Katie and our overnight stay in an old school remade as a hotel. We watched a movie in the gym turned theater. If places can make such remarkable conversion, how can we not hope for and invest in the possibility of human change, beginning with ourselves?

Two other places that I visited for the first time filled me with wonder at their inspirational beauty. The altar of the church of the Madeleine took me heavenward, and the Marc Chagall ceiling of the Garnier Opera pulled me into a riveted immobility. Such gifts, these artists leave us! How can we honor them for their enduring gift but by transforming our lives into reflections of the beauty of their art?









Paris honors men who leave all forms of art, including Thomas Jefferson, whose legacy is enjoyed by all of mankind. This building, the Institute of the Muslim World, testifies to the diversity of Paris and her efforts to come to term with the changing face of France. West along the same bank of the Seine is the Conciergerie, once a fortress, then a prison, now a national monument. It was here that Marie Antoinette and her family were imprisoned, here also, ironically, that Robespierre spent his last days.

In addition to visiting places that I had never seen, I also returned to those Parisian haunts that mean the most to me. I am grinning at the young Japanese student who took this photo for me, but when I walked into the circular exhibit rooms in the Orangerie Museum, I sank to the central seat and quietly soaked in the experience of Monet’s Nymphéas. I was a teenager the first time I sat there, alone in the cool dimness of this sacred place. I have no memory of how I came here alone then, but I have a vivid image of my reaction, utterly still, spellbound. Monet painted the series of long murals of his water lillies and the weeping willows trailing over the soft blues, greens, lavenders of the pond in Giverny as a gift to France, a bouquet, he said, at the end of the war. He asked that it not be displayed until after his death; these exhibit rooms were designed and built to house them.

The Paris that I grew to know this week is many things, grand and sweeping, but most important, it is a story unfolding one Parisian at a time. This shopkeeper was overseeing his domain with a gusto for each client, a word to the regular passersby. I realized suddenly that this was a merchant behavior that I associated with a small town, and that I was surprised to see it in a city.

I remembered the moment in the small tobac where I stopped to get a newspaper with the Tour de France headlines for my cousin Jim, the intimate scene that I saw there of a young man taking his leave of the elderly shopkeeper. She added as she said farewell, “but you’ll be back, surely?” He shook his head and replied so sadly, now that his studies were complete, that he didn’t know where he would go or if he would be there again. She seemed to grieve as if he had been her own child, leaving home forever. No matter the number of the population around us, we carve out an intimate place for ourselves. We as humans have a need to be known, to belong.

I saw in the news when I returned home that there was a new volunteer organization in Paris, a group called “Parisian for a day, Parisian to stay,” creatively translated. Local residents give free tours of their neighborhood, sharing all the personal aspects, the behind the scenes tales, that take a visitor beneath the superficial snapshots of Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe. I am grateful to Dr. Whidden for his assignment to do just that as a part of our coursework, and to Cornelia and Paulette, who put a personal face on this city. I have as a result befriended Paris, and learned to look differently at a city.