The sweater fits, so we can get on with more projects

The sweater fits, or will fit even better by winter, when she'll wear it. You may wonder why there's no head. That's because I don't publish recognizable photos of the grandchildren publicly. The family has received the link to the photos of the birthday party last week. She appreciates, particularly, the big pocket.
The party was a success. Cousins from the Paris area and all the grandparents were present. Among the cousins were the ones who moved back to France from Pittsburgh, where they had enjoyed the extended family connection. They miss Pittsburgh. I got the impression that the neighbors where they are, now, are not quite as welcoming.
On Tuesday, I went into Paris, spent some time with a friend who is trying to sort out her mother's succession and is having considerable trouble with her sister and the notaire her sister chose. She's now got our notaire's office on the case on her behalf, but it's still a slow moving process.

From there, I caught a bus to the American Library, where I was scheduled to man the voter registration table before the Pamela Drukerman talk. She's a pretty well-known NYT contributor and author of Bringing up Bébé. Her new book is about becoming a grown-up in her forties. She's a good speaker.
I got a new camera. A bridge, this time. I find the compacts are just too hard to get my hands around. The old Sony got some sand in it when we were in Spain, which is why I was looking for a new one. It's a Panasonic Lumix FZ200. Not the most recent model in the line -- I would have liked WiFi and a universal USB connection, but I settled for lower price. I'm pretty happy with the zoom and the enlargement created by cropping the image.

Back in the Swing of Things

Ah, September! I think I mentioned all the things that are due in September: taxes, registrations, and so on. Well, we're now in full swing. I've been to the newly refurbished American Library and renewed my membership and the family membership for L's kids and I've taken C to the "Toddler Time", which is the new name for the "Lap-sit". The work at the library was almost finished two weeks ago and I hope it is done the next time. They've moved the circulation desk, again. Where it used to be, there's now a wide staircase leading to the basement, where they've created a reading room and study area. They've opened up book space down there, too. They've moved more books up to the mezzanine, also, and put in an elevator that goes to both the basement and the mezzanine. The big reading room had been soundproofed and there are electrical outlets all over the place for laptops. The children's library has not changed. There are no DVDs anymore. Not for adults, not for kids. Even though they were donations, it seems that the library was not allowed to lend them out without paying some fee or tax.
I'm typing on the new computer. I'm still a bit frustrated as I cannot seem to access my external hard drive. Every time I get the prompt to enter my password, and I do that, it does not recognize it, so it won't let me in. I can still get to it online, so I'm downloading to this computer, which has lots of space, still, and if I have to reformat the external drive and lose what's on it, I will and then start over. It's frustrating. Another program is giving me a hard time. I use Quicken and and loaded it up to this computer. I recovered the old files. It keeps asking me to register, but gets stuck in the process -- maybe because it's already registered from the time I bought it. In any case, I finally found the trick to stop the registration prompts, but when I want to download the account info from the banks, it still asks me to sign in with my Intuit password -- another hoop to jump through. This new computer comes with MS Office, of course, but I got hooked on Open Office and now need to decide whether I want to continue with that, but have to choose between Libre Office and Apache Open Office, which have diverged since Open Office, itself, was discontinued.
With the new computer, I picked up a new printer. No matter how much I cleaned the rollers of the old one, I couldn't get the paper feed to feed the paper properly.
I'm taking watercolor painting this year, not oil painting. Since the watercolor class will involve lots of drawing, too, it's the only class I signed up for. There's was a first session where we did not touch any water or color, just drawing. I bought some, but not all the stuff on the list of materials -- it's going to be an expensive class, I think. I missed last week, which seems to be a repeat of the previous session, so I didn't miss much. Several of my "buddies" from the drawing class are there, but we are all a bit disconcerted. There's the same set-up in the room and an invitation to draw it again, from a different angle, for an hour. Then, we get to the color, but the talk is all theory. I get that we must set aside white space, but I'd like some help determining, on my drawing, what that space should be. Then, we are told to create three grays: dominant yellow, dominant red, dominant blue. Fine. I know how to do that, but some in the class do not know what he's talking about. I know how to put oil on canvas and gouache on paper, but I feel intimidated with watercolor. How much water? Wet paper? Dry paper? If wet, how much? What about colors running into one another? What if you color a space you intended to leave white, but forgot? One friend in the class has now left, for good. She got her check back. She's an experienced watercolor painter who does lots of landscape painting in workshops during the summer. She showed us her paintings from the summer. She did a workshop in the Gers, not really far from where we were. The bastides were very similar. She did not like the imposed drawing of a subject with no interest -- neither did several of us, including me. She did not like the approach of the teacher. She left. I'll miss her. I'm sticking it out, at least for now, because I really want to tackle the medium.
There's a group on Facebook, Americans in France, with lots of people fairly newly arrived in the country. They have the usual administrative headaches that any immigrant has. In addition, they want to make friends. It seems to be a major concern, making friends. Well, the average person on the street, in the shops, or behind the window in an administrative office is not looking for a new friend. It doesn't make them unfriendly or rude, but the judgment of many in the group is that the French are snobs and standoffish. The complaints are commented on with more complaints feeding even more comments. I think they feel they should be welcomed with open arms, that somehow they are not just immigrants like any other immigrants. They wonder, after 16 years in France, why they should have a French drivers license and not renew their state license. (The argument that by getting their state license renewed, they are, in fact, declaring residency in the state and opening themselves up to local and state taxes, doesn't seem fair to them. They want the state license and not have jury duty or state and local taxes.) Why should they have to comply with the rule that states you need to present a clean record for your permanent residence papers? Why should they have to have their papers translated by court-certified translators? I think I'll take a break.

Simon Winchester was the Guest Speaker at the AARO 40th Anniversary Party

The anniversary party was two weeks ago, but since I haven't written in quite some time, it's time I said something. I think the party was a success; we had to turn people who wanted to sign up on the day away because we had reservations to room capacity limits. Alex H., the events chair did a fantastic job, not only discovering our speaker and convincing him to speak to us, but also in selecting an excellent caterer, and so on.
I don't know if you've ever read any of  Simon Winchester's books; I hadn't. He's a great story-teller. On Monday, at the party, he told us the story of how he became a writer. He had originally trained and worked for a while as a geologist. As story-tellers do, he went off on little tangents to highlight points in his story and then came back to it. I think we were all enchanted. He is not a fiction writer, but the protagonists in his stories (and in The Meaning of Everything, he goes into whether protagonists can be plural, or not) are frequently quite extraordinary, if not totally eccentric, people. Someone in the audience, who was quite familiar with his books, asked why. He preferred not to give us a complete explanation then and there, but rather pointed us to his e-book, The Man with the Electrified Brain. It was published just this year, and it's very short and very inexpensive. (I bought the Kobo edition for under €1.60.) It's autobiographical, so it covered much of the same territory as his talk, with fewer tangents and more detail. I enjoyed it. For me, it was preparation to the joint AARO-ALP (American Library in Paris) event on Wednesday.
Wednesday evening, then, Winchester was the guest speaker at the American Library. AARO sponsored his trip, so we were privileged co-sponsors of the event and had a table at the entrance. What I discovered was that many, many of the Library patrons are already members of AARO! So, I changed the tune a little and asked these members, who are mostly retired, to get younger recruits, including their own children, who are Americans, affected by American laws (tax law, in particular), whether they live there, or not, and who need to become involved. (Hint to my own children!)
Winchester was there to talk about his just-published book, The Men Who United the States. He started out by saying he was sorry there weren't women in the story, but there just aren't. Then he spoke about what is really important in writing a book, any book: the idea, first; then, the structure; and last, the writing. He spoke about the structure of this book and how he could tie in the trails, the waterways, the rails, the roads, radio and internet networks. He based it on the five elements (according to Chinese culture): Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water. I'm anxious to read the book to find out just how he did it.
In the hope that he writes stories as well as he tells them, I took out a few of his books just before the meeting: The Professor and the Madman (The Surgeon of Crowthorne, in the UK); The Meaning of Everything; and The Map that Changed the World. I have now read the first one and am in the middle of the second. He is a good story-teller, but I think that perhaps there is too much overlap in the first two books to be reading them one after the other so soon. There was a ten-year gap in his writing them, so one should leave a gap in reading them. They are both about the Oxford dictionary. The first is about the madman, Dr. Minor, and the editor of the dictionary, Dr. Murray, with a lot of background on the dictionary, itself. The second is the story of how the dictionary came into being, from the idea, through the first editors before any publication, through to the time this book was written. The background story of the first book becomes the subject of the second and there is quite a lot of repetition. I'm skimming through this part, but I've allowed myself a pause to finish a knitting project and to read a couple of new Anne Perry books and the latest Dan Brown -- all rather disappointing, so now I'm back on the Winchester track.

Word for Word in Paris

The San Francisco company, Word for Word, has been coming to Paris for the past 18 of its 20 years in existence. They are an eagerly awaited annual event. This year's performance was "You Know When the Men are Gone", two of the collection of short stories. This review in the Huffington Post is more eloquent than I can be.
And that's all that is interesting. I've dealt with the family's US taxes, for the time being, at least. The sun came out and I went to the baseball game yesterday, but didn't stay long. I preferred to continue walking. We watch Sacha grow and will celebrate his birthday, soon. I've just finished reading Jodi Picoult's The Storyteller and am currently reading Tom Wolfe's Back to Blood. Now, off to an appointment. My checklist is done for the day!

GHS 212 in Paris

Wow another three weeks have gone by. I haven't been taking pictures, but it's been a busy time with friends. First, we started out with family. When I last wrote, Paul and I had just returned from England and were recovering from the move. Well, we had a short, surprise visit from Claire on the 11th, because on the 12th, she had a business appointment. Emma made lunch -- Thai -- and all the kids came. We missed not having Geoff and Aurelia and Charlotte, but we still loved having the others. And not having the little ones running around did make it more relaxing. The spring rolls were delicious and so was the curry.

The only thing I missed was going to the library for a Sept. 11 memorial get-together. Al Herter had lent his pictures and things for an exhibit, which I managed to see anyway when I went in on Tuesday. And Al has started dropping in at the library on Tuesdays, so I get to see him anyway. Funny how we all get into routines. I go to the library on Tuesdays because I volunteer on Tuesdays, but I chose Tuesday because back when I was choosing, that was the day for the movie night. It also turns out to be the day for the AARO board meetings, so it was convenient for me to be in Paris on Tuesday for these evening activities.

Then last week the high school friends came en masse. First, Jackie has been around for a while, and she came to lunch with Ed and Ruth, who was in Paris for a professional conference. After lunch at home, we went for a walk through the Bois de Vincennes. We stopped for a moment to see an inning of the PUC vs Toulouse baseball game, a "play down" since the loser ends up going down to the "National" level from the "Elite". We didn't see the game to the end because I had a bad feeling, but it turns out PUC won and will stay in the Elite. We continued our walk, through the Parc Floral, and ended up at the Chateau de Vincennes métro station, where we split; they returned to Paris and I caught a bus to Nogent. I thought we were going over to Jacques', but it turns out I had misunderstood.

Sunday, Jacques came to dinner and showed us his pictures from Chicago. He's got a macro lens and takes fantastic pictures of butterflies and bees, etc. on flower backgrounds. In contrast, he also took wonderful shots of the Chicago skyscrapers, especially of the buildings reflecting off one another. Fascinating!

Monday, I went out to the airport to pick up Fran and Karel, two more classmates! They're staying on Ile St. Louis. They're in town for the première of Phèdre/Psyché for which Karel's sister did the set art. When you consider that the art and choreography for the original performances were done by Jean Cocteau, you can imagine what an honor it is and how fantastic Karen Kilimnik must be!

Thursday, I returned to the library for an evening event, an Evening with an Author event, which this week featured Tatiana de Rosnay, author of Sarah's Key (Elle s'appelait Sarah, in French). The movie "Sarah's Key" is already on DVD here, but has just been released in the US. I read the book and saw the movie and think they are both worth your while. I will not say they are enjoyable because the subject, the Vel d'Hiv roundup of Jews and their deportation to concentration camps, first in France and then to the death camps, is not a pleasant subject. This evening, she talked about Rose, her new book, out in French already, which will be titled The House I Loved when it comes out in English early next year. Again, it's a story with a secret. That's the key to her books. This time the background of the story is the upheaval of the Haussmann renovations in Paris. Whole blocks of the old city were demolished to make room for the wide boulevards everyone admires today. I've got the book on hold at the Nogent library.

Friday, lunch with Fran, Karel, and Rachel! Jackie couldn't make it. Rachel came with her grandson, and Fran and Karel came with a daughter and niece. So, another 212 get-together.

I should be seeing Candace, too, early next week. 

from Wikipedia

Jackie wrote about the troglodyte homes in the Loire valley that she and Ed saw a couple of weeks ago. My blog friend Ken, who lives not far from some, wrote an interesting piece today: Living the life in Saint-Aignan: Riding the train in France. If you are planning a trip to France, and especially to the Loire area, I highly recommend reading his blog. Also, if you don't know what to have for lunch, Ken might inspire you.

What else? I've started a different painting and drawing course this year. Looks interesting. This is also where Jacques goes, although not at the same time: La Charpente. It's in St. Mandé, so a bit farther than Francine's, but I can bike there or take a couple of buses. 

Just about to go

I'm leaving tomorrow for a solo trip to the States. Paul is staying behind -- to take care of the cat. Emma is off to the south for a week at university. Anyway, I'm in the midst of packing and also want to go to my painting class this morning, so will not write for long.
It's rainy today, but I've checked the weather for DC and Long Beach Island, where I'll be, and it looks good. Warm and sunny.

Yesterday evening, Anne treated me to an invitation to the avant-première of "The Social Network". For all the talk, Zuckerberg does not come off as a bad guy really, just a guy so immersed in what he was doing that he got carried away with it. Parker, on the other hand, comes off as someone really out with an agenda. No matter; it's a good movie. I'm glad Candace recommended it back when she was doing the dubbing production. And I very happy that Anne included me in her invitation and that the director of the movie theater invited her. What struck me as we were waiting was that the crowd outside was not immense and they were all there for Justin Timberlake, not for anyone else. It was a very calm and relaxed red carpet walk for all.
Last Tuesday, Anne met me at the American Library for the movie night with Judith Merians. The session was dedicated to "To Kill a Mockingbird" -- what makes a classic (book and movie). Of course they are both classics. She cited all the awards. Also the constant high rankings of both book and movie. She also cited the student of a friend of hers who said that a classic is "the truth, no matter what". That's a good definition. It was good to have the story dissected and to see (again) how forceful the scenes are without special effects, dramatic close-ups and other common tricks.
Claire has been by on business trips. Week before last she came with Aurelia and we babysat while she was off working. This week, she came on her own and spent the night with Anne. It was a quick trip and she flew back before we got to see her. It's nice to have her drop in like that.
That picture of the stars on stage was taken with my new camera. The "old" one (just 2 years old!) has been eating up batteries. I think the batteries are really ok; it's the connection that's faulty. Anyway, I hope this new camera lasts longer. I liked the pictures the Kodak took; they were good enough for my needs. Of course this new Sony uses up more pixels and even takes 3D pictures and movies. That's not what made me take this one; it was the panoramic pictures (which I could do with the Kodak and which I do use) and the rapid-fire pictures, which I wanted because we've discovered it might come in handy to catch Aurelia in action and in focus.
I also got a new netbook. I'm a gadgetaphone! Emma's been using the old one and it's reached its capacity.
Really must get ready to go, so that's it for now. Next news next week after seeing T & B in Washington and my Swelver friends on Long Beach Island.

Visiting Paris one of these days?

First of all, let me know in advance so I can work in a way to see you.

Secondly, here is my fb update today with a link to an interesting site if you are interested seeing some things you would miss on a regular tour:

"Attended the evening lecture at the American Library last night: "...Monique Wells discusses ‘Black Paris and the Myth of a Colorblind France’ and presents an overview of 200 years of African-American history in Paris." Ms Wells is the co-founder of Discover Paris, and she showed us main points of interest on the African-American itinerary. They have several interesting off-the-beaten-track itineraries."

It was an interesting lecture. I was pleasantly surprised that I did know most of the names she mentioned and not just Richard Wright or Joséphine Baker. I remember reading Sally Hemings by Barbara Chase Riboud (GHS, but I had no idea then!) when it first came out in 1979, so I knew about those two figures. And more. The opening slide of last night's presentation was of that book cover and Ms. Riboud. 

When she showed the picture of the Rosa Parks gym (Rosa Parks did not ever live here, but she is honored in Paris with this gym named after her and there's a Martin Luther King park, too, and a Louis Armstrong square.) I knew exactly where it is because we pass it on our way to our son's place and I remember, when I first noticed it, wondering exactly why it was named after her, in the sense "why a gym?". But if you're a tourist to Paris you would never think to go down to the 14th to the rue Alésia (I think) not near a métro station to find it.

(I'll let you find the info on the names above, if you need to. I have to get to the market...!)

Anyway, I enjoyed listening to Ms. Wells and learning more. The discussion afterwards was also interesting because the audience was such a diverse crowd and expressed lots of points of view on the French colorblind hypocrisy issue.

Consumer frenzy - Art Nouveau at the Musée d'Orsay - Volunteering

New TV

We've been debating several purchases for a very long time. It takes us forever to finally decide to take the plunge and buy. But we're getting there. In December we visited a furniture showroom to see the sofas, but the salesguy was so insistent we left in a hurry. I want to get rid of stuff before buying replacements because I want less and I want it distributed in the living room differently. So I think it'll be some time before we act on that.

Another discussion was fixing the path from the house to the front gate. It got to the point we couldn't really open the gate anymore. That's been taken care of. 

Then, there's been the TV discussion. Time to get a flat-screen TV that could be hung on the wall or put on a shallower table and not take up so much room so that we could free the space between the living room and dining room and once again walk through. It's been time for a few years already. Well, it's done and in the frenzy we got a second TV so I could watch a little TV in bed. All these years resisting a second TV and here we are, at last. After seeing that TVs are going the way of computers (once you buy it, it's already outdated) we finally got LED TVs, the really thin ones, and decided not to wait for 3D, Skype integrated into the TV, or whatever comes next.

Little by little we're also framing or re-framing the artwork and we seem to have expensive taste in frames, but they do so much to the pictures that once you see a good frame it's hard to choose a lesser one. Anyway, that's why we're going so slowly on that. It's hard to choose.

There's still plenty on the list: redoing my closet space, a new kitchen (after 25 years, it's time!), making Louis' old room into another guest room, and other odds and ends.

A Visit to the Musée d'Orsay

Yesterday evening we went to the Musée d'Orsay for the first time in a really long time. It's still a beautiful place. There are loads of people but you don't have that crowded sensation you get at the Grand Palais exhibits or at the Louvre. Sara, a Swedish friend here in Paris that I associate with STC, but that's because she's a close friend of Jen's from her Brussels days, set up the visit and Paul and I were glad to go. It was to see the Art Nouveau Revival exhibit that's ending next week on the 4th. We had gotten hooked on the first part of the title, Art Nouveau, and were surprised to see the later stuff from the 30s, 60s, and 70s. Of course there were posters and furniture from all these periods and it was interesting to see how strong the Art Nouveau influence was. In fact, it could have been a bigger exhibit and still not bored me.

Since it was a small exhibit, we went through it fairly fast and decided to take in the James Ensor exhibit, which is also ending on the 4th. The poster for that exhibit is one of his surrealist paintings of masked figures. I  don't particularly like those, or the ones of skeletons -- not the kind of thing I could look at for long before getting very gloomy thoughts. But, I discovered his early paintings, which seemed, to me, at least, to be heavy-handed impressionist -- bold colors, thick paint, but wonderful light coming from the depth of the painting. Also, he did fantastic drawings. Still, I wouldn't really want any of it at home. I am glad we saw it, however. 

American Library

I've become a volunteer at the American Library -- one afternoon a week (Tuesday) at the circulation desk. I've done it twice and am enjoying it. It gets me into Paris at least once a week, although it's a real challenge to get there in less than an hour and coming home during rush hour is horrible and a reminder of why I'm so glad I don't have to do that every day. Once a month I'll stay on for the "night at the movies" event at the library and come home later, well after rush hour, when you have to wait about 15 minutes for the next RER to come along.