Category Archives: Friendship

Turning the Tables on Calls Unknown & Unavailable

Our home phone was out of order for nearly a week recently.  I missed the landline only for daily talks with my mother in Atlanta.  What a golden silence ensued, with the absence of calls from Unknown and Unavailable.  A mute phone, much like a sleeping child, can be such a pleasure.  I could expect no appeals for questionable charities, no reminders to schedule unneccesary service for this or that appliance, no giddy voices informing me of a life-changing message from my carpet cleaning company or that I’d won a Caribbean  cruise.  No hale and hearty howdy-dos, no manglings of my first name.  No calls requesting “The Lady of the House.”  She’s not here, Sir, but I can put you on with the Lady of the Lake. 

All too soon, and all too often, the phone was ringing again, the same unwelcome numbers popping up.  What to do?  Try to ignore the ringing, let the machine pick up.  Hear our greeting, hear the caller click off, followed by a loud dial tone.  No message, of course.  Or quickly answer the phone and just as quickly hang up.  Or pick up the receiver, say nothing, put it down, walk away.  None of these approaches offers much satisfaction, and each time, the call is a distraction.  Annoyance intensifies.   

It got me reminiscing.  During my college days at UGA, a common practice to avoid studying was the group prank phone call.  Hanging around the dorm on a Tuesday night, we’d look through the Freshman register, pick out a cute unknown guy, call him up and make outlandish conversation.  Typically the boy on the other end was happily willing to play the game, intrigued by possible evidence of female interest.  This was, of course, back in the day of the campus phone system, with no caller ID.  Another wholesome pastime made obsolete by cell phones.  We were often on the receiving end of such calls, and we were more than ready.  My friends and I were creative.  We were well-versed in winging it.  We were experts in nonsensical, playfully belligerent banter. 

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In my Rutherford Hall dorm room, with resident partners in crime.  The black wall-mounted rotary phone at the left was a source of much amusement.   

Maybe it’s time to turn the tables on unwanted callers.  It wouldn’t be as much fun as in the old days.  But nothing now is as much fun as it was back then. 

What to do?  Telemarketers make unwelcome demands on our time.  Why not make unwelcome demands on their time? 

Telemarketers’ questions are unfailingly annoying.  Why not annoy them right back?  Perhaps with a survey.  Surveys are ubiquitous, and almost always bothersome.  Express interest in a product online, and a survey pops up.  Buy an item, and the surveys never cease.  Schedule a service call for your disabled washer, and you’ll soon be pestered by recordings inquiring about your degree of satisfaction in scheduling the appointment.  If you’re lucky enough to get the appliance fixed, you’ll be endlessly harassed to rate the technician’s promptness, politeness and level of expertise.  After our phone service was restored, I received multiple entreaties on both landline and cell phone: Tell us how we did! How can we serve you better?  By never calling again, that’s how.   If you were doing really well, I wouldn’t have needed to call in the first place.   

Another ongoing annoyance is the constant volley of ludicrous comments and claims in this Presidential primary season.  What could be more annoying to callers than my asking them to participate in a brief political survey?  It’s doubtful they’d listen.  They’d hang up on me.  Imagine that! 

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  Another photo from the old days. My roommate Pam and I at a Rutherford-Myers red, white and blue party, probably about to respond critically to a remark made by track-suited fellow student. 

Back then, we were always honing the craft of repartee. 

Next up:   The Survey

Our Fall Festival Tradition

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Today, we’re back to sunshine.  Yesterday’s continuous rain failed to wash away fall’s colors; it simply spread them around with an artistic flair.  The weather is mild.  It’s a perfect day to be outside, enjoying October.

It’s a day that makes me a bit nostalgic for my daughter’s younger years.  If she were seven or eight, we might be heading to Cox Farms after school. This family-owned farm puts on a fall festival that really is fun for most ages.  It’s one of our favorite local traditions.  We discovered it with a group of friends we met through D’s preschool.   

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If you live in a suburban or semi-rural area, you probably have a place like this nearby.  In Princeton, there was Terhune Orchards, which my husband and I enjoyed.  If something similar existed in Atlanta when I was growing up in the 70s, we didn’t know about it.  Lucky for me, I didn’t know what I was missing.  Lucky for my daughter, she didn’t have to miss it.   

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Cox Farms is a low-tech, homespun, rough-around-the-edges place, just as a farm should be.  As a preschooler, one of my daughter’s favorite “rides” involved rolling down a hill inside a big pipe.  There are mischievous goats to feed, various baby farm animals to admire, a cow to milk, and lots of hand-painted folk-artsy plywood signs.  Naturally, there are pumpkins, apples, cider and kettle corn.  On weekends there might be a bluegrass band.   

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There’s lots of hay: hay mountains to climb, hay bale forts to explore and tunnel through.  Of course there’s a hayride, during which aliens and assorted odd but non-threatening creatures appear.  There are many slides, some of which are quite steep.  When we first started going to Cox Farms, D was afraid to attempt any of the slides on her own, so we went down them together.  That’s when I found out how much fun a fun slide can be.  Apparently, I was slide-deprived (as well as fall-festival deprived) as a child. 

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Our daughter’s first-choice activity was the rope swing with a drop into a foam pit.  One doesn’t often get a chance to brag on a child’s rope swing skills, but I must say she had excellent form and always managed to sail to a far corner of the pit.  The two photos above are from consecutive years, the first in 2006, the second in 2007.  Evidently D’s fall festival uniform consisted of a pink shirt and blue jeans. 

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In 2007, D added her Brownie vest to the uniform. She enjoys recalling those fashion-forward days.

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For several years when our daughter was in elementary school, we had an annual fall festival meet-up with former preschool friends, a brother and sister, and their dad.  It was one of the highlights of the season. 

IMG_2973Our every visit to Cox Farms ended with the careful picking of a “free” patch pumpkin.  D has always delighted in the perfect pumpkin. 

It’s been several years since we’ve done the fall festival.  But our daughter is now a regular attendee at “Fields of Fear,” held at Cox Farms on weekend nights for older kids and adults.  It includes the Cornightmare, the Dark Side Hayride and the Forest: Back 40.  As of this year, she and her friends can even drive themselves. 

But at the end of the night, D still picks out a little patch pumpkin.   

 

The Red Tree and the Legacy of Eugenia Brown

Today is the day for that steady, late fall rain that washes much of the brilliant color from the trees.  In tomorrow’s sunshine, many branches will be newly bare.  Gutters and lawns, though, will gleam red, orange and gold.  One of the brightest patches in our area will be beneath this magnificent tree.  

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Located behind our church, it’s adorned with some of the most vividly red leaves imaginable.  I’d always assumed it was a maple.  When someone referred to it as an oak, I knew that wasn’t right.  But in September, when Kiko and I were sitting in its shade for the Blessing of the Animals, I realized I was wrong, too.  This was no maple.  The leaves, still green then, were the wrong shape. And there were berries.  Bluish-purple berries, like elongated blueberries.   

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What was this tree?  No one seemed to know.  But mention “that red tree by the church” and everyone knew exactly which one you meant.  I began an internet search.  Googling “trees with blue berries” didn’t provide a quick answer. 

Then I remembered my little tree book, which I’d recently brought from Atlanta.  As I mentioned in a previous tree post, a neighbor gave me the book when I was a child.  She encouraged me to look closely and appreciate nature as we saw it all around us.  She was Eugenia Brown, a Southern lady with a Southern name, a proud graduate of Decatur’s Agnes Scott College some decades before.  (Daddy thought she was too old to be talking so much about her Agnes Scott days.)  Mrs. Brown was a wise woman, and I’ve only recently begun to realize the impression she made on me.  She wasn’t particularly religious, but I can see now that when we examined leaves, acorns, pine cones, shells and flowers, she encouraged my sense of wonder for that vast and easily overlooked array of amazing little things God made.  His little creations–those unique, tiny masterpieces of design–they have always brought me joy.  For that gift, I thank Mrs. Brown. 

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I found the book, and sure enough, I discovered the tree almost immediately, recognizing it from the handy close-up painting of its red leaves and berries.  It’s a Black Gum tree.  Also known as Black Tupelo, Sourgum or Pepperidge.  According to the concise text, “Black Gum leaves are smooth and shiny, turning brilliant red in fall.  The dark blue fruit is eaten by birds and small mammals.”  Bingo. 

Yet again, thank you, Mrs. Brown.  And thank you, God.  Had I not known Mrs. Brown, had she not given me the tree book, I might not be able to find such solace in the beauty of little things and the God who made them.  How wonderful it is that our God designed bright red canopies with plump blue berries to shelter and sustain His littlest winged and furry creatures!  To paraphrase that old hymn, His eye is on the berry, and I know he watches me. 

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Wild Trumpet Vine Turns Four

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Four years ago, I wrote my first Wild Trumpet Vine post.  Like the plant for which it’s named, Wild Trumpet Vine perseveres. There are dry spells, but it hangs on.  It’s grown deep roots, and it keeps me rooted to the real, keeps me on track in a world of smoke, dead ends, and mirrors.  Life is fragile.  Let’s look, live, and love while we can. 

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Thanks for reading!  For more on why I write, see here

Year Three for WTV

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It’s been three years since I began my little blog.  Like the tenacious wild trumpet vine for which it’s named, it keeps on creeping on.

Wild Trumpet Vine is, for me, a convenient, inexpensive form of therapy.  It’s my way of taking stock of life.  It helps me keep my perspective, helps me see beyond the tedious, insistent busy-ness of daily living.  It reminds me of what’s real, important, worth contemplating, worth sharing with family and friends, worth remembering, worth passing on to my daughter.  Sometimes, as I sit and think and write, I discover something I should have known all along.

Occasionally, I write something that strikes a chord with another person, and I hear about it.  I love it when that happens.  Sometimes it’s from someone unexpected–perhaps a childhood friend I haven’t seen in thirty years or so.  This is a real gift.  It’s proof of the resiliency and elasticity of the ties that bind us in a  web of community.

Many thanks to all my WTV readers!  And many thanks for reaching out!

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For more about why I write, see here.

Back to the Cité Universitaire, Part III (And on to the South of France)

That day at the Fondation des Etats-Unis, looking up at the balcony of my former room, the life layers continued to flip by.  I can see myself back in Paris as a grad student.  I’m spending this year primarily in London, researching my dissertation in medieval art.  It’s April of 1989, and my friend Laura had joined me in London.  Together, we had made our way to the south coast and crossed the Channel.

It’s seven years since my summer in Paris.  It surprises me, but I feel considerably more mature.  Maybe it’s Laura’s companionship; perhaps her air of confident capability is wearing off on me.  The stamp on my forehead that once read CLUELESS AMERICAN COLLEGE GIRL!! has evidently worn away.  The throngs of loitering young men check us out but generally don’t pursue us.  Shopkeepers treat us with respect.  Some even call us Madame.  Although this last point strikes me as overkill, otherwise I thank my lucky stars for the perks of aging.  Paris is a familiar, gracious presence, and it’s good to be back.

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Laura and I outside our very bare-bones hotel, April 1989.

We find a cheap hotel just off the Fontaine Saint-Michel, in the midst of what I think of as the old neighborhood, the Latin Quarter.  The hotel is pretty awful, but it’s certainly affordable, the location is great, and its oddities are the source of many laughs.  It’s not worth our time and trouble to trudge the streets in search of a new place, so we stay put for five days or so.

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With Laura, against a backdrop of Notre-Dame.

When Laura flies back to the states, I’m joined by a friend from England.  I have an Apocalypse manuscript to examine in the city library of Toulouse, so we head south.  It bothers me that I have no recollection of how we got there.  We must have flown.  There seem to have been no high-speed trains back then.  I have a vague, unpleasant recollection of trying to speak French on a pay phone with the airline.  One way or another, we got to Toulouse, an ancient university town of rose-brick medieval buildings and tropical charm.

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The Romanesque Basilica of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse.

It’s a bank holiday weekend, so the Bibliothèque Municipale in Toulouse is closed.  Throughout this year abroad, bank holidays keep popping up.  Many I anticipate and plan for, but others come at me, unexpected.  I take them in stride; they offer a good excuse to postpone work and relax.  On this occasion, we opt for additional sightseeing in the South of France.  We take in the nearby historic cities of Albi and Carcasonne, then head to Provence, where we spend several gloriously unhurried days in Nimes, Avignon and Arles.  The gray chill of April is yielding to the sunny splendor of May, and the countryside has an air of lush enchantment.

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In Albi, the fortress-like early Gothic Cathedral of Saint-Cécile towers above the muddy River Tarn.
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Carcasonne.

Atop the hill is the fortified medieval Cité of Carcasonne. Its striking resemblance to a fairy tale village is likely due in part to its comprehensive nineteenth-century restoration by Viollet-le-Duc.  The newer part of town surrounds the walled center section.

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The old town of Carcasonne, seen from a perch along the wall.
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Another view of Carcasonne and its walls.

 On our last night in Carcasonne, we seem to be floating in a slightly surreal multicultural soup.  At a rustic traditional restaurant in the old town, we eat cassoulet, the area’s famous casserole of duck, goose, pork and white beans.  During dessert, an Irish band plays Leonard Cohen songs, the lyrics translated into French.

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The cloister of the Romanesque Cathedrale of Saint-Trophime in Arles.

 

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Another cloister, at the Romanesque Abbey Church of Saint-Pierre at Moissac.

Once we return to Toulouse, my friend goes home to England, and I’m on my own.  The library opens, and I spend a couple of days with my manuscript.  One afternoon, I go to the nearby town of Moissac to see the medieval Abbey of Saint-Pierre.  The church is adorned with a wealth of Romanesque sculpture, which I’ve studied since my very first art history course.  The carving is dramatic, highly stylized and exuberant.  What a thrill it is to be in its visionary presence.

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On the trumeau of the south porch of Moissac Church, the prophet Jeremiah appears to be frozen in a contorted, contemplative dance.

I return to Paris by train, stopping for one night in the picturesque town of Souillac on the Dordogne River.  The scenery between Toulouse and Souillac is amazing.  I’m more and more smitten with each village we pass.  Look:  there’s the medieval bridge of Cahors, as neat and tiny as a child’s toy.  In the distance I spot the perfect hilltop village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.  My dog Popi, six years gone now, has his own French town, I think.  It’s appropriate; he had such class and style.  I’m envisioning future trips to the lovely Dordogne Valley.

I can’t remember why I stopped in Souillac, but I’m glad I did.  I find the nicely situated and aptly named Hotel Belle Vue.  The day is warm and bright, and I wander the old, narrow streets with no particular goal or destination in mind, one of the great luxuries of leisurely travel.  Before long, the buildings give way to flower-filled meadows.  I stop to watch some ducks paddling in the river near an old mill.  After a while, I follow a grassy pathway winding uphill.  At the top of the hill, the path emerges from trees and foliage to reveal the village below, clustered around the domes of the Abbey Church of Sainte-Marie.  The scene is quaint, timeless and peaceful.  It could be an image from one of the illuminated manuscripts I’ve been studying.  I couldn’t have dreamed up a more poetically satisfying finale for my solitary exploration.  All these years later, I carry it with me, like a treasure.

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My hilltop view of Souillac, May 6, 1989.
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The eleventh-century Abbey Church of Sainte-Marie in Souillac, built in the Byzantine Romanesque style.


Back to the Cité Universitaire, Part II

Returning after many years to a pivotal, memory-charged place verges on the overwhelming.  That day at the Cité Universitaire, I could see the young college student version of myself overlaid with that of the middle-aged wife and mother I’ve become.  Briefly, both versions coexisted, and it was unnerving.

I saw the stages of my life like a design done on multiple sheets of transparent plastic.  An early layer shows me at nineteen, near the beginning of my stay in France.  I’m at the desk in my room, writing a letter home.  I’m aware of how fortunate I am to be in Paris.  I had known it wouldn’t be the place of idyllic enchantment that the movies show.  Still, I hadn’t expected to be quite so disenchanted.  I’m surprised at what feels like borderline disappointment.  My friend Jackie had participated in the same program the summer before, lived in the same building.  She’d described the trip as a “blast.”  I’m not having a blast, and it bothers me.  I should have gone the year before, with Jackie.  I feel petty and petulant.  I almost wish I were back home.

I’m sheepish in my homesickness.  I hate to admit it, but I miss my parents.  I miss my dog.  I miss my best friends.  I guess I miss my boyfriend, although this recollection is less clear.  I’m certainly disappointed that the local youths who trail us everywhere (and there are many, because we are obviously American, and they’ve apparently heard that American girls are supremely willing) are not exactly the cream of the crop.  We’ve learned to pretend not to see them, to say nothing.  If we look blankly through them, if we show no reaction, they usually go away.  Some are more persistent than others.  Some become belligerent.  While we rarely feel truly afraid, it’s wearing to have to be constantly on guard.  I know how the chickens in the henhouse must feel when a fox is on the prowl.

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July 1982: Joanne, Nancy and I at the Cité RER stop, on our way to the Sorbonne.
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1982: Too much time on the Metro could be a drag.
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But after a while, things start to look up. On the main staircase of the Fondation, August, 1982.

Another layer, toward the end of the trip.  I’ve come to terms with Paris.  So I didn’t have a blast every day.  But there were far more fun times than bad.  We’ve learned to feel at ease in the city.  We understand the Metro. We’ve checked off the major tourist sites.  We’ve discovered favorite spots we’d never before heard mentioned.  I’ve worked my way through the Louvre, room by room.  It was free on Wednesday afternoons, and I took full advantage.  Often, up in the remote nineteenth-century galleries of French painting, it was just me and the guard soaking up the atmosphere of quietly magnificent landscapes by Rousseau, Millet and Corot.

We’ve made new friends among those in our group, become closer to those we already knew.   We’ve had many laughs and some adventures.  We’ve ridden in a little French car through Paris traffic.  We’ve bicycled through a forest near Compiègne.  We got locked in the historic Père Lachaise cemetery but managed to find our way out.   Fending off local young undesirables has become second nature.  And we did meet some perfectly nice local boys, had a couple of chances to sit at cafés speaking French with them, just as our textbooks had suggested we might.  We discovered that four-franc wine was quite drinkable.  We learned that the best place for our big group to enjoy an affordable, easy-going meal was an Algerian restaurant in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

We were not wholeheartedly welcomed by every citoyen.  But each time we experienced a stranger’s animosity, others followed with gestures of kindness.  On Bastille Day, for example, waiting for the Metro at the Châtelet station, a drunken man took unexplained offense at my hair color.  As I’d already noted, blond hair stood out in Paris, but it hadn’t yet provoked this sort of ire.    Les cheveux blonds!  Les cheveux blonds!, the man sputtered, pointing at my hair and approaching more threateningly with each exclamation.  The French crowd muttered its disapproval, and a powerfully built, well-dressed man placed himself as a reassuring barrier between the man and me.  Another night, when we found ourselves in an unfamiliar area after the last Metro had departed, a couple walked with us to the bus stop and waited until we were safely aboard.

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August 1982: on my balcony at the Cité, shortly before we left Paris.

In the photo above, I’m holding my only major purchase, a bust of a porcelain-headed lady decked in fur and feathers.  She struck me as perfectly Parisian.  Her current home is atop my piano.

By the time we were to leave for our two-week tour of the countryside and other notable French cities,  I was almost sad to say goodbye to Paris.  My early feelings of disappointment had vanished.  Sure, the area around the Cité was a little messy.  But all in all, the city was more beautiful than I had remembered it seven years before.  And as for the French people, well, they’re people.  My friends and I had often been amused by the cultural differences we observed.  Why would the French do this, or that?  Why not the American way?  Isn’t that funny?  But fortunately, we had come to realize that these differences are, in truth, unimportant.

The variety of surface details from culture to culture gives life interest and humor.  But at a deeper level, we’re more alike than different.  Warmth and good will need no common spoken language.  They transcend all barriers.  Our summer in Paris had helped us learn perhaps the most important lesson of travel:  the ties that bind us as humans are stronger than the forces that pull us apart.  Of this truth, travel offers living proof.

Back to the Cité Universitaire, Part I

 

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My friend Nancy and I attempt attitude-filled poses at the Cité Universitaire, July 1982.

I had not been back to the Cité Universitaire since I lived there that summer thirty-two years ago.  (See That French Connection, April 2014.)  I hadn’t expected to return on this trip.  I thought it would hold minimal interest for my husband and daughter.  But on our first day in Paris, a Saturday during spring break, we found ourselves engulfed in crowds.  The area in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral was a roiling sea of humanity.  The line for the Sainte-Chapelle stretched for blocks.  We expected Palm Sunday at all the expected sites to be equally busy.  This factor may have persuaded H and D that we should visit the Cité, located in an unfashionable area at the bottom of the Paris map.   Tourists would certainly not be flocking there.

I had remembered the Cité as being far removed from the city center.  I was surprised to see that it was only three stops from Luxembourg on the RER.  I was also surprised to see the complex looking almost exactly as I recalled it, but spruced up and considerably less seedy.  It wasn’t exactly run-down in 1982.  Perhaps indifferently maintained is a good way to describe it.  The grounds were wild and weedy, closer to messy than pristine.  Litter was common.  This past April, the Cité was looking comparatively fresh, fit and clean.  The plantings were lush and well-tended.  The buildings were grander and more imposing than I had remembered.  And there were fewer shady characters skulking about.

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In this view of the back of the Fondation des Etats-Unis from July 1982, I’m the red blotch on the balcony, fifth window from left, one floor from the top.

My little room was perfectly adequate, and I loved my balcony that looked out onto the big evergreen tree, the then-scruffy garden, and the Mexico building.  On the top floor were much sought-after artists’ lofts, with high ceilings and skylights.

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The Fondation, April 2014.

In the photo above, the open balcony door at the right suggests that the current resident was in my old room.  The same red-orange draperies adorn the windows.  The tall tree still flourishes in the courtyard.

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July 1982: I do laundry in my room. Trying, and succeeding, in looking pitiful.

Although the institutional décor left something to be desired, I enjoyed that humble, well-worn room. In addition to the vinyl-covered armchair, there was a decent bed, desk, and a reading lamp with a shade covered in peeling contact paper.  The open balcony doors provided all the air conditioning needed.  Not a single mosquito, gnat or fly ever flew in. Toilet cubicles and showers were down the hall, of course.  There was no adjusting the water pressure or its temperature in the shower.  You pushed a button, which triggered a quick burst of water that lasted about three minutes.  Luckily, the button could be pressed multiple times, or I never could have rinsed the shampoo from my hair.  The atmosphere was classic Paris student.

The sight of those bare shelves in that room reminds me of how lightly and simply I traveled that summer.  Some aspirin, soap, toothbrush, a little make-up, some paper, pens and pencils, a book or too.  My address book and airmail envelopes for letters to the States.  I did bring a travel iron, at my mother’s insistence, which I don’t think I ever used.  Its adapter was nearly as large as the iron.  No cell phone, iPod, iPad, no laptop.  From the looks of the trash bin at my feet, I had recently polished off two boxes of French crackers.  My friends and I snacked on packaged melba toast-like crisps and La Vache qui Rit cheese.  For further between-meal sustenance, I had brought a large supply of grape Tangy Taffy from home.

Thirty-two years later, as I stood there in the garden behind the building, my husband and daughter by my side, looking up at the open door to my old room, the memories swirled around me.  Some were vivid, others were just out of reach, like dreams upon waking.  The experience was unsettling.  I understood then why some prefer never to return to such places.  As for me, though, I’ll go back.  Those chances to glimpse the present through the eyes of the past, and vice-versa–they add a richness to life that I want to savor.  Even if there may be bitter along with the sweet.

Back to Paris: In the Latin Quarter

For me, one of the great pleasures of travel is returning to a well-loved place.  “My” Paris is the Latin Quarter I came to know as a college student.  That summer, on weekday mornings, two friends and I would take the RER train from Cité Universitaire to the Luxembourg stop.  We’d emerge into the lively bustle of Paris to that unique smell:  car exhaust, of a distinctly Parisian type, mingled with the freshness of the new day.  We’d walk past the elegant Luxembourg Gardens and the big corner cafés, glimpse the Panthéon at the end of rue Soufflot, and continue down the Boulevard Saint-Michel for a couple of blocks to the Sorbonne, where we had our classes. We’d pass a restaurant where a waiter, setting up his tables, would blow us a kiss and make the beating heart gesture.  That kind of chivalric appreciation could brighten even a dismal day.  And that summer, dismal days were few.

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August 1982:  Toward the end of our Paris summer, my friends and I posed for photos around the Latin Quarter, trying our best to look cool.  Above, Joanne and I on rue Soufflot, with the Pantheon in the background.         

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April 2014:  My daughter and I try to recreate the photo. The dome of the Panthéon is currently undergoing a massive re-stabilization. 

Each time I’ve returned since then to Paris, the Latin Quarter has been home base. With each visit, I discover more to love.  Twice now H and I have stayed at the same hotel immediately across from the Panthéon.  This area is in the heart of historic Paris, with its roots in the Roman era, yet it’s a bit removed from tourist circuits.  While the big tour buses swing past the Panthéon, on the sidewalks you’re likely to pass more actual Parisians than foreign sightseers.  Many Americans are apparently unaware that there is a Panthéon in Paris.  A typical comment is “I thought that was in Italy.”  For the record, it’s a grand neoclassical building inspired by the classical Pantheon in Rome and situated on a hill known as the Montagne Sainte Geneviève.  Begun as a Roman Catholic church dedicated to Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, it was finished during the Revolution as a humanistic temple honoring the great men of France.  It may look familiar to Americans because its majestic dome and portico were architectural sources for our U.S. capitol.

Surrounding the Panthéon on its Place, or square, are elegant buildings that function as centers for civic and student life.  There is the Mairie, or Town Hall, of the fifth arrondissement, where locals marry, vote, attend concerts, meetings and special events. Opposite the Mairie is the University of Paris Law School.  Another neighbor is the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève.  This library’s arched reading room appears in many Art 101 textbooks because of its early use of structural cast iron.  Near the library is the beautiful  Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, dating from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries.  Behind the Panthéon sprawls the historic Lycée Henri IV, which incorporates buildings from the medieval Abbey of Sainte Geneviève.  Below are some of my favorite views in the old neighborhood I adore.

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May 2002:  View from our hotel of the Place du Pantheon.  From left, the Law School, the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, and the portico of the Panthéon.

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April 2014: View from in front of the Panthéon looking down rue Soufflot   toward the Luxembourg Gardens and the Eiffel Tower. The colossal bronze statue of a portly nude man was installed in January. A work by the Chinese artist Hong-Biao Shen and entitled Mongolian(Standing Position), it immediately became a popular photo-op destination.

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The typical Paris street sign offers explanatory information.

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April 2014: the entrance foyer of the Mairie.

Europe2014286In the light of sunset this past April, the buildings of rue Soufflot glow coppery gold.