Visiting Louis XIV's Niece's Chateau in Lorraine (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Louis XIV's Niece's Chateau in Lorraine (France) at Luneville with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

France’s château at Lunéville has royal connections not only through the Polish king Stanislaus Leszcynski (1677 – 1766), but also through his predecessor at Lunéville Elisabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans (1676 – 1744), who was the niece of Louis XIV.

The château was designed by Germain Boffrand (1667 – 1754), but it is the people who lived at Lunéville that made his designs come to life.  A provincial château could not compete with Versailles.  However, Elisabeth-Charlotte grew up with the royal family and passed on the culture that she acquired in Versailles to her children in Lunéville.

Much is known about Charlotte-Elisabeth from her correspondence, which helped form the research base for the book Eclat et Scintillement: Lumière sur le décor de la chamber de la duchesse à Lunéville (not translated in English).  This book, which is ostensibly about the interior decoration of the duchess Elisabeth-Charlotte’s bedroom, contains much information about raising aristocratic children in Germany.

The Germanic connection is easy to understand as Elisabeth-Charlotte’s mother came from the Palatinate region in modern-day Germany.  Her mother also named Elisabeth-Charlotte was the second wife of Louis XIV’s brother, Philippe d’Orléans.

Elisabeth’s German mother is recorded as saying in the Eclat et Scintillement that she always spoke to her children with reason.  She showed them what is good and bad.  Her mother did not accept any naughtiness.  The young Elisabeth-Charlotte was told not to follow bad examples.  She could not have a bad attitude.  Her mother praised virtue and taught her daughter to be horrified by vice.

When Elisabeth-Charlotte raised her own children, she taught these same things to them.  She also shared with them those things she had come to love at Versailles such as theatre, music, poetry, literature, nature, and animals.  Elisabeth-Charlotte also loved cooking and was very involved in her children’s studies.

Elisabeth-Charlotte was a mother, educator, and regent of Lorraine for nine years.  As part of a political treaty, she had to leave Lunéville so the deposed Polish king Stanislas could live at Lunéville.  Duke Stanislas of Lorraine was the father-in-law of Louix XV.  When Elisabeth-Charlotte moved to Commercy with all of her belongings, the era of Duke Stanislas began.

Under Duke Stanislas, Lunéville became known as a cultural center while the duke maneuvered to regain his Polish throne.  Stanislas sought to ally himself with the Turkish Ottoman Empire to regain his throne and had several portraits of himself painted in Turkish Dress.  The book Turqueries et Autres Chinoiseries: L’Exotisme en Lorraine au XVIIIème Siècle documents the many portraits.  This may have irritated Lorraine’s aristocratic families who had Turkish inspired artwork commissioned to commemorate Duke Charles V (1643 – 1690), who fought the Turks at Vienna.

Today, the gardens are a family to place to visit in addition to the château.   The day my husband and I visited drops of spring rain greeted us in the garden.  However, we could see the hedge embroidery that outlined the flower beds with a few blooms peeking out. 

A visit to Lunéville coupled with a visit to Nancy is a nice weekend outing.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

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Sampling Vietnamese Cuisine with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sampling Vietnamese Cuisine with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My family’s many Vietnamese restaurant outings in Monterey, California were the product of my meals at Chicago’s Mekong House in the 1980s and Vietnamese meals in Paris’ Vietnamese restaurants in the 1990s.  (Vietnamese restaurants outnumber Chinese restaurants in Paris, since Vietnam was once a French colony as part of Indochina.)

When we moved to Monterey, I noticed the Orient Restaurant while shopping and took my daughter Florence to it for lunch on what was the first of several Friday afternoons when she got out of school at noon.

“What kind of food do they have there?” Florence asked.

“They have Mongolian beef,” I responded knowing that I had mentioned the one exotic food item that Florence liked from Chinese dining adventures as well as Korean ones where we ate bulgogi, which resembles Mongolian beef.  She preferred Mongolian beef to burgers and fries.

“The Vietnamese actually beat back the Mongols from their country twice,” I continued.

“Who are the Mongols again?” she asked.

“Horse riders who ruled from China to Persia,” I responded with my quick historical summary of the Mongol hordes.

“Why do they have Mongolian beef at a Vietnamese restaurant, if they beat the Mongols?” Florence asked.

“They serve both Chinese and Vietnamese food, because that’s what their customers want,” I said.

When we arrived at the restaurant, an altar with a four-foot high laughing Buddha and a three-foot high vase full of sunflowers greeted us at the entrance.  The pale green restaurant walls and black, marble-top tables showed that they were prosperous.

I ordered lemongrass chicken, and Florence ordered Mongolian beef.  When Florence tasted the Mongolian beef, I asked her what she thought of it.

“Spicy,” she said as she moved a red chili pepper off to the side of her plate.  The green onion looked the same as what goes into Chinese Mongolian beef, but the Orient’s version was saucier and had mushrooms and bamboo shoots in it.  It came with rice.

“Is it a little sweet like bulgogi?” I asked.

“No, but I like it.  I don’t mind spicy food,” she said.  She had inherited my liking for hot and spicy food.

“Try the lemongrass chicken,” I said, putting a nugget on her plate.  She put it in her mouth and grimaced.  I like slightly sour foods, but Florence does not.  Lemongrass chicken arrives at the table sizzling with the aroma of chilies, garlic, and citrus in the air.  I like the out-of-the-ordinary ingredients.

“They have a Buddha on their altar,” Florence remarked as she finished her meal.

The altar held many things: incense sticks in a bowl full of sand, cups that looked like egg holders which were full to the brim with a clear liquid probably a rice wine, a stemmed platter of mangos stacked in a pyramid, rose-colored silk tulips, two electric candles, a bowl of rice, and a statue of long-haired, bearded Taoist Immortal.

On the way out after our meal, Florence bent down to look at the altar that was on the floor while I picked up the take-out menu.

“Is the guy with a beard Buddha, too?” she asked.

“He’s a Taoist Immortal; someone who lives forever,” I said, fending off trying to explain Taoism, which believers themselves claim is unknowable.

“Did you know that people who believe in the Tao find doing everyday things beautiful?” I said and smiled.

“What do you mean,” Florence asked.

“Doing stuff like buying groceries, doing the laundry, cleaning the house, and going to school are all beautiful for someone who believes in the Tao,” I said.

Florence looked at me and said, “Doing laundry isn’t beautiful.”

“It is if you like clean clothes,” I responded.

Florence shook her head and said, “You’re weird, mom.”

“Weird and happy,” I retorted.  “Can’t you think of one ordinary thing that you could call beautiful?” I asked.

“I guess eating lunch,” Florence answered.

“Exactly like eating lunch,” I said as I pinched her cheek.  I liked having time to take my daughter out to lunch.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Attending a Filipino Festival with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget in Salinas (California)

Attending a Filipino Festival with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget in Salinas (California)


“Not another festival!” my pre-teen daughter Florence cried.  I thought she was suffering from festival fatigue syndrome.

I was undaunted in my efforts to make Florence into a world citizen however.  “Oh, come on.  You’ll like Filipino food,” I said.

“No, I won’t,” she said and ran to see my husband Laurent to get out of the excursion.

Before Laurent could say anything, I volunteered to drive to the Steinbeck Center in Salinas where the Filipino Festival was taking place and pay for lunch.

“We get to leave after 20 minutes if it’s boring, right?” Florence said on the way there.

“If it’s boring,” I said.  I knew she would become interested in what was happening as the day wore on.

When we arrived at the Filipino Festival, I noticed that almost all of the attendees were Filipino unlike the Greek, Turkish, and Sicilian Santa Rosalia Festivals held on the Monterey Harbor.  Those three festivals had many tourists attend them. 

Many of the beautiful, dark-haired women wore long, flowered formal dresses with the stiff sleeves that puff up at the shoulder.  They looked like graceful butterflies flitting about the festival with children and grandchildren.

The long lines at the food booth moved slowly.  The food smelled so good at the Filipino Festival, however, that people patiently waited their turn.  Florence was impatient with the wait.

“Why don’t you go for a walk with your dad,” I suggested.

I was trying to decide what to order.  The names meant nothing to me except adobo.  I had eaten adobe, a kind of stew, before.  I tried to attach names to the delicious looking dishes that people were ordering, but everyone was speaking Tagalog, which hampered my efforts.

When I got close enough to see what was happening behind the scenes, I saw a man tossing noodles and vegetables in a three-foot wok.  I was going to order that – pointing would help me there.

Finally, it was my turn.  The mystery noodle dish turned out to be pancit.  I ordered that, a serving of chicken adobo, and two egg rolls called lumpia Shanghai with two waters and a soda for Florence.  I was happy with the Filipino sampler menu I had put together.

The thin rice noodles in pancit reflect the Chinese influence on Filipino food.  (The Filipinos themselves have intermingled Malay, Chinese, and Spanish roots.)

“Did you know that the Philippines are named after a Spanish king?” I asked Florence.

“No,” Florence responded, more interested in the Filipino dancing than a history lesson.

“The king was Phillip the Second,” I said.

Florence was becoming more interested in the festival as she ate the adobo, which was made with chicken, vinegar, spices, and pork.

Later when I read Reynaldo Alejandro’s The Philippine Cookbook , I saw that he refers to Mexican adobo as the origin of the dish.  Alejandro writes that Spain administered the Philippines as a colony out of Mexico.  Or, was it Filipino cuisine that influenced Mexican cuisine?  Some things in life remain a mystery.

The origin of the long, torpedo-shaped egg rolls I was eating obviously made me think of China with their stuffing of ground pork and onions.  They were crunchy despite mass manufacture for the festival and tasted good dunked in the red, spicy – sweet dipping sauce.

The child dancers left the stage to be replaced by the director of the first all-Filipino cast film called The Debut.

“If we can’t do well in Salinas with an Asian cast, we’ll never make it in Middle America,” the director said.  “So, bring your ‘lolos’ and ‘lolas’ to the film with you!” he told everyone.

“I just learned the words for ‘grandpa’ and ‘grandma’ in Tagalog,” Laurent said.

“Aren’t we going to the cute store?” Florence asked.  As soon as the director finished his sales pitch, we went down to the “Reflections of Asia” market that was a roofed stall covered with palm leaves.

Florence looked at necklaces.  The coral ones seemed to be de rigueur fashion gear for all Filipino young men.  “Always ready to go surfing,” I thought.  I told Florence she could have one if she let me look around in peace.

I gravitated to the book section.  I looked through cookbooks and a beautiful book about Spanish influences on Filipino religious architecture and art.  (The Philippines is Asia’s largest Christian country with more than 80% of the population being Roman Catholic.)  These items were beyond my budget, but I found a small children’s book about José Rizal.  Rizal is the Philippines’ national hero.

“Who’s that?” Florence asked with her coral necklace with a scallop shell on it in hand.

How do you explain a martyred liberation leader to a young Californian?

“He’s José Rizal.  He’s like the Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez of the Philippines,” I said.

“Neat,” Florence responded, having regained her curiosity about other cultures.  I doubted she would remember Rizal’s name, but I would slip the book into her bookshelves to be “discovered” one day.

Florence had outgrown Barbie dolls, but they had several on sale that wore the Filipino dresses with the puffy sleeves that I liked.  I asked the saleswoman what the dresses were called.

“We call them Santa Claras,” she said.  I later read that they are also called “ternos.”

I bought some postcards of the Philippines, too.  The first postcard I bought showed terraced rice fields in the mountains.  I remembered reading a book about them called Rice by an author named Grist at the University of Chicago.  I recalled that maintaining these terraced fields, especially the retaining walls subject to heavy rains, and overseeing irrigation tend to create communal societies.

Another postcard showed the verdant green foliage around the waterfalls on Basilan Island.

Both postcards would go into our family journal along with a write-up of the day’s outing to make Florence a world citizen, who knows about the Philippines.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Learning about the German Minnesingers and Participating at Mayfair with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Learning about the German Minnesingers and Participating at Mayfair with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

“The German lyricists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were men of knightly rank who sang the praise of women, the joy and pain of love, the happiness of springtime, the beauty of flowers, the sweet music of birds” wrote Calvin Thomas in The History of the German Language (Google Books page 77, Book page number 92)

The poetry, mostly written by the knights, that Thomas refers to paid homage to unobtainable yet nubile ladies or Minne; minne is the origin of the word minnesingers, or love singers. 

Southern France with its troubadours is the source that Thomas cites as the source for minnesingers, but Northern France’s trouvères may have been a conduit of the troubadour tradition or a source of stories itself for some German-language songs and tales.

The minnesingers, or nightingales as they liked to be called according to Thomas, used May Day, the herald of spring, for their assignations, passing of notes, and attention getting. Once again my daughter’s Waldorf School kept alive the tradition of the Minnesingers in a most lovely way; a May Day picnic.

We did Californian things like barbecue wild boar sausage made in Carmel Valley on one grill and organic peppers, carrots, and celery for dipping in tamari sauce on another grill. A cake walk was held in the park’s gazebo, and we set up all our age-appropriate games all around the park.

All the little girls received flower garlands to wear in their hair like white and yellow crowns. A very tall May Pole stood in the center of the park with white ribbons swirling in the wind. The children caught the ribbons and walked around the May Pole without tangling the ribbons. (They had been practicing.) Their walk was accompanied by recorder music and song. 

Sheet music with lyrics helped out those of us who had not been taught by a minnesinger.

Thomas writes that each minnesinger had “[h]is stanza with its tune…. a Ton , and professional honor required that a man’s Ton be respected as his property.” (Google books, page 85 and Book page number 100). This practice appears to be an early form of copyright.

Tunes were becoming property, but good stories were shared out in the medieval era. The most famous of the shared stories are the Arthurian Romances. The stories entered Germany as Parzival written by Wolfram von Eschenbach. 

While they seem to deal with love, they represent a love that is different from that portrayed by the Minnesingers. Parzival seeks the Holy Grail, Christ’s cup which represents holy love. Parzival begins naively and ends as a wise man through his own efforts including mistakes.

Learning to succeed through your own efforts is a powerful lesson to express to sixth graders, but I was impressed with how Waldorf Schools dealt with this lesson as a system. Several schools worked together to hold a Medieval Games at the end of the school year. 

Children at my daughter’s school began running one mile every day before class to get into good physical shape. They practiced the games they would compete in such as tug-of-war, archery, shot put, and javelin throwing. 

In their sewing class, they made crests representing families to sew onto their tunics. I told my daughter on the way to school, “Win, lose, or draw, you will be in great shape at the end of the year!”

On the day of the Medieval Games at the Marin County Waldorf School outside San Francisco, all the kids tried to lose a little at tug-of-war to get muddy. I helped hose down kids after their bouts in the “boue,” or mud. I quizzed them about their family crests and the courtly songs they would compose that day.

As I read Thomas’ book The History of the German Language now, I hope the children from that day will all have inhered some poetry along with the mud to them. Thomas writes that Esenbach’s Parzival is the work of a poet; Esenbach “saw visions and thought in symbols…” 

Communicating symbols through metaphor and/or simile in poetry or prose is a skill that makes complex ideas concrete.

The ability of the German language to make intellectual concepts into objects you can see, feel, handle, and experience through metaphor and simile truly makes it not only a tool for communicating technical ideas, but a language that merits its place in schools and universities for the beauty of the ideas it conveys and its form.  I wish it had been taught in my daughter Florence's Waldorf School.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Learning about the Runes and the Edda with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Learning about the Runes and the Edda with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

As I read through the first half of A History of German Literature by Calvin Thomas on Google Books, I felt like I was reliving many of the experiences I had shared with my daughter when she was a grade school student at a Waldorf School. 

This is not a farfetched claim when you consider that the founder of the Waldorf Schools, Rudolf Steiner, was Austrian and founded his first school in Stuttgart, Germany in 1919. Steiner’s philosophy focuses on the performing and visual arts as a means for teaching, which makes the mystical and medieval texts of the German language come alive.

Thomas relates in the very beginning of his book that the German runes are a form of paganism. He says that no extant literature exists which uses the runic alphabet. When my daughter and I made clay pebble tablets and inscribed runic symbols on them, which resemble Sumerian hatch marks, I told her, “People who could read runes were thought to be magic by everyone else. That’s why reading is still magic now.”

I believe that runes hid codes and showed my daughter how to set up codes similar to vignière ciphers to communicate with me. These codes may have been beyond her years, but they provided us with afternoon entertainment during long winter nights. 

The entertainment for the Germanic peoples most probably came from what were eventually written down in the thirteen century Icelandic Edda that formed the corpus of the Norse myths. Thomas deals with these myths only briefly as he was focusing on indigenous literature, but these myths appear to be important to German speakers as well.

Thomas writes that it was only in the twelfth century that “gleeman’s or minstrel’s tales were written down.” The two most famous tales were The Niblung Lay and The Lay of Gudrun. What is interesting here is what Thomas shares about how storytellers memorize their tales for presentation. Storytellers use “stereotypical phrases and prolixities which stamp the gleeman’s style.” (Google page 33, Book page 48). 

This creates flat characters, but allows the storyteller to focus on action and plot, perhaps accompanied with body movement.

Thomas further notes that “the gleeman’s art is discernable in this repetition, also in a marked fondness for fantastic adventures, hair-breadth escapes, cunning tricks and disguises, and in general for the wildly fabulous.” (Google page 48, Book page 63)

As I watched school performances where young children recited poetry each in turn, I understood why their teachers had them do this from reading Thomas’s A History of the German Language; Literature is based on the foundation of oral literature’s strong plot structure, especially when accompanied by music.

By Ruth Paget,  Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Celebrating Hispanic Day of the Dead with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Celebrating Hispanic Day of the Dead with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I lived in California several years before I could find out about the Hispanic celebration of Day of the Dead, which is celebrated between October 31^st and November 2^nd.  Despite going to Hispanic grocery stores, having a Mexican neighbor, and being able to read Spanish, I still could not find out information on how to set up a Day of the Dead altar, for example.

I had seen ofrendas, Day of the Dead altars, when I attended a Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) parade in Salinas, California.  At this parade, I also watched the Popoktepl Aztec Dancers, who wore feathers on their heads and noisemakers on their legs, drank hot chocolate, and ate sweet bread in the shape of a skull.  However, I still had no idea how to set up an ofrenda.

I wanted to set up a Day of the Dead altar to add something educational to my daughter Florence’s celebration of Halloween.  I found out how to learn more about ofrendas when I read the newspaper and saw that Tere Romo of the Mexican Museum in San Francisco would be doing a talk on Day of the Dead celebrations in the United States in Monterey.  I made plans to attend this talk with Florence.

Dr. Amalia Mesa-Baines introduced Tere Romo by saying that Day of the Dead is an ancient tradition that has Meso-American roots.  It was transformed by the Catholic Church to fit into the holiday of All Souls’ Day.  The holiday was revitalized in the 1960s through the Chicano movement.

Romo told the audience that she was most interested in how Day of the Dead was celebrated in California.  Originally, the holiday was celebrated in the home.  The holiday began to be celebrated as a community event at the Gallery de la Raza in San Francisco at a 1972 exhibit.

After 1848 when Mexico ceded large tracts of territory to the United States, many Mexicans discovered overnight that they were Americans.  These people, who lived mostly in rural areas, observed Day of the Dead by making crepe paper decorations for the graves.  They would spend the day at the cemetery and eat a meal there.  Other people would build ofrendas in the home.

In the 1970s, Day of the Dead became an urban, community, and political phenomenon.  Artists made ofrendas an art form.  Day of the Dead became a focal point for helping Chicanos reclaim their Mexican and indigenous roots.  Its observance provided an alternative to Western European religion.

“What gets overlooked,” Romo pointed out, “is the role of spirituality in the Chicano movement.”  Romo showed us a series of slides of ofrendas, which all featured flowers (especially marigolds, the symbol of death in Mexico), food, photographs of the deceased, and paper cutouts.

“Death is life’s equalizer,” Romo commented.  What has allowed the event to survive according to Romo is the message of duality of life and death, meaning that death is a part of life.

Romo stressed that Day of the Dead rituals from Mexico could not be translated to the United States.  “We have our own celebration here that is both political and spiritual,” she continued.  I thought this was because Hispanics in the United States were a minority culture and not a dominant culture as in Mexico.

One question from the audience generated some interesting comments.  Romo said the holiday had origins before the Olmecs, who are considered to be the mother culture of Mexico and Central America.

“The concept of duality of life and death holds all the cultures of Mexico and Central America together as well as the cultivation of corn,” she said.

Romo also noted that Day of the Dead was originally held in August, but the Spanish moved it to November 2^nd to correspond to All Souls’ Day.  As for the ofrendas, she explained that prior to the coming of the Spanish, the dead were buried under the floor of the living area in homes.  This custom may have been at the origin of building altars in the home.

I asked about foods served for Day of the Dead.

“They are regional,” she replied.  “In Michoacan, they eat chocolate moles (chicken with savory and spicy chocolate sauce).”

A few days later, I took Florence to an art workshop where we made things for our very own ofrenda.  I made papel picado, a crepe paper decoration, and Florence painted a sugar skull.

“Como se dice ‘skull’ en espagnol?” I asked the children whom Florence was sitting with.  (“How do you say ‘skull’ in Spanish” was my question.)

“Calavera,” they answered.

When we returned to the house, I cleaned off one of the bookshelves in the dining room that held cookbooks.  I thought of how I would like to remember the dead in the family as I set up the ofrenda.

I put one of my crystal shining cloths on the top of the bookshelf.  It reminded me of the dishtowels I had used at my great-aunt Winnie’s to dry dishes.  I set out pictures of great-grandparents, glasses of water, tea, a tea pot, and sea salt to remind me of Aunt Winnie.

Next, I put a rose-scented candle with a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe on it on top of the counter.  (You can buy these candles in California supermarkets.)  After that, I placed Florence’s Technicolor sugar skull on the altar.  I put up a poster of a skeleton band playing that I had gotten from my Day of the Dead box from Shambala Redstone Editions.  The papel picado I made went over it all.

Florence and I then went on a mission to find marigolds.  We found some at Mi Tierra market.

We installed the flowers on the ofrenda and invited our Mexican neighbor and his French wife over.  They liked the altar and asked Florence about the people in the photographs.

I made tacos for dinner and felt like I was part of California’s wonderful world mix.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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