Ruth Paget

Sunday, March 25, 2012

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Saturday, March 24, 2012

Ruth Paget Selfie

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

The Dictation of Merimee - a French Grammar Game with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget - Ruth Pennington Paget

I first saw a framed copy of the Dictation of Mérimée created by Prosper Mérimée (1803 – 1870) in the home of my husband’s grandparents.

I knew that this had to be a dictation after years of doing grueling Friday dictation exercises in my high school. My French teacher would read a passage for half an hour that we students would write. Then, we would pass our papers to the student behind us and correct the dictation exercise. I credit dictation exercises for my command of French grammar.

French is full of traps related to homonyms. The sound “oh” can be written as “o,”, “ô,” “eau,” “ault,”, “eaux,” “au,” “aux,”, and “ot.”

You have to know your vocabulary words and be analytical about applying grammatical rules. In French class, dictation correction time solidified correct usage in our young minds. We all wanted perfect scores to show how polished our French was.

As we students advanced through high school, our French teacher gave us dictation exercises from works such as Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince and Gustave Flaubert’s Salammbô. (Salammbô takes place in Carthage in the 3rd century BCE after the First Punic War.) These dictations were somewhat easier for us, because we were reading these books in our French class.

So, when I saw this framed dictation about a dinner in Saint-Adresse near Le Havre, I knew I had to ask my husband’s grandmother a question, “Is this a famous dictation?”

She laughed and said, “It is infamous. It is the Dictée de Mérimée. Napoleon III had trouble with it, but the Austrian ambassador to France only made three mistakes on it.”

The Austrian ambassador was the Prince de Metternich. The dictée that Mérimée created in 1857 was part of the entertainment at the court of Napoleon III in Compiègne, France. The Empress Eugénie made 62 mistakes and Napoleon III made 75 mistakes.

Dictations have remained a part of French culture and not just in school. I was surprised to learn when visiting one of the great-aunts in my husband’s family that she attended a weekly dictation club where she and her friends took turns choosing and reading the dictations that others wrote.

Sometimes they chose passages from French literature, but mostly they made the passages up themselves. (No doubt the made-up passages were full of exceptions to the rules.)

After that discussion, I felt like going home and reviewing French grammar books like Le Petit Bescherelle and taking advantage of the many dictations that are now available on the web. I always liked my French teacher’s dictations that required etymological knowledge in addition to analytical ability.

My family’s copy of the Dictée de Mérimée written on parchment is in a frame on a wall in our home in Germany (now Monterey County California).

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

Ruth Paget Selfie

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Navigating the Colonial French Business Meal by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Savvy business people know that understanding the etiquette that surrounds a business meal can foster relationships that are crucial for doing business in foreign countries. The success of your product or service may have its beginnings in the impression you make at the dinner table.

Nowhere is this truer than in France. The well-thought out contrast of cold versus hot dishes, textures, seasonings, difficulty of preparation, and choice of wines to go with dishes make ordering a French meal a pleasurable intellectual exercise. How well you can put this savoir faire into practice can contribute to the impression that your French counterparts retain of you.

The French meal begins with the very agreeable custom of drinking an apéritif. This is usually a sweet wine or another alcoholic beverage, which should stimulate the appetite. One of the most popular apéritifs is kir. It is made with white wine and blackcurrant liqueur (crème de cassis). Even more popular is kir royal, which is made with champagne.

Plain champagne will always be welcome as an apéritif as well. Those diners seeking the flair of Provence should try anise-flavored pastis. Drinking whiskey is an accepted British habit. The apéritif, always taken in moderation, should serve as a gastric warm up.

In the past, the French preceded the entrée with an hors d’oeuvre, but nowadays business meals are being scaled down. The appetite-opening entrée begins the meal. The French are confused by the American use of entrée to describe the main dish in American fare.

In France, the entrée can be almost any kind of food depending on what you plan to eat after it.

Ham from Bayonne served with fresh figs or cantaloupe is a popular entrée during summer months as well as vegetable terrines. Shellfish show up frequently during the winter months with raw oysters, called fresh oysters in France, being the premier dish.

Other favorites are baked scallops on the half shell and boiled langoustines, a soft-shelled crayfish. Foie gras in aspic is an especially luxurious entrée. Any entrée should just ever so slightly satisfy your appetite on the way to the main dish called the “plat principal.”

Meat or fish is the usual main dish, but the cooking techniques are often what set French cuisine apart from the cooking in the United States, for example. Poached fish whets the appetite for a dry white wine.

Chicken simmered in wine literally falls off the bones in the dish called Coq au Vin (Chicken in Wine Sauce). Roasted meats, especially lamb shanks, remain a favorite, because meat accompanies red wine so well.

The French are by no means finished eating after the main course. A simple green salad with vinegar and oil dressing sometimes follows the main course. The French never drink wine with salad as the vinegar clashes with the wine. If you want to avoid appearing uncouth, you should do the same. Many restaurants proceed directly to the cheese course.

The arrival of the cheese platter signals that serious business discussion can begin. It may even merit opening another bottle of wine. In a restaurant, you can point at two or three cheese offerings on the cheese platter if you do not know the names.

However, it is better to ask the waiter what the names of the cheese are and then select a few. The waiter will give you your cheese selections.

You may never have to do it, but it is good to know the correct way to cut the cheese in France:

Round cheese in wedges

Log shaped cheese in rounds

Square cheese in little squares

Flat-topped pyramid cheese in squares

Wedges in slimmer wedges

Knowing these fine points could earn you some brownie points with your dinner guests on the way to dessert.

Many French people drink a sweet wine or semi-sweet Champagne with their dessert. This holds true for all desserts except for those containing chocolate, which taints the taste of wine. Luscious desserts served in dainty portions explain how the French stay so slim.

The meal usually ends with a cup of espresso. The French never drink coffee with their meals. Strong, bitter espresso bears no relation to the mild American beverage. Preferred after-dinner drinks are cognac and armagnac. Some restaurants even offer their patrons a cigar.

A final word should be said about dinner conversation. French businesspeople have elegant, old-fashioned manners. They will not aggressively seek out personal information.

Instead they will let you slowly reveal your personality through your discussion of current events, interests, and French culture. The French are justly proud of their heritage and they will appreciate knowledgeable references to it during dinner.

Cigars can be smoked at the end of the meal, usually by men.

Bon appétit!

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

Ruth Paget Selfie

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Exploring Germany's Deutsches Museum for Science in Munich, Germany with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany beckons visitors to deepen their knowledge of the sciences they already know and discover how other sciences and technologies evolved often by viewing original machines or replicas.

The first thing that will surprise visitors to the Deutsches Museum is the amount of wood and brass you will see. Early scientific equipment was often made of wood and highly polished, so that it still resembles a work of art.

The Deutsches Museum houses a boggling array of items, including planes, cars, full-size boats, a replica of Foucault’s Pendulum, and a reproduction of Galileo’s workshop. You really cannot appreciate more than one or two galleries at a time on a visit.

During the visit I spent with my husband, we spent most of our time in the topography and mapping and mathematics galleries.

This is especially true of land surveying equipment, models, and globes used to make topographic maps. Topographic maps show the shape and elevation of land. Topographic maps help with disaster prevention and land use planning and are especially necessary in Alpine landscapes.

The mathematics gallery will bring back school day memories for many visitors. For example, even though scientific calculators had been invented, I still had to learn how to use a slide rule to calculate logarithms, the opposite of exponents, in geometry class in high school. I wonder if today’s engineers would know how to use slide rules if their scientific calculators quit on them.

Further on in the mathematics section, there was a large wooden Mobius Curve that you could pick up and handle. It allowed you to see how it was an infinite curve by looking at upper case letters that became lower case letters without turning it over.

An Albrecht Dürer copy of a geometric design drawing by Leonardo da Vinci illustrated the close ties between Germany and Northern Italy as well as the general human delight in spiraling shapes that remind viewers of the Book of Kells or The Lindesfarne Gospels.

After cursory tours of several other galleries, we set out to find a meal that was not the typical sausage and beer that is described as typical “Munich-style” cuisine in most guidebooks. We found a small Bavarian café, where I tried out my budding German and some new foods.

I ate Zagreb-style schnitzel, which is Croatian pan-fried veal coated with breadcrumbs and stuffed with cheese and ham. It is served with fries and took the edge off a foggy winter day that reminded me that the Alps were there even if I could not see them.

My husband had rindersteak (Round Steak) with red wine sauce and rotini pasta. This satisfying dish and mine were accompanied by a salad made of juicy tomatoes and cucumbers.

Our meals fortified us to walk around Munich’s neighborhoods and along the Isar River. The fall colors of the trees in a descending winter fog from the Alps held out promises for hikes and strolls through town despite the cold; we will be back.

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

Ruth Paget Selfie

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The chapter title “The Age of Expiring Chivalry” in Calvin Thomas’ A History of German Literature could just as aptly be named “The Rise of Church Theatre.”

Thomas describes Easter plays in detail as Easter is the more important holiday in Europe than Christmas. There several kinds of plays presented by churches in open-air spaces that connect us with Europe’s past albeit in a fragmented form.

The plays orchestrated by the Church that Thomas describes include:

Easter plays – Pertains to the discovery of Jesus Christ’s body and his resurrection

Passion plays – Enactments of the trial, suffering, and death of Jesus Christ

Christmas plays – Depiction of the birth of Jesus

Shrovetide plays – Carnival plays before the fasting period of Lent before Easter

Thomas points out key elements about these productions that planners of small and large theatre acts should keep in mind:

*They were performed outside as open-air spectacles

*These dramas began as late-medieval performances and ended as spectacles by the fifteen century, “employing an army of actors” (Google page number 109, Book page number 3)

*The performances lasted several days

These plays functioned like the sculpture on the French Gothic cathedrals for teaching the illiterate Bible stories. Spectacles must have brought in necessary revenue as well, especially if they lasted over several days.

Thomas points out that Latin and German were used to narrate the plays, which does make them important for literature. Thomas complains that the play texts that survive are more akin to stage directions; they probably resemble a director’s copy of a screenplay.

Some of the stand-alone acts that we associate with circuses or as children’s entertainment have come down to us from church Easter theatre; these include clowns, any kind of horseplay, and scatological humor according to Thomas.

Many of these plays are still performed in Germany today for adults and children alike. These performances draw in tourists to contemporary Germany; they invite the spectator to hearken back to a medieval soul and assume the position as town baker, butcher or candlestick maker and play your role in society.

The Passion Play at Oberammergau outside Munich, Germany is still performed every seven years. There is a museum in town devoted to the history of the play.

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

Ruth Paget Selfie

Ruth Paget Selfie

Pages

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

The Dictation of Merimee - a French Grammar Game with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget - Ruth Pennington Paget

I first saw a framed copy of the Dictation of Mérimée created by Prosper Mérimée (1803 – 1870) in the home of my husband’s grandparents.

French is full of traps related to homonyms. The sound “oh” can be written as “o,”, “ô,” “eau,” “ault,”, “eaux,” “au,” “aux,”, and “ot.”

You have to know your vocabulary words and be analytical about applying grammatical rules. In French class, dictation correction time solidified correct usage in our young minds. We all wanted perfect scores to show how polished our French was.

So, when I saw this framed dictation about a dinner in Saint-Adresse near Le Havre, I knew I had to ask my husband’s grandmother a question, “Is this a famous dictation?”

She laughed and said, “It is infamous. It is the Dictée de Mérimée. Napoleon III had trouble with it, but the Austrian ambassador to France only made three mistakes on it.”

The Austrian ambassador was the Prince de Metternich. The dictée that Mérimée created in 1857 was part of the entertainment at the court of Napoleon III in Compiègne, France. The Empress Eugénie made 62 mistakes and Napoleon III made 75 mistakes.

Dictations have remained a part of French culture and not just in school. I was surprised to learn when visiting one of the great-aunts in my husband’s family that she attended a weekly dictation club where she and her friends took turns choosing and reading the dictations that others wrote.

Sometimes they chose passages from French literature, but mostly they made the passages up themselves. (No doubt the made-up passages were full of exceptions to the rules.)

My family’s copy of the Dictée de Mérimée written on parchment is in a frame on a wall in our home in Germany (now Monterey County California).

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

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Navigating the Colonial French Business Meal by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Savvy business people know that understanding the etiquette that surrounds a business meal can foster relationships that are crucial for doing business in foreign countries. The success of your product or service may have its beginnings in the impression you make at the dinner table.

Plain champagne will always be welcome as an apéritif as well. Those diners seeking the flair of Provence should try anise-flavored pastis. Drinking whiskey is an accepted British habit. The apéritif, always taken in moderation, should serve as a gastric warm up.

In the past, the French preceded the entrée with an hors d’oeuvre, but nowadays business meals are being scaled down. The appetite-opening entrée begins the meal. The French are confused by the American use of entrée to describe the main dish in American fare.

In France, the entrée can be almost any kind of food depending on what you plan to eat after it.

Ham from Bayonne served with fresh figs or cantaloupe is a popular entrée during summer months as well as vegetable terrines. Shellfish show up frequently during the winter months with raw oysters, called fresh oysters in France, being the premier dish.

Other favorites are baked scallops on the half shell and boiled langoustines, a soft-shelled crayfish. Foie gras in aspic is an especially luxurious entrée. Any entrée should just ever so slightly satisfy your appetite on the way to the main dish called the “plat principal.”

Meat or fish is the usual main dish, but the cooking techniques are often what set French cuisine apart from the cooking in the United States, for example. Poached fish whets the appetite for a dry white wine.

Chicken simmered in wine literally falls off the bones in the dish called Coq au Vin (Chicken in Wine Sauce). Roasted meats, especially lamb shanks, remain a favorite, because meat accompanies red wine so well.

The arrival of the cheese platter signals that serious business discussion can begin. It may even merit opening another bottle of wine. In a restaurant, you can point at two or three cheese offerings on the cheese platter if you do not know the names.

However, it is better to ask the waiter what the names of the cheese are and then select a few. The waiter will give you your cheese selections.

You may never have to do it, but it is good to know the correct way to cut the cheese in France:

Round cheese in wedges

Log shaped cheese in rounds

Square cheese in little squares

Flat-topped pyramid cheese in squares

Wedges in slimmer wedges

Knowing these fine points could earn you some brownie points with your dinner guests on the way to dessert.

Many French people drink a sweet wine or semi-sweet Champagne with their dessert. This holds true for all desserts except for those containing chocolate, which taints the taste of wine. Luscious desserts served in dainty portions explain how the French stay so slim.

The meal usually ends with a cup of espresso. The French never drink coffee with their meals. Strong, bitter espresso bears no relation to the mild American beverage. Preferred after-dinner drinks are cognac and armagnac. Some restaurants even offer their patrons a cigar.

A final word should be said about dinner conversation. French businesspeople have elegant, old-fashioned manners. They will not aggressively seek out personal information.

Instead they will let you slowly reveal your personality through your discussion of current events, interests, and French culture. The French are justly proud of their heritage and they will appreciate knowledgeable references to it during dinner.

Cigars can be smoked at the end of the meal, usually by men.

Bon appétit!

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

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

The first thing that will surprise visitors to the Deutsches Museum is the amount of wood and brass you will see. Early scientific equipment was often made of wood and highly polished, so that it still resembles a work of art.

The Deutsches Museum houses a boggling array of items, including planes, cars, full-size boats, a replica of Foucault’s Pendulum, and a reproduction of Galileo’s workshop. You really cannot appreciate more than one or two galleries at a time on a visit.

During the visit I spent with my husband, we spent most of our time in the topography and mapping and mathematics galleries.

This is especially true of land surveying equipment, models, and globes used to make topographic maps. Topographic maps show the shape and elevation of land. Topographic maps help with disaster prevention and land use planning and are especially necessary in Alpine landscapes.

Further on in the mathematics section, there was a large wooden Mobius Curve that you could pick up and handle. It allowed you to see how it was an infinite curve by looking at upper case letters that became lower case letters without turning it over.

An Albrecht Dürer copy of a geometric design drawing by Leonardo da Vinci illustrated the close ties between Germany and Northern Italy as well as the general human delight in spiraling shapes that remind viewers of the Book of Kells or The Lindesfarne Gospels.

After cursory tours of several other galleries, we set out to find a meal that was not the typical sausage and beer that is described as typical “Munich-style” cuisine in most guidebooks. We found a small Bavarian café, where I tried out my budding German and some new foods.

I ate Zagreb-style schnitzel, which is Croatian pan-fried veal coated with breadcrumbs and stuffed with cheese and ham. It is served with fries and took the edge off a foggy winter day that reminded me that the Alps were there even if I could not see them.

My husband had rindersteak (Round Steak) with red wine sauce and rotini pasta. This satisfying dish and mine were accompanied by a salad made of juicy tomatoes and cucumbers.

Our meals fortified us to walk around Munich’s neighborhoods and along the Isar River. The fall colors of the trees in a descending winter fog from the Alps held out promises for hikes and strolls through town despite the cold; we will be back.

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

Tuesday, October 25, 2011