Living in the 10th Arrondisement in Paris (France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Living in the 10^th Arrondisement in Paris (France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My Parisian studio apartment required walking up five flights of stairs (excluding the ground floor).  I lived on the sixth floor of an apartment building built by Baron Haussman in the 10^th arrondisment by the Gare du Nord when I first moved to Paris.

If I forgot to take the garbage out, I had to do a tiring second walk up and down the stairs.  Carrying groceries upstairs rated as a mini Stairmaster workout with weights.  In addition, the humid heat made sleep impossible.

My neighborhood fascinated me, though, so I lived with the inconveniences.  I lived in a 19^th century townhouse apartment building similar to the one made famous in the Impressionist painting entitled Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte that is exhibited in the Chicago Institute of the Arts.

Many descendants of Algerians, Tunisians, and Moroccans from France’s former colonies in North Africa lived in my neighborhood by the Gare du Nord train station.  I could also easily walk to the Gare de l’Est train station from my apartment building, too.

On my way to work, I picked up just as many Arabic words as French ones like “hamman” for public baths and “halal” designating a Muslim butcher or Muslim delicatessen.

Only men shopped at the open-air halal butcher shops with strips of opaque, yellow plastic dangling fly tape in front of the stores to keep pests away.  Fridays were Mosque days, and Muslim men flooded the streets with butcher shop purchases.

I witnessed Muslim culture first-hand as I sat by my window, studying French and hoping for a breeze.

My neighbors directly across from my apartment over the courtyard followed the “sharia” and “sunna” or Muslim living practices set forth as law in the Koran and “hadith”.  (Sheer curtains, for example, separated the men’s living room from the women’s dining room and kitchen.  The couple read the Koran together in morning and at night sitting at the dining room table.)

(I studied Islam and Muslim culture as part of my studies of francophone children’s culture when I studied French children’s literature and francophone children’s culture at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin.)

Delightful aromas wafted throughout the courtyard over the car repair garage as women cooked what I guessed to be lemon-chicken, roast lamb with mint, and grilled chicken with cumin spice rubs.  These glimpses into Muslim life encouraged me to visit the market at the Barbès-Rocheouart Métro stop.

The Métro stop at Barbès-Rocheouart is the epicenter of North African Paris.  I noticed that there was a weekly market under this Métro station and decided to go there.

Maybe I would even buy some of the ingredients for couscous, North Africa’s signature dish featuring couscous, a small pasta, that was topped off with a stew made of spicy chicken or lamb (never pork, which was forbidden by the Koran).

The market at Barbès-Rocheouart qualifies more as an Arab market, called a souk, than a Parisian market.  The sounds of Arabic filled the air there with women wearing flowered headscarves looking at merchandise.

The merchants sold mysterious things like glazed, clay pots with conical lids called tagines as well.

Then, there were bulbous, metal couscousiers featuring a big, round bottom for cooking a tagine, or stew, that would flavor the couscous pasta sitting in a perforated tray above the stew.

Dried figs, dates, almonds, and fruit showed up at several stands.  I worked my way to a spice merchant representing the ultimate Arab legacy to North African cuisine.

The pungent, freshly ground spices like cayenne used to make fiery, Algerian harissa sauce tickled my nose.  I asked the merchant what spices I needed to make couscous.

The spice seller motioned to the small, plastic containers holding golden, ground ginger; rust-colored turmeric; cinnamon sticks; and garnet-colored threads of saffron.

“Isn’t saffron a powder?” I asked.

The merchant shook his head in dismay.

“Saffron is collected by hand from a flower,” he said.

He looked me in the eye and rubbed his fingers together and said, “With saffron you have to remember to pinch the threads between your fingers to release their perfume as you drop them into a liquid to boil,” he said.

I chickened out on making couscous. 

I told the spice merchant, “My culinary skills at the moment are limited to pasta, frying breaded fish sticks, making instant mashed potatoes, and making salad.”

I did buy some pepper, which I knew how to use.  The merchant made a little paper cone for the pepper and gave it to me to take home on the Métro like a real power shopper.

(A much shorter version of this story appeared in the Side Dish column in the Monterey County Weekly around 2000 – Circulation: 200,000)

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

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Visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

From the Tate Gallery I walked to the Victoria and Albert Museum (The V & A) with toddler Florence checking out the squares with houses around them.  Some of the squares had gardens while others used the squares as parking lots.

We were on Belgrave Road, which is lined with row houses surrounding fenced-in squares with gardens.  The row houses all have a similar rectangular porch with a column on either side of the door.  The small porch above the door on these homes had become a terrace in most cases with chairs and tables. 

I turned down Eccelston Street.  Somewhere along the way, I left the Borough of Westminster and entered the Royal Boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea.

There were many embassies in the royal boroughs areas with no places for crossing the street.  When I found a crosswalk, I was able to walk across the street with Florence, because the English stop at crosswalks unlike French drivers.

Most of the embassies have cute alleys called “mews,” which are dead ends on brick roads and very clean.  You find many mews liked this on the backside of grandiose townhouses.

When I arrived at the Victoria and Albert Museum, I was tired from walking and just concentrated on the Italian collection.  I wanted to see Desidero Settignano’s bas relief of the Madonna and Child. 

I loved this sculpture while flipping through hundreds of photographic plates at the University of Chicago art library to memorize – artwork name, artist, century completed (artistic periods get renamed), current location, and any details that would help me memorize what the artwork looked like.  People who draw might be able to do this memorization task with sketching.  I loved being able to see this artwork as a young woman and not as a retiree.

I went through the fashion history part of the museum, which led to the Nehru Indian art galleries at the time.  These galleries had Mughal manuscripts out for viewing. 

The Mughals were Royal Indian Muslims with ties to Persians and the Rajput Warrior Dynasties.  I learned about the Mughals at the University of Chicago when my Indian art class was able to view Mughal paintings in the archives at a private class meeting at the Chicago Institute of the Arts.

I whizzed through the Chinese and Japanese collections and went back to Epping (UK) with very happy souvenirs of my trip to London. 

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

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Visiting the Tate Gallery (London) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Tate Gallery (London) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent, Florence, and I ate breakfast together before Laurent went to work with his English consultant colleagues. 

I love English breakfasts with broiled tomato halves, piles of bacon slices, and over easy eggs made correctly.  (I cannot make over easy eggs, so I like ordering them in restaurants.)

When Laurent left for work, I washed Florence up.  She likes a little toast and lots of jelly.  I wanted her to be cute for touring around London Town in her stroller throne.  I wanted to look cute in my mini skirt and cool sunglasses.

We took the Underground (Subway) and transferred at the Mile End Station.  Mile End is a nice place to transfer when you have a baby, because you can walk from one platform to another.

When I arrived at the Tate Gallery, though, there was a large stairway to climb with no handicap access elevator or ramp that I could push Florence’s stroller up.

I picked Florence and her stroller up and hauled them both up the steps.  I bruised my legs in the process and laughed about my injuries all for the sake of art.

Once inside the Tate Gallery, I did notice that the Tate Galley had diaper-changing facilities in the bathrooms.  I made sure toddler Florence had fresh undies and went off to view the galleries.

The Tate Gallery specializes in exhibiting art from the 1850s to the present.

The Clare Foundation Gallery inside the Tate houses the immense Turner Collection.  You can trace Turner’s development as an artist in this collection, if you want.

People who like Impressionism are usually ga-ga over Turner, because they see him as being influential on Impressionism, especially Monet.  I thought Turner used too much yellow to show his ships in churning ocean storms.

All of his works were overly varnished, which makes you squint looking at them from all angles of vision.

Navy, merchant marine, people who grew up on coasts, or who have ancestors who were ship captains like buying Turner-inspired art of ships churning in the sea, marinas with boats, and fish market scenes to remind them of the hardships their families have overcome to obtain money and skills.

The Pre-Raphaelite Room at the Tate Gallery had paintings by Rossetti and Burne-Jones.  The Pre-Raphaelites loved women with wavy, auburn hair.  (I thought of Neil Young’s song Cinnamon Girl when I looked at these paintings.)

I noted in my journal:  Brunettes finally get their day in the sun.  Blondes and red heads have monopolized film and TV forever.

One of the modern works of art in the Tate caught my eye:  David Buery’s sculpture consisting of stone fragments strewn about the floor.  I wanted to diagram this work from a bird’s eye view.

“What fun to make this,” I thought.

I like the Tate Gallery.  Modern art is mostly protest art.  All modern artists are classically trained to draw and paint like Raphael, but choose to sell mounds of feces and plaster of Paris bodies in jail installation scenes for a reason usually.

Buyers know protest art reaps millions later, if you look at Basquiat’s paintings, Sark’s Journals (not yet, but it’s coming), and Rauschenberg’s Drip Paintings.

Rauschenberg and his widow ended up being richer than the artist’s agent.

There are two books that are very good at helping Renaissance art lovers learn to understand, if not love modern art:  The Painted Word and From Bauhaus to our House by Tom Wolfe.

Buying protest art helps artists survive and their dealers who often support them.  However, buyers who invest in protest art without supporting solutions to the problems depicted are also “suits” and “establishment” benefitting from tax laws to write off champagne and nourishing appetizers at buffet dinners for openings or “vernissages” as business expenses.

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


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Visiting Cambridge (UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Cambridge (UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent’s colleague’s wife picked Florence and me up for a trip out to Cambridge University and the town of Cambridge on one of our trips to London.

Cambridge lies just an hour away from Epping.  The landscape becomes flatter as you leave London and drive towards Cambridge.

I knew I would like Cambridge University when we drove into town and I saw Chinese cloisonné vases in office windows around campus and at the Fitzwillem Museum.  Young women in mini skirts dashed around on bicycles.  Bookstores were everywhere.

I love university book towns no matter where they are.  They tend to have:

-many bookstores

-lectures open to the public on many topics which professors and graduate students alike do to learn how to deal with question and answer sessions and to hone their presentation skills in front of potential donors, who could fund their research

-great public libraries with wonderful children’s and teen book collections and skills development collections for all ages (up-to-date tech books are hideously important in an environment where skills become obsolete quickly)

-museums and parks for strolling, so families can do the Italian “paseo” where the entire family goes out for walks.  (At one time, CSUMB's Kinesiology Department supported research for campus walks and the amount of calories you would burn for each walk to help with weight loss programs.  They might be able to do consulting on how to set this up for other communities.)

-places to learn about nature and buy books about animals like zoos, botanical gardens, and outings in nature

-cafés for discussion

-great grocery stores with a variety of American and ethnic foods, so you can prepare foods from scratch and have a choice of good “microwave” food

-broadband access at both libraries and chamber of commerce locations.  Each community should have 10 high-quality, mass-produced items that they can sell all over the country to assure good sales tax income for the community.  The West could have Cowboy Scarves.  (See this Savvy Mom Website for how to use these items.)  

-very high educational standards that are listed for everyone in the community to see along with self-study books you can use to obtain these skills in addition to textbooks.  All of the self-study books should be available at public libraries in multiple copies and on e-readers such as Kindle.

-public transit with local and express options

In 2018, I would add that great university towns should offer the ability to gain many certifications for entry-level jobs or just for organizing a home later in life:

-early childhood education

-touch typing for Silicon Valley jobs

-software engineering (especially in Excel and Access to do databases, mail merges, and personalized mass mailings)

-headset skills for sales and/or radio shows

-H and R Block training for personal and corporate taxation issues

-business plan training for fundraising purposes and to analyze whether or not your idea could turn a profit  – see SBA.gov – small business administration website of the US government

-driving classes for both automatic and stick shift cars

-car buying and maintenance classes

-driving classes for various types of vehicles, driving classes for various kinds of trucks, boat pilot classes, and plane piloting classes for private planes and package delivery companies

-sales training – maybe through doing the Toastmasters organization’s course

-public access television with production equipment training

-film clubs for contemporary and historic films by country

-certification classes to sell products such as:

- wine (Sommelier 1 and 2)

- beer (Cicerone 1 - 4)

- fashion (Western Wear)

-cultural tourism (religious tourism for the Missions, Monterey's Spanish adobe homes, the Dali Museum in Monterey, ethnic festivals on the Monterey Wharf - Turkish, Greek, and Italian - and Cowboy Poetry)

-catering

-restaurant

-hotel

-art sales (Sotheby's courses) 

Subject knowledge alone is not enough to do sales in many industries, because you need to know taxation, insurance, shipping, invoicing, negotiation, prior ownership for right-to-sell purposes, and import/export regulations.  Stolen goods are a problem in art sales, decorative arts, and antiques sales.  Online certifications should be offered.


Books should be sold at many outlets on topics relevant to the outlet.  Zoos should have animal and environment books, for example.

Cambridge and Cambridge University certainly provided many places to chat.  The Jesus Field by the Granta and Cam Rivers with their various canals was a mini homage spot for me; one of the favorite books I read in high school was Daniel Martin by John Fowles, who wrote about a rich movie producer and director, reflecting on his college days in this book.

That situation might describe John Fowles as well.  He wrote the French Lieutenant’s Woman, which starred Meryl Streep.  Then, he wrote the creepy book The Collector, which scared women away and finally the warped book The Magus to keep everyone away. 

All of these Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games might have their ultimate origin in Fowles’ book The Magus along with the Italian film L’Avventura, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

I finally visited the bookstore chain whose book bags I had seen all over London – Dillons.  I bought two great books in this store:

-Catalonia: A Self-Portrait edited by Josep Miguel Sobrer

-Among the Cities by Jan Morris – my favorite travel writer, who wrote a great chapter on Australia in this book

After the bookstore, we visited Kings’ College and the beautiful gardens at Clare College.  Having to negotiate steps with Florence’s stroller throne was hard, which prevented us from visiting all the quads.

At Trinity College, we walked through the quad and admired the Gothic architecture.  Each college is its own little world complete with a chapel.

After our visit to Cambridge University, I returned to Epping with my husband’s colleague’s wife for a “cuppa” of tea.  The cold weather made the tea taste delicious, and I had to drink it with two lumps of sugar.

Laurent picked me up after work.  We went back to the hotel and ate a soup, salad, and some bread for dinner.  I drank a cuppa of tea and slept soundly until the next day.

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


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