Adventures with Marianna

Lila and Rene warned us against an excursion to St Denis as being too hazardous a trip for two ladies. This particular ban lieu had its share of riots and car burnings protesting the unfairness of the French educational system or the like. Mari and I approached the trip with the same sense of adventure and appetite we had approached our excursios when we were twenty.

The Metro was direct from Jussieu to St Denis. We ascended into an large square bright with sun shine. There was an open air market shaded by awnings on one side of the square Marianna shopped for a steamer. There were no bargains, but open air markets have a charm for those of us who do not experience them at home. The occupants of the quarter passed the fabulous church without looking to the left or the right; it was so familiar it had no existence for them. Here for centuries was the burial place of the kings and queens of France. This first of the great “gothic” structures, the chef d’oeuvre of Abbot Suger.

Suger was the rare and perfect combination of brilliance, good taste, great connections an excellent education and an open mind. He had the good fortune to be a class mate of Louis VI, he who married Eleanor of Aquitaine. (Suger approved) and later divorced her, (Suger disapproved). Suger was right but that is a whole different story.

The Abbot took it upon himself to modernize and expand the church at St Denis, already ancient and full of history in the twelfth century, where the sepulchers of the Kings and Queens of France reside.

The theory of the flying buttress was at that moment nascent and Suger saw it as the possibility to allow light to fill the church for the glory of the Divine and rescue it from its dark enclosed Romanesque beginning. As he was very well connected with the aristocracy finding the money for the enterprise was not as difficult as it might have been for a lesser person. The story goes that although he begged for money for the nave and rose window which would have made the church useable, he delayed the restoration of that part of the building until the end fearing the money would dry up once the impressive front of the church was complete.

He understood the physics and applied geometry of the pointed arch with keystone and the flying buttress as the methods by which the weight of the building would rest on an exterior skeleton allowing the interior to be filled with light filtered through stained glass. St Denis was the beginning of what would be the most fabulous works of man ever to be raised to God.

Mari and I completed our visit and enquired about a restaurant for lunch. We found a working class Algerian local. We were welcomed by the maitre d’ and waiter who treated us like royalty. We ate the best Algerian couscous I have ever eaten, covered with lamb gravy. And we were surrounded by happy noisy natives..

Bread and Roses I

Publishers Clearing House was a paternalistic company, flowers delivered on Mondays, corn festival in August, turkeys distributed on Thanksgiving, ice skating and cocoa when the pond froze in the winter champagne parties for the contest winners to which the whole building was invited and especially a haven for the Port Washington ducks. If a duck were spotted downtown the police would call for Tommy to catch it and return it to its rightful pond at PCH.

As part of its benevolence retirement lectures were afforded the hoi poloi no matter that most of us were many years from retirement. The lectures were free so Elliot and I participated. The third lecturer gave each of us a sum of money and asked how we would spend it to further our retirement plans. I invested part of mine in the stock market and with the remainder I bought a bed and breakfast in the Berkshires. The lecturer did not laugh rather he opined that if the Berkshires was a likely tourist destination a bed and breakfast might be a good thing. For the first time in my daydreaming someone said “not a bad idea.”

Serendipitously we had a staff meeting the next day where my boss banged on the table and pronounced “make your plan, work your plan.” I would have paid attention without the table banging as the boss was over six feet in all his dimensions.

I trotted home and announced to Elliot we should make our plan and work our plan for the B&B as the oracle had declared. He answered so what’s your plan? My plan was simple enough; open a bank account for the B&B and throw all the loose money in it. Elliot did this the next day.

Connie was working in the reinvestment department of a large bank in New York City. Under her tutelage we learned how to arbitrage Bank of New England stock buying at 95 percent of market and selling at market. For more details you would have to ask Connie. This scheme worked exceedingly well, so well my very conservative husband was seen carrying one hundred thousand dollars in hundreds from one bank in Mineola to another to make the investment date.

We soon had enough money to shop for the B&B.

A Room With A View

When I had the apartment in New York for the winter people would ask me why would I spend a winter in the city. I always replied that I went south for the winter just not as far south as the other people. Once I replied I would go to Paris except for the language problem. It suddenly occurred to me I had no language problem, I was bilingual or could be again with a little effort.

Finding the Paris apartment took two phone calls to an agent listed in a brochure at the French tourist bureau. The first apartment in the Marais was not light enough. We passed on the chic eighth arrondissement and settled for the Latin Quarter which afforded us a light and bright duplex. The top floor encompassed a living room, dining area, kitchen, bedroom and bath, below two bedrooms and a bath. It was decorated flawlessly in beiges and Thai silk pillows and lots of books in various languages.

The building had once been a monastery and was built around a court which made the apartment very quiet although we were but steps from the market on Rue Mouffetard. In the Spring the trees in the courtyard put forth cherry blossoms.

I find it most amusing to hear the know nothings condemn the French health care system. When Mariana and I had the apartment in Paris I transferred my care to the French health care system. The transfer was facilitated by Connie who was living in Switzerland at the time. She sent an e-mail to the American Women’s Club in Zurich saying I needed care, I would be in Paris I spoke French. By return e-mail I had a doctor who would enter me into the system,

Every three weeks I took the metro from Place Monge to Ballard the end of the lilac line. I walked the four blocks to the brand new fabulous building , Hopital Europeen Georges Pompidou. Within the three story atrium were grown trees, restaurants and of course the hospital.

In the private room in which they treated me everything ran off a remote control wand. The blinds went up and down the bed went up and down etc. If I arrived before eleven AM the French cheerfully provided me with breakfast. After 11 one was served lunch. Breakfast was better than lunch. A Breton nurse took care of me swiftly and pleasantly. When the treatment was over I spoke with the billing people. On one occasion I forgot my credit card and they waved me on saying I could pay next time. Just like in America.

Annals of Iceland

Some time ago The New York Times travel section ran an ad for a long weekend in Iceland. Elliot and I packed our carzinkas and went off to that exotic if not tropical island. We landed at the airport in Keflavik and rode from there through a moonscape of black volcanic rock for miles to Reykjavik,. The airport was very impressive for such a small island, built I believe by the US Army for World War II and probably maintained by the CIA.

Reykjavik was small for a capital and wooden. We were used to the stone of the Mediterranean. We visited the Parliament building and a nearby Viking dig as well as a buggy ride into the surrounding area. The Icelanders have the oldest democracy in the world still called the Althing as it was in Viking days.

The people were large and friendly much like the Scots we had encountered before. Actually Iceland was colonized by Vikings and their Irish slaves. They are all related and the phone book produces perhaps a dozen family names.

Everything ran on geothermal energy. The hotel was steam heated and then the hot water was run into the pipes for washing. The temperature for March was friendly if damp. The Gulf stream which is a moderating influence flows close to the Southern coast of Iceland keeping the harbors open all year.

We visited the wild north face of the island. Noone lives there mostly geysers, mountains, water falls and birds. In the south there were greenhouses everywhere heated of course by the underground geothermal energy. We had fresh tomatoes and salad at dinner which was mostly fruit of the sea. Fishing is important in Iceland, but surprisingly so was the transformation of bauxite from Jamaica into aluminum, again the cheap energy source.

Reykjavik abounded with swimming pools Everyone from 3 to 93 swam almost every day. I actually went swimming in the famous Blue Lagoon on one trip. The water was quite warm although the air was still March.

There were no erupting volcanos nor were any new islands born while we were there. Fish, lamb, good food and woolen sweaters abounded.

Greek Myths

Greece is back on the front pages and a tragedy again, where is Midas and his golden touch?

When I was a little girl I was handed The Bible Stories, The Arabian Nights and The Greek Myths. It was obvious to me that I was a Greek. In Latin class all the stories started “erat olim in Graecia” Once upon a time in Greece.

As an adult I looked forward to visiting the monuments and the shrines I had only seen in history books or in the case of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum ripped from Praxiteles’ frieze and carted off for “:safekeeping “ in a northern clime, or the Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo ensconced in the Louvre.

I lied to Elliot and told him that the Mediterranean would be like a lake in March. No stories of Ulysses taking ten years to return home on storm tossed seas. We were drawn to the Shrine at Delphi to see the Omphalos of the ancient world where the Oracle sitting on a three legged stool predicted the fate of Oedipus. We visited Corinth and stood on the bema where St Paul preached to the unruly crowds. It was said that in ancient Corinth one could hear a dozen tongues spoken in the agora. One could see a neolithic shrine still here 6000 years later or the Corinth Canal where British airmen had jumped to their death hoping to escape from German occupied Greece.

The most exciting if unplanned and unpleasant was our stay in Athens. The first day or two were fine, even though a general strike had been announced. By Friday the strikers were full to the brim with ouzo and antipathy, many “Americans go home” chants. We went about our tourist business in all innocence., We had no idea what a general strike meant. Our bus downtown stopped running and we learned of another a few blocks further from the hotel. We arrived at the Binacki Museum. They let us in and locked the door behind us which was comforting, sort of entering a safe womb. When we had finished viewing the fabulous gold we left the museum..and they locked the doors behind us which was less than comforting. The street was eerily empty although one could hear the strikers in the distance and see the gray painted school bus full of gray uniformed soldiers. Then they tear gassed us. Our friend the professor knew we were being tear gassed because he had been at Kent State. Then it was bedlam, no buses no transport at all. A taxi pulled up and I got in with another couple. We were six and I assumed another cab would come and take the remaining three. The cabs only held three passengers. I had the passport. Elliot arrived at the hotel three hours later much the worse for wear. No passport, no Greek language he walked back to the hotel through the street fires and tear gas. When he arrived he was furious I had deserted him in his three hours of need.

Paris in the Springtime

Yvonne and David are going to Paris next week. He for a business meeting she because she lucked out on the dates of Spring vacation and was "added on". Poor child I have been bombarding her with ancient tips and information probably none of it age appropriate for that matter century appropriate.

When Marianna and I rented the apartment in the fifth arondissement several years ago we glimpsed the lights of the Eiffel tower from the restaurant we ate in the first night of our stay. It was reminiscent of the first time we had seen the lights from our balcony when we came to Paris as green teenagers to spend our junior year.

We lived in the eighteenth in a very residential pre-World War II building. The elevator was to be used to go up. Walk down the five flights please. The hall lights were on a timer and one raced from floor to floor to push the button to illuminate the stairwell to descend further.

We lived with the family Mullander: Madame, Monsieur, Grand Pere, the daughter and son-in-law just returned from North Africa and Bruno who was four years old. If anyone spoke English they kept it to themselves. Our major communication difficulty was with Bruno as we had no vocabulary suitable for dealing with a four year old. Although we did exclaim at dinner on the wonderful carrion we had just eaten. Most of our vocabulary came from Verlaine and Beaudelaire. Grandpere had traveled in the States at the turn of the century and had carried a gun with him for fear of the redskins and the gangsters. He always asked us about our war, the Korean war, as if we were in control, or even knowledgeable.

Madame was a wonderful cook. I sent home recipes for the exotic lunches she made for us. My mother resented this thoroughly. Madame opened each spice tin in turn so we could smell and learn the French name. We had wine with every meal Bruno also had wine watered by more than half. Monsieur Mullander was an insomniac given to painting things like the toilet seat in the middle of the night. Each morning we went off to school at 4 rue de Chatreuse for lessons in grammar and reading and writing proper French. We translated Churchill into French, De Gaulle into English. We returned after lunch for culture lectures. As soon as the light went off for the slides I fell asleep so I missed much of the culture.

On days when there were no lectures we had a map and instructions on exploring Paris century by century starting on the Ile de la Cite an expanding each week into a larger concentric circle. These adventures are for another day.

Ancient Greek Women

The course I am taking in Greek drama has taken over my life. My heroine Joan of Arc is so straight forward, pious and innocent compared to these twisted agonized souls. Where Joan killed reluctantly for a holy cause, the Greeks commit matricide, murder and mayhem. The Bible differentiates between killing and murder. The commandment really says thou shalt not murder.

Clytemnestra waits ten years for Agamemnon to return victorious from Troy. She has already filled his place in her bed with Aegisthus. Agamemnon returns and violating all the rules of Greek hospitality she welcomes him to the house slays him and Cassandra his new wife and expects to live happily ever after. A cursed family, and the family Atreus is cursed, never lives on without revenge. Electra daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra mourns her father's death to the point of psychosis waiting only for the return of her brother Orestes to kill their mother and her paramour. Of course Agamemnon is not without guilt having killed his daughter Iphigenia in order to insure a good wind for the voyage to conquer Troy. Oh the collateral damage of the great wars.

Trickery, cunning and deception are held in great esteem as personified by Odysseus. And yet here is the beginning of Western democracy. Is matricide a worse crime than the murder of a non relative? Is revenging one's father's death more important than living? In the golden age of Greece we have the beginning of a jury system with twelve jurors. The barbaric stands side by side with the civilized. I guess as it still does.