Bob and Heather's Paris Newsletter - December 23, 2006I think 5 months is too long to leave between newsletters. Too much to go back and remember or reconstruct! This newsletter is being finished on my Palm on the flight from Paris/Frankfort to Calgary, just as we cross the Arctic Circle. I had hoped to see the Arctic ice while there still is some, but it's dark, so there's nothing to see. So this becomes holiday greetings, as well as another update on our sojourn in Paris.
Since the end of July I've been to Southern France, the Hague, Cameroon and Berlin. And, as seems almost "normal" now, half the world seems to beat a path to Paris, or somewhere nearby, so that we're constantly being transported into other peoples' worlds via media coverage of this issue or that, playing out somewhere nearby - even if we never see the motorcades or press conferences ourselves.
In Berlin last month for a seminar on an alternative international financial architecture, I visited the new Jewish museum, which was the venue for the seminar. It's a refreshing celebration of Jewish life, accomplishments and culture in Germany, and, while not ignoring the Holocaust, far more enlightening than the more common focus on negative history. Here in Paris, there have been a number of exhibits looking at Islam and its contributions to science, history and western civilization, which also force one to examine current events in a broader context. The overlaps between Judaism, Islam and Christianity are multiple, yet are lost in the "chatter" that passes for media and "intellectual" commentary today. There was a good opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune last week about the cultures of humiliation and hatred on all sides in the Middle East, cultures which focus on the many actors' obsessions with past and present wrongs, real and imagined, to the detriment of any hope of negotiations unfettered by blinding emotions.
Meanwhile, we all continue to pump carbon into the atmosphere at rates we now know will kill us all within the next twenty or thirty years, while our governments and big corporations argue about who will be the first (or last) to give up our fossil fuel addictions. If you make New Year resolutions, make one to see Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth". He doesn't offer much in the way of solutions, but he lays out the problem pretty clearly.
On a brighter note, in October we discovered the Albert Khan Museum on the outskirts of Paris. Khan was a Jewish banker who believed that universal harmony could be achieved if different cultures understood more about each other. He used his fortune made in the stock market in the early 1900s to finance some 50 photographic expeditions to far flung corners of the world between 1910 and 1930, to document the daily lives and cultures of many different peoples. The thousands of photos and hours of film are now housed in a modern museum with an amazing set of 10 theme gardens walled off from the hustle and bustle of Paris. Places like that, as well as our ease of access to the Louvre's Mesopotamia collection, the Institute du Monde Arabe, the Musee d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaisme, innumerable Da Vinci Code Paris tour guides (tongue in cheek), etc., all put life into world history in a way that's going to make Ottawa seem a bit too quiet when we eventually go home. I've already decided that, when that moment arrives, I'm going to take a few months of "sabbatical" here to catch up on reading, visit museums, interview interesting people and generally do what Heather has been able to do in her life as a perpetual "tourist" in Paris.
"That moment" won't be until sometime next year at least, since the Wallace Global Fund has just given ECA Watch a grant which, together with another expected grant from the Rausing Trust and next year's Mott Foundation funds, will see us through until the end of 2007. The OECD negotiations on environmental standards have been foundering and decisions expected in November are now postponed until at least March. Three OECD export credit agencies seem about to approve support for the large Ilisu dam project in Turkey which will affect some 78,000 people in 90 villages, exacerbate human rights violations against the mainly Kurdish population and destroy the 10,000 year old city of Hasankeyf - a project in short, which makes a complete mockery of OECD environment standards, hence my cynical note above re government and corporate fiddling while Rome burns. The current scandal in the UK, where Blair stopped a Serious Fraud Office investigation of an export credit guaranteed £1 billion sale of fighter jets and a £60 million bribe to the Saudi regime, is another source of cynicism which some of our ECA Watch NGO members are taking to the courts.
In addition to the OECD focus, we expect this year to reach out to community groups and NGOs that are affected by projects supported by export credit agencies in the growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs). This is quite a fascinating area and the members of our network are now making contacts that show great promise of mobilizing people to question and stop or redesign harmful energy and infrastructure projects all over the world.
I was in Cameroun Central Africa for a week in October, at an AFRODAD seminar about the foreign debts created by failed export credit projects which convert commercial debt into government debt. Africans are waking up to this nefarious way of getting taxpayers to pay for the pet projects of governments and corporations which have almost no development benefits and they are beginning to expose and fight it. Most OECD governments don't recognize this, but the Government of Norway has just agreed to take responsibility for a shipbuilding and export scheme from the 70s, and forgive the onerous (and odious) debts created to save Norwegian shipyard jobs.
I took advantage of the trip to climb Mount Cameroun with American and Australian colleagues. Quite an "adventure", although like Kilimanjaro, more of a long hike than mountain climbing - three days only, vs 6-7 for Kilimanjaro. On the second day coming down from the summit, we walked past the still mildly active 1999 eruption craters through a moonscape of ash and cinders, where vegetation pushed up through the rock as we descended, eventually to spend the night in a tropical forest with chimpanzees, although we didn't see any. It was literally a stroll through the geological and biological history of the planet in one day. Africans are proud to be the original "mothers" of human civilization and this hike certainly brought this home to me. You can see my photos online.
My three day hike wasn't as ambitious as Boyd's eleven day solo walk around Mont Blanc in September. We had a guide and porter to carry our tent and food. He spent several days with us before and after his tour, which was timed between jobs. He's now working with a small firm based on the UBC Campus developing micro-fluid technology for hydrogen fuel cells. It was nice to catch up with him. Pam is working in Toronto now and searching for gigs in stand-up comedy.
While Boyd was circling Mont Blanc, we exchanged cell phone text messages on his progress from Provence, where we spent 11 days visiting Avignon, Aix en Provence, Marseilles and the Riviera around Nice. It was a lovely holiday.
We had a few Canadian visitors this Fall. Heather loves being a tour guide and of course is good at it since she's probably seen more of Paris than half of Paris. We quite regularly get out of Paris for what we call our Ile de France walks. Within an hour of the Gares du Nord, de l'Est or Lyon there are all kinds of wonderful walks in forests, through small towns and villages or both. It's getting a little cold now, but there are also little weekend or Christmas markets in some places that are full of surprises - like the fried Brie cheese we discovered a couple of weeks ago. Definitely a local specialty as our French friends couldn't believe it (and wouldn't eat it!).
We had to get our residence permits (Cartes de Sejour) renewed in the Fall. Almost as pleasant an experience as spending a whole day queing for a Cameroonian visa, although complicated this time by the fact that I lost my passport in Brussels in April and couldn't get a new one until after the French permits had expired. So between the Canadian Embassy and French bureaucracies, we got our share of the reality of being foreigners in another land. Next lesson, tax returns!
The mistaken mailing of my credit card renewal to my first address in Paris led to a pleasant dinner and evening a few weeks ago with my first "landlady", Sole and Rene, and their daughter Anne and her children. We had a cordial meeting with our current landlady last week and she agreed to some repairs and improvements to our tiny apartment since we're going to be here another year. While a larger place might be nice, we're fairly comfortable here and the hassle of moving plus an invariably higher rent is a deterrent.
Following Halloween, much as in Canada I guess, the Christmas consumer season opens in full force here. This led to an interesting encounter with Paresian poverty and immigrant experiences for Heather. For several months, a Roma (Romanian gypsy) woman and her 8 year old daughter had been begging outside the supermarket just up the street from our apartment. One day, Heather found herself standing in line at the supermarket with the little girl who was buying an Advent calendar with a pocketful of pennies from the mother's cup. She seemed to think that the big box was a good "deal" in terms of volume for price and was no doubt also influenced by the riot of Christmas advertising that exploded everywhere just after Ramadan and the American Thanksgiving. She had helped Heather figure out the produce weigh scale and a kind of personal contact was established. She was a few pennies short for the chocolate calendar which Heather gladly contributed. The whole scene of a semi desparate grasping of pennies for food and a child for candy in the context of poverty and consumerism was a bit much for Heather. She went home, made them some soup and sandwiches and took it out to them on the supermarket sidewalk. We haven't seen them since, but it was a pretty emotional and highly personal introduction to the complex and volatile situation of immigrants in Paris.
On the way to work via the bank yesterday, by bike, I ran into another vignette of poverty in Paris. At the upper end of Pere Lachaise Cementary on this once a month route to work, I ran into the street man who lives in a phone booth. He was one happy man, having just moved out of the phone booth into a brand new home, a Doctors Without Borders tent on the sidewalk beside the booth. His excitement and gratitude was obvious from the Christmas garlands he had pinned to the windows and door of the tent. Medecins sans Frontiers has been handing out tents to street people since last Spring. It's been a source of contention with the City authorities because, as MSF intended, it has made poverty and homelessness in Paris VERY obvious, particularly along the Seine in the tourist areas. It's not at all clear yet if this has produced more resources for better social housing or programmes for street people, but it certainly made this man happy.
We look forward to seeing some of you over Christmas and New Year in Calgary and Ottawa. To those we won't, all our best wishes for a good holiday and the new year. Keep in touch and remember, we have a great Paris guide service if you want to visit.
Bob
Felicitations, Merry Christmas, Bonne Annee tout le monde
We will be in Paris for another year so we anticipate our newsletters and greetings will keep coming. We have not kept up with our earlier email schedules, but here we are again at the computer and looking back on the last few months.
Since August, I have really gotten into visiting art decorative museums and exhibitions. With the reopening of the Musee des Arts Decorative at the Louvre, which highlights decorative art from Medieval times to the present day. I particularly liked the Art Nouveau and the medieval. There is also a 20th century mansion once owned by the Camando family filled with 18th century furniture, and a friend and I spent the day at Versailles visiting and exploring the Marie Antoinette Domain.
The months of November and December were devoted to photography exhibitions in Paris and I went to a few. Robert Doisneau, a Parisian photographer who did a lot of photography from the 20's to the 60's in Paris had a great exhibit at the Hotel de Ville. Another exhibit at the Biblioteque National was also on Paris life. There were a couple of exhibitions at the Jeu de Paume by American photographers showing various aspects of American life in the 50's and 60's - a lot of cars. The best was a photography exhibit and documentary film on Cuba entitled "ordinary life" at the international Photography Institute.
I have also gotten a lot more interested in modern art and fashion, I've been to a few exhibits including one at The Foundation Cartier pour Art Contemporain and the Musee of Modern Art, as well as some invited showings at smaller galleries. I took in a guided lecture at the Foundation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent, with a special theme exhibit of clothes he created depicting exotic lands.
My treasured art and architecture lectures with WICE recommenced in October and will follow through until June. October/December classes on art were from the Belle Epoque to the dawn of Modernism in french art 1890-1905 (Thurs) and Fridays classes were on the history of Paris through art and architecture from Francois I to Louis XIII (1500-1643). My bi-weekly visits to the Louvre and d'Orsay, as well as to other museums, keep me busy.
I even took a 3 night class on opera appreciation. I went to the operetta "Candide" - a modern take on Voltaire's book, but aimed at America. The cast was British so the opera was in English with French subtitles. The French seemed to really enjoy it. It was done at the Theatre de Chatelet. Next time I'll aim for the Garnier or Opera Bastille. In the last year there have been a number of exhibitions on Islamic and pre Islamic cultures at various museums. "Venise & l'Orient" was exceptionally good, as well as a Persian exhibit at the Cernuschi and an Afghan exhibit at the Musee Guimet.
Resto du Coeur, a Paris food bank, started up again in September, closed for November and reopened in December. Until April we will be open 5 days a week. I go every Tuesday morning and already I've noticed a lot more people coming through our doors than last year. One benefit of being a Resto du Coeur volunteer is the odd free tickets to concerts - so we got to listen to the Lyon Symphony at the Cité de Musique concert hall two weeks ago.
We had several friends visiting Paris so I got to catch up on Ottawa life and act as tour guide, and discover even more of Paris's unexplored mysteries and hidden corners.
We vacationed in Provence for 11 days in September to celebrate both Bob's and my birthday. I particularly liked Avignon and Aix en Provence. In Avignon we visited the Pope's Chateau and had great dinners, and in Aix, we went to Cezzanne's atelier. I got to swim in the Mediterranean and had bouillabaisse in Marseilles. Next year I would like to stay in a small village and be close to the Cote d'Azur.
My Wednesday hikes to Ile de France continue even into December as the weather has been quite warm and sunny on those days. In all, the weather here has been quite mild, even if it sometimes rains in the morning. Last week it was gorgeous, warm and sunny as I strolled down the Seine, then sat in the Jardins des Tuilleries by the pond and looked up at the Tour Eiffel. (This is how I imagine heaven.) I was also reading the latest MacLeans 18 December "special edition" about the Liberal leadership convention (quite interesting).
I picked up a number of copies of a book entitled "Paris dans un Panier : Marchées, marchands et marchandises" at a discount store for 2 euros each. The numerous markets of Paris are shown by Arrondissment (District) and it describes them in text and with colour photographs, including some of my favourite vendors at the Joinville Market. So I inscribed a note to each of them and presented a copy of the book to them as a petit cadeau from Heather Stevens "la Canadienne". They were all very touched and it made me feel good too..
My near TV debut occurred a few weeks ago when I was asked to visit an artist's atalier where France One was filming a short documentary on a programme for people living in Paris (English and French) to meet working Parisians in their work environment. It was fun, but for a week I taped the time slot they told us it was in, but it never happened. I guess we got pre-empted by politicians or movie stars.
Oh yeh tennis, how could I forget tennis. Live tennis on TV is great. I do a lot of taping because I'm out at museums during the day. I did get to the Paris Masters, but unfortunately Daniel Nestor lost the game I was at, so I never got to the finals and box seats like last year. I actually hit a few balls with my friend Jan, and I have a lead now to play with a group of women in the spring.
Our visit to Canada is short, with one week in Calgary and one week in Ottawa, so it will be impossible to see or talk to everyone, but you are all in my heart, so keep the emails coming.
Love
Heather
