Sunday, July 29, 2007
interviews
at the end of last school year, in may, the seniors were preparing their 'senior video' (a tradition in our department) and decided to interview my colleague and myself. i found out this weekend (quite by accident) that these interviews have been posted on YouTube. my colleague speaks first, then i. click here.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
france part four
MUSEUMS, CHURCHES & CEMETERY:
we decided not to try going into the louvre. given our time constraints we felt that our hours would be more usefully spent in other historic places, such as the musee d'orsay, which contains a mind-blowing amount of famous, priceless art. housed in an old train station (built in 1900), the museum is almost completely lit by overhead skylights, which gives the atmosphere a bright, even, and serene quality immediately as you walk in.
some of picasso's drawings were especially enthralling to me, on a purely technical level-- later drawings where he depicts his model as a voluptuous young beauty and himself as an old lecher or a beast. the van gogh area of the passing exhibit was teeming with people, which was annoying because it was almost impossible to really appreciate the art in that kind of crush; on the other hand, it made me happy to think how happy these artists would be to know that people were still flocking to the work, discussing it passionately, gazing at it, deriding it, drawing parallels and puzzling out odd choices. the place was like a beehive. i've already mentioned manet's 'olympia' and 'portrait of emile zola' right next to it. the latter includes a portrait of the former, as art aficionados will know. we also enjoyed looking at works by degas, cezanne, klimt, munch, cassatt, monet, renoir, courbet... and i was a little mesmerized by cordier's 'sudanese negro' sculpture, which seemed so alive as i walked by it.
the other paris museum we visited was the pompidou centre, which is built 'inside-out,' with a sort of scaffolding exoskeleton and tube-like exterior escalators. at first glance it looks like a building you'd see in a dream, a place full of unpredictable contents, a place you can't wait to go into. this museum was established by french president georges pompidou, a modern art lover, in the early seventies. inside are five or six floors of modern art. we visited a really cool children's installation, where kids got to choose four or five images from a computer screen (eiffel tower, apple, peace sign, heart, skull, etc.), have their picture taken, and have all the chosen images stack themselves one by one like a totem pole on a large screen, each accompanied by a different sound effect, topped by the child's picture and a sweeping harp glissando at the end. the modern art on the top floor of the museum was copious, diverse and absorbing-- sculpture, painting, photography, video... it was yet another treasure trove of human expression, worthy of hours of lazy strolling, gawking, grinning and discussion.
which takes us to the churches.
notre dame, as i mentioned, was a little hectic, which didn't necessarily detract from the experience, since one expects notre dame, naturally, to be overrun with tourists. i took some good pictures of the beams of light coming down through the staggeringly gorgeous stained glass windows into the dark atmosphere of the cathedral.
sacre coeur was less hectic, and the main reason for this was that there was a service going on at the time of our mid-morning visit. as we climbed the final set of stairs to the church, jesus looked down at us from his alcove over the front entrance. inside, the priest was praying and the nuns were singing. the atmosphere was hushed. the church was full of light, the almost modern-looking windows emitting tranquil shades of color. the nuns' voices rang beautifully in the cathedral. i was moved by something that has occurred to me before: small humans, producing all this beauty, trying to understand the mystery of this existence, deciding to spend their time in an activity called worship. it sounds like an analyzation when put into words, but at the moment it was a feeling in my heart that stabbed me a little, which i was ready and grateful for.
by the time we got to pere-lachaise cemetery, it was about 3:45 pm. we strolled on the paths and i for one felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of gravestones around us. how would one ever find anyone's grave, without a guide? fran wanted to find abelard & heloise; i made my desire for moliere known. but at 4:15, as we were sitting on the curb taking a brief rest, a man drove up to us in a golf cart and said we needed to leave, that the cemetery was closing.
someone made eye contact in the subway-- a lover from a future life. back at the hotel we ate cheese and bread, drank wine, and smoked cigarettes on the balcony before turning in. i listened to people on the street below: walking, singing, screeching... alive!
we decided not to try going into the louvre. given our time constraints we felt that our hours would be more usefully spent in other historic places, such as the musee d'orsay, which contains a mind-blowing amount of famous, priceless art. housed in an old train station (built in 1900), the museum is almost completely lit by overhead skylights, which gives the atmosphere a bright, even, and serene quality immediately as you walk in.
some of picasso's drawings were especially enthralling to me, on a purely technical level-- later drawings where he depicts his model as a voluptuous young beauty and himself as an old lecher or a beast. the van gogh area of the passing exhibit was teeming with people, which was annoying because it was almost impossible to really appreciate the art in that kind of crush; on the other hand, it made me happy to think how happy these artists would be to know that people were still flocking to the work, discussing it passionately, gazing at it, deriding it, drawing parallels and puzzling out odd choices. the place was like a beehive. i've already mentioned manet's 'olympia' and 'portrait of emile zola' right next to it. the latter includes a portrait of the former, as art aficionados will know. we also enjoyed looking at works by degas, cezanne, klimt, munch, cassatt, monet, renoir, courbet... and i was a little mesmerized by cordier's 'sudanese negro' sculpture, which seemed so alive as i walked by it.
the other paris museum we visited was the pompidou centre, which is built 'inside-out,' with a sort of scaffolding exoskeleton and tube-like exterior escalators. at first glance it looks like a building you'd see in a dream, a place full of unpredictable contents, a place you can't wait to go into. this museum was established by french president georges pompidou, a modern art lover, in the early seventies. inside are five or six floors of modern art. we visited a really cool children's installation, where kids got to choose four or five images from a computer screen (eiffel tower, apple, peace sign, heart, skull, etc.), have their picture taken, and have all the chosen images stack themselves one by one like a totem pole on a large screen, each accompanied by a different sound effect, topped by the child's picture and a sweeping harp glissando at the end. the modern art on the top floor of the museum was copious, diverse and absorbing-- sculpture, painting, photography, video... it was yet another treasure trove of human expression, worthy of hours of lazy strolling, gawking, grinning and discussion.
which takes us to the churches.
notre dame, as i mentioned, was a little hectic, which didn't necessarily detract from the experience, since one expects notre dame, naturally, to be overrun with tourists. i took some good pictures of the beams of light coming down through the staggeringly gorgeous stained glass windows into the dark atmosphere of the cathedral.
sacre coeur was less hectic, and the main reason for this was that there was a service going on at the time of our mid-morning visit. as we climbed the final set of stairs to the church, jesus looked down at us from his alcove over the front entrance. inside, the priest was praying and the nuns were singing. the atmosphere was hushed. the church was full of light, the almost modern-looking windows emitting tranquil shades of color. the nuns' voices rang beautifully in the cathedral. i was moved by something that has occurred to me before: small humans, producing all this beauty, trying to understand the mystery of this existence, deciding to spend their time in an activity called worship. it sounds like an analyzation when put into words, but at the moment it was a feeling in my heart that stabbed me a little, which i was ready and grateful for.
by the time we got to pere-lachaise cemetery, it was about 3:45 pm. we strolled on the paths and i for one felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of gravestones around us. how would one ever find anyone's grave, without a guide? fran wanted to find abelard & heloise; i made my desire for moliere known. but at 4:15, as we were sitting on the curb taking a brief rest, a man drove up to us in a golf cart and said we needed to leave, that the cemetery was closing.
someone made eye contact in the subway-- a lover from a future life. back at the hotel we ate cheese and bread, drank wine, and smoked cigarettes on the balcony before turning in. i listened to people on the street below: walking, singing, screeching... alive!
Friday, July 20, 2007
france part three
P A R I S :
our hotel was in lovely walking distance to notre dame. just walk that way down rue cardinal lemoine, cross the bridge and look to your left. it was raining intermittently. fran fired up her first paris cigarette. on the bridge we looked to our left and there it was. i remembered my few-hours' layover in 1991 when i was on my way to russia. i wrote this in my journal then:
"I am sitting in a park next to Notre Dame. It is so beautiful and cool here today... This is my life! This is how my life is unfolding. Children begin running all around me."
i felt happy to have another chance in paris, since the last visit had been so brief. it was also nice to experience it with friends instead of alone.
notre dame, immense and full of relics and tourists, with its luminous windows and intricate carvings and massive arches, was a little bit of a circus. from there we hopped on a riverboat and began wending our way toward the eiffel tower. if i thought notre dame was a circus, then the eiffel tower was definitely disneyland. first of all, that thing is quite huge-- you know how some people get disappointed when they see the statue of liberty for real; they're like, 'i thought it would be bigger.' well, i didn't feel that with the eiffel tower. people were teeming under its legs, standing in long lines waiting to get to a leg, each of which contains an elevator. when we finally got through the line, and up to the 'second' level, we had to exit the elevator and stand in another line in order to get to the top of the tower. the quarters were generally crammed; people with claustrophobia wouldn't do well here; all around us american, german, spanish, french voices. up top the view was nice and everything, and it was a little staggering to think how high we were. 'look, there's the pompidou!' said fran. 'look at the clouds!' said andy. 'i'm freezing!' said zoe. and it was cold up there.
coming down from the top was equally fraught with lines and cramped standing room. once we got back down to level two, and were waiting for the elevator to go all the way down to the bottom, a cold, sideways rain began to whip through the waiting area. some of us opened umbrellas. people squealed and giggled in different languages. and when the elevator came, there was a bit of a crush. fran almost got caught behind a guard rail, as did a small spanish child next to me. but we made it down safely.
i, for one, was happy to have my feet back on french soil after that. and then on french water as we rode the riverboat back to the notre dame stop, where we got off the boat and walked back to our hotel.
our hotel was in lovely walking distance to notre dame. just walk that way down rue cardinal lemoine, cross the bridge and look to your left. it was raining intermittently. fran fired up her first paris cigarette. on the bridge we looked to our left and there it was. i remembered my few-hours' layover in 1991 when i was on my way to russia. i wrote this in my journal then:
"I am sitting in a park next to Notre Dame. It is so beautiful and cool here today... This is my life! This is how my life is unfolding. Children begin running all around me."
i felt happy to have another chance in paris, since the last visit had been so brief. it was also nice to experience it with friends instead of alone.
notre dame, immense and full of relics and tourists, with its luminous windows and intricate carvings and massive arches, was a little bit of a circus. from there we hopped on a riverboat and began wending our way toward the eiffel tower. if i thought notre dame was a circus, then the eiffel tower was definitely disneyland. first of all, that thing is quite huge-- you know how some people get disappointed when they see the statue of liberty for real; they're like, 'i thought it would be bigger.' well, i didn't feel that with the eiffel tower. people were teeming under its legs, standing in long lines waiting to get to a leg, each of which contains an elevator. when we finally got through the line, and up to the 'second' level, we had to exit the elevator and stand in another line in order to get to the top of the tower. the quarters were generally crammed; people with claustrophobia wouldn't do well here; all around us american, german, spanish, french voices. up top the view was nice and everything, and it was a little staggering to think how high we were. 'look, there's the pompidou!' said fran. 'look at the clouds!' said andy. 'i'm freezing!' said zoe. and it was cold up there.
coming down from the top was equally fraught with lines and cramped standing room. once we got back down to level two, and were waiting for the elevator to go all the way down to the bottom, a cold, sideways rain began to whip through the waiting area. some of us opened umbrellas. people squealed and giggled in different languages. and when the elevator came, there was a bit of a crush. fran almost got caught behind a guard rail, as did a small spanish child next to me. but we made it down safely.
i, for one, was happy to have my feet back on french soil after that. and then on french water as we rode the riverboat back to the notre dame stop, where we got off the boat and walked back to our hotel.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
france part two
my renegade suitcase arrived the next evening with huge rips in the nylon fabric. it's unclear what happened to it; looks like it was attacked by wild dogs. in any case, nothing inside was damaged except, strangely, a little eraser i bought with a picture of the eiffel tower on it, which was pulverized beyond recognition. delta provided me with a brand new nylon suitcase... but not with a new eraser, alas. mostly, i was relieved that the 1000 ml bottle of cointreau i bought at the duty-free shop in paris wasn't cracked.
anyway, to get back to our trip:
we spent three days in paris and then took a really fast, smooth train west to another city called nantes, which is not too far from the west coast of france. at the train station in nantes we were met by one of our hosts, fran's old friend rick (who is from corpus), who took us back to the house he shares with his french wife odile (another old friend of fran's) and their two daughters. the house is on a little farm in a community about 20-ish miles from nantes, called st. julien de concelles. there we did the following things:
-stayed in a garage apartment
-learned some french
-met emma (5) and chloe (16)
-watched zoe and emma play and fight
-relaxed
-had amazing meals, all very simply prepared
-drank great wine
-picked vegetables from the garden
-took walks
-took pictures
-had interesting discussions
-listened to birds in the trees during the day and the complete silence at night
-played with the dog pistache
-traveled to the coast and saw mont st. michel, st. malo, a small coastal town called pornic (great ice cream!), and toured a bit around the city of nantes, which has a real live castle and a gorgeous cathedral
...and much more!
people in the states had warned me about the snotty attitude of the french toward americans. we didn't run up against this at all. my attitude is that if you maintain a modicum of respect and politeness, awareness of customs, you will be treated in kind. i certainly found this to be true. once, in the train station, i asked a man in a uniform, "bon jour, m'sieur. parlez-vous anglais?" and he turned to me and said, "do you speak french?"
he had a wry french expression on his face as he said this. i continued with my question in english and he was perfectly helpful. i learned that the "bon jour" is a very important component in terms of manners. people want to be addressed properly, starting with a hello. doesn't seem like too much to ask, does it? actually it made me more aware of interactions i had when i got back to the states, and how common it is for employees and customers never to say "hello" to each other at all. if there's no "hello," it's all about the product; ideally, if there's a "hello," it's about people instead. would you rather your life be about products, or people? just asking.
the last time i was in europe i was in russia, so i couldn't help comparing my french experience to my russian one. it's a given that i love the russians and always will; at the same time, i found the french to be much more civilized, humane, and genteel. they care about the quality of each moment; there's beauty everywhere you turn; there's a relaxed sense of pro-human advancement. in russia (at least when i was there), i saw people struggling under the weight of life; their voracious partying was direct evidence of the hardships they felt. france has produced a milder person, someone who doesn't spend all his time fighting against a system, but who moves functionally within it, for the most part.
it would be interesting to compare how the arts are affected as a result of this difference in climate. is it really true that people tend to create more interesting art when they are oppressed in some way? i found myself wondering while i was in paris, "what is the theatre like here?" unfortunately i didn't have time to find out.
(just to reiterate: i will always love russia and russians. but the contrast was interesting.)
in car drives, rick and i had good discussions. we talked about music, movies, school, china, insurance companies... he told me about france's health care policy, and talked about how the united states could improve theirs.
imagine my sense of synchronicity when, three days after my return to the united states, i saw michael moore's new movie, sicko, which takes apart american health care and even compares it to france's. the point was driven home, back home. it seems to me that those french are doing a lot of things right.
next entry: more about paris!
anyway, to get back to our trip:
we spent three days in paris and then took a really fast, smooth train west to another city called nantes, which is not too far from the west coast of france. at the train station in nantes we were met by one of our hosts, fran's old friend rick (who is from corpus), who took us back to the house he shares with his french wife odile (another old friend of fran's) and their two daughters. the house is on a little farm in a community about 20-ish miles from nantes, called st. julien de concelles. there we did the following things:
-stayed in a garage apartment
-learned some french
-met emma (5) and chloe (16)
-watched zoe and emma play and fight
-relaxed
-had amazing meals, all very simply prepared
-drank great wine
-picked vegetables from the garden
-took walks
-took pictures
-had interesting discussions
-listened to birds in the trees during the day and the complete silence at night
-played with the dog pistache
-traveled to the coast and saw mont st. michel, st. malo, a small coastal town called pornic (great ice cream!), and toured a bit around the city of nantes, which has a real live castle and a gorgeous cathedral
...and much more!
people in the states had warned me about the snotty attitude of the french toward americans. we didn't run up against this at all. my attitude is that if you maintain a modicum of respect and politeness, awareness of customs, you will be treated in kind. i certainly found this to be true. once, in the train station, i asked a man in a uniform, "bon jour, m'sieur. parlez-vous anglais?" and he turned to me and said, "do you speak french?"
he had a wry french expression on his face as he said this. i continued with my question in english and he was perfectly helpful. i learned that the "bon jour" is a very important component in terms of manners. people want to be addressed properly, starting with a hello. doesn't seem like too much to ask, does it? actually it made me more aware of interactions i had when i got back to the states, and how common it is for employees and customers never to say "hello" to each other at all. if there's no "hello," it's all about the product; ideally, if there's a "hello," it's about people instead. would you rather your life be about products, or people? just asking.
the last time i was in europe i was in russia, so i couldn't help comparing my french experience to my russian one. it's a given that i love the russians and always will; at the same time, i found the french to be much more civilized, humane, and genteel. they care about the quality of each moment; there's beauty everywhere you turn; there's a relaxed sense of pro-human advancement. in russia (at least when i was there), i saw people struggling under the weight of life; their voracious partying was direct evidence of the hardships they felt. france has produced a milder person, someone who doesn't spend all his time fighting against a system, but who moves functionally within it, for the most part.
it would be interesting to compare how the arts are affected as a result of this difference in climate. is it really true that people tend to create more interesting art when they are oppressed in some way? i found myself wondering while i was in paris, "what is the theatre like here?" unfortunately i didn't have time to find out.
(just to reiterate: i will always love russia and russians. but the contrast was interesting.)
in car drives, rick and i had good discussions. we talked about music, movies, school, china, insurance companies... he told me about france's health care policy, and talked about how the united states could improve theirs.
imagine my sense of synchronicity when, three days after my return to the united states, i saw michael moore's new movie, sicko, which takes apart american health care and even compares it to france's. the point was driven home, back home. it seems to me that those french are doing a lot of things right.
next entry: more about paris!
Friday, July 13, 2007
france part one
hi y'all,
i went to france. i thought i was ready to come home but i'm kinda depressed to be back.
i went with my friend fran and her 8 year-old daughter zoe. we spent three lovely days in paris first, at a hotel called the royal-cardinal, on the rue des ecoles in the latin quarter. none of us spoke french, but we all felt bad about it so the obnoxious american factor was at least tempered with some stuttering attempts at rudimentary french. in paris we did the following things:
-ate at a few cafes
-got caught in a downpour or two
-went to notre dame
-rode on a riverboat up and down the seine
-climbed the eiffel tower (yes, there was an elevator-- we didn't actually climb it)
-drank wine that we bought at a tiny store next to the hotel
-sat on the hotel balcony smoking and waxed romantic about the beauty of paris (it's f-ing beautiful there)
-bought souvenirs
-went to montmartre and sacre coeur
-feasted our eyes on beautiful paintings at the musee d'orsay (manet's 'olympia' being one of the highlights... also, there was a picasso/van gogh/cezanne collection passing through...)
-visited gift shops (i bought a musee d'orsay catalogue which is now lost in my luggage, more on that later)
-sat in the pyramid courtyard at the louvre
-rode a ferris wheel (zoe)
-saw young lovers kissing in the street
-rode the metro
-visited the pompidou centre (it, itself, was a structure of art, and it was jam-packed with art)
-ate crepes
-watched birds
-went to the pere lachaise cemetery to see famous graves (abelard & heloise, moliere, gertrude stein and alice b. toklas are all buried there, among many other noteworthies) but it closed shortly after we arrived so we mostly just strolled there and soaked in the atmosphere
-bought a new watercolor set
-walked over bridges, gazed at the water
-used the ATM
-went to the luxembourg gardens but they were closing just as we arrived
-got lost a little
-visited sylvia beach's store shakespeare & co. but it wasn't open (its hours are 12 to 12, isn't that the coolest?)
it did rain a bit in paris, and the sky was mostly overcast, but it was still breathtaking. so many beautiful buildings, the seine, the light, the trees. everything. i will go into more detail and ruminate over the rest of the trip in subsequent entries...
as for my luggage, it's all back except one suitcase which had my whole bag of souvenirs and gifts in it... i'm hoping it will show up today... stay tuned.
i went to france. i thought i was ready to come home but i'm kinda depressed to be back.
i went with my friend fran and her 8 year-old daughter zoe. we spent three lovely days in paris first, at a hotel called the royal-cardinal, on the rue des ecoles in the latin quarter. none of us spoke french, but we all felt bad about it so the obnoxious american factor was at least tempered with some stuttering attempts at rudimentary french. in paris we did the following things:
-ate at a few cafes
-got caught in a downpour or two
-went to notre dame
-rode on a riverboat up and down the seine
-climbed the eiffel tower (yes, there was an elevator-- we didn't actually climb it)
-drank wine that we bought at a tiny store next to the hotel
-sat on the hotel balcony smoking and waxed romantic about the beauty of paris (it's f-ing beautiful there)
-bought souvenirs
-went to montmartre and sacre coeur
-feasted our eyes on beautiful paintings at the musee d'orsay (manet's 'olympia' being one of the highlights... also, there was a picasso/van gogh/cezanne collection passing through...)
-visited gift shops (i bought a musee d'orsay catalogue which is now lost in my luggage, more on that later)
-sat in the pyramid courtyard at the louvre
-rode a ferris wheel (zoe)
-saw young lovers kissing in the street
-rode the metro
-visited the pompidou centre (it, itself, was a structure of art, and it was jam-packed with art)
-ate crepes
-watched birds
-went to the pere lachaise cemetery to see famous graves (abelard & heloise, moliere, gertrude stein and alice b. toklas are all buried there, among many other noteworthies) but it closed shortly after we arrived so we mostly just strolled there and soaked in the atmosphere
-bought a new watercolor set
-walked over bridges, gazed at the water
-used the ATM
-went to the luxembourg gardens but they were closing just as we arrived
-got lost a little
-visited sylvia beach's store shakespeare & co. but it wasn't open (its hours are 12 to 12, isn't that the coolest?)
it did rain a bit in paris, and the sky was mostly overcast, but it was still breathtaking. so many beautiful buildings, the seine, the light, the trees. everything. i will go into more detail and ruminate over the rest of the trip in subsequent entries...
as for my luggage, it's all back except one suitcase which had my whole bag of souvenirs and gifts in it... i'm hoping it will show up today... stay tuned.
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