THIS PARISIAN LIFE

Well, there’s no comparing this Parisian life with our American life.  That life is filled with getting into cars and racing to work, to the grocery store, to various events on the calendar.  This life is full of walking.  And walking.  And then a little more walking.  Or eating, thinking about eating, drinking coffee (or Pernod, or wine), and then a little more eating. 

People here are clustered in cafés at midday and at day’s end. Dinner begins late, so they are meeting for coffee or apéritifs at 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00. But a few late coffees have kept each of us up right through the night on different nights, and we can’t keep up with the French on wine and spirits or we would fall asleep before dinner.  There’s a schedule to master in all this, and we are doing our best!

For example, yesterday (Sunday) we rose late because we’d had such interrupted sleep.  But once we were up, we took off walking.  First, we headed down past the École Militaire toward the Eiffel Tower.  The American Library is in that neighborhood, and they were having a book sale.  Any one of you who knows Tom O’Grady will be unsurprised that he needed to check this out—whether or not there’s any room in our American life for more books!

The sale was pretty uninteresting, but while we were in the neighborhood, we checked out the address for the American University of Paris, where Tom and I will spend some time in the coming months.  We were pleased to have a sense of its geographical relationship to us, but we kept moving.

We walked from there along the Seine to the bridge leading to the Place de la Concorde.  This is the largest public square in Paris, built in 1755 to honor King Louis XV.  As you French historians may remember, the statue of Louis XV was torn down during the French Revolution, and the square became known as “Place de la Révolution,” where the guillotine was erected and Louis XVI was executed, along with Marie Antoinette and many others.  There’s a wonderful obelisk with Egyptian hieroglyphics in the center of the square—it was a gift from Egypt to France in the nineteenth century. (We were simply there to check on the location of an amazing event we were attending on Monday, but more on that in a minute.)

Since Concorde has a major Metro stop, we decided to complete our Navigo Pass purchases there, and we are now in possession of monthly Metro passes!  And not a moment too soon—our feet were tired, so we hopped on the Metro to Montparnasse, where we headed to a Sunday-only arts & crafts market at Le Marché Edgar Quinet.  It was interesting, but not tempting, so we picked up a cup of coffee and headed to Shakespeare and Company bookstore to look for a book I wanted—and how amazing to come up out of the Metro and see the Notre Dame cathedral looming above us.  To think this is our playground for this Parisian life . . . .

We’ll write more later about how we are making the most delicious dinners out of our market purchases and about my foray into French language classes (Tom has decided to see how much of his own Canadian schooling in French will come back to him). . . .

But I think I need to jump ahead to the highlight of our Monday: an evening with Ira Glass, host of NPR’s This American Life!  What a treat!

Tom mentioned in the first blogpost that we’d had coffee on Saturday with a friend whom we’d never met.  That friend is Steven Barclay, an extraordinary literary agent whom I’ve worked with for a dozen or so years to bring writers to Stonehill as part of the Chet Raymo Literary Series.  And although Steven and I had never met, we’ve known for some time that we are “kindred spirits,” and I think he and Tom found that they are too. 

Ira Glass et Katie

Well, Steven did most of his growing up in Paris, and tonight he sponsored an event for the school he attended here, the American School of Paris.  Each year, he brings one of the writers he represents to speak at the school and to offer an evening program for parents and friends of the school.  When we discovered we would be in Paris at the same time, Steven graciously invited us to the event, which this year featured Ira Glass, my absolute favorite radio host.  (I know all three of our girls are writhing with jealousy over this!) 

Steven said the event would be “swanky,” and he wasn’t kidding: it was held at the Hôtel de Talleyrand on the Place de la Concorde, and the appetizers and cocktails were elegant.  Ira Glass was introduced by the American Ambassador to France, Charles Rivkin.  And then Ira himself was simply wonderful.  He spoke about how he puts together a story for This American Life, and he used several examples—the girl who was bitten by a shark, the recent spate of murders in Chicago.  Maybe some of you have heard these particular radio stories.  He talked about what radio can do that other media cannot, and what it means to tell a story you cannot “see.”  The environment was intimate (fewer than 200 people), and it was a glorious juxtaposition to have the tools of radio and internet technology nestled among the baroque statues, gilded walls and chandeliered ceilings of the George C. Marshall Center in the Talleyrand.

And for us, as we met other Americans in Paris and then made our way “home” after the event, Ira Glass provided a reminder that, even as we launch “this Parisian life,” a rich American life awaits us when we return.  But we aren’t rushing back yet!