snapshots from my summer vacation: paris

i've always enjoyed paris but i have never been crazy about the eiffel tower. it suggests cheap rhinestone pins with matching french poodles, can-can girls at the moulin rouge, berets, and all the most cliched tourist concepts that apparently are still fresh in some people's minds. they sell well in the cheesy souvenir shops now lining the rue de rivoli. you'd think toulouse lautrec was still alive and you might pick up a painting by a young, up and coming impressionist in the place du tertre.

for a change, here are images from paris that might capture a more contemporary concept:




the windows of the institut du monde arabe, designed by jean nouvelle. on a sunny day, the openings (like the iris of a camera) shut down to reduce the light levels within; on cloudy days they open wide. in either case, they are also said to reflect the design of screens used in interiors in those sunnier parts of the world.

and, as a bonus, the institut has a rooftop bar and restaurant (quite pricey) with a view of notre dame and the seine and cafe (ground floor) with a cheerful handsome young syrian waiter who yearns to come to the USA for the music scene. alas, most of the exhibitions were closed, in the process of change.



determined to see some of the sights i'd never visited before, i took the metro to pere lachaise cemetery. i've never cared much for cemeteries and i didn't care much for this one, with its thousands of gloomy little temple-like family tombs, many very neglected. the biggest surprise was oscar wilde's tomb covered in lipstick kisses (click on the image for good detail). someone had left a stack of sheets with his witty sayings, including these: "america is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between" and "a little sincerity is a dangerous thing and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

it's a bit difficult to find the tombs of the many individuals you admire, but i did find colette (an unattractive very new red granite slab: why?) and chopin and jim morrison. his tomb was the easiest to find, as you just follow the streams of young and middle-aged folks clutching maps and wearing 'doors' tee shirts. it's not much to look at.


do you remember the old-fashioned waiters in the cafes of paris? middle aged and elderly men in black with long white aprons who steadfastly ignored you and then had an annoyed, supercilious expression when you ordered your cafe au lait in perfect french and snapped "yes, of course, right away, mademoiselle."

here's an improvement: a handsome, cheerful waiter at the cafe danton, right at the odeon metro stop. i had my petit dejeuner there on several mornings and he was professionally smiling, efficient, and never needed to show off his english. he didn't even mind when i asked in perfect french (if only) to take his photo.

you know you're in the south when

people say "why yes, she might could come over tonight"

words of one syllable become two: ki-ids, gri-its, da-awg

the newborn triplets are named Mari Michael, Bailey Langston, and Jana Kate

Mari's name is pronounced with a dipthong: "Mae-ry"

okra pancakes and shrimp grits are on the menu

the evening meal is called supper

"meat and three" restaurants are very popular

at a "meat and three" restaurant, the sides include collards, fried green tomatoes, and hush puppies

among the bbq restaurants we enjoyed in three days in alabama and mississippi were Johnny Ray's, Little Doey's, Sonny's, and Dusty's.

my name is pronounced without the 'l': Joo-ya (I kind of like this; it does take me back to Ole Virginny)

and you know you're in the southern apalachians when the red clay dirt stains everything.

when a billbiard on the interstate advertises "the best turkey calls in the business"

may apple and wild geranium

back by popular demand: native wildflowers of the week at frog bog farm

may apple (Podophyllum peltatum) the flower appears below the leaves and will make a small yellow fruit, said to have an aroma of guava with hints of papaya and strawberry. there are recipes for may apple jam and jelly, one suggesting that "a tart, subtle, exotic" flavor results

wild geranium (Geranium maculatum) the seed pod will be sharp and pointed, giving the alternative name of crane's bill. and speaking of cranes, a pair is nesting in the swamp and we often see a single crane, probably the yearling of the pair.

and introducing a new category: invasive plants of major concern

garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata): this is a pernicious weed that is spreading rapidly throughout southeastern michigan. it is a threat to all native wildflowers and tree seedlings, as it can completely dominate a forest floor in 5 to 7 years. it must be pulled and the plants bagged and put in with household garbage (not composted). it is in the woods along the road at frog bog and clusters of it have infested the edges of the dirt road for about a mile to the west.

photo to come

where were we?

perhaps this is an occasion for another contest: where were we?

i've seen grass-covered mounds in Kyong-ju, South Korea; in Gamla Uppsala, Sweden; and Chillicothe, Ohio...but these are in Moundville, Alabama, south of Tuscaloosa. we stopped for a look on our way driving from Atlanta to Starkville, Mississippi, with Marcia and Oded.

Moundville was a large Missisippian Culture fortified town of about 1,000 inhabitants, occupied from about 1000 to 1450 a.d. it was one of the largest cities in North America at the time, and about 10,000 people lived in the surrounding area. There are thirty-two mounds arranged around a central plaza.
the largest mound is about 58 feet high. archeologists think that the highest ranking clan probably occupied this. apparantly later in the centuries, the area ceased to be inhabited and became a sacred site. but i was frustrated by the lack of information about this. which points to the importance of label and brochures and visitor's guides.


unfortunately, the museum was closed for renovation. it houses some remarkable objects found on the site. without much context for these mounds, it was hard to visualize how the area would have looked. we were almost the only people there and in fact it seemed a little melancholy to me, just these grassy mounds set in the open.


oded and marcia, wearing her 'boot' and on her high-tech rolling scooter. marcia had surgery on her foot and can't put any weight on it for six weeks. we went to atlanta to help to amuse her, but they were perfect hosts and amused us instead.

more to come soon on our adventures in southern cuisine...

biodiversity hurray

on saturday i went to a day-long volunteer training for "rapid natural area assessment" sponsored by the huron river watershed council. over the summer, 90 sites will be assessed by volunteers to determine which are the highest quality places that would be top priority to be protected. one of the most important characteristics is abundant biodiversity: many species of trees, shrubs, and plants.

with this in mind, i took a walk through our strip of woods that borders the hayfield. and, without taking notes and trying to be scientific, here are species that i noticed:

trees:
red, white, and black oak
red maple
black cherry
pin cherry
basswood
shagbark hickory
pignut hickory
blue beech
hopbornbeam
sassafrass
cottonwood
hawthorn
sumac
ash (all dead)
elm (mostly dead)
box elder
poplar
willow
autumn olive (invasive, along perimeter)
buckthorn (invasive)

prickly gooseberry
black raspberry
gray dogwood (or silky?)
red osier dogwood
multiflora rose (along perimeter)
grapevine

native wildflowers and plants:
spring beauty
trillium
trout lily
wild geranium
nodding trillium (white and red)
mayapple
jack in the pulpit
virginia waterleaf
cutleaf toothwort
pale blue violet
yellow violet
ramp
poison ivy
queen anne's lace
bergamot
various asters
various goldenrods

pennsylvania sedge and other as yet unifentified sedges

but also: garlic mustard: vigorous alien invasive, taking over the world

and that doesn't include the wetland itself to the north of the field, pictured above.

the total area may be quite small, but it has excellent biodiversity.

and to keep it that way, i'll go pull some more garlic mustard.

notes on russia

Notes on Russia

The massive bronze statue of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, dominated the square on Nevsky Prospekt in the center of St. Petersburg. All I could remember about her was the high school playground rumor that she died making love to a horse. As horse-crazy teenage girls, we knew a thing or two about horses and this was hard to visualize. Surely she was one of the most powerful women in the world, and two centuries after her death, her story was reduced to that crazy myth about her voracious sexuality. Catherine never tried to hide her several significant lovers. On the other end of the spectrum, the Virgin Queen defined Elizabeth I.
I’d found a precious empty space on a park bench in the shade and pulled out my guidebook. I knew so little about Russia and was annoyed with myself for not reading much before I arrived. I was traveling with my friend Susan and had let her make most of the arrangements. She’d come to visit while I was living in Sweden, so I’d planned our adventures in Stockholm, Uppsala, and Helsinki, leaving Saint Petersburg to her. The huge attraction for anyone in our profession of art history is the State Hermitage Museum, known for its enormous collection of over three million works of art. Difficult to visit until the thaw in East-West relations in the 1990s, its well-known but mostly unseen masterpieces in the Winter Palace had the additional appeal of formerly forbidden fruit not exactly on the usual museum circuit.
And yet, I had fled after an hour in the galleries, eager to get out in the June sunshine and look around the city.

The Repin
The old-fashioned compartment on the Russian train Repin was hot and stuffy. The walls were plastic paneling and the seats were upholstered with a worn brown fabric with dark green swirls in the ugliest, most unnatural configuration possible. Outside the sliding door to the compartment, militaristic versions of folk music were playing at an uncomfortably high volume in the corridor. Shortly after the train pulled out of Helsinki, a porter came around, offering a stick of something resembling salami, a packet of crackers, and a watery beer, apparently part of the service. At Vyborg, the border crossing into Russia, three police in elaborate military uniforms took away our passports for about a half hour, making sure our visas were in order. Then two presumably Russian businessmen entered the compartment without a word or a nod to us or each other.
When we rolled into the Finland Station in Saint Petersburg at almost 11 p.m, the “White Nights” sky of early June was still partially light. Guidebooks had warned that taxi drivers lurk to take advantage of arriving tourists. Taxis have no meters and no fixed prices, so you must always bargain hard for a price in advance, and several drivers may be competing for your business. Some may be regular taxi drivers, but many are ordinary car owners making a little extra money. This sounded dicey, especially as darkness was coming on.
As we rolled our bags off the train, a tall man with a baby strapped to his back asked in almost perfect American English, “Do you know what you’re doing?”
We didn’t, in spite of the fact that we were both experienced travelers.
He asked where we were staying and then gestured to his wife and a small child. “Come with us, we’ll share a taxi. We can be dropped off first, then he’ll take you to your hotels. Our apartment is on the way.”
He was Finnish; his wife Russian. He’d worked for a while in L.A. She went outside the station and several cars immediately pulled up, but we were four adults, a small child, a baby, and plenty of luggage, so she waved them away, waiting until a battered Lada station wagon with a roof rack appeared. Somehow, we all squeezed in. The price would be about twelve dollars. We were very grateful and offered to pay it all at the end.
“No tip, remember,” our hero said. “He’ll ask for one, but don’t give him a thing extra. Three hundred roubles is already more than enough.”

The Corinthia Nevsky Palace and the Oktiabryskaya
Susan’s colleagues in the museum world had highly recommended a five-star hotel: the Corinthia Nevsky Palace, suitable for a self-described Jewish princess. She had found a decent price on line and booked a nonrefundable reservation for five nights. When the total bill appeared on her credit card, it had escalated wildly with the addition of service fees, taxes, and extra White Nights occupancy charges. I was retired a retired cheapskate, and the pretensions of fancy hotels turn me off. With the help of a bemused Swedish travel agent, who questioned why I wanted to go to Russia, I’d found a more reasonably priced hotel nearby, the three-star Oktiabryskaya. It was a few long blocks away from the Corinthia, near a large busy square where several big streets converged. The driver took us first to my hotel, and Susan insisted that she would walk from there; she wanted to stretch her legs; it wasn’t very far. She set off and walked a long way before she realized she might be on the wrong street. We had both learned the Cyrillic alphabet for this trip, and when she finally came upon a street sign legible in the dim light, she knew she was lost. Someone pointed her back towards Nevsky Prospekt (перевода. Перспектива).
My room at the large Soviet-era Oktiabryskaya was large, clean, old-fashioned in decor, and perfectly acceptable, though swarms of mosquitoes came through the thin curtains when I opened the window. Ladies of the night sat quietly in several small armchairs near the elevators. The buffet breakfast consisted of strange unidentified hot and cold foods. Ahead of me were a group of French ladies who laughed at the offering, repeating to each other “Mais, qu’esque c’est?”
Susan’s sixth-floor room at the Corinthia was smaller, attractively decorated in international upscale hotel style, and with a view over the six lanes of traffic on Nevsky Prospekt including a view of the broken timbers of the roof of a rundown building opposite. Night and day, two inscrutable beefy security guards sat outside one particular door on her floor. The buffet was excellent by any standard, and Susan invited me to be her guest. They never asked for her room number, and she didn’t feel guilty, given what she was paying.

At the State Hermitage Museum: a private tour
Mr XX met us at the staff entrance of the vast museum, which sprawls over six buildings. The curator of modern art was polite, but not overly effusive. Susan had met him when editing a catalogue of paintings loaned to the Art Institute of Chicago. He headed immediately to the modern art galleries. We walked fast up the enormous white marble staircase, under gilded and painted ceilings and enormous crystal chandeliers, past huge malachite and lapis lazuli basins, vast mirrored chambers and others hung with tapestries, until we finally reached the top floor. Here in plain, white-walled galleries were the famous Matisses, Gauguins, and Picassos and a very important large painting by Degas that was looted from Germany during World War II. It was a hot, sunny day and the windows stood open; no fancy climate control for these masterpieces.
The curator and Susan chatted, exchanging museum gossip; I looked at the famous paintings seen in every art history textbook. After teaching art history for seven years, and working as an editor at the Detroit Institute of Arts for twenty years, my enthusiasm for great masterworks had worn down. I knew that these artists had changed the direction of Western art; Matisse’s Red Room was a favorite of students. Certainly I would enjoy any one of the paintings at home if offered the chance, but, as one of my friends says, are they so important? They are just paint on canvas. Mr. XX told a few stories about the visionary Russian collectors who had purchased these great works from the young artists in Paris. He mentioned that he hadn’t been allowed out of Russia until the late 1990s. These were the only original French works that he’d seen first-hand until that time, although that was his specialty.
After a half hour, he was gone, pleading an important meeting. Susan was a little miffed; she and her colleagues had gone out of their way to be hospitable in Chicago, wining and dining their impoverished Russian colleague.
“He knows I’ll retire soon; I’m no longer of use to him,” she said, and headed for the dozens of Rembrandts.
I looked out at the sun warming up the day and decided to take a walk. We’d bought three-day passes to the Hermitage; there would be plenty of time. I wanted to get my bearings in the city.

By the Sea: Primorskaya
The warm hospitality we were shown one evening more than compensated. Again through her museum connections, Susan had met a Russian couple who had invited us to dinner at their apartment. Mikhail Karrasik was an artist, a printmaker, and also a dealer in fine antiquarian illustrated books. We took a packed subway to the end of its line, where his partner met us. Marina was slim, pleasant looking, slightly intellectual, wearing fashionable glasses. She hailed one of the little battered yellow minibuses that run fixed routes all over the city, and we rode about five minutes to an enormous complex of tall Soviet-era apartment blocks.
Next to the pot-holed street, dirt paths were worn through a field with scrub trees here and there; between the buildings weeds grew up in a sandbox and vines covered a metal climbing structure. Litter was everywhere: all sorts of trash and rubble, the skeletons of discarded strollers and umbrellas, plastic bags and bottles. This was a warm summer evening and quite a few people were walking here and there, but there was no sense of pleasure in the scene. If all this looked grim in June, how would it look in January?
And then I was surprised to see the sun gleaming on an expanse of open sea. This was prime real estate. But apparently there was no access to the water, not even a sidewalk or path that ran along the sea wall made of chunks of concrete.
“I am sorry for you to see the condition of our building,” Marina said.
The door was a windowless, rusted slab of steel with graffiti all over it, requiring two keys to open. We stepped into a dark, dank concrete entrance hall. On one wall was an array of narrow metal mailboxes, some filled with dirt and trash, others bashed in and all hanging at crazy angles.
Marina called her husband to say that we were getting on the elevator. Often, she explained, it breaks down, so if she doesn’t arrive soon, he will know to try to fix it. The elevator’s interior walls were of plywood, showing extensive burn marks, gouges, graffiti. The numbers on buttons indicating the floors were punched in or defaced beyond recognition. All that was missing were bullet holes.
“I apologize,” Marina said. “This is very embarrassing. But there is no point to clean things up; they just get destroyed again. People do not yet understand private property.”
Out of the elevator on the twelfth floor, down a grim corridor lit only by a tiny bulb, and Marina again used two keys to unlock another formidable steel door.
And we walked into a bright, sunny, clean, high ceilinged artist’s studio, with framed prints on the walls, large work tables, and a lithography press. A loft held shelves crammed with books, and there was modern furniture; all was as sophisticated as any loft in New York or Paris. A gaunt, dark man in his sixties rose to greet us warmly, kissing Susan on both cheeks, and shaking my hand.
Mikael explained that this ‘70s apartment building was designed by the government with studios for artists on the corners of some of the floors. A member of the artist’s union, he had waited on a list for years to be granted this. The tall windows let in plenty of light and there was a small balcony that looked west out to the sea. From there you could see what a wreck the entire waterfront was, with rotting wooden jetties and the shells of abandoned warehouses and the rusting hulls of ships, with waves full of flotsam and jetsam breaking over every kind of junk.
Marina opened a bottle of Prosecco and put out some peanuts and we settled down on a comfortable leather sofa. Most of the conversation went on between Mikael and Susan. I sat in stunned silence, trying to make sense of it all. We’d moved so quickly from one world to another.
Marina spread a stylish tablecloth on the worktable next to the lithography press. The modern porcelain was plain white; the cutlery from famous German manufacturer. A puree of asparagus soup, garnished with small shrimp; then a slab of salmon and a salad; a pretty little fruit tart for dessert. We’d brought two bottles of wine, a California red and an Austrian white, bought duty-free on the ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki. Susan doesn’t drink much, so the three of us had plenty of wine.
After dinner Mikael brought out some of his most precious Russian illustrated books to show Susan, who collects such things, though principally Western European and American ones.
Marina hovered about, occasionally mentioning a price, and Susan was very polite but not interested.
When it was time to leave, Marina accompanied us. Again, she called Mikael on her cell phone to let him know we’d made it down. I asked to buy a bottle of water if there was a shop open anywhere nearby. She’d warned us not to even brush our teeth with tap water.
There was a small structure on the sidewalk that looked like a construction children had made out of a large cardboard box covered with advertising signs. It had only a small opening at eye level. Marina said something to the person invisible within, offered a few rubles, and a bottle of water was handed out. She said a few words to the minibus driver and gave us a handful of subway tokens, and we were off to the Metro.

hurry spring

on Easter Monday it is still very chilly at frog bog farm, not that the cold water keeps ellie out of the pond.

yesterday the chorus frogs and the wood frogs have been calling and the goldfish have started to be interested in their expensive new "spring and autumn" pellets, imported from germany. they can't digest regular food when the water is below 50F but this fancy stuff offers fine dining when the water is above 39F. i assume it is, but have not yet invested in the appropriate thermometer. the trout lily leaves are up and i've found one spring beauty that is blooming.

on the other hand, the evil alien invasive garlic mustard is very present in several places at the edge of our woods and can be seen all along six mile road, preparing to take over the universe of native wildflowers. if you don't know about garlic mustard, google it. and be very afraid.

i, like many others living in the detroit area, have been feeling quite gloomy of late; a partial reason for not writing on my blog. the straws have been in the wind for some weeks now that GM may go into bankrupcy and Chrysler has two weeks to finalize a deal with Fiat or die. (i'm hoping for Fiat of course--wouldn't it be fun to have one of the new cinquecentos? but will they come back into the American market?) it's all happened so fast that the whole situation seems unbelievable. much of it can be traced back to just plain old greed: make the big suvs and trucks, that's where the big profits were. i keep a little trace of pride in ford, as of course they were such major supporters of the dia in the old days, and they haven't needed bailout money. they seem to me like the real hometown team. i even once brought a vodka and tonic to dodie ford at a ccs party in grosse pointe.

the university of michigan museum of art has opened a new wing and it is very handsome and simple with lots of windows on the ground level, making it literally transparent. i was happy to see that the silver tea and coffee service that we gave in 2002 is on display, albeit in the 'study collection.' this belonged to my great-grandmother mimie chouteau of st. louis and was made by tiffany & co., but as usual with what my father called 'henshaw luck' it dates from about 1885, before the much more interesting and attractive art nouveau style came into fashion. i was very happy to see it there, but it did seem to need a little polishing. mimie's gandfather was charles gratiot, for whom the avenue was named, so you might say there is a michigan connection.

i have picked up auditing corinne painter's philosophy 101 course again, for the next two weeks the topic is the meaning of life. chances are good that there will be no answers but it's hard to say that the topic isn't of interest and the students are very engaged. that's gratifying to see.

jeremy has promised new photos of bennie and tamara, but they haven't arrived yet, so i'll let ellie have the photo honors on this post. apparantly all is well in california and the easter bunny left plenty of eggs for both tamara and bennie, but she scored them all.