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Review of a New Memoir
Michael Hainey’s new memoir, After Visiting Friends, exquisitely captures the magical thinking of a child trying to understand the premature death of his father. See my review in The Nervous Breakdown: Here is the link: The Nervous...
read moreComfort Food
Tell me I’m contributing to the dilution of local culture. Tell me I’m part of the problem of rampant globalization. Then tell me, please, that everything’s going to be OK. Yes, that’s a mermaid on my tall latte. With an avenue of Parisian cafes to choose from, today I opted for Starbucks. Not because the coffee is better (though it is), but because I needed comfort. I needed the memory that Starbucks evokes. Of hope and birth and new beginnings. It’s been a hard week. My friend Stephanie wrote: “The tone [in your blog] is so open...
read moreIt’s British, But It’s Good
My favorite Paris metro ad of the week is for McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits, a round, flat cookie made in England. The ad reads “C’est anglais, mais c’est bon.” It’s English, but it’s good. The comedy lies entirely in the choice of conjunction. What’s funny about this ad is how succinctly it expresses the love-hate relationship between the English and the French, the food snobbery which is both tongue-in-cheek and a little for real. My husband James remembers eating McVitie’s by the tubeful as a child, when his family lived...
read moreWriting Lessons I Learned From Pandas and Dragons
My nine-year-old daughter just entered two writing contests. “I hope I win,” she told me yesterday. “So do I,” I said. “But the odds are that you won’t. And if that happens, it doesn’t mean your story isn’t good.” One of the contests is run by the American Library in Paris, and I have no idea how many entries were received and how good they were, but I imagine the competition is stiff, and I told her so. The second contest I have more insight into. I am 1 of 12 judges, so I know that 161 entries were submitted and only 30...
read moreNaked Perfume Hunk: Meet Naked Handbag Babe
We’ve had a lot of guests for spring break. “You know what we saw in the metro station?” my nieces said at dinner the other day. “People without clothes.” I had almost stopped noticing. It’s always fun to see Paris from a fresh visitor’s point of view. The two specimens my nieces were most intrigued by are the Naked Perfume Hunk and the Naked Handbag Babe. Equal opportunity nudity. The Hunk lounges on a polar bear rug, wearing nothing but a black-and-white striped scarf over one shoulder. (The French do love their scarves.)...
read moreInstant Parisian: Just Add Scarf
My three teenage nieces came to visit Paris for spring break, clad in fuzzy yellow fleece and sports team logos, carrying bulky nylon school backpacks. It was fun to see them transform into Parisians, accessory by accessory. First came the change in totes, borrowing a trim black leather backpack to carry their guidebooks and phones. Then, off came the swim team ski caps, exchanged for a plain black hat or nothing at all. The hair rolled up into chignons. They each bought a cotton scarf. Et voila! Instant change from suburban American teens to...
read moreFire Fighter Fashion
My husband James and I cycled next to each other on stationary bikes at our local Paris gym. “Have you noticed all the fire fighters?” he asked. I shook my head. How had I missed that? “The scene in the locker room was like something out of a gay porn film,” he said. “Firefighters stripping out of their rescue gear.” Thirty minutes later, I caught sight of them hovered around the bicep curl and hip extensor machines. They were dressed in identical gym uniforms of clingy shirts outlining every chest muscle and minimal shorts...
read moreNo Tantrums on Air France
My friend (whom I’ll call G) has lived in Paris most of her life, except for a recent six-year sojourn in Houston. Over the Christmas break, she and her children returned to Texas for two weeks, and her four-year-old (whom I’ll call S) returned to American ways. S knows that no matter how democratic America says it is, the children there rule like kings and queens. A combination of jet-lag, fatigue, restlessness, (and perhaps French baguette-withdrawal symptoms) caused S to throw some tantrums during their vacation. Time-outs are hard to...
read moreDrunch, Slunch, and Other Fake American Trends in France
Drunch, anyone? Slunch? Don’t know what I’m talking about? Me neither. But the newsletter for my Paris supermarket, Monoprix, thinks these are all the rage in the U.S. The site gives recipes for mini hamburgers, carrot fries, cranberry-banana smoothies, and brownie/cookie parfaits. “No more depressing, gray Sunday afternoons,” I read on the site, looking out my window at the overcast skies that are as Parisian as poodles. If you want to “drunch” in Paris, a l’americaine, you can go to le Mini-Palais at the between-meals hour of...
read moreOn Being an American-in-Paris-in-Italy
We recently traveled to northeastern Italy for a week. It was the first time Ella, my nine-year-old daughter, had left France since August. What struck her the most? “Not being able to speak the language. It was disorienting.” When Italians asked where she was from, she said, “France.” When she observed Italian cities, food, and clothes, her point of comparison was Paris. “Italian architecture is a lot older than in Paris,” she said, “because Paris is all Haussman,” the architect Napoleon III hired to transform narrow, winding...
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