Shop Window, Rue Ferdinand Duval, Paris – 28Sept 2017
Hard right on the street from our vacation apt. bldg, was a Jewish shop. It was Marais, duh! Wish I’d made a photograph of the Scooby-Do Yarmulke advertised but I did make this. My goal on Sunday morning was pastries from the shop pictured below.
Bakery, Rue Ferdinand Duval & Rue des Rosiers, Paris – 28 Sept 2017
Rue Ferdinand Duval ends in a T here, crossed by Rue des Rosier. The buildings on all sides create a canyon. Just to the right of this door way is a marble plaque, one of far too many in Paris.
My poor translation to English is: “In Memory of the Principal, Staff, Teachers and Students of this School who were arrested in 1943 and 1944 by the Vichy Police and The Gestapo and deported and killed in Auschwitz because they were born Jewish.”
It was early and quiet. There was nothing to distinguish that street from 1943 or 1944. I closed my eyes, and opened them thinking, what if… It was the most chilling and frightening moment I’ve ever experienced. And I balanced that with knowing I’d been a Missile Control Supervisor on an American Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine. Boomers are always ready. Never again.
Sidewalk Rotisserie, Rue de Rivoli, Paris – 26 Sept 2017
Yesterday, my food frugality was overridden by the need to finish my last, receipt intensive, tax return. Bought a rotisserie chicken and a tub of Cole Slaw. I rationalized, knowing the carcass would make more broth than it cost. But that’s not what this is about.
Post online communion with H&R Block, IRS and the North Carolina Dept of Revenue, I was completing a rare, early supper. And was transported to Paris, on the Rue de Rivoli, a side street from our vacation apt. on Rue Ferdinand Duval.
Being the most visited city on the planet, Parisians are mostly bi-lingual, especially in English. My required two years of a foreign language at the College of Charleston was French but my accomplishment in that language is pathetic. I’m okay with Metro Signs and Menus but conversation is an adventure. My sweetheart, beyond “Bon Jour” and “Merci” was illiterate. But the language of food is universal and she was extraordinarily fluent.
With great confidence, she would be out the apt. door, down 56 steps ( Floors in Paris start at 0 instead of 1, so the 3rd floor is what Americans would call the 4th) and off in the early afternoon, before the chickens and the gloriously basted potatoes underneath were sold out. And it was wonderful to have the windows open, at table. It felt like home
John Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things” will summon the Muse. Sometimes in the mid night
“Shorty” was a neighbors cat, a retiree, a tough old barn cat.
Neither their standard Schnauzer or the 180 lbs of my two Labrador Retrievers were a cause for his concern. There were Cattle and Horses in Kansas who’d learned that. He was curious about me as I set my camera and tripod to photograph the new blossoms of their Deciduous Magnolia Cary, North Carolina 27 April 2009