Tag: paris

Postcard from Paris, France: Linear parks rejuvenate neighborhoods

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playing boule along ourcq canal in paris
A vintage French postage stamp depicting a man playing jeu de boules, with spectators in the background. The stamp features blue illustrations and text stating 'JEU DE BOULES' and 'RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE'.

Above: Adjudicating outcome of an afternoon boules game along the Ourcq Canal.

Paris had to be more than a manicured museum preserved for the affluent beneath the Eiffel Tower and the Pantheon’s dome.”

“A City Reinvented: Paris Is Now Greater Paris,” Roger Cohen, New York Times, August 31, 2025

When we returned this past spring, our prior trip to Paris had been forty years earlier. Obviously, things have changed. We found ourselves afoot exploring areas of the city regarded as neither appealing nor safe for boulevardiers back then, areas such as an abandoned railroad line that runs across the 12th Arrondissement from the Bastille to the Bois de Boulogne.

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Postcard from Paris, France: Chefs blur borders

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Illustration of a chef's hands arranging a plate with colorful vegetables and a small dish, featured on a French stamp labeled 'Gastronomie'.

Above: Mushroom tarte at Pristine

People who do not accept the new, grow old very quickly.”

A Guide to Modern Cookery, Auguste Escoffier, 1907

We’re already old. We arrived at this stage in but the blink of an eye and certainly have no desire to accelerate the aging process. This is the excuse I offer for not sticking to French food in France.

My hero chefs are those unafraid to pluck ingredients and fuse ideas from many cultures. The evolutionary development of European cuisine as a whole has been speeding along ever since those first traders sailed eastward to discover an explosion of spices and westward to find revolutionary crops – such as tomatoes and cacao.

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Postcard from France: Saint Phalle battled outside wrongs and monsters within

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A colorful 1992 French stamp featuring a stylized figure by Niki de Saint Phalle, surrounded by stars and a crescent moon.

Above: Detail of “Monster Crocodile,” a 1964 assemblage by Niki de Saint Phalle.

I wanted [the fountain] to have charm, with the colors of Niki…. I wanted sculptures like street performers, a little bit like a circus, which was at the heart of Stravinsky’s style itself when in 1914 he had his first encounter with jazz….”

Jean Tinguely (1925-1991)

With bright primary colors twirling around squirting water in all different directions, the 1983 “Stravinsky Fountain” by Niki de Saint Phalle and husband Jean Tinguely ignited a public space between the Pompidou Center, housing the National Museum of Modern Art, and the Gothic-style Church of Saint-Merri. Viewing the flamboyant fountain evokes a childlike joyful feeling in even the most jaded adults.

Above: “Stravinsky Fountain,” Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, Paris, France, 1983.

That whimsical, playful exuberance bubbling up in the fountain and her jubilant plump “Nanas,” with figures resembling my own, meant I failed to take a serious look at her art. I must have been in a teenage trance to miss the media coverage when she exhibited a giant Nana “Hon” with an entryway for attendees between her widespread legs.

Underestimating Saint Phalle’s talents for decades was a mistake. An exhibition this spring at the Caumont Center for Art in Aix-en-Provence altered my misconceptions.

A quotation by Niki de Saint Phalle in French and English, expressing her love for monsters, displayed in a colorful and artistic font.
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