In which it is very wet, and my computer drowns on the way back from a day’s conference-ing

 Keep your fingers crossed that it dries out and starts in the morning!   Here are some meteorological images of Paris

OK - so Colbert isn’t damp. He was presiding over the conference dinner …

research and walking

First stop, a sculpture of a straw beehive that told passersby of a honey shop, back in the C19th.

This isn't research - it's just a shop window completely full of models of Japanese food, disconcertingly realistic.

But not a lot can possibly be as disconcerting as the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature - there seemed to be a great deal more Chasse than Nature.  Some of the victims had clearly escaped - most of the antique chairs had teasels on them to stop one sitting, but the one went for a more aggressive message.

Two of my chapters seem to have got together at some point in the C19th and made a sofa - bees and snails.

But the best bits for me were where contemporary art worked as a commentary on all the paintings and sculptures and tapestries of dead or dying animals - let alone on the stuffed animals and antlers and guns.  There was a Mark Dion hunting cabin; an urban owl;

and this terrific collage by Daniel Horowitz, Cervus armatus, which could stand in for my whole argument about moorland and peatlands being underpinned by violence.

Then, as an antidote - and it was a beautiful day - I walked down the Coulée verte from Bastille to Vincennes - a million thanks to Avigail for the recommendation.  This was the inspiration behind the High Line in NY.  It started off park like and manicured;

passed through a more urban section;

became very dark and bosky,

and by the end was, indeed, abandoned railroad tracks.  And then there was a bus back right to Saint-Michel!

And happily, at dinner, I was able to order the lentilles that I never got to eat in Puy this summer ...

 

In which I eat my research, and other Parisian views

I wonder if a helping of snails (I didn't eat them all - this was a shared starter ...) counts as a research expense?  I did thank them, and apologize to them, before tucking in ...

It was clearly a day in which (lunch with another friend, but I ate all of these) I preferred to consume things that came in their own shells.

Research for another chapter?  But I didn't buy/eat any honey, although that's obviously what's on sale here.

A very strange statue (César Baldaccini's The Centaur, 1985) at the corner of Rue de Sèvres and Rue du Cherche Midi.

Someone holding the moon in their teeth.

An electricity junction box, painted with an image of Gisèle Halini, a Tunisian-French politician, lawyer, and feminist activist;

and Notre-Dame, still under repair, with a crane holding the moon - the real moon - in, I suppose, its teeth.

 

Paris!

It's good to be back!  Here's the view from my hotel window, and the Frenchest of French rooms.

A pet shop window (because I miss them);

and a bowl of superlative onion soup - as good as it gets (followed by some raie and capers).  It's fifty five years to the month since I first came to Paris, and it's both changed a great deal and hasn't in many quintessential ways changed at all.  I haven't stayed in the Quartier Latin since 1973, when I was a - a what? a kind of nanny? - to a family whose Paris base was in the rue du Bac - an experience that's seared on my soul (and not in a good way, though the rue du Bac itself was rather fine ...).

 

Pullman

Yes - Pullman, Illinois - where the Pullman cars were made, and where George Pullman constructed the first planned company town in the US.  So - some wonderful 1880s brick architecture (there would be more of this central building if it wasn't for an arsonist in 1998 ...), whether in the factory/administration buildings, or in the town itself.  This colonnaded square was apartment buildings ... and people came out by train during the Chicago World's Fair to stay in them.  It's been a National Park since Obama designated it as such in ... 2015? - and the NPS tour was really great - not just taking one through the architecture, but the place of the workers in US labor history, the Pullman porters on trains and the implications of the Jim Crow era in terms of their working conditions, and so on.  

Admittedly, walking round the streets themselves felt a bit like walking round the parts of Leeds that my father's side of the family came from... But what made it a really special day was that I'd managed, unplanned, to coincide with the 51st Annual Pullman House Tour - so a number of renovated homes were open to the public (including one former executive home restored over the last 21 years by people who love Victorian art and Victoriana - there was even a Queen Victoria under a glass cloche, and also a ballroom - a very small ballroom - made in 1900 on the 3rd floor, complete with a 2800 piece stained glass laylight.  Alas - but understandably - none of the homes allowed photography.

And I had an added bonus when I stopped for coffee at the Crivello Residence, and found myself talking to an elderly (88) man, Al, who told me he was one of the two men remaining in the town who'd been employed in the Pullman works, which finally closed in 1982.  He worked 8 hour days, during each day he fitted the doors onto one Pullman car (and he said he put a penny into each carriage, hidden behind a door, so that Abraham Lincoln would look after it.  Does anyone know of any other instances of AL being treated like a saint?  Al's parents came from Mexico, which might explain the votive nature of this ...).  He remembered growing up as a boy in the town, and all the tanks that were made there in WW2.  After the works closed down, he did repairs and renovations all round the town, finding all kinds of things left behind and hidden in walls, and in the Prohibition-era tunnels between houses and garages - not least money, because people didn't trust banks at that time (readers of Alice's Shortfall will appreciate that).  So that was an amazingly fortuitous encounter (he was waiting for someone - he wasn't an official part of the tour ...).

Stained glass in the church,

and in the Hotel Florence.

And some Halloween decorations...

Oh, and there was a vintage car show going on, too!  (the mural was done in 1996 by American Academy of Art students).

 

Another day in the woods

Such a lovely (and educational) day ... workshops in the morning (and yes, I was sharing a paper on bees and beehives, and this poster seemed apt ...).

Then we went for a hike in the woods, and to the Galien River;

Back to the field station to learn about different native plant seedheads,

and then we all fanned out with secateurs and gloves gathering them, respectfully -

I enjoyed getting to know False Indigo better - a plant that doesn't grow in Souther California, and barely in NM.

Autumnal grasses!

And then off for another hike, in old-growth forest.

And then off out to dinner - alas, no pictures from me, though there's a group pic knocking around somewhere ...

 

workshopping in the woods

Nothing better than workshopping smart papers with a small group of smart people in a large cabin in the woods ... this year, Vcologies is meeting at the University of Chicago's field station.

Extremely peaceful to stand outside at coffee break ...

then in the latter part of the afternoon, to head off on a guided nature hike in/on the Indiana Dunes - about 22 miles back towards Chicago -

with marshland,

and the lake shore,

and a special and unexpected treat - there are five "Home of Tomorrow" which were put on boats after the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, and established on the shore line ...

Actually, after that, another treat - some very boggy marshlands - but I was driving, and couldn't photograph ...