Paris
Tuesday, September 12
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A typical Parisian park “allée,” this one being
in the avenue de l’Observatoire extension of the
Cats on a lamp base, in the same part of the
Gardens.
Photograph of President Push on the front page
of this past Friday’s issue of LeMonde. Also notice the photo of the intelligent
looking Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian teenager who recently escaped from
her kidnapper after 8 years of sequestration. |
Although we
already knew the neighborhood around Saint Sulpice
from our nine summers of wandering and reading about Something that
impresses me is how very long the restoration work on the exterior of the
church has been going on. Now, the entire
north side, including the north tower, is engulfed in scaffolding, as it has
been for some time. All of the
churches built before 1925 are the property of France, not the Church. So, when a massive restoration must be
done, the French taxpayers pay for it.
Work is scheduled, and money is budgeted. But the budgets are often cut, and the
amounts budgeted are not always allocated.
I think that this accounts for much of the time it takes to finish
these massive restorations. The church must
still pay for all the costs of operating the buildings they occupy, even if
they don’t own them. This includes
routine maintenance, and there are many examples of churches in the city that
do not receive proper routine maintenance.
But they are beautiful and imposing, nonetheless. On one of our
recent wanderings in the vicinity of Bon Marché, Tom and I once again passed
the Chapel of the Miraculous Medallion where Sister Catherine
Labouré was supposed to have had three separate conversations with the
Virgin Mary, and where she allegedly received the design for the Miraculous
Medallion from Mary. We never bothered
to see when the Chapel is open because we really don’t care much about
this. But when we
passed by that day, the double doors to the court leading to the Chapel were
open, and people were streaming in and out of there. Tom wanted to go in. So we went in, and mixed with all those
devout Catholics. We stepped into the
very crowded chapel where a service was being conducted in Latin. The chapel was bright inside, with
unbelievably gaudy mosaic decorations at the altar end. Lots of gold tiles in those mosaics! Along the court
leading to the chapel are several openings.
One is for a reception desk.
Another is for the place where the medallion is on display. And another is for a gift shop, which Tom
entered, and where he discovered that the souvenir medallions being sold
there were not very expensive. He came
out and asked me if I wanted one. I
said no, and that I didn’t want to give any money at all for this cause. I suspect that the money collected here
does not go toward maintaining these wonderful, monumental churches, and that
it does not go for what I would consider to be humanitarian purposes. I suspect that it is used for pushing a
semi-political agenda that does not mesh with my value system. I have no proof, only suspicions. One reason I
like the Saint Sulpice church is that I trust its austerity. Its history, of being the church created
for the people, the real people who were not allowed to attend the church at
the Saint Germain des Prés abbey. I
think Hemingway may have liked Saint Sulpice for the same reasons. And to this day, Saint Sulpice is very open to
the people. It seems to have more
visiting hours than any other church I’ve seen in Last night we
went back to dine at L’Espadon
Bleu (The Blue Swordfish) again.
Jacques Cagna himself was there, and he came to our table to chat with
us. He had not heard of Sanibel
Island, but he said he spent at Mar-a-Lago,
Donald Trump's exclusive spa for the super-rich in I had a wild
bass served with little wild mushrooms – perhaps almost the best fish I’ve
ever eaten, and I’ve eaten a lot of fine fish. Before that, I had the salad with green
beans, and it was lovely, with a fine vinaigrette. Tom indulged in dessert, a homemade apple
tart. Superb! And the bread at this fine resto is not to
be missed, even if you are on a low-carb diet. |
