a dark and stormy night

Bienvenue and welcome back to Musée Musings, your idiosyncratic guide to Paris and art. I hope the first week of the new year treated you well. Here in San Francisco, we have been battered by a series of almost non-stop storms. They have been so severe that the Governor of California (who used to be the Mayor of San Francisco) has declared the state to be in a state of emergency. And our storms have made the national news. Meteorologists have pulled out all the stops in describing this weather. An entire new and frightening vocabulary is now mine - bomb cyclone storms and atmospheric rivers. (Figures 1, 2) Which in layman’s terms means heavy rains and strong winds. And clogged drains and threats of electricity outages.

Figure 1. Stormy weather in San Francisco

Figure 2. Atmospheric River

I used to think that we in Northern California were blessed, weather-wise (and in so many other ‘wises’). Other parts of the country experience annual ‘weather events’ like tornados and hurricanes. Of the latter, it bothered me growing up that those violent, destructive storms always had female names. I was heartened when I started hearing hurricanes referred to as men. I was surprised to read just now that the first hurricane to be named after a man, Hurricane Bob, was in 1979. How time flies.

In Northern California, where the winters are mild and the summers non-existent, the only thing that hangs over us, is earthquakes. Which everybody takes seriously and for which everybody is, more or less, prepared. But now we’ve got these annual things, like everyone else. And ours have really scary names. And if that wasn’t all bad enough, ’climate change’ autrement dit, ‘global warming,’ is threatening San Francisco’s summer fog! When Ginevra came to visit me in Paris last summer, it was to experience summer. Unfortunately, she collided with a killer heatwave. She longed for the fog even as she swanned around in summer frocks, unwearable in San Francisco.

Except for worrying about the electricity going out, it’s been rather cozy. This week, I wrote my final review of an exhibition dedicated to the author of À la recherche du temps perdu, (Figure 3) until 2071 when exhibitions in conjunction with the 200 anniversary of Proust’s birth are sure to be held, followed by those marking the 150 anniversary of his death, 2072. I hope you have time to read my review this week. Here are links to the other Proust exhibition reviews I wrote last year:

How to Get Your Proust On: Marcel Proust A Parisian Novel: Musée Carnavalet

So What’s Wrong with being a Mama’s Boy: Proust on his mother’s side: mahJ

Never mind the Madeleine: Proust Coté de la mère, part 2

Upon reflection, Proust has more or less been the leitmotif of my life in Paris in 2022.

Figure 3. Where it all began for Proust & me, Musée Carnavalet, Winter 2022 (masks were still obligatory)

I’ve also been binge watching murder mysteries these past few weeks. Magpie Murders was really good, firstly I suppose because I liked the book and secondly because the book’s author is also the television series screenwriter. And any liberties the screenwriter took were approved by the author. If you’ve read the book, you know it is actually two books in one and how Anthony Horowitz the screenwriter got around that conceit by Anthony Horowitz the author, was very clever.

While the adaptation of Magpie Murders seems mostly right, the adaptation of Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache books seems mostly wrong. When you set a series in a small town like Three Pines and you make the people who live in that town ‘regulars,’ then the victim/s and perp/s of whatever horrific crime is committed are obviously the strangers in town. The crimes may all be different but they’re all easy to solve, it’s the outsiders. I think I’ll pass on the adaptation and stick to the books.

I guess it’s easier when there isn’t a book because Murders in the Building, seasons 1 & 2 were both charming and well written. Probably because the chemistry between the central characters - Martin Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez is so good. And because Steve Martin is such a skilled writer. A third season was confirmed in the closing moments of the second one. An apartment building can be just as claustrophobic as a small town but it hasn’t been, at least not so far.

Lately, I’ve been watching Vera. (Figure 4) I don’t know the books written by Ann Cleeves on which the television series is based so I can’t tell you if it rings true to the books or not. The series is formulaic but it’s a formula I find comforting. All you have to do is fast forward past the actual crime! Any other crimes that are committed during the 90 minutes it takes Vera and her crew to solve the original one, are thoughtfully committed ‘off camera’. You go along with Vera and her long suffering assistant, Aiden, to the scene of the crime/s. She drives, it’s her own beat-up land rover, that gets them to all of the out of the way places people get themselves murdered. And without a GPS. Most of the time though you get to hang out with Vera and her gang in the room where they put the faces of the victim/s and suspects on a board, building up a plausible scenario, as if they were writing a book, working out characters and plot lines. Vera always catches the criminal and they always confess so you never have to worry about the DA bungling the case. My favorite moment is when Aiden puts the blue crime scene booties on Vera’s delicate feet. Ginevra says if there was a drinking game associated with Vera (and maybe there is), whenever she says Pet or Love, which is often, everyone would have a shot.

Figure 4. Vera at a crime scene with her able assistant Aiden (is he holding a notebook or crime scene booties?)

Besides writing and watching, I’ve been eating and baking. Specifically eating citrus, candying the peels and baking panforte. (Figure 5) Which I love. They’re a specialty of Siena, and reason enough to go there, although of course, there’s the art, too. One year I went to at least 10 different panetterie (bakeries) in Siena and bought a slice or two of panforte at each. Then of course, I did a serious taste test. Can’t find my notes, guess I will have to repeat it - soon.

Figure 5. Panforte and candied orange peels (pecan balls behind)

The panforte recipe I use is from David Lebovitz. Do you know him? He was a pastry chef at the famed Chez Panisse in Berkeley before moving to Paris at the very end of the last century. He started blogging before most people could say the word, let alone spell it. He mostly writes cook books but he has written about renovating an apartment in Paris. After renovating two homes in the Dordogne, I couldn’t bear to read it, couldn’t bear to relive the pain of it. But his book Drinking French helped get me through the pandemic. No, I didn’t become an alcoholic, not even a drinker. When his book tour was canceled, he started doing Instagram Live. He did them at 7:00 p.m. in Paris. So there was somebody in the same place as I was, talking to me, live. I ate dinner while I watched and I didn’t feel so lonely. His panforte recipe is easy to follow and with good ingredients (homemade citrus peel for example) it tastes great.

There was a break in the rain yesterday so I rushed to the supermarket to buy Dufour puff pastry. Which means that today I can make a Galette des Rois. (Figure 6) David has a recipe but I’m going to use Dorie Greenspan’s recipe in the New York Times. I love her recipes, I love her style and I love her joie de vivre. I get her weekly newsletter and I get David’s, too. For a foodie like me, two food writers who spend time in Paris (Dorie has an apartment in the 6ème, David lives in the 11ème) I’m happy for all their suggestions for chocolateries, boulangeries and pâtisseries.

Figure 6. Galette des Rois from NYTimes recipe by Dorie Greenspan

Speaking of pâtisseries, if you like pastry porn, there is no better instagram reel to watch than those artful ones by Cedric Grolet, the pastry chef at the Hotel Meurice. According to Erin, there was a line 50 deep in front of his shop yesterday. People waiting to buy his 55 euro almond shaped galettes (Figure 7). I would have pre-ordered and done a click and collect. I’m not a fan of lines, at museums or patisseries. Maybe you want to pass on edible art altogether and agree with Fran Lebowitz that “If you can say 'I'll have that and a cup of coffee,' it's not art’”.

Figure 7. Almond shaped Galettes des Rois, Cedric Grolet, Meurice Hotel, Paris

Thanks to everyone who complimented our pajamas. Our dear friend, Rafa even sent a photo of himself and his lovely family similarly attired. (Figure 8) John sent me a photo that friends had sent him, everyone in pajamas, but since I don’t know them, I didn’t dare include their photo here …. A new friend David Burke, from Ireland, caught a grammatical error and kindly alerted me to it. I quickly fixed it, thereby avoiding further embarrassment. When I get back to Paris in a couple weeks, I have signed up to join a Proust reading group at the American Library. I guess there are two things to say - it’s about time and it’s never too late. (Figure 9) Have a good week. Bisous, Dr. B.

Figure 8. Raphael Santos and family 

Figure 9. Proust ‘paperoles’ drafts of his 7 volume, 1.5 million word opus.