Paris-Montrouge Scribbler

  The Road to Santiago de Compostela, 2003: A Pilgrim's Diary 2. Background to the pilgrimage Spring semester, 2002-2003, I took a leave of absence from my teaching duties in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art at Bilkent University, Ankara. The book I had been working on for many years was at last finished ( Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece, and Rome ), so it was time for a break. I spent the first three months in Athens, reading in the great library of the American School of Classical Studies. I was investigating especially the history of archaeological exploration in the region of Kinet Höyük (ancient Issos), an ancient port city in southern Turkey, in the northeast corner of the Mediterranean. The site had been under excavation since 1992, and I was a member of the project team. In late April, I left Athens and Ankara and flew to Paris to begin a completely different activity: hiking the famous lat...

Today, 25 July , is the Feast of St. James (= St. Jacques, in French; Santiago, in Spanish) -- an auspicious day to begin posting my account of the pilgrimage walk to Santiago de Compostela that I undertook  21 years ago, in 2003.  I am planning 10 installments, to be posted at irregular intervals, depending on how much time it will take to revise my original trip diary and to find suitable illustrations.   The Road to Santiago de Compostela, 2003: A Pilgrim’s Diary Charles Gates 1.Preface Another account of a pilgrim’s journey to Santiago de Compostela? Do we really need this? Yes, we do. There are as many travelers to Santiago as there are stars in the sky, and each experiences and interprets this special trip in a different way. After I returned from my journey in spring, 2003, I read two accounts, and it stunned me how their take had so little in common with mine. I was hoping to get some insight into my own experiences, but instead these writers seemed so ...

  I would never have set foot in Villa Seurat had it not been for Betty Ryan . Betty Ryan (aka Elizabeth Gordon)  Photo: Popaganda.gr  Yes, I'm paraphrasing the opening sentence of Henry Miller's book, The Colossus of Maroussi : “I would never have gone to Greece had it not been for a girl named Betty Ryan who lived in the same house with me in Paris.” But it's true. I – or, more precisely, my daughter, Irene – would never have looked for Villa Seurat , a short dead-end street in the 14 th arrondissement, had it not been for Betty Ryan . Betty Ryan was a friend of my wife's family. When her parents met her, in Maine in the late 1940s, she was married to Harry Gordon and so was known to them as Elizabeth Gordon. That's how I was introduced to her when I met her in Athens in 1972, on my first trip to Greece. She seemed old then, slight with gray hair and thick glasses, but I was only 22. She was 58, I now know. At the time, she was living in Kifissia,...

  With Notre Dame still closed as restoration work continues as a result of the devastating fire of April 15, 2019, the Gothic church of choice to visit in Paris is surely St. Denis . It's easy to get to, located just north of the Paris city limits and very close to a metro stop.  Not only is St. Denis a splendid example of 13 th century Gothic architecture, it also has renown as the place where the Gothic style began in the 1140s (as every student of art and architectural history knows). The church has even more to offer. Because it served as the funerary church for French royalty, it houses an amazing collection of royal funerary monuments dating from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. During the French Revolution, these monuments were saved from the destructive fury of the mobs. Surely such a place would be filled with tourists! Yet when we visited in March, the only groups to be seen were local children, teenagers and younger, given a tour through French histor...

The principle of a strike is noble: fighting for better work conditions by stepping off the job and shaking up the routine, thereby forcing employers to give way. But for those of us not directly affected, when we find our routines shaken up by the protests, our support of this principle may be put to the test.  Here in Paris, garbage collectors have been on strike since March 7. They are striking for higher wages but also as part of much wider strikes and demonstrations against a recently passed law that concerns retirement benefits .  I myself have no opinion on the new retirement law. I am familiar with social security and retirement benefits in the US and Turkey, but not the program here in France, which seems incredibly complex . Since I don't receive French retirement benefits, never having worked here, I have no motivation to find out what the details are – apart from obtaining some understanding about why people are so worked up over what seems from the outside ...

  BLOG. Paris-Montrouge Scribbler This is a new blog that picks up from https:// www.ankarascribbler.blogspot.com , written during the years 2012-2022 while I was living in Ankara, Turkey. I will still post there from time to time, for return trips to Turkey and travels in the neighboring region: Greece, Cyprus, etc. This new blog will feature my experiences in Paris, other parts of France, and western Europe, and maybe elswhere, we'll see. Welcome! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 January, 2023. (post no. 1). Street signs – agents of  education I now live in Paris , in the Petit-Montrouge section ( quartier ) of the 14th arrondissement. [Paris is divided into 20 arrondissements , or districts.] The area belonged to Montrouge, a separate town, until 1860 when it was annexed by Paris. Montrouge the town still exists, immediately to the south of Paris, with metro (subway) and bus connections into the cap...