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 Newsletter No.4
11th, March, 2005 Dear "Paris Set Me Free" Visitor,
Welcome to the latest issue of the unique
FREE Creative Paris Newsletter
"Kiss That Frog"
Contents
1)
SPONSOR'S SPACE
! -
The Great People Who Keep Us Going !
2)
Introduction - Welcome to the City of Light & Love!
3) Parisian Picks - photos
4) Paris Daze - personal notes
5) Pause Poétique - contributions welcome
6) History Corner - this is.. Paris
7) Weird & Wonderful - strange & obscure facts & findings
8) Hint of the Week - not a lot of people know this, but...
9) Readers' Letters - have your say
10) This Week - a snapshot of the latest news
11) Quote of the Week - Paris inspired...
12) This Week's Special Offer!
13) Contacting Us, Related Links and Subscription Info
14) Copyright notice
1) SPONSOR'S SPACE
This week's sponsor is
Cambridge University Press, the oldest printing and publishing house in the world. They are 'dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge', and produce, notably, some of the finest English language teaching materials in the world. Check out their web site for more information,
and if you are interested check out our sister site The
Frankly Fabulous
Language Fun Farm, and
read our review of their latest publication. Or not. The
choice is yours. You know the score.
If you are interested in publicising your Paris-related site, event or product here, do let us know and you'll become an official Kiss That Frog sponsor (and help us to survive at the same time)! We'll let you know the details and we can work out the best way to promote your wonderful services, publication, business or products through Paris Set Me Free and sister sites. ask a small amount of money or even better a reciprocal arrangement for promoting the site through your publication or business - please get in touch!
Contents Kiss That Frog Index Home Page
2) Introduction
Welcome, Paris-Lover and Friend!
 And here's the Lady Eiffel in all her sparkly splendour, as seen on my nightly prowl around the neighbourhood just an hour ago.
The funny, and so French, thing is that Paris is about to put itself up as the ideal candidate for the 2012 Olympics and on that very same day the unions have called for the biggest national strike in a long time. Now, a strike may not be the worst thing you could imagine, you may be saying. But wait! This is Paris. When they did the same thing in the winter of 1995, with heavy snow, when I was living on a barge on the Seine in the far far suburbs of St. Germain en Laye, it was crazy. Classy business women were hitching lifts (if not skirts) by the side of the road! I don't think it will be as bad again, but I think they would like it to be. Just to piss everyone off.
Poor old beleaguered Paris is draping a fair smattering of its national monuments in 'Paris 2012' regalia. The Assemblée Nationale and maybe even the grandiose Hôtel  de Ville have got more multi-coloured rings dangling off them than your average fortune-teller (in retrospect, not strictly true: see This Week below).
I hope we get them though. I got married and moved to Greece two or three years ago, and would have been there for the Athens version if I haven't got unmarried shortly after. So it would be kinda cool for the Games to follow me back to the place I love and live - good old Paris.
Good-Old-Paris. Doesn't Paris have a nickname like London is Old Smoke (or is it the Big Smoke?) and New York is the Big Apple? It must have, and I don't mean something pompous like 'The City of Light'. Maybe we could start a competition with a prize for the best suggestion. I'll leave it up to you.
3a) Parisian Picks (part 1)
A strange mixture of black and white and colour, of Asian and Western culture, of movement and stillness, of reflections and matt. Posters and people are everywhere in Paris, and if you combine them you often get unexpected results. This especially comes out when enormous adverts of ridiculously idealised images are cruelly contrasted to the grim reality of life in a not-always-so-ideal city.
3b) Parisian Picks (part 2)
And what could be more symbolic of Paris than the Metro? And this picture shows the entrance to Vaneau on line 12 from Austerlitz to Pont de Saint-Cloud. The letters are evocative Art Deco (I think) creations, harking back to another time, and the metalwork around the signs is particularly distinctive and eye-catching.
I'm planning a section where I visit all the Metro stations in the capital, taking photos in and around them and talking a little about their history and special features. This is currently stewing in my mind and I'd be interested in any comments on this subject. It would obviously be a major work so  I'm hesitating before getting going on it, as I also have many other projects simmering under. In the meantime I will continue snapping away at any of the wonderful Metro stations that I happen to pass, until I'm ready to do a more in-depth study. If anyone knows of any good resources on the subject of the Paris Metro I'd gratefully receive the address here!
Vaneau, by the way, was a young student killed during 'les Trois Glorieuses' in 1830 by Swiss guards during an attack in the rue de Babylone. 'Les Trois Glorieuses' were the three days of revolution on the 27th, 28th and 29th of July, 1830, when the Parisians rose up against King Charles X, setting up barricades in the streets and fighting the armed forces commanded by Maréchal Auguste de Marmont.
Two hundred soldiers and nearly eight hundred insurgents were killed, leading to Charles X fleeing to be replaced by Louis-Philippe I. Vaneau was buried with full honours in the Montparnasse cemetery which I'll have to do a photo essay on one of these days. So there!
4) Paris Daze
It's a rather strange time here in the capital at the moment. For a start it's still pretty chilly, and I have the feeling that people are not quite ready to believe that summer could every come back. Plenty of the more fortunate have been off skiing, of course, during their specially designed winter holidays - the kids have two weeks off in Feb for this very reason - just another example of classic French savoir vivre...
 And as I mentioned above, everyone seems to be going full out for the current visit of the Olympic Committee who are going to write a report shortly on the suitability of the various candidate cities to host the 2012 Games. Apparently the general strike which is threatening to grind the city to a halt tomorrow shouldn't cause to many problems or too much embarrassment to the politicians plying Paris' cause. And get this: they are even going to distribute a few thousand 'Paris 2012' T-shirts to the strikers - wonder if they'll swallow it!
The strangeness I'm feeling probably comes from inside the writer as much as from the City, seeing as I'm currently questioning my very existence, well, let's say my very career choices, at the moment, and I'm looking for a radical life change, if one would be so kind as to stroll my way...
The image here, one of my Rainbow Days series, nicely sums up my feelings right now. The black blob bottom right is an umbrella, in case you hadn't realised, and it's true that there is a lot of weird stuff raining down in my life right now. But look at all the wonderful colours out there just waiting to be discovered if only I would raise my eyes up and look for them! Sometimes the shields we set up to protect ourselves from the bad things can stop us from experiencing the good things out there just waiting for us to take that vital step - the step of closing the umbrella and seeing that the harsh rain isn't so bad after all, and in fact is rather refreshing!
Wow, was that philosophy corner, or what?! Enough, enough. Let's move on... what's next? Ah yes, Poetry from Paris!
5) Pause Poétique
This really lives on my Mystic Rhythms personal site, but I'll slip it in here to let you see what the other side of my head is up to. As with many poems, it didn't go according to plan. It was supposed to have at least three other verses, but somehow it had to be got rid of after one. It was like it had its own personality and character. That often happens. Now that it's out there, I doubt very much whether the other three verses will ever materialise, but we'll see. The girlfriend is mine, by the way; the café belongs to Paris. I hope you like it.
I Noticed
(Time Passing) |
 I was listening
To time passing
Slipping quietly
Past falling feet
And coffee cups
Candles and kisses
Sheets of paper
Shuffled fingers
Dripping slyly
Fleeing shyly
Minutes
Moved
Away
© Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free 2005 |
Contents Kiss That Frog Index Home Page
6) History Corner - The Story of France, Part IV
In the last episode we saw our pal, Homo Erectus, messing around with matches and developing his culinary palette. He also got to grips with the first tools, notably flint scrapers, leading inexorably to the ultimate expression of things working for us: the computer I'm using right now. A tenuous link, perhaps, but a thought-provoking one nevertheless. Now let's move on and see what happened next.
 Now You See Him, Now You Don't
Around 40,000 years ago, during a warmer period, a new bunch of wannabe humans came along from Africa into Europe as we know it today. We shall refer to them as Cro-Magnon man. The two populations lived concurrently for about 10,000 years. Then, some 30,000 years ago, a new ice-age dawned, and the competition for food and better territories in this harsher climate became more intense. At this point the Neanderthals disappeared from the face of the planet.
The Cro-Magnon guys were pretty innovative dudes, and may well have been responsible to an extent for the disappearance of their Neanderthals bros. Well, they did take over practically all the best caves and all the four and five star hunting grounds which the Neanders had opened up for them, the ungrateful so-and-sos.
Nean-Magnon or Cro-Derthal?
They discovered a very interesting skeleton a few years back; a four year-old dug up in the Lapedo valley, north of Lisbon, showed a hybrid child, with a Cro-Mag chin but Neanderthal bones (apart from the chin, obviously). It doesn't take a lot of grey matter to draw the conclusion that maybe our two distant predecessors got together for a little more than just chewing the fat. But as far as the learned community is concerned the jury is still out.
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Whacky Historical Notes:
Funerals - Rite On Brother!
 Now this guy was probably the first to actually take the time to dispose of the dearly defunct by digging a hole in the ground and throwing them in it. They also threw in some of his or her personal effects for good measure, such as tools, weapons, a bit of food and some of his (or her) most cherished hunting trophies.
One wonders if they maybe even had real burial ceremonies with crying and wailing and all that stuff. Not as banal a thought as it may seem, because, lest we forget, we had to pass from the apparently unemotional forms of lower life to the shining pinnacle of human achievement we have now achieved, that's right, isn't it?
So we've found the bodies systematically placed on an east to west axis, and adorned with flowers.
 Some believe this is evidence of a nascent belief in an afterlife, precursor of more modern forms of attempts to explain the phenomenon of existence. Who knows?!
Tool Up
The two essential tools at this stage were the spear tip for hunting and the scraper for cleaning up the skin of recent kills. These were great improvements on previous techniques and contributed to the inexorable advance towards the zenith of modern civilised culinary prowess: the McDonalds hamburger. Wot?
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7) Weird & Wonderful
 If you think of Paris, you may well think of statues. And if you think of statues, you may well think of... mmmm... Paris. There's quite a lot of them. And what's even better, some of them are absolutely nuts, when seen in a modern light or context. That's why I'm creating a new section here on PSMF devoted exclusively to these often awe-inspiringly maladroit creations.
Here is one of my favourites, from the Tuileries Gardens next to the Louvre. Just like in the film 'A Fish Called Wanda', this mythical hero seeks solace and fortitude in his epic struggle against the fork-tongued serpent by checking out his pungent underarm odour. The expression on his face (open-mouthed, aghast...) suggests that the result is everything he could have wished for to repel the strongest-stomached of assailants. His somewhat ambiguous... companion concurs and is protecting himself from eventual fall-out with an arm flung precipitously over his head.
I truly believe I've struck a rich vein here as already my head is reeling with images of about ten crazy statues I've spotted all over Paris in the last few years which would admirably adorn this little section. Watch this space!
Contents Kiss That Frog Index Home Page
8) Hint of the Week
A little known fact, sadly, amongst visitors to Paris, is that if you want one of the absolutely best, and more importantly free, views of Paris, then just get yourself over to La Samaritaine.  What is La Samaritaine, you ask. La Samaritaine is worthy of a PSMF section all to itself, as perhaps the most famous and beautiful of all Parisian department stores.
I've been going here regularly for several years, to raid their arts section, buy diaries, enjoy the art fairs they sometimes host, look down from the fifth floor at the amazing galeries below, and most of all show my friends the unparalleled view from the roof.
All in all, this is a treat that you will never regret having indulged in, whether you dine in the lovely restaurant, buy some of the delights on offer in the store, or simply take advantage of the breath-taking view. And as I said, not a lot of people know that, so impress your friends with this little gem, and maybe combine it with a picnic in the lovely little garden on the tip of Ile de la Cité which is just across the bridge, or stroll down to the marvelous Pont des Arts which I talked about in last week's Kiss That Frog. You might even see the legendary big-nosed, belly-posed, canvas-hosed violinist, if you're lucky. Who knows? But you won't regret it.
9) Selections from Readers' Letters
Maria Antonietta - Benevento, Italy, said:
I've already been to Paris three or four times in my life, with very long
lapses of time in between. As it happens with "package-trip tourists" each
time I felt harassed by a conceited tourist guide who had learned their
lessons by heart and deluged all their knowledge over us. dis-heartedly...
paradoxically as it may seem. We were led to visit places just because
"tourist must visit them" or, even worse, only because they were on our
guide's wage book.
With Sab it's different: you see places through his very own eyes and soul
and heart. He takes you by the hand and asks you to share the rich beauties
of the only woman he's ever truly loved: Paris! Because Paris can only be a
woman, a gorgeous satin-dressed lascivious woman who denies her charms to no
one since nobody can help being in love with her.
Ummm, err, not quite sure how to follow that one Maria Antonietta! Suffice it to say that I was extremely touched by your message and hope that I can continue to give you a personal taste of this capital which you obviously have some real understanding of! Hope to see you in Paris some day soon! - Sab
If you would like to send in a comment or suggestion, please do. Some or all of your contribution may be published in a future issue of Kiss That Frog!
Contents Kiss That Frog Index Home Page
10) This Week That Is Was Will Be
 Well the strikes went ahead as planned, and didn't really cause too much disruption apart from loads of people having problems getting to work, but hey, we're used to it - this is Paris! I patently avoided taking clichéd pics of pee-ed off commuters waiting at train stations, although I easily could have.
What was funny was to see the Eiffel Tower sparkling away in the middle of the day, in a vain attempt to charm the visiting Olympic Committee into awarding us the 2012 Olympic Games. Maybe it'll work.
I took this picture on one of my strike-forced cross-Paris marches to the British Council, this being the Assemblée Nationale, fully kitted out in proud colours and looking pretty good, actually. I've still got to complete my collection with a shot of the Hôtel de Ville which I'm sure must be in a similar state. A colleague told me that one of the metro stations on line 1 has also been decorated with various personalities saying they support the Paris 2012 bid, for what that's worth. I'll have to track that one down too. Check back next week for the results of this enquiry!
Contents Kiss That Frog Index Home Page
11) Quote of the Week
"It's true that the French have a certain obsession with sex, but it's a particularly adult obsession. France is the thriftiest of all nations; to a Frenchman sex provides the most economical way to have fun. The French are a logical race."
-Anita Loos
12) Special Offer
Tell a few people about the Paris Set Me Free site, and I'll send you high-quality versions of some of the best photos from the site to print out and enjoy, absolutely free! Also visit the PSMF Boutique (coming soon - check to see if it's live yet!) for other great Paris-related items and other special offers, including personal signed copies of my Complete First Collection of Paris- and Life-Inspired Poetry (32 poems from a genuine Modern Poet living the Parisian Dream) as read at Shakespeare & Co. (legendary Parisian bookshop and poetry-reading venue), no less!!!
Anyone who would like to sponsor Kiss That Frog in return for some publicity in this great newsletter, please get in touch!
Contents Kiss That Frog Index Home Page
13) Contacting Us, Related Links & Subscriptions
You can contact us directly at info@parissetmefree.com .
You can visit the web site at http://www.parissetmefree.com where you can read previous newsletters and loads of other great Paris-related material which is being constantly added to, in particular the rich photo and writing sections.
Our sister sites include the Language Fun Farm, an innovative resource for teachers and lovers of English, and my own personal site, Mystic Rhythms, which is home to my paintings, poems and a large collection of creative self-portraits. All my photos and words directly relating to Paris can be found on the Paris Set Me Free site, of course.
We have various other projects in progress, which you are welcome to visit but which are as yet simply shells as we work on the ideas. These include an entrepreneurs' an creative person's club - Lazy Pig, and a life-optimisation site - Black Witch. And we also have a great name with no idea what to do with it: Hotch Potch. Any comments or ideas would be very welcome.
To RECEIVE notification of new Kiss That Frog newsletters, with links to all the sections, simply send an empty e-mail here.
Contents Kiss That Frog Index Home Page
Please note that all the original words and pictures contained in this newsletter are copyright by default, even without this notice, but obviously the poems, photographs and articles in particular. NONE may be reproduced without the original artist or author's express permission. You are, however, more than welcome to send on this newsletter in its entirety, or the link thereto, to anyone you like, and indeed we very much hope you will do just that. If you do want to use any of the original photos, poems or articles contained herein then it is normally just a formality to ask the author for permission and then simply include an acknowledgement and a link with the new reproduction. Where I have included images I have found on the web to illustrate articles, I include the credit if possible. Please get in touch for further details here: copyright@parissetmefree.com
Thanks for reading! See you next time.
And tell people about it - please! 
Sab
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