pt at large

pt in paree:an american in paris

Forget about “Old Europe.” While Paris is as old world as it gets, the City of Light has been a watering hole for change ever since the Romans built administrative offices on the Left Bank of the Seine centuries ago.

At any given time, a Parisian is either talking on a cell phone, eating, drinking coffee, or seated in a cafe doing all three. I assume they work someplace but that’s an afterthought. When they pull up a tiny chair at a sidewalk café, they extricate themselves from the business of the day - the world can wait.

ptatlarge has arrived in late spring and tout le monde strains to be outdoors on a spectacularly blue sky Sunday.  The ones with the maps are the tourists. On any given day, their array of digital devices soak up gadzillions of pixels to capture the history, art, architecture, monuments, squares and scenes on the river Seine.

click on any photo to enlarge it
The world-class Paris Metro hums through stations every two to five minutes. Electronic signs display the names of the trains coming and the time they’ll arrive, and they damn well arrive when the display says they will. The only thing they have in common with their cousins in NYC or Boston is the graffiti sprayed or scratched onto the surfaces.

You can reach any district in the city, from seedy Monmartre to swanky Louvre in minutes. Over 4 million people a day use the Metro. Occasionally a dapper man with an accordion sets up inside the door. For a few magical moments, it feels like the spirit of Edith Piaf, “The Little Sparrow,” floats through the quiet rumble of the train.

 Up on the surface, ooo la la, Paris is visually stunning. The Boulevard Périphérique that rings the city seems to have locked it into an architectural time warp. Look down the narrow side streets, many of them still cobblestone, and you’re gazing at streets that resemble an eighteenth century etching.

Paris is stubbornly retaining its sense of scale. Six stories is about the limit for most buildings. Paris is so totally non-American. No big box stores, steel and glass skyscrapers, miles of blazing neon. It doesn’t seem to be devoured by a consumer economy. Its swagger devolves from its history not its height.

Considering the whopping number of cars jockeying through rues and boulevards, the degree of horn honking is minimal. But the whine of motorcycles, which are like a plague of locusts, is often overwhelming. And yes, you can still spot a cyclist with a two-foot baguette or two poking from the backpack.

Is it a coincidence that the word insouciant is derived from French? I’m not naïve enough to think that Parisians don’t have family problems, marriages on the rocks, or business failures but there’s an uncommon amount of laughter and smiling going on here. Does drinking wine with lunch make that much difference?

And where is the hauteur? I see smokers, animated sidewalk cafe story tellers, waiters who bring food and drink on time then let me sit and watch the world go by, water trucks daily rinsing the streets, tons of really small cars that can park on a postage stamp and use thimbles full of high priced gasoline, but I experience none of that Gallic disdain that I’ve been warned about. 

I walk by bakeries and brasseries and am lifted into another dimension with the aromatics of baking bread or garlic being sautéed in butter. And I drink vin ordinaire for less than three bucks a glass. Could my high school French be that disarming to the locals? I begin to think that this whole French arrogance thing has been cooked up by the Italian Ministry of Tourism.

Paris seems  to be in a state of equilibrium in which traffic jams, strikes, noisy elections are taken in stride. The legacy of writers, poets, painters, revolutionaries, and royalty here is breath taking - Picasso, Monet, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Hemingway, Stein, Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette, Rodin, Degas - the list is longer than several baguettes. With this history, why would the Parisians even think we Americans were worth the effort to get haughty about?

It’s not paradise. Paris hasn’t escaped the political malaise that has crept into the mainstream life of other urban centers. It has growing pains as we do. It’s just not in a rush to crush its past to embrace its future.

Back here in my home territory, spring is in full bloom - forsythia, daffodils, and cherry blossoms ignite the landscape long dreary from winter.

But, ahhh, I miss the magic of those narrow cobbled streets, the church steeples, the public squares - both the tiny jewels and the colossal - and the proud mantle of history that drapes itself so un-self-consciously over the City of Light. April in Paris was magic.

Mike Daisey's "Invincible Summer"

INVINCIBLE SUMMER

Created and performed by Mike Daisey
Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory
April 4-29, 2007 at Zero Arrow Theatre
Zero Arrow Street, Cambridge, MA 617.547.8300
http://www.amrep.org/invincible/

Mike Daisey’s stories seem to spin straw into gold. He riffs on the weather in Seattle, wedding toasts, parental divorce, his move to New York City in an oppressive August heat wave, the New York City subway system, and the morning of September 11, 2001 which found him in lower Manhattan drinking coffee and preparing to deliver an overdue book manuscript to his publisher. This is what became his “Invincible Summer.”

Photos from amrep web site
For his show at Zero Arrow Theater, Daisey sits on a chair at a wooden table a few feet from the first row. His only props - a glass of water and a lamp. At the beginning of each vignette of his monologue, he glances for a few seconds at what appears to be an outline, then spins the story. This is steeplechase theater. The careening highs and lows of Daisey’s emoting opens us up to our own experiences with grief, anger, loss, hate, and love. His use of humor, irony, and a face and voice of enormous elasticity, act as foils for the denser parts of his stories.

Aside from his experience of 9/11, Daisey’s stuff is much the same as our own, but retold a million times better. If you’ve ever been in the spotlight as you spun a story at a dinner table, you get a sense of how hard it is to keep an extended story alive. Daisey has a natural way of caroming off audience response and using it to gather intensity as the story resolves. With no smoke and mirrors in sight, he connects every strand at the end of ninety minutes.

Daisey spends months refining the vignettes and delivers them extemporaneously. ”We’re navigating the space together. I’m aiming for the truth without boundaries between me and the audience," Daisey said in a “Talk Back” session after a show last week. This is the 19th time he’s performed “Invincible Summer.” He has nine monologues in various stages of development.

Daisey started performing in an unheated garage in Seattle ten years ago. He’s been a guest on The Late Show with Dave Letterman and been heard on NPR.

“Moments happen that shift your life. All that happened before that becomes nostalgia. 9/11 and my parents’ divorce are two examples,” he said. Mike Daisey’s gift to the audience: On the way out of the theater, you find yourself wondering where those shifts took place in your own life.

Daisey’s upcoming productions at Zero Arrow Theater
Tongues Will Wag - Mike Daisey's newest monologue is about dog culture, baby culture, and the essential choices we all face. Special workshop performance May 8 only - tickets $20 - call 617.547.8300.

MONOPOLY!
May 1-5, 2007

Professional fisherman Dave Cornell reels in audience at Westport library event

Real fishermen see the glass as half full. When Dave Cornell watched ice forming on the Westport River during the gray days of the early March, he looked on the bright side. Only a few more months and we'll be fishing for stripers again, he smiled to himself.

Now that April has arrived, fishing season looms even closer.

Like most fishermen, Mr. Cornell enjoys telling stories. He told a few on March 15 when the Westport Library presented a program titled, "Fly-Fishing with Dave Cornell." The event was sponsored by the Westport River Watershed Alliance and the Westport Fishermen's Association.

A cabinetmaker in the winter in Dartmouth where he has lived with his wife Linda for the past 25 years, Mr. Cornell is on the water from late spring until deep into the fall. By 1994 it had become clear that he washopelessly hooked on fishing. He decided to bait and switch and turned an avocation into a vocation. He's been a professional fishing guide since then.

Mr. Cornell is as good at reeling in an audience as he is at catching fish in Buzzards Bay. His slide presentation was chock full of information useful to beginners and experienced anglers alike. As you listened to him, you could infer that a good fisherman must be observant and patient. Mr. Cornell has studied the characteristics of local game fish, cataloged the places he has fished, the flies he used, and the conditions that produced the best results.

Mr. Cornell has tried using live bait, lures, and trolling and could probably figure out a way to scoop them up with his bare hands but the method he loves the most is fly-casting.

The first thing he cleared up is that he doesn't fish with flies. "Salt water flies are meant to represent bait fish whereas fresh water flies are representing insects a lot of the time," he said.

He showed pictures of flies representing silver side minnows, the most common bait fish in our area. The flies may not look the same as a minnow to us but they are the right size and shape and can get a fish's attention when it moves just like a minnow. Larger flies used might represent scup or even baby crabs.

"I think everyone would agree that the number one fish that people go after in this area is the striped bass," Mr. Cornell said. "Stripers come in all shapes and sizes virtually an unlimited supply of school sized fish here and in Buzzards Bay."

Stripers can reach hefty sizes. It isn't unusual to hook 25 pounders. The best way to catch them is to learn how they hunt their prey themselves, he said.

Second on the list of predator fish are bluefish, Cornell said. While stripers lie in wait to ambush prey, the more sleek bodied bluefish chase them down. Other game fish in the area are false albacore, bonito, and summer flounder.

Photo: Timothy Leary

"We have world class fishing around here, Mr. Cornell said. "You could spend your whole life fishing here and you wouldnât be wasting your time. You've got flats fishing where you can go sight casting, deep channels for fish with sinking lines, and rocky shorelines where surf breaks when water is rough."

An observant pair of eyes is as important as good rods or reels. A little bit of agitation on the surface might indicate that bait fish are underneath. Little bubbles or wakes might mean a school of fish is feeding underneath. A "blitz" of birds in the air grabbing minnows means bigger fish are chasing them to the surface. All of it means it's time to cast a fly into the water. An experienced angler can cast a fly 80 feet.

Outside of the Westport River, Mr. Cornell's fishing grounds are Buzzards Bay from Sakonnet Point to Dartmouth and across the bay to the west end of the Elizabeth Islands. It's not necessary to have a large boat to catch large fish. Mr. Cornell uses a 20-foot Sea Craft as his primary boat. He carries a push pole for shallow water and a small electric motor for approaching fish quietly. He uses an 18-foot Johnboat with a poling platform for fishing the rivers and estuaries.

No boat? No problem, says Mr. Cornell. Many areas of our rivers are wadeable. The tide scours deep holes around points in the river that often hold small to occasionally big stripers and bluefish. Outside the river, try standing on a rock near big boulders, rough water, and a drop off to deeper water.

Mr. Cornell showed slides of trusty old navigation charts his family used for years and showed digital and aerial photos of local fishing grounds. "My favorite things to look for are boulders, deep water, and flats," he said.

What can't be conveyed on film is the attitude of a dedicated fisherman. Anglers like Cornell enjoy the hunt as well as the catch. Sure, they love outsmarting the fish but they love the smell of the salt air, the ever-changing color or sea and sky, and the sense of getting away from it all. And it takes a true sport fisherman to release a thirty-pound striper he or she has just landed.

"When's a good time to go fishing?" Mr. Cornell mused. "Whenever you have time to go," he said with a grin.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Some of Dave Cornell's favorite spots are:

*Hen & Chickens Reef

*Outlets of Allens Pond, Slocum River, Gosnold Pond

*Pockets of deep water south of Cuttyhunk shoreline

*Quick's Hole north side

*Robinson's Hole

From shore:

*Tip of Gooseberry Island

By Paul Tamburello

Waltz into Matilda's

Matilda’s Breakfast, Lunch, and Catering
1 A Crawford Street
Watertown, MA 02472
Phone: 617.926.0700
Monday - Friday 7 am - 5 pm, Saturday 9 am - 2 pm
http://matildasmenu.com/index.html

You gotta love a tiny out-of-the-way sandwich shop that lines its walls with miniature tin models of stoves, refrigerators, and cupboards circa 1950. With old-fashioned pressed tin covering the ceiling and walls down to the wainscoting, this place practically hollers “Retro!”

Every town needs a little gem like this - a quirky, friendly place with an utter lack of pretense and a conviction to serve good food. ptatlarge has spent the past several days cheerfully working his way through the lunch menu and watching the petite place in action.

Stepping through the door practically guarantees a “How are you today?”(often by name) from one of the smiling faces behind the order counter a few feet away. Once you’ve made your choice from the big menu hanging over the chest high counter, one of several staff gets busy amongst the griddles, gas burners, coolers and bins. “Wait” isn’t on the menu here.

On one of my visits, a group of five strapping guys who looked like they could inhale the contents of an industrial refrigerator squeezed out of a sedan and filed inside. Within ten minutes, they were chowing down on sandwiches and side orders in the yellow, quietly cheerful six-table dining room adjacent to the counter area.

Slick, chrome and recessed lighting eateries abound. Matilda’s is unapologetically low tech. Red and white checked oilcloth covers the tables and no effort is made to hide the worn linoleum floor or glam up the furnishings. It’s easy to find a reason to return to a clean, uncomplicated refuge like this, where the food is more important than the furnishings.  Food is served on unbreakable, probably bulletproof yellow Melamine dishware that was a hallmark of the 1950s and may have a half-life second only to plutonium. In here, it’s charming.

The lunch menu features Specialty Sandwiches ($6.50), Classic Sandwiches ($4.75- $6.75), Burgers and Subs ($5.25-$7.00), Hot Specialty Sandwiches ($5.50- $7.25), and Salads, Soups and Sides.

Bread makes or breaks a sandwich menu. Matilda’s bread, uniformly fresh and chewy, is from Iggy’s or Blue Diamond. With eleven kinds of cheese and ten kinds of bread/baguette/wrap, your mouth will begin to water as you contemplate your options.

My first day’s choice was The Barney: moist chicken salad with golden raisins and cashews, caramelized onions and jack cheese on bulkie roll. The cool chicken salad was set off with a little surprise warmth of the caramelized onions. Sandwiches arrive with a small mound of cole slaw, finely chopped with a hint of sweetness and a crunchy pickle ($6.50)

Day Two - Matilda’s features a small list of sandwiches and soups (stock and ingredients made on the premises) that will be specials for that week. Adventurously, I order the Eastern Standard special: sautéed ginger sesame broccoli, with mushrooms and onions sautéed, grilled chicken or steak, sesame noodles in a tomato wrap ($7.25). I chose the chicken. The effect is like eating Chinese in a wrap. Quite tasty but messy to pick up.  Don’t plan on eating this in a car. A cup of tangy, thick tomato rice soup with a hint of dill goes down easily as an accompaniment.

My lunch companion orders the Abigail: solid white tuna, capers, lettuce, tomato and muenster on bulkie roll ($6.50) and comments he would have liked a more liberal dusting of capers.

Day Three - The carnivore in me takes over. I order The Butch: tender, medium-rare roast beef, marinated red peppers,  boursin cheese and sliced cucumber on a fresh baguette. Delicious.

Potato and ham soup is the special, “Made this morning,” says the friendly woman behind the counter. Three minutes later, I’m sucking down soup with a deliciously smoky ham flavor - small cubes of potato and bits of ham in a milky base of pureed potatoes. A handful of green peas give it a little jolt of color. Perfect for this chilly March day.

“I had to come in for your delicious scones!” a woman exclaims as she sweeps through the door. Placed at eye level at the order counter, the scones, muffins, and cookies practically ambush unsuspecting customers. “How good?” I ask. “The best, they melt in your mouth,” she says with conviction. As if I needed another reason to return here.

In a neighborhood with no other stores, Matilda’s is one of those places you pass when you’re on the way somewhere else. That doesn’t mean it’s remained undiscovered.

“About 40% of our business is catering,” says owner Wesley Finnemore. The black Toyota Scion parked next to the store gets a daily workout delivering platters to nearby businesses. The walk-in clientele includes regulars from office buildings in the next neighborhood and beyond, like the state trooper who always orders the “Shrink.” (Slices of honest to goodness turkey, cornbread stuffing with mushrooms, onions and celery,and cranberry sauce in a whole wheat wrap - exquisite, as I found out in a subsequent visit - one of the best I've ever eaten.)

“I worked for twelve years in many of Boston’s high end restaurants,” say Wesley, who has worked at Lumiere, Radius, and Abe and Louis. He’s owned Matilda’s since August 2005. “The one thing I learned is that hospitality matters, even in a hokey little place like this.” The vibe here feels like your best friend’s kitchen.

By the time I work my way through the breakfast menu, I’ll be on a first name basis with the entire staff.

Whether they know your name or not, you’ll feel welcomed at Matilda’s. And you’ll certainly feel well fed.

Gil and Jo Fernandez: the wind beneath Westport ospreys' wings

“In Celebration of the Lives and Work of Gil and Jo Fernandez”

Saturday, March 31, 2007
Friends Academy
Dartmouth, MA

Shadows of ospreys gracefully gliding over Westport’s rivers and estuaries are a welcome sight every spring. Two Dartmouth personalities casting deep but unseen shadows that have long been associated with the presence of these majestic flyers are the late Gil and Jo Fernandez. Last Saturday a community of friends, relatives, neighbors, birders, and just plain grateful citizens gathered at Friends Academy in Dartmouth for an event titled “In Celebration of the Lives and Work of Gil and Jo Fernandez.”

 Gilbert Foster Fernandez passed away on February 18, 2007 and Josephine Lamb Fernandez died on July 2, 2000, but this was not designed to be a somber occasion. Triggered by Mr. Fernandez’s recent death, the event was organized spontaneously and privately by Sarah Storer of the DNRT, Betty Slade, Mike Boucher of the Paskemansett Bird Club, and Gina Purtell, Director of the Allen’s Pond Sanctuary.

“We’re here to celebrate two wonderful lives of people who have contributed so much to the world and our local area,” said David Cole, Westport River Watershed Alliance president and master of ceremonies.

Larry Dean of Westport holds photo of one of the platforms he and Gil Fernandez erected.  Mr. Dean liked the job so much he spent fifteen years helping Gil Fernandez build more platforms.

Six speakers delivered remembrances about Gil and Jo Fernandez as bird watchers, cooks, teachers, hosts, world travelers, and osprey defenders. Displays of newspaper stories dating back to 1939, slide shows and videos on laptop computers, paintings by Arthur Moniz, and a huge time line covering the length of the  auditorium stage featured aspects of their lives.

 Hope Atkinson, a friend of sixty years, warmed the crowd up with a story about a potluck supper at the Paskemansett Bird Club. Gil, “who could be counted on to bring something delicious, arrived with an elegant heirloom tureen of steaming hot stew. We lapped it up with lip smacking pleasure. When the tables were cleared Jo asked if we all had enjoyed the tasty stew. She then announced that we had dined on the raccoon who had raided an osprey nest. ‘He ate the osprey eggs so we ate the raccoon’, she said, ‘Now that’s justice!’”

Kathleen Anderson, the first director of the Manomet Bird Observatory, recalled a time Gil was showing a group how to band birds. When he discovered they were a bilingual group, he delivered the rest of his lesson in perfect Spanish.

The Fernandez's former daughter-in-law and their two great grandsons

Jim Baird of the Massachusetts Audubon Society taught a Bird Biology class to Gil and Jo forty years ago. He briefly summarized the Fernandez history back to 1963 when Gil called the society to report he and Jo had found a new osprey nest. Gil’s and Jo’s arrangement to import the osprey eggs the Coast Guard was removing from buoys in the Chesapeake Bay and place them under nesting ospreys is now the stuff of legends.“There were eleven nests in the late 60s and now there are over 75 with more than 100 fledged each year,” Mr. Baird said.

Gil also loved to ham it up. When he made only the second sighting of a black tailed warbler in North America, he made a photo presentation called “Hoods in the Woods.”

Gordon Johnson, founder of the Paskamansett Bird Club, traveled widely with his wife and Gil and Jo Fernandez. Johnson poetically summed up a friendship that spanned decades and several continents with a touching poem titled “Verse in Memoriam of Gilbert and Josephine Fernandez.” The final verses encapsulate all that Saturday’s crowd could wish for an extraordinary pair of people.

…”with your great smile and knowing way,
You helped many a cause day after day.
We’ll miss you very much Jo and Gil, that’s for sure,
You made your mark on earth, long may it endure.
It was a long journey and you did your best,
May the Lord hold you both in his arms while you rest.”

Several of Gil and Jo Fernandez’s family, including in-laws, grandchildren and great grandchildren attended the celebration.

Terry Fernandez, the Fernandez’s youngest son, came from Santa Fe, New Mexico with his daughter Cassady. Mr. Fernandez offered an inside view of growing up in the home of “naturalists of every stripe.” His parents believed in the value of travel and education. “They dragged me along on many trips. I saw hundreds of thousands of gannets, more than I ever thought possible,” he said.

Terry Fernandez talks to Bill Owen, owner of Merrylegs Farm in South Dartmouth, who watched him take his first riding lessons in the mid forties.

Mr. Fernandez remembered that his parents always had birds around - crows, owls, and cedar waxwings among others. With a wry smile, he remembered telling a friend about to visit his home that “my parents have their eccentricities.” The friend found this to be startlingly accurate when the family pet owl was placed and fed at the kitchen table along with the rest of the family. “It was very interesting being their son,” he summarized with a bemused grin.

“Our friendship was a simple one of Saturday morning coffee or an evening glass of burgundy,” said Sarah Storer Rickson, a close friend of Gil’s. “We spent time raking leaves, going to the dump, watching an elderberry bush on the farm get picked clean by a flock of starlings in fifteen minutes flat,” she recalled. Ms. Storer read Gil Fernandez’s favorite poem,  “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

The formal program concluded with a video excerpt of a 1989 PBS series, “Nature.” Gil and Jo Fernandez are shown in their element on the river. At one point, Gil Fernandez, in a teacher’s metaphor, says, “I like to call this my osprey orchard because when you see these sticks on all these towers here it resembles an orchard. The results are fruitful, the birds bring forth their youngsters, and they enrich the world.”

Like their beloved ospreys, the labors of Gil and Josephine Fernandez bore fruit and enriched the world. They both took the road not taken by others, “the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”