Paris, Greenery, and Learning While Walking

The Coulée verte René Dumont—Paris’s 4.7-kilometer greenbelt built upon the remnants of a raised set of railroad tracks and which includes the Viaduc des Arts with a series of shops featuring the works of artists and artisans—is not unique. There are, among others, the similar bits of pedestrian paradise in New York—the High Line—and in San Francisco’s expansive Tunnel Tops park above the reconstructed roadway that replaced the raised bypass running through the Presidio to connect the Marina District to the Golden Gate Bridge. But it doesn’t have to be unique to be spectacular; it’s an invitation to lift oneself above the busy city streets and immerse oneself in an extended period of learning and contemplation while strolling through a set of gardens that can’t help bringing us relief from noise and crowds and commerce.

It takes us several minutes to find the entrance to the Coulée verte after we step outside the Bastille subway station. The map we are using doesn’t clearly mark an entrance, and the sensory overload from all the people, shops, mixture of old and new buildings, and enticing side streets threaten to completely derail this planned immersion into another learning space before it is even underway. But Licia and I are determined learners. We want to see and experience what we set out to learn by walking that raised path, so we make mental notes to come back another day for further explorations and focus on the lessons that call to us today.

As is often the case, the initial journey to reach the “classroom” pays off immediately. After we climb a set of stairs and gain access to the beginning of what will initially be a long, somewhat narrow landscaped path with lush green vines and shrubs and vibrant purple iris that opens up at unexpected intervals into larger spaces, we linger on benches. Watch women engaged in Tai Chi. Look down into the city streets from angles not normally accessible in this densely populated city. And remind ourselves that any learning experience grows in intensity when interspersed with periods of reflection.

We incorporate the act of taking photographs into the process of learning about and absorbing what we are seeing. We generally stop. Observe. Linger. Make an effort to become aware of fragrances as well as the sound of robins, sparrows, and doves that make each setting what it is. And only then do we try to frame a photograph in a way that makes us see it differently than it initially appeared to us. Eyes to setting to photograph then back to setting and eyes in a completely immersive learning experience which makes it memorable. And transformative. Suggestive of how all learning might so easily be approached if we were to give it the time it deserves rather than racing through it to acquire a grade or certificate of completion that is quickly set aside and easily forgotten.

I draw myself back into the moment. Realize again that the views of nearby buildings are magnificent. There is one with an impressive band of sculpted figures calling attention to its top floor—something its own inhabitants probably rarely, if ever take the time to notice, appreciate, and enjoy. Another building hints at Art Deco roots, but is playfully given a modern look through the addition of at least a couple of dozen hanging pots—blues, reds, yellow, terra cotta—filled with plants; it all suggests an apartment where the plants have taken over the entire unit and now are spilling out onto the balcony and threatening to run down the side of the building and, in a moment of complete rebellion and abandon, take over the entire neighborhood. The side of yet another stone structure that helps form the viaduct has terraced levels of greenery flowing as if the plants were water streaming toward a basin at the foot of the entire wall.

Our walk takes us through a tunnel with walls featuring painted works and sculpture. An unexpected detour when police route us off the Coulée verte to pass a section that has been temporarily closed off puts us at street level, eyeball to eyeball with some of those spaces now featuring the work of artists, architectural model makers, and other craftsmen whose proximity to each other creates a view of what is possible when artists and artisans feed off of and are inspired by each other. A small set of what appear to be publicly maintained gardens. A set of undisturbed tracks reminding us of what was here long before we were. And, finally, to the end, where we are routed back onto a city street. An invitation to find lunch at a nearby bistro. And a reminder that, in walking and observing, we learn far more than we had hoped to learn about our surroundings. And ourselves.

NB: This is the ninth in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

Paris and Learning With the Angels

There are angels, angels everywhere, in Paris. At least, that’s the impression I have while reading Rosemary Flannery’s charmingly engaging book Angels of Paris: An Architectural Tour Through the History of Paris and sinking into her numerous sensual photographs accompanying her text, long before arriving here a couple of weeks ago. But after walking around for several days looking for them in public spaces and on buildings, I realize how much time and effort Flannery spent seeking them out. Photographing them. Researching them in a variety of local libraries. Writing about them. And sharing them with locals as well as with readers all over the world through her book and through some of the interviews she has done. Because, as our second week in Paris begins, three of us (my wife, a friend, and I) meet her in the Place Saint-Michel to begin a private three-hour Angels of Paris walking tour with her as rain softens the already luminescent streets of Paris.

She is the consummate teacher/trainer/learner. She loves her subject and, more importantly, loves opening that subject up to others by immersing them in her world. It would be one thing for the three of to stand there in the Place Saint-Michel with a copy of her book, comparing the lovely photograph to the large-scale figure of Saint Michael standing before us on the vanquished, writhing Lucifer above the flowing water of the fountain which the bronze statue dominates. It’s quite another to realize nearly half an hour passes unnoticed with us standing there captivated, enraptured, and engaged as she sets the context for the tour by talking with us—not at us—about the angel, the history of that lovely work of art, the architectural setting that makes the experience of spending time with that particular angel something extending beyond awareness of the passage of time—all the while, word by wondrous word, drawing us into the world inhabited by this and other angels. This is interactive learning—learning at its best. A reminder of what we should attempt to create and recreate each we enter a sacred space of learning with those who are our co-conspirators in the learning process. Comprised of interplays of questions, comments. Exchanges as lovely and as conversational as a piece of chamber music in which each player uses a specific instrument to create something so tightly intertwined that, while it is happening, it seems without beginning and without end. As focused on us as on what we are exploring. And, ultimately, memorable. Transformative. Leaving us hungry for even more.

As we leave Place Saint-Michel and meander through the narrow streets of Paris’s Latin Quarter in search of other angels, Flannery employs the art of storytelling to further draw us in. Not just telling us about the beautiful cherubic angel carved into the architectural element above the door to a home once owned by someone who sent many to their deaths—the “Executioner’s Angel.” Or the angels encircling the spire above Sainte-Chapelle. Or those that are part of the oldest public clock in Paris, in the tower of the Conciergerie. She leavens this immersive learning experience with some of the stories behind how she researched and wrote the book. Carrying around a ladder so she could stand in just the right position to capture precisely the photograph she knew she had to capture. Wearing a dark coat that apparently made her so distinctive that one passerby asked her, as she was photographing yet another angel, whether she were a spy.

It doesn’t take me long to realize we are engaged in far more than an art and architecture tour. Flannery herself, acknowledging the sense she has of the angels in her life, rekindles in me a long-held belief that we are, nearly every day, surrounded by unnoticed angels. Those who seeing us about to step into the path of an oncoming automobile, gently pull us back, then vanish into a crowd as if they were never there. Those who see us struggling to find change while purchasing something in a local shop, reach into their own pockets, pull out a coin to make up for what we temporarily lack, nod demurely, and are gone so quickly we barely have a chance to thank them. Those who free us from an ersatz escape room. Or fix a lens that has popped out of the frame of our glasses. Or liberate trapped luggage from a locked, unmoving elevator. Or offer us sanctuary when we unexpectedly find ourself in the middle of a large-scale political demonstration. Those who attend the onsite and online classes that we facilitate, set aside their fears and trepidations, and engage so completely with what we are all doing that they make the learning experience far more deep, far richer, than it would have been without their presence. Those who come to us for mentoring, spend precious time with us ostensibly seeking guidance and support, and then return to what they were doing, having given us far more than we could ever give to them.

The tour, as planned, ends after three hours, but the conversation continues over lunch in a restaurant so full of life that I can’t help but suspect that angels are working in the kitchen. Flannery, the three of us who took the tour, and another friend who joins us for the meal linger as long as possible, overseen by whatever angels conspired to bring us all together. And when she finally has to leave to prepare for another tour late in the day, we trust our angels to continue to protect us and to guide as we wander aimlessly for another hour or two. Learning. Absorbing. Finding angelic inspiration all around us in and above the streets of Paris. And through continuing conversation cultivated on the wings of angels.     

NB: This is the eighth in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

Paris, Learning, and Letting Go of Baggage

Standing in the lobby of our friends’ apartment building earlier this week, I am observing something I wished I were not seeing: the closed doors of an elevator. With me on one side of it, in the lobby. And our suitcases, on the other side. Just a foot or two away. And yet, since they are unretrievable, locked in the elevator, they might as well be worlds away.

Everything, up to this moment, has seemed so simple. (Well, OK, maybe not everything. There was that evening when we were trapped in the lobby of the first place where we were staying. And the moment when one of the lenses of my glasses popped out of the frame before we even entered the airport to begin our journey. And the moment when the power goes off in our flat even though all we have done is turn on an oven and an electric teapot. And the moment I was inside the entry gates to a subway station and Licia was still outside because we had somehow used up the last of the tickets we had purchased on the card she was forlornly holding in her hand. And and and.) All we are trying to do, as I stare at our all-too-distant bags, is complete the move with a checkout time of 11 a.m. from one (large) flat, shared with a friend during the first week of our time here in Paris, to a smaller place with a 3 p.m. check-in time and close to our two Parisian friends (Peter and Regis). But this moment is in a class all its own.

Yes, as friends suggest after I begin describing the luggage locked in its own personal escape room, it is customary to lose luggage during a flight, not long after arriving at a destination. But we have never claimed to take a traditional approach to our travels or anything else who choose to do. We are pioneers, dammit. We are going to follow our own path. Beat our own drums. And stare forlornly at our luggage when it is trapped in an elevator, and there is no immediate way to retrieve it.

The luggage-in-an-escape-room situation is the result of the elevator being so small that it can either accommodate one person and one bag at a time or two bags and no people. (I hope you are already learning, from my choice to go with two bags and no people, that there definitely is a right answer and a wrong answer in this situation.) We put the bags in the elevator to send them down to the lobby—three floors below us—and I descend by way of a spiral staircase to meet and retrieve them. (An aside: it’s interesting to notice the symbolism inherent in descending/spiraling down in a situation like this in retrospect. This might be a good time to take another class or workshop in spotting and identifying literary symbolism before rather than after a scene is put into play.) Having missed the forewarnings, I arrive in the lobby, pull on the elevator door, and discover it still is locked. Assuming it may take a few seconds for the door to unlock, I wait and try again. And again. And again. (As my friend Jared Bendis suggests, we will continue playing a game until we realize there is no hope of winning; then we walk away.)

I obviously can’t walk away. I wait for Peter, Regis, and Licia to call the elevator back to their floor so they can begin using it to join me. But, of course, they can’t join me by way of the elevator. The doors remain firmly shut when it arrives before them. Because the bags obviously somehow shifted just enough to be holding the inner door in place. And without the inner door functioning, the outer door will be on an extended holiday.

Peter attempts to come to the rescue by using information outside the elevator to call the elevator maintenance company. Yes, they assure us, they can send someone out. Later this afternoon. Or this evening. Or at least by sometime tomorrow.

I hear a familiar, unwanted in this situation response from Peter: Oh là la. Oh là la là la. I also hear plenty of other words I don’t quite catch, but the sense is clear. We’re going to be traveling much more lightly than anticipated when we check in to the new place later this afternoon. But, in the meantime, there is little we can do other than wait. So, knowing that our bags are safely secured in that inaccessible elevator, Peter and Regis take us back upstairs to their flat so we can sit. Talk. And, of course, watch TV a bit to pass the time. They continue our education into all things American—yes, they are in many ways more culturally attuned than we will ever be—by having us watch a couple of episodes of the Netflix series “Emily in Paris.” Which, for obvious reasons, is making me laugh uncontrollably as I recognize the familiar challenges this completely unprepared American faces as she tries to settle into Paris after flying in, with no preparation, for a year-long job in the City of Light. There’s the moment when she blows out the power in her entire building by plugging in an appliance. (You’ll have to watch that initial episode to find out what she plugs in; no spoilers here.) There’s the moment when her shower stops delivering hot water and she is told it could take a day or two or even a few weeks to have the shower repaired—and I start thinking about how long might take to have the elevator functioning again. Or the many moments when she struggles to understand or make herself understood. Art imitates life, and life imitates art, until we are unsure where one begins and one recedes until it’s all a seamless tapestry of adventures, misadventures, and layered moments that remind us that in spite of all the plans we make, life has other offerings, including ending up witnessing a major protest march when all we want to do is have a cup of coffee and read.

Afternoon melts into evening. We successfully check into the flat that will be our home for the remainder of our journey. Engage in acquiring some new vocabulary and essentials as we learn how to say toothbrush (brosse à dents) and toothpaste (dentifrice) in French to replace what remains safely ensconced inside that stationary ascenseur. (We will save, for a more advanced language lesson, the question of whether to buy une brosse à dents électrique or une brosse à dents manuelle. Remember: great learning involves providing just what the learner needs in this particular moment; the rest is icing on an overly rich gateau.) Have a wonderful dinner with Peter and Regis. Return to our room, where I am bursting at the seams to begin capturing this entire story to post it on my blog.

But that is not to be. My laptop is in the suitcase. In the elevator. In that building a couple of blocks away. But wait! I can at least prepare a draft in my notebook. Which, I realize with a sinking feeling, is also in my suitcase. In the elevator. In that building a couple of blocks away. Perhaps I can return to another episode of “Emily in Paris” to see what she does when her luggage is trapped in an elevator. But that, too, is not to be, for we can’t even find a way to turn on the television. Even Regis has tried, without success. (Turns out that you have to press one button on a remote control, then press another button. Then wait a couple of minutes for everything to begin to function. Mais oui! Everyone knows you press a series of button and then wait two minutes for the device to respond. What could I have been thinking?)

Sleep comes blissfully. As does the subsequent dawn. When light flows through the blinds. Hope springs eternal. We remain in the game. And a text from Peter tells us that our bags have been liberated. Another day of learning, exploring, wandering, and eating in Paris begins.

NB: This is the seventh in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

May Day 2024 in Paris

I have learned a lot during my first week in Paris, but I did not expect to learn what it means to be caught up in a major demonstration while far away from home.

We did not set out to see or be part of the May Day demonstrations today. Quite to the contrary, we glanced at maps of the demonstration route provided by friends here. Took a mid-morning walk along the beautiful Coulée verte René-Dumont—the nearly three-mile landscaped pathway which follows an old railway line. Returned to our flat briefly for an early afternoon break. Then deliberately headed away from where we thought the marchers were going to be, found an outdoor table at a wonderful café, ordered coffee, and sat down to what we thought would be a couple of hours of reading and relaxing.

The first hint that something is amiss is the slow-moving orderly caravan of at least a dozen police vans passing the café, heading toward the Place de la Nation. Then we start to hear intermittent explosions, as if someone were setting off smoke bombs. And when we look up to see the beginning of what eventually becomes a two-hour stream of what feels like tens of thousands of people—not the 18,000 that Reuters is (inaccurately?) estimating were there—we quickly join others in abandoning the sidewalk tables and allowing ourselves to be shepherded, by staff, into the safety of a covered area of the café with a tremendous view of what is happening. As if by magic, the staff also quickly transports and tables and chairs into the building, raises the awnings, and closes the doors as something acrid begins wafting through them and irritates our throats.

I could easily post a picture of the one demonstrator I saw being walked, by several policemen, away from the march at that moment. Or the picture of the trash receptacle that someone set on fire not far from where we are sitting. Or the woman, who as the final marchers are passing us, tries to hit one of our waiters because he is grabbing her arm and forcibly attempting to remove her from one of the chairs and tables he is setting up outside to accommodate returning customers—which clearly she is not. But this is not Dante’s Inferno. So I’ll leave that to the reporters who are looking to draw attention to the most dramatic, confrontational moments they are able to record rather than acknowledging the tens of thousands of people who felt strongly enough about the world around them to peacefully—but far from quietly—make their feelings known.

Instead, I’ll say that in spite of what our colleagues who are professional journalists are reporting, I am struck by how few altercations and how little violence I see from where I am sitting in a position of relative safety, seemingly a step removed from all that is unfolding. With approximately 300 people walking by every few minutes for nearly two hours, I might expect a steady stream of smoke bombs, broken windows and numerous confrontations much more than the brief whiffs of tear gas that blow our way, but that only happens during those first few minutes of the two-hour march we witness.

What is even more interesting to me is our differing perceptions of whatever focus there is to the entire demonstration. The news reports I’m skimming after the event ends focus on the protests against social conditions; handmade signs and printed banners in favor of better labor conditions; and a variety of other calls to action. But what I see from start to finish over a two-hour period are countless people of all ages and backgrounds calling for freedom for Palestinians and an end to attacks on Palestinians, with only one banner, near the end of that steady flow of marches, calling for Israelis and Palestinians to stop the violence and find a way to work together to bring an end to wars. The calls for labor rights, greater reactions to the global climate crisis, better treatment of women, and a variety of others issues seem to be more prevalent among those who pass us during the second half of the march—yet never completely outnumber those reacting to the ongoing tragedies and heartbreaking violence in the Middle East.

In spite of the intensity of the issues at the center of the march through this part of Paris (between the Place de la Bastille and the Place de la Nation), what is clearly visible is the same thing I have seen in other demonstrations—including those in San Francisco when our elected leaders were on the verge of taking our country into the war in Iraq. People are walking together out of a sense of commitment to what is important to them. Many of them walk quietly. Others are singing. And some shout messages through microphones and loudspeakers. There are a few marching bands, as if this were a festival rather than a demonstration designed to offer support-by-presence for causes they feel they can’t ignore. And there are sound trucks blaring music from different parts of the world.

I capture as much of this as I can with the camera in my cellphone. The signs. The banners. The seemingly never-ending passage of thousands of people. And even those poignant moments like the one in which a woman carrying a bright bouquet of flowers literally swims upstream by gently walking against the flow of the immense crowd—just as all of us, at some point, need to swim upstream and learn by observing and reflecting on what we otherwise might overlook.

These are clearly political moments. Social moments. Moments that are ephemeral and yet moments that are part of something rhizomatically spreading around the world. Moments that we may initially feel do not really matter and political expressions with which we may vehemently disagree—particularly if we are witnessing them as visitors rather than willing participants—as if we can observe them from safe places without allowing them to touch us. Yet they are also moments that we might (and should) review at some point in our future and realize, with open eyes, that they are world-shaping in what they help create.

They cannot be ignored.

They are moments that remind us that no matter how far we travel, we cannot and should not make the mistake of thinking that we ever can completely slip away from being part of what surrounds us.

NB: This is the sixth in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

Giverny: Gardens, Home, and Learning by Seeing

Photo taken in Monet’s garden

There is a stunning moment during a visit to Giverny that must transform anyone who surrenders to Monet’s home and gardens: focus on the water lilies floating in that pond, take a tightly-framed photograph, and, in looking at the results, realize that Monet’s paintings of his water lilies on display in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris and so many other museums around the world are far from being frozen moments in time. They are portals to ongoing captivating moments where life and art and learning are inextricably interwoven. Invitations to allow ourselves to flow into and become part of exquisite extended timeless moments that stimulate and overwhelm our senses beyond anything a photograph or words can capture. And they transform the way we view and experience the world.

See those water lilies onsite one time, and you will never be the same.

Which, of course, describes any first-rate learning moment. We dive into our subject. We feel it. We hear it. We smell it. We experience it. We acknowledge it and reflect upon it so its meanings and nuances completely obliterate us. We cherish it. We absorb it. And we carry it with us for the rest of our lives, transformed and reinvigorated every time we recall and re-experience it.

Arriving onsite in Giverny early enough on a damp gray Saturday morning recently to first enjoy coffee and croissants in a restaurant immersed in a prelude to flowers spread throughout the artist’s gardens, those of us who made the trip together immediately found ourselves melting into the environment. Just like a great learning space sets the mood for exquisite learning moments, the restaurant and the damp-glistening narrow streets removed all sense of time and obligations. When we walked through the entrance and strolled through the initial gardens to reach Monet’s house, we began to feel the presence of the artist and appreciate the pinks and greens and blues and yellows that make Monet’s home shimmer. The flow of light into those rooms. Even hints of the inspiration that must have caressed the artist each day he lived within the setting he so lovingly created.

The same sense of learning-through-experience that has been with me nearly every moment since I arrived in Paris more than a week ago continues to make me live each moment at least three times: once as I experienced it. Once as I become aware of how much it is transforming me by giving me glimpses into the mind and heart and soul of such a seminal figure in our cultural history. And a third time as I reflect upon it and try to capture it through these pieces on my blog. Each moment makes me appreciate how much of a commitment Monet made to create an environment that so completely supported his daily life and his creative spirit. And thinking once again about the learners with whom I have the luck to work, it makes me think of how important it is—every day, every minute we have together—to help create environments that are equally enticing, supporting, inspiring, and transformative since anything less than that robs all of us of possibilities to learn and thrive and grow that we cannot afford to overlook.

I move deeper into that house. Then spend a couple of hours—completely unaware of the passage of time—meandering through the wild profusion of fragrances, birdsong, founds of water flowing past in a nearby stream in the company of friends and strangers. Feeling the crisp morning air caressing my skin, and raindrops tickling my face and arms and the surface of the pond. I sink into the setting. Into memories of having seen the paintings in l’Orangerie a few days earlier. Into all I’ve ever read and studied about Monet and all he produced. And it comes together in a lesson that slams years of learning into a stunningly emotional moment of revelation. The revelation that what the artist captures is, above all, an essential element of what drives each of us, in our own way and at very personal levels, to be all that we can: the desire to create, reflect, share what we experience, and then repeat the process as long as we have the energy to sustain it.

When we finally leave the garden and finish a leisurely lunch back at the same restaurant that had served as a gateway to the house and gardens, we gently make the transition from that sensual paradise back into the larger world we inhabit by walking through the nearby Impressionist museum which displays wonderful paintings—and extends our understanding of and appreciation for what Monet and others have given to us. We work our way back to our car and prepare for the return to the very different, equally transformative settings of Paris in all its splendor. And, if we have learned anything worth learning, we have once again learned that every moment we fully live offers another opportunity to learn what is important to us. And how to keep it alive through everything we do.   

NB: This is the fifth in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

Paris, Crowds, and the Art of Learning

Learning anything in a formal classroom often runs the risk of engaging in learning removed from its context. While building foundations and creating frameworks, it can also be overly academic. Somewhat stultifying. Sort of like looking at a dessert you love without allowing yourself to take a bite, savor the taste, enjoy the fragrance, and relish its textures during the instant it first danced upon your tongue. Or gazing at a set of cliffs without being aware of the wind on your face or the smell of ocean spray caressing your nostrils. Or watching a sunset without feeling the air around you suddenly turn chill as day melts into dusk melts into nights that lead to sunrises and other sunsets.

I think of the hours I have willingly spent in formal language courses, or working with fantastically creative and supportive private tutors, or poring over grammar books, or struggling with literature and nonfiction in the languages I’m studying, or absorbing the vocabulary and rhythms of that language by watching television programs, viewing videos online, or listening to a radio. All useful. All productive at a certain level, as far as they go.

But it all comes back to life for me, meaningfully and enjoyably, as I am visiting wonderful art exhibitions in uncomfortably crowded museums here in Paris. Listening to the conversations all around me in French and other languages as they cajole and embrace me. Struggling to read the labels and pamphlets that introduce me to the content and provide useful information—which I can use immediately to add to my appreciation of all that in this moment surrounds and entices me—about the work into which I willingly am diving.

You could make me sit at a desk all day, drilling vocabulary into me and making me repeat it until I replicate it mechanically, without feeling, without understanding it essentially. But I can assure you I’m not going to feel and viscerally understand that a falaise is the French word for what I know in English to be a “cliff” until I’m standing here (in Paris, in an exhibition in l’Orangerie) in front of a magnificent Impressionist painting of a young woman stretched out on the ground at the seaside and gazing toward a falaise. Or, a couple of days later, strolling through the galleries of the Impressionist museum near Monet’s house and gardens in Giverny and finding myself in a gallery with paintings united under the theme of falaise. I know, when I return to California, I will once again be captivated by cliffs that line the coast north and south of San Francisco, but I also know that when I see them and briefly connect them to the word falaise, it will be the French settings that come to mind as opposed to all the cliffs in Pacifica, Big Sur, and Point Reyes that come to mind when I use that English-language word.

In the same way, when I see paintings grouped within a gallery under the theme of coucher de soleil (sunset), I begin to see and think about what the French term suggests intrinsically: putting the sun to bed, or the sun going to sleep. The vocabulary is no longer a set of tools mechanically to be employed, forgotten many times and then relearned until it is anchored into memory. It is an extension of the art, a connection to the world as it is perceived by those who use French rather than English to think about and describe their world. It is art reflecting and describing life, life reflecting and describing art, and learning as an essential act of living/breathing/embracing all that is around us.

This does not mean in any way that formal classrooms—onsite as well as online—no longer have a place in my world; they are, in fact, a part of my daily life and my ability to earn a living. But what it does remind me of is what is at the center of all I try to bring to those learning opportunities I provide: immersing my co-conspirators in learning—aka, my students—in situations that immediately connect the lessons learned to the world into which they will carry and apply those lessons. It reminds me—and the colleagues with whom I so often explore the ways we approach training-teaching-learning—that learning comes to life and becomes meaningful when we stop treating it as something that pulls us away from work or our day-to-day existence long enough to engage in it before we return to work or our day-to-day existence. When we carry the falaise and the coucher de soleil back into our workplaces and our daily existence, we acknowledge we have somehow been transformed. Have somehow connected learning, life, and yes, even art into all that we do. And in that act of connecting learning to our daily experiences and our daily experiences to learning, we work together to create a better, more compelling and stimulating playful world, a world so enticing that the concept of being bored no longer has a place in it.

NB: This is the fourth in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

Paris, Friends, and Support Through Social Learning

There are clearly parallels between entering a new learning space onsite or online and stepping into an unfamiliar city. There is a sense of anticipation as well as one of fear of failure—particularly if the city into which we are stepping is one where the language is one in which we are nowhere close to being fluent, the subway and bus system is one we have not begun to master, and even the challenge of learning how to activate the systems that unlock doors or find someone to repair our glasses when one of the lenses chooses that moment to pop out of its frame.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

In learning spaces, friends help each other; prop each other up; and, in the best situations, celebrate the positive, transformative learning moments that came from their collaborations; in immersing ourselves in unfamiliar cities, we immediately begin to make those cities feel somewhat familiar through the presence of our friends—those who timed their visits here to at least partially overlap with ours as well as those who, living here, are welcoming us as warmly as we welcome them each time they visit San Francisco.

Both in those learning spaces and in those unfamiliar and enticing new places—“classrooms” in their own right—we quickly realize that all that comes naturally, all that is familiar, suddenly is not at all available. Buying a ticket to gain access to a subway platform becomes a struggle; it is as if a lifetime of experiences has suddenly been snatched away, and even finding the right words to ask for help becomes a challenge, an exercise in redefining how we interact with the world that now surrounds us—and how, in turn, it responds to us. It changes, at a basic level, how we see ourselves.

The presence of our friends and newly-found acquaintances, on the other hand, keeps us from completely feeling adrift and disconnected—something I realize and appreciate as I willingly dive into the challenges of exploring and continuing to learn about Paris while I am handicapped by woefully inadequate knowledge of the language the Parisians speak. There is, of course, that completely liberating moment of realizing and accepting that I, like everyone else I know, am never completely alone, and none of us needs to function without the support and assistance of others. Each of us brings some overlapping experiences to the situation. And each of us brings a separate strength. Some of us, having been born in France and lived here all their lives, are here to walk us through what baffles us but is as natural to them as inhaling and exhaling is. Some of us have spent months preparing for our immersion by reading everything we can find about Paris—its history, is geography, its art, its churches, its parks—while others have continued to augment their knowledge of and comfort with the all-important art of communicating in French and translating for those of us who struggle tremendously with the language.

The central concept here is the concept of developing, nurturing, and sustaining a sense of community. One where each person brings something unique to the community. Contributes something important as well as pleasurable. And, when absent even for a moment, leaves the rest of us feeling as if the community is incomplete. And whether it is the shared and cherished moment of finding a small, welcoming sandwich shop where we enjoy a meal and conversation with each other as well as with the people who created, own, and make that inviting space what it is—a safe space for social learning in every sense of that term—or whether it is that experience of making reservations to see a popular new art exhibition in a series of very uncomfortably crowded galleries and then finding out that the reservation process didn’t work as it was meant to work, which requires us to renavigate the process of successfully gaining entry to the world-changing set of painting with which we are about to engage.

Restaurnt, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Our friendships grounded in years of common experiences grow deeper. Richer. Because we share and meet that challenge, or share a meal provided by the most welcoming and accommodating of service staff in the lovely setting of a world-class museum. Because we create new memories that bind us together more tightly than before and, as we look at Monet’s paintings of water lilies, we are simultaneously anticipating our upcoming visit to the home and garden where those exquisite images were brought into the world. Our friendships become richer as we have coffee at a table outside a café we have never seen before this moment and may well never see again. They become more firmly intertwined as we interact, together, with someone kind enough to put us back on track when we have unexpectedly taken a wrong turn.

The presence of our friends in unfamiliar settings is like the presence of colleagues with whom we struggle while engaged in a particularly challenging workshop or webinar. We thrive in our willingness to throw ourselves into the unfamiliar. To expand the sense of who we are and how we fit into the places we have entered. And we realize—and relish—that the more we push ourselves into those unfamiliar places—cities as well as learning spaces—accompanied by friends, the more we find ourselves.

NB: This is the third in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

Paris, Perspective, and Vision

The experience of having a lens pop out of the frame of my glasses is not entirely new to me. But I have to admit I am not particularly thrilled when it happens again as I’m arriving at the San Francisco Airport in preparation for a ten-hour flight to Paris.

I count my blessings: the glass didn’t crack; the lens didn’t roll through a grate and disappear into the city sewer system; the frame appears to be undamaged even if it isn’t quite meeting expectations in terms of holding a lens in place; I’m experienced enough to always carry an inexpensive pair of reading glasses to fill the most important gap that occurs when I don’t have my prescription glasses, so I am not going to be severely visually impaired as I begin the journey; and I know that while this is not an ideal temporary situation, I’ll be able to get around fairly well by using those reading glasses to translate the ants on the printed pages of my books into actual legible words and will only be facing the minor annoyance of losing the crispness of my distance vision that my progressives provide when they are not lacking a lens.

But there is the annoyance of knowing that my first views of Paris after more than a few decades away from the City of Light are not going to be as picture perfect as I would have liked them to have been. And I’m going to have to find a place, in an unfamiliar city, where I can have the glasses repaired.

The flight and our arrival in Paris go well. Using my reading glasses, I manage to continue absorbing the content of the latest book I’m reading about Paris, watch the beginning of a couple of movies that do little to hold my interest, and sleep as much as I can. As we come off the flight, I have little trouble finding my way around the airport and even, when facing an unexpected escape room in the lobby of the first of two places where we will be staying, can see well enough to eventually find my way out of the unexpected trap since my distance vision is still strong albeit a bit less focused than it once was.

Our evening stroll begins, as expected, with The Search for Food: provisions we can use to prepare breakfast the following morning, then the pleasurable exploration of the neighborhood to find an outdoor café where we can sink into our meals—rigatoni with salmon for me, a very generous serving of vegetarian lasagna for Licia. (Yes, making the transition to the culinary delights of Parisian cooking is going to be gradual for us.) And because I’m still feeling a bit off kilter without my usual glasses, I spend less time reading and more time just sitting back, glancing around at the tree-lined streets, the shuttered buildings, the increasingly soft dusk light, and the slightly out-of-focus signs which include an illustration of a young woman holding baguettes just above the entrance to a patisserie and an enormous pair of scissors hanging over a nearby barber shop.

What is becoming increasingly clear in spite of my mild visual challenges is that we are in a neighborhood with plenty of day-to-day amenities—the wine shops, bakeries, cafés, fruit and vegetable stands, and a well-stocked grocery store that has everything we need. I feel increasingly grateful, under the circumstances, that I’m engaging in visual rather than textual reading as I see familiar shapes and experience familiar fragrances rather than having to read labels to identify what surrounds me.

Time slows down. Seems to be barely moving forward. Dusk turns to a cool early-spring beautifully lit night. We stroll through lovely narrow streets with new sights revealing themselves as we follow every gentle curve or turn. We are soon in l’Étoile—the Place Charles de Gaulle, which in its center has the magnificently powerful presence of the l’Arc de Triomphe. I refuse to let frustration intrude even though I am having a bit of difficulty making out the fine details of the sculptures that make the Arc so visually inviting. I enjoy the softness of the reflected city light in that place where a dozen streets flow in star-like pattern, coming together in the circular roadway surrounding the Arc. And I become tremendously appreciative when we stumble upon two optometrist shops, in our neighborhood, that promise the delivery of quick relief from my visual impairment when they open the following morning.

We sleep. We toss. We turn. We rise.

The repairs go quickly, and the optometrist simply laughs when we ask him how much we owe him for the reinsertion of the lens into the frame. 

“I only had to turn the screw a couple of times. I can’t charge you for that,” he says as if we were long-time customers rather than people passing through his neighborhood and his life all too quickly.

We leave the shop. Walk past the Arc de Triomphe in the cold mid-morning light. All is crisp. All seems suddenly clear. And our first full day in Paris is completely underway.  

NB: This is the second in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

Paris, Escape Rooms, and Lifelong Learning

A friend, during a conversation a few days before I arrived in Paris for nearly three-weeks with my wife (Licia) and a friend (Ann) who will be with us the first few days, described with childlike wonder and glee the pleasure she has been taking in designing and entering escape rooms—those playful spaces where you willingly allow yourself to be locked into a room with other people so you can all collaborate on how to escape in the shortest time possible from the seemingly exit-less room.

This is all far from my thoughts when, arriving at the flat where we will spend the first of our three weeks in Paris, we are met by the mother of the man who rents out the flat. She lovingly and patiently shows us around. As any good trainer-teacher-learner would do, she shows us how to get into the building and makes sure we understand how everything in the flat works. Reminds us that we haven’t a care in the world and shouldn’t do anything other than have fun while we are here. Then leaves us.

Everything is perfect for about five minutes. And then her brief, informal training session begins to fall apart. Because we are tired and don’t absorb everything she tries to teach us. And because she shows us how things work without taking time to make us practice what she demonstrated.

The fun begins when, after briefly settling in, we decide to take an early evening stroll and find a place for dinner. But we don’t even make it out the door of our flat on the premier étage—the first floor of flats, one level up from the narrow shop-lined street with multi-story buildings featuring shutters and grill-work on the balconies—before we begin to stumble. Walking toward the elevator, we look—initially unsuccessfully—for the stairway she used while we brought our suitcases up in the elevator. All the doors initially look the same through my weary eyes. All seem to be entrances to other flats. It is only when the doors to the elevator are closing and my field of vision is forcibly narrowed that I realize the door across from the elevator—which I had assumed led to a flat since it had a number “1” posted on it—actually was quite different in appearance from the others (plain rather than ornately decorated as the others are, so much so that I really hadn’t seen anything other than the number before visually searching for an entrance to the stairs). So I step back out of the elevator. Look to see what is behind Door #1. And voilà! There they are: that hidden-in-plain-sight spiral staircase, descending into darkness. (Reminder to self: when working with learners, be sure to overtly draw attention to the subtle clues that help them remember what they are struggling to absorb. They might be as tired as someone who has just stepped off a cross-Atlantic flight and might not be operating at full capacity.)

The adventure in learning-a-new-environment while somewhat exhausted—not the best of conditions for any training-teaching-learning situation—is far from over. Stepping into that dark stairwell, I am unable to activate the wall switch to throw some light onto the situation, so abandon this part of the journey and gladly rejoin Ann and Licia for a quick ride down to the lobby. Exiting the elevator and now in full-alert mode, I begin looking for other hidden traps. Like the one that is immediately visible when we look from the small elevator lobby toward two consecutive sets of glass doors that separate us from the street—and we have no idea now to open the first set, which leads into a space created by walls to our left and right and those two glass doors forming a small perfectly square room with mailboxes between where we are standing and where our destination—the street in front of the building—is. It immediately becomes worse: we realize that even if we were to figure out how to open the glass door leading into the miniature lobby with the mailboxes, we have no assurance we would be able to reopen it to get back to the elevator or open the door that finally provides access to the street.

We stop. We look for options. We are stumped. Our only tools are the key to our flat and the small fob that is supposed to open doors like the ones we are contemplating. But we see no mechanism against which we can place the fob to unlock the doors. We try pointing the fob everywhere possible since there doesn’t seem to be a button to press on the fob to active it. We try pressing it against everything that looks like it might be activated by a fob—small white squares on the wall, the handles to the door, even the glass doors themselves.

Nothing.

We start pressing anything that looks like it might unlock the first of the glass doors.

Nothing.

And finally, out of sheer desperation, I begin running my fingers over the small white squares on the wall next to the interior glass window. And finally feel what my eyes were not perceiving: one of the squares has a very small lip along its bottom…which allows me to use my fingers to lightly press down on it and release the heretofore unperceived switch.

But now I’m really cautious. Apprehensive, And—admittedly—a bit excited by the challenge, for it’s clear to me that if we step into that middle glassed in space without identifying the release mechanisms—we could easily become trapped in that glass escape room, unable to re-enter the elevator lobby or exit to the street-until someone else came along to release us from captivity.

“OK,” I say with far less assurance than I am feeling, “let’s figure this out before we let that inner door close. You stay in the elevator lobby so you can hit the release switch if I can’t find my way out of the next room.”

This, of course, is not going to be easy; finding the solution to an escape room never is. I try everything—obviously looking for a similar white square that could be lifted from the bottom to release a hidden-from-view latch. Tapping the fob against everything that looks like a potential recipient for a signal from a fob. But to no avail. At which point we agree that Licia and Ann will go back to our flat to try to call the owner for a refresher lesson in Escape-From-Your-Building 101 while I continue trying to find a way out of our situation. And just when I’m assuming we’re going to spend the rest of the evening in our flat rather than on the streets of Paris, I notice a small black circular object on a wall-mounted intercom fixture next to the set of mailboxes. Which, of course, has a barely visible red light in its center. And which turns green and releases the latch back into the elevator lobby when I press the fob firmly against it. Which suggests that if I find a similar black circular object close to the door leading out to the street, I might be on the verge of finding the escape the three of us have been seeking.

When Licia and Ann return to the lobby without having yet managed to reach either of our potential rescuers, I proudly show them what had been quickly shown to us earlier this evening and just as quickly forgotten in the overload of information—the path to dinner.

It’s been a very long journey. And the evening is just beginning. Licia and I are ready to move. Ann, understandably exhausted and unnerved by all has happened since we arrived, decides to stay in for the evening. So Licia and I venture out. Find a charming market where we buy the basics for the breakfast we plan to prepare the next morning. Return to the flat to make sure Ann has comfortably settled in for the evening. Then, like the lifelong learners we are, we set out in search of a meal and a re-introduction to a city that neither of us has seen for more than two decades.

NB: This is the first in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

The Lankes Corollaries: Librarians, Learning, Activism, and the Communities They Nurture

When my mother took me for my initial visit to a bookmobile, I met my first activist: Mel Turner, the librarian who brought that vehicle to our neighborhood once every two weeks. Mel probably would have laughed at the idea that he was an activist, but his job of connecting books with readers—and readers with books—to open worlds up to us was as revolutionary an act as any that a five-year-old child could have imagined. Mel brought that bookmobile and my own world to life. He helped my mother inspire in me a lifelong love of reading, learning, and exploring the world. And he became a cherished friend—one I continued to visit whenever I went back to my hometown during a college break or, years later, to be with my family in that mid-sized Central California Valley city during holidays.

I think of Mel, his role as a lifelong-learning advocate, and all he brought to me through a friendship that eventually extended far beyond the walls of that tiny, miraculous vehicle again as I read scholar-speaker-writer-educator-advocate R. David Lankes’s fabulous article “The Lankes Corollaries.” Not surprisingly, the depths and passion with which Dave consistently addresses the role of libraries, librarians, and the communities they serve in contemporary society—as in his decade-old presentation “The Faithful and the Radicals” and so much of what he offers through his presentations and publishes in his books and on his blog—are fully on display here and certainly go a long way in reminding us that a) to ignore libraries is to ignore a community resource we continue to need and cherish, and b) to ignore the people who work in them—and use them—to actually make them libraries leaves us (mistakenly) believing that libraries have little to do with advocacy and activism, community-building, and supporting the common good.

There is much to unpack, admire, savor, and act upon in the article, but one part that makes me think of Mel—and Dave, and so many others who work in libraries and help make them what they are—is Dave’s contention that “a room full of books is a closet, but an empty room with a librarian serving their community is a library” (the third of his five corollaries); the bookmobile without Mel would not have been a library in its broadest, richest sense, and libraries onsite and online without the people who help us navigate them would be something far less transformative than they are. It isn’t as radical a concept as it might at first appear to be, and it helps us understand the difference between those lovely, ubiquitous little free libraries that have become neighborhood gathering places for readers and those spectacular “real” libraries where people nurture, support, and influence communities in positive ways—just as any activist/advocate attempts to do.

If you haven’t spent much time talking to librarians about what they do and how they attempt, through their day to day work, to change the world, it might be helpful to you to be introduced to a simple set of precepts that continues to influence and guide their work, and see how the Lankes Corollaries build upon those precepts—S. R. Ranganathan’s five laws of library science (from 1931):

1. Books are for use.
2. Every person his or her book.
3. Every book its reader.
4. Save the time of the reader.
5. A library is a growing organism.

To these precepts, Lankes adds his corollaries:

1. The  mission  of  librarians  is  to  improve  society  through  facilitating  knowledge  creation in their communities.
2. To be a librarian is to be a radical positive change agent with your community.
3. A room full of books is a closet, but an empty room with a librarian serving their community is a library.
4. Bad libraries build collections, good libraries build services, great libraries build communities.
5. A library should be a safe space to explore dangerous ideas.

All of this goes far beyond the constraints of any particular political point of view. Libraries and librarians, in spite of all the conflict they are currently experiencing through book challenges and disruptions to public programming, remain incredibly committed to doing all they can to provide access to a variety of perspectives and resources—that is part of what members of library staff do as activists, and that’s part of what I do through my involvement in the California Library Association’s Ursula Meyer Library Advocacy training program (named after the librarian who for many years ran the public library system in the same town where Mel worked and where I grew up). As Dave notes in his Corollaries, this does not mean that libraries and librarians are neutral: “Picking what tools and services a community needs is not a neutral act and it never has been. Before the 1970s public libraries wouldn’t carry paperbacks. Before the 1910s many didn’t carry novels. Before that public libraries didn’t carry fiction at all. Libraries have always depended upon specialists to use limited resources to best meet both the needs and aspirations of the community. That is not a neutral act. Ranganathan  might  have  written EVERY book its reader, but in reality, no library can collect EVERY book (or DVD, or 8mm film, or database subscription, or large print edition, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera).That’s  obvious, but this corollary is more than recognition of the obvious, it is about action and activism. Librarians are people of action; actively seeking to make a better society one community at a time”—with the involvement of the community members who contribute to making a library a library.

So once again I think of Mel, of Dave, and all the other first-rate librarians I know or have known. I think about how through the work they do, they remain some of the most influential activists/advocates I have encountered. And I’m left with what Dave writes at the conclusion of his Corollaries: “In the United States library leaders often talk about libraries as more than books. I’ve never been a fan of this line. It implies that things the library does beyond books are still  build on the foundation of materials. Yet the foundation of libraries should be the community libraries are seeking to serve. Ranganathan’s words talked about books and readers, but the spirit of his work was in service and communities.” And that’s where we all need to be. As activists. As citizens. And as fully participating members of our onsite and online communities.