FAITES ATTENTION! Stop whacking people with your backpacks!Photo © Ann James Massey

Coming to my studio on the metro after church one Sunday, I had my own rude “Parisian” turn.

I was seated comfortably in the open section of the coach where the doors part and the seats unfold down. A couple of tourists arrived with their backpacks in place. It was not crowded so I remained seated, as did others.

Paris Métro Photo ©2022 Ann James Massey

Suddenly, whack! I yelped in surprise and pain. One of the tourists standing in front of me had turned to her friend. Her large backpack, filled with rocks or books (so it seemed), hit me square and hard on my upper right cheek, missing my eye by only a centimeter. Not a pip from her, not an “excuse me,” nothing. I reached up and punched her well covered arm to catch her attention. She looked at me blankly and I angrily stared at her while carefully…

Shortly after I moved to France, I complained to Henri Bérenger (then friend, now my better half) that the French spoke too fast. His dead-on reply was, no, they did not…I just did not understand. 

One Sunday some weeks later, I was coming out of my church (The American Cathedral) and walking down Avenue George V when a bunch of schoolboys ran up to me and asked me something in French. I did not have a clue as to what they said, so I answered simply, “Je ne parle pas français,” which means I do not speak French…in French. Rather an oxymoron when you think about it.

As I turned and continued on my way, I heard one of them say, “What’d she say?” “I don’t know. She spoke too fast.”

The American Cathedral in ParisPhoto © 2001 Ann James Massey

I whirled around and walked back to them talking in an exaggerated drawl, “Hi, I’m from Texas. Can I help you?”

Turns…

There is no doubt I love Paris, but there are some things a girl from Southwest Texas misses. The hardest part is the sky

Today Paris has a multitude of ways and venues to feed the less fortunate, though history has not always proved so generous. For example, the four-and-a-half-month siege of Paris during the Franco Prussian war was devastating and some ways of staving off starvation can only be described as uniquely French.

Still manna from above is always welcome.

After all, in his early days in Paris, it has been said that Ernest Hemingway found that the city provided cheap sustenance when he would capture pigeons in the Luxembourg Gardens to supplement his diet.

As a youngster from 1935-1941, Henri Bérenger (my better half) lived on the Avenue de Paris leading to the Palace of Versailles. Therefore, the gardens were his playground. He remembers well riding the ancient “carrousel” there and spearing the brass rings with his stick, but he does not remember going there during the German occupation.…

Despite being one of the largest cities in the world, Paris is a very safe city, with negligible violent crime considering its size.

X marks the locations of Ann’s ateliers in Paris and Ivry-sur-Seine, The red A in the 15th marks the location of Ann’s apartment ©2022 Google Maps

One of the challenges of being an artist in Paris is finding affordable atelier space.  By 2010, it had become impossible to work any longer in a tiny corner of our 38 sq. m (410 sq. ft.) apartment where I had painted for 15 years.  Thus started my artistic shuffle through six diverse and for the most part, progressively larger shared studio locations.

My first was in the Passage de la Boule Blanche near the Bastille in the 12th arrondissement;

then to the 2nd in the heart of Paris in an 18th Century building on Rue d’Aboukir for 4 years;

Ann’s studio on rue d’Aboukir Photo © 2010 Ann James Massey Ann’s studio on rue d’AboukirPhoto © 2010 Ann James Massey

followed by a 1930’s art deco State owned building 10 minutes from our apartment in the 15th;

Ann’s…