Paris Snapshot

Sharing a few moments along the way

Arc de Triomphe (author photo)

As promised, I wanted to share a few moments during my travels these weeks. First stop Paris was not really time off, as I was heavily in meetings for an international communications conference, but I took every minute I could to “be there,” to savor the eclectic mix of people-watching and daily visits to the boulangerie for a croissant and café au lait. This is how every day started:

But let me offer a few moments that I expect will stick with me:

• I met a waiter in a restaurant near Montmarte, a young guy with family from Brazil. I told him some of the happiest people I’ve ever met are from Brazil. I asked him why. He said one word: “Gratitude.”

• At the communications conference headquartered at the Palais des Congrès near the Arc de Triomphe, I met a research scholar from Mexico City studying displaced Mexican journalists. He told the group that 156 journalists have been murdered in Mexico in the last year. I asked him later what keeps the others going, under such dangerous conditions. “Resilience,” he said.

• A Danish scholar studying gender roles shared his finding that Danish fathers with young children were more sensitive to environmental dangers, demonstrating empathy that was comparable to their female partners. Yet once their children were adults, the compassion gap between men and women widened again. Later, he and I discussed the probable benefits of having more women in positions of leadership.

• Eating good food, drinking good wine, savoring good conversation in Paris got me thinking on the last night about Johnny Apple, better known by his New York Times byline R. W. Apple Jr. A long time ago, I met the legendary journalist when I was freelancing out of the Times’ bureau in London. He was a person of great appetites and enormous talent, and wrote robustly about his love for food, wine, travel and politics. A year before he died, he held a big 70th birthday party at his favorite restaurant, the Paris bistro Chez l’Ami Louis. As writer Calvin Trillin later noted, quoting one of the guests about the evening and the difficult choice of what foods and wines to serve: “It’s my understanding that Apple has simplified what could be a terribly difficult choice by telling them to bring everything.”

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Next up: Heading north to Finland. Stay tuned.

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