My Stuff

https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/rwolff_umass_edu/EkxJV79tnlBDol82i7bXs7gBAUHadkylrmLgWbXv2nYq_A?e=UcbbW0

Coming Soon:

The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





Total Pageviews

Sunday, July 8, 2012

URBAN MYSTERY

Our tiny apartment here in Paris sits midway down the one-block street called rue Maître Albert [named after Albertus Magnus, the teacher of Thomas Aquinas], between Place Maubert and Quai de la Tournelle in the 5th arrondissement.  Place Maubert is a lovely space bisected east to west by Boulevard St. Germain and crisscrossed by no fewer than seven other streets.  In the middle of the Place is a very small triangular park, with a little patch of grass and a fountain.  On the east side of the park sits our café, Le Metro [so named because next to it is the Maubert-Mutualité Metro station on the Number 10 line.]  Whenever we are here, Susie and I spend a good deal of time sitting in Le Metro, drinking a kir or a café noisette and a déca allongé, and watching the world go by.

On one of the other sides of the little park are several benches, and for years now, we have watched a little old oriental lady sitting on one of the benches, hands crossed primly in her lap, sensible hat atop her head.  She has been as much a fixture as the fountain.  On rare occasions, she tosses some crusts of bread onto the grass for the pigeons, but for the most part she just sits.  She is the first person we look for when we return to Paris.

At the end of rue Maître Albert, just where it empties into the Place, is an oriental grocery shop offering an exotic assortment of fresh and dried or packaged foods, one of which – cinq épices -- is an essential ingredient in my hazelnut encrusted rabbit loins dish.  It is, or has been, called Thanh Binh, and since this is actually the heart of the Vietnamese district in Paris, it is one of a great many Vietnamese shops and restaurants in a five block radius of our apartment.  Fifty yards away, facing Thanh Binh on rue Lagrange, is another Vietnamese grocery store, Thanh Binh Jeune [i.e., Thanh Binh Junior].  Pretty clearly, when Thanh Binh’s son grew up, the old man set him up in his own shop.  Susie and I conceived the fantasy that the little old lady on the bench is Thanh Binh’s mother [and Thanh Binh Jeune’s grandmother], and was just keeping an eye on things.

The last time we were here, Thanh Binh was closed for major renovations.  Peering inside, we could see that all the shelves and display racks had been removed, new flooring was being put in, and a staircase was being constructed from the interior of the shop to the floor above.  Now, six months later, we have returned, and Thanh Binh is no more.  A new shop has opened, announcing itself as carrying Japanese and Oriental delicacies. 

Now comes the urban mystery.  The little old oriental lady is gone.  No longer does she sit on her park bench, watching Thanh Binh’s shop.  Her place has been taken by a different little old oriental lady, somewhat fuller of figure and rounder of face, but wearing very much the same sensible hat.

Can it be that the property that changed hands included sitting rights on that park bench, so that Thanh Binh’s mother was forced to vacate, making place for the mother of the new shopkeeper?  Alas, the rules of urban politesse, combined with complex language barriers, keep us from finding out.

5 comments:

Traveller said...

Hello Bob, I see you are once again navigating in the "old world"... yes those arrangements in Paris entirely possible, but you will need to have a fairly well made lever into the Cadastre to find these things out. I can imagine you are a point of discomfort there in Paris... as I recall our walks the routes from Blackstone to Swift Hall.

I even repeated your conversations to Vere Chapelle, who thought I was very credible. Well so much for Vere. Your paper of Hume's Mental Activity was to be my Thesis Topic. Nonetheless I was on my way to Viet Nam within the year. Not a tourist trip.

Over a year ago, while in Eastern Europe, I came back upon your scene with the conversations on Modal Logic and the Saul Krepki and W.vO Quine...( a bit interest for me) I would like to keep in touch a bit... I know the layout there in your neighborhood. When living in Ireland and had decided to move to the West Side in Boulogne Billancourt but somehow was talked out of it. Lovely place to visit... living there will surely offer a few complications. However you may find them ready to create new rules... just for you ;-) The French are not like everyone else but seem to choose the features they like best. Hope you do well and that we can again walk along together someday.

'till then,

All the best,

Daniel Garrigan (Gargan)
(The French claim it is a "French" name; nonetheless it has been Irish since the 17th century. Maybe some reason for that?)

John S. Wilkins said...

I am terribly sorry to contradict you on this, but actually Aquinas is Albertus' student. Albertus is much more important: he wrote on birds!

Robert Paul Wolff said...

John, I am puzzled by your comment. I said that Albertus was Aquinas' teacher, and you say that Aquinas was Albertus' student. Aren't they the same thing? Am I missing something?

imcdpe said...

And here is Thanh Binh:

http://tinyurl.com/7txm8o7

Robert Paul Wolff said...

Good grief. Everything is on the internet!