French produce market. By Paul Goldfinger. Click left for full view.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor@Blogfinger.net
In many villages in France, there is market day once per week. That is a time when you can buy fresh produce, cheese, meats, breads, and many other food items. In some towns it is like a flea market. Market day is also a time to purchase unique specialties like foie gras. But the villagers also go shopping daily for whatever they need for that day.
They go to green grocers, as in this photograph, to buy whatever is in season. This merchant was unhappy with my taking his picture, but I caught him unawares before he spun around and gave me the evil eye. Fresh fruits and vegetables are characteristic components in the “Mediterranean diet.” Then, you sit at a cafe with coffee, French bread and fresh preserves. Skip those strong unfiltered Galloise cigarettes.
Then you go to your garret in Montmartre where you finish your latest painting or your novel in the style of Hemingway. If you are lucky, you can be in a Woody Allen movie and travel back in time to the Roaring Twenties where you get to chat with Picasso and Modigliani (with one of his long-necked models) in a lively bar on the Left Bank. (Be sure to see “Midnight in Paris” by Woody.) — Paul Goldfinger
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger (We like to re-post this piece about every 1-2 years)
Photographer’s note: If you go to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, near Tanglewood, there are lots of old B and B’s. Our friends Dick and his wife Luisa used to stay at Peirson’s Place, an old house, sort of ramshackle, with a large barn in the back where the kids could play and even sleep.
Mrs. Peirson would make breakfast each morning — nothing fancy like some places where they serve Eggs Benedict. Dick is an internist, now retired, who also is a pianist. His wife Luisa is an artist, so they’re the sort of people you run into at Pierson’s Place.
Eileen and I went there a few times. During the day you could visit farmers’ markets or historic attractions or towns in the area such as Lenox and Stockbridge. You could also wander the grounds of the Tanglewood Music Festival where the peaks of the Berkshires give off vapors in the morning. You can listen to a rehearsal in the afternoon and then picnic on the great lawn, under the stars, while enjoying the magnificence of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
One morning I got up and meandered around the property at Peirson’s Place. There’s something about those cool mornings in the mountains as the new sun ripples across everything that’s still wet with dew and crisscrossed with leftover shadows.
I looked at the old house and the barn. There were flowers all around, and you could touch them, but not pick them. That’s what Mrs. Peirson did before everyone came down for breakfast.
As I walked about, I came upon an old garage where I was startled by the eye of a creature peering out at me. It seemed alive even after I moved closer and identified it. The big red eye belonged to an old English sports car that was just itching to roar out of there onto the country roads.
SOUNDTRACK. “Someday Soon” by Judy Collins.
2018 Addendum: Eileen came upon a 1992 interview about Peirson’s Place. Margaret Mace Kingman (1912-1998) was being interviewed for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology archives. She was a descendant of the Peirson family which owned the property .
The interview was about her life and education, but this is what she said about the family’s Richmond, Mass. home:
“My childhood was right here on the property because I was born in the same room, in the same bed my mother was born in, in the same room my grandfather was born in. The property had been in the hands of my family since the land was bought from the Indians in 1761.”
Margaret became a college professor, and she added, “Sometimes I take students up around on the trails; we have quite a number of trails because we have, along with the property I gave to my son, more than 400 acres here. And you can see the trees still, some of the crab apple trees to which he had grafted other types of apples. They’re still growing although everything’s grown up now into forest. It used to be much more open than it is today.”
Ocean Grove, New Jersey. May, 2013. By Paul Goldfinger. Re-post from May, 2013 on Blogfinger.
ALLISON ADAMS TUCKER. “Volver” (by Carlos Gardel) This song is from the 1930’s and was written in Argentina. It started out as a tango. It was featured in a movie called Volver with Penelope Cruz which won awards at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.
The version below is not from the movie. I’m not sure if it is a tango or a cha-cha or what? Anybody know? It is performed by Allison Adams Tucker, a contemporary jazz singer from California who sings in multiple languages including Spanish, French, English and Italian.
THELONIOUS MONK SEPTET. “Ruby My Dear.” The tenor sax player is probably John Coltrane. Monk wrote the piece in honor of his first love Rubie R. (1947) Netflix is currently showing a documentary about John Coltrane who once was part of Monk’s group. It is “Chasing Trane.”
It was 34 degrees this morning at about 9:00 am when I drove on Wickapecko Road and noticed that the trees were lit up with snow. It was beautiful—Currier and Ives. I stopped and began walking over by the water. It was suddenly apparent that the temperature was causing the magical snow scene to quickly disappear. The white was melting, turning the trees from a snowy Christmas card to an icy, slushy exhibition, twinkling in the warming sunlight. Bits of frozen material were falling on my head making a clickity sort of sound on my hat—a sort of wintery “Raindrops are Falling on My Head.”
From a photographic point of view, not only was the light changing fast, but the subject was also being transformed from magical to mundane. I had to shoot fast, so I took about 15 quick frames, and it was all over.
It reminded me of Ansel Adams who was driving at dusk along a country road in New Mexico when he spotted a georgeous scene. He realized that he only had moments before the light was gone. He jumped out of his car and “struggled” to set up his large format camera on a tripod with the proper filters. He understood that he only had seconds before the moonlight would change. He took one frame and knew that negative would be the only one that would work. Later he wrote about how the painstaking process in the darkroom was accomplished.
Moonrise Over Hernandez became his most famous image.
“Moonrise over Hernandez.” Ansel Adams “almost ditched the car” when he spotted this scene near Sante Fe. Notice how the crosses are illuminated. Click to enlarge.
This photograph shows the gentle and elegant sport of horses and all the rituals, postures, clothing and casual styles of these aficionados blended with the formality of it all. When we lived in Chester, we often saw “horse people” (usually women) shopping or walking around town in their special clothes. I like the black coats and hats on these riders.
That’s why I chose Gato Barbieri’s “Girl in Black” (Para mi Negra) — a tango by the jazz saxophonist (b. 1934 in Argentina) who wrote the incredible score for film “The Last Tango in Paris” with Marlon Brando.
This song seems to fit for this photo. Argentina is horse country, and the tango is very sexy.
Do you see any of that in the photo? How do those riders get out of those pants anyhow?
TONY BENNETT AND THE RALPH SHARON ORCHESTRA live at Carnegie Hall in 1962. There they celebrated the seasons: New York in June with “How About You” and Paris in April with “April in Paris”
“How About You” was written by Vernon Duke (music) and E.Y. Harburg (lyrics) for a 1932 Broadway show “Walk a Little Faster.”
Perhaps you are wondering why I was in Guadalajara instead of Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta. Guadalajara is the capital of the state of Jalisco, in the Pacific western region. It is a fine city with great restaurants, shopping and friendly people; and it is also the home of the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara: UAG School of Medicine, where many Americans attend medical school.
I was a visiting professor (cardiology) there and I got to lecture in a large auditorium with a glass booth high up in the back where they did simultaneous translation. That was good for me, because my Spanish was limited to a few phrases like, “Mas Dos Equis por favor” (which means, “Another ‘Two X’s‘ beer please”). I had reason to suspect those translations because, when I launched a one-liner, only the Americans laughed — they were the ones without earphones. Maybe it’s about how you tell a joke.
In the photo, I approached a group of school kids, and they immediately morphed into the Marx Brothers. This is one of my favorite photographs and it was published.
Guadalajara is where mariachi music was invented. It is fun and lively, but when you are in that area, it seems like wherever you go, the mariachi follow. “Jalisco, Jalisco” is, of course, played a lot in that city.
