Tag: Sorbonne

Notre Dame and Dinner Near the Sorbonne

After our brief rest at the hotel, Bill departed for the evening EuroCloud Summit dinner, so Tina and I had a night in front of us.  We decided there was enough light in the day to visit Notre Dame first and then head over to the Sorbonne to enjoy a delicious French dinner. We wanted to make the most of the evening after our Big Red Bus tour.

Tina and I remembered visiting Notre-Dame de Paris in 1973 with Mom. This was before the restoration effort had begun (1991), and I remember well the grayish-blackish tint that covered much of the front edifice. At the time, the grime of the centuries somewhat hid the grandeur of the amazing entrances, carvings and gargoyles but the totality of the entire church still was impressive, to say the least.

Notre Dame de Paris (2011) – Source: Family photos

During our mid-March 2011 trip, the entire presentation was vastly different. The Western façade of Notre Dame Cathedral was clean with a beautiful gray incandescence. All the carvings were visible and bright. To remember the contrast made you feel the carved entrances could now be appreciated to their fullest. We felt lucky to know the difference.

The surrounding square sets off the church magnificently, giving it space to balance the immensity of the structure. Construction of the cathedral began in 1160 and was largely complete by 1260, although substantial updates have occurred over the years. It is considered to be one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture, with innovative use of the rib vault and flying buttresses. Continue reading “Notre Dame and Dinner Near the Sorbonne”

The Journey of Researching and Writing The French Desk

I’ve been mulling over writing this story for a long time. I had many letters from 1944-1945 my mother had written home, so I knew I could use those as the outline of the story.  But some of the material was personal, like her love life, and did I want to splash all that over a book?

Sorbonne – Source: Family Photos

In the end, I decided I did because you can’t have a good novel about straight war work, even propaganda war work. There have to be a few problems and additional characters along the way. A few things, including all the names of the characters in the story, except for the people who worked at OWI, were changed.

I then asked myself if I thought my mother would want me to write this story. With her death in 2006, the opportunity to talk with her about the idea of a book was long gone. But, as we were going through their possessions after they had both passed away, we found my mother’s yearly date calendars. I looked through them casually, ready to discard them, until I caught an entry in the 1990 calendar. Continue reading “The Journey of Researching and Writing The French Desk”

The Paris Study Group – A Defining Year

Over the years, in explaining the backstory behind my book, The French Desk: A Brooklyn Gal’s Journey into Wartime Propaganda, I would mention that my mother had participated in the Paris Study Group to my friends, and they would invariably say, “What was that?”

Paris Study Group (1938) – Source: Family photos

The Paris Study Group (PSG) was a group of catholic college women (about 20 per year), who travelled to France for their junior year abroad, lived with a French family and studied at either the Sorbonne or the Catholic Institute of Paris. The students came from all over the world. The program ran between 1928 and 1940.

The PSG Founder and Director, Miss Erin Samson, was born to a French father and an Irish mother and grew up in in Washington, DC. As a young girl, Miss Samson traveled to France often to visit her father’s relatives and ended up attending college there, earning her French Baccalaureate at the Catholic Universite of Angers. Miss Samson also went on to study in England, earning advanced literature degrees at Oxford. Continue reading “The Paris Study Group – A Defining Year”

Good Things Are Worth Waiting For

About ten years ago, I embarked on a journey to write the story of my mother’s wartime experience when she worked as a civilian in the Office of War Information (OWI). I had many letters – maybe 65 or so – she had written home in 1944 and 1945, saved by my grandparents for some reason.

My mother – Alberta Conway Jones (early 1950s) – Source: Family Photos

When my grandparents sold their brownstone in Brooklyn way back in the late 1960’s, my mother took all those saved WW2 letters to our house and promptly stored them in our attic for thirty-five years. When we sold our parent’s house thirty years later, I took those loosely tethered letters to my home and finally had a chance to look through them carefully.

As I went through them, I knew there was a story to tell. The challenge was where to start and how to approach these large moments in history: Continue reading “Good Things Are Worth Waiting For”