One thing is sure: the attacks on Charlie Hebdo raise many questions and uncertainty about how we will all move forward. 

Living in Paris, the last week has been tragic.

Wednesday’s attacks on the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo put the city into a state of mourning, many gathering in the evenings at Place de la République to pay their respects to the slain.

There are many things to say about last week’s events, many things to analyze. One thing is sure: there is no right answer, no right policy for moving forward. If we are to find an answer, it will only be a complex, multifaceted one. Because the Charlie Hebdo attacks are not the only attacks that took place in the last week. On the same day as the Charlie Hebdo attack, around four dozen were killed by a car bomb in Yemen. Several days later, an attack in Nigeria left so many dead the number was unknown. Amnesty has estimated that it is in the thousands.

Of course, we mourn things that we have a proximity to, be it geographical or personal. We can be in the place of an attack, or live close by. Or we can know someone in a place that has been attacked. We can have friends and family there. Or the place of attack can be a place that we have visited and loved, certainly the case when it comes to Paris.

For me, living in Paris meant watching a city work its way through trauma and fear. A tension hung over the city until the attackers were eventually killed last Friday. It was hard to concentrate on anything else.

When millions gathered in Paris on Sunday, I joined them. It was intended to be a march, but the mass of people made my own experience more of a “stand,” crammed into the street with thousands around me, so many that it was hard to move. People held signs, chanted and clapped. They sung “La Marseillaise.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if millions would come out for those slain Nigerians. Unfortunately, I think we all know the answer. For most of us our proximity, both geographical and personal, is nonexistent for the attacks that happen around the world on a regular basis, and so they don’t get the same reaction, the same coverage and the same attention that others like Charlie Hebdo do. But that of course doesn’t make them any less important. As Teju Cole wrote in the New Yorker, “we may not be able to attend each outrage in every corner of the world, but we should at least pause to consider how it is that mainstream opinion is so quickly decides that certain violent deaths are more meaningful, and more worthy of commemoration, than others.”

Personally, yesterday I gathered in the streets of Paris because it was all I knew how to do. After a week of tragedy, I was searching for answers, searching for some way to move forward. Gathering with the rest of the city was a way to do that. It was a personal way to take a stand against violence and racism. I do not believe hate is the answer, and if there’s anything that we can do to move forward it’s to focus on tolerance. I am sure that I stood next to people who didn’t have the same political leanings that I do, and probably wouldn’t choose the same policies moving forward. But at least for one day, we agreed on the fact that hate and terror are terrible things.

This tragedy will eventually fade from our minds, and unfortunately, we’ll go back to politics as usual. There has been talk of a French Patriot Act – similar to what was enacted post 9/11. There’s no denying that the far right in France will continue to rise, and many will make this tragedy into a black and white issue of the Western World versus everyone else.

But we live in a world of many shades of gray, and if we look to find answers in the midst of terror, we are sure to choose the simple ones, that will only have more detrimental effects down the line.

Let us all remember that human lives are all equally valuable, no matter where they come from or what they look like. Let us build a world of tolerance, because we all deserve to live without fear.

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There’s a lot of shock still over the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in France earlier this week. It’s no surprise that Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” totally nail it.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Powell’s, Shakespeare & Co. and Strand bookstore – all places any literary lover should put on their travel list. 

While many claim that print is dead, there’s still nothing like the feel of a book in your hand. But it’s not just the book that’s special; it’s the process of buying it. Bookstores are treasure troves, and in a day and age where large online retailers and box stores are pushing out the smaller guys, making sure they get your business is even more important.

Are you a lover of books? Then why not devote your next trip to checking out the independent bookstore scene wherever you are? You never know what you’re going to find. For inspiration, we’ve rounded up a list of bookstores that are worth a visit.

1. Strand – New York City, New York

Around since the 1920s, Strand is an iconic part of not only New York City’s bookstore culture, but simply general culture overall. Visiting NYC without visiting Strand bookstore is simply a missed opportunity. In all, the store boasts 18 miles of used and rare books, which is enough to make you get lost in book aisles for days and days.

2. Powell’s – Portland, Oregon

If Strand is the iconic bookstore in the east, then Powell’s is its counterpart in the west. Opening in the 1970s, today it has five different locations within the Portland area, the downtown main one called “City of Books.” And when you enter, it does in fact feel like a city, the aisles are like little streets that wind you through the many rooms. The best part about Powell’s? You can grab a stack of books, take them to the in-store cafe and peruse them while drinking a coffee.

3. Parnassus Books – Nashville, Tennessee

Leave it to an author to ensure that the local book scene stays alive. When Nashville lost its only bookstore, Ann Patchett stepped in, a firm believer that people should be able to buy their books at a brick and mortar, and helped open Parnassus. This neighborhood bookstore revival is born out of Patchett’s desire for a store “that valued books and readers above muffins and adorable plastic watering cans.” Yes, please.

4. BookPeople – Austin, Texas

BookPeople happens to be Texas’ largest independent bookstore, and it’s so popular that it was voted Bookstore of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly in 2005. But beyond all the literary works housed in this space, there’s another reason to visit: all the books on Texan and Southern cooking, so you can be sure to beef up on your bbq knowledge.

5. The Elliott Bay Book Company – Seattle, Washington

Seattle is known for a lot of rain, and what do you want to do when it’s gray and rainy? Curl up with a good book. Which might be why Seattleites have such a wonderful bookstore at their disposal. The Elliott Bay Book Company is home to more than 150,000 titles. And because it’s Seattle, Elliott Bay’s other claim to fame is that the Elliott Bay Cafe was Seattle’s first bookstore cafe.

6. Shakespeare and Company – Paris, France

The literary crowd will always have a love affair with Paris, and for those there is no place higher on the destination list than Shakespeare and Company. Paris has always attracted writers, and the bookstore is known for supporting the works of both well-known authors and the yet undiscovered ones. Located on the Left Bank it has managed to maintain its quaint, cozy ambiance.

7. Politics and Prose – Washington, D.C.

The name of Politics and Prose is fitting in the U.S. capital. Here you find a community gathering space, with plenty of author events, and lots of unusual books. The bookstore has even started hosting trips, taking book lovers around the world.

8. Bertrand Bookstore, Lisbon, Portugal

While today Bertrand runs over 40 bookstores around Portugal, it’s worth a mention on a list of bookstores has it has one thing going for it that no other place has: it’s the oldest bookstore in the world. In fact, if you’re feeling down about the state of books, there’s nothing to bring your spirits up like a place that has been selling written works since 1732.

9. McNally Jackson – New York City, New York

The Strand bookstore isn’t the only thing NYC has to offer. The literature in the store is arranged by nation, and hoping to bring more great works to the rest of the world, they even offer self-publishing services.

10. The Last Bookstore – Los Angeles, California

While younger than many bookstores, The Last Bookstore is California’s largest independent one and perhaps the most unique. It began in 2005 in a small loft space and now takes up about 20,000 square feet. There are books everywhere, often part of the interior design of the space, making it just as much a museum of books as a bookstore.

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ColumnPressuring ourselves to “get out more” is an old hat we use to deal with our problems. Fresh air. Exercise. New experiences. It makes sense. But sometimes answers can be found by spending more time in our “place.” Here’s a case for respecting your inner homebody.

I’ve recently taken a few of those silly online quizzes that tell you who you are, what you were and where you should be. It’s a guilty distraction, I know, but it has importantly been determined that I’m Gustav Klimt, living in a minimalist Paris apartment during the Renaissance and playing lead guitar for Led Zeppelin. Fair enough. Count me in.

I mention this because among the many odd questions that helped these brilliant algorithms identify my true self, one popped up that got my attention: “Do you prefer to be inside [picture of some dark, ill-defined interior] or outside [a lovely mountain with a lovelier waterfall]?” I clicked “outside,” of course—but then paused, hit the back button and stared at the question again. Could I? Might I? Yes. I changed my answer to “inside.”

Allow me assuage some guilt out of the gate and say that I do love the outdoors. I’ve climbed some big mountains, hiked some excellent trails and believe Ra is the one true god. Also, with summer coming, I’m well aware that championing the indoors might not resonate very well with the promise of a much-needed vitamin D fix on the near horizon—particularly for my long-suffering friends back East. (Sorry, dudes. You’re welcome in Cali anytime.) Nevertheless, I think the great indoors—and staying home, in particular—gets a bad rap.

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with our personal home space—one that’s easy to take for granted. After all, it’s where we conduct such inspiring tasks as doing laundry, collapsing in front of the TV, going to the bathroom and eating hastily made eggs over the sink before rushing out to our “real” lives. Even those of us who take great care in tending to our insides, as it were, or choose to work at home (as I do), would be excused for gliding over its value and impact as familiarity indeed breeds oversight. You know, in plain sight, out of mind.

But next time you’re home (if you’re not all cozy now), take a moment to stop and look around, and pay some attention to your quarters. As the poet W.S. Merwin put it:

Just this, just this, this room where we are. Pay attention to that. Pay attention to who’s there, pay attention to what isn’t known there, pay attention to what is known there, pay attention to what everyone is thinking and feeling, what you’re doing there, and pay attention. Pay attention.

If you do, interesting things are sure to emerge. The colors you (and perhaps your roommate or partner) once chose to “open up the space.” How incoming light glints this way and that. What’s lying around? Magazines? Photos? Check out those books on the shelf. Which ones have you read? Which ones have you not? Why not? When was the last time you looked at that art on your wall? Remember when you got it? What was happening in your life then? Did you buy it overseas? Or at Pier One? What does that mean?

And here’s an ode to tchotchkes. I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea (and dusting is a drag), but most of us have lots of them. From where I now sit, I see a curious combination of class (a lovely Baccarat glass statue of a Labrador retriever I stole from my parents) to kitsch (a Detroit Red Wings shot glass filled with Tootsie Roll Pops) to somewhere in between (a small ceramic sculpture of a head I made one day in college that somehow turned out way above my pay grade).

Though my space doesn’t give off the hoarder vibe, there are little things everywhere. They elicit memories of some of the many nouns in my life—the people, places and things—that at one time or another were important to me. All told, knickknacks are clues—curated breadcrumbs that can lead us back through our lives to experiences that may need re-exploring, analysis or just one more well-deserved smile.

Room to Create

Aside from stirring your memory pot, exploring your space can be a limitless source of creative and emotional inspiration, as well. At home you can have an interesting and productive conversation with yourself. One obvious example of how such space inspiration works is in the visual arts. Artists use the word studio—or “room for study”—to describe the place where they retreat to energize their thinking and do their work. Two quick examples:

A friend of mine, the artist Abigail Doan, spends a lot of time working with found objects. She says her home environment is “constantly evolving with the displayed objects that [she’s] currently researching or interpreting.” Her work with sculptural fiber forms and still life arrangements “often migrates from room to room in a dialogue with my children’s play activities as they, too, draw and create objects with materials that we collectively recycle in the home or find outdoors. There is a certain clarity that comes from making things work in the time and space that one has available.” By arranging, rearranging and juxtaposing items she’s gathered, Doan grows new concepts. This is a process that happens inside.

Also consider the game-changing Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957). Without belaboring my fascination with his revolutionary work, the relevant short take is this: the artist is inexorably linked to his commitment (some say retreat after scandals related to public reception of his work) to his Paris workshop, which was also his home. He constantly photographed it and invited the world to come to him, rather than pushing his work “out.” And he was always rearranging his pieces so they would support and impact each other, often describing how the populated space itself was his expression. (Man Ray described visiting the studio as “penetrating into another world.”) After his death, he left his “Atelier Brancusi” to the French state with instructions that it be displayed exactly as it was the day he died. Painstakingly recreated just outside the Centre Pompidou, the great master’s magnificent “interior” is now available to all of us.

Of course, the broader idea of “studio” is not limited to the visual arts. The workspaces of all great thinkers and writers are, in fact, a source of great public fascination. (Note the recent online obsession with library and study “porn.”) In any case, allowing what’s happening inside your four walls to expand your thinking—rather than confine it—can be a wonderfully creative experience.

Room to Learn

For many of us, our very personal relationships with our inside space goes back to our childhood bedrooms. I remember when I was young getting a great buzz when I gave in to orders to clean my “calamity.” In fact, I came to enjoy it, right down to arranging the pencils and markers in my desk drawer. Better still was rearranging my furniture—moving the bed here, the desk there, changing out this poster for that one. Sometimes the new arrangements made sense. Sometimes I created ergonomic disaster areas. But still, I got a charge out of doing it. Somehow it made me feel smarter.

Today, I can be a tad OCD-ish. (I know, flip self-diagnosis bugs the hell out of me too, but you get my drift.) I have to neaten my home office before I begin to write and my studio before I put brush to canvas. I don’t have a clean fetish or germ phobia, but I do react well to organized clutter. It gives me the illusion that I have my shit together—that my thoughts are straight, that I somehow know what I’m doing. And I’ve read that, like all things behavioral, there’s some neuroscience to this.

One way of learning, especially when we’re young, is getting raw data in. New experiences. Fresh information. Soaking it all up like a sponge. But as we age, it’s about more than adding new bits. It’s about working with what we already have in stock. That is to say, by repositioning what we’ve already acquired into new relationships, we see new patterns—and we learn. Existential angstists might refer to this as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I say it’s part of the fun. Regardless, spending time rethinking can shake loose new ideas.

I know the idea of hermitage isn’t for everyone, and that’s perhaps too strong a word, anyway. But looking “inside” for new inspiration, using the found objects of our lives to grow and inspire and develop new tales with our existing vocabulary, so to speak, can open new doors in ways that simply opening the exit door can’t. By all means, get out and breathe the fresh air. Find new things and ideas. But don’t be afraid to take them home with you. You never know what you might come up with after you empty your pockets on the table, move things around a bit and realize that knowledge and growth are at hand.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the laundry is piling up.

Scott Adelson—who does indeed go outside—is EcoSalon’s Senior Editor of HyperKulture, a monthly column that explores opening cultural doors to initiate personal change. He is also the author of InPRINT, which reviews and discusses books, new and old. You can reach him at scott at adelson dot org and follow him @scottadelson on Twitter.

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Images: Allie_Caulfield (top): René Magritte, Les Valeurs Personnelles (Personal Values), 1952; Scott Adelson (center): Atelier Brancusi, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Abigail Doan: Fiber Form Drawing |2012 (Sofia), Abigail Doan, 2012.

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After a multimillion-euro (dollar) makeover, the Zoological Park of Paris, also known as the  Zoo de Vincennes, is re-opening its gates to the public. The park aims to be a twenty-first century zoo, whose priorities are animal well-being and conservation. Visitors will be able to observe animals in environments designed to be as close to their natural habitat as possible.

The Zoological Park first opened its gates in 1934, with concrete landscaping, and traditional cages to house the animals. The zoo temporarily closed in 2008, because its crumbling displays that had not been renovated since the parks premiere opening had become a safety hazard. The zoo said that after a makeover at the cost of 170 million euros ($234 million), it will be able to house the animals in conditions that are as natural and stress-free as possible.

Instead of re-building the park in its original form, the zoo decided to take a modern approach by preserving the animals’ habitat, while at the same time giving a unique visitor experience. Zoo Director Sophie Ferreira Le Morvan, said that “Now visitors are being invited to the land of animals to immerse themselves in their natural environment. So the whole work was to rebuild, to recreate the natural environment of the animals.”

The displays consist of winding pathways, lush vegetation, and rock barriers, rather than cages, to separate the wildlife from its viewers. The cathedral-like greenhouse as long as a football field is filled with tropical birds, such as grey-winged trumpeters, and West Indian manatee.

“We’ve invented a new zoo, whose concept is different from 20th century ones, where animals were exhibited like in some amusement park,” said Thomas Grenon, head of the National Museum of Natural History, which manages the Zoological Park. “This is a 21st-century zoo, which will show biodiversity and talk about it, and where the animals will live together as they do in their natural environment.”

The zoo is also aiming to create a more natural series of “biozones,” with replica habitats for tropics, forests and grasslands in South America, Africa and Europe where the animals will be housed. Instead of by type, the animals have been grouped by five regions of origin —  Madagascar, Patagonia, Guyana, Europe and Sahel-Sudan, the largest single area in the zoo and home to African savannah roamers. Rolling terrain and artificial rocks point to the effort to re-create the natural ecosystems, as best possible. Giraffes and ostriches co-habit one display area, zebras and rhinos another. A male lion, somewhat understandably, has his own pen until three lionesses arrive. “It’s like a journey around the planet,” said Le Morvan.

Geographer Jean Estebanez, a specialist in “humanimal” relationships, said that “the zoo reflects a push towards animals to be seen not as a resource but as fellow species. The tendency in modern zoos is not to show animals hauled out of a different environment but to place us in the different environment itself.”

The zoo’s curators have also taken animal welfare into account in their selection of species. Due to space constraints, there are no longer any elephants, or bears featured at the zoo. The modern outlook takes the animals needs into consideration, therefore, including such range-loving animals in the confines of a city zoo would be deemed as cruelty.

The zoo has some one hundred and eighty species — including seventy-four birds and forty-two mammal species — totaling over one thousand animals – aside from the insects. The zoo said that it will also carry out scientific research to help protect threatened and endangered species. “We hope that visiting this zoo can raise awareness of the protection of nature,” says Eric Joly, director of the zoo’s botanical gardens told Le Figaro.

Although, the Zoological Park of Paris re-created the park to ‘appear’ like the animals’ natural landscape (and it certainly sounds like a step up from most zoos), the fact is the animals are still living in a human-made environment, and therefore, they are not ‘free’ to live their lives as nature intended. Animal advocacy groups are already not buying into to the zoo’s new approach, and their reasons to hold animals in captivity. “Pretending that zoos have a direct role in the preservation of nature is a sham,” said Jean-Claude Nouëts, president of advocacy group La Fondation Droit Animal, Ethique et Sciences. – Joan Reddy

This post originally appeared on Ecorazzi

Ecorazzi covers news and gossip on celebrities and notables in support of the environment and humanitarian causes. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Spring flowers straight from the French capital.

Spring in Paris–there’s a reason that everyone loves this time of year. The sun comes back, the sky turns blue and flowers turn the city from gray to colorful. Between the flowers and branches of city parks and the multitude of flower shops and fresh bouquets at markets, there is plenty of flora to enjoy.

Want a full dose of flowers while in Paris? Check out the Jardin des Plantes. And if you can’t make it for a spring in Paris, why not Parisian spring flowers at home?

Here are 11 flowers and blossoms that make a Parisian spring beautiful.

1. Cherry Blossoms

Cherry blossoms are the quintessential flowers of Parisian parks, and when the breeze comes through just right you almost feel like you’re in the countryside. Paired with the bright blue sky, it makes for the perfect Parisian springtime afternoon.

2. Daffodils

What better way to say spring than daffodils? The yellow spring flowers can be found all around town at floral shops and local markets.

3. Peonies

Peonies are a favorite of Parisian flower boutiques, and this time of year you’ll find them practically overflowing onto the sidewalk.

4. Irises

There are a few Iris varieties native to Paris and it’s a common flower found in the big gardens like Jardin du Luxembourg.

5. Lilies

With many species and colors it’s no wonder that the French love lilies. In fact, the fleur-de-lis, a stylized lily, appears on countless French coat of arms and is a common symbol in French culture.

6. Roses

Roses are in abundance in the Paris flower markets this time of year, and if you’re lucky you can even track down the native wild climbing rose Rosa Canina.

7. Nasturtiums

Pass by a community garden in Paris and you’re sure to see some blossoming nasturtiums. But these aren’t just pretty; they’re edible too.

8. Gourdon Flowers

A purple widlflower, you’ll find this flowers growing wild all around Paris. While you may not be able to get a hold of these at home, you can replicate that beautiful purple color in any flower arrangement.

9. Lily of the Valley

Known as muguet in France, the Lily of the Valley has a special place in French culture, and you’ll find it in everything from perfumes to teas. On May 1st, the French have a tradition of gifting bouquets of lily of the valley to friends and loved ones.

10. Tulips

While tulips are most often associated with Holland, you’ll find them all over Paris. In plenty of colors they are the perfect pop for spring.

11. Paulownia Blossoms

While not native to Paris (Paulownia trees come from Eastern Asia) they’re symbolic with a Paris spring. They line many a Parisian street and their beautiful pink and white flowers are certainly a sign of the spring season.

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ColumnHave you ever intentionally engaged in a mind-bending, dizzying, life-changing cultural experience? Have you self-induced what we call hyperkulture? Consider the idea that you can purposefully step outside your comfort zone to shift your perspectives—and that time traveling is not required to put yourself in swoon’s way.

A sudden, icy sweat. A spinning sensation. The immediate need for a chair. It took more than a few minutes to regroup—perhaps because that necessary chair was nowhere to be found—but I had some experience with this feeling. The race back from 1564 to 2013 seemed to take longer that it actually did, but that’s understandable: Time traveling has a way of knocking you off your rails.

The venue for said swoon was Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon—in the actual bedroom where it’s said the great Bard made his grand entrance. As a writer and fan of his work (how could that not be an understatement?), a lot had conspired that afternoon to leave me leaning against a wall, struggling to take in air. What was initially an earnest, if touristy, moment was transformed by a blood-to-the-brain rush of understanding that this now-visualized birth so many centuries ago was critical to not only my choice of profession but to my intellectual and emotional vocabulary—this screaming (of course!) infant would eventually teach me how to think and inform who I am. And not only me. All of us. It’s Shakespeare, for god’s sake, born here—right here—and destined to change the trajectory of our culture. Yes. For this writer… some air, please.

I know Shakespeare isn’t everyone’s life-altering cup of tea, but I’m sure many of you are familiar with the phenomenon I experienced that day in England. We all have had interactions with discrete articulations of our human culture—in the realms of art, literature, travel, food, history, technology and media (or, in my case here, that bedroom)—that overwhelm us. These are personal growth moments and, I think, by definition positive. They are instances where we’re touched deeply, beyond the intellect, so that our soul spins and we can distinctly feel our emotional anatomy change. And these moments even have a name (a few names actually). To varying degrees, these states of mind are sometimes referred to as Stendhal or Florence syndrome—or Hyperkulturemia.

According to one medical dictionary, the syndrome is defined as “a psychosomatic response—tachycardia, vertigo, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations—when the ‘victim’ is exposed to particularly beautiful, or large amounts of, art in a single place—e.g., Florence (Italy), which has a high concentration of classic works; the response can also occur when a person is overwhelmed by breathtaking natural beauty.”

For this discussion, I think we can safely broaden the causes beyond art and nature to include other cultural encounters (read: that bedroom). I also think we can leave the veracity of the notion that this is a cap S-Syndrome to specialists above my medical pay grade. But in any case, regarding the times in my life when I have experienced such a state, the French author Stendhal was spot on in 1826 when he wrote about it in “Rome, Naples and Florence” (from a 1959 translation.):

Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty, I could perceive its very essence close at hand; I could, as it were, feel the stuff of it beneath my fingertips. I had attained to that supreme degree of sensibility where the divine intentions of art merge with the impassioned sensuality of emotion. As I emerged from the porch of the Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitation of the heart (the same symptom which, in Berlin, is referred to as an attack of the nerves); the wellspring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground.

I don’t want to take lightly what some might call a severe mental-health event. (Hallucinations?) But I also want to be clear that these happenings are more than just “oh my!” moments—they are true swoons, in every sense of the word, save perhaps hitting the ground. (Thank you nearby chairs, walls, et al.)

Making It Happen Not long after returning to the U.S. late last year, as I looked back at my journey and Shakespeare reaction, something occurred to me. Up until then, this kind of thing had happened maybe once every few years since my late teens. Yet this trip had somehow produced five such episodes in just four months. Though I still consider these instances rare and unexpected, something was going on that triggered these experiences—or at least allowed them to take place.

Here’s some context: I had left California for extended travel overseas for the first time in years, making good on a promise to return to my globetrotting ways after Things 1 and 2 had left home for university. I made the trip with my girlfriend of eight years, Mihaela, and like my days traveling as a youth, had a fairly slipshod approach to time and money planning. We formulated the trip as we went, discovering along the way that my primary editorial client would be withholding payments in unpredictable, seemingly sadistic ways. Though punctuated by a few lovely moments of luxury, our journey—including time in Eastern and Western Europe—would feature some good ol’ down-and-out, cold-water-flat time, with me slamming away at my keyboard (she says I type like Jim Carrey answering prayers via email in “Bruce Almighty”) while she went out in search of cheap veggies to stew for dinner.

All of this is not to complain, by any means. The trip was glorious and brilliant and in almost constant high relief. But we for sure had left our relaxed Bay Area comfort zone and, back to our story’s syndrome of interest, this was a good thing. I firmly believe that being on our heels opened the door to the above-mentioned byproduct—and again, not once, but five times.

Aside from the Stratford-upon-Avon experience, it happened in Spain in the Plaza Mayor, where one evening I could not keep my hands from shaking when attempting to take a photograph. It happened in Florence while taking in Masaccio’s masterworks in Santa Maria del Carmine. And then twice in Paris (but of course)—once in the Pompidou in front of Joan Miró’s Bleu triptych and another time during the first of two visits to Atelier Brancusi. Then there was London, where I happened upon Jack Kerouac’s On the Road scroll temporarily on display at the British Library. I’ll spare the details of these events (each one a story), but suffice to say that I do not diminish my many experiences during these months by saying these five quite literally floored me, each in their own way changing the way I think.

For me, having done the math, there’s a great takeaway here. I think we can increase the chances of such life-changing cultural experiences—call it hyperkulture—occurring in our lives if we take risks. This is not to say that you need to go time traveling, or out on some financial edge or upend your life. Nor do you have to be in Florence—or Paris or London or even Kathmandu—to access those things that will push your personal envelope. But rather and more simply, if we purposefully and actively take ourselves outside our comfort zones, we’re more likely to have encounters that will shift our perspectives. It could be as easy as turning off your phone and getting lost in a museum. Or hiking into the forest with a tent but without a plan. However we wish to do it, to initiate personal change and growth, we can, in fact, put ourselves “in swoon’s way.”

Scott Adelson is EcoSalon’s Senior Editor of HyperKulture, a monthly column that explores opening cultural doors to initiate personal change. He is also the author of InPRINT, which reviews and discusses books, new and old. You can reach him at scott@adelson.org and follow him @scottadelson on Twitter.

Top image: Wikimedia Commons

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InPRINT: One the Road – Again: Revisiting Jack Kerouac

The post In Swoon’s Way — Time Traveling and Staring Down Florence Syndrome: HyperKulture appeared first on EcoSalon.

A veggie lover in Paris? Here are some vegetarian restaurants and cafes not to miss. 

The mecca of foie gras, charcuterie and steak tartare, Paris, is often a challenge for vegetarians. Tell anyone you’re a vegetarian in Paris and you’ll often get the, “well we have a fish dish” response. When it comes to the Parisian diet, pescatarian has yet to make it into the vernacular.

Fortunately, Paris is also a cosmopolitan hub and food preferences from around the world enter the local culinary season. These days it’s possible to find just about anything, and most Parisian restaurants will usually have a vegetarian appetizer or two that will do the trick. But if you’re looking for vegetarian restaurants and places to eat that offer a little more than a cheese plate and crudités, start with these.

1. Soul Kitchen

Homemade granola, organic yogurt, quinoa salads, and hearty soups, Soul Kitchen is a bit of paradise for any food lover, vegetarian or not. Using local and organic ingredients whenever possible, this place is as good for lunch as it is for an afternoon pastry; they even serve locally craft roasted coffee from Coutume. Close to the Montmartre steps it’s also a a prime spot for getting off the beaten track after you have explored the more tourist-dense parts of the neighborhood around Sacre-Coeur.

Soul Kitchen, 33 Rue Lamarck, 75018.

2. Loustic

Not only can you get vegetarian quiche and kale chips here, but owner Channa is committed to serving good coffee, which is hard to come by in the French capital. The cafe is cozy and perfect for a quick breakfast pastry or a light midday meal. Get the lunch menu, which will ensure you get one of the delicious baked goods for dessert paired with a perfectly drawn espresso.

Loustic, 40 rue Chapon, 75003. 

3. My Kitch’n

A little off the beaten track in the 17 arrondissement you’ll find My Kitchen, a 100 percent vegan smoothie counter in Marche des Batignolles. More of a snack bar than a vegetarian restaurant, it’s good for an afternoon pick-me-up smoothie after exploring the Montmartre neighborhood. Finish off the afternoon with a walk to Parc Monceau.

My Kitch’n, 24 Rue Brochant, 75017.

4. Rose Bakery

With several locations in Paris, Rose Bakery is a favorite with those that want atypical Parisian baked goods and lunches. Owned by Englishwoman Rose and her French husband Jean-Charles, the bakery has been open since 2002 and since then have become a local favorite. You won’t find croissants or pain au chocolate but you will find various cakes, perfect to go with your soy latte, creative salads that change every day and mini galette style vegetarian pizzas.

46, rue des Martyrs, 75009 / La Maison Rouge, 10, boulevard de la Bastille, 75012 / 30 Rue Debelleyme, 75003.

5. Café Pinson

Homemade vegan Nutella and vegan cashew dill sauce? Café Pinson is hard to beat when it comes to creative cooking options. Most of the menu is vegan, including soy yogurt to go with your breakfast and lattes made with almond milk. On weekdays they offer a 17 three-course lunch menu, and their Sunday brunch is so popular that reservations are recommended. Be sure to get a fresh-pressed juice while you’re at it.

Café Pinson, 6 rue de Fourez, 75003 Paris.

6. Chez Alain

At the back of Paris’ oldest covered market Marché des Enfants Rouges, you’ll find Alain, a grey-haired, friendly man with a round belly. He not only whips up the city’s only socca (typical street food from Nice, gluten free and vegan), but he also makes a killer vegetarian galette, filled with organic vegetables, local chèvre and topped with honey. 

Marché des Enfants Rouges, 39 rue de Bretagne, 75003.

7. Tuck Shop

It may come as no surprise that this vegetarian and vegan-friendly cafe is run by three Australians. You’ll find homemade lemonade, tartines with roasted vegetables and the house-drink, the LSD (latte, soymilk and dandelion-infused honey). It’s in the hip Canal St Martin area, so you’re well located to check out some of Paris’ other trendy bars, cafes and boutiques.

Tuck Shop, 13 rue Lucien Sampaix, 75010 Paris

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Image: Anna Brones

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ColumnAdventures in urban composting.

“The worm compost bin is getting delivered next week, we can finally get the worms going again!”

“Finally!”

This is what we call a romantic Foodie Underground conversation.

Let me take a few steps back. No wait, let me start from the beginning.

As an only child that lived in the country, I spent a lot of time outside plotting my own adventures. One of my favorite summer activities was to dig through the dirt in the garden and collect earthworms in recycled yogurt containers that my mother used to plant seedlings. I would put a few in the yogurt container, and walk around with them, taking great care to look after my little soil dwellers. I called it worm babysitting. Yeah, country girl, I know.

Fast forward a couple of decades.

Earlier this year I moved into a small, no, wait… tiny apartment in a huge city (it’s Paris in case you were wondering). Funny how in some of the world’s most expansive metropolises the housing is quite the opposite. It has been an adventure in accommodating my favorite activities to fit the space. Cooking and baking is a careful dance between slicing, chopping and mixing and doing dishes in between so as to keep enough counter space open. Dinner parties are capped at six people, because more would be hard to fit around the table. But somehow, with enough effort and desire, it all works.

It was into this space that the worms would work and the resulting compost would be put to good use.

If you get excited about food, it’s easy to get excited about growing it yourself, no matter where you live. This is not backyard homesteading with raised beds and a chicken coop, this is working around obstacles like space and creating an urban sanctuary that includes some greenery and fresh herbs to cook with. I’ll be damned if I let minimal square footage get in the way of gardening and cooking.

The worms had been on hiatus and were waiting for a new home, hence the need for a new bin. When the first round of vermicompost was ready, we pulled terracotta planters into the tiny dining room and sat on the floor, mixing compost and fresh dirt and replanted basil, mint, parsley and chives. I prepped two containers for kale seeds that would be arriving the following week (kale is, after all, quite difficult to find in Paris).

There is something about putting your hands in the dirt. There is something even better about putting your hands in compost. Call me a dirty hippie – you won’t be the first – but to be able to create your own fertilizer to grow plants from your own food waste is in fact an incredible thing. Don’t believe me? Try it.

The compost bins sit under the kitchen sink. When you open up the top one, you can feel the warmth that the breakdown of organic material (or in our case, 97 percent coffee grounds) generates. A reminder that you don’t need to live in the country to take part in the natural cycle of things.

The kale arrived and it was planted immediately; we’ll see which one of the two varieties do best. Some baby basil and cilantro seeds are doing well in the kitchen, and all of the terracotta pots hang off of the window guard rail, creating our own little Hanging Gardens of Babylon, four floors up in the Parisian courtyard.

It’s not just about eating good food, it’s about being part of the process, no matter where you are. It’s not a farm, or a raised bed with seven varieties of heirloom tomatoes, but it’s something; a mini-contribution to being a part of growing what we eat. To top it all off, next week a friend is passing on a kombucha baby. Compost, kale and kombucha… and you thought Paris was only for croissants and fromage.

At least you know that those tiny six-person dinner parties will consist of kale appetizers and kombucha cocktails, and we’ll be composting the leftovers of course. I promise not to show off the worms.

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Images: Anna Brones

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ColumnHave we lost our ability to do – and appreciate – the beauty of the simple things in life?

I had walked by the socca stand once before.

All the way in the back of Paris’ popular Marché des Enfants Rouge, full of various food stands and markets, there was a gray-haired man making the traditional street food from Nice, “socca” scribbled in white on a black chalkboard. A crepe made of garbanzo bean flour; it’s a specialty that’s hard to find out of the region. Tracking down garbanzo bean flour a couple of years ago at an ethnic food market, my mother started making them. They became an instant family classic.

In the middle of a very cold day at the height of rush hour, we opted for a pot of Moroccan tea instead, but I made a mental note to come back.

A couple of weeks later, we were in the neighborhood just at the end of lunch hour. The market had mostly cleared out after the midday rush, and the line at the socca stand was only a few people long. Beyond socca, the specialty was obviously galettes – large crepes filled with whatever you wanted – and grilled sandwiches. The gray-haired man working the stand filled ciabatta with a variety of ingredients and put them on his expansive crepe griddles.

“Alors, vous voulez quoi?” What would you like?

“Deux cornets vegetariens… et un socca”

Two galettes stuffed with a handful of vegetables and a socca for good measure. The man, whose name was Alain, went to work. Throwing a pre-made galette on the grill and filling it with grated carrot and fennel, mushrooms, lettuce and a roasted eggplant spread. He opened up a Tupperware filled with goat cheese and threw on more than a few rounds, his fingers covered in bits of cheese. He moved in a meticulous yet artful way; a frantic type of methodical in the way that only someone that has been doing something for many years can do.

He looked up, “et le miel!” he said emphatically, as he brought out a jar of honey and held it high up as he drizzled it over the entire thing. He wrapped the cornets in paper and handed them off. “Tout bio vous savez!” All organic.

Meanwhile the socca had been cooking on the crepe griddle at the edge of the stand. I asked him if it was easy to get socca in Paris. “Non, je suis le seul à le faire.” I have yet to verify whether or not he’s actually the only one in town making socca, but I took his word for it. He sprinkled the garbanzo flour crepe with an herbed salt, broke it into small pieces and threw it into a white bag. It was so warm it was steaming. Comfort street food.

The cornets were huge, more food for 6.50€ than you could probably get anywhere else in Paris, unless you were stuffing yourself on a baguette and a jar of Nutella.

This city, like many other food metropolises, is full of five star restaurants and world-renowned chefs, but it’s moments like these that are a reminder that often, the simplest ones are the best. I asked Alain what the name of his food stand was. “Il n’y en a pas.” There isn’t one. Of course there wasn’t. This was a man cooking food simply for the love of food.

We like to over complicate things with multiple course dinners and fancy drinks. Those all have their place, but in an complex world, simplicity is more and more sought after, be it at a food stand in a market or in the kitchen.

Compare a cookie recipe from the early 1900s to a more modern one. The former will be a single mixture of butter, eggs, sugar, flour and baking powder. Simple ratios. There may not even be a temperature or time indicated. The home cooks of the day were merely supposed to have the knowledge to take care of that on their own and know when the cookies were done.

Take that same recipe from a modern book and it will fill up a page, you will be instructed exactly how to beat your eggs and cream your sugar and you’ll probably even get a complex icing concoction. Not to mention the images that show the cookies sitting on a romantic farm table, lightly dusted with the flour from the baking process and a cozy cup of tea in the corner. It might provide for inspiration, or it might just be a reminder that you’ll never accomplish the same thing.

We have made food for millennia, crafting and concocting and figuring out how to put ingredients together and create something new. From the more caveman methods of roasting a freshly caught animal over a fire, to modern day boiling, whisking, broiling and frying, we have evolved into a species that doesn’t just forage for fruits and berries: we do something with them. Culinary evolution has followed that of mankind, bringing us to the current day and age of the food cart, the five star restaurant and the cookbook shelf with thousands of new titles.

And yet somewhere along the way we reached a moment where we stopped cooking. Where convenience and prepared food became such the norm, that we didn’t have to know what to do with ingredients. Someone else could do it for us.

These days, we don’t know basic ratios. We have never roasted a turkey. Stocking a pantry is beyond us. Eating has nothing to do with the effort of our brains or hands, all we have to do is order, and so in this complex process of culinary evolution, we ourselves have actually devolved, unable to put simple ingredients together and make a meal out of it.

There’s no simple answer to this dilemma. It involves better food education in schools. It requires better access to food for everyone, not just those that live in food capitals. It involves a serious investment in revamping the entire food system. But it does also require a personal re-commitment to simplicity. A re-commitment to buying carrots from the farmers market and washing the dirt off ourselves, to working with the ingredients we have instead of ordering take out, to appreciating good food for good food’s sake, not because a magazine or guidebook said we should care about it.

That’s what people like Alain stand for. The love of food for food’s sake. Food doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be good and made with a little bit of passion. There’s beauty in simplicity after all.

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Photo Credits: Anna Brones

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