July 16, 2011 – Le Lustre

One might assume that chandelier has the same meaning in French. Yet chandelier is actually the word fro candlestick. Lustre is what the French call a chandelier and appropriately from where we also get the English word luster.

There is a chandelier at the Legion of Honor that is probably the most beautiful one in San Francisco — words like luster, brilliant and radiant can all be applied. The chandelier compels many visitors to get the camera out. The artist Timothy Horn even did a magnificent recreation of the chandelier — in sugar! The chandelier hangs in one of the period rooms, a salon from the Hôtel de la Trémoille in Paris circa 1781. I always make a point to linger in that room on every visit to the Legion.

I have been told that ghosts live in glass doorknobs. If that is true, I can just imagine what sort of spirits watch over the room from the crystals in the chandelier. The room itself always feels a bit haunted, but the spirits seem to tolerate those of us who appreciate the allure of pre-revolutionary France. The Legion of Honor may be one of the most haunted places in San Francisco. The building sits on top of a cemetery where the gravestones were removed but many of the graves were left behind. I can just imagine what the building is like after hours. Do the ghosts of old Paris and Gold Rush Era San Francisco get along together? It could make for a good story.

June 1, 2011 – Cosmos Pliage de Papier

I know just enough French to know better, but not that much to know French.

On my most recent Japantown excursion I bought some groovy, outer space-themed, foiled origami paper. It’s the sort of thing that will always come in handy. Oddly enough all the Japanese is translated quite literally into English and French. The product is described as Japanese Folding Paper. Obviously the translator was unaware that origami is an English word now too. There are some important cautionary warnings on the package in Engrish. My favorite is, “No horseplay with the folded paper.”

What caught my eye this morning was the French translation for origami paper — Cosmos Pliage de papier. It stirred my imagination and I quickly imagined some dashing, aristocratic French playboy circa 1959. Cosmos Pliage de Papier would be the sort of jetsetter who’d be racing cars, hobnobbing in Monaco and training to be France’s first man in space. He’d finish a quick last cigarette. Then climb aboard the rocket that would blast off from a base in Nouvelle Guinée. I can imagine the black and white footage and I can nearly hear the Serge Gainsbourg tune about Cosmos Pliage de Papier. All that from a package of origami paper….