Welcome to the new Blog for the American College in Paris for those of us who attended during the birth of the College, before it became a campus and then a university. This is entirely experimental and designed after several conversations with classmates that I have been keeping up with sporadically as well as a couple I have just reconnected with after 40 years. 40 YEARS!!!!
Yeah, well actually this is precisely the point. We are all at a point where we have some life experience and many of us are facing the big “64th″ birthday. Most fellow alums are too busy to waste much time in nostalgia. Despite that, since our class did not have a year book and at the time I took snap shots which ended up as some of the only documentation of our time in Paris and created the foundation of my own career as a photographer. So enjoy the scrapbook that is up at www.daprix.com/acp64-65 & the new one for the Class of 1966 at www.daprix.com/acp65-66. We all share this blog from anyone, any class who wants to share their experiences (If you don’t want your photos included, let me know at pdaprix46@gmail.com).
The main reason for this blog is that in one on one conversations with the few alums I am still in contact with, we notice that the experience in Paris seems to have given us a different perception of the world than if we had never left the States. It seems to be characterized by an appreciation that the world operates in an infinite set of shades of grey rather than the black and white that tends to be an American approach. We also seem to understand that other cultures can operate quite happily and successfully, at least from their point of view, under different sets of values, ethics, religions, type of political structure, even with rampant corruption. To be sure, everyone bitches and complains about their leaders, but when it comes right down to it, the status quo for the majority of members of populations is preferable to tearing it all down and trying to live with something unknown. Since this is especially pertinent to today’s US foreign policy, I am particularly interested in a wider set of comments from alums as to how they feel their time at ACP and life in Paris help create their view points and how they look at life as a result. So please feel free to express your ideas about your own experiences on any topic here. We may all have more in common that we think no matter our occupation or political stance.
Peter D’Aprix “64-’66.
You know, the main thing I learned from being in Paris was to discount the idea that Parisians are rude. Everyone seems to think that, but Parisians are rude to everyone, even themselves. It’s a bit like New York City, where you have to rudely butt yourself into things in order to merely be noticed. There are just so many people running around that you have to be obnoxious just to get noticed. I also learned in Paris that, since nobody pays attention to you, you can do just about anything you want. Chip and I used to do the “Olympic Walk” down the streets and nobody paid attention. We delivered a “baby rabbit” to Joan on some bridge there, and nobody noticed. One did notice when she perched on a bridge and he warned as he walked by, “Ne Tombez!” Don’t fall. There are lots of French jokes running around but I don’t pay much attention to them. I met them, mingled with them and I think I have a better idea of who they are than those folks who only spent a few days there in a 15 day, 15 country tour of Europe.
ReplyDeleteAlas, my year in Turkey and the Middle East seriously warped my mind about things going on over there. The people there are of a different religion, a different history, than anything most of us could even imagine. I have a hard time believing the leaders of our country could presume Democracy can be dispersed from above. It has to come from the bottom up. Too many people are dying from their ignorance. But that’s just my opinion, because I lived there. To each, his own.
David Dick — 64-65
“Those were the days, my friends, we thought they’d never end….”
ReplyDeleteThere are times when I forget, times when I romanticize the memories, and times when I know how fortunate we were to find our selves in a space like Sacre Coeur, les Halles even the basement and sub-basement of the American Church. As I remember, we were pretty good to each other too; not too much trauma. There isn’t anything that I did, which I now regret. I only regretted the things I didn’t do; I became much more outrageous thereafter.
When I took my three kids to Paris several times, we dropped by the School, but it doesn’t feel like the same place, so I seem to have parked ACP in my memories. It is good to hear from old friends, but I haven’t been very good at initiating contact. Peter’s reaching out to us is a good platform to connect: Thank you, Peter.
By way of background since then: I lived a reckless life and am lucky to be here; indulged most of my fantasies without hurting others and am still trying to figure out who I am going to be when I grow up. For a decade of wildman civil rights organizing, consulting to cities of Munich and Amsterdam about drugs, bought year long trips of walking through India, North Africa and the attic of my mind. A decade of “touching all the bases,” rolled me through the Carter White House & two Governors, directing a program at Harvard / teaching at Emerson College, and a failed run for Congress. When my wife died of breast cancer, I took over raising my three kids in Boston’s North Shore area and bought time with home-based strategic consulting for a decade.
Having turned sixty, July 28, I am trying to figure out what to do with my next decade: so far, I am getting light by selling the house, finishing a novel about 9/11 from Afghanistan perspective, and finishing launching my kids (Sage 20, Morgan 17, and Noah 15). Noah is at St. Paul’s Boarding School in Concord, NH (just went to China for 5 weeks)is five inches taller than me, 50 IQ points smarter and doing real well with me at a distance.
So I am open to suggestions from you about the next decade…go ahead, you can say it.
Don’t forget to be outrageous in making the rest of your life everything that Paris both was and wasn’t. Be well.
Eric Elbot - 64-66