Unexpected in Brooklyn

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The Traveling Writer Explores the Unexpected in Brooklyn

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

I mentioned in my last post that I had seen baseball caps all over France and Barcelona that had "Brooklyn" emblazoned across them. Seeing "Brooklyn" proudly worn in Europe influenced my expectations.

So, what did I expect?

I expected a world-class city. I expected pride amongst its citizens that they were living in a world-renowned city. I expected Brooklyn to be fun, picturesque, engaging, artsy.

Not in my immediate neighborhood. It's called Prospect Park South. If you zoom in on the southern edge of the park closely enough, that name will appear. If you zoom out, it disappears and the area gets covered by a much less classy-sounding name, Flatbush.

I did not expect to see a home reminiscent of a southern plantation in Brooklyn. But it's there! Looks as though someone went in search of the American Dream and found it.

Church Avenue is the main artery through Prospect Park South. It's one-lane each way, so it's not as divisive as a four-lane road would be. In my neighborhood, Church Avenue is lined on both sides with small shops: liquor store (of course), many small grocery/deli stores, most of which specialize in Caribbean products like swords of aloe vera, cans of coconut milk, piles of jack fruit, mangoes, avocados, jars of guava jelly. 

There are shoe stores, watch repair shops like my friend Abida's (from Pakistan), beauty supplies, wigs, barbershops, hair braiding shops galore. There's a Duane Reade pharmacy, several branches of big-name banks, a cut-rate department store, and a natural foods market trying to ride the wave as the area gentrifies.

I'm a gentrifier, though I don't want to be. I'm in Brooklyn because I work for a non-profit and the rent is cheap -- at least it was two years ago, not anymore -- and I snapped up the apartment within an hour of it hitting the listings. There isn't a studio apartment anywhere in Manhattan, where I'd rather live, that rents for less than $2,000 a month. Rents in my neighborhood are surging toward that level, and the black folks who've been there decades are being forced out as white young people realize the rents aren't too bad.

The blacks who've lived here for decades, relegated to broom jobs and Starbucks jobs and $10 per hour health aide jobs, can't keep up. I'm not sure where they go. Down South? Farther out in Brooklyn, in the vast swaths of it that have no park, no subway? Where the commute must be done by bus, which takes far longer, is more stop-and-go in street traffic, is far more stressful.

Before I moved there, I pictured a Brooklyn that felt artsy, happy, more relaxed than Manhattan. Instead, the atmosphere in my neighborhood is pungent with fear of not making rent that month. I haven't found any fellow writers, even though I advertised a new writers group at the local library for six months. Maybe people don't have time to write when they work 10 hours a day in 12-day stretches, as home health aides have to. The black women of my neighborhood are keeping the elderly rich in Manhattan alive. And soon these women will have to commute far longer to keep their jobs with their already impossibly-long days and weeks.

So the atmosphere isn't creative and artsy and full of possibility in my neighborhood. Instead, it's full of anxiety and, yes, a touch of resentment. Doors have been closed to these folks because they've been judged on the color of their skin. They see a little white woman powering off to her 7.5-hour-a-day, 5-days-a-week job, and the atmosphere gets a little bitter. 

And I see such a waste of human potential. Black young men stand and talk in groups on the sidewalk. They are clever enough to run a company, run a country. But the education system failed them, and racism thwarts them, and they grew up knowing there was no money for college and not much chance of ever being anything but poor.

I want to say to the people I pass, people looking down at the sidewalk, sad expressions on their faces, or faces shut down from any feeling: Don't give up. Keep trying. You can overcome -- just look at how the Internet can't tell the color of your skin. You can do things to change the trajectory of your life. 

But I truly don't know how many times they've been knocked down, denied, doors slammed. So I just keep doing my best at my writing and working and praying for racist attitudes to change, for the education system to improve, for doors to open to more people of color.

So I didn't get the artsy atmosphere that I expected. I didn't get the more relaxed atmosphere than Manhattan I expected. 

I do get to live in a "pre-war building." Mine was built in 1920 and probably was a very elegant, high-end place back then. I have parquet floors, high ceilings, big windows -- though my windows face the courtyard and just look out on other windows and gray brick.

To see sky from my apartment, I have to look out the window, up, and to the left. I think I had expected to gaze at a tree from my window. No such thing.

There's a neighborhood near me I'd like to show you next. It's called Ditmas Park, and it too is part of Flatbush.

I did not expect to see anything like it in Brooklyn. 

It's full of beautifully built houses. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder, tight together on plots barely bigger than the houses themselves. But they are so elegant, so beautiful. I walk by them on my way to my favorite café, for a lavender latte, and feel so happy that such beautiful houses exist, and exist in Brooklyn, and exist near my home. And I feel so happy that I'm not responsible for taking care of one, paying for heat, electricity, roofing, repairs. But these houses are eye candy for me. How about you?

If money were no object and I could afford to own and keep up a home like this, my writing room would be on the third floor in the little round room.

Tara, anyone?

Maybe my writing room would be on the second floor, behind the bay window. On nice days I'd sit outside on the upstairs porch.

The details in these homes are beautiful! See the dentated, curved molding above the curved bay windows? See the scaffolding holding up the left corner? We're talking big dollars...

How gorgeous! I envy them the porch to sit on. 

How about you? Do this kind of house appeal to you? Comment below! And Retweet this post if you enjoyed it!

In Brooklyn, In Search of the American Dream

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Prospect Park in Winter

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

I’d like to shift attention to my life in Brooklyn for this post. Brooklyn is a world-famous city. I saw baseball caps with the name emblazoned on them in Paris, Barcelona, Grenoble (in the French Alps), Lyon (the foodie capital of France).

The gates to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

I always wanted to live in Brooklyn, ever since I was a kid, sitting in my father’s car and driving across Brooklyn to my grandmother’s house on Long Island. Both my parents were born in Brooklyn, and all of my grandmother’s family. They ran a print shop on Atlantic Avenue. My subway stops every day at Atlantic Avenue, on the way to and from work. Small world.

So living in Brooklyn, my dream since childhood, has come true. It’s possible, though, that it falls in the category of “be careful what you wish for.” I walk home between the six-story pre-war brick buildings and it feels so odd, so unlike “home”. I was raised in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Reading, PA, and New Jersey. I’m used to lots of grass, trees, bushes. There’s one bush outside my Brooklyn building, a yew about my height that lists way over to the right. It has a rat hole at the foot of it. The superintendent swept some dirt into one day, while I was talking to him, and he laughed to himself.

Brooklyn is over-built, over-peopled, over-vehicled. I hear horns and sirens constantly, day and night.  There is so much garbage on the streets--plastic bags floating around, or mysterious blobs of whatever that have been ground into the street.  Lots of people means lots of dog lovers. Since quite a few of them don’t pick up after their animals, there’s lots of dog poop. I have to watch the sidewalk every moment, instead of looking at the people passing me.

In fact, I can’t look at the people I pass. They might be exchanging drugs for money and don’t want any witnesses. They might simply be touchy and take offense. They might mistake a woman looking at them as a come-on and make trouble. I’m real careful not to look too closely at anybody. Which frustrates me, because I think it detracts from my ability to be an artist. An artist looks closely and doesn’t turn away. Except me, when to do so may put my life at risk.

The weather is turning milder in New York City. Before it’s too late in the year, I want to share my pictures of winter in Brooklyn.  Of course, the pictures were taken in Prospect Park, the place I go to stay sane.  But it’s tricky, even in the park.

Last week I explored a new area and ended up at the top of a wooded hill. It was the first time ever in the park that I was out of earshot of traffic noise. I was alone, and it was a relief to not have people, strangers, always around.

And as soon as I realized it, I panicked. A woman alone is a magnet for attack. This is the reality women have to live with that most men have no inkling of.

Anyway, let’s explore Prospect Park in winter. It has so many great trees and vistas. And for you, dear blog reader, the pictures probably aren’t accompanied by the sounds of traffic.

An apartment building in the last light of the sun.

A feature known as Harry's Wall.

The little hut, just right of center, sends out smells of marijuana in all seasons.

I love winter because you can see the shapes of trees.

Another great tree in Prospect Park.

Another spectacular tree.

How about you? Do you live within earshot of car horns and sirens all day, all night? Comment below!

The 7th Arrondissement and Treats

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Paris Is a Treat While in Search of the American Dream

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

The bane of my existence is treats. I think of them as a reward for a long day finished with as much living and working packed into it as I can. I need a reward for my hard work. It used to be a glass of wine...which became two....which was reaching toward three....which was almost a whole bottle for moi même. So I quit alcohol.

Before that it was a chocolate chip cookie. Then it became two, then three. So I gave those up too.

It's still a struggle for me to find rewards. I've never found a better one than a cookie or a glass of wine -- isn't sugar just grand? At first it is, and then it leaves me feeling lower than before. And it's highly addictive. Rats in experiments choose sugar over cocaine. 100% of the time.

Because I'm clearly a sugar addict, I had to give it up. An apple, unfortunately, just doesn't give me that "aaaaah" feeling. 

It's an ongoing struggle. I don't have the answer yet. Buy a small bouquet of flowers? Soak in a lavender- scented bath? Buy a new blouse? All good things. But I'd rather have a scone and a cup of coffee. It gives me that "aaaaah" feeling. But soon it's not just once a week, it's twice, three times a week...

But I offer you now a rather large treat I enjoyed for a year -- Paris!!! I was there in search of my American Dream: to write a good novel. My reviewers are telling me it's good. Now for the second half of my American Dream: for all the work of writing a novel to pay off handsomely. We'll have to wait and see.

Today we're in the 7th arrondissement, catching glimpses of big treats and little ones. Behold:

Nothing like peering down a Paris street, a treat in itself, and catching a glimpse.

Another day, another glimpse.

Oops, the tower is tilting just a bit. Must be windy...

Here are the little treats -- looking in the window of a chocolatier in the 7th arrondissement. Women's pumps made of chocolate -- what a treat of the imagination!

More treats in the same window.

Macarons. Aaaah, if I could have just one.

10 Euros is not a bad price for a designer handbag.

Isn't it a beautiful shop window? A treat for the eyes.

This is a different store, where French chocolates are lined up in a more regimented style.

I like the first window better. I almost wasn't able to resist that day! How about you? Do you love chocolate, treats, rewards? Comment below!

Travel: Does it Expand Your World View?

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I Embedded in Paris in Search of the American Dream

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

I saw a question online: “What are the top 10 places to travel to in 2019 to expand your world view?”

I’ve traveled quite a bit—more than I dreamt possible—but I wasn’t changed discernibly by two weeks in Italy or 10 days sailing in the British Virgin Islands.

But when I bought a one-way ticket to Paris, when I went there to live for a year in search of my American Dream of writing a very good novel, when I lived chez famille with a French woman and her two nieces, when I embedded in the language and the culture and knew that I couldn’t go home for at least one year—that changed me.

The vast distance from home—3,000 miles of ocean, and I couldn’t afford to jump on a plane to traverse it—made me homesick after the first month more deeply than I’d ever experienced. I could not return to the familiar faces and things of the States. I found it a bit distressing that everything was different in France, even the plastic wrap. It was tinted green and thinner than the stuff I was accustomed to. Fixtures in the bathroom, tiles, fabrics, the foods offered on the shelves, were all different.

Below: pictures from my life in Paris and more on embedding.

Driveways in the Paris suburbs are different than in the U.S. Ancient stone walls, for one.

Martine's niece Daphne, who taught me French and became a lifelong friend. She's visiting me in Brooklyn in May!

Statue of Charles DeGaulle outside the Metro.

I didn’t expect that. I had thought before I left, “France is a Western country, steeped in the Judeo-Christian mindset. I won’t be that much different from here.”

Wrong. And the distance from home, the inability to fly back for a quick fix, being embedded in a culture I found profoundly different, made big changes in me.

I was forced to redefine "home," and I could only find it within myself. And since I believe in a Higher Power, whom I choose to call Emmanuel, I had company in my home within myself.

I did not have to be defined by labels imposed by myself or others, like “American writer” or “mature woman” or “expat”—though I rather adored that expat label and did everything I could to remain an expat in Europe. See my blog post about how I ended up living in Barcelona here.

I felt free, with Emmanuel, to cultivate a childlike wonder about Paris, and all things French, and for how Emmanuel had orchestrated my life that I would end up here. Read how here.

The immersion in a culture vastly different from the U.S. made me see that we aren’t the center of the world. Other countries have much higher priorities than news from the U.S. Though we feature in their news much more than they do in ours.

My appreciation for the French deepened too. My landlady Martine and her two twenty-something nieces opened their hearts to me. It was unlike any experience I’ve had from American friends.

I learned, because I had the time to learn and to experience, which I wouldn’t have had if I had rushed around Paris for a brief vacation, that they have a different attitude toward life, work, family, friends, money. Most French, I think it’s safe to say, work in order to live, not live to work. They keenly value friends and family and aren’t willing to give up time with them for the sake of the Almighty Euro. I learned so much. Including that this orientation is changing, sadly, under the influence of the United States.

My worldview expanded when I lived in Paris because I realized that Putin’s tanks in the Crimea and Ukraine could conceivably roll all the way to me. News stories of suicide bombs in Israel and Palestine were scarier because those places were much, much closer. India was closer too. Many French go there for vacations, and it’s a much shorter flight than from New York. It’s doable.

The last worldview change that I experienced from living in Paris and Barcelona is that I’ve never felt at home in my own culture in the U.S. since. Martine had warned me that going back to my own culture would be the hardest part of having lived abroad.

Martine grew up in the Saumur region tending the vines and trodding the white grapes the region is famous for. She had dreamed of living and working abroad—and she made the dream come true. She lived in Kuwait, Malaysia, Burkino Fasa, and India. So, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South Asia.

While I was embedded in her Paris home, Martine and her nieces taught me French expressions and cooking. We threw parties together. I cut beautiful loaves of crusty pain into baskets for guests to smear one of France’s 350 types of cheese upon.

I had all kinds of memorable experiences. Martine was an actress, and belted out Les Marseillais on Bastille Day, with a nice touch of irony, while the President of France marched with a brass band down Les Champs Elysees on her TV. I could hear her from out in her jardin. I would not have gotten that unforgettable experience if I’d floated into Paris for a look-see and floated out again.

She sold the beautiful house she had in Paris, the one I lived in for a year, and moved back to the Saumur region recently. In both homes, I hear her say she doesn’t feel at home.

I still recommend not just vacationing around a place but embedding there long-term. My answer to the title question is: anywhere that you embed is the best place for a permanent change of worldview! 

Two friends from my Paris Writers Circle

Everything was different in France. Coming from New York City, I marveled at how there were no right angle corners in Paris.

The flowers left in dismay after the Charlie Hebdo shooting. It was a taste from home--the U.S.--mass shootings and terrorism.

Some of the art left at the site.

Momentoes left in grief and shock. 

How about you? Where would you like to embed yourself and learn about the culture, language, and landscape? Comment below!

Paris vs. New York City in Winter

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Battling Out Winter in Two Great Cities

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

Paris (arguably the capital of Europe) and New York City (some say the capital of the world) offer very different experiences of winter.

Cold? Both can be, but the winter I was in Paris, in search of the American Dream, was a typical winter. Temps went to 33 degrees and stayed there. New York can dip to 0 degrees, and the wind can whip down the straight streets, lined with tall buildings, to give that beloved canyon effect, and we’re talking wind chill way below zero.

In New York City, the wind comes off of the Atlantic, through the Verrazano Narrows, through Upper New York Harbor, and then splits in order to howl up the Hudson on the west and the East River on the east. It makes its presence felt all the way to the center of the island, on Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

Paris wasn’t windy in winter, though the air always moved along the Seine. And there is no canyon effect – there’s only one building more than six or seven stories tall, and that’s the hideous Montparnasse tower. Also, the streets rarely run straight for more than one block, which means the wind can’t howl down them very well. In fact there are no right-angle corners in Paris. Every corner is at a unique angle. It’s great.

The air moves along the Seine, winter and summer, but it doesn't debilitate people the way the wind does in New York City.

La Conciergerie, in which Marie Antoinette was imprisoned before being beheaded. There is a re-envisioned apartment in this building now, envisioning what her cell would have been like.

Of course, along the Seine, the famous vendors of books, posters, postcards.

A cobbled ramp (in a beautiful scallop-shell pattern) leading down to the quai.

Another view of the Conciergerie.

No matter which angle I viewed it from, Paris was beautiful.

New York has colder temperatures, magnified by wind. But it has more sun, and this is an important difference.

Paris is as far north as Newfoundland, Canada. More north than the northern edge of Maine. This means it’s much closer to the Arctic Circle than New York. So the sun is low in the sky in winter, much lower than in New York.

In Paris in winter, the sun barely makes it above the roof of a two-story building, even at its highest point in the day. And most of the buildings are six- or seven-stories.

On top of that, the skies are normally full of dense clouds that barely ever let a sunbeam through the cracks. If the clouds do part and the sun does burst through, the clouds make a point of blocking up that crack just as fast as possible.

So between a low, weak, northern sun and clouds that are diabolically intent on denying earthlings any sunlight, Paris winters are very gray, very dimly lit, and very difficult to endure if you’re accustomed to a more New York sort of winter.

I would be writing in my favorite library, La Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, with an eye cocked out the window. I was sun starved, and I intended to do something about it. I would watch, wait, write. There it was! A sunbeam! I would pack my stuff up, race outside, and stand in the sunbeam—even if it was in the middle of an intersection. Nobody’s moving very fast in Le Marais, where the library’s located. It's mostly tourists strolling. I’d stand there absorbing the sun’s rays on my face – and a minute later clouds rose and the sun was gone. For another three, long, agonizing weeks.

I was shaky, cranky, feeling ill. How did people in Copenhagen, Scotland, Sweden--all closer to the Arctic Circle than Paris--get through winter? 

Somebody said “Light lots of candles and take Vitamin D-3,” so I did. I felt no better.

Next time: what I did to deal with light deficiency.

The Traveling Writer Went to France in Search of the American Dream

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Scenes from Paris, including Notre Dame

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

I love Europe. I want to explore it more.

I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to live in Paris for a year, on a creative writing sabbatical. It was beyond my wildest dreams. God turned the tables on me -- I had told myself a hundred times that I would never bother to visit Paris because Parisians didn't have the right attitude toward Americans. Then I found a book, described in my blog here, and ended up not just visiting Paris but LIVING there for a year. Exploring. Experiencing life with a French family (an aunt my age, and her two nieces).

I capitalized on that year to write The Paris Writers Circle. You can click on the book's cover in the right hand column of this blog to read reviews.

I was a big fan of New York City when I moved to Paris. Paris was going to have to work hard to capture a place in my heart. 

Somehow, it managed.

I fell in love with Paris and with Paris doors. There were so many, as beautiful or more beautiful than this one. Feel the history oozing from it and from the surround. Generations have passed through the door, living their Parisian lives.

I do know that Paris is not anywhere near as energetic as New York City. Barcelona is getting there, though. It's a hub of design and entrepreneurship. Pics and stories about my Catalan family in my blog here. I've heard London is full of energy, but I haven't been there in 40 years : (

Paying 70% of their salaries in taxes, and being guaranteed a retirement income, I believe, is a disincentive for Parisians to do the manic level of hard work that I intuit New Yorkers are doing. 

Also, France and other European countries are older, and have more history, which means more history of national mistakes and abuses, which dampens patriotic enthusiasm perhaps.

But Europe exhibits the glories of the Roman Empire and gives us the glories of centuries of excellence in the arts, most of it nurtured by Christianity, I might add. Europe gave us Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, Palestrina, Paganini, Verdi, Beethoven, Saint Saens. To name a tiny portion of the whole.

Europe fostered and gave us the Pieta, the paintings of scenes from the life of Jesus that still stop us in our tracks, the glories of the Vatican, the statues of David and Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist.

And gave us churches and cathedrals, tons of them. Soaring ceilings, sculptures in stone, carvings of wood, stained glass. Incredible achievements of design, engineering and construction.

We in the United States are all blessed by Europe and the incredible hotbed of creativity it once was and that I hope it will be again.

The rose window of Notre Dame.

It's gorgeous from every angle.

This is the nave, a tiny portion of the cathedral.

I could look at it all day.

On the place outside Notre Dame, tourists mill while guarded by the gendarmerie.

An Audrey Hepburn look-alike thinks this horse is pretty cool.

Then she wonders off into Paris, dressed for breakfast at the King George V. How about you? Do you love Europe too? Crazy about Paris? Comment below!