Hommage à Madame - 21 Rue Soufflot, Paris

This is where it all started -- as anyone who took the year abroad program organized by UIC's French Dept. under the directorship of the incredible Prof. June Moracevich ('Madame') will tell you. Most left after the first year. I stayed for ten.

Some Things Never Change: Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne

I was a student at the Sorbonne for two years. For most of that time, I was in the library. This was in the early Eighties -- way before "automation" (i.e. computer catalogs). You'd look the book up in the Card Catalog, fill out a form -- literally in triplicate, and then hand it to one of the attendants at the "guichet" (i.e. service window).

"Vingt minutes", they'd invariably say, and you'd sit around looking at the mural of Francois I while they fetched your book. "Vingt minutes" -- I'll never forget it. I'm happy to see things haven't changed a bit...