Anna Traverse Fogle
You’ve entered a new decade by the time you read this, and a year that reads like the perfect optometrist’s assessment I’ll never receive. I’m writing to you from the recent past – mid-December.
At present I am, of all places, in a studio apartment in Paris, with a view of the Eiffel Tower. My husband and I have traveled here for a somewhat belated honeymoon. At the end of a tumultuous year, it seems fitting that we should have landed in Paris in the third week of a widespread transit strike that has shuttered much of the Métro (thus clogging the streets with auto traffic), as well as disrupted rail service to more distant French locales. In recent weeks, as many as 400,000 Parisians have taken to the streets to demonstrate their discontent with the French government’s planned pension reforms. Protests are expected again tomorrow.
The tourist crowds have been light, relatively speaking, thanks to many travelers’ canceled or postponed plans. The only real throngs we’ve seen: at the base of the Eiffel Tower, and in the gawking area surrounding the Mona Lisa. And I’m pretty sure there are crowds permanently stationed at both places, no matter the time of day or time of year. The Louvre closes for the night, and somehow, some way, there remains an anxious crowd queuing up for their peek at Mona Lisa. It’s a strain to imagine Room 711 of the museum any other way.
The decade that’s just passed seems to me to have been characterized, both personally and globally, by finding ways to thrive in spite of certain complications.
And while we were genuinely looking forward to navigating the Métro, we like to walk even more. It’s the absolute best way to learn a city’s contours and textures, to trace its lines and absorb its smells and syncopations. You could say we’re enjoying the city in spite of certain obstacles, but that might suggest that we’ve had to scramble and scrape to find the loveliness here, and this is not the case. Outside the window, the Eiffel Tower glitters every hour on the hour, and today the Venus de Milo nearly grazed us with her robes.
When we return home, it will be to our own home, finally, after three long months’ displacement following an electrical fire in September. I cannot allow myself, not quite yet, to think about the relief it will be simply to wake up each morning in the same place, and not to unpack and repack our things every one to three weeks, as we have been doing all autumn.
The decade that’s just passed seems to me to have been characterized, both personally and globally, by finding ways to thrive in spite of certain complications. I’d like to say that I hope the 2020s might present fewer complexities, but that would be disingenuous. From the troubled state of the media industry, especially the local media industry, to the waking nightmare of climate change, I have to admit with clear-eyed vision that the 2020s will require constant adaptation. We’ll focus in this microcosm on adapting for the better.
You’ll see some of that rapid evolution in this magazine; our regular readers, I hope, have already. We’re covering familiar ground, but approaching it in different ways. You’ll see in this January issue our annual weddings feature. But instead of focusing on a few lovely couples, we’ve chosen to turn the lens on the behind-the-scenes aspects of marrying in Memphis – emphasis on Memphis. There’s so much here that you can’t find anywhere else, and we see it as our goal to keep you informed about as much of it as we can fit.
We hope you’ll venture to a pair of community restaurants in the Binghampton neighborhood, guided by our Dining Out feature. Plan a month of local activities – our calendar is always a good resource, both in these pages and online. We are ensconced in the darkest, coldest time of year, with nights that stretch on and on; you may as well use them wisely. There is, as always, much more besides.
Most of all, I hope you will try – as I will along with you – to go into this new decade with curiosity, and willingness, and deep affection for the place and people around you. No matter what unrest may come, we’ll know where our center is.
– Anna Traverse Fogle, CEO
