'The Greatest National Anthem in the World, Ever'
The power of La Marseillaise explained in a hand drawn animation.
Posted by BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday, 18 November 2015
BBC Radio 4 has produced a great video looking at the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, narrated by historian Simon Schama.
He explains how the force and emotion of the words empowers the French population, and how it still has a relevance today following the terrorist attacks in Paris.
ON Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 October, 2015, Villefranche du Perigord will be hosting its popular festivities marking the chestnut, and if available the cèpe mushroom.
Over the two days there will be chance to try a variety of chestnut and cèpe delicacies, as well as take in local music and dance, and don’t forget the chestnut spitting competition on Sunday – it always draws the crowds.
NEW rules on the sale of kittens and puppies are to come into force from 1 January 2016 in an attempt to cut trafficking and improve animal welfare.
According to Le Figaro the rules will require anyone wanting to sell a kitten or puppy to register at the Chambre d’Agriculture and publish a Siren business number on any adverts.
Around 50,000 sales are expected to come under the new rules, although the rules do not apply to the sale of existing pets or if you want to give away a pet – although the giving away of pets is fraught with the dangers of providing ‘prey’ to dog baiting rings.
The authorities say that the rules will ensure animals are not being treated badly and producing too many litters, as well as restrict the sale of kittens and puppies brought into France from overseas.
Despite Winter Fuel Payments for older expats in France ending this autumn, the campaign to reinstate them continues.
Brian Cave, of the Votes for Expat Brits website, is urging people to contact their own MPs, or that of where they last lived in the UK, to raise the issue with Frank Field MP.
Frank Field (above) is chairman of the Select Committee for Work and Pensions and in reply to Brian Cave said: “The Committee has no plans, at present, to investigate the specific matter you raise but I am always open to suggestions from colleagues.
“Might I suggest, therefore, that any friends or relatives of yours living in the UK should ask their local MP to take up this matter in the House?”
A teacher, originally from Wales but who now lives in Amiens, is hoping to stock a small library with books that has been built in a Calais refugee camp.
Mary JOnes said that she wanted to do more than just bring things to the camp, so decided to work on filling the shelves of a small library that has recently been created.
“We’ve only just set the library up and it’s been fascinating to see what people are asking for — short stories and poetry, for example — but we need Pashto-French dictionaries, Pashto-English dictionaries, Eritrean dictionaries, books in native languages. I’m planning to get in touch with the Open University to see if they have anything. Eventually, I would like the migrants to run it themselves, so that they don’t need me.”
Anyone wishing to offer support can contact Mary Jones at maryjones@orange.fr
Under the regulation, after 17 August 2015, any British national who has property in France, or any other participating EU state (and who has taken appropriate action before their death) can choose either the law of the country of their habitual residence, or of their nationality, or choose one of their nationalities if multiple, to govern the devolution of their French estate.
If you make no choice, then the default position is that the succession of your estate will be governed by the state of your habitual residence, which will be France if you are living in your property there.
THE recent spell of very hot weather contributed to an additional 700 deaths, the French health minster has said.
Marisol Touraine said that between 29 June and 5 July there was an increase of 7% in the number of deaths compared to the long-term average for the same period.
This was how the figure of 700 was reached, and compares to 15,000 additional deaths in 2003, when the health service was heavily criticised for its poor reaction to the extreme temperatures.
This year around 3,600 people were admitted into hospital, while around 1,500 saw their local GP as a result of temperatures which hovered around 40°C.
Billboards advertising services such as hotels, restaurants and service stations will no longer be allowed at the entrance of French towns and villages of under 10,000 residents, as a law voted in 2010 came into effect on Monday.
The law scrapped an exception for advertising judged “particularly useful for travellers” because certain businesses, such as supermarkets, were found to have bent the rules for commercial purposes.
Although this initiative was primarily driven by environmental group Agir pour les paysages, other loose-knit advertising collectives such as Les Deboulonneurs, les Deposeurs and la Brigade anti-pub are also campaigning against “excessive” advertising.
I HAVE been caught out at the airport with too big a jar of Marmite, so the news that travel-sized jars are to be offered is sure to spread a smile across many faces.
Marmite has said it will produce a 70g jar that can be carried in hand luggage, and it looks set to prove popular as Marmite was second in a list of confiscated branded foods at London City Airport, behind jams.
The jars are set to be priced at £1.
Even when you have two balconies, offering opposing sixth-floor (worth the walk-up) views of the rooftops of Paris off the Boulevard Voltaire, and your own personal Lefty bookstore just down the street, you can still have days that just don’t start off right, writes Paul Ben-Itzak.
Trying to check my dwindling bank account the other morning while fighting a losing battle against the not at all comfy desk chair in my airy summer lodgings, I kept being diverted by the Citibank site to the page called ‘does not exist.’
When it finally became existential, it confirmed that I had enough remaining for cat food — Mimi, my bi-color eyed white Texan, was so pissed off that I’d reduced her to “Leader Price” saumon et thon that she’d knocked the China bowl crashing to the floor (I’d put it on the table to avoid the ants).
My numbers issues weren’t over as Descartes, still cited as the source code for French thinking, apparently wasn’t big on math. First it took one cashier — over at the Leader Price near Pere Lachaise — then one supervisor and one manager to get neither the price nor my change right for the two for one bags of Friskies boeuf and poulet; only my American persistence when it comes to money (see Henry James’s “The American”) got me the full 12 cents due, but not before a language detour in which the supervisor demanded, “You’re Portuguese, right?”
The cheese guy at the Alexandre Dumas outdoor market, by contrast, couldn’t stop apologizing after he confused a 50-cent piece with the one Euro change due for my 1.42 slice of bleue d’Auvergne (appropriately for anything hailing from that region located somewhere in the middle of BFF, the poor man’s Roquefort).
(More typical is the confusion between the one and two Euro coins, which are almost identical and either one of which could be confused with the short-lived Susan B. Anthony dollar. As the French and Belgians continue to argue about the new 2.50 piece — those devious Belges neatly circumnavigated the French veto of their special edition 2 Euro coin commemorating the bicentennial of Waterloo, which the French lost, by utilizing an obscure E.U. law which allows member states to issue without need of approval coins in new denominations — my only concern is that its size is distinct.)
All these banking histories left me with just enough time to hit the post (note to Internet monitors: it’s a turn of speech) for the envelope of flea meds my beautiful mother (belle mere) had shipped from San Francisco which the postman leaving the notice had insisted was ‘too voluminous’ to leave in the mailbox (not true; I tested), rush home down the rue Robert & Sonia Delaunay and through the park Damia (even if the uniformity of the Euro money — Belgian deviants notwithstanding — banished French currency celebrating the Little Prince ((50 francs)) and Cezanne ((200)), at least French streets are still named after artists.
When can we get a lower Manhattan alley named after Stuart Davis? Who were ‘Duane’ and ‘Reade’ anyway?) and open all the windows, tying Mimi to her leash so she couldn’t fly off the balcony in pursuit of the cat-sized pigeon that alighted there the other day less than two feet from where she was taking her afternoon siesta, so I could air the flat out before the arrival of E., the friend of F., the woman I’m subletting from, on the off-chance she wanted to come upstairs for a glass of water after picking up the plant medicine to ship to F. in Chili.
I’d offered to bring it downstairs for her, in theory to save her mounting the seven flights but in actuality because between running around to shows and scouring the vide greniers (neighborhood-wide garage sales; vide = empty, greniers = attics) for better running around shoes I’d let the flat fall into presque Bukowskian disarray, absent the cigar butts and empty wine bottles. Of course, E. turned out to be a drop-dead Latin knock-out, and I’d blown my chance to get better acquainted.
The moral being that if you don’t clean up your nest you’ll never bag your pigeon.
To read the full piece, and find out more about subscribing to The Dance Insider, visit: http://www.danceinsider.com/free/20150618.html
About Paul Ben-Itzak and The Dance Insider: Established in 1998 in New York City and edited principally from Paris & the Dordogne since 2001, The Arts Voyager & Dance Insider provides a uniquely Franco-American inside view of Arts & Culture in Paris, New York, and throughout the United States and the world, with special emphases on insider reviews and travelogues. The longest running arts magazine with content published exclusively online, the Arts Voyager & Dance Insider, publishing daily at http://www.danceinsider.com, is edited by Paul Ben-Itzak, a veteran foreign correspondent who previously covered culture and equities for Reuters, the New York Times, and many others. Paul also publishes Art Investment News, at http://www.artinvestmentnews.com, specializing in illustrated critical coverage of art exhibitions and auctions, focusing on art on auction for less than $100,000.