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NewsletterJune 2010

Beware of Falling Horses, Cavemen and Mammoths!

Photo signs leading to the <em>Roche de Solutré</em>

This is a photo of the Roche de Solutré in Burgundy that I visited during the last part of May. Roche de Solutré along with being beautiful and offering nice hikes and views of the local countryside is also deep in history, both contemporary and prehistoric.
The contemporary history is that François Mitterrand used to make a yearly visit to the Roche de Solutré. He would hike up to the top as we did. This started after WWII and continued when Mitterrand became President.
The Roche de Solutré once was home to a number of Paleolithic (Stone Age) civilizations and gave its name to a tool-making technique – Solutréen (Solutrean). The Roche de Solutré is home to the Solutré Prehistory Museum.
Another part of Roche de Solutré’s contemporary history is the legend of falling horses as one of the signs in my photos suggests. Legend has it that prehistoric hunters would stampede and drive horses off the cliff of Roche de Solutré to kill them. Like most legends it makes a good story but isn’t true.
You can see more photos I took at the Roche de Solutré.

Town Budget

I recently received in the mail my town’s budget. The good news is that the operating budget has a € 2.2 million surplus; overall income was € 12.2 million with spending at about € 10 million. Most income came through taxes, € 5.4 million and regional/national government contributions of € 4.7 million. Most spending was for salaries at € 6.3 million.
The investment budget is € 6.9 million with most funding coming from the operating budget surplus of € 2.2 million and regional/national government aid at € 3 million. The principal outlays are roadwork € 1.3 million and the town’s new school cafeteria € 1.6 million.
Interestingly enough both the operating budget and investment budget are paying part of the town’s debt, € 427,000 and € 1 million respectively. According to the brochure I received the town’s debt is being paid down at the pace of about a € 1 million per year.
The brochure also pointed out, that local taxes did go up, by less than 1% but are still overall lower than the national average. This tax increase was severely criticized by the opposition.

Videos

I’ve been playing with my camcorder and made a few short videos. Here is a selection:
Market day, flea market and the yearly ‘march of the cows’ in my town.
Here’s a video of one of the milk dispersers I’ve talked about.
In addition I went back and made videos of some of the Romanesque Churches I’ve visited in the past:
Ameugny Notre-Dame, Chapaize Saint Martin and Lancharre.
All videos I’ve made can be found on my YouTube page.

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