NewsletterNovember 2013

Le Villars Yesterday & Today

The above photo is a mix: a postcard from the 1910s and a photo from September 2013. Le Villars is located in Southern Burgundy. You can find similar mixes of the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville in Tournus, Quai Sud in Mâcon and the menhir of Saint-Micaud.

President Normal

A year and a half into his term President François Hollande still hasn't found his footing and is starting to look more and more like a one term president. His problems go beyond the economic problems facing France. No matter who'd be in office it wouldn't be easy, but Hollande suffers from an acute lack of charisma and no coherent message.
France is more or less practicing austerity through taxation, favoring raising taxes to get the government books in order, over budget cuts. Instead of trying to sell this as needed sacrifice, Hollande's government stated recently there would be a pause in new taxes. But this is before many new taxes come into effect in 2014. What the government really meant was there would be no new taxes in 2015.
Another faux pas was the deportation of a Roma schoolgirl and her family. The girl was taken by police when she was on a school outing. The girl's family had had their application for asylum rejected. Just after the deportation became public, students throughout France protested and the government was severely criticized. Hollande stepped in and addressed the nation. He said that the girl, Leonarda Dibrani, could return to France and finish her studies, but not with her family. This coming from someone who ran on a platform of social justice. A majority of the French supported the deportation, if not how it was done. A government report indicated the family wasn't integrating and the father wasn't looking for work. Similar families had been okayed to live permanently in France.
It's looking more and more likely that Hollande's Socialists will suffer an electoral defeat in next year's municipal and European elections. Right now the far right National Front (FN) is leading in polls for the European elections. The FN won a recent by-election for a departmental seat in the Var.

More Bread

One type of bread I forgot last month was Kraken. It's a dark bread made in part from: sunflower seeds, brown flax seeds, yellow linseed, soybean meal, sesame seed and barley. It's filling and good to say the least!

New releases from Le French Book

Here is an excerpt of The Greenland Breach, a cli-fi spy novel with environmental catastrophe, geopolitical stakes, freelance spies and Bond-like action. The Arctic ice caps are breaking up. Europe and the East Coast of the United States brace for a tidal wave. Meanwhile, former French intelligence officer John Spencer Larivière, his karate-trained, steamy Eurasian partner, Victoire, and their bisexual computer-genius sidekick, Luc, pick up an ordinary freelance assignment that quickly leads them into the glacial silence of the great north, where a merciless war is being waged for control of discoveries that will change the future of humanity. The author is a former top-level official in French intelligence and a prizewinning thriller writer. It was published in English by Le French Book, a digital-first publisher specializing in best-selling mysteries and thrillers from France.
(First published in French as The Greenland Breach, ©2011 Odile Jacob. English translation ©2013 Julie Rose. First published in English in 2013 by Le French Book, Inc., New York)
The Greenland Breach by Bernard Besson and Julie Rose (translator)

Sunday
Greenland, the north face of Haffner Bjerg, 6:30 a.m.
Lars Jensen felt the ground tremble beneath the snow. He straightened up and abandoned his position, petrified by what he was seeing to the west, toward Canada. The last phase of global warming had begun just as a big red helicopter flew past from the east. It doubtless belonged to Terre Noire, the Franco-Danish oil-and-gas company that was carrying out geological surveys.
From the rocky slopes of Haffner Bjerg, events were taking an unimaginable turn worthy of Dante. With a sound as ominous as the crack of doom, the Lauge Koch Kyst had begun to tear away from Greenland and plummet into Baffin Bay in the North Atlantic Ocean. A colossal breach a mile and a half deep was opening up in the middle of the island continent. The trench ran for miles, as if an invisible ax had just split the ice cap in two.
Terrified, Lars backed away, forgetting what he had come to the top of the world to do. He'd guessed that his presence on the slopes of Haffner Bjerg had something to do with the death of the Arctic. The advance wired from an anonymous account on the island of Jersey was every bit as incredible as the cataclysm under way.
A mist shot through with rainbows rose from the depths of the last ice age. Behind the iridescent wall, thousands of years of packed ice raked the granite surface and crashed into the sea, stirring up a gigantic tsunami. He pressed his hands to his ears to muffle the howling of Greenland as it began to die.
It took Lars awhile to get a grip. His hands were still shaking as the thunderous impact reached him. It was even more frightening than the ear-splitting sound. Greenland was plunging into Baffin Bay. In a few hours, the coasts of Canada and the United States would be flooded. He fell to his knees like a child, overcome by thoughts that had never before crossed his mind. An abyss was opening inside him, and it was just as frightening as the one in front of him. It wasn't until his fitful breathing slowed and his lungs stopped burning that he was able to get back to the tawdry reality of his own situation.
He lay down again on the hardpacked snow. With his eye glued to the sight of his rifle, he found the trail that the dogsled had taken from the Great Wound of the Wild Dog. That's where the team would emerge, heading for Josephine and the automated science base that sounded the great island's sick heart. The Terre Noire geologists were known for their punctuality, but at two thousand euros an hour, he would wait if he had to. Say what you like, the end of the world was good business.

Mail Box

The 35th book in the Asterix series came out on October 24th: Astérix chez les Pictes (Asterix and the Picts).
Learn French: And about different types of honey sold at a French market.
AssistedVacation.com: Provides nurses to travel with and support elders on holiday.
Un Verre en Provence: Winetours in Provence. Discover wines and estates in the Var.
Suggested by a reader: Americans in Paris: Life and Death under Nazi Occupation 1940-44.