tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-102521382011-12-14T04:57:59.966+01:00Political, cultural and personal daydreaming from an American in FranceStevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.comBlogger561100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-21809399501761549062010-05-31T23:25:00.005+02:002010-06-01T08:33:34.755+02:00

Il est des moments dans la vie où on sent qu'il n'y aura pas de nouvelle occasion. Il y a quelques années Toni Morrison est venue à Lyon, à la Villa Gillet. Je n'y ai pas été. Pareil pour les Rolling Stones une année ou deux plus tard. Mais la semaine dernière c'était Daniel Cordier, et je ne voulais pas rater ça. Pour mémoire, Daniel Cordier était pendant une courte période entre 1942 et 1943 le

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-28219927498731665512009-10-17T00:41:00.007+02:002009-10-17T10:16:29.468+02:00

I haven’t blogged in a long time, but tonight merits an exception. Yes, I know: I say that every time I write something after a long hiatus. Believe me. This time it’s true. Keep reading. La fête continue ! After seeing Du Rififi chez les Hommes Wednesday evening at the start of the first edition of the Lyon film festival “Lumière 2009”, my father-in-law and I decided to return tonight to see

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-32508959091524614712009-01-13T23:45:00.006+01:002009-01-16T09:31:08.418+01:00

In France Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie has been in overdrive trying to prevent the conflict in the Middle East from spreading to France, which is one of the few European countries to have both a large Arab population and a (relatively) large Jewish population (the UK is the other). I attended a rally in support of Israel Sunday morning in the park by a tree planted in memory of Itzhak

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-14074985396528614582009-01-05T12:49:00.004+01:002009-10-17T00:49:05.417+02:00

Last year at this time, B’s bar mitzvah and our subsequent trip to Israel brought me out of blogging slumber in order to write about non-political events. This time, it was the wedding of S.'s childhood friend's son that drew us to Israel. The geopolitics nearly overwhelmed us.It is difficult to find words to describe my feelings upon reading that people were being killed just a few miles from

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-31684290833228300272008-11-06T01:30:00.005+01:002008-11-07T01:04:19.805+01:00

When my family and I were in the States last summer, we bought a poster that now hangs in our home. It shows Martin Luther King Jr. at various stages of his public life, accompanied by excerpts from his speeches. We bought it because our son B. learned about Martin Luther King Jr. in eighth grade history class last year and in so doing, communicated a fascination about the man to his younger

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-81013413726118202612008-10-12T00:23:00.005+02:002008-11-06T01:33:42.446+01:00

When I was young, I sat outside my parents’ house at 3AM looking at the stars through binoculars. Once a policeman drove by and asked me what I was doing. So I showed him the Pleiades.When I was young I calculated how old I would be in the year 2000. The number seemed preposterously high. As if I had accidentally hit the “factorial” button on my first hand-held calculator instead of the “sum”

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-85417407420883920862008-10-05T16:44:00.011+02:002008-10-10T19:59:50.339+02:00

It was recently reported that one of the vice-presidential candidates could not name a single Supreme Court decision she disagreed with other than Roe v. Wade. This got me to thinking.So far debate moderators Gwen Ifill and Jim Lehrer have asked questions such as, “Who do you think was at fault for the sub-prime lending meltdown?” or “What promises have you and your campaigns made to the American

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-51547291570720774042008-02-04T23:37:00.000+01:002008-02-05T11:51:23.211+01:00

Since our return from Israel several people have asked us if we felt safe there. The short answer to this is "Yes".I now understand the feelings of the many French Jews who are buying property in Israel. On the one hand, if you are bothered by the anti-Semitism coming from parts of the Arab-Muslim community here, you might think, as I did, that moving from France to Israel is like jumping from

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-66204018308441007402008-01-28T22:33:00.000+01:002008-12-10T13:26:20.014+01:00

No matter the feelings I might have had about Judaism when I was growing up – joy, guilt, wonder, sorrow – the Jewish identity is so strong, so compelling that sooner or later it always reels me back in. In some periods of my life religion has played only a minor role, but it has always been in the background and always a part of my character, ready to sally forth at critical moments. Judaism’s

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-82758298777976808282008-01-16T22:19:00.000+01:002008-01-27T22:00:56.370+01:00

Many events over the past two years could have warranted a blog entry: the World Cup, the death of l’Abbé Pierre, Marcel Marceau or Saddam Hussein, Nicolas Sarkozy’s election and subsequent escapades, the release of the iPhone, the Arche de Zoé affair, the most recent round of strikes, or France’s newest anti-smoking laws, which ban the practice in all public buildings, including bars and

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1131917851289092042005-11-13T22:28:00.000+01:002008-01-27T22:08:03.932+01:00

There have been so many events in the last few months that I could be blogging about, but I've decided to devote my energies to more healthy activities, such as sleeping. There have been other factors, too, in my silence since early September. The rest of that month I had so much work that I could have cut myself in two and both halves would have been busy. Then in October I spent most of the

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1125701443050084992005-09-03T00:48:00.000+02:002008-01-28T11:54:54.797+01:00

”It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1125529009929482242005-09-01T00:38:00.000+02:002008-01-28T22:46:20.241+01:00

We have returned from two weeks stateside and it has been hard to get back to normal life. All we feel like doing now is planning our next vacation. Maybe we should eliminate vacations. They don’t refresh, they just feed our wanderlust. We had a blast. A bigger blast that we ever had before.There’s a reason for this. All of our past US trips as a family have been to the East Coast. This allowed

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1124893277555234132005-08-24T16:19:00.000+02:002008-01-27T22:04:11.993+01:00

Looking at what I wrote yesterday, I realize the real problem is not Lance Armstrong. On the road, he’s better than all the other cyclists in the field, at least in the Tour de France. In ethics, he isn’t. He’s just as human as the rest of the pack; no better, no worse.I heard an interview on the radio with another former (French) cyclist whose view of the organizers of the Tour was exactly what

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1124789959645990532005-08-23T11:32:00.000+02:002008-01-27T22:04:11.994+01:00

Earlier this summer, friends, both American and French, often asked me what I thought of Lance Armstrong and his performance in the Tour de France. Among American friends and acquaintances there seemed to be an unparalleled awareness of the Tour de France this year.Today’s headline in French sports daily L’Equipe was “Le Mensonge Armstrong” (Armstrong's lies). The articles inside tell a

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1123283441283863242005-08-06T01:09:00.000+02:002005-08-24T16:27:37.690+02:00

I think I was relatively civil. I didn’t shout, and I didn’t resort to name-calling. I did ask for the address for complaints, however, and added that I’d be copying the Fraud Office. I’ve never had an internet installation take place without the phone hanging from my ear for most of an afternoon, while I try to decipher the rapid, polite, but thickly-accented speech coming over the line, and I

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1122988567004586462005-08-02T15:13:00.000+02:002008-01-28T22:47:02.877+01:00

The French traffic forecasters labeled Saturday, July 30 as “black”. The scale progresses as follows: green, orange, red, black. Only a handful of days in the year qualify for the dubious distinction of "black", and the day that traditionally signals the return of the July vacationers (“les juilletistes”) and the departure of August vacationers (“les aoûtiens”) is one of them. The traffic gods

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1122713036831394902005-07-30T10:38:00.000+02:002008-01-29T20:03:55.774+01:00

This one's too good to pass up. It's from yesterday's Chicago Tribune:Beach stabbing suspect's French throws judgeTribune staff reportsPublished July 29, 2005, 3:12 PM CDTA bond hearing today for a man charged with stabbing a woman at Oak Street Beach was delayed after the suspect walked into a Chicago courtroom and spoke to a judge in French, CLTV reported.Taken aback, Criminal Court Judge

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1122682355474610842005-07-29T23:18:00.000+02:002008-01-28T22:46:20.241+01:00

In every couple or family, it seems, there is one partner or parent who prefers vacationing in the mountains and the other who prefers the seashore. Ours is no exception. S. prefers the seashore, whereas I never really learned to swim. I absolutely love the mountains; S. gets acrophobia. Recipe for disaster?Last summer we did a week of each. We spent a week at Arcachon on the Atlantic coast of

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1122074158628878632005-07-23T01:12:00.000+02:002008-01-28T11:57:41.181+01:00

The big news story here over the past week has been a story that is not yet a story: PepsiCo is about to launch a takeover bid on Danone.Have they? Where have you seen that story, Steve? I haven’t, because it isn’t a story. It’s a rumor. About two weeks ago it was mentioned in Challenges, a French business magazine somewhat akin to Fortune, that PepsiCo had bought up around 3% of Danone’s stock.

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1122027497935198552005-07-22T12:17:00.000+02:002008-01-27T22:01:47.627+01:00

I realised the other day that I, like many people, had expressed solidarity with Londoners after the terrorist attacks there (the first ones), but I had said nothing about the fuel tanker bombing in Iraq a few days ago, which caused an even higher death toll. An attack in London is reported widely throughout the Western world and is considered the serious, horrible event that it is. It raises

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1121868159919161912005-07-20T15:57:00.000+02:002008-01-27T22:06:57.464+01:00

Despite the ease and economy of reading news on line, I often find that I read it better, or at least more thoroughly, when I read it on paper. So yesterday I bought the print edition of Le Monde.Pages 1 and 2 had a series of headlines and articles about Iraq. The headlines included the following (all translations are mine):1. “L’Irak au bord de la guerre civile entre chiites et sunnites” (“Iraq

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1120858074459175982005-07-08T23:15:00.000+02:002005-07-17T00:06:08.216+02:00

Well, it appears I was wrong on several counts. Madrid was not chosen for the 2012 Olympiad. And Madrid is no longer the latest martyred city. If I already had a twinge of guilt and insensitivity when I originally wrote that, the feeling was only heightened yesterday morning when I heard the terrible news from London. My feelings go out to all the people who are now suffering as a result of those

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1120655727869186862005-07-06T15:02:00.000+02:002008-01-30T09:59:17.306+01:00

The Egyptian ambassador to Iraq has recently been abducted in Baghdad. There have also been three other attempts to capture or kill ambassadors in Iraq in the past few days, but let’s focus on the kidnapping. It happened on Sunday (July 3), but to find an article about it two days later on Le Monde’s web site I had first to click on “International”, then page way down to the bottom of the list of

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1120549470652944742005-07-05T09:42:00.000+02:002008-02-10T22:44:53.471+01:00

Do I still have time for some last minute predictions?I’ll bet you all know which one is first on my mind. The new president of the Medef, the Mouvement des entreprises de France, of course. This is France’s employer’s federation. Whenever the government wants to change rules or laws affecting companies, particularly regarding employment, the Medef is consulted, as are labor unions. The current

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1120032082326843222005-06-29T09:58:00.000+02:002008-01-28T12:00:38.176+01:00

Even the cinemas in France aren’t air-conditioned! That’s what an American with us the other day watching “The Interpreter” would surely have said. In fact, they usually are air-conditioned; it just happened the air conditioning wasn’t working in that cinema that evening. Interestingly, this didn’t bother most people, who went in anyway.Southeastern France has just been through ten days or so of

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1119478961224883592005-06-23T00:13:00.000+02:002008-01-27T22:00:56.371+01:00

With each passing day I don’t write on my blog, I have the impression that when I do post an entry, it will have to be more momentous than if I had posted it a day earlier. By the end of a week, it seems nothing less than the next definitive (Franco-)American novel will do, or at the very least, something to outshine A Year in Provence and its sequels. This is a slippery slope, as it means that

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1117751982342341402005-06-03T00:38:00.000+02:002008-01-28T11:59:21.066+01:00

I couldn’t sleep the other night and it wasn’t because of the results of the referendum. I had numbers floating in my brain. “Eighty” first of all. But also “seventy-nine” and “eighty-one”. And “ninety”, “fifty-five” and “eighty-eight”. And “oh-three”, “oh-four” and “oh-five”. The numbers were floating on a sea of orange costumes. Some costumes included sport jackets, some could be mistaken for

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1116891641622463402005-05-24T01:36:00.000+02:002008-01-28T12:02:06.646+01:00

Over the past few weeks, I have hardly had time to cut my fingernails, much less blog. I have been working day and night it seems for the past month. My singing career, on a tear only a month ago, is now in serious trouble. This in a country that supposedly has a 35-hour workweek. Actually, this is not inconsistent with my customers’ approach in recent weeks. Several of them think I do work 35

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1115070887680638512005-05-02T23:51:00.000+02:002008-01-27T22:08:03.932+01:00

I said in my last post that the French government has been in the doghouse lately. Well, it’s not as if they haven’t been barking. The latest thing they’ve bungled by making all the wrong noises is the Monday Pentecost holiday. Two years ago, after a heat wave sent an estimated 15,000 elderly people to their graves a few years earlier than expected because there weren’t enough doctors, hospital

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1114727142129704472005-04-29T00:20:00.000+02:002008-01-27T22:08:03.933+01:00

I’ve just come up for air after a week or two of non-stop translation of a company’s sustainable development report, in which the company explains what a good corporate citizen it has been. Even if this is true, to reassure myself that all was not yet quite right with the world, I asked S. what she thought of the EU Constitution.As usual, her answer was enlightening and went right to the core of

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1113732083672003812005-04-17T11:57:00.000+02:002008-01-27T22:08:03.933+01:00

Last Thursday evening there was a debate on TF1 about the EU Constitution. It was President Jacques Chirac going up against a hundred or so young people. I was at my singing rehearsal, so unfortunately I didn’t see it, but the next morning on every radio station I tuned in to – one at home, one in the car, and one in my office – they were talking about it. From what I heard, the hundred weren’t

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1113430828193894812005-04-14T00:19:00.000+02:002005-04-14T00:24:52.166+02:00

It was a busy week over at Paris Match. The pope and Prince Rainier of Monaco were bedpost to bedpost. Meanwhile Prince Charles was supposed to get married and had to postpone it a day (luckily the hall wasn’t rented out for a bar mitzvah). To top it all off Prince Ernst-August of Hanover, husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, was taken to the hospital with acute pancreatitis and put in

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1112731205144930262005-04-05T21:57:00.000+02:002008-01-31T23:23:58.359+01:00

A few weeks ago, after a review of a book called French Women Don’t Get Fat appeared in the New York Times, I wrote a long piece about obesity, French and American eating habits and how, despite what the author of the book says, obesity is gaining ground in France. Last week an article was published in Les Echos (subscription required) with the following title: Jean-Marie Le Guen (PS) dépose une

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1112650738425340392005-04-04T23:36:00.000+02:002008-01-27T22:00:05.571+01:00

I did it. And I survived. I sang solo for the first time in my life on stage. What’s more, nothing terrible happened. Actually, as I mentioned in my previous post, it wasn’t a complete solo; it was a duet. But we each sang certain parts individually.Let me explain how all this came about. For the past five years or so, ever since the chorus in my son B.’s primary school issed a call for adult

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1112223491929286782005-03-31T00:56:00.000+02:002008-01-28T11:59:03.116+01:00

Concentration has never been my strong suit, and a typical day of translation work is peppered with internet searches for something urgent, such as an early 1950s-vintage Citroën Traction (more on that another time). That I am supposed to appear on stage and sing a song Friday in front of 100 or so strangers as part of my voice workshop is not helping me to concentrate (more on that in a few days

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1111837166625524372005-03-26T12:37:00.000+01:002008-01-29T20:04:59.266+01:00

Two recent polls in France have indicated that if the referendum on the EU Constitution were held today, the French would vote against it. This has sent the entire French political class into a panic, because no one is quite sure what would happen if French voters actually vote against the Constitution.In a discussion yesterday morning on Radio Classique, someone (sorry, can’t remember who it was

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1111285435878709882005-03-20T03:22:00.000+01:002008-01-30T09:58:42.807+01:00

A friend in the US has just sent me the Anheuser Busch commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. For those who haven’t seen it, it shows an airport terminal scene, then American troops returning home, presumably from Iraq. As they file through the hall, people start clapping, first one person, then two, then five, then a standing ovation from everyone in the hall. It ends with the words “Thank

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1110928675865983882005-03-16T00:16:00.000+01:002008-01-27T22:08:03.934+01:00

When you live in a country you didn’t grow up in, there are certain things you never really understand. At first you ask people around you, but the language barrier makes it difficult to formulate your question in a way that goes to the core of your misunderstanding. Even if it does, you often don’t understand the answer. If there are several people present, you might think you’ll have the

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1110843505390989242005-03-15T00:37:00.000+01:002008-01-28T11:59:03.116+01:00

There was an article in Saturday’s New York Times about a Diane Arbus exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum. As I read about her life and her work, I realized how closely tied they were to New York and how much they drew me back there. I read the descriptions of some of the photos in the exhibit, and I could see them before me although it’s been 20 years since I last looked at them. I remember the

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1110498374200111412005-03-11T00:43:00.000+01:002008-01-29T20:03:13.905+01:00

Riverbend has written a very funny piece entitled “Chalabi for the Nobel Peace Prize”. It’s about political debate in Iraq, but I won’t spoil it for you; you have to go there yourself and read it.On a personal level, her post reminded me of political debate between my father and my uncle when I was growing up. Whenever the family got together for a holiday meal, they went at each other, one

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1110404168545978902005-03-09T22:32:00.000+01:002008-01-27T22:08:03.934+01:00

Usually when there is an anti-Semitic event in France – the vandalizing of a synagogue, the defacing of Jewish graves – my inbox fills up. The content ranges from concern about anti-Semitism in France, which many people outside the country think is rampant, to tirades against France as the most anti-Semitic country on Earth, parallels to the Dreyfus Affair and “humor” about French anti-Semitism.

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1110069555503185232005-03-06T01:38:00.000+01:002008-01-30T09:56:22.787+01:00

Stories about capital punishment in the US always make the news here in France and this week’s was no different. There seemed to be a little more emphasis in the European media I read (The Guardian and Le Monde) on the international pressure aspect than in my US papers of choice (New York Times and Washington Post). The nuance was not lost on Justice Scalia, either, who is apparently concerned

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1109841465153310092005-03-03T10:15:00.000+01:002008-01-28T11:57:52.702+01:00

I was reading Maureen Dowd’s Bushworld one evening last week after skiing. Wait!! Don’t bail, she not my favorite writer either (Ann Coulter is). She has some clever insights and a good sense of humor, but sometimes she just goes head first off the deep end into fantasyland. There’s an advantage to this, though: she frees my spirit to do the same.So I started fantasizing about George Bush’s bold

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1109678428230266962005-03-01T12:57:00.000+01:002008-01-28T22:47:28.272+01:00

Well, the Alps certainly were snow-covered. It snowed virtually every day of our week in Villard de Lans, as it had the week before our arrival, and the snow base was between one and two meters thick. You could ski on the picnic tables we ate lunch at last year. Temperatures ranged between –15°C (5°F) and –4°C (25°F).Unlike most downhill ski resorts, Villard de Lans has a big cross-country ski

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1108794000797918332005-02-19T07:18:00.000+01:002008-01-28T12:03:13.803+01:00

The Kyoto treaty came into force this week and the French media are not painting a pretty picture of the Bush administration. Here’s my translation of the first paragraph of an article from Le Monde, entitled “Reluctantly, Washington is forced to change”:“The first Bush administration’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocol is one of the best examples of its indifference towards the US’s allies

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1108546398723366852005-02-16T10:31:00.000+01:002008-01-31T23:23:21.212+01:00

I received an e-mail a week or so ago about an alarming French government internal report. The subject of the report was juvenile delinquency, its causes and potential prevention, and it was submitted to the minister of the interior, Dominique de Villepin (that’s right, him again!) in October 2004 and recently published on the web. It suggested these problems have their roots in very early

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1108250430071939122005-02-13T00:19:00.000+01:002008-01-31T23:23:58.360+01:00

The Bush budget battle is raging enough already, so I won’t add to it ... except to say that we may yet get to see whose side the Bush administration is really on and what I meant by “hoodwinked” (see January 5 post). If you’re patient, I think you’ll see them get their comeuppance.Also, Riverbend is back with a personal report on the Iraqi elections, another fascinating post. I don’t know how

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1107907449786324552005-02-09T01:02:00.000+01:002008-01-27T22:05:37.236+01:00

With a new major news item coming out every day, it’s hard to stick to one’s blogging ideas. Was Bush père Deep Throat? That question was asked on a French radio station yesterday morning during the 8-10am slot. Or how about this one: Peace in the Middle East! What won’t they think of next? I must say, if the pictures and videos I saw yesterday are anything to go by, Condi Rice has an uncanny

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1107565865479707602005-02-05T11:22:00.000+01:002008-01-27T22:06:57.464+01:00

On Tuesday, The French daily Le Monde ran an article entitled, “The Iraqi Vote Accelerates the Thaw in European-American Relations” (my translation). The newspaper seemed very happy to report that George Bush had phoned Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder on Monday and that when their conversation ended, the USA and “Old Europe” had moved closer together. Interestingly, Le Monde also reported it

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1107163682282412782005-01-05T22:25:00.000+01:002008-01-30T10:03:55.924+01:00

I know I’ve been silent for a while, and some people have asked me if I have “recovered” from the election. Indeed, I put so much energy into communicating during the run-up to it, that I have needed time to get back to the rest of my life. Although I was disappointed with the outcome, communicating with you was very rewarding. It was a good way to feel involved in the debate from afar.I was in

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1107039366525479412004-10-27T01:48:00.000+02:002008-01-28T12:01:50.094+01:00

This will probably be my last post before the election, so I'd like to pack as much in here as possible. For starters, I'd like to thank all the people who sent me the links that appear below. If you follow all of them and read everything, you'll be busy from now until the election. In my opinion, if even one-tenth of the factual information presented in these article and sites is true or if you

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1106955644039339762004-10-14T01:41:00.000+02:002008-01-27T22:05:37.238+01:00

According to an article in today’s Times, the mayor of Crawford, Texas, where President Bush has his ranch, is a Democrat and a Kerry supporter. The article also mentions a Crawford newspaper, the Lone Star Iconoclast, that has endorsed Senator Kerry. Here’s a link to that editorial and an equally interesting follow-up article to the publication of the editorial. And lastly, while you’re at the

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1106955201072609932004-10-03T22:15:00.000+02:002008-01-27T22:05:37.239+01:00

Thanks to the internet (and the New York Times!) I was able to watch last Thursday's debate a day later. Watching it live from France would have required being up in the middle of the night, something my wife says I do too often as it is. I think the debate showed a telling contrast between the two candidates. I saw Senator Kerry as an experienced, poised statesman, someone who has thought long

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1106954929161206472004-09-22T21:52:00.000+02:002008-01-28T12:01:50.094+01:00

As I said a few weeks ago, this is the first election year in which I have made a contribution to a political campaign. Since then I have been receiving information by e-mail from the Democratic party. The latest one included the speech Senator Kerry gave at New York University. I feel very strongly about the issues raised here, and I think it's important to share them with you. I think it's

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10252138.post-1106953862989054922004-07-21T22:08:00.000+02:002008-01-28T12:01:50.094+01:00

I have just done something for the first time in my life. I have made a contribution to a US presidential campaign. As I can only vote once (unless the current administration finds a way to invalidate absentee ballots from overseas voters, in which case even my one vote won't count), I have decided that giving money is the next best thing. I fully recognize that it's only symbolic compared with

Stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046511627275174469noreply@blogger.com0