About Me

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In my interests below, I list French language, cinema, theatre, politics, art, and wine. And while French brought me to a lot of these things, I also like all of them in a more general way. I really love languages and their connections. I also have a thing about how theatre and cinema, art, politics and wine all hook up in some way. As I think of these ideas, I can hear the thwonk of the cork coming out of the neck of the bottle, and the gentle squeak as the cork is twisted off the tire-bouchon. Ah, that oakey, musty, acidic aroma wafting, wafting and people talking and talking and talking. And, oh they found out we have some sets of boules and they want to play pétanque. "Let's pick teams and play in the shade of those plane trees." The sounds of summer resonate: the crunch of the terrain under foot, the click of the iron bocce knocking in the players' hands, and the soft kiss of the wooden cochonnet as it hits the ground scuttling down to its resting point where it will await the arrival of each team's battle-worn aggies.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

New York Times on Clichy-sous-bois

New York Times article  (France’s Ideals, Forged in Revolution, Face a Modern Test)
It talks about life in Clichy-sous-bois in the aftermath of both the riots from ten years ago this October and the Charlie Hebdo and Kosher supermarket shootings makes for interesting reading. The article is reasonably short, so it does not expand on some ideas. I was particularly interested in the use of the term "enlightenment fundamentalism".