BonjourParis

Few heroes of French history are as obscure as Eugène-Réné Poubelle, yet not one—not Joan of Arc, not Napoléon, not Charles de Gaulle—has as many monuments named in his memory.  It is impossible to walk anywhere in Paris, or other French cities and towns for that matter, and not daily come across one of these shrines.  It is true that they are not treated well, are not revered, and buses do not come from miles around loaded with tourists panting to have their pictures taken in front of one of them.  As a matter of fact, people habitually throw nasty things in, or at, them.  But the monuments, if not truly the memory of M. Poubelle, endure.

Oh, Jérôme, Jérôme, what have you done?  Uproar everywhere.  Your masters at the Société Générale are beside themselves.  They are tearing their hair at the Bourse.  They are beating their breasts at the Élysée.  They are pulling their chins at the Fisc.  And in Brussels the Eurocrats are hatching regulations for ten times six times six levels of control on transactions in excess of two euros.  Oh, Jérôme, Jérôme, they say you are a very bad man—a rogue or worse.

The lyrics of a popular French song a few years ago had an unforgettable characterization by a boy talking about his hard-to-deal-with girlfriend.  He dubbed her  jamais contente, «never content.  Those words just as easily could be applied these days to their homeland, France.

He was a genuine Renaissance man; one of France’s greatest military heroes; a master builder; a humanist; an agronomist; a philosopher and even an economist who, three hundred years before it came to pass, proposed creation of a single European currency.

Most adult Americans are familiar with the famous phrase “ Lafayette, we are here,” attributed to U.S. General John J. Pershing when the first American troops landed in France in 1917 to fight alongside French forces during World War I.

Nicolas Sarkozy, of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement party, defeated Socialist Ségolène Royal, who had hoped to become France's first woman president. Sarkozy won by a decisive 53.06% of the vote to Royal's 46.9% in an election that saw a record turn-out of 84% .

France turned a major page in its history May 6, voting into office for the next five years a new and new generation president dedicated to radical change. But the presidential race was extremely tight nearly to the finish and left all concerned still battling for victory in national parliamentary elections scarcely a month away on June 10 and 17.

After months of invective-filled, media-obsessed campaigning by 12 separate contenders, France, on April 22, finally narrowed down its presidential race to two finalists—Ségolène Royal on the left and Nicolas Sarkozy on the right of the political spectrum.

The 44th annual Salon de l’Agriculture has just closed its doors at the Porte de Versailles in Paris where some 600,000 visitors enjoyed this “largest farm of France” and all that comes with it  -- more than 3 acres of exhibits with every breed of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, fish and fowl.  In other words, anything that walks, swims, waddles or flies and ends up on the French dinner table.  Not to mention 9 breeds of draught horses, and the many mules and donkeys, all brushed and polished to a high gloss.  Literally --  I saw a farmer dust and spit-polish the horns of a prize cow, ending with a snap of the cloth just like the best of shoe shiners.