Tag Archives: France
May 1st: A Hard Rain on The Parade
May 1st has forever been a big day in France. Long before the invention of trade unions (credited today to the USA by a Paris radio station!) and street demonstrations, it was a day of festivities and magic. Pots and bunches of lilies of the valley are sold on street corners now as centuries ago, […]
Brushs and Pens
Any denizen of France will tell you: Certes, Athens, Florence and a few other cities had their moments, but Paris has reigned as the Western wellspring and magnet for arts and artists for centuries. The influence of French visual art, music and literature reaches beyond Euro-America into Asia and Africa, while drawing freely from those […]
when joie-de-vivre turns surreal
ONE RIDER DOWN With at least one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Trump, Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Modi et al.) knocked out of his saddle this morning, the world looks a little less damned. The Amazon can breathe! My intent yesterday was to ignore politics completely in this letter, but the defeat of Boss Bolsonaro […]
WAOU!
At a few minutes past 8 p.m., in Nice, the multiple knots in pointdevue’s tummy are unwinding. Around midday rumors were swirling (fed by Belgian TV) that the race looked too close to call. I wandered around town, restless and anxious, with a real touch of vertigo. Too much at stake to list here at […]
Election Fever–or Election Panic?
Only the speechifiers, with a p.a. system at their disposal, can make themselves heard over the deafening drumbeats and burst of song from hundred of militant throats. These are festive militants enjoying the national tradition of taking to the streets (thank god yesterday’s rain is over!) many in clownish costumes or yellow vests. But all […]
Sleeping Beauty – la belle au bois dormant
Pointdevue returned to Paris this week after nearly two years in Covid exile without any conscious a priori expectations apart from major changes and signs of damage. What would be left after the repeated, months-long strict ‘confinement’ to living quarters? Torture enough to drive significant percentages of the population out of their minds, especially those […]
Up for judgment: Macron’s Great Debate, and the ‘re-looking’ of the Champs Elysees.
Part 1 It is desperately unfashionable to spare a good word for President Emmanuel Macron. You may call him elitist, aloof, politically deaf and dumb, an imperious windbag or vacillating introvert, a conservative in progressive clothing or vice-versa, or all of the above. Just don’t give him any credit. The current global nationalist/populist movements have […]
POINT de VUE: PARIS 
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