Four Corners Revisited: My People

I am cheating a little and using the Four Corners concept to quickly introduce to you people and ideas so that future articles on Portugal make a lot more sense.

Introducing Mr P — who does not really wish to be on the internet at all. Ironically, I met Mr P online playing a rather silly game called Tribal Wars. Mr P was born in Morocco of French parents and has been living in Portugal for most of his life. He has a degree in Biology from Pau University. He speaks French, Portuguese and English extremely well and has knowledge of Spanish, Italian and German as well. He has a strong sense of history and of culture. The mix of our cultures and our language brings a lot of humour to our lives. We love to travel — not just in the broadest sense — but in the everyday sense of exploration; not only of ourselves and our lives but in the beauty found all around us. We have adventures everywhere! This picture was taken at our handfasting where we took our vows in front of friends and family.

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Teachers in France Have The Right Idea: Strike!

The other day, I was watching television and I saw a commercial for a certain credit card company that showed a teacher shopping for their own school supplies. I was reminded how bad our education system currently is — bad enough that it supplies teachers with a certain budget for the year but when that budget is exhausted, as it often quickly is, they have to pony up if they want to give their students crayons or colored paper or project supplies — regardless of how important those supplies may be for their education. I couldn’t imagine a bank teller being told by their employer that they could only have a certain number of pens at their station, and that they would have to pay for any others if they needed them.

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Banning the Veil: Show Me Your Face or Go To Jail

In France, the fight for the right to stay a completely secular state has just taken an interesting turn. I remember in 2004 when head coverings were banned in public schools thinking that I was glad that I was not a student in France as being a Jew as I am involves wearing a head covering.  Covering your face is now prohibited in public places in France, and I’m not sure it’s necessarily a step in the right direction for France. In addition to banning the niqab, the full face veil that Muslim women wear, the ban also includes masks, hooded jackets as well as anything else that covers the face.

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Concrete Bombs in The Age of Drones

One of my fondest memories of history class in grade school was learning about how the British redcoats in their keen formations were thwarted by the colonists using techniques they learned from the Native Americans — hiding among the trees and taking cover while attacking the well formed British troops. Unfortunately, I recently found out that this story was somewhat fictional — rather, “…on occasion the Americans used cover, hiding behind trees and rock walls. The start of the war at Lexington and Concord is a prime example, and the New Jersey Militia, used it well also, both being examples of partisan warfare.”

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Stick a Pin in Sarkozy: He is Done

What we bind together and choose to fight defines our cultural values and our inherent morality and immoral choices.  When a French court ruled that voodoo dolls of French President Nicolas Sarkozy must be sold with a warning label indicating sticking pins in the toy hurts Sarkozy’s feelings, a small slice of intellectual freedom was preserved in the presumptive ridiculousness of the ruling:

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En Français, Si Vous Plâit…

There has been a lot of bashing of France and the French people, much more so in the last year or so than in recent years. While I disagree with their stance on the war in Iraq entirely and I am, understandably, distraught over the large amount of anti-Semitism that is taking place in the country, I do not feel it is right to simply dismiss the entire country and its culture.

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How Anti-Americanism in France Lacks Self-Questioning

by Violaine Messager

(Warning: This article does not aim at agreeing with one side or the other, either Bush or Chirac to extrapolate. It just aims at reflecting a French person’s feeling about the question of French-American relationships or rather the lack of debate in her country.)

Everyone heard the French Foreign Affairs Minister’s well-applauded speech during the UN session about the war on Iraq (or “against Iraq” if you prefer). I was impressed and I encountered difficulties figuring out my actual opinion about it. Indeed, I was torn between some kind of approval of the part to be played by the Old Europe and an inability to understand the American project I could not be satisfied with.

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Upside Down & Inside Out

by Nancy McDaniel

I’m at that age, “A Woman of a Certain Age” (Isn’t that what The French call middle age? Or is it semi-old age? I think we need a new term for us Boomers. Fifty-two can’t be middle age because that would mean I would live until 104. This is not likely, especially with the not-so-great genes I inherited. Besides, although I like Willard Scott quite a bit– even better when he was Ronald McDonald many years ago — I don’t like him well enough to live past 100 just to get a Smucker’s birthday salute. So if 52 is not middle age, then what is it? Certainly not golden age – what a dreadful term. Centrum calls it silver; they ask “isn’t it great to be silver?” I’d rather be platinum, I think. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s “going platinum.” Kind of like selling a lot of records. But not actually selling them, really just being old enough to have bought a lot of them — 45s and even 78s mostly)

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