Thursday, December 15, 2011

FYI France : L'Ardèche!

FYI France (since 1992) -- http://www.fyifrance.com
File 3: Ejournal & archive, by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.sf.ca.us -- archive copy of an issue of the FYI France ejournal, ISSN 1071-5916, distributed via email on December 15, 2011, and a little later here on http://fyifrance.blogspot.com, and at Facebook on Jack Kessler's Notes.

In south-central France, south of Lyon, the rivers empty from the Massif Central into the Rhône -- some of them after falling a long way, through impressive gorges and in tremendous floods. The result is some of the country's most spectacular scenery, best fishing, simultaneously the richest alluvial-deposit farming and the most hardscrabble clay & rock survival existences, and tiny and picturesque villages -- and some libraries, impressive too for also being tiny and impoverished-yet-surviving, in some places, and for possessing wonderfully-interesting collections and providing extensive local information services, in others.

Many accounts have been written of life in this part of France, many of them by foreigners: Robert Louis Stevenson on the Cévennes, Peter Mayle on the Vaucluse...

To better-appreciate the Ardèche I just now am reading an account by ebullient Yale History Professor John Merriman, of his love affair with the place, also of his keen appreciation of its history, its temperament, and of the ups and downs of living in France and of being French -- Merriman has lived there himself for many years, in Balazuc, population recently a few over 300 --

John Merriman, The Stones of Balazuc: A French Village in Time (W. W. Norton, 2002) 352 pages ; ISBN-10: 0393051137, ISBN-13: 978-0393051131

From the publisher's description:

"Experience village France with its historical dimension in place. In a spirited history, John Merriman allows us to see the presence of the past in the people and ways of this beautiful village in the Ardeche.

"Balazuc is a tiny medieval village carved into a limestone cliff that towers above the Ardeche River in southeastern France. Its dramatic landscape and Mediterranean climate make it a lovely destination for summer visitors, but for its residents over the centuries life in Balazuc has been harsh.

"At times Balazuc has prospered, most notably in the nineteenth century through the cultivation of 'the golden tree' and the silkworms it fed, a process whose rigors and rewards are gleefully detailed in this splendid book. But the rewards proved fleeting, leaving only the rigors of life on the 'tormented soil.'

"Historical events from the French Revolution, through the Paris Commune and the two world wars, sent ripples through this isolated region, but the continuities of everyday life remained strong. Twenty-eight men from Balazuc signed the list of grievances against the king in the spring of 1789; the families of nineteen still live in the village. This is a story of resilience."

And here are some of the libraries which these tiny towns, so remote from the superbly-endowed Parisian monstre to their far north, stubbornly and gamely and proudly support:

-- entries are listed below "in no particular order", as the search engines and I expect the always-suspicious neighbors would say;
-- population figures are via Wikipedia.fr, and they say the numbers are from 2008;
-- colors & links & character sets here are Zimbra's, my own & The WELL's new & very magical Open Source email genie, Siri's cousine, they work OK on Zimbra and in Gmail and I hope you can read and use them OK direct from your own email, but if not please let me know;
-- the following is not an exhaustive list, either, so if anyone please would point me to omissions via email to kessler@well.com I will add them;
-- aaand browsers and email programs vary greatly in the way they treat links, in the following -- for example Zimbra un-helpfully shows both the underlined and the non-, below here, as links, but then for some functions does not go past the #... -- so below I have included both, both the embedded link to the left and the full ASCII contents of that link to the right, in the hope that if the former ends up not being too helpful, at least you can copy & paste the latter into your own browser and get to where you are going easily that way -- the Ouebbe still is a work in progress --

* Voulte sur Rhône, Bibliothèque Municipale Lucie Aubrac, La -- 5,017 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#VoulteSurRhone

* Annonay, Bibliothèque Communautaire -- 17,156 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli1.htm#Annonay

* Coucouron, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 827 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli1.htm#CoucouronBM

* Saint Péray, Médiathèque -- 7,268 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#Peray

* Charmes sur Rhône, Bibliothèque -- 2,384 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli1.htm#CharmesSurR

* Alboussière, Bibliothèque -- 907 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli1.htm#Alboussiere

* Saint Julien Labrousse, Bibliothèque du Pays du Cheylard -- 336 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#SaintJulienLabrousse

* Saint Just d'Ardèche, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 1,535 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#SaintJustdArdeche

* Villeneuve de Berg, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 2,845 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#VilleneuvedeBerg

* Devesset, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 292 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli1.htm#DevessetBM

* Lamastre, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 2,608 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli2.htm#LamastreBM

* Teil, Le, Médiathèque -- 7,929 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#Teil

* Guilherand Granges, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 10,791 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli2.htm#Guilherand

* Valgorge, Médiathèque Intercommunale -- 454 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#ValgorgeM

* Privas, Médiathèque Municipale -- 8,552 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli3.htm#Privas

-- all of these entries are most easily reached as a single groupe ardèchoise via the initial list of "New" entries shown currently at,

http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1plib.htm

-- and, later on, hopefully by the end of this month in fact, via a search in the New & Improved FYI France Search Engine, on either "Departement Ardeche" or "Département Ardèche"...

--oOo--

A Multilingualism Note:

Search has been ASCII-only for a long time, here on FYI France: partly as protest, ever since a certain Michael Hart & I, a long time ago, first discussed the politics of inserting little diacritical marks -- "comme c,a" -- as a salute to broad-minded US trans-nationalism, also to recognize foreign integrities, also to keep a few ferocious francophiles happy, also to remind US friends that the Nets were not yet multi-lingual much less multi-cultural.

That was back in the days when, in France anyway, an "airbag" had to be a "coussin gonflable de protection", or there would be a jail sentence... loi Toubon... which some of us at the time thought was funny and others among us did not...

Since then, though, Search has improved, the French président has shown up at Le Web, and now there is a new outfit down in Mountain View -- they're also now over on the rue de l'Opéra plus a few other locations worldwide -- which not only does Search pretty well but they do it pretty well multi-ling-ual-ly... In the remaining meantime, then, entschuldigen Sie bitte.


Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com