THE ODESSA TEAR
(The original French version was published via National Geographic France and La Règle du Jeu. Click here to read).
The man from Odessa had taken off neither his coat nor his cap, he was carrying his bag on his shoulder and inside was an umbrella, his hands were tucked in his pockets. He was standing next to a piano still covered with a thick purple cloth that protected it from the dust. We could hear a heavy, repetitive, dull sound, a constant background of hammers and flashlights coming from the scaffolding below. The long gallery we were in was plunged into an involuntary gloom. It didn’t matter to the old and mischievous pianist who was playing standing up. At that moment, nothing could disturb him. He too had kept his long black gabardine on. He was impatient and unquenchable. A thirst of flats and sharps, a musical emergency!
I was standing on the opposite side of the piano, carrying on my shoulder a camera, which I barely knew how to operate. The sound was hesitant, and the underexposed image, blurred and distant—on the screen as in time—has remained to this day a testimony of a brief and joyful moment, the crazy promise of a Ukrainian port on the Black Sea, a city of poets and musicians, Odessa, suddenly free of the Soviet bear hug.
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Jumai Victor
JUMAI VICTOR
Entretien avec Bernard-Henri Lévy, à l’occasion de la première américaine à New York de son film
Une Autre Idée du Monde—The Will to See à New York le 16 janvier 2022.
Jump to the English version of this post below: Click Here
À la fin de l’année 2019, Bernard-Henri Lévy rentre du Nigeria avec un reportage d’une force rare. Il décrit les actes meurtriers, odieux et terroristes d’un groupe « plus ou moins liés à Boko Haram », « des islamistes d’un genre nouveau » : les Fulanis. De village en village, ils attaquent, brulent et assassinent les Chrétiens du Nigeria. Bernard-Henri Lévy nous présente une de leurs récentes victimes, Jumai Victor. Cette femme, « une évangéliste », se recueille sur une tombe, celle de son mari et de ses quatre enfants assassinés. Elle survit à cette attaque. Enceinte, les Fulanis ont épargné sa vie, mais certains d’entre eux lui ont tranché, l’un après l’autre, les doigts, puis la main et l’avant-bras.
The Vital Power of Youth and Words
The Vital Power of Youth and Words: 22-year-old Poetess Amanda Gorman to Perform at Joe Biden’s Inauguration
A Rock, a River, a Tree
Maya Angelou, On The Pulse of Morning
Hosts of species long departed
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
Which Glass Should I Use to Taste Champagne?
Which glass should I use to taste Champagne?
Excerpts from an interview with Clément Pierlot, Cellar Master of Pommery Champagne.
(This post was edited by Word Factor. Click here for more information)
A French version of this article was published on Le Petit Journal. click here.
It was an unexpected and happy movement. I brushed aside two glasses standing on a coffee table. They were wider in the middle and beveled down, yet their shape did not matter anymore. All that remained on the ground were shards of broken glass.
These two glasses were a gift, two champagne glasses that had nothing in common with the ones I used for my friends: six “tulip” glasses made of crystal, also known as flutes. Thin, elongated, fragile, and unique with reliefs of light on a stand, my flutes have a formal spot in my home.
I therefore could not care less about the two broken glasses, yet I was doubting: “Am I serving champagne with the proper glasses when I use the flutes?”
I asked the question to the Chef de Cave—the winemaker—of Pommery Champagne, Clément Pierlot, while interviewing him during an online tasting dinner in June 2020 organized by the French Institute-Alliance Française, Tastings and Vranken-Pommery America:
Pierlot’s answer was a resounding ‘no.’
One Hundred Women to Inspire Us to Change
One Hundred Women to Inspire Us to Change
Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower (Assouline)
On September 6, 2020, French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter wrote an editorial in Le Journal du Dimanche, one of France’s main Sunday’s paper to denounce a dangerous post #metoo radical neo-feminism, which she says transforms all women into victims and all men into presumed aggressors. At the same moment in the United States, Assouline and the American foundation Vital Voices published a groundbreaking book with 100 portraits and texts of women ‘using their power to empower.’
Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exceptions.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, lawyer and former Justice, United States Supreme Court
Their names are Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG passed away a few days after this article was published), Melinda Gates, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nancy Pelosi, Michelle Bachelet, Geena Davis and Jacinda Ardern. Some have led countries, some head a foundation, one is a US Senator, while another is one of the most powerful judges in the United States. The book also features Panmela Castro, Xiye Bastida, Yin Myo Su, Hindu Oumarou Ibrahim, Andeisha Farid, Amani Ballour, and Tarana Burke. Less known in the Western media, they too run foundations, corporations, paint large murals, engage in politics, and transform the healthcare delivery landscape of their communities.
There are 100 of them in this book edited by Alyse Nelson, President and co-founder of Vital Voices Global Partnerships, along with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Melanne Verveer, and Madeleine Albright. This Washington-based non for-profit organization works with women in 182 countries to help them become professionally empowered, visible and heard. One hundred portraits painted by Gayle Kabaker, one of the greatest American illustrators, known especially for her New Yorker covers. One hundred women who share their visions, their ambitions, and raise their voices. They could be a thousand, a hundred thousand, millions. In fact, these 100 women leaders, activists, lawyers, politicians, entrepreneurs, diplomats, financiers, biologists, journalists, athletes and artists are de facto ambassadors of half of the world’s population.