Bonnie- Re: John McCain saying we could be in Iraq for 100 years, tape below. And since there is no way the Iraqis will ever go for that..that means at the point of a gun. The British tried this road and failed, as we are and will fail despite the fact that Bush Inc has already built the largest US Embassy in the history of the world and 14 permanent bases. People should read “Sorrows of Empire” and understand the REAL cost of what we are doing….and not McCain’s glib response here to the US occupying bases all around the world. And as he says here…being in Iraq for 100 years is fine with him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUE-QmH-n4Q&feature=related Oh, and a book about McCain featuring his temper that earned him the nickname “McNasty” in HS…has three Az. reporters verifying that he called his wife a “C**t”…. Nice guy. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/81588/ I believe the reporters.

Cynthia…Not to mention the most lethal mercenary army on the planet, Blackwater, et al. And pray, just where is Bush’s Praetorian Guard disbanding to once the Halliburton War concludes?

“News” disappeared with the Fairness Doctrine. Since 1983 we’ve gone from 50 media owners to 5 entertainment conglomerates. But to fully comprehend how pernicious Fox News is watch Robert Greenwald’s “Outfoxed” with Murdock’s former producers on camera divulging Mudock’s war on journalism. You’ll hear that GWB’s cousin, a Fox News personality, called Florida on air for Bush without any vote compilation, and the networks immediately followed suit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuorIjt1HG0 The equivalents are Goebbels or China’s Cultural Revolution. Not mere propaganda but the programatic undoing of our Bill of Rights and Constitution, or as Bush terms it that “damned piece of paper,” and especially social advances from the New Deal on. Most Americans are like the proverbial frogs in the water slowly being turned up until it’s too late. Once, the entire nation was watching Huntley and Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Charles Collingswood, et al…today we do still have that caliber of reportage—except that it is subterranean and diffuse. The loudest voice is the gigantic, mesmerizing Fox-Wurlitizer with its glitzy talking-heads, slick graphics, hypnotic ‘sharks-in-the-water-about-to-devour-little-Bobbie-and Suzie” music…endlessly repeating the fatuous across all Murdock Empire units until its transfigured into reality. As Bush said, “We create reality….and while you’re studying it over there we’re creating it anew over here.” A shell game. Fox gets its talking points directly from the White House. As one Fox News producer after another said on “Outfoxed”…it isn’t news programming but an arm of the RNC. They’ve deliberately created a starkly polarized cultural divide. Listening to Fox News ‘Ditto-heads” is like a deprogramming session with members of a brain-washed cult. The lack of reason, logic and the oddly mutated facts is startling. Murdock, like his brethren in the WH, has harnessed fear to dumb-down a generation into a bunch of unquestioning Huns. On the other side, the Web 2.0 set have scanned online digests of the International Herald, Asian Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, Toronto Sun, Der Speigel, the NYT, WaPo, etc., with their morning coffee…splitting the US along the lines of the brainiacs vs the bobbleheads and Left-Behinders like some comic-Apocalypse film co-written and produced by Woody Allen, Fellini, Groucho and Tarantino.

Ena- You could start a blog on Blogger. It’s free and takes just a minute to set up and then load your digital photos there and embed a link in your posts. “Our gal in Provence!” Would be great to see your photos. My son is a US-French citizen. He went to part of HS in Aix-en-Provence, and grad school in Paris, and has lived in France 1/2 his life. My novel, French Heart, is set on a vineyard in Aix-en-Provence….and while I wasn’t for Sarkozy….am not too concerned about him either. Here’s my French Heart blog….but wait to look at it till Sunday as redoing much better…and will have many links from folks in your area. Will have the new version up Sat/Sun. Good to ‘meet’ another Francophile! All best. http://web.mac.com/myfrenchheart

Jackie Kennedy loved lilies of the valley…..her casket was covered in a cross fashioned from them. She used to have delicate little cups filled with them….and white peonies too. She was such a Francophile.

Dear Liz—Thank you for the beautiful photo of you and Caterine. You both look like fabulous, fun women who live full-out.

May Day is also labour day in France, la fête du travail, that started from a worker protest day. And our ‘entrepreneur’ is a French word. “Over-regulated” France is the world’s 6th economy, though it is only about the size of Texas and less than twice the population of California. I cannot wait to relocate to la belle France….where the emphasis is on living beautifully, and on culture and not letting the corporations own everything in sight. http://www.invest-in-france.org/international/en/Why-choose-France.html Viva la France!

Dear Caterine~Thank you for your FABULOUS photos and for the wonderful memories that put a smile on my face. I love Paris on May Day. There’s a festive air with people wearing and giving lily-of-the-valley. Fancy meals are prepared or everyone goes out. I especially love that on May 1st the golden Saint Joan of Arc statue off the Rue Rivoli is piled with mountains of flowers at its base…(but sadly not in this photo) http://images.travelpod.com/users/kitkatgo/eng-fr-feb-07.1171674060.100_… Once we had a May Day dinner celebration outside the City in a huge round dark room with wood beam ceilings and round wood tables for 12 that looked out immense gleaming windows onto a forest. It was so busy that people were seated at tables with strangers. We sat amongst six very handsome Italian soccer team members who were on the road back to Italy and wound up drinking Veuve Clicquot, laughing our heads off, and singing “Santa Lucia” over and over. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsCBZxpoqIc&feature=related I’d worn a tiny “Muguet Porte Bonheur” tucked in my hair. Indeed it had worked! That was an unforgettable May Day dinner ;)