Let it rip, Popcorn!

My family will tell you, with an annoying unanimity, that I get steamed up relatively easily. Well, you know,...... that Gallic thing!One of my buttons is the media Duffus issuing opinion regarding " The French".Most of the originators of those amazing pieces of analysis are usually media member, some how either based in Paris or vaguely related with somebody who spend sometime there. My little experience (back in the 60's I’m afraid) was a bunch of people, living in Paris and passing a good portion of there time at the US Embassy, usually getting out of there right around 4:oo pm to make it in time to Harry's Bar where among pennants of every "Proper Ivy League University" they would indulge in sizeable numbers of the "only decent Manhattan in town" and getting out only to be fashionably late to the American expatriate party of the day.People who got out of town and mixed with the people of the country will tell you an amazingly different story.The truth of the matter is that with my little experience of a dude born in France at the peak of the tourist season (1942) and having spent a respectable number of years as a "The French" I am sorry to have to report that there is not such a thing as " The French".France is a country of amazing division. The first one is really basic: The Parisian French and the Provincial French. United by the division of there strong conviction that the other group is the ultimate waste of humanity. Parisian French are convinced that they basically walk on water and the rest of the population is basically convinced that the Parisian population is almost uniquely formed of brown-eyed people because they are full of ......Beside this basic division you have, stating from the eastern border and moving clockwise: Les Gars du Nord, The Alsatians, The Vosgiens, the people of Provence, The Catalans, the Basque, The Vendeens, The Britons, The Normans and in the center of that circle, the Gascons, the Limousins, the Auvergnats and I am missing Tens more. The Northern people have a strong heritage from Poland from their ancestors who came to work on the Mines, the Alsatians have a language of their own an distinct architecture and mastered the art of Beer brewing that escape most of the rest of France. The Vosgiens and people of the Alps have also a culture, language and tradition all their own. The people of Provence ( lou Provencou) darker skin, beautiful music of the Tambourinaire and a language that sing with the mistral, the song of the cicada and the din of a hard son hitting the hills. Their own poet Frederic Mistral was the founder of a movement to protect the dialect of the langue d'Oc, united by the song of La Coupo Santo and the very dedicated Felibrige.The Catalan whose country straddle the Pyrenees also have a language of their own, In fact France has more that 200 distinct dialects that presently see a strong revival. One Deputy, in defiance of the rule imposing French in the National Assembly, did last year stand and song the anthem of what is know as Occitanie (Se Canto) also known by its name from the Bearn Dialect "Asssero Mountagno". The People from the Basque Country also has a language that has baffle linguist for century, since nobody seem to trace its origin not pout the Basque in any ethnic group. The people of Brittany are proud of their Celtic heritage, the Normand fiercely independents also have an heritage all it own, The people from Auvergne and Limousins trace back their ancestry to the Gaul and the Gascons see themselves as the guardian of the spirit of panache.A tour of France for a person on the gourmet side is bound the be a treasure of discovery with aver 75 or 80 distinct style of food, wine lover will face an enormous diversity sometime define by the side of a hill or the other. Even De Gaulle grudgingly declared,” How can you govern a country that has more type of cheese than their is day in the calendar.""The French" have however one thing in common: an undeletable memory of World War one. Imagine that you live in a country of less than 40 Million people, that a war of 4 years (1914 to 1918) is entirely fought on your soil against a country of over 60million people and that a full third (3millions) of your male generation between 17 and 30 years will be killed and a larger number mutilated or disfigured. Every little town has in the main square a monument with the name of each member of this village who died in WW1 and WW2 is listed. Those are large numbers.Of that come one thing: The French will do almost anything to avoid any type of organized slaughter. I do not know how you feel about that attitude, but on my side, even if I served in the French Navy for ten years including a period in the Algerian Conflict, I am proud to have in me some of that Peace Loving blood and also I mourn for four thousand young people of my new country, victim of a cowboy who call himself a Christian but had no qualm and do not show any remorse for sending those beautiful young people to their dead along tenth of thousand of people of the land were the slaughter was imposed.