Le Petite Fille du Passage Ronce by Esther Senot and Isabelle Ernot

 Le Petite Fille du Passage Ronce

by Esther Senot and Isabelle Ernot is the story of a family devastated and lost because of the Holocaust.

The family of Esther was a modest one, and they were new in Paris. They had left for good Polland noticing that the anti-semitism was becoming a horrible problem just ten years before.

Her mother had had seven children in total, both her parents, plus her brothers Marcel and Achille her beloved sister Fanny and Bella, plus uncles, cousins, all dead in Auschwitz or other camps.

It hasn't been a simple reading this one, because there is an intense sufferance, not mediated by time, again, although I recognize in this wonderful and tender lady a big courage, and an immense sweetness seen also in the structure of the book; in the first part there is the introduction at the family Dzik and the personal experience of Esther in Auchwitz and her liberation; the second part is a series of letters written by Esther to his various family members, in particular to Fanny and her parents. Pictures included. Fanny died in Auschwitz after many sufferances; Esther survived and this one was the promise she made her: telling their story, not leaving their time passed in Auschwitz buried in the past or in the time. We all know that for survivors is impossible to forget because it was simply too irrational what they experienced. Imagine a lot of people in train dedicated for animals transportation, kept there per more than 12-13 days, before their final arrival, defecating, making pees wherever they could, without any sort of privacy, or other personal hygiene, treated as animals; just this experience will give to you the idea of what it meant.

Unfortunately the wind of the anti-semitism involved France as well, tells Esther, and most of her family was captured  on 16 april 1942.

Not having anymore anyone, for Esther will start a long crusade. She found several refugess but at the end will be discovered and will finish to Auschwitz. She tells that she was close to the crematorium, that to her seeing many corpses became a daily experience. They thought that she could work and she did it, employed in a place where they produced tubes. She knew Marie, a friend, and then was strong her connection with Fanny, her sister, rediscovered there, but Fanny at some point died.

A couple tried to escape from Auschwitz. In this case discovered, they would have being hanged up but the girl preferred to cut her veins for not give this satisfaction to the SS.

To them this girl was seen as a heroine.

Once the war was over, and they were free, in the while Esther went also in Berger-Belsen, she could just see that everyone of his family was not yet returned and most of them wouldn't never returned home. At first Marie, her friend gave her hospitality but situation became difficult with Marie's boyfriend, who didn't want to see around anyone. Esther then went in a sort of orphanage, but too tired of fighting, she tried to kill herself; this time she spent some time in a psichiatric hospital, where people reassured her: she would have built a great existence, just she had to believe in herself. And the strength of living, more powerful than nothing else returned. With love, as well. Her boyfriend and then her husband knew her story and he thought that it would have been better to close definitely that chapter, for living only happily! the rest of her existence. The family of her husband didn't never ask her of her pasr, for keeping her always cheerful and happy.

Esther has had three children and they rarely talked about what it meant to her the Holocaust and the Shoa.

The public appearances of Esther started when she joined a group for a touristic visit in Germany, Auschwitz included. The touristic guide treated the topic with superficiality, not knowing, when Esther remarked that she had been there. There was a big silence and then the invitation of the guide at explaining what had meant to her. Since there Esther has visited a lot and a lot of schools; the first one, she was at that time maybe more shy than not now, she didn't know what would have happened but the teacher said her that the children were prepared. Later she received from them, she tells in the book a bit envelope plenty of letters.

This book is extremely moving. Told with great sweetness, and the important promise made to her sister Fanny of telling the horror, because, only telling what humans are in grade to do to other humans, we can avoid that the story would repeat itself. We can't permit it.

Highly recommended book.

I thank Editions Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Rain-Maiden and the Bear-Man by Easterine Kire With 10 colour illustrations by Sunandini Banerjee

 The Rain-Maiden

and the Bear-Man by Easterine Kire is a series of poweful Indian legends I read in a few minutes. Enchanting, sad, while I read then I thought that in every part of the world (I think at the North European countries, Ireland but Italy as well) the supernatural has been important for men of all ages like also the ambivalence that man has always felt for nature, seeing it undee many ways as a friend, under other ways as a misterious world in grade of hiding a different, magical, and sometimes dangerous parallel dimension. 

The first legend is the one of the Rain-Maiden and the Bear-Man. The first one is the Queen of Rain and her hair are composed by rain's drops. She would love the Bear-Man but...

The Man who Lost his Spirit is the most intriguing one of all these legends. Once a man fell from a tree; more dead than alive, the people of the village tried to give back to him his own spirit; but that man had changed after this experience and maybe because his spirit didn't enter in his body correctly.The only thing to do was to return in the place where everything happened! And there..."The spirits of the dead and the spirits of the living mingled with familiarity. There were no barriers between them"...

The Man who Went to Heaven is pretty similar at a legend of North Europen Countries.

There is a man with a pond of cleaned water, till, one day, he notices that the water is dirty, muddy. What is it going on? 

Night after night, he notices that there are several magical creatures dancing in the pond and keeping the water unclear. This boy falls love for one of these Sky-Girls and with an escamotage, will keep her close to him.They have had two children but these children will reveal to their mother what their father did...

The Man Who Became a Bear is the story of a man attracted in the forest and later tranformed in a bear.

In all these tales, I left alone some of them, the forest is seen, in particular the most profound part of it as plenty of magical creatures, most of the time pretty dangerous. This is a constant. Hearing the voices of the little folk, the magical creatures means a big danger, exactly like for a sailor hearing the chant of a mermaid.

A dangerous enchantment that would mean to men or also children, you will read, a perdition, and when there is the return home, possible in certain cases, the alteration of their characters.

Beautiful book, wonderful and dreaming illustrations, this reading is the best if you want to be transported in other dimensions, exotic places  and the...unknown!

Highly recommended.

I thank Seagull Press for the copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Pandemic! Covid-19 Shakes the World by Slavoj Zizek

 Pandemic!

Covid-19 Shakes the World by Slavoj Zizek is a book released by Polity Books treating the current period (first phase and wave, Italy was in lockdown) we are all experiencing. Social distancing, an enemy we can't touch but that it is incredibly visible and.."alive" in bodies of people and that it is causing a lot of death and sufferance.

A pandemic means a shock: a social, political, economical, psychological shock, because the rules are not anymore dictated by a government of a state, but by a virus and the behavior of the citizens. There is a constant, enormous, fear, panic, uncertainty in a pandemic time.

As reflects Zizek there won't be any return to normality, but the new normality that will be built under the maceries of this pandemic will be for sure a new one.

If we won't do that, a new barbarism will start to take place.

And...Another question: why America and Europe were so unprepared although rich countries to this shock, when previsions said that a new pandemic would have affected the world soon? 

Zizek starting from the experience of Li Wenliang, the doctor of 37 years who denounced the silence of chinese authorities regarding the severe outbreak of COVID-19 and his following death concludes with a phrase of Martin Luther King: "We maybe have all come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now." 

It is true: Covid-19 doesn't respect anyone; it kills the rich and the poor, the beauty and the ugly. Everyone. And it becomes incredibly strong, joyous and happy when people spend time together.

That one is its strength. Only that one. In opposite case, it would remain a solitary virus, without consistency. But this virus knows something: that people can't stay always all alone and there, joyously he kills and let us suffer.

This one is not a healthy society, adds Zizek, but a society pretty tired, by dues, by that being masters and slaves at the same time, without adding that the globalization is the main cause of social distress. 

COVID-19 pandemic is keeping this state of things pretty worrying;  not everyone stay at home for smart-working: there is a large part of population who is forced to go outside, in an unsafe world where the risk, at the moment, of catching the virus is very high.

The situation of the world is not the happiest one at the moment: there is not just COVID-19 but climate changes as well! and we are experiencing phaenomenon always seen in the world but with more prepotency: floods, hurricanes, quakes and other different disasters.

Our perception of body is changed: for reasons that we all know we must avoid to touch our face, nose, ears, cleaning hands compulsively and wherever we go, we can't shake hand anymore, we can't hug, we can't kiss anyone. We can't let show to anyone our affection for prudency.

We learned to control and discipline ourselves writes Zizek.

These past years, reflects Zizek, only the internet and its explosion presented us, in particular with Windows the problematic of viruses of various sorta. If in our part of the world we experienced only online stress, in other part of the world the explosion of COVID-19 has been lived as another "plague" close to other ones, (certain countries are effected by more than an epidemic per time) in particular in Africa.

The explosion of places where people have fun all together, so parks at theme, or also cruise ships let us rethink at the system created in our past society...A society where people had to enjoy all the fun together.

Pandemic's psychological reactions have always been absolutely similar in every epidemic. There hasn't been a great differentiation in terms of behavior if we look at the past and we read what happened, and the mirror we observes today.

There is denial, anger, bargaining, depression and at the end acceptance. 

In the first stage people can't recognize that there is a problem (I met several people in that phase and they are now the most worried ones), there is anger, when it is understandable that the peril is close to us, but also the dream that the problem can be attenuated or sorted out, for then experiencing depression and acceptance.

A new form of living must be created, helped by a new Communism tells Zizek, if not, Zizek writes a future could be this one:  "We stay at home, work on our computers, communicate through video-conferences, exercise on a machine in the corner of our home office, occasionally masturbate in front of a screen displaying hard core sex , and got food delivery never seeing other human beings in person." Scaring.

For sure panic is a condition that we started to know well. My mother is taking some drops every night because the entire situation scared her to death although we live in a countryside.

The fear of the unknown; the idea that what it is told can be a lie, or just, the enormity of the problem in particular for people who remembers the last Second World War Conflict and thinks that this virus, keeping people isolated, is worse than a war.

But... After all...Isn't it a war this one?

A war that can't be defeated egoistically but through global solidariety and cooperation "in the interest and survival of of all of each of us" writes Zizek.

The situation experienced in the first wave,  when in hospitals sometimes nurses and doctors chose who put in ICU "removing" from the list the oldest, and sickest ones. Isn't this one a situation that potentially can open up the space for immense corruption, asks Zizek.

 

Italy has been in a general lockdown, and that lockdown brought things under control for circa two months. Virus circulated but was more lazy thanks to the general lockdown.

It is a historical fact this one: for killing or for put under control a state, a city during an epidemic the only real measure that can save wagons of existences are lockdowns.

China remembers still the lessons learned when Watson closed an entire village in 1917, affected by a weird flu, dedicating to him an hospital.

Zizek speaks of the elite, living well and maybe like the protagonists of the Decameron by Boccaccio who lived somewhere for escaping the new wave of plague, telling to each other stories of various genre for passing the time.

Sure: during a pandemic normality is strongly altered. We live, also when the peak is reached in a constant situation of peril; there is not anymore the relaxation of the past; because we still know that the virus is there.

A virus: what is a virus if not a parasite, write Zizek? An entity close to a vampire, a parasite, yes! It couldn't live if he wouldn't enter in the body of someone replicating itself creating in most cases important illnesses or the death. It doesn't exist and exists, prepotently; it can be classified a "silly virus" because it can be killed cleaning hands with alcohol, cleaning surfaces with simplicity, it doesn't resist high temperatures because and of course, it doesn't enter, as said one day by a virologist through the walls of the houses. So, you must catch it somewhere meeting someone.

I smiled when I read what Zizek wrote: he said he would have wanted to catch the virus so that the uncertainty would be over. It happens the same to me. 

I wanted to see if I catched COVID-19 so that I would have been immune but no, I did a sierologic exam and it was negative.

And yes, I know what it means experiencing nightmares of various sorta, COVID related. You dream virologists, politicians, doctors, you dream COVID, in general you are sick or other people are sick and so what to do?

But I find, for example more simple at the moment sleeping, because dreams changed for good after a while; I find more difficult  coping with the day, when from the beginning to the end the main mantra is COVID-19 and who is sick today, and what will happen tomorrow? I tell the truth: that the fact Italy reopens put me is a big stress. Last year we were in lockdown and I experienced great relaxation because I knew that we were safe. This year is the opposite...

So, you imagine when you will return to the city, jumping here and there, avoiding human contacts, staying safe....It's not a joke. Plus of course, the uncertainty of the future, how this society will change, because I am honest, I hadn't seen a great society in the pre-pandemic world. No.

This pandemic is a medical, economic and psychological emergence.

Kant once said speaking to the laws of a state: "Obey, but think, maintain the freedom of thought."

To Zizec passing through the public is crucially important, because we understood that the past system built couldn't be inclusive with everyone and important decisions must be taken for avoid any kind of social intense di-stress that could bring people to desperation.

Transfunctionalitation is an extreme measure for helping societies and privates; it permits to the economy running and to prevent extreme poverty and starvation.

Beautiful book, you'll read it in a few hours. There is a new book Pandemic 2, written by the same Zizek. Stay tuned. I will post the review I hope in a couple of weeks.

Highly recommended.

I thank Polity Books for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Open: Where It All Started A 90 Day- Journal Extended Edition by Jacqueline Pirtle

 Open:

Where It All Started A 90 Day- Journal Extended Edition by Jacqueline Pirtle is another incredibly good journal for being more happy, more satisfied of your existence.

Undoubitedly in this life sometimes we can be close-ness experiencing fear, anger, anxiety, depression but it is when we are open-ness that we  give the best of ourselves. Defining this second condition, Pirtle says that it is "where you can truly be you, and "can make  your wishes, dreams, and desires come true."

The most common errors that all of us do is remembering the past, seeing our errors and failures. Of course in this depressing condition we can't be creative, but we are put down by our same thoughts, vibrating in a low frequency. "Being open to all that life has in store for you is where it all starts because it allows unlimited opportunities to arrive in that wideness" explains Jacqueline.

The trip that Jacqueline has thought for you is magical as magicals are her books.

At first there will be the visualization of a door, then the door is opens...Just with these two entries you can visualize a dreaming world, the one you have every dreamed.

Personally I read it also as an exercise of an exciting experiment of creative writing. This journal won't feed up just your soul but body as well! speaking of concreet thematics that sometimes are worrying us. I want to underline an expression used by Jacqueline.

You must know  that the first time I heard in english the word open-minded well, it was thanks to my correspondent Maria Louise. She lives in California and she insisted that they were and are open-minded. Who is an open-minded person? Jacqueline doesn't have doubt: a person like that one has the ability to see, feel, hear and live beyond what things look like in physicality. 

So, open yourself to the immense possibility that the University will present you because of positive vibes, positive frequencies and because of a positive attitude to the existence.

Another stunning journal! Congratulations, Jacqueline.

Highly recommended.

I thank Jacqueline for the copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

French Riviera and Its Artists Art, Literature, Love, and Life on the Côte d'Azur by John Baxter

  French Riviera and Its Artists Art, Literature, Love, and Life on the Côte d'Azur 

by John Baxter is a new fatanstic book published by Museyon.

French Riviera has meant and is meaning a peaceful, enchanting place where spending good and long vacations also thanks to good weather, warm hospitality and that light, so special and unique. Matisse would have written: “When I realized that each morning I would see this

light again, I could not believe my luck.”

In the XVIII century from novelists to painters, creatives thought that the best places where to set their masterpieces was the indoor, till at the moment in which Paul Cezanne native of Aix-en-Provençe decided to portraying the outside part of the world. It was a great success.

Inspired also by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau  artists started to research new environments, outside, for portraying their paintings; there was a consistent migration in this part of France. 

Indispensible to mention Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin, and then Henri Matisse that was shocked by the wonderful light seen in this corner of the world; Renoir was another estimator. Picasso would have been in the French Riviera only after the First World War and pandemic flu.

The love for this bucolic land wasn't completely unknown. In 1834 Lord Henry Peter Brougham, decided to afford to Italy, but an epidemic of cholera interrupted his trip in the Riviera. He was so fascinated by that land that he fell in love for it, deciding to buy a villa in the area. Thanks to this publicity a lot of his friends joined him. 

In the XIX ventury Cannes became the favorite place of Russian aristocracy and Guy de Maupassant ironically thought that the city of Cannes had acquired several titles considered the crown heads in the city.

Aldous Huxley, Edith Wharton, Michael Arlen and E. Phillips Oppenheim were also in love for the French Riviera.

The first decades of the XX century Americans, Russians, tended to spend just the winter-time in the Riviera, ending their vacation in May 15.

A new railways meant the arrival of new tourists; it was a big change, noticed also by Francis Scott who wrote at some point: "Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people; a decade ago it was almost deserted after the English clientele went north in April.”

Cole and Linda Porter were the first couple who decided to spend with great joy their summer time in the Riviera. Their friends considered them eccentric, but they really enjoyed every second of their time spent there.

The story of Cezanne is articulated. His family was a good one but they didn't encourage the artist, so Paul left for Paris where he failed, returned home, worked in a bank and was soon in the capital again because encouraged by Emile Zola.

As most people grown up in little places, Paul Cezanne remarked in a letter: "When I was in Aix, from Paris, it seemed to me that I would be better elsewhere, but now that I am here, I miss Aix.  When one is born there, he is ruined; nothing else means

anything to you.” They're absolutely healthy feelings of people born in beautiful places.

One day Renoir was his guest for several days at L'Estaque and they painted both the same scenario. Renoir remains the gentle soul painting with grace the reality; Cezanne is more hard in his characterization of the scenario.

Renoir was another estimator of the South of France because of his many problems with bones; if in the youth had visited Italy and Africa, for helping his body in the latest part of his life choose the South of France.

When afforded in the French Riviera Renoir was an old man; accompanied by his wife and many servants, he loved to surround himself by sexuality that found thanks to the young models he used for painting.

In the Riviera Renoir spent only the coldest months of the year, but the first world war blocked him per years there.

He returned to paris where he died  in 1919.

Matisse lived in traumatic times, and experiences and saw things, politically and ecologically that were devastating.

Helped by Gertrude Stein at coming out, devoted of his canvas, she had many canvas of this painter for sure! Stein was someone who helped everyone and every painters she believed in exposing every saturday in her apartment on Rue de Fleurus.

Matisse moved in South France, Nice in 1917.

It was a joy and a delight representing the light, beauty and sunny days of the place.

He had two passions: travelling and women.

He died, after years of sickness for a heart attack. 

A chapter is dedicated at the so-called Blue Train.

Sylvia Plath once said that it was the best way for travelling; this train interrupted its touristic function during the First Wolr War becoming a train for military purpose.

After the war and from 1922 to 1947 the Blue Train was a joy for the tourists.

It stopped at  Paris, Dijon, Marseille, Toulon, St. Raphaël, Cannes, Juan-les-Pins, Antibes, Nice, Monaco, Monte Carlo, and Menton.

Le Figaro wrote: “Going to sleep in a country of mist and grey skies, then waking up the next day to visions of light and sunny places where one breathes a fragrant air: this poetic dream can indeed come true if you take the new lightning-speed train that the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée company has just created, with Monte Carlo as its destination.”

Many the known people who reached their favorite locality with the Blue Train: Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, Sergei Diaghilev, Coco Chanel, Evelyn Waugh and W. Somerset Maugham.

It became a sort of Orient Express and this train interested also Agatha Christie, who wrote a book called The Mystery of the Blue Train.  

The same known and legendary coreographer Sergei Diaghilev  commissioned Le Blue Train a ballet written by Jean Cocteau, Coco Chanel designed the customs and Pablo Picasso treated the theatrical curtains.

After the Second Wolrd War the Blue Train didn't travel anymore.

Coco Chanel at first was also costum designer for theater and films.

In 1923 at 40 was known as a couturier and her first fragrance Chanel No. 5 was ready.

With her companion they chose a house in the Riviera. It was  an old

farm on Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

It took a long time before that the farm was completely restored, but then her friends like Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and Luchino

Visconti spent months with her.

Once she broke up with her companion the Duke of Westminster in 1932, Coco Chanel found a new dimension with new lovers and companions.

Fetes in the French Riviera, but also Ballet and Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteu, Riviera, Brigitte Bardot, and cinema, cinema, cinema, in a new book by John Baxter that it is a tripude of colors! No one, like Baxter is in grade of characterizing, representing like in a long and beautiful dream that years, with an enchantment, a joy that it is pure love for his adoptive land,  France.

I found not just relaxation in reading this book, but also an immense lightness. John Baxter enters in your heart with his unforgettable stories, for staying there forever.

Highly highly recommended, for dreaming, remembering, learning.

I thanbk Museyon for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

La Fabrique de Notre-Dame! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

 That evening, 15 April 2019 I went to the mass, at 7:30 pm and when I left it was 8 o'clock. I remember I sent some voice-messages to my Memphisian aunt and then I returned home. My mother started to asking me who was at the mass while there was a breaking news on TV,  pretty shocking: Notre-Dame de Paris was burning.

A new love-story between me and France was starting again after decades of passivity and thanks to the American bookstore Shakespere and Company located in Paris.

I remembered that I studied French per several years, and I thought that it would have been a pity neglecting this big country, culture, people, absolutely friendly and amicable for other time. 

Notre-Dame is a part of the existence of all french people it's part of their identity, but this cathedral is also the most important one of all Europe and the entire catholic world.

After some days, when I discovered that the French government opened an international fund raising I donated a very small amount of money. I told to a relative who worked once in Notre-Dame, when he called me: "They can just buy a sac of cement with what I donated but it is a something."

340.000 donors from France and other 150 countries in the world for a total of 830 millions of euros reached. There were many remarkable donors in every part of the world, for helping a quick restoration of the injured Cathedral.

A cathedral this one that bewitched Victor Hugo;  while Joris-Karl Huysmans in the little book Notre-Dame de Paris released by Editions de l'Herné guessed maybe what would have happened, stigmatizing as "Revoltant" the installation of electricity in Notre-Dame. 

Once I made this donation, after a while the French president Emmanuel Macron sent to all of us, donors a video message for thanking us all for having donated something; plus we have always been updated via e-mail regarding the progression of works in the Cathedral; the Centre des Monuments Nationaux sends periodically e-mails.

Last December I also received an e-mail: they asked me if I wanted to buy La Fabrique de Notre-Dame Journal des Donateurs; this one

is the first issue. 

It is beautiful

and explains step-by-step what happened that horrible april 15th; the idea of an international fund raising, and then words go to that people who started to put in security what was left behind by the big fire; so statues and other objects of value  put somewhere else for being cured, vaults, barrells have been consolidated, arcs have been put in security, and much more of this has been done. 

In this cathedral are working miriads of different people for the most diversified works and reasons and for giving new life, and a best aeternal future to this cathedral.

Philippe Villeneuve, architect, explains that "when a person works in an historical monument is necessary a bit of culture, practical skills, and a lot of modesty" underlined that they are there for a restauration loyal to the spirit of origin of the damaged monument and not for "architectural gestures."

Of all the people involved in the rebuilt of Notre-Dame gone destroyed there are the "Cordistes". It is not a work pretty known but surely you musn't suffer of diziness for doing this! They have been the first workers involved immediately after the fire; two days after the fire 40 cordistes were on the roof of Notre-Dame. They have put in security the roof, preventing other potential fallings.

Some history of Notre-Dame. The first stone and so the inauguration of works in 1163. There was in the past another church and the Ile de la Cité was the biggest center of power of the king. In that historical moment Louis VII le Jeune was in power. Did the Pope assisted at the inauguration? It is unclear, but the Pope probably was in France till the previous year so it is not impossible.

Anna Maria Polidori

 

La coppa dell'amore by Winston Graham

 La Coppa dell'Amore

a new bok of the Poldark saga by Winston Graham published by Marsilio focuses the attention on the new generations. Geoffrey Charles, Ross's cousin after years spent at war return home and it will be this one a great event celebrated with a feast. At the same time in a grotto a silver globet and other precious objects are discovered. In the silver globet there are written words in latin: Amor gignit amorem: love generates love. 

At the same time what is it happening to the various characters of the book? Jeremy continues to be refused by Cyby Trevanion. Jeremy would want to go away, forgetting this girl till at the moment in which he hears that she is planning of marrying someone else. Clowance and Stephen are planning a wedding after a turbulent love-story although there is more than a perplexity...

New entry is Selina Pope. Voices said that her husband lost his existence because discovered her to bed with someone else. 

There won't be peace for Ross and Demelza, as you will see.

Another passionate chapter of the Poldark saga!

Highly recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Autobiografia di Alice B.Toklas by Gertrude Stein edited by Alessandra Sarchi

 Autobiografia di Alice B.Toklas by Gertrude Stein

edited by Alessandra Sarchi is a wonderful book  if you want to understand the dynamics and atmosphere breathed in Paris during the  two first decades and more of the last century. 

Gertrude Stein's writing-style is not encouraging, or beautiful, let me write this: no. 

Her writing is hard, cold, and mainly autoritative and auto-celebrative. She mentions herself 760  times  in 285 pages! It's a continuous: Gertrude Stein, miss Stein, Stein met...etc etc.

This experience, the one of an auto-celebration passing through the idea of writing the biography of her companion is an escamotage for a promotion of herself and her vision, telling us who were the artists, painters, people of letters, or friends like Sylvia Beach and Monnier, passing through painters like Matisse, Picasso and many more, who visited their house. People still without fame, as Ernest Hemingway, who searched for Gerteude Stein once in Paris because a thing was more than sure: if Gertrude Stein loved your work, probably you would have become someone. For this reason, but also for passing some time together, in this fertile house, Gertrude and Alice organized constantly art exhibits. Whoever could stop by; it was maybe necessary a little introduction but for the rest, no one was excluded in this circle of creatives. The two brothers Stein were very well known in the environment and Leo was indispensible like the sister in the creation of a new idea of painting; not only; this place of aggregation that was Stein's house avoided the possible dispersion that in opposite case maybe would have characterized these beautiful minds without a guidance. Sometimes luck happens and in their case they found in Gertrude Stein and her brother a great shoulder for going on and becoming who they became now: Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway... What I appreciated the most of this particular historical period in Paris was the mutual help that surrounded them all thanks to the Stein

Only for this reason you should read this book.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Hairlarious Critter Tails by Sharon Kleve

 Hairlarious Critter Tails by Sharon Kleve is an homage to squirrels. Americans go crazy for animals maybe because they have a large diversity and their contact with also wild animals can be frequent.

Sharon tells in the introduction at this sunny book that living in a place where she can does it, has a lot of domestic animals, spotting, frequently squirrels and other wild animals as well. This ebook is dedicated to them! 

Starting from squirrels. Oh, I adore them! You must know that when I was little I was fixated with squirrels. When our elemantary teacher Angela gave us a theme, it was about some fictional story on squirrels. I adored they way of living and their idea of family and the warm of their little tiny, cozy nest.

Sharon starts to tell us several important facts that maybe not everyone know about squirrels: one of the best ones is that squirrels are helping to...planting trees in the immese forests of the USA!  The season of love is from February to May and a squirrel tends to have circa 2-4 babies per time.They can fall from 30 meters without any kind of pain. They're real acrobats. Their eyes are positioned in a way that permit them of looking behind and escape when they see a predator.

Remember the remake with Johnny Depp of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? I thought that they were fictional creatures: They were all real and trained by The Nut Room Animal trainer Michael Alexander and his for more than 19 weeks! Incredible!

A part of this section  is dedicated at the jokes involving squirrels. Hilarious!

Frogs: more than 6000 spieces in the world the biggest exemplary in Africa. They are on this Earth from more than 200 million of years and the first animals in land with vocal cords. There are also frogs emitting poison and another one similar to a kangaroo.

Rabbits! Beautiful, tender, shy, rabbits have all characteristic that help us to interact with sweetness with this animal. In captivity they can eat only carrotts, surviving, but when they are free they love to eating grass and everything green around them. It is true!

There are rabbits for domestic purposes incredibly big like the Flemish Giant rabbit. Remarkably hugienic, these little animals can have several bunnies everytime.

Pigs are another interesting chapter; the other one on goat willlet us discover the incredible world of an intelligent animal. Rectangular pupils, four stomachs being ruminant animals, their milk is the best one of this world. It's very good and contains vitamin A and calcium at high doses.

I adore them: hedgehogs: affectionate, tender and cute animals they are the best if you have a garden and you want to protect your veggies from nasty animals. Great guardians, these little animals roll into a ball for protecting themselves from predators. They eat insects, but also worms, centipedes, bird eggs, snails, mice, frogs, and snakes and an adult's got from 5000 to 7000 spines.

Chickens: they have a best vision if compared to the one of the humans; once someone counted the feathers of a chicken for a total of more than 8000 leathers.

Peacocks are suggestive colored animals; vice-versa Raccoon in captivity òlives just 3 years while in captivity something like 20 years!

Nocturnal animals they stay awoken during the day as well! if they find good food. Their appaetite is endless and they tend to eat whatever they find along their way.

In general raccons are accidentally killed by car drivers. The female of the raccon has a time of gestation of 63 days for a 7 kits in total.

Porcupine closes this beautiful adventure presented by Sharon.

For all the children of this world! I found beautiful imagines, great description of every animal and a lot of fun with jokes associated to them.

Highly recommended.

I thank Sharon for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

L'Enfant des Camps by Francine Christophe with Pierre Marlière

 Francine Christophe is a lady, if you look at her picture, not only beauty, but also plenty of grace and serenity. You wouldn't never guess from a pic, that this lady experienced the horror of the Holocaust. But she did.  

Her book, L'Enfant des Camps

written with Pierre Marlière is a shocking but at the same time precise, vivid account of the years of her Holocaust. Francine has had the luck of not having lost his parents; her mother was captured with her and both of them were never been separated.

When she was arrested with her mother, she tells, she was learning "le tables de moltiplication" and she was at the number 5. When she returned home, three years later, in 1945, all the rest of the children knew them, while she didn't, but the trauma remained and she hasn't never been in grade of been quick with numbers. 

Yes, because as Francine remarks in this book, there is not a day that she doesn't remember what it meant Berger-Belsen and the other camps where she stayed in, two times at Drancy, the first time "better", the second time horribly, because in the camp there weren't anymore French french soldiers but  SS and horrible kapos. 

In theory Francine and her mother couldn't be deported because in family there had been soldiers prisoners of war. But they have been. The main priviledge they had was receiving mails, and sometimes his father wrote them long letters. Once reunited, that poor man couldn't recognize anymore his wife. He had left a florid lady, and now he had in front of her someone unrecognizable, with typhys.

It's impossible to forget an experience like that one, because there wasn't anymore anything of human in the treatment reserved to Jewish people and the rest of humanity nazists didn't like, writes Francine.

Francine changed several camps, but till she remained in France, although there wasn't always a human treatment, (but sometimes people were gentle) she was still in the mood of singing. It would have been impossible singing in a place like Berger-Belsen. 

When still in a french camp she composed a little song that it is now preserved in the Memorial dedicated at the victims of the Shoah. Her mother preserved in fact the paper with the words written by her daughter. 

That trains: Francine is not shy in telling what was going on in the trains where they were deported. From the beginning you felt a nauseabond smell, because, obviously before their deportation other people had suffered the same pain that had experienced Francine and her mother; treated like beasts, they had to pee and make poo directly there; once arrived at destination they were all dirty, tired, but the horror was just starting.

In a camp when they received their little food, they discovered a dead rat; in Bergel-Belsen Maurice, a friend of Francine waited everyday with impatience that one of the kapo of SS finished to eat his cheese; he had discovered that that SS had the habit of throwing away the rind; the kid discovered it and everyday was waiting for it. It was something.

The mother of Francine in the camp of Berger-Belsen had also kept away some chocolate. "I will give it to you if strongly indispensible" she said her once. Then, one day they discovered a lady who had had a baby in the camp. She was a little tiny baby; that lady was starved, was emaciated, and didn't have any strength for helping her baby. So Francine's mother decided of presenting the chocolate at that lady: Francine agreed. What I found absolutely moving and wonderful was what happened many years after this episode. The baby survived and at some point Francine organized a meetings for people interested in the Holocaust, but also of course for survivors and their families. During this first meeting, a lady donated her some chocolate. "I am the baby of the girl you and your mother have helped in the camp."

Beautiful! Wonderful! 

There are still and there will be always many fears in the mind of Francine: she can't watch horror movies, or movies containing any sort of violence. 

She can spends hours to see the pictures of the corpse of people dead in her camp, the one of Berger-Belsens or other ones, because, she underlines, that "that one has been my childhood", and that ones were the people with her in the camp. Maybe she hadn't never met them, but they were part of what she was sharing with them. 

Francine strongly avoid movies containing strong messages of violence, because she experienced what it means and obviously no one would want to live anything like that, also if fictionally.

Francine has a big fear of the night, and once, when she watched on TV the concert organized for the arrival of the New Year, I imagine the one of Wien, an air of Richard Strauss called Schnell, to her meant to be again transported in the camp, where the SS used that word, that meant billy, or trancheon.

Many are  the hidden traumas, like this one that can return on surface prepotently and abruptly in the existence of a survivor.

A survivor. 

The return in the real life hasn't been simple for Francine. She also experienced a lot of big problems; diarreah and dysentery, typhus, the poor conditions experienced, meant to her big big problems at the teeth, cystitis, and many other kind of health problems derived by malnutrion, cold and extreme conditions experienced by her body. 

Malnutrion reached dramatical proportions. When the SS understood that the end was close, they didn't mind anymore of feeding these poor people; to them, specifies Francine we were numbers not anymore people.

So one day, Francine while was walking noticed a corpse and a man on this corpse. She run away, disgusted.

People tried for their survival every possible escapism, also that one.

Francine saw wagons of corpses accumulated close to them: you can't forget that innocent people can be treated like that, and that they can die because of the dishumanity of other human beings.

Francine is optimistic regarding our times. The Second World War was born because of a general turmoil not yet sorted out at the end of the First World War, but what it was wanted by all the European Countries, in particular France and Germany, was establishing a new order of things; the creation of Europe means preserving another event like the one seen in the 1940s but also presenting peace, stability and freedom to the folks of these countries.

That's why Europe is important and it is a value that we must treasure so badly. New generations, adds Francine doesn't know what it means a lack of freedom (maybe we are experiencing it because of the covid-pandemic, but surely we hadn't never lived a limitation of freedom or massive departures, before.) In the past it wasn't like that. 

The goals reached now in terms of peace, freedom of expression and freedoms of every sorta are good fruits born because of the atrocities of the past; so it's important to preserving the memory, looking always to the future with a smiling attitude and gratitude; these free lands where we live in decided to change for better after the horror experienced in the latest world war conflict.  

 

In Berger-Belsen Francine lived in the Camp of de l'Etoile, of the Star, and with them there were jewish of many countries and different ethnicity; it meant that no one understood the other ones; yes, there were examples of jewish people who could understand and speak several languages, but for example Francine didn't know yiddish at all; there was a sort of competition of the various people of different countries in the camp and also in this way, Germans wanted to put hate between them.

But Hitler didn't invent the anti-semitism remarks Francine: it transformed that hate in a mostruosity. 

The latest train that they caught had to explode, but thank Lord they were saved by Russian soldiers and set free. Forever. A freedom, the one of Francine that meant to her, a survivor, the constant, frequent visit at schools of every genre, for telling what happened to her. No one can knows if survivors don't tell.

Once she said, she was invited at Hannover and an israelian lady told that she screamed most of the time during the night because of the SS. Another flash, a big hug with that unknown lady and the idea, they were also invited to dinner, of spending some time in solitude in her bedroom, with few food. They prepared a superb dinner at the restaurant, but at few meters of distance there were the dead people disappeared abruptly during the war; while she had to eat; eating...An impossible dream in the camp, pains experienced for the lack of food were the msot tremendous and diversified ones; Francine passed from physical to psychological torments.

Jewish people, adds Francine had been totally absorbed by the french community; they are part of the social tissue of France: they are proud of been francais, french, they fought, as the relatives of Francine did, in the french army. It was  shocking what happened to them.

A book that everyone must read!

Highly recommended.

I thank Editions Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori