Look up at the sky. Ask yourself, “Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?” And you’ll see how everything changes. And no grown-up will ever understand how such a thing could be so important. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince   If you are a regular reader of The Modern Trobadors, I suspect that you know “the little prince.” It’s likely that you know him well. People who travel, like the little prince, open their eyes, their ears, and their hearts to the adventures the world has to offer and to the lessons introspection provides. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Alghero, Sardinia, May 1944 Collection…

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What does a town do with a vast web of stone quarries with a “Closed” sign on every door? The folks in Les Baux-de-Provence turned theirs into the largest permanent multimedia show in France. Carrières de Lumières (formerly called Cathédral d’Images) is a smashing success. Close to 400,000 visitors attended last year’s show. For over 2000 years, the quarries in Les Baux-de-Provence were a primary source of limestone for this area. The Romans exploited the quarries for material to rebuild the nearby Celto-Liguirian town of Glanum back in 200 BC and later the Municipal Arch and the Mausoleum that still stand across from Glanum. The…

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Throughout the concert, there were film clips of Piaf in concert, including on the Ed Sullivan Show Édith Piaf was surely smiling when Thursday night’s vibrant tribute to her life and music opened with a animated duet of La Foule by French singers Nolwenn Leroy and Zaz. La Foule—“The Crowd”—is about the chance encounter of two people in the midst of a festive crowd who, as quickly as they connect, they are separated. So much of Piaf’s life seemed fated for disappointment, but this sold-out Francofolies de New York Festival was beautifully orchestrated to ensure a remarkable celebration of her life and music. There were…

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 August in Provence. It is hot and crowded. The line of cars inching their way along, hoping to snatch an open parking spot for the most popular markets is foreboding and the sea of people that fills the streets of those otherwise picturesque villages steals any of your remaining enthusiasm for the outing.  Reservations for lunch or dinner are impossible, a disappointment mitigated only slightly by the knowledge that the wait staff would be too cranky to bear anyway. And the lines of buses parked outside the famous sites are enough to deter even the most tenacious tourist. The lavender fields are likely to be barren. Even the sunflowers are looking…

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Nice was where we first touched down in the South of France. We were on our way to Aix-en-Provence and then, to our final destination, Lourmarin. We had a direct flight from Boston to this city, known as the capital of the French Riviera—so the itinerary was practical—but, really, who doesn’t want to delight in the beauty of the Cours Saleva Flower Market; walk along the famous Promenade des Anglais; and visit the iconic Negresco Hotel whose guest list has included such luminaries as Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Edith Piaf, Frank Sinatra, Luciano Pavarotti, Ernest Hemingway, Lauren Bacall, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Elizabeth…

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Lavender and Provence are inextricably tied together in the minds of almost everyone who yearns to visit—and revisit–Provence. What comes to your mind when you think of Provence? Someday I will survey people about the images “Provence” conjures up. But, in the meantime, I’ll put my euros on lavender as the first image that pops into the minds of most people.   Rosé wine, pastis, truffles, bouillabaisse, markets, the slow pace of life, the mistral, and Cézanne—all certainly contenders, but, to paraphrase France’s well-known author Jean Giono, it’s the lavender that taps into the soul of Provence. Or, as the well-known English writer Peter Mayle wrote, perhaps…

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Amour has captured the hearts of movie-buffs, critics, and those that bestow those coveted awards every year. The Austrian film—I know, you thought it was French!—swept France’s César Awards this past Friday evening: Best Film, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. It also received the Palme d’Or award at Cannes this past spring. At tonight’s Academy Awards, this wonderful movie is in contention for five Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Director, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Original Screenplay. Sadly, Jean-Louis Trintignant was not nominated for Best Actor. Amour is not a movie for everyone. It…

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Part Two of Two Parts This is the second of two posts inspired by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts exhibition entitled “The Postcard Age: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection,” on view through April 14, 2013. Showcasing around 700 postcards from Mr. Lauder’s massive collection—which he recently gifted to the MFA—it is an immensely interesting and fun exhibition. The first post, last week, entitled “Postcards from France: Provence and the Côte d’Azur,” focused on the postcard craze that swept across the world around the turn of the 20th century and showed postcards from a friend’s collection of images from the South of France. This…

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Today's Café Gaby lies where rue de Henri Savournin appears to end, on the left.

Part One of Two Parts   “Postcards from France” was inspired by the current exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston entitled “The Postcard Age: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection,” featuring over 700 miniature pieces of art from his very sizable collection of postcards. Today’s post focuses on postcards of Provence and the Côte d’Azur and what I learned from the curator of this MFA exhibit about the history of postcards. Next week’s post will feature postcards from the other regions of France and I will present what I learned about Mr. Lauder’s collection of postcards. I am grateful to…

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The Modern Trobador is back at the keyboard after a brief hiatus to work on a photography exhibition in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I have managed to weave together a post about photographs of Africa in New Hampshire, photographs of Africans in France, French Presidential trips to Africa, and the bestowing of France’s most prestigious award to Liberia’s President, all of which I hope you find interesting (and impressive that I wove it all together, coherently, I hope!). Africa is on my radar these days because I am part of an organization, the Seacoast African American Cultural Center (SAACC), which organized and just opened a photography…

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