(Cole Porter)
("Can-Can")

"Every time I look down on this timeless town
whether blue or gray be her skies.
Whether loud be her cheers or soft be her tears,
more and more do I realize:

I love Paris in the springtime.
I love Paris in the fall.
I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles,
I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles.

I love Paris every moment,
every moment of the year.
I love Paris, why, oh why do I love Paris?
Because my love is near."

Actually, I visited Paris only once in the summer of 1980. The Parisians , I must say, really did go out of their way to be rude to us Americans. And I ,unfortunately, learned where every toilet in the Louvre is located! Other than that,it was great.

I'd much rather visit Heber Finn's with the master anyway!

Twelve yrs. ago in Paris, it was a wonderfully warm night, walking along the boulevards, and I was looking forward to a special dinner with my wife. We decided upon a small, attactive cafe with a fine view of a public square across the way. People were leisurely strolling and music filled the air. How romantic!

After entering the establishment, we were led to a very small table for two located directly next to the doors leading in and out of the kitchen. Very active and noisy, to say the least. A woman came in long after we had arrived, and was given a nice seat at a table for four situated at the front window. She and her poodle received smiles, immediate service, and all the ice water they could drink. We had yet to have anyone come to our table and, by now, I had begun to understand the scenario.

My wife, fluent in French, courteously addressed our waiter about the delay when he finally got around to us. The "waiter" (a true misnomer) responded they were especially busy this evening and he'd try to do his best!? I could not help but see Fido and Mommy were already heartily eating their appetizers.

I was grumbling in English when a tiny platter of bread, cheese, and two small glasses of wine eventually arrived.

Long into our holding pattern, the lady and pooch were having their main course. I sipped my last taste of wine, pulled out a few loose French francs, to cover the cost of the pain et fromage, and we departed into the night. Hand in hand, we stopped at a curbside coffee and ice cream wagon run by an old French gentleman who, after having chatted with us for awhile, gave my wife a carnation just before we said au revoir!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: fjp451,

Delightful story.

Pain et fromage are good words.

Café et glace, aussi!

"The poet of science fiction."

Pierre Vimont
Ambassador of France to the U.S.
December 17, 2007

This message has been edited. Last edited by: The Lake,

Writer Ray Bradbury named Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters
Beverly Hills, December 17, 2007

Speech by his Excellency Pierre Vimont, Ambassador of France to the United States.


Ray Bradbury & Ambassador Pierre Vimont
Photo: Eric MartinetDear Ray, Dear Alexandra,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Esteemed guests,

It is a real privilege for me to welcome you tonight at the Residence of France on a wonderful occasion : to express the French government’s acknowledgement of an outstanding writer and distinguished man.

Dear Ray, as a matter of fact, you are widely recognized as the most important living figure of science -fiction. For over 60 years, you have published more than 600 short stories, revolutionizing the genre as Jules Verne or George Orwell did in their time. You have also written novels, screenplays, poetry, and created your own theatre company, Pandemonium.

Often named “the poet of science-fiction”, your have given the genre its Lettres de noblesse but creating stories nourished by references to Art History and Philosophy, full of poetry and enlightened by a sense of the absurd. You hence reveal the very soul of humankind, in its irrational aspiration to become God. Always ahead of your time, you wrote your first stories with a metaphysical profoundness, questioning Science when everybody was fascinated by the progress of technology and the space odyssey. Hence were born masterpieces such as Dandelion Wine, the Martian Chronicles or Fahrenheit 451.

Dear Ray, in an interview with the newspaper Le Monde you state that your whole life has been dedicated to writing. You have been writing every morning since you discovered Verne, Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs at twelve years old. You are too modest though: you don’t mention the precious contribution you have also made to Society, apart from your literary work, as an architect and science consultant. You helped create the United States Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in 1964, the Spaceship Earth at Disney’s Epcot, and your concepts for a new mall at the corner of Hollywood and Highlands has caused the Assyrian Pavilion to be built, utilizing the fabulous set of Intolerance, which was directed by D.W.Griffith.

Somehow, you are the future dear Ray, you who have always anticipated the dangers into which humankind could fall, the potential dark side of science, the diseases that Society encounters when confronted with its desire of control over Nature. You have hence become a prophet for the XXI century, a Socrates for our time, using myths and imagination to reveal what is to come next. Maybe this is why you have now your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

When asked what motivates you to write, dear Ray, you answer “Love for what you do and for the ones you are with. And you give this advice : “forget about money”. You, personally, began with nothing -a small apartment in Venice where you had to use the public phone...

But the story about how you became a writer is especially poignant for me, as it is related to France. You recently revealed this secret on your website: “how I fell into becoming a writer”. At the age of twelve years old, while discovering science-fiction, you also got to see a great Magician in a circus - Mr. Electrico. A favorite uncle of your died at the time, but this Mr Electrico told you that you could live forever. Why ? “Because I’ve met you before, says Mr Electrico. You were my best friend in the great war in France in 1918. You were wounded and died in my arms at the battle of the Ardennes Forest. But here you are now, with a new face, a new name, but the soul shining from your face is the soul of my dear dead friend”. “This clown gave me a future and in doing so gave me a past many years before”, you now remember. “A few days after, I began to write, full time”. And your relationship with France, especially Paris, has since grown more and more intense, particularly since that trip you made as a young man- jumping out of a train for Rome to run into the streets of Paris. In a more recent time, you have made a ritual of coming to Paris every year and buying copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the night, writing “Paris 1998, or 1999 or 2000” on each new copy. In 2000, you hired a limousine with a television set, something you would never do, as you were going to the desert but wanted to follow the French soccer team in the World cup.

Dear Ray, I wanted to tell you today that this love affair with France is mutual. You have been read by hundreds of thousands of fans in France, adapted by François Truffaut in 1966 for Fahrenheit 451, and you launched the prestigious science-fiction series Présences du futur for Denoël publishing house with your Martian Chronicles in 1950. A new edition has recently been made available, and we are proud to have copies here tonight. You are, also, one of the only science-fiction writers to be read in French primary and secondary schools.

In the story about “how you fell into writing”, dear Ray, Mr Electrico tells you “live forever”. I think this will be the case, as you have written books that will stay forever in History, and continue to be enjoyed by our grand children, great grand children and theirs to follow.

I would also like to pay tribute to your daughter Alexandra, your precious assistant, who helped us so much in doing this event. And now, Dear Ray, let me proceed to the ceremony in itself.


Ray Bradbury & Consul General Philippe Larrieu
Photo: Eric MartinetRay Bradbury, au nom du Ministre de la culture et de la communication de la République Française et en vertu des pouvoirs qui me sont conférés, nous vous faisons Commandeur dans l’ordre des Arts et Lettres.

Them French people sure are good speech-makers!

The trip to France in Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River makes for good reading for those who can stand it.

Dandelion, you will insist on plugging Wolfe, won't you.... No, I'm kidding. I actually loved LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL. I probably wouldn't ever have braved a Wolfe novel if not for Ray's 'Forever and the Earth', though!

Well, that's why I read him. Recommended reading is all of Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River up to the point where he finishes school and goes to New York. The entire New York section is almost unreadable due to the anti-Semitism, and as for the rest, you are on your own.

August 22 in Paris 2010?

Now that would be a great 90th birthday party.

Whoa! Better brush up on my French. A LOT!

This makes me like the French a little more. Thanks for posting this!