Paxkal Exposito

Sharp, whole and generous, Paxkal Exposito is like his creations: he is unique.

The son of fishmongers living in Biarritz, Pascal wondered how to maintain his parents' knives. He began training in sharpening and quickly found followers of his expertise among the neighboring merchants. 

1987 marked the year he launched his business in this field. He expanded his skills: sharpening scissors and restoring cutlery. In 2004, after receiving specific training in medlar processing, he created his own knives and founded the artisanal cutlery business. The Bidart workshop-boutique was opened in 2011.

Paxkal and his team are craftsmen, and make knives from A to Z: their own creations. These unique pieces are called Artzaina, Mizpira, Bixia, they are thought and imagined in the Basque Country with always a story, a symbol and lines which signify their belonging to their territory.

John Meisel

John Meisel CC (1923 –2025) was a Canadian political scientist, professor, and scholar, and chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

Meisel wrote on various aspects of politics, notably on parties, elections, ethnic relations, politics and leisure culture, and, at the beginning of his academic career, international politics.

Meisel was a pioneer in Canada of research on electoral behaviour, political parties and the relationship between politics and leisure culture, particularly the arts. Throughout his career he examined the cohesion (or its absence) of the Canadian communities. He also lectured and wrote about regulation, broadcasting, telecommunications, and the information society.

Meisel was born in Vienna, Austria in 1923. His father worked for Baťa Shoes at its headquarters in Zlín, Moravia, Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. As the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia became imminent, Baťa sent its Jewish employees out of Czechoslovakia to Bata centres abroad, and the Meisel family moved to Casablanca and then Haiti before settling in Bata's Canadian company town of Batawa, Ontario in 1942.

Berets Are Back

Just so you know...

 

BTS

K-pop superstars RM and V from the band BTS have been discharged from South Korea’s military after fulfilling their mandatory military service.

They each saluted upon their release on Tuesday in Chuncheon City as about 200 fans, some of whom travelled from Mexico, Turkey and Brazil, cheered. RM and V began their service in December 2023, while three other BTS members – Jin, J-Hope and Suga – were already months into their conscription.

In South Korea, all able-bodied men aged 18 to 28 are required by law to perform 18 to 21 months of military service under a conscription system meant to deter aggression from rival North Korea.

The law gives special exemptions to athletes, classical and traditional musicians, and ballet and other dancers if they have obtained top prizes in certain competitions and are assessed to have enhanced national prestige. K-pop stars and other entertainers aren’t subject to such privileges.

There was heated public debate over whether to offer special exemptions for BTS members, until the group’s management agency announced in 2022 that all seven members would fulfil their duties.

Maison Adam

While the town of Saint Jean de Luz was preparing to celebrate the royal wedding of Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse Infante of Spain in 1660, Monsieur Adam, a renowned local pastry chef, sent his prettiest servant Gachucha to deliver a tray of his almond macarons to the Royal party which were exceedingly well received.

Two years later Gachucha married Monsieur Adam, with their family continuing the traditions of the Maison.

Fast-forward a few centuries and the business still in the hands of the same family. After the Great War, the founder’s great-great-granddaughter Pascaline Adam took over the family business. She married Valentin Telleria, a shoemaker from Eibar, who had taken refuge in Saint Jean de Luz during the final Carlist War of the 1870s. Both developed Maison Adam’s pastry and confectioney offerings while they also opened new shops in the French Basque Country.

Upon the death of his father, Lenôtre-trained JacquesTelleria and his wife Bernadette, continued to develop their range of Basque cakes and fine chocolates. This was around the time that the first tourists arrived in the town after the setting up of paid holidays.

In turn, Jacques passed on the macaron’s secret recipe he’d received from his mother to his son Jean-Pierre, who had trained in both Paris and the United States. While preserving these family memories and traditions, the dawn of a new era arrived in 2018 with the latest generation, Andoni and Miguel Telleria – Adam, Jean-Pierre’s sons.

Le Soulor Shoes

The Soulor workshop founded in 1925 in Pontacq (Bearn).

Pontacq's activity is linked to leather by the establishment of numerous tanneries in the 16th century. Naturally, shoemakers set up shop, many working at home for a boss in addition to another activity (agriculture, tanning). The production of Pontacquaise shoes grew steadily until the beginning of the 20th century. In 1925, the Paradis-Pommiès workshop, today renamed Le Soulor 1925, was founded.

At its inception, the workshop primarily produced studded ankle boots with leather soles, and sometimes aviator boots. Other, more formal models completed the range and were regularly delivered to La Samaritaine and Le Bon Marché in Paris. From this era, the iconic mountain hiking model remains, the brand's DNA, and is still in high demand by our customers, whether they are shepherds, hikers, or lovers of fine craftsmanship.

“We practice “Norwegian Welt”. A technique rarely used today because its production is complex and time-consuming. This technique, still used today in the workshop, combined with premium leather, ensures robustness, waterproofness and unlimited resoling possibilities for our models.”

Women and men put their talents at your service, perpetuating the “Made in France” concept with French and superior-quality raw materials. Proud to promote French and Béarnese know-how!

Olivier Campardou

Olivier Campardou makes the famous noodles used to garnish Japanese broth. He learned everything he knew in the Land of the Rising Sun. A report from his workshop in Rimont, Ariège.

He wields his meat grinder with the precision of a master chef. Dressed in traditional garb, this farmer is both a peasant and a master of soba, the name given to this Japanese noodle specialty.

Soba is buckwheat spaghetti. " The unique thing about mine is that it's 100% buckwheat. I don't use wheat, whereas the Japanese recipe uses 20%. I left it out to provide a guarantee for people who don't eat gluten ," explains Olivier Campadour.

This buckwheat is produced and processed locally by this farmer. Once hulled, the grain is turned into flour in a mill he built himself, inspired by Japanese models. Before starting, he went to Japan to learn about the tools and know-how. " To see how they did it, how they processed buckwheat, the tools they used, the hullers. Because we don't have the tradition of hulling it in France. The Japanese make very good hulling equipment. I also learned how to make soba from a soba master while immersed in a restaurant ."

Since then, the farmer has expanded his range and now offers a variety of roasted buckwheat infusions. This product has become very popular, particularly among Japanese expats in Paris. " Most of my retailers are in Paris. I have about thirty retailers in Paris who sell my infusion. I sold a ton last year. Locally, a little in Toulouse, in the Basque Country, but also at the Saint-Girons market."

His journey led him to own his own business in Paris, where he trained 2,000 people to make soba noodles. Since then, he has returned full-time to his farm, nestled in a corner of the valley where Ariège heritage and Japanese tradition now coexist.

German Panzer Corps Beret

 

A bereted member of Germany’s Panzer corps balances a beer stein on the Leopard 2’s gun, to demonstrate the stabilising system that allows the tank to fire on the move. 

Marcel Bauer

On 15 May, Marcel Bauer, a member of the Left Party from Baden-Württemberg, was thrown out of a Bundestag session because he was wearing a beret. The Karlsruhe politician refused to remove the hat.

Parliamentary Vice President Andrea Lindholz (CSU) excluded Left Party politician Marcel Bauer from the ongoing plenary session, to the applause of the CDU/CSU and AfD. The 33-year-old had previously refused to comply with her request to remove his black beret or voluntarily leave the room.

The Left Party MP had already clashed with Bundestag President Julia Klöckner (CDU) over his beret an hour and a half earlier. Klöckner had asked Bauer to remove his beret: "I would ask you to do so, because it is customary in this House—and if that is not possible for you, please leave the room." The Left Party politician from the Karlsruhe-Stadt constituency did so, but later returned.

Gérard Bellecourt

Cereal farmer in Haute-Garonne, Gérard Bellecourt is passionate about vintage machinery. A hobby he shares with his loved ones.

With his beret screwed on his head and a smile on his face, Gérard Bellecourt is inexhaustible on the subject of vintage tractors. His collection includes at least sixty, including one of the first American Fordson models of 1917, with its red metal wheels.

The Train des Mouettes

The Train des Mouettes is a tourist train that has been operating (again) since 1984 on the 21 km of railway between Saujon and La Tremblade on the Saujon to La Grève line in France. As the only steam railway in Charente Maritime (Nouvelle Aquitaine), it serves the stations of Fontbedeau, Mornac-sur-Seudre, Chaillevette, Étaules, and Arvert.

On 25 April 1868, la Compagnie du Chemin de Fer de la Seudre [the Seudre Railway Company] was founded. It would take many years of negotiating, research, fundraising and even a war (1870-71) before the line became operational on 28 August 1875.

The railway has about 60 items of rolling stock, of which 18 are classed as 'Historic Monuments'.

Giacomo Gates

 Giacomo Gates (1950) is an American jazz vocalist. Gates was born and raised in Connecticut. 

His father was a classical violinist. He made his public debut as a vocalist at the age of six. Soon after, he picked up guitar. In his youth he listened to jazz stations broadcasting from New York City, learned about jazz from disc jockeys, and played along on guitar.

A college dropout, he found work on a road crew as a laborer, then drove dump trucks and heavier vehicles like bulldozers. Gates moved to Alaska to work on the Alaska Pipeline, intending to stay only a year but remaining for twelve. While performing at a jazz festival in Fairbanks, he was approached by Sarah Vaughan, who encouraged him to leave Alaska and pursue a singing career.

Gates interprets jazz standards, practices vocalese, and is active in jazz education. He has taught at Wesleyan University, the Hartford Conservatory of Music, and New Haven's Neighborhood Music School. In his singing he tries to copy the sounds of instruments, such as flutes, trombones, and drums.

Gabriel Desjacques

Gabriel Desjacques was born in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, Corrèze, in 1862. He became the head veterinarian of the stud farm in Hennebont  1887.

He was immediately won over by Brittany, even admitting : "I regret not having been born Breton." He emphasized the wonderful qualities of the Bretons. Especially the women whom he found loving and faithful. According to him, the Bretons are not boastful. They prefer action to words. He also admired the Breton peasant woman, the Breton family, the modesty which "forms the basis of your character and your faith". 

It was after the 1906 strikes, by chance at a fair. where he exhibited a collection of everyday objects depicting daily life in the 19th century . Given its success, he thought that a permanent exhibition of Breton art in Hennebont had every chance of success. And it did. The museum opened in 1910 at the Broérec'h Towers. A magnificent site that was listed as a historic monument the following year. It is a regional museum, entirely devoted to the history and customs of Brittany, particularly the Lorient region. 

Sadly, in August 1944, forty years of hard work were destroyed by the bombing. But all was not lost, as the Hennebont Heritage Association took up the torch in 1984, gradually recreating no fewer than ten rooms today.

Jean Barry, Market Gardener

At the Saint-Martin roundabout, like every Wednesday morning, the market is in full swing: you can find fish, meat, eggs, but also clothing, mattresses, knives... For its small size, the market holds its own. While the intensity of the cold is felt, these colors and smells warm the hearts of customers and strollers a little.

A few meters from the tobacco shop, wrapped in his blue anorak and wearing a black beret, Philippe Barry sells his produce. Fruits and vegetables come mainly from the Pyrénées-Orientales. "A market gardener since 1973, it was my son Philippe who took over the business," explains Jean. A Catalan, born in Perpignan, he cultivates his fields on land located in Salanque. He and his son travel to the department's markets to sell the fruits of their labor: Thuir, Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque, Saint-Cyprien, Le Barcarès, and the small market in the Saint-Martin district of Perpignan. 

"Except on Fridays," adds Jean with a smile. "Because on Fridays, we go sightseeing, we go for walks." Indeed, in the family, there are no weekends. So every Friday, for him, is a bit like Midsummer Day.

Francis Poineau

Francis Poineau is a shepherd and cheesemaker from Larrau, Basque Country, France. He owns a herd of manex red-head sheep and produces Ossau-Iraty cheese and Basque yogurts. 

In 1983, he learned to make cheese during a training course in Oloron Sainte Marie and decided to process the milk instead of selling it to the Chaumes dairy. In 1986, he acquired a share of a cayolar in Ardakotxea in Larrau, where he remained a shepherd until his retirement in 2022. 

In 1990, he joined forces with a farmer from Moncayolle to reduce their respective workloads. At the same time, he became involved in the AOC Ossau-Iraty and the Confédération Paysanne, of which he was the national secretary from 1997 to 2002.

Having started his career with 120 sheep, he retired with a flock of 140 animals.
His succession is now ensured by another landless shepherd like him.

Poineau is also the Co-President of the Alternative Chamber of Agriculture EHLG (Euskal Herriko Laborantza Ganbara).

 

Denis Gheerardyn

Former civil servant turned organic market gardener Denis Gheerardyn, works 10 hecatares across the plains of Offekerque, in the north of France.

Aside from a greenhouse that still produces beautiful lettuce in the depths of winter, the bare land is covered with straw and silently preparing for the first spring sowing.

While farmer's organizations and government promotes ever more expansion, Denis says "...that is not serious. There are many small farms going along peacefully without continuous modernizing". 

When in his 50s, denis left everything he knew and became a farmer, now achieves a 40.000euro turnover and is a leader in the organic field in the Calais region.

"On a personal level", he says, "it's a great satisfaction to live in nature every day, to sow and harvest beautiful vegetables. To be independent, to have freedom of choice and action". 

Célestin Coyos

COYOS Célestin was born in Chéraute (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) in 1908.

He ordained a priest in 1933 and left Seoul (Korea) the next year.
He studied Korean in An-song but, suffering from tuberculosis, he had to return to France for treatment. He was then a professor in Mauléon (1941-1945) then in Ménil-Flin (1945-1948).
Returning to Korea in 1949, he was sent to the major seminary in Seoul.
In 1950, he was taken, with other missionaries, to North Korea. He was the only survivor of the "death march".
In 1955, he returned to Korea, where he was appointed parish priest of Cho-nan and Andong (1962). He then became a chaplain to nuns (1976-1991), then retired to Suwon.
He died on March 3, 1993. He is buried in Andong.

Tobacco Growers of the Semois

A beautiful video from a time long past: tobacco growers of the Semois region in Bohan (Belgium).

These passionate artisans discuss the various aspects of their trade, from harvesting to diseases that attack tobacco plants and the selling price of pipe tobacco.

Antonio di Benedetto

Antonio di Benedetto (1922 –1986) was an Argentine novelist, short story writer and journalist.

Di Benedetto began writing and publishing stories in his adolescence, inspired by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Luigi Pirandello. Mundo Animal, appearing in 1953, was his first story collection and won prestigious awards. A revised version came out in 1971, but the Xenos Books translation uses the first edition to catch the youthful flavor.

Antonio di Benedetto wrote five novels. Zama (1956) is considered by critics to be his magnum opus. El silenciero (1964, The Silentiary) is noteworthy for expressing his intense abhorrence of noise, and was followed by Las suicidas (1969, The Suicides). These three novels have come to be known as the "Trilogy of Expectation".

In 1976, during the military dictatorship of General Videla, di Benedetto was imprisoned and tortured. Released a year later, he went into exile in Spain, then returned home in 1984. He travelled widely and won numerous awards but never acquired a level of worldwide fame comparable to other Latin American writers, perhaps because his work was not translated to many languages.

Murray Bookchin

Murray Bookchin “died in 2006 a disappointed man,” said Janet Biehl, the author of Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin. At the time of his death, his dream of social revolution had failed to materialize.

Born in New York City in 1921 to Russian-Jewish parents, Bookchin was raised as a revolutionary. His identity is described as being “socialist first, Russian second, Jewish third.” He immersed himself in the growing revolutionary spirit left in the wake of the Depression decade of the 1930s, building skills as an orator and a writer.

As time went on, Bookchin broke with the Marxist left, and began to gravitate towards environmentalism in the late 1950s—mostly due to concerns over pesticides being used on food.

He saw this as happening because of how large-scale and centralized farming had become, and then he started formulating the same critique of cities and political units. Decentralization of power became his new project, and with that he began to gravitate towards anarchism. By the end of the 1950s, Bookchin was looking to realize structures that could carry out this decentralization.

He was inspired by ancient Greece’s face-to-face democracy, despite the fact that it was an “incomplete” democracy, largely due to the marginalization of anyone who wasn’t a male with property.

He wanted to find a way to implement [assembly democracy] universally. Bookchin imagined that if everyone at the local level had to debate and vote on whether or not to scrap their own environment, it would never happen. He began to organize people towards this idea, which he termed libertarian municipalism.

As the first Earth Day came around in 1970, people began to embrace his ideas. The movement for direct democracy saw gains in cities such as Burlington, Vermont—where Bookchin lived at the time—and Montreal.