Sapeurs-Forestiers

The Sapeurs-Forestiers (Forest Sappers) were an army corps in existence between 1927 and 1945. They replaced the forest hunters whose corps was abolished in 1924.

Between the two world wars, the military command, anxious to ensure the army's great wood needs in the field, organized forest sapper units during peacetime, supervised only by reserve personnel.

The béret plays a role even in the ‘song of the foresters’:

I know under my French sky,

Tanned guys with pensive foreheads,

In green jackets

In blue hunter's pants.

The beret tilted over the ear,

And on the lips a song,

They leave when the dawn turns red,

Up there colors the horizon.

Jay Garfield

Jay L. Garfield chairs the Philosophy department and directs Tibetan Studies in India program at Smith College. 

He is also visiting professor of Buddhist philosophy at Harvard Divinity School, professor of philosophy at Melbourne University and adjunct professor of philosophy at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies. Academicinfluence.com has identified him as one of the 50 most influential philosophers in the world over the past decade.

Gaie Delap

Gaie Delap, a 78-year-old beret wearing climate protester, has had her prison sentence extended by 20 days for being "unlawfully at large", after the authorities failed to find a tracking bracelet that fitted her.

Delap, a retired teacher from Bristol, was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment for her part in a Just Stop Oil protest in 2022. She was released in November to complete her sentence at home, but was then recalled to prison when no appropriate tracker could be found to monitor her.

French Portraits

 

Beret Fire

 

Bérets et Pipes

 

Beards & Berets

 

More from the Beret Spy

 Latest additions from the Netherlands:

Hunting Horn

The hunting horn has no keys or valves. All tones and effects have to be produced using lips, cheeks, tongue and air pressure. Some tones are created by stopping the sound with the hand (“Ton Bouché”).

The French hunting horn was developed around 1817. It is called the “Trompe d’Orléans”. This natural horn is tuned in the D major key and has a 3 octave range. All musicians play the same kind of instrument, only the mouthpiece can be different.

The hunting horn is made of a brass alloy, and weights only 750 gr. The total length of the tube measures about 4.54 metres.

Cacti

A cactus is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family of the order Caryophyllales comprising about 127 genera with some 1,750 known species.

The word cactus derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Greek word κάκτος (káktos), a name originally used by Theophrastus for a spiny plant whose identity is now not certain. Cacti occur in a wide range of shapes and sizes. They are native to the Americas, ranging from Patagonia in the south to parts of western Canada in the north, with the exception of Rhipsalis baccifera, which is also found in Africa and Sri Lanka. 

Cacti are adapted to live in very dry environments, including the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth. Because of this, cacti show many adaptations to conserve water.

Most species of cacti have lost true leaves, retaining only spines, which are highly modified leaves. As well as defending against herbivores, spines help prevent water loss by reducing air flow close to the cactus and providing some shade. In the absence of true leaves, cacti's enlarged stems carry out photosynthesis.

Jerzy Ficowski

Jerzy Ficowski (1924 - 2006) was a Polish poet, writer and translator (from Yiddish, Russian, Romani and Hungarian).

 During the German occupation of Poland in World War II, Ficowski who lived in Włochy near Warsaw was a member of the Polish resistance. He was a member of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK), was imprisoned in the infamous Pawiak and took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. His codename was Wrak and he fought in Mokotów region.

After the war, Ficowski studied philosophy and sociology at Warsaw University. There he published his first volume of poetry, Ołowiani żołnierze (The Tin Soldiers, 1948). This volume reflected the Stalinist atmosphere of the early postwar Poland, in which heroes of the Armia Krajowa Warsaw Uprising were treated with suspicion at best, arrested and executed at worst, together with the sense of a new city arising on the ashes of the old.

 From 1948 to 1950 Ficowski travelled with Polish Gypsies and came to write several volumes on or inspired by the Roma way of life, including Amulety i defilacje (Amulets and Definitions, 1960) and Cyganie na polskich drogach (Gypsies on the Polish Roads, 1965). He was the member of the Gypsy Lore Society and translated the poems of Bronisława Wajs (Papusza).

Roma prisoners sitting in an open space in the Bełżec camp, July 1940. Photo Jerzy Ficowski

Ficowski translated the poems of Federico García Lorca, and he was also a known specialist of Jewish folklore and Jewish poetry, becoming an editor of the Jewish poem anthology Rodzynki z migdałami (Raisins with Almonds, 1964).

 After he signed the letter of 59 in 1975, all of Ficowski's works had been banned in Poland. However, his prose and poems were translated widely in the West and the emergence of Solidarity in the 1980s brought his works back to Poland's bookshelves. He was active in the opposition movement, and was a member of the Workers' Defence Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR) and later the Committee for Social Self-defence KOR.

Arvid Lorentz Fougstedt

Arvid Lorentz Fougstedt was a Swedish painter and cartoonist. He worked for a time as a draughtsman at the Swedish satirical magazine ‘Puck’ before moving to Paris to continue his studies. 

There he studied at the Académie Colarossi under Christian Krohg and at the Henri Matisse school. In 1916 he journeyed to Madrid where he was commissioned to copy Memling’s altar piece triptych in the Prado Museum. On his return to Sweden in 1917, his style reached a synthesis of French Empire, French Cubism, German Renaissance and Dutch early Renaissance. 

In 1918 he produced "Ingredients in David's studio" a painting statement that aligned himself with the New Objectivity movement.

He established himself as a major portrait artist. He became in 1934 a member of the Academy of Arts and in 1937 professor of drawing there.

The Love of a Good Woman

The Love of a Good Woman is a collection of short stories by Canadian writer Alice Munro, published by McClelland and Stewart in 1998.

The eight stories of this collection (one of which was originally published in Saturday Night; five others were originally published in The New Yorker) deal with Munro's typical themes: secrets, love, betrayal, and the stuff of ordinary lives. Nice cover!

Los Potreros

Estancia Los Potreros is an exclusive 6,500-acre working cattle farm, at the top of the Sierras Chicas in the heart of the beautiful region of Córdoba, Argentina.

Estancia Los Potreros dates from 1574 when breeding mules for the silver mines in Peru was the main activity on the hills.

Cattle replaced mules during the last century and today the estancia provides an idyllic retreat for horse riding and nature lovers.