Kafé Utza

In the dusty Badlands of Eastern Montana sits the little ranch town of Miles City. It's the last place one would expect to find a Basque inspired coffee shop. 

The name, Kafé Utza, is the Basque translation of the term "Black Coffee”.

The owner felt that her home town, if given the chance, would respond well to the fine pastry and fresh roasted small batch coffee found in the Basque region of France.

proXima

proXima is a rock band founded in Paris, 2011.

Self-described as Indie with Gothic and Punk influences and a good bit of Beatles influence.

But most interesting here, is that all members of the band wear black berets. Always!

Auguste Metgé

Auguste Metgé (1883 – 1970) came from a line of cabinet makers and carpenters, well known in Sorèze (France). Auguste followed the sculpture course at the School of Fine Arts in Toulouse from 1899 to 1903 and shows to be a brilliant student.

After his graduation he could have chosen for a career in the big city, quickly building up a reputation, but instead he chose to remain in Sorèze, believing that contacts with other artists would prevent him to develop his art freely.   

Auguste Metgé works as a cabinetmaker, restaurateur and also as a skilled designer, always wearing a beret and the long linen blouse that became his trademark “uniform”.

In 1910 he exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time.

On the death of his father, Auguste became the boss of the woodworking shop. It stays very simple, it’s the customers that make the workshop famous.

Although the art of furniture making is his main activity, he does not abandon sculpture, working with clay and bronze.

During the First World War, he was assigned to the 42nd Colonial Regiment, first asl Corporal and later Sergeant. Having seen many colleagues fall, he gets wounded himself during the Battle of Verdun Vauquois in 1915. “They were atrocious, the Germans and the French”.

 

After the war of 1914-1918, he made various memorials. He refused to establish a hierarchy among the arts, for him a well-made piece of furniture was also a work of art.... He had no liking for modern art, remaining faithful to the art of furniture, in a sort of frenzied academic way. Auguste famously said: "a Picasso…, I'd make ten in a day".

In 1970, at the age of 87 years, Auguste Metgé dies in his sleep.

Bernhard Huys - German Painter

Bernhard Huys (1895 -  1973) was a German painter.

Huys is considered one of the last painters who set up their easels in the open field in order to remainclose to the object during the process of painting. Huys was a co-founder and longtime chairman of the Friends of Worpswede, an artist’s colony located in Teufelsmoor, near Bremen.

Huys studied dentistry for one semester and then became a soldier during  the First World War. Unable to prepare for a civilian job, he retired as a traveling teacher with his guitar through the country, earning money as a waiter and casual laborer. In 1929 he settled down in Worpswede, married and found also a profession that fed him and his family. After a year's apprenticeship with a carpenter, he began to manufacture picture frames, using his own technique.

On the side he drew much of what he had done in the last few years at school and started to paint. During World War II he was arrested by the Gestapo and convicted of "contempt of the leader" in December 1943. In  1945, physically, ravaged by a disease, but strengthened inwardly he started his most creative years.

At the age of 71 years he was awarded the Order of Merit of Lower Saxony first class because of his commitment to the "Friends of Worpswede".

Rami Saari

Rami Saari (1963) is an Israeli poet, translator, linguist and literary critic.

Saari studied Semitic and Uralic languages at the Universities of Helsinki, Budapest and Jerusalem. He did his PhD in linguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The author has published eight of his own poetry books and translated several dozen books of prose and poetry, from Albanian, Catalan, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Portuguese and Spanish. In 2002-2006, Saari was the national editor of the Israeli pages of the Poetry International website. Saari has won several Israeli literature awards.

Alfonso Zapico - La balada del norte

Alfonso Zapico (1981) is a graphic novelist from Blimea (region of Asturias in Spain ) and lives in Angoulême (France). His first book Café Budapest (Astiberri 2008, Timof, 2010) was awarded the Josep Toutain del Salón Internacional del Cómic de Barcelona Prize in 2010. 

A great artist and researcher, he has spent months in Dublin working on his book James Joyce, Portrait of a Dubliner.

More interesting, in regard to berets, is his book La balada del norte, which was turned into an animation recently. A beautifully drawn story of the tragic miner's strike in Asturias, in 1934. 

The beautiful soundtrack is the voice of Marisa Valle Roso (Langreo, 1987).

Frans Eemil Sillanpää

Frans Eemil Sillanpää ( 1888 –1964) was one of the most famous Finnish writers and in 1939 became the first Finnish writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

Sillanpää was born into a peasant farming family in Hämeenkyrö. Although his parents were poor, they managed to send him to school in Tampere. In 1908 he moved to Helsinki to study medicine. Here his acquaintances included the painters Eero Järnefelt and Pekka Halonen, composer Jean Sibelius and author Juhani Aho.

Five years later, in 1913 Sillanpää moved from Helsinki to his old home village, married, and devoted himself to writing. He won international fame for his novel Nuorena nukkunut (The Maid Silja/Fallen Asleep While Young) in 1931.

In 1939, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his deep understanding of his country's peasantry and the exquisite art with which he has portrayed their way of life and their relationship with Nature."

The asteroid 1446 Sillanpää, discovered on January 26, 1938 by the renowned Finnish astronomer and physicist Yrjö Väisälä, was named after him.

Sillanpää died on 3 June 1964 in Helsinki aged 75. His beret? I would say a Czech made Radiovka.

In 2013, a Finnish commerative 2 euros coin was issued for  Sillanpää’s 125th. 

Garcia Telia

Self Portrait with Beret, 1955

Garcia Telia was born in Madrid (1906). After the Spanish Civil War, he had to go into exile in France, but eventually got arrested and was interned in Bremen. He escaped prison in 1942 and fled to Paris where he hid, doing the most diverse occupations until liberation. In 1946 he founded a Spanish Art Journal which soon became a victim of censorship. Pursued by the urge to expression, Telia began painting. His work is represented in numerous private collections and museums in Europe, North America and Japan.

Couturier Leo Bernáldez

Leo Bernáldez (73) is one of Spain’s most famous couturiers, co-founder of the prestigious boutique Elpidio. 

He dressed brides from across the country; in blue, yellow and mauve but also in miniskirt and patent laminated white boots above the knee.

Bernáldez himself usually wears jeans and a good sized brown beret. 

Chef Tómas Urrialde

Tómas Urrialde was the founder of the Association of Segovia Chefs , the oldest in the country, and co-founder of the National Association of Chefs of Spain.

He was named 'Favorite Chef of Segovia' in November 2007 after an emotional popular tribute and receiving the Government of Spain's Medal of Merit at Work. 

Tómas Urrialde was a chef for 42 years and chef de cuisine of Hotel Los Arcos.

At a time when vegetables were considered little more than cattle fodder in the 1970’s, the great chef found ways to popularize vegetables and beans. He was the first Spanish chef to write a book on the use of mushrooms.

Tómas died in 2010 after suffering from Alzheimers disease and is remembered for his easy-going walk, his large handlebar moustache and the always present black beret with which recalled his Basque ancestry.

30 Years of Darkness

30 Years of Darkness is not a documentary about the Spanish Civil War. It goes further. It tells about the post-war years and in this sense it is not one of those documentaries that approach war. The worst thing about wars is not just their victims, but the consequences that they cause. 

After the end of the Civil War, Manuel Cortés, a former mayor of the town of Mijas in the province of Malaga, had no chance to escape from Spain. After a long and dangerous journey, he managed to get home at night without being discovered. His wife, Juliana, warned him of the numerous firing squads that were taking place in the village. So, they decided to open a small hole in the wall where Manuel could hide. Manuel Cortés could never have imagined that this small space behind the wall would become his personal prison for 30 years. This is the story of the so-called post-war moles who had to sacrifice an entire lifetime to escape repression.

30 Years of Darkness tells how war affects families, no matter what side they are on. The characters range from those who were clearly involved politically, to those who felt locked in the midst of a fratricidal struggle they did not understand. 30 Years of Darkness is, above all, a story of survival. In this sense it takes a universal look at a local issue.

Available on DVD from Amazon. 

Daniel Samuel a.k.a. Denis Gauthier

Daniel Samuel, or as he was known in the resistance “Denis Gauthier”, was born in Strasbourg in 1921.

During the occupation of Paris by the Nazis, Daniel worked with an optician until he was drafted in 1941 to the "Chantiers de la Jeunesse”, a paramilitary organization created by the Vichy government for youth between the ages of 18-20, who were called up for six months. The uniform of the organization was in fact a French army uniform.

A few months after his release, Daniel moved to Nice (in Vichy France). They lived with his aunt, who, together with her husband, was active in the resistance. Their address served as the “post office box” for a Jewish resistance group called “La Sixieme” ("La Sixieme Eclaireurs Israelites de France").

In his aunt and uncle’s home, Daniel met Maurice Cachoud (whose real name was Maurice Loevenberg), one of the leader’s of “La Sixieme”. Maurice sent Daniel from Nice to Lyon with false identity papers under the name Denis Gauthier to learn how to create forged rubber stamps and documents. The patience and precision that he had learned as an optician were a great advantage in his new role, for the work required an ability to carve official seals including tiny text that had to be carved in mirror image.

The raw material used to make the forged seals was linoleum, taken from the floors of trains on his late night train rides to Paris.

At the beginning of 1943, Daniel was sent to St. Etienne where he made contact with the "L ’Aide aux Mères” organization and in cooperation with them he forged rations cards that were supplied to hidden Jewish children. Among the hidden families he prepared ration cards for in St. Etienne, was the Levie family, his future wife’s family.

In February 1944, the Gestapo in Nice arrested Daniel’s aunt. She ultimately managed to escape and survive the war. Tragically, Daniels mother and his brother Claude, who was active in the ORA resistance group (Organisation de résistance de l'armée), were caught as a result, deported to Drancy and from there to camps in Poland, where they perished.

St. Etienne was liberated in July 1944 and the resistance groups joined the Free French Forces and fought together with the Allies in remaining battles. Denis Gauthier returned to his original name, Daniel Samuel, and fought with the Alpine troops. He was injured while fighting on the border between Italy and France in the Alps and released from the army.

Croissants

This post may shatter a few concepts, taken for granted by most Francophiles and gourmets. The "French" croissant is not French, but Austrian!

The kipferl, ancestor of the croissant, has been documented in Austria going back at least as far as the 13th century, in various shapes. 

The birth of the croissant itself can be dated to at latest 1839 (some say 1838), when an Austrian artillery officer, August Zang, founded a Viennese bakery ("Boulangerie Viennoise") at 92, rue de Richelieu in Paris. The French version of the kipferl was named for its crescent (croissant) shape and has become an identifiable shape across the world.

A much nicer story, and by many taken as “the true story”, it is said that the pastry was invented in Vienna to celebrate the end of the second siege of the city by the Ottoman troops (1683). While the enemy decided to attack at night to avoid being noticed, the Viennese bakers, up before dawn gave the alarm. This is to capture the victory that they were allowed to make the “Hörnchen” (little horn in German) with its shape that resembles the symbol of the Ottoman flag.

Another version attributes the invention, still in 1683, in a Vienna cafe, named Kolschitsky, which would have recovered bags of coffee left by the Turks during their hasty departure, and would have had the idea of ​​serving this coffee and a pastry crescent-shaped in memory of the departure of the occupier …

Definitely true: this has led to croissants being banned by some Islamic fundamentalists.

Black Panther Inspired Fashion

These pictures come from this blog.

An interesting photo shoot of fashion inspired by the Black Panthers. 

Looking great, and I like the fact the model wears a Basque beret (with cabiliou). 

Justin Bridou

Justin Bridou is a French household name for cured meats and sausages. It is a subsidiary of the Spanish Campofrio Food Group, itself owned by the Chinese group Shuanghui.

The brand was created in 1978 as one of the Aosta group, itself owned by the American multinational Smithfield Foods. We’re talking big multinational corporations here. In May 2013, the Chinese Shuanghui International Holdings bought Aosta for $ 7.1 billion.

Jean Feppon, resident of Rumilly; located in the Haute-Savoie gave his image Justin Bridou in 1978. 

The fictional character Justin Bridou is the stereotype Frencman: moustache, sweater and beret.

Magazine Covers