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Celtic Santon

2009-06-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

Celtic Santon: Slán go fóill to Father Steve Concannon
A Pastoral Adieu - A Bientot
By Juliana L’Heureux

Genealogy teaches us the ultimate lesson in humanity. The more we understand genealogy, the more we learn how closely we are related, one to another

Therefore, it’s with a great deal of unscientific certainty, meaning it’s pretty likely, the Celtic nations are more related to the French than either culture wants to readily admit.

This ancient genetic connection can be useful when creating metaphor. In this particular occasion, the characterization of a Celtic Santon is one St. Patrick would embrace, because we can assume he is one of those blessed iconic features standing nobly inside many a porcelain crèche. He’s the Santon tipping his hat in homage to the New Born King. A Santon is the holy witness to Christian history. It’s a French tradition to include Santons in the manger scene as humble representatives of the human race, in an otherwise gloriously mystical occasion.

And so, our Celtic Santon of St. Charles has led us, by oratory and example, through the liturgies of the holiest New Testament scenes. He gave faithful parishioners brilliant insight into the dash between the years of birth and death.

“From the crèche in the manger to the man on the cross”. We’ve followed our Celtic Santon through this journey. He compares his witness to our own frazzled lives, so ordinary when contrasted to the agony we vision in the genealogy of our Christian faith.

A Santon is also a person the culture refuses to forget. In other words, Santons are little saints. Not big saints like St. Patrick, of course. But, more like the followers who this charismatic Christian man converted during his journey from birth to death

We never say goodbye or adieu or slán go fóill to our Santons. Like fine jewelry, they thankfully adorn our Christian family, representing genetic spirituality with sparkling resonance. We are affirmed about who we are because we actually knew them. As we are like branches in a tree, Santons remind us about the roots of our faith. And so, our Celtic Santon is a transcendent figure – the wind will always blow gently at his back as we tip our hats to his future happiness. We know he is genetically connected to who we are; knowing, we are all related, after all.

Frost Nixon Movie Review - We Need Reminding

2009-01-25T14:05:00.001-08:00

Do you recall where you were when President Richard Nixon resigned his position as President of the United States?

I was living in the Philippines at the time. My husband was stationed in Subic Bay, at the US Naval Base.

As a US military family, it was difficult to hear our nation's commander in chief resigning on a broadcast heard live over armed forces radio.

Even more amazing, to me, is recalling how the women around me were crying while President Nixon was giving his resignation speech. Frankly, when I heard the sobs and sighs of despair around me, during President Nixon's August 8,1974 speech, I simply left the room.

Why did I leave the room while the women cried? Because, I simply could not believe people were distressed about President Nixon's resignation after all the turmoil we endured in the months leading up to the inevitable. In resigning, in my mind, President Nixon admitted guilt. If he was innocent, completely unaware of the illegal break in at the Watergate Hotel to sabotage the Democratic Campaign headquarters, it stands to reason, he would have stood up to the challenge of exonerating himself. End of story.

So, initially, watching Ron Howard's excellent movie "Frost Nixon" left me feeling a little afraid - did I really want to relive remembering those crying women?

Yet, I'm certainly glad I did.

Aside from the movie's brilliant performances by Stacy Keach as Nixon and Alan Cox as the British interviewer David Frost, the movie took an unpleasant memory off a shelf in my mind, where it was collecting dust.

I'm glad to remember how the Frost-Nixon interviews, taped three years after the resignation, exposed the insidious influence power has over people.

Moreover, the Frost-Nixon movie supports the potential virtue of perseverance. Frost never gave up his quest to interview Nixon, despite enormous criticism and financial adversity. Initially, Frost was actually more interested in propelling his own career then finding out whether Nixon was guilty of criminal wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the two became mental jousters, where their non-verbal intelligence turns into a contest about who has the dominant mental power.

Most important, the movie dramatizes, yet again, how important integrity is when faced with power. Nixon had all the power, but he lacked integrity. Frost had no power, but he retained his integrity, despite Nixon's barbs and oblique remarks made while out of sound range.

Kevin Bacon also plays a shadowy, but clever, role in Frost-Nixon. Bacon's role as Nixon's administrative assistant, a Marine officer named Jack Brennan, is portrayed like a revealing mirror through which Nixon is seen like his closest confidents saw him. Brennan's (Bacon's) response to his boss stirs up some surprising sympathy, especially when confronted with the president's darkest thoughts. Sometimes, I had to actually remind myself not to be sympathetic to Nixon, especially when he admits to firing his aides John Erlichman and H.R. Halderman because he was under political pressure to do so - not because they were complicit in criminal acts.

Frankly, recalling those women crying on August 8, 1974 is like experiencing a wailing hallucination. Those sad women simply wasted their tears. Looking back today, they surely regret supporting a man who said, "When the President does it, it isn't a crime."

We must never forget. Howard's movie "Frost-Nixon" will outlast our collective memories. Certainly, the movie will erase any enduring ambiguities about Nixon's paranoid intentions.

Frost-Nixon is a top notch hit and a movie classic.

Tom Cruise Is Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg - Good performance, almost!

2008-12-31T17:17:00.000-08:00

Actor Tom Cruise accepted an uncanny look alike roll when he agreed to star as a German army officer in the excellent war movie, "Valkyrie".

Cruise is a good looking guy, who very much resembles the truly heroic martyred character, Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944).

Stauffenberg was a German army officer and Roman Catholic aristocrat who was one of the leading officers of the failed 20 July plot of 1944 to kill German dictator Adolf Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from power in World War II. He was one of the central figures of the German Resistance movement. - the man who led the failed conspiracy attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944. (Wikepedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claus_von_Stauffenberg)

Valkyrie was the name of the German army reserve operation whereby Stauffenberg and his conspirators planned to take control of Germany following Hitler's murder.

My husband and I saw this movie on New Year's Eve, during the day, in Brunswick, Maine. Unfortunately, there were less than 20 people in the theater. Even the drawing power of star Cruise doesn't appear to bring out movie goers for this film. Nearly all of the small audience members were old enough to understand the significance of the amazing act of treason portrayed in this excellent World War II period movie. Maybe young people will rent this movie on DVD - I hope so because it is worth a history lesson. Some Germans, like Stauffenberg and probably Oskar Schindler, tried to make a difference, while the Third Reich terrorized the world.

Aside from the assassination, which everyone knows failed, the film is wonderful for the German war period, set design, created to entertain the senses while the characters lead us to their inevitable end.

Cruise gives an impressively convincing performance, although he seemed a little monolithic at times. In fact, Cruise's expression seldom changes in this film, even when he is protecting his lovely wife and children.

Nevertheless, I wanted to know more about Stauffenberg as a result of seeing this movie.

Outside of the convincing Cruise performance, David Bamber as Adolf Hitler is worth the price of admission to see "Valkyrie".

Indeed, Bamber's performance creates a highly believable Fuhrer, who borders on being a sympathetic paranoiac. I suspect Bamber's demeanor as the failing Fuhrer is as close to depicting this small tyrant dictator as anything in modern theater, or movies.

As much as we enjoyed this movie, there is one exception to the otherwise superb cinematography and screenplay in "Valkyrie". It has to do with religion.

I learned, in the movie, about how righteous a person Stauffenberg was. He wore a gold cross around his neck and a gold wedding ring.

In the movie, Stauffenberg is portrayed as a religious man through symbolism. Therefore, in one brief scene, when Stauffenberg is seated in a Roman Catholic Church collaborating with other army officers, the film's director misses an insightful opportunity. In my mind, director Bryan Singer should have pushed this particular scene into a prayer. I picked this oversight out of the screenplay, prior to knowing anything about Stauffenberg as a Roman Catholic. Meanwhile, I learned there was a buzz about Cruise being a Scientologist, and how this might have influenced this film. I sure hope Scientology didn't ruin this particular scene. Obviously, this is only my opinion.

Certainly, Cruise is a movie icon who is to be thanked for bringing the brave Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg back to life - because, he is a mirror look alike image of the real man.

"Valkyrie" is recommended for it's historical perspective, for the excellent cinemotography and the characterizations portrayed by Cruise and Bamber.

Let's Care About What Happens to People in Haiti

2008-09-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

The Jerusalem Post? Where is the American mainstream media?
http://tinyurl.com/55ykuy

"Floods caused by tropical storm Hanna claim 529 lives in Haiti
By Jerusalem POST STAFF AND Associated Press

Death tolls reached 529 in Haiti, as more bodies were discovered on Saturday when Hurricane Hanna flood waters continued to recede.

Hanna weakened to become a tropical storm after hitting Haiti.

UN peacekeeping troops began handing out food and water to famished Haitians on Friday after the first shipload of aid sailed into a crumbling port on the outskirts of this flooded city, where tens of thousands were stranded in the wake of Tropical Storm Hanna.

But the respite was expected to be brief. Hurricane Ike, a dangerous Category 3 storm, was forecast to pass just north of Haiti on Sunday. Even if Haiti avoided a direct hit, Ike was almost certain to bring rain to the fertile Artibonite Valley, whose rivers funnel into Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, and the surrounding flood plain.

On Friday, the European Union promised US$2.85 million to provide storm victims with food, water, shelter, basic medical care and household equipment."

Americans are so consumed with news about us, the "US", and are therefore media-oblivious to the enormous tragedy happening to people living poverty in our hemisphere.

Now Hurricane Ike is likewise going to affect these same desperate Haitian people.

Can Americans do as least as much as the European Union, by reaching out to these afflicted Haitian people with money, health care and emergency food?

Hopefully, America will quickly rise above our political angst right now, to care for the poor vulnerable people in a suffering Haitian population.

And, we must pray for them to have the strength to endure.

Memere's Catalpa Trees

2008-09-06T05:40:00.001-07:00

Grandmother's (Memere's) catalpas give family roots: Portland Press Herald
JULIANA L'HEUREUX
September 3, 2008

People walking past our Topsham home frequently stop to ask about the
four Catalpa trees in the front yard. One lady even called a local
tree nursery to inquire about how to buy one.

Our family's Catalpa trees are connected to a family heritage started
in Sanford, where my Franco-American mother-in-law, Memere Rose Morin
L'Heureux, started the tradition. As a result of her love for
Catalpas, four generations of Memere's trees connect us all to the
two she grew in the front yard of her Sanford homes.

Each of her five children, her grandchildren and even a few great-
grandchildren grow at least one Catalpa tree, all from Memere's own
trees.

"We don't grow just any Catalpa trees," said Ann Lapoint Frechette of
Alfred, a granddaughter of Memere L'Heureux. "We want Memere's trees."

Memere's two Catalpas grew to more than 30 feet high, sprawling over
the gabled roof of her family's screened front porch. The Catalpas
provided welcome summer shade to the family's Freemont Street house
in Sanford's Ridgeway neighborhood. Memere transplanted her two trees
from sprouts she dug up and took with her when the family moved in
1936 from Roberts to Freemont Street.

Shade notwithstanding, Memere especially admired the tree's lovely
blossoms. She beamed like a sunflower at high noon when the
exquisitely fragrant blossoms adorned the trees in early summer.

"Les belle fleurs," said Memere about her Catalpa's fragrant blooms.

Our family tradition of growing Memere's Catalpas began when we
noticed sprouts of Catalpa trees appearing in Memere's yard. Sprouts
grow easily from the large bean pod seeds they throw off each summer.
Rather than mow the sprouts down, we began transplanting them.

We discovered how surprisingly easy they are to transplant. My
daughter-in-law left one of the tree sprouts in a pot in her garage
over the winter; but it was still healthy enough to grow when she
planted it in her Scarborough yard the next spring. They don't
require much maintenance or special soil.

The trees grow amazingly fast. Actually, one particularly cold winter
seriously damaged Memere's two Sanford trees, but the roots sprouted
into two nearly full-grown replacements in about six years. In our 20
years' experience growing Memere's Catalpas, we can raise a small
twig into a medium-sized blooming tree within about six years of
planting.

Memere's Catalpa trees help our family to stay connected by our
genealogical roots. We compare their growing progress like they are
children. Of course, we're on the lookout for those tree sprouts to
show up in the lawn or flower beds so we can pass them along to other
family members. There's always room for one more of Memere's Catalpas
in our family's yard.

In Sanford, two 40-foot high descendents of her trees are growing on
the yard at Storer and Main streets. Other descendents continue to
grow in Sanford, Brunswick, Topsham, Scarborough and Alfred, as well
as in Massachusetts and Virginia. They are literally part of our
family's Franco-American roots.

Juliana L'Heureux can be contacted at:

Juliana@mainewriter.com

The Producers - Serious Mel Brooks Filtered by Vaudville

2008-07-07T03:33:00.001-07:00

By now, most everyone knows the story of The Producers, the creative theater masterpiece written by Mel Brooks. It's a funny show with a serious message.

Reviews about The Producers began in 1968 when the original comedy movie was released. Mel Brooks won the Oscar in 1969 for best writing and screenplay for The Producers. Zero Mostel starred in the 1968 movie as the comic, albeit unscrupulous, Broadway producer, Max Bialystock, the role Nathan Hale perfected in the stage musical. Gene Wilder was nominated for a supporting role Oscar in the 1968 film for his portrayal of Leo Bloom, the forlorn accountant who Bialystock turns into a producer. Mathew Broderick plays this part in the Broadway musical and movie.

In 2001, The Producers won 12 Tony Awards including Best Book, Score and Musical, 2 Drama Desks as Outstanding Book and New Musical, and the New York Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical

For reasons unexplainable, I didn't actually appreciate the extraordinary genius of this vaudevillian story until my husband and I saw the musical performed live at the Maine State Music Theater at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, this summer. Two veteran actors star in the Maine State blockbuster show: Ed Romanoff plays Bialystock and Chuck Ragsdale plays Bloom. Ulla, the deliciously hot blond who captures Bloom's heart, is played by Amy Bodnar.

We enjoyed the musical. So, we immediately rented the DVD movie, which is a re-creation of the Broadway musical, with Nathan Hale and Mathew Broderick. It's a rare musical movie which, for once, follows the story line of the Mel Brooks screen play and musical, line for line.

Bialystock is a man trained in the P.T. Barnum school where a sucker is born every minute. He latches on to Bloom because the star struck accountant's financial expertise will help him to fraudulently create wealth out of a sure fire Broadway flop. Bialystock convinces Bloom to go against his accounting scruples and the two men begin searching for a play doomed to failure.

Along comes a horrid script called "Springtime for Hitler". The two men sense a Broadway bomb. Bialystock and Bloom start counting their chickens when they find the play's author is a lunatic Nazi sympathizer who raises carrier pigeons on the roof top of a New York City apartment building. Bialystock embarks on a scheme to extort money from dozens of little old lady investors. He hires a terrible director, under the pretext the show is destined to win a Tony Award. Together, Bialystock and Bloom dream about a blissful lifetime of luxury in Rio de Janeiro, with sex kitten Ulla, who walks into their lives looking for a part in
the "Springtime for Hitler", musical revue.

All of which is absolutely side splitting funny. Without realizing it, the audience buys into the premise of "Springtime for Hitler", being seduced by superb acting, comical debauchery and double-entendre sexual innuendos of the bi-sexual variety. Insidiously, Mel Brooks rips open the envelope of political correctness in The Producers by tossing socially polite dialogue into the proverbial trash.

In fact, the show is an upscale vaudeville production with a drop deadly serious theme. For those who, God Forbid, buy into historic revisionism by sinking into the underworld of Holocaust Denial, the vaudeville tone in The Producers shoves their best intentions into eternal folly.

Although Nazism's inherent evil leaves no room for burlesque, Mel Brooks, nonetheless, creates an eternal joke out of the Third Reich, using vaudevillian genius to immortalize the stupidity of the Hitler era.

By an extraordinary twist of fate, "Springtime for Hitler" becomes a big hit, when the director of the show, who is supposed to seal its failed fate, is thrust into playing Adolf Hitler. It turns out, the duped director unsuspectingly creates a gay caricature of the Nazi terrorist, a portrayal which captivates the audience. Instead of the bomb they hoped for, Bialystock and Bloom find they have hit show on their hands. Now, they must repay their unsuspecting investors with the money they intended to steal.

Everything vaudevillian is magnified in The Producers, except for the theme. There's nothing at all funny about Nazism, except, of course, if the life and times of Germany's notoriously failed Fuhrer will be remembered as utterly brainless. Likewise, those who followed the Nazi dictator, who perpetrated World War II in Europe resulting in the murders of millions of innocent people, are portrayed as stage hungry manikins, decorating the set for the entrance of a tyrant turned buffoon.

"Springtime for Hitler and Germany" is the juxtaposed musical revue and showstopper in The Producer's second act, belying the reality bubbling beneath the musical's farce. Just like Hitler's suicide at the end of World War II, the failure of Bialystock and Bloom to carry off their ruse is analogous to the reality faced by the German people when the ugly truth about Nazism could no longer be couched in the ultra
patriotic spirit of nationalism.

Mel Brooks is a world renowned film director, writer, actor and the widower of the wonderful actress Ann Bancroft. He is also a World War II army veteran of The Battle of the Bulge, in Belgium. Many aspects of his comedic life as a Jewish American are a far cry from being funny. Regardless of a lifetime of other achievements, The Producers is a theatrical legacy for Brooks, the writer. Like a magician, Brooks uses vaudeville to hide a historical slight of hand, whereby the laugh lines are rooted in exposing the brutal truth about one of the most heinous of
mankind's modern times.

Les fleurs des mères: Maine's Mother's Day Traditions - Is It Mother's Day Yet?

2008-05-11T07:52:00.000-07:00

Les Fleurs:
Planting season in Maine - Is it Mother's Day Yet?

By Juliana L'Heureux

Although Happy Mother's Day is truly today's greeting, I must hurry this message along because it's also the beginning of Maine's short planting season.

Maine's Mother's Day traditions include having lobster dinner and planting flowers. For those who own swimming pools, this is the day to pull back the winter cover and begin clearing up the water. Of course, it's much too cold to swim, yet. Moreover, we don't own a swimming pool anymore - so it's all about planting pretty plants.

Mostly, the symbolic swimming pool defrocking is just a ritual, meaning winter is almost, nearly, finally over.

Dick and I purchased over $300 in flowering plants and rhododendrons on Friday, after coming home from work. It was a laborious chore fitting them inside our small Dodge; the one Dick drives because we don't want another car payment.

Now, we must get these beauties, les fleurs des mères, into the ground this weekend, or Mother's Day will simply not be the same around here.

Oooops! We just checked our outdoor temperatures to see the morning thermometer dipping to 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh boy! We almost lost our Mother's Day investment. But, 35 degrees is not 32 degree, so we're safe for now. Thankfully, there's no frost predicted for Topsham, near the Maine coast, only scattered frost in some inland areas.

Maine's short growing season is dangerously pushed back by Les Fleurs des Meres, because the risk of frost continues until Memorial Day. Once upon a time, people patiently waited until Memorial Day to plant, for fear of damaging frost. These days, however, people ask, "Is it Mother's Day yet?"

Never mind the meteorologists! What do they know? Today is about Mothers, after all, not about science. On Mother's Day, it's all about les fleurs des mères.

We mothers live on the faith our decisions will prevail. We have faith in our families' traditions and knowing that every Mother's Day, at least in Maine, we'll bring forth flowers, like the new life we helped create, giving us the right to plant, if we want to. Besides, planting allows us to beautify the earth for other Mothers.

What about having lobster for dinner? Although it's another Maine Mother's Day tradition to eat lobster, we've made this a Father's Day event, instead. Rather, I'm having my favorite turkey dinner, because Dick can cook it for me, without needing instructions.

I see the temperature outside is climbing to over 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so it's getting close to being a warm spring Mother's Day.

I'm off to plant les fleurs des mères.

Happy Mother's Day to us, our plants and all.

Longfellow Celebrates Longfellow: Readings Connect Relative to Poet

2007-03-02T16:42:00.000-08:00

Layne Longfellow is celebrating his famous literary relative's 200th birthday onFEbruary 27, 2007 by giving poetry readings and newspaper interviews in Maine and around the US.

On Tuesday, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a Bowdoin College alumnus and author of "Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie," was 200 years old.

Longfellow's poetry is ageless, helped by his relative who keeps the writer's talents in the public's ears with readings and a CD recording. Although Longfellow carries the family's famous name, he's actually the great-great-grandson of the writer's cousin, Michael. The poet's direct descendant is great-granddaughter Dr. Ann Guest, 85, who calls Layne Longfellow her cousin.
They are close friends.

"It's not my familial connection but my connection with the poetry that brings me close to my family name," says Longfellow. "It brings great meaning to my life when I can read my relative's poetry with almost a sense of being a channel. It comes through me. The history of my readings and recordings has been one of metaphysical coincidences, and I sense this is a result of the familial connection."

"Longfellow Reads Longfellow" is a charmingly mellow recorded expression of Longfellow's enduring poetry. The poet's great granddaughter, Guest, says her famous ancestor would appreciate Layne Longfellow's CD as a sensitive expression of some of America's favorite poetry.

Included in the CD are verses from the epic "Evangeline," the historic story put to poetry about the 1755 expulsion of the French-Acadians out of Nova Scotia or Acadie, the result of years of conflagrations between France and Great Britain over control of Canada. Historians could easily have overlooked the tragic French-Acadian expulsion were it not for the 1847 epic poem "Evangeline," says Longfellow.

In the story, the Acadians' eternal longing to return to their beloved homeland in Nova Scotia is immortalized by Evangeline Bellefontaine, the heroine who searches seaports to which the expelled French settlers were deported in a futile attempt to find her beloved fiancÈ, Gabriel Lajeunesse.

Longfellow's popular poem was a best-seller in its time and remains an American classic. For decades in the 19th century, schoolchildren throughout the United States were required to read Evangeline. Her saintly qualities, so compellingly portrayed by Longfellow's poetry, caused many people to believe Evangeline was a real person.

Her character in silent film was played by actress Dolores Del Rio (1905-1983), who was actually a native of Durango, Mexico. Longfellow lives in Tucson, Ariz., but is frequently in Maine. His poetry readings take him to historic locations, such as the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Mass., setting for "Tales of a Wayside Inn," written in 1863.

"Our family tradition and oral stories relay Longfellow as a sweet and sensitive person," says Longfellow. Celebrating his relative's birthday, Longfellow was scheduled to read at Sudbury's Wayside Inn on Tuesday, at a sold out $75-a-plate dinner event. He is preparing to record a reading of "Evangeline" with Francoise Paradis of Saco, author of a recent annotated publication of the poem.

Longfellow will be at the film showing of the "Acadians" at the University of Maine in Orono with Brenda Jepson, the film's producer. He will also read at the Maine Historical Society. Longfellow is the poetry ambassador from the Friends of the Longfellow House in Cambridge, Mass., a National Historic Site where the poet's personal effects are maintained.
Juliana L'Heureux can be contacted at:
Juliana@MaineWriter.com

Phoenix Arizona: Finding Franco Culutre in the Southwest

2007-02-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

Travelers to Phoenix, in Southwest Arizona, might be surprised, like my husband and I were, to find a quiet dose of French culture among the Spanish influenced architecture, language and missionary history. Seeking out French culture in our travels is a hobby, sort of a travel and cultural Sudoku. Our game ends when we find a number of unexpected things of French heritage.

Our first surprise came at the Herberger Theater in downtown Phoenix, to see the live matinee performance of the play, “Ella”. It’s an entertaining biographical musical performance with jazz ensemble about the famous “first lady of song”, the popular singer Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996). “Ella” is played by the singer and actress Tina Fabrique, a talented lady with a distinctly French name. Nevertheless, her name along does not count in our cultural detective game. After all, lost of people who have French names don’t even know it. Instead, our surprise came in the program guide where we learned the stage story was set in 1966, in a concert hall in Nice, France. In the plot, Fitzgerald was performing in France shortly after attending the funeral of her beloved sister, Frances, who died unexpectedly in the United States shortly before the story began. Ella, and her agent Norman are worried about her son. They search for an available seat in Ella’s otherwise sold out performance, just in cast her recently estranged and only son will change his mind about flying to France to be with her. Throughout her energetic and wonderfully lyrical performance, Fabrique frequently speaks in short French phrases, using the polite, “Mesdames et messieurs”, during her ongoing dialogues with the audience.

Fabrique sang 24 of Ell’s songs like “ It Don’t Mean a Thing”, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” and her well known theme song, “A Tisket A Tasket”. She especially delighted the audience when she performed what her manager Norman called “scat”, or vocal jazz.

Finding “Ella” was staged in Nice, France, did not qualify for finding French culture in Phoenix. There was more. It turns out, the nearby adobe missionary style Basilica of St. Mary’s, a historic monument in Phoenix, is a building with a distinct French origin. It was founded by a French missionary named Father Edouard Gerard. He was the first priest to be ordained in Arizona. A casual visitor would not know this history except by reading a blackened brass plaque honoring Father Gerard mounted on the front entrance of the Basilica. Inside the Basilica is a shrine to the popular French Saint Therese (Martin) of Lisieux, who is an icon of faith to religious Franco-Americans. While we attended Mass as the Basilica, the Franciscan friar happened to give a homily with a focus on the origins of the word “église” (meaning “church”). This word is apparently rooted in the Greek meaning “going forth”. As a subject of the homily, the priest explained how “église” related to the moral message of creating a unified church.

Driving to our hotel, we listened to French Mountain Air music performed on the Phoenix classical music radio station. Our French reverie was interrupted with commercials promoting the Arizona Opera Company’s production of “Madame Butterfly”, a Puccini opera based upon a French libretto.

We pulled out the immense Phoenix telephone directory to see any unknown relatives lived in the area. Indeed, nine names listed were similar to ours, like “L’Heureux” or “L’Heureault”.

There you have it. “Neuf et neuf”. Nine French experiences in Phoenix Arizona plus another 9 names like “L’Heureux in the telephone book. It’s our cultural Sudoku.

York County Maine Rivers Attracted Franco Workers to Mills

2006-05-29T05:09:00.000-07:00

York County's (in Maine, USA) usually quiet scenic rivers made major news during the recent week of torrential rain with dangerous flooding. “Inondations” or “les deluges” (words for “floods” en française) caused by excessive rain swelled sleepy rivers causing millions of dollars in damage. Yet, in the recent past, these rivers created mills and plenty of work for Franco-Americans and their immigrant ancestors.

Although usually quiet waterways, picturesque rivers like the Mousam, the Kennebunk, the Ogunquit and the Mildford Dam along the Salmon Falls River have a history of bringing commerce and industry to York County.

The attraction of plentiful water power brought industrial mills to the area and French-Canadians workers into Southern Maine and Southeastern, NH. Communities like Biddeford, Sanford, Kennebunk and Somersworth, NH grew along with the textile and shoe mills built along York County’s and Strafford County’s rivers.

Franco-Americans living in these communities today are descendents of the first French speaking immigrant mill workers, who came mainly from Quebec and the Canadian Maritime Provinces.

A typically quiet Mousam River winding its way through Sanford-Springvale recently surged to near flood levels near Muriel Poulin's Springvale home during the recent floods.
“The river didn’t rise into my back porch, but you sure wouldn’t want to be caught in the dangerous current,” said Poulin, a Springvale native and Franco-American.

A history of Maine’s rivers is written in, “Toward a New Balance in the 21st Century”, a summary about Maine’s dams and river restoration published by the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

Historically, Maine’s rivers served as routes of commerce for Native American peoples. French and other European settlers used Maine’s rivers for fishing and later for providing the power to support textile mills and factories.

Between the years 1830-1950, French speaking immigrants from Quebec and the Canadian Maritime Provinces were attracted by the industrial work created in saw mills, tanneries, paper mills and textile factories.

Individual stories about those attracted to work in the mills fueled by the hydro-power of Maine’s rivers are captured in the classic anthology “Quiet Presence: Histories of Franco-Americans in New England” by Dyke Hendrickson, published in 1980.
Stories include the Robert Lambert, from Somersworth, New Hampshire, where the Salmon Falls River recently closed streets due to “le deluge”.

Lambert talks to author Hendrickson about how his father was only 18 years old in 1896, when his family came down from Quebec to find work. “Mills were recruiting in Canada then, so people heard about the work available. My father and grandfather were farmers near St. Frederick, in New Brunswick, Canada, but the life was hard…..They didn’t have jobs when they came to Somersworth, but an uncle who was here for two years helped them get work.”

Lambert’s family intended to earn some money and return to their New Brunswick (Canada) farms to help buy better equipment and tools, but they actually never went back. Instead, they started roots in Somersworth.
In 1881, Lambert’s mother (Ruel) was only two years old when her family moved from Quebec Province to the Somersworth area.

“My parents (Lambert and Ruel) worked in the mills as a matter of course. They met there, they married and then the children came,” recalls Lambert.

At the age of 14, Lambert began working in the mills himself, where he earned about $11 a week.

Indeed, New England’s Franco-Americans can rightly say “Merci!” to the area’s volatile rivers for bringing their ancestors to America.

2005-01-14T18:47:00.000-08:00

God Is Good: Sister Viola Lausier, scim, and Greg Foltz, Ed.D., Executive Director of St. Andre's Home, Inc., in Biddeford, Maine. Holding a photograph of a Ukranian orphan named Sophia.

2005-01-14T18:44:00.000-08:00

Sister Viola Lausier and Greg Foltz, Ed.D. with photograph of Sophia, a deaf Ukranian girl who lives in an orphanage.