The Ol' Pork Barrel?

A very rainy Saturday morning in early Winter, I had errands to run: see a doctor; pick up a coat I'd had altered by the "rétouches" lady; buy a carton of cigarettes and LE NOUVEAU DETECTIVE (my favorite French weekly publication); go to La Poste and mail some things; and get some prescriptions filled at a pharmacy. I live in Saint-Denis, arguably the first capital of France before Paris, which is just North of Paris and has a border contiguous. It's a huge city with an island on the River Seine ("Ile-Saint-Denis," which has its own city hall), La Plaine Saint-Denis, the world's first industrial zone, and the main part, which has the world's first Gothic cathedral (métro 13 "Basilique") and one of the largest markets in Europe (it runs every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday morning), Napoléon's Legion of Honor, and tons of history, dating back to the Dark Ages, when it was a fortified city. Before that, it was a Roman village ... and before THAT, there are still traces of ... there's an excellent museum in town, worth visiting!

The "Mutualité" area of Saint-Denis is mostly quiet and residential, and I wonder aloud here what happened to the fancy, artistic metal benches they installed here in Place Clovis-Hughes when the area was redesigned a few years ago. These new benches seem pretty boring ... !

Wasted money for various works is referred to as "le panier percé" in French -- the basket with a hole in it. There are many terms for this sort of thing in my native United States, one of which is "pork barrel."

We are not likely to know each others' names around here, but we recognize the faces of our neighbors, for the most part. This part of Saint-Denis, adjacent to my neighborhood, the ancient Saint-Rémy parish which was just outside the city walls, on the way to the properties owned by the abbey church (basilica of Saint-Denis), has an almost village-like feel to it. Until recently, there was even a chevaline (horse-meat vendor) here, and there's still an excellent poulterer, who keeps very strange hours, I find.

copyright 2012 Lisa B. Falour, B.S., M.B.A. all rights reserved cutecatfaith.com

On YouTube, I post under SLOBOMOTION and CUTECATFAITH.