Passadoc Gazette - No 171

The weekly 171

Are you shooting or pointing?

– So you shoot or you point? Impatient adversary.

The adversary? Would it be a fight? Yes... Kind of... And whoever wins this last assault won the battle... So the moment is important; the crowd that attends the duel holds its breath; as if they perceived a calamity, the sparrows hidden in the branches of the platanes of the place ceased to grow; the silence is total, weighing, almost anxious...

Finally man chose: he points*... and the ball is rolling fast first, then more and more slowly to finish its race near, close to the piggy, until almost approaching it! The pétanque game is over!

Jeanne Monin

[Photos André Abbe]

*Pull → Hit the opponent ball to move it.
*Point → Throw the ball to place it closest to the pig.

If you ask the question:

– In France, what is the national game?

Google will answer:

– Football!

Big mistake! For from Var to Paris, from Strasbourg to Lorient, from Lille to Perpignan, every village, every city has a petanque field! The petanque is global!

Claude Boyer
I've been to some crazy pétanque parties in Mali!

The Echoes of the Week
First May
The Camargue
Saint Tropez
Passadoc
Match
Read

First May!

Claude Boyer says:
Offering flowers in May dates back to ancient times.

It is spring, in ancient Rome flowers are offered. At the Celts too, their party is called Beltaine.

But offering mugue dates back to the Renaissance.

King Charles IX (1550-1574) offered mugue from 1561, he was only 11 years old but ascended to the throne a year earlier! He makes the ladies of the court enjoy it. We are far from the symbol of International Labour Day!

The French Revolution goes through there, the Feast of Labour appears the... April 26th! It's actually a Republican day.

Exist the reference to Catherine de Medici and her son Charles IX!

Red eglantin replaces the mugue.

Labour Day dates back to 1889.

Paradoxically, the Workers' Day comes from the country of triumphant capitalism.

The first « 1 May » came from the United States, when American workers' unions mobilized in 1884 to obtain the eight-hour day. Outside the Atlantic, this date corresponded to the first day of the accounting year of enterprises and to the closing of workers' contracts of employment. More than 300,000 workers then demonstrated throughout the country.

At another demonstration on May 3, three workers were killed in Chicago. A protest march was organized the next day, and the explosion of a bomb thrown at the police killed several people. Five trade unionists were then sentenced to death.

In Paris, the Congress of the Second Socialist International in 1889 resumed the date of 1 May, under the impulse of Jules Guesde. As a few years earlier in the United States, the situation turned to drama on May 1, 1891.

The crowd of the « International Labour Day » wears a red triangle, its three sides symbolizing the claim of the 8 o'clock day: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure, 8 hours of rest and we will return to the red eglantin.

The symbols of red eglantin are not lacking:

• Reference to Fabre d'Eglantine (the revolutionary who initiated the labour festival).

• Workers' demonstrations in the north of France, where the eglantine is cultivated.

• Blood shed during clashes in the North

Fourmies cultivates the May 1 symbol

In the Nord and Pas de Calais, the factories are running at full speed. Imagine: the Fourmies (North) region alone produces more than 10,000 tons of wool at the end of the 19th century.

May 1st strikes are peaceful. But in Fourmies the police are firing. Nine deaths, eight of them under the age of 21.

This shooting of May 1, 1891 will leave traces. It is also the cradle of the workers' movement. Leglantin leads to everything!

Petain makes the mugue reborn

It is Marshal Pétain who gives the muguez to the honor.

The Workers' Day is replaced by the Labour Day, and the muguet replaces the red eglantine which by its colour reminds a little too much the Communist Party in the eyes of Vichy and the Germans; By the way, we erase the symbols of the workers' struggle and more widely from the Left!

Mayol and Provence

The only real reference to muguet in Provence is Felix Mayol (1872-1941).

Felix wasn't a rugbyman. But he loved his town, Toulon. He had become famous thanks to the café concert in Paris where he wore a hoop and a bit of muguet at the buttonhole.

Félix Maillot paid $60,000 in gold to buy the land and build the Mayol Stadium. In 1931, the Rugby Club Toulonnais (RCT) won the French Championship and Mayol offered a feast to the players.

Since then, the emblem of the Rugby Club Toulonnais has had a bit of mugue.

IAnne Monin
« Conversation« , little poem by Jacques Prévert

The purse: I'm indisputably useful, it's a fact.

The umbrella holder: I agree, but it must be recognized that if I didn't exist, it would have to be invented.

The flag holder: I don't have any comments, I'm modest and I keep quiet, besides, I don't have the right to talk.

The lucky one: I'm happy because it's my job.

The other three, nodding their heads: Nice mentality!

The mugue... What if we sing it?

The Camargue

– Do you like the Camargue?

To this question, Giono answers:

– Well, I don't know her well, I just saw her once. I've been wandering around with friends... We visited the Camargue which touched me a lot. It was supposed to happen in 1930, or 31...

With memories over thirty years old, Giono tells the Camargue:

« On these islets are built these small white houses with straw roofs or tiles that are tin all deltas and estuaries,

[…]

There are marshes, muds, sands, tangles of vegetable wrecks, this atrocious heat, this blinding light, these invisible gods... »

And this portrait of a Camargue:

« ...He was a man without a picturesque exterior. He did not have a large hat or a carefully tied scarf; He didn't have sheriff's boots; ... »

Camargue – Jean Giono – 1958.

Photos André Abbe.

Claude Boyer
I like the Camargue, it is one of the must-see summer bike rides... However, avoiding mistral days because there he does not pretend, and closing the visor of the helmet well regardless of the type of time: for the shot the epinal image of the rider who smiles with mosquitoes stuck on his teeth makes sense!

A very recent anecdote comes to mind, but it is in winter and by car this time.

It was last January when farmers were demonstrating. I had to go to my son's house in the Gers, yes, but here's the essential route through Arles and Nîmes was completely blocked by the demonstrators.

I then worked out a route passing through the Camargue from the potron-minet following the Mediterranean until Agde before going back to Toulouse.

Thus we saw the sun rise on the pond of the Vaccarès and took the ferry of the Barcarin which connects Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône to the Salins-de-Giraud.

Our trip lasted 12 hours instead of 6 by the highway but the glance was worth the sacrifice... And we didn't see a tractor or a boot of straw!

If you're in the Camargue, don't hesitate to visit « The house of rice » This is very interesting and the welcome is friendly (free advertising of course!).

https://www.maisonduriz.com/a-proposal

The Camargue... How about we sing it?

Saint Tropez

Every year, four weeks after Easter, it is the feast in Saint-Tropez: the city's citizens honour the patron of the city... That is, Saint Tropez!

Women and children, dressed in traditional provencal costumes, follow men in military clothing. In 2024, from 16 to 18 May, tradition remained.

History says that in order to remove the saint's relics from the desecration of the infidels – late eighth century – the prior Avit would have transferred them to a safe place, today still unknown.

Photos André Abbe – Saint-Tropez in 1981.

To read the gazettes of the previous months:

https://abbe.photo/gazette-passadoc/

Easy!

Cited in The Gazette :
André Abbe
Claude Boyer
Angelo del Tabor
Momo dela Etdici
Jeanne Monin
Editor in Chief
Jeanne Monin