Stealing Paris

Today I received a notice from a reader that someone was using a photo from my blog, which had been doctored and captioned,  for a hateful and racist post on a Facebook page.

Steam poured out my ears.  As if this week hasn't been awful enough for everyone who loves Paris and France.

It is bad enough when people use photos or other artistic creations without attribution or permission.

Alas, sadly we bloggers get accustomed to that sheer theft for our finer works of art or prose.  It shouldn't happen, but it does, and we try to remedy the situation as best we can. (I've been writing this blog for 8 years without remuneration, just for the love of sharing my bit of France.  I cringe to think of the number of people who have used images or text from this blog without asking.)

Just ask me, and usually -- USUALLY -- I will give permission.

Fortunately, Facebook was responsive to my report of copyright abuse today.  And for the pages which had shared it.

Here's what I wrote to my friends.  I rarely swear, so you have to understand my outrage:

There are lots of photos of Paris, I know. But dammit, *I* spent the money to be there for that moment, to take my kids to Paris for New Years, to rent the apartment on that street, to take the time and effort to get up early to take the photo, to post in on my blog. All for free, to share the love of Paris on my blog. And some idiot A-hole thinks he can just appropriate it to promote some anti-Islamic crap? That's the outrage.

Here is my original blog post, dated January 1, 2011.

The New Year's photo from that post.  I love Paris!  I love so many friends in Paris, of all different races and nationalities.

And  -- gahhhh --here is the doctored photo that some despicable thieves used to promote their own hateful agenda this week.

Whatever can be done to knock down these messages is not soon enough.  Not only did they steal a photo of beloved Paris, but they contorted it and turned it into a message of hatred.  Thankfully, Facebook has been prompt in stopping these pages.

Let's get rid of these thugs' photos!

Bloggiversary

Wow.  Have I really been writing this blog for seven years?  Did I really first arrive in Paris in 2006, that long ago?  The digi-world, the blogger world, was so different then.   Click here for the very first Polly-Vous Francais? post.

Seven??  I feel ancient.  I feel humbled by all the wonderful readers and their snarky comments enlightening feedback.

Thanks, everyone!

And I'm heading to Paris in 10 days, so please stay tuned for timely updates about planning for and returning to Paris.

Can you really go home again?  

We'll see.

Polly-Vous Francais: Very Pinteresting

It's a challenge, some times, to keep up with all the latest digital connection places.  Back when I was a digital neophyte in 2006 and started this blog, the world of bloggers was a small one and often under siege by the mainstream media.  But as a group we hung together, and no other group hung together better than the bloggers for the Paris Blog. And now, we old-world bloggers are SO thrilled that the mainstream media have joined our ranks.

But  -- wow -- how to keep up with all the new media?  And, umm, I now have a day job.  As technology and cool social media sites have proliferated, I've done my best to keep abreast of all the sites for communicating my message.

This blog of course, has a Facebook page, and if you haven't yet liked it, I encourage your participation.

I am also on Tumblr (for which I have a kind of visceral aesthetic love), and Twitter, which I attend to in fits and starts.

I am even on etsy and ebay, should I ever find the time to sell some of my French trouvailles. Working on it!

But when I joined Pinterest, I was irked, annoyed, upset to see that someone had taken my name, "Polly-Vous Francais," to use for one of her Pinterest pages.  Awkwardly, I do also have my own, authentic, Polly-Vous Francais  Pinterest account.

Why would anyone want to siphon credit, SEO, and Google page hits from my personal blog, which has spent six years delivering knowledgeable fun and news about Americans and their relationship with France?  Especially since this other person who copied my copyrighted nom de plume is not named Polly in real life and has never even lived in France?  Polly-Vous Francais is my personal brand, built with pride and quality and a true raison d'etre.

I've left a few comments on her page, asking for a name change. A few loyal fans have done the same.   No response.  Naturally, I'm not encouraging readers to flock to her page because that will only increase her page hits.  Arrgh!   But I wish that common courtesy still existed in the cyberworld.

What do you think?  Next steps?

Christmas letter from Beirut, 1959

Mini-me and mini-Christmas tree 1959

Christmas time is here.  And I found among family mementos a Christmas newsletter written by my mother in December 1959/January 1960, when our family had moved to Beirut, Lebanon, for a glorious year.   I post it not to detail the minutiae of our family life, but as an archive of life in that era, certainly the early era of the Christmas newsletter.  And also?  Where I first learned French.

Younger readers may scratch their heads at the notion of a mimeo stencil required to make multiple copies of a missive.  These days even photocopying a newsletter -- or a newsletter itself --  seems so outdated, n'est-ce pas?  (And these photos were certainly not a part of the original newsletter.)

When a family with five children ages 5 through 12 picks up and moves half way around the world, I would say that it calls for a newsletter. A chronicle of expat life.  Then I wonder:  is this subtly what gave me the urge to re-live an expat experience?  And to write about it?  

I love the 1960's social norm of not writing about misfortunes (oops --  neglected to mention little Polly's two weeks in the hospital in Rome with pneumonia!?) Oh how times have changed!   Here's the letter.

Dear Friends,

What started out being a Christmas letter has ended up being a belated New Year’s message, and for this we apologize. Actually, we did mimeo a Christmas letter, but yours were the 15 or 20 envelopes we put aside because we wanted to write messages on the letters. In our own inimitable way, before we realized it, the letters were consumed and we didn’t even have a copy to make another stencil. So be it! Enough of apologia. You will get the more up-to-date news anyway.

Dad and Polly on board

The past five months have been the “pinch yourself to make sure it’s true” type. This has been a marvelous experience for us all and certainly one that we’ll never forget. Starting with the boarding of the “Bergensfjord” on August 8th right through Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan we have been wide-eyed and incredulous, all the more so because we never dreamed this could happen to us. We only wish we could bottle all this and bring it home to share with you………..beautiful Scandinavia with its lovely countryside, handsome people, sumptuous meals, and abundance of flowers everywhere; Bavaria with Oberammergau….. the Passion Play anticipation shown on the bearded faces of the townsmen, the delicate woodcarvings, fairy tales painted in bold colors on the houses, and the magnificent rolling countryside; Austria with its unforgettable Tyrols right outside our window, folk dancing, The Achensee 3000 ft. up where we swam in 65 degree water, Peter in his leiderhosen and our girls in Tyrolean dresses………..; Italy, after a glorious trip over the Brenner Pass, with its host of churches, monuments, and fountains… plus the usual tourist attractions…. Not to mention “Chaiou, chaiou Bambino” played nightly outside our pensione windows….. sailing out to see the Straits of Messina go by. Greece was almost the high spot… a cloudless warm day with the Acropolis silhouetted against a deep blue sky…it was all we had anticipated and more…the Olympic Stadium, the King’s palace eve to seeing the changing of the guard….we hated to leave. A brief visit to Alexandria with the inevitable “Gullah-gullah” man on the dock to greet us… the museum, the catacombs, bazaars… and back to the ship.

And here we are in Beirut. Having just put down our roots, we will be loath to leave here in June, and hope to be able to return someday. This is a fascinating city and country…. A real meeting of Eastern and Western cultures. You can walk down any street and in one quick glance take in men in tarbushes and baggy pants…. Goat-herders with their flocks, a Cadillac or Chevrolet, veiled women… men with pushcarts of brioches or vegetables… women in mink stoles… and boys and girls alike dressed in their smocks with big white collars, on their way to school. The Lebanese people are kind, generous to a fault, volatile, argumentative, and the biggest bargainers in the world! The city with its souks (markets), mosques, flea-market, luxurious hotels, poverty, and beggars is one great conglomeration.  Beirut International Airport is the third largest in the world (next to New York and Frankfurt) and it is an exciting excursion to go out there and watch the big jets taking off for spots all over the world. The countryside here is incredibly beautiful! From our balcony we look out over the Mediterranean right across the street, and by turning our heads to the right we can see lovely snow-capped mountains. We haven’t yet been able to be really nonchalant about all this… and will miss it terribly.

Even our “routine” life isn’t routine here. Having to speak French to “Information” to get a telephone number; speaking spotty Arabic with our wonderful maid, Hania; eating new foods; getting the “bukra” attitude toward life (“bukra” means tomorrow!); and living in a wonderful apartment on the sea…. Now does this sound routine? The more mundane things include the children loving the American Community School; L enjoying his teaching and research; A tutoring 4 hours a day; the usual Brownies and Boy Scouts, etc., but life will never be the same again!

Skiing in Lebanon, 1960

We have crossed the mountains into Syria for a wonderful trip to Damascus where we saw so many things we have all read about since we were children… the “Street called Strait”…the window where St. Paul escaped… the Omayed Mosque… and many others. We came home laden with lovely silk [illegible] . We plan another trip In the spring.

Shawl made of Damascus silk, seen in photo at bottom

L has had a fascinating trip to Jordan. He saw Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and Amman, staying in the latter for 4 days with a Christian Arab family which made his trip. He even had an audience with King Hussein and has pictures to prove it! We plan to take the children to Jerusalem at Easter when it is a bit warmer.

We still have much of Lebanon to see. So far we have been to Byblos and to Baalbek, plus many lesser places close by, but are very anxious to get to Tripoli, Sidon, and Tyre. L also plans a trip to Ankarra, Turkey in the very near future. We have the traveling bug but good!

Our best trip so far, though, started on December 19th when we boarded a Viscount for a flight to Cairo. Exactly 1 hour and 15 min. later we landed at the Cairo Airport! We had an unbelievably good time there and could have easily stayed another week. Cairo was very reasonable… we seven stayed at a nice pension hotel for the equivalent of $11 a day, room and board, and the food was excellent and excellently served by a team of Sudanese in their red tarbushes and long white gallebeyas with the red cummerbunds. It was quite an experience. Of course, we had the customary camel rides at the Pyramids of Giza, saw the Sphinx, the Tomb of the Bulls at Sakarrah, the second Sphinx at Memphis, all of the lovely mosques, the Egyptian museum with all the contents of King Tut’s tomb, the Mousky bazaars, a boat trip around Gezirah Island in the Nile, and two visits with Egyptian friends in their homes which was great fun. The children were determined to get home for Christmas so we arrived back in Beirut on Christmas Eve and even had a big Christmas dinner for 14 the next day!

Expat night club life in Beirut, 1960

You can see that we are enjoying ourselves to the fullest. We have made many friends, both Lebanese and American, and it will be hard to leave them, too. We have even done quite a bit of night-clubbing which is most unusual for us… plus seeing an excellent “belly-dancer” just the other night who was a real artist.

All this description has been most inadequate but we hope we have conveyed some of our feeling and impression about this wonderful year. Our only regret is that all of you couldn’t have enjoyed it with us. We will most likely be unbearable to live with when we get back with our many slides and stories! Until then, we send you belated wishes for a very Happy New Year.  Inchallah! (God willing!)

Polly, Peter, Meg, Suzie, Johnny, L and A

. . . .

This post dedicated, with love, to the memory of my mother. (November 1923 - February 2012).  She's the beauty in the foreground of the nightclub photo.

p.s. And I was so glad to be able to re-visit my childhood memories a few years ago.

New Banner!

New banner.  A work in progress.  Thanks for all the input!  What about this one?  It feels more like moi!

Design S.O.S.!

I need your help!  I am considering any of the following for a new banner for Polly-Vous Francais?  Do you like any (if so, which) or none?

Other thoughts in general on color scheme.  Font.  Or forget the whole concept?

 I hate design decisions.  I LOVE design decisions.

A vous, mes amis!

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

Six years and counting

Break out the bubbly!

Wow.  Here I am, six whole years old, and ready to down the champagne.

I'm not picky, really, but it must be French. Veuve Clicquot will do quite nicely, though I won't turn down a Taittinger, Moet, or Nicolas Perrier. (Am I missing someone important?)

Yup, six years ago today Polly-Vous Francais? was born. It happened by accident, really.  I had been living in Paris for two months on place de la Madeleine, invading and soaking up the cultural and political life of Paris.  Then I found my dream apartment in the 7e arrondissement.  The student protests were all the news, and I was madly sending missives to all my friends detailing the drama and social thrill of my new Parisian existence.

Then, over dinner in Paris, my good friend A. said, "Polly, you really must stop sending all these stories in emails."

Ouch.

"Oh," I apologized, abashed.  "Are they tedious?"

"No, not at all -- but they need to be published on line instead, " she said.  "You need to start a blog."

"But, but... I don't know the first thing about blogging!"  I think I whined a fair bit, feeling technologically incompetent and ancient.

"Look, Polly," said A., all no-nonsense.  "If you... did have a blog, what would you call it?"

(Ah, a question I knew how to answer!)  "Polly-Vous Francais!" I said, maybe a bit too excitedly.  It had been my mantra ever since I understood my first French phrase.

We finished our dinner and our wine and parted ways for the evening.  The next morning, an email from A.  appeared in my in-box:  "Polly-Vous Francais? is up and running.  Start posting!"  She had created the blog for me.

I felt the wind knocked out of me.  It was like the time that the summer lifeguard/swimming coach forced me to jump off the high-dive. You can do it, you can do it.  Just plunge, just plunge.  Breathe later.

And voilà.

Polly-Vous Francais? has grown and morphed over the years, from A.'s great banner above, to a few variations.

I've written 920 posts.  The blog has had probably several million visitors in six years, but in today's internet stream, I can't begin to gauge the importance of that stat.  (For perspective:  when this blog began in May 2006, Facebook had about 7 million users, mostly college students.  Today?  Well, you know.)

Another Polly-Vous Francais banner, made with stamps from the Marché aux timbres.

Back in 2006, many of us bloggers in Paris felt as though we had a mission, but sometimes we felt misunderstood.   We wrote for the Paris Blog (many lucky ones, still in Paris, still do). We fed our feeds to the now-defunct Paris Times.  We gathered to celebrate our blogging life in Paris.  Sometimes I felt as though I were part of a new literary genre scene, and sometimes I felt as though it was just considered clown school.

I am really, really delighted to note that some of the official traditional Paris-based print journalists who had pooh-poohed the very notion of blogs back in 2006-7 are now the proud authors of blogs, Twitter feeds and Pinterest and Facebook pages.  They have hired their social media interns!! Kudos -- now we're all family.

I look forward to returning to Paris this summer to re-connect a) with my inner Polly-Vous, and b) with a lot of pals!  Time for a party.


And to say that I love you all!  

(Okay, almost all.  Except for a few anonymous commenters and so forth.  You know who you are.)


And tonight I nod off to bed, having blown out the six candles for my blog.

And the next burning question:  is it time for a new banner?  What do you recommend? Votes?

Ceci n'est pas un blog

Really, how dare I call this a weblog when I haven't posted in over a month? Ceci n'est pas un blog. Call me Mme Magritte, but please do forgive my dilatory epistolary something-or-other. Okay, it really is a blog, but it doesn't appear to be so at times when nothing has been posted. Right? It's so very Magritte of me, n'est-ce pas?

Nom d'une pipe! I've been on the move. Polly-Vous Francais is now an official denizen of -- ta-dah! -- the Big Apple. Stayed tuned for updates from the flaneuse of the streets of Manhattan.


image via wikipedia

U.S. Place Names in French

As a lifelong student of the French language, I've always appreciated the French names of places in the United States. Some are better known than others, albeit with Americanized pronunciations. One of my favorites is Picketwire. From the French "Purgatoire," Purgatory.

Some other favorites (not including cities and towns named for famous Frenchmen or places in France):

Detroit. (Where the river narrows.)

Des Moines. (Of the monks)

Baton Rouge. (Red stick)

Havre de Grace. (Harbor of Grace)

Mount Desert Island and its sidecar, Isle au Haut. (Island of the deserted mountains; high island.)

And, so verrry French: The Grand Tetons.

Go ahead, take a look at the beauties in this photo and try to convince me that the mountain range was NOT named for the French phrase for large mammaries. Some claim that that interpretation of the origin of the name is "controversial." Too much tittering about it, I guess. I'm not fooled.

What are your favorite French place names in the U.S.?

P.S. By the way. Hey, Wyoming, you wonderful state: how about a little more blog-love? Je vous adore, and not just because I'm envious of the grands tétons.


Images via Wikipedia and Clustrmaps.

New Format

Fresh new banner and font!

Bof. I was getting bored with the old one.

What do you think?

Dites-moi.

Polly-Vous Francais on the Airwaves!

Polly-Vous Francais is silent no more! If you'd like to hear my real voice live, tomorrow is your chance. On Saturday May 21, I will be the guest on the radio program "Franco Fun" on KUSF in Exile in San Francisco, at 5:00 p.m., Pacific time.

Every Saturday, DJ Fari provides a weekly francofix for Franciscans and francophiles around the world with the program Franco Fun, featuring music, lifestyle, culture, and interviews. And this week the feature is moi. Some in English, some in French. Tune in!

I was originally scheduled to be on air in January, but five days before show time, the University owners in a surprise move sold the station's air rights for a cool $3.75 million without any advance notice. (I always have impeccable timing, n'est-ce pas?) So KUSF is now live-streaming here.

If you have requests for music, let me know ASAP. Featured guests are asked to BYOM (bring your own music), and my CD collection of French music tends to the classic crooners: Maxime Le Forestier, Serge Gainsbourg, Georges Brassens, etc.

I could throw in a few brief comedy sketches like Franck Dubosc, Florence Floresti, and Sylvie Joly if there's time. An hour is pretty short, especially with all the yakking I'll be doing.

What music would you like to hear? What questions would you like DJ Fari to ask me? Any shout-outs (within reason)?

BTW, If you miss the show, you can always hear it on the archives

Polly-Vous Francisco?

What, you call yourself a blogger? I say to myself in the morning as I peer bleary-eyed in the bathroom mirror. You haven't updated your blog in weeks! 

True, too true.

No excuses, but justifications aplenty.  I've been leading a rather nomadic life, not all the romance and adventure that some might imagine it to be. But I try to capture the day's fleeting joy wherever I am.

I do write constantly.  Really, I do!  Did you know, for example, that I still have a whole Longchamp-bagful of absolutely incredible prose that I produced in Paris which still hasn't found its way to this blog, or any other publication?  Well, I do, and here it is:

Observe it sitting coyly next to the Ed supermarket bag which I use for all my urgent correspondence.

But the real reason I haven't written much of late is that I am moving. I am moving to San Francisco. And believe me, if you can't be in Paris, there is virtually no more francophile city on the planet than San Francisco.  It is so verrrry French.

Well, I have to go pack (again!), but wanted to offer a little France-in-San-Fran photo essay from my most recent treks  -- the cafes, the Legion of Honor Museum, the boutiques, the pollarded trees, the government buildings.

Blog Action Day 2009

Today is Global Blog Action Day.  When I was first asked to participate, I knew immediately what I wanted to write about.

If you have an hour and a half to spare for the planet, I highly recommend French photographer and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand's exquisite 90-minute documentary Home, produced by Luc Besson.  The photography is breathtaking and the message is compelling.  Earth is our fragile island home -- the only home we have.  Our challenges in taking care of our home today and in the future are complex.

Arthus-Bertrand, perhaps best known for his documentary and book Earth from Above (La Terre vue du ciel) has given up author's rights to Home so that all may see it on the web.  You'll be glad you did.

For more information check out his website GoodPlanet.

What French Women Know: Part One

Wow. French epistolary literature is beginning a new era. I bring you the first chapter: What French Women Know.
_______________________


August 14, 2009

Dear Polly,

I finally found you! I'm an author with a new book coming out next month about French women ("What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind"). A few years ago, while I was writing the book and talking to countless French women, someone sent me a copy of a blog post about flirting in France. It was a personal anecdote. The post didn't have a source. I thought it was a perfect representation of a fleeting moment of French flirtation (experienced by an American), and I quoted it in my manuscript. When it got time for serious copy-editing, no one (not me, not my editor) could find the source of the anecdote, and it was deemed officially off-line. (This is a windy road getting to my point...bear w/me!) Then just last month I was in Paris, met [name of Parisian blogger], she sent me a post she'd written about lingerie, which had a reference to a piece you'd written, which lead me to your blog, which led me to... the anecdote above.

All this to say, first, bonjour. Am very glad to have finally "met/found" you. I'd love to send you a galley of my new book, and also tip my hat to you in my blog. I finally got a new web site up (www.whatfrenchwomenknow.com) which will soon have a blog, though -- full disclosure -- I'm not much of a blogger. It will probably be more random/impressionistic than journal-ish. Still, I'll find a place to salute you.

If you sent me your snail mail address, I'll make sure you get a galley asap. In the meantime, hope you're doing well wherever you are. Perhaps one day our paths will cross in France.

Best,

Debra (Ollivier)

Same day, reply. Blogger fawning over published author:

Hi Debra!

So good to hear from you. Your first book was kind of a bible of mine, so I may be a little biased when I read the next one. I think you won't mind... Sorry I never wrote you any fan mail -- I may have mentioned it in the blog.

I would love to read a galley proof of your book. So happy you have another one soon to be published. [here I inserted my snail mail address].

And let me know if you need any help with your blog. They're not obvious, and I spent my first two years in Paris going from zero to sixty on the blog learning-curve. At least I now have an extra transferable skill.

Keep in touch.

Best,
Polly


A full two weeks later. Too late to correct galleys? Bound book (not galleys) received chez moi August 27, with concomitant outraged What?! You Forgot to Credit my Blog!? post published. After twenty-four hours attempting to calm my rattled nerves, I wrote this:

August 28, 2009:

Dear Victoria [publicist at G.P. Putnam; cc'd to Debra Ollivier]

Yesterday I received an advance copy of "What French Women Know," published by G.P. Putnam and with an anticipated sale date of September 3, 2009.

And while I was pleased to start reading it and found the book had great merit, I was startled and upset to find that a long passage of my original work was printed therein without permission or attribution. I am the proprietor of all copyright in a literary/artistic work entitled "Polly-Vous Francais?" http://pollyvousfrancais.blogspot.com, which I began writing in May 2006.

The text on pages 25-26 of "What French Women Know" is identical to my copyrighted work. Since permission to use my work was not granted it therefore legally constitutes infringement of my rights.

In normal circumstances, an infringement of copyrighted material would bring demand that you immediately do one or more of the following.
1. remove all infringing content and notify me in writing that you have done so;
2. credit all infringing content to myself in a manner to be deemed appropriate;
3. immediately cease the use and distribution of copyrighted material;
4. undertake in writing to desist from using any of my copyrighted Work in future without prior written authority from me.

Not being litigious by nature, however, I would prefer as a first step to discuss with you and the editorial department at G.P. Putnam some positive and appropriate way to correct this ethical and legal wrong.

I await to hear from you at your earliest convenience, but by no later than close of business on Tuesday September 1, 2009.


Yours truly,

[Polly etc.]

Received Tuesday evening, September 1

Dear [Polly-Vous Francais]

I received your e-mail last Friday, August 28. It was my intention from the start to fully credit the passage that I used from your blog; as you know, I was unsuccessful at locating your blog in order to specifically attribute the passage at the time I was writing the book. I am pleased that I now have the opportunity to do so.

I have spoken with my publisher and they will include the name of your blog in future reprints of my book as well as in the paperback edition. So please let me know how you would like your blog credited; I will then pass that information on to my publisher. Thanks very much.

Sincerely,

Debra Ollivier
________________________________________

Hmm. Of course, reprints and paperback rights are an interesting offer, assuming the book gets to that point. But what about the current audio-book versions, e-book versions, and foreign rights, such as China? Methinks we need to reconsider.

I've been so touched that friends, colleagues, and peers -- including my wonderful readers -- have sent kind words of support. Some have sent reviews to Amazon mentioning the copyright flap. Curiously, all of those reviews seem to have been yanked by unknown powers. Keep trying!

Meanwhile I find myself in a bizarre David vs. Goliath pseudo-battle that I never wanted or anticipated.

My question is now: am I sabotaging my own efforts to some day get my own book published if I make a stink out of this? If so, that's my loss, I guess. But I believe it's the right thing to do.

I'm no Donna Quixote, but I just call it as I see it.

Top Ten Expat Blogs about Paris

This brightened my day! This week Polly-Vous Francais was named one of the top ten expat blogs about Paris in Arthur Frommer's online Budget Travel.

Budget Travel has always been one of my favorite resources. Now it is my number one!

Obsessed about Paris? Um, actually, I guess I am.



Un grand merci to Budget Travel -- and kudos to all on the list. There are so many great Paris blogs.

What!? You Forgot to Credit My Blog!?

Dearest, darlingest, G.P. Putnam,

Right now I am so upset that my hands are shaking. My mind is racing, my heart is pounding. I can hardly type.

On the one hand, I am flattered, G.P.! Flattered that Debra Ollivier chose to excerpt my blog in her soon-to-be published-by-you book What French Women Know. On the other hand I am having a heck of a time calming myself down. Pacing. Rattled. Why? You may have guessed. She didn't attribute a full page of well-crafted prose to me.

Nope, she instead simply said "Take this typical blog posted by an American woman in a Parisian grocery store," then proceeded to quote one of my most popular blog posts on French Flirting.

How popular is that post, you ask? Excellent question, G.P. Putnam. It is very, very popular. You know how to Google, don't you, G.P.? Try googling the phrase "French Flirting" and see what pops up first. Not merely on the first page of Google hits, but THE number one. Why, goodness me, that's the very post she used in her book. Look, look, G.P.!

A bit of history. A few weeks ago I was flattered to receive an email from Debra Ollivier, asking me to review a galley proof of her book, and to apologize for inadvertently failing to attribute a quote from my blog. "At last I found you!" she said, with a drawn-out story about how it had been too difficult to track down and credit the source. Neither she nor her editor (your editor) had been able to find me! Pourtant, G.P. Putnam, I am no shrinking violet. No Writing Wallflower! Polly-Vous Francais is anything but anonymous.

At the time I assumed that she had perhaps made a vague reference to one of many insightful posts on my blog. Debra promised to "make up for it" by mentioning me in her blog. (Naive moi, I even responded by offering to HELP her with her blog. You know, we writers lending a hand to each other and all. Ha!)

O excuse me, G.P. Putnam, but Debra's blog gets how many hits? And tell me, G.P., is that how publishers and authors make amends these days for failing to give proper credit to a source? By a follow-up mention in their blog? (FWIW, G.P. Putnam, my blog gets a quarter of a million page pageloads annually.)

And here is my quandary, G. P. Putnam. As soon as FedEx delivered the book today, I kicked off my shoes, got my reading glasses, and guiltily ignored the pressing need to send out more job applications. I wanted to dive right into the book; I knew it would be a tour de force. I had actually forgotten about the pesky attribution issue Debra had mentioned weeks earlier. "Hmm, this book is really, really good," I was thinking to myself as I read. "So intelligent. So well written." Then I reached page 25, and saw the quoted text. "Oh goodie, this is me!" was my first reaction. Yes, she had quoted it properly, precisely. The section of my blog post (the original is here) continued on page 26, taking up a full page of her book. "Wee! She likes me!" I first thought, glowing with pride. I continued reading for a bit, but a nasty feeling started creeping over me. Wait a sec. Wait a sec. This isn't RIGHT!

And that, G.P. Putnam, is when I started shaking in anger. This wasn't just a little blurb. It was a full page! Dear, dear, G. P., I think you must have copy editors who know how to check quoted text by inserting it into a Google search and seeing what pops up. And then to give FULL CREDIT to the writer. Don't you?

Alors, now what, G.P. Putnam? Do I keep blogging away, unpaid, my work unattributed in your book? Do I jump up and down and scream and say "How about me? How about MY writing?" for a while? Do I point out the little copyright sign at the bottom of my blog and start calling dial-a-lawyer?

I don't know.

But I'm not going to take this lying down.

Polly's Summer Vacation

Alors, it's almost August 1, and you know what that means. Time for a petit break in the action. Not that I'm departing to loll around the Riviera reading Gala and Paris Match. Vacation is a relative term.

I'll be back in the saddle posting again in a week or so. But so that no one goes into Polly-Vous Francais withdrawal (how I delude myself!) here are a few oldies from the past year that you might enjoy re-reading. Or not.

1. Why did the chicken cross the road?

2. Have you ever eaten anything so disgusting-looking but delicious?

3. Jer vay pawlez fransayz cawm sah.

4. Because it really did change my life.

5. Getting my teeth cleaned in Paris. No sedation necessary!

6. The shrieks from my apartment were innocent... really.

7. Classic French footwear: espadrilles!

8. French fashion advice from men.

9. An incredible place to stay on the Loire Valley... and the most incredible coincidence of my life, so far.

10. Fun times at the Marche aux Puces. My stats tell me that there's a, um, um, community out there that really digs these gals. Who knew?

11. We're still working on the book. Sorta.

12. I am kind about all other varieties of birds. Not pigeons.

13. Love a la Francaise. How I miss Polly Platt. Every day.

14. Do you remember Fractured French?

15. Will anyone ever stop speculating about bidets?

16. I'm still hoping for French movies subtitled in English in Paris.

17. As you read this blog you're reading the results of what I did with my French major.

18. And despite the French major and an M.A., I still goof up, royally.

19. I think that's enough, don't you? If you haven't yet, you can read the "best of" from 2006-2007.

20. Or simply look at views of Paris.

Bonnes vacances!

43. I can deal with that.

Woo-hoo!

Break out the (cheap) champagne -- méthode champenoise. I just found out that Polly-Vous Francais? ranks #43 in all France-related blogs worldwide. I'm in some pretty esteemed company. See the list here, and discover some great blogs that you might not already know.

Yeah, yeah, I'm promoting the competition, but when we're writing about France, it's all friendly competition, right?

Bonne lecture!

Merci to Art Goldhammer at French Politics for the tip.

Happy Bloggiversary to Moi

May 2006. I'd been in Paris for two months, writing up almost daily accounts of funny/exciting/extraordinary happenings, and emailing the stories to my friends and family.

At dinner one evening my friend Ariane said politely, "You ought to write a blog."

"Oh, gawd, I wouldn't know how to start a blog if it hit me over the head," was my brilliant technologically-challenged answer. I was handy enough with a computer, a master at googling, for example; but for cripe's sake, I still didn't know how to work my digital camera.

"Well, if you did have a blog, what would you name it?" sly girl asked.

"Polly-Vous Francais, of course," I answered without missing a beat. It had been my lifelong mantra.

The next morning I had an email from Ariane. "Dinner was fun. Oh, and Polly-Vous Francais is up and running. Here's your password. Start posting."

Ulp.

Thus it began. Here's the first post. And here's to many more! And thank you to all you lovely readers -- you are so much more than just little red dots in the map.

Last but not least, in honor of President Obama's preference for dijon mustard, here's my tale of being a lifelong mustard aficionado. "Looking back, I think this culinary discovery weighed heavily in my becoming such an ardent Francophile. Any country that truly understood and adored mustard the way I did simply had to have a permanent and central place in my life."

Hmm. Maybe he should consider me for that ambassador position.

Monsieur Jacques a Dit?

Ooh, I love to read supposedly scathing articles about the French in the New York Times. So provocative. But, um, not really. Today there was a great slice-and-dice piece about food critic François Simon, perhaps more popularly recognized outside gastronomic circles as the ultimately-redeemed villain Anton Ego in Ratatouille.

I can't presume to judge the culinary dialectic. But I do have another bone to pick. For, although the NYT article refers to his Monsieur Simon's two food blogs, as a blogger I was disappointed that it contained no hyperlink to either the French- or English-language versions of "Simon Says!" Seems a disservice to their readers. So I'm glad to oblige.

Well, even if Simon is sometimes a demanding, dismissive restaurant critic and occasionally a biting cynic, his image was measurably softened in the film version by Peter O'Toole's sentimental portrayal of a character with an artichoke hide and a mousse center. And a lover of the genuine article.