French clown leaves the circus

Pierre Etaix, 87, died this morning.

He worked with Jacques Tati [1907-1982]
and was married to Annie Fratellini [1932-1997],
famous for her role in Zazie in the métro.

Independence referendum in Scotland

At the opening of the Scottish National Party in Glasgow, Nicola Sturgeon, prime minister of Scotland, announced her intention to present a new project, next week, for an independence referendum.

Fake healers

Answer is blowin' in the wind

Bob Dylan, 75, has just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, Dylan started his musical career in 1959 in Minnesota cafés. He received the prize "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

Archangel’s new skin

The monastery of the Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy is topped by a statue of an archangel whose English name would be Michael. Yesterday evening, a wonderful TV documentary showed the steps involved, on earth, in replacing the archangel’s golden skin.

We then saw him being carried back up by helicopter to his home in the sky. Click here for a newspaper article on this operation, which includes a short video. The same Normandy-based show presented the elegant tomb in Caen of a distant ancestor who interests me greatly: William the Conqueror.

 

My chart on this link [click to enlarge] goes back through

my paternal grandmother Kathleen Pickering [1889-1964]:

Lad on a bike

This courageous Scotsman, Danny MacAskill, is never afraid of falling off his bike. You have to wait until the end of the documentary to discover that falls occur regularly.