http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070828/ap_on_re_eu/france_diana_monument
French fans want Diana memorial in Paris
By ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press Writer
Tue Aug 28, 2007
At a golden statue of a flickering flame, fans of Princess Diana pay homage to her in Paris, leaving behind poems and prayers even now, 10 years after she died nearby.
A French child's collage proclaims her "unforgettable." An Italian fan scrawls, "I still love you."
But contrary to popular belief, the statue wasn't built for Diana; it was merely appropriated by her fans.
With the 10th anniversary of her death on Friday, a few fans say it's time she had a Paris monument in her honor — something permanent, unlike the memorabilia swept away regularly by trash collectors — and they have begun a fundraising drive.
Dominique de Fontenay says he thinks about Diana every day as he passes through the Pont d'Alma traffic tunnel where she died in a car crash, and he is always struck by the lack of a monument.
"That seems shocking and flagrant, given Diana's notoriety and the love that most people all over the world felt for her," said de Fontenay, a 34-year-old event planner who conceived the project.
De Fontenay teamed up with a jeweler and sculptor, Xavier de Fraissinette, who sketched out ideas for a bronze statue of a suit-clad Diana reaching out to a small child holding a bouquet.
"The hardest thing will be getting her expression, her smile, her face right," said de Fraissinette, who designed a sculpture for the Lyon, France, meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized nations in 1996. "It must not be a mortuary monument, she must be natural."
After a few mentions in the local press, about 150 people have donated a total of $9,500, the two said. Building the statue will require $240,000, said de Fontenay, a Diana fan who remembers joining up with crowds to mourn the princess after the Aug. 31, 1997, crash that killed her, her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and their chauffeur, Henri Paul.
"I think everyone on the planet who had a heart was depressed that day, or at least filled with a great sadness," said de Fontenay, who named his cat "Princess" in Diana's honor.
The plans by de Fontenay and de Fraissinette are in the early stages and do not have approval from Paris City Hall, where the press office said officials were not aware of their campaign. The process could be long, and they will need approval from the city council.
For now, the torch statue near the traffic tunnel remains the de facto memorial. A replica of the Statue of Liberty's torch, it was donated in 1987 by the International Herald Tribune newspaper as a symbol of French-American friendship.
Ten years later, mourners turned the torch into a Diana shrine, which seemed fitting because Elton John sang "Candle in the Wind" at her funeral in London's Westminster Abbey.
On any given afternoon, dozens of tourists crowd around the torch, snapping pictures and leaving behind cellophane-wrapped roses. After posing for a snapshot, 29-year-old Arijit Ray of London said he wished de Fontenay and de Fraissinette luck.
"There should be a statue," he said.
De Fontenay already has a spot picked out — a grassy garden right above the tunnel where the crash took place.
"It's all ready. There are flowers. All that's missing is Diana," he said.
___
On the Net:
http://www.myspace.com/amemorialfordiana
http://www.xavierdefraissinette.fr/
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
French revolution: Rentable bikes every 900 feet
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070706/wl_csm/obicyclette_1
French revolution: Rentable bikes every 900 feet
By Robert Marquand, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Fri Jul 6, 2007
The socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, has seen the future and it's got two wheels, three speeds, an adjustable seat, indestructible tires, a basket, and a bell. It's 50 pounds of ecofriendly handlebars, comin' at ya.
The French are turning Paris into a bicycle zone, pretty much overnight. Even now, astride small alleys and behind boulangeries, paving stones are being ripped to fit 750 bicycle rent "stations."
On July 15, a day after the French Revolution anniversary, the city of lights will kick off a "vélorution" with 10,648 rentable bikes, or vélos. By January, some 1,400 rent stations and 20,600 bikes are scheduled to be in place. In Paris proper, one will never be more than 900 feet from a set of cheap wheels. At least theoretically.
Similar programs have been launched elsewhere with varying success. But Paris officials say their city is the first world capital to adopt a major green biking initiative, and they are doing it in a way that may be too big to fail. The ambitious Paris project is titled Vélib' – wordplay for bicycle freedom. Read: freedom from too many cars and carbon fumes.
"When I first got involved with Vélib, I was amazed at the number of stations, 750 to start with, and the enthusiasm of everyone for reducing auto traffic," says Jonathan Pierson, a Paris native who's part of a team of young Parisians hosting questions at Vélib stations during the day.
Amsterdam, a city not unfamiliar with bikes, tried a similar experiment that foundered. But the French think they've conquered the kinks. A bike-rental program started in Lyon in 2005 is working.
One clincher for the Paris project: Vélib isn't costing the city anything, and should be self-supporting. The program is financed by advertising behemoth JC Decaux – in exchange for 1,600 billboards around the city.
The concept is computerized and credit card driven. Each station has a large ATM-sized panel that gives instructions in French, German, English, and Chinese. Riders buy in for a day (1 rules), a week (5 rules), or a year (29 euro). The panel issues a card that can be swiped over a small locking pod to release the bike.
It is also a concept designed mainly for commuters, not tourists seeking a languid ride along the Seine. Riders have 30 minutes to get to their destination before any charge is made. After 30 minutes, the cost is 1 euro ($1.36). The bike is 2 rules for 1.5 hours, and 4 euro for 2 hours. "We hope each bike is used 10 to 14 times a day," says Pierson, who notes that the stations are open 24/7.
A rider who arrives to find no locking pods available, checks in, and is given another free 15 minutes and directions to the closest space. Need to stop for a baguette? The bike has a lock.
Yet there's also some personal responsibility tied up with bicycle freedom. To avoid problems found in Lyon – nearly half of its 1,000 bikes disappeared or were destroyed in the first year – initial membership in the Paris program puts a 150 euros hold on the credit card. People are charged for bikes that aren't returned, placing an emphasis on rider care and oversight. Should a bike not be returned, an alarm inside the bike will go off.
Today, Lyon's program seems to have lost its training wheels; it now has 4,000 bikes that get ridden 20,000 times a day, more than 40 percent of which are used by office workers.
Paris officials hope to register 200,000 rides a day. Perhaps one can amend Ezra Pound's famous 1913 modernist reflection on the Paris metro: "...faces in the crowd/petals on a wet black bough" to "pedals on a silver-grey vélo."
Not that Parisians won't have to adjust. The French are fond of the idea of civilization and the vision of a city suffused with bike commuters is a humanist heaven. The problem is that Paris streets are Darwinist by nature. The 19th-century avenues are host to 21st-century traffic. The bulk of movement is not by vélos, but by Jurassic Park-like véloceraptors – aggressive autos and packs of even more aggressive motorscooters that tunnel through and sweep around car lanes and backed-up traffic.
City fathers and mothers argue that Parisian drivers will simply start to adjust. Such is the faith.
In the past two years, Paris has created larger zones for bikes, buses, and taxis. But there's no history of bike helmet wearing. Paris commuters in the morning and evening aren't particularly patient, and bike stations only have one sign-up panel. Some Parisians question the vélo station courtesy levels late at night, when students and partygoers want to get home.
For all the Tour de France glam and a general rise in bicycle culture in France, Paris has not been a bike town. A rising tide of bikers, though, are notorious for riding on sidewalks, ignoring traffic signals, and biking the wrong way on all those one-way streets.
Ann-Marie Fouchet of the Geppeto Vélo bike shop on the Left Bank feels the program "is good as a way to establish biking in Paris." But she says that Parisians are not used to dealing with bikes on the road. Every Friday evening about 500 bikers join for a tour of the city, during which "cars aren't always courteous and the bikers are not always knowing how to deal with them," Ms. Fouchet says.
Another niggling factor amid the revolutionary fervor: parking. Parisians may like the idea of bike heaven, but few want their already crowded parking spaces absconded. To the barricades!
Albert Asseraf, director of marketing at Decaux, says that the bike project is so broad that after July 15, 2007, Parisians will refer to "before Vélib, and after Vélib."
Ok. Vive le vélo!
French revolution: Rentable bikes every 900 feet
By Robert Marquand, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Fri Jul 6, 2007
The socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, has seen the future and it's got two wheels, three speeds, an adjustable seat, indestructible tires, a basket, and a bell. It's 50 pounds of ecofriendly handlebars, comin' at ya.
The French are turning Paris into a bicycle zone, pretty much overnight. Even now, astride small alleys and behind boulangeries, paving stones are being ripped to fit 750 bicycle rent "stations."
On July 15, a day after the French Revolution anniversary, the city of lights will kick off a "vélorution" with 10,648 rentable bikes, or vélos. By January, some 1,400 rent stations and 20,600 bikes are scheduled to be in place. In Paris proper, one will never be more than 900 feet from a set of cheap wheels. At least theoretically.
Similar programs have been launched elsewhere with varying success. But Paris officials say their city is the first world capital to adopt a major green biking initiative, and they are doing it in a way that may be too big to fail. The ambitious Paris project is titled Vélib' – wordplay for bicycle freedom. Read: freedom from too many cars and carbon fumes.
"When I first got involved with Vélib, I was amazed at the number of stations, 750 to start with, and the enthusiasm of everyone for reducing auto traffic," says Jonathan Pierson, a Paris native who's part of a team of young Parisians hosting questions at Vélib stations during the day.
Amsterdam, a city not unfamiliar with bikes, tried a similar experiment that foundered. But the French think they've conquered the kinks. A bike-rental program started in Lyon in 2005 is working.
One clincher for the Paris project: Vélib isn't costing the city anything, and should be self-supporting. The program is financed by advertising behemoth JC Decaux – in exchange for 1,600 billboards around the city.
The concept is computerized and credit card driven. Each station has a large ATM-sized panel that gives instructions in French, German, English, and Chinese. Riders buy in for a day (1 rules), a week (5 rules), or a year (29 euro). The panel issues a card that can be swiped over a small locking pod to release the bike.
It is also a concept designed mainly for commuters, not tourists seeking a languid ride along the Seine. Riders have 30 minutes to get to their destination before any charge is made. After 30 minutes, the cost is 1 euro ($1.36). The bike is 2 rules for 1.5 hours, and 4 euro for 2 hours. "We hope each bike is used 10 to 14 times a day," says Pierson, who notes that the stations are open 24/7.
A rider who arrives to find no locking pods available, checks in, and is given another free 15 minutes and directions to the closest space. Need to stop for a baguette? The bike has a lock.
Yet there's also some personal responsibility tied up with bicycle freedom. To avoid problems found in Lyon – nearly half of its 1,000 bikes disappeared or were destroyed in the first year – initial membership in the Paris program puts a 150 euros hold on the credit card. People are charged for bikes that aren't returned, placing an emphasis on rider care and oversight. Should a bike not be returned, an alarm inside the bike will go off.
Today, Lyon's program seems to have lost its training wheels; it now has 4,000 bikes that get ridden 20,000 times a day, more than 40 percent of which are used by office workers.
Paris officials hope to register 200,000 rides a day. Perhaps one can amend Ezra Pound's famous 1913 modernist reflection on the Paris metro: "...faces in the crowd/petals on a wet black bough" to "pedals on a silver-grey vélo."
Not that Parisians won't have to adjust. The French are fond of the idea of civilization and the vision of a city suffused with bike commuters is a humanist heaven. The problem is that Paris streets are Darwinist by nature. The 19th-century avenues are host to 21st-century traffic. The bulk of movement is not by vélos, but by Jurassic Park-like véloceraptors – aggressive autos and packs of even more aggressive motorscooters that tunnel through and sweep around car lanes and backed-up traffic.
City fathers and mothers argue that Parisian drivers will simply start to adjust. Such is the faith.
In the past two years, Paris has created larger zones for bikes, buses, and taxis. But there's no history of bike helmet wearing. Paris commuters in the morning and evening aren't particularly patient, and bike stations only have one sign-up panel. Some Parisians question the vélo station courtesy levels late at night, when students and partygoers want to get home.
For all the Tour de France glam and a general rise in bicycle culture in France, Paris has not been a bike town. A rising tide of bikers, though, are notorious for riding on sidewalks, ignoring traffic signals, and biking the wrong way on all those one-way streets.
Ann-Marie Fouchet of the Geppeto Vélo bike shop on the Left Bank feels the program "is good as a way to establish biking in Paris." But she says that Parisians are not used to dealing with bikes on the road. Every Friday evening about 500 bikers join for a tour of the city, during which "cars aren't always courteous and the bikers are not always knowing how to deal with them," Ms. Fouchet says.
Another niggling factor amid the revolutionary fervor: parking. Parisians may like the idea of bike heaven, but few want their already crowded parking spaces absconded. To the barricades!
Albert Asseraf, director of marketing at Decaux, says that the bike project is so broad that after July 15, 2007, Parisians will refer to "before Vélib, and after Vélib."
Ok. Vive le vélo!
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