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My city is going through a French Invasion ..... the good kind .... haaa

Hats off to our friend Girodreamer and the French food processor Roquette

Roquette is a French-based family owned company which produces more than 650 by-products from the starch extracted from corn, wheat, potatoes and peas.

Founded and headquartered in Lestrem, France in 1933 by the brothers Dominique and Germain Roquette, Roquette has grown to become the leader in starch production in Europe and the number four ranked producer of starch worldwide

Just over a year ago they came with over half a billion dollars and announced they are building a state of the art plant for pea protein just outside our small city of 13,000.

Unbelievably good impact on our economy and jobs ... we already have large french fry potato plants for Simplot and McCains and this just tops it off.

Great news in a gloomy world .

https://www.portageonline.com/local/roq ... al-workers

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I hope the workers who came to help took a couple of good bottles of wine in their luggage to celebrate Canadian/french Friendship !

it is nice to see that we, I mean westerners , are still able to build plants instead of buying our stuff to the indians, chineses etc etc

I think they were surprised when they visited our wine store , it is mostly French wine. haaaa

They have been great to deal with .... our city mayor and council bent over backwards to streamline all the red tape and regulations and they are extremely pleased.

Earlier (last spring) they contracted with local farmers to grow thousands of acres of peas ... which has already been delivered to the new factory

Our farmers love it , peas grow very well here ... the Roquette plant will need 150,000 metric tons of peas per year , which is about 170,000 US tons .... that is a lot of peas !!!!

I live at an airport and they have leased a brand new hangar for their corporate jets.

This whole thing has been a windfall for our small city .... a great thing for Roquette because of our crop quality and a very dependable labor force.

Plus Roquette is a private family owned company .... no government involved !!!!

Maybe I can make friends with their corporate pilots ... sit in the jump seat , come to France and paint your gyro ..... haa ..... hey , I can dream too !!!!!

And I am easy to look after .... just glass of wine and lots of bread ... I love the crusty French bread with the soft interior.

all of this seems to be a nice win win venture, it is really important to keep farmers on their terrirories, it keeps local traditions and local cultural heritage Alive so that we don't all end up as FB members and Amazon chinese stuff buyers.

I Noticed that in Canada there are more and more local cheese makers and other small organic food producers

we all need to go back to local economy , it does not means that international tradding must end , but just that buying a tomato pasta sauce made in china is more then stupid when one can buy in a local company and make it possible for locals to go on living, in their country etc etc ..

The real solution, and maybe the hardest to accept is to eat with the seasons as we all did in 60's and 70's.

There are too many food miles demanding summer foods in winter.

Strawberries used to be a treat to eat on the long summer evenings, now we have strawberry shaped things with no flavour, grown in a greenhouse that never see soil.

And wine made of God knows what but grapes.
We also have meat full of steroids and antibiotics and genetically modified grains and greens.
Yet the world is wondering why a simple COVID19 (pretty punchless) takes a huge toll on us as it did.
I am sure the aqua grew stuff is OK in certain cases but I prefer to taste the nutrients coming from the rich soil.
I guess the generation that grows up on cardboard tasting food won't miss a thing.
It's us "old-timers" who remember how food needs to taste.

I 100 % agree with you

I don't know in the US but in france in every cities, and every day you can find those kind street markets :






local producers of meat, cheese, veg, fruits sell their production themseves .. most of the time those markets are in streets where a lot of small independant shops exists , bakers, independant restaurants , bars etc etc

I never get in any supermarket, malls etc .. all my money go to small business .

when I am travelling as a tourist I always look for small businesses to spend my money ... in my opinions big companies are ok for making cars, big planes, ships, trains etc ... but I don't need walmart or amazon to help me find my food Locally

I buy everything organic and local when it is possible of course ... and believe me I am anything then a woodstock bitnick !!

https://buylocalfoodny.org

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Hats off to two French brothers, Jacques and Louis Breguet .... and then fellow French inventor Paul Cornu who designed and built the Cornu helicopter ... both of which lifted off the ground a few inches around 1906

And then we have Jay Leno who says one of his favorite cars is his Citroen .... roomy , comfortable , and the best riding car out of his whole collection.

Air over hydraulic suspension and trouble free if the proper factory oil is used ... anyone who had problems it was from using the wrong hydraulic oil.

I have never driven a Citroen , or even worked on one .... but years ago was a local collector who had 5 of them ... he was Canadian Military stationed in Germany and every trip he would bring another one home ... shipping paid by the military and no import duties or taxes .... I should look him up to see if he still has them.

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Hi,

I did not know that Breguet had tested powered heli so early ... so it is not true to say that Autogiro were the predecessors of the helis .. helis existed before ... great !
as for citroëns cars they had introduced 2 innovations :

- the first front wheel drive, the car was called " la traction avant", when I was young It was not exceptional to ear people say " j'ai acheté une traction" : " I Bought a traction"

here is the traction :



- The double-helical tooth gears .. and the shape of the teeth gave the symbole of the brand

here is the gear



the brand symbol has the same shape then the gear, you can see it on the radiator on the previous picture

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Nice Cabriolet Roadster convertible

I had no idea Citroen was building cool cars in the 1930's

Came across this coupe .... sweet sweet sweet

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Not only that .... from the 1930's Citroen used front wheel drive , four wheel independent suspension , monocoque unibody instead of a frame , and in 1955 disc brakes ... they were decades ahead of everybody else

Even the word monocoque is a French term for "single shell" ... which is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, similar to an egg shell.

I never knew any of that until now ... and here I thought I knew everything about cars ... haaaa

CItroën also invented a pneumatic suspension system,

there were 4 spheres at the 4 wheels, all filled with compressed air and connected to pneumatic shocks








when the car would be at the parking she was sitting low and when one would start the engine , the car would raise .. wery funny

this sytem would give the driver the the feeling of rolling on and air cushion

https://youtu.be/ZdbAGzycIMk?t=64

there were also a high position which made it possible to pass some badly dented roads and onece the bad road portion passed to come back in a fast suspension position

trouble is that many people would get sea sick in those cars .. hahaha

Citroën also issued a very popular car called the 2CV , it was light, really cheap, really tough, really simple .. I would remove the engine in 30 minutes with a friend without any crane , just manually

the 2CV is a part of our cultural history ..

https://youtu.be/IerzAJbvTPE

I remember of the contest Citroën did of its CV2 the ugly duck.
If you could tip it over by driving it erratically and yanking and banking wildly with it you would get a brand new one from Citroën.
They never had to issue one!
The ugly duck was very stable!!!
Air cooled and front wheel drive.
I also owned a Renault and Peugeot.
Never had any complaints well.... the Renault master break caliper quit on me and I had to stop by using my foot through the open door....
Yes .... people were looking at me strange

Wasn't the Eiffel Tower a citroen billboard?
I don't know if Citroen was just buying ad space or had something to do with the tower itself....I remember seeing a B&W photo of it in french class lit up.

I have googled it , you are right the tour Eiffel has been used as a billboard, I did not know it at all

thanks you Benry



but I don't think that Citröen had owned a part of it , it was financed for the universal exhibition of Paris 1889 to promote the French metal bridges technology, it should have been removed after the exhibition but we kept it

André Citroënstarted his car building company in 1910

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Speaking of flying Frenchmen and the Eiffel Tower ... Frantz Reichelt jumped off in 1912 to test his parachute .... but did not survive.

Parachutes had already been invented but were designed for exiting balloons , not planes , so he came up with his own design.

Tested it using dummies from a 5 story building ... sometimes it worked sometimes not ... and he blamed the lack of height for the failures ... thus the attempt from the tower.

Apparently he had the calculations correct ... enough square feet of canopy etc ... trouble was it did not open properly .

Journalists back then were the same as today .... all they cared about was how deep the hole was (5.9 inches)

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Yep Arnie , I remember the numerous TV documentaries about the pioneers of aviation.

I also remember the cameraman hand passing in front of lens saying to the man on the tour Eiffel go go go the tape is short .. horrible

It is crazy to think that this is in France that the first human flight officially took place ( the hot air balloon of Pilatre de Rozier in 1783 !)
Pilatre de Rozier did not only fly captive balloons in meetings but also flew up to 3000 feet (long cross country flight) ..

It is not Because I happened on France that I am saying this but just to underline the fact it happened so early in the history of technology ... humans have always been determined to fly , it is incredible;

Giro, perhaps some day an alien race will come down and actually tell us about the history of humans on this planet.
I suspect that we have been around MUCH longer then we currently believe and that possibly flight was available prior to the 1700s.
But its just a gut feeling....based on things like those little gold airplanes and things like the temple at Gobeki Teple in Turkey.

Those airplane artifacts from Egypt caught my interest as a young boy ... it was a National Geographic article .... the one they showed was carved from white stone and looked exactly like a modern jet (minus the rudder) .... later researchers placed an outline of it over a top view of the early Bell P-59 Jet and it was almost a perfect match except the carving had some taper at the wingtips.

Then someone pointed out to me it looked more like a bird in flight (minus the beak) ... I hate it when that happens ... at the time I was keen on believing in ancient aviators.

More about "alien life" in a minute.

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Devout atheist Richard Dawkins is a highly intelligent man who believes Darwinism + evolution can explain everything and he thinks creationists are absolutely bananas with their so-called "god" somewhere out there in the universe or the heavens or whatever.

Nearly impossible to corner him on any subject .... he has an evolutionary theory for everything .... the only "magic formula" he relies on is "lots and lots of time" ... (millions and billions of years) and then nothing can become everything as we know it today.

There is only one question he stumbles on .... "where did the very first origins of life come from on this planet" .... he has difficulty with that one so he takes a leap of faith and proclaimed .... "life on this planet may have originated from some form of alien life out there in the universe which was the seed for life here on earth".

Why do I mention all that ???? .... because without realizing it he has stepped fully into the Jewish-Christian concept of Creationism ... an alien life form (God) out there in the universe who in old testament times communicated to mankind (Moses & the boys) by using Angels .... and the highest form of angels have wings (cherubim) .... full details of those flying angels can be found in the precise instructions to build the Ark of the Covenant for Solomon's Temple.

So what does this have to do with Egypt artifacts ???? .... Everything .... the Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians for a long time and they would have witnesses the supernatural winged creatures who provided freedom to Moses and his people.

Old testament has lots of mentions of "alien" winged creatures:

--- He rode on a cherub and flew; he came swiftly on the wings of the wind.
--- You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself.
--- Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
--- their wings were stretched out straight, one toward another ... sound of their wings was like the sound of rushing water ... When they stood still, they let down their wings.
--- The cherubim appeared to have the form of a human hand under their wings
--- the cherubim lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth
--- I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, two women coming forward! The wind was in their wings. They had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between earth and heaven.
--- and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle.