Month: December 2024

Regardless of what you have been going through lately, or what is on your mind while reading this post, may your journey toward, and into, 2025 be filled with self-care. Indeed, this is Bambi’s wish for each one of you from the bottom of her heart.

This wish is inspired by the spirit of tenderness in Grégoire’s uplifting French song, “Je te souhaite une bonne année” [I wish you a Happy New Year]. If you wish to read an English translation of the lyrics, taken from YouTube, please see the text below.

Happy 2025, dear readers of this blog!

“I wish you a Happy New Year, filled with love, filled with dreams

And above all with health, and endless tenderness

I wish you to be happy and if you are, to stay that way

I wish you all the best that your heart can imagine

I wish you success in achieving the impossible

Yes, you can do it because nothing, no, is inaccessible

I wish you to realize how lucky we are to be there, to tell you that at the end, we complain a little too much sometimes

I wish you a Happy New Year, filled with love, filled with dreams

And above all with health, and endless tenderness

I wish you friendship, affection and gentleness

Yes, I wish you to share because together, everything is better

I wish you indulgence for those who see the glass half empty, for those who do have the luck to have hope in the pit of their belly

I wish you a mild winter, a spring full of promises, a careless summer and an autumn tinged with joy

I wish you a Happy New Year, filled with love, filled with dreams

And above all with health, and endless tenderness

I wish you compassion for all those who harm you

because one day, yes, they will understand that they hurt themselves

I wish you to forgive and to avoid all the anger, of those who only know how to cast their misfortune on the whole earth

I wish you lightness to tell you that life is beautiful, to no longer cling to the past, to its never ending complaint

I wish you a Happy New Year, filled with love, filled with dreams

And above all with health, and endless tenderness

I wish you magic in all your projects, to see that above the rain, the sun continues to shine

I wish you to know that by being negative, you never get to see the bright side, the positive

I wish you to never procrastinate until later, never to realize, that now, it is too late

I wish you a Happy New Year, filled with love, filled with dreams

And above all with health, and endless tenderness…“

Mr. Jimmy Carter joined his wife in heaven. May he rest in peace (https://shorturl.at/6Zd55).

Yes, “peace” like the one he had dared to envision for the Middle East and for the world.

May his family members and his staff at the Carter Center (https://shorturl.at/Gom9t) find comfort and inner peace. May his beautiful legacy continue to offer a light of hope in our darkened world.

Of note, on the front page of the Carter’s center, we can see a lovely picture of Mr. and Ms. Carter with the following inspiring words: “We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes — and we must.”
Jimmy Carter, Nobel Lecture.

Some of you, dear readers, might consider Mr. Carter a romantic dreamer. Some might say: oh well, an inept President or even an outstanding one, but that was it. Yet others may find his politics or legacy inspiring. Of course, some may disagree with his vision of peace. They may even dislike not only his ideas, but his character or his country too.

As far as Bambi is concerned, she does not know much about Mr. Carter’s internal politics in his own country. Plus, perhaps his external politics did not work that well in the end. YET, she has the utmost respect, along with deep gratitude, for him for having believed in AND worked for peace until age 100.

May peace and love fill our hearts. When we truly love, we compromise. May the latter practice, and its resulting peace as an outcome, prevail in our meaningful relationships, domestically, in the Middle East, and around the entire world.

The above being said, and if she may now, Bambi will end this tribute by sharing with you an email that she allowed herself to send to Mr. Jimmy Carter, via his centre, on August 20, 2015. She will also share the centre’s thoughtful reply in his name. The email was entitled “A Get Well Message to President Carter“.

“Hello Madam/Sir:
I would be very grateful if you can share my note below with President Carter, please. I do not expect any response but it is very important for me to be able to share this with him. Thank you very much. Just FYI (as your website seemed to ask for): My mailing address is: Rima Azar… etc.”

Dear President Carter:

Thank you Mr. Carter. More than ever, the dark bloody Middle East that I originally come from, and the whole world (with its tragic conflicts here and there) need a peace visionary like you. Rare are the men and women in Politics who know how to inspire us, whether domestically or internationally. You are one of these rare public figures. Thank you for all your efforts, for the inspiration, and for the hope. Please keep up the great work– you, your staff, and mentees/students! One day, diplomacy and common sense will be fruitful. One day, peace will know how to prevail. For the time being, and from the bottom of my heart, I pray for your health and inner peace during your cancer journey. You take good care, please. 

Rima Azar, Sackville, NB, Canada.   

“On behalf of the Carter’s, and their staff here at The Carter Center we would like to thank you so much for your well-wishes.  They mean a great deal and are sincerely appreciated.

The Carter Center”.

Bambi thanks her new friend Andrew for sharing an uplifting 6-minute CBC documentary, which is described on YouTube as follows: “Jewish and Lebanese families in Yarmouth, N.S., have been coming together for more than a century to share in conversations and find common ground. CBC’s Sabrina Fabian breaks down the rich history of friendship that stands out in an increasingly polarized world”.

Bravo to CBC‘s Sabrina Fabian for putting the emphasis on what assembles us, as Canadians, that is on our shared humanity. What a beautiful story, unfolding over generations, in Yarmouth in the beautiful Atlantic Canadian province of Nova Scotia!

Some of you may be into a laughter mode.

Others may be busy with work.

Some may be sad.

Yet others may be sick with a cold.

Regardless of how your day (or evening is going) or your state of mind, Bambi hopes this sketch by Rudy (playing all three characters) will put a smile on your face.

From the YouTube description of the OLJ bilingual video shared below, we can read the following, thanks to Google Translate for its assistance:

“The war in Lebanon was brutal, terrifying and devastating. How many Lebanese have lost loved ones, killed in Israeli bombings? How many others, their house?

In the midst of this misfortune, however, solidarity is sometimes born. This is what a Lebanese woman from Bekaa and living in the southern suburb of Beirut tells us in this new episode of our podcast “I’m telling you about Beirut”.

Faced with Israeli bombing, she moved several times during the war. But during this journey, she met a family who not only welcomed her and her loved ones, but also pampered them, while their entire world was falling apart.

Beyond prejudices and community divisions, this young woman tells us how she met this family, and how, little by little, “a new friendship, full of love, was born” in the midst of chaos. “I think the Lebanese learned an important lesson during this war: we can only count on each other. »

Every week, we hold out our microphone to men, women and even children, coming from all regions of Lebanon or elsewhere, to find out how the war between Lebanon and Israel has turned their daily lives upside down. They tell us their experiences but also their fears and their hopes. Personal and intimate stories, to be discovered every week on all our platforms”.

If you are interested, below you can find a three-minute YouTube video of a Medley from a Christmas concert presented worldwide, featuring Mr. Amine Hachem (tenor), along with Mr. Brian Holman (music director). Bambi hopes you will enjoy it as much as she did.

Thank you Mr. Hachem (et al.) for singing “Petit Papa Noël” in your fabulous concert :).

Merry Christmas to you and long live your immense talent, which makes both Lebanon and the United States of America proud!

Mr. Jean Ferrat’s real name is Jean Tenenbaum. For those of you who may not know him, he is one of the greatest French songwriters, poets, musician-composers and singer-performers of all times. Bambi is devoting a second post to honour his memory because she is fond of his talent.

Mr. Ferrat was born on December 26, 1930 (in the region of Hauts-de-Seine). He took his last breath on March 13, 2010 (in Ardèche). His personal/familial story is moving. Indeed, when he was eleven years old, his (Jewish) dad was deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz where he died. If Mr. Jean Ferrat survived, it is because he was hidden by good men (https://shorturl.at/qfzFu). Thanks to them for their humanity in the darkest of times. They allowed us to enjoy his musical legacy.

One of Ferrat’s songs , which Bambi loves is entitled “C’est beau la vie [“Life is Beautiful“]. Another one she also appreciates is called “Aimer à perdre la raison” [“To love to The Point of Losing Our Mind“].

Between the love of life and love, we are well served with Mr. Ferrat’s repertoire of songs. Bravo for his poetic and simple yet deep lyrics. His beautiful voice and music transcend death. In addition to entertaining us, the essence of his musical legacy gives us hope for brighter days despite tragedies (just like his own story). May love, humanity, and the power of life triumph over the forces of obscurantism, hate, and evil in our world.

Christmas is about baby Jesus’ birth while Hannukah is the Jewish eight-day festival of lights. As reported in Euro News (https://shorturl.at/92Lav ), Hannukah begins this year on December 25, “marking only the fifth time since 1900 that the two holidays have overlapped“.

Merry Christmas to you, if you celebrate Jesus as the Light of the World ❤️!

Happy Hannukah to you, if you celebrate the menorah as a symbol of light ❤️!

May the double power of the lights of love and hope illuminate our darkened world.

If you celebrate the nativity of Jesus Christ, Bambi wishes you a blessed Christmas Eve.

May the birth of baby Jesus bring hope to our troubled world for healing, peace, and love.

Merry Christmas ❤️!

The Gipsy Kings’ “Amore De Mis Amore” is the only song Bambi knows how to sing in Spanish. Of course, she sings it like a frog and she does not speak this beautiful language.

However, she recalls the lyrics of this famous song, which would be entitled in English “Love of My Loves“. If she is not mistaken, it was originally composed by Mr. Ángel Cabral and known as “Que nadie sepa mi sufrir” [Let No One Knows My Suffering].

Indeed, Bambi happens to know the meaning of this love poem since her youth in Beirut. For fun, at that time, she used to record melodies from the radio [when power would come back :)], pause the songs, and write down their lyrics.

Who knows? Perhaps she likes “Amore De Mis Amores” because it inspired another song she adores by Ms. Edith Piaf (older post shown below). Yes, some of you can perhaps guess that she is referring to “La Foule” (https://shorturl.at/u0Cle).

Gracias/Merci Mr. Kendji Girac for your beautiful talent and unique style. Merry Christmas to you and please keep singing!

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A friendly wink to heaven: Honouring Ms. Edith Piaf with her “La foule” [The Crowd]