One of the biggest industries on the Île d'Oléron (SW France) is oyster farming — ostréiculture in French. "An oyster" is une huître. Oysters are affinées (aged, fattened up) the way cheeses are affinés (aged, ripened). The part of the island where oysters are farmed isn't very prettied up, except for the bright and bold colors of the paint used on the oyster shacks (les cabanes ostréicoles). The oyster-farming area is called Marennes-Oléron — Marennes is a town on the mainland, just across the bridge from the island.
Some of these photos are mine, some are Walt's, and some are our friend Cheryl's. More tomorrow. These kinds of scenes remind me very much of the place where I grew up: Carteret County in North Carolina.
I'll put this here in the comments: For those of you (at least four friends of mine in the U.S., the U.K., and France) who got strange messages (in French) from somebody claiming to be me, I haven't received any more reports of such messages being received. I believe that changing my orange.fr passwords put a stop to the hijacking. Be not afraid...
ReplyDeleteNot necessarily so. Once they had what they wanted, it seems to me they created a bogus email account coming from you. I never saw any of your email addresses. My impression is they pirate accounts just to get names to send their scam.
DeleteLearning that a good friend has jus been diagnosed with throat cancer is nothing to dismiss just as trash. The people who pirated my friend two years ago where so much better, I almost got scamed out of two thousand euros.
DeleteThere was one going around a couple of years ago in which your "friend" would say, "Help, I'm in Aberdeen, and my wallet was stolen. Can you send money?" Details and locations varied, of course. I got that one day with a friend's name on it, and it looked really real -- except that I knew he was at that moment in the US, not in Europe.
DeleteOur neighbor the mayor was scammed that way. When I saw the e-mail saying it was from her and she was stranded far from home without any money, please send some, I called her husband and let him know. Several other people had called him already. Five minutes before the e-mail came in, I had seen her drive past on her way to the mairie...
DeleteNo strange messages have come on this end!
ReplyDeleteI love these photos :)
The first photo is in my top ten of your photos. It grabs me somehow. I've been enjoying Lupin on Netflix. Bon Weekend.
ReplyDelete: ^ )
DeleteHow did the Oleron wine taste?
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't bad but was a little sweet and fizzy. The Pineau des Charentes was good.
DeleteOh, I’ve been hoping you would have some oyster pictures as that would be a big reason for my going here. These pictures remind me of Carteret County too and I agree with Evelyn about the first one. Thanks for all these island pictures, Ken, looking forward to more.
ReplyDeleteI'm fascinated by the bushels of oysters pictures. Apparently they can live a week out of water per google, who knew?
ReplyDeleteWith emails, checking the little drop down option next to the email received shows you the address it came from, which if it doesn't exactly match the people you know can ID phishing.
It's hard to tell whether what's in those wire baskets are live oysters or just empty shells.
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