Michel Eric Gaillard

MPA Harvard University Kennedy School of Government - Auditor, CPA - Data Modeler - Public Policies - Governance - Leadership - Affaires Electorales

[Muse @xmuse_]

Couture meets fire on the dance floor 🔥

Alexander & Arina take over the floor in this custom Michael Chen piece.

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@elonmusk You should capture it, bring it back to earth, and display it in the Tesla Museum.

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

Madame la Première Dame,

Je vous remercie sincèrement pour vos aimables vœux d’anniversaire. Votre message m’a profondément touché.

Je suis très honoré de votre attention et vous en suis très reconnaissant.

Avec toute ma gratitude, je vous adresse mes respectueuses salutations et mes meilleurs vœux.

Bien cordialement,

Eric

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@RAMhaiti Bon bagay ♥️

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Why does Mary look younger than Jesus in Michelangelo's Pietà?

The answer is one of the most beautiful in art history...

Mary is holding the body of her 33 year old son, but she looks 20. Critics noticed it the moment the sculpture was unveiled in 1499. The mother of a man who has just been crucified would have been in her late forties or early fifties. Michelangelo had carved her as a girl.

His own biographer, Ascanio Condivi, was the one who finally asked him why. The answer Michelangelo gave is preserved in Condivi's Life of Michelangelo and has been repeated for centuries: "Do you not know that chaste women stay fresh much more than those who are not chaste? How much more in the case of the Virgin, who had never experienced the least lascivious desire that might change her body?"

Most modern critics treat this answer as a half-serious deflection. Michelangelo was famous for his sharp tongue and refused to explain himself to people he considered beneath his intellect.

The deeper answer is older, and it lies inside one of the greatest poems ever written. In the final canto of Dante's Paradiso, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux begins his prayer to the Virgin with one of the most extraordinary lines in Italian literature:

"Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio."
"Virgin mother, daughter of your own son."

Michelangelo, who knew Dante by heart, was carving that line into stone. Mary is younger than Jesus because Jesus is older than the universe... because she gave birth to her own creator.

But there is another reading, simpler than either of those, and it is the one I find myself thinking of today. Every mother who has held her child has held them at every age at once. The infant is still inside the toddler. The toddler is still inside the teenager. The young man on her lap, even dead, is also the boy she nursed and the baby she first carried home.

And maybe that's why Michelangelo did not carve Mary as the years had aged her. He carved her as love had kept her: outside of time, outside of grief, holding her son the way she had always held him...

Happy Mother's Day.

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[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@Jacquiecharles 🤔

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@Jacquiecharles 🤭

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@Jacquiecharles @MiamiHerald 👍

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

This is what happens when the soul merges with the violin: the music running in your veins.

[んaitianaute 🇭🇹 @Haitianaute]

🇭🇹 𝗟𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗲̂𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗱𝘂 𝗥𝗼𝘆𝗮𝘂𝗺𝗲 𝗱'𝗛𝗮𝘆𝘁𝗶 𝗲𝗻 𝗹'𝗮𝗻 𝗱𝗲 𝗴𝗿𝗮̂𝗰𝗲 𝟭𝟴𝟭𝟲, 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗹𝗲 𝗿è𝗴𝗻𝗲 𝗱𝗲 𝗦𝗮 𝗠𝗮𝗷𝗲𝘀𝘁é 𝗛𝗲𝗻𝗿𝘆 𝗜𝗲𝗿, 𝗥𝗼𝗶 𝗱'𝗛𝗮𝘆𝘁𝗶.

[Ce jour-là dans l'Histoire @CeJour_Histoire]

Le 3 mai 1803, Napoléon vend la Louisiane aux Américains.

2 144 000 kilomètres carrés. Du golfe du Mexique jusqu'à la frontière canadienne, du Mississippi aux Rocheuses. Un territoire plus vaste que la France, l'Espagne, l'Allemagne et l'Italie réunies. 22% de la superficie actuelle des États-Unis.

Prix : 15 millions de dollars. Soit 80 millions de francs. Soit 3 cents l'acre.

Les Américains étaient venus à Paris pour acheter la Nouvelle-Orléans. Napoléon leur a proposé tout le territoire d'un coup. Ses négociateurs n'en revenaient pas.

Pourquoi brader un empire colonial entier ? Parce que son armée venait d'être décimée à Saint-Domingue par la révolte des esclaves et la fièvre jaune. Parce qu'une nouvelle guerre contre l'Angleterre se profilait. Et parce qu'il savait que sans flotte, la Louisiane tomberait aux mains des Britanniques.

Son calcul : mieux valait vendre le territoire aux Américains que le perdre face aux Anglais. Et créer un rival de l'Angleterre de l'autre côté de l'Atlantique.

Thomas Jefferson avait autorisé ses négociateurs à dépenser 10 millions de dollars maximum. Ils en ont dépensé 15. C'était une fois et demie le budget annuel de l'État fédéral. Pour financer l'achat, les États-Unis ont dû emprunter, à 6% d'intérêt, auprès d'une banque anglaise. La Barings.

En une signature, les États-Unis ont doublé leur superficie. L'achat de la Louisiane est l'acte fondateur de la conquête de l'Ouest.

Aujourd'hui encore, La Nouvelle-Orléans a un quartier français, des noms de rue en français, et des descendants de colons qui parlent encore la langue.

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@Frantzduval 😭

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

Sé pa ti bèl

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

Beautiful sky over #Jacmel #Haiti this morning. Notre perle des caraibes

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@historical_Afr There are no known pictures of Boukman as photography did not exist in the late 1700s.

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@BINUH_UN Très mauvaise idée.
Porte ouverte à la fraude electorale.

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@DelphineGardere 😭

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@Rainmaker1973 @monetization_x We respect you Sir and learn so much from you.
Hope you get well, with the grace of God.

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@Haitianaute #42 Ignace D. Marion est le quadrisaïeul de ma mère

[Michel Eric Gaillard @egaillard]

@Jacquiecharles 🤔