French issues of the day seem to deal with food and wine.

The great French snail - once so common that early-19th-century train companies hired women and children to clean the tracks of them so the trains could get a grip -- has gone the way of the great American buffalo. I hate to burst any bubbles, but if you're slurping top quality "free-range snails" in a little Paris bistro, they most likely last slithered free in Poland. Wine is another topic that arouses the French. Walking through the finest vineyards in France, the fabled Cote d'Or (or "Golden Hillside") of Burgundy, the proud vintner guiding me became evangelical: