The Loire Valley, spanning 280 kilometres, is located in the middle stretch of the Loire River in central France, in both the administrative regions Pays de la Loire and Centre-Val de Loire. The area of the Loire Valley comprises about 800 square kilometres, it is referred to as the Cradle of the French and the Garden of France due to the abundance of vineyards, fruit orchards, artichoke, asparagus fields, which line the banks of the river. Notable for its historic towns and wines, the valley has been inhabited since the Middle Palaeolithic period. In 2000, UNESCO added the central part of the Loire River valley to its list of World Heritage Sites; the valley includes historic towns such as Amboise, Blois, Montsoreau, Orléans and Tours. The climate is favorable most of the year, the river acting as a line of demarcation in France's weather between the northern climate and the southern; the river has a significant effect on the mesoclimate of the region, adding a few degrees of temperature. The climate can be cool with springtime frost.

Summers are hot. Temperature and average sunshine time in Angers: The Loire Valley wine region is one of the world's most well-known areas of wine production and includes several French wine regions situated along the river from the Muscadet region on the Atlantic coast to the regions of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé just southeast of the city of Orléans in north central France. Loire wines tend to exhibit a characteristic fruitiness with crisp flavors. On December 2, 2000, UNESCO added the central part of the river valley, between Chalonnes-sur-Loire and Sully-sur-Loire, to its list of World Heritage Sites. In choosing this area that includes the French départements of Loiret, Loir-et-Cher, Indre-et-Loire, Maine-et-Loire, the committee said that the Loire Valley is: "an exceptional cultural landscape, of great beauty, comprised of historic cities and villages, great architectural monuments - the châteaux - and lands that have been cultivated and shaped by centuries of interaction between local populations and their physical environment, in particular the Loire itself."The Loire Valley chansonniers are a related group of songbooks attributed to the composers of the Loire Valley and are the earliest surviving examples of a new genre which offered a combination of words and illuminations.

A new Contemporary Art offer is developing all along the Loire River from Montsoreau to Orléans with such places as Château de Montsoreau-Contemporary Art Museum, CCCOD Tours, the Domaine Régional de Chaumont sur Loire and the Frac Centre Orléans. They are a rare association of Renaissance architecture with contemporary art; the architectural heritage in the valley's historic towns is notable its châteaux, such as the Château de Montsoreau, Château d'Amboise, Château d'Azay-le-Rideau, Château de Chambord, Château de Chinon, Château du Rivau, Château d'Ussé, Château de Villandry and Chenonceau. The châteaux, numbering more than three hundred, include the necessary castle fortifications built in the 10th century but the splendour of those built half a millennium later; when the French kings began constructing their huge châteaux here, the nobility, not wanting or daring to be far from the seat of power, followed suit. Their presence in the lush, fertile valley began attracting the best landscape designers.

In addition to its many châteaux, the cultural monuments illustrate to an exceptional degree the ideals of the Renaissance and the Age of the Enlightenment on western European thought and design. Many of the châteaux were designed to be built on the top of hills, one example of this is the Château d'Amboise. Many of the châteaux had detailed and expensive churches on the grounds, or within the actual château itself; the Château de Montsoreau is the only château to have been built in the Loire riverbed, it is the only one to be dedicated to contemporary art. The European Commission reported that in 2016, three categories accounted for most of the economy in the Pays-de-la-Loire region: services, including tourism, provided 66.7% of the employment, industry 26.5% and agriculture, 3.9%. The unemployment rate was 8.8%. In 2015, the region ranked eighth in France in terms of economic performance producing 5.0% of the gross domestic product. Important economic sectors included leather goods, shipyard/construction and aeronautics and food-processing as well as the plastics industry.

The EC did not produce a report for the larger Loire Valley region. According to another source, tourism in the Loire Valley was supported by over 700 hotels and 550 restaurants in the region. In addition to the chateaux and some 700 other listed Historic monuments, attractions included three Regional nature Parks, 550 km of cycling tracks, 800 listed Historic monuments, over 100 museums and 30 golf courses. In April 2019, The Guardian's travel section included one Loire Valley location in its list of 20 of the most beautiful villages in France: Montrésor, "a fairytale village with a rich history" evidenced by "the wool market, the Halle de Cardeux... the 16th-century Logis du Chancelier... a riverside walk, Balcons de l’Indrois... Jardinier Bridge". According to a 2017 report by CNN, the 42 chateaux that make up the UNESCO World Heritage Site receive over 3.3 million visitors per year. The Telegraph newspaper listed the following as the premiere chateaux for tourists: Chinon, Cité royale de Loches, Blois, Chenonceau, Lemeré, Clos Lucé, Chambord and Valençay.

Orléan

Yisrael Eichler is an Israeli politician. A member of Agudat Yisrael, he served as a member of the Knesset for the party and the United Torah Judaism alliance from 2003 until 2005, again since 2011. Born in Jerusalem, Eichler worked as an journalist, he became editor of HaMahane HaHaredi in 1980, in 1996 became chairman of the Centre for Jewish Publicity. In 2003, he was elected to the Knesset on the United Torah Judaism list, an alliance of Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah; the alliance split in January 2005, Eichler resigned from the Knesset on 23 February that year and was replaced by Shmuel Halpert. As part of a seat rotation agreement within United Torah Judaism, he returned to the Knesset on 6 February 2011 as a replacement for Meir Porush, he served as parliamentary group chairman until 2013. He was re-elected in the 2013 elections, was placed sixth on the UTJ list for the 2015 elections, retaining his seat again as the party won six seats. Following a Supreme Court ruling that public mikveh facilities must allow use by followers of Conservative and Reform Judaism in February 2016, he compared non-Orthodox Jews to the "mentally ill".

Eichler is married, with 14 children. He lives in Jerusalem. Yisrael Eichler on the Knesset website

John Peabody Harrington was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the indigenous peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which has remained unpublished: the shelf space in the National Anthropological Archives dedicated to his work spans nearly 700 feet. Born in Waltham, Harrington moved to California as a child. From 1902 to 1905, Harrington studied classical languages at Stanford University. While attending specialized classes at the University of California, Berkeley, he met anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber. Harrington became intensely interested in ethnography. Rather than completing his doctorate at the Universities of Leipzig and Berlin, Harrington became a high-school language teacher. For three years, he devoted his spare time to an intense examination of the few surviving Chumash people, his exhaustive work came to the attention of the Smithsonian Museum's Bureau of American Ethnology. Harrington became a permanent field ethnologist for the bureau in 1915.

He was to hold this position for 40 years and compiling several massive caches of raw data on native peoples, including the Chumash, Rumsen, Kiowa, Yokuts, Salinan and Mojave, among many others. Harrington extended his work into traditional culture mythology and geography, his field collections include information on thousands of photographs. The massive collections were disorganized in the extreme, contained not only linguistic manuscripts and recordings, but objects and realia of every stripe, he gathered more than 1 million pages of phonetic notations on languages spoken by tribes from Alaska to South America. When the technology became available, he supplemented his written record with audio recordings - many digitized - first using wax cylinders aluminum discs, he is credited with gathering some of the first recordings of native languages and songs, perfecting the phonetics of several different languages. Harrington's attention to detail, both linguistic and cultural, is well-illustrated in "Tobacco among the Karuk Indians of California," one of his few formally published works.

A more complete listing of the languages he documented includes: Harrington was married to Carobeth Laird from 1916-1923. They had Awona Harrington. Indigenous languages of California Traditional narratives Native American history of California Native Americans in California Survey of California and Other Indian Languages J. P. Harrington Database Project Victor Golla, California Indian Languages Bibliography John Peabody Harrington: the clue to lost Native American languages: Mike Anton LA Times Staff Writer Keepers of Indigenous Ways: J. P. Harrington Biography "Reconstituting the Chumash: A Review Essay," Peter Nabokov, American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 4, Special Issue: The California Indians. Pp. 535-543. A Harrington Chronology John P. Harrington Papers 1907-1959 Los Angeles Times article and video about Harrington's research amongst the Chumash The John Peabody Harrington Collection at the National Anthropological Archives