Entire Frame of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is Engulfed In Flames After Spire Collapses
SkyNews via NBC...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIXxTrAa9nc]
One of the world's greatest architectural landmarks is burning...and, apart from its world-renowned architecture (gargoyles, etc.), and the reality that the Cathedral, itself, was the primary subject of many famous works of art, this sad event will undoubtedly destroy/damage many well-known pieces contained within the building, too.
...Here's the slide show LINK via the Chicago Tribune.
Here's the link to the developing news via Associated Press...
Firefighters are battling a massive blaze at the French capital's iconic Notre Dame Cathedral.
A church spokesman has told French media that all of the cathedral's frame is burning after its spire caught fire and collapsed.
The peak of the church had been undergoing a $6.8 million renovation project.
French media quoted the Paris fire brigade saying the fire is "potentially linked" to the renovation work. The cause remains unknown.
French President Emmanuel Macron has postponed a televised speech to the nation because of the fire...
A devastating day for France, and the entire world.
# # #
Comments
I saw it on Twitter.
The Guardian says it was an accident related to the construction going on. Thank god it has nothing to do with the yellow vests.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Or Muslim migrants. Can you imagine? It’d be civil war. n/t
Renovation work was responsible for a big fire at Windsor
Castle. It is quite likely that the same is true here.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Having only heard the blurb about a fire, I have to admit
I thought immediately about Operation Mockingbird.
What could be a better way to thwart very popular, successful and consistent protests that have been running for 4 months straight - than to set fire to a beloved national monument in order to point to it and say "we need to get tough on these protests...," with the full backing of the nation.
The minute it comes out you realize you might sound like an insane conspiracy theorist. But then I think of the sinking of the Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin, Conintelpro, My Lai, 9/11, etc etc etc. Isn't this exactly the mission of institutions like the CIA, FBI and other "national security" apparatus?
Maybe I'm just becoming too cynical and down on mankind. Stuff like this can get depressing.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
This is going to be bad.
Everyone who has an axe to grind will immediately point to their enemy and claim that "THEY DID IT!" No matter what the investigation ends up proving, those initial impressions will be what people think. At a time like this, the capitalists will blame the yellow vests, the Nazis will blame the Muslims, and anybody who it IS finally pinned on will be just proof of the government/communist spy conspiracy.
Quite frankly, this is a no-win situation unless people are willing to come together politically in support of saving a national treasure. But knowing the Macron government, they'd want it rebuilt to be more "Inclusive"... which would of course piss off the Catholics... You get the idea... No matter what happens, it's gonna be bad.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
There was very extensive work being done on...
...the Cathedral's roof, at the time. It's looking very likely that this was the cause of the fire.
(My own house came extremely close--seconds away from that, in fact--to catching fire when we had our roof redone about six years ago.)
"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." --Hunter S. Thompson
Rgr. I'm not doubting that.
But there are plenty more who WILL. And they will be loud about it. Especially if "accident due to renovation" is the given cause...
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I dread reading a news item someday, “Dome of the Rock in ruins”
Too many secret agents in this world, working for too many secret agencies, each maneuvering to see who will be the one who succeeds in bringing us the next “new Pearl Harbor” . . .
Or maybe it’s too many mobs . . . what do I know?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/28/ayodhya-mosque-india-guard...
Reminds me a bit of the old Gary Larson Cartoon...
With a couple of wolves in sheep costumes, looking around and realizing "Wait... are ANY of us real sheep here?"
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
No, I don't get the idea
So what do you know about Macrons feelings right now? You sound as if you accuse him for something. How so?
This I do believe too.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Considering he's already talking about "International" effort
to pay for rebuilding... I imagine that whatever corporation decides to do so will only want it renamed to "Nike Cathedral" or whatever deal he hammers out. That's all I'm implying. By it's very nature, inclusive, because corporate citizens are worth praise!
Maybe they'll surprise me, but I doubt it. Betting on it not ending well.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
A very, very wealthy couple created a foundation
whose express purpose is to buy the naming rights of various buildings and whatnot at UW-Madison, and not rename them.
It may be incomprehensible to you or me, how a billionaire can resolve in her own mind the conflict between her humanist values -- her empathy, her sympathy, her nostalgia, her sentimentality -- and her excessive wealth; yet many such people do. They have actual humanist values, and they try, however imperfectly or incoherently or inconsistently, to act on those values.
I think you can be confident that the Ile de France will never be the site of The Glaxo-Kline Cathedral of Notre Dame.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I never give the rich the benefit of the doubt.
Especially multi-millionaires. Mainly because when you hear the Koch brothers talk about themselves, they will happily tell you how all of their wealth was honestly earned and what great humanitarians they are.
They all claim to be the "good guys" while siting on a pile of money.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
no-win? Maybe not.
No-win? Maybe not.
Remember, this isn't the USA we're talking about. It's France, a civilized nation.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
A civilized nation that beats civilians for 6 months
Well, according to American standards, that's pretty civilized, all right.
/snark
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
the nation, not its powerful ones
I referred to the French nation, not its government or its powerful class. There's a serious infestation of capitaloma affecting all Western governments right now; moreover, all power corrupts absolutely. You know that.
Rather, my point about France is founded on an oft-made point hereabouts: les gilles jaunes. France has 'em. We don't.
Notre-Dame de Paris will be rebuilt, because the French 99% will demand that she be rebuilt.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I hope you're right
Reports of widespread cemetery and Christian churches throughout France, urban and rural, is increasing. The cause whereof these disfigurements is for another essay.
This event may be the beginning of the end of French globalism, because I believe France will largely unite in the effort to retrieve a cherished religious and cultural icon. But will the resurrected spires have the same "soul" (spirit) as the originals? A turning point in human civilization has just achieved a marker--for all time. It could be the death of nationalism--or of internationalism.
This is indeed a crisis of a week, a year, but even a generation.
Below please find a 13:41 long video from the Duran today 4/16. The cultural symbolism is eloquently described by Peter Lavelle of RT's Crosstalk.
[video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e0LtaqmfH0]
This is tragic
if only from a historic perspective. Actually it is amazing that this does not happen more often with these extremely old buildings where were originally wood frame. Maintaining these very old historic structures is expensive and time consuming and it does not take much for a spark to set a fire. From what I read, they believed it started in the spire that collapsed. The wood in the spire was very rotted to begin with and it took very little for it to accidentally catch fire. It now appears the entire interior of the church will end up gutted by this fire. I hope they were able to save the artwork and the windows, but I suspect there will be losses of those too. It is just sad.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Just added links, near the top of the post...
...on the art contained within (and outside of) the structure--from stained glass, to mosaics, to sculptures, bas reliefs, etc. Obviously, many will be ruined, or badly damaged. This really is a terrible loss to world culture, in general.
"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." --Hunter S. Thompson
I understand the spire
in the rear of the cathedral which collapsed was a renovation, taller than what was originally there, dating from the 1840s. Let's hope they can save the two tall towers in front.
One report from coverage stated that funding for the renovation underway was only 1/3 of what was really needed. A bit of a puzzle why there wasn't a greater effort put forth by the recent French govts and UNESCO to fully fund the effort or why such efforts fell considerably short of what was needed.
Reports from France24 that lead was used in the building/rebuilding process, and question whether a health hazard locally is being created by the fire and smoke releasing toxic elements into the air.
So far, the only silver lining is that this doesn't seem to be terrorist related.
Tax cuts for billionaires are the priority everywhere.
Yet they all have works of art lining the walls of their estates. Guess they only appreciate what they own.
Very sad watching it burn. Imagine how all the people in the ME must feel watching all the historical sites and their homes get bombed into ruins. sad, sad, sad
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Great point, dkmich.
Very sad to see cultural icons destroyed.
But as usual the outpouring reminds me of how selective our collective sadness can be.
Where was the Western World's sadness, pity, sympathy and outrage while America was both bombing into oblivion and then ransacking all the cultural treasures of Mesopotamia, literally the cradle of human civilization in Iraq?
I don't mean to detract from the prevailing sadness, which I also feel about the Notre Dame. It's only meant to have a fuller discourse about our inclinations and preconceptions.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
We here in the US
being a product and part of western culture, are going to naturally be more emotionally affected by those tragedies involving the destruction of western cultural artifacts, in addition to considering the western religion angle. And, too, many of us from here have visited or lived over there in Europe and France, so we have direct experience with the old culture there.
It was terrible what the Taliban did to the various ancient Buddha statues in Afghan. Also bad was the destruction by the IS/AQ terrorists of many ancient artifacts in Syria and Iraq. But all that just didn't have the same emotional impact over here (and presumably in Europe) as did the near total destruction of NDC.
For instance, I can remember the semi-destruction of the ancient city of Palmyra, but I have to think several times before I am able to recall it is in Syria and not Iraq (I'm pretty sure ...) Never been there, and would imagine only a small number of my fellow somewhat homebound Americanos have had the pleasure. A feeling of temporary sadness about the destruction in those parts of the ME, but nothing too deep or lasting.
I know, officially the two-rivers area of Iraq is still probably considered the "cradle of civilization", but that is currently in dispute, and should never have been labeled as such so dogmatically -- as if there couldn't be further archaeological digging to discover still older civilizations. Also much of those ancient artworks and architecture have an unknown, distant, cold and impossibly foreign aspect to them, perhaps in part because the history of that period is so inadequately known or is poorly explained by the experts. In part this creates an interesting mystery for some of us, recognizing there is still much there to understand and properly interpret. Their very early and rather advanced laws for instance, and their advanced mathematics stand out as amazing achievements.
Finally, I couldn't help but sense some virtue signaling going on in a few posts above -- I'm more international in outlook and multicultural than thou, with some anti-western sentiment baked in. Hope noting that doesn't run afoul of the rules here, but it seems too obvious not to mention it.
Only one rule here: don't be disrespectful!
Say what you want to say but do not engage in personal attacks with other members. I have written a few essays which were mildly supportive of El Trumpo, but had a courteous reception even with large dissension from my opinions. Allow yourself to be opinionated--forcefully opinionated--but respectful of the rest of us.
Cheers!
My heart is breaking
No words.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I have one word.
Catastrophe.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
This could all have been prevented...
... if the Little People (we call them "the Little People") had just raked up those leaves and twigs. But it isn't all doom and gloom, no sir! This opens up a prime piece of real estate now that that old eyesore is gone. All you need is to incentivise an entrepreneur to develop a glass and steel high rise in its place. Then you offer tax cuts that will help people to afford multi-million Euro family condos in it.
Now you're going to need a classy name for this project. Let's see, maybe "Washington"? No, nobody remembers that guy. I know! How about "Trump"?
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
I was sad about this before
Now I'm inconsolable.
Because I fear you speak the truth.
Never in my life have I wished that I were close to "aging out" as I have been these last few weeks. As it is, at almost 50, I fear I'm not old enough. My 18-year-old self never could have imagined this day ...
gloom and doom
As I pointed out above, this isn't the USA. It's France, a civilized country.
Notre-Dame de Paris will be restored.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
As gulfgal98 noted above,
it's a wonder that we still have these buildings at all, given their age, size and the constant need for money for upkeep.
I've been to many of the cathedrals in England, and several on the continent (including Notre Dame). It really is very sad. Old Gothic St. Paul's in London was in such a state of disrepair, that it had little to no chance of surviving the Great Fire of 1666.
(Edited)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
I’m lucky to have visited Notre Dame de Paris more
than once. This fire is truly heartbreaking.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
I was fortunate enough
to live in Paris in the late 70s and enjoyed going to the free Sunday organ concerts at ND, the organ dating from the 17th C and still working. Amazing sound, and the view of the massive vaulted ceiling was unforgettable. After that it was usually a visit across the Seine to browse at the famous Shakespeare & Co bookstore.
It is amazing and sobering to consider that old building managed to survive WWII and the Nazis and yet is being destroyed before our eyes in peacetime.
France24: Report that a number of precious artworks inside were quickly removed (what could be quickly removed at least) at the fire's outset.
Your comment's emotion I concur but the ideas are important
I agree with you completely on the worth of making, building, repairing of the elements of society--that includes the composition of the culture. But let us not neglect to mention, easily occurring in a brief comment, that IDEAS precede goals. This is true in science and emotion. Aimless development produces tribes, not cultures.
Notre Dame fire
So glad we went to Advent services there a couple of years ago. We are wondering about oil paintings in the Cathedral. Apparently some sculptures and statues were removed only days ago for the renovations. We always thought that stone buildings were safer from fire. But we have seen two houses and now this Cathedral go so fast because the structure is supported by wood (Charpente). The revolution took the Bastille brick by brick. The Notre Dame stood through it all. Many burial sites, paintings, art of all kinds.
It is another blow to the French people. They have evacuated the Île de Citè. Hard to contain the fire to adjoining buildings. We are so hoping the organ is still there. But it is looking rather grim. The Venice Cathedral tweeted that it has had two fires and rebuilt. Encouragement from Italy.
No one was hurt.
Thank you for thinking of us all. We identify as French these days. In Malta for dental this week when we heard French it felt like our home language. We repeatedly ran into a group of young French women who visited the island of Gozo and the fortress there. We laughed a lot with them as we kept coming across their path.
We are so upset that the last thirty years has seen a reduction of taxes for rebuilding and maintaining the historical buildings of France. The government owns all the churches and sees to deciding which will be renovated and which will be let go into ruin. Many generations of stone masons, iron workers, stained glass artisans are employed across France through the generous taxes of the French people.
We will hope some parts can be saved.
We watch France 24 in English.
We cannot comprehend this. But also keep in mind the growing homeless, sick and poor who need help but are going through the Californication of France.
They are going to "investigate" the orgin of the problem???? Really????? The lack of funding from the last three or four prime ministers for renovations on an ongoing basis rather than a last ditch effort to save it. They had to beg for money to renovate it to keep it from collapsing.
Going on all over France. The UK has almost dismantled its public funding of many social services including the unparalleled health system. It's coming to France too. Macron is trying to privatize the airports; has managed to defund the high speed rail. What a lesson has been learned from the privateers in the US.
Sorry to be so glum.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
What comes to mind is the Grenfell Tower fire.
Corners cut somewhere.
But we will forever lose all similar monuments (except perhaps some dolmens), museums, universities, orchestras, water, and most life forms in a similar way unless Extinction Rebellion https://rebellion.earth/ can somehow mitigate. I think Greta must understand.
Really enjoyed your comments in this thread.
Thanks.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
So sad...
...another treasure lost.
Reminds me of the Syrian UNESCO sites which were destroyed not by accident, but because of US intervention.
https://www.rt.com/news/335619-syria-unesco-heritage-damage/
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
It would be so easy now to construct a story that would
indicate it was an arsonist.
I think I wait for this to happen. Nobody will be so reckless to do it in the open, but over the years it will be done. My thoughts are free, my digital footprints are not. So my mouth is sealed and my keyboard stuck.
This will never be forgotten and it will not be forgiven. So we will ignore any other possibility than the one that a fire sparked up in the construction area of the roof and ignited a firestorm.
BTW did you listen to Drumpelstiltzchen reaction? The little gnome has really the nerves to be a full blown bloodsucker, who I would think millions of French people would just like to give 'eins in die Fresse'.
BTW in Europe you can't access the links you provided.
Yes, it hurts a lot, really badly.
https://www.euronews.com/live
I guess I'm the only one?
Ima just gonna come right out and say it, flame me if you will. I don't get it. Who cares? Yeah, it's old and it was impressive that something like that could be built in 1300. On the other hand, it was also an ostentatious monument to the rapacious greed of an oppressive authoritarian religion, a religion that has been responsible for more suffering than perhaps any other single organization in the history of homo sapiens. I've got more important things to mourn.
it's worth saying that we'd have a very hard time building
it from scratch today.
you can consider it a monument to the rapacious and horrible church, but i prefer to consider it a monument to the ingenuity, the diligence, the craft, and the sacrifice of those who built it, and those whose labor supported those who built it.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Thank you.
I, for one, will never flame a remark that many believe but most never have the courage to say.
I absolutely agree with you and was flamed for making somewhat similar remarks elsewhere.
I will not waste what precious time I have mourning artifacts that were risen on the debauchery heaped upon the helpless.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
@Pricknick Well let's just
Well let's just destroy every religious icon on the planet because the religions all suck.
It’s a Western equivalent of the Cultural Revolution in China.
“Everything’s old, it’s all feudal or bourgeois holdovers, from now on culture should revolve around the working class as the heroes and agents of history, so good riddance.”
Nice try.
I never said this:
Yet, if it would end the bombing of children in hospitals, which is something to mourn, I'd be all for it.
Although I am an atheist, I deny no person their religion as long as it harms no entity.
Tall order I know.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
If my granny had balls she'd be my grampa.
That's not a particularly consequential "if" you've laid out up there.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@Pricknick Sorry the post was
Sorry the post was supposed to be a reply to
Rachael7 and not you.
There's a lot of ground between not mourning the loss
and advocating for destruction. That is a strawman argument. But yeah, if tearing down the monuments to those religions would stop them raping children and bombing innocents, I'd be all for it. Since that 'if' wouldn't actually happen, I'll settle for noting without tears the passing of one of their relics into the fires where it belongs.
don't forget to purge everything Bach and Handel
and and and ever wrote. Best we undertake a great forgetting of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who after all was worked into an untimely grave by the exigencies of property, markets, and aristocratic prerogative.
And I say this, even though arendt's comment about the Old Man of the Mountain really ticked me off.
WTF ever happened to humanism? Can we not, even here, subdue our angry cynicism over 5 millennia of plutocratic and theocratic abuse, even long enough to recognize that the human enterprise has, in spite of that abuse, brought forth not only extraordinary artifacts of mind and passion, but done so, always, via the inspiration of our nature: our nature, as in "nativity", that to which we are all born, our birthright? Do we not know that human art and natural beauty are inseparable, that neither may be set above either; for the art cannot exist, has no meaning at all, without the universe that frames it, and yet the beauty, the awe, the passion: these exist only in our human minds, they are us, they are what we bring to the table ...
Notre Dame Cathedral is an astonishing accomplishment, beautiful, functional, and almost incomprehensible in its execution (David Macaulay notwithstanding), but remember this: It is a human emulation of the awesome natural world that its builders attributed to divine creation. Whyever in spiteful pride set one against the other? Emerson understood it all; I do not know that he was the first to have the insight, but he is the first I know to have put it in writing:
Here is a poem I wrote not long ago, in a passionate futility. I am reluctant to share it. But I now realize that I have echoed Emerson, though I read his essay so long ago that I had no notion of its title or even the particulars of its thesis, but only remembered his adamant argument: that contrary to the supposition of the average arrogant sojourning homo sapiens, the lofty vaults of an ancient forest do not, by odd happenstance, invoke the sense of the cathedral; no, my dears, no, the cathedral, by cunning, worshipful craft, and fierce labor, invokes the sense of the forest.
And so:
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Enchanting images, thanks.
And a reminder that I need to read more Emerson. Definitely imbued my morning with the right stuff.
Nice work all around, UR.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Lovely poem;
feeds the soul on this day of mourning.
The world isn't exactly teeming
with superlative examples of French High Gothic.
Anyway, each to their own.....
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
"We are on a quest to rebuild Notre Dame de Paris ...
... and we would like to invite your CEO to contribute to the project ..."
"Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen ... he's already got one, you see?"
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
You make a point. When I was mourning the loss of
The Old Man of the Mountain, my Buddhist sister said it was a lesson in impermanence.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Your sister
sounds like a wise lady.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
No offense, but..
the comparison is horrible.
The OMITM is a piece of kitsch. Notre Dame is a work of art.
One is a pile of rocks that people read meaning into. The other is the blood and sweat of an army of anonymous medieval workers who felt they were doing god's work.
Pardon moi.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Is French your mother language?
Why do you use it if it isn't?
https://www.euronews.com/live
I will have the temerity answer on her behalf:
A. Because it was clever, given that we're discussing a French cultural artifact. Of course, she'd have done better to say Pardonnez moi -- in this context, the familiar tutoyer mode is clearly not appropriate.
B. Because English-speaking people do that -- grab bits and pieces of other languages and toss them into our speech. I once heard a guy in college, holding a door open for a friend, say, "Apres vous, mein herr." (Incidentally, I was watching a french TV show a while back, and was amused to discover that they peppered their french with occasional phrases in Spanish.)
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I know that, but it gets on my nerves,
just remember too many incidences, when Americans start to make comments in French, believing it sounds a bit better. Sorry for being an ass, but it would be nice if people didn't fall into this behavior without thinking much of it.
Neither "ick bin ein Baliner" of JFK (loved and enthusiastically embraced when JFK made that remark in German way back in Berlin) nor 'Pardonnez moi' will enhance and change anything someone tries to say.
So, there, my response: "Huh, excusez-moi?". There you have it, I did it. Yeah right, big deal, no deal, but getting on my nerves.
Having to deal with French, Italian, American, Indian (children of Portuguese colonialists), Francophone Africans and German folks, they all fall into that behavior. One of my colleagues couldn't resist to bring "fuck them all" into a morning conference meeting of TV news producers. This poor chap wouldn't have known how to express his feelings in German, being a German. He could have said 'Arschloch' (asshole), but something something prevented him to say that. I wonder what that was.
Sorry that something so irrelevant rubs me in a wrong way.
Nothing for Ungood.
(in case you don't understand that, it is a literal translation of the German saying 'Nichts für Ungut' and means that what you have said was meant with good intentions and not to cause pain or bad feelings)
Peace. God Willing. (ha I use 'God Willing' now as a German, because when I understood who uses it and why, I found that hilarious). I hope you forgive me for that.
https://www.euronews.com/live
"ick bin ein Baliner"
(sic). Hmm, not clear to me why you (native German speaker??) botched the correct Ich bin ein Berliner, which JFK got right. I'm missing something too as his saying it in proper German (albeit with his thick back Bay Massachusetts accent), contrary to your assertion, did in fact enhance his overall message.
As an American who takes the First Amendment very much to heart but who didn't grow up in a multilingual culture, unlike most Euros, I enjoy sampling from a few other western languages and occasionally, perhaps imperfectly, trotting them out to use them, to see if they can be put to good effect.
It's in that spirit that when I greet visitors to my home, it's often with a hearty "Welcome to my humble chapeau". Haven't yet heard an objection from guests about "But you're not French!" and "That's not even proper French!" A few guests get it, most do not, but no one yet has threatened to report me to the French Academy or the English-Only Society of American Super Patriots.
I have hurt your feelings with
(added the last paragrapha)
botching JFKs correct German phrase "ich bin ein Berliner" with a little spice of the Berlin dialect?
Sorry for that. Drumpelstiltzchen has botched a lot of feelings for some Europeans and French. I thought I could allow myself to return the favor and 'liven up' - as lotlizard explained - the attitude of some Americans, who love to embed some weirdo french in their remarks.
So, this time, you got some weirdo Berlin dialect back for one of the most beloved Americans in the sixties and seventies among the German population.
lotlizard called it 'liven up' a comment, I would call it "spicing up" a comment. Some spices are quite hot and they seem to light up a lot of dangerous emotional reactions ... too hot for some, They spark some fires. That's not what we want though, right?
I am just mad and let it hang out. So be it, I will get over it. Way too disgusted to apologize though today. May be in a couple of days. There must be better days ahead.
PS.:
My mileage varies, but that is because we may have had different experiences.
Believe it or not I have experienced reactions of visitors from other cultures to a simple welcoming phrase "Your home is my home. Welcome.", reactions which were beyond pale and which absolutely nobody understood. Memories of that haunt some still after 50 years. Of course you can say there are crazy people everywhere and leave it at that, but I like to ask why was the reaction that weirdo. It caused divides that lasted for generations. So, just allow me to say that we all have some different experiences that taint our reactions.
PS2: I didn't threaten anybody to any government run language police.
PS3: No offenae against you or JFK meant.
PS4: Can we have peace now?
(corrected typos)
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No hurt feelings
mimi, and there was never any unpeace from me towards you. Just confused, but thanks for the clarification. My German only consists of a few words and phrases so I was in no position to remotely understand your dialect take on the famous phrase.
I hope to visit Germany one day, perhaps after you've gotten rid of Merkel and things have lightened up over there, and would like to see not only the Brandenburg Gate but also the Black Forest, which I understand is kind of spooky, and perhaps for good reason ...
I am a little confusing, I know, so this here ...
@liberal moonbat
...is just to clarify... I am a German, german is my motherlanguage, I lived in Germany, where I went to highschool in the sixties and the went to Technical University in Berlin and graduated as a Chemist. After that I worked for four years in Germany til 1979. I then left Germany in 1979 at the age of 31. I followed my husband to Italy and then 1982 to the United States.
Since then I lived in the US on a G4 Visa, since 1987 as a permanent legal resident (yippie I won the green card lottery) and I lived among many expats from various countries of the world, who all worked in the US (and usually were not that brainwashed by US msm propaganda. They just kept it to themselves ... to get along). I could be considered a migrant from Germany, living and working in the US from 1982 to 2016, I guess that makes me a German expat, who lived and worked in the US for 35 years. I had no US family and no US employers. (Kind of rare set-up).
All my employers were German media companies with their US offices in DC to which I was hired as a local little office and research hand, so to speak. I came back to Germany for family reasons, taking care of my elderly sister, after I became a divorced spouse and then widow of that spouse and became retiree myself. I am now 70 years old and just learn everything I had missed that happened in Germany since 1979, all of it only in the last two years. lotlizard has helped and opened my eyes a lot and I have to say, it was kind of an unexpected awakening.
Having such a confusing life, I understand that not only me gets confused a bit too often, but you probably too.
Just to hand in my complete CV for the surveillance folks who read our beautiful conversations here every day for their files....
I just felt that there were humans killed in the tower attacks, who went through terrible trauma before they died. So, I would think their lives need always be remembered with somber respect and great sadness.
I know what you mean and understand that the attacks on the towers were used a lot to justify many political decisions that lead to wars that shouldn't have been fought.
I hear you quite well, but I wouldn't have said, 'Fuck the towers', rather more 'fuck those who used the tower attacks to justify all thepr wrong political decision making.
Just trying to be clear. No offense meant.
I really like to have peace.
Uff, that was hard to do.
Now, when it comes to languages, did you know that Angie Baby Merkel speaks Russian when having a Kaffeeklatsch with Putinchen and Putinchen shows his love for Germany by speaking German to her? Just to add something confusing about people using languages that are not their own mother language, when they don't have to.
But then Merkel went too far and criticized Putinchen in the open and he didn't like that too much. So, now 'haben wir den salat' (now we have the mess). Angie Baby should have known better ... something about the manly soul ... or so.
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Just for the record
it was another poster who offered the colorful objection about "F... the towers" and the cathedral.
Did not know Merkel spoke Russian. How did she come by that? I knew about Putin, who had worked in E Germany with Soviet intel in the 80s. And speaking of non-speakers trotting out some words in a foreign language in public, Putin has done this on several occasions, to very great effect, when visiting some of the regional areas of Russia. When it's done right, the locals appreciate the effort to communicate in their native tongue.
Merkel grew up in former East Germany and
@JtC ( I think I misdirected this comment, sorry about that too, so this is directed at @The Liberal Moonbat too)
all kids there learned Russian at school. Putin apparently was appreciative of the German culture as much as he loved his own. More I don't know. There was a huge opportunity after reunification to have peaceful relations with Russia and it has been lost. That obviously is angering me a lot.
I realize that I have disturbed the thread with my OT comments and will ask JtC for permission to take my comments down. (at least my CV that I threw in here being a little angry about everything and shooting the internet with the wrong weapon).
With regards to approaching strangers with friendly words in their own tongue and that being appreciated a lot, I can't help to say that there is also another aspect to it. Brutally honest as I am, I would say it is often also method to put the strangers in a position where s they have to respond in very polite terms to those charme attacks, even if they wouldn't like to do that. It is a warm fuzzy trick, mostly used without conscience and in good intentions. But one has to responded to with same politeness - if you want it or not. And that doesn't feel that good sometimes.
I imagine Pompeo would charm attack China with some warm fuzzy Chinese words, you think it would have prevented China from blowing up in response with "Pompeo has lost his mind"? May be it is the polite charme attack that triggered the 'honest response', and not the other way around. was who knows. YMMV.
Have a nice Good Morning, I like you all and apologize to have approached my limits and hope you don't care about our different feelings about certain niceties. Need my coffee now and another nap.
Gimme some peace, please. And thanks for putting up with me.
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Thank you UR. I had to drive my son around and missed this
exchange. I did study French in high school and college. I was unpardonably familiar using the familiar, but was just kidding around. That’ll larn mee!
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Often it’s just a “trope” people use to liven things up a little
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GratuitousForeignLanguage
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SurprisinglyGoodForeignLanguage
I took six years of French in school: four in high school
and two in college. I shouldn’t have used the familiar, but did anyway.
You are a native speaker of German, I’m guessing, but feel free to use any language you choose with me. However, I’d appreciate translations of German as my two experiences of living in German left me woefully unschooled in that language. “Guten Tag” and the second level, which I am not going to attempt to spell, offered by the Army were pretty bare bones.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
I am sorry I was showing my frustration over the
Notre Dame catastrophe in directing it at idiotic things. I never meant to say your French is bad or something (though I admit nobody could have read my words differently). I apologize. I am tired to explain my feelings about it again. I did in a couple of comments I just posted to others. May be it could help you a little to forgive my inappropriate behavior. Wasn't that good. I admit. Sorry, again.
Peace.
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Don’t worry about it.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
I agree with you, but it would have been nice
if you had spelled out what the abbreviation of OMITM means. I have no brain anymore to remember what the meaning was or where it was mentioned.
Macron and the French people have all the right to rebuild the cathedral in any way they see fit.Basta.
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Macron is pledging to rebuild?
With whose money? His pledge is only as good as the support (or lack thereof) from the people of the nation of France.
He is bound and does not have discretionary funds for this sort of project. What he does have is the power of his office to encourage the people to form a government which takes care of each other; the patrimoine; France itself.
This he has not done. In fact he encourages every person for themselves.
The galling statements from heads of state who are neoliberals is awful to hear and read. Such dissonance.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Once upon a time, I would have assumed that
Macron would have been held responsible, and would have paid a political price -- likely, the ultimate political price -- for having presided over the loss of such a cultural treasure.
But that was my pre-9/11 self. Little Boots having managed to evade any responsibility for that debacle, I no longer expect any particular polity to behave as would seem most likely.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
He was scheduled to give a speech in response to
Gilets Jaunes movement. Many are saying that he will wear the loss of the Cathedral on top of his other losses/purposeful steps towards corporations.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Not entirely fair
to just blame Macaron as the deterioration of NDC has been ongoing for many years, going back several administrations. Such a human response to not care enough until it's gone or nearly gone.
Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone ... -- Joni Mitchell.
Over the next decade
I expect that we'll lose everything. All the people, the ecosystem (the land based ecosystems almost entirely). All the works, great and small, of men and women. The megaliths will remain as they always have.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
@WoodsDweller I don't. I think we
I don't. I think we will be fine.
Lady, I don't know who you are, but I know what you are.
I don't know what caused this tragedy, insufficient precautions taken by the restoration managers, or careless workers, or sabotage, but I recognize the attitude behind it, a combination of selfish carelessness and envy. What I mean is the corrosive envy of the idle and dissolute, whether they be billionaires, or wage earning layabouts, or glad handing salespersons, for the sublime products of human work and effort. BTW, I would feel the same way and be saying the same things if it were the Taj Mahal burning.
No cigarettes should have been anywhere near a job like this; no day laborers should have been involved, the crew ought to have been professional craftspersons only, and fire suppressant equipment should have been kept on site. And the French or Paris govt. should have funded all of the above and more.
The ancient Athenians were a pack of homoerotic slave traders who kept their women confined to quarters, but knowing that doesn't prevent me from admiring the Parthenon or reading Sophocles, Thucydides and Aristotle.
I deplore Roman cruelty but that doesn't prevent me from admiring their engineering feats.
Most of Europe's great churches were built by towns, the people themselves raising money and hiring workers, not by lords or kings. The builders of the cathedral at Laon decorated the tops of their church's towers with massive statues of oxen to honor the beasts who dragged huge rocks uphill to the church site.
We, some of us at least, who are the descendants of these builders, know and remember that making, building, doing are far more important and worthy than buying and selling, or sitting around discussing philosophy over tea.
Mary Bennett
Some good news about Notre Dame Cathedral
-2 of 3 stained glass windows are saved
-the spire was under repair so 12 statues had been removed from it
-the main structure has been saved
-the Cathedral has been destroyed before and it can be rebuilt
To thine own self be true.
Reims Cathedral,
the traditional coronation site of the kings of France, was rebuilt after the devastation of WWI. The same can happen for Notre Dame.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
RT is reporting
The Paris prosecutor office has launched a probe into the incident, entrusting it to French judiciary police, which indicates that the investigation is criminal. How they can say so soon I don't know, but I am always suspicious when I hear "just an accident" from TPTB.
Mary Bennett
Macron was the only one among EU member states
that rejected trade deals with Drumpelstiltzchen. Basically just hours before Notre Dame erupted in a fire blaze. Shoot me, I am living among coincidentically challenged theoreticians, CCTs.
I need my nap.
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Wife sent to me
Francois-Henri Pinault, billionaire, pledges 100 mil EU
to help rebuild Notre Dame
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/skbaer/notre-dame-fire-rebuild-pina...
I can't forget these two video of
Secret of the Pagoda's Earthquake Resistant Design
and this one
Japan - Pagodas and Earthquakes
So far the Pagoda hasn't been destroyed by earthquakes. It wiggles like a snake when an earthquake hits. A masterful example of crafsmanship in caprtentry. (Snakedance - I can't find a video that acutally was filmed during an earthquake in Japan and showed the snakedance movements live))
The only way to destroy it would be by fire, and I believe from the bottom my heart, the Japanese would rebuild it with the intelligent engineering design, the carpenters used already some 400 years ago.
May be this could be a reminder to everyone expressing his feelings about the Notre Dame destruction, that being flexible in one's opinion would help to trigger less painful reactions.
What would you have felt if a Merkel or a Macron would have said after viewing the first images of the Twin Towers collapse, 'heh, you have to use your firefighters water bombs capabilities NOW and do it fast' to the American President and the American people? And then nothing else. Nada.
I wonder how you would answer to yourself that question. But I really don't want to know.
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What would *I* say?
'Fuck the Twin Towers.'
They were never anything special, just bigger-than-average office buildings. 9/11 was the most overhyped day in (certainly recent) history.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I would never say that nor think like that
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Maybe not, but you're not American
The wreckage of those goddamn towers are LITERALLY being called "sacred ground", and they've served as the nuclear fuel rods to power the complete Orwellization of America, not to mention a justification for the murders of many times over as many people, American and foreign, since then.
Anyone may say what they will about Bill Clinton, he didn't do this when Timothy McVeigh did almost the exact same thing.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
it shouldn"t matter if I am American or not,
what should matter is, that I could understand what you say and why you say it. I don't, you confuse me, and at that point I de-link myself from the thread.
'Chacun a son gout', that's the most generous I can come up with.
I have to use french here, because anything that would escape my mouh in my mother language German would be unacceptable to JtC and other good folks at C99P.
Sigh.
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My point being...
...that if you HAD lived in America these past 18 years, you would have a better understanding of why some of us have become sick and tired of the out-of-proportion rhetoric and cult-like-mentality surrounding the 9/11 incident. You live in a country that's relatively functional, hence you might underestimate how poisonous it's really been over here.
For what it's worth, I'd just been spending this morning having an upsetting and frustrating argument with someone on another site (of a very different nature than this) I frequent, so it's possible some of that was leaking out.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
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