July 13, 2005

it's the 14th in france...

Happiest of Bastille Days, Mon Amis!
i'm not sure if you noticed, but i appreciate all things french. yeah, yeah, yeah..whine to someone else about their politics, i don't care to hear it..i have enough issues with our own politics, myself.. can't we all just appreciate our neighbors for their contributions to the world we all love? i know i do...

on this day in 1789 it is said a crowd of a 1000 stormed the bastille and started the french revolution which led to the dumping of one kind of government for another...a monarchy for a republic...government by the people, of the people, for the people...

what a great idea..

when i was a child, the hunchback of notre dame was as real a character to me as any. the original story of the damsel in distress...victor hugo, master male thinker..

quasimodo...i can see the unfuckable dorkchop clearly, his beauty, esmeralda, draped over his shoulder..only he had the guts to save her..climbing for the bell tower as the crowd outside goes wild, archers at the ready...no luck, she spends "private time" with the freak and still gets beheaded in the end...

course, lots of women like esmerelda lost their heads in paris, it was kind of a freaky woman torture state to an imaginative little girl..

i couldn't find the pics of the gargoyles up there, but they are the finest i have ever seen..
for all who think you can't relate to the french, i wonder if you would feel differently sipping some absinthe at the agile rabbit?

the oldest cabaret in paris, now the most quiet street in the city..is this where hef got the inspiration to have bunnies?

and who can think of paris without envisioning the eiffel tower? surely the greatest architectural achievement of any world's fair..

on my blogroom wall, there is a framed drawing my son did when he was 4. it's a map from our house to our other family members' houses.. strangely dallas and houston appear on the other side of the eiffel tower...

sacre couer was always my favorite place to be.. the creation of suburbia, possibly ...when all the locals were driven 20 miles out of town by the massive real estate development in downtown paris...no city taxes on the hill, and before long the nuns of sacre couer were selling wine...once wine started flowing down the hill, artists, poets and musicians began congregating, free commerce unimpeded by the taxman...is it any wonder if you tumble all the way down the hill you wind up at the moulin rouge? i didn't think so...

and how about having a truly wonderful cup of coffee, in a town that turned coffee drinking into a national pastime..perhaps you will sit in the very same spot where writers like hemingway and sarte have been sipping and stewing for years..the cafe de flore...opened in 1887 for business, and still going strong...

and finally, denis diderot..patriot author of paris, i like what this man had to say..

"The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual."
any wonder they gifted us lady liberty? i often think of her twin standing in the middle of the river seine. Happy Independence Day, mon petit pomme frites!

wish i were there to celebrate with you...

Posted by shoe at July 13, 2005 06:12 PM | TrackBack
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