"I would like to say 'This book is written to the glory of God', but nowadays this would be the trick of a cheat, i.e., it would not be correctly understood."--Ludwig Wittgenstein
"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."--Soren Kierkegaard
I'm in Lucerne Switzerland today and visited a statue of a lion that in some ways reminded me of a visit to Stone Mountain in Georgia. I remember commenting aloud to a few European visitors to the statue to the effect of "liberte, egalite, neutralite". The statue is next door to a museum diorama/panorama celebrating activities of the Swiss Guard in Paris in 1792 during the French Revolution and in 1870/71 when Swiss Guard troops participated in the closing scenes of the Franco-Prussian War which resulted in what's often called German Unification, the formation of Germany as a national state. I think it's interesting that Kirk is the German word for church. My first association from the name of Charlie Kirk was the movement in France fired up by a political cartoonist named Charlie Hebdo who satirized Islam and Muslims, resulting in fatwa death threats to Charlie Hebdo and I couldn't help but recall a more recent movement in France and Paris involving disruptive acts of civil disobedience by people wearing yellow vests. A friend of mine I've known since junior high school inherited a small town newspaper from his father that he sold after his father died of lung cancer. He used the money from the sale of the newspaper to rent a flat in Paris and buy a house in a town in France near a famous castle on the Normandy coast. He wrote an essay called I am Charlie during the Hebdo crisis and another essay about the yellow vests. He married the widow of a former editor on the paper he had owned. His father, Henry Gay, had been a nationally syndicated editorial writer for about five decades. My friend had been elected president of a national association of weekly newspapers when he wrote his Hebdo and yellow vest essays.He's never bothered much with the internet, but he and his wife like living in France. My wife and I visited them two years ago on our first and so far only visit to Paris.
I’ve seen that lion. On the same (and only) trip, bought a pocket watch with that statue engraved on the cover. Still have the watch hanging in a display in my office. Shit, that was nearly 50 years ago. As Paul Simon said (as a young man): “How terribly strange to be 70.”
I'm in Lucerne Switzerland today and visited a statue of a lion that in some ways reminded me of a visit to Stone Mountain in Georgia. I remember commenting aloud to a few European visitors to the statue to the effect of "liberte, egalite, neutralite". The statue is next door to a museum diorama/panorama celebrating activities of the Swiss Guard in Paris in 1792 during the French Revolution and in 1870/71 when Swiss Guard troops participated in the closing scenes of the Franco-Prussian War which resulted in what's often called German Unification, the formation of Germany as a national state. I think it's interesting that Kirk is the German word for church. My first association from the name of Charlie Kirk was the movement in France fired up by a political cartoonist named Charlie Hebdo who satirized Islam and Muslims, resulting in fatwa death threats to Charlie Hebdo and I couldn't help but recall a more recent movement in France and Paris involving disruptive acts of civil disobedience by people wearing yellow vests. A friend of mine I've known since junior high school inherited a small town newspaper from his father that he sold after his father died of lung cancer. He used the money from the sale of the newspaper to rent a flat in Paris and buy a house in a town in France near a famous castle on the Normandy coast. He wrote an essay called I am Charlie during the Hebdo crisis and another essay about the yellow vests. He married the widow of a former editor on the paper he had owned. His father, Henry Gay, had been a nationally syndicated editorial writer for about five decades. My friend had been elected president of a national association of weekly newspapers when he wrote his Hebdo and yellow vest essays.He's never bothered much with the internet, but he and his wife like living in France. My wife and I visited them two years ago on our first and so far only visit to Paris.
ReplyDeleteI’ve seen that lion. On the same (and only) trip, bought a pocket watch with that statue engraved on the cover. Still have the watch hanging in a display in my office. Shit, that was nearly 50 years ago. As Paul Simon said (as a young man): “How terribly strange to be 70.”
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