C'est juillet quatorze! or maybe C'est quatorze juillet!

Bastille Day - July 14, 1789 - Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité - the French Revolution

I have mentioned it five times before.

Anything I say five or six times is worth investigating.

douze... treize...quatorze juillet est ici!

...so let me wish you:

Happy Bastille Day!

I was going to post a picture of the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe or Notre Dame Cathedral or a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte or Louis XVI or Robespierre or somebody, but the thought of having to choose just one takes too much effort in this Georgia heat and humidity. I found an interesting crossword puzzle with a Bastille Day theme but it was copyrighted, so ix-nay on at-thay as well.

Nevertheless, whatever you’re doing this quatorze juillet, do it with gusto befitting the day. (Hey, I made a little rhyme!)

Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

And Crêpe Suzette for everybody!

Putz is gone, Katherine de Chevalle is on hiatus, and I’m not feeling too well myself

Our old friend Putz is not really gone, as in gone gone, as far as I know, although he sometimes seems gone even when he is here, if you get my drift. I have every reason to believe he is still working as a school crossing guard and tooling around Tooele, Utah, not living on the planet Kolob as he would like us to think. But having posted only once in all of 2013 he appears to be gone from Blogworld, at least for the time being.

Speaking of the time being, Katherine de Chevalle down in New Zealand has also taken a little hiatus of indeterminate length -- she calls it a Bloggus Interruptus -- because, in her own words, “I have a lot of painting to do for my exhibition and am also working on getting my art website looking good and up-to-date.” As the head of the parole board said to H.I. “Hi” McDunnough (Nicholas Cage) in Raising Arizona at the end of every one of his parole hearings, “Well, okay then.”

Daphne over in Leeds, whose Dad was a Communist, hasn’t posted since May 19th, the day Mrs. RWP and I observed our 50th wedding anniversary. I miss Daphne’s wit and her love of swimming and her work in patient roleplay with medical students and her inclination to travel through Europe at the drop of a hat. Her mother, who lives next door to her, was beginning to have some health problems in her late eighties and I do hope all is well with both of them.

Ian, who also lives in Leeds, stayed in England last winter instead of spending his usual six months a year in Florida, and it seems to have dampened his enthusiasm for blogging. His photographs are always marvelous, but he has posted less and less often lately. It would be worth your while to take a little time and check out his few posts in 2013.

Our old friend Carolina in Nederland has posted only five times since the beginning of the year, and has said absolutely nothing since the middle of April. If I may say so, dat is niet goed.

Reamus hasn’t been heard from since the first day of Baseball’s spring training back in February, but he may be traveling around the country in his new La Coachasita, the old one having given up the ghost somewhere in South Dakota last summer. One never knows, but one will find out eventually.

Pat (an Arkansas stamper) was getting ready for stamp camp around the end of May. Surely the camp has ended by now.

Vonda out in Oregon seems to have given up her Little Egg Farm and gone to making souvenirs for the tourists to buy. As Ezio Pinza said or rather sang in “Some Enchanted Evening” in South Pacific, “Who can explain it? who can tell you why?” (The next line, as I recall, is “Fools give you reasons; wise men never try.” For the record, when I mentioned Ezio Pinza I was speaking of his role as Emile de Becque in the stage version of South Pacific. In the movie version, Rossano Brazzi never sang a note. His part was dubbed by the Metropolitan Opera star, Giorgio Tozzi. And even though Mitzi Gaynor did her own singing as Ensign Nellie Forbush in the film version, she was not Mary Martin. But I digress.)

Where was I? Oh, yes.

Dr. John Linna of Neenah, Wisconsin, a retired Lutheran minister, died on February 15, 2010. He had a town, Pigeon Falls, in his basement and told us many strange and wonderful things that happened there. Every Sunday he shared nuggets of wisdom with us from his own personal treasure-trove. I still like to go back there and read his posts, even though there are some typographical errors. Maybe you will too.

Doctor John was one of a kind. Come to think of it, they don’t make ’em like Buford Pickleberry any more either.

In summation, some people say “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” and other people say “Out of sight, out of mind.” I guess for every proverb there is an equal but opposite proverb. You will have to decide for yourself which is true, and ultimately land on one side of the fence or the other.

I do hope each of you had a pleasant Bastille Day yesterday, and that it was filled with, well, you know, liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Here in the lull between America’s Independence Day (July 4) and France’s Bastille Day (July 14)...

...you might want to read Ann Coulter’s explanation of the differences between the American Revolution and the French Revolution.

If you do (and I hope you do), come back here and leave a comment if you’re so inclined.

In other news, I hereby forgive myself for overlooking Canada’s Dominion Day on July 1 -- it has been called Canada Day since 1982 -- although it was a perfectly understandable thing to do; Canadians have a history of overlooking it themselves.

A shout-out to Brigitte Bardot, Nicolas Sarkozy, et al

Happy Bastille Day!!!

To make amends for my bourgeois use of three exclamation points in that link, I give you, in both French and English, La Marseillaise, which (a) I spelled correctly without even having to look it up first and (b) was composed by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792 and declared the French national anthem in 1795:

Here it is, sung in French.

And here is a translation into English by someone named Laura Lawless:

Let’s go, children of the fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny’s
Bloody flag is raised! (repeat)
In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!

Refrain:
Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your batallions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields!

This horde of slaves, traitors, plotting kings,
What do they want?
For whom these vile shackles,
These long-prepared irons? (repeat)
Frenchmen, for us, oh! what an insult!
What emotions that must excite!
It is us that they dare to consider
Returning to ancient slavery!

What! These foreign troops
Would make laws in our home!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would bring down our proud warriors! (repeat)
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brows would bend beneath the yoke!
Vile despots would become
The masters of our fate!

Tremble, tyrants! and you, traitors,
The disgrace of all groups,
Tremble! Your patricidal plans
Will finally pay the price! (repeat)
Everyone is a soldier to fight you,
If they fall, our young heroes,
France will make more,
Ready to battle you!

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
Bear or hold back your blows!
Spare these sad victims,
Regretfully arming against us. (repeat)
But not these bloodthirsty despots,
But not these accomplices of Bouillé,
All of these animals who, without pity,
Tear their mother’s breast to pieces!

Sacred love of France,
Lead, support our avenging arms!
Liberty, beloved Liberty,
Fight with your defenders! (repeat)
Under our flags, let victory
Hasten to your manly tones!
May your dying enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

(Refrain)

We will enter the pit
When our elders are no longer there;
There, we will find their dust
And the traces of their virtues. (repeat)
Much less eager to outlive them
Than to share their casket,
We will have the sublime pride
Of avenging them or following them!

(Refrain)


Whew! And people say The Star-Spangled Banner glorifies war. After Ms. Lawless’s translation into English of France’s utterly peaceful national song, there is very little to add, except that while we may sing of “the rockets’ red glare” and “the bombs bursting in air,” our anthem makes no mention of mercenary phalanxes, bloodthirsty despots, slit throats, impure blood, or mother’s breasts.





In keeping with the demure spirit of this post, therefore, I will let you search for a photo of Brigitte Bardot all by yourself, but only if you really want to.

Happy Bastille Day!

I was going to post a picture of the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe or Notre Dame Cathedral or a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte or Louis XVI or Robespierre or somebody, but the thought of having to choose just one takes too much effort for moi in this Alabama heat and humidity. I did find an interesting crossword puzzle about Bastille Day but it was copyrighted, so ixnay on at-thay as well.

Whatever you're doing this quatorze juillet, do it with gusto befitting the day. Liberty! Equality! Fraternity! Croissants for everybody!