Le jour de gloire

THE THEME SONG OF THE DAY

Happy Bastille Day to all of our French friends. For my money, France has the best, totally kick-ass national anthem with the most brilliant music in the entire world. Have any of you English speakers ever read a translation of the lyrics? It's blood in the streets, gore, violence and triumph! I just love it!

Aux armes citoyens
Formez vos bataillons
Marchons, marchons
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!

To arms citizens,
Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows!

In these pictures, Le Roi Louis et La Reine Marie Antoinette parade through the streets of St. Louis' Soulard neighborhood, hounded by the mob, only to meet their inevitable fate. Then, naturellement, everybody went out for a few more drinks. Vive la Republique! I really love France.

TOMORROW: Scenes from an execution.
WHAT I'M LISTENING TO: La Marseilles, as orchestrated and arranged by Hector Berlioz, one of my favorite mad geniuses. That's what you hear above.

Quoi?

What on earth is going on here? It's the rabble in St. Louis' Soulard neighborhood and trouble's afoot. Sorry, but you will have to come back tomorrow to find out what. Students of Romance languages, please pardon the sign painter, but no one else.

Demain: Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
What I'm Listening To: Be In, Ethel

Brother-Hood

Why the hyphen? I don't think this dealer is talking about Ode to Joy-type brotherhood, not that alle Menschen werden Brüder wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt * stuff. I think they are talking about selling cars to brothers in the hood, ya know what I mean? Warranty optional. What's your interpretation?

* All men will become brothers under thy gentle wing, referring to Joy. Ya know, Schiller can come across as pompous BS in the 21st Century.

TOMORROW: teaser

Disoriented Some-Day-Or-Other Arch Series

I read an awful lot of medical records in my job. Part of a standard quickie psychiatric screening is whether an individual is "oriented X 3," that is, to person, place and time. 1 - Who am I? Who are you? 2 - Where are you? 3 - What time/date/year is this? How long have you been in this room? When I put together yesterday's post on Wednesday night, I flunked Number 3. I lost track of the day of the week. We could attribute the problem to a run of days in which I was exploring new dimensions in overwork or to creeping dementia. You pick.

As a result, the Thursday Arch Series appears on Friday. Everyone's entitled to an occasional mistake, right? This view of my favorite monument is from an alley in Laclede's Landing. It is an area of old warehouses north of the Arch from the days when the Mississippi was our chief means of transportation. It's been redeveloped into restaurants, bars, nightclubs and, lately, our most enormous casino-hotel complex. Pierre Laclede and August Chouteau were the French fur traders and explorers who founded St. Louis is 1764. The alley plays peek-a-boo with the the side of the Arch.

TOMORROW: Brother-Hood

News of the Flood

The Mississippi River is falling but there is still an awful lot of water. Here, a television cameraman records the scene. The graceful arches of Eads Bridge, the first bridge over the central Mississippi, are in the background. The Casino Queen, one of our half-dozen gambling dens, is behind it. The Queen claims the loosest slot slot machines in the whole country.

TOMORROW: Thursday Arch Series but, um, on Friday. Chinamom2005 has pointed out that I have my days of the week mixed up. I better slow down my pace.

Words of Wisdom

The inscription over the back entrance to the Saint Louis Art Museum reads "Art still has truth. Take refuge there." Do you buy it?

Here's my take: art has no direct connection to truth and everything to do with the individual experience. It is the indispensable way to share the subjective. For the hard stuff, the testable, approximately reliable, we need science. Our National Public Radio network has a weekly essay feature called "This I Believe." If I ever wrote one, I'd call it Arts & Sciences.

What's your view?

TOMORROW: Eyewitness News

Fifty-9

Another snap from the staging area of the PrideFest parade a week ago. This 1959 Chevrolet convertible was the car that Mayor Francis Slay, pictured below, rode in.

TOMORROW: words of wisdom