Rise of a Phoenix: Notre Dame Paris

Paris’ iconic Notre Dame caught fire on April 15) a shocking inferno that soon collapsed part of the building’s spire.

No building makes it 856 years without some ups and downs. Among the low points for Notre Dame was the 17th century. According to National Geographic, the reign of Louis XIV brought dire changes to the cathedral. Original stained-glass windows were replaced with plain glass; a pillar in the main doorway was demolished to widen the opening so carriages could pass through.

The French Revolution was even more devastating. According to the cathedral’s official history, revolutionaries tore down 28 statues of kings housed in Notre Dame, driven by anti-monarchist fervor. They also destroyed many other statues with the exception of one of the Virgin Mary, and tore down the original spire of the church, erected in the 13th century. Revolutionaries renamed Notre Dame the Temple to the Goddess Reason, according to the Fondation Napoleon, and later converted it into a wine warehouse.

After the revolution, an agreement called the Concordat of 1801 returned Notre Dame to the Catholic Church. Napoleon Bonaparte, the French general and eventual emperor, chose the damaged cathedral as the site of his 1804 coronation. Bonaparte’s people draped fabrics over the Gothic architecture of Notre Dame to make it look like a Greek temple, according to Fondation Napoleon. From then on, the building was used for imperial ceremonies, but remained in disarray until the Romantic movement of the 1800s, according to the Fondation Napoleon. Victor Hugo’s famous novel “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,” published in 1831, reinvigorated interest in the crumbling building in the middle of Paris.( Earlier to Hugo there is a passage in the masterpiece of Rebalais  the escapade of stealing the bells of Notre Dame in Gargantua and Pantagruel). 

With city officials and public support behind him, architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc launched a major renovation project to save the cathedral in 1843. It was a 20-year project that created Notre Dame as it appeared before today’s fire: The old spire was replaced, sculpted gargoyles were added and new murals were painted. According to the cathedral’s official website, the renovation also included the building of a new sacristy, where priests prepare for worship services, and the reconstruction of the cathedral’s organ.

Over the next 150 years, the cathedral would see more facelifts, including the restoration of stained glass in the nave and a decade-long effort to clean the building’s western facade. In recent years, the building has again shown its age. Last year, the Friends of Notre-Dame of Paris Foundation launched a major fundraising effort in the United States in an effort to fund repairs to the cathedral. According to CBS News, years of pollution and weathering had cracked the facade and the famous flying buttresses. The French government had pledged $50 million to renovations, but the Archdiocese of Paris had estimated that the total cost would reach $185 million.

The much-needed renovations may be the cause of the fire that raged at the cathedral yesterday, according to French authorities. But some of the cathedral’s treasures may have been saved by those same renovations, too. On April 11, cranes lifted more than a dozen religious statues off the top of the building to be sent to southwestern France for restoration work, according to the Associated Press. The statues made it down just four days before the fire burst into flame. (Ack: Live Science/Stephanie Pappas-15 April,2019)

Benny

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Notre Dame, Paris: July 1995

Picture#1 shows Notre Dame from the garden of Place de Jean XXIII

My wife and I were in Paris and parts of Notre Dame were under repair. Under the picture #5 title would be ‘Have a head will travel.” I lost something when I first heard the news of the fire. I may not visit it as often as I would have liked but Notre Dame shall endure. It is a cultural monument to man everywhere and for those who consider art and architecture as man’s highest form of self-expression, 800 years of the Cathedral in the making cannot be bettered. It is France and for every person of culture elsewhere his or her second home. Benny

Short Stories: Clay by James Joyce

The matron had given her leave to go out as soon as the women’s tea was over and Maria looked forward to her evening out. The kitchen was spick and span: the cook said you could see yourself in the big copper boilers. The fire was nice and bright and on one of the side-tables were four very big barmbracks. These barmbracks seemed uncut; but if you went closer you would see that they had been cut into long thick even slices and were ready to be handed round at tea. Maria had cut them herself.
Maria was a very, very small person indeed but she had a very long nose and a very long chin. She talked a little through her nose, always soothingly: “Yes, my dear,” and “No, my dear.” She was always sent for when the women quarrelled over their tubs and always succeeded in making peace. One day the matron had said to her:
“Maria, you are a veritable peace-maker!”
And the sub-matron and two of the Board ladies had heard the compliment. And Ginger Mooney was always saying what she wouldn’t do to the dummy who had charge of the irons if it wasn’t for Maria. Everyone was so fond of Maria.
The women would have their tea at six o’clock and she would be able to get away before seven. From Ballsbridge to the Pillar, twenty minutes; from the Pillar to Drumcondra, twenty minutes; and twenty minutes to buy the things. She would be there before eight. She took out her purse with the silver clasps and read again the words A Present from Belfast. She was very fond of that purse because Joe had brought it to her five years before when he and Alphy had gone to Belfast on a Whit-Monday trip. In the purse were two half-crowns and some coppers. She would have five shillings clear after paying tram fare. What a nice evening they would have, all the children singing! Only she hoped that Joe wouldn’t come in drunk. He was so different when he took any drink.
Often he had wanted her to go and live with them;-but she would have felt herself in the way though Joe’s wife was ever so nice with her and she had become accustomed to the life of the laundry. Joe was a good fellow. She had nursed him and Alphy too; and Joe used often say:
“Mamma is mamma but Maria is my proper mother.”
After the break-up at home the boys had got her that position in the Dublin by Lamplight laundry, and she liked it. She used to have such a bad opinion of Protestants but now she thought they were very nice people, a little quiet and serious, but still very nice people to live with. Then she had her plants in the conservatory and she liked looking after them. She had lovely ferns and wax-plants and, whenever anyone came to visit her, she always gave the visitor one or two slips from her conservatory. There was one thing she didn’t like and that was the tracts on the walks; but the matron was such a nice person to deal with, so genteel.
When the cook told her everything was ready she went into the women’s room and began to pull the big bell. In a few minutes the women began to come in by twos and threes, wiping their steaming hands in their petticoats and pulling down the sleeves of their blouses over their red steaming arms. They settled down before their huge mugs which the cook and the dummy filled up with hot tea, already mixed with milk and sugar in huge tin cans. Maria superintended the distribution of the barmbrack and saw that every woman got her four slices. There was a great deal of laughing and joking during the meal. Lizzie Fleming said Maria was sure to get the ring and, though Fleming had said that for so many Hallow Eves, Maria had to laugh and say she didn’t want any ring or man either; and when she laughed her grey-green eyes sparkled with disappointed shyness and the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin. Then Ginger Mooney lifted her mug of tea and proposed Maria’s health while all the other women clattered with their mugs on the table, and said she was sorry she hadn’t a sup of porter to drink it in. And Maria laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin and till her minute body nearly shook itself asunder because she knew that Mooney meant well though, of course, she had the notions of a common woman.
But wasn’t Maria glad when the women had finished their tea and the cook and the dummy had begun to clear away the tea-things! She went into her little bedroom and, remembering that the next morning was a mass morning, changed the hand of the alarm from seven to six. Then she took off her working skirt and her house-boots and laid her best skirt out on the bed and her tiny dress-boots beside the foot of the bed. She changed her blouse too and, as she stood before the mirror, she thought of how she used to dress for mass on Sunday morning when she was a young girl; and she looked with quaint affection at the diminutive body which she had so often adorned, In spite of its years she found it a nice tidy little body.
When she got outside the streets were shining with rain and she was glad of her old brown waterproof. The tram was full and she had to sit on the little stool at the end of the car, facing all the people, with her toes barely touching the floor. She arranged in her mind all she was going to do and thought how much better it was to be independent and to have your own money in your pocket. She hoped they would have a nice evening. She was sure they would but she could not help thinking what a pity it was Alphy and Joe were not speaking. They were always falling out now but when they were boys together they used to be the best of friends: but such was life.
She got out of her tram at the Pillar and ferreted her way quickly among the crowds. She went into Downes’s cake-shop but the shop was so full of people that it was a long time before she could get herself attended to. She bought a dozen of mixed penny cakes, and at last came out of the shop laden with a big bag. Then she thought what else would she buy: she wanted to buy something really nice. They would be sure to have plenty of apples and nuts. It was hard to know what to buy and all she could think of was cake. She decided to buy some plumcake but Downes’s plumcake had not enough almond icing on top of it so she went over to a shop in Henry Street. Here she was a long time in suiting herself and the stylish young lady behind the counter, who was evidently a little annoyed by her, asked her was it wedding-cake she wanted to buy. That made Maria blush and smile at the young lady; but the young lady took it all very seriously and finally cut a thick slice of plumcake, parcelled it up and said:
“Two-and-four, please.”
She thought she would have to stand in the Drumcondra tram because none of the young men seemed to notice her but an elderly gentleman made room for her. He was a stout gentleman and he wore a brown hard hat; he had a square red face and a greyish moustache. Maria thought he was a colonel-looking gentleman and she reflected how much more polite he was than the young men who simply stared straight before them. The gentleman began to chat with her about Hallow Eve and the rainy weather. He supposed the bag was full of good things for the little ones and said it was only right that the youngsters should enjoy themselves while they were young. Maria agreed with him and favoured him with demure nods and hems. He was very nice with her, and when she was getting out at the Canal Bridge she thanked him and bowed, and he bowed to her and raised his hat and smiled agreeably, and while she was going up along the terrace, bending her tiny head under the rain, she thought how easy it was to know a gentleman even when he has a drop taken.
Everybody said: “0, here’s Maria!” when she came to Joe’s house. Joe was there, having come home from business, and all the children had their Sunday dresses on. There were two big girls in from next door and games were going on. Maria gave the bag of cakes to the eldest boy, Alphy, to divide and Mrs. Donnelly said it was too good of her to bring such a big bag of cakes and made all the children say:
“Thanks, Maria.”
But Maria said she had brought something special for papa and mamma, something they would be sure to like, and she began to look for her plumcake. She tried in Downes’s bag and then in the pockets of her waterproof and then on the hallstand but nowhere could she find it. Then she asked all the children had any of them eaten it — by mistake, of course — but the children all said no and looked as if they did not like to eat cakes if they were to be accused of stealing. Everybody had a solution for the mystery and Mrs. Donnelly said it was plain that Maria had left it behind her in the tram. Maria, remembering how confused the gentleman with the greyish moustache had made her, coloured with shame and vexation and disappointment. At the thought of the failure of her little surprise and of the two and fourpence she had thrown away for nothing she nearly cried outright.
But Joe said it didn’t matter and made her sit down by the fire. He was very nice with her. He told her all that went on in his office, repeating for her a smart answer which he had made to the manager. Maria did not understand why Joe laughed so much over the answer he had made but she said that the manager must have been a very overbearing person to deal with. Joe said he wasn’t so bad when you knew how to take him, that he was a decent sort so long as you didn’t rub him the wrong way. Mrs. Donnelly played the piano for the children and they danced and sang. Then the two next-door girls handed round the nuts. Nobody could find the nutcrackers and Joe was nearly getting cross over it and asked how did they expect Maria to crack nuts without a nutcracker. But Maria said she didn’t like nuts and that they weren’t to bother about her. Then Joe asked would she take a bottle of stout and Mrs. Donnelly said there was port wine too in the house if she would prefer that. Maria said she would rather they didn’t ask her to take anything: but Joe insisted.
So Maria let him have his way and they sat by the fire talking over old times and Maria thought she would put in a good word for Alphy. But Joe cried that God might strike him stone dead if ever he spoke a word to his brother again and Maria said she was sorry she had mentioned the matter. Mrs. Donnelly told her husband it was a great shame for him to speak that way of his own flesh and blood but Joe said that Alphy was no brother of his and there was nearly being a row on the head of it. But Joe said he would not lose his temper on account of the night it was and asked his wife to open some more stout. The two next-door girls had arranged some Hallow Eve games and soon everything was merry again. Maria was delighted to see the children so merry and Joe and his wife in such good spirits. The next-door girls put some saucers on the table and then led the children up to the table, blindfold. One got the prayer-book and the other three got the water; and when one of the next-door girls got the ring Mrs. Donnelly shook her finger at the blushing girl as much as to say: 0, I know all about it! They insisted then on blindfolding Maria and leading her up to the table to see what she would get; and, while they were putting on the bandage, Maria laughed and laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin.
They led her up to the table amid laughing and joking and she put her hand out in the air as she was told to do. She moved her hand about here and there in the air and descended on one of the saucers. She felt a soft wet substance with her fingers and was surprised that nobody spoke or took off her bandage. There was a pause for a few seconds; and then a great deal of scuffling and whispering. Somebody said something about the garden, and at last Mrs. Donnelly said something very cross to one of the next-door girls and told her to throw it out at once: that was no play. Maria understood that it was wrong that time and so she had to do it over again: and this time she got the prayer-book.
After that Mrs. Donnelly played Miss McCloud’s Reel for the children and Joe made Maria take a glass of wine. Soon they were all quite merry again and Mrs. Donnelly said Maria would enter a convent before the year was out because she had got the prayer-book. Maria had never seen Joe so nice to her as he was that night, so full of pleasant talk and reminiscences. She said they were all very good to her.
At last the children grew tired and sleepy and Joe asked Maria would she not sing some little song before she went, one of the old songs. Mrs. Donnelly said “Do, please, Maria!” and so Maria had to get up and stand beside the piano. Mrs. Donnelly bade the children be quiet and listen to Maria’s song. Then she played the prelude and said “Now, Maria!” and Maria, blushing very much began to sing in a tiny quavering voice. She sang I Dreamt that I Dwelt, and when she came to the second verse she sang again:
I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
With vassals and serfs at my side,
And of all who assembled within those walls
That I was the hope and the pride.

I had riches too great to count; could boast
Of a high ancestral name,
But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,
That you loved me still the same.
But no one tried to show her her mistake; and when she had ended her song Joe was very much moved. He said that there was no time like the long ago and no music for him like poor old Balfe, whatever other people might say; and his eyes filled up so much with tears that he could not find what he was looking for and in the end he had to ask his wife to tell him where the corkscrew was.
End

Black Holes: Information and Inversion

An event horizon is a boundary around the black hole beyond which nothing, including light, can escape. Such is its powerful gravitational grip. But it only applies to material that has gotten extremely close to the hole’s edge. Many black holes are, in fact, surrounded by streams of gas and dust, which circle around the hole, like water going down a drain. Friction in this material generates heat, which creates churning, storm-like structures in the gas and dust. This would explain, I am being fanciful here, the halo around saints normally shown in the Catholic hagiography.
Concerning black holes recent observations suggest that this motion also produces arching rings that surround inner columns of matter, which shoots straight into the air, strongly resembling fountains.

Quantum mechanics provides a clue for the black hole to shrink in size over a period of time. This is Inversion principle. We can understand why: provides another way for particles to escape a black hole. According to quantum mechanics theory, pairs of subatomic particles are constantly blinking in and out of existence around a black hole’s event horizon. Every so often, the configuration is aligned in just the right way to cause one of the partners to fall into the black hole. The particle’s identical associate is then propelled away at extremely high speed, robbing the black hole of a tiny bit of energy. (This produces what’s known as Hawking radiation, after Stephen Hawking, who discovered the phenomenon. Because energy equals mass, this process actually can cause a black hole to shrink and eventually evaporate away over long periods of time.)
How do we reconcile black holes’ crushing mass with the laws of quantum mechanics, which hold that information about particles can never be destroyed? As mentioned before material that slips beyond a black hole’s edge should become forever lost to the universe. This conundrum is known as the black hole information paradox; a resolution has eluded scientists to date. We shall try to understand from history.
Nazi ideology has been defeated and never shall the history can recreate the same circumstances or another Hitler. But Neo-nazism shall explain this information paradox. They are there to stymie and defeat the hypocritical politicians promising democracy based on principles of liberty. As a result when the President speaks ‘Make America great again’ it is an encouraging sign for Charlottesville, Virginia to erupt. In short every wrong done whether to an ethnic minority, gypsies disabled and weak is information burrowing into the body politic and shall surface again and again.(Ack:LiveScience/9 ideas/Adam Mann-April 10,2019)
Benny

Lessons from Nazism etc.,

(In continuation of my recent posts on nationalism this may be of interest-benny)

Bennythomas's Weblog

In 1928 at Neidenburg in the East at the local elections Nazis got only 2.3% of the votes cast. After the Great Depression the Nazis did not have a party office there. Neither did Hitler visit the place to drum up support. By 1933 the Nazi party got 53 % in Germany( actual figures I cannot vouch for.I am quoting this secondhand-b).

Nazi Manifesto was still the same as at the time of its founding and in 1933. People in Germany were dejected with the economy and disruptive Communists were for rejecting democracy. In such a flux energy of each German was in ferment and was ready for taking.

ii

Energy of individual is in full flow when he sells himself to an idea. Look at the post-war Germany what with the hyperinflation and political chaos man on the street was waiting for one father figure who would guide him…

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Inflight- shoebill stork-graphite

Science Notes: Black Hole sighting

For the first time what was considered as the impossible has happened. It measures 40 billion km across – three million times the size of the Earth – and has been described by scientists as “a monster”. The black hole is 500 million trillion km away .A black hole named M87 has been photographed by a network of eight telescopes (the Event Horizon Telescope) across the world. Details have been published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The image shows an intensely bright “ring of fire”, as Prof Heino Falcke, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, (who proposed the experiment) describes it, surrounding a perfectly circular dark hole. The bright halo is caused by superheated gas falling into the hole. The light is brighter than all the billions of other stars in the galaxy combined – which is why it can be seen at such distance from Earth. The edge of the dark circle at the centre is the point at which the gas enters the black hole, which is an object that has such a large gravitational pull, not even light can escape. (The other is Sagittarius A at the centre of the Milky Way.) To make this image, astronomers networked radio telescopes all over the world to magnify M87 to unprecedented resolution. No single telescope is powerful enough to capture the black hole, so a network of eight was set up to so do using a technique called interferometry.
Dr Katie Bouman and others developed a series of *algorithms that converted telescopic data into the historic photo shared by the world’s media.
(*In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is a process or set of rules used to solve problems.)
This image forms a clear link now between supermassive black holes and bright galaxies,” said Sheperd Doeleman, a Harvard astrophysicist and director of the Event Horizon Telescope at a National Science Foundation press conference.
It confirms that large galaxies like Virgo A (and the Milky Way) are held together by supermassive black holes, Doeleman said.
Astronomers knew that black holes were surrounded by glowing matter. But this image still answers a key question about black holes, and about the structure of our universe. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity holds up even at the edge of a black hole, where some researchers suspected it would break down. The shape of the visible event horizon in the image is a circle, as predicted by relativity, so it confirms relativity still holds sway even in one of the most extreme environments in the universe.
Now we may ask ourselves why man grows old only to grow feeble or Why nationalism has people power behind it to make it strong and yet it must fail? The answer my friend is in the details and in as trivial as fundamental particles. There is an inversion principle built in. Our strength may lay in numbers. So we push nationalism as though nations can safeguard our best interest. Oh no, nations shall take away many of our freedom with the excuse it as a necessary evil ‘in the national interests’. (So you want your children safe from guns and give them a safe environment to grow in. But creepies are out there and they are ready to shoot for no reason because your color isn’t right. How safe are you because law makers have been already bought by NRA to sell more guns? Mind you an election is round the corner.)
General relativity governs very big things, like stars and gravity as Einstein had predicted. Whereas Quantum mechanics (which describes very small things) is incompatible with it. Here we have two workings that underpin our universe contrary to one another. For this reason stupid mullahs who preach hate and who send terrorists are merely eating their own flesh as white supremacists dig the very ground they stand on.
Tags: gun laws, NRA, event horizon, algorithms, black holes,M87,
Benny