4/15/19 – 4:40pm EDT

I am watching with horror and sadness the incredible destruction by fire of Paris’ iconic Notre Dame cathedral.

In grief and helplessness I decided to go through the pictures I took when Ed and I visited Notre Dame last August.  I had been creating blog posts based on our Paris trip, and planned to eventually create one focusing on Notre Dame too.

But it wasn’t going to be my next blog post.  And I surely wish I didn’t post it under such distressing circumstances.

These photos will start outside the cathedral, enjoying its front facade as we enter the church, followed by a tour all around inside the cathedral, more details from the front of the church, then a walk around the south side, and a return approach from the north at night.

May these photos be a memory tour of what now, from the horrible reports coming in, appears to be greatly lost.

It’s too early to know what can be saved and what is lost, but from what I see and hear on television, it seems unlikely that any of the stain glass windows will be saved.

11:50pm – reading the NYTimes: “Bernard Fonquernie, the architect in charge of the cathedral’s restoration in the 1980s and 1990s, said that he believed much of the building, its furnishings and its stained glass could be saved. “The stone vaulting acted like a firewall and it kept the worst heat away,” he said.”

Puisse mon sang etre le dernier verse – May my blood be the last poured

I look at some of these photos, and sense them changing from how I originally viewed them last summer.  Now they seem to be taking on the sorrow of the day.