D-DAY: THE LANDINGS ON THE BEACHES OF NORMANDY, JUNE 6, 1944. This however is flying low over Paris sometime later. The street is named at the bottom. In the distance is the Arch of Triumph and beyond it the Louvre. On the upper right horizon is the cupola for the Pantheon, which is but three blocks from the home of our very own Berangere Lomont on the Rue Genevieve, the Patron Saint of Paris, whose (or one of whose) birthdays we also celebrate on THIS DAY IN HISTORY - JUNE 6. The picture here is uncanny, or at least strange. (Click TWICE to Enlarge) Except for a few military vehicles and scattered pedestrians there is little moving below. The scene is one of several low altitude fly-byes and all of them have the same silence or poverty of commotion. Paris was liberated over a few days in late August. As soon at the Germans left (those that did not simply stay for the surrender on August 25th) the streets of Paris were very busy with parades, general celebration and also some shaming of Parisians who had cooperated with the Germans. Fifty Five years before D-Day, 35-or-so Seattle City blocks were razed by its Great Fire of June 6, 1889. This view looks north on First Avenue in the block between Yesler Way and Cherry Street. The ruins on the left are on the west side of First (or Front Street as it was then still named).
HERE FOLLOWS the 2-page limited edition of the Next Day’s Post-Intelligencer for June 7, 1889. So that you might more easily read them these are big files and will take a bit longer to download. Once they appear please – as with all else – CLICK TWICE TO ENLARGE and read the next days reports. Thanks one again to RON EDGE for providing these.
NOW WE INSERT a BLOGADDENDUM – another EDGE CLIPPING. In a caption to the Post-Intelligencer’s own description of its efforts to get out their two-page paper, Ron Edge points out its heroic qualities.
I was thinking that the heroic effort by the PI staff to print this little one page hand trimmed paper could itself be the significant event for the 7th of June. What an effort was made to get this little edition on the street the very next morning produced on borrowed foot presses and no sleep.Flip side to the Front Street Great Fire shot printed just above. Soon after the fire, photographers were selling scenes like this one on the streets and from their studios - those studios that survived. Here the fire's notable survivors are listed.Four years after D-Day Genevieve McCoy (named for the patron saint of Paris) was born on June 6, 1948. Genevieve "Genny" answered my request for a caption to this setting. "I was born on D-Day but in 1948. You are 71, 9.5 years older than I. This is me preparing for my Junior Prom at Holy Names in 1965. It was my first self-selected formal dress. I was a month or so shy of 18. Wasn't I cute 45 years ago? (We agree.) My mother must have taken the picture, just before I left for the prom." If we imagine that the 85 faces shown here include no second and third renderings of the same person then the odds would be a little more than one in four that one of them would have been born on the sixth of June. These odds are much better than those we might calculate for how likely it is that any of these 85 (so to speak) are named Genevieve, although one or more of them may be named for someone or something else's patron saint. BELIEVE IT OR NOT. It was on June 6 that Gene Woodwick gave me a copy of her latest book, "Ocean Shores." Inside the front cover is this note. "June 6, birth date of Ed Woodwick, father of Larry Woodwick, husband of Gene Woodwick, and father for their five children."
