What Goes Up . . .

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The small white plastic box with blinking green lights on it which ensures the translation of packets of binary data coming over the phone lines to and from our house into intelligible internet pages gave up the ghost some time on Sunday morning, stranding us in the stratosphere with no oxygen, as it were, leaving us with no connectivity to the world wide web for over 24 hours. A pitiable state to be in when one is wanting to blog and one cannot. Such is life, and the death of small plastic boxes. The box has a name, it is called a "Livebox". But this one became a "Deadbox". So today I had to get it changed. In order to get back on line, to get my fix, as it were. In some cases, it is not so easy to recover.
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One never knows upon what one is going to happen when one sets out to simply wander and look. The other day, James and I set out to wander in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. We happened upon a story I'd never heard before. There are a multitude of stories to be found in Père Lachaise, from the famous, Like Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, or Oscar Wilde, to the obscure; but the story of Theodore Sivel and Joseph Crocé-Spinelli was not one I'd ever heard of before. I'll be curious to know if you have perhaps.
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From a distance, their tomb, for they are buried together, looks like this :
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When one draws closer, one realizes that the sculpture on the tomb is of two men, holding hands.
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Someone had placed some synthetic flowers there.
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The two men appeared to be sleeping peacefully.
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It wasn't until I read the inscription carved in the stone pedestal that I had any inkling of the tragic tale memorialized here at their grave. On April 15th, 1875, three men took off in a balloon named the Zenith from near Paris. Only one of them, Gaston Tissandier, lived to recount what transpired. The inscription says in French : "Catastrophe du Ballon le Zenith 15 Avril 1875, Croce-Spinelli et Sivel, Morts à 8600 Metres de Hauteur". Dead at 8600 meters up in a balloon named the Zenith. That is just over 28200 feet. They had set out that day to break all previous high altitude records. They succeeded, but at great cost. No one had ever gone that high before. They did not know that there was not enough oxygen to sustain life at such lofty heights.
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For the advancement of science, so that we can enjoy travelling on jet planes and have an internet that works, some early pioneers paid the ultimate price for knowledge : Morts. Dead.

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One thumb has been worn shiny with being touched by thousands of passers by in a mute token of respect. I touched it too.
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Autumn leaves were falling already that October day, rain had filled the folds of sculpted cloth with pooled water from the skies above.
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Hands clasped forever.

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If you would like to read more about what happened to Croce-Spinelli and Sivel, there is an interesting article from the April 16th, 1875 New York Times on line here.

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Il y a un article en français sur le sujet du catastrophe du Zenith ici.

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