The last time I saw Notre Dame was in the summer of the year we elected Donald Trump for President. @curtisjsimon and I were on our way to see Dan Tepfer play in a, I would say hole in the wall, but it is more like a really cool hole in the ground in the Halles neighborhood.  We must have taken a lazy roundabout way of getting there because we ended up at La Cité and, surprised, I happily pointed to the cathedral and said, “Look, it’s Notre Dame!”  We were approaching it from the non-iconic side.  

The thing that always surprises me about Notre Dame is how much of a neighborhood church it feels to be.  It’s this monster cathedral, but it does not feel that way; maybe because the spires were never added to the front towers. There was a mass, complete with priest and enormous choir, in progress when we ventured inside; and when we came out, the bells started ringing and I took this awful video.