A fire in the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in Nantes has destroyed a 17th-century organ. Arson is suspected:

The fire began in the early morning, with massive flames visible from outside the building. More than 100 firefighters brought it under control after several hours.

Mr. Sennes said the national police would be involved in the investigation and a fire expert was travelling to Nantes. ‘When we arrive at a place where a fire has taken place, when you see three separate fire outbreaks, it’s a question of common sense, you open an investigation,’ he said.

Newsagent Jean-Yves Burban said he heard a bang at about 07:30 local time (05:30 GMT) and saw flames when he went out to see what was happening. ‘I am shook up because I’ve been here eight years and I see the cathedral every morning and evening. It’s our cathedral and I’ve got tears in my eyes,’ he told Reuters.

A 39-year-old Rwandan man was held by police but was released over the weekend. Apparently devout, he was one of seven volunteers in charge of security and has been involved in the life of the church for several years.

In other news: How panic over “stranger danger” led to the safety state: “During the 1980s, large sections of the American public embraced the idea that a handful of horrific events were symptoms of a deep-seated national sickness. Intense focus by a rapidly expanding, multi-platform media transformed events that would have previously been local news items into durable national preoccupations. Moral panic ensued as millions of Americans learned of a national network of transgressors that had long been hiding in plain sight. Citizens displayed striking vigilance in rooting out this new disease, pushing successfully for public policies aimed at eradicating it. Immersed in the moment, few people gave much thought to the long-term consequences of these new policies. How little times have changed. Paul M. Renfro’s excellent new book, Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State is an engaging history of how a cluster of high-profile child abductions in the late 1970s and 1980s became catalysts for the expansion of state power, a corporatized national media culture that thrives on crisis, and a bipartisan political consensus built around the idea of security.”

In City Journal, Shepard Barbash tells the story of her parents commissioning a cello concerto for Yo-Yo Ma for their 40th anniversary: “Anyone who knew her well or had ever subscribed to one of her concert series could tell you that Lillian Barbash—director of the Islip Arts Council and struggling pianist of my youth—was no great fan of contemporary classical music. In fact, she had spent most of her life avoiding it—changing the channel when it came on the radio, turning down requests from her artists to perform it, and refusing to buy a recording of anything more dissonant than Bartók . . . But now, hearing about Mrs. Bliss, she returned to a childhood fantasy of dukes and countesses and patrons of the arts. Suddenly, this child of the Great Depression, of modest good taste and origins, circumspect by nature, suspicious of showboats and grand gestures, was ready to spend—as it turned out—$40,000 for 18 minutes’ worth of music, the sort that she had resolutely shunned for half a century.”

In search of the grave of Hans Holbein: “He was a star of the Renaissance, an unflinching painter of death and horror in a time of rampant plague. Yet he ended up in an unmarked grave in London. Or so it has always been believed.”

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Did you see this letter to the editor in the New York Times? “I never thought I’d turn to The American Conservative for comfort, but at least it has the guts to publish controversial opinions that run counter to conservative orthodoxy.” TAC is in the midst of its summer campaign—and as a nonprofit, 92% of our revenue comes from donations. Give $250 or more, and we’ll send you a signed copy of Brad Birzer’s In Defense of Andrew Jackson. Support our independent-minded conservatism by donating here.

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Maggie Fergusson revisits Helene Hanff’s 84, Charing Cross Road: “I thought I could never feel fond of Charing Cross Road, London. In 1988, when I was 23, I spent a miserable three months there doing a typing course on the bleak first floor of a building next to the Garrick Theatre. Secretarial instruction was delivered over headphones to classrooms full of women and as I tried to follow the disembodied tutorials my fingers kept slipping and jamming between the keys of a hefty, black manual typewriter. Fortunately for me, just as the course was finishing, a job as subeditor at Harpers & Queen fell into my lap. Within days I discovered that I loved working with words and, despite a meager salary, employment on a glossy magazine had its perks – including, in the spring of 1988, a free ticket to New York. It was there, in the sunshine in Central Park, that I first read 84, Charing Cross Road — a battered old paperback edition I had discovered in the apartment of the friend I was staying with. It came as a boost at just the right moment, sending me home with a dash of Helene Hanff’s dauntless appetite for life and books, infected with her curiosity as to whether ‘the England of English literature’ could actually be found.”

Alex Trebek on the meaning of Jeopardy!—“There is reality, and there’s nothing wrong with accepting reality. It’s when you try to distort reality, to maneuver it into accommodating your particular point of view, your particular bigotry, your particular whatever — that’s when you run into problems”—and his fight with cancer: “Trebek, who turns 80 this month, has never been one to ignore hard facts. He plans to keep making the show for as long as he can, but he worries that his performance is declining, that he’s slurring his words and messing up clues. ‘It’s a quality program, and I think I do a good job hosting it, and when I start slipping, I’ll stop hosting,’ he said. After some encouraging news from doctors last year, Trebek’s prognosis has worsened. If his current course of cancer treatment fails, he plans to stop treatment, he said. ‘Yesterday morning my wife came to me and said, “How are you feeling?” And I said, “I feel like I want to die.” It was that bad,’ he said. ‘There comes a time where you have to make a decision as to whether you want to continue with such a low quality of life, or whether you want to just ease yourself into the next level. It doesn’t bother me in the least.’” 

Photos: Illinois

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