On Friday the f*cking 13th, Paris was attacked for the second time in a year. For more information, read below. For this Saturday Songbird, to honor all in Paris, I’d like to share this video that moved me to tears of people singing “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, as they’re being evacuated out of a soccer game at the Stade de France. [Reminiscent of the powerful scene in Casablanca, as everyone in the bar stands up and sings the anthem, a classy middle finger of enduring pride and solidarity to the occupying Nazis.]

As a friend told me, he was shocked because Paris had always seemed so untouchable in his mind. When I started seeing the news reports, I told Moose and we began to cry as we saw the headlines and the rising death toll. I had to pause writing this post because chill after chill ran their way through my body thinking about the horror. To be in a sophisticated, cosmopolitan metropolis and have such awful machinations sprung upon you- Why? How? Who? Terror that I can only imagine – and when I try to imagine, it’s almost too much for me. So, so sad.

I’ve never been to Paris. But I have this sense of the French as being resilient people. Whoever plotted and executed the attacks, they struck fear into our hearts. However, those bastards haven’t won yet. Even during the horrifying events on Friday, people were standing together by providing shelter for those under threat or fear of threat with #pourteouverte, “open door,” on Twitter. A lot of fear and hatred will arise from this, but it will not prevail. I’ll leave you with this closing paragraph of a Telegraph article, which I’ve linked to below:

The answer to such an attack lies in the revolutionary promise of “liberté, égalité, fraternité”. As I write it looks like France has a long, dark night ahead of it. Hopefully it will emerge the same people. Despair is defeated by hope. Hatred by love. Vive la France.

• Vive La Vie: A Time For Solidarity and Unity | Huffington Post
• Paris terror attacks: Vive la France. The world is with you | Telegraph
• Scores killed in Paris terror attacks at six separate sites | USA Today
• Parisians use hashtag #pourteouverte to offer their homes as shelter during attacks | CBC News
• Cities Around The World Lit Up For Paris | attn.com