Quand tu Sonneras

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“Quand tu Sonneras, je Chanteray” (When you will ring, I will sing)
Sundial on a wall
Rue de l'Abreuvoir, Montmartre
Quartier des Grandes-Carrières, 18e arrondissement
Paris, July 2009

“Not all the inscriptions are somber. A whimsical blue chicken on a sundial at 4, rue de l'Abreuvoir in Montmartre clucks, ‘Quand tu sonneras, je chanteray’ -- ‘When you ring, I sing,’ a humorous reference to the time when chickens were alarm clocks. Sundials ask us to contemplate, not only time and its passage, but also when and why humans began to divide time into hours, a development that was not, at first, universally embraced, as the Roman comic playwright Plautus (circa 200 B.C.) made clear, condemning the man who set up a sundial in the marketplace ‘to cut and hack my day so wretchedly into small pieces.’” (Susan Allport, Solar-Powered Timekeeping in Paris, New York Times)