All Purls. No Swine.
April 10, 2024 was the 112th anniversary of the day that the British passenger and mail-carrying ocean liner RMS Titanic slipped her surly mooring bonds in the English port of Southampton and set sail on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic. In her honor, and on that date, I embarked on an excursion I don’t undertake much… Continue reading A Day to Remember
No, I've not quite lost my mind, and I do have a calendar app on my phone. I know it's April 13, not November 5. (November 5 this year will be doubly memorable, as it's the date of the 2024 US Presidential election.) What today actually is, though, is the likely birthday, four-hundred fifty-four years… Continue reading Remembering Guy Fawkes
Yawn. I was busy here, down in SW Pennsylvania. Trying to get the Polaris UTV up and running after a rough, cold, and wet winter. I didn't have the glasses, so I wasn't spending every other minute staring at the sky. And, truth be told, I didn't notice all that much. Mid-afternoon, we were supposed… Continue reading Once in a Lifetime!** The Eclipse!
I saw my first movie ever in the UK, when I was five years old. it was 1959, and Dad was on leave from Nigeria. We were living in the family home in Droitwich, and Granny, Mum, and I went to Birmingham's West End Cinema to see a much-celebrated American import. Those were the days… Continue reading There is Nothing Like a Dame: 75 Years Later
Yesterday's Telegraph article, about the latest children's book to be given the "trigger warning" treatment, put me in mind of a post from several years in which I held forth on the usefulness of the books which we are now--apparently--too frightened to let our children read without first blighting their minds and prejudging their responses… Continue reading The Nattering Ninnies Come for Hillaire Belloc
No doubt there's a lot of competition. But today, April 5, 2024, I offer you this one, from Encyclopedia Britannica's On This Day recap: [1818] Battle of Maipú Chile's independence movement, led by José de San Martín and Bernardo O'Higgins, won a decisive victory over Spain in the Battle of Maipú, which left 2,000 Spaniards and 1,000 Chilean patriots dead on… Continue reading Maybe the Best Opening Line, Ever
On April 4, 1818, the Congress of the United States adopted a new national flag which consisted of thirteen alternating red and white stripes (one for each original colony), and--at the flag's upper left--a field of blue with a star representing each state. (There twenty of them at the time. Now there are fifty.) The… Continue reading Happy Birthday, Old Glory!
“I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night”– Sarah Williams Sarah Williams was a British Victorian poet who is best known for “The Old Astronomer,” written in the person of an elderly astronomer on his deathbed who speaking to his young pupil. Her output is short, as was her life (1837-1868),… Continue reading Quote of the Day: Worlds Beyond Earth
Let us be thankful, Lord, for little things - The song of birds, the rapture of the rose; Cloud-dappled skies, the laugh of limpid springs, Drowned sunbeams and the perfume April blows; Bronze wheat a-shimmer, purple shade of trees - Let us be thankful, Lord of Life, for these! Let us be praiseful, Sire, for… Continue reading Quote of the Day: A Little (April) Prayer