All Purls. No Swine.
A repeat, because--by gum--those wonderful men deserve it: Eighty-one years ago, on May 16-17 1943, an elite group of airmen, mostly from the Royal Air Force, but also with contingents from Canada and Australia, took off in nineteen Lancaster bombers from the RAF station in Scampton, Lincolnshire. Their mission was clear: Destroy three dams in… Continue reading Dam Busters +81
A bit more than three years ago, I wrote a post on Ricochet, When Computers Rule, about the Royal Mail scandal involving Fujitsu’s Horizon software and the plight of hundreds of UK “sub-postmasters” who’d been accused, prosecuted and convicted for fraud because, once the Fujitsu software system was implemented for Post Office management, their accounts… Continue reading Getting Their Reputations Back–The Royal Mail Horizon Scandal Staggers to the Finish Line, Courtesy of ITV
Breathes there an English expat girl with soul so dead, who never to herself has said, “Well, having heard that bloody song again, I’m just going off–not for the first time–to have a quiet little cry…” Here's the song: https://youtu.be/hKdRpDpIR70 Unlike most popular stars of the 1970s and 80s, Roger Whittaker ploughed his own furrow… Continue reading Roger Whittaker: The Last Farewell
I’m proud to come from a family that values its traditions. Sometimes, those traditions take the form of my dropping everything, getting in the car in all my sweat and filth, racing up the road to Lowes or Home Depot before it closes, and buying the $.50 item which is the only thing preventing me from completing a major home remodeling… Continue reading Turtons All The Way Down
The following is a lightly edited version of a post I wrote on the Queen's death, a year ago today: The only British monarch of my lifetime died a year ago today. She was crowned in June 1953, slightly more than a year before I was born. I was named after her, “Elizabeth,” and–for my… Continue reading “I have to be seen to be believed”–Queen Elizabeth II
August 26, 2023, is the 148th anniversary of the birth of John Buchan. Born in Perth in 1875, the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister and his wife, Buchan attended the University of Glasgow as a scholarship student, then moving on to Oxford where--according to Wikipedia (which can sometimes be trusted to get… Continue reading Celebrating John Buchan
If Florence Nightingale were still alive, she’d have been 203 years old in 2023. She was born on May 12th, 1820, just a few short months after Mad King George (of American Revolution fame) breathed his last. By the time she died, 113 years ago this week, on August 13, 1910, George V (the current… Continue reading The Lady With the–Cats?
Crimenutely. Naomi Wolf. King Charles. She’s entering the seventh decade of her life and, thirty-plus years ago, was the darling of the feminist movement, being praised fulsomely by folks like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan alike for her brilliant ideas. However, Camille Paglia never bought it. Something that intelligent women should have paid attention to,… Continue reading Naomi Wolf’s Dishonest Perspective on the Recent Coronation
I’ve mentioned once or twice that I’m an avid fan of the novels of mystery writer Louise Penny. A friend of mine introduced me to them several years ago, and at first I was hesitant, wondering how I’d get along with a Francophone Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, and his adventures in and… Continue reading The Things We Love: In Memoriam, Rupert Brooke
A little over four years ago, I wrote a post–Shadow Lands and Cyber Worlds–in which I reflected, among a few other things, on the books and stories of my childhood, and the life lessons I took from them: Through my childhood and over time, I came to find lessons and truth in these tales of… Continue reading The Death of Imagination