All Purls. No Swine.
210 years ago today, when the flag of the still relatively-young republic had only fifteen stars, on September 14, 1814, an American lawyer by the name of Francis Scott Key published a poem he'd written upon witnessing the bombardment of Baltimore's Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy during the War of 1812. The poem… Continue reading The Defense of Fort McHenry: For the World
It was 104 years ago today, on August 18, 1920 that these United States granted all women full voting rights. The vote which put the amendment over the top came from Tennessee which--by just a single vote from representative Harry Burn--moved it forward. (There's a story there, disputed, but a story, nonetheless, related here in… Continue reading Happy Nineteenth Amendment Ratification Day!
More than seven years ago, just before the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States sent the world into perpetual "tilt" mode , I wrote this post on Ricochet. I'm reprising it here on the day my mother would have turned 96. November 6, 2016: I spent several hours this morning doing… Continue reading The Simple Things–On the 96th Anniversary of My Mother’s Birth
Dateline June 20, 2024: Happy Summer Solstice! I’m always reminded, on this “longest day,” of the trip that Mr. She and I made to England, and the day we spent at Stonehenge and (just down the road a bit) Avebury. Avebury is another Neolithic Henge, but in this case, the stones surround the village. Once… Continue reading The Summer Solstice, 2024
I don't write headlines, or epitaphs, for a living. Too short. (They, not I.) Still, were I to attempt one of either (or perhaps both) over the ghastly matter of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's shooting of the fourteen-month old Cricket two decades ago, that would be it. For those not in the know, Noem… Continue reading Irresponsible, Out-of-Control Woman Shoots Dog She’d Set Up To Fail
A recent conversation on Ricochet brought to mind a post I wrote in the Dark Ages of social media, in this case, in 2012. Twelve years ago. And it's still there and available to the members, although it can't be viewed on the public Internet. I'm about to fix that. I wrote it just after… Continue reading Why I’ll Always Have a Soft Spot for Bill Clinton, No Matter What
Oh, my giddy aunt. Such excitement in the US this evening. Joe Biden was to "speak" at 7:45pm Eastern time (12:45GMT). Could he be resigning? Or at the very least, announcing that he wasn't going to run for President again later this year? Oh, pleeze, pleeze, pleeze, God. Let it be true. Umm. No. Ever… Continue reading You Thought Biden Was Going To Resign? Have You Been Living Under a Rock? Or Just Floating in an Otherworldly Bubble With Two or Three of Your Loony Friends?
You probably all know either the meme or the original story: The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked… Continue reading Twitter Idiots: On Boiling the Frog
So there I was, as I often am, chasing down some reference or other that has nothing to do with the point at hand, and I stumbled over the fact that it was only 160 years ago today, on November 19, 1863 (what a very young country this still is), that a President of the… Continue reading “These Honored Dead”
Fewer than twenty miles from my old stomping grounds of Droitwich Spa, in the small Staffordshire village of Enville, a dedicated amateur researcher who's been on the case for more than three years has uncovered eight graves dating from the thirteenth century and believed to be those of members of the Knights Templar order. Enville's… Continue reading The Knights Templar: To Your Name Give the Glory