My wife watched the funeral activities today (not real-time, I believe). She told me Charles wept.
When the news of her death broke, my wife and I were on a long drive on our vacation. We tuned in the BBC reports on Sirius XM, and listened to them for several hours. I was surprised by how much her death moved me.
I can't quite put a finger on why that should be. I don't think her office is of much practical importance to Americans, and perhaps not even to Britons. The best I can think of is that she has been a constant in the world for a very long time - longer than my entire life. My mother was a young teen when she was crowned queen. My mother is now in her 80s.
So her death feels like a milestone, ending something and beginning something else.
I don't claim to know a lot about her, but I can believe those who tell us that she was admirable. There seems to be a widespread feeling that Britain will now "settle" for a few generations of lesser heads of state.
Does her life and death speak to you at all?
She was a mother and grandmother. She liked animals and gin. She knew how to get on with things, basically getting off her death bed to greet Liz Truss. I hope she didn't suffer.
ReplyDeleteBut the Windsors are billionaires because they happen to be born to a family of not very bright, inbred Germans. We fought a war centuries ago to get shut of these people. The Declaration of Independence clearly spells out the grievances against the crown.
I was appalled that the Gov of Michigan required flags to be flown at half staff. What next? A Confederate flag for Robert E Lee's birthday?
I was busy this morning, but I plan to watch the funeral later. I think she was an admirable person. A lot of people would say a very "privileged " person. But that comes with a lot of constraints, she did not get to live her life exactly as she wanted, or like any of us would want. She seemed to be a practicing Christian, and to take her role as titular head of the Church of England seriously. On her 21st birthday she promised to serve her country as long as she lived, and I think she kept the promise.
ReplyDeleteOne reason I wanted to watch the funeral was for the music. I imagine they were putting forth their best effort. Jim, what did you think of the music?
Re: the music: I was working in another room. I heard some music floating in, and thought my wife must have turned on classical music while she was working. As I was busy focused on other stuff, I didn't really attend to the music, but it sounded pretty pleasant. At one point I walked into the room where the television was on, and they were just finishing singing a hymn (I didn't catch which one). I'm always impressed by how well the Royals sing. I would like to check out the musical bits.
DeleteI also heard a few words from the archbishop, but they sounded more correct-to-the-occasion than stirring. But I only heard a few words. And I doubt he was aiming for stirring.
After dinner tonight, we watched the last 45 or so minutes, as she was transported to the chapel in Windsor, the final service there and then watched her sink into the floor. Have to say - it's hard to imagine better pomp and ceremony.
Delete"...pomp and ceremony"
Delete"Pageantry" might also be a good word. Pageantry - spectacle - of course, is one of the ways that royals distinguish themselves from the hoi polloi. I am sure there were traditionalists who loved every second of it. I also think that many people's affection for Elizabeth was deep and genuine, so I suppose that all those Beefeaters and Gurkhas and chamberlains and so on who took part yesterday were more than willing to do their parts in the ceremonies.
I respect tradition. But I'm also American. It's fair to ask of yesterday's events, "Pageantry in service to...what, exactly?"
ReplyDeleteShe was given a role and she fulfilled it. I respect that. Thankfully, my job never entailed meeting with Donald Trump. She earned her billions with that encounter.
I'm glad we don't have a monarchy and a nobility. But we still have more or less the same thing, with Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gates, Bezos, Musk. The reduction of inheritance taxes pretty much promotes a new heritable nobility.
I don't feel especially better off than the British.
Pah. She just had to put up with him for a couple of days. We had to live under that crud and his cruddy friends for 4 years. Where's my quadrillion$$?
DeleteCheck's in the mail.
DeleteI guess Japan still has an emperor. I know much less about that office than the British monarchy (and I don't know a good deal about that, either), but my vague impression is, the Emperor occupies a certain "space" in the Japanese notion of national identity, perhaps analogous in some ways to whatever psychological need the British monarchy address for citizens of the UK.
ReplyDeleteHaving a monarch live for a long time can bring a great deal of continuity in the life of a nation. We should be talking today about an Elizabethan age much as we talk about the Victorian age. Except we already had an Elizabethan age. Perhaps historians will refer to this as the commonwealth age, especially since there are signs many of its members may break with having the British monarch as symbolic head of state.
ReplyDeleteI guess being monarch is not a very attractive job, since Edward the VII gave it up for the woman that he loved.
Does Charles as a male monarch have any models to follow? George III was the last long-lived King.
Charles also does have that much time to be king. Does he become a kind of transition King in the hope create for a son a longer monarchy that might be like those of Elizabeth and Victoria?
Does the British monarchy maintain much status if the Commonwealth nations go their separate ways? Will the British monarchy remain if Scotland goes its separate way?
About Scotland, the queen appeared to have an emotional attachment to it. Balmoral is in Scotland, and that is where she spent her last days. It seemed like Balmoral was their home where the royals could let down and be themselves, more so than Buckingham Palace. If Scotland broke off would that still be their summer home? Maybe not.
DeleteMost European monarchs (especially the Netherlands and Denmark) have divested themselves of vast property and income. They certainly didn't beggar themselves in the process, but they are now more subject to the same market vagaries as ordinary rich people.
DeleteI doubt that an independent Scotland would start seizing crown estate lands or private property owned by the Windsors individually. That type of thing tends to destabilize states and their economies. Plus Balmoral employs a lot of locals.
Charles is expected to downsize the role of the extended royal family and possibly the extent of the crown estate lands. But that land is held in a kind of trust for the reigning monarch to use during his or her life. I don't think he can just sell it off. My guess is that it would take parliamentary permission to donate or sell.
Jack, according to Google, Charles is 73. He seems healthy. His mother was 96. His father died shortly before his 100 th birthday - didn’t quite make it. His grandmother Elizabeth lived past 100. So if he has the genes, with the support of the best medical care available, he could be king for 25 years or so, which is a pretty long time. He doesn’t need the Royal wealth from what I’ve read. His personal fortune is estimated to exceed a $ billion. Of course, his personal fortune was built on the inheritance of huge estates etc. that were originally taken from peasants in earlier eras.
DeleteI haven’t watched the funeral. I’m not really big on Royal watching. But we did watch The Crown on Netflix. If I were British I would deeply resent the use of my tax money to support the lifestyles of the royals, especially since whatever grit and character Elizabeth may have possessed does not seem to be present in the rest of the family. Her death does seem to mark the end of an era, and possibly the beginning of the end of the absurdity of continuing to support the British Royal family. Perhaps they will eventually become minor figures as they are in most European nations these days.
Perhaps the British public or at least some great part of it holds on to the monarchy because not to do so would be to admit they are no longer a significant world power. What was Brexit but their version of MAGA. A United Europe IS a world power. And perhaps dumping the monarchy would be their collective entrance into a new mindset.
DeleteIn truth, my own patriotism has become attenuated after witnessing MAGA craziness. I always liked Teilhard's quote: "The time of nations is past. The task that lies before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the earth."
Stanley, I think you are on to something. Elizabeth was devoted to the notion of the Commonwealth, sort of a fictionalized version of the empire. The idea is that the former colonies got so much cultural and economic benefit from the empire that they continued to nurture those ties with the UK and recognize the queen as their head of state.
DeleteBrexit was predicated on Britain having economic ties in the empire-cum-commonwealth, where it could do much better than being bossed around by France and Germany.
But Britain--England, really--has always had an inflated notion of the strength of the commonwealth. William and Kate bombed in the Caribbean. Harry and Meghan have sold themselves as tabloid fodder. Charles is unpopular everywhere, especially when he brings Camilla, who always looks like she's looking for a place to have a cigarette. Andrew is all but a convicted sex criminal. Edward is a bumbler with a long string of failed arts projects. Princess Anne works hard, but she is blunt and uncharismatic.
Buckingham Palace has an impressive PR machine, but I'm not sure even it can hide the dimwittery of the current Windsor family.
If the commonwealth erodes, does the justification for Brexit go with it?
The EU certainly is a large economic market and producer. Brexit was, in large part, a bet that Britain would still be able to trade with EU member countries. How that is working out, I am not certain. The EU leadership certainly seems capable of cutting off its nose to spite its face.
DeleteIn terms of military power, Britain still is a member of NATO - and a nuclear power in its own right.
I believe, when Britain went to war against the Axis powers in WWII, the Commonwealth countries did the same. But as I understand it, there was no military alliance that mandated that - or at least there isn't today.
I learned, on the day of the queen's death, that Australia is actively considering exiting the Commonwealth. Whether that would have any practical significance, I am not sure.
I am watching House of the Dragon (prequel to Game of Thrones) on HBO, and I thought it would be interesting to read something from the real-life history that seems to have partially inspired it. I just finished The White Ship by Charles Spencer, which covers the reign of Henry I (son of William the Conqueror) and the period (the Anarchy) that followed his death. What I came away with was a horror of monarchy and especially the "divine right of kings." Of course it's a difficult question to what extent we should judge the past by the standards of today. But to those who are aghast at the violence and cruelty of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, don't blame it on George R. R. Martin. If anything, in his history-inspired fantasies, he is toning things down. Blinding, cutting off hands and feet, and castration were punishments a ruler was expected to mete out if he or she was not to be seen as weak.
ReplyDeleteI have no strong feelings against Queen Elizabeth II, and to a certain extent I buy the common viewpoint that she was a hard worker who carried out her duties in an exemplary manner. But I'm not sure that an institution with such a horrific past should be perpetuated even in a benign form.
Well, I watched it. I was expecting the funeral to be more like our Mass of Christian Burial, but it really wasn't. It wasn't a Mass at all, more a liturgy of the Word. The Scripture passages were familiar ones that we often hear at funerals, though. They didn't use incense, maybe they never do.
ReplyDeleteWhen the coffin was being transported on a gun carriage, it reminded me of John Kennedy's funeral, which we watched on tv when I was twelve. I'm sure the military guys who were carrying the coffin (British style, up on their shoulders) were glad when it was over. I read that the coffin was lined with lead, which had to make it plenty heavy.
The Queen was Broad Church, which is a style that is simpler, more Protestant, hence the lack of incense.
DeleteReasons there was no Eucharist: The royal family generalky takes cimmunion in private. Also, many non Christian or Catholic heads of state not allowed to take communion makes a Eucharist underscore possible point of division. And giving everyone communion would have taken forever.
There were some nice hymns. Two I hadn't heard before, The Day Thou Gavest, and an unfamiliar setting of The Lord is my Shepherd. I did recognize Christ is Made the Sure Foundation, to the tune of Westminster.. I was hoping they would sing Jerusalem, but maybe that's not an appropriate funeral hymn.
DeleteOh and I forgot Love Divine, All Loves Excelling sung to Blaenwern. I like that tune better than the usual Hyfrydol.
DeleteHere is "The Lord is My Shepherd". I think I am going to have to exclude the Queen Consort from my praise for how well the royals sing!
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY1LdA4Em-A
Katherine, could you imagine being the organist for that service? With organists all over the world judging you? :-)
LOL, Jim, stress city!
DeleteCamilla looked like I probably look when I go to Mass with my younger son and family. Their parish goes in for very highly caffeinated music. And I usually haven't a clue!
DeleteSome interesting stuff here on problems that come with monarchies.
ReplyDeletehttps://broadstreet.blog/2021/04/05/the-rise-of-the-stationary-bandit/
Betty and I watched the whole thing late yesterday afternoon into evening. Betty, of course, is an Elisabeth with an “S” Her mother was carrying her at the same time that Elizabeth was carrying Charles, so Betty has followed the royal family over the years.
ReplyDeleteBetty is Welsh with the surname of Morgan. There is a Morgan family castle in Wales which Betty and her family visited. On the wall is a portrait of a Morgan that looks exactly like Betty. During their tour of London, Betty’s mother had to be hospitalized. Her mother was treated like royalty. The staff called her princess. Later when they came home, they received a letter saying all her bills had been paid by the Queen.
Today is the birthday of Betty’s daughter. So yesterday was a day for Betty to remember her own mother and be empathetic to the Queen and her family.
The British are great about royal pomp and circumstance. I read somewhere that began with Victoria. Before the Empire there really was not much pomp and circumstance.
I was impressed by the internment where the royal crown, orb and scepter were taken from the Queen’s casket and placed on the altar with a proclamation of all her titles. Kind of a royal version of “you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
The British do parades and processions really well. It was a good way to end an era. And "God Save the King" is a good way to hope for a bright future, though I have my doubts.
I liked the part where the crown and scepter were placed on the altar, too. I wonder if Charles will have the same crown, or if every monarch has a different one. It sounds like the coronation is ten days after the funeral. That will be impressive to watch, also.
DeleteWelsh here, too. Charles addressed the Senedd with a few Welsh words last week, and, of course, surprised people when he gave his investiture speech in Welsh decades ago.
DeleteMy family's motto is "Duw a ddarpar ir brain," God provides even for the ravens. Fitting given the reprobate Hugheses!
The music at the prayer service for the Queen in Llandaff Cathedral sounded very good from the news clips I saw. Sounds like they were pounding out "Jerusalem" and "Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah." Two hymns I deeply miss cuz the Catholics never sing them. I didn't watch it, but the whole thing is here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FA6iVNGfZcg&feature=emb_imp_woyt
The TV news people said the coronation would likely be a stripped down deal next spring/summer.
After googling names, I learned that my maternal grandfather’s name, Walsh, is one of the ten most common names in Ireland. I knew it was pretty common. But I have also learned that it was originally a name used to refer to immigrants to Ireland from Wales about a thousand years ago, a corruption of a reference to a Welsh-man. The red hair in some Irish families allegedly came from the Viking conquerors (my tall Irish grandfather was known as Big Red. My mom was also a redhead). The “black” Irish - very fair skin, very dark hair, very, very blue eyes- supposedly reflect the washing ashore of survivors of sunken Spanish ships off the Irish coast. . One of my sons has that coloring. When he was about 18 months I was holding him up to watch boats during a ferry crossing. A Catholic priest walked by, and in a strong brogue said “I haven’t seen a child who looks this Irish since I left home”. On the Walsh side, I might have a bit of Welsh DNA too. Both Hughes and Morgan are among the ten most common names in Wales. My other Irish family names range from somewhat common to fairly rare. Every now and then I get inspired to research the ancestry stuff, usually finding information that some very distant cousin that I’ve never heard of has dug up and dutifully uploaded to the internet. I don’t pay, but it’s possible to dig up a lot of information for free. I have found information on my German side too. A little bit easier because my father’s family name is extremely rare, in the US and in Germany. I’m at least distantly related to almost every person in the US and Germany with that name. In the US, almost everyone with German heritage with the name is a descendant of my grandfather or one of his brothers, who all came here at the same time in the 1870s. The Irish side ancestors came in the 1840s, before the potato famine.
DeleteWell, since I’m 100% Irish on the maternal side, and my great grandparents were essentially driven from Ireland by the English in order to survive. I don’t have any particular ancestral fondness for the Brits. No castles as far as I know. My mother’s maiden name is very common in Ireland. Some people with that name were Irish aristocracy and some were peasants. I suspect my own ancestors were of the latter class. ;)
ReplyDeleteThe English basically stole the land from Catholic farmers, giving it to the English. The only way the Irish could hold onto their land was to convert. Some had their firstborn sons baptized Church of Ireland instead of Catholic to keep the land in the family. The rest were baptized Catholic, to be supported by the C of Ireland brother. It was against the law to teach Catholics how to read and write, punishable at times by death. Some priests ran secret schools in the villages but that was a huge risk, so most catholic children of that era were not educated in schools. If lucky, a parent or grandparents had enough time to teach them at home. But when a couple of my Irish ancestors arrived here as children they were illiterate. They learned to read and write in this country, including my maternal great grandfather. When he grew up, a successful farmer and businessman near Corning NY, he fathered a big family that prospered here. One son was a priest who taught at St Bonaventure’s. One son became a medical doctor. A daughter became a nun, and two became teachers. One daughter was a librarian. My own grandfather was a civil engineer. My grandfather sent his 3 sons to St. Bonaventures and his daughter, my mother, to UCLA in the late 1920s, a time when few fathers thought to send girls to college. Obviously my family history would not have been the same had they remained in Queen Victoria’s empire. My Jamaican daughter in law’s African ancestors were sold to English and Scottish landowners by English slave traders. Her DNA test shows Scottish ancestry as well as NigerIan. Jamaica was seriously considering leaving the Commonwealth before the Queen died, so I imagine that will happen at some point fairly soon.
My husband's Irish ancestors came from County Sligo in the 1850s. They were poor and probably illiterate, and I'm pretty sure were fleeing the potato famine. Which was due to a fungus, but the British mismanaged the crisis and made it a lot worse than it had to be. None of the Irish descendants got rich in the US, but they lived, which they probably wouldn't have if they had stayed in Ireland.
DeleteThere was family lore on my father's side as to where his Irish ancestors came from (his mom was - allegedly - of 100% Irish descent; his dad, whose surname now is mine, was from Flanders). I forget which county in Ireland that lore claimed the family came from.
DeleteMy sister, who is a genealogy maven, has been tracing back that branch of the family tree. It's a good deal more complex than the family lore acknowledged (or, probably, knew). We actually have more ancestors on that branch who are from England than Ireland. I imagine there a good deal of back-and-forth between the two islands a couple of hundred years ago, so its possible the English branches had Irish origins, but I'm sure that's a complicated story, too, given the human proclivity for intermarriage across tribes, nationalities, etc. There are definitely surnames in that tree that don't sound Irish.
The genealogy program my sister uses (Ancestry.com, I think) will take the results of genetic tests like 23andMe, and use the genetic analysis to try to pinpoint where the ancestors hail from. The greater the number of living relatives who submit their genetic test results, the more accurate the geographic-origins analysis becomes - or that is the premise, anyway. Thus, the program won't just say "Your family is from Ireland"; it will say, "You're from this group of villages along the southwest coast of Ireland".
I am sure there is something genuinely scientific about the analysis, but color me skeptical that it's as precise as the results would imply. Humans don't stay in one place. They marry and move, they emigrate for greater economic opportunity, they flee natural disasters and wars, they migrate because of drought and famine, they are enslaved and borne far away, etc.
My sister has pleaded with me to take a genetic test and submit the results. I've resisted, primarily because of a libertarian streak (I don't want my genetic profile to be available to law enforcement, not because I've done anything particularly criminal, but because I think my genetics are none of the government's damn business.) I told her that plenty of other family members have taken the test and submitted the results, so we have a pretty good sample of the family genetics out there already for her genealogy purposes. But she responded that each family member has a different mix of ancestral traits, and mine could bring out new insights. I continue to think about it.
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DeleteI'd encourage people to research what the genetic tests reveal. 23 and Me supposedly gives you risk factors for various diseases. Making medical decisions based on this info could be dicey. Ancestry just gives you the ethnic background up to something like 500 years ago.
DeleteI also don't want my genetic info out there. Businesses could get hold of it and eventually use it to screen my kid or other blood relatives out of work or health insurance due to genetic proclivities. Less nervous about the gummint, but if I had non-European genes, I would be worried when Trump gets reelected.
Plus I have a long-lost cousin from one of my grandfather's many liaisons who is a Wiccan psychotherapist. I don't think she knows I exist, and I really don't need more nutty relatives finding me thru Ancestry. The ones I have are sufficient to shave years off my life.
Jean, your concerns are cogent. I'm an orphan now, no siblings, no children. I've tested with Ancestry and 23 & me. Given my posts on the internet, I'm on their lists anyway. Come and git me, suckers, if you want a dose of Neanderthal.
DeleteHee. Raber's mother claimed she was half Italian, through her father's family, which had a last name ending in "i".
DeleteResearch indicates she was 100 percent German.
I'm idly curious about it, but The Boy gets such a kick out of telling people how he "used to be Italian" that I hate to spoil it!
Yeah, names aren't always good indicators of nationality.
DeleteRomano Guardini, the 20th century theologian, was born in Italy, and surely had an Italian name, but his family relocated to Germany when he was very young, and as I understand it, he always considered himself German.
As an occasional tennis fan, I'm aware that Caroline Wozniacki is Danish, Stan Wawrinka is Swiss, Emma Raducanu is British and Milos Raonic is Canadian. Maybe there are stories of EU open borders, colonization and immigration behind those names.
That raises an interesting conundrum about ethnic vs cultural identity. My mother identified as Irish, despite the fact that her mother was Scots Irish and Dutch. Her mother identified as Dutch because the old folks at home spoke it.
DeleteI love the stories I uncovered about people in my family, but I'm not sure I "feel" anything but Midwest American, which was hammered home in my younger years when I was able to travel abroad. You can have ancestors from a place, but doesn't mean it's gonna be old home week.
I will also say I felt more like a foreigner in Georgia and Texas than Canada or Scotland.
Since we all had two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, that means that about 200 years ago ten generations we all had 1024 ancestors, and 400 years ago at 20 generations we all have 1,048,576 ancestors in that generation, etc.
DeleteOf course, there was intermarriage of distant cousins because most people did not travel that far. Still, some did. There was a lot of migration, trade, wars, etc. So, we all probably have some unusual ancestors somewhere back there whose genes may or may not have gotten washed out in the flood of distant cousin marriages in between.
One of my nephews spent a semester in Denmark when he was in college and looked up some relatives while he was there. By now they were second and third cousins. He said about one out of every seven Danes have the surname Nielsen, which he also has. So it's not exactly unique, and it doesn't mean people sharing that name are related. Danes only started having fixed surnames some time in the 19th century. Before that their surname just meant "son of" whatever their father's name was.
DeleteThe Catholic side of my family, through my paternal grandmother, came from France, Alsace-Lorraine actually.
Mom's side were Scots Irish, fleeing Ireland in the hard times of the 1850s. It was said that they originally came from the Isle of Skye
Stanley, I agree with what you say. And I really like the Teilhard quote! I agree that Brexit was a last attempt to hold on to the glory of the British empire. There was a big generational divide, with the college educated young adults wanting to stay in the EU, while their parents voted for Brexit. There was also a demographic divide, with most of the working class voting for Brexit. Some of them were surprised to learn that their towns would lose the EU subsidies that were keeping them afloat. The economy there is not doing well, so the next election may see a return to the Labor party if the new PMs govt doesn’t deliver.
ReplyDeleteWe’ve traveled a lot to European countries as I’ve mentioned a few times ;), but the country we’ve visited the most often is England, starting in the 70s when my husband traveled there for business several times/ year. We’ve been there together many times, maybe 15 or 20 trips together, and he has been even more often, because he sometimes went alone. It’s a beautiful country and we loved visiting there. We made friends more than 40 years ago with a couple when my husband worked with a Royal Navy officer who was his counterpart on the British side of a Joint DoD project. His wife was the daughter of a Royal Navy officer who fought in WWI. She was also a very devout Anglican who devoted her life to the church. My husband was a civilian, but he provided the same project support to the American Admiral on this joint project as our RN did for the English Admiral. Our friends were pro- Brexit, but their four adult children supported Remain - in the EU. Our friends, the parents, never gave up on their belief in England’s superiority among the world’s nations, nor in the glorious British empire. She died last summer at 89. He is 93 and going strong. They lived the quintessential English country life in a Grade II registered building, now a house, in Devon, near a small, picture perfect village in Dartmoor. The house was stone, and had been converted from a barn. The views were postcard beautiful. They hadn’t known that I was raised Catholic, with Irish and German heritage, until our last visit with them 5 years ago. The shock, especially his, could be seen in their faces. They quickly recovered and were as friendly and hospitable as always. It was an interesting moment, however.
"I agree that Brexit was a last attempt to hold on to the glory of the British empire. "
DeleteCould be. I read it as an assertion of British identity. That could certainly come at an economic cost. Some people are willing to pay that price for autonomy. Many in Scotland would like to be independent of the UK for similar reasons, even if there is an economic cost. The longing for identity and autonomy is very human.
I love the differences and uniqueness of the various peoples of the world. How can we unite in work for humanity without wiping out the diversity? Giving up the need to dominate might be a start. It would be wonderful if we could give up the US need to dominate and control, opening up the possibility of a United States of North America. I increasingly see Spanish-speaking people as ordinary brothers and sisters.
DeleteJim, while the desire for autonomy probably plays some part in the push for Brexit, in our conversations in England with many people, ranging from our Royal Navy friends to pub owners, to parents of our son’s friends in England when he was a grad student there. it seems that the Brits, especially the older folk, are very reluctant to give up their self- image of being the greatest empire the world has ever known. Our son did his graduate work in England and lived there for two years. That’s where he met his European wife and his Australian business partner, who were also grad students, along with English students of course. Their English friends from grad school believed that being part of the EU had far more benefits than negatives. Unlike their parents and grandparents, they have no memory of England before WWII, which is when the decline in English dominance accelerated, and the dominance of the US began growing. They understood the economic benefits to the UK as far outweighing the disadvantages. They loved their freedom - they could not only travel with open borders between countries, they had the freedom to work or go to school anywhere in the EU just as they had in the UK. No need to obtain work or residency visas and they automatically qualified for all EU countries’ health plans too. They saw themselves as not only British, but Europeans. They didn’t see being part of Europe as destroying their national identity but as an enhancement to it.
DeleteSo - generational differences may eventually propel England back into the EU. Scotland may very well vote for independence the next time because losing membership in the EU has hurt their economy and in order to have more autonomy they will probably need to breakaway from the UK so that they can rejoin the EU. Northern Ireland might end up forging an alliance with Scotland, especially since Johnson threatened not to honor the critical agreement he had negotiated with the EU meant to ease trade barrier problems that are now being caused due to Brexit. He had called this a great victory. But once Brexit was done, he announced he wanted to trash it. I don’t know what the new PM plans.
Apparently even the Welsh are now giving serious consideration to separation from the UK. They are an interesting case to me. They have been more loyal than Scotland, which voted Remain, by a huge majority. Wales voted Leave. But as soon as you cross the bridge over the Severn River into Wales and drive around a bit it’s very easy to see that they are far less prosperous than the towns and villages one sees driving around England. Perhaps they depend on England too much for subsidies to risk independence. We stayed with friends in Wales several years ago, before Brexit was proposed, and we were surprised by the differences in the apparent prosperity there.
Northern Ireland is in a really awkward spot because of the history of violence between them and the Republic of Ireland. They don’t want to become part of Catholic Ireland, but they also desperately need open borders with them. They don’t want a renewal of violence and look to England for security forces to remain in Northern Ireland. They are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
As far as national identity is concerned, few are as wedded to their identity as the French. But France and most of its citizens well understand the benefits that EU membership provides. There are complaints of course depending on the industry, but most problems can be ameliorated in Brussels, and most aren’t interested in throwing out the baby with the bathwater. At least not so far. The French grumble about everything and the EU is no exception.
For the liturgical music buffs - Michael Sean Winters provided this link
ReplyDeletehttps://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/westminster-abbey-choir-organs-music-history/
Thanks Anne. That's interesting!
DeleteTrump is claiming that if he would have gone, he would have gotten a better seat than Biden.
ReplyDeleteThe protocol about the seating is interesting: after the royal family came monarchs, then heads of Commonwealth nations, then other nations. Seems like a very Victorian view of the world.
I suppose if he had been re-elected Trump would have claimed that he should belong among the monarchs.
I read th at trump is disgruntled about not being invited to the funeral at all. No reserved seat in the cathedral for him.
ReplyDeleteI read that only current heads of state were invited because of seating capacity. The Obamas weren't invited either. It isn't always about Trump (though he thinks it is).
DeleteThat makes sense, Katherine. After all there are five living former American presidents now. If they invited every former head of state who is still alive it could get pretty crowded even in a huge cathedral!
DeleteIf it makes Trump feel better: I'd go to his funeral.
ReplyDelete:)
DeleteMy movie club was talking about this short documentary about Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice of Greece, as a coda to recent royal hooplah: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rwIpxNHVHpk
ReplyDeleteAlice's mother and husband locked her in an insane asylum in her 40s for excessive religious fervor. Sigmund Freud himself ordered her ovaries bombarded with xrays to hasten menopause to drive out the crazy.
But she was a remarkable, active, and decent woman with sincere religious impulses. She set up hospitals, soup kitchens, worked as a nurse, gave, and hid a family of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Greece.
Thought folks her might also be interested.
Thanks for this. What a wonderful, sad, paradoxical life. Truly a fool for Christ.
DeleteI really enjoyed learning about her, too!
DeleteAlice was a remarkable person. The Crown, on Netflix, dramatized quite a bit of her story. I think they did a good job. She is recognized by the Jews at Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations Since she was Orthodox, not Catholic, will she ever be recognized as a Saint? Do the Orthodox canonize saints too?
DeleteAnne, in that case, I may watch some of The Crown just to see her story dramatized.
DeleteAlice, in real life, was considered something of an embarrassment by Elizabeth's family. But Philip seems to have been very fond of her. He wanted her to attend official functions, and he made no apologies for her appearance. He spent 20 years arranging to have her buried in Jerusalem as she wished, and he seemed genuinely moved when he was informed that Alice had hidden the Cohen family in her own hone during the Nazi occupation of Greece. There is a nice picture of him planting a tree for her to mark her status as a righteous gentile. A form of sainthood, no?
DeleteI saw the dramatization, which is fictionalized of course. Thanks for the link to the documentary which I will watch soon.
DeleteI hope you will like it. She was what I would call a transcendent soul!
DeleteStanley, Alice is in series 3 I think.But you might want to watch the first two series for background. We enjoyed The Crown, but not everyone would I suppose. The last series is filming now. They stopped filming for now, probably because it wasn’t seemly during the funeral period, but probably also for the writers to have time to incorporate Elizabeth’s death into this last series.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the guidance, Anne.
DeleteI haven't watched The Crown. What I am reading is that it is considered fiction. I actually kind of like some historical fiction. Such as during the Elizabethan period. I mean Elizabeth I, not II. Authors can fill in the missing blanks with artistic license because a lot of things we don't really know about the somewhat distant past. Unlike the period that is in living memory, and some of which we are still living through. About which plenty is known, and could be a biography or documentary. I guess what I am saying is that I don't get how they can make historical fiction out of present or recent events and people.
DeleteA fellow Jesuit novice once said that "all history is just gossip." I might add that "all journalism is just gossip." That has a lot of truth to it since most historians and most journalists rely on the narratives that people have of what was going on at the time. Some historians and journalists now use written materials or archeological data that questions the gossip both at the time and/or subsequent to the events.
DeleteGreenleaf in Servant Leadership has a profound insight into what is really going on:
The prescient person has a sort of moving average mentally…in which past, present, and future are one, bracketed together and moving along as the clock ticks.
And this requires living by a sort of rhythm that encourages a high level of intuitive insight about the whole gamut of events from the indefinite past through the present moment to the indefinite future.
One is at once, in every moment of time, historian, contemporary analyst and prophet –not three separate roles. This is what the practicing leader is, every day of his or her life.”
“Foresight is the ‘lead’ that the leader has. Once leaders lose this lead and events start to force their hand, they are leaders in name only.
Katherine, when I read historical fiction, or watch a dramatization like The Crown, I fact-check as I go, because my iPad is my constant companion. My work life required constant fact-checking of data, statistical analyses, etc, , using original sources as much as possible. I’ve been fact-checking forever. I have never been terribly interested in British royalty, and my knowledge of their history is very shallow. I have forgotten most of what I once learned in history classes in school. In the last couple of years we watched two dramatizations of the British monarchy - The Crown on Netflix, and Victoria on PBS. Both were enjoyable for us. There is so little to atch on TV that interests us.we watch PBS mostly, because the dramas are a bit higher quality than other outlets, and they have lots of science, nature, music, and historical documentaries, as well as fictionalized history like Victoria ad Atlantic Crossing, which highlighted a part of WWII history that we had never been aware of- and my husband is a history buff, unlike me. In fact-checking as we watch ( often real time or right after an episode) I have found that the events shown are usually real. However, the dialogue, especially conversations between only two people, are fictional, unless they are based on diaries or letters. So very often the dialogue is based on gossip. The royals have little privacy. They are raised in a strange world where there are always servants and staff around them, literally waiting on them hand and foot. But the servants and other staff have eyes and ears. They are often looked at as part of the furniture and they observe what is being said and done. Some later sell their stories, and there is no way to really know how much has been embellished to make a good story. Some gossip is repeated by multiple sources who witnessed events, so may be more reliable. Scripture scholars do this too, especially in the NT, when they study the different gospels looking for differences and similarities to try to determine which to accept as “ truth” and which may be less reliable.
DeleteI had never heard the story of Princess Alice before watching The Crown, and I found it fascinating. A truly amazing story about a woman who was genuinely converted to following Jesus, the gospels, rejecting wealth and privilege. Learning about her was the best part of the series. But the series also highlights how sad and empty the lives of the royals can be also, even while in a world of unimaginable wealth and privilege, with a sense of entitlement at times that is appalling.
I watched the episode about the Aberfan coal tip disaster. I thought it was sad that they made it all about the queen's constipated sense of empathy and less about the way that Philip (and Tony Jones, Margaret's husband) did show up to indirectly shine a light on the sins of the National Coal Board and its criminal safety lapses.
DeleteHere is some background on the episode and incident: https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/aberfan-disaster-the-crown-season-3.html
Yes, the aftermath of that tragedy was only touched on. I read a news brief this week about the town’s reaction to Elizabeth’s death. While several who were interviewed are anti- monarchy, they also said that after Elizabeth’s initial lack of empathy and failure to visit the town, she made up for it a bit in later years, returning there for three more visits. The article noted that four visits from the sovereign to a town that size was unprecedented, so most of the citizens had forgiven her, and joined those mourning her death.
DeleteI don't know that Elizabeth's failure to go to Aberfan was a lack of empathy. The Crown writers dreamed that up.
DeleteWe really know nothing about her thought process other than the stated palace position that she didn't want a royal visit to become a nuisance. Recovery workers were digging kids' bodies out of the muck from Oct 21 to Oct 28 of 1966.
The fact that she went back several times over the years ensured that the environmental and safety problems around coal mines remained in the public eye.
Whether those visits were her idea or orchestrations of the palace PR machine, we will never know unless her diaries are published.
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Delete
DeleteHow do you know the writers dreamed it up? Did they also dream up her reaction to Diana’s death? Nobody outside of her inner circle really knows.
I haven’t paid her much attention over the years, so I certainly don’t have ven the slightest clue about what she was really like. But the public persona I that I was at least dimly aware of did not seem to reveal that she was a woman of empathy or warmth. Of course, she was raised to hide her true feelings and beliefs. There are no really comparable personalities in the US, but anyone can form an opinion based on public appearances, even though they might be highly manipulated. So, based on public appearances only, I would describe Michelle Obama as having a warmer, more empathetic character than Melanie Trump. At least that’s what comes across. It might not be real, but the fact that she at least wants to be perceived that way tells us something. As do Melania’s choices of how she handles public appearances. We will all form opinions about those in the public eye, but we really have no idea how accurate they might be.
Jack, Greenleaf’s observation is very interesting. I guess his focus is on leadership. But not very one is a leader in a proactive way. Chaos would be the result if everyone tried to be the leader. I don’t think that being able to process past, present and future as part of a moving continuum is limited to the leaders alone. In fact, the leaders may mis- intuit events at times because of their focus on leading- which implies influencing others to follow their intuition when perhaps the intuitions of some of those who are watchers, and thinkers, not concerned with being the leader, should be heeded by the leader. Sadly, many leaders fail to listen to others. When a tragedy or scandal results, whether major or minor, how often do the leaders then resort to the passive in explaining what happened? They don’t say “I messed up”, they say “Mistakes were made”.
ReplyDeleteI do think that the Jesuit was right about all history being gossip. Maybe not all - there are facts that are recorded and documented - but most of the “behind the scenes” reporting is based on gossip. Much of the Bible, including the gospels, is based on “ oral tradition”, which often comes down to gossip or hearsay.
We have skepticism about the oral tradition because we live in a time of "alternate facts" and outright lies.
ReplyDeleteIn cultures that relied on the oral record, what people said and passed down was considered important. The oral record kept society stable, and lying was viewed as a much more heinous thing.
When I lived in the UP, the Native fishing rights case was largely determined on the Chippewa understanding of what was in the treaty of the 1830s. The oral tradition of elders from several tribes was admitted in court as evidence for the right of Native people to fish in perpetuity.