Navy Hymn

Eternal Father

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

O Christ! Whose voice the waters heard
And hushed their raging at Thy word,
Who walked'st on the foaming deep,
And calm amidst its rage didst sleep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
And bid its angry tumult cease,
And give, for wild confusion, peace;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

O Trinity of love and power!
Our brethren shield in danger's hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoe'er they go;
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

William Whiting (1825 - 1878)

---

Initially composed as a poem by William Whiting a teacher from Winchester, England, for a student who was about to travel by water for the United States. Eternal Father is also officially known as the Navy Hymn and the lyrics are an endorsement of the Nicene Creed. Certainly the writer does not try to argue the various cases of the Arians, Donatists, Macedonians and so on, but the principles of the Council of Nice are inherent in the structure of the poem. The melody was composed by fellow Englishman, the Reverend John Bacchus Dykes an Episcopalian clergyman was published in 1861.

Eternal Father was the favorite hymn of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and was sung at his funeral in Hyde Park, New York, in April 1945. The Navy Band also played it in 1963 as President John F. Kennedy's body was carried up the steps of the U.S. Capitol to lie in state. Roosevelt had served as Secretary of the Navy and Kennedy was a PT Boat Commander in World War II.

With its special appeal to seafaring men it has been sung on ships of the Royal Navy of the British Commonwealth and has been translated into French and as a result in more recent years, has become a part of French naval tradition.It might interest you to know that the first verse of Eternal Father has been customarily sung at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland as the musical benediction to conclude each Sunday's Divine Services since 1879.

Intercession for those at Sea

More commonly known as the "Navy hymn" because it is sung by several branches of navies around the world, today it honors the men and women in all branches of the Armed Forces including astronauts that have given their lives in the service of their country. In its article Eternal Father Strong to Save, the Library of Congress says that:

Reverend Whiting's ode "Eternal Father" drew inspiration from both the Old and New Testaments. His verses referenced familiar texts such as Matthew 8:26 ("He was asleep... Then he rose and rebuked the seas, and there was a great calm") and Psalm 65, ("who stilled the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the turmoil of the nations"). Whiting also cited as an impetus to the work his survival during a ferocious Mediterranean storm.

Rev. Dykes is also known for the composition of such popular hymns as Nearer, My God, to Thee and Lead, Kindly Light. Dykes based the tune for Eternal Father on an earlier tune he had written entitled Melita (the ancient name for the Mediterranean island of Malta). Malta is associated with the biblical shipwreck of the Apostle Paul (Acts 28:1).

In 1879, Lieutenant Commander Charles Jackson Train (later a Rear Admiral), then director of the Midshipmen's Choir, instituted the practice of singing the first verse of Eternal Father at the conclusion of the U.S. Naval Academy's Sunday Services. Because of this practice Eternal Father came to be called The Navy Hymn, became an integral part of Navy tradition, and gained increasing popularity among U.S. Navy personnel.

Other names that it goes by are the Royal Navy Hymn or the United States Navy Hymn, Eternal Father and sometimes by the last line of its first verse, For those in peril on the sea

Additionally the opening verse refers to is God's forbidding the waters to submerge the earth as portrayed in Psalm 104. The third stanza is an allusion the Holy Spirit role in the creation of the earth in the Book of Genesis, while the last verse is adds a reference to Psalm 107.

The words have been changed several times since the original hymn by the Reverend Whiting was first published." The Protestant Episcopal version "Wikipedia notes that, " In 1940, the Protestant Episcopal Church altered three verses of the hymn to include travel on the land in the second verse (referencing Psalm 50) and in the air in the third verse (again referencing Genesis). The 1982 Hymnal, which is in current use by most Episcopal congregations in the USA, has further revised this version (as Hymn #579) with opening line "Almighty Father, strong to save..." by adding the word "space" to the final verse, so it ends "...praise from space, air, land, and sea" (because by 1982 space travel was a reality); this 1982 Hymnal also has a more traditional water-only version (as Hymn #608) with opening line "Eternal Father, strong to save..."

Strong as a lion, pure as a dove. -Christina Rossetti

There are now many different verses to plea for God's protection for persons in different circumstances, including explorers and astronauts. Other texts from a publication of the Bureau of Naval Personnel includes additional verses like:

Eternal Father, grant, we pray
To all Marines, both night and day,
The courage, honor, strength, and skill
Their land to serve, thy law fulfill;
Be thou the shield forevermore
From every peril to the Corps.

--J.E. Seim, 1966

O God, protect the women who,
in service, faith in thee renew;
O guide devoted hands of skill
And bless their work within thy will;
Inspire their lives that they may be
Examples fair on land and sea.

-- Lines 1-4, Merle E. Strickland, 1972,
and adapted by James D. Shannon, 1973.
Lines 5-6, Beatrice M. Truitt, 1948

Eternal Father, King of birth,
Who didst create the heaven and earth,
And bid the planets and the sun
Their own appointed orbits run;
O hear us when we seek they grace
For those who soar through outer space.

--J.E. Volonte, 1961

There are a number of movies and television shows that have made use of the familiar tune. Most of them naturally deal with the US Navy like Crimson Tide and JAG. It has also been used to spotlight Naval Aviation in The Right Stuff and took on a more civilian face for The Perfect Storm The hymn has also been performed by Tennessee Ernie Ford as a unique highlight on his television program produced on a U.S. Naval carrier to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of U.S. naval aviation. More recently it was used in the movie Titanic. A bit of trivia that you may find interesting is that the adaptation sung in the movie is the 1940 Protestant Episcopal version, which hadn't been written yet since the Titanic had sank in eighteen years earlier.

William Whiting's responses to requests from publishers inquiring about paying a copyright fee for the publication of any of his works were usually met with his usual sentiment, "I have always given not sold the right to use that as well as any other of my hymns which have been asked for, and have refused all offers to purchase that or any other right... The only profit I have had is the satisfaction of knowing that I have written anything which has proved of service in Divine Worship." (from Ian Bradley's Abide With Me: The World of Victorian Hymns.) Likewise for Dykes, of whom Bradley explains: "Dykes was happy for his tunes to be used in hymn-books of all denominations and rarely, if ever, asked for payment."

Sources:

Collections . . . Central Texas Sailor
Accessed August 30 2000.

http://olimu.com/Readings/EternalFather.htm
Accessed March 28, 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Father_Strong_to_Save
Accessed March 28, 2006.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq53-1.htm
Accessed March 28, 2006.

http://memory.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200000005/default.html
(Public domain document)
Accessed March 28, 2006.

Lori Arsenault
Accessed August 30 2000.

Picture Source

Public domain text taken from The Poets' Corner
Accessed August 30 2000.

in memory of the young men who perished at sea on the Russian Nuclear Submarine Kursk

Flak

The African sun, like a bloody curious eye, hung on the rim of the world as hundreds of airplane engines coughed into life, spewing miniature dust storms across the flat wastes of a desert airfield.

Thin aluminum skins of C-47s vibrated like drawn snare drums and as paratroopers heaved themselves up into the planes and sought their predesignated seats, they wrinkled their noses at the smell of gasoline and lacquer that flooded the planes' interiors.

Spearheading the airborne invasion of Sicily, the 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry, crossed the North African coast as the sun flared briefly, then plummeted into the Mediterranean. Flak rose thinly into the dusky sky ahead-probably Malta, the paratroopers grimly thought.

Detached from the regiment for tactical requirements, the 3rd Battalion crossed over the Sicilian coast on schedule and jumped on its assigned drop zone, July 9, 1943 - the first Allied troops to land in the invasion that Prime Minister Winston Churchill termed, "not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning".

from a personal tribute to the 504th Parachute Infantry Brigade

Pronounced 'flak this noun is as mentioned above as an acronym for anti-aircraft artillery,also refers to their bursting shells Here is some more information as to what historically motivated the word.

Like blitz, dachshund and dollar, flak is a German loanword first coined in 1938 for Fliegerabwehrkanone as in Flieger+Abwehr+Kanone for "flyer defense gun," or more literally a "pilot-defense-gun." The military meaning was obtained from "anti-aircraft fire" in 1940.

During World War II the British called flak ack-ack or Archie. "Ack" was then the British symbolic enunciation for "a" so "ack-ack" stood for a-a or anti-aircraft. By December 1942 "ack" was replaced by "able" as the symbolic enunciation of "a" in the military system of symbolic letter substitutes.

The Automatic 2 cm Anti-Aircraft Gun was initially used successfully in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 during the battle of Bilabao. Earlier the weapon had been introduced into the German Luftwaffe in 1934 as a replacement for the anti-aircraft machine-gun MG C30. The purpose was to provide a defense against low flying aircrafts. As a German defense system flak units employed more than a million men and women and POW's during the war, were responsible for more than half of all Allied aircraft losses, forced Allied bombers to fly far above high-accuracy altitudes, and permitted Germany to hold out far longer than it might have otherwise. Hitler was obsessed with micromanaging the war. Nearing the target's searchlights, sometimes guided by primitive radar the flak unit would hunt for a plane by attempting to cone it between two different beams of light to as a target for the anti-aircraft guns.

The searchlights were fantastic, they really were. They were worse really than flak because you didn't see that until it actually burst. But to fly towards a target which was literally ringed with cones of searchlights, with the flak going up into where all the beams met at a focal point, and then all the guns round it would concentrate on that area once they got someone in it. It was quite scary.

Flak was intended to explode at the same altitude as the planes, throwing out shards of hot metal that easily tore through the thin skins of the bombers. The 'tail-end Charlie' or rear gunner was exposed to the below freezing night air. Frequently he would knock out a panel from the gun turret to increase the opportunity of spotting German fighters. Crews were acutely aware of their vulnerability in a plane laden with bombs and fuel:

"You had to literally fly through a wall of flak..... often getting chunks of metal come pinging in to the aircraft. And sometimes you could smell the cordite in the aircraft." -Tom Wingham

The war forced many innovations in radar, navigation aids and bomb sites. Some were cleverly successful. The Russian women pilots developed a clever strategy for dealing with German flak traps:

The women of the 588th (Women's Bomber Regiment) also came up with a unique strategy to deal with the German "flak circuses." In an area they controlled or were protecting, the Germans would assemble as many as two dozen 37 mm antiaircraft guns in concentric circles around a target. The gunners would be supported by a searchlight platoon. Many Soviet bomber pilots, true to their unyielding strategy, flew straight in, alit by searchlights and pounded by ring after ring of antiaircraft fire; they seldom made it to the target. After several casualties among the women bomber pilots, the survivors decided to break out of the Soviet strategy mold. The women decided to fly in groups of three instead of two; two would fly headlong toward the target while one held back. When the front two were first hit by the searchlights, they would go into wild evasive action, and the searchlight operators would try to follow them. The third plane would slip in under their cover and deliver her load. The women would later describe the tension of waiting for the searchlight to hit them, how they ignored the sound of flak tearing through the wings and fuselage, and their worry about their friends who had been sent in to draw the Germans' fire. But, in the end, they seemed to shrug the tactic off in a pragmatic military manner. "It worked," they said.

Another tactic to deal with "flak alley" by the British was a raid codenamed Window. Above the skies in Hamburg in July 1943 British planes dropped thousands of strips of aluminum foil.

The German Flak was aimed visually and by radar. In the thirty or so miles to the target we used electronic jamming and dispensed chaff. The chaff looked like the old time X-mas tree tinsel. We used those items to fool their radar, but if it was a clear day they used visual sighting and that negated our counter measures. (Cubbins, William R., The War of the Cottontails, p. 45)

Fluttering down the strips created a mass of reflections on German radar screens making it almost impossible to distinguish the bombers. The Germans developed a better radar system as a result. There were flak traps, flak towers and flak fighting was even taking to sea as U boats escorted flak boats and the resulting flak trawlers who opposed them. By the end of 1944 US Army Air Force fighter planes controlled the skies over Europe. Most of the flak batteries had been neutralized and were retreating from the Russian Armies; withdrawing their guns the Germans used them to strengthen their defenses closer to home.

Flak related phrases used by American airmen from 1943-1945 were, 'flak farm,' the 'flak shack' and a 'flak home,' which led to more terms like, "flak-happy," a person mentally affected by flak. One B-26 nick named Flak Bait, a famous Marauder, endured over 1000 enemy hits during her combat days. Today the un-restored nose section is displayed at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.

The word has been extended to flak jacket, slang for a bullet-proof vest. By 1946, the word "flack" meant a press agent when it was first used by show biz magazine Variety, supposedly from name of Gene Flack, a movie agent. Along with this change in spelling, there seems to be a semantic shift from "flak" as a defensive to an offensive sense leading to the idiom "flak catcher," " a person who takes the heat" or "a slick spokesperson who can turn any criticism to the advantage of their employer." Sometime around 1963 it became an American colloquialism for opposition or heavy criticism. which could lead some to think of a flak catcher as a limited definition of a public relations agent and that reporters could fire "flak at a flack."

Sources:

BBC - History - World War Two - The Air War and British Bomber

Dr. Link Answers your Questions

etymology

Women's History Month Feature

yourdictionary.com

A Burial at Ornans

Represenative of Gustave Courbet's work is A Burial at Ornans which portrays a stark funeral set in a provencial landscape. Courbet has set the scene of the burial of a small child in his home town of Ornans and at first glance it appears to a general depiction. However, Courbet's purpose is to express his feelings that the lower class is just as important as the upper class and deserve attention. This attitude was prevalent in many literary works of the day, in particular the novels of Balzac and Gustave Flaubert.

While an officious vicar reads the Office of the Dead, those present gather in groups around the open grave their faces showing various degrees of emotions. Even though the painting has the monumental scale of a traditional history painting, comtemporary critics were appalled by both the commonplace and the bluntly anti-heroic composition. Arranged in an S-shaped extending across the canvas, groups of mourners are displayed--the somberly clad women at the back right, a half circle of like men at the grave opening, and a variety of clergymen. The viewers focus, however, is wholly on the flat surface of the figures, at eye level, that blocks any view into deep space. (Several figures are indeed potraits of Courbet's friends) In the background are barren cliffs under stretches of overcast skies and the fresh grave opens into the observer's face in the centermost foreground.

Courbet's painting also shows that the Catholic Church is not the most Holy place, but that God exists everywhere. The crucifixion is out in it's proper place on the hiilside in the background, as well as, put into the hand of a small child. This is a deliberate optical illusion by the artist to make it seem like its in two places at once so the viewer can realize the illusion after they have made their own interpretations about its meaning. This angered the Church greatly because the painting had the potential to cause a damaging blow to the foundations of the Church by the intentional interpretation of God being everywhere, not only in the Church. This is most likely the reason Courbet's work was banned because the Catholic Church had originally established the French Academy founded by Cardinal de Richelieu in 1635 as an institution for the study of higher learning.

Some figures are cut off at the edges of the canvas and may be due to Courbet's interest in photography. The narrow and long rectangle of the canvas is effectively panoramic where the viewer's eye cannot take in the whole group at once. Only drab facts of the undramatized life and death --the heroic, the sublime, and the terrible are not found here.

Champfleury writes about A Burial at Ornans

".....it represents a small-town funeral and yet reproduces the funerals of all small towns."

Differing greatly from the superhuman or subhuman actors on the grand stage of the Romantic canvas, this Realist piece moves according to the ordinary rhythms of live and death.

Bibliography

De La Croix, Horst, Richard D. Tansey, and Diane Kirkpatrick.
Art Through the Ages. University of Michigan: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
1991.

Picture Source

Justus. "Art and Culture II." Tucson , Arizona.
1992. (Lecture presented at Pima Community College.)

I'll be your Huckleberry!

What exactly is a huckleberry? And how can you be one? "Huckleberry friend" was used in the Johnny Mercer Oscar winning song Moon River (Holly Golightly sung the song in Breakfast at Tiffany's); it was a bedtime lullaby sung by Dad; so divine to drift off to dreams in a hammock aboard a raft whereWaiting round the bend, my huckleberry friend. And for those of you who might want to know I looked it up. Did you know that there is a real Moon River? It's in Savannah, Georgia.

So is it a fruit, a verb or a dog as in Huckleberry Hound? Could it be a friendship? Well there are seven famous friendships that pop to mind: Achilles and Patroclus, Lewis Carroll and Alice, Robinson Crusoe and Friday, John Smith and Pocahontas, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the Lone Ranger and Tonto , and of course the infamous ragamuffins Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. How I'm your huckleberry. came to be given as a mark of affection or comradeship to one's partner or sidekick, as in the best man for the job. Frequently along with a naming of oneself as a willing helper or assistant, the phrase is on many top ten lists of favorite quotes from Hollywood films, "I'm your huckleberry" Doc Holliday says to Wyatt Earp in Tombstone, filmed here in Tucson by the way! It was the context and in the way he said it that makes the scene such a defining moment.

Most etymologists will own up to the idea that idiomatic phrase could be making a vague allusion to Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn who were close friends in their youth. Xrefer has a nice summary of the story and its impact upon literature:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885); (Mark Twain) give(s) a vivid evocation of Mississippi frontier life, faithfully capturing Southern speech patterns and combining picaresque adventure with moral commentary.The first linguistic break with British tradition was made by Mark Twain's Huck Finn. Previous writers had generally followed the British literary pattern, but Twain used the forms and cadences of the American South in which dialect predominates and proved that North American English could provide its own literary idiom.

" All kings is mostly rapscallions." (Huckleberry Finn)
This classic nineteenth century literature piece was Mark Twain, speaking through the voice of a semi-literate runaway boy, inducing the mythic magnitude of the river and universal truths about mankind. --" There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."-- 'The beauty of Huck Finn', says Perry Miller, 'is that the boy sees all there is to see about human depravity, violence, skullduggery, as well as virtually all which is noble, lovely, self-sacrificing, and that he tells about both without yielding to florid language.' Growing up can sometimes strain friendships and one dictionary defines this quaint Southernism as: "Blueberries found in the woods." It's not too hard to imagine these two blueberries stumbling their way through the berried briar patches known as 'growing up."

It's not really a blueberry, say botanists though it's easy enough to be confused as one. The word huckleberry is first found in American English dating around the year 1670, most likely a variation of hurtilbery or the common name "whortleberry," derived from Old English horte. Bearing edible fruits and related to the blueberry the New World shrubs with glossy black many-seeded berries are from the genus Gaylussacia. These may be eaten raw or cooked as in pies, used in preserves, or used to make wine and spirits.

These small dark colored sweet berries that greeted European settlers arriving in the New World, reminded them of the native English bilberry and other similar fruits. One of them was the hurtleberry, some experts relate that it may have to do with hurt from the bruised color of the berries; this was then corrupted to huckleberry.

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, by J.E. Lighter (Random House, New York, 1997) records a number of descriptions: "1.minuscule amount. 2. a fellow; character; boy. "one's huckleberry," the very person for the job. 3. bad treatment. "the huckleberry" is similar to "the raspberry." 4. a foolish, inept or inconsequential fellow. "

From the first and fourth descriptions meanings it's obvious that the word can have opposite meanings. To understand the meaning comes from how a person uses it in context. Other huckleberry phrases mentioned in sources are: "above one's huckleberry" meaning, " beyond one's abilities' and "huckleberry train," as in a train that stops at every station.

"Huckleberry" was universally used in the 1800's in combination with "persimmon" as a small unit of measure. "I'm a huckleberry over your persimmon" was intended by the speaker to mean, "I'm just a bit better than you." Because huckleberries are small, dark and rather insignificant, in the early part of the nineteenth century the word became a synonym for something humble or minor, or a tiny amount and since a persimmon is so much larger it immediately sets up an image of something tiny against something substantial. Hence a huckleberry over one's persimmon, becomes a phrase indicating just a little bit beyond one's reach or abilities; one instance of this meaning can be found in John S C Abbott's 1874 David Crockett: His Life and Adventures: "This was a hard business on me, for I could just barely write my own name. But to do this, and write the warrants too, was at least a huckleberry over my persimmon".

During this era of American history "huckleberry" came to stand for two idioms. First, it represented a small unit of measure, a tad. Here's one illustration from 1832: "He was within a huckleberry of being smothered to death". Also as it were, someone who was a huckleberry could be a small, unimportant person--usually spoken as irony in teasing self-depreciation that may have led to the more conventional meaning. In the words of the Dictionary of American Slang: Second Supplemented Edition (Crowell, 1975):

"A man; specif., the exact kind of man needed for a particular purpose. 1936: "Well, I'm your huckleberry, Mr. Haney." Tully, "Bruiser," 37. Since 1880, archaic.

By the time Twain heard it bandied about the Deep South "I'm your huckleberry" meant both, "I'm just the man you're looking for!" and something small and unimportant. Mark Twain borrowed characteristics from both of these ideas to create the personality traits in his famous character, Huckleberry Finn establishing that he was a boy "of lower extraction or degree" than Tom Sawyer as he explained to an interviewer in 1895. He runs away and travels down the Mississippi River on a raft with a runaway slave, Jim, as his companion. Escapes from pap on canoe and makes it look like murder. And in true-blue huckleberry fashion Finn dresses up as a girl to gain information from the town then pretends he is "George Jackson" to live with Wilkes family.

By the end of the century Edward Stratemeyer was writing "I will pay you for whatever you do for me. Then I'm your huckleberry. Who are you and what do you want to know?" in his novel True to Himself. The remarkable variety of connotations given the humble "huckleberry" in late 19th century America would certainly have been familiar with what Stratemeyer was saying. By the 1900's the Dictionary of American Regional English defined, "huckleberry" to mean, in addition to, "the desired or suitable person" for a task, but also an all-around nice person or even "sweetheart" because, huckleberries could be special, too, as in the phrase "the only huckleberry on the bush," signifying something unique.

In addition to the measurement connections the meaning of the word took on a variation of the same theme, "a small amount or distance" or even "a negligible thing or person." In fact, Twain himself used the word in this less than flattering sense in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in 1889. Speaking of King Authur's Court one scholar relates: "The phrase has ties to Arthurian lore. A Knight, coming to the service of a damsel would lower his lance and receive a huckleberry garland from the lady (or kingdom) he would be defending. Therefore, "I am your huckleberry" may well have been spoken to the Earps and the statement's meaning may be "I am your champion"."

All of this turn of the century huckleberry madness simply because Early American colonists discovered the native American berry and mistook it for the European blueberry known as the "hurtleberry."

Sources

Gullible Gulls, Huckleberry, Jumbi, Wooden Nickels, Realtors, and Calling a Spade a Spade

I'm Your Huckleberry!

The Macmillan Encyclopedia 2001, © Market House Books Ltd 2000

Online Etymology Dictionary

Twain, Mark, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)) excerpts from chapter 23

World Wide Words

Xrefer

Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff

"Terence, this is stupid stuff:


You eat your victuals fast enough;


There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,



To see the rate you drink your beer.


But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,


It gives a chap the belly-ache.


The cow, the old cow, she is dead;


It sleeps well, the horned head:


We poor lads, 'tis our turn now


To hear such tunes as killed the cow.


Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme


Your friends to death before their time


Moping melancholy mad:


Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."





Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,


There's brisker pipes than poetry.


Say, for what were hop-yards meant,


Or why was Burton built on Trent?


Oh many a peer of England brews



Livelier liquor than the Muse,


And malt does more than Milton can


To justify God's ways to man.


Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink


For fellows whom it hurts to think:


Look into the pewter pot


To see the world as the world's not.


And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:


The mischief is that 'twill not last.


Oh I have been to Ludlow fair


And left my necktie God knows where,


And carried half way home, or near,


Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:


Then the world seemed none so bad,


And I myself a sterling lad;


And down in lovely muck I've lain,


Happy till I woke again.



Then I saw the morning sky:


Heigho, the tale was all a lie;


The world, it was the old world yet,


I was I, my things were wet,


And nothing now remained to do


But begin the game anew.





Therefore, since the world has still


Much good, but much less good than ill,


And while the sun and moon endure


Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,


I'd face it as a wise man would,


And train for ill and not for good.


'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale


Is not so brisk a brew as ale:


Out of a stem that scored the hand


I wrung it in a weary land.



But take it: if the smack is sour


The better for the embittered hour;


It will do good to heart and head


When your soul is in my soul's stead;


And I will friend you, if I may,


In the dark and cloudy day.





There was a king reigned in the East:


There, when kings will sit to feast,


They get their fill before they think


With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.


He gathered all that sprang to birth


From the many-venomed earth;


First a little, thence to more,


He sampled all her killing store;


And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,


Sate the king when healths went round.



They put arsenic in his meat


And stared aghast to watch him eat;


They poured strychnine in his cup


And shook to see him drink it up:


They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:


Them it was their poison hurt.


--I tell the tale that I heard told.


Mithridates, he died old.

March 27th marks two well-known poets' birthdays, A.E. Housman (1859) and Robert Frost (1875). Reading through a few of their poems I came across this one and liked it for several reasons. If you enjoy poetry, and sardonic humor I think you will too. This poem appears in Houseman's first book, A Shropshire Lad the composition date is unknown but was first published in 1896. Professor of Latin at University College in London, Houseman later worked at Cambridge and was concerned with regards to his professional life for the bitter form of humor he sometimes used intending to hurt or wound. There is a glimpse of that present in Terence, This is Stupid Stuff and serves as a good example the undertone of poignancy that is present throughout the book. You may be wondering who Terence is. Houseman intended to originally title A Shropshire Lad as The Poems of Terence Hearsay. So you could say that the Shropshire lad is Terence. "Terence" is a name Housman used in his poetry to refer to himself, and some poet scholars say it may be a subtle reference to the ancient comic playwright Terence as in Publius Terentius Afer.

The verse sidesteps any pretense of self pity and instead employs wry irony and sarcasm as means to convey a message. There is fatalism which usually, but not always, stops short of the maudlin. Beginning with a brief outline of the verses. The first one starts with a complaint by a friend of the poet for the gloominess of his poems, asking him to pipe, or sing, a merrier tune.

In the second stanza the poet responds by ridiculing happy poems and the happiness they create for their own sake. A book could be written on the variety of metaphor and threads, yet it is the liquid imagery that catches and holds attention. Burton-upon-Trent is a city famous for its breweries while Ludlow Fair might be conjured up as being famous for its beer drinking parties. And you might be interested to learn that at the beginning of Paradise Lost, Milton petitions the Heavenly Muse to aid him

"assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.

Milton's central theme considers why God tolerates evil in the world and Houseman's postmodern response is not to think about the problem at all. Houseman's relpy to Milton is:

Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink

Ah yes, there are poets talking among themselves in poetry. Horace, another would say with regards to the relative merits of alcohol and poetry: "No poems can please long, nor live, which are written by water drinkers." and enjoins his friend, "Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think." Terence judges, should his friend desire such false and fleeting joys, to drink beer instead; when you return to the world of reality it will be as bleak as ever.

Explaining further in the third verse the poet to his friend, supports his philosophy with a warning: prepare for the worst that his heart and mind might endure. From the grim wisdom of bleak poems, the poet gleans from his own bitter experience. In the last two lines Housman begins a segue, and the reader will see why in the latter verse, from poets to poetry itself.

Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

By the fourth verse it's become a treat, the payoff is a punctuation with poem within a poem. Mithridates, spelled properly is Mithradates is Housman's reference to The Great King Mithradates VI of Pontus who lived and reigned in Asia Minor for fifty seven years, from 120 to 63 BCE. His story comes from Pliny the Elder's work Natural History, Suetonius has a lively account, as well as, Plutarch. It goes something like this. Being somewhat of a rather large thorn in the side of Rome, Crassus the Triumvir also led an expedition into Asia Minor after Mithradates and was killed. Pompey fought against him too, but it wasn't until Caesar overran Asia Minor, but the old king was dead by then that his sons were subjugated along with his empire. Pliny tells how Mithradates made himself immune to poison by taking small doses every day. In the end, betrayed by his son, Mithradates tried to commit suicide, but could not poison himself, so he ordered a mercenary to kill him.

Other writers join in Housman's lament. In Dorothy L. Sayers' Strange Poison, Lord Peter Wimsey joins forces for the first time with the one true love of his life, Harriet Vane. Harriet is on trial for poisoning her fiance when Wimsey meets her. Not only does Wimsey believe in her innocence, he falls in love with her at first sight. Cleverly he brings home the case for her by using Houseman's poem Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff to deduce the scheme. In fact, the chapter in which he confronts the murderer ends with the same line "Mithridates, he died old."

Sources:

Blair, Bob

Public domain text taken from the Poet's Corner

The Wondering Minstrels

Sumptuary law

At the nucleus sumptuary law regulates personal habits that offend the moral or religious beliefs of the community. The law intends to regulate personal expenditures designed to restrain extravagance, especially in food and dress.

Encyclopedia Britannica comments that sumptuary law had its beginnings from ... Spartan inhabitants of Laconia, for example, were forbidden to attend drinking entertainments and were also forbidden to own a house or furniture that was the work of more elaborate implements than the ax and saw. The possession of gold or silver was also forbidden to the Spartans, their legislation permitting only the use of iron money. A system of sumptuary laws was extensively developed in ancient Rome; a series of laws beginning in 215 BC governed the materials of which garments could be made and the number of guests at entertainments and forbade the consumption of certain foods.

Conquering peoples commonly employed this device to make all the spoils of war theirs by enacting decrees forcing the conquered to forfeit everything over a certain amount. Often it was the church that set limitations on conspicuous consumption, either for the good of its flock's souls or the fattening of its own purse. Sumptuary laws have been enacted in attempts to halt inflation during a time of rapid economic growth, or to keep the newly wealthy merchant class from trying to out dress and outlive the king and his court. By using clothing as a complex system of communication they desired others to be able to read what is communicated with some degree of certainty. These laws, as applied by the English in Ireland, record some of the more interesting aspects of what Irish life was like in the 16th century. The English were quite detailed with descriptions of what was not allowed, which in turn determined what people were doing. Without these details, we would have much less information about period.

Sumptuary laws were passed in England and Europe, from about the mid 1300s, to the mid 1600s, and were devised to control behaviors from the wearing of certain apparel to the consumption of certain foods, beverages, (usually of an alcoholic nature), and other miscellaneous products, to gaming and hunting. These laws also often prescribed what prices could be charged for various consumables, from clothing to food.

The Sumtiaoriae Leges concept is of Greek in origins and refers to the name of various laws passed to prevent inordinate expense (sumtus) in banquets, dress. (Gellius, ii.24, xx.1). In antiquity it was considered the duty of government to put a check upon extravagance in the private expenses of persons, and among the Romans in particular traces of this can be found in the laws attributed to the kings and in the Twelve Tables. The censors, to whom was entrusted the disciplina or cura morum, punished by the nota censoria all persons guilty of what was then regarded as a luxurious mode of living: a great many instances of this kind are recorded (CENSOR, p264, a.] But as the love of luxury greatly increased with the foreign conquests of the Republic and the growing wealth of the nations, various Leges Sumtuariae were passed at different times with the object of restraining it. These, however, rarely accomplished their objectives, and in the latter times of the Republic were virtually repealed

Sumptuary laws were not peculiar to the states of antiquity.

"Our own legislation, which in its absurd as well as its best parts has generally some parallel in that of the Romans, contains many instances of Sumptuary Laws, which prescribed what kind of dress, and of what quality, should be worn by particular classes, and so forth. The English Sumptuary Statutes relating to apparel commenced with the 37th of Edward III. This statute, after declaring that the outrageous and excessive apparel of divers people against their estate and degree is the destruction and impoverishment of land, prescribes the apparel of the various classes into which it distributes the people; but it goes no higher than knights. The clothing of the women and children is also regulated. The next statute, 3rd of Edward IV., is very minute. This kind of statute-making went on at intervals to the 1st of Philip and Mary, when an act was passed for the Reformation of Excessive Apparel. These Apparel statutes were repealed by the 1st of James I."

Long's Translation of Plutarch's Life of Sulla, c.2.(paraphrased)

Some prime examples of this English Sumptuary Laws of Apparel enacted during the Renaissance between the reigns of Henry and Elizabeth during which time the Parliament of 1510 passed a law governing the wearing of all kinds of fabrics and trim from fur to gold and silver. Amended with additions in 1514 and again in 1515 and 1553 few details were changed since they were for the most part reiterations and reaffirmations of previous admonitions. The wearing of certain colors were restricted to nobility; purple could only be worn by royal family and red was worn only by the royal family and the highest nobles in the land. Most of these were reflections of the expense of the dyes in relation to the economy of the times. The most frequent punishment for the abrogation of these laws was the confiscation of the offending garment and a fine of several shillings to ten pounds per offense.

One such declaration reads:

Forasmuche as the greate and costly array and apparrell used wythin this realme, contrary to good statutes therof made, hath be the occaion of grete impovershing to divers of the Kings subjects and provoked many of them to robbe and to doo extortion and other unlawful dedes to maynteyne therby ther costeley arrey: In exchewyng wheof, Be it ordeyned by the authority of this present Parliament that no persone of whate state, condiion, or degre that he be, use in his apparel eny cloth of golde of purpoure purple coloure or sylke of purpoure coloure, but onely the Kyng, the Quwene, the Kyng's Moder, the Kyng's Chylder, the Kyng's Brethers and Susters, upon payne to forfett the seid apparel, . . . and for using the same to forfaite 20 pounds.

However, the King could, and did, grant special dispensations to wear articles of clothing forbidden by law, to whomever he pleased.

Sumptuary laws regarding the wearing of pearls of Europe through the ages:

• 1299 - a Venetian decree proclaims that at a wedding the bride alone, and nary one guest, was allowed to wear pearls. And then only in moderation with only one strand around her waist.
• 1345-- Germany in the city of Ulm, no women, married or single, high birth or low birth were allowed to wear pearls on their dresses until 1411 when they were permitted to wear a single pearl wreath on their heads
• 1479. A Frankish sumptuary law-- declared an ordinary noble serving a knight at a tournament was not allowed to wear any pearls whatsoever, except for one string around their hats.
• 1495-- The Diet of Worms sets forth that citizens who were not of noble birth, and nobles who were not knights could wear neither gold or pearls. The Diet of Augsburg, circa 1530, said this: If you were the wife of a noble--ordinary or otherwise--you were allowed four silk dresses...but no pearls.
• 1692-- Duke John George of Saxony said: The nobility may not wear dresses of gold, or silver, and no adornments of pearls. Professors and doctors of universities, their wives included, could also not wear anything with gold, or silver, or pearls. As to those who worked in courts of law...same thing. No gold, no silver, and no pearls.

Jews that lived in Venice in 1797 came under strict regulations as outsiders to the community with regards to dress along with prostitutes, and women:

The first ghetto officially came into existence in Venice on March 29, 1516, where, "The Jews must all live together in the Corte de Case. . .in order to prevent their roaming about at night. . ." Although there are claims that the creation of the ghetto, ". . .did not represent a deterioration in the status of the Jews, but rather the opposite." since the ". . .ghetto represented a kind of middle ground between unconditional acceptance. . .and expulsion," the Jews were nevertheless walled off from the center of society. In addition to being forced to live in the Ghetto, sumptuary laws forced Jews to first wear a star-shaped yellow badge and then, when the Senate ruled the badges were too easily hidden ". . .Jews were compelled, unless they were doctors of medicine, to wear a yellow bareta (a type of hat)if they were male. Eventually the Council of Ten revoked the medical doctors privilege of being excluded from the wearing of the yellow bareta and they were forced to don the hats as well. Such items made the Jews instantly identifiable as outsiders and open to the taunts and various other cruelties of society. In fact, the baretas were considered such a hazard that when traveling, Jews were legally allowed to wear the same head coverings as Christians to protect them from any trouble they might encounter on the road. Generally though, the Jewish community more strictly regulated themselves than the outside laws did, prohibiting any fur or bright colors so as not to draw attention on themselves as well as because it was a Christian characteristic to dress in that manner and, according to their beliefs should be avoided. In fact, "Dignitaries and persons in power were permitted to have the same exterior aspect as the Christians" when outside the ghetto. This was justified inside the Jewish community by the fact that they should appear as equal to their Christian interlocutors when dealing personally with them.

paraphrased from Clothing in Early Modern Venice

Today most sumptuary laws have been rendered obsolete with the advancement of democratic ideals, industrial mass production, and consumerism. On a related subject see Blue Law.

---

Sources:

A Pearl of a Law

Clothing in Early Modern Venice

CLAN MAC COLIN SUMPTUARY LAWS

Sumptuary Law

Inverted Jenny

From time to time, stamps or postal stationery items are discovered that are different from normal issues because of a mistake made during production. Although stamp printers are very careful about creating only properly manufactured postage stamps, there are times when something goes haywire during production and the mistakes are not caught before the stamps are distributed. The most prominent of these inadvertent varieties are known as "errors," and many have a value to collectors that is far greater than the value of a normal example of the same item. Especially intriguing are the stories of errors and misprints that turn run-of-the-mill stamps into instant collectibles.Errors in stamp production are among the most highly coveted postage stamp varieties. One of the most famous varieties of all time, the Inverted Jenny, is an example of a production error.

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

The Curtiss' plane was nicknamed Jenny because of its official designation Curtiss JN-4. When the 1918 United States 24¢ airmail stamp was being printed, one partially printed sheet of stamp paper was accidentally turned the wrong direction before it was fed into the presses. As a result, the airplane known as the Curtiss Jenny appeared to be flying upside down on that sheet. This kind of error is called an invert, meaning one element of the design is upside down in relation to the rest of the stamp.

On bi-color stamps like the 24c Air Mail stamp of 1918, the guidelines helped align the plate for printing the second color. Unfortunately, they did not guarantee correct up vs. down orientation, and the plates used for the first printing of this stamp had no other markings to help show top vs. bottom. After the sheet of the Inverted Jenny was found, TOP was added to both plates for subsequent printings.

The first US air mail stamps printed in 1918 were named the 24c. At the time the highly important series of U.S. stamps had been these airmails and the initial issue of these stamps, in May 1918, was an attractive 24 cent carmine stamp featuring a blue Curtiss Jenny biplane in the center. It was to be used for letters flown (with varying degrees of success) on the route between Washington and New York. Lowered airmail rates later that year soon rendered the stamp obsolete with the exception of the Inverted Jenny.

When the United States issued its first Air Mail stamp, on May 13, 1918, collectors were on the lookout for invert errors. This was only the third time the US had issued bicolored stamps, and each of the prior instances had yielded inverts. The first was the six stamps of the 1901 Pan-American Expo set.

One lucky stamp collector

William T. Robey actually went to all his local post offices to look for inverts the day the stamp was first available, and hit the jackpot, finding and buying, for $25.00, the only sheet of 100 copies of the invert. Robey was astounded to discover that the sheet he had purchased was made up of 100 stamps picturing an airplane upside down! When the collector asked if there were any more sheets available like the one he had just bought, the Post Office clerk demanded the return of the defective sheet. Refusing to give it back, Robey later sold it to a Philadelphia dealer for $15,000.

Errors such as the Inverted Jenny, of which the only 100 were accidentally released, hold great enthusiasm for stamp collectors and the public at large. There's a fascinating book called The Inverted Jenny: Money, Mystery, Mania, by George Amick, that tells the story of this sheet of stamps. As the world's best-known and most sought after invert error, its catalog value is currently $150,000 per stamp. The unique center-line block, catalogs at $600,000.

Floridian may have used $200,000 stamp to vote by mail

More recently, in Fort Lauderdale, FL someone mailed in an Inverted Jenny attached to an absentee ballot for the 2006 elections. It was attached with a collection of other stamps from the World War II era. Some papers report that stamp collectors think it will be more valuable while other say it will be less. The Washington Post reports that, "Maynard Guss, president of the Sunrise Stamp Club, said an Inverted Jenny, if authentic, could be worth $200,000. But when the ballot was mailed, the stamp was canceled, reducing its value. Guss estimated that a canceled Jenny would sell for $20,000 to $100,000."There was no name on the envelope and it has since been sealed in an election box for 22 months which is required by law, then all ballots are destroyed. No one is sure if it will be authenticated before then.

Ballot stamp likely a fake

As of November 15th it looks like it may be a fake. Probably a known counterfeit, Philatelic Society director Peter Mastrangelo believed from a preliminary examination by photos that the thinness of the Florida stamp's paper seems to be dissimilar from that of a real Jenny, the blue dye and the perforations did not the same as the originals.

Selected Sources

Encyclopedia of U.S. Postage Stamps

F is for Firsts

Florida ballot stamp likely a fake, experts say
http://tinyurl.com/yf6wqo
Accessed November 15,2006.

Picture Source

Rare Stamp May Be on Envelope in Florida Ballot Box
Accessed November 14, 2006.

To a Friend

Sour Grapes (1921)
by
William Carlos Williams

To a Friend

Well, Lizzie Anderson! seventeen men--and
the baby hard to find a father for!

What will the good Father in Heaven say
to the local judge if he do not solve this problem?
A little two-pointed smile and--pouff!--
the law is changed into a mouthful of phrases.

Sources:

Public domain text taken from The Poets' Corner

What is our life?

What is our life?

WHAT is our life? A play of passion,
Our mirth the music of division,
Our mother's wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the setting sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest,
Only we die in earnest, that's no jest.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552(?)–1618)

---

All the worlds a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. A well known quote from his contemporary William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh explores the same idea about human mortality and transience, and the insignificance of worldly achievement. It was on October 29th 1618 that Sir Walter Raleigh was put to death by King James I. A rakish and shady character he left a legacy of great literature and this particular work was composed while he was confined to the Tower of London about five years before his execution and where he wrote his History of the World, for which he is best remembered.

He was a favorite of the court of Queen Elizabeth I and whether he placed his cloak in the mud for her or not, it seems fairly certain that his personal charm had much to do with their friendship. He spent much of his time in court with her and became a much disliked man because of the attention that he received. It was Raleigh who conceived and organized the colonizing expeditions to America that ended tragically with the "lost colony" expeditions on Roanoke Island, N.C. As an adventurer, admiral, historian and poet his greatest rival was the Earl of Essex an accomplished soldier and sonneteer and a threat to Raleigh's position at Court. To be sure I can't do adequate justice to his life but one thing of note about his works and one you may be acquainted with is Raleigh's famous reply to Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd, the best of many such responses is his The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd.

It is with unclouded irony that Sir Raleigh answers his question about life considering the adventurousness and sometimes absurd way he lived. After a brave, brutal and romantic life he met his death fourteen years after he was convicted for his part in the Cobham Treason against King James I; here he points out clearly and with exactness where the jest ends.

Sources:

Blair, Bob

Public domain text taken from The Poets' Corner

Raleigh, Sir Walter: Early Life

Due process clause

Due process is the a term that applies to legal proceedings and laws along with safeguards for the protection of individual rights. It is more commonly referred to in such terms as the "law of the land" and "legal judgment of his peers." This terminology was used for the first time in the sense of due process in the great charter of English liberty, the Magna Carta.

The U. S. Constitution guarantees that the government cannot take away a person's basic rights to 'life, liberty or property, without due process of law.' Courts have issued numerous rulings about what this in many cases. The phrase due process first appears in the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified December 15, 1791. Because the amendment refers specifically to federal and not state actions, another amendment was necessary to include the states. This was accomplished by the 14th Amendment under Section 1, ratified July 9, 1868.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

U.S. Constitution Amendment XIV

The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the deprivation of liberty or property without due process of law. A due process claim is judicially heard and determined only if there is a recognized liberty or property interest at stake.

The Sixth Amendment, which is applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, guarantees a criminal defendant a the basic right to be clearly informed of the cause and nature of the charges against him.

As determined by custom and law, due process has become a guarantee of civil as well as criminal rights. Much emphasis has recently been placed by the U.S. Supreme Court on procedural safeguards in the administration of criminal justice in federal and state courts. Through interpretation of the law, due process has grown to include, among other things, provision for ensuring an accused person a fair and public trial before a competent tribunal, the right to be present at the trial, and the right to be heard in his or her own defense; the doctrine that the provisions of criminal statutes must be drawn so that reasonable persons can be presumed to know when they are breaking the law; and the principles that taxes may be imposed only for public purposes, that property may be taken by the government only for public use, and that the owners of property so taken must be fairly compensated.

Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2000
http://encarta.msn.com

Due process can be defined basically as fair treatment. All through the history of the United States case law and statutes have striven to determine standards for fair treatment of citizens by federal, state and local governments. These standards have become commonly known as due process. When someone is treated unfairly by the courts and/or government, he is said to have been deprived of or denied due process.