Sunday, June 21, 2015

Happy Father's Day to all who've fathered or fostered others! You are Light!



5 comments:

  1. Howard Dean! Zounds!

    Cat--I shall have to listen to "The Skye Boat Song" this evening (can't do so here). Wikipedia has an interesting article about it. As with so many songs, the tune is evidently much older than the current lyrics. I am reminded of a couple of things:

    1) When terrans first settled Darkover they named their village "New Skye," which later morphed into "Neskaya."

    2) Indeed Charles escaped in a boat to Skye, disguised as a lady's maid (and the song is about it); just as Jefferson Davis was apprehended trying to escape disguised as a woman. Which leads me to:

    2a) I wonder if J. Davis knew the story of Charles' escape 120 years before--I suspect he did. And:

    2b) Given their respective backgrounds, both their educations and their government experience, any reasonable person would assume Davis would be far superior to Lincoln as a wartime president--but in the event it was not so.

    And not sufficiently related to the above to merit a subheading, I once had some time on my hands at the county law library and found some interesting things. One was a paper written by Thomas Jefferson (in the Virginia records, as I recall) investigating the claim that English law had a basis in Christianity, which he followed to its beginning and disproved. The other was in the first volume of US Congressional records--the full official text of the Articles of Confederation. When I was in grade school the Articles got short shrift as impractical, but I would recommend them to anyone as a basis for understanding the Constitution. It is clear from the conclusion of the Articles (which are clearly but not by name referred to in the preamble to the Constitution, that the Union was permanent and indivisible from its beginning. The representatives of the various colonies swore to it for their constituents. So that makes the people who claim(ed) the right of states to secede at best ignorant of the law, and at worst oathbreakers and traitors. No question. It was interesting to read the agreement between the US and Vermont, which had remained independent for a while; as the (a?) price of being allowed to join the Union, they had to agree to accept and be bound by the same agreements as all the original signatories. Sorry, listener--barring a constitutional convention it would seem you Vermonters are stuck with us. [grin]

    --Alan

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    1. Well, Alan, no one alive today signed those documents. So I think we'd have grounds for secession, should we choose to. ;-)

      What was English law based on, then?

      Much civil treatment of persons and communities got a boost in the Hebrew Scriptures. "An eye for an eye" was a huge improvement over "wipe out the whole village to avenge the act of one member of the village."

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  2. Sooooooooooome weekend! Father's Day was nice, too. All the kids checked in and there were some presents, and I took Bill out for dinner at a place new to us out on the Champlain Islands in Lake Champlain. Very nice! We saw a Great Blue Heron up close.

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  3. listener--the English Common Law was that body of customary law that developed between the departure of the Romans from Britain [410?] and the conquest by the Normans [1066]. Here is the document:

    T. Jefferson: Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law? [Click]

    Cat--I checked out the version of The Skye Boat Song you linked to, as well as several others; yours I like the best. Thank you.

    And now to bed--it was a relatively easy weekend at the hospital, but still pretty long.

    --Alan

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  4. Oh--shortly before I reached home this evening I saw an automobile with New Hampshire license plates. I do believe that is the first I have ever seen.

    --Alan

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