The National Grieving

It has already begun, the annual Niagara of tears for the loss of our Great Leader, a grieving this year made more significant by one of the magic-number anniversaries. It happened fifty years ago come Friday.

I am prepared, handkerchiefs laundered and stacked at the ready. My screen glows with multiple Windex treatments so I miss no detail of the video tributes to the man who illuminated the planet and would have saved it but for the mischance of death.

Already written and on the blog queue is a finely detailed account, some nine thousand words after the most brutal editing and condensation. It explains to a breathlessly awaiting world exactly where I was and what I was thinking on that tragic Day the Music Died.

It is most somber.

November 22, 1963, the death of Aldous Huxley.

C.S. Lewis, too.

O! Brave New World!

Tear-mongering television has about turned the Tacloban disaster into just another ho-hummer, something like a sudden rain storm which ruins Mrs. Abernathy's garden party.

To wit: The CBS teevee news correspondent this morning -- on the spot with disaster in the background -- announced in his lede that while food and water were being delivered to some 100,000 people, "The needs are still enormous. It can take five hours to charge your cell phone."

I weep for the poor victims forced to endure hours without the comfort of a ring tone, but I rejoice in the keen sense of proportionality displayed by the United States electric news industry.

Obama: Don't worry; be happy

I'm taking a break from hands-on life this morning to note the upcoming address by President Obama about a "fix" for the problem he promised would never occur. You'll recall it. "If you like your current health insurance, you can keep it." Period. No qualifications. Uttered as he touted his version of English health care for America.

(Leading to a side question: When is the last time you heard of an American flying to London for for treatment of a rare and complicated disease? But I digress.)

Of course any fix he proposes won't work, so I won't get very interested in its details. More interesting will be his stab at restoring his credibility. I suspect what ever he has to say will play well enough with mouth breathers and gum chewers still entranced by the visionary rhythm of his Hope and Change sermons.

For the skeptics among us,  I expect the actual revelation will be confirmation that this inept man reached the limits of his competence as a Chicago ward heeler, albeit one who went to the Ivy League to learn how to string the comforting  buzz words together.

So what does The Admiralty lose next -- rum, sodomy, or the lash?

As if my week hasn't been bad enough, my friend JAGSC has just invited my attention to the end of ship building for Her Majesty's Royal Navy in  Portsmouth. A very long era ends, from Henry VIII's fighting carrack Mary Rose to the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, due for sea trials year after next.

That's a lot of imperial scurvy and lime juice punctuated by routine entertainment with the cat-o-nine-tails and the occasional stiff-upper-lip extravaganza known as flogging around the fleet. Too, it is said that Portsmouth  developed the first  practical yard arm which could bear the weight of an insolent Jack Tar and half a stone of stout hempen line.

I mourn the end of most traditions, but as the direct descendant of an Irish-American who shot at Redcoats 1776-1783, I suppose I should feel smug about this one. Final victory of a sort and all that. Maybe.

The Royal Navy isn't what it used to be, but up through the middle decades of the 20th Century it helped serve a personal purpose for the likes of me.

The socialist goodthinks who, post-Churchill, captured British politics retained an urge to sail around and wag their (now empty) cannons at commies and wogs. That gave Yanks like me an excuse to put on bell bottoms and dixie cups and go to the Oriental seas, loaded to pull Albion's nuts out of the fires again.

It wasn't a terribly bad way to come of age. As Mr. Kipling explained, "...the things that you learn from the yellow and brown  ...".

---

I'm humming some Oscar Brand here, but already having offended about everyone I can think of, I won't compound my sins by typing out his lyrics.

---

JAGSC remarks that Lord Nelson may somewhere be mounting a "spirited" protest. :)