Tag Archives: crown

Coronation weekend…

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It’s Coronation Weekend. As an American citizen, there’s very little logic attached to the affinity I feel for the Crown. I mostly blame a childhood love of history that effortlessly channeled itself into stories of the thin red line of heroes carving an empire out of the far reaches of the world. That led seamlessly into a more general love of royal, military, and political history mostly ranging from the Restoration through the Napoleonic Wars, with a healthy bit of dabbling in the Victorian Age.

In any case, I expect it will be all coronation all the time for the next few days… as this American ponders a past that could have been, but for some determined malcontents from Boston and a Virginia landowner who didn’t so much manage to win, but keep his embattled forces from losing through the long war of revolution.

I am entirely delighted to be a spectator, even if only from my sofa, at this first coronation of my lifetime. I’ll invite you to join me in wishing good health and long life to Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

God Save The King.

Maryland, my Maryland…

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On March 25th, 1634, along the shores of the Potomac at St. Clement’s Island, subjects of the English crown first set foot in the Provence of Maryland.

No one loves to rant and rave about the government in Annapolis more than I do. Despite their never meeting a tax they didn’t want to levy and general disregard for the rights of citizens, I’ve always found myself drawn back to Maryland – to it’s shore, and its marshes, and its mountains. I never manage to stay away long. For all its political foibles, I simply do better when my feet are firmly connected to the good soil of my native country.

There’s more than enough going on in this old world of ours to keep me blogging every day for months. It would be incredibly easy to fall down that particular rabbit hole. It’s important during these times to remember that we’ve been doing what is hard here in this corner of the world for 386 years now. I don’t even want to guess how many “ends of the world” we Marylanders have endured in that time.

I’m a native son of Maryland and today I’m taking a break from the pandemic to celebrate it.

The Crown…

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I’m an unreconstructed anglophile. I like the Brits for their humor, their television, and their food. I like them for clinging to aristocratic pretense and the trappings of monarchy
long after it’s supposedly gone out of favor. I like them for their sense of history and place.
I like them for their stiff upper lip and determination in the face of crisis. I like them for
the-crown-season-2-770x433.jpgthe single fact that England is a place and that almost everything I hold dear here in its former colony can draw a line, whether direct or indirect, back to that small island in the North Atlantic. I like the fact that England is.

I watch a fair amount of British television and though I won’t claim to like it all, they have a better hit percentage for my viewing time than most of what’s made here in the states. Last weekend, I may have binge watched my way through the first season of The Crown, which is based on the life and times of Elizabeth II. Sure, they punched up the drama a bit and took a few liberties with the story, but I found it a perfectly enchanting period piece that drifts through 50’s era England and paints the House of Windsor in far more familial tones that we’re use to seeing. More important, maybe, is its attempt at presenting a case study in personal desire versus duty.

I commented to a friend who sometimes shares my affinity for the English that it’s sweet and it’s sad and it’s funny in that uniquely British way. I’m a fan. If you’ve got ten hours to kill and want to watch something other than reality TV or the continuing disintegration of the republic on the nightly news, you’d be hard pressed to find something better to watch. Truly Netflix has embiggened us all.