In the previous post, I showed you a photograph of Evelyn Lincoln, John F. Kennedy's secretary, chiefly because of something Judy Garland as Dorothy said to Ray Bolger as The Scarecrow in The Wizard Of Oz way back in 1939:
With the thoughts you'd be thinkin'
You could be another Lincoln
If you only had a brain.
Then Graham Edwards who lives on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and no longer spends half the year in New Zealand like he used to said in the comments that there was not a Mrs. Beethoven. I assured him that there was indeed a Mrs. Beethoven, Ludwig's mother, but that the family name, being Dutch, was not Beethoven. It was Van Beethoven.
It does not follow as the night the day (as Polonius said to Laertes), but it's how my mind works.
Therefore, I am now including a link from the Snopes website that debunks or at least explains in detail that a lot of the things a popular list claims are similarities between John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln are simply not true or not amazing coincidences.
FACT CHECK: Lincoln and Kennedy Coincidences - snopes.com
If you read it in full, you will discover at last who Lincoln's secretaries (there were two) really were.
I think I shall not mention Ludwig van Beethoven again in 2018, although his birthday is two days hence and in other years I devoted posts to him. That I am telling you this in a post about Abraham Lincoln's secretaries merely adds to the mystique surrounding moi -- if not in the salons of Paris, at least in places like the Willamette Valley in Oregon and the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and beauiful downtown Sheffield, Yorkshire, England and the northwest corner of Iowa and several locations in Australia.
Recently I read an article about what will happen when Queen Elizabeth dies and Prince William becomes king. It made no mention of Prince Charles whatsoever. You talk about strange, now that is strange. I think it must have been written by a millenial.
I am surprised that you think politicians are bothered by ancestry. Trump isn't add I applaud him for the detachment.
ReplyDeleteAdrian, try as I might I cannot relate what you are saying to what I said in this post. Are you talking about Beethoven versus van Beethoven? The absence of Prince Charles? John F. Kennedy versus Abraham Lincoln? I am, as they (not the aforementioned) say, at sixes and sevens.
ReplyDeleteMy fine friend,
ReplyDeleteYes, it be an awfully long time since my eyes doth glanced your blog. You will, I'm sure, understand that I've been a most reflective time.
Your blog post, as per usual, a learning experience for my last two remaining brain cells.
Prince Charles, will be the King of lame ducks.
Thank you and thank you for your most profound comment on my tribute post. I'm truly grateful.
Gary
Gary, it's great to see that you are commenting again. I just wish this post had made a little more sense. It is what it is. King of the lame ducks, that's a good one!
ReplyDeleteThank you for both of your thank yous.
On the subject of Ludwig van Beethoven his name originated in the Netherlands but his father (atrocious though he was he was) was German as was, I think, his grandfather. Beethoven was, of course, famously born in Bonn. Now I confess that my history of Germany is not good but I think Bonn was part of the ancient Kingdom of Germany within the Holy Roman Empire. The Germany as we know it came much later after the unification of the various countries into the German Empire. I think the Germany of today only hails from 1918. I'm sure all this can be verified or unverified on Google but I confess to being to lazy to have checked it all.
ReplyDeleteGraham, of course Ludwig and his father and his grandfather were German. But the family name somehow was not. It was not Beethoven or Von Beethoven as one would expect, but Van Beethoven. Definitely of Dutch origin.
DeleteI love to look at old maps, and yes, the old German Empire included Austria and parts of Poland and, as Andy Griffith might have said, I don't know what all.
Yes. As I said. His name originated in the Netherlands: we are at one on that point. It was, I think, his great grandfather who hailed from there.
DeleteWhy can't you blog about Miley Cyrus or Lady Gaga or your drinking preference - Coke or Pepsi? These are topics that really matter and would certainly attract many more visitors to "Rhymes with Plague".
ReplyDeleteYorkshire-type Pudding, Esq.,, if such topics as Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, and one's choice of carbonated beverages really, really mattered, you would have blogged about them yourself before now. Do not try to lead me down a rabbit trail. I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam.
DeleteDrat! I poked the caged lion with a stick and he didn't roar!
DeleteI got a bit lost in this blog post. But it was interesting, in a random-kind-of-way.
ReplyDeleteKate, sort of like me.
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