Edith Head must be turning over in her grave, or a lookback at the royal wedding

Now that the big event is history, check out this Royal Wedding Fashion Report Card (19 photos in all) put together by the folks at Yahoo.

Included are the good (Kate Middleton, Pippa Middleton, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson), the bad (Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie), the bland (Duchess of Cornwall), and the downright ugly (HRH Princess Anne, who, in my opinion, looked like a charwoman gussied up for a day at the racetrack).

The peacocks were out in full regalia as well. The British are always top-notch at pomp and circumstance, but among the men this much spit, polish, brass, and military froufrou has not been seen in one location since the Battle of Trafalgar.

This has been another non-controversial post by rhymeswithplague.

We few, we happy few.

The nuptial day of the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge is apparently an even happier occasion than we thought. Either that or the groom’s family arrived already sloshed.

In what is surely a stroke of journalistic brilliance, at the exact moment when the next Prince of Wales was saying, “I, William Arthur Philip Louis, take thee, Catherine Elizabeth,” and the eyes and attention of the entire civilized world were fixed on the happy couple, our roving reporter today turned and pointed his camera at another part of Westminster Abbey and managed to capture the reaction of his grandmother, father, and stepmother.

The late Queen Victoria, however, the great-great-great-great-grandmother of the groom, in an attempt to maintain a modicum of royal decorum, issued a statement from beyond the grave through her publicist, saying, “We are not amused.” This is hardly surprising, as she died in 1901 and thus is unable to grasp fully the complexities and nuances of maintaining the monarchy in the twenty-first century.

Sharp-eyed viewers will note that although Her Majesty and the Prince of Wales sat upon exquisite Royal Blue Portable Wicker Thrones created especially for the occasion by Thrones ’R’ Us, the Duchess of Cornwall was relegated to a Royal Aluminum Lawn Chair. The Duke of Edinburgh, typically, was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he slipped away to find more bubbly.

Quote of the day (Easter Sunday)

St. Paul wrote the words, but click on them and you will hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir* sing them with a little help from Handel:

For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
..............................................................-- I Corinthians 15 : 21-22

* P.S. -- I am not a Mormon or a fan of their doctrines, but I know great music when I hear it. -- RWP

Died He for me, who caused His pain?

This painting, known as both Cristo de San Plácido and Cristo crucificado, was painted in 1632 by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez (1599 - 1660). The original, done in oil on canvas, measures 248 by 169 cm (67 inches by 98 inches) and hangs in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

The computer image above is too small to see Velázquez’s painting well. Click on it, then click on the next image also, and examine it in greater detail.

It is a fitting way to spend some of your time on this Good Friday.

[P.S. -- It is probably an indication of my great sin and depravity that although I looked at the enlarged painting for a long time yesterday and thought, “How horrible, how painful” I looked at it again this morning and thought, “It really doesn’t look so bad.” Of course, we moderns have the entertainment media to thank for that. We have all been desensitized by such television programs as NCIS and CSI: Miami and Law and Order SVU (for Special Victims Unit and which my wife keeps referring to as Law and Order SUV). Even though our culture now turns to blood and guts and gore and violence for relaxation, I think the version of the crucifixion presented in Mel Gibson’s The Passion is probably much more likely to resemble what actually happened than the stylized, almost antiseptic by comparison, portrayal in the Velásquez painting. --RWP, 4/22/2011]

Happy 175th anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto!

If you’re saying, “The battle of whaat??” then read this.

Two years ago today -- on the 173rd anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto -- I wrote a post entitled “Rules to live by: (1) Always post a sentry during the afternoon siesta; (2) Choose your underwear very carefully” that is also about the Battle of San Jacinto. You can read it here.

Texan to the end (though not a native -- I was transplanted there at the age of six from Rhode Island and left for Florida when I was 20), I cannot resist letting you know that the San Jacinto Monument near Houston is 55 feet taller than the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.

I reckon I done done my duty as a Texan, and I’m glad. I’m also glad I never learned to talk the way my classmates did.

[P.S. -- I once heard actress Betty White, who has lived in California most of her life and is an actual graduate of Beverly Hills High School, say “San Hah-cheen-toh” on television. While this is the correct way to pronounce it in Spanish, Texans don’t say it in Spanish. They say it in Texan: “Sanja Sinta” it is, now and forever, world (or at least the Lone Star State) without end, Amen. --RWP]

From the archives (April 18, 2009): Listen, my children, and you shall hear...

...Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-Five,
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year...

One if by land, and two if by sea,
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm...

You can read the entire poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow here.


Seventy-Five, of course, refers to neither 1975 nor 1875, but 1775. This statue of Paul Revere stands in Boston, Massachusetts. If you look closely, you can see in the background the spire of the Old North Church, which played a prominent role in the famous midnight ride of April 18-19, 1775.

[end of 2009 post]

When I was still employed, I always greeted people in my little corner of corporate America with “Happy Paul Revere’s Ride Day” (April 18) or “Happy St. Swithin’s Day” (July 15) or “Happy Texas Independence Day” (March 2) or “Happy Bastille Day” (July 14) or whatever was appropriate for the day. It drove everyone absolutely bonkers.

Mission accomplished.

My memory may be a bit fuzzy

Here, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful houses in America.
It is (or was) the residence of Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt in Hyde Park, New York, where they lived for many years before moving to the state house in Albany and later to the White House in Washington. After Franklin died in April 1945, it was to this house that Eleanor Roosevelt returned to spend the rest of her days, leaving it only on those rare occasions when she needed to sit with the U.S. delegation to the United Nations or make television commercials for margarine. I remember one that began with her saying, “When you think about the starving people of the world...” and until she said that I hadn’t thought about the starving people of the world at all.


From 1965 until 1968 we lived just a few miles away from Hyde Park in Poughkeepsie, New York. Here are my two oldest children and their two cousins from Florida sitting on the front steps of FDR’s home. My older son is on the left and my younger son is on the right. In the middle are their cousins. From left to right, these four individuals are now 46-1/2, 46-1/2, 45 (today is his birthday), and 45 (his birthday was a couple of months ago), respectively.

Here is a slightly closer view, and a little more off-center.

The fuzziness, of course, is in my cell phone, not in my memory. I used my cell phone to take photos of a snapshot, and you see the result. The dadblamed phone simply would not focus. Actually, you now know how I see everything when I’m not wearing my glasses.

Here is how I see things when I am wearing my glasses:

This is not my children and their cousins from Florida. This is Jethro, my dog. I do not know if his memory is a bit fuzzy, but everything else is.