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The ceremony was unique in British history, reflecting both the extraordinary longevity of the Prime Minister and his continuing domination of the political landscape. On 30 November 1954 almost the entire membership of the Commons and the Lords, as well as several officers of state and other distinguished visitors, gathered in Parliament to mark the eightieth birthday of Sir Winston Churchill, the first premier since William Gladstone to have reached that milestone. The setting was the eleventh-century Westminster Hall, whose magnificent high-vaulted timber ceiling and mighty stone walls exuded an austere medieval grandeur. Out of respect for Churchill's venerable age, special electric heating pads had been discreetly installed in his designated chair on the dais facing the audience. 

- From Attlee and Churchill: Allies in War, Adversaries in Peace by Leo McKinstry

The Teachers Retirement Association

 I've been waiting to hear more about this potential scandal in Minnesota.

A jarring quote from the New York Post story:

The TRA has also posted gains claiming it beat its own benchmark by exactly 0.2% in every period for 30 years — which Siedle calls “virtually impossible.”

East Germany Was Unavailable

Brandi Kruse interviews a Washington state socialist.

His choice of a country in which socialism has worked: Cuba.

Uncomprehended Problems

 These (logistical) problems were so grave and pointed so surely toward final defeat that one is forced to wonder how the founding fathers of the Confederacy could possibly have overlooked them. The answer perhaps is that the problems were not so much unseen as uncomprehended. At bottom, these were Yankee problems; concerns of the broker, the money changer, the trader, the mechanic, the grasping man of business; they were matters that such people would think of, not matters that would command the attention of aristocrats who were familiar with valor, the classics, and heroic attitudes. Secession itself had involved a flight from reality rather than an approach to it. ...Essentially, this was the reliance of a group which knew a little about the modern world but which did not know nearly enough and could never understand that it did not know enough. It ran precisely parallel to Mr. (Jefferson) Davis's magnificent statement that the duration of the war could be left up to the enemy - the war would go on until the enemy gave up, and it did not matter how far off that day might be.

- From The Coming Fury by Bruce Catton

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 Every schoolboy knows that the Middle Ages arose on the ruins of the Roman Empire. The decline of Rome preceded and in some ways prepared the rise of the kingdoms and cultures which composed the medieval system. Yet in spite of the self-evident truth of this historical preposition we know little about life and thought in the watershed years when Europe was ceasing to be Roman but was not yet medieval. We do not know how it felt to watch the decline of Rome; we do not even know whether the men who watched it knew what they saw, though we can be quite certain that none of them foretold, indeed could have foreseen, the shape which the world was to take in later centuries.

- From Medieval People by Eileen Power (May 1924)

Autumn Leaves

 

Find Something Beautiful Today

 

[Photo by Anthony Fomin at Unsplash]

The Year of Living Dangerously

 City Journal: Adam Lehodey on the new mayor of New York City.

True

Q: What did Collectivists use to generate warmth before candles?

A: Electricity

- Alice Smith

William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy Walk into a Bar