[Jonathan adds: Click the photo to display a bigger version.]
Shorebirds of the Chicagoboyz
Holidays
Merry Christmas
May God bless all our ChicagoBoyz contributors, readers, friends (and foes), families, and loved ones. I hope everyone gets good presents, that the children are happy, healthy and well-behaved, that families are at peace, that old rifts are healed, that drinking is not too immoderate, that dinner comes out perfectly and on time, that travel is safe and that peace reigns in hearts and homes throughout our great and greatly blessed land. God bless our soldiers on duty in dangerous places at Christmas. Be happy. We are lucky to be here.
Happy Thanksgiving
The Mayflower Compact:
In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, etc. Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Colony in the Northern Parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini 1620.
We give you thanks almighty God for all the blessings you have given us. God bless all of our ChicagoBoyz contributors and their families, our readers and friends. God bless the many people who are travelling for this holiday, and grant that families will resolve their animosities and be at peace with each other. Thank God for the courage of the many people who came here over the centuries and gave us the strong, free and prosperous country we have so unworthily inherited, ruled by law and free association and cooperative effort, and not by the whim of the powerful. God grant that we may keep it well and leave it to our children and grandchildren even better than it was given to us. God bless our soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and other dangerous places, and may He have mercy on the ones who have been killed and strength and hope to the wounded and their families.
God bless America.
Thanksgiving and Temporal Bigotry
Stuart Buck encountered a teacher who said “Kids learn so much these days. Did you know that today a schoolchild learns more between the freshman and senior years of high school than our grandparents learned in their entire lives?” (“She said this as if she had read it in some authoritative source”, Stuart comments.)
She probably had read it in some supposedly-authoritative source, but it’s an idiotic statement nevertheless. What, precisely, is this wonderful knowledge that high-school seniors have today and which the 40-year-olds of 1840 or 1900 were lacking?