Today is about projecting outwardly. It began coincidentally with an obituary.  I was drifting through my Facebook account when I encountered an obituary which I had not yet seen in our local electronic newspaper The Millstone. It was the obituary of a woman who marks one of my first acquaintances in Almonte when I arrived in 1976. She was the principal legal assistant to my employer Michael J. Galligan, QC. Her husband (with whom I later associated when I was a director of Mississippi River Power Corporation) was an employee of The Town of Mississippi Mills.

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It has proven beyond me to determine with authority worth repeating either the meaning or the import of the word “Whig”. I differentiate the two objectives of meaning and import because to my befuddled mind the term Whig, whatever may be its rude etymology, has the import or gist of the more traditionalists of the political ambit. The descriptions and banners of the word have to my mind as well the singularity of attracting capitalist interests primarily – as opposed to what is now called by Marjorie Taylor-Greene “communism”. Otherwise the historic ranks of Whiggism are frightfully varied. The changing cruciality (depending for example in which country the word is employed) invites perpetual and often contradictory demarcations. The divisions have not always been an easy one between Protestants and Roman Catholics; nor between nobles and gentry; nor between town and country; nor indeed between progressive and regressive. Instead the popularity of one or the other is a composition of the whole. As usual the characterization of the Canadian example is overshadowed by that of our brethren of the United States of America where the insinuation of the current meaning in this country most likely began. We, the poor cousins to the north, are bound once again to endure the abasement of precedence. Though in the same breath I acknowledge the sweeping monarchical influence upon our native soil embedded by the United Empire Loyalists since 1763.

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The Declaration of Indulgence, also called Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, was a pair of proclamations made by James II of England and VII of Scotland in 1687. The Indulgence was first issued for Scotland on 12 February and then for England on 4 April 1687. An early step towards establishing freedom of religion in the British Isles, it was cut short by the Glorious Revolution.

The Declaration granted broad religious freedom in England by suspending penal laws enforcing conformity to the Church of England and allowing people to worship in their homes or chapels as they saw fit, and it ended the requirement of affirming religious oaths before gaining employment in government office.

By use of the royal suspending power, the king lifted the religious penal laws and granted toleration to the various Christian denominations, Catholic and Protestant, within his kingdoms. The Declaration of Indulgence was supported by William Penn, who was widely perceived to be its instigator.

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Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (baptized 15 May 1567 – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, string player, choirmaster, and priest. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is considered a crucial transitional figure between the Renaissance and Baroque periods of music history.

There hasn’t to be anything more sedative than Claudio Monteverdi. My unwinding carcass is further soothed by the crisp air circulating the two-wheeler during my constitutional bicycle ride about the neighbourhood. The mixture of blue sky and fluffy white clouds was a vision. The moderate physical performance succeeded as well to expiate my guilt. I have opened one large window and the patio door each a crack. The wind outside is from the north at 19 km/h. According to my weather app the visibility is “perfectly clear right now” (an abnormally good-natured way to put it, I believe).

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“As he approached he found that this tower rose from an embattled pile, low and irregular, yet singularly venerable, which, embowered in verdure, overhung the slugish waters of the Cherwell. He passed through a gateway overhung by a noble orie, and found himself in a spacious cloister adorned with emblems of virtues and vices, rudely carved in grey stone by the masons of the fifteenth century. The table of the society was plentifully spread in a stately refectory hung with paintings, and rich with fantastic carving. The service of the Church was performed morning and evening in a chapel which had suffered much violence from the Reformers, and much from the Puritans, but which was, under every disadvantage, a building of eminent beauty, and which has, in our own time, been restored with rare taste and skill. The spacious gardens along the river side were remarkable for the size of the trees, among which towered conspicuous one of the vegetable wonders of the island, a gigantic oak, older by a century, men said, than the oldest college in the University.”

Excerpt From
The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 2
Thomas Babington Macaulay

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Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis called her daughter Caroline’s husband ‘egghead’ and said he was a ‘boring old fogey’ behind his back, according to reports.

The former First Lady’s name calling was a result of her mistrust of Ed Schlossberg, who is 12 years older than Caroline. Her open contempt for Mr Schlossberg ended when Caroline threatened to cut Jackie off from her grandchildren.

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For all the advantage that is broadcasted about focussing on the present, one has to question the utility of mentioning the past. More precisely the focus on the present may indirectly turn the glare from one’s Delphic past to the seemingly less virulent present. I’m all for leaving has-beens in the past; especially so if one is enjoying the entitlements of life through the proper eligibility.

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Life, I’m convinced, isn’t complicated.  If for example we were to conduct ourselves as animals apparently do by listening to our instincts, there’d be less incertitude. Apart from the improving feature of alignment with Nature, this simple rubric affords the most palatable and instructive statement of purpose and function. The government of our lives in accordance with intuition and urge is by logical prescription axiomatic; and, by contrast the ignorance, dilution or alteration of the inner drive is paradoxical beyond awkward.

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No doubt we all prefer to render ourselves a worthy member of society. I cannot imagine the sole scope and objective of anyone would be willingly confined to the narrow tinctures of unqualified selfishness and greed. The goal is not to exalt some Vedic hymn but rather to deport oneself as a befitting perhaps even genteel human being. The British have long ago afforded the tangible reward of emblems, badges, coats of arm, logos, trademarks and heraldic devices to those who – at least initially – sought and achieved the approbation of the Crown. Given the historical attempts to align the sovereign with the divine, the perambulations were at times of a decidedly heady and politic force.

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Hello, Marilyn!

Thank-you for your email. You’re lucky to have the casual use of the words island, tide, chop, seawall and beach. I am an inveterate lover of all things maritime. I hope you (as a Pacific Ocean resident) won’t be offended when I say my dream has been a cottage on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in a village in Nova Scotia.

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