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January 20, 2023
Edward I: Longshanks, the Scots and the Stone of Scone.
Apud Monasterium de Scone positus est lapis pergrandis in ecclesia Dei, juxta manum altare, concavus quidam ad modum rotundae cathedreaie confectus, in quo future reges loco quasi coronatis.
--14th century English cleric Walter Hemingford
An oblong block of red sandstone known as The Stone of Scone (or Scottish coronation stone) was already ancient and storied when Edward I "captured" it" in 1296 as a spoils of war. Edward took it to Westminster Abbey. There it was fitted into a wooden chair, known as King Edward's Chair. Most subsequent English sovereigns have been crowned on it.
The combative and opinionated Edward, who spent much of his reign taming and subjugating the Scots, and hated them, once referred to the Stone as "a turd".
Seven hundred years after Edward lifted the Stone from the Scots, on July 3, 1996, the British House of Commons finally ordered that the Stone would be returned. It was handed over to Scotland in November of that year at the England-Scotland border and taken to Edinburgh Castle. It will remain in Scotland except for future coronations at Westminster Abbey in London.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2023
Daniel E. Hull, Sr. (1768-1854)
Missourian John Daniel Hull I (1866-1953) was my great-grandfather. John’s own father was a farmer, accomplished horseman and Confederate soldier who on saddlehorse just before the war helped move the Hull family from Virginia to Missouri. His son John, a businessman in Mountain Grove, MO, never attended college but worked his ass off, bought a bank and a drug store, raised 4 kids as a widower and saw my grandfather graduate from Yale. Old John Hull crowed about my birth in 1953 and I got to meet him before he died. Below in turn is the grave of his own great-grandfather Virginian Daniel E. Hull, Sr. (1768-1854). With 12 years separating their lives, they unfortunately never met. They were, respectively, 87 and 85 at death. I first visited Daniel's grave on May 6, 2015. It's still beautifully kept by Lutheran church people in Middlebrook, Virginia I don't know and still have not met.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2023
Encore: T.J. O’Hara - Dan Hull interview, November 17, 2021
Written intro by T. J. O’Hara
“John Daniel Hull, IV, founder and partner of the D.C. law firm of Hull McGuire PC, joins T.J. O’Hara, host of Deconstructed, to share his political experiences and observations from inside the Beltway. Mr. Hull is a distinguished attorney who, as a Democrat, served as a Legislative Assistant to a congressional Republican before beginning his career as a litigating attorney.”
“In recent years, his political affiliation has shifted to a more conservative point of view, and he explains what drove his change of heart. He cites the tenor of the media in Washington, D.C. and how it has impacted the way with which events and individuals are often portrayed.”
“Mr. Hull describes the similarities and differences he personally observed in the Black Lives Matter protests he attended as well as the January 6th rally that served as a precursor to the insurrection at the Capitol later that day. His observations of the attendees and some of the groups that drove the behavior of the crowds are quite interesting in each case. As a former journalist, his “takeaways” are quite compelling.”
“Then, Mr. Hull does a “deep dive” into “free speech” differentiating the actual element of that phrase and its misplaced use. T.J. quizzes him on “freedom of the press” as well, and he dissects that issue as well.”
“From Antifa to the Proud Boys, Mr. Hull has had an opportunity to directly observe the behaviors of both and the aftermaths of their actions. He describes what the media reported relative to the facts versus the impact of any partisan spin on national perspectives. Learn how an actual observer evaluates the actions he saw, the people he met, and the way each was presented to the public. Some may be in complete alignment with what you might suspect. Others may stun you with what the genuine details reveal… particularly with respect to the law.”
“Leave your political biases at the door and enter the world of someone who lives in D.C. and regularly experiences history as it occurs. Then, ask why this isn’t what you may have read or seen from either side of the aisle.”
Broadcast November 17, 2021
Posted by JD Hull at 12:53 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2023
La Peste
“....the day would come again when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”
— The Plague (1948)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2023
Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)
Above: King, about 28, in 1957 at his home in Montgomery, Alabama. Had he lived, King would have turned 94 yesterday. In 1964, at the age of 35, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was 39 when he was killed.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
The London Stone.
We've written about it before. I have a thing about it--probably because for now I live a lot of the time in California in an "old" 22-year-old home. Back East, in DC, NYC and Nantucket, and other parts of the U.S. where people do not use "party" as a verb, there's much older stuff, of course, sometimes going back to the 1600s--but nothing like you stumble upon every moment in dear old Albion and Western Europe. Sorry, rock and cave paintings and U.S. mound-builder relics don't cut it for me as much; so alert the Oberlin College faculty, the BIA and NPR--and then sue me. I like old books, old homes, old things; but they need to be the relics of real goofy-looking Europeans like me.
The Stone is important to me because it's mysterious and fires the imagination--not because it's way old. There's a myth that the Stone was part of an altar built by Brutus of Troy, the legendary founder of London. Not true in any respect--but the Stone is Dang Olde, older than Boudica, Tacitus, Disraeli or Keith Richards, and at the very minimum, an enduring symbol of the Authority of The City since London Roman times. So we're talking about at least 2000 years of Stoneness. Some scholars think 3000 years.
Anyway, finding It is easy: you head east, down Fleet Street, past Dr. Johnson's house, past St. Paul's a block north, staying on Fleet Street (not Lane) which becomes Ludgate Hill (past intersection with Old Bailey), which becomes Cannon Street, to 111 Cannon, across from the tube station.
Got it? You'll miss It if you're not careful. You may give an oath to It if you like. The Stone likes that.
Original: 8-29-08
Posted by JD Hull at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)
Geoffrey Arnold Beck 1944-2023
First heard you Jeff on vinyl when I was 14. You were a virtuoso innovator and genius who always suprised. Thanks for being in my life’s soundtrack. Everywhere all the time. Ohio. North Carolina. Pennsylvania. Europe SoCal.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)