On Dry Land

Thinking about the sea this week. Britain buried a sailor, a veteran officer of the Royal Navy, a successful refugee that it had taken in, given royal titles, given its head of state to be his wife. The funeral was magnificent, moving, spectacular, as his riderless carriage and armed forces accompanied his coffin from a small chapel to a larger one, in which the ground opened up and swallowed the coffin as a lone piper played a lament.

The Duke of Edinburgh was descended from 8^th century Vikings, most of us born in northern or western Europe are, and as grand and appropriate his farewell was, I kept thinking he should have been launched on a ship that sailed away flaming into the North Sea.

So much chance and good fortune in the life of the consort of the sovereign of Britain, the Duke of Edinburgh. We are all, every one of us, descended from rulers who called themselves kings, queens, emperors, princes, dukes, barons, ladies which titles came along with lands and ships and horses. How do I know this? Because rich people are more likely to survive wars, disease, famine. Somewhere along the way most of our ancestors were second or third or seventh sons, or daughters married to downwardly mobile men, and our fortunes declined, perhaps not completely, but enough to no longer be part of the senior royals, powerful barons. Other powerful barons are constantly emerging, this is a dynamic process.

When Princess Elizabeth was born to a second son she was not expected to be in line for the crown. I imagine she was expected to be a downwardly mobile princess who would not inherit much from either the family of her father or her mother, and would be pushed aside by a subsequent brother, who never arrived. Her father became king when her uncle unexpectedly resigned, and her only sibling was a sister. This still did not guarantee her the crown; her mother was young enough to produce more children, but she did not.

By 1926 when Princess Elizabeth was born, the royal titles given at birth to the Duke of Edinburgh had gone, along with his family’s wealth. The Duke was soon was orphaned by insanity and neglect, and his 4 older sisters all married to German nobility or royalty, all of whom were Nazis.

During his long life the Duke was given titles that outranked his original ones, he again became a prince after a few years as the consort of the sovereign, and once again was known as Prince Philip. He was a chameleon, able to adapt to any situation, but even more important, he was drop-dead gorgeous on the scale that the ancients talked about Greek gods. He was not Greek, being prince of Greece had something to do with the many German kingdoms and princedoms, the overabundance of descendants of Britain's sovereign Victoria, and the consequences of Napoleon Bonaparte creating royalty all over Europe. If Prince Philip had not been so good-looking, or so good at networking, would the Princess Elizabeth have been drawn to him, and given him a far greater life than he was born into?

The message is clear: refugees must do everything they can to be drop-dead gorgeous, serve in the Royal Navy, disavow the politics and nationality of their siblings, and do everything they can to marry the head of state.

Well played Prince Philip, from chaos you brought calm.

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Machine Guns Kill. Many. Frequently.

The ceremonies inside and outside the Windsor Castle buildings echoed those of 1919 when the casket of the unknown soldier was conveyed slowly from the battlefield where he was originally buried though the streets of London into Westminster Abbey where he was lowered into a vault inside the abbey during a magnificent choral ceremony. Grieving adults and children jammed the sidewalks as the coffin passed, that soldier might have been their lost husband, son, brother, father, fellow soldier. His rank, theater of war, and branch of service was unknown; remains of four soldiers were added to anonymous coffins from different war zones and a church official selected one coffin. Double-blinded Unknown Soldier selection. I like that.

The Unknown Soldier could have been one of the 9 first cousins of my English grandfather, or any of his and my English grandmother’s 22 first-degree relatives. Some of their fallen relatives do have graves in Palestine, France, Belgium and England, but not all. In some battles in the 1914-1918 war the machine guns did what they are built to do: mowed down tens, hundreds, thousands, and identification of every lump of formerly human flesh was impossible. And Americans can buy them, build them, steal them, carry them openly in some states.

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Anniversaries

The third week in April bursts with red and yellow tulips and remembrances of events good and bad. On April 21^st the 95^th birthday of the British sovereign who so recently consigned her handsome consort to a vault to wait until her body no longer is attached to her breath, Earth Day is April 22^nd, William Shakespeare’s birthday is celebrated on April 23^rd, as is St George’s Day, Anzac Day is April 25^th, and the day Chernobyl melted down is April 26^th.

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William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare’s birthday needs to be celebrated by reading sonnets, plays, or watching performances. All are possible, you can pick whether you want to sob your heart out with stories of teenage suicide, assassination of heads of state, battles in which most soldiers are killed, deadly family quarrels; or maybe something fun like Midsummer Nights Dream. Yes, my favorite. Because midsummer, June 20^th and 21^st, are my favorite days and we know the light on those days are the most we will ever get.

I am glad William Shakespeare was not alive to write plays about the Back Death, the Great Fire of London, the beheading of Charles I, the insanity of Charles II, or the emergence of Quakers. He would not have been kind.

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Watch https://youtu.be/5R2gPTUM1Gk

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Soccer

Soccer season is underway. I am lucky enough to live near three soccer fields, and spring has brought tiny and bigger children and adults out to play games, or practice kicking. Wonderful to see, I can watch full games in two soccer fields on my walk to the train station. Occasionally I do. So do robins and sparrows in the woods next to the third soccer field. I saw a tiny brown snake slither across my path in the woods yesterday. Spring makes everyone, everything want to move, to grow, to get out of the way.

Our local soccer league is getting ready for the 2021 season: all is on https://unitycup.phila.gov/, with updates on Twitter https://twitter.com/phlunitycup.

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St Vincent and the Grenadines

I have good friends who are from St Vincents and the Grenadines; a highlight of Prepandemic Philadelphia was the annual SVC tea party held by Yvonne O’Garro and her friends, right after the Caribbean communities came together to feed student athletes in Team Jamaica Bickle. This tiny nation that has been made smaller by lava flow. The call for donations to help volcano displacements continues.

The United Nations has launched a $29 million appeal, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/un_global_funding_appeal_-_explosive_eruption_of_la_soufriere_volcano-_saint_vincent_and_the_grenadines.pdf

The Miami Herald interviewed the prime minister and has published a video and information about how to donate: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article250666544.html

If all that is too daunting and you would rather do something small and closer to home, please contact the honorary consul for Jamaica in Philadelphia, Mr Christopher Chaplin. He is on Linkedin.

If you have been following me for 8 years you know that in 2013 I became interested in 20 Congolese refugee prisoners in Pretoria Central Prison. I visited them in prison, and spent a lot of time with their wives and friends, and learned that they had been the victims of scams perpetrated by South African police, particularly by the counter-terrorist unit. Stories can be linked to from http://emeraldpademelonpress.com/congolese20.html

After 2 years, after world-wide effort by friends and relatives of the victims they were released; and I discovered that the same unit had been responsible for the imprisonment of a soft-spoken genius engineer who was certainly interested in human rights in his community in Nigeria, but was in no way ever a terrorist.

Henry Okah had been working in South Africa, and has now spent the better part of 11 years in solitary confinement in Pretoria Central Prison. Amnesty International in South Africa did not make the 20 Congolese prisoners of conscience, nor have they done so with Mr Okah. Fear for their own safety may be at the heart of that, and I understand that. You cannot build a house in the mud when rivers are flowing fast beneath your feet.

Mr Okah was accused to blowing up a parade in Nigeria when he was in South Africa. Mr Okah has been denied a fair trial or an appeal; his computers were seized immediately and how easy would it be to plant “evidence” in them. If you are interested in learning more, please let me know. I am feeling my way, I do not want to harm anyone wanting to help him while I focus on why he is in prison and what can be done to get him released.

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Fourth Thursday Philadelphia Amnesty International Meeting

Amara sent out the following: Our next Amnesty International meeting will be this Thursday, April 22nd at 7pm via Zoom.