Friday, June 13, 2008
Celebrating Magna Charta Day
A while ago, my older sister hatched an interest in the skeletons back there in the dark corners of the family closet. Turns out that our family was run out of the old country a long time before lots of other families. The inevitable result of her research was that pretty soon she was joining “lineage societies.” You know the ones; you occasionally see photos of their members in the newspaper. They are kind, earnest ladies who channel their pride of ancestry into good works. They clean cemeteries, erect historical markers, and promote awareness of history in youth through essay contests and the giving of scholarships. Although all worthy endeavors, the ladies often look very old and often quite grim. Sadly, they don’t seem to be having much fun.
You may extrapolate from these comments that I had some skepticism about my sister’s new-found interest. However, I remained uncharacteristically noncommittal. She is my elder, after all, and I’ve seen her hit! Once, I did timidly ask if she was the youngest member of her group and was told, “Yes.” That terse response seemed to confirm my suppositions, so I just steered clear of the whole enterprise.
As she delved further and further back into history, joining more groups along the way, Larry thought that maybe she soon would be connecting with his idea of the ultimate: The Dames of the Ark. I snickered appreciatively. That is until she announced that she had joined the National Society Dames and Barons of the Magna Charta. This thing that she had joined sounded British! Having spent my formative years overdosing on Charlotte Bronte, Dorothy L. Sayers, Jane Austen, and Henry the VIII and his wives before they were a mini-series, I’m a confirmed Anglophile. Suddenly, all pride cast aside, I was begging that she propose me for membership. Runnymede, the site of the signing of the Magna Charta, loomed right up there in my imagination with Stonehenge: a couple of historical sites that had captured my interest early on. I can still see surly, pimply-faced, bad King John in some old movie being strongly urged, that is coerced, into signing this document where he promised to behave: “The Lion in Winter,” I think.
Soon, I was a life-member, (with rights to assign that membership to my direct descendants), attending the semi-annual meetings of the Indiana Chapter, wearing my little Magna Charta lapel pin, and planning a trip to Runnymede. A little southwest of London, it’s lovely there; kind of in the middle of a cow pasture near the Thames River, but with, frankly, not much happening. There are several memorials: one to JFK (Go figure!) and one to the Allied air forces who died in World War II, but only a little gazebo-type structure erected by the American Bar Association to commemorate the event that made the site famous.
Since the Magna Charta is the root document for both English and U.S. law, it seems a bit odd to me that so little is made of it. The webpage of the Baronial Order of the Magna Charta cites the document as “the first cornerstone of liberty and justice in the western world.” Finally, a few years ago, the Brits did designate the signing day, June 15 as an official celebration day of the event. Took a long time to get around to that—only about 800 years before anybody noticed, but go ahead; party on now!
You can access the text of the Magna Charta on the internet, but to the average non-lawyer, non-historian, it’s a bit dense for beach reading. The text also is presented, but in livelier surroundings, in ]1215: The Year of Magna Carta, by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham. This slim volume gives a fine picture of life during that year and makes it pretty understandable why the barons forced this document down the craw of the Crown. The boy was overstepping the line!
So, the result is a document that, again according to the Society’s home page, is “the well-spring of modern concepts of free speech, free association, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, the right of due process according to the law of the land, to the public and impartial trial at the hands of our peers, the right to travel freely in the time of peace, and perhaps most important of all, the recognition that even the sovereign is subject to the law of the land.” The Magna Charta, the document with everything: serious historical ramifications, knuckle-rapping, and snob-appeal! Time to celebrate!
Books & Films • Customs & Rituals • Family & Friends • Permalink • Printer Friendly
A random selection from more than 300 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:
Joe Chaney -- More essays by Joe
Louise Collins -- More essays by Louise
April Lidinsky -- More essays by April
Jonathan Nashel -- More essays by Jonathan
Jeff Nixa -- More essays by Jeff
Ken Smith -- More essays by Ken
Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- Celebrating Magna Charta Day / More essays by Jeanette
Chronicles Home | Email:
Leave a note for any of the authors at our WebNote page, or maybe you'd like a copy of our book?
About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, and Ken Smith.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
| August 2008 | ||||||
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | |||||
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| 31 | ||||||
Recent pieces
Girl Power -- I noticed the other day that my friend has a bumper sticker on her bike that says, “Girls Kick Butt.” (The word isn’t actually “butt” but a more colorful term that rhymes with “grass.” If you know that, you’ll understand better the force of the slogan.) The phrase “Girls Kick [You-Know]” is unexpected, because girls, conventionally speaking, aren’t supposed to want violence. Of course, the phrase also simply means, “girls are great, girls are cool.” But it’s impossible not to hear also the assertion that girls are powerful, they enjoy their power, they take charge, they win. Win what? Against whom? Or does it matter? By Joe Chaney.
Waiting for a Superhero -- I can report that seeing the Catwoman suit that Michelle Pfeiffer wore in the Batman movie is proof, if any was needed, that the U.S. is and will always be the greatest country in the world. How she got into that suit, how she managed to act in that suit, and how Batman was able to concentrate on anything other than that suit....now, these are mysteries for the ages and ones that haters of freedom will never be able to defeat. Take that, Osama! By Jonathan Nashel.
Another Summer of Love? -- Anyone who's been in – or even near – a marriage knows they are far less about romance than the practical work of partnering – dividing chores, sharing burdens and finances and joys, dealing intimately with illness and dying, and practicing daily empathy, even when you don't feel like it. In other words, marriage is a practice of good citizenship. Just-released research has shown that same-sex partnerships tend to be far better at achieving equitable citizenship in the home – better at fairly dividing the chores – grocery shopping, vacuuming, taking kids to the dentist -- that drive maddening wedges between many heterosexual couples. By April Lidinsky.
Google’s Tips for Getting Ahead -- Just the other day, I had a fleeting desire for self-improvement. Before the mood passed, I turned to Google for some advice. Now Google doesn’t burden a fellow by demanding complete sentences, the way some people do, so I typed in “how to get ahead.” I wanted to complete the phrase: how to get ahead by doing what? Reviewing the massive search results, I found that this is a land of dreamers; we are a people of contradictory impulses and destructive longings. Even Google is having trouble sorting this country out. By Ken Smith.
Making Up on the South Shore -- As we’re approaching the Beverly Shores station I glance over and see the woman looking into a pocket mirror. Yes, you’re pretty, sister. Don’t worry about that. Then she reaches into her bag and pulls out a big pink tackle box, sets it on her lap and opens it up, revealing a whole assortment of little tubes and jars. She selects one tube, squirts some stuff onto her fingertips and starts rubbing it onto…her face. Whoa! What are you doing? By Jeff Nixa.
Time Travel in Paris -- I had studied maps of Paris and read French literature and the Parisian works of American expatriates like Stein, Hemingway, Baldwin, and Miller. I had fallen in love, of course, with my French teachers in high school and college. My prior romance with the language, art, stories, and landmarks animated the city. I remember a morning when the sun emerged and lit up the domes and towers across from where my friend and I stood on a right bank quay, and the world itself seemed like a pure gift, a fresh beginning. By Joe Chaney.
Celebrating Magna Charta Day -- Runnymede, the site of the signing of the Magna Charta, loomed right up there in my imagination with Stonehenge: a couple of historical sites that had captured my interest early on. I can still see surly, pimply-faced, bad King John in some old movie being strongly urged, that is coerced, into signing this document where he promised to behave: “The Lion in Winter,” I think. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Life on the Default Setting -- That foam cup will still reside in the county landfill when our great grandchildren are driving their offspring in a nuclear-powered mini-van to gymnastics classes on the moon. "Will you look at those kids jump!" By then the landfill will be the tallest manmade feature in north-central Indiana, visible from earth orbit. Astronauts will steer their sleek ships by the neon glow of all our waste. By Ken Smith.
It’s a Long, Long, Road from May to December -- Over the years Kurt Weill’s music has inspired a legion of devotees who want to be a part of his creepy luster. Some fifty years after Weill’s death Lou Reed took a stab at getting in on this kind of cool. Now, Lou is just about as cool as there is too. In the 1960s he co-founded the rock band, The Velvet Underground, and as the story goes, only a couple of thousand copies of their first album were sold, but everyone who listened to it formed their own band. The man gives new meaning to having no vocal range, and yet conveys everything that needed to be said. By Jonathan Nashel.
Pomp and Happenstance -- Truly, the moments in our lives that really deserve a brass band and velvet robes and a basso profundo voice saying “Something BIG has happened here!” are most often happenstance, unexpected. Maybe you’ve had the experience of reading a novel or seeing a film that shifts you, profoundly, to another axis – that peoples your interior with ideas or characters that become guides – or cautionary figures – for the rest of your life. Or maybe you’ve had a conversation with someone that suddenly made your world slide sideways as you questioned your faith – or gained a new sense of it. Those are moments that warrant pomp and circumstance, but they often pass quietly, despite their transformative legacy. By April Lidinsky.
A Kid and a Rock -- But every night I come home, the kid is hammering on the rock. He’s like a little John Henry. Small stones dislodged and fell to the dirt but then larger ones emerged, and eventually the worst one of all: a granite field stone the size of a pumpkin embedded in there till the end of the world. “This is hard,” he said. “Yeah, it is,” I said, watching the woman glare at me from hell. I left town for vacation. Two weeks. I was carrying an armload of sleeping bags back around the house when I stopped. The concrete monster was gone. Just a circle of rock dust in its place, littered with stones and in the center, the big granite pumpkin. I smiled. He did it. Dang. I’m going to go hug that kid. Buy them both a pizza or something. By Jeff Nixa.
True to Type -- We talk about what we are reading, what we have read, what we’ve read about reading (God bless the Sunday New York Times Book Review section!) and what we are planning to read next. Standing in front of the bookcase, my daughter-in-law, Nancy, and I were having one of those discussions. I think that she was holding Bobbie Ann Mason’s Clear Springs; she flipped to the back and saw the page that tells which font was used in printing the book and a bit of history about that font. Nancy said, “I can’t believe that they waste a page putting that in there. Nobody cares about that!” Danger! A big, evil-mother-in-law-trap just waiting to ensnare me there! Recognizing it in time, I pulled the shreds of my seldom-worn garment of tact around myself and did not blurt out, “Are you nuts! That’s a great thing! I love it when they put that in! It’s like frosting on a cookie; it makes it ever so much better!” By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Categories
Archives and syndication
- By author
- By category
- By date
- RSS 2.0 syndication
- Technorati Profile