against the swell of history in the room future felt like a footnote
Reading this wonderful article about The Old Printshop, that asked the questions, How do you relocate more than 100 years’ worth of (haphazardly organized) fine art, maps and prints?
The last paragraph of the story read:
During a lull in the packing, Scott and his uncle paused to admire a wall-size map of New York City commissioned by the British government in 1766 (and now priced at $325,000). Their conversation rolled back in time, from Revolutionary War strategy to the burning of the Library of Alexandria to the fall of ancient Carthage and beyond. Against the swell of history in the room, the future felt like a footnote.
The article told the story of a citizenship ceremony that took place in Canada via ZOOM with 140 ‘excited, polite faces’ waiting for presiding judge to come on screen to greet attendees.
The Judge was late and the ceremony was delayed.
When the Judge did log in and show up he said, “Now, just to inform you, the Monarch of the United Kingdom, the Queen, has passed away. Our sovereign is now King Charles III, the King of Canada.”
It reminded me how here in the United States, we are citizens united by a Constituion.
In Canada, the UK and other places, they are subjects of the realm, united by a common monarch.
That’s what 1776 was all about, in a nutshell.
I also read how not only will oath’s have to be updated but after 70 plus years of Elizabeth, with 5 different likenesses, there will be some new looks to the money.
I happen to have some older Canadian coins in a box and I found some nickels with King George VI and a penny (that I bought a long time ago) with King George V.
If you are around my age, and you grew up in Michigan you saw a lot of Canadian coins.
If you are really old, you will remember how vending machines had stickers that said, NO CANADIAN COINS.
I don’t think the warning was so much for the difference in value as much as it was the weird 12 sided Canadian nickels that would jam up the machine.
The 12-sided shape had been introduced in 1942 to help Canadians distinguish the wartime bronze-coloured tombac coins from copper cents.
Tombac, also used on British three-pence coins, was adopted to save on nickel, in high demand during the Second World War for the production of armaments and munitions.
The coin had returned to nickel after war, while the shape had been retained for 20 years.
While distinctive and popular, it was causing problems at the Mint.
The coin was composed of nickel, a notoriously hard metal which required a high striking pressure.
The unusual shape created a weakness in the collar dies, which tended to develop cracks at the corners.
On Nov. 8, 1962 the Government of Canada issued a proclamation to authorize the production of round five-cent coins.
Oddly enough when I started working in a bookstore in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1979, the 12 sided nickel was still common enough that I collected a box full.
My plan was to save up enough to make a $2 roll of 12 sided nickels that I could turn in at the bank.
I was in the bank near the bookstore almost everyday and I figured that whoever ended up with that roll of nickels would have screamed and gone back to the bank to complain.
The thought of being in the bank and hearing about it and then looking at the tellers and saying ‘now who would have gone to all the trouble to save up all those nickels’ was a funny thought.
I never followed through and here I sit with a box of Canadian nickels from 1962.
They all have the likeness of the Queen as she looked in 1960.
As I said, I understand the likeness of the Queen was updated 5 times and she got older.
Charles III gets to start out older.
And don’t bother looking for any Edward VIII coins.
They were all set to start being minted but a month before the start date, the feller walked out on the job.
ABOUT THE PICTURE – You can see the likeness of George VI on the Canadian nickel and quarter – in the center in the George V penny from 1920 with the inscription GEORGIVS V DEI GRA: REX ET IND: IMP which translates “George V, by the grace of God, the King and Emperor of India” Also in the photo is a gold colored 3 Penny Piece or thruppence from 1953, with the inscription ELIZABETH II DEI GRA BRITT OMN REGINA F D or Elizabeth II by the Grace of God, of all the Britains Queen, Defender of the Faith – The copper colored coin with George VI is the famous Brass Farthing as in the line from My Fair Lady, “Not a brass farthing” when Eliza’s mooching father comes around.
At some point in my life, when I realized I was never going to travel I would tell friends and coworkers they had to bring me coins back from wherever they went.
This led to lots of bizarre stories of people leaving planes and boats to buy quickly, something, anything to get some change and ‘coins for Mike.’
Once when a friend left for England I asked for some old money coins which is how I got the thruppence and farthings.
My friend had to go into an antique store to find them and actually pay for them. A fact I always felt a bit bad about but I always loved having the coins.
Old Money you ask?
Prior to 1971, there were 12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound. There were guineas, half crowns, three penny bits, sixpences and florins. This old system of currency, known as pounds, shillings and pence or lsd, dated back to Roman times when a pound of silver was divided into 240 pence, or denarius, which is where the ‘d’ in ‘lsd’ comes from.
To add to those 12 pennies, each penny was worth 4 farthings so a brass farthing was 1/4 of a penny.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote “… puzzled with adding the farthings, taking out the fours and carrying them on; adding the pence, taking out the twelves and carrying them on; adding the shillings, taking out the twenties and carrying them on.“
Jefferson was one of the earliest Americans to consider a decimal currency. He gave it, in 1784, its most articulate and persuasive expression in his “Notes on Coinage.” Congress, convinced by these arguments, adopted it with little dissent. It was eventually implemented because of the agreement of major figures in the U.S. government with the basic principles of Jefferson’s argument. Jefferson also became part of the realization of the system through his involvement with the establishment and first years of the U.S. Mint.
It only took the Brits another almost 200 years to catch on.
Queen Elizabeth Michigan fan true colors amazing maize and blue
Queen Elizabeth II was a Michigan fan.
I have that on the authority of my Dad.
Back back back to the days of the Glorious Bicentennial of the United States of America, the powers that be decided that it would be great if the President of the United States hosted a State Dinner (White tie no less) to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 2nd, 1776.
(It WAS July 2nd – you can ask John Adams.)
It was also decided that the principle guest would be none other than the Queen of England, the Great-Great-Great Grand daughter of George III, the feller to whom, the Declaration of Independence was addressed.
BTW the Queen, in her remarks at the dinner did say, “After all, nobody can say that what happened on the 4th of July, 1776, wasn’t very much a bilateral affair between us.”
By chance and by the workings of the Constitution, when Queen Elizabeth got out of the car that brought her and her husband to the White House for that State Dinner, none other than those wonderful Grand Rapidians, Jerry Ford, graduate of Grand Rapids South High School and his wife, Betty Ford, graduate of Grand Rapids Central High School were there to greet them.
PBS TV made arrangements to broadcast the dinner on live TV and it was one of the few Bicentennial specials that most of my family watched together.
PBS assembled an all-star cast to deliver commentary that included Julie Child who was concerned that due to the Washington July heat and the fact that they were eating outside in a big tent, many of the dishes might melt on the plate … but would still taste good.
We were watching as PBS showed the Ford’s come out of the diplomatic entrance on the South Side of the White House.
We were watching as the Queen’s limo pulled up.
We were watching as the Queen got out and stood with the Ford’s.
The Queen was wearing a bright yellow gown with a navy over-the-shoulder sash.
“Hey”, my Dad said, “Maize and blue! The Queen must be a Michigan Fan!”
President Ford was a graduate of the University of Michigan.
President Ford had also played football for the University of Michigan.
My Grand Father was a graduate of the University of Michigan.
My Father was a graduate of the University of Michigan.
At the time, it was 8 years before I could say I was a graduate of UofM.
I am still not sure how I managed to graduate but my roommates told me, Michigan has taken steps so it won’t happen again.
My Dad laughed and looked at me and said, “Or do you think the British advance team did their research and picked out the colors?”
I looked at my Dad and shrugged.
My Dad turned back to the TV and said, “Well, I think she is a Michigan fan.”
declare before you that my whole life long or short devoted to service
On her twenty-first birthday, 21 April 1947, Princess Elizabeth was with her parents and younger sister on a tour of South Africa. In a speech broadcast on the radio from Cape Town, the Princess dedicated her life to the service of the Commonwealth.
portrait by Annie Leibovitz
I was struck by much of the this simple speech.
A speech written and made with no idea, I am sure that anyone was thinking of another 73 years of service yet to come.
There are some really good lines here.
When she said at age 21, “I am sure that you will see our difficulties, in the light that I see them, as the great opportunity for you and me,” I want to say if you only knew.
Here is the full text:
On my twenty-first birthday I welcome the opportunity to speak to all the peoples of the British Commonwealth and Empire, wherever they live, whatever race they come from, and whatever language they speak.
Let me begin by saying ‘thank you’ to all the thousands of kind people who have sent me messages of good will. This is a happy day for me; but it is also one that brings serious thoughts, thoughts of life looming ahead with all its challenges and with all its opportunity.
At such a time it is a great help to know that there are multitudes of friends all round the world who are thinking of me and who wish me well. I am grateful and I am deeply moved.
As I speak to you today from Cape Town I am six thousand miles from the country where I was born. But I am certainly not six thousand miles from home. Everywhere I have travelled in these lovely lands of South Africa and Rhodesia my parents, my sister and I have been taken to the heart of their people and made to feel that we are just as much at home here as if we had lived among them all our lives.
That is the great privilege belonging to our place in the world-wide commonwealth – that there are homes ready to welcome us in every continent of the earth. Before I am much older I hope I shall come to know many of them.
Although there is none of my father’s subjects from the oldest to the youngest whom I do not wish to greet, I am thinking especially today of all the young men and women who were born about the same time as myself and have grown up like me in terrible and glorious years of the second world war.
Will you, the youth of the British family of nations, let me speak on my birthday as your representative? Now that we are coming to manhood and womanhood it is surely a great joy to us all to think that we shall be able to take some of the burden off the shoulders of our elders who have fought and worked and suffered to protect our childhood.
We must not be daunted by the anxieties and hardships that the war has left behind for every nation of our commonwealth. We know that these things are the price we cheerfully undertook to pay for the high honour of standing alone, seven years ago, in defence of the liberty of the world. Let us say with Rupert Brooke: “Now God be thanked who has matched us with this hour”.
I am sure that you will see our difficulties, in the light that I see them, as the great opportunity for you and me. Most of you have read in the history books the proud saying of William Pitt that England had saved herself by her exertions and would save Europe by her example. But in our time we may say that the British Empire has saved the world first, and has now to save itself after the battle is won.
I think that is an even finer thing than was done in the days of Pitt; and it is for us, who have grown up in these years of danger and glory, to see that it is accomplished in the long years of peace that we all hope stretch ahead.
If we all go forward together with an unwavering faith, a high courage, and a quiet heart, we shall be able to make of this ancient commonwealth, which we all love so dearly, an even grander thing – more free, more prosperous, more happy and a more powerful influence for good in the world – than it has been in the greatest days of our forefathers.
To accomplish that we must give nothing less than the whole of ourselves. There is a motto which has been borne by many of my ancestors – a noble motto, “I serve”. Those words were an inspiration to many bygone heirs to the Throne when they made their knightly dedication as they came to manhood. I cannot do quite as they did.
But through the inventions of science I can do what was not possible for any of them. I can make my solemn act of dedication with a whole Empire listening. I should like to make that dedication now. It is very simple.
I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.
But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do: I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God help me to make good my vow, and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.
What can anyone say but the quote the Queen when she quoted Rupert Brooke (an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War), saying, “Now God be thanked who has matched us with this hour”
Now God be thanked who has matched this lady with this hour.
buy shirts for some men out of work as no work to manufacture shirts
Adapted from the passage, “Within my lifetime in England money was (very properly) collected to buy shirts for some men who were out of work. The work they were out of was the manufacture of shirts.”
