The last day in November

The stress of Kate's seminar presentation is over. The biggest problem she had yesterday was trying to get in touch with Cindy and me. She had a lot of friends and professors in attendance at the seminar and she apparently did very well. Not that we had any doubts.

Now she and her female buddies from PC are going to Greenville tonight to watch a movie and eat a nice meal. That sounds nice but she needs money in her checking account to handle the cost. So Daddy will take care of that.

Today's calender entry is about Winston Churchill, whose birthday we celebrate today. Churchill was born to an English aristocrat and an American mother. He was related to the Duke of Marlborough (Spencers) and is a distant relative to Princess Diana, the former Princess of Wales. Due to his dicey lineage, Churchill was on the edge of the aristocracy his entire life. As a young man, he covered the Boer war in South Africa as a correspondent. He was captured by the Boers and held for a twenty five pound ransom. Apparently, the price for an English journalist was pretty low. Also it was apparent that no one really cared about journalists captured in the field, because Churchill escaped rather than wait for ransom to be paid. Churchill became the exemplification of that old saw about young men being liberals and old men being conservatives, because he was a member of the Liberal party as a young member of parliament and was later a Tory when he was Prime Minister.

I truthfully think that he probably played both ends against the other. He was a liberal who was appointed the First Lord of the Admiralty and apparently had a low opinion of the Royal Navy. In the entry on my calender, it quotes Churchill as saying, "Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash." He also apparently had quite enough of Field Marshall Montgomery, saying that he was "in defeat, unbeatable-in victory, unbearable."

Juxtapose against that his early distate for Adolph Hitler, who was beloved by many Englishmen, including the Prince of Wales, Edward VIII. Hitler was seen by many as the voice of conservativism in Germany, in opposition to the communists. Clearly, both sides were the bad guys in that battle.

Since he seemed to battle against both sides in Parliament, I suppose that it is appropriate that Parliament kicked him out as Prime Minister immediately after the war. His opinions were lauded in America, however, and he coined the phrase 'iron curtain' in a speech in Missouri. He had a strong relationship with FDR as well. That may have been the most prominent element in the winning of WWII. Those guys got along even when few of the allied commanders could agree.

Tomorrow brings us December: the birthday and celebration month. Just a matter of days.