Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

The Victoria Cross

victoria2On a sunny summer day in 1857 (June 26th to be precise) a disciplined line of 62 officers and men lined up in Hyde Park, London, to await their Queen — Victoria.  She was coming to award them a new military medal — one which would, along with the Congressional Medal of Honor in America, become one of the highest military honors in the world – the Victoria Cross.  These men had just recently fought for “Queen and Country” in the Crimea, a nasty little war, distinguished only because it was the first “living room war.”  Foreign correspondents from Britain had been on the scene at Sebastapol, Balaklava and the Alma River.  They saw and they wrote.  Their stories told the British public about disease and filth, inadequate clothing, obsolete equipment and idiotic orders, but what captivated the country was the nobility and the bravery of the common soldier.

Even though the public now loved him, Great Britain had no way to recognize its ordinary fighting man.  There was the Distinguished Conduct Medal, instituted in 1854, and staff officers were decorated all the time, but for most soldiers, the best they could hope for (aside from not getting killed) was a mention “in dispatches.”  Several officials took up the cause.  Liberal MP Thomas Scobell brought a motion to parliament suggesting an “Order of Merit…to which every grade and individual from the highest to the lowest… may be admissable [sic].”  Meanwhile, the Secretary of War wrote to Prince Albert about “a new decoration open to all ranks.”  His letter was enthusiastically received by both Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, who wrote back to suggest the name be changed from “the Military Order of Victoria” to “the Victoria Cross.”  Victoria also took a hand in the design of the medal itself, changing the motto from “for the brave” to “for valour” and recommending that, even though it was to be symbolically made from ordinary metal, it should be bronze, not copper.

The drawings and specifications, along with Her Majesty’s “suggestions,” were given to the jewelers Messrs. Hancock of London,victoria where H. H. Armstead is credited with the actual design.  It’s unlikely that he was the one who decided to make the medals out of the bronze from Russian cannons captured in the Crimea.  It was probably just cost cutting, but at the time, this extra bit of symbolism was not lost on the British public.  Hancock and Company still make the Victoria Cross today from the same lump of bronze, safely stored in the vault of the Royal Logistics Corps, in Donnington.  The cannons, two 18-pounders, are still at Woolwich Barracks, where anyone can plainly see that these “Russian” guns are, in fact, Chinese.

Since that first sunny day in June, the Victoria Cross has been awarded only 1,357 times to 1,354 recipients throughout the British Commonwealth – which, given the number of wars and warriors over the last 150 years, is not a lot.  It has been won by 4 sets of brothers, 3 times by fathers and sons and 3 men have won it twice.  Incredibly, during World War I, it was won by three men who all lived on Pine Street in Winnipeg, Canada.  Pine Street is now named Valour Road.  The youngest recipients were Andrew Fitzgibbon and Thomas Flinn, age 15, and the oldest was William Raynor, 61.  Legend has it that, at the first ceremony, Queen Victoria, stretching awkwardly from the side-saddle of her horse, actually pinned the first medal through Commander Henry Raby’s chest.  Popular Victorian fiction says he didn’t even flinch.  A fitting beginning for the Victoria Cross.

Technology Is Not To Be Trusted

pdaNot so many years ago, I had a PDA (I still don’t know what that stands for) from Palm.  I loved that little thing.  I carried it with me like a religious icon.  It held all my worldly knowledge and then some.  It was the beginning of the end of my memory because it told me what the phone numbers were, when the birthdays were, where I was supposed to go, what I was supposed to do and even what I’d been thinking two weeks before.  It saved my pictures and played music.  I even typed out a couple of short stories on its tiny screen.  It still holds most of my accumulated life, sitting in a dark closet, silent and forlorn, replaced by a telephone that’s smarter than I am.  My PDA (I called it Oscar) was my first foray into techno-living, and it taught me a valuable lesson: information technology is not to be trusted.

Way back in the day, when Hammurabi wanted to tell his people that goat stealing was a no-no for civilized Babylonians, he made a law.  Then, in order to get the word out, he found a guy with a hammer and chisel and etched that law into stone.  It was a permanent record.  In fact, if you happen to be hanging out at The Louvre and just happen to understand ancient Akkadian cuneiform, you can still read all about it and a whole lot more — in the original text.  Three thousand seven hundred and some odd years later, Hammurabi can reach through history and talk to us in the 21st century.  Cool, huh?  This is information technology in its simplest and most durable form – and it’s universal.  For example, we know that “The Drunks of Menkaure” helped build the Pyramids in Egypt because they carved their name on a rock.  Likewise, we have Sanskrit texts from India, the famous Mayan calendar from Mesoamerica and literally tons of other information from all over the world.  It’s not exactly an Information Super Highway, but we have enough stuff to get a pretty good vibe about what was going on before Herodotus turned history into a paying proposition.  The only problem with “cut into stone” technology is you have to be standing right beside it in order to use it.  It might be permanent, but it sure as hell isn’t portable.

However, our ancestors were an ingenious lot, and after several centuries of trial and error, they came up with a portable semi-permanent product called paper.  Paper and all the information we inscribed on it served our civilization well until the 1980s when Bill Gates and Stephen Jobs killed it dead as Disco.  Jobs, Gates and the boys turned information into electricity, and we’ve been expanding on that ever since.  And therein lies the problem.

Today, I carry all I know and all I need to know in the palm of my hand – including a translation of Hammurabi if I want it.  pda1Unfortunately, without the machine to read it, I have nothing.  Not only that but if my good friends at Google decide to kill the thing (I honestly don’t know what it is) they call Android, I’m totally screwed.  Under some circumstances, I wouldn’t even be able to find my way home.  After all, it’s not like I carry maps anymore – or an address book, or an appointment calendar or even a pen.  But it doesn’t have to actually get that drastic.  For all intents and purposes, most of my (and a lot of other people’s) existence gets put on hold every time the techno somebodies change their minds.  For example, when the Palm operating system went out of business, so did I — for a while.  The information was there (somewhere) but I couldn’t see it.  It was like trying to fit my vinyl recording of Sgt. Pepper into my CD player.  (Yes, I still have both.)

Of course, these days, information isn’t even really “there” anymore.  There is no tangible place (like my old Palm) that has my sisters’ phone numbers or my doctor’s appointment or my nephew’s wedding pictures.  All these things do exist but in such specific formats that one techno-twitch either way and they disappear.  They haven’t been destroyed; it’s just that nobody can see them.  I might have all my information backed up on an SD card or Flash Drive, but without a corresponding slot to put it in or a protocol that recognizes it, my information becomes a lump of factory formed plastic.  And what happens to Grandma’s birthday party if the Cloud goes away?

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not a 21st century Luddite, but I keep a handwritten address book and my photo albums right beside Oscar the PDA because, these days, information might be portable but it sure as hell isn’t permanent.

 

Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013

thatcherWe cannot look at historical figures without the telescope of history, so it’s hard to judge what our contemporaries will look like to the ages.  As hostages of living memory, we get caught in the fever of the times and think with our hearts and not our heads.  Margaret Thatcher is such a figure.  To some, she was the embodiment of all that is wrong with representative government — the conservative terror that nightmares all “progressive” dreams.  To others, she was a Joan Bull of Britain, standing with Elizabeth I, Nelson and Churchill in the stubborn defence of British attitudes and values.  Regardless, she was Britain’s first female Prime Minister and held that office for eleven years, longer than anyone else in the 20th century (including Winston Churchill.)  And, like it or not, she revolutionized politics in Britain and around the world.

For me, Margaret Thatcher still represents hope.  In her, I see the enlightened idea that we are citizens of our country not clients of it.  We, each of us, are personally responsible for how all of us make our way in the world.  We should not download that responsibility onto distant bureaucrats; nor put our faith in the chimera of government programs which history has proven unworkable and unsustainable.  In 1987, Margaret Thatcher summed it all up in an interview, when she said, “It is our duty to look after ourselves.” and I believe she was right.