Neddy's Palaver

I am wondering if this Masonic Temple on a hill in Alexandria, Virginia will be featured in the new novel by Dan Brown The Lost Symbol.

Dan Brown had said that his next book was to be entitled “The Solomon Key.” Obviously he has changed those plans, as it is now published as “The Lost Symbol.” George Washington and many of the Founding Fathers were Masons as were founders of Mormonism: Masonry and Mormon Mysteries.

I snapped the picture one day while awaiting the Metro train at the King Street Station in Alexandria. The AmTrak Station is just next to it.

The image, Amtrak Train, was originally uploaded by Edna Barney. It is posted here from Barneykin’s account.

Visit Neddy’s Archives for more of Edna’s writings.

Most people have no idea that the first European to discover American was a Barney. They think it was Leif Erikson or Christopher Columbus. When Leif found the coast of America he was following Bjarne’s discoveries. Bjarne, a Norwegian Viking, found what is now New England in 986 AD. He went back to Greenland where his family was living and told his father, Harold, what he had seen. Harold was a member of Erik the Red’s sailing team. Erik the Red then ordered his son, Leif, to go and find the lands that Bjarne had described. The rest is history, and Christopher Columbus ended up getting the credit, as he had a great publicist. Leif came in second place, and Bjarne was forgotten.

Vanquished, Vanished

Come, come, come …
Let us ponder the America of our memories:
We sang like the birds of the field; we sang of freedom;
When we sought opportunity, we found it awaiting us.
America was a dream, a vision of seekers;
America was a dream that lasted ten score and thirty years.
The dream that was America encountered the anarchy of liberty;
And was felled by the anarchy of immorality.
We beg forgiveness of our founders, our fathers;
We weep for the blood they shed for us.
The America that was their dream is now our master.
Freemen no longer, we are serfs to toil land that is not ours.
We live the lives of the slaves of old, lives of quiet desperation;
We beat our breasts in despair knowing we sold our posterity into bondage.
We still pray, but not to God; We still sing, but not of freedom.
We tell tales to our children and they laugh,
For, as we recollect our remembrances,
Our children hear fairy tales of long, long ago.
We talk to those who sacrificed for freedom,
And they ask: “Did we win or did we lose?
Was God with us or were we against God, in those days?
Was freedom worth the blood we spilt?
Or was freedom but a mysterious nothing,
A mere longing of our souls?”
We will soon go away too, we who have the memories.
When we are gone, will seekers ever dream that dream again?

“And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave [him] leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews’ preparation; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand.” (John 19:38-42 KJV)

Mural of Jesus from the Crypt at Washington National Cathedral

The chapel that contains this mural is located on the crypt level of the cathedral. It contains New Testament imagery that show the promise of eternal life: Jesus’ birth, his death and entombment, and his resurrection. This somber mural tells the story of Jesus’s entombment following the crucifixion. I snapped the photograph at the CHAPEL OF SAINT JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA. Joseph was the wealthy man who gave his tomb for the burial of Christ’s body after the crucifixion.

The image, Mural of Jesus, was originally uploaded by barneykin. It is posted here from Barneykin’s account.

Visit Neddy’s Archives for more of Edna’s writings.

Who were Harry Thaw, Evelyn Nesbit and Stanford White?

I have been listening to an audio book of “Ragtime,” which I purchased because I have tickets to the play “Ragtime” that is scheduled for the Kennedy Center in May. Halfway through the book, I have decided that Evelyn Nesbit and Harry Thaw are featured characters that I should know more about. To learn more about them is quite easy, as, before reading “Ragtime” I had never heard anything of either of them; for all I knew, they were figments of the author’s imagination.

After the author’s coverage of Houdini, Teddy Roosevelt, Admiral Byrd, the famous psychiatrists Freud and Jung, I decided that murderer Harry Thaw, Gibson Girl Evelyn Nesbit and Evelyn’s lover Stanford White must have been historical characters. In 1906, Harry Thaw’s trial for the murder of White was labelled the “Trial of the Century.” Of course, OJ Simpson had not yet been born, and his trial for murder was fated for the end of the same century.

I find “Ragtime” interesting reading as it covers the historical events of my father’s boyhood. He was born 1901, and came to the U.S. as a teen. Also, my grandmother and my mother had grown up on a Virginia plantation of the family of another Gibson Girl, Irene Langhorne Gibson. I remember my grandmother recounting how she and her siblings played with the discarded drawings of Irene’s artist husband, Charles Dana Gibson. This is all doubly intriguing, as E.L. Doctorow links all of his historical characters with one another, and with his created characters, and I have found that my own family is linked to the very same people of his novel.

Well, back to “Ragtime” and Evelyn Nesbit, I finally Googled her this morning. (I’m not sure if “Google” the verb should be in caps or not.) She and her star-crossed lovers are in Wikipedia as real American characters and she even has her own web page: “The Story of Evelyn Nesbit.”

The image, Evelyn Nesbit, was originally uploaded by westiemom. It is posted here from Barneykin’s Flickr account.

Visit Neddy’s Archives for more of Edna’s writings.

Who Was

• The first president born in a log cabin?
• The first president nominated by a political party?
• The first president to ride on a railroad train?
• The first president victimized by an assassination attempt?
• The only president to find himself an orphan and an only child at the age of fourteen.
• The only president to have been a prisoner of war?
• The only president to have killed a man in a duel.
• The last president who was a veteran of the Revolutionary War.

Hint, Hint; They were all the same person. The answer is at http://tinyurl.com/djt7q6.

The Smithsonian wants it, but Aretha Franklin is not keen about reliquishing her hat with the big wool bow sparkling with genuine Svarovski crystals. At latest count there are more than twenty-five Fan Groups for her hat at Facebook and probably as many at Flickr. The hat’s Detroit designer has more than 3,000 requests for silk replicas at $180 each. The original in wool would cost upwards of $500, and it is unknown how many have ordered that version. And … Even I have finally got my own official “Aretha Franklin Inauguration Hat.” Mine is the original - all wool Svarovski. Now I can die happy. My only regret is that it was not available in fire engine red.
Flickr Slide Show of Aretha Chapeaux

(The Weekly Standard)

The image, Edna-Aretha, was originally uploaded by barneykin. It is posted here from Barneykin’s account.

Visit Neddy’s Archives for more of Edna’s writings.

I made this Christmas card using Picnik. My 2008 Christmas Card, was originally uploaded by barneykin. It is posted here from Barneykin’s FLICKR account.

My Christmas Gifts For You

Twas The Night Before Christmas read to you by Librivox.org.
• Saint Francis and the Creche
• Old Christmas Eve
• An American Christmas Carol
• Christmas Archives
• The Christmas Story
• Annie’s Wiseman Page
• A White House Christmas
  See the Barney Cam!
• A Swedish Merry Christmas
• A Victorian Christmas Scrapbook
• Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus
• “Old Christmas” by Washington Irving
• A Neddy Christmas

Visit Neddy’s Archives for more of Edna’s writings.

The Choral Group from Carl Sandburg Middle School, directed by Jeanne Crowley, concluded their presentation for Nelly Custis DAR chapter with "We Wish You A Merry Christmas," performed on the main staircase of the Woodlawn Mansion, Woodlawn, Virginia. Regent Pamela wanted her chapter to experience a brief moment from a long ago Virginia holiday. It was as though we had been transported back to those early American days of Nelly Custis Lewis and her family when they celebrated Christmas at Woodlawn Plantation, with no radios, televisions, cds and computers.

The talented young women sang a musical round also that I have not the title. The video is posted here: My Flickr Album.

I found this musical creation so beautiful that I had to learn more about it and its meaning. I found it on an album at Amazon, which I just ordered: The Irish Tenors / McNamara, McDermott, Kearns, Tynan.

This is what I discovered about the song entitled “Grace.” Give a listen. (The Video)

“As we gather in the chapel here in old Kilmainham jail,
I think about these past few weeks; Oh, will they say we failed?
From our school days they have told us we must yearn for liberty,
Yet all I want in this dark place is to have you here with me.

[Chorus]
Oh Grace just hold me in your arms, and let this moment linger,
They’ll take me out at dawn and I will die.
With all my love I’ll place this wedding ring upon your finger,
There won’t be time to share our love for we must say goodbye.

Now I know it’s hard for you my love to ever understand,
The love I bear for these brave men, my love for this dear land,
But when Padraic called me to his side down in the G.P.O.
I had to leave my own sick bed, to him I had to go.
[Chorus]

Now as the dawn is breaking, my heart is breaking too,
On this May morn, as I walk out, my thoughts will be of you.
And I’ll write some words upon the wall, so everyone will know,
I loved so much that I could see His blood upon the rose.”

Joseph Mary Plunkett was an Irish nationalist, poet and leader and planner of the 1916 Easter rising. It was largely his plan that was followed in 1916, which ended in a military disaster. Plunkett was held in Kilmainham Jail and faced court martial. Hours before his excecution by firing squad, at age 28, he was married in the prison chapel on 4 May 1916, to his sweetheart Grace Gifford, a Protestant convert to Catholicism.

Grace remained loyal to the republican movement while earning a living as a commerical artist.She voted against the treaty which divided Ireland and during the civil war she was imprisoned in Kilmainham jail for three months. She died in 1955.