One of the unfortunate factors about places like New York which have been settled for hundreds of years is that they are generally over-developed. This leaves little land for new developments, and likewise for large-scale semi-planned communities like the ones currently being built in Florida. While much, perhaps even most, of Florida’s booming development in the late 20th century suffered from severe architectural defects, a number of outstanding works have bucked the trend.

Rosemary Beach is one such development. The Town Hall, seen above, was designed by the firm of Merrill, Pastor, & Colgan. This, and other buildings in Rosemary Beach, follow a St.-Augustine-esque Spanish Colonial style, with wooden balconies, and a few Cape Dutch elements, as with the gables of the Town Hall. What’s more, most of these buildings are designed to take advantage of natural cooling methods to cut down on energy consumption, as well as being built to high standards of hurricane resistance. Below are a series of photos from Rosemary Beach and other places demonstrating some of the better trends in recent Floridian architecture, both public and domestic. (more…)

Posting over the next fortnight will be light or even non-existant, as next week I am going on pilgrimage to Rome, and the following week I will be spending down in Somerset. Until I return, enjoy the above post on recent Floridian architecture, and remember there are category archives above for you to peruse if you get bored and need a dash of Cusack.

I don’t know how that translates into Russian.

In a shocking defeat for the Hacks, Tom d’Ardenne has been elected President of the University of St Andrews Students Association, though not without a fight! First, the background.

What is the Hack? The Hack is a strange subspecies of human which populates the myriad committees and offices of the Students Union. They are vile, strange, self-delusional people who live in an alternative universe purely of their own creation. The Hack is the enemy of all that is good and holy and sensible in this world. They have committee meetings which are hours long and which achieve nothing. They devote indordinate amounts of time to the Students Association, and to no real use. The Union (and all its works and worthless pomps) has absolutely no bearing, impact, or influence on the lives of the overwhelming majority of students. Hacks pretend this isn’t so, and when they are confronted with this reality (usually by injurious ne’erdowells such as myself), the reactions vary from the hilarious to the pitiable.

Nonetheless, the free reign the hacks have in the union has led them to create an intricate code of complex rules, regulations, and decrees. The hack has spent years studying and being inculcated in this strange Justinian code of darkness, which makes it intrinsically difficult for any non-hack to win any union election. First of all, the electoral rules can punish a candidate for factors completely outside his control. If you’re running for office and someone you don’t know, have never met, and have nothing to do with has completely unknowingly violated some minutiae of a footnote of a rule, you can be punished for it. Even thrown out of the race!

This is what happened to dear old Tom, the non-hack, the anti-hack. But with appeals and tribunals and what have you, somehow common sense prevailed and it was decided that his votes would be counted along with the others. And when the votes were counted, it was announced that the Anti-Hack himself had been duly elected Association President! Of course, it doesn’t really mean much. It’s largely a figurehead position as he has no real power to abolish, reform, or streamline the Union. But it’s an important symbolic victory against the hacks and their reign of self-importance. Plus, it’s always somewhat comforting to know that nice guys don’t always finish last. Our most profound congratulations to Tom d’Ardenne and best wishes for his sabbatical year as the head student representative of our ancient university. Do us proud!

When snow falls, most people build snowmen. The Catholic Ladies Guild of the University of St Andrews, however, constructed a snow Madonna-and-Child. For your enjoyment, I present you with this selection of recent photographs, mostly stolen from the Facebook accounts of my friends. (more…)

Glen Hansen, Praha – Church of St. Nicholas
Oil on panel, 32″ x 32″
2005, Fischbach Gallery

Glen Hansen, Praha – Trilogy (Homage to Agnes Martin)
Oil on panel, 24″ x 24″
2005, Fischbach Gallery

“Praha” is on display through Saturday, April 15 at the Fischbach Gallery, 210 Eleventh Ave., between 24th and 25th streets. Tue.–Fri., 10:00am–5:30pm, Sat, 10:00am–6:00pm, 212-759-2345, free.

Thus wrote Francis Finnegan of the Ancient Order of Hibernians to H.R.H. Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, (above, in the uniform of the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars) inviting him to partake in New York’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities in 1966 during his visit to North America. The invitation was made in recompense for the opprobrious breach of propriety in 1861 when Col. Michael Corcoran, Commanding Officer of the New York 69th committed an act of insubordination when he refused to order his troops to take part in the official festivities welcoming the Prince of Wales to New York. Corcoran was dropped from the Officers Roll of the New York State Militia for the offense, and was to be court-martialled but for the outbreak of the Civil War.

Finnegan, the public relations director of the New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade organised by the Ancient Order of Hibernians every year, assured the Duke of Edinburgh that he would not be mistreated as the Prince of Wales had been one hundred and five years previous. “Alas,” TIME magazine reported, “he arrived in Manhattan too late on St. Patrick’s Day to march in the Fifth Avenue parade, even though he did sport a fine green tie. Britain’s Prince Philip, 44, in a green tie? ‘Just a coincidence,’ chuckled the consort.” (TIME, 25 March, 1966).

The 1861 visit of the Prince of Wales to New York was a spectacular event, despite the insults of Col. Corcoran. A ball was held, just as for the Queen Mother during her 1954 visit to New York, as well as a parade and pass-in-review.

King Peter of Yugoslavia visits the University of St Andrews, September 1941. Above, on South Street outside Parliament Hall and St. Mary’s College gate. Below, in St. Mary’s quad.

IN THE SHADOW OF FATHER DUFFY: Members of the New York City National Guard (sic) stand next to a wreath during a ceremony honoring New York’s Fighting 69th at Times Square’s Father Duffy Square (sic) yesterday. The regiment, which suffered 19 casualties during its tour of duty in Iraq, will be marching as a full unit in this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Fifth Avenue. The speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, has decided not to march in the parade. Story, page 3.

Despite the inaccuracies (it’s the New York National Guard, not New York City National Guard, and Father Duffy Square is opposite Times Square, not in it), it’s nice to see one of the Empire State’s greatest regiments remembered in the press, and on no less than the front page.

Further:

How one enjoys the traditional and ceremonial side of university life! Having duly elected Simon Pepper OBE as the new Lord Rector of the Universitas Sancti Andreae, the usual rigamarole of festivities and rites recently took place. The first is the Rectorial Drag, in which the Blues of the University drag the new Lord Rector around the town in a carriage. Along the way he makes various stops, mostly at public houses, in which a number of student groups and the like present him with gifts and drinks. We in the Boat Club arranged to meet the Lord Rector at the Central bar in Market Street. Above (and below), having alighted from his carriage, the Lord Rector greets a number of students, among them Felix Lobkowicz, the recently-elected President of the Boat Club, and Chris Kololian, the outgoing president. (more…)

The Hill of Crosses in Lithuania. Over the years, the faithful left crosses on this hill to praise God and signify their appreciation for the many graces and mercies bestowed by Him. During the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, the hill was twice demolished and cleared by the Communists. Each time it was reconstructed by the people, and on its third appearance the Soviets finally allowed it to stay. Despite strong evidence of Christian faith such as this, the University of St Andrews ‘Christian Union’ claims that Lithuania is a heathen country, ‘with only 35 Christians’.

During my presence at St Andrews over four years, it has snowed on a few occasions, though never stuck for more than a few minutes. I was much pleased, then, to awake on March 2 and spy through my windows (I never draw the curtains, as I enjoy the early morning sun) a blissful wintry utopia. The auld gray toon had been transformed into a veritable snow-globe, with snowflakes shifting back and forth with the wind as gravity drew them nearer their earthly home. Delightfully, this snow lasted, affording thousands of students myriad opportunities for heavenly mischief and giving me an excuse to put on my trusty Sportos. (Trusty Sportos seen at right).

But, woe of woes, I had a presentation to give that afternoon on the mundane and irascibly dull subject of the historiography of Indian/Settler relations in colonial America. I, and about four or five others out of a class of nearly twenty, duly arrived in the Old Library of St. John’s House at the appointed hour. We, the few, pondered where everyone else was. Had they autonomously declared a holiday? Risky business, considering this was a tutorial, and thus required, unlike lectures, of which I likely attended less than a third of my due during the past four years. A kindly secretary came in to inform us that Dr. Hart had cancelled the class and thus we were all free to frolic in the abundant snow to our little hearts’ content. Naturally, I just went to Rosary.

Speaking of Rosary, one day the week previous the post-Rosary revelry nearly drank the town dry. Well, perhaps I ought to give some background to our bliss. The Rosary is said every day Monday through Friday in St. James Church at 1:30 after which we all process across the street to the Common Room in Canmore. One or two of the girls, or Adrian if the girls are absent, make a round of tea for the merry band of Marian devotees. Well, on this frigid day in Scotland (a land of poorly-heated buildings, if one’s lucky enough to have heating on at all), we all huddled by the electric fire in our chairs, surmounted by a large communal blanket. Tom brought a bottle of port, of which we all partook, before I then excused myself to go off and do some equally time-wasting task. Well apparently the Rosary crew finished off that bottle of port, and then went and purchased another one! What’s more, the rapacious dipsomaniacs, once they had finished that bottle of port they emptied the reserve bottle of whiskey I keep hidden behind the German dictionaries in the library upstairs. Disgraceful! I have decided not to replenish the secret reserve, since, to put it in the vernacular parlance, is nae secret anaemoor!

Of course it’s my own fault for leaving it in the Chaplaincy. Should I have hidden it in the chaplaincy of the very friendly heretics over in St. Mary’s Place across from the Students Union, it would have remained unmolested. The worse that could happen would be the Christian Union forming a prayer circle around it and praying for the Good Lord to make it go away. (We Catholics already posess the knowledge on making drink disappear, and how!).

Ah, the ‘Christian Union’! Not in the entire English-speaking world, I daresay, does there exist a more delusional body of people. Everything about them is either hilariously funny or pitably sad, beginning with the irony of their very name. The Christian Union, as it styles itself, actually bans most Christians from joining. Those who wish to sign up (poor fools!) must be willing to sign a statement of faith extolling the tenets of the Evangelical Protestant religion. Thus Catholics, Orthodox, and even most Anglicans are not allowed to join. I have sometimes posited contacting whichever bureau of Britain’s behemoth government is responsible for truth in advertising and trying to get them to get the Christian Union to change their name. ‘Evangelical Society’ would be the most appropriate; while ‘Society of Over-Emotional Self-Deluding Followers of Feel-Good Teddy-Bear Christianity’ might be more accurate we must give some allowance for PR these days.

One of the latest projects of the Christian Union is to work for the ‘Christianization’ of Lithuania, “since there are only 35 Christians in the entire country”. It has apparently escaped the C.U. that Lithuania was Christianised ten centuries ago and has remained a vibrantly Christian country, even through decades of Soviet persecution. But perhaps we should leave them in their self-delusion, if only for the hilarity it provides for the rest of us. One can almost imagine them being given demographic information about the population of heaven, with thousands upon thousands of the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles, the Church fathers, the martyrs, confessors, priests, nuns, and all the legions of holy souls: “But there are only 35 Christians!”

In an act of worship of the goddess Effeciency, the U.K. Government, or the Meteorological Office thereof, declared March 1 to be the beginning of Spring rather than the traditional, astronomical, and accurate Vernal Equinox (March 20). True to form, Mother Nature (a proud woman), decided that, in the interests of putting the upstarts in their proper place, she would open the heavens and thus a bountiful snowfall was produced the ver next day. I took a few snaps from my little chamber in St. Salvator’s Hall for your enjoyment. (more…)

I do hope you will pardon our appearance while we’re fixing everything up. In the process of reconstruction, it seems a few things have been misplaced and I’m afraid it may be some time before they are put to rights (though naturally, we have every intention of putting them to rights).

It would seem that, due to our own faults, previous posts must be reentered and reposted, but this process has already commenced. You will note many of the posts under the ‘Recommended’ section on the right are already up and running again, and once those are complete, my Maces of America series (published, in part, in the Quarterly Journal of the Guild of Mace-Bearers, I should remind you) will be next after that. From thence I suspect I will procede backwards chronologically in reuploading our content. (Just reposted Rob and Maria’s wedding).

Nonetheless, in addition to bringing back the old stuff, we will indeed provide you with new amusements and observations, and tales of every shape and hue.

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