Rambling - continued!

Today's the 21st of January!  Lydia is in bed, and I'm getting ready to go, but not before I tell you that we just returned from a week in Munich, where we were Guests of Honor for the MSC (Münchner Senioren-Convent) Ball.  We have an outstanding relationship with one of the Munich Corps -- Corps Bavaria -- which actually started many years ago through a personal relationship on the part of my Corpsbrother Obelix with a young man from Corps Bavaria called 'Fricke.'  This has developed over time, to where there is now a regular stream of visitors back and forth between our organization, AHSC (Alt-Herren Senioren Convent) Washington DC and Corps Bavaria, and a wonderful string of friendships and acquaintances.  This time, we were the guests of Daniel Esendal and his lovely fiancee, Vanessa Jordan, and were squired about by Dr. Sebastian Sigler, a wonderfully scattered intellectual currently acting in the capacity of a literary hired gun.  Both had been our guests in the past.  We had departed Washington Dulles on 12 January, leaving behind a cold, icy and bleak Northern Virginia, to head for the  Bavarian Alps. We were indeed pleasantly surprised that the temperatures were considerably warmer there than at home.  I'll continue my update tomorrow!

Apologia pro sua vita

The road to a literary and antiquarian hell is frequently paved with good intentions, and this blog is no exception to that rule. Since I first started considering a direction, a half a year has passed, and no progress has been made. Since we all have new resolutions for the new year, mine will include finally getting serious about this project. It is to be the nature of this blog that it will cover a variety of antiquarian topics, but not -- as originally envisioned -- only concern itself with books, but rather with all of the odd bits of matter and philosophy which would have concerned the antiquarians of yesteryear, Lowndes or Grasset, for example. I hope to explore my faith and its liturgical trappings, opinions, history, ethnic culture, and, of course, books, as well as certain objects of vertu.

“Honi soit qui mal y pense” is the motto of the British chivalric Order of the Garter. An acceptable translation from Middle French is “evil to him who thinks evil of it.”

For my dueling society brothers at Corps Saxo-Borussia and Corps Masovia, a quatrain from the Landesvater ritual sums it up:

“So lange wir ihn kennen,

woll’n wir ihn Bruder nennen,

es leb auch dieser Bruder hoch!

Ein Hundspfott wer ihn schimpfen soll.”

The quote ostensibly originated during the reign of Edward III, while he was dancing with his cousin and daughter-in-law, Joan of Kent. Upon her garter slipping down to her ankle, the assembled courtiers – not showing good judgement in the face of the Sovereign, started snickering at her humiliation, but Edward, quite the cavalier, placed the garter around his own leg and iterated that now-famous quote, which became the motto of the Order of the Garter.

It’s somehow appropriate for our reading public as well.

It's the second day of Orthodox Christmas today, and it's a cold day at Klein Waldeck; yesterday, after a pleasant day at the Cathedral of Saint John the Forerunner, followed by a variety of fast-free treats in the Parish Hall, daughter Anna Sophia, spouse Lydia and yours truly retired back to the log cabin in the Blue Ridge. Anna Sophia left us at about 6:00 p.m. Lydia and I had a number of far-fetched plans, all of which involved staying up to watch the latest Russian movies, which dissipated quickly. We were exhausted. Lydia enjoys her sleep, and now that she is pregnant, she enjoys it even more. We'll try again on Sunday afternoon.