An Example of "Don't Do This"

Well, that'll teach me go just go cruising about the internet by myself.  There I was, just wandering about and looking at stuff and following whatever caught my eye for a little while, and I ran across the following:

Yeah, the "coat of arms" in the seal of the City of Hartford, Connecticut.  You can tell it's Hartford because you have a hart, or stag, crossing a river (presumably, the ford, though an heraldic ford is a different thing altogether), and you know it's Connecticut because of the grapevine in base, three of which appear on the arms and, because the arms appear on the flag, the flag of the State of Connecticut.

And, of course, you can tell that it's located within the bounds of the United States of America because of the eagle (wings displayed) sitting atop the shield.  Really, about the only thing they're missing is the GPS coordinates (41.762736°N 72.674286°W, if you must know).

And what is that stuff that they've done instead of mantling down the sides of the shield?  The upper parts look like Victorian gas brackets, but the lower parts look like branches of some sort. Oak, maybe?

I guess I could just chalk it all up to that old quote by Catherine Aird: “If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.”

"Horrible" may be a little strong here; I've certainly seen worse.  But, still, it's not good.

When Is A Knight Not “Really” A Knight?

I was really tempted to do some kind of subject line with a punch line of “once a knight is enough,” but I manfully resisted the temptation. (The fact that I wasn’t able to come up with something on short notice that really worked well had nothing to do with it!)

Anyway, there was a story dated November 2, 2011, in the Greenwich, Connecticut Greenwich Time about Peter von Braun, who is running for election to the Board of Education there. There is, apparently, some controversy being stirred up by his opponents about the fact that he calls himself a knight.

What the controversy really boils down to is that Mr. von Braun has not been knighted per se, but is a Knight of Grace of the Order of St. John, a chivalric order headed by Queen Elizabeth II. So he can’t add “Sir” as a title to his name, but, yes, technically he is a knight.

The part of the story that interested me was the pictures, showing von Braun with the grant of honorary arms he received from the College of Arms in 1983, along with a close up of the grant alone. Even when the arms are pretty complex (and these seem to be pretty complex, quarterly with a checky fess), it’s always of interest to see someone’s grant of arms.

If you’d like to read the full story of the controversy, including what David White, Somerset Herald of the College of Arms in London had to say to inquiries about von Braun's knighthood, it can be found on-line at: http://www.greenwichtime.com/news/article/He-s-no-Beatle-but-yes-von-Braun-is-a-knight-2249330.php