A photograph released today of the Queen with two of her ponies, exemplifying her love of horses.
Her Majesty the Queen, born in 1926, today celebrated her 96th birthday quietly at her Sandringham estate in Norfolk. As is customary, the big celebration of her Official Birthday will be held in early June, this year combined with four days of festivities to mark her seventy years on the Throne, the Platinum Jubilee.
Her Majesty's lifelong devotion to duty and service to her people, as well as to the other 53 nations of the Commonwealth around the world, are beyond the measure of human acclaim. Your Head Trucker can add only his humble admiration, and wishes for her every happiness.
God Save the Queen.
Bonus: For a comprehensive, behind-the-scenes look at the Queen's public and private life, I highly recommend the BBC's beautifully done Elizabeth R, filmed in 1990-91 with Her Majesty's full cooperation - before the unpleasant events of the annus horribilis:
Zelensky and his family in happier times. Click to enlarge.
BBC correspondent Katty Kay, based in the United States, writes:
Since coming into office, Joe Biden has spoken repeatedly about the tectonic struggle between democracy and autocracy. It's been the leitmotif of his presidency. His argument is that democracy must deliver for its people if it's going to survive. But there's another side to that social contract. We citizens have to deliver for democracy as well.
For a start, we have to bother to vote. It's an activity America is famously bad at. In the 2020 election, one of the most consequential in recent history, only 62% of eligible voters bothered to turn out and vote. That was a modern day high. The UK doesn't do much better, 67% voted in its last general election. . . .
Of course it's not just the lack of participation that weakens liberal societies. Twenty-first century democracies are hotbeds of social and economic inequality. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer. Many democracies, like the US, have such polarised political systems that you can't get laws passed that would make lives better. They've become virtually ungovernable. Long-term challenges, like climate change, get kicked down the road as politicians focus their efforts on short term gains, like getting re-elected.
Democracies aren't giving the next generation the tools they will need to be responsible democratic citizens in a complicated, changing world. Our kids need lessons on how to spot real news from fake news and how to avoid baseless conspiracy theories that undermine the strength of democracy itself. . . .
I am part of a generation that has taken political pluralism for granted. Decades of peace produced a failure of imagination. Despite the war tales our parents told us, we couldn't envisage that a way of life we'd all got used to might disappear if we didn't defend it.
Ukraine has snapped us awake. It has shown us both the risks, and, more inspiringly, what it means to really care for democracy. In a war they didn't choose, Ukrainians are fighting, and dying, for the right to free elections, to the rule of law, and an impartial media, for the right to be a democratic country. Their bravery puts our laziness to shame.
Ukrainian President Zelensky will be interviewed on the long-running CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes tomorrow. Excerpt:
"We are defending the ability of a person to live in the modern world," Zelensky says. Rhetorically, no one can dispute that inconvenient truth that puts all Western nations to shame. "Being brave is our brand, " Zelensky said two days ago, "This is what it means to be us. To be Ukrainians. To be brave. If everyone in the world had at least ten percent of the courage that we Ukrainians have, there would be no danger to international law at all."
It may not be not quite that simple - but once again, he gets to the heart of the moral dilemma confronting the West that I have mentioned since my first post about this damnable war: every moral fiber quivers with the impulse to join Zelensky and his people in the fight against a monstrous evil; but to do so would probably mean a death sentence for many millions of people far from Ukraine, and unthinkable destruction on a gigantic scale. A devil's dilemma, that's what it is.
And who knows but what the unthinkable won't happen anyway, no matter how carefully Western leaders tiptoe around the edge of the abyss? God forbid. I have no idea what to do or what to say. I can only join with all other decent men and women in saluting the fierce courage of the Ukrainians and their indomitable president. May God deliver them from all assaults of the enemy and give them peace - and all the rest of the world, too.
For a long time now, it has seemed hard to find things to blog about. All of a sudden, many stories and videos seem to be popping up for my attention. Why, I don't know. This one is particularly moving. From the BBC in 2015:
Map of recent Russian advances in Ukraine - from the BBC, 17 March 2022, 2100 GMT. Click to enlarge.
The cruel juggernaut lumbers on, the slow strangulation of a nation continues - George Floyd's death repeated over and over and over, with blood and bombs.
Sky News reports - "The life is being drained from Mariupol":
Sky News reports: Kiev residents say "Putin's trying to kill us":
Sky News reports: Rescuers dig frantically through steel and rubble to save one life:
CBS News reports: An American was shot to death in Ukraine while standing in a bread line to get food for his partner and other hospital patients:
President Zelensky warns that if Russia is not stopped now, it will embolden other aggressors to attack their neighbors:
The Prince of Wales, who has championed protection of the environment since long before it was hip to do so, expresses himself in a thoughtful interview about the problems now facing the world, marred by a somewhat hysterical interviewer and a completely misleading video title. Well, listen to what he says, and see what you think.
The interview takes place in the garden at Birkhall, the Prince's Scottish country house, part of the Balmoral Castle estate.
And here's the scoop on that "wine and cheese" fuel - it's ethanol, people, which all of Brazil and several other countries already run on. Grow up.
The poignant theme from the movie Summertime (1955), starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brozzi, is as beautiful as the film. If you've never seen it, you should.
The original trailer for the film gives an idea of the glorious cinematography that shows the city and the stars at their best:
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Bulletin, 12 Noon:Olivia de Havilland dead at age 104. The beloved actress died in her sleep at her home in Paris yesterday. She is survived by her daughter, Giselle, a journalist.
By sad coincidence, I just last week posted an interview with Miss de Havilland from 2016.
The last star of the Golden Age has fallen, one of the loveliest. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.
The BBC reports:
Turner Classic Movies remembers:
And the late Robert Osborne, longtime host of TCM, was a close friend of Miss de Havilland's for many years until his death in 2017:
This fascinating series takes us behind the scenes at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Your Head Trucker got to spend a couple of hours there once, which was of course not nearly enough time to see all I wanted to see. In addition to the usual paintings and sculptures, the museum houses a fabulous collection of historic furniture and furnishings, clothing, jewelry, and all sorts of decorative objects, including children's toys.
Lord Kenneth Clark (1903-1983) was a renowned British art historian, perhaps best remembered for his 1969 BBC series Civilisation, at the conclusion of which he made this statement:
At this point, I reveal myself in my true colors as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.
I believe that, in spite of recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years. And in consequence, we must still try to learn from history: history is ourselves.
Former First Lady Laura Bush, in an op-ed for the Washington Post, emphasis mine:
I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart. Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.
Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation, on being the nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by natural disasters or famine or war. We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We pride ourselves on acceptance. If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents — and to stop separating parents and children in the first place.
There's confusion on the links as a love triangle sorts itself out, in this delightful production of one of P. G. Wodehouse's short stories from 1928, superbly acted by husband-and-wife team John Alderton and Pauline Collins for the BBC in 1975:
A fascinating BBC series first shown in 2012. Description:
Historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn face up to the challenges of the biggest revolution ever seen in the history of the British countryside as they turn Manor Farm back to how it was run in the Second World War. When Britain entered the war, two-thirds of all Britain's food was imported - and now it was under threat from a Nazi blockade. To save Britain from starvation, the nation's farmers were tasked with doubling food production in what Churchill called 'the frontline of freedom'. This meant ploughing up 6.5 million acres of unused land - a combined area bigger than the whole of Wales.
In this first episode, the farmers find themselves in a new location, a new time period and with a new team member. There is a new farmhouse to modernise, strict new rules to abide by and air raid precautions to contend with.
Bonus: A charming little teaching film produced in 1941 by the British Ministry of Food to teach home cooks the tastiest way to prepare a cabbage, with no waste of vitamins:
The second episode in the BBC color series, written and presented by fashion expert Doris Langley Moore. First broadcast on April 28, 1957, using all original costumes from the various periods.
Dr. Michael Scott, classics professor at the University of Warwick in England, wrote and narrates this excellent BBC documentary covering many aspects of ancient Greek life and society, the ultimate source of our own civil culture. If you are into this sort of thing, you can search around on YouTube for several other documentaries the studly Dr. Scott has done for the BBC.
The first episode of a fascinating BBC series - unusually for 1957, filmed in color - on the history of fashion, presented by noted fashion historian and scholar Doris Langley Moore, who designed Katharine Hepburn's wardrobe for The African Queen. A young Vanessa Redgrave is one of the models wearing original period gowns; can you spot her?
What may or may not be the first in a series of documentaries that your Head Trucker has enjoyed on YouTube: from BBC4, If Walls Could Talk: The History of the Home, presented by Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces, London.
Worsley takes viewers through the 800-year evolution of the living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom, with visits to historic houses in various parts of England. Pretty fascinating, and full of many enlightening historical tidbits - from cooking a hedgehog to roasting with a dog-powered spit. Here's the first part of the episode on the kitchen.
BTW - the hit counter in the sidebar tells me that the Blue Truck has now had over 400,000 views. Thanks for the support, guys.
I wonder if any of my truckbuddies remember the tune of the same title: it was a well-known piece that I learned to play as a kid while taking piano lessons (which, alas, I didn't continue very long).
I was reminded of both tune and title by the serendipitous discovery on YouTube of some BBC programs done in the late 1980's which are really delightful. I don't think they were ever shown over here, but if you like to cook and garden, check these out, I think you'll enjoy them.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
