August 1, 2013

Finest Hour 125, Winter 2004-05

Page 11

Datelines – Around and About

In America during the baseball World Series madness in September, Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaunessy wrote: “The entire Red Sox Nation has once again been swallowed into the cavernous sinkhole of Hub hardball hope….The Boston baseball bombast is truly boundless. Red Sox club choreographer Dr. Charles Steinberg expects any day to hear from Steven Spielberg, Mick Jagger, and J.D. Salinger. Only recently we learned that Churchill, Gandhi, and James Dean were Red Sox fans.” So was God, of course. Yet, until 2004, the Red Sox had not won a World Series since they traded Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1918. In 2004 God spoke, and the rest is history.

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Reader Michael Rudd to The Kansas City Star, September 11th: Listening to [Georgia Democratic Senator] Zell Miller ’s venomous rant at the Republican convention, I was reminded of another politician: a great man of unquestionable character, Winston Churchill. On at least two occasions during his illustrious career, when Churchill disagreed vehemently with his party, he took the proper course of action and changed parties. This was the decency, integrity and loyalty of a man of honor.”

What Churchill and John Lennon had in common were tree houses, reported The Philadelphia Inquirer in September: “Winston Churchill had a tree house at Chartwell Manor, his country estate in Kent, England, as did John Lennon during his first years as a Beatle.” John Lennon had a tree house at Chartwell? Oh, never mind.

Staff writer Wendy Lin in the October 18th Lehigh Valley (Pennsylvania) Newsday writes about Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario: “A charming old town that retains much of the feel of the British colony it once was. This well-tended former shipbuilding center is a 20-minute drive away on the scenic Niagara River Parkway, which Winston Churchill declared to be ‘one of the prettiest drives on a Sunday afternoon.’” We have not heard this Churchillian remark before. Can anyone confirm it?

British airline tycoon Sir Richard Branson and mining magnate Cyril Ramaphosa joined forces in November in a new initiative to tackle HIV and AIDS in South Africa. The project, titled “Your Finest Hour,” was launched at the CIDA Campus in Johannesburg, the country’s first free higher education institution, and urged the working population to donate one hour of their salaries to the fight against HIV/AIDS. According to CIDA campus chief executive Taddy Blatcher , the name of the project came from the memorable speech made by Winston Churchill after France had fallen to the Germans, on 18 June 1940: “…if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their Finest Hour.’”