THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNION OF THE UNITED STATES
Creating global understanding through English
Southwest Virginia – Roanoke Branch
Newsletter February – 2015
Why, what’s the matter, that you have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness? Much Ado About Nothing (Viv) - William Shakespeare
The SWVA Branch of the English Speaking Union will convene at The Shenandoah Club on Thursday, March 5, 2015 at 6:00 P.M. The program will feature Dr. Rob Havers, president of the George C. Marshall Foundation. Formerly he was executive director of The National Churchill Museum and vice president for the Churchill Institute at Westminster College, located in Fulton, Missouri. The museum also houses archives and a research library similar to that of the Marshall Foundation and connects the Churchill legacy to Westminster College. The Churchill Museum includes a museum, archives and a research library, all similar components to the structure of the Marshall Foundation. Dr. Havers was affiliated with the Churchill organizations and Westminster College from 2004 to 2014. The George C. Marshall Foundation, located in Lexington, Virginia, houses a library, archive, a museum and administrative offices dedicated to honor the legacy of George Catlett Marshall.
Formerly Dr Havers served as Fulbright-Robertson visiting professor of British History at Westminster College and served as a professor of War Studies at Sandhurst and taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Cambridge. He graduated with a degree in history and politics from Queen Mary College, University of London. Subsequently he obtained his master’s degree from the London School of Economics in Modern British history, and his PhD from Pembroke College of the University of Cambridge. His thesis, “Reassessing the Japanese POW Experience: The Changi POW Camp, 1942-45”, was published as a book in 2003.He is the author of other articles and books.
Dr. Havers is married to Alana Abbott and they have two daughters, Alice and Olivia.
BRANCH NEWS
The next meeting will convene on April 15, 2015. This will be the annual Wrench Speaker meeting and is our black tie event. The speaker will be Sir Robert Rogers KCB, Clerk of the British House of Commons. His topic will be “A Universal Charter? The Legacy of the Magna Carta.”
PERSIFLAGE
1. You’ve got to go out on a limb sometimes because that’s where the fruit is.
2. Everything is funny as long as it is happening to someone else.
3. Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
4. Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.
5. It's easy being a humorist when you've got the whole government working for you.
6. Things ain't what they used to be and never were.
7. An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.
8. Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff.
9. If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as
they do on advertising then they wouldn't have to advertise them.
10. Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.
(Source – Will Rogers Quotes)
Test yourself with these few lines from Shakespeare
What should I do with him—dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.
(II.i.28–32)
These lines constitute Beatrice’s witty explanation for why she must remain an unmarried woman and eventually an old maid: there is no man who would be a perfect match for her. Those who possess no facial hair are not manly enough to satisfy her desires, whereas those who do possess beards are not youthful enough for her. This conundrum is not particular to Beatrice. In Renaissance literature and culture, particularly in Shakespeare, youths on the cusp of manhood are often the most coveted objects of sexual desire.
Although Beatrice jokes that she would dress up a beardless youth as a woman, there is a hidden double meaning here: in Shakespeare’s time, the actor playing Beatrice would have been doing exactly that, since all female roles were played by prepubescent boys until the late seventeenth century. Indeed, the beardless adolescent had a special allure that provoked the desires of both men and woman on the Elizabethan stage. Beatrice’s desire for a man who is caught between youth and maturity was in fact the sexual ideal at the time. The plot of the play eventually toys with her paradoxical sentiments for a man both with and without a beard: during the course of the play, Benedick will shave his beard once he falls in love with her.
(The lines are from Much Ado About Nothing - Quotation explained source – Spark Notes)