The Hooverville Hexagon: Autumn in a Tumble

 

Things to look at, things to think about.

 

While You're Watching the Birds…

by SashaQ

The birds are watching out for each other.

 

A Look Back

by Paulh

 

Memory of a summer garden. Nice to think about in late fall.

 

 RIP Funny-Shaped Car

Somebody on social media called it 'the end of an error,' which is a pun I could get behind. DG

Visually, the Cybertruck asked and answered pressing questions. Questions like: What if a hammerhead shark were also a microwave? What if the abstract concept of 'toxic masculinity' took on a physical form? Can a car be so powerfully off-putting that it makes your wife divorce you?

Jessica Goldstein, The New Republic

 

War Memorial #9:

Romanov Memorial

(Isle of Wight)

by Bluebottle

Every day until the day I still call Armistice Day, Bluebottle will be presenting a war memorial from somewhere. Today he shows us an unusual memorial to the Romanov family.

One often overlooked aspect of memorials is how their meaning changes over time. A prime example of which can be seen in one of the Island's most recent memorials, that of the Romanov Memorial in East Cowes, Isle of Wight. This was erected in July 2018 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the execution of the Russian Imperial Family by the Bolsheviks, and has an inscription listing,

 

Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexis, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Martyred During The Revolution In Russia July 1918.

 

It also shows carvings of the eight people listed. The memorial was erected in East Cowes because the Russian royal family were related to Queen Victoria who lived at Osborne House, and had visited the Island for their holidays. The memorial was erected by the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Romanov Society, as Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, is an official Russian Orthodox saint, the Holy Martyr Elizabeth Feorovna Romanov. After her husband was assassinated in 1905 she sold off all her possessions and with the proceeds established some Russian convents, living as a nun and caring for the poor and sick until the Bolsheviks dragged her out of her convent, pushed her into a pit in a mineshaft and chucked some hand grenades into it. She was heard singing hymns as the hand grenades exploded. The others listed on the memorial were killed by firing squad, with Nicholas and Alexandra's daughters aged between 15 and 20 and their son, Alexis, 13. And despite Hollywood's stories, Anastasia definitely died too.

 

Shortly afterwards, the memorial became associated with Pride, with the rainbow LGBTQ+ flag

frequently flying there. Was this because it was a handy flagpole? Or was it because it is known that members of the Romanov family were gay or bisexual, including the Holy Martyr Elizabeth's husband Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, and so is the family's memorial considered a gay icon by extension? You could certainly say that the Romanov family directly knew what it was like to be a highly persecuted minority because they were born different – in their case, royalty.

 

Since 2020, though, the memorial has flown the Ukrainian flag, and it has come to be regarded as a memorial to the ongoing war in Ukraine. The Romanovs were a family slaughtered by the proto-USSR, just as Ukrainian families today are being bombed and invaded by post-USSR Russia.

 

Poem of the Day

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

 

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

 

Robins will wear their feathery fire

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

 

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

 

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

If mankind perished utterly;

 

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Sara Teasdale, 'War Time'

 

Peace,

Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor