CSotD: Swearing True Allegiance to Spring

I’m with Katy in today’s Adam@Home. We haven’t had actual snow here lately but we’ve only had two days of warm sunshiny weather so far and even the warmish days that might have come close have, instead, featured cold winds. It might as well be March.

However, the birds are back, including the cormorants, as featured in the current They Can Talk, though our featured pescatorians locally are a pair of osprey who are building a nest on top of a power pole at the park.

They fooled with the concept last year, but never completed the project, which apparently is typical of osprey. This year, they’ve done much more work, bringing in sticks and building the nest and using it as a base of operations, so we’re hoping for youngsters.

Meanwhile, back at the cartoon, cormorants do indeed gorge on some huge fish. In China, fishermen who used cormorants would put rings on their throats so they couldn’t swallow their catch. They’d have to turn it in to the boss who would reward them with a smaller piece.

I suppose there are still people fishing that way; it seems like a reasonable form of symbiosis.

I don’t know that mayflies are useful for much, though fish like them and fly fishermen take advantage of a hatch, while cartoonists couldn’t live without them. Off The Mark uses their notoriously short (adult) lifespan to mock the current love of abbreviations. I like cartoons that make you pause for thought, even silly thought.

This May Day cartoon by Serbian cartoonist Tošo Borkovic (Cartoon Movement) also took me a moment, until I noted the difference in clothing, and then I didn’t laugh, but, then, political cartoons are not required to be funny.

They are, however, required to be accurate and I’m afraid this one is. May Day is traditionally a day for the workers of the world to unite in saying things are unfair, but I know the astonishing gap between the pay of workers and CEOs in this country and feel some comfort in knowing it’s worldwide.

Though, as Jonesy’s cartoon points out, there’s really nothing anyone can do about it. Those are specific UK politicians, and specific workers who have been striking, but it’s only one example. As the old English music hall song goes

It’s the same the whole world over
It’s the poor what gets the blame
It’s the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn’t it a blooming shame?

Morten Morland questions the new tradition to be observed at Jug-Eared Charlie’s coronation this coming week, which is that everyone — not just the titled nobility — should pledge loyalty to the sovereign, and not just the people in attendance but even those watching on television.

It’s not a joke, though the Daily Mail generally is.

But, yes, “Millions of people will be called upon to swear ‘true allegiance’ to King Charles at the Coronation.” And, presumably, to swear to run down to the local tattoo parlor to get a William and Kate emoji in a prominent position.

Though whoever put together that Sunday magazine section ought to go back and read some Kipling, since “the man who would be king” came to a very bad end once his lack of divine nature was revealed.

And not everyone will be swearing “true allegiance.” Nicola Jennings notes Charlie’s large, tax-free salary while doctors and nurses are heading for the food banks in Britain.

Maybe editorial cartoons aren’t required to be funny, but Jenning’s drew some pretty amusing comments from readers.

Political cartoons are not required to be funny, but they are allowed to be, and there is some giggling coming from the Antipodes, where Pat Hudson makes use of the two names for the stone in the throne, which is alternately known as “The Stone of Scone” or “The Stone of Destiny” and, appropriately, was stolen from Scotland when Scotland was itself stolen.

The tradition is that it is placed in the Coronation Chair of St. Edward and, if the new monarch-to-be notices that he’s sitting on something uncomfortable, it is proof of nobility and just in the nick of time. Or perhaps I’m thinking of a different fairy tale.

Anyway, it was stolen and returned temporarily to Scotland once, and suffragettes tried to blow it up, but it’s still around and will be part of the ceremony.

Another Australian cartoonist, Megan Herbert, didn’t bother drawing anything but she did express her joy and relief that the stone is properly positioned and ready for the royal tuchus.

Perhaps we’ve all got it backwards, and it’s not that royal people sit on the stone but, rather, that sitting on the stone makes you royal. If so, Britain could address their Brexit losses by putting the thing out in public like the Blarney Stone and charging tourists to sit on it.

People could, of course, get the same effect by switching from butter to margarine, but most of them aren’t old enough to know that.

Catching up with the past

Comics Kingdom missed a change-of-month from Nov to Dec 1939 at Thimble Theater. Here’s what should have happened in today’s Vintage episode.

And if you aren’t signed up for Comics Kingdom, you couldn’t pick a better time, since Rip Kirby is starting a new adventure and about to encounter a potentially fatal femme fatale.

While Johnny Hazard, whose adventures tend to segue into each other, is in Paris, where he was accidentally served oysters from a purloined crate, and is now also on the verge of meeting someone lovely but dangerous.

Earlier, Johnny restored the royal scepter just in time for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, and if we can go back to her, we can go further back to an earlier queen, who might well have benefited from having Johnny Hazard rescue her, but, instead, got Stanley Holloway to record her legacy

A legacy, I would add, which comes with a moral: Don’t become the second wife of a guy who got your older sister pregnant.

Twice.