Miss Beazley
So on a lighter note, and as we are heading into the holiday and i will be seeing the family, it's time to talk about cute little Miss Beazley.
First of all, I want to note that I love Barney (the dog). Hate Bush, but that Barney is mighty cute. And yes, I follow presidential pets, and yes, I cried when Buddy died, and if you didn't you're a damn liar.
But back to Miss Beazley. She is, as you may know, the new presidential puppy (see this). She is a little black scottie and looks to be headed for extreme cuteness. But that's not the point. The point is her name. She was named after a character in the book The Enormous Egg by my late, great uncle, Oliver Butterworth. Really.
So the whole family doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry over the whole situation. Uncle Beazley is a triceratops born to a chicken in Freedom, New Hampshire. The entire book is a (thinly) veiled allegory about McCarthyism and the evils of the goverment taking away civil liberties. Ironic? Yes. Painful in a that-evil-man-has-robbed-my-family's-heritage kind of way? Yup. So not taking this lying down, we got the word out. And now my aunt has written a very lovely open letter to the White House (printed in the Hartford Courant, sorry I don't have a link yet), which you should read because Thanksgiving is coming, and what I have to be thankful is a family as wonderful and as full of humor as this:
Dear Miss Beazley,
Our family is delighted to hear you are now a member of the first family, cavorting around the White House. It's good to have another Beazley in Washington.
We'd like to tell you something about your namesake, Uncle Beazley, who has been a cherished part of our family ever since my husband, Oliver Butterworth, created him in his book ``The Enormous Egg'' in the 1950s.
Uncle Beazley is a triceratops, a three-horned dinosaur, who unexpectedly hatches out of an enormous egg laid by a hen in Freedom, N.H., where he is then raised by Nate Twitchell, age 12. Freedom is a little town described by Nate as ``about three miles from the Maine state line, but Pop says Freedom's just as much a part of our state as Concord ...'' Uncle Beazley outgrows Nate's little town, so a scientist friend takes him to Washington, where he ends up in the National Zoo. You can find him there today in a position of honor just outside the Elephant House.
Uncle Beazley's Washington life was been full of adventures. A Sen. Granderson, bearing a remarkable resemblance to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, took a dislike to him and proposed a dinosaur bill to exterminate this beloved animal from Freedom -- he was eating up too much of the taxpayers' hard-earned money, and besides, he was un-American and ``a specimen of a bygone age,'' according to the senator.
Nate went on TV and gave a speech that launched a national campaign that had everyone writing congressman to defeat the dinosaur bill. Citizens' groups like the Mechanicsville Fife and Drum Corps and the Citizens' Council for Secondary Schools from Point of Rocks rallied at the zoo with banners and signs. Penny collections rolled in to pay for Uncle Beazley's alfalfa. The day was saved.
Years after writing ``The Enormous Egg,'' its creator wrote about why his dinosaur was a triceratops: He would be big and solid, ``but didn't bother other creatures,'' and his ``four sturdy legs would keep his feet solidly on the ground ... not the kind of dinosaur that could be easily pushed around.'' He would stand for a ``stubborn resistance to senators who tried to take away your freedoms,'' and his name, Uncle Beazley, ``sounded like a member of the family, slow-moving, a bit stubborn, perhaps even a little old-fashioned, but not likely to give in to bullies.''
We remember the many years when Uncle Beazley really did stand on the National Mall in Washington outside the Natural History Museum and generations of kids had a good time climbing on him before he moved to the zoo. We used to joke that he was the only statue in the District of Columbia that wasn't honoring a war.
His story has been told in other countries, in staged plays, in TV movies and in a remarkable musical put on at the Wilmington, Del., Opera House. A Beazley worth being named after, eh?
It was no accident that Uncle Beazley showed up in New Hampshire in the 1950s, right in the middle of the McCarthy era. And we're glad you're there in the White House now. We can always use a reminder in Washington of our need for civil liberties. And if you're little and wiggly -- so much the better.
Welcome to our nation's capital!
Your friends, Miriam Butterworth and the Butterworth family
First of all, I want to note that I love Barney (the dog). Hate Bush, but that Barney is mighty cute. And yes, I follow presidential pets, and yes, I cried when Buddy died, and if you didn't you're a damn liar.
But back to Miss Beazley. She is, as you may know, the new presidential puppy (see this). She is a little black scottie and looks to be headed for extreme cuteness. But that's not the point. The point is her name. She was named after a character in the book The Enormous Egg by my late, great uncle, Oliver Butterworth. Really.
So the whole family doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry over the whole situation. Uncle Beazley is a triceratops born to a chicken in Freedom, New Hampshire. The entire book is a (thinly) veiled allegory about McCarthyism and the evils of the goverment taking away civil liberties. Ironic? Yes. Painful in a that-evil-man-has-robbed-my-family's-heritage kind of way? Yup. So not taking this lying down, we got the word out. And now my aunt has written a very lovely open letter to the White House (printed in the Hartford Courant, sorry I don't have a link yet), which you should read because Thanksgiving is coming, and what I have to be thankful is a family as wonderful and as full of humor as this:
Dear Miss Beazley,
Our family is delighted to hear you are now a member of the first family, cavorting around the White House. It's good to have another Beazley in Washington.
We'd like to tell you something about your namesake, Uncle Beazley, who has been a cherished part of our family ever since my husband, Oliver Butterworth, created him in his book ``The Enormous Egg'' in the 1950s.
Uncle Beazley is a triceratops, a three-horned dinosaur, who unexpectedly hatches out of an enormous egg laid by a hen in Freedom, N.H., where he is then raised by Nate Twitchell, age 12. Freedom is a little town described by Nate as ``about three miles from the Maine state line, but Pop says Freedom's just as much a part of our state as Concord ...'' Uncle Beazley outgrows Nate's little town, so a scientist friend takes him to Washington, where he ends up in the National Zoo. You can find him there today in a position of honor just outside the Elephant House.
Uncle Beazley's Washington life was been full of adventures. A Sen. Granderson, bearing a remarkable resemblance to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, took a dislike to him and proposed a dinosaur bill to exterminate this beloved animal from Freedom -- he was eating up too much of the taxpayers' hard-earned money, and besides, he was un-American and ``a specimen of a bygone age,'' according to the senator.
Nate went on TV and gave a speech that launched a national campaign that had everyone writing congressman to defeat the dinosaur bill. Citizens' groups like the Mechanicsville Fife and Drum Corps and the Citizens' Council for Secondary Schools from Point of Rocks rallied at the zoo with banners and signs. Penny collections rolled in to pay for Uncle Beazley's alfalfa. The day was saved.
Years after writing ``The Enormous Egg,'' its creator wrote about why his dinosaur was a triceratops: He would be big and solid, ``but didn't bother other creatures,'' and his ``four sturdy legs would keep his feet solidly on the ground ... not the kind of dinosaur that could be easily pushed around.'' He would stand for a ``stubborn resistance to senators who tried to take away your freedoms,'' and his name, Uncle Beazley, ``sounded like a member of the family, slow-moving, a bit stubborn, perhaps even a little old-fashioned, but not likely to give in to bullies.''
We remember the many years when Uncle Beazley really did stand on the National Mall in Washington outside the Natural History Museum and generations of kids had a good time climbing on him before he moved to the zoo. We used to joke that he was the only statue in the District of Columbia that wasn't honoring a war.
His story has been told in other countries, in staged plays, in TV movies and in a remarkable musical put on at the Wilmington, Del., Opera House. A Beazley worth being named after, eh?
It was no accident that Uncle Beazley showed up in New Hampshire in the 1950s, right in the middle of the McCarthy era. And we're glad you're there in the White House now. We can always use a reminder in Washington of our need for civil liberties. And if you're little and wiggly -- so much the better.
Welcome to our nation's capital!
Your friends, Miriam Butterworth and the Butterworth family
posted by chiniqua at 6:43 PM
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