Yesterday informs today...

Yesterday was "Archaeology Day" in the USA and Canada. It might point to a history such between us though coincidentally we were at war next year 200 years ago (cue up "1812 Overture") and the single defeat in a War of the US, probably due to our lack of supply lines, or the superior ones in then "Lower Canada" i.e. the Rideau Canal, the historical society of which I once bought a rose decorated chocolate pot while on archaeology survey of New York's northern border through which flows mutual commerce upon our cooperative construction, the modern St. Lawrence Seaway, allowing ocean-going ships access to ports on the Great Lakes constructed in the late 1950s. One thing we agreed to I imagine is not allow the wars of Europe be fought out here in North America ever again. With that in mind and the recent Rupert Murdock "hacking" scandal I thought I might introduce a short piece of Sir Thomas Urquhart (1611 – c. 1660) prose for those reading this blog for some indication of intelligent matter left in my brain:

Sir Thomas on Scottish bankers

There hath been in London . . . for these many years together, a knot of Scottish bankers, collybists, or coin-coursers, of traffickers in merchandise to and again, and of men of other professions, who by hook and crook, fas et nefas, slight and might, all being as fish their net could catch, having feathered their nests to some purpose, look so idolatrously upon their Dagon of wealth, and so closely, like the earth's dull centre, hug all unto themselves, that for no respect of virtue, honour, kindred, patriotism, or whatever else, be it never so recommendable, will they depart from so much as a single penny; . . . which churlish and tenacious humour hath made many . . . imagine their compatriots infected with the same leprosy of a wretched peevishness, whereof those quodomodocunquizing cluster fists and rapacious varlets have given of late such . . . proofs.

Extracts from the writings of Sir Thomas Urquhart