August 2009 Weddings
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
QOTD Thursday (dinner guests)
What three famous/historical figures, living or dead, would you like to have over for dinner? Why?
Re: QOTD Thursday (dinner guests)
1 - Anne Boleyn. I think she gets a bad rap from the popular culture interpretations of her life (damn you, Other Boleyn Girl!). Fact was, she was a pretty damn good queen once on the throne. It'd be fascinating to hear her actual story.
2 - Eleanor of Aquitaine. Another powerful Queen of England who kicked much ass.
3 - Allegra Goodman. I really admire her writing style and she just seems like such a nice person--it'd also be really interesting to hear how she works to write a novel and what it is that inspires her.
Chica - See, I'm all over Catherine of Aragon, because she totally kicked Henry's ass (herself, too) in the legal battle of him trying to divorce her. I have so much more respect (and pity, man, she totally didn't deserve to be saddled with him) for her after looking at some of the documents from the time. (Also, her mother, Queen Isabella fought in battles while she was pregnant - AMAZING.) I don't think much of Anne as queen, though she certainly manouvered herself well in getting to that point. I love that she refused to put out for almost a decade to keep Henry wanting her (which makes it extra interesting that she got labelled as a whore, because really, she was anything but). Have you read David Starkey's Six Wives? It does an amazing job looking at the lives and personalities of all the women in Henry's life. It's super comprehensive in dealing with the documents of the time.
As for me...
1: Nigel Slater - my favourite food writer. Honestly, I'd just like him to cook for me. Is that wrong of me to want a guest to do the cooking?
2: Walter Raleigh - I love a good adventurer/spy/courtier.
3: My great-grandmother - She was abandoned at an orphanage as a baby. After her first husband died, she moved to Kenya with nothing but her trumpet as part of the Salvation Army. She met husband #2 there, who was an engineer/big game safari owner. She had my nana (and 2 other children there) and then left him when he became abusive and moved back to England to go on to marry husband #3 and #4. I never met her, but my Mum says she was quite cold and proper. I think, though, that there was a woman there who wasn't afraid to step outside the gender roles of her time. A few years back I caught myself wondering what kind of woman moves to Africa by herself circa the 1920s, and realized that my moving to Japan by myself 80 years later seemed to tie in nicely. I would love to talk to her and see if we were alike at all.
Alyson & Phil | Planning Bio | Married Bio!
Dates & Quinces Blog
My admiration of Anne is based on her educational and charitable acts as queen, which often get ignored in the scandal of her marrying Henry, her miscarriages and execution. She also had a good degree of influence in terms of religious reform, and that's actually what people speculated was her undoing--not that she had Protestant leanings, but that when it came to the government seizing the Church's wealth, she wanted the wealth redistributed to educational and charitable entities instead of to the crown itself. So her once ally Cromwell, who disagreed and knows she still has the influence with Henry to make her will happen, does her in with trumped-up charges.
I have read Starkey, but I have to admit I prefer Ives. I think Catherine did a bang up job of defending her marriage. She seems to have not known about Henry's affair with Mary Boleyn, though, which is too bad since it created the same degrees of affinity that he claimed as the reason for their divorce. It would've been an awesome counterargument (Henry was an oaf, but seems like he was a discreet oaf!).
Oh totally! Another slam dunk (not that that mattered to Henry).
Anne was undoubtedly a very good strategist and an ambitious woman with a long range plan who very carefully manoeuvred her man to get what she wanted. She's still the most famous of Henry's wives (and you're right, definitely due to the scandal) and I think it's interesting that poor Catherine, who was a fighter and a strategist and who won in the court of popular opinion, always gets forgotten. I guess because we hear so much more about her, I'm always more interested in the voices that are absent from the story. It's like watching the Diana/Charles/Camilla story unfold, except Catherine's age and appearance have her looking more like Camilla than Diana, so she's largely discarded. She doesn't have the celebrity power that Anne does.
Not criticizing your dinner guest choice - I just think it's interesting that we'd choose a counterpoint.
It would be interesting to have them together in the same room, wouldn't it?
Alyson & Phil | Planning Bio | Married Bio!
Dates & Quinces Blog
I would have a very random dinner party.
Language, and dinner etiquette aside I would want to have dinner with Cicero and his secretary Tiro. I would love to know more about living in the Roman Republic, the scandals with the dictator Sulla all the way up to what Julius Caesar was like. (They were related too) That would be fascinating to me.
I would also love to have dinner with Picasso to just pick his brain and talk about Paris and his life in Barcelona.
Lastly I would love to dine with Audrey Hepburn. Her grace and style I have always been a fan of.
1. Betty White. I love that woman!! She just fascinates me and I would love to sit down and have a full conversation with her. I'm sure that meal would be full of laughter.
2. Elie Wiesel. When I was younger I met a Holocaust survivor and have been fascinated with learning about that time in history ever since. To meet someone like Elie whose resilience and strength has been such an inspiration to those who read his work would be an amazing opportunity.
3. Emma Stone. No particular reason other than her personality reminds me so much of mine and I have a theory that if we met we'd be good friends lol
Oh, definitely! And what if they had the benefit of hindsight and had insight into what we know now about biology and reproduction when they met? I'd like to think they'd both dump their goblets of wine on Henry's head before doing much worse!
I tend to champion Anne more because of the awful contemporary portrayals of her that I've run across, but I have a soft spot for all of Henry's wives. Again: oaf!
Ha! I could see that as a tag team event. He wouldn't stand a chance. I'm sure there's a drama piece in there somewhere.
Alyson & Phil | Planning Bio | Married Bio!
Dates & Quinces Blog