Something Fun for Post Number 600

It's alway great when more than one of my interests intersect, and it seemed to me that this particular post, the 600th on this blog, was the ideal time to share with you a picture that was posted by Joseph Staub on the forum of the American Heraldry Society a few days ago.  And considering that it combined one of my loves, heraldry, with another of my loves, military aircraft, it was just too good to keep to myself.

And so. for your heraldic viewing pleasure, here's a photograph of a Czech fighter jet (I think it's a General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon) with what I can only consider to be a really cool, heraldic paint job!

The lion rampant on the aircraft is, of course, from the "small arms," the simpler, non-quartered coat of arms of the Czech Republic, shown here.

Another member of the AHS, Joseph McMillan, replied to a comment about how it wasn't really very well camouflaged, "It's in case the Czech Air Force ever has to deploy to the African veldt; the airplanes will blend in with the lions."

I hope that you will find this combination of heraldry and aviation as enjoyable as I have!

A Roll of Early American Arms

In the American Heraldry Society Forum, Arian Collins announced recently that he (with help from other AHS members Eric Hall, Robert Tucker and Joseph McMillan) has completed the pre-1825 blazons for the AHS's Roll of Early American Arms.  I mention this here not only because my book on The Gore Roll (available at www.appletonstudios.com/BooksandGames.htm) was used as a source (along with such standbys of early American armory as Crozier's General Armory and Virginia Heraldica, Bolton's American Armoury, and Matthew's Complete American Armory & Blue Book), but because it's such a great resource for finding coats of arms as they were used in early America.  The AHS has made this resource available to everyone on their website, at http://www.americanheraldry.org/pages/index.php?n=Main.Roll  I have also added this link to the "Some Good On-Line Armorials and Ordinaries" section in the left-hand column of this blog.

They do note that: "Arms are included in this roll based on actual use as reported in the sources given. We have not attempted to validate the user's right to the arms beyond what is reported in the sources. Names given in italics are those of an immigrant to America whose descendants bore the arms shown. The immigrant himself may not have made use of the arms."

This is a wonderful heraldic resource, and the gentlemen mentioned above deserve to be applauded for the tremendous amount of work that they put into making such a resource available to the rest of the world.

A small, but productive, meeting of heraldry enthusiasts

I had the chance last weekend to attend the first ever face-to-face meeting of some of the Texas members of the American Heraldry Society. For those of you not familiar with the AHS, it’s pretty much an on-line thing. I mean, we send in our dues every year (usually on-line, though you can pay them via U.S. Mail, too, I suppose). But the members are spread out all over this country (and a few others), and we don’t – yet – have annual general meetings in the manner of some of the longer-established heraldry societies. So this meeting was something of a novelty for the organization.

In any case, I got up at my usual time, had breakfast, and then hopped in the car for the three-hour drive to Austin (each way – six hours on the road for what turned out to be a four-hour meeting) to meet with fellow AHS members/heraldry enthusiasts. As it turns out, there were only three of us there (a fourth didn’t make it), but – and this is probably the weird thing – we all had a great time and I, for one, believe that the meeting was great! Apparently the others agreed with that assessment, because we’re going to do it again this fall, though the next one will be in Dallas rather than Austin. (We thought that moving it about the state would give more people the opportunity to participate over time.)

It was a reminder again to me how much fun, and interest, and education, can be stirred up in face-to-face meetings with other heraldry enthusiasts. It’s something I should know, I realize, but even though I’m a member I only occasionally get to attend the annual general meetings of the Royal Heraldry Society of Canada, and never yet to those of the Heraldry Society (England) or Heraldry Society of Scotland, while the International Congresses of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences are held only every other year. But the immediacy, the give-and-take, the synergy that occurs during such meetings, in ways that can happen at best relatively slowly on-line, is truly wonderful, with the participants simultaneously gaining enthusiasm from others and sharing their own enthusiasm, as well as their knowledge and expertise in the field, discussing how far it has come and where it might be going, as well as possible future directions of the organization to which we belong. I mean, sure, it was fine that we got a bit of a "backstage" tour of the capitol dome and even got to see a bit of heraldry along the way. But it was the interaction of the three of us as we discussed heraldry, the American Heraldry Society, and everything, that gets me hoping that we can make such meetings a regular happening.

That six hours on the road was totally worth it! Now if I can just make the one in Dallas equally good for those who show up for it.