Why Kentucky? Why the Falklands?

Like certain sexually transmitted diseases, the archive that is the pile of still-unsorted papers from the Orchard has proved to be the Gift that keeps on Giving.

Yes, we moved Mom out of the Orchard 3 years ago, and we sold the house 2 years ago. But, in her valiant effort to empty the house in time for the sale, my sister took hundreds of pounds of unsorted files and papers back to Maine with her, to sort at leisure. A very funny concept of leisure, it is true.

Over the years some of us have enjoyed the wide variety of weird solicitations that come in over the transom for my mother. And for the past 3 years my sister and I have been fielding, ambushing, and then jettisoning said weird solicitations.

We were pretty inured to supplications from Little Sisters of this and that, the Needy Orphans of Cairo, as well as the Fund to Save the Gothic Revival Outhouses of Western Massachusetts, or the Steering Committee for 2035 - Celebrating 400 Years as Bucket-Town, even the Society for the Reinstatement of New Belgium in the New World. We thought nothing could surprise us.
Wrong, again.
My sister just shared with me this personalized solicitation that my mother received in 1982. And then saved for the next 30+ years.

Why Kentucky and the Falklands? Yes, I know about conflict between Argentina and the British. I just don't know what Kentucky has to do with it, or why. Thus, I have wasted several hours researching the two regions and am no closer to an answer. But I do now know a few things about Kentucky and the Falklands.

While the population of the Falklands hovers around the 3,000 mark, Kentucky has 4.4 million inhabitants: in both cases most of the residents trace their ancestors to the British Isles.

Kentucky has more miles of navigable rivers than any other state in the US. It has also the two largest man-made lakes east of the Mississippi, and the longest cave system in the US. The Falklands are 0% water, but – predictably – are entirely surrounded the Atlantic Ocean.

Kentucky has horse racing, bourbon, tobacco, coal, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. The Falklands have sheep. Kentucky produces 95% of the world’s bourbon. The Falklands have five varieties of penguins (King, Gentoo, Rockhopper, Macaroni and Magellanic) and some very large albatross colonies.

The entirety of the Falkland Island print media consists of The Teaberry Express and The Penguin News. Kentucky has colorfully-named conflicts: The Beaver Wars of the 1670’s, and the Black Patch Tobacco Wars of the twentieth century.

The Kentucky state seal features two men facing each other in what we can only hope is friendship; one is wearing buckskins, the other is wearing formal tails. The Falkland Islands seem to have two coats of arms: one depicts a sheep, while the other pictures a somewhat misshapen seal.


It is unclear whether my mother sent money to the Kentucky Committee for the Falkland Islands. Who was this person, this Kentuckian, so obsessed with the valiant Falklanders? And why should anyone else care? His solicitation strikes me as equivalent to me hitting up everyone I am connected to on Linked In and everyone they are connected to, for the Fund to Pay Groundskeepers for the Holy Wells of Dubious Historicity in Brittany and Wales.

If you have a country full of springs, then it is a good idea to make sure that lots of saints – preferably virgin martyrs – die near those springs, so the springs can become Holy Wells, which by definition are pilgrimage destinations that are good for the local economy. Just in the past few days, to make my point, we have Saints Almedha (or Eiluned), Sidwell and Sithney.

Almedha (August 3), a 6th century* Welsh Princess and one of King Brychan’s 24 daughters, wished to be chaste & devout and so she defied her father’s wish to marry her off, and she ran away. You might think that with 23 other daughters he would have relented and allowed just this one off the hook. But no. Brychan found poor Almedha and beheaded her; her head rolled down a hill into a nearby spring that instantly gained Healing Powers. Though some say it was her rejected suitor who did the deed.
And consider Saint Sidwell (August 1) whose stepmother**ordered reapers to remove Sidwell’s head from its body with a scythe. A well sprang up at the site of the heinous crime, and the Healing Waters beckoned paying tourists.
Saint Sithney (August 4) was neither a virgin nor a martyr. No, he was a 6th century* Breton monk. God spoke to Sithney and asked him to be the patron of unmarried girls seeking to find husbands. Sithney demurred; he said that sounded like too much work and he would rather be the patron of mad dogs. God agreed to his request, and ever since, mad dogs have been cured with a drink from Sithney’s holy well.

Later, Sithney’s relics made their way to Cornwall so that mad Cornish dogs can seek solace there.

* The sixth century, as far as I can tell, was the Golden Age of Holy Wells.

** One of those days I would like to address the bizarre and fraught state of step-motherhood (she whose default epithet is wicked), a condition most of us never imagined inhabiting.