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Luxembourg

The Netherlands and Belgium are both monarchies, but Luxembourg is a grand duchy.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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I've seen the spoonbill, the sturgeon, even the gar.
I'd put a picture on here about gar, but can't do that yet,
despite many of your attepts to teach me.

I am aware Luxembourg is a Grand Duchy, but is not an hereditary
duchy a monarchy? The Duke or Duchess being the monarch?
How about an hereditary Principality like Monaco or Liechtenstein.
Is monarchy limited to a King. Just wondering really. What about
hereditary emirates? Or sultanate, like Oman or Brunei?

Last edited by LukeJavan8; 03/22/09 08:55 PM. Reason: typo

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OH, yet another one of those miracles.link Here's the gar. Never knew those rivers had these giant fishes in them.

Never mind the Duke Luke, nor the Duchess.

"The spoonbill, sturgeon and the gar
They were the best of friends
So when spoonbill needed money one day
Sturgeon took out a roll of tens "

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Just curious about the monarchs.
We have a coronation here each autumn. A local service group
crowns a business person as King of Aksarben, and the daughter
of another is crowned Queen. 115 years of this or so. We have
queens and kings of the prom, Dairy Queen, Dairy Princess, Rose Bowl Queen, etc. For a democracy or republic or whatever we are,
we are fascinated with royalty and monarchy (whatever it is.)

As for gar, spoonbill, and their ilk, we also have the giant
catfish. One recently died (in a local aquarium, over a hundred years old and about 150 lbs.) Caught in the river.


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Just curious about the monarchs.

Most of the Pacific Island cultures still retain a traditional monarchy. In Rarotonga, my homeland, there are currently 2 queens with a third under contest. You must prove geneaology. To some extent the rule of 'primogeniture' is active but in recent years, more often than not, the female lines have prevailed due to strength of character.

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Originally Posted By: LukeJavan8
Just curious about the monarchs.
We have a coronation here each autumn. A local service group
crowns a business person as King of Aksarben, and the daughter
of another is crowned Queen. 115 years of this or so. We have
queens and kings of the prom, Dairy Queen, Dairy Princess, Rose Bowl Queen, etc. For a democracy or republic or whatever we are,
we are fascinated with royalty and monarchy (whatever it is.)

As for gar, spoonbill, and their ilk, we also have the giant
catfish. One recently died (in a local aquarium, over a hundred years old and about 150 lbs.) Caught in the river.


I don't know if St. Louis still has the annual "Veiled Prophet Ball" at which or for which some one is crowned.

In Ste. Genevieve, MO, and Prairie du Rocher, IL, there are annual balls held around the end of the year called La Guianne. Since both of these towns have French origins, the connection is obviously French; but the origins of the celebration are basically unknown. However, in the tradition, a cake is baked from a batter that contains four or five beans. The cake is sliced and divied out to the young women at the ball. The first woman who discovers a bean is crowned as the queen of the ball and she is allowed to chose a man as her consort for the evening festivities. As part of the tradition, mixed choirs roam the streets of the towns singing French songs similar to madrigals or English caroling although the songs are not necessarily Christian. Ste. Genevieve is considered by many to be then oldest city of European origin west of the Mississippi River. Prairie du Rocher is about 300 years old and had no Protestant church in its envirions until the 1960s. It is also the site of one of the earliest French forts in the upper Mississippi River Valley, Fort de Chartres. It has been the site of an annual Rendevous in the recent past. BTW, Ste. Genevieve is the home of a cured beef sausage of French origin that has been made by one family, the Oberles for a couple hundred years. My paternal grandfather and his family lived in Ste. Gen during the first three decades of the 1900s. He was a bridge carpenter for the Missouri-Illinois RR. He died in 1935. WHen I was growing up in Chester, IL, my grandmother and father introduced me to the pleasures of Oberle sausage. Today, whenever I am in the area, I always make a side-trip to Ste. Gen to buy some Oberle sausage. Got some just this past October.

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I have not checked but Dubuque, Iowa, was founded in the 1600's
and (chuckle) is west of the Mississippi, on the west bank.
How old is Ste. Genevieve, MO?


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Originally Posted By: LukeJavan8

As for gar, spoonbill, and their ilk, we also have the giant
catfish. One recently died (in a local aquarium, over a hundred years old and about 150 lbs.) Caught in the river.
Just hope it spend the better part of those hundred years in the river.

When these big fishes turned up in this thread few days ago this movie passed on TV:
Big Fish
A bit of a chaotic fantasy movie, with Albert Finney doing Southern accent but the fish in question was a giant catfish, just as big as you and Etaoin describe. Huge!

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They are huge and magnificent animals. Don't know about the
aquarium fish, but I know the last 20 years were confined.
It had been injured, however, and would never have live had it
not been thus. The gar and spoonbill are mighty.


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Originally Posted By: LukeJavan8

I have not checked but Dubuque, Iowa, was founded in the 1600's
and (chuckle) is west of the Mississippi, on the west bank.
How old is Ste. Genevieve, MO?


I did a Google. I thought it was older than its website indicates. I thought it was at least as old as Prairie du Rocher, IL; and older than Chester, IL, which were both founded in the 1600s. Somewhere in one of my boxes, I have a history of the French Illinois Country, which included Cahokia, Fort de Chartres (Prairie du Rocher) and Kaskaskia, which are in present-day Illinois, Vincenes which is in present-day Indiana, and Ste. Genvieve, which is in present-day Missouri. According to Wikipedia, SG is *only* the oldest permanent European town in Missouri. So, my memory has served me wrong.

"Sainte Genevieve, Missouri: Missouri's Most Historic Town

While 1735 is celebrated as Ste. Genevieve's birth date, the village of Ste. Genevieve was established somewhere between 1722 and 1749. The first permanent European settlement in what now is the state of Missouri, the community was established as a trading outpost and was later settled by lead miners, farmers and fur traders. Before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the dominant architecture was French Creole with wooden homes built in several styles. Most of these homes feature galeries, or porches, surrounding the homes. These homes were gradually replaced by brick buildings as the American influence on the city took hold. Most of the earlier French structures are gone, but Ste. Genevieve holds the distinction of having the largest concentration of French Colonial buildings in the country. Three of these buildings - the Amoureux, the Bolduc, and the Guibourd-Valle houses - are open to the public. The Felix Valle Home is open to the public and demonstrates the effect of the American influence."

These named houses are log "cabins" built in French style rather than American. Their logs are vertical rather than horizontal and are actually slabs rather than logs.

Cahokia is located on the Illinois side of the Mississippi across from St. Louis. Do a Google on "Cahokia Mounds."

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