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Kateri Tekakwitha
Onkweonweke Katsitsiio
Teotsitsianekaron
The fairest flower that ever bloomed among true men. Epitaph of Kateri Tekakwitha,
Native American nun who died on April 17, 1680
A dying man can do nothing easy. Last words of Benjamin
Franklin, who died on April 17, 1790; to his daughter, who had
suggested he change his position in bed so that he might breathe more
easily
I have never claimed that
liberty will bring perfection, only that its results are vastly more
preferable to those that follow authority. Benjamin Tucker, American anarchist, born on April 17, 1854
Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity, these three; but the greatest of these is Liberty.
Formerly the price of Liberty was eternal vigilance, but now it can be
had for fifty cents a year. Benjamin Tucker; on the first page of the first issue of Liberty,
August 6, 1881
Benjamin Franklin
Every human being whom we meet and get
to know is, after all, something in our minds, like a tree planted in our
gardens or a piece of furniture within our house. It may be better to keep
them and try to put them to some use, than to cast them away and have
nothing at all there in the end. Karen Blixen, Danish author, born on April 17, 1885
To set sail somewhere is more
important than life itself. Motto of Karen Blixen,
Danish author, born on April 17, 1885
We will bury you. Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet politician and Premier, born on April 17,
1894
I was an old man when I was 12;
and now I am an old man, and it's
splendid. Thornton Wilder, American dramatist and novelist, born on
April 17, 1897, speaking at age 70
…
remember, america eugene
debs said he would not
lead you into paradise if he could,
because if he could lead you in,
someone else could lead you out, that
was the text you ought to have
listened to, that was the text you
ought to have believed, instead you
bought a world free for democracy
and you bought a return to normalcy,
and you bought a new deal, and four
freedoms (freedoms you might only
have, anyhow, if you look deep inside
yourself where all freedom is to be
found, and not with rockwell hands so
carefully and badly drawn … and then
america they will be unnumbered for you, america)
america yes the square deal and the
new frontier... Joel Oppenheimer, excerpt, '17-18
April, 1961';
from Walter Lowenfels, Poets
of Today: A New American Anthology; Eugene
V(ictor)
Debs
(1855 - 1926),
was a prominent American socialist politician, presidential candidate and
peace activist
I think it
entirely posssible that Kerry went bananas on his own, due to genetics and/or
traumatic early imprints and/or Too Damned Much LSD and/or other causes unknown,
with no help from the CIA at all. I also think it entirely possible that the CIA
did subject Kerry – and his Marine Corps buddy Lee Harvey Oswald – to some form
of 'Manchurian Candidate' mind control and that his seemingly 'psychotic' words
and actions represented an intelligent man's attempts to break the strings of
his puppet masters and find his way back to a world that made sense again. Robert Anton Wilson
on Kerry Thornley, author,
Discordianism
co-founder and conspiracy theorist who was born on April 17, 1938;
'The
Monster and the Laburinth', Introduction to
The Prankster and the Conspiracy (2003)
I have no certitude about how
'crazy' to consider Kerry Thornley on any given day of any year, but I don't
believe he ever became a simple damned fool. He unnderstood the government of
this country better than 99% of its citizens.
Robert Anton Wilson; ibid
Throughout the world, people
of all religions recognize Jesus Christ as an example of love, compassion,
sacrifice, and service. Reaching out to the poor, the suffering, and the
marginalized, he provided moral leadership that continues to inspire
countless men, women, and children today.
To honor his life and teachings, Christians of all races and
denominations have joined together to designate June 10 as Jesus Day. As
part of this celebration of unity, they are taking part in the 10th annual
March for Jesus in cities throughout the Lone Star State. The march, which
began in Austin in 1991, is now held in nearly 180 countries. Jesus Day
challenges people to follow Christ's example by performing good works in
their communities and neighborhoods. By nursing the sick, feeding the
poor, or volunteering in homeless shelters, everyone can play a role in
making the world a better place.
I urge all Texans to answer the call to serve those in need. By
volunteering their time, energy, or resources to helping others, adults
and youngsters follow Christ's message of love and service in thought and
deed.
Therefore, I, George W. Bush, Governor of Texas, do hereby proclaim
June 10, 2000 Jesus Day in Texas and urge the appropriate recognition
whereof. George W
Bush; proclamation
of June 10 as
Jesus Day (Texas, USA), April 17, 2000 Source
April for the Inuit of Alaska "Ice cellars are cleaned in early April. In a whaling community the ice cellars must be cleaned to ensure that the whale which the captain will receive has a clean place to put its
atigi (parka). The meat and the maktak (skin with blubber) of the whale is referred to as the
atigi which is given to the whaling captain by the whale. Out on the ice, when the whale is being butchered, the head is removed and returned to the ocean. This allows the soul or spirit of the whale to return to its home and don a new parka. Much respect is given to the whale, as it is to all of the animals that give themselves to the Inuit people.
"During the month of April, too, the whaling captain's wife is busy supervising other women while they sew on a new skin cover of at least five
ugruk (bearded seal) skins for the whaling-boat frame. In April smaller Arctic seals give birth to their young out on the Arctic ice. The female polar bears have already left their winter dens with their cubs the previous month. In the interior it is time to hunt the caribou that migrate north for the summer. The land is awakening. In late April, the whaling crews go out on the ice and put up camp to wait for migrating whales." Source: Cultural Heritage of the Alaskan Inuit
(PDF file)
Dedicated to Machendrana (Machhendranath), the ancient and powerful Indian God of rain, an annual religious event called the Chariot Festival of the Rain God
begins around this date in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal and continues for approximately eight consecutive weeks. This is the Red Machhindranath festival, and the White one is in January.
"It's no April
Fool – in early April, the town of Nontron celebrates the Bellows
Festival (le Carnaval des Soufflets), dressed up in nightshirts,
cotton caps, clogs, masks and, last but not least, carrying the
all-important bellows.
"The tradition
dates back to the carnival celebrations of the Middle Ages, when the
people of Nontron used their bellows to purify the city air and free
it from bad spirits, wherever they may be hiding (even under ladies'
skirts)! ...
"Walking in
single file, people blow air from their bellows up their neighbours'
nightshirts, while dancing and singing the traditional nonsensical
Occitan song:
We are all
children,
Our father was a bellows maker
No, you will not see them
The colour of my gaiters.
No, you will not see them,
The colour of my stockings.
If I saw them
The colour of my stockings
If I saw them
The colour of my gaiters
and, while making love, I lost my tie
My tie which is so good
My waistcoat which was purple
And my bonnet which was cotton."
Egyptian day (dies egypticus , dies ægypticus or
dies mala), unlucky day in
Medieval Europe. ("But, notwithstanding, I will trust the Lord"
was the associated saying.)
Nikko Yayoisai, Futaarasan Shrine, Nikko,
Tochigi Prefecture, Japan (Apr 13 -
17)
Around historical Nikko, brightly decorated mikoshi (floats)
representing 13 neighbouring towns are paraded.
Hojo-e Matsuri, Kofukuji, Nara, Japan People release carp into Lake Sarusaono in the belief that
suffering is also thrown away with the fish.
Banyan
Tree Birthday Party, Lahaina,
Maui
County, Hawai'i,
USA Lahaina's most famous landmark
(see images),
the Banyan Tree, celebrates its birthday with a two-day fete, and,
of course, a birthday cake. There's also a display of nature art,
activities for kids, historical exhibits and live music on stage.
The banyan tree in Courthouse Square is noteworthy for its size. As
a strangler fig,
it has grown by dropping roots from its branches that then become
additional trunks, allowing it to cover two-thirds of an acre.
Omarmas Birthday (1938) of Kerry Thornley
(see below).
By 1827, Robert Owen
had taken his ideas of a co-operative movement to the United States.
But they were picked up and amplified by Dr King. King founded a
cooperative store in Brighton. Then in 1828 he started a
paper, The Cooperator (first edition, May
1) to promote these ideas. The
Cooperator had a wide circulation and a great influence in the
emerging movement. Though only published for slightly over two
years, the paper served to educate and unify otherwise scattered
groups. King's articles in the paper gave the movement some
philosophical and practical basis that it had lacked before.
King's overriding rationale for the
movement is best illustrated by the phrases repeated on the masthead
of every issue of The Cooperator:
"Knowledge and union are power.
Power, directed by knowledge is happiness. Happiness is the end
of creation."
1833Arthur
Arnould, French journalist, novelist, member of First
International and the Paris
Commune, companion of Michael Bakunin. Collaborated on the Bulletin
of the Jura
Federation. Arnould wrote L'Etat et la Révolution
(1877), a history of the Paris Commune, and numerous novels as A
Matthey.
1837JP
Morgan (d. 1913), American financier, art collector, philanthropist
Benjamin Tucker's
contribution to American anarchism
was as much through his publishing as his own writing. In editing
and publishing the anarchist periodical, Liberty, Tucker
both filtered and integrated the theories of such European thinkers
as Herbert Spencer and Proudhon with the
thinking of American individualist activists, Lysander Spooner, Ezra Heywood, Stephen
Pearl Andrews,William
Greene (William Batchelder Greene) and
Josiah
Warren, as well as the uniquely
American free thought and free
love movements in order to produce a rigorous system of
philosophical or individualist anarchism.
Tucker shared with the advocates of
free love and free thought a disdain for prohibitions on
non-invasive behaviour and religiously-based legislation, but he saw
the poor condition of American workers as a result of four
state-maintained monopolies: the money monopoly, the land monopoly,
tariffs, and patents.
For 27 years his journal Liberty ('The Mother, not the Daughter of Order') served as a voice of individualist anarchism, opposed
to the major anarchist communist and anarchist syndicalist wings of
the movement. Liberty published such works as George Bernard
Shaw's first original article to appear in the United States, the
first American translated excerpts of Friedrich
Nietzsche.
The Daily Bleed
says that Liberty, until recently was the longest running
anarchist journal in American history (the Detroit publication, The Fifth Estate, is now past its 28th year). Tucker converted
to anarchism Jo
Labadie, whose personal papers formed the basis of the famed
Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan.
"His magazine was the first to publish George Bernard Shaw in the U.S., and to translate Pierre Joseph Proudhon. Tucker also published other works considered radical at the time, such as Walt Whitman's
Leaves of Grass, Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata, and Oscar Wilde's
Ballad of Reading Gaol." Source:
Cabinet Card Portraits in the Collection of Radical Publisher Benjamin R Tucker
1863Constantine
Cavafy (Constantine Kafavis; d.
1933), homosexual Greek poet born in
Alexandria, Egypt. He published only about 200 poems, but is well
known to English readers from the many references to his work in
Lawrence Durrell's
The
Alexandria Quartet.
1880 Sir
Leonard Woolley, British archaeologist who discovered the
Biblical
Mesopotamiancity of Ur
of the Chaldees (Ur
Kaśdim,
in modern day
Iraq). Ur means 'city' in ancient
Iraq's Sumerian
and Akkadian languages. The Bible says Ur of the Chaldees was
the birthplace of the Hebrew patriarch,
Abraham, but many scholars did not believe it
existed until Woolley's discoveries.
"Woolley
first started working as Assistant Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum
at Oxford where he remained from 1905 until 1907. He worked with
TE Lawrence [Lawrence of Arabia – PW]from 1912 to 1914 and
later in 1919 clearing Carchemish, the Hittite city, and in Sinai.
Woolley also worked in Tell el Amarna with the Egypt Exploration
Society. From 1922 through 1934 he was in charge of the joint
venture between the British Museum and the University of
Pennsylvania excavating at Ur of the Chaldees where he made his
greatest discovery.
"The Ur of
Chaldees, found in present-day Iraq, was the royal burial site
of many Mesopotamian royalties. Woolley discovered tombs of
great material wealth. Inside these tombs were large paintings
of ancient Mesopotamian culture at its zenith, along with
amazing pieces of gold and silver jewelry, cups and other
furnishings …" Source
The heart of the wasted city is weeping, reeds
(for flutes) of lament grow therein, its heart is weeping, reeds
(for flutes) of lament grow therein, its people spend the day in
weeping.
UR, Iraq - Under a
white billowing tent and U.S. auspices, a select group of Iraqis,
many of them rivals and mutually distrustful, took their first
tentative steps Tuesday toward forming a new government …
"A free and democratic Iraq will begin today," declared
Jay Garner*, a defense contractor and retired three-star general
chosen by the Bush administration to run an interim government."
1885Isak Dinesen(d. 1962), pen name of Karen Blixen, Danishauthor, aka
Pierre Andrezel, born at Rungsted, Denmark. She was a writer whose
stories incorporated themes of
Eros, supernaturalism and dreams. She was born into a Unitarian
aristocratic family in Rungsted, and was schooled in art at Copenhagen,
Paris,
and Rome.
She began publishing fiction in various Danish periodicals in
1905
under the pen name Osceola.
Blixen's years in Kenya are
depicted in Out
of Africa, adapted as an Oscar-winning
film directed by
Sydney Pollack. Blixen wrote her books in English and rewrote them
in Danish. In her late years, Blixen dressed sometimes as commedia
dell'arte character
Pierrot. She died in Rungsted, Denmark,
apparently from malnutrition. She had suffered for many years from syphilis
contracted from her husband, her cousin, Baron Bror von
Blixen-Finecke, who she divorced in 1921.
1891George
Adamski (d. April
23, 1965),
Polish-born
American
who claimed to have seen and photographed ships from other planets,
met people from other planets and to have gone on flights with them.
He wrote several books relating to his experiences, including the
best-selling Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953),
co-written with Desmond Leslie. He enjoyed some popularity as
perhaps the most prominent contactee,
but this gradually diminished as his claims became more
questionable, and he was mostly considered a crackpot when he died.
His adventures commenced on November
20, 1952 (qv) in the Mojave
Desert near Desert
Center, California.
"Scientists on both sides were appalled by the advent of thermonuclear weapons. In the West, Churchill and Eisenhower recoiled from their
use.
"To Khrushchev, Western squeamishness appeared to open opportunities to bluff – opportunities for nuclear blackmail. (North Korea, today, appears to have reached a similar conclusion.) Eisenhower administration assurances that there would be no NATO response to Soviet actions in Hungary reinforced this
belief.
"For six years – from the time of the Suez crisis in 1956 until the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Khrushchev would repeatedly aggressively rattle his nuclear saber."Source
Khrushchev himself told British Laborite Aneurin Bevan the
story of how it had been before. Presidium members, said Khrushchev,
drew up a plan to decentralize the economy after World War II, and
Voznesensky, the chief economic planner, took it to Stalin.
"Voznesensky came back," said
Khrushchev, "and told them Stalin had denounced him as a traitor
to socialism. This made them angry because Voznesensky had merely
done what they had told him to do. They went to Stalin next day and
told him this: that it was their collective plan, not Voznesensky's;
that he had been unfair to Voznesensky and ought to apologize to
him.
"'I can't,' said Stalin. 'He was shot this
morning.'"
Thornley served
in the same platoon as
Lee Harvey
Oswald in
1959, and, in
1961, wrote a book, The Idle Warriors
(unpublished until after 1963; later reprinted as
Oswald),
with Oswald a key character featured under the fictional name of
Johnny Shellburn – the only book in which
Oswald appeared prior to President
John Kennedy's
assassination in 1963.
Jim Garrison, District Attorney of New Orleans from
1962 - '73, best known for his
investigations into the assassination of JF
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