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Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret
Read MacDonald
Against All
Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror – What Really Happened
Power and Terror -
Noam Chomsky
The Pagan Prosperity
The Triumph of the Moon
The Celtic Dragon
Tarot
Sabbat Entertaining
The Pagan Book of Days
The Rise of the Creative
Class
Celebrate the Earth
A Year of Holidays in the Pagan
Tradition
Wheel of the Year
The Trouble
with Islam
Brave Hearts, Rebel
Spirits
The Five Biggest Lies Bush
Told Us About Iraq
Lady Godiva
Lucifer Ascending: The
Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture
Activists Beyond
Borders
The Book of Spells
Spellcraft
The Book of Saints
The Encyclopedia of Saints
Daily Everything
Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
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What
Would Jefferson Do?
By Thom
Hartmann
The Price of Loyalty
The
Torture Debate in America
The
Culture of the New Capitalism
Pagan
Christianity
By Robert Fisk
The God Who Wasn't There
A
Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy
When Corporations Rule the World
Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on
Journalism
The Corporation
Highly recommended DVD
Crimes Against Nature : How George W Bush and His Corporate
Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
By Robert F Kennedy, Jr
The Skeptic's Dictionary
A Dictionary of Saints Days, Fasts, Feasts and
Festivals
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
365 Goddess
Adventures in a TV Nation
Michael
Moore
Drawing Down the Moon
Globalization/Anti-Globalization
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Celtic Daily Prayer
Dude, Where's My Country?
Photo of the day
Mother Earth Spirituality
Rich Media, Poor Democracy
Robert McChesney
Shamanism
Robinson Crusoe
Selkirk's Island: The True and Strange
Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe
In Search of Robinson Crusoe
In Search of Robinson Crusoe
Women's Activism
and Globalization
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 Feast day of St Ivo
(Ives) of Huntingdonshire,
England
The city of Saint Ives (formerly Slepe,
an old Saxon word meaning 'muddy'), Huntingdonshire, England was named for this saint who,
according to medieval legend, was a
wealthy Persian bishop who yearned for a more disciplined and
arduous life. So he went to England with three companions, where
they settled as
hermits
in the remote, wild fenlands in Huntingdonshire. There they died, in
the 7th
Century, according to the legend.
His gravesite was lost for years,
but in 1001 four bodies were uncovered in an
unmarked grave near or in Slepe. Because one of the
skeletons bore a bishop's insignia, following a peasant's dream
these episcopal bones were immediately 'identified' as those of
Ivo.
The four skeletons were translated to
Ramsey Abbey, where a holy well sprang up, at which many miracles
were performed. Or, so it is said.
The St Ives in west Cornwall is named for Saint Ia.
As I was going to St Ives
I met a man with seven
wives.
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits;
Kits, cats, sacks and wives –
How many were going to St Ives?
Traditional
Answer
Pictured above: 'As I Was Going to St. Ives',
Arthur
Rackham, Frontispiece, June 1913, (Volume 40, No. 8, p. 673)
Sacred
springs and wells at the Scriptorium
Lyrid meteor
showers (Apr 15 - Apr 28,
peaking Apr
22)
Vinalia priora, ancient
Rome (Apr 23
- Apr 28)
Feast day of St Alexander (friend and companion of Saint
Epipodius)
Feast day of St Benedetto
Menni
Feast day of Ss Beuve (Bova; Bona)
and Doda, of Rheims
Feast day of St Deodatus
Feast day of St Diarmaid
Feast day of St Dyfnan
Feast day of St Egbert of
Northumbria
St Egbert (d. 729;
not to be confused with the later Egbert, Archbishop of York) was a
novice in the Benedictine
monastery
of Lindisfarne
in Northumbria in Anglo-Saxon England.
Many other high-born notables were associated with his work: St Adalbert,
St Swithbert,
and St Chad.
Egbert arranged the mission of St Willibrord,
St Wigbert
and others to the pagans.
More
Feast day of
St Fidelis
of Sigmaringen, martyr
(Blackthorn; Prunus spinosa
is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Fidelis (1577
- 1622)
was a Roman
Catholic saint
and martyr
to the counter-Reformation
in Switzerland.
A Catholic missionary among the Calvinists in Switzerland, Fidelis
was killed by their soldiers in 1622. He and his relics worked 305
miracles.
More
And
More
Feast day of St Gregory of
Elvira
Feast day of St Honorius of
Brescia
Feast day of St Mary
Euphrasia Pelletier
Feast day of St Mellitus, third
Archbishop of Canterbury
More
Feast day of St Robert, of Chase-dieu,
Auvergne
Feast day of St Sabas
Feast day of St William
Firmatus
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Singing in May,
Swinton, Lancashire, UK
Children's
Day, Iceland
Nagasaki
Takoage, or Kite-Flying Event,
Nagasaki,
Japan (Apr 3 - 29)
Yasukuni Matsuri,
Japan (Apr
21 - 25)
Mibu Dainembutsu Kyogen, Japan (Apr 21 - 29)
Senteisai
Matsuri, or Courtesan Festival, Japan (Apr 23 - 25)
Genocide
Remembrance Day, Armenia
The term
Armenian Genocide (also
known as the Armenian Holocaust
or Armenian Massacre) refers to the deportations and related deaths
of hundreds of thousands of Armenians
during the government of the Young Turks in 1915 - '17. The
date commemorates the arrest, on April 24,
1915,
of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, most of
whom would be executed, which was a precursor to the ensuing events.
In
Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, crowds of
people walk to the
Tsitsernakaberd Genocide Memorial to lay
flowers at the
eternal flame.
From
Wikipedia:
While there is no clear consensus on how many Armenians lost their
lives during what is called the Armenian genocide, there is general
agreement among Western scholars that over a million Armenians may
have perished between 1914 and 1918. Estimates vary between 300,000
(the Turkish claim) and 1.5 million (the Armenian claim), while
Encyclopædia Britannica makes special
reference to the research conducted by
Arnold J Toynbee who was appointed by the
British Foreign Office to investigate the
forced deportation of the Armenians and the related casualties, who
estimated a death toll of around 600,000 to 800,000; which formed
the basis of the
Allies' charges against the Ottoman
government at the
Paris Peace Conference in
1919
that up to 800,000 Armenians were killed during the war.
Republic
Day, The
Gambia (1970)
Newman's
Day
Newman's Day is a USA college tradition involving drinking 24 beers within a 24-hour period on April 24.
24-hour comics
day
A 24-hour comic is a 24 page comic book written, drawn, and completed in 24 hours.
TV Turnoff Week (Apr
23 - 27)
(2007 date; varies annually)
1533 William I of
Orange (d. 1584), Dutch national 'father'1576
Vincent de
Paul (d. September
27, 1660)
Catholic saint born at Pouy,
Landes,
Gascony,
France
to a peasant family. His feast
was formerly kept on July
19 (qv), but is now observed on September
27 (qv) – the day of his death.
1743 Edmund
Cartwright, English inventor of the power loom that revolutionized
industry but led to increasing
immiseration of workers. Cartwright's
elder brother, John, was a reformer who advocated annual parliaments
and manhood suffrage.
"1743–1823, English inventor and clergyman. He was the inventor of
an imperfect power loom that, when finally patented (1785),
became the parent of the modern loom. It was the first machine
to make practical the weaving of wide cotton cloth. A few of
Cartwright's many other inventions were a wool-combing machine
(1789), a machine for ropemaking (1792), and an engine (1797)
that used alcohol as fuel. He cooperated with Fulton on his
experiments with steam navigation." Source
Cartwright's
invention helped liberate workers from one kind of slavery and
condemn them to another (wage
slavery). His poem below shows his awareness of the
terrible significance of his labours.
'To ------'
Chained to the oar and hopeless of
reprieve,
From year to year to one dull task confined –
A task that needs no effort of the mind,
A task mere honest dullness might achieve –
Tell me, sincerely, though too proud to grieve
Or murmur at thy destinies unkind,
Dost thou not feel at least the chains that bind
Thy spirit down to toils it must not leave?
To have decked the shrine of Ceres with the flowers
That science gave to thy collecting hand;
To have served, by useful arts, thy native land:
These were thy hopes; on these were bent thy powers.
These hopes foregone, repress thy vain desires;
Curb thy aspiring soul and quench her useless fires.
1718 Nathaniel Hone
(d. 1784),
Irish-born
painter
1815 Anthony
Trollope (d. 1882), English
novelist
who also introduced the famed red pillar box to the
UK. His mother,
Frances Trollope
(1780 -
1863), was the author of
controversial The Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832) and many novels.
He visited Australasia in 1871 and wrote Australia and New
Zealand (Chapman and Hall, London, 1873).
 1846 Marcus Clarke
(d. August 2,
1881), Australian novelist
(For the Term of
His Natural Life; Australian Tales,
1896), bon vivant, and librarian at the State
Library of Victoria.
In 1868 he became the first secretary of
the Yorick Club, other members being Adam Lindsay
Gordon, Henry
Kendall and George Gordon
McCrae. The first instalment of his well-known novel His
Natural Life appeared in the Australian Journal in March
1870.
"He introduced the paradoxes of
la vie de boheme – luxury cheek by jowl with poverty, islands of productivity amid a sea of laziness. Clarke
'lived like a Prince of the blood one day, and subsisted on a pipe and a pint of beer the
next', he later recalled. Clarke acted out the contradictory bohemian fascination with the low life and the high life, cultivating
'an atmosphere of wit, poverty, luxury, champagne, tripe, tobacco, billiards, pawn tickets, the drama, the gutter, beef and cabbage, oysters and chablis, lavender gloves and coats at
elbows.'
"In the French style Clarke presided over a bohemian HQ at the Cafe de Paris in Melbourne's Theatre Royal. Here he grandly blurred the Victorian distinction between work and play :
'We absorbed wine and women, and hate and love into us, that we might be able to write those magnificent
articles.' And write Clarke did: plays, journalism, opinion and serialised fiction for popular periodicals such as the Melbourne
Argus, the Australian and his own Colonial Monthly
Magazine, which became Melbourne's literary hub.
"Clarke enjoyed offending respectable society. He drank and ate to excess, gambled, smoked opium and hashish and even introduced a character into his
Argus column called Dr Cannabis."
Source:
Romancing the City: Australia's bohemian tradition
"He was
steadily writing the instalments of His Natural Life, though
later on he found it very difficult to be up to time with them. In
the issue for December 1871 the proprietors of the Australian
Journal, in apologizing for the absence of the usual monthly
instalment, stated that although they had delayed publication they
had been unable to obtain 'either copy or explanation'. The story
was published in book form in 1874 differing in some particulars
from the serial issue. On the advice of Sir
Charles Gavin Duffy (q.v.) some portions had been omitted and a
new prologue was written. In later editions the book is sometimes
called For the Term of his Natural Life. This title is given
to the edition of the story issued by Angus and Robertson in 1929
which is stated to be the 'first complete edition in book
form'.
"A short novel 'Twixt Shadow and
Shine was published in Melbourne in 1875, but did not go into
a second edition until many years after the author's death. Much
of this work was done under great anxiety. He had early fallen
into the hands of the money lenders, and in 1874 had been
compelled to become insolvent. His industry was unfailing but he
had no sense of business. Among his activities of this period were
a play called Plot, which had a fairly successful run in
1873, much local journalism, and two or three pantomimes. He was
also the Melbourne correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph.
He had a fair salary and one way and another must at times have
had a good income. Probably, as one of his biographers suggested,
he had no conception of what was meant by 60 per cent interest. In
1877 he did a piece of hack work, a History of Australia,
for the use of schools. He had been appointed sub librarian at the
public library in 1873, but his work there must always have been
subordinated to his literary work. In 1880 he became involved in
controversy with Bishop
Moorhouse (q.v.); he had a facile pen but it is doubtful
whether he had the knowledge to fit himself for controversy of
this kind. His private affairs were again involved about this
period, and to add to his worries he had been appointed agent for
his cousin Sir
Andrew Clarke (q.v.), with a comprehensive power of attorney.
Clarke was as little fitted to look after the affairs of another
man as his own. In July his estate was again sequestrated and,
worn out by anxiety and disappointment, he died on 2 August 1881,
leaving a widow and six young children. Shortly before his death
he was a candidate for the office of public librarian, but the
position was given to Dr T. F. Bride.
"Marcus Clarke was short and slight
with a face remarkable for its beauty. His wit was polished, his
humour refined, he had great powers of description, and a slight
stutter did not detract from his charm as a conversationalist. He
was an excellent though unequal journalist, and he wrote some good
light verse. His sketches of the early days in Old Tales of a
Young Country (1871) still retain their interest, and of his
novels Long Odds (1869) is good in its way. 'Twixt
Shadow and Shine (1875), and Chidiock Tichbourne,
published posthumously in 1893, might, however, have been written
by any fairly competent writer of the period. His Natural Life
is his title to fame. A powerful story of a grim period, it
triumphs over its minor improbabilities, and its reader is carried
on by its pure human interest to the last word." Source
"Besides these novels Clarke also published a range of short fiction throughout his life, the best of which uses Gothic themes and conventions to construct strangely derivative stories about second sight, drug-use and phantasmagoric hallucination. These are collected in the posthumous publications Sensational Tales (1886) and
The Mystery of Major Molineux and Human Repetends. At the end of his life he was working on a novel entitled
Felix and Felicitas, a philosophical examination of the kind of imaginative idealism that had seemed to inform so many of Clarke's early aspirations as a writer. He died in 1881 at the age of 35, leaving a wife (the actress Marian Dunn) and six children under the age of eleven.
"Without doubt Clarke has a privileged place in the history of Australian literature. His
Natural Life is justly considered the best novel written in Australia during the nineteenth century, while Clarke's career as a whole is central to any attempt to understand the development of colonial literary culture in nineteenth-century Melbourne."
Source
Lawson
& Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
Sensational
Tales March
23, 1880 Age editorial by Clarke
More More (with some
poems)
1856 Henri Philippe Pétain (d. 1951),
French soldier
and statesman, who led the right-wing
French government (Vichy regime) that collaborated with the Axis
Powers in World War II
1876 Erich Raeder
(d. 1960),
commander in chief of the German navy 1878 Jean
Crotti (d.
1958), Swiss artist 1882 Hugh Dowding
(d. 1970), Scottish
fighter pilot 1889 Sir Stafford Cripps
(d. 1952),
British politician 1896 Benjamin Whorf
(d. 1941),
American linguist 1897 Manuel Ávila
Camacho
(d. 1955), President
of Mexico 1889 Sir Stafford Cripps (d. 1952), British
Labour Party politician,
Chancellor of the Exchequer in post-WW II Britain
1899 Oscar Zariski
(d. 1986),
mathematician1904 Willem de
Kooning (d. 1997), Dutch painter 1905 Robert Penn
Warren
(d. 1989), writer, Pulitzer Prize
winner, first American Poet Laureate 1906 William Joyce ('Lord Haw-Haw'; d. 1946),
American-born Irish-British
fascist
propagandist, writer
and traitor
during World War II. Joyce was executed
by famed hangman Albert Pierrepoint on January 3, 1946, at Wandsworth Prison.
1914 Justin Wilson
(d. 2001),
Cajun
humourist, celebrity chef,
writer1914 William Castle
(d. 1977),
director, producer 1924 Sir Clement Freud,
British writer,
radio
personality and politician 1926 Thorbjörn Fälldin,
Prime
Minister of Sweden 1930 Jerome Callet,
musician 1930 Richard Donner,
director, producer 1934 Shirley
MacLaine, actress and author 1940 Sue
Grafton, author 1941 John
Williams, Australian guitarist 1942 Richard M Daley,
politician
1942 Barbra
Streisand, singer, actress, director, the first person ever to receive a Grammy, an Emmy, an Oscar,
and a Tony
"When she and
Neil Diamond had a smash hit in 1978 with You Don't Bring Me
Flowers, it was not the first time that the Brooklyn-born
superstars had sung together. While students at New York City's
Erasmus High School they both sang in the school choir." Source:
IMDB
1952 Jean-Paul
Gaultier, fashion
designer1953 Eric Bogosian,
actor, writer 1954 Mumia Abu-Jamal
(b. Wesley Cook),
journalist
and political
activist. He is a
political prisoner and death row activist. An award-winning
journalist/author, his insightful commentaries and essays have
earned him international recognition – and also the ire of many
officials, who have vowed to silence him at all costs [Including NPR
which cancelled and censored planned shows].
More on and by Abu-Jamal Mumia
is still the issue (ZNet, August 29, 2005)
Source: The
Daily Bleed Mumia
Awareness Week, September 19 - 25 in the Book of Days
1962 Jeff
Minter, computer games
programmer1964 Cedric
the Entertainer, comedian, actor 1964 Djimon Hounsou,
actor 1968 Stacy Haiduk,
actress 1982 Kelly Clarkson,
singer, winner of the first American Idol
competition
Phew!!
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