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reetings from Australia.
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Strike. Alone with none but
Thee, my God, We know for certain that Columba left successors
distinguished for their purity of life, their love of God, and their
loyalty to the rules of the monastic life. When
looks were fond and words were few.
... a poet
& painter easily understands how you feel about leaving any
beloved place - he's always putting huge pieces of myself into whens
& people & wheres & animals & trees & stones. For
human creatures (& I hope we're human!) "things" equal
illusion; actually, nothing's inanimate. |
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Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
Howell Forgy, US naval
lieutenant, when Pearl Harbour was attacked, December 7, 1941
Wilella Sibert 'Willa' Cather, American author, born on December
7, 1873; from Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920), 'A Wagner
Matinee'
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to
the young.
Wilella Sibert 'Willa' Cather; from One of Ours (1922), Bk
II, Ch. 6
He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of the pioneer. He had
come upon it when already its glory was nearly spent. So in the
buffalo times a traveller used to come upon the embers of a hunter's
fire on the prairies, after the hunter was up and gone; the coals
would be trampled out, but the ground was warm, and the flattened
grass where he had slept and where his pony had grazed, told the
story.
This was the very end of the road-making West; the men who had put plains
and mountains under the iron harness were old; some were poor, and
even the successful ones were hunting for rest and a brief reprieve
from death. It was already gone, that age; nothing could ever bring
it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men
had seen in the air and followed, – these he had caught in a kind of
afterglow in their own faces, – and this would always be his.
Wilella Sibert 'Willa' Cather; from A Lost Lady, Part II,
Ch. 9
The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the
little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre
wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth
had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make
any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its
own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its
uninterrupted mournfulness.
Wilella Sibert 'Willa' Cather; from O Pioneers! (1913),
Part I, Ch. 1
The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a
woman.
Wilella Sibert 'Willa' Cather; from O Pioneers! (1913),
Part I, Ch. 5
There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid,
gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on
the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly
appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining
our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some
upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun
was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the
horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly
contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue,
the share – black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in
size, a picture writing on the sun.
Wilella Sibert 'Willa' Cather; from My Antonia (1918),
Book II, Ch. 14
Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never
voted them in, in the first place.
Noam Chomsky, American professor of linguistics, anarchist
thinker, human rights activist and political analyst, born on
December 7, 1928; from a talk entitled 'Government in the Future',
given at the Poetry Center of the New York YM-YWHA, February 16,
1970
In the United States, the political system is a very marginal
affair. There are two parties, so-called, but they're really
factions of the same party, the Business Party. Both represent some
range of business interests. In fact, they can change their
positions 180 degrees, and nobody even notices. In the 1984
election, for example, there was actually an issue, which often
there isn't. The issue was Keynesian growth versus fiscal
conservatism. The Republicans were the party of Keynesian growth:
big spending, deficits, and so on. The Democrats were the party of
fiscal conservatism: watch the money supply, worry about the
deficits, et cetera. Now, I didn't see a single comment pointing out
that the two parties had completely reversed their traditional
positions. Traditionally, the Democrats are the party of Keynesian
growth, and the Republicans the party of fiscal conservatism. So
doesn't it strike you that something must have happened? Well,
actually, it makes sense. Both parties are essentially the same
party. The only question is how coalitions of investors have shifted
around on tactical issues now and then. As they do, the parties
shift to opposite positions, within a narrow spectrum.
Noam Chomsky; from an interview by Adam Jones, February 20, 1990
'Tough love' is just the right phrase: love for the rich and
privileged, tough for everyone else.
Noam Chomsky; from Powers and Prospects (1996)
See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.
Noam Chomsky; from Understanding Power (2002)
The United States is deeply in debt – that was part of the whole
Reagan/Bush program, in fact: to put the country so deeply in debt
that there would be virtually no way for the government to pursue
programs of social spending anymore. And what "being in debt" really
means is that the Treasury Department has sold a ton of securities –
bonds and notes and so on – to investors, who then trade them back
and forth on the bond market. Well, according to the Wall Street
Journal, by now about $150 billion a day worth of U.S. Treasury
securities alone is traded this way. The article then explained what
this means: it means that if the investing community which holds
those securities doesn't like any U.S. government policies, it can
very quickly sell off just a tiny signal amount of Treasury bonds,
and that will have the automatic effect of raising the interest
rate, which then will have the further automatic effect of
increasing the deficit. Okay, this article calculated that if such a
"signal" sufficed to raise the interest rate by 1 percent, it would
add $20 billion to the deficit overnight – meaning if Clinton (say
in someone's dream) proposed a $20 billion social spending program,
the international investing community could effectively turn it into
a $40 billion program instantly, just by a signal, and any further
moves in that direction would be totally cut off.
Noam Chomsky; ibid
December 7 is the 341st day
of the year in the Gregorian calendar (342nd
in leap years), with 24
days remaining.
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Haloia of Demeter, ancient Greece
This festival commemorated the goddess Demeter's sorrow at the loss of her daughter Persephone, and the coming of the winter months.
Source of date: Earth, Moon and Sky
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Saint Ambrose, (Latin Sanctus Ambrosius, Italian Sant'Ambrogio) (c. 340 - April 4, 397), bishop of Milan, was one of the most eminent bishops of the 4th Century. Together with Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, and Gregory I, he his counted one of the four Doctors of the West of antique church history. Ambrose was highly influential in the destruction of paganism in the Roman Empire. A pagan delegation led by Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 340 - c. 402), consul in 391, presented to the Christian, Emperor Valentinian II, a forcible but unsuccessful petition pleading for tolerance for traditional cult practices and beliefs that Christianity was poised to suppress in the Theodosian edicts of 391. Ambrose successfully argued that it was the duty of a Christian prince to suppress pagan ceremonies. A legend has it that as an infant, a swarm of bees settled on Ambrose's face while he lay in his cradle, leaving behind a drop of honey. His father, a praetorian prefect of Gallia Narbonensis, considered this a sign of his son's future eloquence and 'honeyed tongue'. For this reason, bees and beehives often appear in the saint's symbology. In art he is sometimes depicted with other 'attributes', including a child, a whip, and/or bones. According to another legend, Ambrose was admonished in a dream to search for, and found under the pavement of the church, the remains of two martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius. The saints, although they would have had to have been hundreds of years old, looked as if they had just died. Ambrose surprised St Augustine by his habit of reading silently, indicating that this was an unusual practice in those times. Augustine records in his Confessions:
St Ambrose is the patron of beekeepers; bees; candle makers; domestic animals; the French Commissariat; learning; Milan, Italy; students; and wax refiners.
Burning the Devil Celebrations (La Quema del Diablo), Antigua, Guatemala
The festivities of the Faunalia continued
on this day, ancient
Rome Egyptian day (dies egypticus, dies ćgypticus or dies mala), unlucky day in Medieval Europe. ("But, notwithstanding, I will trust the Lord" was the associated saying.) Advent (Nov 30 - Dec 25), season of the coming of Jesus Christ Feast day of St Humbert Feast day of St Mary Joseph Rosello Feast day of St Victor of PiacenzaHari Kugo; Daitosai, or Good-Luck Market, Omiya, Japan (Nov 30 - Dec 11) Iyomante Matsuri, Kutcharo, Japan (Dec 1 - 15) Pearl
Harbor Day, USA
(observance)
521 St Columba, Irish abbot, 'apostle to the Picts' About the time that St Patrick was taken to Ireland as a slave, Columba was born. It was in the heart of the so called Dark Ages, the 6th Century, when Irish colonists and invaders, the Scots, began migrating to Caledonia (later known as Scotland).
Columba was a poet, who had learned
Irish history and poetry from a bard named Gemman. Tradition has
it that, sometime around 560,
he became involved in a copyright wrangle with St
Finnian over
a
psalter. The dispute eventually led
to a pitched battle in 561 during which many men were killed. (Columba's
copy of the psalter has been traditionally associated with the Cathach
of St Columba.) It is
said that on one occasion, so anxious was Columba to have a copy of
the Psalter that he shut himself up for a whole night in the church
that contained it, transcribing it laboriously by hand. He was
discovered by a monk who watched him through the keyhole and
reported it to his superior, Finnian of Moville. The Scriptures were
so scarce in those days that the abbot claimed the copy, refusing to
allow it to leave the monastery. Columba refused to surrender it,
until he was obliged to do so, under protest, on the abbot's appeal
to the High King Diarmaid, who said: "Le gach buin a laogh"
or "To every cow her own calf", meaning to every book its
copy. As penance for these deaths, Columba was ordered to make the same number of new converts as had been killed. Exiled in 563 to the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, he founded and led a monastery there for 12 years, which became the centre of his evangelising mission to Scotland. They built a monastery consisting of huts with roofs of branches set upon wooden props, a rough and primitive settlement. For over 30 years, he slept on the hard ground with no pillow but a stone. He and the monks of Iona, including Saint Baithen of Iona and Saint Eochod, then evangelized the Picts. There are many stories of miracles that Columba performed during his mission to convert the Picts. He made water from wine; made water issue from a rock; calmed a storm at sea; provided a miraculous catch of fish; multiplied a herd of cattle; drove a demon out of a milk pail; and cured the sick. A book owned by the saint could not be destroyed by water; through his prayers he destroyed a wild boar; he stopped serpents from harming people; angels and manifestations of divine light attended him throughout his life.
Columba and Nessie Columba is also the source of the first known reference to the Loch Ness Monster. According to the story, in 565, he came across a group of Picts who were burying a man killed by the monster, and brought the man back to life. In another version, he is said to have saved the man while the man was being attacked, driving away the monster with the sign of the cross ... Read on at the Saint Columba page at the Scriptorium
1598 Gian
Lorenzo Bernini (d. 1680), Italian
baroque sculptor and architect who designed the
colonnade at St Peter's
in Rome. The bulk of Benini's work is in St Peter's.
From 1623, until his death in 1680, most of Bernini's time was spent
embellishing the basilica.
Eminently
a
sculptor, he was also an
architect,
painter, draftsman, designer of
stage sets,
fireworks
displays, and funeral trappings. 1670 John Aislabie (d. 1742), director of the South Sea Company 1784 Allan Cunningham (d. 1842), Scottish poet 1801 Johann Nestroy (d. 1862), dramatist and actor 1810 Theodor Schwann, German physiologist, co-originator of the theory of the cell and the first to use the term 1847 George Grossmith (d. 1912), English actor and comic writer, best remembered for his work with Gilbert & Sullivan1860 Sir Joseph Cook (d. 1947), 6th Prime Minister of Australia 1863 Pietro Mascagni (d. 1945), composer 1863 Richard Sears (d. 1914), department store founder 1873 Willa Cather, (d. 1947) novelist 1879 Rudolf Friml, (d. 1972) American composer 1887 Ernst Toch (d. 1964), composer 1888 Joyce Cary (Arthur
Joyce Lunel Cary; d. 1957), Irish novelist (Famous trilogy:
Herself Surprised; To Be a
Pilgrim;
The Horse's
Mouth) 1888 Hamilton Fish
(d. 1991),
American
politician 1903 Danilo Blanusa
(d. 1987),
Croatian
mathematician 1905 Gerard Kuiper
(d. 1973),
astronomer 1910 Louis
Prima (d. 1978), musician 1912 Daniel
Jones, composer 1915 Eli
Wallach, Hollywood actor (The Magnificent Seven;
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) 1924 Mário Soares,
President
of Portugal
1986 - 96 1927 Helen
Watts, Welsh contralto
1928
Noam
Chomsky, linguist, anarchist, social critic, activist. Critic in
the manner of the great
IF Stone – and just as ignored and
vilified by the establishment. Always interested in
politics, and politics brought him into the linguistics field. His
political tendencies result from "the radical Jewish community
in New York". Since 1965, Chomsky has
become one of the leading critics of US foreign policy. He has many
books and essays published arguing against American involvement in
Vietnam, Latin America and Indonesia's political involvement in East
Timor. Chomsky has many
contributions to anarchism, constantly stressing that we are all
capable of become more aware of what is fundamentally right and
wrong, and that life itself is bigger and brighter than passively
consuming state led propaganda and mis-information. Source: The
Daily Bleed 1934
Gordon
Parks Jr (d. 1979), director 1942 Harry Chapin
(d. 1981),
musician 1942 Peter Tomarken,
game
show host
1944 Daniel
Chorzempa, organist
1945 Marion
Rung, Finnish singer
1947
Sasha Soldatow (d. August
30, 2006),
Russian-born Australian writer, editor and activist. He edited the
works of Australian poet and philosopher, Harry
Hooton. In the week or two before his death, Sasha offered to
edit my just-completed novel, Faces
in the Street, at no charge. His generosity was widely known. A
good bloke, and a remarkable one.
"Sasha Soldatow was born in Plochingen, Germany of Russian parents. A speaker of Russian, he has worked as a freelance journalist and a translator of Russian for SBS Television. As well as writing and presenting performance poetry, he has been involved in filmscript editing, the production and direction of videos and acting in theatre productions. He has also exhibited, between 1974 and 1987, in the visual arts. In 1985 he won the C. H. Currey Memorial Fellowship for research on Harry Hooton."
Source
"He was also a forerunner in the gay liberation movement, often in unexpected ways. His cabaret performances were steeped in libertarianism, cheek and political incorrectness. When the rest of fashionably leftist Sydney was busy discovering itself, Sash turned up at one party with a copy of their latest, very serious hero Althusser's book on a leash like some sort of pet puppy. "'Don't just be ordinary, be
extraordinary,' he demanded of those around him. Always! 'And always demand honesty from people! The truth is
everything.'" Source
1948
Gary
Morris,
American
country
music
singer and
actor 1949 Tom
Waits, singer, composer, actor 1971 Chasey
Lain, erotic actress 1987
Aaron Carter,
singer 2003 Princess
Catharina-Amalia of the Netherlands Phew!!
Have a rest before the big This
day in history section
Do you forget
birthdays and anniversaries? Schedule
your cards
to be sent during the coming year. |
Feast day of St
Columba
Chomsky learned a lot
about linguistics from his father, William. Among his many
accomplishments Chomsky is most famous for his work on
