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reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
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I put my hand in my pocket, and I found my rosary there; I wanted to make the sign of the cross ... I couldn't raise my hand to my forehead. The Vision made the sign of the cross. Then I tried a second time and I could. As soon as I made the sign of the cross, the fearful shock I felt disappeared. I knelt down and said my rosary in the presence of the beautiful lady. The vision fingered the beads of her own rosary, but she did not move her lips. When I finished my rosary, she signed for me to approach but I did not dare. Then she disappeared. The CBS cameramen were blocked and pushed by the entrepreneurs and prevented from filming the garish displays of holy water, religious statues, gimcracks, and cheaply printed booklets that are peddled at the holy site. But men never violate the laws of God without suffering the consequences, sooner or later. We first
crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on
them forever, because they are prostrate. |
Bernadette Soubirous at
Lourdes |
Not in vain is Ireland
pouring itself all over the earth. Divine Providence has a mission for her
children to fulfill; though a mission unrecognized by political economists.
There is ever a moral balance preserved in the universe, like the vibrations of
the pendulum. The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are
needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism.
Lydia Maria Child; Letters from New York (1843), vol. 1, letter 33
There was a time when all these things would have passed me by, like the
flitting figures of a theatre, sufficient for the amusement of an hour. But now,
I have lost the power of looking merely on the surface. Everything seems to me
to come from the Infinite, to be filled with the Infinite, to be tending toward
the Infinite. Do I see crowds of men hastening to extinguish a fire? I see not
merely uncouth garbs, and fantastic, flickering lights, of lurid hue, like a
trampling troop of gnomes – but straightway my mind is filled with thoughts
about mutual helpfulness, human sympathy, the common bond of brotherhood, and
the mysteriously deep foundations on which society rests; or rather, on which it
now reels and totters.
Lydia Maria Child; ibid, letter 1
I will work in my own way, according to the light that is in me.
Lydia Maria Child; Letter to Ellis Gray Loring (1843)
The United States is ... a warning rather than an example to the world.
Lydia Maria Child; to the twenty-fifth-anniversary meeting of the Massachusetts
Anti-Slavery Society (1857)
Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!
Lydia Maria Child (attrib.)
I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman
could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book.
Lydia Maria Child (attrib.)
You find yourself refreshed in the presence of cheerful people. Why not
make an honest effort to confer that pleasure on others? Half the battle is
gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy.
Lydia Maria Child (attrib.)
Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor, born on February 11, 1847 (attrib.)
In Common Sense [Thomas] Paine flared forth
with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. [George]
Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters
never could be the same again.
Thomas Alva Edison; 'The Philosophy of Paine' (June
7, 1925)
It is absurd to say our country can issue $30
million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but
one promise fattens the userers and the other helps the people.
Thomas Alva Edison; criticizing the Federal Reserve System, as quoted in The
Money Masters (1995)
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas Alva Edison; unsourced
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
Thomas Alva Edison; unsourced
I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I
hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
Thomas Alva Edison; in conversation with
Henry Ford and
Harvey Firestone
(1931)
I got a job at
Metro and went in
to see Louis Mayer,
who told me he wanted me to be a producer. I said I wanted to write and direct.
He said, "No, you have to produce first, you have to crawl before you can walk."
Which is as good a definition of producing as I ever heard.
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz, American screenwriter, director, and producer born
February 11, 1909; quoted in Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell's Who's Who in the
Movies, 15th edition (2003), p. 312
Every screenwriter worthy of the name has already directed his film when
he has written his script.
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz; ibid
Dying
is an art like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
Sylvia Plath, American poet who died on February 11, 1963; 'Lady Lazarus' (1962)
February 11 is the 42nd
day of the year in the Gregorian
calendar, with 323
days remaining (324 in leap years).
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Feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes
Miraculous apparitions to St Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes
This was
the last manifestation at a grotto which, for many centuries, had been
known as a shrine of the goddess Persephone.
Persephone ('she who destroys the light'; also Kore, 'maiden'; Roman
equivalent: Proserpina),
the daughter of Zeus and Demeter,
became the goddess of the underworld when Hades abducted her from the Earth and brought her into the underworld. She is a life-death-rebirth
deity.
On this day in 1858,
14-year-old Bernadette
Soubirous was collecting
scraps of wood on the bank of the River Gave when she saw an indescribably
beautiful apparition
of a haloed Virgin Mary near a cave in the Massabielle cliff,
near Lourdes.
Bernadette was with her sister Toinette and her friend Jeanne, neither of whom saw the vision.
The Virgin said to her, "I am the Immaculate Conception" (curiously,
rather than "I am the Immaculately Conceived"). The apparition, according to Bernadette, "fingered the beads of her own rosary" (although the practice was not adopted, by Eastern Christian monks, until two centuries after Mary lived).
In total, Bernadette had 18 visions of the Virgin Mary at the grotto.
People followed Bernadette and saw the girl fall
into ecstasy; they heard her speak, but they saw nothing. The unknown
'lady' told Bernadette: "Tell the priests I wish to have a chapel
here"; "Processions are to come here"; "Go, drink from
the spring and wash in its water."
In obedience, the girl dug with her hands into
the earth of the grotto, and there gushed forth a spring, unknown until
that day – February
25 – that for years has yielded 27,000 gallons weekly. Many miraculous
cures have been effected by its waters. Or, so it is said.
By March 4, about
200,000 people were accompanying Bernadette to the shrine
site. The last vision occurred on July 16, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount
Carmel.
Bernadette was an unsophisticated girl and for
many years the nuns and churchmen to whom she reported her amazing story
treated her with disdain. Eventually, however, the events of 1858 resulted
in Lourdes becoming one of
the most important pilgrim shrines in the history of Christendom, ending
with the consecration of the basilica in 1876. Bernadette, who initially
had met with skepticism and even outright hostility from the Catholic
Church, entered the Monastery of Nevers in
1866 and was canonised in 1933.
Lourdes (Lorda in Occitan) is a village in the Hautes-Pyrénées département in France. It is the largest Catholic religion pilgrimage location in France. It is situated in the south of the country, in the Pyrenees region, with about 17,000 inhabitants. Some 3,000,000 pilgrims annually make their way to the grotto, among them 50,000 or so sick or disabled, seeking a miraculous cure. A mere 66 cures have been accepted as miraculous by the Catholic Church out of the estimated two million sick pilgrims who have visited the shrine since 1858, which scarcely indicates a statistical link between Lourdes and cures. More than 400 hotels cater for the throngs and a huge industry has developed from the visions, or delusions, of the barely literate Bernadette Soubirous.
Catholic Church's list of recognised miraculous cures at Lourdes Wilson's Almanac on the Virgin of Guadalupe
Madonna, Jesus, Virgin Birth, Crucifixion in other old religions What is the Goddess Calendar? Mary/Goddess
Sacred wells, springs and grottoes Feast of the Immaculate Coception
Seventh Wednesday after Christmas, Binding Day, Portland, Dorset, UK
A note about the dating of items in Wilson's Almanac
According to tradition, on
the seventh Wednesday after Christmas (February 11 in 2004) you burgle
your neighbours' house and ransom the booty back. "This commemorates a
successful counter-attack by locals who had managed to remain hidden
whilst raiders slew local men and carried off the women."
Source: The Daily Bleed
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Celebrated annually since 1904 at around this time. "The carnival is
held in mid-February and revives the nineteenth-century Gasparilla,
the Spanish pirate, his buccaneers, and their three-masted sloop
with welcoming ceremonies at the harbour, pirate parades, fireworks
and balls." In years past a US Navy ship would be attacked by small boats throwing Cuban Bread and Black Bean soup. Wikipedia's article on the festival says that this was "discontinued after 9-11", referring, no doubt to September 11, 2001 when the USA suffered a serious terrorism incident. No further explanation is given as to why this colourful tradition ceased. One hopes that in the wave of paranoia and jingoism that swept that and other nations at that time, the good citizens of Tampa did not feel that their playful traditions were 'unpatriotic'.
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.) Feast day of St Adolphus of Osnabruk Feast day of St Ampelius Feast day of St Ardanus of Tournus Feast day of St Benedict of Aniane
Feast day of St Caedmon (Cædmon; Cadfan; Cedmon), poet Caedmon lived in the latter half of seventh
century (during Hild's
abbacy at Streonæshalch [Whitby
Abbey] 657
– 681) and is today the most ancient English poet whose name is
known. He lived in Northumbria, the son of a small landholder. At a drinking party one evening, when the harp
approached him and he was expected to sing a song of his own
composition, as were all at the party, he was ashamed of his lack of
skill, and went home. He should have gone home to guard the family
cattle, as was the custom; instead he fell into despondent sleep. In
his sleep a stranger came to him and demanded that he sing 'the
Creation', but he protested that he could not sing as he was so
shy. Caedmon woke with the ability to remember the hymn
that the angel gave to him. He was taken to the abbess St Hilda at the
nearby monastery of Streonæshalch (or Streaneshalch, now Whitby), who listened to his
story and read him scriptures in Anglo-Saxon. The next day he gave
her the same texts in verse. He continued through his life to put
sacred history into verse. Caedmon was regarded as a saint by the Anglo-Saxon church, and celebrated his life today. It is assumed that Milton was familiar with Caedmon's writings, as Paradise Lost bears some similarities to Caedmon's Creation verses.
Caedmon at Whitby Attractions More More And more
Feast day of St Calocerus of Ravenna Feast day of St Castrensis of Capua Feast day of St Dativus, martyr of Africa Feast day of St Desiderius Feast day of St Elizabeth Salviati Feast day of St Euphrosyne Feast day of St Felix Feast
day of St Gobnata
or Gobnet Feast day of St Gregory II (this source says today and February 28) Feast day of St Helwisa Feast day of St Jonas of Muchon Feast day of St Lazarus Feast day of St Lucius Feast day of the Martyrs of AfricaFeast day of St Paschal I Feast day of St Saturninus, martyr of Africa Feast day of St Severinus of Agaunum Feast day of St Theodora, empress Feast day of St Victoria
Guru Rinpoche as
Shantarakshita, Guardian of Peace,
Tibet Old Masks Parade,
Oranjestad,
Aruba
Armed Forces Day,
Liberia Lateranensi Pacts Day National
Youth Day, Cameroon
(Cameroun) Shiwasu Matsuri, Mikado Jinja, Nango, Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan (Jan 20 - Feb 20) Yuki Matsuri,
or Snow Festival, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan (dates vary in early
February) Sounkyo Ice
Festival, Sounkyo Onsen (spa), Hokkaido, Japan (Jan 29 - Mar 5) National
Foundation Day, Japan White Shirt Day, USA Professor Leets's Day, USA
1380 Gianfrancesco Poggio Bracciolini (d. 1459), Italian humanist 1465 Elizabeth of York, (d. 1503) consort of King Henry VII of England, 1535 Pope Gregory XIV (d. 1591) 1768 John Hayes, who annexed New Guinea 1800 William Henry Fox Talbot, (d. 1877) British botanist, scientist and pioneer of photography 1802 Lydia Child (d. 1880), novelist and abolitionist (Read her at The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century US Women's Writings)
Edison, the god In the USA, there was a cult known as the Electricity Culture Religion which elevated Thomas Alva Edison to the status of a god.
1908 Vivian Ernest Fuchs (d. 1999), geologist, explorer 1909 Joseph Mankiewicz, Oscar-winning American screenwriter, director and producer 1917 Sidney Sheldon (d. January 30, 2007), American writer who won awards in three careers—a Broadway playwright, a Hollywood TV and movie screenwriter, and a best-selling novelist 1920 King Farouk I of Egypt (d. 1965) 1925 Eva Gabor, Hungarian-born American actress 1925 Virginia E Johnson, American sexologist 1922 Leslie Nielsen, American actor (The Naked Gun series) 1933 Chad Morgan, Australian comedic singer/guitarist ('You Can Have YourWomen, I'll Stick To My Booze'; The Sheik of Scrubby Creek) 1934 Mary Quant, English fashion designer 1935
Gene Vincent, American singer 1936 Burt Reynolds, Oscar-nominated American actor 1938 Manuel Noriega, Panamanian general and dictator 1941 Sergio Mendes (Sérgio Mendes), Brazilian musician 1962 Sheryl Crow, nine-time Grammy winning American blues rock singer, guitarist, bassist and songwriter1974 Alex Jones, controversial American radio host, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker
Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section
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