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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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Tomorrow is
St Valentine's day ... a man is never so well Employ'd, as when he is labouring for the advantage of the Public; without the Expectation, the Hope or Even a wish to derive advantage of any Kind from the Result of his
exertions. I had one
experience which gave me some slant on the way large organizations
run. I was not allowed to take spherical trigonometry because I'd
sprained my ankle. Because I'd sprained my ankle I had an incomplete
in gym, phys ed. And the rule was that if you had an incomplete in
anything, you were not allowed to take an overload. I argued with
some clerical person in the administration office, and was stopped
there. It's an experience which I've remembered since, and advised
people not to be stopped at the first point. |
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You meet a better class of people in pubs.
Oliver Reed, English actor, born on February 13, 1938
I do not live in the world of sobriety.
Oliver Reed
My only regret is that I didn't drink every pub dry and sleep with every woman on the planet.
Oliver Reed
I believe that my woman shouldn't work outside the home. When I come home and I'm tired from filming all day, I expect her to be there and make sure that everything is cool for me. You know, like drawing my bath and helping me into bed. That's the kind of job she had and, in return for it, she can bear my children and if any man talks bad to her, I'll hit him.
Oliver Reed
For me the image isn't
important, it's the human behaviour of wanting to touch.
Sigmar Polke, German post-modern painter and photographer, born February 13,
1941
We cannot rely on it that good painting will be made one day. We have to
take the matter in hand ourselves.
Sigmar Polke
This is the meeting point of ideas and materials … you see what you want,
but you have to work with the painting, and the results are always different.
Sigmar Polke
My campaign is based upon
the proposition that the answers to the problems which currently plague our
cities, our towns, and our homes, are not to be found in the decisions in
Washington. They are instead to be found in the hearts, minds and resources of
our own people here at home.
Jerry Springer, British-born American TV celebrity born on February 13, 1944;
from a speech given c. 1970 to citizens in Cincinnati, Ohio, as reported
on This
American Life, Ep. 258 (January
30, 2004), 'Leaving the Fold'; Act One
The Statue of Liberty
means everything. We take it for granted today. We take it for granted. Remember
the Statue of Liberty stands for what America is. We as Democrats have to remind
ourselves and remind the country the great principles we stand for. This is a
place of protection. This is not a country of bullies. We are not an empire. We
are the light. We are the Statue of Liberty.
Jerry Springer; speech given January 2003, as reported on This American Life,
Ep. 258 (January 30,
2004), 'Leaving the Fold'; Act One
I still do politics but I do it behind the scenes now. So that's still my
passion. It's what I believe most strongly in, and I love that. Do I miss being
in elective politics? Sometimes. This show is fun to do, my American show, and
it's obviously silly, sometimes stupid. It gives me a good living and I enjoy it
but I'm not passionate about it like I am about politics.
Jerry Springer;
Chatshow Net interview with Lara Lewington (July
13, 2001)
The overarching issue, as I see it, is the elitism of America's political
system; the fact that regular, ordinary Americans aren't considered in policy
debates or legislation, and regularly get shafted by the powers-that-be in
Washington.
Jerry Springer;
Democratic Veteran, interview with Jo Fish (June
23, 2003)
I opposed the war in Iraq because I did not believe it was in our
national security interest, and I still don't. What we did was akin to taking a
baseball bat to a beehive. Our primary security threat right now is terrorism –
and by doing what we did in Iraq, we've managed to alienate a good part of the
world and most of the allies whose intelligence and other help we need to combat
and defeat terrorism.
Jerry Springer; ibid
Country comes before politics.
Jerry Springer;
Springer On The Radio for
Air America Radio (July
15, 2005)
Somebody once said I had a face for radio and a voice for newspapers.
Jerry Springer (attrib.)
February 13 is the 44th
day of the year in the Gregorian
calendar, with 321
days remaining (322 in leap years).
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Anthesteria, ancient Greece
(Feb 13 - 15),
festival to the god Dionysus
The Attic festivals of Dionysus were four: The Rural or Lesser
Dionysia, the Lenaea, the Anthesteria and the City or Great (or Urban)
Dionysia.
These
festivals were drunken revels, partaken in with enthusiastic joy and
boisterous music of flutes, cymbals and drums. Processions were held, in
which women were dressed as Bacchae, Lenae, Thyades, Naiades, Nymphs and
so on, adorned with garlands of ivy, and bearing the thyrsus in their hands. The thyrsus was a pole carried by
Bacchus, and by Satyrs, Maenades and others who engaged in Bacchic
festivals and rites. It was sometimes tipped with a pine or fir cone; the
fir tree was dedicated to Bacchus because its sap was used in wine making.
In ancient art the cone was represented with a bunch of vine or ivy leaves
and grapes or berries, arranged into the form of a cone. Bacchus was said
to have converted the thyrsi into dangerous weapons by concealing an iron
point in the leaves. Hence its point was said to invoke madness.
The choruses sung at such festivals were called dithyrambs, image-filled songs to the god. The phallus was also carried, the symbol of Nature's fertility. The Greeks believed they owed the gift of their intoxication to the god, and in some places it was thought a crime to remain sober.
During the Anthesteria the participants ritually expelled the Keres, evil female spirits, from their houses.
From Wikipedia: On the first day, called Pithoigia (opening of the casks), libations were offered from the newly opened casks to the god of wine, all the household, including servants and slaves, joining in the festivities. The rooms and the drinking vessels in them were adorned with spring flowers, as were also the children over three years of age.
The second day, named Choës (feast of beakers), was a time of merrymaking. The people dressed themselves gaily, some in the disguise of the mythical personages in the suite of Dionysus, and paid a round of visits to their acquaintances. Drinking clubs met to drink off matches, the winner being he who drained his cup most rapidly. Others poured libations on the tombs of deceased relatives. On the part of the state this day was the occasion of a peculiarly solemn and secret ceremony in one of the sanctuaries of Dionysus in the Lenaeum, which for the rest of the year was closed. The basilissa (or basilinna), wife of the archon basileus for the time, went through a ceremony of marriage to the wine god, in which she was assisted by fourteen Athenian matrons, called geraerae, chosen by the basileus and sworn to secrecy. The days on which the Pithoigia and Choës were celebrated were both regarded as αποφραδες (nefasti) and μιαραι ('defiled'), necessitating expiatory libations; on them the souls of the dead came up from the underworld and walked abroad; people chewed leaves of whitethorn and besmeared their doors with tar to protect themselves from evil. But at least in private circles the festive character of the ceremonies predominated.
The third day was named Chytri (feast of pots, from χυτρος, 'a pot'), a festival of the dead. Cooked pulse was offered to Hermes, in his capacity of a god of the lower world, and to the souls of the dead. Although no performances were allowed at the theatre, a sort of rehearsal took place, at which the players for the ensuing dramatic festival were selected.
The name Anthesteria, according to the account of it given above, is usually connected with ανθος ('flower', or the 'bloom' of the grape), but AW Verrall (Journal of Hellenic Studies, xx., 1900, p. 115) explains it as a feast of 'revocation' (from αναθεσσασται, to 'pray back' or 'up'), at which the ghosts of the dead were recalled to the land of the living (cp. the Roman mundus patet). JE Harrison (ibid. 100, 109, and Prolegomena), regarding the Anthesteria as primarily a festival of all souls, the object of which was the expulsion of ancestral ghosts by means of placation, explains πιθοιγια as the feast of the opening of the graves (πιθος meaning a large urn used for burial purposes), χοες as the day of libations, and χυτροι as the day of the grave-holes (not 'pots', which is χυτραι), in point of time really anterior to the πιθοιγια. E Rohde and M P Nilsson, however, take the χυτροι to mean 'water vessels', and connect the ceremony with the Hydrophoria, a libation festival to propitiate the dead who had perished in the flood of Deucalion.
More
'Bacchanalia' by Auguste Léveque (1864 - 1921)
The worship of Dionysus, whom the Romans called Bacchus, was introduced from southern Italy into Etruria, thence to Rome. According to Livy, many vices took place. Rites were held at the Bacchanal (sanctuary); it was only for women until Pacula Annia, a Campanian matron, admitted men to the initiation. The Bacchanalia went from three days in the year to five days per month and, in a decree that proved ineffective, was banned, except by special permission of the Senate and for only five initiates at a time, in 186 BCE by the Roman Senate because of extreme licentiousness. The Liberalia, another festival of Bacchus, was celebrated on March 16 - 17. Adorned with garlands of ivy, priests and old priestesses carried through the city wine, honey, cakes and sweets together with an altar in the middle of which was a small fire-pan in which sacrifices were sometimes burnt. On this day youths who had turned 15 received their costume, the toga virilis.
Parentalia, ancient Rome (Feb 13 - 21)
Temples were closed and weddings
prohibited during the Parentalia, ancient Rome's main festival of the
dead, which lasted until the Feralia (February 21).
It was customary for people to visit the graves
of their parents and other relatives, placing offerings of wine, milk,
oil, honey and water from springs. Also laid at the graves were
sacrificial blood from the bodies of black animals. Mourners decorated the
graves with roses and violets, then partook of a ritual meal at the
graveside.
The mourners
greeted each other with the words, Salve, sancte parens,
"Hail, holy ancestor".
Today was a day
for the famed Vestal Virgins to perform a special ritual, in honour of
their sacred ancestor, when they visited the cult's parental shrine which
was sacred to the early Vestal, Terpeia.
The Phoenix and Arabeth 1992 Global
Spiritual Calendar (Phoenix and Arabeth, Ukiah, CA, USA, 1992) called
it a "purification festival of [the] Goddesses Mania and Vesta, devoted
to ancestors".
Roman festivals and notable days in the Book of Days Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days
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