|
|
|
|
This page is big!
If it fails to load fully, please click Refresh on your browser menu.
It's fully loaded when you see the purple menu bar at the foot of the page.
reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
First time here? See the Index for
How it works
Celebrate each and every day with a free subscription to the daily ezine. You can apply by form or send a blank email. Read what the 'Almaniacs' (members) say about Wilson's Almanac.
I request your support if this website pleases and informs you, as this is my livelihood. Thank you, from the bottom of my fridge.
Inquiries from publishers are welcome, but, dear reader, please don't use my work without my written permission. If I've inadvertently used something of yours that you consider not to fall under the fair use doctrine, please tell me and I'll remove it.
Carpe diem! (Seize the day!)
Our news on your homepage (that is, if you use My Yahoo, which we recommend for your start-up page)
|
|
|
O roving muse, recall the wondrous year, When winter reigned in bleak Britannia's air ; When hoary Thames, with frosted oziers crowned, Was three long moons in icy fetters bound. About a freeze in 1709, quoted in The Lady's Almanack for 1852, London Most people never run far enough
on their first wind to find out they've got a second. Give your dreams
all you've got and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of
you. It is our
attitude at the beginning of a difficult undertaking which, more than
anything else, will determine its outcome. He [Thomas Hardy] laughed a little and said that once or twice recently he had looked up a word in the dictionary for fear of being again accused of coining, and had found it there right enough
only to read on and find out that the sole authority quoted was himself in a half-forgotten novel. |
|
There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.
Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a
pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.
These wild things, I admit, had little human value until mechanization assured us of a good breakfast, and until science disclosed the drama of where they come from and how they live. The whole conflict thus boils down to question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress, our opponents do not.
One must make shift with things as they are.
Aldo Leopold, American conservationist and author, born on January
11, 1887; A Sand County Almanac,
1949
We shall never achieve harmony with
land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for
people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to
achieve, but to strive.
Aldo Leopold;
Round River,
Oxford University Press, New York,
1993
Do we realize that industry, which
has been our good servant, might make a poor master?
Aldo Leopold; A Plea for Wilderness
Hunting Grounds, 1925
[W]e seem ultimately always thrown
back on individual ethics as the basis of conservation policy. It is
hard to make a man, by pressure of law or money, do a thing which does
not spring naturally from his own personal sense of right and wrong.
Aldo
Leopold, Conservationist in Mexico, American Forests,
March 1937. Reproduced in Aldo Leopold's Southwest,
edited by David E. Brown & Neil B. Carmony, University of New
Mexico Press, 1990, p. 207
My great fear is that by the time the whites
have turned to loving, the blacks will have turned to hating.
Alan Paton, South African
author, born on January 11, 1903
Last
Friday, April
16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the
laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being
affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight
dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant
intoxicated-like condition characterized by an extremely stimulated
imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the
daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted
stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense,
kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition
faded away.
Albert
Hofmann, Swiss chemist born on January 11, 1906, who
discovered the effects of LSD
You have to forget
about what other people say, when you're supposed to die, or when
you're supposed to be loving. You have to forget about all these
things. You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven.
Jimi Hendrix
January 11 is the 11th
day of the year in the Gregorian
calendar, with 354
days remaining (355 in leap years).
Calendar
converter Almanacs,
calendars, time, dedicated weeks, etc Almanac
screensavers On
this day Dictionary
I
recommend
IMDB
days IMDB
years Wikipedia
days Wiki
decades Wiki
centuries Timelines
Convert
weights, measures, etc Calendrica
Lunabar
When 'Source' links
on this page move address or
die, I might allow them to stay here, but the
Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
Carmentalia, Roman
Empire, half holiday, kept mainly by
women (Jan 11 & 15)
Today is the first of two important festivals of Carmentalia, for the Camenae, nymphs of prophecy, identified with the Nine Muses. Their chief deity is Carmenta (or Carmentis), goddess of prophecy, protector of women in childbirth, and patron of midwives. She was regarded as a deity of procreation. Her name is derived from carmen, meaning 'magic spell', 'oracle' or 'song', and is also the roots of the word 'charm'. Carmenta was said to have invented the 15-letter Latin alphabet.
The Carmentalia were among the most distinguished
festivals of the Roman matrons. At first Carmenta ruled the rites alone,
but later prayers offered to her invoked the Camenae and the mysterious
Carmentes (goddesses Porrima and Postverta) who presided
over birth and were worshipped as her sisters and attendants. As well, during childbirth, women offered prayers to summon the Carmentes to
preside over the labor. Aulus Gellus (Attic Nights, 16.16.4)
tells us that the goddess Porrima
was present at the birth when the baby was born head-first, and Postverta,
when the feet of the baby came first. The Dictionary of Classical
Mythology says Carmentis was invoked by two names, Prorsa (head
first) and Postversa (feet first).
Today, assisted by the
Pontifices, the
Flamen Carmentalis (the
The origins of the festival,
we are told (
When the third sun shall look back on the past Ides, the holy rites will be repeated in honour of the Parrhasian goddess. For of old, Ausonian matrons drove in carriages. Afterwards the honour was taken from them, and every matron vowed not to propagate the line of her ungrateful spouse by giving birth to offspring; and lest she should bear children, she rashly by a secret thrust discharged the growing burden from her womb. They say the senate reprimanded the wives for their daring cruelty, but restored the right of which they had been mulcted; and they ordained that now two festivals be held alike in honour of the Tegean mother to promote the birth of boys and girls. It is not lawful to bring leather into her shrine, lest her pure hearths should be defiled by skins of slaughtered beasts. If you have any love of ancient rites, attend the prayers offered to her; you shall hear names you never heard before, Porrima and Postverta are placated, whether they be thy sisters, Maenalian goddess, or companions. The one is thought to have sung of what was long ago, the other of what should come to pass hereafter.
Offerings
of rice were made to the goddess and women feasted on cream-filled
pastries shaped like male and female genitals, as well as triangular
pastries filled with raspberry jam. The number of days separating
the first and second days of the festival was said to be pleasing to the
gods.
Carmenta was also
known as Metis, the Titaness of Wisdom, as well as Car, Carya, or Car the
Wise. After arriving in Latium
with her son,
Evander, she went to the summit of the Capitoline Hill
and began prophesying; soon after, she became revered as a deity. After
Carmenta are named the Caryae (walnut trees) and the Carytids (nut
nymphs). 
The goddess Egeria ('of the black poplar') was also a goddess of birth, as well as wisdom, and one of the Camenae. She was married to Numa Pompilius, second king of Rome and taught him matters relating to wise and just kingship. When her husband died, she changed him into a well, holy to Diana, which was located in the forest of Aricia, in Latium.
Healing Festival of
Juturna, ancient Rome
Sacrifices
were also offered in the Roman Empire today to the goddess Juturna, in a festival
called the Juturnalia on the anniversary of the day on which her temple
was erected in the Campus
Martius (Field of Mars, where soldiers trained, a place dedicated to
the Roman god of war, Mars)
by Quintus
Lutatius Catulus, a great-great-great uncle of Julius Caesar.
In Roman mythology, Juturna was the goddess of
fountains, wells and springs, nymph of the fountain in Latium,
waters of which were famous for their reputed healing powers.
She was a sister of Turnus and
supported him against Aeneas. She was also the mother of Fontus by
her husband, Janus, the god who rules the month of
January.
Jupiter turned
Juturna into a nymph
and gave her a sacred well in
Lavinium, Latium, as
well as another one near the temple to Vesta
in the Forum Romanum. The second well was called
Lacus Juturnae. Once, she had an affair with
Jupiter but the secret was betrayed by a nymph named Lara, whom
Jupiter struck with muteness as punishment.
Juturna is patroness of all who work with water. All aqueduct workmen and others in a similar field used to celebrate the Juturnalia.
Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days
Find an error or dead link?
Like to make a suggestion, or just say "G'day"?
Meet me at Corrigenda
