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reetings from Australia.
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Love your neighbour, but don't pull down your fence. Benjamin Franklin, American polymath, born on January 17, 1706
I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it. Benjamin Franklin; from 'Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion', November 20, 1728
If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Roman Catholic Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England. Benjamin Franklin
I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity. Benjamin Franklin; Works, Vol. VII, p. 75
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of. Benjamin Franklin
Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade. Benjamin Franklin
Joy is not in things! It is in us! Benjamin Franklin
If to be venerated for
benevolence, if to be admired for talent, if to be esteemed for
patriotism, if to be beloved for philanthropy, can gratify the human mind,
you must have the pleasing consolation to know that you have not lived in
vain.
George Washington in a letter to Benjamin Franklin, about a year before
the latter's death
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you
particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion ... has
received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present
dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a
question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it
needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of
knowing the Truth with less trouble. Benjamin Franklin, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by
Thomas Fleming, p. 404, (1972, Newsweek, New York, NY) quoting
letter by Franklin to Exra Stiles March 9, 1790
Lighthouses are more
helpful than churches. Benjamin Franklin
I wish it were possible, from this instance, to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear
country. Benjamin Franklin; letter to Jacques Barbeu Dubourg, April, 1773
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Benjamin Franklin
And sometimes, with his marvellous range, in spite of his personal tang,
he seems to have been more than any single man: a harmonious human
multitude.
Carl Van Doren on Benjamin Franklin
[Our constitution,
said Franklin] will fail, as all such constitutions have in the past, because of the essential corruption of the people. He pointed his finger at all the American people. And when the people become so corrupt, he said, we will find it is not a republic that they want but rather despotism
– the only form of government suitable for such a people. Gore Vidal
Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard
to utter the abominable word "Frisco," which has no linguistic
or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of a High Misdemeanor, and shall
pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of twenty-five dollars. Norton I, Emperor of the United States And Protector of Mexico, born on
January 17, 1811
I could argue all day about the significance of
facing east in religious rituals, but a clean table is a clean table. Emperor
Norton I
I yam what I yam. Popeye, who first appeared on January 17, 1929
I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong. Muhammad Ali, American boxer and conscientious
objector, born Cassius Clay on January 17, 1942
The uglier the woman, the
more you gotta kiss her. Makes her feel good. Muhammad Ali
It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves
pound the sand. I beat people up. Muhammad Ali
This conjunction of an immense
military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American
experience ... we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential
for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. USA President Dwight
D Eisenhower, January 17, 1961
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious.
Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again. Allen Ginsberg; from 'America', Berkeley, January 17, 1956
Felicitas is a minor Roman goddess of
good luck. Known particularly from the
2nd Century BCE, in Roman mythology, this goddess of success was
very closely associated with the Imperial
Family.
She had multiple temples in Rome,
including one on the Forum Romanum. Felicitas personified
happy events and was linked with agricultural prosperity. Ovid's Roman calendar,
theFasti, tells us she was associated
with the numen Augusti.
This is one of the dies
comitiales (C), when committees of citizens could vote on political or
criminal matters.
Saint Anthony the Great
(251 - 356),
Christiansaint, was a leader among the
Desert
Fathers, who were Christian monks in the
Egyptian desert in the
3rd and
4th centuries
CE. His feast day is celebrated on January 17 in some churches, but celebrated on
Tobi 22 (January
31) in the Coptic Orthodox Church which has the closest cultural and geographical ties to him. Anthony is known as the father of Christian monasticism; he had many temptations by the Devil.
He is the patron saint of herdsmen and also the patron of pigs. The smallest pig of a litter was named a Tantony pig in his honour.
Anthony
was born in about 251 in Heraclea, Egypt. He lived in a cave and practised abstinence and
self-inflicted punishments, suffering many temptations by the Devil.
He influenced the church from Scotland to Italy. Satan came to him
early in his career as a beautiful woman and a black boy, and with
many demons came to him in his cell one night and it appeared to
others that the saint was dead. Another time the walls shook as
Satan and his demons assailed him. They came as all sorts of beasts
– lions, bears, leopards, bulls, asps, serpents, scorpions and
wolves, and he was mangled by them. "This continued till the
roof of his cell opened, a beam of light shot down, the devils
became speechless, Anthony's pain ceased, and the roof closed
again." – Robert
Chambers, (Ed.), The
Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection
with the calendar, etc,W
& R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879
Edition is online and 1869
edition here
with CD-ROM available; See also The
English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of
Days)
In 285 for
solitude he withdrew into the mountain wilderness, returning in 305
to found a monastery. An angel came and plaited mats of palm leaves,
saying "Do this and thou shalt be saved". He hated the
Arians. Died 356, aged 105, and no rain fell for three years. He
once shut himself up in a tomb and was assailed by devils. A friend
carried his nearly lifeless body out, but he revived and asked to be
carried back. Once the devil put a large piece of gold plate in his
way, but Anthony rebuked him and the plate disappeared. Another time
the devil put some real gold in his way, but he jumped over it. He
locked himself up in an empty castle for twenty years, and friends
came to see him in vain. When they broke in they found his body
exactly the same as 20 years before. He performed an exorcism on a
boat after recognizing the stench of Satan in a possessed man.
It was brought to Europe by a
miracle. One Joceline had not gone on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem so
was wounded in battle and carried for dead into a chapel dedicated
to St Anthony, where a host of devils came to take him to Hell. But
Anthony intervened, and made him promise to carry his body to
France. Bits of him were all over Europe as relics, enough limbs to
make about six people.
Patron of pigs; like a tantony pig
London: At the markets, city officers took any pigs that were
starved or unfit for human consumption. They slit their ear. One of
the proctors of St Anthony's Hospital tied a bell around its neck,
and let it feed on the dunghills. No one would hurt it or steal it.
Anyone who fed it would thereafter be followed by it, hence the
saying to be followed as though by an Anthony pig. 'Like a tantony
pig' decribes a whining person.
Anthony
could cure pigs. He is sometimes represented
in art with a large hog, but there are many images showing the many temptations
of St Anthony (often with naked women) including those by Delaroche, Bosch and
Dali.
His biography was written by St Athanasius of Alexandria and
entitled Life of St Anthony. He instructed his followers to
bury his body in an unmarked, secret grave,
lest his body become an object of veneration.
He is sometimes said to have preached to fish, but this was
Anthony of Padua,f.d. June 13.
Benediction of the Beasts, Church of St
Anthony, Rome This ancient Christian
ceremony lasted for some days. Everyone who had a horse, mule or
ass, sent them to be blessed at the shrine of St Anthony near Santa Maria Maggiore. A
similar custom has traditionally been observed on the same day at Madridand many any other places.
The beasts at Romewereblessed at St Anthony's shrine. A little holy water, for a fee,
was splashed on all sorts of animals. Today, on his feast day,
domestic animals are cleaned and decorated and brought to churches
for blessings; in Italy even cars are treated in this way.
"His
relationship with pigs and patronage of swineherds is a little
complicated. Skin diseases were sometimes treated with
applications of pork fat, which reduced inflammation and
itching. As Anthony's intervention aided in the same conditions,
he was shown in art accompanied by a pig. People who saw the art
work, but did not have it explained, thought there was a direct
connection between Anthony and pigs - and people who worked with
swine took him as their patron."Source
St Anthony's Fire An inflammatory disease, St Anthony's Fire raged in Europe in
the 11th Century. The saint was prayed to for relief; a relic (a
religious item, such as a piece of a saint's body or part of a
saint's possessions) was also dipped in wine which was then drunk.
"Ergot
poisoning (pronounced "er-get") has been blamed for
hallucinations and convulsions accompanying the dance mania.
Nicknamed St. Anthony's Fire, ergotism coincided with floods and
wet growing seasons which fostered the growth of the fungus claviceps
purpura which thrives in damp conditions and forms on
cultivated grains, especially rye. While this could account for
some symptoms, many outbreaks did not coincide with floods or
wet growing or harvest periods. Convulsive ergotism could cause
bizarre behavior and hallucinations, but chronic ergotism was
more common and typically resulted in the loss of fingers and
toes from gangrene, a feature that is distinctly not associated
with dance manias (Donaldson et al. 1997, 203)."Source:
Rethinking the Dancing Mania
St
Anthony and the centaur
and satyr
"On his road he met with a demon in the form of a centaur.
Later on he spied a tiny old man with horns on his head. 'Who are
you?' asked Antony. 'I am a corpse, one of those whom the heathen
call satyrs, and by them were snared into idolatry.'"
Source
Atami Ume Matsuri (Apricot Festival),
Atami,
Shizuoka Prefecture,
Japan (Jan 15 - 17)
From the end of
December till mid-January, the early-blooming apricot
is in flower. The festival to commemorate this includes
caged-nightingale singing contests and photography contests.
Wassailing the apple trees, Carhampton in Somerset, UK Source
Franklin was
born on January
6, 1706, which was then Epiphany, but in 1752, when
he was 46, England and her colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar
and also changed to New Style, which dropped 11 days. Thus we
remember this American 'Renaissance man' on January 17.
Long before there
was Wilson's Almanac,
there was Poor Richard's Almanac, by Ben Franklin, the
first American bestselling book, which gave the young Franklin
financial security to begin his life's work doing … absolutely
everything.
The prodigious accomplishments of
the boy who left school aged ten include: the foundation of the Society to Abolish Slavery and
the American Philosophical Society, the first US hospital and its
first lending library, its first police and fire departments and the
first American fire insurance company. He invented the lightning
rod, a platform rocking chair, the step ladder that folds down into
a chair, the Franklin stove (still popular today) and bifocals. He
created the first efficient postal service in the USA, and an
academy that became the University
of Pennsylvania.
He was America's first newspaper cartoonist;
the US Ambassador to England and France (helping to
cement the alliance so valuable to the American Revolution); a
musician, philanthropist, cartographer, linguist and printer. He sat
on the committee that drafted the US
Declaration of Independence. He founded a popular publication,
the Pennsylvania Gazette, later to become The Saturday
Evening Post. He invented
swim fins, and a tool to get books off of high shelves; he headed the Pennsylvania
delegation to the Albany Congress; he established two
major fields of physical science, electricity
and meteorology. Old Ben wrote a scientific essay
that for the first time described the existence of the Gulf Stream.
He also wrote essays on how to select a
mistress (pick an older woman) – he was something of a ladies' man
and a member of England's Hellfire Club* – and how to avoid flatulence (drink perfume); in 1737 he drew up the first formal list of American slang terms for drunkenness (coming up with an impressive 228).
On top of all that, he was also said to be
a likeable man.
There is the story of the
young Franklin arriving in Philadelphia so poor that all he could
buy was a penny-roll to eat. A local girl, Deborah Powell, laughed
at him. Years later she became his common-law wife.
"Franklin appears to have been the first to use,
at least in print in English, these electrical terms: armature,
battery, brush, charged, charging, condense, conductor,
discharge, electrical fire, electrical shock, electrician,
electrified, electrify, electrized, Leyden bottle, minus
(negative or negatively), negatively, non-conducting,
non-conductor, non-electric, plus (positive or positively),
stroke (electric shock), uncharged." Benjamin
Franklin, by Carl Van Doren, 1939
How did he do it all in one lifetime? His extraordinary autobiography
tells, among many things, of his daily regimen.
Many sayings commonly used today were written by Ben Franklin:
Keep conscience clear, then never fear.
Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
Don't throw stones at your neighbors', if your own windows are made
of glass.
God helps them that help themselves.
For want of a nail a shoe is lost; for want of a shoe a horse is
lost; for want of a horse the rider is lost. (Sayings
from Poor Richard's Almanac)
" …
invented swim fins, bifocals, a glass armonica, watertight
bulkheads for ships, the lightning rod, a wood stove, and an
odometer. While serving as Postmaster General in 1775, Franklin
decided to analyze the best routes for delivering the mail. He
invented a simple odometer
to help measure the mileage of the routes that he attached to his
carriage."Source
*The Hellfire Club "The Hell Fire Club
initially was based at Medmenham Abbey which Sir Francis bought and
converted into an erotic garden. The members of the Hell-Fire club
took part in mock religious ceremonies and used masks and costumes
to allow them to indulge in varying degrees of debauchery. Medmenham
gained some notoriety so the Hell Fire club moved to a more secluded
site at West Wycombe caves. Members of the club included Sir Francis
Dashwood, the Earl of Sandwich, Thomas Potter (the son of the
Archbishop of Canterbury), John Wilkes, William Hogarth, the Earl of
Bute, the Marquis of Granby, the Prince of Wales and possibly
Benjamin Franklin and Horace Walpole. It was alleged that the
'monks' took prostitutes down the Thames from London in barges to
act as masked 'nuns'. The members of the Club also were accused of
celebrating the Black Mass over the naked bodies of aristocratic
ladies, one of whom was Lady
Mary Montagu Wortley, the mother-in-law of the Earl of
Bute." Source
Joshua Norton, born in London, grew up in a pioneer British
family in South Africa, and inherited the fortune of his merchant
father. At the age of 30, Joshua went to San Francisco from Brazil,
where he had accumulated a considerable treasure of his own.
California had become the scene of perhaps the world's greatest-ever
gold rush, and Joshua Norton wanted to be a part of the excitement
and prosperity.
By 1853 he had amassed a vast fortune of more than $250,000 by
trading in real estate and high-demand goods such as coffee, tea and
flour. His success brought him some fame in California, and he
earned the nickname 'Emperor'.
Soon, however, he lost his fortune and was even in $50,000 debt when
he lost a gamble of cornering the market in rice. He worked at
menial jobs and disappeared from view, only to re-emerge on
September 16, 1854 when he walked into the office of the San
Francisco Call, dressed like a Gilbert and Sullivan-style monarch.
He asked the editor to publish what he called a "decree"
… Read
on
reetings from Australia.
How it works
Feast day of St
St
Anthony and the 
