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The Twilight
of American Culture
Golden Bough
Folklore classic
Sabbat Entertaining
The Pagan Book of Days
Eight Sabbats for Witches
Celebrate the Earth
A Year of Holidays in the Pagan
Tradition
Wheel of the Year
Be A Goddess
The Five Biggest Lies Bush
Told Us About Iraq
The Oxford Dictionary of Saints
Lucifer Ascending: The
Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture
Cassell's Dictionary of Superstitions
Granny D
By Granny D
White Noise
Encyclopedia of Superstitions
The Book of Spells
Spellcraft
The Book of Saints
The Encyclopedia of Saints
Daily Everything
Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Lord of the Rings
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By Alfred McCoy
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Controlled: How Television Is Damaging Our Lives and What We Can Do About
It
What
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By Thom
Hartmann
How
Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World
Pagan
Christianity
For
God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire
By James Yee
Crimes Against Nature : How George W Bush and His Corporate
Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
By Robert F Kennedy, Jr
The Price of Loyalty
The
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The God Who Wasn't There
A
Question of Torture
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When Corporations Rule the World
Alternatives to Economic Globalization
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365 Goddess
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Michael
Moore
Drawing Down the Moon
Globalization/Anti-Globalization
Body Wisdom
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Cornish Tinners' and Seafarers'
Day
Or Paul Pitcher Day
On the eve of St
Paul's
day, an old labor day, celebrating the new season of sailing and
mining in Cornwall,
England. Cornish tin miners traditionally
set up a pitcher in a public place and threw stones at it to destroy
it.
A replacement pitcher was then
bought and filled with beer, which was replenished throughout the
day as they drank from it.
The miners
were great inventors of reasons to celebrate, this one being a
rebellion against the rule that only water was to be drunk during
work time.
Was Jesus a tin man too?
Old Cornish tradition has it that
Jesus Christ went to Cornwall
with his uncle, St Joseph of
Arimathea (feast day March 17). There is even an old local song
that says "Joseph was a tin man". Legend has it that at
Glastonbury, which was also known as Avalon (resting place of King
Arthur), Joseph stuck his staff in the ground, and from it sprung
the famous 'Glastonbury
Thorn' tree which always flowered on
Christmas Day.
Cornwall has
long been a centre of tin mining, known even to ancient
Phoenician
traders who travelled from the
Mediterranean to Britain for the
tin
they sold in North Africa, the
Middle East and other areas of their
influence. It is not impossible that the ancient Cornish tradition
about Jesus and his uncle might be true. We know from the Bible that
Joseph was a wealthy man (he provided the tomb that Jesus was buried
in), and he could quite feasibly have travelled to the British
Isles.
For more on Joseph of
Arimathea, see January 5, March 17, April 22, May 19, May 25 and June 20 in
the Book of Days.
The
great English Romantic poet William Blake wrote, in the hymn 'Jerusalem':
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Feast
day of St Francis
de Sales
(Flowering fern
[Royal fern], Osmunda
regalis*, is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
St Francis
de Sales (August
21, 1567
- December
28, 1622),
seventeenth-century
bishop
of Geneva
and Roman
Catholic saint,
is the patron saint of journalists; perhaps he was
semi-literate, or simply drank too much.
Francis, Count of Sales, left a life
of riches for
poverty and became a preacher. He went about the poor, treating them
kindly. He brought 70,000 Genevese Calvinists back to the Roman
Catholic Church. Francis died in 1622, aged 55. Francis is buried in Annecy
in Savoy,
where his tomb is reputed to work miracles.
His heart was kept as a relic in Lyons,
whence, during the French
Revolution, it was moved to Venice,
where it is venerated today. Francis of Sales was beatified
in 1661
by Pope Alexander
VII, who then canonized
him in 1665.
In 1877,
Pope Pius IX
proclaimed him a doctor
of the Universal Church. In 1923,
Pope Pius XI
proclaimed him a patron of writers and journalists. His patronage also includes authors;
Catholic press;
diocese
of Columbus, Ohio;
confessors;
deaf people;
deafness;
diocese
of
Wilmington, Delaware,
USA;
educators;
teachers
and writers.
*
Osmunda regalis belongs to the oxymoronically
named flowering
fern family, so called because the densely-clustered sporangia
resemble flowers.
It is said by some to be one of the most handsome European
ferns, hence the name. It is widely distributed in Europe, Asia
and North
America. The 'Royal Fern' is also known as the 'Queen Flower'.
According to Slavic
mythology, the sporangia – called 'Perun's
flowers' – have assorted magical powers, such as giving their
holders the ability to defeat demons,
fulfil wishes, unlock secrets, and understand the language of trees.
However, collecting the sporangia is a difficult and frightening
process. In earlier traditions, they had to be be collected on Kupala
night; later, after the arrival of Christianity,
the date is changed to Easter
eve. Either way, the person wanting to collect Perun's flowers
must stand within a circle drawn around the plant and withstand
the taunting or threats of demons. Source:
Wikipedia
Feast day of St Anicet
Hryciuk
Feast day of St Artemius of
Clermont
Feast day of St Babylas,
bishop of Antioch
Feast day of St Daniel
Karmasz
Feast day of St Epolonius
Feast day of St Felician of
Foligno
Feast day of St Guasacht
Feast day of St Ignacy
Franczuk
Feast day of St Julian
Sabas the Elder
Feast day of St Macedonius
Kritophagos of Syria
Feast day of St Projectus
Feast day of Our
Lady of Peace
Our Lady of Peace or Queen of Peace is a
title of the Blessed
Virgin Mary in the Roman
Catholic Church. She is represented in art holding a dove
and an olive
branch, symbols of peace.
Her official memorial
feast is celebrated on January 24 each year in Hawaii
and some churches in the United
States. Elsewhere, the memorial feast is celebrated on July
9.
Feast day of Our Lady of
Tears
Feast day of St Suranus
of Sora, abbot in Umbria, martyr
Feast day of St Thyrsus
Feast day of St Urban
Feast day of St Xenia the
Merciful
Feast
day of St Zama of
Bologna
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Unification of Provinces (1859),
Romania
Alacitus Fair,
Bolivia
Festival of Eq'Eq'o (Ekeko), a plump, smiling god of prosperity, celebrated by the
Aymara Indians, in and around
La Paz, Bolivia. Tiny replicas of all the things desired are hung on household statues of the god.
Shiwasu Matsuri, Mikado Jinja, Nango, Miyazaki
Prefecture, Japan (Jan 20 - Feb 20)
Jim
Ross Day, Oklahoma,
USA
76
CE Roman emperor
Hadrian (Publius
Aelius Traianus Hadrianus), born
in Italica, Spain (d. July 10,
138). Publius Aelius
Traianus Hadrianus,
known as Hadrian
in English, was a Roman emperor from 117 - 138. He is
considered one of the so-called Five Good Emperors.
More
1670
William
Congreve, English
playwright (The Old Bachelor;
The
Way of the World) and poet
More
1712 King Frederick II of Prussia (d. August
17, 1786).
Frederick the Great of Prussia
Frederick II (of Prussia), called
'The
Great', king of Prussia (1740 -
'86); during his reign, he
was considered among the most notable of enlightened despots in 18th-Century Europe.
Frederick was born in Berlin, son of King Frederick
William I and grandson of Frederick
I.
His father was an extremely harsh, even
cruel, disciplinarian to young Frederick, whom he hated for being
artistically rather than martially inclined, such that the boy's
mother, Sophia Dorothea, Princess of Hanover, tried to send the boy
away secretly to England, to his maternal uncle George
II. The King
discovered the plan and threw the boy and his companion into a
dungeon. King Frederick proposed to execute the prince, but the boy
was saved by the intercession of the Emperor of Austria, Charles
VI.
Neither would the court officials try the boy.
The king was so incensed that he sent the
boy to be confined in a fortress cell in Custrin. After a year, the
king called him back. After ascending the throne, the young
Frederick matured into one of the great generals of history,
enlarging Germany by more than half.
He was a small, lean man, who wore a beaten
up old military hat instead of a crown, and was known affectionately
by his subjects as Vater Fritz
(Father Fred). He used a walking stick cut from the woods.
A meeting with Johann Sebastian Bach in
1747 led
to Bach writing The Musical Offering.
Frederick also befriended Voltaire.
Frederick the Great and the spider
When he was at Sans-Souci, a spider fell
into his cup of hot chocolate. He called for a fresh one and then
heard a gunshot.
His cook had been suborned to poison his chocolate,
and thought that he had been discovered, so he had shot himself. On
the ceiling of Frederick's room at Sans-Souci a spider was painted
in remembrance of this
event.
Ivor
H Evans, Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988
1749
Charles
James Fox (d. September 13,
1806), British statesman who opposed war with
Napoleon.
One of his mistresses was Mary Robinson
('Perdita').
1776 ETA Hoffmann (d. 1822), poet,
composer, and painter
1862
Edith Wharton
(d. August
11, 1937)
American
novelist, short story writer, and
designer, born into a wealthy
New
York family believed by some to be
associated with the phrase 'Keeping
up with the Joneses'.
Wharton was
friend and confidante to many gifted contemporary intellectuals:
Henry James,
Sinclair Lewis,
Jean Cocteau, and
Ernest Hemingway were all guests of hers
at one time or another. When F Scott
Fitzgerald met her in France, he embarrassed himself by telling
her a long story of how he and his wife
Zelda
Fitzgerald had spent a night in a
bordello, thinking it was a hotel.
Wharton was 43
when her first novel,
The House
of Mirth, was published, after which she published more than
40 books. Her best-known work,
The Age of Innocence (1920), won the
1921 Pulitzer Prize.
Other late
starters and late achievers, in the Scriptorium
More
1872 Ethel
Turner, English-born Australian author (Seven Little Australians)
1884
Field Marshal Sir
Thomas Blamey, GBE,
KCB,
CMG,
DSO
(d. May
27, 1951),
Australian
General of World
War II, and to date, Australia's only Field
Marshal
 1910
Granny D
(formerly Granny Haddock),
born Ethel Doris Haddock, American
politician and progressive political activist
from the state of New Hampshire.
Haddock famously walked across the continental
United States in 1999 to advocate campaign
finance reform and in 2004 ran unsuccessfully
as a Democratic
challenger to incumbent Republican Judd
Gregg for the US Senate.
She is noted for her colourful character and advanced age.
Haddock
requested an official name change to
"Granny D," which was the name her family began calling her in
1972.
On August 19, 2004,
Haddock's request was officially granted by Judge John Maher
during a hearing at the Cheshire Country Probate Court.
Granny D was born in Laconia.
She attended Emerson College
in Boston,
Massachusetts
for three years before marrying James Haddock (nicknamed Jim).
Though Haddock never graduated from Emerson, she was awarded an honorary degree
in 2000
(she was awarded another honorary degree by Franklin
Pierce College on October 21,
2002).
After marrying, Granny D started a family and worked during the Great
Depression; she was employed in a shoe factory in Manchester
for 20 years.
In 1960, Granny D began
her political career when she and her husband successfully
campaigned against planned hydrogen bomb nuclear testing
in Alaska,
saving an Inuit
fishing village at Point Hope.
Granny D and her husband retired to Dublin,
New Hampshire, in 1972. There Granny D
served on the Planning Board and was active in the community. Her
husband later developed Alzheimer's
disease, dying after a ten-year struggle.
After the first efforts of Senators John
McCain and Russ Feingold
to regulate campaign finances through eliminating soft
money failed in 1995, Granny D became
increasingly interested in campaign finance reform and spearheaded a
petition
movement. On January 1, 1999, at
the age of 89, Granny D left the Rose Bowl
parade in Pasadena,
California,
in an attempt to walk across the USA to raise awareness of
and attract support for campaign finance reform.
Granny D walked ten miles each day for 14
months, traversing California, Arizona, New
Mexico, Texas, Arkansas,
Tennessee,
Kentucky,
Ohio, West Virginia,
Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Virginia,
and the District of
Columbia, making many speeches along the way. The trek attracted
a great deal of attention in the mass media. When
Granny D arrived in Washington,
DC, she was 90 years old, had travelled about 3,200 miles,
and was greeted in the capital by a crowd of 2,200 people. Several
dozen members of Congress
walked the final miles with her during the final day's walk from Arlington
National Cemetery to the Capitol
building on the National Mall.
Two books were written by Granny D, both
co-authored with Dennis Burke.
Granny D was the Democratic candidate for a
U.S. Senate seat in New Hampshire during the 2004
election. She was one of the oldest major-party candidates to
ever run for the U.S. Senate and lost to incumbent Republican Judd
Gregg, capturing 34 percent of the vote to Gregg's 66 percent.
Granny D has 12 grandchildren and 16
great-grandchildren.
Source:
Wikipedia
"Born Doris Rollins: Jan. 24, 1910 in
Laconia, New Hampshire USA. In 1998 she decided to walk across the
U.S. to demonstrate her concern for the issue of campaign reform.
"She walked around her hometown of
Dublin, New Hampshire for most of 1998 to get in shape for the
walk …
"On Jan. 1, 1999, she began her walk in
Pasadena, California. She walked 10 miles per day for 14 months,
arriving in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 29, 2000. She was
hospitalized once, in Arizona, with dehydration and pneumonia. She
walked 3,200 miles …
"She is five-feet tall. She wore out four
sets of shoes on her long walk. When snows between Cumberland,
Maryland and Washington threatened to delay her arrival in
February of 2000, she cross-country skied 100 miles along the
old C&O Canal tow path. She has emphysema and arthritis, both of
which improved during the walk.&quo |
reetings from Australia.
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