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reetings from Australia.
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Glory to God for all things. Amen. Last words of St John
Chrysostom, died September 14, 407; today is his feast day
I gave strict order that the natives should not be
offended, or molested on any account, and advised that wherever they
were met with, they were to be treated with every mark of friendship.
In case of their stealing anything, mild means were to be used to
recover it, but on no account to fire at them with ball or shot. Captain Arthur Phillip, January
27, 1788, from log of HMS Supply
(arriving at Sydney's Botany Bay on the First Fleet)
Consider your origins: you were not made to live as
brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge. Dante Alighieri, Italian writer, who was
expelled from Florence on this day in 1302
The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who,
in times of moral crisis, preserved their neutrality. Dante Alighieri
Up-Helly-Aa
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi
ritrovai per una selva oscura ché la via diritta era
smarrita. (In the middle of
our life's walk I found myself in a dark
wood for
the straight road was lost) Dante Alighieri, La
Divina Commedia
The Jews who have arrived would nearly all
like to remain here, but learning that they (with their customary usury
and deceitful trading with the Christians) were very repugnant to the
inferior magistrates, as also to the people having the most affection
for you; the Deaconry also fearing that owing to their present indigence
they might become a charge in the coming winter, we have, for the
benefit of this weak and newly developing place and the land in general,
deemed it useful to require them in a friendly way to depart, praying
also most seriously in this connection, for ourselves as also for the
general community of your worships, that the deceitful race—such hateful
enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ—be not allowed to further
infect and trouble this new colony to the detraction of your worships
and the dissatisfaction of your worships' most affectionate subjects. Peter
Stuyvesant; petition to the Dutch West India Company for the
expulsion of Jews from New Amsterdam,
September 22,
1654
We would have liked to effectuate and fulfill your
wishes and request that the new territories should no more be allowed to be
infected by people of the Jewish nation, for we foresee therefrom the same
difficulties which you fear, but after having further weighed and considered the
matter, we observe that this would be somewhat unreasonable and unfair,
especially because of the considerable loss sustained by this nation, with
others, in the taking of Brazil, as also because of the large amount of capital
which they still have invested in the shares of this company. Therefore after
many deliberations we have finally decided and resolved to apostille [annotate]
upon a certain petition presented by said Portuguese Jews that these people may
travel and trade to and in New Netherland and live and remain there, provided
the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the
community, but be supported by their own nation. You will now govern yourself
accordingly.
Reply of the Board of the Dutch West India Company to Peter Stuyvesant,
April 26, 1655
If Troy Donahue could be a movie star, then I could be a movie star! Line from the Broadway musical, A Chorus Line; American actor
Donahue was born on January 27, 1936
This Shetland festival
is derived from the ancient
Yuletide festival celebrating the triumph of
the sun over darkness. There you will see bonfires, blazing barrels of
tar, and torch-lit processions, ending with the burning of a
Vikinglongship or
galley. People
dressed as Vikings sing and dance.
The first celebration was in 1878, when instead
of burning the usual tar-barrel on Auld New Year's Eve, a Shetland yoal
(a traditional boat) decorated with a dragon's head and tail was burned.
It did not become a regular event until 1889.
There is a main guizer who is dubbed the Jarl, and a committee
which one must be part of for fifteen years before one can be a jarl,
and only one person is elected onto this committee once a year. This
procession culminates in the torches being thrown into a replica Viking
ship. The Lerwick Up
Helly Aa is claimed by some to be Britain's biggest fire festival and
torchlight procession.
"In earlier times there was an exorcizing ceremony at
midnight, with the expulsion of evil spirits who were ritually driven out of the
house."
JC Cooper, The Aquarian Dictionary of
Festivals, Aquarian Press, UK, 1990, pp. 209-210
"It
has been suggested that the Up Helly Aa is a relatively new festival,
whose riotous elements were introduced by men returning from the
Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th Century ... In subsequent years, it
grew and adapted to reflect the strong cultural links between Shetland
and its neighbouring Scandanavian Nations.
"Until the introduction of the
torchlight procession
in Edinburgh, the torchlight procession in the main town, Lerwick,
could rightly claim to be the biggest procession of its kind. It
certainly is still one of the oldest ...
"At a designated burning point in the town, the torches are thrown
into the galley, following which the 40 plus squads visit the 11 local
halls and perform raucous sketches to entertain their hosts.
"Lerwick's is the biggest Up Helly Aa, but there are also Viking
fire festivals in Scalloway on 12th and 13th and Nesting and Girlsta
– taking Hogmanay or 'the daft days' well into the second month of
the year."Source
"There is some
evidence that people in rural Shetland celebrated the 24th day after
Christmas as 'Antonsmas' or 'Up Helly Night', but there is no
evidence that their cousins in Lerwick did the same. The emergence
of Yuletide and New Year festivities in the town seems to post-date
the Napoleonic Wars, when soldiers and sailors came home with rowdy
habits and a taste for firearms." Source
Boy Bishop
practices (see December
6) in the UK continued in a form at Eton College
(founded in 1440
by Henry
VI) in the Montem
ceremony (Ad Montem: to the
mount), which continued for many years. Instead of ecclesiastical garb,
though, the children wore military uniforms. The students marched to Salt
Hill, dined, and marched back to Eton. Certain boys (salt-bearers) and their scouts, extracted money from
spectators. Each donor was given a bit of salt from the salt-bearer's
handkerchief.
(Earth moss, Phascum
cuspidatum, is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
(Born c.347; died
September
14, 407) (Chrysostom =
'Golden-tongued')
Notable Christianbishop
and preacher
from the 4th
and 5th
Centuries in Syria
and Constantinople.
He was Bishop of Constantinople and a Doctor of the Church, a
liturgical reformer who was banished by his enemies in 403, and died
in exile on the way to Pityus, Iberia from Cucusus, Armenia. His
sermons are still read today.
One of the most popular preachers of his day, hence
his nickname 'Golden-tongued', John Chrysostom denounced the
licentiousness of the court of Constantinople. Killjoy.
Winter-een-mas
(Jan 25
- 31) Third day: Ethan advertises Winter-een-mas
to the masses, calling on the Ghosts of Winter-een-mas to curse the
thumbs of those who do not participate. Celebrated Ghosts:action/adventure,
first-person
shooter. [Winter-een-mas is a celebration of video games and the gamers that play them.]
Mozart
played the harpsichord at age three, composed his first minuet at
five, wrote his first sonata at the age of seven, and was only eight
when he composed his first complete symphony. He then wrote at least
one symphony a year, eventually producing "some 600 symphonies,
operas, operettas, concertos, string quartets, sonatas, masses and
other classical pieces". He did all this before his early death at
only 35. Meyers, James, Mammoth Book of Trivia, A and W Visual
Library, NY, 1979
The English
mathematician coined dozens of words in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through
the Looking Glass and his nonsense poems, many of which have
become part of the English language, such as 'chortle' (used in
the poem 'Jabberwocky',
it is a cross
between a chuckle and a snort) and another from 'Jabberwocky',
'galumph'. He called them 'portmanteau' words, a term still used by linguists today,and wordmongers today still
use Carroll's technique of combining two words to form a new one,
as in the words 'smog'and
'brunch'.
Questions over his sexual
preferences
Evidence abounds
that Carroll was a paedophile
though not whether he ever indulged his sexual preference. He
photographed many pretty little girls – some languidly stretched
out on beds, and some nude. He is famously quoted as saying, "I
am fond of children (except boys)". However, according to all
evidence, Carroll remained beyond reproach in his behaviour and the
girls without exception seem to have adored him.
Morton Cohen, a
pre-eminent Carroll scholar conducted interviews in the 1960s with
several elderly women who were once Carroll's child-friends, but
even when pressed for details of possible indiscretions, all of them
affirmed that Carroll was the nicest, most gentle, and kindest man
they had ever known. Perhaps the Victorian English scholar is often
judged harshly by 21st-Century values.Maybe Chicka is chortling in his grave.
'Acrostic (for Lorrina, Alice, and
Edith Liddell)'
(Take the first letter of each line)
Lewis Carroll
Little maidens, when you look
On this little story-book,
Reading with attentive eye
Its enticing history,
Never think that hours of play
Are your only HOLIDAY,
And that in a HOUSE of joy
Lessons serve but to annoy:
If in any HOUSE you find
Children of a gentle mind,
Each the others pleasing ever--
Each the others vexing never--
Daily work and pastime daily
In their order taking gaily--
Then be very sure that they
Have a life of HOLIDAY.
Julian Ashton
arrived in Australia in 1878 with a background in the contemporary
French realism of the Barbizon
School, which emphasised painting en
plein air (ie, direct from Nature, as opposed to studio-based
painting), and which laid the basis for the Impressionist
movement. As a Trustee of the Art
Gallery of New South Wales he championed emerging Australian
artists of the Australian Impressionist or Heidelberg
School, and the Gallery's decision to collect these works owes
much to his influence.
According to James
Gleeson, Ashton's oil paintings, much-admired in his own
lifetime, "now seem to be so mannered and limited that is is
difficult to understand the enthusiasm they once aroused," and
his reputation as an artist rests instead on a number of
"charming and unaffected" watercolours.
Julian Ashton Art School
The Sydney Art
School (today the Julian Ashton Art School), which Ashton
established in 1890, has been one of the most influential in
Australia. Julian Ashton students have included Elioth Gruner, George
Lambert, Thea
Proctor, Adrian Feint, Sydney
Long, Howard Ashton (Julian`s son), Dorrit
Black,
JJ
Hilder, William
Dobell, Eric Wilson, Jean
Bellette, Douglas Dundas, Arthur Freeman, William Dadswell, John
Passmore, Joshua
Smith, Max
Dupain, John
Olsen, Michael
Johnston, Brett
Whiteley, Nigel
Thomson and Salvatore
Zofrea. Howard Ashton's son, J. Richard Ashton and his wife
Wenda ran the School from 1960, when, among many gifted artists, Ian
Chapman and Archibald Prize winner Francis
Giacco and attended, until 1977 when Phillip Ashton (Richard's
son) became Principal, this being the time of Haydn
Wilson, political cartoonist Bill
Leak and artist Paul
Newton.
"Ashton painted well in both oil and
water-colour. Some of his early work is rather tight, but his Sir
Henry Parkes (1889), and the Hon. Henry Gullett (1900), both in
the national gallery at Sydney, are admirable pieces of
portraiture, and his landscapes are often very good too. In his
later work he developed a charming feeling for colour. He was a
man of great honesty with much personal charm and force of
character. As a trustee of the national gallery at Sydney from 1889
to 1899 he fought hard and successfully for the encouragement of
Australian painting, and the fine collection now in that
institution owes much to him. As a teacher he influenced and
guided most of the Sydney exhibiting artists of his period. He
lived long enough to see a great change in the attitude towards
art of the people of Australia, and no other man did so much
towards making the place of art in the community better understood
and appreciated." Source
"… Kern
decided to adapt Edna Ferber's novel, 'Show Boat', to the
musical stage. Although Oscar Hammerstein II agreed to do the
adaptation and lyrics, nearly everybody (including Ferber)
thought Kern and Hammerstein had lost their minds. Show Boat 's
storyline featured interracial marriage, wife desertion,
alcoholism, and gambling, and the most realistic characters ever
seen in a musical up to then, not to mention the song 'Ol' Man
River' and an opening chorus of black dockworkers singing about
their work. Most of the songs were integrated so well into the
story that they could not possibly have been sung in another
show or taken out of 'Show Boat' without damaging the plot. And
'Show Boat' featured a song, 'Mis'ry's Comin' Round', which was
so utterly tragic that Florenz Ziegfeld ordered it cut – and it
remained cut, existing only as background music until the 1994
revival. In spite of all this, 'Show Boat' became a huge hit,
and has remained one of the musical theatre's greatest classics
and most often revived shows …"Source
The actress born Donna Belle Mullenger was raised on
a farm in Iowa and usually played wholesome girl-next-door types,
but broke the mould to play a prostitute in From Here to Eternity.
However, given Hollywood's strict censorship guidelines in 1953,
the character Alma was not referred to as a sex worker.
1936Troy Donahue (b. Merle
Johnson; d. September
2, 2001),
American actor and '60s 'teen hearthrob' (movie: A Summer Place;
TV series: Surfside
6). According to IMDB, he was an
alcoholic (or, rather, a polyaddict) whose personal and professional fortunes had sunk so low
by the 1980s he was literally living on a bench in New York's Central Park.
He beat his alcoholism through Alcoholics
Anonymous
1974Bridget Fonda, American actress: (Point
of No Return; The Godfather, Part 3; Aria; 21
Jump Street) daughter of actor Peter Fonda and actress Susan
Brewer, granddaughter of actor
Henry Fonda, niece of actress
Jane
Fonda
Phew!!
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This
day in history section
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98
CE The Roman
emperorNerva(b. 35) died of apoplexy (stroke or brain haemorrhage) after a
fit of anger. He was 62 and was succeeded by Trajan. Elevated to emperor on September
18, 96, after the death of Domitian, who had persecuted many Christians and others,
Nerva had released those imprisoned for treason, banned future prosecutions for
treason, restored much confiscated property, and involved the Senate
in his rule.
1302Dante Alighieri was expelled from
Florence when a political group he opposed seized control. For the next 20
years, until the end of his life, he remained in exile.
1343 A
papal bull by Pope Clement
VI revealed the doctrine that indulgences gain their validity and power from
the accumulation of merit in the manifestation of the Catholic Church.
1513 Puerto Rico:
African slaves were introduced into the island.
1606Guy Fawkesand the other Gunpowder Plotters
were tried and convicted. Four days later, on January 31,
they were executed by hanging, drawing
and quartering. An inscription on a contemporary engraving states:
The heads of Percy and Catesby after they were dead, were cut off and set
upon the ends of Parliament House. Friday the last of Jan, 1606, were executed
in Parliament Yard: T. Winter, Rokenvood, Keys and Guido Fawkes, their quarters
were placed over London gates and their heads upon London Bridge.
1654
About 150 Sephardic (Jews
of Spanish-Portuguese extraction) families of Portuguese background began
fleeing the city of Recife,
Brazil, following an expulsion
order decreed, on
January 26, that gave them three months to quit the region. This decree had
been issued under the
Portuguese
Inquisition, by the new
Portuguese rulers of Recife, who the same month had taken the city from the
Dutch.
Pictured: A depiction of a New Amsterdam street
scene
On
September 7, 23 of these refugees (four couples, two widows, and thirteen
children) arrived in New
Netherland (New York) on the Ste. Catherine to establish, against the
wishes of local merchants and the local
Dutch Reformed
Church, the first community of Jews in that place, which was a colony run by
the Dutch West
India Company. Jacob
Barsimson was the first Jew to settle in
New Amsterdam, having
disembarked from the Peartree on
August 22, possibly
sent ahead by the Recife Jews as an advance scout.
Peter Stuyvesant, Director General of all Dutch possessions in North
America, motioned to eject the Jewish newcomers but the Company (many of the
shareholders themselves being Jewish) unequivocally refused Stuyvesant's
petition (see Quotes section at head of page for part of Stuyvesant's petition
and the reply of the Board of the Dutch West India Company). The immigrants
settled in the colony and soon formed the
Congregation
Shearith Israel, although the first synagogue was not built until
1730.
These Sephardic Jews had been
refugees before. In
December1496, King
Manuel I of Portugal
had decreed that all Jews convert to Christianity or leave Portugal by
October the following
year, and the Sephardim either fled or went into secrecy under the guise of 'Cristãos
Novos', ie, New Christians. (This decree was symbolically revoked in
1996 by the
Portuguese
Parliament.) Some fled to Holland, where the Jews found relative tolerance.
From there, some migrated on to
Pernambuco, a colony of
the Dutch West India Company in modern day Brazil. Recife was part of that
colony and the Jewish community flourished there until 1654 when the Dutch
eventually surrendered Pernambuco to Portugal and the Sephardim were again
forced to flee.
1814
"Today, in modern day Macon County Alabama, American forces of almost 1,000
militia and Indians will be camped on Callabee Creek near the scene of the
battle of Autossee, last November. Red Stick CREEKs will attack their
encampment. The Georgia militia and the 'friendly' Indians will have 22 killed
and almost 150 wounded. The Red Sticks will suffer as well, but they will force
the American expedition to leave the area."Source
1863
Bear River, north of the Idaho-Utah boundary, USA: The Battle of Bear River:
Chief Bear Hunter's Northern Shoshone tribe unsuccessfully fought almost 300
California volunteers commanded by General Patrick Connor. Military reports put
the death toll of Native Americans as 224 warriors. Other sources put the number
closer to 400 men, women and children. Connor was called by the Indians 'Star
Chief'.
MUMBLES LIFEBOAT CAPSIZES
LIFEBOATMEN SAVED BY BRAVE WOMEN
The Gower coast, Swansea Bay and much of the channel were visited by a fearful gale on Saturday, which unfortunately resulted in the loss of a large number of human lives and many thousands of pounds worth of property.
During the early hours the steamship Agnes Jack, of Liverpool, was wrecked on Port Eynon Point with the loss of all hands. Twelve hours later another steamer, the James Gray of Whitby, and her crew suffered the same fate on the notorious Tusker Rock near
Porthcawl.
But the incident which has stirred the emotions most of all is the loss of the Mumbles lifeboat Wolverhampton when attempting to rescue the crew of a Prussian barque wrecked on Mumbles Head. Coxswain Jenkins, who has led his crew fearlessly in many a rescue over the last seventeen years, has suffered a grievous loss as four lifeboatmen were drowned - two of them being his own sons John and William, and a third his son-in-law William
Macnamara.
However an incident occurred shortly after the lifeboat capsized which has served to lift the spirits of the nation. For at the height of the storm Jessie Ace and her sister Mrs Margaret Wright, daughters of Ace the lighthouse keeper, went down to the sound, tied their shawls together, entered the boiling sea and drew two of the struggling lifeboat crew to safety.
1901 King Edward VII
of the United Kingdom appointed his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II of
Germany a field marshal in the British army, on Willy's 42nd
birthday.
1903A fire at Colney Hatch Mental Asylum in Middlesex, England,
killed 51 patients.
"Mohandas Karamchand "Mahatma" (Sanskrit:
"great soul") Gandhi (October 2,
1869 - January 30,
1948) was one of
the founding fathers of the modern Indian state and
an influential advocate of pacifism as a means of revolution. (See also: Mahatmas.)"Source
1980 Robert Mugabe arrived in Salisbury, Rhodesia, after five years
in exile, to participate in elections.
1981 Australian
media magnate Rupert Murdoch bought the London Times and the Sunday Times.
1984Michael Jackson's hair burst into flames while filming a Pepsi commercial.
1989 The Tasmanian Gaming Commission estimated that Australians were
spending $20.6 billion per annum on gambling, or more than $20 per week for
every man, woman and child.
1997 It was revealed that
French museums
held nearly 2,000 pieces of art that were stolen by Nazis.
1998 American First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
appeared on the Today Show calling the
attacks against her husband part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy".
2002 Several explosions at a
military dump in Lagos,
Nigeria
killed more than 1,000.
2005
USA: President George W
Bush, in an interview with the New York Times, assured the world that
"torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture."
Since then, overwhelming
evidence has been compiled by numerous reputable sources that the Bush
administration does in fact use a process known as 'rendition'
to transport detainees to other countries for the purposes of torture and other
illegal activities.
The operations described
in the document include a wide range of military activities: public
affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological
operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an
enemy, computer
network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks, and a major disinformation
project to plant false stories in any available (non-domestic) news media.
"A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for
'information operations' – from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.
"Bloggers beware.
"As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.
"From influencing public opinion through new media to designing 'computer network
attack' weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.
"The declassified document is called 'Information Operations Roadmap'. It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.
"Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it."
Source
reetings from Australia.
How it works
Up Helly Aa (Up-Halliday;
Up Hally A'; Antonsmas),
Shetland, Scotland (last Tuesday of January)
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