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Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Dr Samuel Johnson, whose Dictionary went on sale for the first time on June 14, 1755

The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
Dr Samuel Johnson

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
Dr Samuel Johnson

I am a little bit of a woman, somewhat more than 40, about as thin and dry as a pinch of snuff never very much to look at in my best of days, and looking like a used-up article now.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, American novelist, born on June 14, 1811

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and the time the tide will turn.
Harriet Beecher Stowe

I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.
Harriet Beecher Stowe; (attrib.) of her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin

In Japan, Orochi is slain today

Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald

The Encyclopedia of Eastern Mythology

Myths and Legends of Japan

Asian Mythology

Myths and Legends of Japan

The Masks of God
Joseph Campbell

Nordic Gods and Heroes

Favorite Norse Myths

The Rule of Four

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia

Worse Than Watergate
John Dean

8 Weeks to Optimum Health

Women's Activism and Globalization

8 Minutes in the Morning

Stand and Deliver
Hip Hop activism

Salam Pax
The Baghdad Blogger

To support this project
Search by keywords for books, music, computers, software, home and family products and much more.

What Would Jefferson Do?
By Thom Hartmann

When Corporations Rule the World

Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

The Corporation
Highly recommended DVD

Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America
By Bruce Shapiro

The Skeptic's Dictionary

Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America
By Bruce Shapiro

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror

D'aulaire's Book of Greek Myths

Word Origins

Seeds of Deception

Gaian Democracies

Environmental Activism

Gaia's Garden

Permaculture

Introduction to Permaculture

Permaculture Two

The Book of Saints

The Da Vinci Code

Daily Everything

Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths

More women's suffrage books

The Dalai Lama's Book of Wisdom

Celtic Folklore Cooking

Globalization/Anti-Globalization

Live with Passion!
Anthony Robbins


More books, calendars, T-shirts, mugs, music, posters, etc at  
Cafe Diem!

Celtic Daily Prayer

Dude, Where's My Country?

Photo of the day

Mother Earth Spirituality

Wheel of the Year

Listowner: Click for by far the best free service I have found that really increases my ezine subscriptions. It will work for your e-groups too.
Pip Wilson

The Merry Pranksters
Ken Kesey

On the Bus

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Spit in the Ocean

Kesey's Jail Journal

The First Third & Other Writings
Neal Cassady

Women of the Beat Generation

Second day: Day of Meditation on the Salvation of all Beings.

Festival of Vestalia, in honour of Vesta, goddess of fire and hearth, Roman Empire (Jun 7 - 15)

Feast day of Vidar, son of Odin (modern Asatru)
Viking tradition says all leather workers should put aside all of their offcuts for Vidar's boots, so he can beat the demonic wolf, Fenris.

"In Norse myth, Vidar is the son of Odin and the giantess Grid (Gridr). He is the god of silence and revenge, the second strongest of the gods. At the destruction of the world, Odin will be killed by the wolf Fenrir, and Vidar will avenge his father by killing the wolf with his bare hands. He will press one foot on Fenrir's bottom jaw, and will take hold of his other jaw and tear the wolf apart. He is one of the gods that will rule the new world when it is created. His hall in Asgard is Vidi."   Source

Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology

 

Sumiyoshi O-taue Shinji, (Sumiyoshi) Rice-planting Ceremony, Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine, Osaka, Japan
A custom dating back more than 1,700 years.

"Transplanting rice shoots from the seedbed to the rice paddy field is called 'Taue'. To pray for a bountiful harvest of rice, a group of women clad in a traditional farmer's costume plant rice seedlings in a rice paddy, singing rice-planting songs to the accompaniment of drums and flutes, usually played by men clad inYukata."   Source

Izawanomiya Otaue Matsuri, Izawanomiya Shrine, Mie Prefecture, Japan
"Rice-planting festival at a sacred rice field within the precincts of the grand shrine at Ise. After the rice-planting itself, the Taketori-shinji ritual is performed by a group of loincloth-wearing men who battle in the muddy paddy field for charms attached to a 14m high bamboo pole."   Source

Flag Day, United States  
The Stars and Stripes originated as a result of a resolution adopted by the Second Continental Congress at Philadelphia on June 14, 1777. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation calling for a nationwide observance of Flag Day on June 14, the birthday of the Stars and Stripes. It was not until 1949 that Congress made this day a permanent observance.
Source    Federal Flag Code    US Flag Code    

In the Almanac:
Betsy Ross    Star Spangled Banner   Francis Scott Key    World's best flag & national anthem

Mothers' Day, Afghanistan

Starting Mid-June Dramatic festival, Epidaurus, Greece
An annual event lasting throughout July and the first fortnight of August, in the ancient sanctuary of Asclepius (Aesculapius; Asklepios; Asklepius), the god of medicine. An open-air amphitheatre, the best in Greece, designed by Polycleitos the Younger, accommodates 14,000 spectators. The acoustics here are believed by some to be the best in the world. This modern festival began in 1954.

June marriages lucky

"'Good to the man and happy to the maid.' This is an old Roman superstition. The festival of Juno Moneta was held on the Calends of June, and Juno was the great guardian of women from birth to death."
Ivor H Evans, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988

Runic half-month of Dag commences

Feast day of St Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesaria, confessor
(Sweet basil, Oscimum basilicum, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Basil (c. 330 - January 1, 379), also called Basil the Great, was bishop of Caesarea, a leading churchman in the 4^th century. The Eastern Orthodox Church considers him a saint and one of the Three Holy Hierarchs, together with Gregory Nazianzus and John Chrysostom. That church commemorates him on January 1. Basil, Gregory Nazianzus, and Basil's brother Gregory of Nyssa are called the Cappadocian Fathers. The Roman Catholic Church considers him a saint and a Doctor of the Church.

In Greek tradition, his name was given to Father Christmas and is supposed to visit children and give presents every January 1 (his main feast day in the Western Church), unlike other traditions where this person is St Nicholas and comes every Christmas.

Read more Eastern Orthodox St Basil Day traditions

Feast day of St Castora Gabrielli

Feast day of St Docmael (Dogmael; Toël), confessor

Feast day of St Gerold

Feast day of St Hartwig

Feast day of St Joseph the Hymnographer

Feast day of St Lotharius

Feast day of St Marcian of Syracuse

Feast day of St Mark of Lucera

Feast day of St Methodius, confessor, Patriarch of Constantinople

Feast day of St Nennus, or Nehemias, abbot

Feast day of St Psalmodius, hermit

Feast day of Ss Rufinus and Valerius, martyrs

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

During Corpus Christi week, the Patum, Berga, province of Barcelona, Catalonia

From Wikipedia: The Patum de Berga is celebrated each year, in the solemnity of Corpus Christi. Those who visit Berga on Thursday and on Sunday of Corpus Christi or on Wednesday and on Saturday evening, could easily feel the festive atmosphere of 'La Patum'. The fire, the smoke and everyone jumping up and down, dancing and drinking will enable you to participate in a celebration which, after a number of changes originates in the popular and religious theatre of the Middle Ages.

"The Patum of Berga is a popular festival whose origin is to be found in the celebrations and parades accompanying the Corpus Christi processions of the Middle Ages. It takes the form of a series of theatrical performances and parade of a variety of effigies through the streets of this Catalan community north of Barcelona. 

"The Patum takes place every year during the week of Corpus Christi, between the end of May and the end of June, and comprises several parts: an extraordinary meeting of the municipal council, the appearance of the Tabal (a large and emblematic festival drum presiding over the festivities) and the Quatre Fuets announcing the festivities. The following days see numerous celebrations, the most important of which are the parades, the ceremonial Patum, the children's Patum and the full Patum. The Taba (tambourine), the Turks, Cavallets (papier mâché horses), Maces (demons wielding maces and whips), Guites (mule dragons), the eagle, giant-headed dwarves, Plens (fire demons) and giants dressed as Saracens are all allegorical figures and representations that parade one after the other through the streets, performing different acrobatic tricks and spreading light and music among the joyous audience. All the figures join to perform the final dance, the Tirabol."   Source

 

Liberation Day, Falkland Islands

Flag Day, United States

Mother's Day, Afghanistan

World Blood Donor Day
Celebration of blood donation on the birth date of Karl Landsteiner, who discovered ABO blood groups.

International Weblogger's Day
Celebration of the work of webloggers around the world.

Birthday of the US Army, United States

On which day of the week were you born? Find out here

1671 Tomaso Albinoni, composer (d. 1751)

1736 Charles Augustin de Coulomb, mathematician, grandfather of soil mechanics (d. 1806)

1794 John Gibson Lockhart, lawyer, novelist and critic, born at Cambusnethan in Lanarkshire; he married Sir Walter Scott's daughter, and wrote his father-in-law's biography

1811 Harriet Beecher Stowe (d. July 1, 1896), American abolitionist and novelist (Uncle Tom's Cabin). She was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, an abolitionist Congregationalist preacher from Boston, and the elder sister of renowned clergyman and reformer, Henry Ward Beecher (1813 - '77). She journeyed to Europe, becoming friends with George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Lady Byron. British public opinion turned against her when her charges against Lord Byron's love affairs became public.

Early progressives in the Book of Days    Faces for Famous Women    

Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe Compiled From Her Letters and Journals by Her Son Charles Edward Stowe, available freely at Project Gutenberg

Harriet Beecher Stowe's brief biography and works

Biography at FemBio – Notable Women International

History's Women: Harriet Beecher Stowe    More    More    And more

1820 John Bartlett (d. December 3, 1905), American writer and publisher, compiler of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

1832 Nikolaus Otto, engineer (d. 1891)

1855 Robert M La Follette ('Fighting Bob' La Follette; d. June 18, 1925), American politician who pursued public policies to improve the lot of farmers, workers, children and women

"LaFollette, Robert Marion (1855-1925) -- also known as Robert M. LaFollette; 'Fighting Bob' -- Father of Robert Marion LaFollette, Jr. and Philip Fox LaFollette; grandfather of Bronson Cutting LaFollette. Born in Primrose, Dane County, Wis., June 14, 1855. U.S. Representative from Wisconsin 3rd District, 1885-91; Governor of Wisconsin, 1901-06; U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, 1906-25; died in office 1925; candidate for Republican nomination for President, 1908, 1916; Progressive candidate for President of the United States, 1924. Died of heart disease complicated by asthma and pneumonia, in Washington, D.C., June 18, 1925. Interment at Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison, Wis. See also: congressional biography."

Source

1857 Adolphus George Taylor (AG Taylor; nicknamed 'Giraffe', 'Mudgee' or 'the Mudgee Camel'; d. January 18, 1900), a 'wild man of Sydney', Australia, colourful politician of that city and co-founder and editor of Truth, a scurrilous but popular journal (first issue, mid-August, 1890). His colleagues on Truth included William Patrick Crick, John Norton and William Nicholas Willis; Henry Lawson was a contributor.

Taylor was a Member of the NSW Legislative Assembly from December 11, 1882 to June 6, 1891. Although he had almost no money he fought Speaker of the Assembly Edmund Barton (from 1901 the first Prime Minister of Australia) in a law suit that went to the Privy Council in England, and though not a trained lawyer, argued his suit and won, refusing then to accept a one-thousand pound damages award on the grounds that it would come from the pockets of the people of New South Wales. A hard-drinking man, he founded a 'home for inebriates' but himself died due to alcoholism, in Callan Park Lunatic Asylum for the Mentally and Criminally Insane, Sydney's mental asylum at the time.

Qualifications, occupations and interests 
"Journalist. Educated at Church of England School at Mudgee. Aspired to study Law however, frustrated by poverty from 1872 until 1875; may have worked for Mudgee Independent. joined New South Wales Permanent Artillery as private, court martialled for insubordination and gaoled from June until December 1878; edited Bathurst and Mudgee newspapers. Went to London in 1886 and resigned from Legislative Assembly in 1887 and became examiner of patents; went into voluntary bankruptcy; resigned as examiner of patents in may 1888; founded and conducted Echo Farm Home for male inebriates; became a freelance journalist; admitted to Callan Park in 1898. 


Personal 
"Son of George Taylor, gentleman, and Mrs Sarah Burton Shellum. Married Rosetta Nicholls on 19 January 1885 at Darlington in New South Wales. Church of England."   Source

"To be smashed at all times was considered a badge of honour in the 1890s. When a Presbyterian MP lamented that 'Parliament contained some notorious drunken blackguards and licentious brutes' he drew a swift response from one William Crick, MP [qv  – PW], who bragged that he had been 'a confirmed boozer' since the age of 16.

"'It may be,' he bellowed, 'that the honourable member for Newtown – a human mullet – has poured into his carcass as much grog as would make any other man drunk. But it may be that he has not the necessary mental structure to be affected by alcohol. But suppose that he never did taste strong drink – and he looks foolish enough never to have done so. What great virtue is there in that?'

"Adolphus George Taylor, member for Mudgee, was suspended by Toby Tosspot [common nickname of Sir Edmund Barton, first Prime Minister of Australia – PW] for claiming that no fewer than 35 members of the House were sloshed at one sitting. Soon afterwards he was again suspended for drunkenly alleging that the government was voting £100,000 for the NSW military simply to create a branch of the public service wherein to park 'incapable loafers who had not brains enough to be put even in the Department of Lands'.

"He wasn't expelled for being drunk but for 'persistently and wilfully obstructing the business of the House'.

"Fisticuffs in and around the chamber were commonplace, and the source of a great deal of public amusement. But it was Norton [John Norton – PW], member for Fitzroy – a blackmailing drunkard who made a fortune raking muck in his Truth newspaper – who best embodied the spirit, and the spirits, of the time.

"Having occupied his seat in the House for only three weeks, in a state of near-constant intoxication, he capped off the last evening of the session by relieving himself on the floor of the Legislative Assembly.

"This was considered a bit much even in those days – he was dragged screaming from the House, smashing a glass door on the way out, but the self-appointed 'champion of the people' suffered no electoral harm. He was easily re-elected at the general election soon after."   Source

"The original editor of Truth was Adolphus George Taylor, who was born in a daub-and-wattle hut near Bathurst and died in a sandstone lunatic asylum near Sydney."
Pearl, Cyril, Wild Men of Sydney, Universal Books, Melbourne, 1958

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1864 Alois Alzheimer (d. 1915), physician, the first to describe Alzheimer's Disease

1877 Jane Bathori, opera singer (d. 1970)

1895 José Carlos Mariaátegui, Peruvian essayist (La escena contemporánea, 'The Contemporary Scene' 925), born in Lima

1906 Margaret Bourke-White, photojournalist

1908 Kathleen Raine (d. July 6, 2003), British poet, critic and independent scholar writing in particular on William Blake and WB Yeats. She became perhaps Britain's most important twentieth-century Nature poet. She enjoyed a tempestuous relationship with author Gavin Maxwell (Ring of Bright Water), and much of her finest poetry was inspired by the landscapes of Wester Ross. 

While in Cambridge she met Jacob Bronowski, William Empson, Humphrey Jennings and Malcolm Lowry. Her first book of poetry, Stone And Flower (1943) was published by Tambimuttu, and illustrated by Barbara Hepworth.

1909 Burl Ives (d. 1995), American singer and actor, who won an Oscar for A Big Country

1914 Ruthven Todd, poet and novelist, born Edinburgh

1916 Georg Henrik von Wright, Finnish philosopher/logician, influential cultural critic/essayist; associated with Vienna School of logical positivists; an executor of the literary estate of German philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein

1919 Dorothy McGuire, actress (d. 2001)

1919 Sam Wanamaker (d. 1993), American actor and director

1921 Gene Barry (b. Eugene Klass, changed his name in honour of his idol, John Barrymore), actor whose most outstanding role was as a scientist who finds himself in the midst of a Martian invasion in the cult sci-fi classic The War of the Worlds (1953)

1925 Pierre Salinger, journalist and JFK's White House Press Secretary

1926 Hermann Kant, author 

1929 Cy Coleman, composer

1933 Jerzy Kosinski (d. 1999), Polish author (The Painted Bird)

1940 Ben Davidson, American football player

1945 Jörg Immendorf, painter

1945 Rod Argent, musician (The Zombies)

1946 Donald Trump, American real estate mogul

1946 Marla Gibbs, actress

1949 Harry Turtledove, science fiction author

1951 Paul Boateng, British politican 

1961 Boy George, English 'gender bender' pop singer, formerly with the band Culture Club (Karma Chameleon)