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reetings from Australia. 

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Pip Wilson

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"Look aloft!" cried Starbuck. "The corpusants! The corpusants!" All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of the three tall masts were silently burning in the sulphurous air, like three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.
Herman Melville; Moby Dick

The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable. A traveler journeys along a fine road. It has been strewn with traps. He falls into one. Do you say it is the traveler's fault, or that of the scoundrel who lays the traps?
Marquis de Sade, French author, born on June 2, 1740; in a letter to his wife 

Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.
Marquis de Sade; from his last will and testament

I'm writing to tell you, my friend, that I stayed here (Bucharest) with the intention of becoming a teacher at the Bulgarian school, but I was sorely disappointed. I have fallen on such hard times, that I can hardly describe my miserable state. I'm quite broke, the rags I had aren't fit to wear any more and I'm ashamed to show myself in the street. I live in a draughty mill on the outskirts of Bucharest, together with my fellow-countryman Vassil Levski. It is better not to ask what we eat, because we only once in two or three days get hold of some bread to still our hunger ... I'm thinking of giving a lecture at the 'Brotherly Love' reading club one of these days, but I have no idea in what clothes I shall appear there! In spite of this critical situation I have not lost my courage and honour ... My friend Levski, with whom I share my lodging, has an incredible disposition. When things with us are at their lowest, he is as merry as when they are at their best. When it is perishing cold outside, and we have gone hungry for two or three days, he will be merry and sing. He sings while we are getting into bed in the evening and he sings the moment he opens his eyes in the morning. Whatever your despair might be, he will cheer you up and make you forget all your grief and suffering. It is a pleasure to live with such a character ...
Hristo Botev, Bulgarian poet and revolutionary hero who died on June 2, 1876; Bucharest, the end of 1868   Source

It's not the length of life that counts, it's the roundness in the holes.
Michael Leunig, Australian cartoonist, born on June 2, 1945

Me Tarzan, you Jane.
This was never said in a Tarzan movie. Johnny Weismuller, who played Tarzan in a number of pictures, was born on June 2, 1904

It is a multiple million eyed monster ...
Allen Ginsberg, American poet; Lysergic Acid, (written on June 2, 1959) in Collected Poems 1947-1980, p. 231)

The sort of men who get married are almost without exception commonplace, womanly, illiterate and unintelligent, lacking in personal independence, completely incapable of creating love in the intelligent woman or keeping alive love in the unintelligent woman for more than five years.
Bee Miles, Sydney eccentric; speaking to a Sydney Morning Herald journalist on the day of her retirement, June 2, 1965

June 2 is the 153^rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (154^th in leap years), with 212 days remaining.
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Feast day of St Erasmus (Elmo of Formiae), bishop and martyr
(Pimpernel, Anagallis arvensis, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

This St Elmo/Erasmus is sometimes confused with another Elmo/Erasmus (Peter Gonzales) and both are patron saints of sailors.

"Bishop of Formiae, Campagna, Italy. Fled to Mount Lebanon in the persecutions of emperor Diocletian; was fed by a raven so he could stay in hiding. Discovered, he was imprisoned; an angel rescued him. Recaptured, he was martyred. One of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Namesake for the static electric discharge called Saint Elmo's Fire."   Source

Elmo was martyred by being disembowelled at Formiae, Italy in about 303. His patronage includes: abdominal pains, ammunition workers, birth pains, danger at sea, explosives workers, sailors, seasickness and storms.

Sailors believed that the appearance of an electrical phenomenon known as 'St Elmo's Fire' was a good omen, as it tends to occur during severe thunderstorms. This, they conflated with their prayers for safety from the storm. It is possible that the Hindenburg airship disaster of 1937 was caused by St Elmo's fire.

St Erasmus/St Elmo might have become the patron of sailors because he is said to have continued preaching even after a thunderbolt struck the ground beside him.

From Wikipedia: The Acts of Saint Elmo were partly compiled from legends that confuse him with a Syrian bishop Erasmus of Antioch. Jacobus de Voragine in the Golden Legend credited him as a bishop at Formia over all the Italian Campania, as a hermit on Mount Lebanon, and a martyr in the persecutions under Eastern Roman Emperor Diocletian ...

The version of the Golden Legend did not relate how Erasmus fled to Mount Lebanon and survived on what ravens brought him to eat, an interesting pre-Christian mytheme. When he was recaptured, he was brought before the emperor and beaten and whipped, then coated with pitch and set alight (as Christians had been in Nero's games), and still he survived. Thrown into prison with the intention of letting him die of starvation, Erasmus managed to escape.

He was recaptured and tortured some more in the Roman province of Illyricum, after boldly preaching and converting numerous pagans to Christianity. Finally, according to the legend, his stomach was slit open and his intestines wound around a windlass. This late legend may have developed from interpreting an icon that showed him with a windlass, signifying his patronage of sailors.

 

St Elmo's fire

St Elmo's Fire is an electro-luminescent discharge caused by ionisation of the air during thunderstorms inside a strong electric field. Benjamin Franklin correctly observed in 1749 that it is electric in nature. 

Physically, it is a bright bluish-white glow, appearing like fire in some circumstances, often in double or triple jets, from tall, sharply-pointed structures such as masts, spires and chimneys. Although referred to as "fire," St Elmo's Fire is in fact a kind of plasma caused by a massive atmospheric potential difference. It can also appear between the tips of cattle horns during a thunderstorm, or sharp objects in the middle of a tornado, but is not the same phenomenon as ball lightning, although they are related.

In ancient Greece, the appearance of a single one was called Helena and two were called Castor and Pollux.

It is named after Erasmus of Formiae (also called St Elmo), the patron saint of sailors (who held its appearance to be auspicious). It is named such because the phenomenon commonly occurs at the mastheads of ships during thunderstorms at sea.

References to St Elmo's Fire, often known as 'corposants' or 'corpusants' from the Spanish Cuerpos Santos (Holy Bodies), can be found in the works of Julius Caesar, Pliny, Antonio Pigafetta's journal of his voyage with Ferdinand Magellan and Herman Melville.

Source: Wikipedia

 

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Mother Shipton's Day On the dating of items in the Almanac The Wednesday following Whitsunday, for reasons unknown to your almanackist, is said by some to go by this name. Mother Shipton, whose real name was the rather un-English-sounding Ursula Sontheil, was a celebrated soothsayer in Cambridge, England and the wife of Toby Shipton, a carpenter. To some, she is also the patron saint of women working in laundries.  Ursula was born in a cave at Knaresborough, Yorkshire (where Guy Fawkes once lived) in 1488, in the reign of Henry VII just fifteen years before Nostradamus, in an era in which prophetic utterances were widely sought – and just as readily condemned. According to Yorkshire legend (and that is probably the true origin of her 'life'), Ursula Sontheil's birth was the result of a liaison between her mother and Satan. Perhaps as would be expected from such a union, she was a stunning but not attractive child, at least according to one antique biographer:  Very morose and big boned, her head very long, with very great goggling, but sharp and fiery Eyes, her Nose of an incredible and unproportionate length, having in it many crooks and turnings, adorned with many strange Pimples of diverse colours, as Red, Blew, [sic] and mixt, which like Vapours of Brimstone gave such a lustre of the Night, that one of them confessed several times in my hearing, that her nurse needed no other light to assist her in the performance of her duty. She is generally supposed to have sold her soul to the Devil for the power of foretelling future events ... 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The day is celebrated with poetry festivals and concerts. Ruth W Gregory, Anniversaries and Holidays, American Library Association, Chicago, 1983, p. 68 (Gregory has this date at May 20, according to the Julian calendar) Air raid sirens throughout all Bulgaria are switched on for a few minutes on every June 2, exactly at 12 o'clock. Bulgarians stand up to honour the ones who have fought and died for their country. Every nation should have a Poetry Day! Does yours? National Reconciliation Week, Australia (May 27 - Jun 3) Green Week (May 31 - Jun 3) Xenia name day in Slovakia       On which day of the week were you born? Find out here 1740 Marquis de Sade (d. 1814), French author, imprisoned in the Bastille for his sexual perversions, where he wrote Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue. 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But Dick Taylor (later with The Pretty Things) had chosen for a student-life and Chapman had left too ... Charlie replaced him, we were a step closer to the real Stones. In the early days, Watts was the drummer of The Blues Incorporated. Charlie is the favourite Stone of Keith Richards who says: It's Charlie Watts' band, without him, we wouldn't exist. And, according to Mick Jagger, Charlie always exaggerates with everything ... One thing for sure is that Charlie really hates being a rock star. He never had a 'rock star' kind of life and does not even know what it is supposed to be. He certainly is the quietest of the Stones and is always amazed to get such ovations in concert. He likes the early Gretsch kits (the ones with the round logo on them!) and always uses a Gretsch kit live. "He also loves jazz and released some albums with his quintet. 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