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reetings from Australia.
Welcome to
this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations,
birthdays and events.
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Mistletoe
is, however, seldom found on a hard-oak,
and when it is discovered it is gathered with great ceremony, and
particularly on the 6th day of the moon (which for those tribes
[Druids] constitutes the beginning of the months and the years) and
after every thirty years of a generation, because it is then rising in
strength and not one half its full size. Pliny the
Elder (Plinius maior or Gaius
Plinius Secundus;
23 CE - 79),
Natural
History XVI xcv. 250 (see Coligny
Calendar)
A large nose is the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, generous, and liberal man. Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, born on March 6, 1619
Marry
in Lent And you'll live to repent. East Anglian saying
Ill hath he chosen his part who seeks to please
The worthless world, – ill hath he chosen his part,
For often must he wear the look of ease
When grief is in his heart;
And often in his hours of happier feeling
With sorrow must his countenance be hung. Michelangelo Buonarotti, born this day in 1475, translated by Robert Southey
Measure not the work
Until the day's out and the labour done,
Then bring your gauges. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet, born on March 6, 1806
Mill, poor fellow, is terribly cut up. We must endeavour to hide from him how very serious this business is for us. Thomas Carlyle to his wife on discovering (March 6, 1835) that his friend
John Stuart Mill had been responsible for the
accidental destruction of the only manuscript of Volume I of Carlyle's
The French Revolution: A History
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
Thomas Carlyle
I am now convinced, that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought. John Stuart Mill
Conservatives are not
necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. John Stuart Mill
Though God were to
rain wealth from heaven or cause it to burst from the earth, to whom would
the wealth belong? Nay, if the land had been property when the Israelites
were in the desert, to whom would the manna have belonged? Henry George;
from a speech delivered in Australia, reported in Bunyip, May 2, 1890.
American economist George commenced his 98-day lecture tour of Australia
on March 6, 1890.
Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent. Ayn Rand,
property-before-people advocate, March 6, 1974, when asked at West
Point how she reconciled her view of America with, among other
things, "the cultural genocide of native Americans"
That idea of "realism is literature and every other form of fiction is not literature" didn't get really badly shaken until the magical realists popped up in South America. When you've got García Márquez around, you just can't go on that way. Ursula K Le Guin in an interview with Amazon.com, 2000; Márquez
was born on March 6, 1928
Boy this is beautiful. Boy oh boy! Gordon Cooper, American astronaut, born March 6, 1927
Holi, Hindu festival (date varies),
North India and Nepal
Holi is the most colourful Hindu festival and falls on the Full Moon day in the month of
Phalguna according to the
Hindu Calendar, which is
in late February,
or in March, as per the
Gregorian calendar.
In West Bengal,
it is known as Dolyatra (Doljatra) or Boshonto Utsav ('spring
festival'). On the first day, bonfires are lit at night to signify
burning the demoness Holika,
Hiranyakashipu's
sister.
"There
are manystories of the
origin of Holi. The most widely held belief is that Holimarks the day when thedevoteeof lord Vishnu, Bakt Prahlad,
seated on the lap of demoness Holika, was saved from the effect of the
fire by God and the demoness got burnt instead. Other stories relate to
the death of demon Putana at the hands of lord Krishna and to the
burning of demoness Hoda by children. Some link the festivalwith the worship of Karma, God
of pleasure and destiny.
"Holi is a harvest celebration marking the
climax of spring. Bonfires are lit, marking both the end of winter and
the death of evil, and proceeds from the seasonal harvest – grains,
coconuts etc – offered to the flames. The next day, dhuleti involves
plenty of colour throwing, prayer, fasting and feasting. People have fun
throwing coloured powder and colourful water at each other, dancing and
gambling over cards. The Rajasthani and north Indian population at
Kankaria and Jamalpur in Ahmedabad celebrate Holi in great style with
folk dancing and colour throwing." Source
There
is not as much info on the Net about Holi as about Western
festivals. The same is true for all but festivals of the richest
ten or twenty of the 190 or so nations on the Planet.
Perhaps
we shouldn't forget:
There are more Internet connections on the island of Manhattan than there
are on the entire Indian continent. Shashi
Tharoor, PhD, author, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and
Public Information of the United NationsSource
Find an error or dead link?
Like to make a suggestion, or just say "G'day"?
Meet me at Corrigenda
Purim is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the
deliverance of the Persian Jews from
the plot of the evil Haman to exterminate them, as recorded in the
biblical Book of Esther. According to that book
the feast was instituted as a national one by the book's
protagonists, Mordecai and Esther. Purim is celebrated
annually on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar. ( … in a small
number of cities that were walled in ancient times, it is also
celebrated on the 15th.)
Lenten curtain, or Lenten veil
We are now in
Lent,
the Christian fasting period of 40 days before Easter.
"In
the mediaeval Western Church, a white curtain hung down in Parish
churches between the altar and the nave, and parted on feast days
kept during Lent. It was taken down in the last three days of Holy
Week and said to betoken 'the prophecy of Christ's Passion, which
was hidden and unknown till these days' (Liber Festivalis).
Similarly, all crucifixes and images were covered, a practice still
followed in some Anglican churches." Ivor H
Evans, Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988
Festival of the
god Mars, ancient Rome (Mar 1
- 19) Today, Roman
household gods were honoured.
Egyptian day (dies egypticus, dies ægypticus or
dies mala), unlucky day in
Medieval Europe. ("But, notwithstanding, I will trust the Lord"
was the associated saying.)
Feast day of
St Baldred
(Baldrede), of Scotland Bishop of Glasgow, he died at London in 608. Bollandus says "he
was wonderfully buried in three places"; just how is not
explained. He was the successor to St Kentigern (Mungo).
Known for holiness and for her miraculous powers
although she was repeatedly refused entrance to the Poor Clares.
When only three years old, she raised to life her maternal aunt. She
had the friendship of birds. On December 5, 1250, Rose foretold the
speedy death of the emperor, a prophecy realized on December 13.
Soon afterwards she went to Vitorchiano, whose inhabitants had been
influenced by a famous sorceress. Rose secured the conversion of all,
even of the sorceress, by standing unscathed for three hours in the
flames of a burning pyre (source). Her
patronage includes exiles,
people in exile,
people rejected by religious orders
and tertiaries.
Another feast day of St Rosa is also
celebrated on September
4 [qv; source],
called Fiera di S. Rosa, when her body, still incorrupt, is
carried in procession through Viterbo, Italy.
The
'Macchina di Santa
Rosa' Wikipedia says: The transport of the
Macchina di S. Rosa takes place every year, on
September 3
[qv], at 9 o'clock in the evening. The Macchina is an artistic illuminated bell-tower with an imposing height of 30 m. It weighs between 3.5 and 5 tonnes and is made of iron, wood and papier-mâché. At the top of the tower, the statue of the Patron Saint is enthusiastically acclaimed by the people in the streets of the town centre, where lights are turned off for the occasion. One hundred Viterbesi men (known as the
Facchini) carry the Macchina from Porta Romana through the major streets of Viterbo, concluding with a strenuous ascension up to the Piazza di Santa Rosa, its final resting place. Each
Macchina has a life span of five years, after which a new one is built.
1619Savinien (or
Savinio)Cyrano de Bergerac (d.
July 28, 1655),
soldier, poet, dramatist, best known for his huge
nose, over which he is said to have fought more than 1,000 duels.
The character CD Bales, played by Steve Martin in Roxanne,
was based on de Bergerac, as the movie was based on Edmond Rostand's
verse drama, Cyrano de Bergerac
(1897).
De Bergerac wrote two science-fantasy
novels about voyages to the moon and sun. He was severely wounded twice, once
at a fight with a Gascon Guard, and the second time at the siege of
Arras in 1640. There he was hit in the neck with a sword and he
never fully recovered from the wound.He died in Paris in, 1655 and the cause of his
death was banal: a piece of plank dropped on his head.
"According to Arthur C Clarke,
Cyrano must be credited both for first applying the rocket to space
travel and, for inventing the ramjet. Cyrano wrote:
"'I foresaw very well, that the
vacuity that would happen in the icosahedron, by reason of the
sunbeams, united by the concave glasses, would, to fill up the
space, attract a great abundance of air, whereby my box would be
carried up; and that proportionable as I mounted, the rushing wind
that should force it through the hole, could not rise to the roof,
but that furiously penetrating the machine, it must needs force it
upon high.'
"(quotation from Greetings,
Carbon-Based Bipeds by Arthur C. Clarke, 2000)"
Sonnets from the Portuguese
'XXXII'
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The first
time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon
And quickly tied to make a lasting troth.
Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe;
And, looking on myself, I seemed not one
For such man's love!--more like an out-of-tune
Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth
To spoil his song with, and which, snatched in haste,
Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note.
I did not wrong myself so, but I placed
A wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float
'Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced, –
And great souls, at one stroke, may do and dote.
It's a b-a-a-ad lie
A rumour, published in the book Hollywood Trivia, has it
that "Abbott and Costello once took out a $100,000 insurance
policy with Lloyd's of London that stipulated payment if any of
their audience should die of laughter." In reality, however,
no record of such policy
exists in the files, a spokesperson for the famous agency said in
1989. Source:
Abbott and Costello Official Website
1928Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian
journalist, novelist and short story writer, born Aracataca,
Colombia; winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature1982.
A central figure in the Magical Realism movement, a term used in
1920s Germany to describe painters, whose works expressed
surrealistic visions. The term was applied to literature by Cuban
novelist Alejo Carpentier, who recognized the tendency of
Latin-American writers to combine fantasy elements and mythology
with otherwise realistic fiction.
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1835 In the evening, English philosopher and former child prodigy
John Stuart Mill (1806 - '73) knocked at the door of his friend, the Scottish essayist and historian
Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881). Mill had fostered Carlyle's interest in the French Revolution, so Carlyle had asked his friend if he would read the manuscript of his first volume of a history that he had written on the subject.
Ashen-faced, Mill had the unpleasant duty of
telling his friend that his, Mill's, maid had mistaken for the manuscript (the
only copy in those quill-pen days) for garbage, and had lit the fire with it.
All that remained of the historian's hard labours were several burned pages.
Thirty-nine-year-old
Carlyle had laboured for five months without income to produce the volume:
"Had
Carlyle stooped to journalism and adapted himself to the every day routine of
the professional man of letters – The Times, for instance, was thrown
open to him – he might rapidly have won an assured position for himself.
Instead, he buried himself in French history, laboured unremittingly at his French
Revolution, while months passed when not a penny came into the domestic
exchequer." Cambridge History of English and
American Literature (1907 - 21),Vol. XIII
Carlyle's
journal for the following day, March 7, 1835, tells the tragic story more
poignantly than I can:
"Last
night at tea, Mill's tap was heard at the door. He entered pale, unable to
speak; gasped out to my wife to go down and speak with Mrs Taylor whom Mill
later married; and came forward (led by my hand, and astonished looks) the very
picture of desperation.
"After
various inarticulate utterances to merely the same effect, he informs me that my
First Volume (left out by him in too careless a manner, after or while reading
it) was, except four or five bits of leaves, irrevocably ANNIHILATED! ...
Read
on at the Carlyle/Mill
page in the Scriptorium
1884Susan B Anthony and more than 100 other suffragists presented
US President Chester Arthur with a demand that he support women's right to vote.
They failed, but the two women's suffrage groups – the National Woman Suffrage
Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association – soon merged and
worked for the next 36 years toward passage of the 19th Amendment, achieved in
1920.
1888 Louisa
May Alcott (b. 1832), author of Little Women,
died, apparently of grief, hours after her father was buried.
1890
American economist Henry George
(1839 - '97), arriving for a
98-day lecture tour in Australia, was greeted at Circular Quay,
Sydney, by a cheering crowd and a brass band parade. He was taken by
four-horse coach to a Lord Mayoral reception at the Town Hall. He
gave 48 lectures and nine Sunday sermons in 38 towns and cities.
1897 Death of
E
Cobham Brewer (Ebenezer Cobham Brewer; b.
1810), the compiler
of
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, a Victorian-era
reference work
frequently referred to in the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days. The
'Revised and Updated Edition' from the 1890s is now in the public
domain, and web-based versions are available from sites such as
Bartleby.
The
Bayer corporation registered
Aspirin (invented by chemist
Felix Hoffmann) as a
trademark. Another of their trademarks: Heroin (synthesized by Hoffman
eleven days after he synthesized Aspirin), which Bayer energetically marketed as
a non-addictive treatment for
morphine addiction at a time when millions of Amerians and others around the
world were addicted to opiates in cough medicines. Surely Bayer is a suitable
case for millions of dollars in reparations, if only addicts, lawyers and
workers in the drug treatment and rehabilitation industry put their heads
together.
1944 The Allies
began daylight bombing raids on Berlin, from American air bases in Britain.
1946Vietnam War: Ho
Chi Minh signed an agreement with France which
recognised Vietnam as an
autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.
1947The Newport News, the first air-conditioned naval ship, was
launched from Newport
News, Virginia, USA.
1965Civil rights demonstrators began a march from
Selma to
Montgomery,
Alabama, USA, to protest the murder of
Jimmie Lee Jackson and to
demand voting rights for blacks. They were brutally beaten by police officers
while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, and 67 were injured. The attack on
March 7 became known as
'Bloody Sunday'.
1971
Four thousand women's liberationists marched from London's Hyde Park to No 10
Downing St, the prime minister's residence.
1974At
West Point, econo-rat (economic rationalist) American author
Ayn Rand
was asked how she reconciled her view of America with "the cultural genocide
of native Americans". Her answer, in part:
"[The Native Americans] didn't have any rights to the
land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not
conceived and were not using ...
"What was it they were fighting for, if they
opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive
existence, their "right" to keep part of the earth untouched, unused
and not even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live
practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person
[emphasis mine, ed] who brought the element of civilization had the right to
take over this continent."
Source: The Daily
Bleed
2003
USA: "Defense Department 'Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on
Terrorism' (the 'Pentagon Torture Manual') requested by Rumsfeld, adopts the Yoo/Gonzalez legal analyses of torture.
'In order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign, [the statutory prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority. Congress lacks authority under Article I to set the terms and conditions under which the President may exercise his authority as Commander-in-Chief to control the conduct of operations during a
war'. [NOTE: In fact, Art. I, Sec. 8 of the US Constitution expressly states that
'The Congress shall have Power to declare War and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and
Water']"
2004
A group of 28 people gathered in a private home to worship and welcome
Senua,
possibly the first offerings to the recently rediscovered Roman
goddess in more than 1,500 years.
reetings from Australia.
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