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Before Bonifaz no summer, after the Sofie no frost.
Traditional German proverb (see Eisheilige)
 
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!'
Edward Lear, English nonsense verse writer, born on May 12, 1812

They dined on mince, and slices of quince
   Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
 And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
   They danced by the light of the moon,
     The moon,
     The moon,
 They danced by the light of the moon.
Edward Lear; 'The Owl and the Pussycat'

Cedars of Lebanon, by Edward Lear

Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald

Power and Terror - Noam Chomsky

Edward Lear

The Owl and the Pussycat

Bill W.

Rational Recovery

Brave Hearts, Rebel Spirits

Activists Beyond Borders

Spellcraft

The Encyclopedia of Saints

Daily Everything

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

 

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What Would Jefferson Do?
By Thom Hartmann

Methods of Nonviolent Action

The Torture Debate in America

The Culture of the New Capitalism

Pagan Christianity

Waging Nonviolent Struggle

 

The Great War for Civilisation

By Robert Fisk

The God Who Wasn't There

A Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy

When Corporations Rule the World

Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

The Corporation
Highly recommended DVD

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 Skeptic's Dictionary

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

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

Adventures in a TV Nation
Michael Moore

Drawing Down the Moon

Globalization/Anti-Globalization


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

Rich Media, Poor Democracy
Robert McChesney

Shamanism

Women's Activism and Globalization

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International Nurses Day

(Some sources call today "International Nursing Day".) "International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world every May 12, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth.  You can find information about Florence Nightingale on the Florence Nightingale International Foundation (FNIF) web site and the Girl Child project."   Source

Khmer Republic Constitution Day (Cambodia)

Jerusalem Reunification Day (Israel; date varies)

Celtic tree month of Saille ends

Feast day of St Candida Maria de Jesus

Feast day of St Diomma

Feast day of St Dionysius

Feast day of St Dominic de la Calzada

Feast day of St Domitilla

Feast day of St Epiphanius of Salamis, archbishop
Epiphanius (c. 310 - '20 - 403) was a Church Father, a heresiologist who was a strong defender of orthodoxy, known for tracking down deviant teachings (heresies) wherever they could be traced, during the troubled era in the Christian Church following the Council of Nicaea.

More

Feast day of St Flavia Domitilla

Feast day of St Francis Patrizzi

Feast day of St Gemma

Feast day of St Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople
(German fleur de lis; Iris germanica, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

Feast day of St Jane of Portugal

Feast day of St Modoald

Feast day of Ss Nereus and Acheilleus (Achilleus), martyrs

Feast day of St Palladius

Feast day of St Pancras (Pancratius), martyr
A Roman youth of only 14 at the time of his martyrdom (by beaheading) under the Roman emperor Diocletian. St Augustine of Canterbury dedicated the first Church in England to this saint and there are many St Pancras churches in Britain. In art, Pancras is represented as treading on a Saracen (Muslim) and bearing either a stone and sword, or a book and palm-branch. St Pancras is normally invoked against cramp, false witness, headache, and perjury. He is a patron saint of children, and one of the Ice Saints (see above).

"The Witch of St. Pancras: Shown here crossing the Fleet River with Old St. Pancras Church in the background. From a printed printed by John Hammond in 1643 entitled 'A Most Certain, Strange and True Discovery of a Witch'. In 1968, the Beatles used the Church graveyard for the inside shot of their double album The Beatles: 1962-1966."   Source

"A most Certain Strange and True Discovery of a Witch, Being Overtaken by Some of the Parliament Forces (1643). She was shot by a soldier who saw her surfing on the river at Newbury, using a 'plank.'"   Source

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Feast day of St Philip of Agirone

Feast day of St Richrudis (Rictrudes), abbess

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

International Nursing Day (Florence Nightingale's birthday)

Feeding of different Loas, Voudon (Voodoo)   Source

Feast for Loas, Voudon (Voodoo)      Source

Snellman Day, Finland
Celebrates the birthday of JV Snellman (May 12, 1806 - July 4, 1881), Finnish (Fennoman of Swedish origin) writer, philosopher and statesman.

Fennomans were a loose political group in Finland propagating the Finnish language during the language strife. Their opposition, the svekomans tried to defend the status of Swedish, but eventually had to give in.

Alpha Bootids meteor shower ends

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

1496 King Gustav I of Sweden (d. 1560)

1670 King Frederick Augustus I of Poland (d. 1733)

1755 Giovanni Battista Viotti (d. March 3, 1824), Italian violinist and composer whose 'Variazioni sulla Marsigliese per violino e orchestra' formed the basis of the tune of 'La Marseillaise', France's national anthem

1803 Justus von Liebig (d. 1873), chemist

1806 Johan Vilhelm Snellman (d. July 4, 1881), Finnish (Fennoman of Swedish origin) writer, philosopher and statesman

1812 Edward Lear, (d. January 29, 1888) English artist, illustrator and writer known for his nonsense poetry (The Book Of Nonsense), influencing many others, probably including Lewis Carroll, John Lennon and Dr Seuss. He popularized the limerick.

Lear was born in London, the 20^th child of his parents and raised by his eldest sister, Ann, twenty-one years his senior. From the age of about five, he suffered from mild epilepsy (which he called 'the Demon'), suffering frequent grand mal seizures, bronchitis, asthma, and partial blindness. From about his early teens he was afflicted with sudden changes of mood with bouts of acute depression, which he termed 'the Morbids'.

As an artist of Nature, Lear collaborated with the English ornithologist and 'father of Australian ornithology', John Gould, on A Century of Birds from the Himalayas (1830 - 32).

Project Gutenberg e-text of The Book of Nonsense  

Like Lear, do have have depression? Read Wilson's FeelGood Manual

 

By himself

"How pleasant to know Mr Lear!"
Who has written such volumes of stuff!
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few think him pleasant enough. 

His mind is concrete and fastidious,
His nose is remarkably big;
His visage is more or less hideous,
His beard it resembles a wig. 

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,
Leastways if you reckon two thumbs;
Long ago he was one of the singers,
But now he is one of the dumbs. 

He sits in a beautiful parlour,
With hundreds of books on the wall;
He drinks a great deal of Marsala,
But never gets tipsy at all. 

He has many friends, lay men and clerical,
Old Foss is the name of his cat;
His body is perfectly spherical,
He weareth a runcible hat. 

When he walks in waterproof white,
The children run after him so!
Calling out, "He's gone out in his night-
Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!" 

He weeps by the side of the ocean,
He weeps on the top of the hill;
He purchases pancakes and lotion,
And chocolate shrimps from the mill. 

He reads, but he cannot speak, Spanish,
He cannot abide ginger beer:
Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish,
How pleasant to know Mr Lear! 

1820 Florence Nightingale ('The Lady with the Lamp'; d. August 13, 1910), English nurse during the Crimean War. A pioneer of modern nursing, she was also a writer (Cassandra; Notes on Nursing: What Nursing Is, What Nursing is Not; Suggestions for Thought (to Searchers after Religious Truth); Mysticism and Eastern Religions) and noted statistician. A Christian universalist, she played an active role in the reform of the British Poor Laws, extending far beyond the provision of medical care.

In her later life, Nightingale made a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation in rural India and was the leading figure in the introduction of improved medical care and public health service in that country.

Florence Nightingale was named after the city in Italy in which she was born to English parents. Until then, Florence was an uncommon name, and for males only. Her fame and the respect with which she was esteemed by the British popularized her name as one for girls.

Several churches in the Anglican Communion commemorate Nightingale with a feast day on their liturgical calendars. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commemorates her, with Clara Maass (1876 - 1901), as a 'Renewer of Society', on August 13.

Country Joe's tribute
American singer-songwriter Country Joe McDonald, of Country Joe and the Fish, best known for performing 'I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag' at Woodstock, is an expert on the life of Nightingale, and has written an extensive online tribute to her.

Nightingale Declaration for a Healthy World    Nightingale's spirituality

Florence Nightingale stamps of the world    Early progressives in the Book of Days

1828 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (d. April 10, 1882) English poet, painter and translator.

The son of an émigré Italian scholar, Rossetti was born in London. He was the brother of historian William Michael Rossetti  and poet Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894) and a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. Their father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a political asylum seeker from Naples, and their mother, Frances Polidori, was the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician, John William Polidori.

1845 Gabriel Fauré (d. 1924), French composer

1850 Henry Cabot Lodge (d. 1924), US statesman

1889 Otto Frank (d. 1980), writer, father of Anne Frank

1899 Indra Devi (d. 2002), yogi

1903 Wilfred Hyde-White (d. May 6, 1991), British actor (My Fair Lady)

1907 Katharine Hepburn (d. 2003), actress

1910 Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (d. 1994), chemist

1907 Katharine Hepburn (d. June 29, 2003), American actress, four times Oscar winner (The Philadelphia Story; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner; On Golden Pond) [date of birth often incorrectly given as November 9, or November 8, the birthday of her brother, who suicided in her childhood and the date of birth she often gave for herself; also, sources differ as to the year of her birth]. Hepburn holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscar wins with four, from 12 nominations

1912 Archibald Cox, US Solicitor General and Watergate special prosecutor

1914 Howard K Smith (d. 2002), journalist

1918 Julius Rosenberg, American spy executed in 1953 for espionage for the USSR

1921 Joseph Beuys (d. 1986), artist

1921 Farley Mowat, writer, naturalist

1924 Tony Hancock, British comedian (Hancock's Half Hour radio series [1951 - '53] with co-stars Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Williams and Sid James; Hancock TV series) who committed suicide in Sydney, Australia on June 25, 1968

The Tony Hancock Appreciation Society

1928 Burt Bacharach, American pop composer

1936 Frank Stella, painter

1937 George Carlin, comedian

1942 Ian Dury (d. 2000), rock star

1948 Steve Winwood, British rock guitarist and singer, associated with popular '60s groups such as Blind Faith, Traffic and The Spencer Davis Group

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

1962 Emilio Estevez, American actor, Martin Sheen, brother of actor Charlie Sheen and Renée Estevez

1966 Stephen Baldwin, American actor

Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section

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Zodiac birthday Free astrology e-cards Limerick Day [ May 12 ] Birthdays Frog Jumping Day [ May 13 ] Leprechaun Day [ May 13 ]

Varies Full Moon Day
Varies Friday the 13^th
Varies Hindu holidays
Varies Hanuman Jayanti
Varies Arbor Day
Varies Child Care Professionals Day
Varies Wesak Day (Malaysia)
Varies Buddha Purnima
Varies Birthmothers' Day
Varies Mothers' Day

 

May

11 Minnesota Day
11 Chair Day
12 Kite Day
12 Limerick Day
12 Military Spouse Day
12 Receptionists Day
13 Frog Jumping Day
13 Tulip Day
13 Leprechaun Day
14 Motorcycle Riders Day
14 Stars And Stripes Forever Day
14 Dance Like A Chicken Day
14 Crazy Day
15