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reetings from Australia.
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Here was October, here Cut bushes to hedge, fence meadow and redge. |
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Then came October, full of merry glee,
For yet his noule was totty of the must,
Which he was treading, in the wine-fat's see,
And of the joyous oyle, whose gentle gust
Made him so frollick, and so full of lust
Upon a dreadful scorpion did he ride,
The same which by Dianae's doom unjust
Slew great Orion; and eeke by his side
He had his ploughing-share, and coulter ready tyde.
Edmund Spenser (c. 1552 - 1599), English poet; Faerie Queen,
'The
Cantos of Mutabilitie'
My ornaments
are fruits; my garments leaves,
Woven like cloth of gold, and crimson dyed;
I do not boast the harvesting of sheaves,
O'er orchards and o'er vineyards I preside.
Though on the frigid Scorpion I ride,
The dreamy air is full, and overflows
With tender memories of the summer-tide,
And mingled voices of the doves and crows.
HW
Longfellow (1807
- '82);
The Poet's Calendar for
October
Much rain in October,
Much wind in December.
Traditional English proverb
If October bring much frost and wind,
Then are January and February mild.
Traditional English proverb
A warm October,
A cold February.
Traditional English proverb
Full Moon in October without frost,
No frost till November's Full Moon.
Traditional English proverb
Dry your barley
in October,
Or you'll always be sober.
Traditional English proverb (ie,
if this isn't done there will be no malt)
There are
always nineteen fine days in October.
Traditional Kentish proverb
As the weather in
October, so will it be in the next March.
Traditional English proverb
In October dung
your field
And your land its wealth will yield.
Traditional English proverb
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.
Bliss Carman
(1861 - 1929); 'A Vagabond Song'
When birds and
badgers are fat in October, expect a cold Winter.
Traditional American proverb
An October day, with waves running in
blue-white lines and a capful of wind.
Amy Lowell, American
poet; 'Men, Women and Ghosts'
They who never ruled before
poured from their factory districts
across the bridges of Petrograd
to make October.
The moon was so startled
all global tides
shifted.
The lights went on all over Europe.
Nothing
can ever be the same again.
Dan Georgakis; from 'October Song', from Three Red Stars, 1975
Bright
October was come,
The misty-bright October.
Arthur
Hugh Clough, English poet (1819 - '61); 'The Bothie of
Tober-Na-Vuolich'
What of
October, that ambiguous month, the month of tension, the unendurable
month?
Doris
Lessing, English writer, Martha Quest, pt 4, sect. 1
There
is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on,
and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
American author
Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.
Carol Bishop Hipps
All things on earth point home in old October: sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.
Thomas Wolfe
(1900 - '38), American author
Question everything.
Maria Mitchell
(1818 - '89), American astronomer, who, on October 1, 1847, discovered the comet that bears her name
Born in slums,
driven to work while still children, undersized because under-fed,
oppressed because helpless, flung aside as soon as worked out, who
cares if they die or go on to the streets provided only that Bryant
& May shareholders get their 23 per cent and Mr Theodore Bryant
can erect statutes and buy parks?
Girls are used to carry boxes on their heads until the hair is rubbed
off and the young heads are bald at fifteen years of age? Country
clergymen with shares in Bryant & May's draw down on your knee
your fifteen year old daughter; pass your hand tenderly over the silky
clustering curls, rejoice in the dainty beauty of the thick, shiny
tresses.
Annie
Besant, British social activist and founding Theosophist, born on
October 1, 1847; 'White
Slavery in London', The
Link (June
23, 1888)
Q:
What is the cause of the strike?
A: Why, a girl was dismissed yesterday; it had nothing to do with
Mrs Besant. She refused to follow the instructions of the foreman, and as
she was irregular anyway, she was dismissed.
Q: Is it not very unusual that all the girls should strike because
of one?
A: Yes, but I've no doubt they have been influenced by the twaddle
of one.
Annie Besant; interview
with Bartholomew Bryant in The Star newspaper (July, 1888)
Many women now, educated more highly than they
used to be – women with strong brains and loving hearts – are being
driven into bitterness and into angry opposition, because their ambition
is thwarted at every step, and their eager longing for a fuller life are
forced back and crushed. A tree will grow, however you may try to stunt
it. You may disfigure it, you may force it into awkward shapes, but grow
it will.
Annie Besant;
The Political Status of Women, 1874
I was dazzled, blinded by the light in which
disjointed facts were seen as parts of a mighty whole, and all my puzzles,
riddles, problems, seemed to disappear. The effect was partially illusory
in one sense, in that they all had to be slowly unravelled later, the
brain gradually assimilating that which the swift intuition had grasped as
truth. But the light had been seen, and in that flash of illumination I
knew that the weary search was over and the very truth was found.
Annie Besant;
Autobiography,
p. 310
Not
out of right practice comes right thinking, but out of right thinking
comes right practice. It matters enormously what you think. If you think
falsely, you will act mistakenly; if you think basely, your conduct will
suit your thinking.
Annie Besant
...
those who can serve best, those who help most, those who sacrifice most,
those are the people who will be loved in life and honoured in death, when
all questions of colour are swept away and when in a free country free
citizens shall meet on equal grounds.
Annie Besant
This
is the India of which I speak – the India which, as I said, is to me the
Holy Land. For those who, though born for this life in a Western land and
clad in a Western body, can yet look back to earlier incarnations in which
they drank the milk of spiritual wisdom from the breast of their true
mother – they must feel ever the magic of her immemorial past, must
dwell ever under the spell of her deathless fascination; for they are
bound to India by all the sacred memories of their past; and with her,
too, are bound up all the radiant hopes of their future, a future which
they know they will share with her who is their true mother in the
soul-life.
Annie
Besant; India: Essays and
Lectures, Vol. IV, The Theosophical Publishing Co., London, p. 11.1895
After
a study of some forty years and more of the great religions of the world,
I find none so perfect, none so scientific, none so philosophical and no
so spiritual that the great religion known by the name of Hinduism. Make
no mistake, without Hinduism, India has no future. Hinduism is the soil in
to which India's roots are stuck and torn out of that she will inevitably
wither as a tree torn out from its place. And if Hindus do not
maintain Hinduism who shall save it? If India's own children do not
cling to her faith who shall guard it? India alone can save India and
India and Hinduism are one.
Annie Besant
Mrs Annie Besant, now in Melbourne, has come
to Australia for the purpose of lecturing on Theosophy ... Mrs Besant's
daughter, Mrs Besant-Scott, is married to a Melbourne pressman and is a
clever young lady who has succeeded equally well as a cyclist and as
spokeswoman of an adult-suffrage deputation to the Victorian Premier. ...
Mrs Besant makes her clearest and brightest point in charging the church
with having led man to believe that he is naturally a base animal – with
having persistently cursed his fleshly lusts, and exhorted him to feel
sorry for his disgraceful conduct, instead of teaching him to glory in his
noble impulses. What has the brimstone shepherd to say to this?
The 'Society' column, The Bulletin
of Sydney, Australia, September 15,
1894. From September
29, Mrs Besant continued her lecture tour in Sydney.
In view of the deplorable termination of
Henry Slade's
visit to this country, we the undersigned desire to place on record our high
opinion of his mediumship, and our reprobation of the treatment he has
undergone.
We regard Henry Slade as one of the most valuable Test
Mediums now living. The phenomena which occur in his presence are evolved with a
rapidity and regularity rarely equaled.
He leaves us not only untarnished in reputation by the
late proceedings in our Law Courts, but with a mass of testimony in his favor
which could probably have been elicited in no other way.
From the text of an illuminated testimonial presented to medium, Henry Slade, by
London Spiritualists in 1877. On October 1, 1876, Slade had been before a London
magistrate under the Vagrancy Act, accused of fraud.
In the cases that did succeed, there was possible
substitution of slates. Tired of so much loss of time, I agreed with Admiral
Mouchez, director of the observatory of Paris, to confide to Slade a double
slate prepared by ourselves, with the precautions which were necessary in order
that we should not be entrapped. The two slates were sealed in such a way with
paper of the observatory that if he took them apart he could not conceal the
fraud. He accepted the conditions of the experiment. I carried the slates to his
apartment. They remained under the influence of the medium, in this apartment,
not a quarter of an hour, not a half hour or an hour, but ten consecutive days,
and when he sent them back to us there was not the least trace of writing
inside.
Camille Flammarion
(1842 - 1925), French astronomer and author, on his tests of Henry Slade's
alleged spiritualistic
October 1
is
the 274th
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (275th
in leap years), with 91
days remaining.
Calendar converter Almanacs,
calendars, time, dedicated weeks, etc
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Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
October birthstone: Opal, signifying hope. Said to bring bad luck to those not born in this month who wear it. (Some sources add rose sapphire, and tourmaline.)
October's child is born for woe,
And life's vicissitudes must know
But lay an Opal on her breast,
And hope will lull those woes to rest.
Traditional English rhyme
October
October is the tenth month of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar, with 31 days. From the Latin octo for
'eight'
(it was originally the eighth month of the year, before January
and February
were inserted).
October begins on the same day of week as January, except in leap years.
The old Dutch name
for October was Wynmaand and the
Old English
was Winmonath (Wine-month, or
the time of vintage; the
month for treading the wine-vats); also Teomonath (tenth-month) and Winter-fylleth (Winter full-moon).
In some Saxon calendars,
the month was allegorised by the figure of a husbandsman carrying a sack
on his shoulders, sowing corn. Sometimes, October is personified as a
vineyard worker riding on Scorpio, as in this image
(right) that illustrates Edmund
Spenser's rhyme (above). In other old calendars, the sport of
hawking is represented. In
the Domesday Book
the vineyards
are mentioned often.
The Frankish name, Windurmanoth,
means 'vintage month'. American backwoods calendar: Hunter's Moon.
Ásatrú name: Hunting.
In the French
Revolutionary Calendar the month was Vendémiaire (time of vintage, c. September 22 to
c. October 21).
It is the month for making beer, wine and cider, because of the steady
temperature.
In the Goddess
calendar, October is sacred to goddess Hathor (October 3 - October 30). October's flowers are
the calendula
and cosmos.
The
last Monday in October is one of the Public Holidays in the
Republic of Ireland and in the Irish
Calendar the month is called Deireadh Fómhair
(literally 'End of Autumn') and is the third and last month of the
Autumn season. Lammas, or Lughasadh, draws
to a close and Celtic people prepared for the harshness and impending
darkness of Samhain.
Weather lore of October (Northern Hemisphere)
The more bright red berries (haws and hips) that
can be seen in the hedgerows, the more frost and snow there will be the
next Winter.
The second 'Summer' in October is called Indian
Summer in America, St Bridget's
Summer in Sweden (as her feast day was formerly October 8); in
Italy, the Summer of St Teresa; in
Germany and Switzerland, the Summer of St Gall. In
England, it is called St Luke's Summer.
Roman festivals and notable days in the Book of Days Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days October poetry and folklore
October is National Breast Cancer
Awareness Month, USA
The
Board of Sponsors of National Breast Cancer
Awareness Month is dedicated to increasing awareness of breast cancer
issues, especially the importance of early detection of breast cancer.
This message is communicated through a nationwide educational campaign
to audiences including women in all age and ethnic groups, the general
public, state and federal governments, women's health care professionals,
and employers. Learn more about how you can help by becoming a
program leader.
Please click on the respective link if you would like
additional information on breast cancer,
mammograms
and breast health, women's health
or health professional
issues.
You
Don't Have to Have a Lump to Have Breast Cancer
Discovery
Health :: Inflammatory Breast Cancer
Ram Mating
Ceremony, Anatolia,
Turkey (Oct 1 - 20)
Anatolia (Greek ανατολη [anatole] for 'rising of the sun'; cf 'Orient' and 'Levant'), also called by the Latin name of Asia Minor, is a region of Southwest Asia which corresponds today to the Asian portion of Turkey (in Turkish Anadolu).
The
ram mating rite has unique customs, beliefs and magical practices. About a
month or two prior to the ceremony, which is to increase the fertility of
the herds as well as to bring the folk together, the rams are separated
from the herds.
The first day of the
ceremonies is celebrated as a festival throughout the region. Village
residents gather in the village square with their drums and and shrill
piping melodies on the zurna (an oboe-like reed instrument).
Shepherds allow the rams, which are dressed up and decorated with henna,
to join the females. In some places, imams read out prayers, and the
animals are mated.
Ram breeding facts we should know
"Onset of puberty occurs when a ram is 23-27 kg regardless of age."Desire or libido refers to the ram's urge to mate and, may be affected by nutrition, age and breeding season.
"Mating ability refers to the ram's ability to successfully inseminate ewes and, is influenced by age and physical problems.
"Stamina or serving capacity refers to the number of ewes a ram can successfully serve over a given period of time.
"Serving capacity (a combination of libido and mating ability) will have little effect on conception rates provided the ram flock is kept young and healthy, two to three per cent of rams are joined and, the joining period is at least six weeks." Source
International
Day of Older Persons (UN)
In 1990, the United Nations General Assembly designated October 1 as the International Day for Older Persons, also known as the International Day for the Elderly.
A demographic revolution is underway throughout the world. Today, world-wide, there are around 600 million persons aged 60 years and over; this total will double by 2025 and will reach virtually two billion by 2050 – the vast majority of them in the developing world.
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