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I have had more experience in the world than most of you, and I have seen a great deal of the vanity and wickedness of it ... I have great reason to be thankful that my lot has been so much better than most slaves have had.
We
decided, my wife and I, to have a school where we would grant to the
pupils the freedom of expression. For that it was necessary for us to
give up any discipline, any direction, any suggestion, any
preconceived morals, any religious instruction whatsoever. |
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AS
Neill's system is a radical approach to child rearing. In my opinion,
his book is of great importance because it represents the true
principle of education without fear.
Foreword to Summerhill
by Erich Fromm
He was only forty-five when he died. It would have been better for this sensitive man had he never come to Hollywood, never heard the shrill trumpet of success and the canned laughter of this desperate insecure society.
Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham on Montgomery Clift, American actor born on October 17, 1920
I love the stage but after a few months you can get tired. I would rather do three movies than play in one stage hit. I played in four flops in a row when I was about seventeen and I was delighted. I was being paid to be trained.
Montgomery Clift
I keep my family out of my public life because it can be an awful nuisance to them. What's my mother going to tell strangers anyway? That I was a cute baby and that she's terribly proud of me? Nuts. Who cares?
Montgomery Clift
Politicians are the same everywhere. They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers.
Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Premier, October 17, 1960
The campaign to make poverty history—a central moral challenge of our age—cannot remain a task for the few, it must become a calling for the many. On this International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, I urge everyone to join this struggle. Together, we can make real and sufficient progress towards the end of poverty.
Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General; from his message to be delivered on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, October 17, 2006
October 17
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Calendar (291st in leap years), with 76
days remaining.
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Feast day of the
Translation of St Audrey (Etheldreda;
Æthelthryth; Ediltrudis; Awdrey), virgin and abbess of
Ely, England (Anglican;
Catholic feast June 23)
(Our Lady's slipper, Cypripedium, is today's plant, dedicated to St Audrey.)
Now Etheldreda shines upon our days,
Shedding the light of grace on all our ways.
Born of a noble and a royal line,
She brings to Christ her King a life more fine.
The Venerable Bede, English chronicler
St Audrey was an English saint (c.
630 - June 23, 679). She was a princess, sister of Saint
Jurmin and the third and most saintly of the three daughters of Queen Saewara and King
Anna (Annas) of
East Anglia, of the family of the Uffingas, allegedly descendants of the Norse God,
Odin. Audrey, was born at Exning in Suffolk, and grew up wishing to be a nun like her two sisters.
Said to be "twice a widow and always a virgin", Etheldreda kept her vow to be a nun although her parents twice forced her to marry to Saxon princes. She was widowed after three years marriage to Tondbert, King of South Gyrwe, an East Anglian sub-kingdom in the
Fens (an area of wetlands). As part of their marriage settlement, Tondbert gave his wife an estate then called Elge, later known as Ely. Legend says that the marriage was never
consummated, because Etheldreda had taken a vow of perpetual virginity.
For reasons of state, probably to secure an alliance for the house of the Uffingas with the powerful Kingdom of
Northumbria against the aggressive
Mercians – she married a second time, to Egfrith, the second son of Oswiu, King of Northumbria. Her new husband knew of her vow, but grew tired of living with her and having no sexual relations, and began to make advances on her, but she refused him. He tried to bribe the local
bishop, St
Wilfrid of York, to release her from her vow. Refusing, Wilfrid helped Audrey escape to a promontory called Colbert's Head where a seven-day high tide, considered divine intervention, separated the two; the young man gave up. The marriage was later annulled, and Audrey became a nun.
Later, as she travelled, on a very hot day, Etheldreda was overcome with fatigue. She stuck her staff into the ground and lay down to rest. When she awoke, the staff had grown leaves and branches, and it afterwards became a mighty oak tree, the largest for many miles around. For this reason she is portrayed in art as a woman with a crown holding a staff that is budding. We note that the English hagiography also tells of St
Joseph of Arimathea (the uncle of
Jesus Christ) who, when he visited
Glastonbury, England (known as Avalon, Isle of Apples, the seat of King
Arthur of the Round Table) with his divine nephew, stuck his staff in the ground and it, too, became a living tree, the sacred
Glastonbury Thorn.
After many days of tiresome walking, Audrey arrived on her own lands in Ely. Here she found a good piece of fertile land, supporting six hundred families and surrounded by swamps, forming protection from invaders.
Here, in 673 CE, Etheldreda built a large double monastery where she died on
June 23, 679. Her relics were translated, or moved, on October 17,
695. When she died, Audrey had an enormous and unsightly
tumour on her neck, which she gratefully accepted as divine retribution for all the necklaces she had worn in her early years.
When Etheldreda's shrine at Ely Cathedral was destroyed during the Reformation, the saintly Queen Etheldreda's hand was preserved by a devout Catholic family. Her hand, still incorrupt, was enshrined when a little Catholic Church was re-established in Ely. According to a recent apocryphal tale, Queen
Elizabeth II, on a tour of the cathedral, met the cranky Irish priest of the small Catholic Church. When she asked him if it wouldn't be a
"nice gesture" to return the hand of St Etheldreda to the cathedral; he replied that it would be a nice gesture for her to return the cathedral to the Catholic church.
Audrey
and 'tawdry'
We get the word 'tawdry' from her name.
On her home island of Ely at the annual fair on her saint's day, cheap jewellery, neckerchiefs and showy lace called
'St Audrey's lace', associated with the neck disease suffered by the
saint, were sold, hence the word 'tawdry', meaning cheap and chintzy. In time, the word
came to apply to any piece of glittering trash or tarnished finery.
The Venerable Bede tells how about ten years after her death, her bones were disinterred by her sister and successor at Ely Abbey, Abbess
Seaxburh (St
Sexburga; Sexburgh), and buried in a white, marble coffin from Cambridge. At the time, her body was found incorrupt, her face beautifully youthful, and the
tumour healed, and Bede records many miracles wrought by her relics.
Audrey is patron of Cambridge
University, neck ailments,
throat ailments and
widows.
The abbey she founded was destroyed in
870 by Danish Viking invaders and not rebuilt for over a hundred years.
Blessing the throats, St Etheldreda's Church, Ely Place, London, February 3
Other saints preserved
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 International Day for the Eradication of
Poverty
Poverty in the news
Feast day of St Alexander Feast
day of St Anstrudis (Anstru)
of Laon Feast day of St Balthassar of Chiavari Feast day of St Berarius I of Le Mans Feast day of St Colman of Kilroot Feast day of St Contardo Ferrini Feast day of St Florentius Feast day of St Francis Isidore Gagelin Feast day of St Gabriel Bourla Feast day of St Gilbert the Theologian Feast day of St Hedwiges, or Avoice, duchess of Poland Feast day of St Herodion Feast day of St Heron Feast day of St Ignatius of
Antioch (Theophoros;
God-Bearer) Feast day of St Jane Louise Barré Feast day of St Jane Reiné Prin Feast day of St John Baptist Turpin du Cormier Feast day of St John the
Dwarf Feast day of St Louthiern of Cornwall Feast day of St Mamelta Feast day of St Margaret Mary Alacoque Feast day of St Nothlem Feast day of St Regulus of Scotland
Feast day of St Richard Gwyn From Wikipedia, et al: St Richard Gwyn (c. 1537 - October 15, 1584), also known by his anglicized name, Richard White, was a Welsh school teacher and is a Saint of the Roman Catholic Church. He was martyred by being hung, drawn and quartered for high treason in 1584. He was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 along with the other Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. An early chronicle of his life records:
The incident of the birds is one of the strange events in Richard Gwyn's life. Once when he was brought before a court, the clerk who read the indictment suddenly lost his vision and had to be replaced before the proceedings could resume. The judge cautioned those present not to report the incident, so that Catholics could not claim that it was a miracle. On another occasion, the judge, who later sentenced Richard to death, became inexplicably speechless in court. At Gwyn's hanging, when he appeared to have expired they cut him down, but he revived and remained conscious through the disembowelling, until his head was severed.
Feast day of St Rudolph of Gubbio Feast day of St Seraphino Feast day of St Solina of Gascony Feast day of St Victor Festival
of Hengest,
Ásatrú
(Norse heathenism) Black Poetry Day, USA
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here 1563 Jodocus Hondius, cartographer 1711 Jupiter Hammon (d. 1806?), America's first published black poet
1727 John Wilkes (d. December 26, 1797), English radical journalist, political theorist and campaigner. He had the reputation as something of a rake and was a member of the Knights of St Francis of Wycombe (Francis Dashwood), also known as The Hellfire Club, and instigator of a prank that may have hastened its dissolution. There is an apocryphal interchange with Lord Sandwich, when the latter sputtered: "Wilkes, you will die of a pox or on the gallows," to which Wilkes replied:
He was charged with seditious libel over attacks on the King George III's speech at the opening of Parliament in 1763. General warrants were issued for the arrest of the publishers and almost fifty people were arrested under the warrants. Wilkes was expelled from the House of Commons on January 19, 1764 and later arrested. He gained considerable popular support and was soon released and restored to his seat. When Wilkes was imprisoned on May 10, 1768, for writing an article for The North Briton severely criticising the King, rioting broke out in London. On his release in 1770 he was made a sheriff in London and in 1774 he became Lord Mayor. Also in that year he was re-elected to Parliament, representing Middlesex. He was one of those opposed to war with the American colonies and he was also a supporter of the Association Movement and of religious tolerance. His key success was to protect the freedom of the press, removing the power of general warrants and also the ability of Parliament to punish political reports of debates. The Dutch politician Joan van der Capellen tot den Pol (1741 - 1784), who advocated the American Revolution and criticized the Stadtholder regime, was inspired by Wilkes. The city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania was named for John Wilkes and Isaac Barré. Wilkes Street in Alexandria, VA also bears his name. American actor and assassin John Wilkes Booth is also an eponym.
1760 Henri
Saint-Simon (Claude
Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, (d. May 19,
1825), French
utopian
theorist, the
founder of French socialism Some famous people in the Book of Days and Le Père-Lachaise Cemetery Birth
of the Socialist Idea 1864 Elinor Glyn (d. 1943), writer 1883 AS Neill (Alexander Sutherland Neill; d. September 23, 1973), Scottish educationalist recognised as one of the leading pioneers in education. He is most famous and admired for recommending personal freedom for children, and has been correspondingly attacked as the instigator of "permissiveness" by his critics. On December 3, 1921, he founded Summerhill school on the basis that children should not be compelled to attend lessons. Additionally, the school is democratic, in that a meeting is held to determine school rules and the pupils have equal voting rights with school staff. Early progressives in the Book of Days
1885 Tom Mutch (Thomas Davies Mutch MP; d. June 4, 1958), New South Wales parliamentarian (three times Minister for Education) and close friend of Australian writer Henry Lawson (1867 - 1922) during the latter's last 20 years. These were Lawson's years of decline due to alcoholism and, despite being almost 18 years younger than Lawson, Mutch was a loyal and helpful friend to him. Mutch wrote: "One day, in nineteen hundred and two, a tall, lean, dark man came to the counter [of the Worker office in Kent Street, Sydney] , stood, smiled and saluted (recognizing now an employee), and then impulsively came round the counter, placed his hands on my shoulders, looked long with the deepest eyes I have ever seen in a man, and said, 'You'll do'."
Source: NSW Parliament Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
1898 Simon Vestdijk, writer 1900 Jean Arthur (d. 1991), actress 1902 Irene Ryan (d. 1973), actress 1903 Nathanael West (d. 1940),
American novelist (Miss
Lonelyhearts;
The Day of the Locust) 1912 Pope John Paul I (d. 1978), religious leader 1914 Jerry Siegel, (d. 1998) cartoonist 1915 Arthur Miller (d. February 10, |
