6 April 2007 supra, 1 May 2007 media, 28 April 2009 infra
Date.......................High.............. Record 27 April 2009........85 °F....... 86 °F (1990) 26 April 2009........86 °F....... 87 °F (1948) 25 April 2009........85 °F....... 87 °F (1990) 24 April 2009........85 °F....... 88 °F (1925)
The color and shape of spring bulb flowers are truly lovely. Tulips are often delightful in those qualities, and in fragrance. The aesthetic experience is thoroughly enjoyable; under moderate weather, they can be brilliant for more than a month. The colors can succeed each other, yellow comes first, and the darkest purple, called black, is the finale. The color palate waxes and withers. Some colors predominate, and then fall away, and other colors come to the fore. Drying, wilted tulips have a concentrated color on their curled, and contorted petals.
During their vibrancy, they open and close their blooms. The mid-day sun can splay them 180°, exposing the internal base color, which can be white, or black, or another hue than the predominate color.
They prefer the mid 50°s. Here, they just went through four consecutive mid 80°s. The first day, it surprises them, and they recover during the night; after that, the cycle is, noticeably accelerated, and the toll hits.
They can survive an early snow, especially when the bud is tight; an open bud, when capturing enough wet snow can snap the stalk. Tulips are cold hardy. Too much heat, and they mature rapidly.
Years ago, I remember several saloons having a framed photograph of Geronimo, the one above was taken by Ben Wittick in 1887. I am not sure why he had that popularity. There is a limited number of famous indian warriors who posed for pictures. Geronimo was a free wild man into the twentieth century, he was an example of a type of noble savage. It is easy to roll off the tongue, alternating soft consonants and vowels. A movie with Chuck Connors was released in 1962, but the photo was always of the indian, and not the actor.
Goyaałé (*1829) was a Chiricahua Apache born in what was, then, Mejico. The Apache and the mexicans were in a state of war. Goyaałé was a fearless, effective and charismatic warrior, who seemed immortal in battle and impossible to capture. Jeronimo was an appellation given by the mexicans. The US military found the same situation, for more than a full generation, Geronimo continued. He surrendered in 1886. He became a prisoner in Florida, Alabama and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. As an aged man he became a national celebrity. In 1905 he told his story in an autobiography.
An hundred years, and a week ago he died at Fort Sill, Oklahoma,and was buried in the Indian Prison Cemetery. During WWI, while millions died in battle on the fields of europe, three yalies, all being members of the secret society ‘Skull and Bones’ were fighting the kaiser and keeping America free at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. They, depending on interpretation, liberated bones or desecrated indian graves in 1918. They took the relics or souvenirs to their clubhouse at Yale.
One of these bold adventurers was Prescott Bush. The same, Prescott Bush, who planned a coup against Franklin Roosevelt. The same, Prescott Bush, whose son and grandson occupied the White House. On the hundredth anniversary of Geronimo’s death, his relatives have sued, in federal court, for return under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. They have gotten Ramsey Clark as counsel.
One can speculate, that, this is the sort of thing the entitled, presumptuous elite do as sport, or the thing drunken fratboys falsely claim, and enshrine, as inherited folklore. Mankind has for millenia taken body parts as trophies of war, and those, whom, have not gone to war have felt the need to invent heroics. It would not be the first time wasps have enjoyed a degradation of an indian, or drunken clubhouse juveniles enjoy fantasies. _________________________ Postsriptum: After viewing the 1962 version, Geronimo, with Chuck Connors, for the first time since it was on ABC’s Sunday Movie, it still holds. There were many comments about the silly incongruity of a blue eyed indian. The deep set stare of determination worked well. It was a petty complaint. The writer, Pat Fielder, had written for Connors in The Rifleman. Geronimo was an historical figure just leaving living memory. As Shakespeare, and other writers, take a known personage and plot, and then spin their own tale, and message, so did Ms. Fielder.
The tropes of filmdom were there in giving familiarity to many a movie: man and woman meet in tension and make a family, the best friend dramatically dies, fathers proud of their children, the value of education and the female civilising influence. Beyond that, it was shown that the indians were cheated, that agreements made by the US with indians were never meant to be respected. The government agents and preachers were not interested in justice.
The indians, Geronimo in particular, wanted their dignity recognised. Fielder wrote sympathetic and telling dialogue that would rile busheviks and american imperialists if they were written, to-day, and especially five or six years ago.
[I did not transcribe, this is approximation] “We are not savages. We are Apache.”
“I’m not an animal that has to be branded!”
“Show me which hand signed the paper ”, before the crooked agent’s hand is fixed to the table.
“I am a soldier, not a philosopher.”
“You will be fighting the whole United States. You can not win.” “I know. We will fight and not surrender. Then people will ask, why are they fighting still? And we continue, and they will stop. ” [This was in 1962, before the heavy Viet Nam involvement.]
Now, the first university in Britain is Oxford. Its formation began with the expulsion of the english, from the University of Paris, in 1167. At this time, Henry II had Thomas à Becket in exile, and had warred against Louis VII repeatedly. Oxford town, and its countryside, now had a new source of steady income, of a captive clientele. In the middle of the 14th century, the bubonic plague hit europe, afterwards there was a significant, and drastic reduction in population, with much social disruption of all kinds.
The three days, beginning with Tuesday, the 10th of February, Saint Scholastica* [yes, there is irony aplenty] Day, 1355, there was something between an urban riot, and warfare in Oxford. It began at Swindlestock [again irony in naming] Tavern, when scholars complained about bad wine. The taverner chose to use unfortunate words, the wine then hit him, followed by the pot. He wanted revenge and gathered men. He brought the local enforcement authorities to university. The university was not under town jurisdiction.
Wednesday the students attacked the town, and the town counterattacked. Thursday was the bloodiest day. Many of the scholars were clerics and were tonsured. The townies and rural locals scalped† others. An Eucharistic procession, to demonstrate for calm, was attacked.‡ Some of the university fled to Stamford, which had earlier had Oxford émigrés.
Edward III was to rule on this. The town having inflicted the greater havoc was punished. Each year on Dies Scholastica: the mayor and 62 freemen were to attend mass at Saint Mary the Virgin on campus, and pray, for the souls of those that died in the slaughter; in addition, they were to give a penny each for each dead scholar. The mass was changed to a sermon, when England apostatized, and that atonement ended in 1825. A mayoral oath of good behavior lasted to 1859. All Masters of Arts had to swear, that, they would not lecture at Stamford. The university would guarantee weights, and measures and the prices on drink and bread, and would clean the streets. In 1955 a ceremony of all differences settled took place.
Now from that, one, especially one, who, has lived as a student in a college or university town, must gather, that, the townies gouged and cheated students, and did not maintain facilities. Students are a cash crop of livestock. It is true, they are often a drunk and rowdy lot, but they are temporary residents and cash cows, and are treated as such. Some will say the mediæval ages were brutal and ignorant, but that is often just a strawman argument. There was no such precedent, certainly, in England at this time. There were occasions of violence, but not battle; and within the school, the rivalry was between the scots and the english. No, it was something pertinent to 1355 and how the university was in relation to the town and countryside about it. __________________ *Saint Scholastica *c.480 †547, abbess, twin sister of Saint Benedict of Nursia. †it was not an introduction by indians, but by the anti-clerical english ‡one can wonder, whether any of this was connected, with the rise of lollardry§, the lollards began about Oxford, and had anti-Eucharistic, and anti-clerical views; but it also co-incided with the the Great Schism of the West, and the Peasant revolt, which again may all be, in part, ripples from the plague. §latin lolium = certain ryegrasses, lolium temulentum = cockle, (bearded) darnel, false wheat, tares
cum autem dormirent homines venit inimicus eius et superseminavit zizania in medio tritici et abiit But while men were asleep, his enemy came and oversowed cockle among the wheat and went his way. ― Matthew xiii. 25. DRC But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. KJV
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s(*early1340s,†1400) Prologue to the Shipman’s Tale:
...“He woulde sowe some difficulty, Or springe cockle in our cleane corn...
G. K. Chesterton, in his essay, William Penn and the Puritans ofJanuary 24, 1931, in the Illustrated London News begins:
The Americans have established a Thanksgiving Day to celebrate the fact that the Pilgrim Fathers reached America. The English might very well establish another Thanksgiving Day, to celebrate the happy fact that the Pilgrim Fathers left England.
Chesterton speaks of the miserableness of the calvinists, and of the accident of people’s imaginations that a holiday refers to them. Fanciful, fictionalised and sanitised retelling of history, into a shared folklore has benefited, their legacy.
It is good to give thanks, and celebrate a feast. And one can chart good reasons, to do so, and for right rational purpose.
The calvinist attempt, in this celebration, was to replace Christmas and its inherent catholicism. Many americans, christian or no, celebrate this day, and many non-christians are very comfortable in its effective non-religiousness, and especially its adaptability as a non-christian festivity. Thanksgiving is an american, national holiday; it has religious overtones to some, but, essentially, it is not a religious day. It is a civic substitute.
Many commentators on history look at certain years as years of significant tumult and turmoil. 1968 was one, a more recent one was 1989, the fall of european communism and the intransigence of Sino-commuism. In Europe they fell like dominoes and in an accelerating pace. Almost by a märchen formulæ 10 years it took in Poland, 10 months in East Germany, 10 weeks in Hungary, 10 days in Czechoslovakia and 10 seconds in Romania. Bulgaria just quit.
Reagan was out of office and in advancing senility. Lee Atwater, and the Republican party slime and sludge machine, extended his third term to the first George Bush, whom was quite slow in realisation of the world’s unfolding drama, but soon Republicans gave all credit, for the fall of communism, to Ronnie Reagan. It was an european event produced by the people themselves.
In China communism had been changing. The apparatus of state was firmly in the grasp of the party and the coterie of men whom ran the party. Capitalism and the desire for wealth was melded into communism, an unification of godless materialism with the brutality that entails. The military might was controlled by the state and the party, which differ only in paper drawing.
In the first few minutes, of the 4th of June, a military slaughter began in Tiananmen Square, Beijing *(Peking, Peiping). There was an incipient movement beginning in Beijing and also in Chengdu (capital of the Szechuan province). Peaceful dissent and free speech was thoroughly and brutally crushed. The next day, in a most brilliant moment, a young man carrying a shopping bag stopped a column of tanks. Truly, a rememberable , remarkable and uttering inspiring moment, that lasted only a moment. There he stood undaunted and the military paused and the moment was gone. His fate is unknown to us.
Was there a chance that a democratic air would flow in China? The chinese communists have embraced capitalism. Propaganda, in this country, has linked democracy with capitalism as virtual synonyms. The chinese, the largest population and a growing power have shown how, absolutely, false that is.
When I was first introduced to the internet ether, I found this iconic photo on a Vatican site, available as a poster: This year, the chinese have cracked down on the tibetans and have spoken in a unity about the nefarious Dalai Lama. No sensible person believes in that campaign. The chinese want to project a grand face. They have a great desire to display the Olympics as a triumph of China, and one triumph of many. In 1936 the Olympics was used this way in Berlin, Germany. The torch run was to bring the pagan aryan glory through the, soon to be conquered, lands to the modern teutonic glory. The trek for China has been scuttled by protest.
Now a great and continuing, natural catastrophe is shaking the ground, literally, in Sichuan (Szechwan). The chinese government is being uncharacteristically open with reporting and some people are voicing their minds. Is this year going to be a year of annus horribilis or annus memorabilis for China. ____________________ *The spelling of chinese words, into english, has been done in several (at least three) systems. Who knows what form is accepted to-morrow.
Last Sunday, I attended a healing service by Dr. Issam Nemeh at Saint Stephen’s Cleveland. It was, the sixth, in six locations, that, I had been to. Doctor Nemeh prayed and touched people, with help from his wife, Kathy, and a religious sister, Sister Monica, and he has a crew of volunteers. He murmurs, almost silently, inviting, imploring the Holy Spirit to come and act.
He became known to me through a local broadcaster, Ted Henry (WEWS), whom first told his story on television. A fellow broadcaster, and medical doctor, Ted Castele, also testified on the man’s veracity and gift. With this public announcement, the next few, healing sessions were jammed. A private individual rented out Cleveland State University’s basketball building, for a service, as he was so impressed with the doctor, and the results.
Most, but not all, take place in Catholic churches. He has been in the Cleveland area, extending to Sandusky, Canton, Ashtabula, and onto Michigan. After the first rush of interest, the local establishment rag, which purports to be a newspaper, reviewed him badly. The Cleveland Plain Dealerhas not been known to be friendly to catholicism, it was little surprise assigned reporter was not pleased with Dr. Nemeh.* The next winter, another local television station (WKYC) ran a week long morning series with a radio disc jockey, Trapper Jack, Philip Keller, who is blind and is Dr. Nemeh’s spokesman.
I look at televangelists with great scorn. That class, of so called faith healers, are confidence men on the make. The main attraction of their own traveling side show carnival. I consider them charlatans and, as slippery as, snake oil salesmen. They are vainglorious, pompous and adept and dishonest of speech. This man, Dr. Nemeh, and his organisation, Path To Faith, is none of that. The doctor is a Syrian born anesthesiologist, who now has a busy, acupuncture practice. The man is a medical doctor, he has no need to spend time doing this for money. He and those around him see this as a christian ministry, a path of evangelisation.
All the ones I attended, and at least the ones held in Catholic (Latin and Byzantine) churches begin with the regularly scheduled mass and then the service, with the good doctor, begins. It lasts several hours, a good shift, and some times longer. The lessening of the novelty, and the notoriety, and I believe the strain, have reduced the schedule. Everyone who stays, some people are frustrated by the duration, receives a blessing and prayers that invite Jesus and especially, the Holy Spirit to arrive and bestow a healing; it must be understood that the good comes through God.
Bearing on the resources of the church and people available, there are musical backgrounds and interludes of organ, singing, and other instruments, or a music disc playing. There are also: testimonials, the praying of the rosary, and other prayers by the assembly.
No promises are made. NO money is solicited. Donations for the church, and the organisation are accepted, but no requests are made, or even alluded to. There are some discs available, music, video for purchase, and this is away from the assembly.
An honest sceptic can doubt the efficacy, or even the attempt, but only an ill spirited individual can deny the sincerity. A sceptic can suggest that it is psychosomatic placebo. An alternative view, may suggest, the benefit may come from so many people praying together, that has an effect, even to the point, that some good karma, or an equivalent is produced.
A goodly number who ridicule, and cast aspersions on the particulars of this case, show anger, and even malice. I can see, and calmly accept, that some people cannot see this as being real. I cannot see, that, an honest witness would not see the veracity, and sincerity of it.
I find the experience in the assemblage, peaceful and pleasant, and I can tune out the people who grouse about the wait, and why some go before them. For as many people who do come, it takes time, period. If, they are aware, that someone is of a greater physical challenge, they and their family/group go ahead. You can see some are in sad, and even pitiful condition. They have suffered, and are suffering, some people you cannot see what condition of torment, that, they have undergone. The time spent over an individual is not the same for all. Some individuals are prayed over, by several people, and for several minutes.
Some people weep, others slouch and stagger, and some fall straight backwards. There are people to catch them, and mats for them to lie on, and if they are out — a blanket. Some fall very quickly, sometimes several people in succession. Some demonstrate no outward effects.
Some report only a feeling of warmth, or a type of rush, or current. Some say an ailment becomes better. I, the first five times, can say nothing. The last time, with my head down and eyes closed, I somewhat more than vaguely felt/saw something approaching, I can’t say that it arrived.
If you come in goodwill, patience and faith if you can muster it, you will find a good experience and perhaps improvement. In the New Testament, some are said to enjoy this gift, it may only last a season, but that aperture can help many. ________________ postscriptum: October 2008. I am happy to report, that, my aged mother, whom I brought six times to these events, has had a physical improvement. She has come from her biennial physician’s visit, and a kidney problem that has worried, her physician, has gone away, and this much to the wonder of that physician. Now, Dr. Nemeh, and his crew, never interviewed my mother, yet, especially during the last visit, the doctor and the Sister gave some attention to her kidneys. I am wont to believe, that, their touch, and the influence of the Holy Spirit, were active in this recovery.
postscriptum: October 2009. I have been told (I have not confirmed this), that, the event I attended in May of ’08 was the last in that format. Now there are events, some with lectures, and tickets at $ 20; I have not been to one.
*I crossed out some text above, as seen. The management and the reporters are different groups. The management are very attentive to the establishment. Some reporters are very careful, and try to be scrupulous. Some writers are different, the reporter who wrote was no fan of his subject.
Spotsylvania Virginia Confederate Memorial Day is a state holiday in most of what one considers the South. Most people from outside the south do not know of it. When I first read about it, as a child, I thought why the duplication, there was the national day. There are many southern negroes under forty years of age, that are not aware of it, now. Many black americans are surprised and shocked, when they encounter its existence. Many are insulted, angered and want it ended. Human charity demands that people be allowed to mourn.
It was a precursor to a general Memorial Day. It was meant to remember and honor the fallen of the 1861-5 war, the most traumatic event in the history of this land, and the most significant. It is the only lost cause that is of the US.
As George Patton (or George C. Scott, it is the same to the country) is to have remarked*, this country only has respect for winners. It (CMD) is, thereby, remarkable for its existence. Other than the Indian Wars, this land has not known war since. The United States wars, and is damn proud of it, but those wars are on some one else’s land. With the failed War of Southern Secession, americans experienced real war, not a vicarious, hidden war of expedition.
When the southern textbooks referred to the war as the ‘War of Northern Aggression’, they were not meaning to be coolly objective. They wrote with pained, humiliated resentment; they did not lie. A more neutral, and ambiguous term ‘War Between the States’ is better and far more accurate than ‘Civil War’. The rejoinder, “there was nothing civil about it”, is true. In a political sense, it was a civil war, only, in some communities in border areas. Massachusetts was on one side, Mississippi on the other.
The South, the secessionists, lost. The feelings of the vanquished were similar to the central powers (germans, turks, magyars, bulgarians), whom lost the First World War and to the losers in many another war. Pride in the action of existence was a psychological bulwark. We fought therefore, we who survive, we exist. Bello ergo sum.
From this many corollaries are. The current military is more revered, than, the country as a whole. A ‘south will rise again’ attitude lingered and has manifested itself; it still can be discerned.
Where it is observed, it is usually a separate state holiday. It is not on a common date. A couple states move it to a Monday. Three different dates are commemorated. 26 April was Johnston’s surrender to Sherman. Jefferson Davis’s birthday is the 3rd of June. 10 May is the death of Thomas Jackson and the capture of Davis. In addition, some states have a separate Davis Day, and a Lee birthday (19 January). The only one, of these states, to have a Lincoln birthday is his birth state, Kentucky.
The Lincoln item is further interesting. Kentucky recognises Franklin Roosevelt’s birthday (30 April). Most of the south is solidly Republican, it does not recognise the greatest Republican, who was, also, the first Republican president and the only good one. ________________ *Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. ― Speech to the Third Army. 5 June 1944. noto bene: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is the junior senator from Alabama.
The cleverness of the dandelion is remarkable. It is so much more than people realise. Here now, we have gone through a flowering cycle.
In the city, lawns and fields that have not been aggressively mowed or chemically controlled have had this plant run free. An otherwise clean portion of grass, devoid of wildfowers and many weeds that break up the consistent hue and tint have seen this herb.
I look at the green, and see, interspersed, the bright yellow heads. Some yards when in full bloom have a greater preponderance of yellow than green. On days that are rainy and overcast or at twilight, or at gloaming, you have these two strong, deep and bright colors unbleached by strong and excessive light and glare. That is why green and yellow appear with stoplights. I enjoy those clean colors. But, a fecund transformation arises. Hollow stalks shoot up.The collection of yellow flowers that make up a head transform into a puffball of seeds. They scatter, bloody well, everywhere. The bare stalks remain. When darkness falls and headlights shine on the lawn, an army of ugly stalks are sighted, some completely bare, some partially, and some with seed and fluff entire intact .
When I was a small child, my father impressed upon me a disdain for thoughtless superstition. Children of my cohort had all sort of nonsense they professed to believe in. One of the damnedest, was to tear a dandelion stalk and puffball, and then blow the seeds and fluff away. It may be enjoyable to watch the initial separation and the course of the flight path, but the idiocy was to plead a wish upon this action. To a child of a pious Catholic family, with a strong willed father, this was to exhort to a conjuring.
My father came to this land, knowing of the plant, but unaware of the silly folklore attached by some children to the puffball. The indians were gone from the land. The later arrived nations did not have this ceremony. Did these children inherit their belief from an unlettered, uncivilised, hillbilly background? Pagan superstition (sueverie, cuprnija), it was in his revered opinion. My lack of credence in the efficacy to their, then, sincere ritual did not endear me to my playmates. It was easier, and to my self-interest, to refrain from their enlightenment.
Now, this plant was an immigrant to the new world as were we. Somewhere in the centuries back, the anglais transmogrified ‘dent-de-lion’, tooth of the lion, into dandelion. It was not the flowers, but the long serrated leaves that named the plant. The french, still, prize certain varieties as cultivated salad.
Now, not only the seeds, but the root and the stalk and the timing all promote this plant. I spoke to a professor of biology, that was fond of the term ‘opportunistic plants’. I said, “weeds ”. He was not pleased. He explained how a plant colonises an area. In different works, our friend, the dent-de-lion, is described as a persistent or nearly ubiquitous or hard to eradicate weed. It is highly successful, insult it or admire it, it still carries on.
It has a taproot, that can grow deeper than its height. That root has side roots. That long root gathers water, secures a hold in the earth and can regenerate its removed greenery. The seed will sprout in any crack and break up rock or asphalt to grow. This root can be harvested as a chicory substitute, which is a substitute for coffee. It makes itself valuable. I have had wine from its flowers, well mostly apple and grape with dandelion added.
That stalk can lay flat to the ground, or grow past and through other plants, so as to raise its head in the open. And from that vantage to catch the wind for dispersal.
Now they are out in flocks, but at anytime of the year one can sprout. This year, immediately after New Year’s Day, when a heavy snow was melted, there was dent-de-lion in bloom. Mow the lawn, the next day fresh ones will appear. Go out and physically remove every one you see, and to-morrow there are more.
Sometimes, you can enjoy a couple days of yellow. You have time to catch it when it telescopes out. You see the yellow flowers have become ovaries, but it needs no pollination. Its puff fluff has not formed. But, overnight, or less, you can find a bare stalk, when the day before there was neither flower nor leaf visible. Yes, dent-de-lion wins, even if you pay one of the many, aggressively, annoying, competing uniformed or not, lawn services to drench your yard with chemical treatments.
To-day, a century ago 175 people died in a school fire, Lakeview school in Collinwood (annexed to Cleveland in 1910), Ohio on Ash Wednesday. A few minutes walk east is interstate highway 90, which runs from Boston to Seattle.
I was told, by at least one grade school teacher, that the children died because the doors opened in, and the crush of kids inhibited the doors. I was told incorrectly. This was not the case. Though doors were, later, nationally redesigned, so that a push against a bar latch would open the door quickly in a panic.
It had been a multi-storey building, some children died from jumping, others died because they did not jump. Some died because the floors were oiled and the flames flew up the stairwell onto higher floors. The front entrance was burning and the children that approached, tried to retreat upwards, while those above tried to descend. A back entrance was locked. People came and tried to save children and saw them die as the fire grew. The fire department arrived too late.
The new century, the school's capstone read 1901, had heavy new immigration and the warehouse consolidation that gave pride of place to efficiency and concentration with little, if any, safety and building code interference were the combined causes for disaster, with the natural panic that children, or anyone, experience with rapid and engulfing flames. Children trampled each other, breathed deadly smoke and were incinerated. Some were never identified, some families had no money, and these children were buried in a common grave.
Afterwards, a memorial garden was built on the original site. During the 1970s, and beyond, the site greatly deteriorated, along with the city. A committee made a partial restoration of the site. The Memorial School that was built behind the site, also deteriorated and was razed. A new, replacement school has been recently completed further back on the site. It is of one storey. The children of the newest school have, perhaps universally, no connection or interest concerning the original school. To-day, the church bell of nearby, St. Jerome's tolled for the dead, and a brief ceremony was held, at the school, with the local councilman in attendance. The Cleveland Public Library has recently found, and is displaying, photographs, and a news reel is playing on an internet video site. An exhibit will tour five branches, with the documents and other material on Collinwood.
Cleveland was to have two more epically disastrous fires. Fire generated from nitro-cellulose x-ray film would kill 123 at the Cleveland Clinic in 1929. During world war II, an East Ohio Gas fire and explosion would kill 130, in 1944.
To-day is a bonus. We can celebrate this, intercalary day, this bissextum, this leap day as a gift. The calendar measures time with a large sandglass. The sun, moon and the stars take their part. We follow different reckonings, mainly roman, first pagan then christian Rome.
The calends was the day of the new moon, and the ides were the full moon. The twice six day, the bissextum, was the doubling of 24 February, the sixth day before the calends of Mars. February having, then, 30 days. Then to 1970, Saint Matthias’s day was normally on the 24th, but sometimes then on the 25th, now the 14th of May.
Some people have the fortune to be born on this day, the new last day of February. Gioachino Rossini, the great composer, was one such. I am happy to note, my dear mother was born on such a day. Because of a fanciful calculation, I am now much older than my mother. The Pirates of Penzance played on this motif.
In reference to a calendar, it is possible on even a ferial work day, many commemorations may simultaneously co-exist. Which one should stand out, when each has significance. I have no academic, literary, clerical or journalistic career. Yet, I have interests there. To semi-quote from Cicero*: “not to know that the world existed before your birth, is to remain a child.” We as inheritors of civilisation should be aware and familiar with its legacy and deposit. To assert, in any way, that one is knowledgeable and his opinions have any value, without this basis of knowledge is derisively laughable. Here follows a partial list of items worth considering:
362 - Athanasius returns to Alexandria
1072 - Saint Peter Damian O.S.B., Doctor of the Church
1440 - Prussian Confederation is formed
1543 - Battle of Wayna Daga - Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeat a Muslim army
1595 - Saint Robert Southwell martyred by England, when Catholicism was treason, hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn
1613 - Mikhail I is the unanimous choice of the Zemskij Sobor as the first Romanov Tsar
1804 - Self-propelling steam locomotive -- Pen-y-Darren ironworks in Wales.
1848 - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish the Communist Manifesto
1878 - The first telephone book is issued -- in New Haven, Connecticut
1885 - Washington Monument is dedicated
1916 - World War I: In France, the Battle of Verdun begins
1918 - The last Carolina parakeet dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo
1937 - The League of Nations bans foreign national "volunteers" in the Spanish Civil War
1952 - The British government abolishes Identity Cards in the UK to "set the people free" †
1953 - Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the structure of the DNA molecule
1958 - The Peace symbol is designed and completed by Gerald Holtom
1965 - Malcolm X is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam
1972 - President Richard Nixon visits the People's Republic of China
1973 - Over the Sinai Desert, Israeli fighter aircraft shoot down a Libyan Airlines jet killing 108
1975 - Watergate scandal: Attorney General John N. Mitchell and White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced
___________________________ *Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. Quid enim est aetas hominis, nisi ea memoria rerum veterum cum superiorum aetate contexitur? †Identity Cards Act (effective 30 March 2006) reverses this. Similarly in the US, Real ID Act -- May 11, 2005
Chronos to-night ushers out the old year. He is pagan Greece's Old Man Time or Father Time. One can reflect on the year gone by. Major papers, and some news broadcasts, recount those who have died during the past year, and what events—good,bad,important,otherwise—have occurred. We can all reflect upon our, personal history during the same. One more annum has had its grains of sand deposited at the bottom of the figure eight glass. I am not an aficionado of the genre, but the line is quite good: "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives."
Local broadcasts of "news", here, are very poor. The station with the worst broadcast has a two and half hour programme in the late afternoon, that extends to the early evening. Today would they have a weekday would be their dream. There is a home game for the Browns football team in a snowy and windy mess. They often have two weather people, a heliocopter (grounded in this weather) and on location reporters to tell what anyone who looks out the window can see. They cover the football team with fawning obsequiousness. So, conveniently, there is very little news to report on in the remainder of time, not allotted for advertisements, free or paid and mindless chat. When they cover news, it is a mix of fires, automobile collisions and occasional murders and petty and sometime violent larceny only balanced by some minor human interest or health story.
The football team is owned by the son of a credit card magnate. A government financed gift of a new stadium was given his father, and this summer there was a several million dollar plumbing problem that no one has paid for. Boondoggles to benefit the rich, in what is at certain points of time measured as the poorest city in the United States, is the rule here. Entrepreneurs that are the gem of the free market propaganda are the recipients of welfare largesse and receive their bounty without dissent.
I looked forward to watch this game within the comforts of home. The game was forecast to be played in silly weather and it was. In such a game talent and ability are neutralized by the physical environment. Luck decides the game more than most. Sustained organized drives of the ball will not happen. Interesting kicking will be highlighted. The central players are place kickers and punters. The score will be baseball like and a shutout is possible. I would like to see a 4 to 3 or a 5 to 4 score. I look forward to an enjoyable, sloppy, slapstick comedy.
The game is not to be the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field heroics, temperatures are in the wet, heavy, snow range. No markings are visible on the field. I expect a game of kicks, fumbles and foibles; of men falling on each other and falling alone. What can one expect when the ball will be invisible, cloaked behind swirling snow and fall dead to the ground if not nudged by bodies and squirted from hands.
The local hullabaloo boosts and boasts like babbits. The truth is that Cleveland benefited from an easy schedule playing some of the weakest teams in the NFL and did not beat all of them and beat no strong teams. Today they're playing a wounded Buffalo as a home game. Mathematical statistics give the home team a field goal advantage. In this sort of weather offensive statistics will be often anemic, and a field goal could be the entire score.
The game was played, surprisingly, without turnovers. All the scoring came in the first half. Phil Dawson made a 35 yard and, near the end of the second quarter a marvelous, 48 yard field goal -- spectacular under the conditions. It was a very low kick hitting the stanchion, immediately behind the crossbar, dead center within a hand span: 8 - 0.
Buffalo went for a pass on fourth down and eleven on the 23, instead of a field goal in the first quarter, and were in no proximity to the goal line until the last minute of the game. Buffalo put up two points, for Cleveland, on a punting attempt that sailed over the punter, who then kicked the ball, from the end zone, directly into the stands, in perhaps, the most memorable play of the game. After the subsequent free kick and penalty, the referee had difficulty in finding the spot to place the ball and that was the game.
Today, in american notation, is 11/22, in european 22. 11.. Everyday is a commemoration of much, most unknown to us. Today, for example, on the christian calendar, is St. Cecilia's Day, on the US civil calendar, it is Thanksgiving, Charles deGaulle was born in Lille, and John Kennedy died horribly in Dallas.
The three bullets that targeted John Kennedy shocked this nation, more so, than any event since the attack on Pearl Harbor. Looking back at his short era, it became readily and easily mythologized as Camelot. I can hear the welsh baritone of Richard Burton resound in my mind. America looked good and brave to the world. There was a commitment to find the "best and the brightest", even if they turned out not to be the wisest. People believed in the image, those who created the image believed in the image, and the image was making headway into becoming real. How different is America today. In the future, who will wax nostalgic for an ignorant, miserable, disastrous fascist? if they are not required to? What an ugly face America shows to the world now.
There is a movement beginning amongst certain evangelicals, that calls itself Red-Letter Christians; the red letters being the words of Christ, printed with red ink to stand out from the rest of the text in black, and most of these are in the four gospels. Now there are other evangelicals irked over this*. Those who make this distinction believe in the primacy of the Gospel and of Christ within the Gospel.
The Second Vatican Council, in 1965, voted 2,344 to 6 on the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation – Dei Verbum . The first two words of the document give it its name. Dei Verbum is the Word of God. Within the document it is reaffirmed that sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture are equal and the ultimate author is God, and within Scripture:
It is common knowledge that among all the Scriptures, even those of the New Testament, the Gospels have a special preeminence, and rightly so, for they are the principal witness for the life and teaching of the incarnate Word, our Savior.
This sola scriptura ruse some use is either naïve or fraudulent, and, also, that all what is considered holy writ is equal to any other part. Neither Jew nor Catholic can accept this. The Pentateuch, that is the Torah, is of greater import than the Haftorah. There are Jews, Karaites among them, who only accept the Torah; further, there are the Palestinian and the Alexandrian canons.of scripture and Jews do not recognize the New Testament. How or who determines what is Scripture? and if some body of material is excluded by some, then when someone reveres what someone else rejects, how can the authority and interpretation of that part be made mandatory on the disbeliever? Christ's ministry from Incarnation to Ascension is central to the salvation of Christians. The Sermon on the Mount is at the center of Jesus' teachings. This should be self evident. This is Gospel truth. Now, this is not binding on the Jew, but this is on the Christian. The 613 mitzvot (commandments) of the Old Testament are not all binding on the Christian, but for those who maintain, that all scripture is the same equal unity of God's Word throughout, well logically they must be. The New Testament was not necessary to convert the faithful, there were practicing Christians already, it was written to share more information with them, as there were faithful Jews before the Old Testament was complete, and that took centuries. We would be Christians today, even, without one page being written. Jesus was and is the Logos. His words as Logos have to be more important. Among the mohammedans the Logos is the Koran, some protestants have this sort of belief about the Bible, yet they throw out seven books and Luther wanted fewer still. They lack a certain consistency of argument and are nonplussed about it. ___________________ *In part, by understanding of writ, but more so by the actions demanded on the Christian. Jesus's number one usage of a verb is some form of "to do", and it is in the imperative. The Voice from the burning bush spoke, "I am that I am ". Christ made a number of "I am" statements. To be is "esse" in latin and german "essen". "I am" is first person singular of to be. God is essence and He wants us to do. We are required to act as God tells us to act. Good works are mandatory. Faith is a good work. Theologically and politically these anti-red letter christians are upset.
At one time when one was speaking of the mad monk, two historical personages would have been suspect -- either Rasputin or Luther. Once I did a computer engine search of "mad monk" and only Rasputin came up. Has the myth of Luther brushed aside his skeptics and cynics?
In the middle ages it was understood by all that the intellect or intelligence was the highest mental attribute. Luther put the will above the intellect. A child is willful, but unlearned and immature. Any idiot can be willful, all tyrants are. This is Luther's contribution to theology and western civilisation.
Luther was not well schooled in scholasticism, but he knew he hated it. Luther publicly burned the written works of Saint Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the possessor of the greatest human mind and most learned of men. The Dominicans would be Luther's constant thorn.
On a great map like the mind of Aquinas, the mind of Luther would be almost invisible. -- G.K. Chesterton
The legendary fiction of the posting of 95 theses on the Witttenberg castle church's door is still repeated and accepted as a fantastic vignette of history. Erwin Iserloh in 1961 scholarly demolished that myth, but still the textbooks print the falsity of the nailing. The story first appeared after Luther's death, written by Philipp Melanchthon, and no one recorded Luther ever speaking of it, but on the last day of October 1517 he did mail letters to the Bishop of Brandenburg, and the Archbishop of Magdeburg and Mainz.
Much has been changed to glorify Luther. For all of those who approve of the Protestant rebellion, he is the heresiarch hero. Just as the chopping down of the cherry tree was invented for Washington's hagiography, so were events for Martin.
Luther proclaimed the non-biblical sola scriptura argument, that he could only make after he denied the canonicity of the Epistle of Saint James. When he misquoted scripture, his loud response would be, "Tell them that Dr. Martin Luther will have it so!" So authority rested with him. So this is the foundation of Luther's pronounciamento, the clarion call of protestantism and modern man.
Luther first became a monk, by his own reckoning, to fulfill an oath, "St. Anne help me! I will become a monk", he pledged during a thunder and lightning storm that terrified him, near Stotterheim on the second of July 1505. This moment of sturm und drang must be a moment when his rationality is a question.
He was a fearful man, yet morally scrupulous to the obsessive extreme. He could not, in his own mind, justify and make reconciliation with God. In substitution for absolution, he misunderstands grace. He also did not understand that good works were a grace. In his addled algebra he advises, "to sin boldly".
He was a new Mohammed*. His new religion, with the aid of the sword and a new distribution and concentration of wealth, would change the faith of many Catholic lands into a new and strange creed.
He was also a flippant, foul mouthed boor, who was fixated on his bowels and their product. The reformation had its ontogenesis on the privy†, one can wonder, if he were to have been prescribed an effective laxative, that all of Germany would have remained Catholic and Nazism would not have come into existence. Luther was not only a necessary antecedent for Calvin, but also for Nietzsche and Hitler.
The anglican John Osborne wrote a very good play in 1961 about Luther and Stacy Keach portrayed the rôle on film in 1973. Before this, there was: Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther (1958), a psychological biography and Hartmann Grisar's (1845-1932) multi volume biography and a single volume one. All of these are a corrective to the portrait many cherish of the reformer. ________________________________________ * I cannot find the reference, but it may have been, Sylvester Mazzolini da Prierio, the master of the sacred palace, papal theologian, who in response to Leo X's question, "Who is this Luther?", answered...
† "in cloaca" "das Klo" -- In October 2004, there was discovered his thinking room in Wittenberg.
Charles Darwin's, "Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of the Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", was published in 1859. Note the secondary title. There followed social darwinism in the english philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) who maintained two kinds of knowledge: that of the individual and that of the race. The phrase “survival of the fittest”, is his. This in conjunction with the theories of individuals such as Count Gobineau and Margaret Sanger led to eugenics (a sort of animal husbandry for people), birth control, forced sterilizations, Planned Parenthood, euthanasia and mercy killings. Hitler believed in the superiority of the aryan race, especially the teutonic german. Anti-semitic laws based on american Jim Crow were enacted and so on.
Yet, people focus on Dayton, Tennessee’s Scopes Monkey trial of 1925 as the victory of the enlightened over the boobs. Was this a victory for free speech and academic freedom or a manipulation of chicanery and media show trial? The ACLU advertised to find someone to allow them to challenge the recently passed Butler Act that forbid the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. A group of businessmen conspired with them to have a school coach challenge the law, so that local business could be drummed up. Scopes never actually remembered mentioning evolution, he was fined $100 and the law stood till 1967, but the public remembers the play and the movie, "Inherit the Wind" and that Clarence Darrow made William Jennings Bryan (the democrat nominee for president in 1896, 1900 & 1908) look like a fool. Bryan died within a few days.
The textbook used, "Hunters' Civic Biology", listed the races (often nations) in hierarchical order. The English race was the most superior and the lesser races descended down to ape level. Clearly all men were not equal. Science shows us the way. Bryan's undelivered speech, that he was denied to read, at the trial, through a clever Darrow, was a plea for christian humanitarianism against scientific racism and biological determinism and moral nihilism (Nietzsche) and war. Bryan foresaw an individual who would do great harm to the world; were he to enact such a combined program. Bryan who, a generation earlier, advocated what would be, Roosevelt's New Deal, as a corrective to the capitalism of the republican party, now may have described the outline of a future monster -- Hitler.
The use of biology for other than that as a description of the living world is dangerous. Using an interpretation of science as a mandate to describe and govern human society is a formula for dystopia.
People can disagree with scientific theories. We have one camp that maintains their form of darwinism as absolute unquestionable truth and protests any objector with invective and complete disregard of respect, so did the Nazis with theirs. There is another camp that is threatened by any contradiction to their interpretation of their religious views. Some want to create science in their own image, but isn't science always to be tinkering with answers and questions?
There is no current chance for the extinction of the darwinists. Absurd, discredited, political ideas [e.g. gwbushjr and the fascist wing of his party] are often given sway in this society, but absolutist darwinian determinists must be totally free from perceived umbrage and questioning? Whose academic freedom and free speech is in danger? Many who can incorporate evolution into their beliefs see that some of the extreme darwinists are not truly interested in only advocating good science but advocating atheism through the back door. William Jennings Bryan saw the possibilities of the system and advocated a different course, he lost too often.
Lauren Caitlin Upton: South Carolina honor student
Q "Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the United States on a world map. Why do you think this is?"
A “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uhmmm, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and uh, I believe that our, I, education like such as, uh, South Africa, and uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uhhh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for us.”
I saw the repeating excerpt on television news. Immediately upon hearing the question, I thought, "what don't they watch the weather?" Then I saw young Miss Upton. Oh, she is cute! Then I began listening to her stilted non sequitars. She has to be thinking, why do they ask these questions? can't they just look and see I"m beautiful? isn't that enough? isn't that the reason I'm here?
Then I noticed her strange use of phrases: like such as, and the Iraq. "Like such as" may be being used as a verbal tick or a filler construction, often "like" alone is, but the "such as" seems an apparent attempt to sound academic. "The Iraq", geographical grammatical confusion, before one would say the Ukraine, the Gambia and perhaps the Lebanon. I think that form has gone out of favor, and she was probably born after that point in time and, I doubt that, she would be familiar with it.
From this limited exposure she speaks as well as most republican candidates, certainly Bush junior has had more verbal garble than that. But, then again, she is cute! It fascinates--a blonde moment meltdown. The audience and the presenter do not seem to react astonished or bemused. Part of her answer is formulaic prattle, the rest is certainly non-linear, but trying to be agreeably patriotic. The more I look at her,...who did win?... my, she is cute.
Notre Dame began their season against the rambling wrecks of Georgia Tech. The first play was initially a bad call against Notre Dame. A fumble was manufactured, but on video review it was clearly not. The ball was returned.
Football is a brutal game with many aficionados. Many view it with metaphors and lessons positive for life. Now bad calls often stand*, so justice is not a football principle. A good and fortunate team must be able to survive one or, even, two bad calls a game. Only success counts, not the manner, in which, it is gained. Football is not really a christian exemplar.
Notre Dame is God's own team, never-the-less. In big time football there are only two catholic teams: Boston College, S.J., and Notre Dame. While many who have only a passing interest in football do not recognize the former, they certainly know the latter.
Before Al Smith's loss ('28) and to Kennedy's win ('60), Notre Dame was the cause to root for. The athletic pursuits and heroics were followed by a catholic multitude in papers and on radio throughout the nation. Frank Leahy placed the crushing victory on practically all opponents and that sort of dominance, really, upset those who did not like mackerel snapping Notre Dame. That sort of play and that sort of reaction pleased the followers of God's own team to no end. A dear professor of history, Carl Gustavson, commented on that time period of Notre Dame's dominance, he wasn't pleased. I also remember a Hemingway story where a nun was listening to the radio. Many people remember the heyday, Oklahoma and Army knew their elevens.
I didn't recognize to the degree that anti-catholic bigotry existed, until I came to university and in what instances it freely ran. I was in a large common room watching a televised game (Notre Dame against Penn State, I believe) and heard a small barrage of stupid, spiteful, hateful and ridiculous racist (apparently having black players is one of the ignoble ways that Notre Dame cheats) statements against God's own team and the one true church. At those moments, there began for me, during any play where Notre Dame is not successful -- emotional pain. I want to see Notre Dame win every game, preferably easily, and the more this rankles the bigots, the better. At this moment the rambling wrecks of Georgia Tech have engineered a crushing of Notre Dame at Notre Dame. On to Penn State for redemption. _________________________________ *cf. presidential elections of 2000 & 2004
Protestants are a factious fraction of Christianity, that do not realize their importance within it. They are the majority in the english speaking world and by the combined exceptionalism of calvinism and american chauvinism they project their imagination as the defining one for all.
We can see their combative thought in their musings concerning those who were closest to Christ, when He walked the earth. The hostility toward Mary is greater than the indifference of the innkeepers on the eve of the Nativity. The axis of human history, which is the Incarnation and the Crucifixion, that our salvation revolves about, had only two people in common attendance. It seems that Mary's presence is an encumbrance to these some, who would approve of the mechanisms manifest to have been otherwise---the appearance of the Messiah without nativity, and an Ascension without Passion, and a Tridium of different itinerary.
The chief earthly associate in the ministry of Christ, for those who ever read a gospel by the words that are within it, was Peter. Whatever of the failings that Peter demonstrated, none disenfranchised him to Christ. Yet, by circumlocutions and selective filtering that would make a drunken Talmud scholar blush, Peter does not receive the keys to his office in their reckoning.
To those who proclaim, "sola scriptura", by sola sciptura are vanquished. Ultimately and instantly the claims of the reformers and their descendants are null on continuity and elegance.
And then there is primary commandment of the decima. Ten percent is mine, praise the tithe. The widow's mite will not do. Twist and turn, rave and pay. Now Elmer Gantry was a huckster, but can we not find him less artfully on the television and in his place of practice still plying his trade?
6 April 2007 supra, 1 May 2007 media, 28 April 2009 infra
The color and shape of spring bulb flowers are truly lovely. Tulips are often delightful in those qualities, and in fragrance. The aesthetic experience is thoroughly enjoyable; under moderate weather, they can be brilliant for more than a month. The colors can succeed each other, yellow comes first, and the darkest purple, called black, is the finale. The color palate waxes and withers. Some colors predominate, and then fall away, and other colors come to the fore. Drying, wilted tulips have a concentrated color on their curled, and contorted petals.
