Goddess of Love and Battle from the region of Mesopotamia (Greek for 'between the rivers', ie, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), the area now known as Iraq, and from Assyria. Ishtar is the counterpart of the PhoenicianAstarte.
Her name is said the be associated with the word 'Easter', because of her associations, like Easter, with springtime and fertility. The meaning of the name is not known, though it is possible that the underlying stem is the same as that of Assur, which would thus make her the 'leading one' or 'chief'. She was known as Inanna in Sumerian mythology. She is a life-death-rebirth deity, daughter of Anu, the god of the air, mother and consort of the farm god Tammuz, who is similar to the Greek Adonis. She was usually described as an evil, heartless, women who destroyed her mates and lovers.
"In the astral-theological system, Ishtar becomes the planet Venus, and the double aspect of the goddess is made to correspond to the strikingly different phases of Venus in the summer and winter seasons. On monuments and seal-cylinders she appears frequently with bow and arrow, though also simply clad in long robes with a crown on her head and an eight-rayed star as her symbol. Statuettes have been found in large numbers representing her as naked with her arms folded across her breast or holding a child. The art thus reflects the popular conceptions formed of the goddess. Together with Sin, the moon-god, and Shamash, the sun-god, she is the third figure in a triad personifying the three great forces of nature - moon, sun and earth, as the life-force. The doctrine involved illustrates the tendency of the Babylonian priests to centralize the manifestations of divine power in the universe, just as the triad Anu, Bel and Ea - the heavens, the earth and the watery deep - form another illustration of this same tendency."Source
"... in the great epic of Gilgamesh, she tried to make Gilgamesh her husband, but he refused her and reminded her of her former lovers, whom she mercilessly killed or left injured. She reported this to her father, Anu, and he gave her the mystical bull of heaven to avenge herself. Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu stopped and killed the mighty creature and threw its headless body at her feet. They also insulted her, and she responded by sending disease to kill Gilgamesh's best friend Enkidu. She is one of Aphrodite's counterparts."Source: Encyclopedia Mythica
She was a goddess of death, and her image is on the inside of most sarcophagi. The pharaoh entered her body after death and was later resurrected. In art, Nuit is depicted as a woman wearing no clothes, covered with stars and supported by Shu; opposite her (the upper area, the sky), is her husband, Seb, the Earth. With Seb, she was the mother of Osiris, Horus, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys ...
On April 15 [qv], 1846, the families of James F Reed and George and Jacob Donner, 31 people in nine wagons, left Springfield, Illinois, USA. It was the commencement of the Donner Party, the most famous group of American emigrants ever to attempt the cross-country wagon journey to California. Almost ninety wagon train emigrants were unable to cross the Sierra Nevada before winter, and almost one-half starved to death.
When female Australian Britishsubjects won the vote with the Uniform Franchise Act (June 16, 1902), Louisa Lawson, who had had only two years of schooling, was hailed by her political sisters as "The Mother of Womanhood Suffrage". (Women in South Australia were the first in the world to win the right to vote and stand for election.)
Lawson was a poor, Mudgee-born bush battler, forced by marital breakdown, economic depression and drought to move with her four surviving children to the city. She was an idiosyncratic but indomitable woman, a prodigious worker, powerful writer and fine poet, a spiritualist, farmer, inventor, postmistress and shopkeeper.
In 1902, Australiabecame the first place in the world to give women the right to vote and stand for election. 's Commonwealth Franchise Act came into force, second in the world after New Zealand (more) -- which gave women the right to vote not not be elected. This gave all women the right to vote in federal elections but excluding 'aboriginalnatives of Australia, Asia, Africa or the Islands of the Pacific except New Zealand' unless they already had the vote at State level (as stipulated in S 41 of the Constitution). South Australia had already won, on December 18, 1894, the first rights in the world for women to vote and stand for election – 24 years before Britain, 26 years before the USA, and 75 years before Switzerland. (South Australian women first voted on April 25, 1896.)
Henry Lawsonat the Australian Government's About Australia category.
If any Almy reader could recommend to the editors of the Culture Portalthat Faces in the Street
and the Lawson Chronology, or any of my links about the Lawsons, stop rejecting them after all these years
I'd be amazed if they do, and grateful to you. As you can see at Search, there are about 250 links,
and often there's a new Lawson-oriented page in Recently updated pagesas I'm an avid Lawsonian.
Lawson spent thirty-five years of her hard life fighting for women's rights. She founded the Association of Women, and with Henry, in 1887 - '88 she published the journal, The Republican. Louisa Lawson then became founder, owner, publisher and editor of The Dawn, the new nation's foremost women's political magazine, announcing that it would battle for women's rights, and the vote. "Why should one half of the world govern the other half?" was Lawson's rallying cry.
While she supported her children in a little house at 138 Phillip Street near Sydney's docks, she had to teach herself the difficult trade of setting lead type, because of a black-ban by the New South Wales Typographical Association. The Postmaster-General's Department refused to register The Dawn for sending through the post. In 1891, Lawson helped launch (with Maybanke Anderson, Rose Scott, and Dora Montefiore) the Womanhood Suffrage League of NSW. She also founded the Dawn Club, which met in various locations in Sydney, including the tea rooms of the remarkable Quong Tart ...
Australian politicians and educators, particularly conservative ones, tend to promote the myth of Henry Lawson as a homespun rural author, and consequently, although there is some truth in it, a bucolic view of Lawson is very widespread – he has been washed in antiseptic and billy tea. For example, one website says "Henry Lawson lived in the country on a selection in Sapling Gully approximately 6 kms. from Mudgee in New South Wales." In fact, from the age of 17 to his death at 55, Lawson spent almost his entire life in Sydney, a bustling world city twice as populous as San Francisco in his heyday 1890s, where he mixed with the bohemian and (often extremely) radical intellectuals and activists of the era, as did his mother for the last 37 years of her life. A large part of Henry's writing, especially his poetry, was political, swinging between what we would call today "left" and "right". Progressives and reactionaries, unsure of what to do with him, have preferred to ignore him or make him a kind of literary jackaroo. Louisa Lawson's life, too, probably because she was both poor and in many ways excessively progressive for her times, has been virtually swept from public consciousness despite her incredible achievements. I hope the Almanac's Lawsons Chronology might in some small way help to correct the historical revision of the whole 'Lawson myth', by showing these two Aussies in context.
"Stephen gave a kind of impromptu service after the Sunday meal while we were there. Marijuana was part of the service, but instead of enhancing his image as a mystical leader, Gaskin's ramblings and self-aggrandizement made me think more of Charles Manson than an entheogen-promoting Holy Man. These people were being subjected to classical cult-brainwashing techniques, and he was living high-on-the-hog off of their hard work." Down on The Farm – a dissident voice
Aphrodite ('risen from sea-foam'), the Greekgoddess of love, sex and beauty, bears some likeness to other deities in the ancient world. These include Astarte, Branwen, Aida Wedo, Xochiquetzal, Venus, Freya and Oshun. Her Roman analogue is Venus. Her Mesopotamian counterpart was Ishtar and her Syro-Palestinian counterpart was Astarte; her Etruscan equivalent was Turan. Her festival is the Aphrodisia which was celebrated in various centres of Greece, especially in Athens and Corinth.
Aphrodite was associated with, and often depicted with dolphins, doves, swans, pomegranates and lime trees. She was also called Kypris or Cytherea after her alleged birth-places in Cyprus and Cythera, respectively. Originally she was considered a daughter of Zeus and Dione, one of the ocean nymphs. By classical times, however, an alternate story of her birth had gained precedence, that she was born of the sea foam near Paphos, Cyprus after Cronus cut off Uranus' genitals and the god's blood dropped on the sea. The Iliad refers to both versions.
When she was born on the foam of the sea, the seas boiled and turned a rosy hue. Aphrodite arose, already full grown, wonderfully beautiful and standing on a seashell. She floated to Cyprus, arriving in April; the moment her feet touched the shore, grass and flowers sprang up at her feet and she was received by the Three Graces, Aglaea, Euphrosyne and Thalia. Deities of many cultures in the Book of DaysFestivals in ancient Greece
Redemption man The poor boy from Trenchtown, Jamaica, was born to a white father and black mother. At only 15, he formed The Wailers with school mates Peter Tosh, Rita Anderson (later his wife, Rita Marley) and Bunny Livingston (Bunny Wailer). After his premature death (aged 36) from lung cancer, the huge National Arena of Jamaica was too small to hold the mourners; his grave is now a national shrine. Today is a public holiday in Jamaica.
From 'Redemption Song' Bob Marley Old pirates yes they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I from the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation, triumphantly Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom
Cause all I ever had redemption songs,
Redemption songs Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look
Yes, some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfil the book ...
What is Rastafari?
The religion adhered to by reggae artist Bob Marley and thousands or millions of others, is called Rastafari. Its name is derived from Ras Tafari, a name for the one-time Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, whom Rastafarians believe to be divine.
It was earlier believed that by a charm in the saint's name, a thorn could be extracted from the flesh, or a bone from the throat. One held the patient and said: "Blaize, the martyr and servant of Jesus Christ, commands thee (in the case of a bone) to pass up or down; (in the case of a thorn) to come forth."
St Blaize can cure sore throats. He lived in a cave; wild beasts came daily to be cured by him, and if he was praying, they did not interrupt. He once cured a youth who had a fish-bone caught in his throat, by praying ...
1967Ronald Ryan (b. 1925) was executed at Pentridge Prison, Victoria, Australia and his body buried in an unmarked grave. The killing of Ryan, who was probably not guilty, caused such outrage in the land that no Australian has been killed by Australian lawyers or politicians since – not officially, anyway. Within twenty years, capital punishment was abolished federally and in all State and territory jurisdictions.
In 1967, Ronald Ryan, the last person to be executed in Australia, was killed by the State. It was a killing that helped the Premier of the State of Victoria, Henry Bolte, win an election, but it split the community deeply, such that no politician or judge ever again dared take anyone's life. Bolte brushed aside all protests, appeals and petitions, including one signed by seven of the jurors who sat on the Ryan case.
The judge, who had to impose a mandatory death penalty, was summoned by the Premier, who was soon to go before the electorate. Bolte asked the judge if there was any chance Ryan might have been innocent. The judge, who, despite the evidence, believed Ryan guilty, could have won a State reprieve by telling a white lie, but as a Roman Catholic, he felt he could not tell a mistruth to the premier. He thought it more ethical, rather, to allow a man to be hanged by the neck until dead. Years later, the troubled judge said on TV that he prayed to Ryan each night. I wrote a poem about it because I think this incident says a lot about people and belief.
'I could not tell a lie'
By Pip Wilson (Based on an anecdote; avowedly a true story) The judge sat through the weeks of trial
and sentenced Ryan to hang.
Premier Bolte sent for him
and asked him if this man,
this Ronald Ryan was truly guilty,
or was there "some way out,
with the election coming up and all" –
said the judge, "No reasonable doubt".
So Ronald Ryan's neck was stretched;
the judge spoke to the press:
"I could not tell a lie", he said
"I'm of the faith" he stressed.
And further pressed on how he felt,
said the judge, "Ryan had the right
to absolution, he's now in heaven.
I pray to him each night."
At 8:00 am Ryan fell through the trapdoor and died on the same gallows as Ned Kelly. Ronald Ryan is buried in quicklime within the grounds of Pentridge Prison. His family are forbidden to visit the unmarked grave. On November 28, 2005 on ABC Radio National, elderly Judge Philip Opas, who was Ronald Ryan's lawyer to the end, stated that he still firmly believes that Ryan was innocent ...
Wilson's Blogmanac, founded on April 26, 2003. Dedicated to the 353 victims of Australia's shame, the SIEVX disaster,
and casualties of poverty and authority worldwide. Public Domain (an explanation is at Wikipedia), Pip Wilson, 2003-2011. But kindly email if you republish. I'm currently launching and promoting the free e-book, 'Microminibliss', for
those interested in my new links directory, Bellingen (Australia), and my Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). (Use Search for that.) So, kindly Google the word 'Microminibliss', and some links will come up, not 25 million in the usual Google manner.
Aphrodisia, festival of 
