Ambarvalia, Festival of Dea Dia (dates of commemoration varied)
This ancient Roman festival celebrates the goddess in her aspect as the cosmic mother of humanity. A goddess of growth, Dea Dia is identified with Ceres, goddess of agriculture, grain, and the love a mother bears for her child (known as Demeter in ancient Greece). Her priests were the Fratres Arvales, who honoured her in this feast. During the Ambarvalia, the priests blessed the fields and made offerings to the underworld powers.
This festival, which involved rites performed on the outskirts of the city, resembles a later, Christian, ritual from around this time of year, the ‘beating of the bounds’ of the Rogation days, which we shall be looking at in the Almanac next week.
All of a half-century ago-when I was a little boy on the farm in my native New England - I remember asking all kinds of questions. What is the Earth made of? Why is the sky blue? Why is the sunset red? How does a bird soar? Why does a brook gurgle? How does an earthworm crawl? Why is a dewdrop round? Why does corn pop? Why does a wood fire crackle? And a thousand like questions. To a few I got the answers in reading. To some I got the answers in dialogue with my Mama and my Papa and with my teachers. Some I thought out – not too well, to be sure – but I was learning to think. By this device – ever questioning – ever uncertain – I gathered up a rather massive body of knowledge.
Professor Julius Sumner Miller, American science populariser, born on May 17, 1909
More Millerisms:
The schools destroy the holy spirit of curiosity.
I’m all for having the leaders of nations meet on the open field with a sword.
Why is it so?
Look it up!
Enthusiasm. Without it we are dead.
Oh, yes! I find this place where I get the mostest light – the mostest light. The mostest. That's the superlative of 'most'. I'm reciting something of Euclid. Beautiful – you should read it!
My wife engages in some imaginative adventures, and she put that together from turkey bones. Isn't that fantastic? Look at that. Look at that creature. Out – born out of her mind.
1909 Professor Julius Sumner Miller, American science populariser, best known in Canada for his ‘mad professor’ work on TV’s The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (this page has audio files) and in Australia for his hit show, Why Is It So?. In the 1950s, he was Disney’s ‘Professor Wonderful’ on The Mickey Mouse Club.
The day The Professor called me a goddamn sonofabitch
It was long ago, about 1986. The Professor admonished me. "I must make it clear. Editors must publish my words precisely as I instruct them to. I will not tolerate misspelling. I frequently tell editors exactly how to present my words."
So began my meeting with the late Professor Julius Sumner Miller, that wonderfully cantankerous Merlin who had been a part of Australian TV almost as long as anyone could remember. His off-screen was no different from his famed on-screen eccentricity. Hadn't I suspected that? The strange ways of the wacky Professor Wonderful, as Disney called him, could only be the product of a life whose eccentricities had worn deep channels in the man by their constant coursing through his being.
I was then editor of a magazine named Simply Living, and this was an assignment I loved setting myself. When introduced to our photographer, Graeme Davey, the Professor asked me for the spelling of the surname of the British scientist Sir Humphrey Davy. On discovering my ignorance, Professor Miller started proving the answer— D-A-V-Y — by reading from a book on the shelf.
"But you're quoting from your own book." I baited him.
"What of it?"
"You can't go to a book of your own writing as corroboration of your claim that Davy is spelt D-A-V-Y." I needed to stand my ground to not be swamped by this expansive personality.
"Notice," said the Professor, in the characteristic manner he always exhibited on his Why is It So? TV program, which, as I said, was his only manner. "Notice, if the editor had had any competence, would he not have corrected ..."
"But you might have told the editor not to change a word," I broke in. How would he react to this cheek from me? He paused long, looked at the others, and turned to me with a sheepish smile.
"Wilson, you're a right honourable son-of-a-bitch!"
Read the rest of this editorial
“Finally, a word on how to tackle a question. Read it. Read it quietly. Read it out loud to yourself or to someone who listens intently. Get your IMAGINATION in gear ! Draw a picture in your mind or a real one on paper or on the sand with your finger or with the toe of your boot. Get into dialogue on it. Use your hands - your arms - gesture - flail them - get excited! - show a passion! Find an analog - what is it like? Talk to yourself. Get 'mad' with it. At the table engage your family - do the experiment - come alive! Soon a faint light emerges - the light grows - an understanding comes forth. Soon too the enthousiasmos - that divine possession - so long fettered by inactivity - blossoms forth. Leonardo put it well: "Quiet water becomes stagnant. Iron rusts from disuse. So doth inactivity sap the vigour of the mind."”
JS Miller
Click to see a letter the Prof wrote me
This ancient Roman festival celebrates the goddess in her aspect as the cosmic mother of humanity. A goddess of growth, Dea Dia is identified with Ceres, goddess of agriculture, grain, and the love a mother bears for her child (known as Demeter in ancient Greece). Her priests were the Fratres Arvales, who honoured her in this feast. During the Ambarvalia, the priests blessed the fields and made offerings to the underworld powers.
This festival, which involved rites performed on the outskirts of the city, resembles a later, Christian, ritual from around this time of year, the ‘beating of the bounds’ of the Rogation days, which we shall be looking at in the Almanac next week.
Professor Wonderful
All of a half-century ago-when I was a little boy on the farm in my native New England - I remember asking all kinds of questions. What is the Earth made of? Why is the sky blue? Why is the sunset red? How does a bird soar? Why does a brook gurgle? How does an earthworm crawl? Why is a dewdrop round? Why does corn pop? Why does a wood fire crackle? And a thousand like questions. To a few I got the answers in reading. To some I got the answers in dialogue with my Mama and my Papa and with my teachers. Some I thought out – not too well, to be sure – but I was learning to think. By this device – ever questioning – ever uncertain – I gathered up a rather massive body of knowledge.
Professor Julius Sumner Miller, American science populariser, born on May 17, 1909
More Millerisms:
The schools destroy the holy spirit of curiosity.
I’m all for having the leaders of nations meet on the open field with a sword.
Why is it so?
Look it up!
Enthusiasm. Without it we are dead.
Oh, yes! I find this place where I get the mostest light – the mostest light. The mostest. That's the superlative of 'most'. I'm reciting something of Euclid. Beautiful – you should read it!
My wife engages in some imaginative adventures, and she put that together from turkey bones. Isn't that fantastic? Look at that. Look at that creature. Out – born out of her mind.
1909 Professor Julius Sumner Miller, American science populariser, best known in Canada for his ‘mad professor’ work on TV’s The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (this page has audio files) and in Australia for his hit show, Why Is It So?. In the 1950s, he was Disney’s ‘Professor Wonderful’ on The Mickey Mouse Club.
The day The Professor called me a goddamn sonofabitch
It was long ago, about 1986. The Professor admonished me. "I must make it clear. Editors must publish my words precisely as I instruct them to. I will not tolerate misspelling. I frequently tell editors exactly how to present my words."
So began my meeting with the late Professor Julius Sumner Miller, that wonderfully cantankerous Merlin who had been a part of Australian TV almost as long as anyone could remember. His off-screen was no different from his famed on-screen eccentricity. Hadn't I suspected that? The strange ways of the wacky Professor Wonderful, as Disney called him, could only be the product of a life whose eccentricities had worn deep channels in the man by their constant coursing through his being.
I was then editor of a magazine named Simply Living, and this was an assignment I loved setting myself. When introduced to our photographer, Graeme Davey, the Professor asked me for the spelling of the surname of the British scientist Sir Humphrey Davy. On discovering my ignorance, Professor Miller started proving the answer— D-A-V-Y — by reading from a book on the shelf.
"But you're quoting from your own book." I baited him.
"What of it?"
"You can't go to a book of your own writing as corroboration of your claim that Davy is spelt D-A-V-Y." I needed to stand my ground to not be swamped by this expansive personality.
"Notice," said the Professor, in the characteristic manner he always exhibited on his Why is It So? TV program, which, as I said, was his only manner. "Notice, if the editor had had any competence, would he not have corrected ..."
"But you might have told the editor not to change a word," I broke in. How would he react to this cheek from me? He paused long, looked at the others, and turned to me with a sheepish smile.
"Wilson, you're a right honourable son-of-a-bitch!"
Read the rest of this editorial
“Finally, a word on how to tackle a question. Read it. Read it quietly. Read it out loud to yourself or to someone who listens intently. Get your IMAGINATION in gear ! Draw a picture in your mind or a real one on paper or on the sand with your finger or with the toe of your boot. Get into dialogue on it. Use your hands - your arms - gesture - flail them - get excited! - show a passion! Find an analog - what is it like? Talk to yourself. Get 'mad' with it. At the table engage your family - do the experiment - come alive! Soon a faint light emerges - the light grows - an understanding comes forth. Soon too the enthousiasmos - that divine possession - so long fettered by inactivity - blossoms forth. Leonardo put it well: "Quiet water becomes stagnant. Iron rusts from disuse. So doth inactivity sap the vigour of the mind."”
JS Miller
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