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The Blogmanac: "On This Day" ... and much more
Think universally. Act terrestrially.
For in a hard-working society, it is rare and even subversive to celebrate too much, to revel and keep on reveling: to stop whatever you're doing and rave, pray, throw things, go into trances, jump over bonfires, drape yourself in flowers, stay up all night, and scoop the froth from the sea.
Anneli Rufus*
Let he who is without sin jail the first Stone. Protest sign outside court as Keith Richards and Mick Jagger appeared on drugs charges, May 10, 1967
Can't act, can't sing, balding, Can dance a little. A producer’s verdict of Fred Astaire (American entertainer born on May 10, 1899) after a screen test in the early 1930s
I don't know why everyone makes such a fuss about Fred Astaire's dancing. I did all the same steps, only backwards. And in heels! American entertainer, Ginger Rogers
I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using gases against uncivilised tribes. Great Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Winston S Churchill, referring to the Kurds. (Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister of Britain on May 10, 1940.)
Laura Jean Daniels's dislocation in time On May 10, 1973, columnist Joyce Hagelthorn reported in Michigan's Dearborn Press the strange experience of Laura Jean Daniels. Miss Daniels had been out walking late on a moonlit night. She looked at the moon, then back at her surroundings, but those surroundings had been transmuted into another place. She smelt the heavy scent of rose and honeysuckle in the air, and found herself before a thatched cottage where two lovers in old-fashioned clothes were embracing. Soon she found herself in her own street. No satisfactory explanation of her experience has been forthcoming.
We are plotting revolution! We will overthrow this bogus Republic and plant a government of righteousness in its stead. Victoria Claflin Woodhull, American feminist, who ran for President of the USA on May 10, 1872
May 10, 1872 She might not be a household word today, but in 1872, she was one of the most famous women in the United States of America, a woman a century ahead of her time. Maybe two.
American feminist, snake-oil saleswoman, entertainer, reformer, clairvoyant, orator, stock broker, publisher and free-love advocate Victoria Claflin Woodhull (born September 23, 1838) began her US presidential campaign, with black abolitionist Frederick Douglass as running mate – surely the most unusual and doomed campaign ever.
Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, had already invaded male territory as Wall Street brokers (the attractive Woodhull beguiled the mogul Commodore Vanderbilt, who backed their operation and gave them stock tips) and publishers of the political journal, Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. The journal published the first English translation of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Woodhull and Clafin spoke for free love, abortion, divorce, legalised prostitution and women's voting rights.
When election day arrived, Woodhull was in prison, charged with sending obscene literature through the mail. The offensive material was an article congratulating popular preacher Henry Ward Beecher for his relationship with a married woman, but chiding him for failing to openly advocate the free love he clearly practised. Read more
CodePink Tomorrow is Mothers Day. Sign the Mothers' Day Promise for Peace.
Britain's sex offences bill "The offence of indecent exposure will be reformed to one where a man or woman expose themselves knowing they might cause alarm or distress, and the penalties doubled to six months for a first offence."
Are we to understand that it will be legal in Britain to flash someone if one knows it might cause some response other than alarm or distress? Will it be a legal defence to have intended ridicule, disgust, hilarity or just mild annoyance?
Animation Express: The Oddgods Series "Oddgods 0 A mysterious technology which creates physical manifestations of mental images engages two kids in a post-apocalyptic city. Part 0 of 3. 2.2 MB, Flash"
Yahoo! News - Byrd Rips Bush's Aircraft Carrier Use "I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw," Byrd said on the Senate floor.
Psychedelic Republicans "That's right - the wait is finally over! It's wacky fun time with all-new Psychedelic RepublicansTM trading cards!"
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Editorial Who are you, dam-ned fiend, and what have you done with my David?!
(Is it something I ate, or is it something about the times in which we live? This is my second editorial today that might be a little splenetic -- see the Hollingworth diatribe below. Oh well, I'm on a roll so here come da spleen!)
I was a great admirer of David Horowitz from about the mid-1980s. That was about the time the former Ramparts editor was copping a lot of flak from the Left for having the balls to criticize Marxist-Leninist regimes such as Nicaragua and the USSR. I recall his seminal article, A Speech to My Former Comrades on the Left (Commentary, June ’86 -- not on the WWW as far as I can see); having been saying most of those things all through the Cold War (and all the flak I copped!) I was relieved to see them being said by a prominent New Left activist.
I read with rapt attention a couple of his books, including his memoir, Radical Son. Horowiz was a red diaper baby and his anecdotes about a childhood with Communist parents make fascinating reading. I especially loved the bit where he recounted his parents picketing (like most of the Left, whether Leninist or not) with signs saying "The Rosenbergs Are Innocent": Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were family friends, fellow Communists who the Horowitz family and all their comrades knew were as guilty as hell of passing nuke secrets to their beloved Soviet Union, which Horowitz now correctly identifies as the most murderous regime ever to exist, along with Communist China.
Destructive generation, co-authored with Peter Collier, gives important insights into people and movements that Horowitz knew well while editor of the world's most influential New Left magazine. What he experienced with the yippies and hippies, and the murderous Black Panthers, is gripping reading. (It was what he knew about the Panthers that sowed the seeds of his break with the Left, but it took him some years to put the pieces together in his own mind.)
Unfortunately, since Horowitz's now rather celebrated disconfirmation with his commitments and those of his erstwhile comrades, he has drifted to the US Empire Right with an exponentially increasing momentum. He now seems to want to out-NeoCon the NeoCons. His FrontPage magazine/Center for the Study of Popular Culture, five or six years ago, seemed to me to hold some hope for intelligent discussion of the Culture Wars and politics. I used to recommend them to everyone, not because I agreed with everything Horowitz was spouting -- not by a long chalk -- but because I had confidence that he was doing what I try to do: grok the whole Left/Right thing and, eclectically perhaps, propose new paradigms. Now I'm linking Horowitz as an example of how the mighty are fallen, and how silly things can get. Horowitz is now just slightly to the left of Heinrich Himmler. Somewhere on the Damascus Freeway, the Great Man dropped his torch along with the denims and guarachi sandals. In order to distance himself from the scum of the New Left (and hooray for that), he's adopted the economic rationalism that is destroying the globe and which cares not one whit for human beings, especially if they are tinted and/or poor. Vale Jerry Rubin, John Lennon, Che Guevara and Bobby Seale. Welcome Francis Fukuyama, George W Bush and Milton Friedman.
Horowitz has a column in Jewish World Review, and another at Salon.com. In these, as well as in FrontPage magazine, a lot of his commentary makes sense, as he criticizes the 'acceptability' of the likes of Angela Davis and many unreconstructed Communists. It is hard to fault much of Horowitz's critique of anti-anti-Communism, and he has a good grasp of the role of ideology in culture. I often nod my head when reading him -- and then, whammo!, he comes out with a statement like "The Mideast blood bath is not about land -- it's about religion. The Israelis' great crime? They're Jews." Or he gets incredibly Puritan about modern culture. Or he condemns progressive ideas as neo-Communist. One cannot deny the influence of Marxism on contemporary Left politics, and one cannot decry Horowitz's condemnation of the Left for its interminable silence on its own crimes, but Horowitz seems to be stuck in that old groove of "If you are not with us, you're agin us". He still wears long hair and a beard, but one suspects most accoutrements of even slightly alternative thought or culture are anathema to St David of Tarsus.
How could such a thing happen? It must be a complex matter, but I'm reminded of a psychology study many years ago. The researchers wondered why people who had had a major disconfirmation in their belief system (such as people who predict the end of the world, or a UFO invasion -- things that don't happen to their schedule) seemed not to stop believing, but to believe twice as hard, and to redouble their efforts at proselytising. Perhaps you know the study and can point me to it online.*
After studying many such subjects, the researchers concluded that the people who had suffered the disconfirmation probably tried to convert everyone else so that they didn't look so silly. It's an embarrassment thing. That is, if the whole world believed what they did, they wouldn't look like fools. Such unconscious motivations were imputed by the researchers to cults such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and Millerites (Seventh Day Adventists), both of which had predicted certain dates for the return of Jesus Christ. When Jesus didn't show up on time, the cults actually grew.
Your almanackist was ever a poor judge of character, and an even worse mind reader. However, I think there might well be something in this hypothesis to partly explain the strange transmogrification of the radical son, David Horowitz, into Donald Rumsfeld's doppelganger. Strange, huh?
*(I think it might be Lebra, Takie Sugiyama. "The Logic of Salvation," International Journal of Social Psychiatry 16, 1969: 45-53, but I can't find it online to confirm -- see http://www.mille.org/scholarship/bibliography/bibliosubjects/413.html.)
Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done. John Brown, American abolitionist, born on May 9, 1900; speaking in court before being sentenced to death
Festival of the Lemuria, Festival of Ghosts, ancient Rome (also 11th and 13th May) Lemures were wandering spirits of the departed. They were said to revisit their homes at this time, and were shown respect by the Roman people, who set aside a week to appease them.
At midnight, each household’s male head would wash his hands in spring water, then throw away one black bean for each resident of the household. He then washed his hands again, and clashed bronze cymbals together to summon the spirits. This ritual was repeated on the 11th and 13th of this month.
Late Night Live - Iraq, Regime Change, and the Debate the Left Had to Have "Four speakers take part in this program, which is devoted to a debate of the times. The war in Iraq brought on a fierce public debate, in particular about whether or not war was justified to remove a brutal dictator. It is a debate that has split the 'Left' around the world, raised many questions about the peace movement, and signalled a shift of ideological lines."
Australia's Governor-General must resign Australia's Governor-General has said he will not resign, but resign he must, and without delay.
Rev. Dr Peter Hollingworth is facing an unprecedented barrage of pressure for him to resign as Australia's head of state, following this week's two new rounds of stunning revelations. It is clear now to the Australian public that while he was Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, he helped cover up the crimes of pedophile priests and actually allowed them to continue working in parish duties where they came in regular contact with altar boys and parishioners' children.
Hollingworth faced a similar situation early last year when it was also patently clear that his attitude to the abhorrent crime of child sexual abuse was one of passive acceptance. Indeed, on television he went as far as to suggest that a 14-year-old girl who had been serially raped by a cleric had been in some way responsible for the outrage. As an ABC journalist succinctly put it, Hollingworth forgot the first law of holes: when you're in one, stop digging. After her abuse and control by the priest, the girl pleaded with Archbishop Hollingworth for the priest not to be allowed to preach, but the good reverend doctor had, incredibly, dismissed her pleas. What sort of man could do that? Certainly not one who should be allowed to hold such high office. He scarcely deserves a job as janitor at the G-G's mansion - not until he shows profound remorse, and not until he has made amends more than the limp apologies such as he has proffered.
Even before the pedophile debacle, one respected commentator suggested Peter Hollingworth should never have "given up his day job", as he suffers from terminal foot-in-mouth disease and seems unaware of his actual legal role in Australian government. He appears to have confused his role with that of our democratically elected representatives (they who consistently confuse their role with that of democratically elected leaders).
Australia has a very silly and archaic method of governance under which the Queen of England's representative is, for reasons completely gibberish to your almanackist, de facto head of state. We appear to be stuck with this anomaly for a while as our conservative Prime Minister, John ("Little Johnny") Howard not long ago presented the people with a Machiavellian referendum on whether the nation should become a republic, offering the public a choice of false alternatives that split the majority republican vote and gave the monarchist minority the ascendancy. (Just as badly, Howard appointed - for the PM appoints the G-G - a churchman to the position of Governor-General, thus muddying the waters around the separation of church and state and exemplifying some old biases that abound in our culture. Imagine if Howard had appointed a head honcho of the Church of Scientology, a Tibetan Lama, a Mormon Bishop or a Pope of my ownChurch of the Sub-Genius. Hey, now there's a job I might go for! I love the G-G's shiny medals and salary!)
Now we are stuck with the likes of Peter Hollingworth, whose de facto power is said to be minimal but whose de jure power is actually quite great. We must not forget that on November 11, 1975 it was a drunken Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, who sacked the elected government of Gough Whitlam in Australia's greatest ever constitutional crisis.
In other developments, the current Archbishop of Brisbane, Dr Phillip Aspinall has announced that 157 new cases of sex abuse have come to his attention since he replaced Peter Hollingworth as Brisbane's Archbishop in 2001.
Now even conservative rags are calling for the G-G to step down, vide the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's The Age, whose May 3 editorial sub-headlined boldly, "If the Governor-General does not step down, he should be sacked".
Yesterday, Bishop Hollingworth's hole was dug even deeper as he publicly stated that he had requested the court to lift a suppression order against an accusation of rape that is being made against him in court. The complainant, Rosemarie Anne Jarmyn, has died since starting the action, but it continues. Ironically, I think it likely that Peter Hollingworth will gain more public sympathy from this stunning revelation. I myself, who wishes him to resign, feel such sympathy, as to be falsely accused is a most terrible thing. One must wait till the facts have been revealed before drawing conclusions.
Meanwhile, Johnny Howard is overseas playing lapdog to George Bush and Tony Blair and glorying in having brought down a dictator without suffering as much as a paper cut themselves, glad as hell that he's out of the country and hoping against hope that Hollingworth falls on his own sword before Howard returns home with some of Blair's birthday cake and probably a very embarrassing ten-gallon hat on his bald pate.
One of the most disturbing things to emanate from the Hollingworth controversy now filling the airwaves is the frequent reference by the Governor-General's many supporters to the G-G's acknowledged "error of judgement". Politicians, pundits and priests intone with weighty words about the poor chap's grave mistake. poor fellow. What a hard time he must be having, tsk tsk.
To my mind, acts of pedophilia may indeed be ameliorated by the behaviour and the age of a child, and to deny this is to behave like a puritan ostrich. Furthermore, the age of consent is an arbitrary and culturally specific cut-off point. Having said that, in cases such as those involved in the Hollingworth scandal, and I used the word deliberately, the term "error of judgement" is a sly euphemism for the aiding and abetting of a crime involving the abuse of the power of a strong individual over a weak one. It should be punishable as such, like assault and battery or theft, and those who would protect the perpetrator should be liable to prosecution. Those who protect the protector should at least be mightily ashamed of themselves.
Sexual abuse of minors, to this writer's mind, is up there with the most heinous of crimes. I do not recall those with knowledge of muders and burglaries being reprimanded by judges for their "errors of judgement". It seems to me that they often find themselevs in the same prisons as the murderers and burglars they are protecting, as accomplices after the fact. Hollingworth, we must never forget, not only did not report the pederast priests to the police, he refused (despite the pleas of the injured parties) to remove them from their sinecures and allowed them to continue working amongst boys and girls. Boys and girls who are taught, by well-meaning but misguided parents and a compliant culture, to view these mortal men as demigods.
In many ways, I like Hollingworth, but it's time for him to walk. In this I concur with the great majority of the Australian population. Moreover, I would take it one step further. Despite the Governor-General's avuncular nature, his great wealth and potentate lifestyle, his palatial residence, good looks and vice-regal bearing, why should he not be charged? If there is a law under which he, like the wives and brothers of video-stealing junkies, can be charged as an aider and abetter or accomplice to a crime far worse than pinching an appliance, then let him be face a court as non-elite people do.
Will this happen? In this country, maybe when Hell freezes over.
Happy Furry Day! This ancient celebration is held at Helston, Cornwall, UK, on May 8. Furry Day, which is derived from the Latin feriae (festivals, holidays), in the 18th century was incorrectly amended to Flora and in the 19th century the [Furry] dance was called the Floral Dance. It is derived from a pre-Christian festivity and is seen in some other towns, such as Padstow’s well-known April 30 celebrations. In its present form prominent townsfolk dance through the town.
Feast of the Apparition of St Michael It is not clear which of St Michael’s several appearances is celebrated. He is prince of the angels as opposed to Lucifer and the principal guardian of souls against the powers of evil. In heraldry, his ensign is a banner hanging on a cross, armed as Victory, with a dart in one hand and a cross on his forehead, with the saint also weighing souls in scales.
Happy birthday (1930) Gary Snyder American poet; main character (‘Japhy Ryder’) in Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums
t r u t h o u t - Real American Agenda Now Becoming Clear "In the early days of the war on Iraq, American planes started bombing [Khalq's] bases. But the Khalq PR machines swung into action in Washington to get the guerrillas spared. In a secret ceasefire deal, signed April 15 but not released until Wednesday, the Bush boys agreed to let the Khalq be. The group even gets to keep all its weapons. So the Khalq moves from Saddam's patronage to Bush's."
Pip's Picks was my first blog, an experiment in the technology. I've learned a lot, including the fact that Pip's Picks is superfluous to the much better and bigger blog I've now created here.
From today, to make it easier for you as a visitor, and for me as well, I've decided to enter WWW picks here, at Wilson's Blogmanac. The Blogmanac, if Blogger's archiving system works as they say, should be a vibrant, constantly refreshing home for the sorts of things members and visitors find in the emal magazines and the 1,350-plus pages of Wilson's Almanac Scriptorium. I'm very excited about the prospect.
Bringing Pip's Picks to this site will make the Blogmanac a much more useful online resource, and I intend also to provide a lot more daily Almanac material here. Subscribers to the free daily ezine will, I believe, find it a useful adjunct to the ezine, so I'm going to place a link to this page each day in the ezine.
I hope you'll bookmark this weblog and check in each day for the realization of the Almanac's mission:
"To give readers many reasons and many ways to carpe diem! ... seize the day!"
I'll try to make it a very uplifting experience, unique on the Internet, if I can. With your help, suggestions and comments, I think we can do some good stuff here. By the way, if you post comments, they are for the public. If you want to comment to me, please email me. Thanks, and have fun.
Abundance and gratitude,
Pip Wilson Almanackist
PS There are still hundreds of great links archived at Pip's Picks so I'll leave that page linked in the navigation bar (left) for a while. News and current affairs will henceforth be here and at the new Wilson's Almanac Yellow Pages.
ACTION ALERT: TV Not Concerned by Cluster Bombs, DU: "That's just the way life is in Iraq"
May 6, 2003
"Media have been quick to declare the U.S. war against Iraq a success, but in-depth investigative reporting about the war's likely health and environmental consequences has been scarce. Two important issues getting shortchanged in the press are the U.S.'s controversial use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium weapons.
"According to a May 5 search of the Nexis database, there have been no in-depth reports about cluster bombs on ABC, CBS or NBC's nightly news programs since the start of the war. There have been, however, a few passing mentions of cluster bombs-- enough so that viewers may be aware of their existence. Not so with depleted uranium. Since the beginning of the year, the words "depleted uranium" have not been uttered once on ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News or NBC Nightly News, according to Nexis ...
"Human Rights Watch -- which warned for months of the danger and possible illegality of using cluster bombs near populated areas-- has likewise argued (4/25/03) that "U.S. claims that cluster munitions have not caused significant damage to civilians in Iraq are highly misleading." The group has criticized the U.S. and Britain for failing to "come clean" about how many cluster bombs were dropped and where, so that civilians can be protected (4/29/03).
"The repercussions of the U.S. and British use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium weapons will be felt in Iraq for a long time to come. It is essential that U.S. media push for a full accounting on these issues from the Pentagon.
ACTION: Please ask ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly news to seriously investigate the U.S.'s use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium in Iraq.
ABC's World News Tonight Phone: 212-456-4040 mailto:PeterJennings@abcnews.com
CBS Evening News Phone: 212-975-3691 mailto:evening@cbsnews.com
As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.
For more information, see: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, " Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium": http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/95178_du12.shtml
Human Rights Watch's resources about cluster bombs: http://www.hrw.org/arms/clusterbombs.php"
See also Iraq Body Count | Comment & Analysis HOW MANY CIVILIANS WERE KILLED BY CLUSTER BOMBS? "The Pentagon says 1: Iraq Body Count says at least 200.
May 7, 1968 Parisian students and workers continued their revolt in a nearly successful revolution. The students declared that they were ready for a dialogue on three conditions: withdrawal of the police forces from the Latin Quarter; release and immediate amnesty for the imprisoned students; reopening the Sorbonne and Nanterre. Four hundred and thirty-four demonstrators were arrested on May 7. The police also restored the anarchist Danny Cohn-Bendit's residence permit (but only for a short period). Source
Misasa Hanayu Matsuri, or Flower Spa festival, at Misasa (Spa), Tottori Prefecture, Japan Misasa is the 'second-best' of Japan’s celebrated healing hot springs. This is a festival to Yakushi, god of medicine. Some of the events are: a flower market; tug of war; float procession; geisha parade; lantern parade, and a fireworks display.
Greece: Set sail ... May 6 is St George's Day in the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition Greek sailors’ proverb ”On the day of the Cross, cross your sails and tie your ropes, rest in harbour. On St George’s Day rise and set sail again.”
Nothing easier. One step beyond the pole, you see, and the north wind becomes a south one. Robert Peary, born on May 6, 1856, explaining how he knew when he had reached the North Pole
Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil. Maximilien Robespierre, born on May 6, 1758, Déclaration des Droits de l'homme
The great question, which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?" Sigmund Freud, born on May 6, 1856
I leave this world without a regret. Last words of Henry David Thoreau, American author and naturalist, who died on this day in 1862. (One source says his last words were “Moose. Indian.”)
May 6, 1782 James Price, a Guildford, England chemist, began an experiment (concluded May 25) to turn mercury (another source says sulphur, and another, half a grain of ‘a certain powder of deep red colour’ with some heated mercury. Yet another refers to a white powder with mercury, borax and nitre, as well as silver.) into gold. He presented some of his supposed gold to King George III, and was awarded the degree of MD by Oxford University. Months later, when asked by Sir Joseph Banks (the botanist famed for his work in Australia with Capt. James Cook) and others of the Royal Society to repeat his experiment publicly, he called a group of members together and drank prussic acid in front of them, falling dead.
One source tells the event without mentioning that Price was found out, as though he had in fact discovered the alchemists’ ‘philosophers’ stone’ – the ability to make gold from base materials.
On September 24, 1541, one of history’s greatest alchemists, Paracelsus (born on November 26, 1493), made his will, but there was no mention of gold or silver, the alchemists’ holy grail. His only legacy was a 125 grams (approx. 4 oz Troy/Apoth.) silver chalice. Paracelsus died in 1541, possibly from a fall (he was a heavy drinker).
Exit Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5, 1821, in exile on the remote island of St Helena. Not long before his death he told his secretary, “There is no more oil in the lamp”, but his last words are said to be either “Mon Dieu - la nation Française - Tête d’armée or “Josephine”. Aged 51, he became ill and went into a coma on this day, dying a few hours later.
Napoleon’s willows It is said that all the weeping willow trees in Australia are descended from cuttings taken from trees that surround Napoleon’s grave on St Helena, brought by British people when their ships stopped at the island en route. The willow is by tradition a sad tree. People who have lost their love place mourning garlands on willow branches and exiles hung their harps on them. "She is in her willows" implies the mourning of a female for her lost mate.
May 5, 1945: A US B-29 bomber was shot down over Japan and eight American airmen prisoners were made available for medical experiments at Kyushu Imperial University. The eight were dissected while they were still alive. This is the only occasion on which Americans became part of the cruel practices associated with Lt Gen. Shiro Ishii’s Unit 731, and the only time at which such experiments were done in Japan. Unit 731 was most active in China in a little known chapter of human bestiality in which perhaps hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were deliberately killed. The personnel behind the unit went relatively unpunished as General Douglas MacArthur and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff secured their immunity from retribution in exchange for vast amounts of documentation of research conducted (upon Chinese civilians) into biological warfare. More
"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice. From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, who wrote it for Alice Liddell who was born on May 4, 1852
Well, Jim, I haven't read any of your books but I'll have to someday because they must be good considering how well they sell. Nora Joyce, to her novelist husband, on May 4, 1940
The first Sunday in May On the first Sunday after May Day, in Penzance, Cornwall, UK, people (usually two or three families together) used to visit Rose-hill, Poltier and other adjacent towns, for recreation. They would carry ingredients to make the ‘country cake’ or ‘heavy cake’ made from flour, cream, sugar, and currants. They also visited farmhouses where they ate junket and yoghurt cut in diamonds, and drank tea and punch.
First Sunday in May: Humane Sunday, USA The first Sunday in May is dedicated to the prevention of child abuse and cruelty to animals. It is sponsored by the American Humane Society.
First Sunday morning of May (Old Style calendar) at Craigie Well, Blackisle of Ross Many years ago people used to come in large numbers, every first Sunday morning in May, to a sacred spring called Craigie Well. A large briar bush nearby would be covered with threads and bunting, as offerings to the well (similar to oriental prayer flags). The waters, if drunk before sunrise, had healing powers - or so it is said. The whole day had the atmosphere of a fair.
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