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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*
*Ø* Blogmanac | Australia's former G-G slams 'Honest John' gov't over refugees The following report from Australia's (publicly funded) national broadcaster, ABC, shows that it is just not wild-eyed radicals who condemn the Australian government for its racist policies over refugees. Now the highly respectable Sir William Deane has entered the fray. The reference to "children overboard" is to do with a very serious scandal in which the Howard Government blatantly lied to the Australian people that asylum-seeking adults were threatening to toss their kids off their leaky refugee boats, a tactic that inflamed racism and helped them win an election.
One of the aims of Wilson's Almanac is to draw attention to such lies and policies and to reveal the concentration camps that Australia places refugees in. It's good to see the likes of Bill Deane calling Howard a liar, just as the former UN weapons inspector, Australian Richard Butler did over the invasion of Iraq. The greatest satisfaction comes, because Howard's nickname used to be "Honest John", but he has turned out to be probably the most deceptive and racist 'leader' this country has ever had.
Australia: "The office of Governor-General has caused the Prime Minister some big headaches in the last few weeks. As if its last occupant, Peter Hollingworth, had not caused John Howard enough grief, now the man who filled the post before him is back in the spotlight. Sir William Deane has accused the Howard Government of inflaming prejudice and intolerance, and of acting untruthfully in the infamous children overboard affair." Read on
*Ø* Blogmanac | May 31 | 1921 Tulsa's night of shame US: On this day, more than 300 were killed in a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
This sad (and little known) day marks the worst racial violence in American history. Angered by false rumors, whites were shooting throughout the night of the 31st, looting and burning in the early hours of June 1st. Earlier on this day, the Tulsa Tribune newspaper ran a front page article entitled Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator, and a back page editorial entitled To Lynch Negro Tonight.
The accusation proved false. However, by the time this was determined, the black community of Greenwood was destroyed by a white mob, who murdered many and razed the entire 35 block area.
*Ø* Blogmanac | May 30 | 542 AD According to tradition, the death of King Arthur According to legend, King Arthur was the son of King Uther Pendragon and Igerna, wife of Corlois, Duke of Cornwall who Uther had cuckolded. They later married when Corlois died in battle. It is unlikely Arthur really existed, and he is not found in chronicles before Norman times, five centuries after his supposed death.
On the death of Uther, Arthur became king. He went to war against the Anglo-Saxons, whom he defeated with great slaughter in a place called Mount Badon. He then went on to defeat the Scots and Picts, then conquered Ireland, Iceland, Gothland and the Orcades, followed by Denmark, Norway and Gaul. He supposedly defeated the Gallic governor Flollo at Paris, after nine years of trying to subdue the Gauls.
He returned to his native land, gathered all the princes together and was crowned again, after which representatives from Rome bore a letter from Lucius Tiberius, the procurator of Rome, demanding that he relinquish all the lands that he had taken from Rome, and also that he pay the tribute that Britain had formerly paid to the Imperial power.
King Arthur entrusted his kingdom to his nephew Modred and his queen Guanhumara (Guinevere), and crossed the Channel to France, disembarking at Mont St Michael, where he slew a Spanish giant, who had carried away Helena, the niece of Hoel of Brittany. Arthur engaged Tiberius in France, and defeated him. He was marching with his troops to Rome, passing the Alps, when he got disastrous news from Britain – Modred had conspired with and married the queen, taking the crown. Arthur left half his forces in France under command of Hoel of Brittany, and landed the other half at Rutupiae, or Richborough, Guanhumara fleeing to a nunnery in penitence, where she spent the remainder of her days.
Modred was killed by Arthur's men. After three battles with him, Arthur finally killed him in battle, but was mortally wounded himself. They carried Arthur to the Isle of Avalon (Glastonbury) but were unable to heal him. This tale of the legendary King Arthur comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth and was written in 1147.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
*Ø* Blogmanac | May 30 | Did the Communists starve Pasternak? Boris Pasternak, Russian winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature, in the years leading up to his death on May 30, 1968, suffered appalling persecution by his own government. He had won the Nobel Prize, but, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn after him, was told that if he left the USSR to attend the awards ceremony he would not be permitted to return. He was even expelled from the union of Soviet writers.
Evidence that the Communist regime of the Soviet Union might have wilfully starved Boris Pasternak to death emerged in a book, Moscow: Under the Skin, written by an Italian journalist, Viro Roberti.
Roberti interviewed the great author of Dr Zhivago several times during the ordeal. On March 15, 1960, Roberti met Pasternak, who was emaciated and sickly looking. The novelist told the interviewer, ”I have been expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers so that I shall starve. No one publishes my poetry or my translations anymore, which was my daily bread. The first payments from my editor have been confiscated by order of the authorities …”
Pasternak died ten weeks later, on May 30, 1960. The monopoly State, it seems, had exercised the full logic of its power, disallowing a genius, who had been but mildly critical of communism in Dr Zhivago, the right even to eat.
(More: Schwarz, Frederick, The Three Faces of Revolution, Capitol Hill Press, Washington, 1972, 43-47)
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
*Ø* Blogmanac | How does Dyson make water go uphill?
James Dyson has invented a novel garden fountain in which water appears to flow uphill.
"A set of four glass ramps positioned in a square clearly show water travelling up each of them before it pours off the top, only to start again at the bottom of the next ramp."
*Ø* Blogmanac | Bowling for Columbine soon on DVD Michael Moore's Oscar-winning documentary will be out on DVD in August. You can pre-order through Amazon (see the button in our left-hand column) and forget about it till it arrives at your address as soon as it's released. (US and Canada only. This DVD will probably not be viewable in other countries due to format.) The Almanac will earn a small commission on sales.
Michael Moore's superb documentary (following in the footsteps of Roger & Me and The Big One) tackles a meaty subject: gun control. Moore skilfully lays out arguments surrounding the issue and short-circuits them all, leaving one impossible question: why do Americans kill each other more often than people in any other democratic nation? Bret Fetzer
*Ø* Blogmanac | China Jails Four Internet Activists BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court has jailed four Internet activists for up to 10 years on subversion charges after 20 months in legal limbo, a human rights group said on Thursday. The Beijing Intermediate People's Court sentenced geologist Jin Haike, 27, and Xu Wei, 28, a journalist for Beijing's Consumer Daily, to 10 years in prison each on Wednesday, the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights in China said.
Yang Zili, a 31-year-old computer engineer, and Zhang Honghai, a 29-year-old freelance writer, got eight years each. The court declined to comment. China has jailed a number of Internet writers in recent years as part of a crackdown on dissent on the Web. The government has created a special Internet police force, filtered foreign sites and shut down others posting politically incorrect fare.
*Ø* Blogmanac | Wine tasting takes brains An Italian study of 14 men using MRI scans found that the seven of them who were wine experts used both hemispheres of the brain when they tasted wine. The rest used only the right one. According to the scientists the sommeliers' intellectual capabilities allowed them to appreciate the wine more than ordinary people do. Source I see. They do MRI scans for this?
*Ø* Blogmanac | May 29 | 1453 Did a Pacific volcano change Western history?
500 years ago today: The 'fall' of Constantinople was preceded by heavenly wonders On a Tuesday, Constantinople (now Istanbul) fell to the Turks, or, as it is said in the Muslim world, Constantinople was liberated. It was a major turning point in world history as Constantinople, founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine, was a seat of learning and the tangible presence of Western civilization in the East. It has been said that the flight of many scholarly refugees from Constantinople to Italy was the single most important mainspring of the European Renaissance. Yet the antagonists of the siege of Constantinople had the minds of the Middle Ages era, and the effect of ‘ominous’ heavenly wonders probably affected the outcome.
During the preceding weeks, the city had suffered many heavy rains and hailstorms. Being medieval men, the leaders believed that the Christian city would not fall to Sultan Mehmed’s siege unless there was a sign in the moon. Unfortunately for them, the moon went into a long and dark eclipse on May 22nd, displaying a thin crescent – the image of the Turkish standard flying over Mehmed's camp.
On the 26th, an unseasonal, thick fog fell on Constantinople. By nightfall, the fog lifted and the Christians were appalled by what they saw: the buildings of the city glowed in ominous shades of red. Even the enormous copper dome of the imposing cathedral, the Hagia Sophia (which has been a mosque ever since) appeared to be engulfed in flames, but it never burned. Phrantzes, a friend of the emperor, wrote that the light remained over the city for an entire night.
Nicolo Barbaro, A Venetian surgeon living in Constantinople at the time, later wrote:
At the first hour of the night, there appeared a wonderful sign in the sky, which was to tell Constantine the worthy, emperor of Constantinople, that his proud empire was to come to an end.... The moon rose, being at this time at the full...but it rose as if it were no more than a three-day moon, with only a little of it showing.... The moon stayed in this form for about four hours.
Following this there were more wild storms that certainly must have encouraged the Muslims to liberate a city that they believed belonged to them, and discouraged the Christians who believed the same with equal fervour.
The Greek chronicler, Kritovoulos of Imbros, wrote:
Such was the unheard-of and unprecedented violence of that storm and hail [that it] certainly foreshadowed the imminent loss of all, and .. .like a torrent of fiercest waters, it would carry away and annihilate everything.
Some scientists now believe that the strange heavenly phenomena came about due to the eruption of a volcano at Kuwae, Vanuata, in the Pacific earlier in the year. The volcanic dust that belched into the atmosphere contributed to the stormy weather, the unusually dark eclipse, the luminescent phenomena and the red skies.
Geologists reckon that Kuwae spewed out more than 32 cubic kilometres of molten rock with a violence two million times that of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. By contrast, the famous Krakatoa expelled less than one-third of that in 1883; Mount Pinatubo belched out only five cubic kilometres in 1991 and caused brilliant sunsets around the globe for months.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
*Ø* Blogmanac | What did you do during the African Holocaust? Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times: "In Congo, in which I've had a special interest ever since Tutsi rebels chased me through the jungle there for several days in 1997, 3.3 million people have died because of warfare there in the last five years, according to a study by the International Rescue Committee. That's half a Holocaust in a single country.
Our children and grandchildren may fairly ask, "So, what did you do during the African holocaust?"
Some African nations, like Uganda, Mauritius, Ghana and Mozambique, are booming; they show that African countries can thrive. But the failures outnumber the successes: child mortality rose in the 1990's in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia; primary school enrollments dropped in Cameroon, Lesotho, Mozambique and Tanzania; the number of malnourished children is growing across the continent.
"We are losing the battle against hunger," warns James Morris, the head of the World Food Program.
So it's time to rethink this continent. Africa itself has largely failed, and Western policies toward it have mostly failed as well."
*Ø* Blogmanac | May 29 | Well-dressing, Tissington, England on Ascension Day On Ascension Day* in Tissington, England, wells are traditionally dressed with flowers, and sometimes Bible verses are made out in letters of flowers. Well-dressing, practised in many other places throught Britain, is the art of decorating springs and wells with scenes, usually made from local plant life. The dressings are set in clay-filled wooden trays, mounted on a wooden frame and take up to seven days to complete.
Some believe the custom arose during a drought in Derbyshire in 1615, but it is known that the custom of well-dressing began in Celtic times. The wells of Tissington flowed throughout this time, and people from ten miles around drove their cattle there to drink, so at Ascension Day a thanksgiving custom came about.
We know that these kinds of traditions go back to antiquity, and the Romans also practised well-dressing. Seneca wrote "Where a spring rises or a river flows, there should we build altars and offer sacrifices". English kings Edgar and Canute both issued edicts prohibiting the pagan custom of worshipping of wells.
Wells are symbolic of purity, and May was always considered the best time to visit curative springs. Silence was to be kept going there and coming back, and the vessel used to take the water was not allowed to touch the ground. After the Reformation these customs were forbidden.
In another custom associated with today, farmers hung in their roof an egg laid on Ascension Day, in order to protect against lightning and fire.
Ascension is the end of the Easter season. During the 40-day period beginning with Easter Sunday, Christians celebrate the time when Jesus reappeared to some of His followers. This period ends on Ascension Day, or Ascension Thursday.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
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Thursday was named after the Viking god, Thor, and to the Vikings today was also the Festival of Mjollnir, Thor’s hammer, on a Thursday, at around the time that Christians celebrate Ascension Day. Mjollnir was made by Brok and Eitri and had enormous destructive abilities; it was associated with lightning. When thrown, it would return like a boomerang after hitting its target, and only Thor and Magni, his son, could manage to lift it. Today was marked by ritual contests such as trial by combat.
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Because the skies were opened to receive Christ on Ascension Day, any rain which falls then comes straight from Heaven: so it has special curative properties, being particularly good for bathing sore eyes. Water from holy wells is also uniquely efficacious if collected early on ‘Holy Thursday’ morning: and Ascensiontide or Whitsun are the favourite seasons for ‘well-dressing’. John Aubrey, Remains of Gentilism, 1688
*Ø* Blogmanac Amnesty slams Australia At last, some good news for asylum seekers downunder "Australia has been lashed by global human rights watchdog Amnesty International over tough counter-terrorism laws and the continued detention of asylum seekers.
"In its annual human rights report, released in London, Amnesty criticised the government over plans to give ASIO new interrogation powers which would see people detained for a week without charge ...
"In a pessimistic report, Amnesty said international paranoia about terrorism in the wake of September 11 had seen 50 years of hard-won human rights freedoms rolled back over the last year in 151 countries."
*Ø* Blogmanac | Amnesty launches Annual Report People around the world are more insecure today than at any time since the end of the Cold War, Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International said today at the launch of the organization's annual report.
"The war on Iraq dominated the international agenda for the past year, but away from the eyes of the world a myriad of 'forgotten' conflicts have taken a heavy toll on human rights and human lives, in places as diverse as Côte d'Ivoire, Colombia, Burundi, Chechnya and Nepal."
"Iraq and Israel and the Occupied Territories are in the news, Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo is not, despite the imminent threat of genocide," said Irene Khan. "Drawing attention to 'hidden' crises, protecting the rights of the 'forgotten victims' is the biggest challenge we face today."
At a time of heightened insecurity governments chose to ignore and undermine the collective system of security which the rule of international law represents. While claiming to bring justice to victims in Iraq, the United States has actively sought to undermine the International Criminal Court, the mechanism for universal justice.
The "war on terror", far from making the world a safer place, has made it more dangerous by curtailing human rights, undermining the rule of international law and shielding governments from scrutiny. It has deepened divisions among people of different faiths and origins, sowing the seeds for more conflict. The overwhelming impact of all this is genuine fear -- among the affluent as well as the poor.
Campaigns that ran throughout 2002 resulted in a number of successes. The organization succeeded in the release of individuals like former Russian prisoner of conscience Grigory Pasko, in obtaining justice for Sierra Leoneans with the establishment of a Special Court for that country and for global accountability with the entry into force of the International Criminal Court.
(or how to apologise without saying you're sorry) You know how a small child will say "the cup spilled the milk"? That's what comes to mind with the resignation speech by Australia's Governor-General, Dr Peter Hollingworth today.
"I truly regret the way the matter was handled and I apologise to those involved who have suffered as a consequence," he said. This is kid-speak for "I truly regret the way that I handled the matter ..." and reflects more credit on the $750-per-day PR consultants Hollingworth has engaged for weeks at taxpayers' expense than it does on the former Archbishop of Brisbane. While it took some courage to hang onto office for so long after being exposed for protecting paedophile clerics, and to apologise publicly to those who have suffered, it seems to this writer that something was lacking: the use of the active, rather than the passive voice.
His Excellency retires on $180,000 per annum, for life, courtesy of the Australian people. Like the Archbishop, we look after our own.
*Ø* Blogmanac | Death Sentence influenced by Old Testament Denver (Reuters) - A judge overturned a convicted murderer's death sentence because jurors consulted Biblical passages such as an "eye for an eye" during death-penalty deliberations.
Robert Harlan was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder of Rhonda Maloney, a waitress who was driving home from work when Harlan forced her car off the road.
In a five-day hearing last month, Harlan's attorneys argued that several jurors consulted biblical scripture during jury deliberations, particularly two Old Testament passages from Leviticus that read, "fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him." And, "whoever kills an animal shall restore it, but whoever kills a man shall be put to death."
While noting that Harlan's crimes "were among the most grievous, heinous and reprehensible" he had seen in 18 years on the bench, Adams County District Judge John J. Vigil said Friday that court officials failed to properly sequester the jury.
*Ø* Blogmanac | May 28 | Purification of Pythia, ancient Greece From about 1400 BCE, the shrine at Delphi, Greece, was sacred, probably to Gaia, the mother earth goddess, or to a snake goddess. Later, it became sanctified to Apollo (son of Zeus, god of the sun, light, youth, beauty, and prophesy), perhaps signifying a shift from matriarchal to patriarchal society, though this is uncertain and still a matter of academic enquiry and debate. Delphi gained its name from the dolphin, and Apollo was said to have visited the place as one of those sea mammals that barely survive today’s polluted Ionian sea. Snakes were part of Delphic lore until c. 800 BCE when Apollo was said to have slain the serpent guarded the sanctuary, establishing the oracle anew. (Thus, Apollo became a dragon-slayer, like St George, St Martha and Hercules.)
The serpent’s name was Python, and had been made from mud and slime by Gaia. At first the oracle priestess (sometimes two in shifts) could only be consulted on one day a year. She might have become entranced, by a drug perhaps; she answered questions in hexameter verse.
The priestess, Pythia, seated on a tripod above a crack in the earth, went into a trance while chewing laurel leaves. The temple priests formulated the oracle from the glossolalia (‘speaking in tongues’, as it is sometimes known in the Christian tradition) which the priestess spoke in her ecstasy. Every four years (the third of each Olympiad), the Pythian Games were held in honour of the priestess, the winners receiving a laurel wreath from the city of Tempe; Apollo himself had insituted these games so the world would never forget his great feat in slaying Python.
The leaders of ancient Greece relied on the Delphic oracle for her progostications and clairvoyance. King Croesus once simultaneously asked seven oracles “What is the King of Lydia doing now?” Only the Delphic oracle answered correctly that he was cooking a tortoise and a lamb in a pot of bronze.
Scientists have found that ethylene, rising up through fissures in the rock beneath the shrine, was probably the sweet-smelling vapour that put the priestess in her trance. We know of this vapour from the first-century CE writer, Plutarch (c. 45-125 CE), who, as a temple priest, was familiar with the shrine and reported that the priestess was under the influence of such a vapour. In his day, however, the vapours were weaker than in previous centuries, which may be attributed to changes in the bedrock beneath this fabled place.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
Click the thumb for larger image of Apollo slaying Python
*Ø* Blogmanac | Try googling google Try this: type "search engine" into google, and google comes up third behind My Excite and Alta Vista. I found this item here.
*Ø* Blogmanac | US plans death camp Until now, the worst thing I could say about Guantanamo was that Americans are holding prisoners, including Australians, without charge, first in wire cages exposed to the elements and now in 6' by 8' concrete cells with electric lights on 24/7, two 20-minute exercise breaks per week, no access to lawyers, Red Cross or family, and forbidden to speak to lawyers. Excuse me, I forgot they had Bush over there, who turned Texas into the killingest state outside China and Nigeria. (I heard on ABC radio today an interview with a former death row pastor from Texas who said that at first he was pro-death penalty, but after seeing more than 90 people killed, he now believes it is state-sanctioned homicide. Indeed, the cause of death is officially given as homicide, he said. He also said that he knows for a fact, by the confessions of dying men, some of whom gave him evidence about themselves and other prisoners that he could not divulge, that between 12 and 15 of those mostly black and Hispanic men were innocent.)
Now, the Brisbane (Australia) Courier-Mail reveals plans by the US to build execution chambers ("death houses", as they are called in Texas) at the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp. "The plans were revealed by Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who is in charge of 680 suspects from 43 countries, including two Australians," says the report.
Another paper, The Mail on Sunday, " reported the move is seen as logical by the US, which has been attacked worldwide for breaching the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war."
Unrelated to Guantanamo, but interesting nonetheless, especially to students of memetics, is Microdoc News: Dynamics of a Blogosphere Story: "Microdoc News has been studying the way a story enters the blogosphere, develops, and draws to a conclusion. We have traced such stories as 'Where is Raed?', 'Microsoft iLoo', 'war blogging', and 'Second SuperPower', which actually divided into two additional stories 'Googlewash' and 'Googlewashed'. Overall we have traced 45 stories that have developed in the blogosphere over the last three months. Each blogosphere story has a definite beginning, develops along quite predictable lines and comes to a predictable end."
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Be warned: worse than SARS The World Health Organisation today issued a new warning against non-essential travel to the entire Western Hemisphere following renewed concerns about the spread of Severe Loss of Perspective Syndrome (SLOPS).
Officials are warning travellers not to visit the UK, the US, almost all of Western Europe, Canada and Australia, following further outbreaks of the disease, which has led to mass panic among the media, thousands of ecstatic children being kept out of school by their credulous and moronic parents, and increased profits for DIY stores as the idiot public rush to bulk-buy face masks and boiler suits.
A WHO spokesman said, "You'd be much better off going to somewhere like Taiwan or China, because all you've got to worry about there is SARS, and let's face it, you're about as likely to die from that as you are to get kicked to death by a gang of paper cut-out nuns."
The SARS virus has now claimed a staggering 500 lives in only six months, which makes it considerably more deadly than, say, malaria, which only kills around 3,000 people every single day. Malaria, however, mainly affects only darkies what speak foreign, whereas SARS has made at least one English person feel a bit iffy for a couple of days, and is therefore considered far more serious.
The spread of SLOPS has now reached pandemic proportions, with many high-level politicians seemingly affected by the disease. The rapid spread of SLOPS has been linked to the end of the war in Iraq and the need for Western leaders to give the public something else to worry about. Otherwise, they might start asking uncomfortable questions about domestic issues and the war, and that simply would not do.
[Thanks George Newnham from Cairns, Australia, for this one.]
*Ø* Blogmanac | May 27 | Wild Bill Hickock and the dead man's hand
James "Wild Bill" Hickock, or 'Hickok', American frontiersman and marshall, was born on May 27, 1837. On August 2, 1876, while playing poker in a saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota, Jack McCall shot the marshall dead; McCall was later tried and hanged on March 1, 1877.
The hand that Hickock held at the time he was shot was a pair of eights and a pair of aces. This hand later became known famously as the "dead man's hand." What the fifth card Wild Bill was holding is a matter of conjecture – in the 1936 movie The Plainsman with Gary Cooper as Hickock, it was the King of Spades.
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The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind – that, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done … Rachel Carson, American author of Silent Spring, born on May 27, 1907
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction. Rachel Carson
*Ø* Blogmanac | Ireland - Housewife takes shine to old grenade A woman unearthed a War of Independence hand grenade in her back garden - and then proceeded to scrub and polish up the munition so it could be used as a decoration. Colombian-born Margot Adair even used a knife to chip away at the rusted casing of the live hand grenade. The Emergency Ordinance Disposal team found that the 80-year-old munition was still potentially lethal. Story
*Ø* Blogmanac | Amnesty - the Death Penalty By April 2003, 76 countries and territories had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. A further 15 countries had abolished it for all but exceptional crimes such as wartime crimes. Twenty-one countries were abolitionist in practice: ie had not carried out any executions for the past 10 years and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions. At present there are 112 countries which are abolitionist in law or practice and 83 countries which retain and use the death penalty.
The vast majority of executions worldwide are carried out in a tiny handful of countries. In 2002, 81 percent of all known executions took place in China, Iran and the USA.
I also found an address I tore off an envelope and now I can stop putting out calls for M Sabo to contact me. The fact that I've been advertising for M Szabo probably didn't help. Me dum.
*Ø* Blogmanac | May 26 | 1828 Kaspar Hauser showed up in Nuremburg This is a story that intrigues me as much for the way it captivated the German people of its day and succeeding generations, as for its intrinsic oddness.
On this day, at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, a youth of about 16 or 17 years of age showed up in a pathetic condition in the marketplace in Nuremburg (or Nurenberg as it is sometimes spelt, among a few spellings), Germany. The lad was dressed in peasant clothes, and had with him a letter addressed to the cavalry captain of the city. He was led to the captain and interrogated, and it was found he could scarcely speak. To every question he replied “Von Regensburg” (from Regensburg) or “Ich woais nit” (I don't know). Except for dry bread and water, he showed a violent dislike to all forms of food and drink. He seemed ignorant of commonplace objects. He carried a handkerchief marked ‘KH’ and a few written Catholic prayers.
In the letter that he carried, it was stated that the writer was a poor day-labourer who had ten children of his own. The man had found the boy deposited on his doorstep by his mother, and had secretly brought the boy up as his own, keeping him confined to the house, somewhere in Bavaria. The boy, said the letter, had expressed an interest in becoming a horse soldier. Accompanying this letter was also a note purportedly from the boy's mother, saying that she, a poor girl, had had the baby, named Kaspar Hauser, on April 30 (Walpurgisnacht, the witching time), 1812, and that his father, an officer in Nuremburg's sixth regiment, was dead.
A burgomaster named Binder took a kindly interest in Kaspar. In the course of many conversations with him, it was discovered that the boy had been kept underground all his life, in a space so small he could not stretch to full length. He had been fed only on bread and water by a man who never showed himself. Many rumours started to circulate as to the identity of the poor boy. Many said he was the son of a priest, or of a young lady of high rank. Some thought he might be a prince.
On July 18, 1828, the boy was handed over to Professor Daumer, who taught him and also became his biographer. On October 17, 1829, he was found bleeding from a slight wound on his forehead, which he said had been inflicted by a man with a “black head”. This incident created a great sensation; he was protected in the home of a magistrate by two soldiers. England’s Lord Stanhope came to see the now-famous boy, and sent him away to be educated.
In 1833 Kaspar, who was working without distinction in a court office, was approached by a stranger who said that Lord Stanhope wanted to meet him on December 14 at 3pm in the palace garden. Kaspar Hauser went to his rendezvous, but it was to be his last journey. There in the garden he was stabbed by the stranger. Kaspar Hauser died three days later, on December 17.
Conjecture has always surrounded this strange case. Some said he was the scion of a noble English house. Probably the secret of Kaspar Hauser will never be uncovered.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
*Ø* Blogmanac | The real Dracula Romania's mediaeval town of Sighisoara has been hosting an international Dracula conference this month.
Folklorists, historians and scientists delviong into the Dracula legend met with amateur vampirologists from all over the world during the third World Dracula Congress.
The original Dracula had a role to play in the longstanding enmity between the Christian and Muslim religions, and it was his cruelty to Muslims that earned him his reputation as a vampire, though this did not really take off until the 19th century and Bram Stokers fanciful novel that he based on various books he had read (as he never set foot in Transylvania).
Dracula, or Vlad Tepes, was probably born in Sighisoara around 1431 to Vlad Dracul or Dragon. His father named the young Vlad 'Dracula', meaning 'son of Dracul'. However, in Romanian the word also means the devil.
It was a time in which the area was at war with forces from the Muslim Ottoman Empire, whose epicentre was in what we call Turkey today. Because Vlad liked to dine while watching impaled Turkish prisoners writhe on wooden stakes, Count Dracula became associated with the wooden stake that supposedly was the only thing that could kill him.
By the way, today is the birthday of horror movie great, Peter Cushing (1913), and tomorrow, May 27, Christopher Lee (1922) who played Dracula, and spooky Vincent Price (1911) share birthdays. Mwahahahah!!
*Ø* Blogmanac | May 26 | Wilson takes a lay day -- no, not a lay lady lay :( Unfortunately pressures of study and job hunting require me to take one or even maybe two days off from the Almanac ezines. However, I have some nice stories I want to share so I'll make quick appearances here in the Blogmanac, and of course they will be sent to subscribers of the Blogmanac daily email (subs box in right-hand column). My apologies to subscribers of Wilson's Almanac and the AAA edition. I hope you'll drop by here for the good read I hope to bring you. On May 26, 1828, a mystery boy showed up in Nuremburg and I'd like to tell the story of Kaspar Hauser. Then on Tuesday, some interesting items about the ghostly drum of Sir Francis Drake, and a strange story about Wild Bill Hickock. See you then.
As always,
Abundance and gratitude, and adidas, amigos.
PS My ISP has been as flakey as a pavlova lately. If I haven't responded to your email, chances are it went south ... err ... north. Please try again or leave a comment here. Also, I hope MA Szabo will contact me regarding a recent correspondence. I have no address to contact you. Ta.
*Ø* Blogmanac | May 25 | St Urban’s (confusing) Day celebrations, Germany Feast day of St Urban, pope and martyr (Common avens, Geum urbanum, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint)
Today is the Feast day of St Urban (Pope Urban II). Born in Rome, Italy, Urban died there on May 23, 230 and was buried two days later, and the church made that his day of commemoration rather than the usual day of death or martyrdom. Son of Pontianus, he was elected pope c. 222.
Due to a common confusion with the bishop, St Urban of Langres, who is the patron saint of winegrowers, in Europe (especially around Burgundy) today is a weather prognostication.
If the sun shines clearly on St Urban’s Day, Good vines will grow according to an old saying; But if there’s rain, it will damage the vines, Therefore Urban must soon bathe in water.
A statue of the saint (which St Urban is as unclear to your almanackist as it has been to the practitioners for centuries) decked in grapes was carried through the streets in South Tyrol on St Urban’s day. In Franconia depending whether he has sent good weather or bad, the statue was either sprinkled with wine or splashed with water and dirt.
In many parts of Germany, it was a custom to drag the images of St Paul and St Urban to the river, if there was bad weather on their festival (St Paul’s feast day is January 25).
Saint Urban is portrayed in art after his beheading, with the papal tiara near him. Otherwise, he may be depicted during his beheading as idols fall from a column; he might also be shown being whipped at the stake or else seated in a landscape as a young man (Saint Valerian) kneels before him and a priest holds a book. Sometimes he is a pope with a bunch of grapes (confused with the other guy who is usually portrayed as a bishop with a bunch of grapes or a vine in the image). Sometimes Bishop Urban may be shown with a book with a wine vessel on it or grapes on a missal as he holds the papal triple cross (owing to confusion with the first guy. The second guy is the patron of Burgundian vine-growers, gardeners, and coopers. He is invoked against blight, frost, storm, and faintness. If you’re not confused, read again.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
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1184 On St Urban’s Day, a great fire utterly destroyed the abbey church at Glastonbury and the Old Church of St. Mary's, which had stood adjacent to it. Glastonbury, according to tradition, was visited by Joseph of Arimathea and possibly also by Joseph’s nephew, Jesus Christ. It is also closely associated with King Arthur and is supposedly the same place as Arthur’s “mystic Isle of Avalon”.
What groans, what tears, what beatings of the breast were yielded by spectators, can be imagined only by those who have suffered similar affliction. The confusion of relics, treasures in silver and gold, silks, books and other ecclesiastical ornaments might justly provoke grief. More vehement was the woe of the monks mindful of their earlier happiness, seeing that in all adversity bygone joy is the saddest part of misfortune. Adam of Domerham, writing a century after the fire that destroyed Glastonbury Abbey; Hearne, T, Adam de Domerham: Historia de rebus glastoniensibus, Oxford, 1727, p 344
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Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. Ralph Waldo Emerson, American transcendentalist author, born on May 25, 1803, Self-Reliance
*Ø* Blogmanac | Stereotypes of erotica challenged An Australian academic's brief talk on ABC Radio disputes some of the common misconceptions about pornography as often asserted by the religious right and the feminist left, and just as often left unchallenged by the media and politicians. Read it here
*Ø* Blogmanac | Aussie bid to out-glutton America Australia is now only slightly behind the United States as the world's fattest nation and 60 per cent of Australians are either overweight or obese, a medical study has found.
*Ø* Blogmanac | US gov't adds insult to Iraq museums injury
It has been likened to the burning of the Library of Alexandria in ancient times, a cultural loss almost without parallel. And now Shrub wants to throw some loose change at the benighted people of Iraq and instruct his PR men to give his largesse maximum spin.
The USA government has proudly announced that it will disburse $2 million to help patch up the looted museums of Iraq. The administration of the richest country in the universe will now congratulate itself on its generosity and a significant number of its peons will doubtless continue in their chronic myth that Americans are the biggest aid givers of all nations (in fact, per capita, they come about 18th). What is $2 million worth? Oh, about eight middle class houses. Maybe half a house of a corporate executive. Two million bucks won't even get you a cluster of cluster bombs. Not to put too fine a point on it, $2 million is chicken feed and an insult not only to the Iraqi people but to the citizens of the world. We have sustained an enormous, preventable loss.
While American officials early on reported that only around 25 cultural objects had been looted, it's more like 1,000. Let us not forget that -- by some foul quirk of Bush/Rumsfeld policy, one which we shall probably only know the reason for decades from now when White House and Pentagon documents are declassified -- this tragedy was sanctioned. A quarter of a million Coalition of the Killing soldiers in and around Iraq were ordered to stand by while hospitals and museums of antiquities and all sorts of institutions (all, except, for the guarded Ministry of Oil, independent journalists reported) were trashed and burned by mini-busloads of unknown men. (This aspect of the story has been largely neglected by the media, which has emphasised rampaging individuals rather than the armed and mobile units that were mentioned in dispatches.)
Once again, the Bush administration's spin was preposterous: these men were allegedly paid agents of Saddam Hussein. Once again, the media lapped it up. Well, they're lap dogs, after all. One can only wonder how many Americans will believe that gangs of thugs would run around burning hospitals, museums and virtually the entire bureaucratic infrastructure of Iraq (for that is what happened, apart from the oil wells and administration) because Saddam had paid or had promised to pay them. Hussein was missing, presumed dead. Baghdad was occupied by the might of the American and British armies. The town was crawling with soldiers. If Hussein had pre-paid the goons, why should they do the job now he was without authority, maybe even dead? Wouldn't they take the money and run? If the dictator had promised to pay them after doing the job, why should they do such a dangerous thing literally under the gaze of heavily armed marines and other troops? Who would pay them?
Pull the other leg, Shrub, that one's got bells on it.
While we're on the subjct of Iraq, this story at Indymedia covers rather well the complicity of the media. And What, exactly, are we Never Forgetting? has some very useful links, especially with regard to the Coalition's refusal to count the bodies of those they laughtered in Iraq. It's a page at bumperactive.com where you can make bumper stickers ... pretty cool.
Just above the seaside mog shot (no, not Mug Shop, though you can go there too) of your almanackist (in the right-hand column), there's a new subscription box. There, you can take out a free sub to all the good stuff that is blogged here each day by me and the growing team. It's a daily ezine and I think you will like it. Get all the news and positive ideas "on the run" for those times you can't check into the Blogmanac.
The Blogmanac ezine is not the same as Wilson's Almanac free daily ezine (you can subscribe to that just above the Blogmanac sub box by clicking the pic). What you will get in the blog zine is what is posted here each day. Take out a free sub and see if you like it!
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This sad (and little known) day marks the worst racial violence in American history. Angered by false rumors, whites were shooting throughout the night of the 31st, looting and burning in the early hours of June 1st. Earlier on this day, the Tulsa Tribune newspaper ran a front page article entitled Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator, and a back page editorial entitled To Lynch Negro Tonight.
