Surf almanac with menu above.
Click here to consult your free I Ching and Tarot while waiting (opens in a new window).

How to read our feed



(Our news on your My Yahoo!)

Whole Almanac menu, top of page

Cafe Diem!
Growing range of products
help support the Almanac

Wilson's Almanac free daily ezine

Why we are here:
To give readers many reasons and many ways to 'carpe diem!' – seize the day!

Members of Wilson's Almanac ezine: 2,773 (Jan 1, 2005)
Click for subscription info

Tell J-9 You've Read It! ::

Blogmanac team
Jeannine Wilson (USA)
Veralynne Pepper (USA)
Pip Wilson (Australia)

Carpe diem!

Seize the day with more than 150 articles at Wilson's articles department





This blog is dedicated to the 353 victims of the SIEVX disaster,
and casualties of poverty and authority all around the planet

Yellow Pages News, current affairs	Book of Days Birthdays, folklore, history
Sandy Beach Almanac Beachcomb with Wilson	Kill the President Code and clues mystery

Subscribe free to Almanac and Blogmanac ezines

	:: Pip		7:21 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Smith & Wesson chief bites bullet

"BOSTON (Reuters) - Handgun maker Smith & Wesson Holding says it will issue a statement about its chairman following a published report he resigned after a newspaper revealed he was jailed for armed robbery decades ago ..."
Source: Yahoo News

	:: Pip		1:04 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Oh, great!



Pakistan nuclear technology at arms fair: report
"The Pakistani scientist at the centre of a black market in nuclear weapons is said to have displayed sensitive equipment and brochures for atom bomb technology at a Pakistani arms fair ..."
Source

	:: N		12:23 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Spy case casts fresh doubt on war legality

Richard Norton-Taylor and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian

"Dramatic new evidence pointing to serious doubts in the government about the legality of the war in Iraq was passed to government lawyers shortly before they abandoned the prosecution of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun ...

"The leading prosecutor, Mark Ellison, said it would not be 'appropriate' to go into the reasons for dropping the case.

"But the Guardian has learned that a key plank of the defence presented to the prosecutors shortly before they decided to abandon the case was new evidence that the legality of the war had been questioned by the Foreign Office.

"It is contained in a document seen by the Guardian. Sensitive passages are blacked out, but one passage says: 'The defence believes that the advice given by the Foreign Office Legal Adviser expressed serious doubts about the legality (in international law) of committing British troops in the absence of a second [UN] resolution.'

"It is understood that the FO legal team was particularly concerned about the lack of a second UN resolution authorising the use of force and pre-emptive military action."

Read full text

	:: Pip		7:10 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac | 9/11 panelist may quit over Bush secrecy

"WASHINGTON - Frustrated by Bush administration restrictions, a former senator said yesterday he might quit the special commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"Ex-Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), now president of New York's New School University, told the Daily News that resigning is 'on my list of possibilities' because the administration continues to block the full panel's access to top intelligence officials and materials ...

"The White House recently allowed only three commissioners and their staff director to read secret CIA briefings on Al Qaeda given to Bush and Clinton before the 2001 attacks ..."
Source: NY Daily News

	:: Pip		4:15 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac February 27, 1934 | Ralph is 70



Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford – but you'll take him anyway.
Judith Viorst

1934 Ralph Nader, American consumer rights campaigner and author

Ralph Nader: hero or villain?
Ralph Nader has his fan club, eg http://www.nader.org … “In 1963, Ralph Nader, then an unknown twenty-nine-year old attorney, abandoned a conventional law practice in Hartford, Connecticut, and hitchhiked to Washington, DC, to begin a long odyssey of professional citizenship …”  

… and his detractors:

“Saint Ralph loves to preach about democracy and ‘citizen power’, but he runs his carefully concealed empire with an iron grip. Of 19 groups associated with Nader, the most powerful and important groups are all directly controlled by Nader or completely under his influence and no one else's. With some groups, Nader is the only contributor; others are controlled by his sister, Laura Nader Milleron, or his cousin. …”

	:: Pip		12:35 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac | George Bush action doll

Go through to the end and click "Say something stupid".

	:: Pip		10:05 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Another reason we need the UN: the rich countries selling arms to the poor
There are an estimated 639 million small arms and light weapons in circulation killing 300,000 people a year including innocent civilians. Armed groups are fighting with impunity such is the availability and relatively low cost of this killing machine.
Why we need the United Nations

	:: Pip		8:40 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac | How much thickening can this plot take?

Former Minister Says UK Spied on UN Chief

"LONDON (Reuters) - Former government minister Clare Short said on Thursday that Britain conducted spying operations on United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the run-up to last year's war on Iraq.

"The claim comes a day after Prime Minister Tony Blair's government dropped charges against a translator accused of leaking a top-secret U.S. memo seeking London's help in spying on United Nations members in the run-up to the Iraq war ..."
Source: Yahoo News

	:: Veralynne		5:33 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Abolition, Menicheism and Bretzel?

Praising the President
By Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective


La Boissière d'Ans, five hours south of Paris. The American flag billows on my monitor, as the fleeting words flash by: "Dow Jones … Cocaine … Noam Chomsky … Botox … Guantanamo." Even here in deepest France, tucked away in the green hills and hollows of historic Dordogne, I cannot escape "les mots de l'Amérique," the American words and names that the prestigious Le Monde thinks its online readers need to know.

Mouse-clicking on Old Glory, I get a fresh screen, with eleven different rubrics grouping more than 400 individual blurbs. Who and what Le Monde includes, or leaves out, and what its writers have to say opens a well-placed, if slightly left-facing, window on the French and on what they see in us.

Movies are big, this being France, where they helped invent the cinema. Clint Eastwood, Julia Roberts, and Michael Moore each get a screen. Woody Allen, a long-time French favorite, shows up under "psys, short for psychiatrists.

Sports has the fewest entries, but what do the French care about baseball, especially this week, when everyone is watching rugby?

The entries reveal a keen interest in American music, media, literature, the economy, cultural symbols, and technology.

They talk about our First Amendment and America's "absolute respect" for different religions. They explain how our separation of church and state differs from the more rigorously secular French, who would never open an official function with a prayer or allow their currency to proclaim "In God We Trust."

For a newspaper -- and country -- so often accused of being anti-American, Le Monde’s lexicon shows a fine sense of engagement. The writers seem fascinated and care enough to try to understand us.

Then I turn to politics, where the first item catches my eye -- "abolition."

Slavery?

No, "capital punishment," which links to "executions," "prisons," and "electric chair." The whole nasty business ranks as one of the biggest complaints the French and other Europeans have against us, every bit as galling to them as Iraq.

I click on George W. Bush -- "a mediocre student at Yale and Harvard," a former owner of a baseball team, a one-time alcoholic, and -- as governor of Texas -- a determined patron of the death penalty.

One link leads to "Crusades," which notes that Mr. Bush and his War on Terror have revived "the reactionary Manicheism of the Cold War." For the ecclesiastically challenged, the Manicheans were a Persian religious sect -- and later Christian heretics -- who saw the world divided into an eternal struggle between good and evil, God and the Devil.

Another links leads to "Bretzel," which is French for pretzel, on which the president choked in January 2002. Pretzels, the writer notes, had their origin in the French Alsace as well as in Germany.

Other links identify, define, and decipher a wider world of differences.

Avancer, s'il vous plez.

	:: Pip		3:16 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac February 26, 1991 | General McCaffrey's Highway of Death

Unknown to journalists, in the last two days before the cease-fire, American armoured bulldozers were ruthlessly deployed, mostly at night, burying Iraqis alive in their trenches, including the wounded. Six months later New York Newsday disclosed that three brigades of the 1st Mechanised Infantry Division – ‘The Big Red One’ – used snow plows mounted on tanks and combat earth movers to bury thousands of Iraqi soldiers – some alive – in more than 70 miles of trenches.
John Pilger on the Highway of Death; Hidden Agendas

1991 Gulf War: On Baghdad Radio Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein announced the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait in compliance with UN Resolution 660.

The Highway of Death: America's "turkey shoot" war crime
In accordance with UN resolutions, Iraqi troops were commanded by President Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait. America bombarded the retreating soldiers. More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway.

The clear rapid incineration of the human beings suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs, anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols ...

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

	:: Pip		2:17 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Scrimmies

"According to Jo, no one knows if the art of incising living human bones was practised in Australia before she had the first, when her femur was ‘scrimmed’"



Scrimmies
A modern cult revealed
Who are the scrimmies? And why do they practise
this strange art that goes beyond tattoos and piercings
– the bizarre body art of carved, living, human bones


It was an appropriately unsettling entrance to the world of the bonecarvers – lost on my first visit, on June 12.

I must have walked past the door marked with the torn Greenpeace sticker and an incoherent bit of graffiti (something about Mariah Cary).

My informant, Justine, had told me to “knock on the blue door near the Leb shop”. Had she forgotten that in this part of Sydney’s inner suburbs, every other shop is owned by Lebanese?

One of Sydney’s ethnic quarters, definitely. The blue door was actually squeezed hard between a Chinese-owned store and a pizzeria (to give more details would break my promise of anonymity to the scrimmies and Justine).

Considering the neighbourhood is so cosmopolitan, I was surprised that the scrimmies were so Anglo-Aussie, except for the Mexican, Serge.

I twisted the ancient bell knob on the grimy, chipped door and waited. And waited. And turned the knob again.

“Yeah?” came a woman’s voice, that one syllable betraying a broad Australian accent.

I introduced myself and she remembered that Justine had said I would be coming to interview the scrimmies.

‘Hannah’, reluctantly it seemed, led me up the steep, narrow staircase. The air was cold, gloomy. At the head of the stairs was a small landing with threadbare Westminster carpet. On the wall was a framed airline poster of that famous fairytale castle in Europe.

Hannah led me, or, rather, I followed her brisk pace into the book-lined, messy room with its untidy plethora of computer equipment, but I had to introduce myself as she dumped me and headed for a small sink in the corner where she made herself a cup of lemongrass tea.

The ‘scrimmies’ I met in that room, with its two kinds of worn carpet, and a flyspecked paper globe lampshade askew above the centre, had not assembled for the benefit of this pariah of the press. It seems that this apartment/office/clubhouse regularly holds a dozen or more lounging or websurfing scrimmies ...

Source: Scrimmies

	:: N		12:06 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac | GCHQ whistleblower walks free

The Guardian, February 25

"GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun demanded an explanation today after the case against her of disclosing information and breaking the Official Secrets Act collapsed after the prosecution offered no evidence ...

"Ms Gun, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, had been accused of disclosing a request allegedly from a US national security agency official for help from British intelligence to tap the telephones of UN security council delegates during the period of fraught diplomacy before the [Iraq] war.

"She argued the alleged disclosures exposed serious wrongdoing by the US and could have helped to prevent the deaths of Iraqis and British forces in an 'illegal war'.

"After the prosecution offered no evidence, the judge, the Recorder of London Michael Hyam, recorded a formal verdict of not guilty ...

"For her defence, she had planned to seek the disclosure of the full advice from the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, on the legality of the war against Iraq, which could have been potentially damaging and embarrassing for the government."

Full text

	:: N		11:54 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Human Rights Groups Shut Out of Military Commissions

Human Rights Watch:

Washington, February 24 -- "The Pentagon has refused to allow three leading human rights groups to attend and observe military commission trials of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

"In a letter sent last week to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Amnesty International, Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) and Human Rights Watch protested their exclusion from the proceedings and urged the U.S. government to rethink its position ...

"'The Defense Department wants to control who can talk to the journalists covering the trials,' said Wendy Patten, U.S. advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. 'The Pentagon has imposed a gag rule on defense lawyers, who can only speak to the press with the military’s permission. Now it wants to shut out experienced trial observers who could provide the public with independent analysis.'”

Full statement
Above the Law: Executive Power after September 11 in the United States

	:: Pip		8:16 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Obidos, Obida

Sorry. This one's really worrying me, too.

Obidos, apparently, is a town in Portugal. I accept that.

But why does "obidos" appear in virtually every Amazon.com product URL I've ever seen? Take, for example, One Crowded Hour, mentioned yesterday in the Haing Ngor post below. The URL for that book is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0002174960/wilsonsalmana-20?creative=125577&camp=2321&link_code=as1

So what's with obidos?

	:: Pip		8:09 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac | I must know!

	:: Pip		1:29 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Bush Lies Uncovered

"The question, of course, is whether the individuals involved were fooled by Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress or whether they were willing collaborators in distorting intelligence."

Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they were a coaling station for the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great presence in the Pacific. That's what Iraq is for the next few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East.
General Jay Garner

Bush Lies Uncovered

"For those still puzzling over why the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, two key players offered important, but curiously unnoticed, clues this week.

"Statements made by both men confirmed growing suspicions that the Bush administration's drive to war in Iraq had very little, if anything, to do with the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or his alleged ties to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda – the two main reasons the U.S. Congress and public were given for the invasion.

"Separate statements by Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), and U.S. retired Gen Jay Garner, who was in charge of planning and administering post-war reconstruction from January through May 2002, suggest that other, less public motives were behind the war, none of which concerned self-defense, pre-emptive or otherwise ..."
Source: AlterNet

	:: Pip		2:48 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac February 25, 1996 | Death of Oscar winner Dr Haing S Ngor

Rejected by Australia because as a refugee he was not only stateless but paperless, Haing went on to better things, but was struck down in his prime

1996 Oscar winner Dr Haing S Ngor (b. March 22, 1950) (The Killing Fields, 1984) was murdered in Los Angeles, USA.

Two days later, three 19-year-old boys, members of a local gang, were arrested and charged with the murder, which apparently was a robbery gone wrong. Haing was shot after refusing to hand over a locket, holding a photo of his late wife. His wife had died in his arms, of hunger and beatings, while they were both in Cambodia (Kampuchea) under the Communist dictatorship headed by Pol Pot.

During his captivity under the Marxists, Haing was frequently subjected to imprisonment and torture. At one time, after having been caught foraging for food for his family, Haing was crucified over a fire and had one of his fingers chopped off.

As a medical student in Phnom Penh during the Indo-China War days, the young Haing had met Australia’s best known war cameraman, Neil Davis (One Crowded Hour). The two became drinking buddies, and Davis told him stories of his home Down Under. Haing wondered if he would ever get to Australia.

Later, as things turned for the worse in Cambodia, he escaped the country and tried to get to Australia, although Davis had by now been killed in a combat zone. Rejected for refugee status by Australian immigration officials in Thailand because he had no identification (such papers would have been a death sentence under the Khmer Rouge, as was the wearing of spectacles, signifying bourgeois origins), Haing moved to the US as a refugee in 1980.

A medical doctor with no acting experience, Haing came to international prominence in 1984 through his Academy Award-winning performance as Cambodian photographer Dith Pran who, like Haing, was a survivor of the ‘killing fields’, Cambodia’s ‘holocaust’. Haing was the first non-professional since Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives, (1946) to win an Oscar. As Haing’s memoirs Survival in the Killing Fields showed, the doctor’s own experiences had been even more horrific than those of the photographer he portrayed in the film. He was, however, a very quiet man as I can attest. I had the pleasure and honour of hosting him in Sydney for a few days, when he told me, quietly and without rancour, about his experiences under the Communists, his friendship with Davis, and his attempt at immigration to my country.

In America Haing established a modestly distinguished acting career, while continuing to work with human rights organisations in Cambodia and elsewhere with a view to improving the conditions in resettlement camps, as well as attempting to bring the perpetrators of the Cambodian massacre to justice, something the world’s ruling elites seem to have decided will never be.

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

	:: N		5:18 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Throttled by history

	:: Pip		10:46 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac February 24 | Mmmmmmmm ..... Oops!

Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day)

Tomorrow (Ash Wednesday is February 25 in 2004) begins the 6-week period of fasting in the Christian world, known as Lent, the forty days' fast preceding Easter. Today is known to the French as Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), as it is the day that all foods may be eaten. Pancakes were popular as families ate the last of the eggs and butter that they were allowed before Lent.

The name 'Shrove' comes from the archaic English word 'to shrive', which means to confess or hear confessions of sin, a practice that was customary in the church on this day.

People traditionally ate bacon, meat and black puddings as well as pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. There was dice and card playing, mumming and revelry. Wagons were drawn by horses today, all decorated with hundreds of bells. Today was apprentices' holiday in old England. They also presented their petitions to parliament on this day.

The folklorist Brand says Pancake Day came from the pagan Fornacalia, in commemoration of making bread, before ovens were invented, by the goddess Fornax. The medieval Roman writer, Polydore Virgil, explains how the feasts of Bacchus were celebrated in Rome at the same time of year ...

Pictured: Your almanackist about to enjoy a pancake, Shrove Tuesday, 2004. Of course, he drained the maple syrup all over his desk.

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

PS George Harrison's birthday: was it February 24 or 25? George himself changed it when he was in his 40s, but did he get it right? Discussed today and tomorrow at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days.

	:: Pip		9:26 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Lotsa heart

I can't help but love this bloke.

Veteran magistrate, Belgium-born Antoine Bloemen tours the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia administering justice to those unfortunates who have fallen foul of the law. Bloemen has the biggest jurisdiction in the world. I can't say exactly how big but something like 1,000 km (600 miles) in any direction, so he does it all by plane. When he went back to his home country and told people his beat is bigger than Belgium, his friends fell silent, thinking he was deluded. One man called him a liar to his face. Fact is, it's about as big as Belgium and France combined. Yet Bloemen takes it all in his stride.

It's a fascinating part of the world that I have yet to visit. Historically, it's a land with many tales to tell: tens of thousands of years of Aboriginal settlement, then, later, Afghan and Turkish camel drivers, Japanese pearl divers, South-East Asian fishermen and traders (before Captain Cook "discovered" Oz), Anglo cattle drovers, brave but lonely drovers' wives, and beef millionaires. And lots of people who you don't ask about their past. ("The only thing we knew for sure about Henry Porter was that his name wasn't Henry Porter" – Bob Dylan, Brownsville Girl)

I've gotta get up there. The closest I've been to the Kimberley is the Nullarbor ('no trees') Plain, a few days' drive to the south, which I drove across when it had the dirt road and even with two drivers you didn't turn the steering wheel for three days. I came back by train on the longest straight stretch of rail in the world. But that's another story.

Miner, paratrooper, stockbroker
The flying magistrate has an inspiring and remarkable personal story, from a boyhood of privation, working in a coalmine under the Nazis, to service as a US paratrooper (he found himself in the USA and, with little English language, thought he was signing up to be a pilot when they put a parachute on his back). A successful career as a stockbroker in Australia didn't satisfy, so he studied law at night, ended up a magistrate, and answered an ad for a job in the Kimberley and Pilbara regions, which constitute a vast, wild and remote bit about the size of Texas, in the north-west of the Australian continent. A big office.

Child thief sentenced to a vacation
He does things differently. He is prepared to enact the law's punishments if necessary, but is just as ready to try a little lateral thinking. He offered to buy one Aboriginal kid a bike if he stopped offending, and this month offered an 11-year-old car thief a holiday to Europe with him and his wife if she behaved herself (unfortunately she was busted again the next day). "I promise you that if you stick to your deal and I stick to mine you will get a good surprise," he had said to the girl. "My wife and I will take you on a long vacation somewhere new." If only she had taken this honest man at his word. On another occasion, Bloemen sentenced an artist to paint 12 pictures. The artist did it, and stayed out of trouble as well as the boob (prison). The Kimberley beak even shelled out for the art supplies.

The conservative West Australian newspaper editorial says he doesn't know what he's doing. I think Antoine Bloemen knows exactly what he's doing. Good luck to him.

Law Report radio program on Bloemen (might take a few days for transcript to be published)

Magistrate gives young offender hope (Audio, RealPlayer)

	:: Pip		11:16 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Everything's fine now

Relax.

No need for readers to support the Almanac by voluntary subscription any more, or to patronise the Cafe Diem Store. Our money worries are over and we can easily now pay the overdues for the ISP and the soon-to-be-cancelled GuestMap.

This came in today's emails:

BARRISTER EGO AMAKA LLB (BENIN)
CONTACT
LONDON OFFICE: +44 77 17490642.
LAGOS OFFICE.
Tel: +234-1 -7763227

#33 TOYIN STREET,
IKEJA-LAGOS
NIGERIA.

NOTIFICATION OF BEQUEST

This is sequel to your non response of our earlier letter to you On behalf of the Trustees and Executors to the Will of late Sir Engr. Willy Bubenik ( ksm), I wish to notify you that you were listed as a beneficiary to the bequest of the sum of US$1,000.000.00 [One Million US Dollars] in the codicil and last testament of the deceased. The late Sir Willy Bubenik until his death was a former Managing Director and pioneer staff of a big construction company here in Nigeria. He was a very dedicated Christian and a great philanthropist during his life time.

Late Sir Willy Bubenik died on 9th February 2002 at the age of 68, He was buried on the 23rd of February. Late Sir Willy Bubenik even though he was an American living and working in here as a foreigner he requested before his death that he be buried here in his words, "I regard here as My home and the people as my people". He said that this token is to support your ministry and help to the less- privelegded. I hereby request that you forward any proof of identities of yours, your current telephone and fax numbers and your forwarding address to enable us file necessary documents at our high court probate division for the release of this bequest of money.

congratulations.
Yours faithfully,

BARRISTER DR EGO AMAKA LLB (BENIN)
QUEENS CHAMBERS (SOLICITORS & ADVOCATES)
LONDON OFFICE: +44 77 17490642

CONTACT LAGOS OFFICE
LAGOS OFFICE.
Tel: +234-1-7763227

	:: Pip		6:45 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac | Ninety per cent of large marine life wiped out

From the American Association for the Advancement of Science
"Marine biologists Larry Crowder and Andy Read outline the threats to conservation of our marine animals, many on the borders of extinction, and the hope for new technologies in gathering vital data. Let's hope it's not too late, because according to Daniel Pauly, 90% of the biomass of large ocean fish has already disappeared over a very short period."
Source (audio)

"The nesting populations of the critically endangered Pacific leatherbacks have crashed over the last decade as the survival of these mighty leatherbacks is threatened by both local and global impacts."
Creating Hope for the Survival of Pacific Sea Turtles

	:: Pip		12:41 PM

*Ø* Blogmanac February 23 | Collop Monday

Collop Monday, or Shrove Monday (moveable feast, February 23 in 2004) The day after Hall Sunday and the day before Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day). In olden times, Britishers cut their meat into collops, or steaks for salting or hanging up until Lent was over. It’s still a custom to have eggs and collops, or slices of bacon, today. In Salisbury, England: boys would sing:

Shrove-tide is nigh at hand,
And I am come a shroving;
Pray, dame, something,
An apple or a dumpling,
Or a piece of Truckle cheese
Of your own making,
Or a piece of pancake.

The medieval Roman writer, Polydore Virgil, explains how the feasts of Bacchus were celebrated in Rome at the same time of year. At Eton, on Shrove Monday it was a custom for boys to write verses concerning Bacchus, which were affixed to the college door.

After tomorrow, Shrove Tuesday, follows Lent, the forty days' fast preceding Easter.

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.

	:: Pip		10:37 AM

*Ø* Blogmanac | A nice find


I found a good site, The Badmonk Gallery, that successfully blends well-photoshopped erotic art with a whimsical and understated kind of piquant humour. Well worth a browse.