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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*
June 19, 1566 James I, (d. March 27, 1625; reigned July 24, 1567 - March 27, 1625), only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Lord Darnley, minor poet and first Stuart king of England (also known as King James VI of the Scots, and 'the wisest fool in Christendom'). He of the 'King James Bible'.
Queen James James was a homosexual and made no secret about it, but condemned sodomy as an unforgivable sin. When he ascended the English throne in 1603 after the death of Queen Elizabeth I, it was openly joked of the new English monarch in London that Rex fuit Elizabeth: nunc est regina Jacobus ('Elizabeth was King: now James is Queen').
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
George W. Bush came into the White House — albeit through the back door — pledging to restore honor to the White House. Instead, he has dishonored America by leading us into an illegal war under false pretenses.
In light of the Defense and Justice Department documents, there is probable cause to believe that the commander-in-chief condoned the methodology of torture to secure information from prisoners.
The Constitution mandates the impeachment of a President for high crimes and misdemeanors. There is no higher crime than a war crime. Willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, which are considered war crimes under The War Crimes Act of 1996. Even if Bush’s lawyers could successfully parse the meaning of torture, they cannot deny that the atrocities we’ve seen constitute inhuman treatment.
Bush impliedly admitted sanctioning willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment in his 2003 State of the Union Address. He would be liable under the doctrine of command responsibility for war crimes committed in Iraq as well. The captain goes down with his ship. It is time to call for the Impeachment of George W. Bush.
What's the single most important thing we can do in the U.S. right this minute to make sure Bush doesn't grab another term? Break all box office records with Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, that's what!
Rats32 at tsuredzuregusa shares with us his recap of the Republican dirty tricks afoot to force theater owners not to show the film and adds a "Du-uh" list of additional actions we can take, including:
1. Scratch and Sniff
The campaign against Michael Moore is typical GOP ersatz grassroots activism: pay PR hacks to build a glitzy website, plug in freepers, and overturn freedom of speech and free market forces. When you encounter a GOP "grassroots" campaign, scratch the surface and see if it passes the smell test. And if your local media is not checking their facts and presents these stories at face value, write and fax and call and let them know what's going on.
2. Reverse Engineering
Move America Forward (sic) includes a list of contact information on their site for theatres that have committed or are considering carrying Moore's film.
These people are internet carpetbaggers and their antics constitute an orchestrated effort to subvert the first amendment by misrepresenting public opinion to manipulate the "free market" process they allege to love so dearly while they wrap themselves in the flag.
So...use their resources. I encourage everyone who cares about free speech and wants to see this film to use the list, supplied so handily by our friends in the right wing, to contact the theaters in support of Moore's film. You can find the list (along with some truly hyperbolic right wing rhetoric here.
(Yes, I've sent my email to all of them already.)
3. Vote with your wallet
Advance tickets for Fahrenheit 9/11 are already available! Circle June 25th on your calendar, grab your friends, and order your tickets now. [Emphasis added. -v]
[Disclaimer: I do not know nor am I related to Michael Moore. I make no financial gain from the proceeds of his ticket sales. I do, however, strongly believe that if the Republicans can hijack taxpayers' dollars for a partisan campaign event under the thin pretext of a presidential funeral, that Michael Moore deserves a reasonable opportunity to distribute his film without political meddling. -Rats32]
[I would also suggest spending as much as we can afford to buy tickets for our right-leaning friends and relatives. Charter buses and take loads of them to the theaters the way churches did for The Passion — especially in the swing states. Forward this post widely. Let's get those fannies in those seats! Right-cheeked AND left-cheeked! -v]
June 18, 1178 About an hour after sunset, according to Gervase of Canterbury (c. 1141 - 1210), the famous medieval chronicler, a band of five eyewitnesses watched as the upper horn of the bright, new crescent Moon
"suddenly split in two. From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out … fire, hot coals and sparks … The body of the moon, which was below writhed … throbbed like a wounded snake".
The phenomenon recurred another dozen times or more, the witnesses reported.
A long-held belief has it that a meteor collision witnessed by these 12th-Century Englishmen resulted in a violent explosion on the moon, so creating the moon's Giordano Bruno crater, named after the 16th-Century astronomer burned at the stake for heresy in 1600. However, this notion doesn't hold up under scientific scrutiny, says Paul Withers of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
"I think they happened to be at the right place at the right time to look up in the sky and see a meteor that was directly in front of the moon, coming straight towards them," Withers said.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
"The head of one of the world's biggest oil companies has revealed he fears for the planet's future if carbon dioxide emissions cannot be controlled.
"The new chairman of Shell, Lord Ron Oxburgh, says he sees very little hope for the world unless carbon dioxide emissions are dealt with.
"He told the Guardian newspaper the consequences resulting from the current level of emissions cannot be predicted and are 'probably not good' ..." Source: ABC Oz News
"Friends of the Earth's director Tony Juniper said:
"'We are pleased that Shell appears to realise the serious threat posed by global climate change. But its core business is the production of fossil fuels – the major cause of the problem. Last year it claimed to have produced more oil and gas than ever before. If Lord Roxburgh really wants to tackle climate change, Shell must stop investing in new oil projects, such as in Sakhalin, Russia, stop the insane practice o9f gas-flaring and switch to alternative, renewable sources of power instead. Until it gets out of fossil fuels, Shell will continue to be a major part of the problem.'
"Mr Oxburgh called for a mass programme of carbon sequestration, where carbon would be captured and stored underground.
"Tony Juniper continued:
"'Technical fixes such as sequestration may have a role to play but are likely to prove more expensive and less effective than simple measures to reduce emissions such as more fuel efficient vehicles and renewable sources of energy. Shell must realise that we need to tackle the core of the problem. There's no point in bailing out the basement while there's holes in the roof.'
"The latest Shell Report says that its emissions of greenhouse gases rose by 6 per cent in 2003." Source: FoE
What would we do if 40% of the adult population of Australia, Britain or the USA had HIV/AIDS?
We can easily be distracted about the biggest issues when we read things like that George W Bush is sticking to his guns about there being an Iraq-Al Qeda connection, even when the FBI and CIA say there was not. It's a big issue, but not the biggest.
Here in the West it is so easy to forget one of the greatest problems facing the world, and that is the tragic toll that HIV/AIDS is wreaking on so many countries of Africa. This report from the Washington Post and this from CNN present issues and statistics that we need to know.
Of the 36.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS, an overwhelming 95 per cent live in developing countries. And it is in these countries that the anti-retrovirus medicines that have made AIDS a less fearful problem in the West, are relatively unavailable, as are massive prevention programs that are urgently needed. In Lesotho, 30 per cent of adults are infected; Swaziland, Botswana and Namibia have figures of around 40 per cent (source).
By 2020 the epidemic will have claimed the lives of one-fifth or more of all those working in agriculture in many southern African countries.
The UN's AIDS envoy to Africa, Stephen Lewis, says that if the West only had the will to act and stretch out the hand of friendship, the pandemic could be turned round in Africa in just five years. But this is scarcely happening, and Africa is faced with the promise of millions of orphaned children. How many of these will grow into armed militants? Lewis says that everywhere he goes in Africa, he sees death, suffering, funerals.
June 17, 1867 Henry Lawson, Australian's best known writer of short stories and ballad-like verse and noted for his realistic portrayals of bush life, born in Grenfell, New South Wales.
His mother was the pioneer feminist, Louisa Lawson (February 17, 1848 - August 12, 1920), feminist editor of Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women (a "paper in which women may express their own opinions on political and social questions").
When female Australian British subjects (with the glaring exception of Asians, Aborigines and Africans) won the vote with the Uniform Franchise Act (June 16, 1902), Louisa Lawson was hailed by her political sisters as "The Mother of Womanhood Suffrage". Unlike many suffragists and feminists of her day, she did not come from a privileged background but from the shanties of rural Australia. Dawn was a monthly journal that lasted for 17 years, employed a staff of ten and mostly published the writings of Henry Lawson’s remarkable mother.
Henry lived much of his life in poverty and alcoholic despair, but even during his lifetime he was acknowledged as a poetic genius, much-loved by the Australian people who until recently had a strong poetic culture ...
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
Chris Keeley, a Net mate of mine from USA (Daily Dreamtime blog) has been sending some interesting stuff lately. His father, retired US diplomat Robert Keeley, is associated with Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change which is making quite a splash:
"An unprecedented bipartisan coalition of 27 career chiefs of mission and retired four-star military leaders will launch a nationwide campaign to press for the need for change in U.S. foreign and defense policy because they are deeply concerned by the damage the Bush Administration has caused to our national and international interests."
He also sent me the following fine article but no headline or URL (I googled a phrase in it and a teaser showed up at AlterMedia but the full story required a log-in so I will take a liberty and reprint what Chris sent me in full):
By James A. Haught
The Charleston Gazette - 6/15/04
Millions of words are being written about the Iraq war, but hardly anyone asks the fundamental, underlying, unanswered question: Why did the Bush administration start it?
As Americans watch the sickening daily events, we really don't know why we got into this mess.
All the official reasons for the war turned out to be phony. Iraq didn't possess horror weapons, wasn't in league with terrorists, wasn't a menace to America and wasn't eager to welcome U.S. troops as liberators. So why did President Bush order the attack? This should be the number-one question of 2004, yet it isn't heard in the election campaign.
About half of Americans still support Bush's war. Maybe they don't even wonder about the cause. If asked, many of them probably would say the war was necessary because of the 9/11 suicide assault. But that's irrational. No Iraqis were among the self-destroying "holy warriors" of Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly all of them were Saudis – yet the White House wouldn't have dreamed of attacking Saudi Arabia.
Early in the war, some cynical Americans speculated that Bush's secret motive was to gain control over Iraq's oil – or to finish his father's old vendetta against Saddam Hussein – or to establish U.S. global military sway, as advocated by far-right hawks in the Project for a New American Century. But those allegations seem largely forgotten now. Nobody seriously thinks it was started to give fat contracts to Halliburton.
A couple of weeks ago, longtime U.S. Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., challenged his colleagues to explain why America is at war – but he got no comprehendible answer.
Hollings had stirred up a hornets' nest by contending that President Bush ordered the invasion partly to serve interests of Israel and "to take the Jewish vote from the Democrats." In a commentary published by several southern newspapers last month, Hollings noted that all of Bush's purported reasons for the war were false.
"With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country?" the senator wrote. "The answer: President Bush's policy to secure Israel."
Hollings pointed out that Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Charles Krauthammer and other key hawks in Bush's clique spent many years demanding a U.S. attack on Iraq, partly "to guarantee Israel's security." Because of their influence, he said, Bush came into office looking for an excuse to invade – and the 9/11 tragedy provided it.
"You don't come to town and announce your Israel policy is to invade Iraq," the senator said, so other pretexts were given for the war.
Ironically, he said, Bush's war actually is creating more terrorism, thus worsening danger to Israel.
Immediately after the commentary was published, Hollings was denounced as anti-Semitic, even by fellow senators. In response, he gave a long, extemporaneous, May 20 floor speech denying any prejudice, and asking:
"I challenge any one of the other 99 senators to tell us why we are in Iraq?... Everybody knows it is because we want to secure our friend, Israel."
Hollings said he mistakenly supported the 2002 resolution authorizing an attack on Iraq. When Bush began talking about Iraq's secret nuclear program, he said, he assumed that Israeli agents had detected evidence of such weaponry and had asked the White House to "knock it out for them. That is why I voted for it. I got misled."
Last month, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni made similar allegations on "60 Minutes." He said "everybody I talk to in Washington" knows that Bush's far-right advisors wanted to invade Iraq to strengthen Israel's position in the Mideast. Gen. Zinni said that, likewise, "I was called anti-Semitic."
The Village Voice says White House aides meet with leaders of a Pentecostal (talking in tongues) lobby that wants Israel to reign over biblical territory, to fulfill prophecies for the return of Jesus.
Meanwhile, some observers think President Bush's simplistic religion, which brands opponents as "evil," was a factor in his war. In his news conference last month, he declared that "freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in the world, and as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help spread that freedom." In other words, he thinks he carried out God's will by ending dictatorship in Iraq.
Earlier, Bush told biographer Bob Woodward that he didn't consult his earthly father about launching the war – "there's a higher father that I appeal to." Fringe candidate Ralph Nader calls Bush a "Messianic militarist" – a holy warrior.
Last year, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas met with Bush, and said afterward that the American president told him: "God told me to strike at al-Qaida, and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did." The White House later denied this statement. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen feigned disappointment about the denial, saying "the purported instructions from God remain about the only explanation for some of what Bush has done."
From all of this, can anyone fathom the real reason why 826 young Americans and thousands of Iraqis have been killed, and a chaotic mess has been created? If you can see a logical explanation, I wish you'd spell it out for me.
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*Ø* Recommended: "Follow The Money" and "George Bush Lies"
From E.P. of EP-Rants [itself highly recommended -v]:
Two things to report today:
1) New York Times TV/Discovery Channel just completed a new documentary about the 2004 elections, and I'm proud to announce that they licensed some of my Howard Dean footage. They only used 2 seconds, so if you BLINK, you may miss all of my footage. I recommend that you keep your eyes wide open throughout the entire program.
The show will be on the Discovery Times Channel (as opposed to the Discovery Channel) which is not part of standard cable. To view this channel, you'll need extended digital cable or one of those special satellite dish packages.
Here's the official word:
"FOLLOW THE MONEY," the one-hour documentary about money in the 2004 elections, will premiere on the Discovery Times Channel on Tuesday, June 29th at 8:00 PM (EST). If you miss the premiere, check the Discovery Times for re-broadcast information.
2) Musician Carmaig de Forest has created a remake of his 1992 single "George Bush Lies." To quote his website:
This version of "George Bush Lies" is a rewrite of Carmaig's 1992 single. The election of that year made it possible for Carmaig to retire the song from his repertoire. Please help Carmaig retire the song again. This means if you're a U.S. citizen please register to vote and, especially if you live in a "battleground" state, vote for John Kerry. The country and the world will be safer and saner.
*Ø* Torture: "US official policy to blame" says Human Rights Watch
"A recently released report from New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) places the blame for torture by US forces at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and other locations around the world firmly on the policies of the Bush administration.
"In the 38-page report titled The Road to Abu Ghraib, HRW describes the pattern of official policy decisions the group says encouraged the use of torture and prisoner abuse by US soldiers, as well as subsequent "cover-ups" to quash any allegations of abuse. HRW’s conclusions provide more evidence to counter statements by US officials that instances of torture resulted from a lack of discipline among frontline troops.
"'The only exceptional aspect of the abuse at Abu Ghraib may have been that it was photographed,' the report’s introduction explains." Source: News Standard
Why are more and more people getting their news from amateur websites called blogs? Because they're fast, funny and totally biased
By Lev Grossman; Anita Hamilton
A few years ago, Mathew Gross, 32, was a free-lance writer living in tiny Moab, Utah. Rob Malda, 28, was an underperforming undergraduate at a small Christian college in Michigan. Denis Dutton, 60, was a professor of philosophy in faraway Christchurch, New Zealand. Today they are some of the most influential media personalities in the world. You can be one too. [Emphasis added. -v]
Gross, Malda and Dutton aren't rich or famous or even conspicuously good-looking. What they have in common is that they all edit blogs: amateur websites that provide news, information and, above all, opinions to rapidly growing and devoted audiences drawn by nothing more than a shared interest or two and the sheer magnetism of the editor's personality. Over the past five years, blogs have gone from an obscure and, frankly, somewhat nerdy fad to a genuine alternative to mainstream news outlets, a shadow media empire that is rivaling networks and newspapers in power and influence. Which raises the question: Who are these folks anyway? And what exactly are they doing to the established pantheon of American media?
And this time the lyrics are not just antiwar. From hip-hop to punk to rock, artists are wailing against President Bush.
By Christopher Blagg Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
The term protest music often conjures up images of unkempt folkies strumming guitars and warbling their dissent in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. All that has changed.
Folk music no longer dominates the genre. Today, rebellious political rhetoric can be found in hip-hop, punk, country, metal, alt-rock, and everything in between. Not only has protest music diversified, it seems to be rapidly on the rise.
Some of the new songs, unsurprisingly, address the war on Iraq. But whereas protest songs during the Vietnam era were broadly antiwar in their message, the new batch of political tunes aren't narrowly focused on the recent war. It's more personal than that. Most of the music is targeted at the actions and policies of one man: George W. Bush.
And it's often incendiary stuff.
"For better or worse, Bush has stirred up a lot of vitriol in the music community," says David Browne, head music critic for Entertainment Weekly. "There's always been protest songs against presidents, but they have never been near to the level of venom you're seeing now."
That isn't to say no songs are championing the administration's foreign policy — country music has produced hits such as Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue (The Angry American)." But they're being drowned out by the sheer volume of musicians working to oust the Oval Office's current occupant. [Emphasis added. -v]
The musicians range from punk rockers to pop acts to older artists like Patti Smith and Rickie Lee Jones. In all, Mr. Browne reckons protest songs seem to have been more numerous in the past year and a half than in the late '60s. "There just wasn't that concentration of songs during the Vietnam War," he says.
Leading the charge in the current round of Bush-whacking is Fat Mike, frontman for the veteran punk rock group NOFX. Mike created the current Billboard-charting compilation entitled "Rock Against Bush," a collection of sneeringly rebellious punk rock songs including ones from mainstream acts like Sum 41, OffSpring, and the Ataris. Twenty-six bands offered songs for the compilation, and many more joined the tour that followed.
The idea for the album emerged from the controversy over the Florida vote count in the previous presidential election. The outcome still rankles Fat Mike, who believes the result was unjust.
"After the 2000 election I was pretty upset," says Mike. "I needed to come up with a way I could use my celebrity to expose the fraud of the election." [Emphasis added. -v]
Mike also soon founded the provocative website punkvoter.com, which aimed to harness the youth vote.
*Ø* Torturing Mr. Bush By Steve Weissman t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Should George W. Bush lose his bid for re-election this November, historians will find a major cause in the flood of pornographic photographs that show American soldiers torturing and sexually humiliating naked Iraqis. How will publishers of sanitized schoolbooks ever tell the story to future generations?
Nor will serious historians stop there. How will they deal with those of us who knew, or should have known, the way American forces have used — and taught other nations to use — the same degrading torture techniques at least as far back as President John F. Kennedy? Will our grandchildren and theirs see us as we see "the Good Germans" who callously turned their eyes away from what Hitler did to the Jews?
As bad as the torture was and continues to be in America's global gulag, it is not the Holocaust. But it is bad enough, and the moral dilemma it poses feels painfully similar.
Consider the role — no, the criminal complicity — of President Bush. For a Harvard MBA who usually delegates details, he played a remarkably hands-on role pushing his torture package through Washington's bureaucratic maze. Not only did he know what his underlings planned to do, he told them to do it. His fingerprints show up all over the smoking documents. [Emphasis added. -v]
A midsummer night's imp Watch out, watch out, there are imps about! Charles Kightly in his The Perpetual Almanack of Folklore tells us that the red-stalked Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) blooms around English houses in June, associated with Summer Solstice (June 21) and Midsummer (June 24). (In North America, however, it is a noxious weed.)
Herb Robert is also known as Death-come-quickly, Robin's eye, Robin Hood, Robin-i'-th'-hedge, Stinking Bob, Stinker Bobs and Wren flower. Weed or not, beware how you treat it, for it is Robin Goodfellow's flower and he might direct a snake to bite you, especially if you destroy it.
Robin Goodfellow is an English imp, a trickster from the woods. As a forest dweller, he symbolises the pagan (wood-dwelling) pre-Christian peoples who the Church worked hard at converting from their wicked ways. Robin is a cognate of the famous European Green Man (a name coined by Lady Raglan in 1939 for a medieval image usually found in churches), and of Robin Hood ...
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
[Our team member Nora, who lives near the heart of Dublin, is unwell, and I'm sure if she wasn't, this would be something like her post. Wishing Nora a speedy recovery. We miss your posts!]
1904Bloomsday, celebrated annually on June 16: all of the main narrative events in James Joyce's Ulysses, took place on this day. Bloomsday is celebrated all over the world wherever people read and love Joyce.
The first celebration of this secular holiday took place in 1954 and major festivals are taking place worldwide on the centenary of the first Bloomsday. For example:
"An exhibition on James Joyce's life and work is being held at the Hoshigaoka Campus of Aichi Shukutoku University in Nagoya through June 16." Source: Daily Yomiuri, Japan
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
Jun 15, 1913 The Battle of Bud Bagsak US troops under General John 'Black Jack' Pershing ended (temporarily, for it continues to this day) the Moro people's struggle for self-determination in the Philippines.
This was done by exterminating 2,000, including 196 women and 340 children, (one source has 6,000 to 10,000 men, women and children) in an assault on the same crater in which an entire community had been similarly liquidated on March 8, 1906, an act of bastardry roundly condemned by anti-imperialist Mark Twain ...
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl! Che Guevara; Motorcycle Diaries
June 14, 1928 Ernesto (Che) Guevara (d. 1967), Argentinian-born Stalinist revolutionary who fought with Castro in Cuba, and in Bolivia; commonly extolled as a hero despite his authoritarian and bloodthirsty ideology and crimes against humanity.
Guevara's first position in the ruthless Communist Cuban dictatorship was that of comandante of La Cabana Fortress in Havana. There he had jurisdiction over the notorious 'war criminals' trials, which allegedly resulted in the execution of 600 civilian and military officials.
Many individuals imprisoned at La Cabana, such as poet and human rights activist Armando Valladares, who worked in the new revolutionary government, allege that Guevara took particular and personal interest in the interrogation, torture, and execution of prisoners. Guevara also assisted Raul Castro in purging and reorganizing the national army to make it the "principal political arm of the people's revolution".
For me, it meant 8,000 days of hunger, of systematic beatings, of hard labor, of solitary confinement and solitude, 8,000 days of struggling to prove that I was a human being, 8,000 days of proving that my spirit could triumph over exhaustion and pain, 8,000 days of testing my religious convictions, my faith, of fighting the hate my atheist jailers were trying to instill in me with each bayonet thrust, fighting so that hate would not flourish in my heart, 8,000 days of struggling so that I would not become like them. Armando Valladares
The famous '60s image of Guevara was taken from a photo from March, 1960 by lifelong communist Alberto Korda. The eyes of the revolutionary have been altered by an unknown person to give him a more saintly and courageous look ...
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
June 13, 1886 King Ludwig II of Bavaria ('the Swan King'; 'the Mad King'), who had a history of mental disorders, and a long struggle with his homosexuality, drowned with his physician in Lake Starnberg, near Munich, Austria.
Luwig was both friend and enemy of the composer Richard Wagner, whom he banished from Bavaria. Ludwig created the fantastic Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria; Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland was largely modelled on this magical edifice.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
*Ø* Here, there and everywhere: St Anthony of Padua
Jun 13: Feast day of St Anthony (Antony) of Padua (holiday in Padua and Lisbon) (Garden ranunculus, Ranunculus asiaticaus, was designated today’s plant by medieval monks. It is dedicated to this saint.)
The patron saint of illiterates, the poor and the downtrodden, St Anthony was born on August 15, 1195 in Lisbon, Portugal, as Francisco de Bulhões (d. June 13, 1231). He became a Franciscan and grew famous throughout Italy. The story is told that once, to impress a heretic, he preached to fish, which lifted their heads out of the water to hear him. On one occasion, to impress a heretic, he caused the man’s mule, which had not eaten for three days, to kneel down and venerate the communion host, instead of rushing to eat a bale of hay ...
Anthony is the patron saint of careless people, especially those who have lost something important, such as an animal, a valuable possession, or even a child. If you have lost something, the following rhyme, which is actually a prayer to this saint, is supposed to help:
Tony, Tony, look around Something's lost that must be found.
If women burn a candle on his day and say the following prayer, they will find a rich husband:
Sant Antoni beneit (Blessed St Antony), Feu-me trobar un marit (Make me find a husband) Que sigui bon home i ric (Who is a good man and rich), I, si pot ser, de seguit (And if possible, immediately).
Many strange occurrences attended the life of this Portuguese saint. On one occasion, a woman went to hear him preach, leaving her child home alone; it fell into a pot on the fire. When she got home she found the baby standing up unharmed in the cauldron.
The Cathedral of Padua, where Anthony is called Il Santo, has kept the tongue of the saint since 1307. On this day, a holiday in Padua, this and other relics are exhibited.
Give food to strangers An old folk saying in New Mexico, USA, has it that on St Anthony’s Day, as well as on St Joseph’s Day (March 19), one should give food to strangers, because the strangers may be saints themselves.
St Anthony of Padua and bilocation While preaching in the Church of St Pierre du Queyroix, in Limoges, France, St Anthony of Padua suddenly remembered he should have been preaching in another place across town. But at the monastery where he should have been, he was seen by the monks to deliver his sermon then step back into the shadows. Other Christian religious figures who are said to have bilocated include Ambrose of Milan and the Italian priest Padre Pio. The Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg supposedly also had the ability.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
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June 19, 1566 James I, (d. March 27, 1625; reigned July 24, 1567 - March 27, 1625), only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Lord Darnley, minor poet and first Stuart king of England (also known as King James VI of the Scots, and 'the wisest fool in Christendom'). He of the 'King James Bible'.
What's the single most important thing we can do in the U.S. right this minute to make sure Bush doesn't grab another term? Break all box office records with Michael Moore's 
June 18, 1178 About an hour after sunset, according to Gervase of Canterbury (c. 1141 - 1210), the famous medieval chronicler, a band of five eyewitnesses watched as the upper horn of the bright, new crescent Moon 
"The head of one of the world's biggest oil companies has revealed he fears for the planet's future if carbon dioxide emissions cannot be controlled.
We can easily be distracted about the biggest issues when we read things like that 
Folk music no longer dominates the genre. Today, rebellious political rhetoric can be found in hip-hop, punk, country, metal, alt-rock, and everything in between. Not only has protest music diversified, it seems to be rapidly on the rise.
1904 
Jun 15, 1913 The Battle of Bud Bagsak 
Guevara's first position in the ruthless Communist Cuban dictatorship was that of comandante of La Cabana Fortress in Havana. There he had jurisdiction over the notorious 'war criminals' trials, which allegedly resulted in the execution of 600 civilian and military officials. 
