Words 11.15

 Words Twice a Week    11.15

and [qm] still means question mark; [ep] means exclamation point

   life flows simply on,                           life flows haltingly     

   no questions, exclamations,              email address, dollar sign

   when shift keys don’t work               plus sign, brackets - none

A few days from the church calendar -

Nov 16  Margaret of Scotland  [1045-1093]  an English princess and a Scottish queen.  She was a strong, pure, noble character, who had very great influence over her husband, Malcolm, and through him over Scottish history.  She attended to charitable works, serving orphans and the poor every day before she ate and washing the feet of the poor in imitation of Christ. She rose at midnight every night to attend the liturgy.  Malcolm and one of her sons were killed in the Battle of Alnwick against the English on Nov 13.  She died 3 days later - the cause was said to be grief.

Nov 22  Clive Staples Lewis   -  The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.  He was baptized as a child in the Church of Ireland, but later turned away from the faith.  He came back to believing in God, and then specifically to Christianity, at age 32, in large part through conversation with friends, including J.R.R.Tolkien.

And from the earth/world calendar -

Nov 16

-  the birthday of Shigeru Miyamoto.  He designed the Mario and Legend of Zelda video games.  This was/is a big deal for some of my family.

-  the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone movie was released in 2001.

Nov 17 

-  Auguste Rodin died on this day in 1917.  A French sculptor, he is perhaps best known for The Thinker; other works include the Three Shades, The Kiss, and The Cathedral.

-  the [modern] Suez Canal opened in 1869.  There had been various canals connecting the Nile River and the Red Sea beginning 2000 years BCE, which had been dug and then fallen into disrepair, or at times even had been closed to prevent certain traders.

-  1858 the start of Modified Julian Date.  ‘A modified version of the Julian date denoted MJD obtained by subtracting 2,400,000.5 days from the Julian date JD , The MJD therefore gives the number of days since midnight on November 17, 1858. This date corresponds to 2,400,000.5 days after day 0 of the Julian calendar. MJD is still in common usage in tabulations by the U. S. Naval Observatory.’  If you understand this, you are probably an astronomer of some sort.  It was developed to help track Sputnik.  Otherwise, just google it.

Nov 18

-  speaking of time, in 1883 the railroads adopted time zones – four of them across the country.

Nov 19

-  Franz Schubert died in 1828.  He wrote over 1,500 works in his short career, roughly 630 of which were songs for solo voice and piano. Schubert's sacred output includes seven masses, one oratorio and one requiem, among other mass movements and numerous smaller compositions.  Interestingly, he completed only eleven of his twenty stage works.

-  Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address in 1863.  There are actually five slightly different copies of the address in Lincoln’s handwriting.  About 280 words – did you have to memorize it in school[qm]  I did not, but seems like a person could.  And spoiler alert – the idea that he sketched it out on the back of an envelope on the way to Gettysburg is most likely a myth.  From the official Lincoln online website - Despite widely-circulated stories to the contrary, the president did not dash off a copy aboard a train to Gettysburg. Lincoln carefully prepared his major speeches in advance; his steady, even script in every manuscript is consistent with a firm writing surface, not the notoriously bumpy Civil War-era trains. On returning to Washington, Edward Everett, the ‘main speaker’ [2 hours] at the event, wrote to Lincoln and complimented the president on the “eloquent simplicity & appropriateness” of his remarks, adding in open humility: “I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

-  Steamboat Willie, aka Micky Mouse, premiered in 1928

Nov 20

-  Universal Children’s Day established by the United Nations with the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959.  For Every Child is a wonderful book published by UNICEF that lists 14 of the most significant rights, each illustrated by a different artist.

-  Windows 1.0 was released.  Here are a few error message haikus -

       Yesterday it worked             Three things are certain            You step in the stream

      Today it is not working          Death, taxes, and lost data       But the water has moved on

       Windows is like that             Guess which has occurred       This page is not here

-  birthday of Joe Biden in 1942 and Robert F Kennedy in 1925 – can that be possible[qm]

-  in one dating system [not the MJD] this is the day Leo Tolstoy died.  I still have not made it through The Kreutzer Sonata.  

Nov 21

-  Henry Purcell, English composer, died on this day in 1695.  He is best known for trumpet compositions.

-  first appearance of Tweety Bird in 1941.  I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat[ep]

Nov 22

-  John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963

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