Words 11.2

 Words Twice a Week      11.2

Last week’s challenge – write a “ball point pen” haiku  (ok – not as good as a SPAM-ku, but still fun.)

   Forceful strokes weaken,

   Elegant scrolls disappear -

   my ball point pen scrawls

A few days from the church calendar -

Nov 2  All Soul’s Day   We remember all those who have died, maybe especially those who have died this year.  Maybe this year especially those who have died from the virus.  Some people light candles.  Some might make a special dinner or dessert that was a favorite of those who died.  Some might get out pictures of family members from now till Advent?

Nov 3  Richard Hooker   He was a priest in the Church of England in the last half of the 16th century.  Some scholars suggest he was mainly responsible for steering the Church into a middle way between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Nov 6   William Temple  He was a child of an Archbishop of Canterbury who himself became the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1942.   Previously, as the Archbishop of York, he was involved in convening and chairing the Malvern Conference (1941) on church and society. The latter proposed six requisites for a society based on Christianity: 

 -every child should find itself a member of a family housed with decency and dignity; 

 -every child should have an opportunity for education up to maturity; 

 -every citizen should have sufficient income to make a home and bring up his children properly; 

 -every worker should have a voice in the conduct of the business or industry in which he works; 

 -every citizen should have sufficient leisure – two days' rest in seven and annual holiday with pay; 

 -every citizen should be guaranteed freedom of worship, speech, assembly, and association.

And a few from the earth/world calendar -

Nov 3

+ in 1868, John Willis Menard became the first African-American elected to the US House.

+ in 1884 the Supreme Court ruled Native Americans were “aliens” – citizens of reservations, but not of the United States.  In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act gave them full citizenship.

So on this day we have to acknowledge that our country captured people from another country, another continent even, and brought them here to be slaves; and then also deal with the idea of our government first denying and then granting indigenous people citizenship.  And then elect a President.  I don’t even know where to start…..

Nov 4

+ Felix Mendelssohn died. (1647)  His full name was Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.  He was born into a Jewish family, but at age 7 was baptized as a Reformed Christian.  Among many other works, he wrote an Overture and incidental music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, including The Wedding March.  We sing Hark, the Herald Angels Sing to his music.  He is largely responsible for the renewed interest in the music of J.S. Bach, with his 1829 Berlin performance of the St Matthew Passion.

+ King Tut’s tomb was discovered in 1922, astounding the world at the achievements of Egyptian culture.

+ Walter Cronkite was born in 1916.

+ in 1925, Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman elected governor of a state – Wyoming.

+ Barack Obama was elected president in 2008

Nov 6

+ Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died in 1893.  A few of his many works are Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and the 1812 Overture.

Nov 7

+ Leo Tolstoy died in 1910.  He wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina.  Then according to W Paul Jones, “out of a growing religious commitment, he abandoned such writing, focusing his works on religious and moral issues.  Practicing what he wrote, he gave up his property for the sake of a simple Christian life, performed physical labor, and threw himself tirelessly into helping the needy in the great famine.  He rejected the miraculous aspects of the Gospels, intrigued instead with teaching and living the Sermon on the Mount.”

+ in 1916, Jeanette Rankin became the first woman elected to the US Congress – from Montana.

+ (1917) the October Revolution   Lenin and the Bolsheviks led an uprising, precipitating the Russian Civil War

+ Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the strongest and most influential first ladies ever, died in 1962.  Though widely respected in her later years, Roosevelt was a controversial First Lady at the time for her outspokenness, particularly on civil rights for African-Americans. She was the first presidential spouse to hold regular press conferences, write a daily newspaper column, write a monthly magazine column, host a weekly radio show, and speak at a national party convention. On a few occasions, she publicly disagreed with her husband's policies. She advocated for expanded roles for women in the workplace, the civil rights of African Americans and Asian Americans, and the rights of World War II refugees. Following her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt remained active in politics for the remaining 17 years of her life. She pressed the United States to join and support the United Nations and became its first delegate. She served as the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.   (Wikipedia)

+ Steve McQueen (Wanted, Dead or Alive, and a few movies) died in 1980

This week’s challenge – read something by Leo Tolstoy!  Ok, not ready for War and Peace just yet, I’m going to try The Kreutzer Sonata,  “a tale of murder and jealousy, exploring the morality of romantic love.”  (ebook from PWPL!)  Although I do recall way back in the early “Email a Day” series there was a website where you could read a chapter a day.  If we had done it, we probably would have finished it by now!