If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church. Click here.
A few days from the church calendar -
March 23 Gregory the Illuminator Born about 257, he was a religious leader who is credited with converting Armenia from paganism to Christianity in 301. He is the patron saint and first official head of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
March 24 Oscar Romero He was the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador. He spoke out against poverty, social injustice, assassinations, and torture amid a growing war between left-wing and right-wing forces. In 1980, Romero was assassinated while celebrating Mass in the chapel of the Hospital of Divine Providence.
March 25 The Annunciation (Here’s the link to the Words entry from last December that has some thoughts on the event.)
When the calendar system of Anno Domini was first introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in AD 525, he assigned the beginning of the new year to March 25 since, according to Catholic theology, the era of grace began with the Incarnation of Christ. Along with Easter, March 25 was used as the New Year's Day in many pre-modern Christian countries. The holiday was moved to January 1 in France by Charles IX's 1564 Edict of Roussillon. In England, the feast of the Annunciation came to be known as Lady Day, and Lady Day marked the beginning of the English new year until 1752. Also in England, the 1240 Synod of Worcester banned all servile work during the Feast of the Annunciation, making it a day of rest.
So – another Happy New Year opportunity!
March 26 Richard Allen Born into slavery on February 14, 1760, he was a minister, educator, writer, and one of America's most active and influential Black leaders. Allen performed extra work to earn the money and bought his freedom in 1780 when he changed his name from "Negro Richard" to "Richard Allen." Allen was qualified as a preacher in 1784 at the Christmas Conference, the founding of the Methodist Church in North America in Baltimore, Maryland. He and Absalom Jones, another Black Methodist preacher led services at St George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, but when racial tensions surfaced, they left that congregation. Their journey then went through several organizations, including the African Episcopal Church of St Thomas and finally the African Methodist Episcopal church. Allen was ordained as the first Black Methodist minister by Bishop Francis Asbury in 1799. In 1794, he founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent Black denomination in the United States. He opened his first AME church in 1794 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. . Elected the first bishop of the AME Church in 1816, Allen focused on organizing a denomination in which free Black people could worship without racial oppression and enslaved people could find a measure of dignity.
March 28 James Solomon Russell born enslaved, (December 20, 1857) in Mecklenberg County, Virginia, shortly before the American Civil War, he became an Episcopal priest and educator.Bishop Whittle ordained Russell a deacon on March 9, 1882 and sent him as a missionary back to Mecklenburg County. He worked in Lawrenceville, Virginia, at first holding services for African Americans at the white Episcopal Church, St. Andrew's. The following year, the diocese authorized funds to build a church for his parishioners, as well as a horse to assist on his missionary travels. He was ordained as a priest in 1887. In January 1883, Russell and his wife began teaching African Americans in a room at the tiny new church. In 1888, through a legacy of the Rev. Saul of Philadelphia, they were able to buy another building. Thus, Russell founded Saint Paul Normal and Industrial School. In 1904, inspired by Booker T. Washington, Russell founded an annual farmer's conference. He urged African American farmers to stay out of debt and to vote, although Virginia's Constitution on 1902 instituted poll taxes and Jim Crow Laws had begun. Archdeacon Russell was awarded an honorary degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary (the first African American thus honored) in 1917, and in 1922 an honorary doctorate in laws from Monrovia College.
A few days from the earth/world calendar
March 22
+ World Water Day – we who live on the shores of Lake Superior can sometimes take fresh, clean water for granted. The folks at Tech are encouraging us to watch the movie Brave Blue World. Seems like several years ago you could buy bottles of water from different celebrity’s homes as a fund raiser. Kind of weird and kind of fun. Also a time to think about bottled water issues, I guess.
+ first Beatles album, Please, Please Me, goes on sale.
+ Stephen Sondheim was born in 1930, Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1948 A good day for musicals!
+ Tara Lipinski became the youngest female world champion figure skater in 1997. She won every competition she entered during her professional career – including being the youngest woman to win an Olympic gold medal.
March 23
+ birthday of Fannie Farmer, in 1857. Although her family valued education, Fanny had a stroke at age 16 and was not able to continue her schooling. She took up cooking and eventually turned their home into a boarding house known for the meals served. At age 30, she began to study at the Boston Cooking School, learning the latest in the science of diet, nutrition, cleaning, chemical analysis of food, and techniques of cooking and baking. Foujr years later she was principal of the school. In 1896 she published The Boston Cooking School Cook Book, which introduced the use of standard measuring spoons and cups. She lectured at the Harvard Medical School. She felt so strongly about the significance of proper food for the sick that she believed she would be remembered chiefly by her work in that field, as opposed to her work in household and fancy cookery. Farmer understood perhaps better than anyone else at the time the value of appearance, taste, and presentation of sickroom food to ill and wasted people with poor appetites; she ranked these qualities over cost and nutritional value in importance. (I think I have mentioned before that her book was iconic in the West family, my father having given a copy to my mother before they were married. As I think about it, I’m not sure what was behind that – as far as I know my mom had always been a good cook!)
March 24
+ birthday of another Fanny - Fanny Crosby in 1820. She wrote many, many, many gospel hymns. She died on Feb 12, 1915. The church remembers her on that day – here’s a link to the Words entry.
+ also the birthday in 1874 of Harry Houdini.
+ and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died on this day in 1882. He was one a group known as The Fireside Poets He probably best known for The Song of Hiawatha, and Paul Revere’s Ride, and Evangeline. He wrote a poem The Golden Legend which was made into a cantata by Arthur Sullivan. He wrote "The Village Blacksmith", "The Wreck of the Hesperus", and Christmas Bells (I heard the bells on Christmas Day…).
March 25
+ musically, Claude Debussy died in 1918, Buck Owens in 2006. Arturo Toscanini was born in 1867, Aretha Franklin in 1942, and Elton John in 1947. There ought to be something to hum along with in all of that crew.
+ Viola Liuzzo was killed in 1965 by four Ku Klux Klan members who fired into her car as she was transporting participants to the Selma, Alabama civil rights march. President Johnson announced the arraignment of the assassins the next day. He declared that while for decades the enemies of justice have used “the rope and the gun and the tar and the feathers to terrorize their neighbors, that situation must stop. Viola’s death had significant impact on furthering civil rights legislation. (W Paul Jones)
+ the first “wiki” (user editable website) created by Ward Cunningham in 1995. It was called “wikiwikiweb” – the forerunner to the ubiquitous Wikipedia!
March 26
+ Ludwig van Beethoven died in 1827. Listen to the Moonlight Sonata? Kind of a cool video of it here.
+ Walt Whitman died in 1892. Here’s 10 of his best, according to the “Interesting Literature” website, including "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", written on the death of Abraham Lincoln.
+ Robert Frost was born in 1874. Have a favorite poem of his? I’ve gone through several over the years. I suppose A Prayer in Spring would be a good one for today.
+ four interesting political happenings – 1975 the biological weapons convention comes into effect, 1979 the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, 1995 the Schengen agreement essentially does away with border checks in much of Europe, and 2000 Vladimir Putin becomes president of Russia.
+ the Salk polio vaccine was announced for the first time, on CBS radio, in 1953. There were several other vaccines being worked on that were later used.
March 27
+ speaking of drugs, the Pfizer drug Viagra was approved in 1998.
+ M.C. Escher died in 1972. Birds and fish that go both ways, forks that start with three tines and end with two, stairs and watercourses that just go round and round – there’s a gallery and a shop on the website. Oh yeah – and two hands drawing each other.
March 28
+ The Three Mile Island nuclear accident happened in 1979.
+ Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was released in 1963. And now I am not making this u p – I looked out the window yesterday and there was this sound of a bird hitting the wall and a swirl of feathers, and there on the ground was a peregrine falcon (I looked it up) killing a morning dove. Hmmm.
+ in 1881 the Barnum and Bailey circuses merged to form "P.T. Barnum's Greatest Show On Earth, And The Great London Circus, Sanger's Royal British Menagerie and The Grand International Allied Shows United". It was eventually shortened to "Barnum and Bailey's Circus". It was purchased by the Ringling Brothers in 1907.
+ Sergey Rachmaninoff died on this day in 1943. Same video treatment of Piano Concerto #2 as with Moonlight Sonata above. You can also hear it accompanying a fantasy seduction scene between Tom Ewell and Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. And you can hear Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in the movie Somewhere in Time (it’s apparently the 18th variation!). Another piano version. And in Groundhog Day! - Bill Murray learns to play it.
Ok here's a challenge - write a poem that is a recipe for something called Moonlight Cake or Pudding!
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