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WAIT A MINUTE! HOLD EVERYTHING! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? WHY DID NO ONE CALL ME AND SAY “CHARLIE, WHAT ABOUT….?” Last Tuesday – I don’t know, listening to Merle Haggard “Sing Me Back Home” and I must have taken my eyes off the road of life – last Tuesday, April 6, was the day that Twinkies were first marketed in 1930! I mean, Twinkies are right up there with SPAM and Jello as iconic American foods. And sure – they are probably full of all kinds of stuff, but hey, they taste so good! So – here’s a haiku about Twinkies. Then I think I’ll run out and pick up a couple.
For afternoon tea
Mint, Earl Grey, or Darjeeling -
Twinkie anyone?
Ok – now here are some of the days for this week, and I’ll try not to miss anything as significant as Twinkie Birthday!
Some days from the church calendar
April 14 Two of the first African American priests and bishops in the Episcopal Church. They both died on April 14, Demby in 1957, Delany in 1928.
Edward Thomas Demby Beginning as an African Methodist Episcopal Church minister, in 1898 he was ordained a deacon (and a priest the next year) as a priest in the Episcopal Church of the United States and later a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Arkansas and the Southwest, Demby worked against racial discrimination and for interracial harmony, both within and outside of his church. He was the first, or one of the first African American bishops in the Episcopal Church.
Henry Beard Delany Born into slavery in 1858, after the Civil War he learned bricklaying and carpentry from his father, who was a ship and house carpenter. He attended St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina, which Episcopal priests had founded in 1867 to educate newly freed men and women, studying theology, music and other subjects. He joined Raleigh's St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, was ordained a deacon in 1889 and a priest in 1892. He was unanimously elected suffragan bishop for Negro Work at the North Carolina diocesan convention, and consecrated in 1918.
April 15 Another double day – a priest and a sister who both worked and lived among people with leprosy on the Island of Moloka’i
Damien He was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a missionary religious institute. He was recognized for his ministry, which he led from 1873 until his death in 1889, in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi for people with leprosy (Hansen's disease), who lived in government-mandated medical quarantine in a settlement on the Kalaupapa Peninsula of Molokaʻi. During this time, he taught the Catholic faith to the people of Hawaii. Father Damien also cared for the patients and established leaders within the community to build houses, schools, roads, hospitals, and churches. He dressed residents' ulcers, built a reservoir, made coffins, dug graves, shared pipes, and ate poi by hand with them, providing both medical and emotional support. After eleven years caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of those in the leper colony, Father Damien contracted leprosy. He continued with his work despite the infection but finally succumbed to the disease on 15 April 1889.
Marianne Marianne Cope, also known as Saint Marianne of Molokaʻi, was a German-born American religious sister who was a member of the Sisters of St Francis of Syracuse, New York. Known also for her charitable works, in 1883 she relocated with six other sisters to Hawaiʻi to care for persons suffering leprosy on the island of Molokaʻi and aid in developing the medical infrastructure in Hawaiʻi. Despite direct contact with the patients over many years, Cope did not contract the disease. She was the 11th person in what is now the United States to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.
April 16 Molly Brant also known as Mary Brant, Konwatsi'tsiaienni, and Degonwadonti, she was a Mohawk leader in New York and Canada in the era of the American Revolution. She was the consort or common law wife of Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Northern Indian Affairs. She attended the Church of England. She had significant influence among the Mohawk and the Six Nation Iroquois League and remained loyal to the British during the American Revolution. She died on April 16, 1796.
And some days from the world/earth calendar -
April 12
+ Clara Barton died in 1912. A civil war nurse whose experience led to the creation of the American Red Cross. She was president of it for 23 years. After the war she ran the Office of Missing Soldiers, helping to locate 22,000 men. In 1869, Barton closed the Missing Soldiers Office and headed to Europe. The third floor of her old boardinghouse was boarded up in 1913, and the site forgotten. The site was "lost" in part because Washington, DC realigned its addressing system in the 1870s. The boardinghouse became 437 ½ Seventh Street Northwest (formerly 488-1/2 Seventh Street West). In 1997, General Services Administration carpenter Richard Lyons was hired to check out the building for its demolition. He found a treasure trove of Barton items in the attic, including signs, clothing, Civil War soldier's socks, an army tent, Civil War-era newspapers, and many documents relating to the Office of Missing Soldiers. This discovery led to the NPS saving the building from demolition. It took years, however, for the site to be restored. The Clara Barton's Missing Soldiers Office Museum, run by the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, opened in 2015. Her home was established as a National Historic Site in 1974.
+ and speaking of the Civil War, in 1861 the South Carolina Militia fired on Fort Sumter. With the return fire and later surrender of the fort, the American Civil War began.
+ In 1961, Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth for the first time. In 1981 the Space shuttle blasted off for the first time.
+ in 1951, the Israeli Knesset set the 27th of Nisan as Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoa. (It was last week, April 8 this year.) Unfortunately, since WW2 we continue to see atrocities of ethnic cleansing.
April 13
+ Tiger Woods became the youngest man to win the Masters golf tournament in 1997. What a lot has happened in his life since then!
+ in 1970, an oxygen tank on Apollo 13 exploded. “Houston, we have a problem...”
April 14
+ George Frideric Handel died in 1759. According to the website, “When Messiah was first performed in London (1743), when the chorus struck up, 'For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth', reportedly the audience and King [George II] stood and remained standing until the chorus had ended. Some days after the first performance, Handel visited Lord Kinnoul. His lordship paid him compliments on "the noble entertainment". Handel is said to have remarked, "My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained them; I wished to make them better."
+ the heaviest hailstones ever recorded (2.2 lbs) fell in Bangladesh on this day in 1986. 92 people were killed.
+ the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in 1912. 1500 people died. I’d say April 14 scores “Ice 2, Humans 0”.
+ Rachel Carson died in 1964. She wrote a couple of books about the sea, and then Silent Spring about pesticides in the environment, giving a strong boost to the environmental movement.
April 15
+ Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.
+ It would be tax day in any other year. I finally got mine done this week. Each year I say – next year in February!
+ Wordsworth and his sister went walking in 1802 and saw “a crowd, a host of golden daffodils.” He finally got around to writing and publishing the poem in 1807.
+ in 1935 Kodak introduced Kodachrome, if you wanted to take a picture of those daffodils. Paul Simon sang the song.
April 16
+ The Rolling Stones released their first album in the US in 1964.
+ Charlie Chaplin was born in 1889. In the Tai Chi for Arthritis and Fall Prevention, they start with “a Charlie Chaplin stance.” Pretty amazing that 100 years later, we still know what that means. Chaplin selected the costume with which he became identified. He described the process in his autobiography: “I wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large ... I added a small moustache, which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage he was fully born.”
April 17
+ Ben Franklin died in 1790..According to wikipedia, he was a leading writer, printer, political philosopher, politician, Freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. He founded Philadelphia’s first fire department.
April 18
+ Ireland became independent on this day in 1949.
+ San Francisco earthquake in 1906. Devastating fires soon broke out in the city and lasted for several days. More than 3,000 people died. Over 80% of the city of San Francisco was destroyed. Other earthquakes occurred in Oct 1989 (during the World series!) and in 2014
+ Albert Einstein died in 1955. Einstein became one of the most famous scientific celebrities, beginning with the confirmation of his theory of general relativity in 1919. And just to look at the list of his scientific topics is pretty overwhelming – I don’t even know what most of them are! Despite the general public having little understanding of his work, he was widely recognized and received adulation and publicity. In the period before World War II, The New Yorker published a vignette in their "The Talk of the Town" feature saying that Einstein was so well known in America that he would be stopped on the street by people wanting him to explain "that theory". He finally figured out a way to handle the incessant inquiries. He told his inquirers "Pardon me, sorry! Always I am mistaken for Professor Einstein." Some quotes attributed to him "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"; "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”; "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere"; "Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value." And more here. Unfortunately the one about the bees is probably not actually from him. His brain was removed after he died and pieces of it shared with various scientists. A 2001 book, Driving Mr Albert tells some of the story.
+ Thor Heyerdahl died in 2002 I read the book, I saw the movie, I carved a Tiki figure and wore it around my neck. You?
+ Dick Clark in 2012. I watched American Bandstand, and danced in my dreams. And a couple Rockin’ New Year’s Eves. You?
Challenge for the week – write a poem about wandering around and suddenly seeing a “field of crocuses, or croci”. Either is acceptable. Crocuses could rhyme with “Memphis slow buses”; croci could rhyme with “Lodi”.
That’s what I got for now……
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