Words Twice a Week 6.27
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.
I know – a day late. Sorry.
Some days from the church calendar -
backspace to June 27 - Cornelius Hill (November 13, 1834 – January 25, 1907) or Onangwatgo (“Big Medicine”) was the last hereditary chief of the Oneida Nation, and fought to preserve his people's lands and rights under various treaties with the United States government. A lifelong Episcopalian, he was ordained a priest of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America at age 69, and ministered to his people until shortly before his death. (wikipedia, well, a bunch of this post is from wikipedia!))
June 29 The Feast of Sts Peter and Paul It commemorates their martyrdom in Rome.
July 1 Harriet Beecher Stowe She and her husband were ardent abolitionists and supported the Underground Railroad. She wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. At the start of the Civil War she had what she called “a funny meeting with President Lincoln” (?). Her son later reported that Lincoln greeted her by saying, "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."
She also campaigned for Women’s rights, writing [T]he position of a married woman ... is, in many respects, precisely similar to that of the negro slave. She can make no contract and hold no property; whatever she inherits or earns becomes at that moment the property of her husband.... Though he acquired a fortune through her, or though she earned a fortune through her talents, he is the sole master of it, and she cannot draw a penny....[I]n the English common law a married woman is nothing at all. She passes out of legal existence.
Following the death of her husband in 1886, Harriet started rapidly to decline in health. By 1888, The Washington Post reported that as a result of dementia the 77-year-old Stowe started writing Uncle Tom's Cabin over again. She imagined that she was engaged in the original composition, and for several hours every day she industriously used pen and paper, inscribing passages of the book almost exactly word for word. This was done unconsciously from memory, the author imagining that she composed the matter as she went along. To her diseased mind the story was brand new, and she frequently exhausted herself with labor which she regarded as freshly created.
Also on July 1 Catherine Winkworth She was an English hymn-writer and translator, particularly of German choral work. She translated Wake, Awake for Night is Flying, and How Brightly Beams the Morning Star. You can check the index in the hymnal for others.
July 2 Moses the Black, also known as The Robber, The Ethiopian, and The Strong. He converted from a life of crime and became one of the Desert Fathers in 4th century Egypt. Moses had a rather difficult time adjusting to regular monastic discipline. His flair for adventure remained with him. Attacked by a group of robbers in his desert cell, Moses fought back, overpowered the intruders, and dragged them to the chapel where the other monks were at prayer. He told the brothers that he did not think it Christian to hurt the robbers and asked what he should do with them. The robbers themselves repented and joined the community as brothers afterwards
And some days from the earth/world calendar -
June 28
+ the raid on The Stonewall Inn and the beginning of the gay rights movement in 1969.
+ Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in 1914, one of the events that lead to World War 1.
+ Rod Serling died in 1975. He created, and is best known for, The Twilight Zone. One of the last things he did was a radio production - Fantasy Park was a 48-hour-long rock concert aired by nearly 200 stations over Labor Day weekend in 1975. The program, produced by KNUS in Dallas, featured performances by dozens of rock stars of the day, and even reunited the Beatles. It was also completely imaginary, a "theatre-of-the-mind for the 70s", as producer Beau Weaver put it, using record albums recorded live in concert, plus crowd noise and other sound effects. (Stations who aired the special were reportedly inundated by callers demanding to know how to get to the nonexistent concert.) Serling wrote the disclaimers, which aired each hour: "Hello, this is Rod Serling and welcome back to Fantasy Park—the crowds here today are unreal." "This is Fantasy Park—the greatest live concert—never held." Kind of like Wait, Wait don’t Tell Me’s disclaimer “This show was taped before an audience of no one.” He was involved in a lot of other movies – check the website. He was an anti-war activist and worker for radial equality.
June 29
+ Antoine de Saint Euxpery was born in 1900. He was a French writer and aviation pioneer. On 30 December 1935, at 2:45 am, after 19 hours and 44 minutes in the air, along with his mechanic-navigator André Prévot, he crashed in the Libyan desert, during an attempt to break the speed record in a Paris-to-Saigon air race and win a prize of 150,000 francs. Both Saint-Exupéry and Prévot miraculously survived the crash, only to face rapid dehydration in the intense desert heat. Their maps were primitive and ambiguous, leaving them with no idea of their location. Lost among the sand dunes, their sole supplies consisted of some grapes, two oranges, a madeleine, a pint of coffee in a battered thermos and a half pint of white wine in another. They also had with them a small store of medicine: "a hundred grammes of ninety percent alcohol, the same of pure ether, and a small bottle of iodine."
The pair had only one day's worth of fluids. They both saw mirages and experienced auditory hallucinations, which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations. By the second and third day, they were so dehydrated that they stopped sweating. On the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel discovered them and administered a native rehydration treatment that saved their lives. Saint-Exupéry's classic, The Little Prince, begins with an aviator crashing in the desert.
He disappeared and is believed to have died while on a reconnaissance mission from Corsica over the Mediterranean on 31 July 1944.
+ CFC’s were banned in 1990. Would it happen today, I wonder?
June 30
+ Chet Atkins died in 2001, 10 days after his 77th birthday. In my humble opinion, no one played or plays the guitar like he did. It was gentle, comfortable, pleasant. Here’s a video of him playing Starry, Starry Night, and links to a bunch of others. Here he is playing with Less Paul.
+ Gone With The Wind was published in 1936. I guess I don’t need to see, or read, it again, although apparently according to a poll in 2014, it was the second favorite book of American readers, right after the Bible. Really?
+ The Tunguska Event in 1908. Ok, hands up – who ever heard of this? I never had. It was an “air-burst” from a stony meteorite about 100 meters in size. It occurred in Eastern Siberian Taiga (eastern Russia) It was the largest inpact event in recorded history. Huh. And I never heard of it!
July 1
+ Medicare was created in 1966. Now if we could just get “Medicare for all”!
+ In 1908 “SOS” was adopted as the International Distress Signal. If anybody is out there listening – SOS, Hey, SOS!!!!
July 2
+ so this is kind of an interesting day – in 1900 a Zeppelin took off for the first time; in 1937 Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were heard from for the last time; and in 2002 Steve Fossett landed his balloon Spirit of Freedom in Australia after making the first solo around the world balloon flight. (13 days!) He was also a sailor with all kinds of records, and a fixed wing pilot. Fossett made the first solo nonstop unrefueled fixed-wing aircraft flight around the world between February 28 and March 3, 2005. He took off from Salina, Kansas, where he was assisted by faculty members and students from Kansas State University, and flew eastbound with the prevailing winds, returning to Salina after 67 hours, 1 minute, 10 seconds, without refueling or making intermediate landings.
+ and, still on July 2, on this day in 1843 an alligator fell out of the sky in Charleston, SC, during a thunderstorm.
July 3
+ the last two Great Auks were killed off Iceland. I actually wrote a poem about this in a creative writing class in college. (What was I, a math major, doing in a creative writing class? I don’t know. On the other hand, what was I doing as a math major?) Anyway, here’s the poem -
Ode to the Great Auk
It was a cold and misty morning
When a boat came from the sea.
And it bumped the rocky coastline,
Landing hunters, leaving three.
Now the auk came lumb’ring forward
To see these strangers in.
Dumb auk, you didn’t realize
These strange looking birds were men.
Whack!
The auk was a funny kind of bird.
It could walk but couldn’t fly.
All that it could do, it seems,
Was die.
The other students – English majors – were not really impressed and their comments made that plain, but the professor kind of liked it and said something along the lines of “It’s a kind of awkward poem about an awkward subject.”
Ok – July 4, Independence Day and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died in 1826 and Henry David Thoreau moved to Walden Pond in 1845,
and that’s what I got for now…..well, along with the preview, in case I’m late again next week -
July 5
+ First can of SPAM sold in 1937. There are towns that hold SPAM Fests, and SPAM Jams. We’ll try for a new SPAM Ku.
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