Words 10.31

 Words Twice a Week        10.31

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.

Two days late and a couple dollars short – but that’s the camp life!

Some days from the church calendar -

Nov 2 – Day of the Dead/Commemoration of the Faithful Departed

Nov 3  Martin de Porres  He was a lay brother of the Dominicans in Peru, born in 1579, he died on this day in 1639.  He was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed slave of African and Native descent.  As such his participation in the religious life was severely limited.  He joined a monastery as servant, and finally became a lay brother.  Once when the monastery was in debt, he said “I am only a poor mulatto, sell me.”  When an aged beggar, covered with ulcers and almost naked, stretched out his hand, and Martin took him to his own bed. One of his brethren reproved him. Martin replied: "Compassion, my dear Brother, is preferable to cleanliness."  He is the patron saint of among others, mixed-race people, barbers, innkeepers, lottery winners, public health workers, and all those seeking racial harmony.

Some days from the earth/world calendar -

Nov 2

+ George Bernard Shaw died in 1950 after falling off a ladder in his orchard.  He was 94.  He wrote a variety of plays, including Pygmalion, on which My Fair Lady is based.  He was a controversial figure - he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform, and opposed vaccination and organized religion. He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as equally culpable, and although not a republican, castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period.

+ Daniel Boone was born in 1734

Nov 3

+ In 1884 the US Supreme Court ruled that Native Americans were aliens and not citizens of the US.  (In 1924 the Indian citizenship Act gave Native Americans full citizenship.)

+ Godzilla was released in 1954.  First of many “Zillas”!

Nov 4

+ Felix Mendelssohn died in 1847.  Among other things, he wrote the music for Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.  53 days till Christmas!  He also wrote incidental music for as production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which includes The Wedding March!

+ Will Rogers was born in 1879; Walter Cronkite in 1916.  We toured Mark Twain’s boyhood home in Hannibal.  It all makes you wonder – in 50 years what names will be part of the common culture.  

Nov 5

+ Art Garfunkel was born in 1941

+ Al Capp died in 1979.  He wrote and drew the Li’l Abner comic strip - Pappy and Mammy Yokum, Daisy Mae, Dogpatch, USA,  and Sadie Hawkins Day, along with a variety of outlandish characters which according to M Thomas Inge “had a profound influence on the way the world viewed the American South.”  Again, in 50 years….?

Nov 6

+ Peter Ilyich Tchaikovski died in 1893.  He wrote The `1812 Overture, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker. Again – 53 days….

+ Adolph Sax (yes, he invented the saxophone) was born in 1814; John Philip Sousa in 1854

Nov 7

+ Leo Tolstoy died in 1910.  (or on Nov 20, depending on which calendar you are using!)  We could have spent the pandemic reading War and Peace (there was an online support group that read so many pages each day) but we didn’t.  Now we’ve got to do it on our own.

+ Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962.

+ In 1916, Jeanette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress.  She was from Montana.

That’s what I got for now…..

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