Words 2.6a

 Words Twice a Week        2.6a

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.

Church days below -

Ok – some days from the world/earth calendar.  

And the Olympics are on.  I find the abilities of the individual athletes just unbelievable.  I try not to pay too much attention to “the countries they represent.”  I try to think more along the lines of “the countries they are from.”

And first – backspacing a couple of days to Feb 3 – It was the day in 1959 when “the music died” – Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and pilot Roger Peterson were killed when their plane crashed.  Wow – it says Waylon Jennings was in Buddy Holly’s band (not “The Crickets”, a later band.)  I didn’t know that.  In fact, wikipedia says he gave up his seat on the plane to the Big Bopper who had the flu.  I don’t know if I knew that or not.

Feb 7

+ It’s the birthday of Charles Dickens (1812) and Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867).

+ The Beatles came to America and sang on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

Feb 8

+ the official ground breaking for the first 8 stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame took place.  The first eight stars were for Olive Borden, Ronald Colman, Louise Fazenda, Preston Foster, Burt Lancaster, Edward Sedgwick, Joanne Woodward, and Ernest Torrence.  There are links for each of them on the website.  And I didn’t know this – there are five different catagories, and some people – Gene Autry – have five stars, one for each catagories.  And not all the persons are actually persons – Buggs Bunny, Big Bird, Alvin and the chipmunks, Snoopy, and Winnie the Pooh are some of the 18 “characters” with stars.

Feb 9

+ Fyodor Dostoyevsky died in 1881.  (Well, wikipedia says he died on Feb 9.  I don’t know if this is one of those old calendar/new calendar things or just an error in one of the books .) Anyway, he wrote Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov.  Arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, he was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted at the last moment. He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer's Diary, a collection of his writings. He began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers.

Feb 10

+ birthday of Boris Pasternak (1890).  He wrote Dr Zhivago.  The book was banned by Soviet authorities and had to be smuggled to Italy to be published.  And although the authorities tried to suppress the news, his funeral turned into a huge public event.  His last poem and a picture of the dacha where he lived are on the website.  Apparently now Dr Zhivago is part of the Russian school curriculum.  And on Dr Zhivago the movie – Omar Sharif and Julie Christie whoa!  And Lara’s Theme?  Double whoa!

+ Bob Dylan released the The Times They Are A Changing album in 1964.  What were you doing in 1964?  Have times changed? 

Feb 11

+ Rene Descartes died in 1650.  Among other things, he said “I think, therefore I am”. (Well, he said it in Latin, but that’s how we say it now!)  He was also a mathematician and we owe the whole x and y axes to him.  Next time you see the graph of the pandemic cases and deaths, think of him.

+ Bernadette had a vision of The Virgin Mary at Lourdes in France, who revealed a healing spring to her.  It became famous, but Bernadette died after much sickness, at age 35.

Feb 12

+ George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue premiered.  Or here’s Leonard Bernstein playing it.

+ Charles Schultz died in 2000.  

Feb13

+ Last Peanuts comic strip published in 2000 – the day after Charles Schultz died.

+ Waylon Jennings died in 2002.  He was 64.

That’s what I got for now…..Back to snowboard cross!

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