June 15 is Fly a Kite Day (or Go Fly a Kite Day), ostensibly honoring the anniversary of Benjamin Franklin’s famous electricity experiment in 1752.
Ben Flies a Kite
However, Franklin never specified the date of the experiment. Written records reveal that he only narrowed down the timeframe to a month (June 1752) a full fourteen years after the fact. Strange circumstances like these have led some historians to cast doubts as to the veracity of the entire experiment.
In Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklin and His Electric Kite Hoax, Tom Tucker points out that the main evidence we have of the experiment, besides Franklin’s recollection 14 years later, is a single article he wrote about it for the Pennsylvania Gazette in October 1752 (and later published in Philosophical Transactions). The article leaves out several pertinent details, such as dates, witnesses, and oh yes, whether or not Franklin performed the experiment at all.
The article is written as sort of a “how-to” description. It contains details of how to construct a kite out of silk instead of paper, attach the key, and so on. But it never actually goes so far as to say the author actually carried out this task to its full extent. But the article does encourage the reader to go out and try an experiment that is more than likely to kill him. Whether Franklin realized this and this was just part of his conniving sense of humor is unknown.
Tucker argues that Franklin later chose June as the month of the experiment had occurred because French scientists had been conducting similar experiments on electricity across the Atlantic in May of 1752. It would have taken 6 weeks for such news to reach Franklin. Thus, in June his experiment would have still been an inspiration from God, as Franklin’s biographers insisted. Whereas in July it would have just been a copy.
Not all historians agree with Tucker’s hypothesis. Franklin is generally credited with proving that lightning is a form of electricity through a kite experiment so simple that it swept the rug out from more advanced scientists on the other side of the Atlantic.
“We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag which we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation…
We celebrate the day of its birth; and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has floated on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people.
“We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be millions, of our men, the young, the strong, the capable men of the nation, to go forth and die beneath it on the fields of blood far away,—
Flag Day was less than a year old when the U.S. entered World War I.
President Woodrow Wilson had proclaimed June 14th as Flag Day in 1916. The choice of June 14th is largely attributed to a school teacher from Waubeka, Wisconsin back in the 1880’s. Bernard Cigrand proposed the anniversary of the Second Continental Congress’s adoption of the first U.S. flag on June 14, 1777. He wrote articles about the should-be holiday and promoted it locally and nationally through articles and events.
The first National Flag Day was June 14, 1916. The backdrop of the celebrations was the war in Europe in which millions of young men were being cut down by machine gun fire and other wonders of modern warfare technology or (far more) by disease. Americans fiercely debated whether the U.S. should become involved in the European conflict. In April 1917, President Wilson—who had run on a policy of isolationism–asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany and its allies.
It would be a while before troops were ready to be sent to Europe, but America wanted to send a symbol of its presence immediately.
Arthur Clifford Kimber, a 21 year-old Stanford University student and Ambulance Corps volunteer, was selected to carry the flag of the Stanford Unit of the American Ambulance Field Service across the country and then across the Atlantic to France. It was a largely symbolic gesture—the first officially sanctioned U.S. flag sent to the front after U.S. entry in the war.
Before Kimber even left the States, he showed his tenacity by defending the chosen flag from a mob of U.C. (University of California) students in New York. As Stanford’s rivals, the Cal students wrestled the flag from him before a parade down Fifth Avenue. The Cal students took off in a taxi, which Kimber chased by jumping onto the running-board of passing car. He caught up with the taxi at 73rd St, retrieved the flag with the aid of a cop, and made it back in time for the start of the parade…
A few weeks later, on June 4, 1917, Kimber presented the flag in a more somber ceremony, largely for the American Ambulance Corps volunteers who were already stationed near Treveray, France.
“My instructions were to bring the flag as quickly as I could, and that I have done to the best of my ability. You know the history of this flag: how it was dedicated and blessed in California; how it led a parade in New York down Fifth Avenue before thousands of persons, and how it was saluted and cheered by that vast multitude; how an attempt to capture it was frustrated; how it reposed in the chancel of Old Trinity Church and was there seen and prayed for by hundreds; and how it was carried through England on its way to France.”
The ceremony ended in a promise by a military official that the defeat of German tyranny would “assure for all time the victory of right, of justice, and of liberty.”
Later that year Kimber realized his dream. He earned his wings as a pilot with the U.S. Air Service.
On June 15, 1918, the day after flag day and a year after his initial speech, he learned that his best friend from back home, Alan Nichols, had been killed behind enemy lines. He weeped for his friend, that war would take such a good man, unaware that in a few short months he would meet a similar fate.
On September 14th, Kimber had a particularly close mission, in which his plane was shot up almost beyond repair. But “The three vital parts—my engine, the gas tank, and I—were untouched,” he wrote home the following day. He concluded his letter with the words,
“God was merciful to me; I hope I can prove myself worthy of His mercy in this war and in later life. Well I must quit; good-bye, good luck and lots of it and much love. God bless you all.”
Eleven days later, God was not so merciful. A month and a half before the Armistice ended the “War To End All Wars,” Kimber’s plane was shot down along the German lines.
“That war insistently devours such men as Clifford Kimber is its final indictment at the bar of civilization” — David Starr Jordan
* * *
Woodrow Wilson noted the importance of the flag in times of peace as well as war. But make no mistake, it’s always been war that has given flags their import. As Francis Scott Key wrote:
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.
Flags are born of war, defended in war, have perished in war. Our almost religious devotion to these pieces of fabric is largely due to the intangible and unpayable debt to those who gave their lives defending them.
It was during wartime that a group of traitors rebelling against the English crown sat down and adopted the flag, a symbol of what the newly united states were fighting for. Betsy Ross and the founders broke from European tradition by not placing the cross or overtly religious symbols on their banner. Instead they instituted a design that would make the U.S. flag unique.
Before June 1777, other Americans had placed 13 stripes on their flags, representing the 13 colonies, and a British Union Jack in the corner. But where the Union Jack had been, Ross and the founders placed a circle of 13 stars. A little redundant perhaps, but this allowed for the possibility of adding new stars to the flag for new states as the Union expanded.
As the number of states increased, so did the number of stars. Today, one can view the U.S.’s 230+ year history in a single glance. Always stars and stripes, always red, white and blue. But changing slowly to reflect the changing country, just like the Constitution.
Would the representatives of the 13 fledgling states that banded together in 1777 recognize the 50-star Mega-State that we know today? Perhaps not.
Would they recognize the flag?
In a moment.
On the shore dimly seen thro’ the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
— Francis Scott Key, the less-recited 2nd verse of the Star-Spangled Banner
Lindisfarne is a small island in the northeast of England—also known as Holy Island—that houses a small castle and monastery. The “island” is actually connected to the mainland by a small strip of land that is revealed by the changing tide twice a day…
But in the Asatru tradition, Lindisfarne Day is a holiday celebrating what is generally conceived to be the beginning of the Viking Era, on June 8th, 793 AD.
On that day three Viking ships landed on Lindisfarne and a bunch of Norsemen sacked a Christian monastery there.
As the English monk Alcuin described,
“Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race. . . .The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets.”
No, it doesn’t sound like an event to base a holiday around. Some neo-pagan chronicles have tried to ascribe positive motives to the perpetrators such as revenge killings, but it was a rather bloody affair in which innocent and defenseless monks were slaughtered for loot. As one modern-day party-pooper explains, “I won’t be celebrating Lindisfarne, which was more the equivalent of a botched 7-11 robbery than heroism.”
Happy Lindisfarne!
Lindisfarne is a small island in the northeast of England—also known as Holy Island—that houses a small castle and monastery. The “island” is actually connected to the mainland by a small strip of land that is revealed by the changing tide twice a day…
But in the Asatru tradition, Lindisfarne Day is a holiday celebrating what is generally conceived to be the beginning of the Viking Era, on June 8th, 793 AD.
On that day three Viking ships landed on Lindisfarne and a bunch of Norsemen sacked a Christian monastery there.
As the English monk Alcuin described,
“Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race. . . .The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets.”
No, it doesn’t sound like an event to base a holiday around. Some neo-pagan chronicles have tried to ascribe positive motives to the perpetrators such as revenge killings, but it was a rather bloody affair in which innocent and defenseless monks were slaughtered for loot. As one modern-day party-pooper explains, “I won’t be celebrating Lindisfarne, which was more the equivalent of a botched 7-11 robbery than heroism.”
Lindisfarne is a small island in the northeast of England—also known as Holy Island—that houses a small castle and monastery. The “island” is actually connected to the mainland by a small strip of land that is revealed by the changing tide twice a day.
But in the Asatru tradition, Lindisfarne is a holiday celebrating what is generally recognized as the beginning of the Viking Era: June 8th, 793 AD.
On that day three Norse ships landed on Lindisfarne and a bunch of Vikings sacked a Christian monastery there, “a place more venerable than all in Britain,” according to the English monk Alcuin…
“Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race. . . .The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets.” — Alcuin, letter to Elthelred, King of Northumbria
No, it doesn’t sound like an event to base a holiday around. Some neo-pagan chronicles have tried to ascribe positive motives to the perpetrators such as revenge killings, but it was a rather bloody affair in which innocent and defenseless monks were slaughtered for loot. As one modern-day party-pooper explains,
“I won’t be celebrating Lindisfarne, which was more the equivalent of a botched 7-11 robbery than heroism.” (mombu.com religion forum)
“Money is not going to organize the disadvantaged, the powerless, or the poor. We need other weapons. That’s why the War on Poverty is such a miserable failure. You put out a big pot of money and all you do is fight over it. Then you run out of money and you run out of troops.” – César Chavez
On March 31 (or the last Monday in March), Americans in Arizona, California, Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin celebrate César Chavez Day. César Chavez is most famous for organizing the historic food boycotts of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and for improving the working conditions of agricultural laborers in the United States.
“Do not romanticize the poor…We are all people, human beings subject to the same temptations and faults as all others. Our poverty damages our dignity.” – César Chavez
Chavez was born outside Yuma, Arizona in 1927.
During the “Roaring Twenties” a booming economy had increased the demand for cheap labor; however the Great Depression brought this to a halt. In 1929 the U.S. government began a program of mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican ancestry. The program was called “repatriation”, even though over half of the deportees had been born in the U.S. (The Forgotten “Repatriation” of Persons of Mexican Ancestry and Lessons for the War on Terror, Kevin Johnson)
The Chavez family was not removed, but they lost their farm and grocery store in Arizona, causing them to move to California to become migrant farm workers. César attended approximately 30 schools during these transitory years. Having completed the eighth grade he dropped out to help support the family after his father was injured in an accident. In 1944 he joined the Navy and served for two years.
César Chavez in the Navy
In 1948 the Chavez married and moved to San Jose, California, where he met Father Donald McDonnell. Chavez later said about McDonnell:
“He told me about social justice, and the Church’s stand on farm labor and reading from the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII, in which he upheld labor unions. I would do anything to get the Father to tell more about labor history. I began going to the bracero camps with him to help with the mass, to the city jail with him to talk to the prisoners…”
Chavez was influenced by the works of St. Francis of Assisi and Gandhi. He joined Fred Ross’s Community Service Organization, initially organizing voter registration. After ten years he left the organization and moved his family to Delano, California to co-found what would become the United Farm Workers with Dolores Huertes. The prevailing belief at the time was that the migrant life of farm workers and high illiteracy rates made unionizing impossible.
However, by September 16, 1965 (Mexican Independence Day) Chavez had amassed over 1200 members who voted to join the grape strike organized by Filipino Americans in the AFL-CIO. The following year Chavez led strikers on a 340 mile march from Delano to the steps of the state capital building in Sacramento. In 1968 he held his first hunger strike to draw attention to the treatment of grape farm workers.
When Giumarra, the largest grape grower in California, was allowed by other grape growers to use their labels to minimize effectiveness of the boycott, the UFW extended the boycott to all California grapes
Over the next two decades, Chavez’s boycotts, strikes and fasts improved the working conditions of farm workers, increased wages, united Latino-Americans laborers, and reduced pesticide use. It was in pursuit of this last goal that Chavez kicked off the “Wrath of Grapes” campaign in 1986, and held his final hunger strike in 1988, lasting 36 days.
With respect to pesticides, Chavez compared the role of farm workers to that of the canary in a coal mine: sickness endured by the farm workers was the first sign of the harmful effects of pesticides that would later be evident in consumers.
Chavez died on April 23, 1993, in San Luis, Arizona. He had been in Yuma testifying in a civil suit filed by a lettuce grower suing farm workers for damages brought on by a UFW lettuce boycott in the 1980s. He died about twenty miles from his birthplace.
The following year, his wife accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom in his honor.
“It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity.” — César Chavez
“We want to be recognized, yes, but not with a glowing epitaph on our tombstone…” — César Chavez
Flag of the Central African Republic, originally designed by Barthélemy Boganda for the United States of Latin Africa
On March 29 the Central African Republic remembers the amazing life and mysterious death of Barthélemy Boganda.
Though France had abolished slavery in the 19th century, the conditions under which Boganda’s family lived at the time of his birth in 1910 in French Oubangui-Chari were not much better.
His mother was beaten to death by officials of the rubber collecting company that controlled much of the region. He was adopted by Roman Catholic missionaries, and at age 12 he took the name Bathélemy after the Apostle who was believed to have traveled Africa as a a missionary.
He became the first Roman Catholic priest from Oubangui-Chari.Following World War II Boganda ran for National Assembly of France and won.
He spent the rest of his career fighting for racial equality in French-controlled Africa and against French colonialism. He did this by organizing and empowering African teachers, truck drivers, women, and farmers. He founded MESAN – Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa, it’s credo: zo kwe zo. Roughly translated: Every human being is a person.
Boganda made enemies in these years, notably the companies that controlled what would later become the Central African Republic. But he had a good friend where it counted — General Charles de Gaulle, who didn’t forget the people of Oubangui-Chari who had supported de Gaulle’s troops early in WWII.
Boganda with Charles de Gaulle
Scandal broke out when the priest Boganda met and married a Frenchwoman, a parliamentary secretary named Michelle Jourdain, and was expelled from the priesthood.
In 1951 he was arrested for “endangering the peace” for intervening in a market dispute, but did not serve time.
Neither did much to harm his public appeal. He was re-elected twice to the National Assembly, overwhelmingly in 1956. And in 1957 MESAN won all the seats in Oubangui-Chari’s territorial assembly.
As the tide turned for the independence of French-African colonies, Boganda foresaw the difficulties of a small, independent Oubangui-Chari. Instead he envisioned a United States of Latin Africa, which would unite French, Portuguese and Belgian territories. Opposition between countries and egos proved too great for a unified vision. Still, Boganda was able to negotiate his small nation’s independence from France in 1958, forming the Central African Republic. Soon after, he was elected to become CAR’s first President.
Barthélemy Boganda (1910-1959)
He never took office.
On March 29, 1959, a plane carrying Boganda crashed in Boukpayanga, killing everyone onboard.
“Experts found a trace of explosives in the plane’s wreckage, but revelation of this detail was withheld. Although those responsible for the crash were never identified, people have suspected the French secret service, and even Boganda’s wife, of being involved.”
The year after his death, the Central African Republic became an independent nation.
“We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.”
— Augusto Boal, World Theatre Day Address, 2009
“Hi-diddle-dee-dee, an actor’s life for me.”
— Honest John, Pinocchio
March 27 is World Theater Day, marking the birthday of famed director and actor Quentin Tarantino. Ok, no. While March 27 is Tarantino’s birthday, the International Theatre Institute chose the date back in 1961 to mark the anniversary of the Theatres des Nations festival, first held in 1957 at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre in Paris.
“The thrust of the festival was never to invite only the safe or official companies. Quite the reverse: in its early years one of its most important functions was to recognize theatres which were not subsidized or recognized in their home countries.”
I’d like to stop for a moment to say I’m not spelling it “theatre” to be all hoity-toity. I don’t even know what hoity-toity means. [It’s from hoit, meaning “play the fool” or “to indulge in riotous and noisy mirth”, as in “Sibbie axed wi a kind ill hoit apon her” (Shetland News, 1897) or as in the 1973 Main Ingredient hit “It may be factual, it may be cruel/Everybody hoits.” http://www.snopes.com/language/foreign/hoity.asp]
No, the correct spelling in Britain is “theatre” from the French word “theatre”. In the United States “theater” is your best bet on a spelling test and when referring to movie theaters (called “cinemas” in Britain). In North America, “theatre” is increasingly used for the art of the stage, and for high-falutin’ Broadway venues.
And if you were to write: “‘Theatre‘ is the favoured spelling because Paris is the centre of d’Arts,” your American spell-check would defenestrate you.
The French word “theatre” originates from the Greek Theatron (a new Transformer? I mean, Transfourmre?) which in turn comes from theasthai, “to gaze at or view as spectators.” That’s the difference between theatre and drama. Theatre was always defined, not around the players, but around those of us watching them, too timid to go up onstage, while “drama” comes from the Greek dran, meaning “to do.”
And if we go even further back, theasthai originates from Thea, the Athenian goddess of light. Thea is also the feminine form of Theo and theos (god).
So you see, Theatre is God. In 7th century BC Athens, the theatre festivals weren’t mere entertainment at all. They were sponsored by the state as part of religious festivals like Dionysia, in honor of the god Dionysis. Plays evolved from songs chanted by a chorus to honor the gods. Then one guy, Thespis, came up with the idea of putting on a one-man show and impersonating different characters mentioned in the song, with the chorus as back-up.
Thespis, the first Gilbert & Sullivan production, London News, 1872
Later, the Greeks put a second actor (deuteragonist) and third actor (triagonist) on stage to interact with the first actor (protagonist) and the rest was downhill.
Over 2500 years later, the words have changed, but the melody remains the same.
+ + +
Every year the International Theatre Institute chooses one person to deliver the World Theatre Day Message. This year it’s Brazilian writer, director, and politician Augusto Boal, founder of the Theater of the Oppressed.
“Even if one is unaware of it, human relationships are structured in a theatrical way. The use of space, body language, choice of words and voice modulation, the confrontation of ideas and passions, everything that we demonstrate on the stage, we live in our lives. We are theatre!
Weddings and funerals are “spectacles”, but so, also, are daily rituals so familiar that we are not conscious of this. Occasions of pomp and circumstance, but also the morning coffee, the exchanged good-mornings, timid love and storms of passion, a senate session or a diplomatic meeting – all is theatre.”
Thus, in Japan the Sundays prior to the spring equinox (shuubun no hi) and the fall equinox (shunbun no hi) are known as O-higan. Days on which families visit and honor the graves of the departed. Ancestors are said to watch over the family like tutelary, guardian deities. That’s why we give thanks to our ancestors whenever we encounter success or prosperity . (But of course if we fail, it’s our own damn fault.)
Favorite foods are prepared for the departed, such as Ohagi (soft rice balls covered in sweetened bean jam), sushi, and vinegar rice & veggies. On the last day of the week, rice flour dumplings, special fruits and sweets are offered.
In Buddhism, O-higan is a time to focus on the 6 Perfections, or Pāramitā:
1. Dana – generosity
2. Sila – virtue
3. Ksanti – patience
4. Virya – effort
5. Dhyana – meditation (also ‘zen’)
6. Prajna – wisdom
O-higan
The O-higan days have been celebrated in Japan since the 8th century. The name Higan literally means, “the other shore” and is short for Tohigan—to arrive at the other shore. The 6 Pāramitā are the bridge that will enable us to cross over to the other shore of Nirvana.
