every day's a holiday!

June 16, 2012June 23, 2012

Bloomsday – Ireland

June 16

June 16 is Bloomsday (also Blooms Day) in Dublin, but it’s not a spring or solstice festival and it has nothing to do with Irish wildflowers.

No, Bloomsday honours Leopold Bloom, who spent a day traipsing through the streets of Dublin on June 16, 1904—in James Joyce’s classic novel Ulysses.

Each year on Bloomsday, Joyce lovers retrace the steps of the fictional characters Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. Many old landmarks remain, though their functions may have changed:

“The house at 7 Eccles Street [Bloom’s home] now serves as home to part of the Mater Hospital Private Clinic… All Hollows Church, now Saint Andrews Church, still stands, as does the chemist shop where Bloom purchased a bar of lemon soap… Bella Cohen’s brothel now serves as a retreat house for Sisters of Our Lady of Charity.”

— James Joyce’s Ulysses, by Bernand McKenna

Martello tower in Sandycove now hosts the James Joyce Museum. Here, and along O’Connell Street, aficionados begin Bloomsday by enjoying a hearty breakfast, emulating that of Leopold Bloom…although many choose to skip the “grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine” in favor of extra sausages and Guinness.

First published in its entirety in 1922, most of Ulysses had been serialized in Margaret Anderson’s The Little Review from 1918 until 1920, the year it was banned in the U.S. due to frank descriptions of bodily functions and sexuality, as well as its commentary on organized religion and social mores.

In the 1933 New York Court case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, Judge John Woolsey overturned the ban, declaring that the story:

“did not tend to excite sexual impulses or lustful thoughts but that its net effect on [my colleagues] was only that of a somewhat tragic and very powerful commentary on the inner lives of men and women.”

Ulysses was the original ‘24‘, and Bloom its Jack Bauer. Each of its 18 chapters documents approximately one hour in the life of Leopold Bloom (though the first few chapters follow Stephen Dedalus). The entire novel takes place in under 24 hours, beginning around 8:00 am on Thursday, June 16, 1904, and ending before dawn the next day.

With its stream-of-consciousness narrative, Ulysses was both a watershed moment in 20th century literature and the bane of English students for generations to come.

Joyce’s title juxtaposes the mundane experiences of Bloom’s romp through Dublin with the grandiose adventures of the ancient Greek hero Odysseus (Ulysses). Bloom’s wife Molly represents Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus (Joyce’s alter-ego from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) mirrors Telemachus.

For all the immortalizing Joyce did for the city of Dublin, the author supposedly never set foot in the town after 1912. He spent the last two decades of his life in Paris and Switzerland, and died in 1941 in Zurich after an ulcer operation.

And as for the date, June 16, 1904—that was the day of Joyce’s first date with his wife-to-be Nora.

— God, he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks. I must teach you. You must read them in the original.

— Buck Mulligan in Ulysses

Rare recording of James Joyce reading his own work – mp3 [Note: often audio books make great literature easier to read. This is the exception.]

June 16, 2012June 23, 2012

Youth Day – South Africa

June 16

With the coming of summer, many students are struck with a debilitating illness known as cantgotoschoolitis. Symptoms may include inability to pay attention in class, wandering eyes, and an overactive imagination.

With students yearning so badly to get out of class, it’s hard to believe that on this day in 1976, many young students gave their lives fighting just to receive a fair and equal education.

In 1953, the white Apartheid government of South Africa passed the Bantu Education Act, which created a curriculum intended to reduce the aspirations and self-worth of the country’s black students.

As the Minister of Native Affairs and future Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd explained,

“When I have control of native education I will reform it so that Natives will be taught from childhood to realise that equality with Europeans is not for them…” (Apartheid South Africa, John Allen)

The supposed benefit of the Act was that it increased the number of black students able to attend school; the reality was that it provided no additional resources for the expansion. As a result, by 1975 the government was spending R644 per white student and R42 per black student.

The final straw came in the 1970s when the Apartheid government announced instruction would no longer take place in South Africa’s many native languages, but only in English and Afrikaans.

As one student editorial proclaimed:

“Our parents are prepared to suffer under the white man’s rule. They have been living for years under these laws and they have become immune to them. But we strongly refuse to swallow an education that is designed to make us slaves in the country of our birth.” (South Africa in Contemporary Times)

The conflict came to a head on June 16, 1976 when a group of students held a protest against the educational system in Soweto. When students refused to disperse, police unleashed tear gas. Students responded by throwing rocks; police, by firing bullets. At least 27 students were killed in the massacre, including a 12 year-old boy named Hector Pieterson.

A string of protests and riots engulfed the region. June 1976 is considered one of the most divisive and tragic months in South African history.

After the fall of the Apartheid government in the 1990s, South Africa chose to dedicate June 16 as Youth Day, in memory of those who died in the Soweto Riots, and those who devoted their lives to the long struggle for equal education and the abolition of apartheid.

June 15, 2012June 23, 2012

Fly a Kite Day

June 15

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.

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 B olt 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.

Either way, don’t try it at home!

June 14, 2012June 23, 2012

Flag Day Part I

June 14

“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,—

“for what?”

Woodrow Wilson, June 14, 1917. Address restating the reasons for U.S. entry into World War I

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…

Flag Day Part II

June 14, 2012June 23, 2012

Flag Day Part II

ALivingAmericanFlag10000MenUSNavalT — A living flag, U.S. Naval training station, Great Lakes, IL, 1917.

from Flag Day Part I

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

The Story of the First Flag : An Account of the Mission of Arthur Clifford Kimber

28 Incarnations of the U.S. Flag, 1775 – present

June 13, 2012June 23, 2012

Saint Anthony’s Day

June 13

san-antonio-de-padua — Saint Anthony of Padua

Cities and countries around the world celebrate St. Anthony’s Day, from Lisbon, Portugal to Wilmington, Delaware, not to mention cities in Brazil, Mexico, Italy, and even India!

The Brazilians get the jump on the celebrations by commemorating June 12, the day before his feast, as Día dos Namorados, or Day of the Lovers, a Brazilian Valentine’s Day, in honor of the matchmaker saint.

St. Anthony was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1195, so understandably the Lisboans claim him as their own. Like the Brazilians, the celebration begins the night before…

“When the sun sets, the whole town goes out to honor the saint with alfresco dining, grilled sardines with salad of peppers, irrigated course, with much red wine, and dancing to the beat of popular music…” (Lisbon at its Best)

In the morning, special services are held in the church built over the spot where he was born, and vintage convertible cars carry throngs of “St. Anthony’s brides” down the Avenue Liberdade.

Women write prayers and wishes on paper and tuck them into specially baked “St. Anthony’s bread”, a tradition that dates back to 1263 when…

…a child drowned in the Brenta River near the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua. The mother went to St. Anthony and promised that if her child were restored to life, she would give to the poor an amount of wheat equal to the weight of her child. Of course her son was saved, and her promise was kept.” (Sardine Heaven: Lisbon’s Feast of St. Anthony)

The award for the most unusual St. Anthony’s Festival goes to San Miguel de Allenda, Mexico. There laborers originally celebrated May 17 as San Pascual Bailon (St. Pascal Baylon) Day, in honor of the patron saint of field and kitchen workers.

“To keep the paraders and observers separated, some paraders were dressed as scarecrows and their characteristic movements were described as “loco,” i.e., crazy. Somewhere along the way, paraders dressed as clowns replaced the field and kitchen workers, though the music and the dances stayed the same.” (El Dia de los Locos)

The popularity of the San Pascual Bailon parade overshadowed that of the more established San Antonio (St. Anthony), and the two festivities merged. Now the festival is held the Sunday after June 13 and is known as El Día de los Locos, or Day of the Crazies.

dia_de_los_locos — photo by Ronald Felton, licensed under Creative Commons

Fisheaters: Feast of St. Anthony of Padua

Lisbon’s Craziest Night

Italian Festivals in the U.S.

Book a hotel for St. Anthony’s Festival

June 8, 2012June 8, 2012

Happy Lindisfarne!

June 8

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.”

Happy Lindisfarne!

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,

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

“I won’t be celebrating Lindisfarne, which was more the equivalent of a botched 7-11 robbery than heroism.” (mombu.com religion forum)

Odin's Wild Hunt PN Arbo — Odin's Wild Hunt, by PN Arbo, 1872

Lindisfarne – uchicago.edu

The Viking World

June 7, 2012June 23, 2012

Corpus Christi

June 7, 2012
June 23, 2011
June 3, 2010

Corpus Christi ain’t just a city in Texas.

Short for Corpus et Sanguis Christi, aka the Body and the Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi is one of the holiest Thursdays of the year.

“The feast of Corpus Christi is one time when our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is exposed not just to faithful Catholics but to all the world.“

http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/pea/cchristi.htm

corpus_christi_2 — Corpus Christi in Cusco, Peru

According to The Catechism of the Catholic Church 1113 “The whole liturgical life of the Church revolves around the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacraments.”

The seven sacraments are:

Baptism
Confirmation
Eucharist
Penance
Anointing of the Sick
Holy Orders
Matrimony

Seven Sacraments Altarpiece, Rogier van der Weydan,

The Eucharist originates from Jesus’s words at the Last Supper.

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.“

Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

Matthew 26:26

Or, as Paul retold it to the Corinthians:

The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenants in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

Corpus Christi came about in the 13th century, when a 16 year-old girl named Juliana began having visions. Juliana had been placed in a convent at age 5, upon the death of her parents. At 13 she decided to become a nun. At 16 the visions began, first with a vision of the moon, shining bright, but with one black spot.

She puzzled over the vision. It wasn’t until many years later when subsequent visions and conversations with the Holy Spirit revealed to her that the black spot represented the absence of a joyful celebration of the “Most High and Most Holy Sacrament of the Alter.” The only observance of transubstantiation at that time was Maundy Thursday during Holy Week, which emphasized the Jesus’ suffering and death, but not the aspects of joy, love, and salvation that the Eucharist offered.

Juliana breached the subject of a feast for the blessed sacrament with the Archdeacon Jacques Pantaleon–originally a cobbler’s son two years Juliana’s junior–and the Bishop de Thorete of Liege. The Bishop , enamored by the idea, officiated the holiday on a local scale in 1246.

When Jacques, the former cobbler’s son, became Pope Urban IV in the 1260s, he recalled the holiday envisioned by Juliana and extended Corpus Christi to be celebrated across Christendom. It has been celebrated by the Catholic Church every year since 1264.

Corpus Christi is also observed by the Anglican Church. John Donne wrote of the Eucharist:

He was the Word that spake it;
He took the bread and brake it;
and what that Word did make it;
I do believe and take it.