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April 6, 2012April 13, 2012

Passover, Part 1

Begins at sunset on April 18, 2011

Tonight Jews around the world celebrate Passover. The origin and the name of Passover goes back to the Egyptian days, when the Jews were slaves in Egypt.

According to the second book of the Torah, Exodus, God unleashed ten plagues upon Pharaoh and his people in an attempt to convince Pharaoh to emancipate the Hebrews. Or as the late great Charlton Heston said, to “let my people go.”

The last and deadliest of the ten plagues was the killing of the first-born male in every household. In the book of Exodus, God commands Moses to tell Jewish families to put the blood of a sheep over their doors, so that God would know to “pass over” the house, hence the name Passover.

The first nine plagues were:

1. Turning of the River Nile to blood:

“…and all the water was changed into blood. The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water.”

Amazing as that sounds, Pharaoh was not impressed. His sorcerers/magicians could also duplicate the feat of turning water into blood. Apparently this was the three-card shuffle of ancient Egypt.

Scientists have put forth numerous theories to explain the seemingly supernatural forces of the plagues. One theory is that a then-active Ethiopian volcano poured sulfurous lava into the Nile, upstream from Egypt.

Another theory is that of the ‘Red Tide. Red tide is a common occurrence brought on by algae in salt water or in stagnant water, but rarely in free-flowing fresh rivers like the Nile.

Both theories would explain how toxic elements in the Nile altered the color of the water and killed the fish. The extermination of millions of fish that piled up on the banks of the river would have created the awful stench from the water and would have set off a domino effect that could account for several of the following plagues:

2. Frogs

God, a devout fan of P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia, smited Egypt with the plague of frogs:

“…and the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed…”

Amphibians would have left the toxic polluted waters in vast numbers to take shelter on land, where they would die of dehydration.

3. An infestation of “Kinim”

Kinim is translated as Gnats, Lice, Fleas, or Mosquitos.

The dead fish and amphibians would have caused Insect populations to explode, accounting for how the “dust throughout the land of Egypt became “kimin.”

4. Swarms of Flies

The Hebrew word arov literally means “swarms,” though it doesn’t say swarms of what. It’s generally believed to be flies or mosquitos, though also translated as wild animals, rodents, or vermin. Any of these would have been present following the fish and frog catastrophe set off by a toxic Nile.

5. Disease upon the livestock and other animals.

Swarms of vermin, rodents, and mosquitos would increase the pestilence level, diseases which may have struck the livestock first. The King James Bible mentions horses, donkeys, camels, oxen, sheep and cattle.

6. Skin disease among people, commonly thought to be boils.

And then pestilence would have infected the people, taking the physical manifestations of painful boils.

Rabbinical scholars often looked at the first nine plagues as a trilogy of trilogies, much like George Lucas’s original plan for the 9-part Star Wars…

Continued in Passover, Part 2

March 31, 2012April 13, 2012

César Chavez Day

Last Monday in March
Actual birthday: March 31

“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.

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

Digital History – Mexican-American Voices: César Chavez

March 30, 2012April 13, 2012

Land Day – Palestine

March 30

Today Palestinians observe Land Day in commemoration of the six unarmed Palestinians killed by Israeli troops on this day in 1976.

The original Land Day strike occurred on March 30, 1976 when thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in reaction to Israeli government’s appropriation of about 5,000 acres of Arab-owned land between Arab towns in northern Israel.

“Although the strike was strictly observed by Palestinians throughout Israel, the focus of the protest were three villages in the central Galilee that faced the loss of a large area of prime agricultural land: Arrabeh, Sakhnin and Deir Hanna.” —Jonathan Cook, Palestinians Celebrate Land Day

The original strike was organized by the “Committee to Defend the Land,” a coalition composed of many disparate political groups, but the strike was rejected by or not endorsed by the more establised “Committee of Heads of Local Authorities.”

“Compared to the large-scale land expropriations from the 1950’s and 60’s, the amount of land actually seized from Palestinians in 1976 was relatively small.” Rabinowitz & Baker, Coffins on Our Shoulders

However,

“What is significant about the movement of the Land Day is the fact that it merged the nationalist demands with the civil rights demands and thus was able to mobilize a large part of Palestinian Arab population.” Farsoun & Aruri, Palestine and the Palestinians

In response, the Israeli government sent in not just the police, but the army. After protesters threw stones, the army imposed a curfew.

“When a neighbour stepped outside her house, she was shot and injured, Mr Khalaila said. He and his older brother, Khader, tried to help the woman. When they were about 50 metres from her, Khader was shot in the head. ” (Cook)

Palestinians recall many similar beatings and shootings that took place on that first Land Day and of wide-scale arrests that followed the strike.

Today, Land Day is one of the most important national non-religious observances of the Palestinian people, and in fact, many consider the original Land Day as one of the major events that helped to unify and define the disparate Palestinian factions.

Land Day Oral Histories

Palestinians Plant Trees on Land Day (2010)

Israeli Forces Open Fire at Land Day Protest (2010)

Sculpture in the town of Sakhnin — from a sculpture in Sahknin

March 29, 2012April 13, 2012

Boganda Day – Central African Republic

March 29

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 and De Gaulle — 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.

Barthlélemy Boganda — Barthélemy Boganda (1910-1959)

He never took office.

On March 29, 1959, a plane carrying Boganda crashed in Boukpayanga, killing everyone onboard.

According to Wikipedia.org:

“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.

March 28, 2012April 13, 2012

Teacher’s Day – Czech Republic

March 28

The Czech Republic and Slovakia celebrate Teacher’s Day on March 28 to commemorate the 1592 birthday of:

a. Frederick Scantron, inventor of the multiple-choice test.
b. Dixon Ticonderoga, explorer and discoverer of the graphite mountain from which all pencils are hewn.
c. Jan Amos Komensky, teacher, pastor and writer who was expelled from his own country to spend 42 years in exile.
d. All of the above

If there’s anything I learned in junior high school, it’s “when in doubt, pick ‘C’.”

Today is the birthday of Jan Amos Komensky, better known by his Latin name Comenius.

M: Come, Boy, learn to be wise.
P: What doth this mean, to be wise?
M: To understand rightly, to do rightly, and to speak out rightly all that are necessary.

So begins Comenius’s Orbis Pictus, a “Nomenclature and Pictures of all the Chief Things that are in the World and of Men’s Employments therein.” The first illustrated encyclopedia for children.

“…it differed from all previous text-books, in being illustrated with pictures, on copper and wood, of the various topics discussed in it. This book was universally popular. In those portions of Germany where the schools had been broken up by the “Thirty years’ war,” mothers taught their children from its pages. Corrected and amended by later editors, it continued for nearly two hundred years, to be a text-book of the German schools.”

— History and Progress of Education, by Philobiblius, N.Y., 1860, p. 210.

The Orbis Pictus covered subjects ranging from anatomy:

“The Head is above the Feet. below. the fore part of the Neck (which ends at the Arm-holes,) is the Throat, the hinder part, the Crag, The Breast is before; the back behind; Women have in it two Dugs, with Nipples…”

to Islam and Mohammad:

“His Followers refrain themselves from Wine; are circumcised, have many Wives; build Chapels, from the Steeples whereof, they are called to Holy Service not by Bells but by a Priest, they wash themselves often, they deny the Holy Trinity: they honour Christ, not as the Son of God, but as a great Prophet, yet less than Mahomet; they call their Law the Alcoran.”

to “Monstrous and deformed people“…

“…are those which differ in the Body from the ordinary shape, as the huge Gyant (1), the little Dwarf (2), One with two Bodies (3), One with two Heads (4), and such like Monsters. Amongst these are reckoned, The jolt-headed (5), The great-nosed (6), The blubber-lipped (7), The blub-cheeked (8), The goggle-eyed (9), The wry-necked (10), The great-throated (11), The Crump-backed (12), The Crump-footed (13), The steeple-crowed (15), add to these The Bald-pated (14)”

Deformed & Monstrous People, Orbis Pictus

It’s inspiring that someone with Komensky’s childhood should have penned the primer by which all others would be judged. His father died when he was 10, his mother a couple of years later, followed by his sisters. “Comenius was thus left an orphan at an early age, and his guardians appear to have robbed him of any small fortune that his father had bequeathed.” [The Great Didactic, Introduction by M.W. Keatinge]

Referring to the schools of his youth as “slaughter-houses” of the young, it wasn’t until he entered Herborn University at age 19 that things turned around. He studied at Heidelberg, traveled to Amsterdam and Hungary, taught at his old Latinschool in Moravia, and became a teacher-pastor in 1618, at the outbreak of the Thirty Years War.

Things did not go well for Komensky during the war. As a member of the Brethren of the Unity, a Protestant group based on the the theology of Jan Hus, Komensky and his circle were persecuted. Spanish soldiers burned his village and most of his possessions, including his library and his own writings. His wife and two children died during an epidemic. And he was forced into exile.

Komensky’s exile would last the rest of the his life. Bad for Komensky, but good for Western education.

“Surrounded by the chaos and destruction of war, Comenius believed that guns were no way to restore order—what the world really needed was a revolution in learning. He envisioned a liberal-arts education that would create citizens, rather than specialists, and proposed a new teaching system based on the novel principle of ‘school through play.'”

— Rick Steves, Prague and the Czech Republic

Emphasizing self-discipline as motivation for learning rather than physical punishment, he disseminated his progressive vision across the many lands he traveled while in exile, including Poland, England, Hungary, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Lithuania. He never made it to the Americas, turning down an opportunity to head up a new university called Harvard, in favor of an offer by the Swedish Ambassador. And in the 1650’s he supported the Sweden’s takeover of Poland, a move that led once again to the burning and destruction of all his property, this time by angry Poles. Decades of his writings went up in smoke.

Still, his Janua, Orbis Pictus, and The Great Didactic were among many works that survived to form the basis of elementary education in Europe. He is credited with redefining the curriculum and learning environment used in Western education for hundreds of years.

The Comenius Medal for education, established in 1992, is one of UNESCO’s most prestigious awards. And though he was never able to return to his homeland, the people of the Czech Republic and Slovakia honor Komensky on his birthday by celebrating the noblest of professions: Teacher’s Day.

Brief summary of Komensky’s contributions to education

March 27, 2012April 13, 2012

World Theatre Day

March 27

“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.”

The Paris jigsaw, ed. David Bradby & Maria Delgado

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_-_Illustrated_London_News_Jan_6_1872 — 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.”

Full text here.

This weekend is also Schmuckfest—wait, no—Schmeckfest, in Freeman, South Dakota. Go Schmecks!

Introduction to Greek Tragedy

March 25, 2012April 13, 2012

Lady Day

March 25

Happy New Year!

For over six centuries, England celebrated March 25 as the first day of the new year, up until the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752.

Being stapled to one solar calendar for so long, it’s hard for us to understand how this is possible. I mean, March 25 isn’t even the first day of the month, let alone the first month of the year.

But remember, for much of antiquity, the agrarian world straddled two systems of keeping track of time. The months, which mirrored the lunar cycles, and the years, which followed the quarter days (solstices and equinoxes) of the sun.

The Spring Equinox, with its natural imagery of rebirth and fertility, was deemed the logical start of the new year, a tradition held in societies as far apart as pre-Muslim Persia, Mayan Mexico, and Celtic Europe. No matter what calendar Rome imposed on the latter of the three.

Thus March 24, 1700 in England was followed by March 25, 1701.

(The Jewish calendar follows a similar practice. The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, starts in the seventh month of the year. Thus, the last day of the sixth month of 5769 is followed by the first day of the seventh month of 5770.)

Lady Day is so-named because it falls on the day of the Annunciation, celebrated on March 25, precisely nine months before Christmas. The Annunciation marks the visit of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary and the conception of Jesus Christ. Thus the New Year on March 25 honors the first moment of the incarnation of Jesus.

When the Annunciation falls during Holy Week, the Vatican moves the date to the Sunday after Easter. Thus, in 2008, the Annunciation fell on March 31.

March 25, 2012April 13, 2012

The Annunciation – Old New Year’s Day

March 25

But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.

Luke 1:30-31

Happy New Year!

Up until 1752, March 25th was the first day of the New Year in much of the English-speaking world. It was also known as Lady Day back then. March 25 marks the anniversary of the Annunciation—when the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to inform her of her child to be.

+ + +

In the 6th century, a monk and historian named Dionysius Exiguus was asked to calculate the dates for Easter for many years. In order to do so, he set out to determine the precise dates of Jesus’s birth and death. Dionysius devised the Anno Domini (A.D.) dating system by counting backwards to Christ’s birth, or more accurately, Christ’s incarnation.

Using the reigns of Roman leaders, Dionysius calculated that the Christian calendar began 754 years after the foundation of Rome. He didn’t consider the first day of the Christian Era to be January 1 or even December 25, but nine months earlier—March 25—the Annunciation. In essence, the conception of Christ’s corporeal presence.

So, according to Dionysius’s system, March 24 in the year 999, for example, was followed by March 25 in the year 1000.

Though there are no clues in the Bible as to when the Annunciation occurred (except that it was six months after the conception of John the Baptist), early Christian scholars placed the date precisely nine months before Christmas.

For much of Christianity’s history, the Annunciation was one of the most important holidays of the year. Over the last few hundred years, the emphasis on the Annunciation has diminished, but it is still widely celebrated across the Christian world.

Why Do We Call Spring ‘Spring’?