I
have often been sorry for having spoken, but never for having held my tongue.
St
Arsenius, Roman monk, (c. 354 - c. 412) whose feast day this is
A
little fro that foresaid town [Berwick],
Halidon
Hill, that is the name,
There was cracked many a crown
Of wild Scots, and also of tame [lowlanders]
Lawrence Minot, from a ballad on the
Battle of Halidon Hill, July 19, 1333
Handel
is the greatest composer who ever lived.
I
would bare my head and kneel at his grave.
Ludwig von Beethoven (1824)
Lizzie
Borden took an axe
Gave her mother 40 whacks.
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father 41.
Children’s
song, 19th Century America
Happy
birthday to you!
1834
(Hilaire Germain) Edgar Degas, French impressionist painter
|
1835
Edgar
Degas
After
studying art in Italy, this great French painter returned to Paris and
came under the influence of the Impressionists, sharing gallery space
with them from 1874-86. Influenced by the new art of photography and
also Japanese woodcuts, Degas became one of the nineteenth century’s
immortal artists, but deteriorating eyesight in his later years led him
to practise sculpture rather than painting.
His unique
style of painting might have been influenced by his severe eye problems
such as myopia, astigmatism, photophobia and even blindness in one eye,
according to Richard Kendall, a leading authority on the impressionist
genius.
|
After the Bath, by Degas
|
|
|
1860
Lizzie Borden, alleged American parricide
Although
eventually acquitted of the crime, birthday girl Lizzie
Borden will always be remembered as the girl who “gave her mother
forty whacks” with an axe. Her name entered American folklore and will
remain there for a long time, regardless of the presumption of
innocence.
|
Virtual
Borden House:
Try to solve the mystery
1896
AJ (Archibald Joseph) Cronin, British novelist (The
Citadel; The Keys of the Kingdom).
The TV series, Dr Finlay’s Casebook,
was based on his stories.
This
day in history
64
AD Rome’s great fire began
History records that Rome burned for six days and that threatening groups of men
who claimed to be “acting under orders” prevented people from extinguishing
the tragic blaze. Nero is said to have enjoyed watching the fire and played the
lyre as he did so; he might actually have set the blaze for his own amusement or
as an excuse to expand his palace.
164
AD A
dragon more than 100 metres long was found dead on Yehwang Mountain in Henan
province and was seen as a bad omen for Emperor Huan, who ignored it and died at
age 35 in 167 AD. Or so it is said.
Xiang Kai, who had warned of
the omen, was released from the prison the emperor had placed him in, lionised
as a hero.
1333
Battle
of Halidon Hill, between the Scots and the English.
1692
Five women were executed for practising witchcraft, Massachusetts.
1825
The
Times of
London reported that some hundreds of townsfolk of Wickham-Skeith, Suffolk, had
put Isaac Stebbings to the ancient witchcraft test of ‘swimming’, and he
would have been drowned by the ignorant crowd had not the local parson
intervened.
1848
The first women’s rights convention opened at Seneca Falls, New York, USA.
1971
British comic Marty Feldman appeared for the defence in the ‘Oz Trial’,
calling the judge “a boring old fart”.
Let’s
celebrate!
Dog
Days, ancient Rome (Jul 3 - Aug 11)
Unlucky
day in 15th century England, Sed tamen in
Domino confido (“But, notwithstanding I will trust the Lord”)
First
day of month of Thermidor (hot month),
French Revolutionary calendar
Today’s
plant
Golden hawkweed, Hieracium aurantiacum,
was designated today’s plant by medieval monks. It is dedicated to Saint
Vincent de Paul, whose feast day this is.
Opet
Festival, ancient Egypt
Today was the day in ancient Egypt to commemorate the marriage of the goddess
Isis and the god, her brother, Osiris. In ancient Rome the counterpart was
celebrated for Venus and Adonis. Isis, the mother goddess, was called by the
Greeks Stella Maris, the ‘star of the sea’.
Osiris was often depicted with
green skin or wrapped as a mummy and was worshipped in the form of a sack of
green sprouting seed. Women used to
carry models of him designed with moving sexual parts to demonstrate his
virility.
Isis was usually represented
wearing a crown shaped like a throne or else of cow horns circling a solar disc.
She was sometimes represented in art as a kite, sometimes being penetrated by
the severed, erect penis of Osiris. She was also often depicted with a device
resembling the ankh symbol, known as
the Isis knot.
It might be that
the Isis cult influenced the way the Christian Mary is represented; Mary’s
portraits as the Madonna bear a striking similarity to those of Isis with her
son Horus.
Vacation
in Lebanon
Plutarch tells a story of the time Osiris was tricked by Seth, the god of chaos
and adversity, to step into a sarcophagus. The lid was nailed shut and poor
Osiris, god of vegetation and the underworld, was tossed into the Nile. The
coffin came ashore in Lebanon and was caught in a growing tree which was used to
make a column for a king’s palace. Isis searched for years and brought home
her brother/lover, breathing life into him.
Adonia,
ancient Greece (July 19-20)
A holy enactment of the wedding of Adonis
and Aphrodite also took place today, in Greece, and this festival also
commemorated the zenith of Adonis’s six-month presence in the world. In other
words, it represented the peak of vegetative growth. The Adonia is closely
related to the ancient Egyptian Opet festival for the siblings/lovers Isis and
Osiris, held at this time.
The Adonia was celebrated only by
women, who brought statues of Adonis into the streets, laid them out as though
they were at a funeral, and beat themselves and wailed. On day two they were
joyful and celebratory, for they had helped Adonis, representing vegetative
growth, to return to life and spend half the year with his lover Aphrodite
(known to the Romans as Venus).
Images of Adonis and Aphrodite
were laid on a silver couch and on the second day cast into the sea, along with
potplant-type arrangements called Adonis
Gardens, which assured the renewal of vegetative growth with the summer
rains, or, so it is said.
Adonis was a handsome youth slain by a wild boar. When the
beautiful Aphrodite pleaded for his life, King Zeus decreed that he should spend
the summer months with her and the winter months with his other lover,
Persephone, in Hades (the underworld).
The handsome Greek god was a
version of the Mesopotamian god Dumuzi or Tammuz (consort of Ishtar); Adon
means lord in Semitic languages (in
the Old Testament, Jehovah is called Adonai).
The Greeks mistakenly applied the honorific to the name of their young deity.
Aphrodite, whose names means foam-born,
is congruent with other goddesses such as Ishtar, Venus and Astarte. Adonis
equates with the Mesopotamian Dumuzi and the Phrygian Attis.
Feast
of St Vincent de Paul
The patron saint of all charities was born in Gascony, France, circa
1580. Son of a peasant farmer, the priest worked among the poor to whom he
dedicated his life. Although by nature ill-tempered, he had great patience and
love for the unfortunates of society. In 1833, Frederic Ozanam in Paris founded
the society that still bears his name and is known for its exemplary work among
the needy.
Feast
day of St Arsenius
This saint is best known for his extraordinary ability to cry. His sudarium,
or handkerchief, was always at the ready.
Festa
del Redentore (Feast of the Redeemer), Venice, Italy
In 1575 after the people of Venice prayed for an end to a plague, the illness
dropped away. Ever since, on the third Saturday of July, Venetians have given thanks in this remarkable
ceremony at the island known as Giudecca. Pilgrims walk from the city to
Giudecca across the decks of boats while spectators gather on waterfront
balconies. People eat sweet and sour sole with pine nuts and raisins, and deck
boats and houses alike with flowers and party lights. The famous Water
Music of George
Frideric Handel was
written in 1771 for this spectacle, and it is played as fireworks are let off.
George Frideric Handel
Burma
Martyrs Day
Today used to be a holiday in Burma, or Myanmar as it may be called, to
commemorate the assassination on July 19, 1947, of General Aung San and his
comrades. Today, Aung San’s daughter, Nobel Laureate Aung
San Suu Kyi,leads the struggle for Burma’s liberation from SLORC, the
dictatorship of the ancient nation.
FREE BURMA!
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