John Lennon goddess Neith Virgin Mary Immaculate Ku Klux Klan James Thurber Mario Savio Tropical Cyclone Sam Morrison doors perception

 

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Millions of mind guerillas
Chanting the mantra "Peace on earth”.
John Lennon, who was killed on December 8, 1980; Mind Games  

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me.
Jai guru de va om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

John Lennon

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that, I’m right and will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first, rock ’n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.
John Lennon

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
That call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe
Jai guru de va om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

John Lennon

 Click for article at the Scriptorium, John Lennon: Saint or sinner?

 

Across the Universe midi

You have to do it yourself. That’s what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not what it says; but the instructions are there for all to see, have always been you.
John Lennon

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
John Lennon

Laurel and Hardy, that's John and Yoko. And we stand a better chance under that guise because all the serious people like Martin Luther King and Kennedy and Gandhi got shot.
John Lennon

I Wandered
On balmy sea and pernie schooners
On strivers and warming things
In a peanut coalshed clad
I wandered happy as a jew
To meet good Doris King.

Past grisby trees and hulky builds
Past ratters and bradder sheep
In a resus baby stooped
I wandered hairy as a dog
To get a goobites sleep

Down hovey lanes and stoney claves
Down ricketts and sticklys myth
In a fatty hebrew gurth
I wandered humply as a sock
To meet bad Bernie Smith.

John Lennon

I'd go through periods of panic, because I was not in Billboard or being seen at Studio 54 with Mick and Bianca. I mean, I didn't exist anymore. And I realized there was a life without it. I thought, "This reminds me of being 15!" I didn't have to write songs at 15. I wrote if I wanted to. That's when I suddenly could do it again with ease. All the songs that are on Double Fantasy all came within a period of 3 weeks.
John Lennon

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.
John Lennon

We've been on our peace gig, as we call it, for a year solid. And people say, “Do you think it's having any effect?” I can't answer that. It's like asking me in the Cavern, “Are you gonna make it?” In the back of my mind I thought, I'm gonna make it, but I couldn't lay it on the line. And I think that peace is more tangible than Beatles.
John Lennon

Now, in the sixties we were naive, like children. Everybody went back to their rooms, and said, “We didn't get a wonderful world of just flowers and peace and happy chocolate, and it won't be just pretty and beautiful all the time,” and just like babies everyone went back to their rooms and sulked. “We're going to stay in our rooms and play rock and roll and not do anything else, because the world's a horrible place, because it didn't give us everything we cried for.” Right?
John Lennon

It just was a gradual development over the years. I mean last year was “all you need is Love.” This year, it's “all you need is Love and peace, baby.” Give peace a chance, and remember Love. The only hope for us is peace. Violence begets violence. You can have peace as soon as you like if we all pull together. You're all geniuses, and you're all beautiful. You don't need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace, think peace, and live peace and breathe peace, and you'll get it as soon as you like.
John Lennon

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.
John Lennon

More quotes at Lennon World quotes

 

In late dynastic times there is no doubt that Nit was regarded as nothing but a form of Hathor, but at an earlier period she was certainly a personification of a form of the great, inert, primeval watery mass out of which sprang the sun god Ra ...
Budge, EA Wallis, The Gods of the Egyptians

According to the Iunyt (Esna) cosmology the goddess emerged from the primeval waters to create the world. She then followed the flow of the Nile northward to found Zau in company with the subsequently venerated lates-fish. There are much earlier references to Nit's association with the primordial flood-waters and to her demiurge: Amenhotep II (Dynasty XVIII) in one inscription is the pharaoh 'whose being Nit moulded'; the papyrus (Dynasty XX) giving the account of the struggle between Horus and Set mentions Nit 'who illuminated the first face' and in the sixth century BC the goddess is said to have invented birth.
Hart, George, A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses

Peace the sailor prays, caught in a storm on the open Aegean, when dark-clad clouds have hid the moon and the stars shine no longer certain.
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Roman writer, born on December 8, 65 BCE, Ode II-XVI ‘Otium’

Add a sprinkling of folly to your long deliberations.
Horace
 
Be not ashamed to have had wild days, but not to have sown your wild oats.
Horace 

Be this our wall of brass, to be conscious of having done no evil, and to grow pale at no accusation.
Horace 

Day treads upon the heels of day, and the new moons hasten to their waning.
Horace

Despise not sweet inviting love-making nor the merry dance.
Horace
 
More quotes by Horace

The bodily shape of the heavenly Queen was well proportioned and taller than is usual with other maidens of her age; yet extremely elegant and perfect in all its parts. Her face was rather more oblong than round, gracious and beautiful, without leanness or grossness; its complexion clear, yet of a slightly brownish hue; her forehead spacious yet symmetrical; her eyebrows perfectly arched; her eyes large and serious, of incredible and ineffable beauty and dovelike sweetness, dark in color with a mixture tending toward green; her nose straight and well shaped; her mouth small, with red-colored lips, neither too thin nor too thick. All the gifts of nature in Her were so symmetrical and beautiful, that no other human being ever had the like.
Description of Mary from Blessed Mary of Agreda, The Mystical City of God, Pt II, Bk 3, Ch. 2   Source: The Face of Our Mother?

The Blessed Virgin had auburn hair, dark eyebrows, fine and arched, a very high forehead, large downcast eyes with long, dark lashes, a straight nose, delicate and rather long, a lovely mouth around which played a most noble expression, and a pointed chin.
Description of Mary from Emmerich, Anne Catherine, The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical Revelations, Vol. I, p. 198   Source: The Face of Our Mother?

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.
James Thurber, American cartoonist and humorist, born on December 8, 1894

It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.
James Thurber

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear but around in awareness.
James Thurber

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
James Thurber

Humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
James Thurber

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
James Thurber

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
James Thurber

One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.
James Thurber

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
Mario Savio
, Free Speech Movement co-founder, born on December 8, 1942; speech delivered at
Sproul Plaza, UCLA, December 3, 1964

I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown, which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.
Jim Morrison, Doors singer, born on December 8, 1943

I think the highest and lowest points are the important ones. Anything else is just ... in between. I want the freedom to try everything.
Jim Morrison

I think I was just fed up with the image that had been created around me, which I sometimes consciously, most of the time unconsciously cooperated with. It just got too much for me to really stomach and so I put an end to it one glorious evening.
Jim Morrison

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.
Jim Morrison

When you make peace with authority, you become authority.
Jim Morrison

Out here on the perimeter; We is stoned, immaculate.
Jim Morrison

 

 

 

December 8 is the 342nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (343rd in leap years), with 23 days remaining.
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Festival of Neith, ancient Egypt

Neith (Nit)In Egyptian mythology, Neith was a psychopomp, the beautiful but fierce predynastic goddess of war and weaving, was the goddess of the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and the patron goddess of Zau (Sau, Sai, Sais) in the Delta whose temple was at Sais on the Nile.

Ancient tradition held that the city of Sais was founded by the Greeks before the flood, and Greeks were kindly treated when in this city. As the mother of Ra, the Egyptians believed her to be connected with the god of the watery primeval void, Nun. Shrouds worn by the mummified deceased were said to be gifts from Neith. She was often portrayed holding a set of bow and arrows, occasionally a harpoon.

She was linked to with a number of goddesses including Nephthys, Isis, Bast, Wadjet, Nekhbet, Mut, Anouke and Sekhmet. As a cow, she was linked to both Nut and Hathor. She was also linked to Tatet, the goddess who dressed the dead, and was thus linked to preservation of the dead. Her son, other than the sun god Ra, was believed to be Sobek, the crocodile god. She was regarded as his mother from early times – the two were mentioned as mother and son in the pyramid of Unas – and one of her titles was 'Nurse of Crocodiles'. She was also regarded, during the Old Kingdom, as the wife of Set, though by later times this relationship was dropped and she became the wife of Sobek instead. In Upper Egypt she was married to the inundation god, Khnum, instead.

At Banebdjetet's request, she interceded in the war between Horus and Set over the Egyptian throne, recommending that Horus should rule.

By Greek times there was a great annual festival in honour of Isis-Nit. Part of the festival, recorded by Herodotus, said that the people lit their houses with lamps and torches that were fuelled by oil mixed with salt. The lamps and torches were kept burning until the morning, while the people themselves feasted. The virgin priestesses of the Temple of Neith engaged in armed combat each year for the position of High Priestess.

Neith was considered by the Greeks to be Athena. The planet Venus was once thought to have a moon, which was called Neith.

More    Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days

  

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The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt


The Search for God in Ancient Egypt


A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses


Magic in Ancient Egypt


Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends


Egyptian Gods and Goddesses


Egyptian Paganism for Beginners


The Great Goddesses of Egypt


The Winter Solstice


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Celebrate the Earth

A Year of Holidays in the Pagan Tradition


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MaryFeast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary (Catholic)

(Holy Day of Obligation; Arbor vitae, Thuja accidentalis, is today's plant, dedicated to Saint Mary.)

The Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic doctrine that the Virgin Mary was preserved by God from the transmission of original sin at the time of her own conception. It is not, as is popularly believed, another name for the doctrine of the virgin birth – it refers to how Mary, not Jesus, was conceived.

Immaculate Conception was defined by Pope Pius IX in his constitution Ineffabilis Deus, published December 8, 1854.

In Ineffabilis Deus, Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary “in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin”.

Mary is known to Roman Catholics as Mother of Jesus Christ and Mother of God.

In her aspect of the Immaculate Conception, Mary may be depicted standing on the moon, crushing the serpent under her foot, and the sun behind her, sometimes her head circled with the twelve stars of the Apocalypse. She might be contemplating herself in a mirror.

Alan Davidson (Oxford Companion to Food, Oxford University Press, 1999) tells us that on this day in Madeira, women begin to bake the bolo de mel cake which is served at Christmas time. This  cake, sweetened with honey or molasses, contains walnuts, almonds and candied peel. Traditionally, the Madeirans leaven the cake with a piece of dough from bread-baking; any honey cakes left from the previous year must be eaten up on this day.

Madonna by Durer

More on Mary tomorrow: the Virgin of Guadalupe/Aztec goddess

 

Feast day of Astraea, ancient Greece
A Greek goddess of justice.
Pennick, Nigel,
The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992

Final day of the Festival of Faunalia, ancient Rome
Celebrated in the Roman Empire in honour of Faunus, the Roman version of the Greek god Phaunos, or Pan.

The Faunalia was commemorated in rural areas, as a celebration of Nature and animals.

Feast day of the Tiberinalia, Roman Empire
A festival commemorating the River Tiber in Rome. The river genius Tiberinus and the earth goddess Gaia were honoured. See also Portunalia, August 17.

Advent (Nov 30 - Dec 25), season of the coming of Jesus Christ

Feast day of St Eucharius

Feast day of St Eutychian

Feast day of St Gunthildis

Feast day of St Jane of Cáceres

Feast day of St Macarius

Feast day of St Patapius

Feast day of St Romaric

Feast day of the Immaculate Conception, public holiday, Republic of Malta

Birthday of Sun goddess Amaterasu, Japan
(Source: The Phoenix and Arabeth 1992 Calendar)

Hari Kugo; Daitosai, or Good-Luck Market, Omiya, Japan (Nov 30 - Dec 11)

Iyomante Matsuri, Kutcharo, Japan (Dec 1 - 15)

Advent Fast begins, Orthodox Christian

Mexico: “Festival of in honor of the Mayan goddess Ixchel.  Rites include processions and rituals that bless boats and fields.”   Source

The Enlightenment of Sakyamuni Buddha, Mahayana Buddhism

Afflux (50 Aftermath) (Discordianism; Discordian calendar)

Day of the Student (studentski praznik), Bulgaria

Constitution Day, Romania

 

 

 

 

65 BCE Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (d. 8 BCE), Roman soldier and poet (Satires; Epodes; Odes; Epistles), poet laureate to Emperor Augustus; considered by classicists to be, along with Virgil, the greatest of the Latin poets.

Horace justified Roman imperialism, saying “Because you are servants of the gods, you are masters on Earth”. Horace was the son of a freedman, but himself born free. His father spent considerable amounts of money on his education, including sending him to Athens for the study of Greek and philosophy.

Maybe, somewhere, the Nymphs and Graces are dancing,
Under the moon the goddess Venus and her dancers;
Somewhere far in the depth of a cloudless sky
Vulcan is getting ready the storms of the coming summer.
Now is the time to garland your shining hair
With myrtle or with the flowers the free-giving earth has given;
Now is the right time to offer the kid or lamb
In sacrifice to Faunus in the firelit shadowy grove.

The works of Horace at The Latin Library

A letter from an Almaniac

Pip,
As you've noted, 'carpe diem' is from Horace's much-admired Odes - ode XI of Book 1, in line 8, to be precise.  (Whether or not he was using an expression current in his day, and there's no evidence of it, it's through him that we know the phrase.)  'carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero', he said – pluck the day, trust tomorrow minimally ...

For the rest of this erudite letter from an Almaniac, Dunc (that's all I know), see the Letters page. Dunc casts welcome light on the Almanac's motto, 'carpe diem', which should really be 'cape diem'. (I've decided to stick with the expression as it is well known, despite Dunc's having persuaded me.)

1542 Mary Queen of Scots (d. February 8, 1587), queen consort of France (1559 - 60), ruler of Scotland from December 14, 1542 - July 24, 1567, whose unwise marital and political actions provoked rebellion among the Scottish nobles, forcing her to flee to England, where she was beheaded, on February 8, 1587, as a Roman Catholic threat to the English throne.

Mary Stuart was executed at Fotheringhay Castle on suspicion of having been involved in a plot – the Babington plot – to murder Queen Elizabeth I. She chose to wear red, thereby declaring herself a Catholic martyr. The execution was badly carried out – the executioner was drunk and it took 3 blows to hack off her head.

1765 Eli Whitney (d. January 8, 1825), American inventor who created the first cotton gin in 1793 (patented on March 14, 1794). Whitney's invention removed the seeds from cotton, which until that time was extremely labour-intensive work

1730 Jan Ingenhousz, physiologist, botanist (d. 1799)

1865 Jean Sibelius, composer (d. 1957)

1886 Diego Rivera, painter (d. 1957)

 

1894 James Thurber (d. November 2, 1961), American cartoonist and humorist (Is Sex Necessary?).

(Thurber cartoon, a fave of mine, at foot of page)

As a child, while playing William Tell with his brother, he lost an eye when struck by an arrow. In his adult years, he had several glass eyes made with varying degrees of bloodshotness painted on them, which he would change while, during one of his frequent drinking nights, his good eye grew redder and redder.

His friend EB White, author of Charlotte’s Web, saw Thurber trying to improve his simple cartoons by hatching and shading them. “Don’t do that,” White said. “If you ever got good you’d be mediocre.” 

Thurber worked at the New Yorker. One day, a staff cartoonist at flared up and said to editor Harold W Ross, “Why do you reject drawings of mine and print stuff by that fifth-rate artist Thurber?” “Third-rate,” Ross replied firmly.

Yet this third-rate artist became a cartoonist and humorist who is known as one of America’s greatest in the twentieth century.

Thurber was once approached at a cocktail party by a female admirer who declared that his work was even funnier in French. "Yes," Thurber replied, "I always seem to lose something in the original."

On November 2, 1961, Thurber, having contracted pneumonia while recovering from brain surgery, finally succumbed to the illness. His last words are said to have been: "God bless ... God damn."

More James Thurber anecdotes    Shop Thurber

Elzie Segar

 

1894 Elzie Crisler Segar (d. October 13, 1938), American cartoonist, creator of Popeye the Sailor, who made his first appearance on January 17, 1929 (qv)

 

 

1916 Richard Fleischer, American film director (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; The Boston Strangler; Mandingo)

1925 Sammy Davis, Jr, American all-round entertainer and film actor (Ocean's Eleven; Porgy and Bess; Sweet Charity). When asked (regarding golf) what his handicap was, he replied "I'm a one-eyed, Negro Jew".

1936 David Carradine, American actor (TV series Kung Fu)

1939 James Galway, Irish flautist  

1942 Mario Savio (d. November 6, 1996), co-founder of the Free Speech Movement which began at the University of California (UCLA), Berkeley

1943 Jim Morrison, singer, songwriter, weekend poet (The Doors) (d. July 3, 1971

Morrison studied theatre arts at the University of California and formed a group which was in 1965 christened The Doors after Aldous Huxley’s book on mescaline, The Doors of Perception of Heaven and Hell, which quoted William Blake’s poem

If the doors of perception were cleansed
All things would appear infinite.

1947 Gregg Allman, musician  

1948 John Waters, English-born Australian actor (The Getting of Wisdom; 'Breaker' Morant)

1950 Rick Baker, film makeup artist

1953 Kim Basinger, actress

1966 Sinead O'Connor, Irish pop singer

 

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644 Omar I, the second kalief of Islam, was murdered.

899 Arnulf of Carinthia, the last emperor of Austria-France, died.

1292 John Peckham, English archbishop of Canterbury, died, aged 62.

1326 The Daitokuji temple, Rinzai line, was established in Kyoto by Daito Kokushi.

1590 At sunset, James Welsh of the ship Richard of Arundel, sailing off the coast of Guinea, observed a great black spot on the sun, and found the same appearance visible next morning.

1638 Death of Ivan Gundulic, Croatian poet.

1722 Death of Elisabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz (Liselotte von der Pfalz), Charlotte Elizabeth, Duchesse d'Orléans and sister-in-law of Louis XIV.

1773 "Something in the sky which appeared in the north, but vanished from my sight, as it was intercepted by trees, from my vision. I was standing in a valley. The weather was warm, the sun shone brightly. On a sudden it re-appeared, darting in and out of my sight with an amazing coruscation. The colour of this phenomenon was like burnished, or new washed silver. It shot with speed like a star falling in the night. But it has a body much larger and a train longer than any shooting star I have seen... Next day, Mr. Edgecombe informed me that he and another gentleman had seen this strange phenomenon at the same time as I had. It was about 15 miles from where I saw it, and steering a course from E. to N."

“The witness of this event was a Mr. Cracker of Fleet, a small township in Dorset, England. Mr. Cracker said that he saw this 'flying saucer' in broad daylight on December 8, 1773. ('Fate', April 1951, p. 24).”   Source

(This source says 1733)

1847 An international convention of the Communist League adopted the principles of Karl Marx.  

 

1854 Pope Pius IX issued a papal bull announcing the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. December 8 became the feast day of the Immaculate Conception. The term refers to the sinless state of Mary, not of her son Jesus as is commonly believed.

In the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus of December 8, 1854, Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary "in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin."   Source

On March 25, 1858, at Lourdes, France, the Virgin Mary appeared in a vision to the little shepherdess, Bernardette Soubirous and announced her presence with the words, “I am the Immaculate Conception”. I have long wondered why these words were used, and not “I am the Immaculately Conceived”.

1859 Death of Thomas de Quincey, author (Confessions of an English Opium-Eater).

1864 Death of George Boole, mathematician.

1870 France: During the depths of hunger during the Siege of Paris, the Parisian daily newspaper Les Nouvelles published a menu containing such ingredients, with such delicacies as "horse soup with millet"; "dog liver kebabs"; "shoulder of dog with tomato sauce; "cat stew with mushrooms"; "rat stew"; and "Gigot de chien flanqué de ratons" (dog leg with small rats). 

More, and picture

1886 The American Federation of Labor was founded.

1888 Sydney, Australia: JT Williams ascended to 6,000 feet above Ashfield Recreation Grounds in Capt. Hendon's balloon and parachuted to the ground.   Source: Australian Aviation Pioneers

1907 Death of King Oscar II of Sweden (b. 1829). King Gustav V of Sweden acceded to the Swedish throne.

1907 USA: Christmas seals were sold for the first time, to raise funds to fight tuberculosis. These days, Christmas seal income is used primarily in the fight against birth defects.

1911 The opera Salome, by Richard Strauss, premiered in London.

1914 The Battle of the Falkland Islands was fought.

1919 USA: Jailed at Ellis Island on December 5, anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman appeared in federal court before Judge Julius M Mayer, who declared that as aliens, they had no constitutional rights. They remained in detention at Ellis Island.

1941 World War II: After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the previous day, the United States Congress passed a declaration of war on Japan, bringing the United States of America officially into World War II. Hitler's Germany declared war on the United States. Pacifist Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin cast the only "no" vote. Australia and Britain also declared war on Japan.

1941 The Holocaust: The first Nazi use of gas vans on Jews, at the Chelmno camp near Lodz.

1949 Chinese Civil War: The Nationalist Government of the Republic of China, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fled from the mainland (Nanjing) to Taipei, Formosa (Taiwan).

1959 “Smell-o-Vision premiered as part of a movie titled ‘Behind the Great Wall’, at the DeMille Theatre in New York City. A somewhat noxious scent was piped through the ceiling vents during certain portions of the show.”   Source

1963 USA: Ku Klux Klan members attacked the home of a black voter-registration worker in Dawson, Georgia with small arms fire and at least one dynamite bomb. 

 

Why Does the Ku Klux Klan Burn Crosses?
By Brendan I. Koerner
Posted Tuesday, December 17, 2002, at 11:48 AM PT

"The practice dates back to Medieval Europe, an era the Klan idealizes as morally pure and racially homogenous. In the days before floodlights, Scottish clans set hillside crosses ablaze as symbols of defiance against military rivals or to rally troops when a battle was imminent. Though the original Klan, founded in 1866, patterned many of its rituals after those of Scottish fraternal orders, cross-burning was not part of its initial repertoire of terror.

"Nevertheless, Thomas Dixon included a pivotal cross-burning scene in his 1905 novel The Clansman; he was attempting to legitimize the Klan's supposed connections to the Scottish clans. A decade later, D.W. Griffith brought The Clansman to the silver screen, eventually renaming it The Birth of a Nation. Exhilarated by Griffith's sympathetic portrayal, Klansmen started burning crosses soon after to intimidate minorities, Catholics, and anyone else suspected of betraying the order's ideals. The first reported burning took place in Georgia on Thanksgiving Eve, 1915. They have been associated with racist violence ever since.

"Modern Klan groups are careful to refer to their ritual as "cross lighting" rather than cross-burning and insist that their fires symbolize faith in Christ. The days of so-called disciplinary burnings, they add, are long since over. Still, nearly 1,700 cross-burnings have been documented since the late 1980s, many of them in the front yards of African-American families—although, in all fairness, the majority have been carried out by lone racist yahoos, rather than by organized Klan groups.”   Source

 

1976 The Eagles released one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, Hotel California.

 

John Lennon glasses1980 Former Beatle John Lennon (b. October 9, 1940) was shot dead in New York by deranged 25-year-old fan Mark David Chapman.

John Lennon Artificial Intelligence Project (JLAIP™) is recreating the personality of the late Beatle, John Lennon, by programming an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine with Lennon's own words and thoughts.

Click to sign the John Lennon Day petition

Peace Off!
In 1971, a fan named Thomas Bonifield wrote to John offering spiritual guidance after listening to the "hopelessness" of the Imagine album. To his surprise, John wrote back!

Bagism  John Lennon fan site

Lennon and Beatles Links

Instant Karma! Online-The John and Yoko Magazine

Music files    Lyrics    Lennon World

LATEST NEWS The very latest John Lennon related news stories.
NEWS ARCHIVES News stories from the past two years.
BIOGRAPHY Extensive insight into the life story of John Lennon.
SONG LYRICS Fully printable lyrics from the greatest songwriter.
ALBUMS Album discography with tracks listings and lyrics links.
SINGLES Singles discography with US and UK release dates.
POETRY
A great collection of John Lennon's personal Poetry.
QUOTES Some of John's hilarious, strong, and serious quotes.

John Lennon Tributes

The Beatles
Free As A Bird

Paul McCartney
Tribute to John

George Harrison
All Those Years Ago

Elton John
Empty Garden ( Hey, Hey Johnny )

Neil Young
Imagine

John Lennon: Saint or sinner? All you need is love Feature article at the Scriptorium

 

All We Are Saying – last major interview with John and Yoko

Mind Games Still an important message from John Lennon:

We're playing those mind games together
Pushing the barriers planting seeds
Playing the mind guerrilla
Chanting the Mantra peace on earth
We all been playing those mind games forever
Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil
Doing the mind guerrilla
Some call it magic the search for the grail ...
Faith in the future out of the now

Shop Lennon       Shop Beatles

 

1982 US: Demanding an end to nuclear weapons, Norman Mayer (b. 1916) was shot and killed by the United States Park Police after threatening to blow up the Washington Monument. Ten hours into the negotiation, Mayer jumped in his van and started to drive off, threatening to become "a moving time bomb in downtown Washington". The police opened fire, striking Mayer four times – twice in the head.

"They have been pretending that we are not threatened every day of our lives with annihilation, and whether by conclusion or otherwise, they refuse to give the real information about the precarious and uncontrollable situation the world finds itself in. It's up to the press."

He climbed back into the van and started driving away at 7:30 pm. Park Police opened fire, hitting Mayer twice in the arm, once on the chin, and once in the left temple.

Police insist they were aiming for the van's engine. Mayer was pronounced dead on the scene.

Norman Mayer group

Source: The Daily Bleed

1987 USA President Ronald Reagan and USSR General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Thus was it agreed to dismantle all 2,611 medium- and short-range nuclear missiles based in Europe.

1988 Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, in one of her early decisions, released 1,000 political prisoners.

1991 Leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine met and signed an agreement ending the USSR and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Nature Reserve in Belarus

1993 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed into law by US President Bill Clinton.

1994 US President Bill Clinton signed a bill enacting United States participation in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT was formally signed on April 15, 1994, in Marrakesh, Morocco by 124 nations).

1998 Tadjena massacre: 81 people were killed by armed groups in Algeria.

 

 

2000 Tropical Cyclone Sam (pictured) made landfall on the Australian continent near the Western Australian town of Broome. At first, Sam moved on a westerly track but then turned to the south and southeast and tracked towards the coast. It then crossed the Kimberley coastline 110 kilometres south of Broome, near Bidyadanga (home of the largest single Aboriginal community in WA) on the evening of December 8. Wind gusts near the centre were estimated to be greater than 250 km/h (155 m/h) with rainfall in the order of 200-300 mm (7.87 in. - 11.81 in.).

 

Shelamar, just south of Bidyadanga, reported 520 mm (20.47 in.) of rain in the 48 hours to 9am on December 10. Most people were evacuated before Sam hit; severe damage was sustained by station (ranch) homesteads, sheds and buildings. Most trees were blown over and power was cut for several days. The system had weakened to a Tropical Low by the 10th.

 

In meteorology, a tropical cyclone (informally, a typhoon or hurricane) is a type of low-pressure system that generally forms in the tropics, but not on the equator. They could not exist without the Coriolis effect and hence cannot form or travel near the equator, as shown by this map.

See also Tropical Cyclone Tracy, which devastated Darwin, Australia, on December 24/25, 1974.

Australian weather

 

Wilson’s Webcam Watch

Click the image below to go to tropical cyclone updates generated by live webfeeds.

List of  featured webcams and webfeeds

Recommend a webcam/webfeed or report malfunction

 

Tropical Storms, Worldwide

World Map

Click on an area of interest to receive a regional map

"The tropical cyclone data presented at the site above are intended to convey only general information on current storms and must not be used to make life or death decisions or decisions relating to the protection of property: the data may not be accurate. If you are in the path of a storm you should be listening to official information sources. These data have no official status and should not be used for emergency response decision-making under any circumstances."

Source

 

2003 The Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada officially merged to create the new Conservative Party of Canada.

2004 The Cuzco Declaration was signed in Cuzco, Peru, establishing the South American Community of Nations.

2004 Former Pantera guitarist Darrell Abbott was shot and killed on stage by Nathan Gale at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio.

2004 The population of the Australian state of Victoria reached five million for the first time.

 

 

Tomorrow: Australia's mythical creature, the Yowie 

 

 Main calendar | Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search

 

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James Thurber

Wikipedia and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed are both excellent resources that aid my research.
I frequently make use of their generously liberal 'fair use', 'copyleft' and 'anti-copyright' policies, with much gratitude.
© My own copyright policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.

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