"New Coke" was introduced on April 23, 1985. We lived in Charlottesville at the time. The uproar was in the news for a few weeks. I tried the drink. It was sweeter, like Pepsi, without that little sharpness that's characteristic of Coke.
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Today is the feast day (and death anniversary) of St Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 - 1109). He was the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093-1109, during which he defended the church in the Investiture Controversy. He is known for his "ontological argument" for the existence of God---God is "that than which nothing greater can be thought." He is also known for his work, "Cur Deus Homo" ("Why Did God Become Human?") in which he argued a "legal" definition of Christ's atonement--that Christ's death paid the penalty that human sin incurred against God's righteousness. Still another legacy of his writings is the idea that religious faith, by its very nature, seeks deeper understanding ("fides quaerens intellectum"), a concept that Karl Barth used as a framework for his "Church Dogmatics" ... The stuff you remember from school, even though you can’t remember where you put your phone, LOL
SO many happy memories of my daughter's school years! Happy birthday to businesswoman Lisa Frank, born in 1955! Her company produced products that were REALLY popular among young girls during the 1980s and 1990s: school supplies, toys, and stickers of animals and unicorns, rendered in neon and rainbow colors.
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Naturalist-writer John Muir was born on this day in 1838! He helped found the Sierra Club and influenced the establishment of what became the US Forest Service, and he was involved in establishing Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Sequoia, and other areas as National Parks. Unfortunately he also wrote racist things, which the Sierra Club has lately addressed in evaluating his legacy. I have Muir's book "A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf," which describes his walk from Indianapolis down into Florida in 1867. He comments on how nature was slowly on the rebound following the environmental damage caused by the Civil War.
My cousins in Texas pointed out that today is the anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto. On April 21, 1836, the Texan Army led by General Sam Houston defeated the Mexican Army led by General Antonio López de Santa Anna. The battle, near the San Jacinto River, lasted only 18 minutes. Santa Anna was captured April 22 and, three weeks later, signed the peace treaty that removed the Mexican Army from the region. Thus ended the Texas Revolution. The Republic of Texas had already declared its independence on March 2. The U.S. recognized the new republic, though Mexico did not. This is a longish article but it provides interesting historical context.
https://www.thealamo.org/remember/battle-and-revolution/san-jacinto?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR10ZfNAiS4TmV-l3wTdFebJ92v-HyNzVSdNHjpocFtbKx6LK3V9ZXCJ82E_aem_AarWoxJz4v9Yug_eQUmIDW5cKSqyZ7fPEYlSP1eILvWqq6DmL65la9UyMm_trysx76SeMzQmKn-c6VLq8WImxVcR
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Something on Facebook this evening reminded me of the time Beth and I ate at the famous Les Deux Magots in Paris in 2019. Fun to pretend to have literary and artistic fame, LOL.
A wonderful set that I purchased in Vienna a few years ago. Schumann's four symphonies make a wonderful "landscape" to traverse. I discovered #1 as I was driving on U.S. 89 in northern Arizona years ago.
Born April 15, 1772, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who theorized an underlying unity of organismal design, and the possibility of species transmutation in time. Developing on the ideas of his colleague Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Saint-Hilaire gathered evidence in embryology, amassing evidence for his claims through research in comparative anatomy, and paleontology. His ideas anticipated the evo-devo evolutionary concept.
A. Bartlett Giamatti was born on this day in 1938. He was Yale University's president in 1978-1986 and then National League Baseball president and later Commissioner of Major League Baseball, during which he negotiated Pete Rose's withdrawal from baseball. The actor Paul Giamatti is his son--such a great actor! During a Yale festival of some sort in the early 1980s, I noticed Pres. Giamatti and took his picture while he was chatting with the mayor of New Haven.
On April 3-4, 1974, there was a "super outbreak" of 148 tornados across the Midwest, 20 of them in Indiana and 26 in Kentucky. When we lived in Louisville in the 90s, folks still occasionally talked about the destruction there. I've a friend from Xenia, OH, where the death toll was high. This map can be enlarged at https://www.weather.gov/iln/19740403 Back in the '90s, I did some writing for the Kentucky Council of Churches. One of my interviewees talked about how Kentucky churches worked together to minister to tornado victims.
"The Lord descends into hell
"Something strange is happening — there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and Hell trembles with fear. He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, He who is both God and the Son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the Cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone, ‘My Lord be with you all.’ Christ answered him: ‘And with your spirit.’ He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.’
"I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in Hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I in you; together we form one person and cannot be separated.
"For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.
"See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.
"I slept on the Cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in Paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in Hell. The sword that pierced Me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.
"Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly Paradise. I will not restore you to that Paradise, but will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The Bridal Chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The Kingdom of Heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity."
From The Liturgy of the Hours, II, Lenten and Easter Seasons (New York: Catholic Book Publishers Corp. 1976), 496-498.
Acclaimed conductor Arturo Toscanini was born March 25, 1867! I read somewhere that his famous temper began early in his career, where he had to get mediocre orchestras in shape quickly. He premiered some well-known operas, like Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” and Puccini’s “La Bohème,” “La Fanciulla del West,” and “Turandot.” Earlier, he played cello at the premiere of Verdi's "Otello". He became additionally famous as the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937–1954). I have an old LP set of his "Falstaff," which I should listen to again soon! When I was first learning about classical music in the 1980s, it was interesting to read about the contrasts between Toscanini's style and that of Wilhelm Furtwängler.
Born March 26, 1904, Joseph Campbell taught comparative mythology and comparative religion, and wrote notable works like "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." George Lucas acknowledged the book's influence. When Campbell died in 1987, he had recently completed a series of interviews with Bill Moyers, "The Power of Myth." That was the year when Beth and I moved to Flagstaff to teach at Northern Arizona University. I was an all-but-dissertation instructor, teaching world religions for the first time. The interviews were so helpful as I got my bearings in the subject, which happily turned into a specialty. It's heartwarming to remember those years and Campbell's words.
One of the major figures of post-war classical music, composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was born March 26, 1925! He was known for his polemical ideas in music, for instance, "any musician who has not experienced—I do not say understood, but truly experienced—the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch." I always think of him because of his recording of Wagner's "Ring" cycle, which was broadcast on PBS in the 1980s--when Beth and I were dating!
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I've been writing lately about the Siege of Veracruz, a significant battle in the Mexican-American War. As this says, the U.S. army made an amphibious landing from the Gulf, under the command of General Winfield Scott. The 12,000 American troops soon moved on the city of Veracruz, not only to secure a key port city but also to clear a way for an advance toward Mexico City. The siege was happening 177 years ago right now: March 9-29, 1847. The city surrendered on March 29, which happened to be Monday of Holy Week. So it was doubly sad when American troops discovered, in one church, that American artillery had blown the head off Jesus. My great-great-grandfather Josiah Williams (the father of Mom's paternal grandma) was one of the American troops. Back home in Fayette County, Illinois, his mother was dying and did die on Holy Tuesday, March 30th. They're buried at the Pilcher Cemetery near Brownstown. Josiah didn't know about his mother; telegraphy was still new, and the mails took weeks. It's a sad family story against the backdrop of American Manifest Destiny..... But it's also cool that Commodore Matthew Perry was present in the Gulf with one of his big ships, the USS Mississippi, which he later used when he "opened" Japan.
Vincent van Gogh was born 171 years ago today. This is his only photograph, taken when he was 19 in 1873. No other photos purported to be of him are authenticated. According to the Van Gogh Museum's website, the artist felt that photographs "lacked life," and so all the other pictures of him are his self-portraits.
The first painting is one of his earliest self-portraits (from the fall of 1886) and the first in which he depicts himself as an artist. Historians disagree which of the other two paintings was his last self-portrait. The first painting is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The second painting sold to a private collector for $71.5 million in 1998. The third painting is in the Musee d'Orsay. He painted nearly 900 oil paintings in his brief life, including 40 self-portraits..... Poor van Gogh, broke and suffering from mental illness, never knew the love and interest that his works would inspire. The way mental illness works, though, he may very well have disbelieved it.
March 20 is the feast day of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (c. 634 – 687). He was a monk, bishop, and (later in life) a hermit. His history is linked to the monasteries of Melrose and Lindisfarne in the Kingdom of Northumbria. He was buried at Lindisfarne Priory, where his tomb became a popular place of pilgrimage, with miracles reported from visits to his grave. When his body was viewed in 1104, it was found to be perfectly preserved. Cuthbert is also associated with the Lindisfarne Gospels, an illuminated manuscript of Celtic illustration and calligraphy.
Emperor Jimmu was the legendary first emperor of Japan, a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu and of the storm god Susanoo. According to ancient chronicle of legends, the Nihon Shoki, Emperor Jimmu was born on February 13, 711 BCE. In those chronicles he became ruler in 660 BCE and ruled until he died at age 126 in 585 BCE.
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were both born 215 years ago, on February 12, 1809. ... This composite picture from the internet made me wonder how tall Darwin was. He was about 6 feet tall, although he stooped as he grew older. Lincoln was 6' 4". They never met but by the 1860s they both certainly had worldwide fame.
George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" premiered on February 12, 1924 at Aeolian Hall in New York. The conductor was Paul Whiteman, the popular bandleader who had also commissioned the work. Gershwin himself played the piano, and Ross Gorman played the clarinet. The piece was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé, who is also known for his own "Grand Canyon Suite."
Here's an article that I found. https://www.npr.org/2024/02/12/1230433015/rhapsody-in-blue-gershwin-centennial-jazz-classical?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=classical&utm_term=music&utm_content=20240212&fbclid=IwAR3MIjsYapQ8GPasnEiffJBApNQqFl_jB7_c2-2K-Vtu3HlolZ4WNnQMEIo
A friend shared two other articles: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/arts/music/george-gershwin-rhapsody-in-blue.html?searchResultPosition=2&fbclid=IwAR2Wc_o0SK4VaOASAFTjlY5Bsr5qN3JIVP6WgoYP7JPpwUbVE4HMcYpe5Qo
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Thomas Hutchinson (1711-1780) was the Royal governor of Massachusetts from 1758 to 1774. He was a polarizing figure, loyal to both Massachusetts and to Great Britain on the eve of the Revolution. Here is his two-volume, “History of the Colony of Massachusets-Bay, from the First Settlement Thereof in 1928, Until Its Incorporation with the Colony of Plimouth, Province of Main, &c. By the Charter of King William and Queen Mary, in 1691.” The third volume is “A Collection of Corginal Papers Relative to the History of the Colony of Massachusets-Bay”. Some of my ancestors settled in Massachusetts in the 1630s. One ancestor was on the Mayflower.
I love old highway alignments: pavement and bridges that were abandoned when a new alignment was constructed. If you come into Highland, Illinois on U.S. 40 from the east, and if you're able to slow down and look through the trees at Lakeside Drive, you'll see this c. 1920 bridge and an early pavement that the modern U.S. 40 (just to the right in this picture) replaced. Route 40 across Illinois was called State Route 11 in 1918-1926 and was part of the transcontinental National Old Trails Highway. I took this picture in 2018.
"The day the music died" was 65 years ago today.
Back in the late '90s, there was an interesting show on VH-1 about "The Day the Music Died." I think it's on YouTube now. The "Winter Dance Party" was a series of midwestern concerts, so that rural and small town kids could enjoy these music stars in person. But there were very long bus trips in winter weather between concerts. So, a frustrated Buddy Holly chartered a plane for himself and two of his band members to get to the next gig early. Big Bopper had the flu and asked Holly's bassist Waylon Jennings to give up his seat for him, and Ritchie Valens made a coin toss with guitarist Tommy Allsup and got on the plane instead. Of course, all three musicians and the pilot were killed in the early morning of February 3, 1959. Don McLean's 1971 song "American Pie" really brought their memory back permanently into popular consciousness.
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Portugese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was born (as Fernão de Magalhães) in around 1480. He pops up on birthday sites today. Magellan organized a Spanish expedition to the East Indies in 1519 to 1522, and after Magellan was killed in the Philippines in 1521, his crew completed the first circumnavigation of the earth. A few years ago, the 500th anniversary events of his visit to the Philippines were held there, commemorating not only the introduction of Christianity to the islands but also Filipino resistance to Spanish colonialism.
Theology, tradition, pop culture...
In Christian churches, February 2 is Candlemas, also called the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, or the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, or the Meeting of the Lord. It is the fortieth day following Christmas, a halfway point between Christmas and the spring equinox. In the Gospel lesson for the day, Luke 2:22-40, Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the Temple forty days after his birth, to complete Mary’s purification and to perform pidyon haben, “the redemption of the first born” (Exodus 13:12-15, Leviticus 12). Because Simeon calls Jesus a light to the Gentiles (Luke 2:32), the festival became known as “candle mass.”
There is an old tradition that sunny weather on Candlemas means a long winter. This tradition was elaborated by the Pennsylvania Dutch, who added a critter to the tradition--first a badger, then a groundhog. The significance of Punxsutawney, PA is that they had the first Groundhog Day celebration during the late 1800s.
But the expression "like Groundhog Day", referring to the same routine or situation day after day, grew from the 1993 Bill Murray-Andie MacDowell-Chris Elliott film.
“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”
Born February 2, 1882, Irish author James Joyce wrote the renowned books Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939). Ulysses is about the Odysseus-like adventures of friends Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedalus as they travel through Dublin on June 16, 1904---the day that Joyce and his future wife Nora had first hooked up. Finnegans Wake seems to be the dreams of the Earwicker family who live above a pub in Dublin. But Mr. Earwicker seems to have done something creepy and actionable, analogous in the dreams to the fall of Adam. But there is also some connection in the dreams to Christ's resurrection (as the titular Tim Finnegan revived during his own wake).
Last fall, Beth and I enjoyed visiting the Museum of Literature Ireland which has interesting information about Joyce, as well as copy #1 of Ulysses. Highly recommended when you visit Dublin!
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My mom once told me she liked Sam Wead (she pronounced it "Wade"; I assume that's right) and his store in Brownstown. Mom grew up near Brownstown and went to high school there. I saw this great old sign on eBay, gave it a bit in case someone else bid, and then bought it.
Looking through the 1971 Brownstown history, I discovered that a Pilcher cousin of ours first established the store, which still stands at 1st and Division Streets. He was David O. Pilcher, my grandma's father's first cousin.
A Brownstown friend told me on Facebook: "The building was called Pilcher Hall and the second floor was a vaudeville theater. The building later became home to The Golden Years Club. The building stilll had a stage and the cloth curtain was still intact years later. There was also a horizontal grand piano there well into the 21st century. The walls back stage had interesting histories about the acts that played there and the dates. They often listed all of the performers."
Mr. Wead died in 1950 and is buried in Brownstown's Griffith Cemetery.... My local history rabbit hole for the day, LOL.
When my hometown was laid out in 1819, several of the streets were named after statesmen of the time: John Randolph, Arthur St. Clair, Richard M. Johnson, Ninian Edwards, and Albert Gallatin. Although there is a Main Street, Gallatin St has always been Vandalia's primary thoroughfare and business district. Albert Gallatin himself was a Swiss-born politician and diplomat who was secretary of the treasury in 1801-1814 (Jefferson's and Madison's administration). He also represented Pennsylvania in the US House and Senate, and was US minister to the UK and to France. In 1794, he calmed the protesters in the Whiskey Rebellion because the army could intervene. Gallatin also studied Native American languages and has been called "the father of American ethnology." He also founded New York University. ALSO, he had the idea for a National Road. When he died in 1849, he was the last surviving member of Jefferson's cabinet and the last surviving senator from the 18th century. Since photography was new in the 1840s, he lived long enough to sit for a picture. He was born January 29, 1761. There will be no quiz on all this, LOL.
On January 27, 1945, Allied forces liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau. The United Nations designed January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, to remember the Jewish victims of the Shoah and the millions of other victims of the Nazis.
I had heard of this book and recently purchased it. "And Every Single One Was Someone," by Phil Chernofsky. Except for the introduction, the book contains only the word Jew, 4800 times on each page for 1250 pages, thus repeating the word 6 million times. The cover depicts a Jewish prayer shawl.
When we lived in Louisville, KY in the '90s, we lived on the short Bingham Drive in our little neighborhood out Westport Road.
Born January 22, 1937, Sallie Bingham is an author, playwright, poet, feminist activist, and philanthropist who has written several novels, collections of short stories, poems, plays, and a family memoir. Her father Barry Bingham, Sr. was head of the family that owned The (Louisville) Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times newspapers, the Standard Gravure printing company, WHAS Radio, WHAS Television. He sold the entire media empire in 1986: https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../1ea01026-800c-4d0f.../
John Hancock was the first and third governor of the Commonweath of Massachusetts and president of the Second Continental Congress, well as a signer of the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence. His large, elegant signature on the Declaration is so famous that "to sign one's John Hancock" is a synonym for one's signature. He was born January 23, 1737. The John Hancock Life Insurance Co was named in his honor during the 1860s.
It's a nice experience to visit an art museum and see a famous painting that you didn't realize was there. In 2019, we visited the Musée d'Orsay. I wandered into another room--and there was Manet's "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe." Oh, hi, nude lady! It's a huge painting--maybe 9' x 7'. I always liked the art of Édouard Manet, who was born January 23, 1832.
Art critic and essayist Clement Greenberg was born January 16, 1909. I found this quote about him:
"Greenberg’s writings mostly dealt with non-objective art, Abstract Expressionism, and other forms of formalist and abstract styles, such as color field painting. The crucial importance in a painting for him was in lines, shape and color, while emotional content was considered secondary. Throughout his writings his focus is on a formal purity and dissolution of a subject as the necessary qualities of modernism. ...He ..‘discovered’ Jackson Pollock, and was the first critic who mentioned the most famous figure of action painting in print. It was in his essay for the Nation in 1943. Greenberg described Pollock as 'the first painter I know of to have got something positive from the muddiness of color that so profoundly characterizes a great deal of American painting.' Flatness of the picture plane came from the evolution of modernism which started with Manet, and was of utmost importance to Greenberg, who observed it as the unique and exclusive pictorial trait." https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/clement-greenberg
