The Fifth of November is England's national day of celebration, but over the past 404 years, we've rather lost track of that. Four centuries of the trappings of The Fifth--the bonfires, fireworks, the scarecrows in wheelbarrows, and the roasted chestnuts--have rendered the whole thing a bit stale, and that's a real shame.
Part of The Fifth's thunder was stolen in 1981, when E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial was first released, and Brits got the idea that it might be more fun to celebrate on Halloween than on The Fifth. But the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot is bigger than any autumnal festival you can think of: It's Great Britain's equivalent of the Fourth of July and 9/11 rolled into one strange celebration.
Tne story goes back to the autumn of 1605, when a group of conspirators plotted to destroy the Houses of Parliament, killing the entire government and the whole royal family in one massive explosion. The building's cellars were filled with gunpowder barrels, and they were primed to blow. The results would have been catastrophic. Without leadership, England would be in anarchy and foreign armies would have been able to stroll in and take power. It would have meant the end of England's home rule and way of worship: The Church of England was so closely tied to the government that it would have crumbled too. That one explosion would have changed everything.
But by sheer dumb luck, the plot was foiled. The barrels were discovered, one of the conspirators was caught on the spot and the others were unmasked. News of what might have happened sent a cold chill down the nation's spine--but their deliverance meant only one thing: It was time to celebrate. So they did celebrate--in the only way they knew how. The same way that folks celebrated in the Old Testament. The same way the Pagans celebrated. With a bloody great fire and a party. And for good measure, they threw an effigy of one of the conspirators onto the fire.
The guy in question was called Guy. Guy Fawkes. He wasn't the mastermind of the operation, but he was the first one they caught so he became a symbol for whole shebang. So he's the guy that generations of children have made in effigy, and wheeled around town in their quest for pennies or treats. (And yes, this is where the Yanks got their idea of Trick or Treating).
And he's the guy who gave the evening's celebrations their name.
Tonight is Guy Fawkes' Night. Or Bonfire Night. Or Fireworks Night (because let's not deny it--there's no better way to big up a fire than to send it whooshing up into the sky).
And whether your nation was delivered 404 years ago or 8, it's time to celebrate the fact with flames. If your township doesn't allow actual fires, light a candle and imagine loud explosions. And thank your lucky stars that you don't live in anarchy, ready for a foreign power to descend upon you. That's the real spirit of Guy Fawkes' Day. And it's worth celebrating, no matter what nation you belong to.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Mischief Night, Part II
Tonight, the night of November 4th, is Mischief Night.
Hold on, you may ask, wasn't that on October 30th? Well, maybe for some, but not for everybody. Mischief Night is the night before the biggest celebration of the early autumn. In the United States, that's Halloween. In England, it's November 5th.
To get some idea of why, do yourself a favor and rent V for Vendetta. Or borrow the graphic novel. Or just read tomorrow's blog.
Suffice it to say that anyone of English descent (especially those who live in England, Australia, and New Zealand) can quite legitimately say "Tonight I'm allowed to set fires, light firecrackers, and generally cause a ruckus. Because my country was almost brought into anarchy and overrun 404 years ago, but it survived."
And that's a cause worth celebrating!
Hold on, you may ask, wasn't that on October 30th? Well, maybe for some, but not for everybody. Mischief Night is the night before the biggest celebration of the early autumn. In the United States, that's Halloween. In England, it's November 5th.
To get some idea of why, do yourself a favor and rent V for Vendetta. Or borrow the graphic novel. Or just read tomorrow's blog.
Suffice it to say that anyone of English descent (especially those who live in England, Australia, and New Zealand) can quite legitimately say "Tonight I'm allowed to set fires, light firecrackers, and generally cause a ruckus. Because my country was almost brought into anarchy and overrun 404 years ago, but it survived."
And that's a cause worth celebrating!
Monday, November 2, 2009
Day of the Dead Authors
Now that Halloween is over, we can really begin to celebrate!
Halloween is the evening before All Hallows' Day or All Saints' Day, which comes the day before All Souls' Day. These days are designed for us to revere the departed--which in most healthy cultures means to celebrate the lives of the dead, rather than get all glum about their being dead. The Mexican misnomer, the Day of the Dead, actually spans three days from October 31st to November 2nd, and involves music, fun, and sugar skulls--all of which meet with our hearty approval.
The souls of children are supposed to return to join in the celebration on November 1, with the creakier old adult spirits following on November 2nd. To prepare for their arrival, families usually clean and decorate their kinsmen's graves with ofrendas of marigold wreaths and toys for los angelitos (the kiddies) and bottles of tequila or mezcalfor adults. In the home, they prepare food and drink for the deceased, but eat everything they leave behind on their plates.
Eighty years ago, the United States threw another celebration into the pot for November 1st: Author's Day. Presumably, in the great stew of holidays at this time of year, we should celebrate dead authors. So I'll be raising a skull-shaped glass of meszcal to Edgar Allen Poe. And in my wildest dreams, I'll aspire to his greatness as we also enter National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org)--a month that begins with three days of the dead, and is supposed to end with a completely finished novel.
Well, we can dream, can't we?
Halloween is the evening before All Hallows' Day or All Saints' Day, which comes the day before All Souls' Day. These days are designed for us to revere the departed--which in most healthy cultures means to celebrate the lives of the dead, rather than get all glum about their being dead. The Mexican misnomer, the Day of the Dead, actually spans three days from October 31st to November 2nd, and involves music, fun, and sugar skulls--all of which meet with our hearty approval.
The souls of children are supposed to return to join in the celebration on November 1, with the creakier old adult spirits following on November 2nd. To prepare for their arrival, families usually clean and decorate their kinsmen's graves with ofrendas of marigold wreaths and toys for los angelitos (the kiddies) and bottles of tequila or mezcalfor adults. In the home, they prepare food and drink for the deceased, but eat everything they leave behind on their plates.
Eighty years ago, the United States threw another celebration into the pot for November 1st: Author's Day. Presumably, in the great stew of holidays at this time of year, we should celebrate dead authors. So I'll be raising a skull-shaped glass of meszcal to Edgar Allen Poe. And in my wildest dreams, I'll aspire to his greatness as we also enter National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org)--a month that begins with three days of the dead, and is supposed to end with a completely finished novel.
Well, we can dream, can't we?
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Zipper de doo dah
Guess what, chaps? Today is the 96th anniversary of the zipper. For about twenty years around the turn of the twentieth century, a Swedish design engineer working in New Jersey was trying to perfect a fastening method that worked faster and more reliably than buttons and hooks and laces and all the other ways that people tried to keep their clothes together at the time.
His name was Gideon Sundback, and he fixed two rows of teeth on opposing cloth tapes, which interlocked by the mechanism of a central device that slid over them. In short, he designed a zipper. Of course, the word wasn't in use at the time--and wasn't until 1921, when B.F. Goodrich ordered up 170,000 of the things from Sundback's Hookless Fastener Company for its new line of rubber galoshes. Goodrich coined the trade name Zipper, either to indicate the speed with which you could get in and out of the boots, or to imitate the sound the fastener made when you, well, zipped it up.
The whole thing was a bit of a novelty, but over the next ten years, they were regarded as a trendy thing, and not necessarily in a good way. (In his dystopic science-fiction novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley held them up as an exemplar of what the brave new world was about. And it wasn't a world he held in great favor.) But eventually, they insinuated their way into the garment world, and they've been there, front and center, ever since.
But aside from the front of a few retro garments, these fasteners now maintain the modesty of trouser-wearers across the planet. And for that, Mr. Sundback, we offer you our thanks. After slyly checking that we're not at half-mast, that is.
His name was Gideon Sundback, and he fixed two rows of teeth on opposing cloth tapes, which interlocked by the mechanism of a central device that slid over them. In short, he designed a zipper. Of course, the word wasn't in use at the time--and wasn't until 1921, when B.F. Goodrich ordered up 170,000 of the things from Sundback's Hookless Fastener Company for its new line of rubber galoshes. Goodrich coined the trade name Zipper, either to indicate the speed with which you could get in and out of the boots, or to imitate the sound the fastener made when you, well, zipped it up.
The whole thing was a bit of a novelty, but over the next ten years, they were regarded as a trendy thing, and not necessarily in a good way. (In his dystopic science-fiction novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley held them up as an exemplar of what the brave new world was about. And it wasn't a world he held in great favor.) But eventually, they insinuated their way into the garment world, and they've been there, front and center, ever since.
But aside from the front of a few retro garments, these fasteners now maintain the modesty of trouser-wearers across the planet. And for that, Mr. Sundback, we offer you our thanks. After slyly checking that we're not at half-mast, that is.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Tell a great story...in Morse Code
Today is Tell a Great Story Day. It's also Samuel Morse's birthday. So here follows a great story, in Morse Code.
Got that, you Morse coders out there? For those of you who don't speak the language, that series of dots and dashes translates to "Morse invented the Internet."
Before you get all bent out of shape about the other Internet pioneers who have a better claim to being father of the Internet (y'know, people like Vannevar Bush, George Licklider, Al Gore, or the Webmeister himself, Tim Berners-Lee), consider the following:
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was, among other things, the inventor of the single-wire telegraph system. This network facilitated near-instantaneous communication across vast distances, using a medium of communication that had only two components: An on signal and an off signal. It was the original digital communication network. Today, using only on and off signals, the Internet transfers digital data across more robust networks and at vastly faster speeds, but using the same zeroes and ones Morse had to play with.
Only later did analog telecommunications come along--in the form of voice telephony and then radio and television broadcasts. But that little revolution is fast becoming an aberration. Most phone calls--including all cell phone calls--convert voice data into digital packets that are only converted later into analog sounds. Television will soon be going digital too. Only radio is a pure frequency-modulated analog form now.
So from here in dot-dash-dot-com land, we wish Samuel a very happy 218th birthday. Many happy ACKs of the day.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
It's Nisan 14th...let's celebrate Easter!
Well, it's the second week in April, which means that we're counting down to Easter...at least, we are this year. Easter falls on April 12th in 2009, but last year it happened nearly two weeks earlier on 23rd March. In 2011, it will be almost two weeks later, on 24th April.
Why on earth is there such a huge spread of dates for Easter, do we hear you cry? We're glad you asked.
Obviously, Easter is a Christian holiday that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. But the whole Easter story begins with Jesus and the disciples celebrating a Jewish holiday, Passover. The Last Supper was a seder, the traditional feast of Passover, which begins on the night of first full moon of Spring every year. In the Jewish calendar, which is based on phases of the moon, Passover always falls on the same date, Nisan 14th. And to early Jewish converts to Christianity, it made sense for Easter celebrations to start with the seder at Passover.
However, some other early Christians felt that Easter should always be celebrated on the same weekday every year--with the death of Jesus on a Friday and his resurrection on the following Sunday. Nisan 14th, Passover day, could fall on any day of the week, which they didn't like.
And so a great controversy began in the early church. When should Easter be celebrated? In the second century, the argument reached such a pitch, they threw syllables at it: It was given the grandiose name of the Quartodecimian Controversy. The quartodecimian bit comes from the latin word for 14, as in Nisan 14th.
Most of the quartodecimians—the Passover Easter folk—lived in Asia Minor. Most of the Easter weekend folk were Europeans. And both sides assumed the other had it wrong. So in the year 155, the Bishop of Smyrna visited the Pope to plead the case for a Passover-based Easter. Bishop Polycarp, who sounds more like a Pokemon to us than the Bishop of Smyrna, failed to persuade Pope Anicetus to change his Easter practices, but the Pope didn’t make the Quartodecimians change their practice either. So the eastern Orthodox churches just went ahead and did their own thing.
This didn't end the controversy, though. The nonstandard dating of Easter rankled with the church for nearly two more centuries. Eventually in 325, the members of the Council of Nicea convened to standardize the date of Easter. They came up with the compromise that we still use to date Easter: It falls on the first Sunday after the full moon after the vernal equinox. The nod towards the full moon was to please the Passover crowd: Nisan 14th, the date of Passover, always falls on a full moon. And the weekend bit was designed to please the mostly European folk.
Maybe the early churches were appeased by this compromisel, but it certainly confuses the rest of us. So for those of us without a lunar calendar to refer to, we here at Easterween hereby give you a table of the date of Easter Sunday for the next forty years. Here goes:
2010 - 4 April
2011 - 24 April
2012 - 8 April
2013 - 31 March
2014 - 20 April
2015 - 5 April
2016 - 27 March
2017 - 16 April
2018 - 1 April
2019 - 21 April
2020 - 12 April
2021 - 4 April
2022 - 17 April
2023 - 9 April
2024 - 31 March
2025 - 20 April
2026 - 5 April
2027 - 28 March
2028 - 16 April
2029 - 1 April
2030 - 21 April
2031 - 13 April
2032 - 28 March
2033 - 17 April
2034 - 9 April
2035 - 25 March
2036 - 13 April
2037 - 5 April
2038 - 25 April
2039 - 10 April
2040 - 1 April
2041 - 21 April
2042 - 6 April
2043 - 29 March
2044 - 17 April
2045 - 9 April
2046 - 25 March
2047 - 14 April
2048 - 5 April
2049 - 18 April
That should keep you covered. Print it out and take it with you. Keep it close to your heart. And most importantly: use it to calculate the midpoint between Easter and Halloween. That's the date we will be celebrating Easterween, and no matter what phase of the moon it falls on, it will be a heck of a celebration.
Why on earth is there such a huge spread of dates for Easter, do we hear you cry? We're glad you asked.
Obviously, Easter is a Christian holiday that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. But the whole Easter story begins with Jesus and the disciples celebrating a Jewish holiday, Passover. The Last Supper was a seder, the traditional feast of Passover, which begins on the night of first full moon of Spring every year. In the Jewish calendar, which is based on phases of the moon, Passover always falls on the same date, Nisan 14th. And to early Jewish converts to Christianity, it made sense for Easter celebrations to start with the seder at Passover.
However, some other early Christians felt that Easter should always be celebrated on the same weekday every year--with the death of Jesus on a Friday and his resurrection on the following Sunday. Nisan 14th, Passover day, could fall on any day of the week, which they didn't like.
And so a great controversy began in the early church. When should Easter be celebrated? In the second century, the argument reached such a pitch, they threw syllables at it: It was given the grandiose name of the Quartodecimian Controversy. The quartodecimian bit comes from the latin word for 14, as in Nisan 14th.
Most of the quartodecimians—the Passover Easter folk—lived in Asia Minor. Most of the Easter weekend folk were Europeans. And both sides assumed the other had it wrong. So in the year 155, the Bishop of Smyrna visited the Pope to plead the case for a Passover-based Easter. Bishop Polycarp, who sounds more like a Pokemon to us than the Bishop of Smyrna, failed to persuade Pope Anicetus to change his Easter practices, but the Pope didn’t make the Quartodecimians change their practice either. So the eastern Orthodox churches just went ahead and did their own thing.
This didn't end the controversy, though. The nonstandard dating of Easter rankled with the church for nearly two more centuries. Eventually in 325, the members of the Council of Nicea convened to standardize the date of Easter. They came up with the compromise that we still use to date Easter: It falls on the first Sunday after the full moon after the vernal equinox. The nod towards the full moon was to please the Passover crowd: Nisan 14th, the date of Passover, always falls on a full moon. And the weekend bit was designed to please the mostly European folk.
Maybe the early churches were appeased by this compromisel, but it certainly confuses the rest of us. So for those of us without a lunar calendar to refer to, we here at Easterween hereby give you a table of the date of Easter Sunday for the next forty years. Here goes:
2010 - 4 April
2011 - 24 April
2012 - 8 April
2013 - 31 March
2014 - 20 April
2015 - 5 April
2016 - 27 March
2017 - 16 April
2018 - 1 April
2019 - 21 April
2020 - 12 April
2021 - 4 April
2022 - 17 April
2023 - 9 April
2024 - 31 March
2025 - 20 April
2026 - 5 April
2027 - 28 March
2028 - 16 April
2029 - 1 April
2030 - 21 April
2031 - 13 April
2032 - 28 March
2033 - 17 April
2034 - 9 April
2035 - 25 March
2036 - 13 April
2037 - 5 April
2038 - 25 April
2039 - 10 April
2040 - 1 April
2041 - 21 April
2042 - 6 April
2043 - 29 March
2044 - 17 April
2045 - 9 April
2046 - 25 March
2047 - 14 April
2048 - 5 April
2049 - 18 April
That should keep you covered. Print it out and take it with you. Keep it close to your heart. And most importantly: use it to calculate the midpoint between Easter and Halloween. That's the date we will be celebrating Easterween, and no matter what phase of the moon it falls on, it will be a heck of a celebration.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Burn baby burn
Cast your mind back to chemistry lessons at school. There was a rubber pipe leading from a gas tap to a metal pipe on a stand. It was burning. And it was invented by German chemist Robert Wilhelm Eberhard von Bunsen. Today, and every March 31st, we celebrate his birthday, presumably by setting fire to something.
Briefly, Herr Doktor Von Bunsen was born in 1811, making him 198 today, and some people credit the wily design of his tube-shaped burner, with its ability to mix gas and air in just the right proportions for making a controlled flame, as a major advancement in the field of chemistry. Of course, many also contend that he didn't actually invent the thing, just refine an existing design. But he is responsible for the design of the thing you used in Chem 101, so vielen Dank, Doktor von Bunsen!
Indirectly, von Bunsen is also responsible for the second hit single of our favorite mad man of pop, John Otway.
Otway's madcap first single, Really Free, edged into the Top Ten of the British hit parade in 1977 (possibly because of its bizarre b-side, Beware of the Flowers 'Cause I'm Sure They're Gonna Get You, Yeah). For 25 years, he plugged away steadily trying to get another hit. He released plenty of music, gigged steadily, and lost a lot of his mop of curly hair. But he didn't get a single. He did build up a fiercely loyal fan base, though. So by 2002, when Otway wanted to release a greatest hits album, he hit up his fans for ideas. Semantically, he needed another chart success to add an S to the end of that word "hit"--because who ever heard of a Greatest Hit album?
His fans decided that he should set his poem Bunsen Burner to music. The music they picked was Disco Inferno--because it was catchy and it had the refrain "Burn Baby Burn."
The results charted at number 9, and Otway was able to release his album. You can see the video that promoted the single Bunsen Burner here on YouTube.
On a side note, many people, including Otway, believe that Bunsen Burner was his second single to become a hit because of its B side. The reasoning goes like this: The flip side of Bunsen Burner was a call-and-response version of the Animals' old hit House of the Rising Sun. Otway recorded the track live with a thousand members of his fan club shouting out lines like "Tell us about your mother!" before the line in the song that goes "My mother was a tailor."
Otway credited each member of the fan club who attended the recording session on the single's liner notes. So here's how it broke down: The single was released, and a thousand people went out to buy it to see their name on the sleeve. And, as Otway noted, "They bought another one for their Mum."
You'll see why on this other YouTube video--John Otway and a thousand others singing The House of the Rising Sun.
Briefly, Herr Doktor Von Bunsen was born in 1811, making him 198 today, and some people credit the wily design of his tube-shaped burner, with its ability to mix gas and air in just the right proportions for making a controlled flame, as a major advancement in the field of chemistry. Of course, many also contend that he didn't actually invent the thing, just refine an existing design. But he is responsible for the design of the thing you used in Chem 101, so vielen Dank, Doktor von Bunsen!
Indirectly, von Bunsen is also responsible for the second hit single of our favorite mad man of pop, John Otway.
Otway's madcap first single, Really Free, edged into the Top Ten of the British hit parade in 1977 (possibly because of its bizarre b-side, Beware of the Flowers 'Cause I'm Sure They're Gonna Get You, Yeah). For 25 years, he plugged away steadily trying to get another hit. He released plenty of music, gigged steadily, and lost a lot of his mop of curly hair. But he didn't get a single. He did build up a fiercely loyal fan base, though. So by 2002, when Otway wanted to release a greatest hits album, he hit up his fans for ideas. Semantically, he needed another chart success to add an S to the end of that word "hit"--because who ever heard of a Greatest Hit album?
His fans decided that he should set his poem Bunsen Burner to music. The music they picked was Disco Inferno--because it was catchy and it had the refrain "Burn Baby Burn."
The results charted at number 9, and Otway was able to release his album. You can see the video that promoted the single Bunsen Burner here on YouTube.
On a side note, many people, including Otway, believe that Bunsen Burner was his second single to become a hit because of its B side. The reasoning goes like this: The flip side of Bunsen Burner was a call-and-response version of the Animals' old hit House of the Rising Sun. Otway recorded the track live with a thousand members of his fan club shouting out lines like "Tell us about your mother!" before the line in the song that goes "My mother was a tailor."
Otway credited each member of the fan club who attended the recording session on the single's liner notes. So here's how it broke down: The single was released, and a thousand people went out to buy it to see their name on the sleeve. And, as Otway noted, "They bought another one for their Mum."
You'll see why on this other YouTube video--John Otway and a thousand others singing The House of the Rising Sun.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Let's go fly a kite
There are several "official" Fly a Kite days on various regional calendars, many of them in March. There's something about spring winds and the lingering effects of winter cabin fever that make going out into the open air in late March sound like a really good idea.
One of the official Fly a Kite days seems to be March 27th, though a lot of people celebrate it on the last weekend in March. Whichever date you go for, consider spending a tuppence on paper and strings, and you can build your own set of wings (thanks, Mary Poppins...now we can't get that darn tune out of our heads).
If you have a kite around, you're golden.
If you don't, get on over to the fabulous Marshall Brain site How Stuff Works and look up the instructions for building a classic diamond-shaped kite. It and other kite activities can be found at http://home.howstuffworks.com/kite-activities1.htm.
Once you've mastered the kite basics, try scoping out some of the advanced kite patents at our favorite patent lookup site, Free Patents Online. It required a membership to look at the patent plans, but you'll be rewarded by designs like this flying saucer kite illustrated below this paragraph. We've not quite got to this level yet, so we don't even know if it works, but it certainly looks impressive.
One of the official Fly a Kite days seems to be March 27th, though a lot of people celebrate it on the last weekend in March. Whichever date you go for, consider spending a tuppence on paper and strings, and you can build your own set of wings (thanks, Mary Poppins...now we can't get that darn tune out of our heads).
If you have a kite around, you're golden.
If you don't, get on over to the fabulous Marshall Brain site How Stuff Works and look up the instructions for building a classic diamond-shaped kite. It and other kite activities can be found at http://home.howstuffworks.com/kite-activities1.htm.
Once you've mastered the kite basics, try scoping out some of the advanced kite patents at our favorite patent lookup site, Free Patents Online. It required a membership to look at the patent plans, but you'll be rewarded by designs like this flying saucer kite illustrated below this paragraph. We've not quite got to this level yet, so we don't even know if it works, but it certainly looks impressive.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Make your own holiday
Today is Make Your Own Holiday Day. Think of something to celebrate, then go out and do it. And thank a wacky Pennsylvania couple for giving you permission to do it.
This is one of about 50 holidays dreamed up by Tom Roy, the mad genius behind Stay At Home Because You're Well Day (which is on his birthday in November). Tom's variety-pack of a life prepared him well for a late-in-life career as a holiday maker. He graduated with a degree in English, attended a seminary, spent two decades in radio, and acted. He married another radio broadcaster, Ruth, and lived in New York, Philadelphia, and then moved to small town PA to work at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. Unsurprisingly, his big role in the Faire was as Don Quixote.
The way Tom reasons, everybody deserves permission to celebrate. We at Easterween applaud this philosophy, because it happens to be our own. Tom took it one step further and began sending holiday submissions to Chase's Annual Events directory. Eventually, he adopted the fake organizational name Wellness Permission League, which is listed as the sponsor of many of the entries in Chase's directory.
For March 26th, however, Tom came up short of ideas.
That's where you come in. Imagine today is a big paper form with a blank line at the top next to the date. Pencil in your own celebration. Fill in the other gaps in the page...the ones that follow sentence openings like "Today, we ____________ " and "At _____ , everybody in the room is supposed to ___________"
If you like, write to us about what you do. Or just celebrate in your own special way. Because it's all about doing it for yourselves today.
Go forth, and celebrate!
This is one of about 50 holidays dreamed up by Tom Roy, the mad genius behind Stay At Home Because You're Well Day (which is on his birthday in November). Tom's variety-pack of a life prepared him well for a late-in-life career as a holiday maker. He graduated with a degree in English, attended a seminary, spent two decades in radio, and acted. He married another radio broadcaster, Ruth, and lived in New York, Philadelphia, and then moved to small town PA to work at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. Unsurprisingly, his big role in the Faire was as Don Quixote.
The way Tom reasons, everybody deserves permission to celebrate. We at Easterween applaud this philosophy, because it happens to be our own. Tom took it one step further and began sending holiday submissions to Chase's Annual Events directory. Eventually, he adopted the fake organizational name Wellness Permission League, which is listed as the sponsor of many of the entries in Chase's directory.
For March 26th, however, Tom came up short of ideas.
That's where you come in. Imagine today is a big paper form with a blank line at the top next to the date. Pencil in your own celebration. Fill in the other gaps in the page...the ones that follow sentence openings like "Today, we ____________ " and "At _____ , everybody in the room is supposed to ___________"
If you like, write to us about what you do. Or just celebrate in your own special way. Because it's all about doing it for yourselves today.
Go forth, and celebrate!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
You can't keep a good archangel down
Not content with crowding the ecclesiastical calendar yesterday, on his feast day, the saint and archangel Gabriel resurfaces today. Everybody's favorite messenger archangel receives honors today for his walk-on role in the Greatest Story Ever Told. That's because today is the Feast of the Annunciation, when Gabe strolled up to a young lady named Mary and said, in Aramaic, "You'll never guess who's expecting a baby!"
Our congratulations to the proud parents and the babe in question, and all his fans, and naturally, to Gabriel for being the bearer of glad tidings.
Our congratulations to the proud parents and the babe in question, and all his fans, and naturally, to Gabriel for being the bearer of glad tidings.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Send a message or pick up the phone
Congratulations to the Archangel Gabriel. Today's your day, my man. Well...my angel.
A little known fact is that in addition to being an angel, Gabriel was a saint too. Saint Gabriel is known as the archangel of the Annunciation, the man (or saint) (or angel) who brought Mary the good news that she was about to become an unwed teen mother.
As such, Gabriel earned the right to be the patron saint (or patron angel) of messengers, postmen, telephone workers, and radio and telegraph operators. And today's his saint's day.
Presumably in the digital age, St Gabe's role would encompass digital communications such as instant messaging and voice over IP and maybe even blogging. And that's a frightening thought. The guy (or saint or angel) who called Mary thrice blessed among women may actually be peering over my shoulder as I type this.
Armageddon! (As in, Ah'm a-gettin' outta here!)
A little known fact is that in addition to being an angel, Gabriel was a saint too. Saint Gabriel is known as the archangel of the Annunciation, the man (or saint) (or angel) who brought Mary the good news that she was about to become an unwed teen mother.
As such, Gabriel earned the right to be the patron saint (or patron angel) of messengers, postmen, telephone workers, and radio and telegraph operators. And today's his saint's day.
Presumably in the digital age, St Gabe's role would encompass digital communications such as instant messaging and voice over IP and maybe even blogging. And that's a frightening thought. The guy (or saint or angel) who called Mary thrice blessed among women may actually be peering over my shoulder as I type this.
Armageddon! (As in, Ah'm a-gettin' outta here!)
Keep your house beautiful
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful"
(William Morris, 1882).
It's William Morris's birthday today, and as such, we think it's a good time to toss out one or two items of clutter from your house. Morris was an artist by sensibility, and hung out with famous painters from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown. His wife Jane was a model for many of the famous Pre-Raphaelite paintings. But Morris's greatest contribution towards the world of art was in bringing it into people's homes. He formed a decorating company that sold wallpapers and other artifacts at affordable prices.
His philosophy of interior decor is a masterwork of concision. Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. Usefulness trumps everything--if it's useful, keep it. But decoration for its own sake is fine too. And the two-edged blade of utility and beauty can cut through all manner of clutter: Anything you can't honestly say is useful or attractive can safely go to Goodwill or some other charity shop, where someone else may find it useful or beautiful.
(William Morris, 1882).
It's William Morris's birthday today, and as such, we think it's a good time to toss out one or two items of clutter from your house. Morris was an artist by sensibility, and hung out with famous painters from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown. His wife Jane was a model for many of the famous Pre-Raphaelite paintings. But Morris's greatest contribution towards the world of art was in bringing it into people's homes. He formed a decorating company that sold wallpapers and other artifacts at affordable prices.
His philosophy of interior decor is a masterwork of concision. Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. Usefulness trumps everything--if it's useful, keep it. But decoration for its own sake is fine too. And the two-edged blade of utility and beauty can cut through all manner of clutter: Anything you can't honestly say is useful or attractive can safely go to Goodwill or some other charity shop, where someone else may find it useful or beautiful.
March 23rd: Do-Over Day
It's not officially recognized as a holiday yet, but we think that March 23rd should be designated as Do-Over Day.
Everybody on earth has experienced an Oops Moment--the second after they've made a stupid mistake. Everybody on earth, therefore, has experienced the desire for a do-over. If you had the chance to do it over again, optimism dictates that you'd get it right the next time.
We all need the chance to correct our mistakes, and nobody knew this better than a woman who was born on this day back in 1924. Bette McMurray married a fellow called Nesmith during the Second World War, had a son, and got divorced in 1946.
Like every single mother, she had an entire life to do-over--and she got good at it. To support herself and her young son, she became a bank secretary, where she often fell into the classic office-worker error--the typo. At the time, the only way to correct typing errors was to use a hard eraser to scrape off all the paper fibers infused with typewriter ink. This struck the freshly divorced Bette Nesmith as wrong-headed.
"An artist never corrects by erasing, but always paints over the error. So I decided to use what artists use. I put some tempera water-base paint in a bottle and took my watercolor brush to the office. I used that to correct my mistakes."
Tempera paint wasn't the best material for covering over typing errors, so Bette collaborated with her son Michael's chemistry teacher to come up with a better formulation. This new product didn't remain her secret weapon for long. Bette's colleagues began coming over to borrow her supply to correct their own errors. This gave Bette an even better idea. In 1956, she decided to sell her correction fluid commercially. She initially called it "Mistake Out", but when she went corporate with the product, she renamed it Liquid Paper. She ran that company for 23 years, grew it to a 200 person business selling 25 million bottles of product a year. Gillette liked it so much, they bought the company in 1979 for $47.5 million.
And things turned out well for Bette's son too. Less than a decade after she brought her product to market, her son Michael Nesmith also made his first fortune as a member of the prefabricated pop band the Monkees. He too became a master of the do-over. After a short stint just lip-syncing to other people's songs on the Monkees TV show, Nesmith began to write and record and perform his own material. When the band and the TV show that launched it went belly-up, his career did not. He continued to write and record his own material, and produce other people's too.
That's the story of one family's Do-Over success story. We're sure there are hundreds more. So we at Easterween earnestly recommend that we celebrate the Oops Moment today with renewed hope. For every dumb mistake we make, we all deserve a do-over. And if we play our cards right, we can do much better the second (and third, and fourth) time around.
Everybody on earth has experienced an Oops Moment--the second after they've made a stupid mistake. Everybody on earth, therefore, has experienced the desire for a do-over. If you had the chance to do it over again, optimism dictates that you'd get it right the next time.
We all need the chance to correct our mistakes, and nobody knew this better than a woman who was born on this day back in 1924. Bette McMurray married a fellow called Nesmith during the Second World War, had a son, and got divorced in 1946.
Like every single mother, she had an entire life to do-over--and she got good at it. To support herself and her young son, she became a bank secretary, where she often fell into the classic office-worker error--the typo. At the time, the only way to correct typing errors was to use a hard eraser to scrape off all the paper fibers infused with typewriter ink. This struck the freshly divorced Bette Nesmith as wrong-headed.
"An artist never corrects by erasing, but always paints over the error. So I decided to use what artists use. I put some tempera water-base paint in a bottle and took my watercolor brush to the office. I used that to correct my mistakes."
Tempera paint wasn't the best material for covering over typing errors, so Bette collaborated with her son Michael's chemistry teacher to come up with a better formulation. This new product didn't remain her secret weapon for long. Bette's colleagues began coming over to borrow her supply to correct their own errors. This gave Bette an even better idea. In 1956, she decided to sell her correction fluid commercially. She initially called it "Mistake Out", but when she went corporate with the product, she renamed it Liquid Paper. She ran that company for 23 years, grew it to a 200 person business selling 25 million bottles of product a year. Gillette liked it so much, they bought the company in 1979 for $47.5 million.
And things turned out well for Bette's son too. Less than a decade after she brought her product to market, her son Michael Nesmith also made his first fortune as a member of the prefabricated pop band the Monkees. He too became a master of the do-over. After a short stint just lip-syncing to other people's songs on the Monkees TV show, Nesmith began to write and record and perform his own material. When the band and the TV show that launched it went belly-up, his career did not. He continued to write and record his own material, and produce other people's too.
That's the story of one family's Do-Over success story. We're sure there are hundreds more. So we at Easterween earnestly recommend that we celebrate the Oops Moment today with renewed hope. For every dumb mistake we make, we all deserve a do-over. And if we play our cards right, we can do much better the second (and third, and fourth) time around.
March 22nd--Why can't I be like Caldecott?
March 22, 1886 was the day Randolph Caldecott was born. This Englishman became an artist and illustrator, and inspired an award that goes each year to the most distinguished illustrated book for children in the American market.
The Caldecott Medal honors the best, but we find that even the nominees for the medal are fabulous. Among our favorites are Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
and Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type
. That second one is a particularly quirky book about cows that trick a farmer by typing letters.
To celebrate the day, we recommend a trip down to the local library and scope out any nominees or winners of the award. Most libraries don't keep a separate Caldecott section, so scope out the American Library Associations annually updated list before you go. It's at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/caldecottmedal/caldecotthonors/caldecottmedal.cfm#00s.
The Caldecott Medal honors the best, but we find that even the nominees for the medal are fabulous. Among our favorites are Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
and Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type. That second one is a particularly quirky book about cows that trick a farmer by typing letters.To celebrate the day, we recommend a trip down to the local library and scope out any nominees or winners of the award. Most libraries don't keep a separate Caldecott section, so scope out the American Library Associations annually updated list before you go. It's at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/caldecottmedal/caldecotthonors/caldecottmedal.cfm#00s.
March (21st) for peace
March 21st is the anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, which began in 2003. As such, March 21st has become a focal point for the peace movement. It has been marked in recent years with marches and protests to bring troops back to the States. This year, 10,000 people marched on the Pentagon with the same message. Even though many believe that the current administration is on the same page vis-a-vis the war, protesters are staying on message.
Nevertheless, March 21st's role seems to be expanding. The organization behind the March 21st Coalition- calls itself A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), tackling two big issues under one umbrella. This expansion of focus makes it likely that the March 21st commemoration and rallies will outlive the Iraq War. Because wars come and go, but mistrust between races has a long and bitter history, and will take much more time and effort to overcome.
Nevertheless, March 21st's role seems to be expanding. The organization behind the March 21st Coalition- calls itself A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), tackling two big issues under one umbrella. This expansion of focus makes it likely that the March 21st commemoration and rallies will outlive the Iraq War. Because wars come and go, but mistrust between races has a long and bitter history, and will take much more time and effort to overcome.
Monday, March 23, 2009
March 20th: The Real Earth Day?
The first International Earth Day was celebrated on the vernal equinox, 1970. It was March 21st that year. This year, it's MARCH 20, at 7:44 AM Eastern Daylight Time. Except that not everyone agrees. Of the several people who claim to be founders of Earth Day, two float to the surface as significant. One of them, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, set up a series of eco-events on April 22nd, 1970 and called them Earth Day. When people questioned the wisdom of establishing an Earth Day on Lenin's birthday (also on April 22nd), he replied “On any given day, a lot of both good and bad people were born...A person many consider the world’s first environmentalist, Saint Francis of Assissi, was born on April 22. So was Queen Isabella. More importantly, so was my Aunt Tillie.” Wisconsin's Earth Day took on a life of its own, and is celebrated by many every April 22nd.
The founder of the March-based Earth Day, International Earth Day, John McConnell, had a less frivolous sense of timing than someone's birthday.
"When I first conceived of Earth Day, a global holiday to celebrate the wonder of life on our planet, I thought long and hard about the day on which it should fall. It must be meaningful. One that might be accepted universally for all of humankind. When the Vernal Equinox dawned on me, I immediately knew it was right....this day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a Proclamation signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations where it is observed each year. Earth Day was firmly established for all time on a sound basis as an annual event to deepen reverence and care for life on our planet."
So here it goes, eco-fans: There are two earth days. One is the first day of Spring, the other is St Francis of Assissi's Birthday. Here's a wild idea: Let's celebrate both. And celebrate the earth on the other 363 days of the year.
The founder of the March-based Earth Day, International Earth Day, John McConnell, had a less frivolous sense of timing than someone's birthday.
"When I first conceived of Earth Day, a global holiday to celebrate the wonder of life on our planet, I thought long and hard about the day on which it should fall. It must be meaningful. One that might be accepted universally for all of humankind. When the Vernal Equinox dawned on me, I immediately knew it was right....this day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a Proclamation signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations where it is observed each year. Earth Day was firmly established for all time on a sound basis as an annual event to deepen reverence and care for life on our planet."
So here it goes, eco-fans: There are two earth days. One is the first day of Spring, the other is St Francis of Assissi's Birthday. Here's a wild idea: Let's celebrate both. And celebrate the earth on the other 363 days of the year.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Birds, Candy, and Saints
What can you say about March 19th? It's one of those days where the celebrations just trip over themselves.
For those among us who celebrate saints, it's Saint Joseph's Day...that's the same Joseph that apparently wasn't actually the father of Jesus, but played the role pretty well anyway.
For the bird watchers in the audience, it's the day that the swallows return to Capistrano. The mission of St John at Capistrano in southern California celebrates a swarm of avian visitors on March 19 every year...and this year the celebrations go on clear into the weekend.
And for candy fans (and who isn't one of them?), it's a day to celebrate one of our favorites--chocolate caramel. We'd shout this one from the rooftops, but the teeth of our upper and lower jaws are gummed together with...well...you can guess that. And it ain't swallows.
For those among us who celebrate saints, it's Saint Joseph's Day...that's the same Joseph that apparently wasn't actually the father of Jesus, but played the role pretty well anyway.
For the bird watchers in the audience, it's the day that the swallows return to Capistrano. The mission of St John at Capistrano in southern California celebrates a swarm of avian visitors on March 19 every year...and this year the celebrations go on clear into the weekend.
And for candy fans (and who isn't one of them?), it's a day to celebrate one of our favorites--chocolate caramel. We'd shout this one from the rooftops, but the teeth of our upper and lower jaws are gummed together with...well...you can guess that. And it ain't swallows.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
March 18th: Poke someone's tummy for a giggle
For no readily apparent reason, people celebrate the Pillsbury Doughboy's birthday on March 18th. It's not been marketed as such by General Mills, the people behind the giggling lump in question. In fact, their corporate archivists make a point of correcting people when they suggest it. But once a character becomes part of the popular culture, no corporation on earth (even the one that owns the rights) can control the story. And there's something about March 18th that just screams "poke an animated character's tummy and wait for the giggle."
Poppin' Fresh--the Doughboy's real name--was dreamed up in 1965 by a group of advertising executives at the Leo Burnett agency. Inspired by the credits of the Dinah Shore show, they wanted to use a stop-motion animated character. And they wanted a distinctive voice, so they hired Paul Frees, who also voiced the character of Boris in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Resisting the temptation to say "Keeell Moose ent Sqvirrl!", Frees burst out "Hi, I'm Poppin' Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy" and the immortal lines "Nothin' says lovin' like bakin' in the oven, and Pillsbury says it best!"
For more on Poppin' and his corporate pals Play-Doh, Easy Bake Ovens, and Nerf balls, scope out General Mills' history at http://www.generalmills.com/corporate/company/history.aspx.
Whoo-hooo!
Poppin' Fresh--the Doughboy's real name--was dreamed up in 1965 by a group of advertising executives at the Leo Burnett agency. Inspired by the credits of the Dinah Shore show, they wanted to use a stop-motion animated character. And they wanted a distinctive voice, so they hired Paul Frees, who also voiced the character of Boris in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Resisting the temptation to say "Keeell Moose ent Sqvirrl!", Frees burst out "Hi, I'm Poppin' Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy" and the immortal lines "Nothin' says lovin' like bakin' in the oven, and Pillsbury says it best!"
For more on Poppin' and his corporate pals Play-Doh, Easy Bake Ovens, and Nerf balls, scope out General Mills' history at http://www.generalmills.com/corporate/company/history.aspx.
Whoo-hooo!
It's March 17. Holy Grail, Batman!
Overwhelmed by the green-soaked fervor of St Patrick's Day, it's easy to forget that it's another famous saint's day today. It's not only the day of the man who brought Christianity to Ireland...it's also the day of the man who brought Christianity--and the Holy Grail--to England.
Joseph of Arimathea, also known as Joseph of Glastonbury, was a wealthy tin-mine owner in Cornwall in the first century. He was an immigrant success story, having come into the country from the Middle East with only three things in his possession. According to legend, he brought only a traveling staff, a cup, and Christianity.
He stuck the staff in the ground when he reached Somerset, where it took root, grew, and flowered on Christmas day.
The cup, he secreted around what is now the Chalice Well in Glastonbury. It was the Holy Grail, and the water from that well flowed red from that point on. (Science explains the russet coloring around the well as residue from the heavy iron deposits in the area--it's basically rust--but tradition prefers to think that it's the blood of the Lord).
And as for Christianity, well, that grew more prolifically than the travelling staff. Joseph had some first-hand experience of the birth of Christianity. He was, so legend had it, the "noble counselor" mentioned in the Gospel of Mark who took Jesus's body, prepared it for burial, bought a grave site, and buried him in it.
That was a lot of work for a grave that only got three days use!
That's why Joseph was awarded the patron sainthood of pallbearers and funeral directors. He was also claimed as an ancestor by many members of English royal families through the ages. And to cap it all off, Joseph of Arimathea also got an honorable mention in the 2003 best selling book, The Da Vinci Code. It's our guess he may not be quite so flattered about that one, though.
Joseph of Arimathea, also known as Joseph of Glastonbury, was a wealthy tin-mine owner in Cornwall in the first century. He was an immigrant success story, having come into the country from the Middle East with only three things in his possession. According to legend, he brought only a traveling staff, a cup, and Christianity.
He stuck the staff in the ground when he reached Somerset, where it took root, grew, and flowered on Christmas day.
The cup, he secreted around what is now the Chalice Well in Glastonbury. It was the Holy Grail, and the water from that well flowed red from that point on. (Science explains the russet coloring around the well as residue from the heavy iron deposits in the area--it's basically rust--but tradition prefers to think that it's the blood of the Lord).
And as for Christianity, well, that grew more prolifically than the travelling staff. Joseph had some first-hand experience of the birth of Christianity. He was, so legend had it, the "noble counselor" mentioned in the Gospel of Mark who took Jesus's body, prepared it for burial, bought a grave site, and buried him in it.
That was a lot of work for a grave that only got three days use!
That's why Joseph was awarded the patron sainthood of pallbearers and funeral directors. He was also claimed as an ancestor by many members of English royal families through the ages. And to cap it all off, Joseph of Arimathea also got an honorable mention in the 2003 best selling book, The Da Vinci Code. It's our guess he may not be quite so flattered about that one, though.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Facts about St Patrick
Okay, folks, not to pour green rain on your St Patrick's Day parade, but we need to point out a few things. The shamrock-toting, green-wearing, green-beer-drinking, parading St Paddy's Day we hear about is not an authentic Irish celebration. Oh, Ireland celebrates the man, for sure, but our forebears celebrated it as a full-on church-going day like Easter. It wasn't until people of Irish extraction started coming over from America and expecting something big that things changed. Be sure of this: If you see a St Paddy's Day parade in Ireland, it's a tourist thing.
So as you hoist 16-fluid-ounce pints of dyed lager, remember that as traditions go, it's Irish-American, not Irish. (And there's one significant difference: Irish pint pots contain 20 fluid ounces...and are filled with very dark brown liquid.)
Not that Irish-American traditions are a bad thing, of course, but because Easterween is an Anglo-Irish-Scottish-Italian-American-with-a-smattering-of-other-nationalities collective, we're very particular about sourcing our traditions.
Now if this blog hasn't been enough to get your Irish up, here are a few other Paddy facts:
1. St Patrick was English. He was born near the river Severn around 389 AD, around the time that the Roman Empire abandoned Britain, and lived there till he was 16.
2. He wasn't naturalized as an Irishman. He was kidnapped by Irish raiders and sold as a slave in County Antrim.
3. He got his freedom--and religion--in France. At the age of around 22, he escaped from his captors to Gaul. There he became a priest and had a dream...to go back to the country that enslaved him and give them a dose of that old-fashioned religion. Only it was new-fangled at the time.
4. He wasn't a snake wrangler. There were no snakes in Ireland at the time. The snake was a symbol (kinda like the 6 days of creation in Genesis). Snakes meant evil (cross reference to the Garden of Eden in Genesis). Patrick drove the evil out of Ireland, not yer actual slithering things.
5. His signature color was blue, not green. All the stained-glass windows in Ireland made before 1800 had Patrick dressed in blue. Even the shamrock he used to demonstrate what the Trinity was all about was often made of blue glass. Green only became associated with Paddy around 1800, when he was adopted during an Irish uprising as a symbol of the country. Another symbol of the uprising was the green uniform worn by the rebels.
...and on that note, happy St Paddy's to you all. We'll also be hoisting one in celebration. But it'll be dark brown, not dyed green.
So as you hoist 16-fluid-ounce pints of dyed lager, remember that as traditions go, it's Irish-American, not Irish. (And there's one significant difference: Irish pint pots contain 20 fluid ounces...and are filled with very dark brown liquid.)
Not that Irish-American traditions are a bad thing, of course, but because Easterween is an Anglo-Irish-Scottish-Italian-American-with-a-smattering-of-other-nationalities collective, we're very particular about sourcing our traditions.
Now if this blog hasn't been enough to get your Irish up, here are a few other Paddy facts:
1. St Patrick was English. He was born near the river Severn around 389 AD, around the time that the Roman Empire abandoned Britain, and lived there till he was 16.
2. He wasn't naturalized as an Irishman. He was kidnapped by Irish raiders and sold as a slave in County Antrim.
3. He got his freedom--and religion--in France. At the age of around 22, he escaped from his captors to Gaul. There he became a priest and had a dream...to go back to the country that enslaved him and give them a dose of that old-fashioned religion. Only it was new-fangled at the time.
4. He wasn't a snake wrangler. There were no snakes in Ireland at the time. The snake was a symbol (kinda like the 6 days of creation in Genesis). Snakes meant evil (cross reference to the Garden of Eden in Genesis). Patrick drove the evil out of Ireland, not yer actual slithering things.
5. His signature color was blue, not green. All the stained-glass windows in Ireland made before 1800 had Patrick dressed in blue. Even the shamrock he used to demonstrate what the Trinity was all about was often made of blue glass. Green only became associated with Paddy around 1800, when he was adopted during an Irish uprising as a symbol of the country. Another symbol of the uprising was the green uniform worn by the rebels.
...and on that note, happy St Paddy's to you all. We'll also be hoisting one in celebration. But it'll be dark brown, not dyed green.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
On March 16, Information Wants To Be Free
Happy birthday, James Madison! You're looking pretty good for 258 years young. So good, in fact, that we celebrate Freedom of Information Day on or around your birthday every year. In the interests of keeping information free, we need to tell you that the Collaboration on Government Secrecy is one of the sponsors of Freedom of Information Day, so it's a serious business.
For our part, we'll be sharing everything we know with you as the weeks go on. And today we can't go far wrong...because as we mentioned earlier, it's Everything You Do is Right Day.
For our part, we'll be sharing everything we know with you as the weeks go on. And today we can't go far wrong...because as we mentioned earlier, it's Everything You Do is Right Day.
Every little thing you do is...
...wrong.
At least, it is this Sunday. March 15th, the Ides of March, is also known as Everything You Do Is Wrong Day. It's a phenomenon Brutus knew well. He and his co-conspirators thought they were ridding Rome of a dictator when they killed Julius Caesar. And they did. But their act ushered in a five-hundred year empire with other Caesars on the throne--including the notorious crazies Nero and Caligula. And the assassins were branded as the kind of people who would betray their friend.
Fortunately, there's for every yin in this world, there's a yang. On March 15, everything you do is wrong. On March 16, everything you do is right.
On Everything You Do Is Right Day, you've earned the privilege of having everything go your way. So grit your teeth on Sunday; Monday's going to be a lot better.
At least, it is this Sunday. March 15th, the Ides of March, is also known as Everything You Do Is Wrong Day. It's a phenomenon Brutus knew well. He and his co-conspirators thought they were ridding Rome of a dictator when they killed Julius Caesar. And they did. But their act ushered in a five-hundred year empire with other Caesars on the throne--including the notorious crazies Nero and Caligula. And the assassins were branded as the kind of people who would betray their friend.
Fortunately, there's for every yin in this world, there's a yang. On March 15, everything you do is wrong. On March 16, everything you do is right.
On Everything You Do Is Right Day, you've earned the privilege of having everything go your way. So grit your teeth on Sunday; Monday's going to be a lot better.
Beware the Ides of March
The Ides of March is the name the Romans gave to the 15 March. Actually, because they spoke Latin, they called it Idus Martias, but you get the point. (To make things a bit more confusing, the ides was the Latin term for 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other eight months. Don't ask us why: They spoke Latin; they didn't believe in keeping things simple. )
In Roman times, the Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the war god Mars, which made it a good day for a parade. It was less of a good day for the noted military general and self-proclaimed permanent dictator, Julius Caesar, who was stabbed to death by important senators and former friends in 44 BC.
The Ides of March are still celebrated in Rome, but instead of a military parade, there's a sloppy race run by a scrappy group of crazies who call themselves the Hash House Harriers. They tear through the streets of Rome to the place where Caesar was stabbed, then go off for a meal and a drink.
The Harriers (variously called HHH or H3) describe themselves as a disorganization of running and partying enthusiasts. The group got its start among British soldiers in Kuala Lumpur in 1938, where soldiers would go for a run to shake off the sloth of the weekend. And we can't think of a better way for them to do it. It's certainly less controversial than stabbing a dictator.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Another slice of Pi
It was 21 years ago when a group of eccentric math and science fans first gathered in San Francisco's distinctive science museum, the Exploratorium, to celebrate the first Pi Day.
To math heads, any day that's written down as 3/14 reminds them of the mathematical concept Pi, the number of times the diameter of a circle fits around its circumference. Back in our school, they used to tell us it was roughly equivalent to 22 divided by 7--but real math heads don't buy that for a minute.
Nope, they measure circles instead. And if you're not too precise about it, you get roughly 3.14 diameters to a circumference. 3.14...hey...that's only one bit of punctuation away from being 3/14...March 14th!
At the Exploratorium, the crowds gather at one o'clock on Pi Day, counting down to Pi Minute, 1:59, so named because Pi calculated to five decimal places is 3.14159.
When Pi Minute arrives, they all sing Happy Birthday to a great but crazy scientist they all revere, Albert Einstein, who was born on Pi Day, 1879.
If they time things right, they could get the song done in 25 seconds, and get to cheer at Pi Second, which is 26 or 27 seconds later. (That's because Pi calculated to seven decimal places is 3.1415926 and to eight decimal places is 3.14159265--so it depends if you're rounding up or rounding down from 5).
Yes, this is all a bit geeky, but you can't knock the appeal of the next bit--they all chow down on slices of pie. In recent years, pizza pie has been considered acceptable. Calories and grams of carbohydrate...that's our kind of math!
Friday, March 13, 2009
Friday the 13th, Part Two
Thirteen is one of the least favorite numbers in the world. People just loathe and fear it. And they get to use a cool Greek term to justify their irrational hatred: triskaidekaphobia (triss – kye – decka – phobia). There's more: Even though it signifies the end of the working week, people seem to have a thing about Fridays too. It has something to do with Friday being the sixth day of the week, or being named after the Norse goddess of marriage, or something like that.
Whatever it is, when a Friday the Thirteenth rolls around, people seem quite worried. And this year, they have to worry about it three times: 2009's first Friday the 13th was last month. And because February was exactly four weeks long, we get another Friday 13th this month too. Today! And when November rolls around, we’ll get yet another.
This is enough to scare the faint-hearted, but we can’t quite see why. They throw around all kinds of rationalizations to make their fear sound rational—including some of the following.
“There were thirteen people at the last supper, and Judas was the 13th person to be seated.” “Twelve’s a really cool number that’s all over our clocks, calendars, and rulers, and thirteen’s just trying to one-up it.” “Jesus was crucified on a Friday.” “Thirteen’s a prime number, and you can’t trust them.” “I was thirteen once and I didn’t like it a bit.”
We believe that’s all bunk, and we can cite a prominent number expert to debunk it. Paging Professor Pythagoras…white courtesy telephone, please! Ancient Greece’s most prominent numbers man had nothing bad to say about 13 at all. Oh, no. He reserved all his hatred for the number 2. He hated 2 with a passion. Two’s nearest neighbors were treated to rivulets of Pythagoras’s purple prose: One was unity, a whole, godlike in its singularity. Three was harmony, and four was perfection—the first square. But two signified opposing unities—diversity—which to Pythagoras meant disorder, strife, evil, and chaos.
So why do we bring this up? To prove that you can create a bad rap for any number if you think hard enough about it.
Sadly, people seem to think pretty hard about Friday 13th, and it actually makes it unlucky for them. Sixteen years ago, the Mid-Downs Health Authority did a study to see whether Friday 13th had any effect on the health and behaviour of people in West Sussex, England. On Friday 6th and Friday 13th of the same month, they counted vehicles on the road, shoppers in supermarkets, and hospital admissions due to accidents.
On the 13th, traffic rates were down. Shoppers were shopping at the same rate. And road traffic accidents requiring hospital admissions spiked 52 percent. That’s despite fewer cars being on the road. One conclusion: Friday 13th is unlucky for some. Another conclusion: People were so wigged out by driving on Friday 13th, they got into accidents.
Our favorite conclusion: Just don’t go driving in the South Thames region on a Friday. You never know what will happen.
Whatever it is, when a Friday the Thirteenth rolls around, people seem quite worried. And this year, they have to worry about it three times: 2009's first Friday the 13th was last month. And because February was exactly four weeks long, we get another Friday 13th this month too. Today! And when November rolls around, we’ll get yet another.
This is enough to scare the faint-hearted, but we can’t quite see why. They throw around all kinds of rationalizations to make their fear sound rational—including some of the following.
“There were thirteen people at the last supper, and Judas was the 13th person to be seated.” “Twelve’s a really cool number that’s all over our clocks, calendars, and rulers, and thirteen’s just trying to one-up it.” “Jesus was crucified on a Friday.” “Thirteen’s a prime number, and you can’t trust them.” “I was thirteen once and I didn’t like it a bit.”
We believe that’s all bunk, and we can cite a prominent number expert to debunk it. Paging Professor Pythagoras…white courtesy telephone, please! Ancient Greece’s most prominent numbers man had nothing bad to say about 13 at all. Oh, no. He reserved all his hatred for the number 2. He hated 2 with a passion. Two’s nearest neighbors were treated to rivulets of Pythagoras’s purple prose: One was unity, a whole, godlike in its singularity. Three was harmony, and four was perfection—the first square. But two signified opposing unities—diversity—which to Pythagoras meant disorder, strife, evil, and chaos.
So why do we bring this up? To prove that you can create a bad rap for any number if you think hard enough about it.
Sadly, people seem to think pretty hard about Friday 13th, and it actually makes it unlucky for them. Sixteen years ago, the Mid-Downs Health Authority did a study to see whether Friday 13th had any effect on the health and behaviour of people in West Sussex, England. On Friday 6th and Friday 13th of the same month, they counted vehicles on the road, shoppers in supermarkets, and hospital admissions due to accidents.
On the 13th, traffic rates were down. Shoppers were shopping at the same rate. And road traffic accidents requiring hospital admissions spiked 52 percent. That’s despite fewer cars being on the road. One conclusion: Friday 13th is unlucky for some. Another conclusion: People were so wigged out by driving on Friday 13th, they got into accidents.
Our favorite conclusion: Just don’t go driving in the South Thames region on a Friday. You never know what will happen.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
March 12: Cookies, Banks, and Fireside Chats
Pull up a cookie, sit by the fire, don’t bother to go down to the bank, and listen to the radio. Today’s a day for celebrating all these sweet treats.
It’s the 96th anniversary of the Girl Scouts of America (founded in 1912 in Savannah, GA, under their original British name of Girl Guides).
It’s also been 76 years since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave the first of his nationwide radio broadcasts, which he gave the cosy name of fireside chats. Even though it was a long time ago, Roosevelt’s first fireside chat has resonance even to this day. It was on the subject of banks, and it came on the heels of a two-week banking crisis (which he coyly refers to as a “banking holiday”) in which the banks shuttered their doors and the government ordered them to stay closed until further notice. It was a crisis that inspired the scene in It’s a Wonderful Life where George Bailey misses his honeymoon and gives out his savings to make sure that his father's Building and Loan company stays open. They were hard times indeed.
The rest of this column is a transcription of the whole speech. If it's too long and too serious for your mood, you can hear excerpts of Roosevelt’s broadcast in his own voice at this Web site: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/medialist.php?presid=32. And heed the president's closing words:
Together we cannot fail.
A transcript of the address of President Roosevelt by radio, delivered from the President's Study in the White House at 10 PM on March 12, 1933.
I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking -- with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking but more particularly with the overwhelming majority who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks. I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days, why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be. I recognize that the many proclamations from State Capitols and from Washington, the legislation, the Treasury regulations, etc., couched for the most part in banking and legal terms should be explained for the benefit of the average citizen. I owe this in particular because of the fortitude and good temper with which everybody has accepted the inconvenience and hardships of the banking holiday. I know that when you understand what we in Washington have been about I shall continue to have your cooperation as fully as I have had your sympathy and help during the past week.
First of all let me state the simple fact that when you deposit money in a bank the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit vault. It invests your money in many different forms of credit-bonds, commercial paper, mortgages and many other kinds of loans. In other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around. A comparatively small part of the money you put into the bank is kept in currency -- an amount which in normal times is wholly sufficient to cover the cash needs of the average citizen. In other words the total amount of all the currency in the country is only a small fraction of the total deposits in all of the banks.
What, then, happened during the last few days of February and the first few days of March? Because of undermined confidence on the part of the public, there was a general rush by a large portion of our population to turn bank deposits into currency or gold. -- A rush so great that the soundest banks could not get enough currency to meet the demand. The reason for this was that on the spur of the moment it was, of course, impossible to sell perfectly sound assets of a bank and convert them into cash except at panic prices far below their real value.
By the afternoon of March 3 scarcely a bank in the country was open to do business.
Proclamations temporarily closing them in whole or in part had been issued by the Governors in almost all the states.
It was then that I issued the proclamation providing for the nation-wide bank holiday, and this was the first step in the Government's reconstruction of our financial and economic fabric. The second step was the legislation promptly and patriotically passed by the Congress confirming my proclamation and broadening my powers so that it became possible in view of the requirement of time to entend the holiday and lift the ban of that holiday gradually. This law also gave authority to develop a program of rehabilitation of our banking facilities. I want to tell our citizens in every part of the Nation that the national Congress -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- showed by this action a devotion to public welfare and a realization of the emergency and the necessity for speed that it is difficult to match in our history.
The third stage has been the series of regulations permitting the banks to continue their functions to take care of the distribution of food and household necessities and the payment of payrolls.
This bank holiday while resulting in many cases in great inconvenience is affording us the opportunity to supply the currency necessary to meet the situation. No sound bank is a dollar worse off than it was when it closed its doors last Monday. Neither is any bank which may turn out not to be in a position for immediate opening. The new law allows the twelve Federal Reserve banks to issue additional currency on good assets and thus the banks that reopen will be able to meet every legitimate call. The new currency is being sent out by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in large volume to every part of the country. It is sound currency because it is backed by actual, good assets.
A question you will ask is this - why are all the banks not to be reopened at the same time? The answer is simple. Your Government does not intend that the history of the past few years shall be repeated. We do not want and will not have another epidemic of bank failures.
As a result we start tomorrow, Monday, with the opening of banks in the twelve Federal Reserve Bank cities -- those banks which on first examination by the Treasury have already been found to be all right. This will be followed on Tuesday by the resumption of all their functions by banks already found to be sound in cities where there are recognized clearinghouses. That means about 250 cities of the United States.
On Wednesday and succeeding days banks in smaller places all through the country will resume business, subject, of course, to the Government's physical ability to complete its survey. It is necessary that the reopening of banks be extended over a period in order to permit the banks to make applications for necessary loans, to obtain currency needed to meet their requirements and to enable the Government to make common sense checkups.
Let me make it clear to you that if your bank does not open the first day you are by no means justified in believing that it will not open. A bank that opens on one of the subsequent days is in exactly the same status as the bank that opens tomorrow.
I know that many people are worrying about State banks not members of the Federal Reserve System. These banks can and will receive assistance from member banks and from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. These state banks are following the same course as the national banks except that they get their licenses to resume business from the state authorities, and these authorities have been asked by the Secretary of the Treasury to permit their good banks to open up on the same schedule as the national banks. I am confident that the state banking departments will be as careful as the National Government in the policy relating to the opening of banks and will follow the same broad policy.
It is possible that when the banks resume a very few people who have not recovered from their fear may again begin withdrawals. Let me make it clear that the banks will take care of all needs -- and it is my belief that hoarding during the past week has become an exceedingly unfashionable pastime. It needs no prophet to tell you that when the people find that they can get their money -- that they can get it when they want it for all legitimate purposes -- the phantom of fear will soon be laid. People will again be glad to have their money where it will be safely taken care of and where they can use it conveniently at any time. I can assure you that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress.
The success of our whole great national program depends, of course, upon the cooperation of the public -- on its intelligent support and use of a reliable system.
Remember that the essential accomplishment of the new legislation is that it makes it possible for banks more readily to convert their assets into cash than was the case before. More liberal provision has been made for banks to borrow on these assets at the Reserve Banks and more liberal provision has also been made for issuing currency on the security of those good assets. This currency is not fiat currency. It is issued only on adequate security -- and every good bank has an abundance of such security.
One more point before I close. There will be, of course, some banks unable to reopen without being reorganized. The new law allows the Government to assist in making these reorganizations quickly and effectively and even allows the Government to subscribe to at least a part of new capital which may be required.
I hope you can see from this elemental recital of what your government is doing that there is nothing complex, or radical in the process.
We had a bad banking situation. Some of our bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people's funds. They had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans. This was of course not true in the vast majority of our banks but it was true in enough of them to shock the people for a time into a sense of insecurity and to put them into a frame of mind where they did not differentiate, but seemed to assume that the acts of a comparative few had tainted them all. It was the Government's job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible -- and the job is being performed.
I do not promise you that every bank will be reopened or that individual losses will not be suffered, but there will be no losses that possibly could be avoided; and there would have been more and greater losses had we continued to drift. I can even promise you salvation for some at least of the sorely pressed banks. We shall be engaged not merely in reopening sound banks but in the creation of sound banks through reorganization. It has been wonderful to me to catch the note of confidence from all over the country. I can never be sufficiently grateful to the people for the loyal support they have given me in their acceptance of the judgment that has dictated our course, even though all of our processes may not have seemed clear to them.
After all there is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people. Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. You people must have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system; it is up to you to support and make it work.
It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.
It’s the 96th anniversary of the Girl Scouts of America (founded in 1912 in Savannah, GA, under their original British name of Girl Guides).
It’s also been 76 years since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave the first of his nationwide radio broadcasts, which he gave the cosy name of fireside chats. Even though it was a long time ago, Roosevelt’s first fireside chat has resonance even to this day. It was on the subject of banks, and it came on the heels of a two-week banking crisis (which he coyly refers to as a “banking holiday”) in which the banks shuttered their doors and the government ordered them to stay closed until further notice. It was a crisis that inspired the scene in It’s a Wonderful Life where George Bailey misses his honeymoon and gives out his savings to make sure that his father's Building and Loan company stays open. They were hard times indeed.
The rest of this column is a transcription of the whole speech. If it's too long and too serious for your mood, you can hear excerpts of Roosevelt’s broadcast in his own voice at this Web site: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/medialist.php?presid=32. And heed the president's closing words:
Together we cannot fail.
A transcript of the address of President Roosevelt by radio, delivered from the President's Study in the White House at 10 PM on March 12, 1933.
I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking -- with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking but more particularly with the overwhelming majority who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks. I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days, why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be. I recognize that the many proclamations from State Capitols and from Washington, the legislation, the Treasury regulations, etc., couched for the most part in banking and legal terms should be explained for the benefit of the average citizen. I owe this in particular because of the fortitude and good temper with which everybody has accepted the inconvenience and hardships of the banking holiday. I know that when you understand what we in Washington have been about I shall continue to have your cooperation as fully as I have had your sympathy and help during the past week.
First of all let me state the simple fact that when you deposit money in a bank the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit vault. It invests your money in many different forms of credit-bonds, commercial paper, mortgages and many other kinds of loans. In other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around. A comparatively small part of the money you put into the bank is kept in currency -- an amount which in normal times is wholly sufficient to cover the cash needs of the average citizen. In other words the total amount of all the currency in the country is only a small fraction of the total deposits in all of the banks.
What, then, happened during the last few days of February and the first few days of March? Because of undermined confidence on the part of the public, there was a general rush by a large portion of our population to turn bank deposits into currency or gold. -- A rush so great that the soundest banks could not get enough currency to meet the demand. The reason for this was that on the spur of the moment it was, of course, impossible to sell perfectly sound assets of a bank and convert them into cash except at panic prices far below their real value.
By the afternoon of March 3 scarcely a bank in the country was open to do business.
Proclamations temporarily closing them in whole or in part had been issued by the Governors in almost all the states.
It was then that I issued the proclamation providing for the nation-wide bank holiday, and this was the first step in the Government's reconstruction of our financial and economic fabric. The second step was the legislation promptly and patriotically passed by the Congress confirming my proclamation and broadening my powers so that it became possible in view of the requirement of time to entend the holiday and lift the ban of that holiday gradually. This law also gave authority to develop a program of rehabilitation of our banking facilities. I want to tell our citizens in every part of the Nation that the national Congress -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- showed by this action a devotion to public welfare and a realization of the emergency and the necessity for speed that it is difficult to match in our history.
The third stage has been the series of regulations permitting the banks to continue their functions to take care of the distribution of food and household necessities and the payment of payrolls.
This bank holiday while resulting in many cases in great inconvenience is affording us the opportunity to supply the currency necessary to meet the situation. No sound bank is a dollar worse off than it was when it closed its doors last Monday. Neither is any bank which may turn out not to be in a position for immediate opening. The new law allows the twelve Federal Reserve banks to issue additional currency on good assets and thus the banks that reopen will be able to meet every legitimate call. The new currency is being sent out by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in large volume to every part of the country. It is sound currency because it is backed by actual, good assets.
A question you will ask is this - why are all the banks not to be reopened at the same time? The answer is simple. Your Government does not intend that the history of the past few years shall be repeated. We do not want and will not have another epidemic of bank failures.
As a result we start tomorrow, Monday, with the opening of banks in the twelve Federal Reserve Bank cities -- those banks which on first examination by the Treasury have already been found to be all right. This will be followed on Tuesday by the resumption of all their functions by banks already found to be sound in cities where there are recognized clearinghouses. That means about 250 cities of the United States.
On Wednesday and succeeding days banks in smaller places all through the country will resume business, subject, of course, to the Government's physical ability to complete its survey. It is necessary that the reopening of banks be extended over a period in order to permit the banks to make applications for necessary loans, to obtain currency needed to meet their requirements and to enable the Government to make common sense checkups.
Let me make it clear to you that if your bank does not open the first day you are by no means justified in believing that it will not open. A bank that opens on one of the subsequent days is in exactly the same status as the bank that opens tomorrow.
I know that many people are worrying about State banks not members of the Federal Reserve System. These banks can and will receive assistance from member banks and from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. These state banks are following the same course as the national banks except that they get their licenses to resume business from the state authorities, and these authorities have been asked by the Secretary of the Treasury to permit their good banks to open up on the same schedule as the national banks. I am confident that the state banking departments will be as careful as the National Government in the policy relating to the opening of banks and will follow the same broad policy.
It is possible that when the banks resume a very few people who have not recovered from their fear may again begin withdrawals. Let me make it clear that the banks will take care of all needs -- and it is my belief that hoarding during the past week has become an exceedingly unfashionable pastime. It needs no prophet to tell you that when the people find that they can get their money -- that they can get it when they want it for all legitimate purposes -- the phantom of fear will soon be laid. People will again be glad to have their money where it will be safely taken care of and where they can use it conveniently at any time. I can assure you that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress.
The success of our whole great national program depends, of course, upon the cooperation of the public -- on its intelligent support and use of a reliable system.
Remember that the essential accomplishment of the new legislation is that it makes it possible for banks more readily to convert their assets into cash than was the case before. More liberal provision has been made for banks to borrow on these assets at the Reserve Banks and more liberal provision has also been made for issuing currency on the security of those good assets. This currency is not fiat currency. It is issued only on adequate security -- and every good bank has an abundance of such security.
One more point before I close. There will be, of course, some banks unable to reopen without being reorganized. The new law allows the Government to assist in making these reorganizations quickly and effectively and even allows the Government to subscribe to at least a part of new capital which may be required.
I hope you can see from this elemental recital of what your government is doing that there is nothing complex, or radical in the process.
We had a bad banking situation. Some of our bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people's funds. They had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans. This was of course not true in the vast majority of our banks but it was true in enough of them to shock the people for a time into a sense of insecurity and to put them into a frame of mind where they did not differentiate, but seemed to assume that the acts of a comparative few had tainted them all. It was the Government's job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible -- and the job is being performed.
I do not promise you that every bank will be reopened or that individual losses will not be suffered, but there will be no losses that possibly could be avoided; and there would have been more and greater losses had we continued to drift. I can even promise you salvation for some at least of the sorely pressed banks. We shall be engaged not merely in reopening sound banks but in the creation of sound banks through reorganization. It has been wonderful to me to catch the note of confidence from all over the country. I can never be sufficiently grateful to the people for the loyal support they have given me in their acceptance of the judgment that has dictated our course, even though all of our processes may not have seemed clear to them.
After all there is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people. Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. You people must have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system; it is up to you to support and make it work.
It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
To Boldly Go Where No Goth or Rocker Has Gone Before.
Today we celebrate a strange set of events spanning 1460 years, beginning with an army of Goths attacking Rome.
On March 11 (a few days before the Ides of March, don't y'know) 537, the Ostrogoth King Witgis set up his troops in camps around the various gates of Rome in a siege that would last a year and 9 days. It ended better for the Roman General Belisarius, though, when on March 20th, 538, the Ostrogoths dispersed in defeat.
Fast forward 1460 years, and two significant cultural figures from the 1960s were being given their props, some thirty years after their crowning acheivments.
On one side of the Atlantic ocean, the ashes of Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry, were blasted off into space. Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth II had Paul McCartney around to Buckingham Palace for the first time in three decades. The first time Macca had visited, back in 1965, she gave him and his fellow Beatles an MBE medal apiece. This time, she whipped out a sword and knighted him Sir Paul.
On March 11 (a few days before the Ides of March, don't y'know) 537, the Ostrogoth King Witgis set up his troops in camps around the various gates of Rome in a siege that would last a year and 9 days. It ended better for the Roman General Belisarius, though, when on March 20th, 538, the Ostrogoths dispersed in defeat.
Fast forward 1460 years, and two significant cultural figures from the 1960s were being given their props, some thirty years after their crowning acheivments.
On one side of the Atlantic ocean, the ashes of Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry, were blasted off into space. Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth II had Paul McCartney around to Buckingham Palace for the first time in three decades. The first time Macca had visited, back in 1965, she gave him and his fellow Beatles an MBE medal apiece. This time, she whipped out a sword and knighted him Sir Paul.
March 10: Three inventions
Next time you hold a five dollar bill in your hand and answer the phone, bear in mind that you have three reminders of great events that took place on March 10th.
That paper money you hold was first introduced in the United States on March 10th, 1862. Up till that point, if you wanted to spend money in the States, it had better be either gold or silver--or it wouldn't go in the cash register. The Confederate states had printed up paper money the year before, and the Thirteen States had made early experiments in paper money around the time of the Revolution, but they had become worthless, so it took 80 years and a Federal Reserve Bank system to inspire enough confidence for Americans to use paper money.
Their confidence wasn't bolstered much by the fact that the fives, tens, and twenties issued on March 10th weren't legally declared tender until a week later.
Another big invention was launched March 10th, 1876. A Scottish tinkerer named Alexander Graham Bell spilled acid in his lab, and called for his assistant to come and help. But instead of yelling into the next room, he picked up an invention of his, the telephone, and used it to summon his assistant. This was the first application of voice over wire technology, and the voice in question growled out in a Scots brogue "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you."
A few decades earlier, a young plains attorney filed a patent for a mechanism to pull grounded boats over sandbars. This was on March 10th, 1849. The mechanism was never put into production, and the inventor never filed another patent, but that didn't stop the patent issued two weeks later from becoming a historic document. The inventor's face ended up on the five dollar bill--but it wasn't for his riverboat buoyancy scheme. It was for his emancipation skills. The inventor was Abraham Lincoln, and that piece of paper on file at the Patent Office gave him the distinction of being the only U.S. president who was also a patent holder.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Today is National Napping ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
The first Monday after the onset of Daylight Saving Time has long been designated National Napping Day. By mid-afternoon on Monday, most people not used to jet-setting around and skipping timezones are starting to flag. A nap seems like a good idea.
Frankly, we think that there's something to be said for setting aside nap time on the 364 days following the onset of Daylight Saving. Humans are, after all, mammals, and more than 85 percent of mammal species are polyphasic sleepers--meaning that they routinely sleep in multiple sessions during the day. And any activity favored by such prominent mammals as Winston Churchill and Thomas Alva Edison gets our vote!
Frankly, we think that there's something to be said for setting aside nap time on the 364 days following the onset of Daylight Saving. Humans are, after all, mammals, and more than 85 percent of mammal species are polyphasic sleepers--meaning that they routinely sleep in multiple sessions during the day. And any activity favored by such prominent mammals as Winston Churchill and Thomas Alva Edison gets our vote!
Of course priests can marry. They just can't get married.
On March 9th in the year 1074, in the year after he ascended to the papacy, the reforming pope Gregory VII imposed celibacy upon the priesthood. He excommunicated all married priests. It was a bold move to bring the church into line with a hard-line ascetic faction that believed that lifelong abstinence was better than marriage. Pope Gregory wasn’t completely prejudiced against married people, though. He’d allow them to become priests as long as they ‘first escape from the clutches of their wives.’ It took a few hundred years, but eventually, his will prevailed.
Pope Gregory VII wasn’t backed up entirely by his flock—perhaps because this was 800 years before Popes were declared infallible. Marriage among priests was common at the time. In fact, if he’d made his edict a thousand-and-some years earlier, he would have thrown the first Pope, Saint Peter, out of the church. Peter and most of the apostles were married, so obviously the one who gave Christianity its name didn’t have such a hard time accepting them.
So how did Gregory VII get the idea to add “unmarried” to the list of requirements for the priesthood?
The tide against marriage began to turn during the second and third centuries, with the rise of a mystic sect called the Gnostics. They divided the world into light and dark. Material things, including all things related to the body, were on the dark side. Most priests of that era were married, but those who weren’t gained a little extra favor among the hard-liners.
In the centuries that followed, things got progressively tougher.
In the year 306, a council in Spain decreed that priests could not spend the night with his wife on the night before a Mass. In 325, the Council of Nicea decreed that once ordained, a priest could not marry. In 385, Pope Siricius left his wife in order to become pope, and decreed that married priests must also forsake their wives—or at least, not sleep with them. At the turn of the fifth century, St. Augustine put his seal of disapproval on marriage--and women in general--when he wrote, “Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of a man downwards as the caresses of a woman.”
It wasn’t until 1930 that Augustine’s approach was questioned from the papal throne. Pope Pius XI declared that year that marital relations can be good and holy. I’m personally glad that he did, too, because that was the year my father was conceived.
On a side note, a couple of popes didn’t think much of Gregory’s position. Pope Clement IV (who reigned from 1265 to1268) was married with two daughters; Pope Felix V (1439-1449) was married with one son.
Pope Gregory VII wasn’t backed up entirely by his flock—perhaps because this was 800 years before Popes were declared infallible. Marriage among priests was common at the time. In fact, if he’d made his edict a thousand-and-some years earlier, he would have thrown the first Pope, Saint Peter, out of the church. Peter and most of the apostles were married, so obviously the one who gave Christianity its name didn’t have such a hard time accepting them.
So how did Gregory VII get the idea to add “unmarried” to the list of requirements for the priesthood?
The tide against marriage began to turn during the second and third centuries, with the rise of a mystic sect called the Gnostics. They divided the world into light and dark. Material things, including all things related to the body, were on the dark side. Most priests of that era were married, but those who weren’t gained a little extra favor among the hard-liners.
In the centuries that followed, things got progressively tougher.
In the year 306, a council in Spain decreed that priests could not spend the night with his wife on the night before a Mass. In 325, the Council of Nicea decreed that once ordained, a priest could not marry. In 385, Pope Siricius left his wife in order to become pope, and decreed that married priests must also forsake their wives—or at least, not sleep with them. At the turn of the fifth century, St. Augustine put his seal of disapproval on marriage--and women in general--when he wrote, “Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of a man downwards as the caresses of a woman.”
It wasn’t until 1930 that Augustine’s approach was questioned from the papal throne. Pope Pius XI declared that year that marital relations can be good and holy. I’m personally glad that he did, too, because that was the year my father was conceived.
On a side note, a couple of popes didn’t think much of Gregory’s position. Pope Clement IV (who reigned from 1265 to1268) was married with two daughters; Pope Felix V (1439-1449) was married with one son.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
International Women's Day
As you wander around groggily trying to recover from the changeover to Daylight Savings Time, don't forget that today is also International Women's Day.
Clara Zetkin, a German delegate at the Conference of Working Women in 1910, first suggested an international day to discuss and promote the rights of women in society. And to show she meant business, she picked the 55th anniversary of a Prussian revolution for the first celebration. In fear after the uprising, the Prussian king promised to give votes to women, but failed to deliver on his promise when things calmed down.
While it wasn't a revolution, the first International Women's Day certainly had its share of conflict. It was so popular that there were major crowd control issues. One parade jammed the streets with 30,000 demonstrators, which led to scuffles with the police. Many town hall meetings were so crowded that the organizers had to ask men to give up their seats, go home, and look after the kids for a day.
Imagine that!
In 1913, the day was assigned a permanent date of March 8th, and it has stayed there ever since. So celebrate international women today, and give them a full vote on everything--including who does the daily chores around the house.
Clara Zetkin, a German delegate at the Conference of Working Women in 1910, first suggested an international day to discuss and promote the rights of women in society. And to show she meant business, she picked the 55th anniversary of a Prussian revolution for the first celebration. In fear after the uprising, the Prussian king promised to give votes to women, but failed to deliver on his promise when things calmed down.
While it wasn't a revolution, the first International Women's Day certainly had its share of conflict. It was so popular that there were major crowd control issues. One parade jammed the streets with 30,000 demonstrators, which led to scuffles with the police. Many town hall meetings were so crowded that the organizers had to ask men to give up their seats, go home, and look after the kids for a day.
Imagine that!
In 1913, the day was assigned a permanent date of March 8th, and it has stayed there ever since. So celebrate international women today, and give them a full vote on everything--including who does the daily chores around the house.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Early to bed, early to rise
Benjamin Franklin gets credit for lots of things. Some of these things he deserves credit for. He invented bifocals, charted the Gulf Stream, and designed a potbellied stove that kept 18th century America toasty warm during the harsh winters. He published an almanac that gave him the chance to write quotable quotes like "early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."
But Franklin gets credit for things he never did And one of those things is inventing the idea of Daylight Savings Time. Yes, Franklin rose early. He advocated rising with the sun as a healthy and productive activity. He calculated huge energy savings (in candles and lamp oil) by using daylight instead of artificial light to work by.
But he didn't suggest changing clocks in the spring and fall. People didn't really live by the clock in the 1700s--the clock became an important thing when train schedules came along in the 1800s. So it wouldn't occur to a great populist practical 18th-century mind to mess with timepieces every spring and autumn.
No, it was a British builder called William Willett who suggested adjusting clocks to take advantage of summer's extra sunshine hours. And he thought it up in 1905 and first published his ideas in 1907.
The United States adopted Daylight Savings Time on March 19, 1918 by an Act of Congress. It ran from March 31st, and was so widely hated that the act was repealed the following year. FDR instituted a year-round fuel-saving Daylight Savings Time called War Time between Feb 6th, 1942 and Sept 30th, 1945. Then the Federal government left adoption of seasonal clock adjustment up to the individual states until 1966.
The birthplace of seasonal clock-turning, Britain, adopted British Summer Time adjustment in 1916, and has stuck with it ever since.
And speaking of history, winter time is over as of 2am tomorrow morning. Spring your clocks ahead tonight!
But Franklin gets credit for things he never did And one of those things is inventing the idea of Daylight Savings Time. Yes, Franklin rose early. He advocated rising with the sun as a healthy and productive activity. He calculated huge energy savings (in candles and lamp oil) by using daylight instead of artificial light to work by.
But he didn't suggest changing clocks in the spring and fall. People didn't really live by the clock in the 1700s--the clock became an important thing when train schedules came along in the 1800s. So it wouldn't occur to a great populist practical 18th-century mind to mess with timepieces every spring and autumn.
No, it was a British builder called William Willett who suggested adjusting clocks to take advantage of summer's extra sunshine hours. And he thought it up in 1905 and first published his ideas in 1907.
The United States adopted Daylight Savings Time on March 19, 1918 by an Act of Congress. It ran from March 31st, and was so widely hated that the act was repealed the following year. FDR instituted a year-round fuel-saving Daylight Savings Time called War Time between Feb 6th, 1942 and Sept 30th, 1945. Then the Federal government left adoption of seasonal clock adjustment up to the individual states until 1966.
The birthplace of seasonal clock-turning, Britain, adopted British Summer Time adjustment in 1916, and has stuck with it ever since.
And speaking of history, winter time is over as of 2am tomorrow morning. Spring your clocks ahead tonight!
Friday, March 6, 2009
Nothing but the tooth
March 6th is Dentists' Day, which naturally comes several weeks after the first onset of Toothache Day (February 9th) and a week after the incentive of Tooth Fairy Day (February 28th...and apparently also August 22nd).
At Easterween, we're keen to celebrate all things dental, so we recommend to anyone living in the northeastern United States a visit to two temples of dentistry--the National Dental Museum in Baltimore and the Temple University Dental School museum in Philadelphia. There, you can find exhibits that commemorate the pioneering work of two giants in the field of staring into people's mouths.
John Greenwood, the father of modern dentistry
If John Greenwood is remembered for anything these days, it's for the fact that he made George Washington's false teeth. And he didn't make them of wood, oh no. He used far more civilized materials: Hippopotamus ivory, springs, and other people's teeth, to name but a few.
"Painless" Parker--the P.T. Barnum of dentistry
Even though he formally trained as a dentist at the Philadelphia Dental College (now part of Temple University), Edgar Parker comported himself more like a carnival barker than a medical professional. And his approach made him a fortune. He opened a chain of dental stores on the West Coast in the early 1900s that employed 75 dentists. He appeared at state fairs and other big gatherings under the name Painless Parker, where he would perform mass extractions before an audience, wearing a necklace of human teeth, and filling a wooden bucket with extracted molars.
The American Dental Association called Painless Parker "a menace to the dignity of the profession", but despite being shunned by his colleagues, his alma mater still chose to display the necklace and bucket of teeth. That alone is worth a trip up to Philly, and a climb up the stairs from the Temple dental school's offices to their free museum.
At Easterween, we're keen to celebrate all things dental, so we recommend to anyone living in the northeastern United States a visit to two temples of dentistry--the National Dental Museum in Baltimore and the Temple University Dental School museum in Philadelphia. There, you can find exhibits that commemorate the pioneering work of two giants in the field of staring into people's mouths.
Photo from the National Dental Museum in Baltimore
John Greenwood, the father of modern dentistry
If John Greenwood is remembered for anything these days, it's for the fact that he made George Washington's false teeth. And he didn't make them of wood, oh no. He used far more civilized materials: Hippopotamus ivory, springs, and other people's teeth, to name but a few.
In the days before dental fixatives, he used physics to keep the top set of dentures in place: They were fixed by coiled springs to the bottom set. This meant, of course, that there was a constant force pushing down on the bottom set. You can see evidence of this on any dollar bill--just look at George's underbite.
Photo from Temple University's dental museum
"Painless" Parker--the P.T. Barnum of dentistryEven though he formally trained as a dentist at the Philadelphia Dental College (now part of Temple University), Edgar Parker comported himself more like a carnival barker than a medical professional. And his approach made him a fortune. He opened a chain of dental stores on the West Coast in the early 1900s that employed 75 dentists. He appeared at state fairs and other big gatherings under the name Painless Parker, where he would perform mass extractions before an audience, wearing a necklace of human teeth, and filling a wooden bucket with extracted molars.
The American Dental Association called Painless Parker "a menace to the dignity of the profession", but despite being shunned by his colleagues, his alma mater still chose to display the necklace and bucket of teeth. That alone is worth a trip up to Philly, and a climb up the stairs from the Temple dental school's offices to their free museum.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Multiple Celebrations, Multiple Personalities
Today we remember the aftermath of one of the worst snowball fights in history. It happened 339 years ago in Boston, when a crowd of Bostonians started throwing snowballs and insults at troops billeted in the city. It escalated into gunfire, and ended with three deaths and eight wounded people—two of whom died later.
It soon took on the dramatic name of the Boston Massacre, and is now recognized as the first skirmish of the American War of Independence. Most people acknowledged the first victim was Crispus Attucks, variously described as a sailor and an escaped slave. Less well known was a teenaged apprentice named Samuel Maverick, who was the roommate of a young lad who would grow up to be the dentist to George Washington. John Greenwood remembered his roomie’s death in his memoirs, which he wrote forty years later in New York City:
I remember what is called the "Boston Massacre," when the British troops fired upon the inhabitants and killed seven of them, one of whom was my father's apprentice, a lad eighteen years of age, named Samuel Maverick. I was his bedfellow, and after his death I used to go to bed in the dark on purpose to see his spirit, for I was so fond of him, and he of me, that I was sure it would not hurt me. The people of New England at that time pretty generally believed in hobgoblins and spirits, that is, the children at least did.
On a completely different note, it is also Multiple Personalities Day. We're still trying to figure out how to yoke these two celebrations together. Any assistance you can offer would be welcome. It's beyond us.
It soon took on the dramatic name of the Boston Massacre, and is now recognized as the first skirmish of the American War of Independence. Most people acknowledged the first victim was Crispus Attucks, variously described as a sailor and an escaped slave. Less well known was a teenaged apprentice named Samuel Maverick, who was the roommate of a young lad who would grow up to be the dentist to George Washington. John Greenwood remembered his roomie’s death in his memoirs, which he wrote forty years later in New York City:
I remember what is called the "Boston Massacre," when the British troops fired upon the inhabitants and killed seven of them, one of whom was my father's apprentice, a lad eighteen years of age, named Samuel Maverick. I was his bedfellow, and after his death I used to go to bed in the dark on purpose to see his spirit, for I was so fond of him, and he of me, that I was sure it would not hurt me. The people of New England at that time pretty generally believed in hobgoblins and spirits, that is, the children at least did.
On a completely different note, it is also Multiple Personalities Day. We're still trying to figure out how to yoke these two celebrations together. Any assistance you can offer would be welcome. It's beyond us.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Don't let your modifiers dangle
Today is National Grammar Day, so we at Easterween are raising a glass to those bastions of the written word, teachers and editors. Exactly what we're putting in the glasses we raise should become clear when you read our little ode.
Teachers and Editors
Teachers and editors
Are easy to annoy
Break some rules of grammar,
Their reaction’s such a joy
Teachers and editors
Are an irritable crowd
Their words sound strange, but
They say they’re right, and say it very loud
So teachers and editors
Are easy to annoy
Teachers and editors
Check the case of each pronoun
And if your modifiers dangle
They will drum you out of town
Their red pen and blue pencil
And yellow Post-It note
Are used to skewer details
Whose offense is quite remote
So teachers and editors
Are easy to put down
Teachers and editors
Are a cinch to irritate
A simple stray apostrophe
Will make them quite irate
A switch of whos and whoms
Or worse—of whichs, whats and thats—
Makes quite sufficient grounds
To send the dears completely bats
For teachers and editors
Find the smallest things will grate
While taxmen are taxing
And parents, a bore
And bankers, exacting
And hard to ignore,
And judges and lawyers
Exist to cause grief
And taxicab drivers
Are hell sans relief.
While security night guards
Are really too strict
And the moods of policemen
Are hard to predict,
While train drivers are strange
And bus drivers are worse
The men who sell tickets
Are widely diverse.
While managers bully
And waiters will sniff
And laundrymen leave
All your shirtcollars stiff,
While all these professions
Have habits that cloy,
Teachers and editors
Are easy to annoy
Teachers and editors
Apply the rules of a tidy mind
They excise split infinitives
Which are hard to ever find
They scratch out sentence fragments.
A bad idea? Aye!
And a sentence that ends in a preposition
They’ll never let get by
For teachers and editors
Tie themselves in an awful bind
Teachers and editors
Are easy to annoy
Give them a Sunday paper
And watch them self-destroy
Teachers and editors
Have skills they can deploy
But grammar is their idol
So they’re easy to annoy
Yes teachers and editors
Are people to enjoy.
For the record, if you're a teacher or editor you may feel free to say "Of course, this doesn't apply to me." We know that's certainly the case with the author of the piece, who has at various points in his life been both a teacher and an editor.
Teachers and Editors
Teachers and editors
Are easy to annoy
Break some rules of grammar,
Their reaction’s such a joy
Teachers and editors
Are an irritable crowd
Their words sound strange, but
They say they’re right, and say it very loud
So teachers and editors
Are easy to annoy
Teachers and editors
Check the case of each pronoun
And if your modifiers dangle
They will drum you out of town
Their red pen and blue pencil
And yellow Post-It note
Are used to skewer details
Whose offense is quite remote
So teachers and editors
Are easy to put down
Teachers and editors
Are a cinch to irritate
A simple stray apostrophe
Will make them quite irate
A switch of whos and whoms
Or worse—of whichs, whats and thats—
Makes quite sufficient grounds
To send the dears completely bats
For teachers and editors
Find the smallest things will grate
While taxmen are taxing
And parents, a bore
And bankers, exacting
And hard to ignore,
And judges and lawyers
Exist to cause grief
And taxicab drivers
Are hell sans relief.
While security night guards
Are really too strict
And the moods of policemen
Are hard to predict,
While train drivers are strange
And bus drivers are worse
The men who sell tickets
Are widely diverse.
While managers bully
And waiters will sniff
And laundrymen leave
All your shirtcollars stiff,
While all these professions
Have habits that cloy,
Teachers and editors
Are easy to annoy
Teachers and editors
Apply the rules of a tidy mind
They excise split infinitives
Which are hard to ever find
They scratch out sentence fragments.
A bad idea? Aye!
And a sentence that ends in a preposition
They’ll never let get by
For teachers and editors
Tie themselves in an awful bind
Teachers and editors
Are easy to annoy
Give them a Sunday paper
And watch them self-destroy
Teachers and editors
Have skills they can deploy
But grammar is their idol
So they’re easy to annoy
Yes teachers and editors
Are people to enjoy.
For the record, if you're a teacher or editor you may feel free to say "Of course, this doesn't apply to me." We know that's certainly the case with the author of the piece, who has at various points in his life been both a teacher and an editor.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Oh say, can you see the man with the lightbulb head?
Today is a bumper day in the history of music. It's two massively significant days rolled into one.
On March 3, 1931, Herbert Hoover signed a measure into law that the National Anthem of the United States of America would be a poem full of unanswered questions set to the tune of a British drinking song.
On March 3, 1953, Robyn Hitchcock was born.
Now, we're as fond of Francis Scott Key as the next poetry enthusiast, but we can't help feeling that but for an accident of birth, Robyn Hitchcock could have done a far more surreal job of writing a national anthem. He also indulges in far more interesting between-song banter than at your average rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.
Your assignment for the day is this. Compare and contrast the following lyrics. Then let us know what you think
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
(Star Spangled Banner, FS Key, 3rd verse)
And how's about you, my pretty one?
Do you still roll and dream of bees?
How's about you, my pretty one?
Do you still dream of bees?
(The Man with the Lightbulb Head, Hitchcock, 2nd verse)
On March 3, 1931, Herbert Hoover signed a measure into law that the National Anthem of the United States of America would be a poem full of unanswered questions set to the tune of a British drinking song.
AND
On March 3, 1953, Robyn Hitchcock was born.
Now, we're as fond of Francis Scott Key as the next poetry enthusiast, but we can't help feeling that but for an accident of birth, Robyn Hitchcock could have done a far more surreal job of writing a national anthem. He also indulges in far more interesting between-song banter than at your average rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.
Your assignment for the day is this. Compare and contrast the following lyrics. Then let us know what you think
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
(Star Spangled Banner, FS Key, 3rd verse)
And how's about you, my pretty one?
Do you still roll and dream of bees?
How's about you, my pretty one?
Do you still dream of bees?
(The Man with the Lightbulb Head, Hitchcock, 2nd verse)
Monday, March 2, 2009
Happy Birthday Ted
March the second just arrived
If Doctor Seuss were still alive
He would be one hundred five.
(Born in nineteen hundred four
wrote some verse, opposed the war,
Gosh we miss him to the core
When other poets start to bore
Us with their verse--enough! No more!)
If Doctor Seuss were still alive
He would be one hundred five.
(Born in nineteen hundred four
wrote some verse, opposed the war,
Gosh we miss him to the core
When other poets start to bore
Us with their verse--enough! No more!)
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Organmeatalicious
No kidding...we like steak and kidney pie. It's a big Anglo-Scottish thing, but we think that organ meat has been given a bad rap.
So we honor National Kidney Month--which is one of the great March celebrations--in our own way. We know it's basically something to do with renal health, but in March, we make steak and kidney pie to an old time-honored recipe.
And to honor Ghost Writer's Week, we had someone else write the recipe:
Easterween's March Steak and Kidney Pie
Prep time: about an hour
Cooking time: about two hours
Ingredients
1lb 5oz stewing steak
10oz kidney, cow or lamb (we prefer lamb)
4oz plain flour
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
half tbsp tomato paste
5fl oz beef stock
8oz puff pastry
1 egg, beaten for glazing
salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
Most people aren't used to preparing kidney. A little kidney taste goes a long way, so most folks like it pretreated to take the edge of the flavor. First trim out the tubes and slice it into small pieces (quarter of an inch or smaller). Then rinse it until the odor is tamed a bit. Some folk let it soak in warm water for a while.
Steak: Dice it into cubes about half an inch across.
Egg: beat it up
Onion: Chop up fine
Parsley: Chop up fine
Pastry: If you buy it in cans, take it out and roll it out to about an eighth of an inch. If you don't...you're on your own!
Method
1. Heat the oven to 425F (also known as 220C or Gas Mark 7).
2. Drop the steak and kidney into a bowl and sprinkle in the flour and salt and pepper.
3. Add the meat mix, onion and parsley into the pie dish.
4. Mix the tomato paste and stock in the dish and add enough water fill the dish halfway to the top.
5. Pack rolled-out pastry along the bottom of your pie pan.
6. Pour the meat and gravy mix into the pie pan
7. Moisten the top of the pan and put more pastry over the top to make a lid. Cut away any excess and crimp the edges.
8. Cut a half-inch hole in the middle to allow the steam to escape.
9. Brush the pie crust with the beaten egg and then bake in the oven for 30 minutes until the pastry is golden and risen.
10. Lower the the heat to 350F (that's 180C or Gas Mark 4) and cook the pie for another hour and a half until the meat is tender. If the pastry starts to get too dark, don't reduce the heat or stop cooking—just cover it with foil.
Results:
Organmeatalicious!
So we honor National Kidney Month--which is one of the great March celebrations--in our own way. We know it's basically something to do with renal health, but in March, we make steak and kidney pie to an old time-honored recipe.
And to honor Ghost Writer's Week, we had someone else write the recipe:
Easterween's March Steak and Kidney Pie
Prep time: about an hour
Cooking time: about two hours
Ingredients
1lb 5oz stewing steak
10oz kidney, cow or lamb (we prefer lamb)
4oz plain flour
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
half tbsp tomato paste
5fl oz beef stock
8oz puff pastry
1 egg, beaten for glazing
salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
Most people aren't used to preparing kidney. A little kidney taste goes a long way, so most folks like it pretreated to take the edge of the flavor. First trim out the tubes and slice it into small pieces (quarter of an inch or smaller). Then rinse it until the odor is tamed a bit. Some folk let it soak in warm water for a while.
Steak: Dice it into cubes about half an inch across.
Egg: beat it up
Onion: Chop up fine
Parsley: Chop up fine
Pastry: If you buy it in cans, take it out and roll it out to about an eighth of an inch. If you don't...you're on your own!
Method
1. Heat the oven to 425F (also known as 220C or Gas Mark 7).
2. Drop the steak and kidney into a bowl and sprinkle in the flour and salt and pepper.
3. Add the meat mix, onion and parsley into the pie dish.
4. Mix the tomato paste and stock in the dish and add enough water fill the dish halfway to the top.
5. Pack rolled-out pastry along the bottom of your pie pan.
6. Pour the meat and gravy mix into the pie pan
7. Moisten the top of the pan and put more pastry over the top to make a lid. Cut away any excess and crimp the edges.
8. Cut a half-inch hole in the middle to allow the steam to escape.
9. Brush the pie crust with the beaten egg and then bake in the oven for 30 minutes until the pastry is golden and risen.
10. Lower the the heat to 350F (that's 180C or Gas Mark 4) and cook the pie for another hour and a half until the meat is tender. If the pastry starts to get too dark, don't reduce the heat or stop cooking—just cover it with foil.
Results:
Organmeatalicious!
I'll finish this later...
In honor of National Procrastination Week, we here at Easterween will
[to be continued]
A new month
Time marches on, and March is a time for remembering various causes. This month is, among other things, National Kidney Month, National Caffeine Awareness Month, International Mirth Month, and Adopt a Rescued Guinea Pig month.
We at Easterween like to celebrate everything we can, so here's how we have rolled all these celebrations into one day: On Sunday March 1st, we brewed a big pot of coffee and a big pot of tea, brunched on steak and kidney pie, and laughed all the way to a small town in Virginia to adopt two guinea pigs--a lavender and a roan teddy pig.
Now if we could only find a way to include Expanding Girls' Horizons in Science & Engineering Month into the outing, we'd have it made. Perhaps we'll encourage the girl of the house to build a Cavy Cave ...
We at Easterween like to celebrate everything we can, so here's how we have rolled all these celebrations into one day: On Sunday March 1st, we brewed a big pot of coffee and a big pot of tea, brunched on steak and kidney pie, and laughed all the way to a small town in Virginia to adopt two guinea pigs--a lavender and a roan teddy pig.
Now if we could only find a way to include Expanding Girls' Horizons in Science & Engineering Month into the outing, we'd have it made. Perhaps we'll encourage the girl of the house to build a Cavy Cave ...
Friday, February 27, 2009
That was the week that was
...and so we come to the end of another banner week.
For those of you who missed the memo, this was a week designated to raise awareness of all kinds of things. The question is...were the organizers aware of what other people were doing?
For example, did the observers of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (22-28th February) know that it was also National Pancake Week (22-28th February)?
Did anyone else see the irony in Telecommuter Appreciation Week (24th February - 1st March) coinciding with American Crossword Puzzle Week (27th February - 1st March)?
No? Was it just us?
Fair enough. Anyway, we hope y'all are recovering from yesterday (which was National Chili Day) and git along with your verse writing before Texas Cowboy Poetry Week is over.
Yeee-haw!
For those of you who missed the memo, this was a week designated to raise awareness of all kinds of things. The question is...were the organizers aware of what other people were doing?
For example, did the observers of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (22-28th February) know that it was also National Pancake Week (22-28th February)?
Did anyone else see the irony in Telecommuter Appreciation Week (24th February - 1st March) coinciding with American Crossword Puzzle Week (27th February - 1st March)?
No? Was it just us?
Fair enough. Anyway, we hope y'all are recovering from yesterday (which was National Chili Day) and git along with your verse writing before Texas Cowboy Poetry Week is over.
Yeee-haw!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Feb 25th - A Day of Contradictions
As if we need further proof that the world is full of contradiction, today is significant in four completely different ways.
It is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent and a day traditionally given over to fasting and mortification of the flesh.
It is also National Clam Chowder Day, celebrating a well-known comfort food, designed to warm and sustain the flesh.
Also in the warm-and-fuzzy department, some bright spark decided that Feb 25th will be National Cuddle Day this year.
And back on the dark side, it's also Pistol Patent Day--a celebration of Samuel Colt's intellectual property rights on an instrument of death. His 1836 patent No. 138 guaranteed Colt ownership of a pistol design with a six-chambered revolving cylinder full of bullets.
So what is the common ground between these four celebrations? Beats us. We'll just wish you a happy day of mortifying the flesh, warming it, pressing it against someone else's, and pumping it full of lead.
How's that for a cheery greeting?
It is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent and a day traditionally given over to fasting and mortification of the flesh.
It is also National Clam Chowder Day, celebrating a well-known comfort food, designed to warm and sustain the flesh.
Also in the warm-and-fuzzy department, some bright spark decided that Feb 25th will be National Cuddle Day this year.
And back on the dark side, it's also Pistol Patent Day--a celebration of Samuel Colt's intellectual property rights on an instrument of death. His 1836 patent No. 138 guaranteed Colt ownership of a pistol design with a six-chambered revolving cylinder full of bullets.
So what is the common ground between these four celebrations? Beats us. We'll just wish you a happy day of mortifying the flesh, warming it, pressing it against someone else's, and pumping it full of lead.
How's that for a cheery greeting?
Job's birthday approaching
Poor Job had a tough time of it, back in the Old Testament. God chose him to prove to the cynical that human devotion was not based on getting material rewards. God's methods were harsh--he took away Job's cattle, his home, his family, and his health. And Job remained devout.
But he didn't remain happy about it. In fact, he literally cursed the day he was born in Job 3:3:
Let the day perish wherein I was born...Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it...let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.
Some people say that this prayer was answered--because Job's birthday was February 30th. This tradition was recorded in the Memoirs of the American Folklore Society in 1925 as a common belief among black people in Maryland.
We'd suggest raising a glass to Job this February 30th, but we can't write it on our calendars, so we're sure to miss the celebration.
But he didn't remain happy about it. In fact, he literally cursed the day he was born in Job 3:3:
Let the day perish wherein I was born...Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it...let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.
Some people say that this prayer was answered--because Job's birthday was February 30th. This tradition was recorded in the Memoirs of the American Folklore Society in 1925 as a common belief among black people in Maryland.
We'd suggest raising a glass to Job this February 30th, but we can't write it on our calendars, so we're sure to miss the celebration.
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