10/31 is Samhain (north)/ Beltane (south) / Halloween (sundry)
~~ Samhain
Today is Samhain in the northern hemisphere, and Beltane in the southern one. This is an ancient Celtic festival marking the end of harvest season and the beginning of winter. Some refer to such festivities and the like as Celtic Pagan, Pagan Celtic or simply Pagan. This is completely wrong, so bad, in fact, that it is beyond wrong. Pagan was originally ancient hate speech used as a hash tag for the "other" and not ever by any of those to whom it was applied.
The term pagan comes to us from the beginning of the Christian ascendancy in fourth century Rome where it referred to those practicing religions other than Christianity and/or Judaism. It was derogatory, but a lot of the Roman military and mercenaries were, at that time "pagan". Once past that barrier, and for most of European history, it was used to indicate those who must be converted or exterminated and whose religions and all related observances and cultural artifacts were to be eliminated and destroyed. A good example is the "Northern Crusades". The same "convert or kill" (or sometimes enslave) ideology was applied to all those not under a Christian king, regardless of whether or not they practiced a religion, by the Bull Dudum Siquidem and assorted related Bulls.
As part of the conversion campaign, the church used a scheme whereby they co-opted all of the major holidays and festivals of the "others". Those such as Yule associated with the winter equinox were supplanted and replaced by Christmas, the spring festivities like Eostre were submerged and subsumed into Easter. Samhain was replaced by a combination of two special "holidays" All Hallows, and All Hallows Eve. That effort largely failed as All Hallows Eve devolved into Halloween, which is quite secular and commercialized. Through it all, Samhain, in an altered and diluted form survived in memory, language, and among some modern celebrants.
Dia de Los Muertos Is actually November first and second, but a lot of places and people have unoficially extended it to include October 31 as well.
On this day in history:
0683 -- The Kaaba suffered severe fire damage.
1517 -- Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to a church door.
1822 -- Emperor Iturbide tried to dissolve the Mexican Empire's congress.
1863 -- General Duncan Cameron's troops started the Invasion of the Waikato.
1913 -- The first automobile highway across the US was dedicated
1913 – The Indianapolis Streetcar Strike and subsequent riot began.
1941 -- They finally finished Mount Rushmore
1941 -- The Reuben James became the first U.S. Navy vessel sunk by the enemy in WWII.
1956 -- France and the UK started bombing Egypt to make them reopen the Suez Canal because "all your canal are belong to us"
1984 -- Indira Gandhi was assassinated
2000 -- The first resident crew was ferried to the ISS by the dirty no-good Russkies
2011 -- The human population hit seven billion
Some people who were born on this day:
Some people you don't have to satirize, you just quote 'em.
~~ Tom Paxton
1711 -- Laura Bassi, physician, physicist, and academic who achieved many firsts for a woman in Europe
1760 – Katsushika Hokusai, artist and printmaker
1795 -- John Keats, poet who famously looked into Chapman's Homer
1831 – Paolo Mantegazza, neurologist, physiologist, and anthropologist
1835 -- Adolf von Baeyer, chemist and academic, synthesized Indigo
1848 -- Boston Custer, soldier, died with his brother George at the Greasy Grass
1860 -- Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the US Girl Scouts
1876 -- Natalie Clifford Barney, poet and playwright
1883 -- Marie Laurencin, painter and illustrator associated with cubists
1887 -- Chiang Kai-shek, dictator of the island of Taiwan
1892 -- Alexander Alekhine, chess player and author
1895 -- B. H. Liddell Hart, soldier, historian, and theorist, advocated mobile warfare
1896 -- Ethel Waters, singer and actress
1902 -- Julia Lee, blues singer, songwriter and pianist
1908 -- Muriel Duckworth, feminist, peacenik, activist
1912 -- Dale Evans, singer, songwriter, and cowgirl actress
1922 -- John Baptiste Illinois-Jacquet, saxophonist and composer
1922 -- Norodom Sihanouk, politician, ousted by US for being neutral; replaced with fascist pig Lon Nol
1930 -- Booker Ervin, saxophonist
1937 -- Tom Paxton, singer, songwriter and guitarist
1939 -- Ali Farka Toure, singer, songwriter and guitarist
1945 -- Russ Ballard, singer, songwriter and guitarist
1961 -- Larry Mullen, Jr., drummer and songwriter
1962 -- Raphael Rabello, guitarist and composer
1974 – Roger Manganelli, singer, songwriter, and bass player
1983 – Adam Bouska, photographer and activist, founded the NOH8 Campaign
Some people who died on this day:
More and more we are into communications; and less and less into communication.
~~ Studs Terkel
1723 -- Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, meh
1806 – Kitagawa Utamaro, artist and printmaker
1879 -- Joseph Hooker, general whose name became a slang term for certain camp followers
1926 -- Harry Houdini, a veritable Houdini
1962 – Gabrielle Renaudot Flammarion, astronomer
1984 -- Indira Gandhi, politician
1986 – Robert S. Mulliken, physicist and chemist,
1993 -- Federico Fellini, director and screenwriter, easily an 8.5
1996 – Marcel Carné, director and screenwriter, esp. Les Enfants du Paradis)
2000 -- Ring Lardner, Jr., journalist and screenwriter, blacklistee
2008 -- Studs Terkel, historian and author
2013 -- Bobby Parker, singer, songwriter and guitarist
Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:
First day of the Day of the Dead
Samhain/Beltain
Hop-tu-Naa
Saci Day (Brazil)
Today's Tunes
The Reuben James
Adolf von Baeyer
Boston Custer
Ethel Waters
Julia Lee
John Baptiste Illinois-Jacquet
Booker Ervin (dada mix???)
Tom Paxton
Ali Farka Toure
with Ryland Cooder
Russ Ballard
Larry Mullen Jr.
Raphael Rabello
General Joseph Hooker
Bobby Parker
Oh yeah, Halloween --
Just for grins:
Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. So what's on your mind?
Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com
open thread, samhain, halloween, John Keats, Joseph Hooker, Federico Fellini, Marcel Carné, Tom Paxton, Ali Farka Toure,
Comments
It’s a holiday here in Saxony due to 1517 and Luther’s 95 theses
It’s Reformationstag / Reformation Day, as I found out when I stopped by the doctor’s office to get a prescription renewed and found everything closed.
Good morning LL. Methinks that it wasn't reformed
enough and the reformers too failed in that respect.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Good morning...
Happy mid-Autumn! Hope everyone has had some color in their forests. It has been a good show here this year. Funny how that works. Some years it goes from green to brown and down, but this year is yellow, red, orange, and everything in between. We have hickories around the house and the golden glow fills the house during the day.
more on Samhain...
Hallows Eve - Reina del Cid
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJs9x0gMh4k]
Thanks for the OT and wide variety of music!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Good morning Lookout. Thanks for the information
and for the music.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Scary thing: I voted yesterday.
There were a handful of independent candidates I could vote for, maybe 3 out of ~15 races. Voted to not retain any judges, voted for the legalization of medicinal fungi and a couple of other measures, and left a lot of the damned thing blank.
Was going to fill it out with a Hershey bar, but decided to eat the bar instead, and used a pen. Dropped it off at the local cop-shop dropbox, where they actually had a couple of people pulled over and were shaking them down for whatever reason.
I feel dirty. I mean, actually *dirty*, for having participated in the sham again. I've only missed one election ever since getting old enough to vote, though (when they delivered our April ballots to the smoking crater after the fire), so I guess that my Calvinist upbringing is going to leave me trapped in the Kabuki forever.
For amusement, I downloaded some more of the voter registration stats from the Sec. of State website to see if there are any interesting trends. I now have the complete stats for CO from Jan 2009 to Sep 2022 to play with. I haven't tidied up the chart yet, but it does show pretty well how active voters from both facets of the uniparty have flattened out, and unaffiliated voters like me (green) are now a significant pluraility. You can also see when purple CO transitioned from reddish (rep) to bluish (dem), and how active voters in both parties have declined since the last two shambolic presidential cycles. Kabuki indeed...
Then, to get the noise down (from the numbers varying when voters who didn't bother to vote are purged from the active list to the inactive list after every election), I added in the inactive voters from each party- so the following graph is active+inactive. Much more informative, especially when you contrast the two: 1. back in the teens, the reps were clearly better at getting their voters to come out, 2. and there are a *lot* of inactive voters here lately...
The little bumps remaining represent new voters who register just in time for each election, followed immediately after the election by a drop as voters are purged from the *inactive* list by having missed more than 4 elections, moving out of state, or simply dying off. I'll tidy it up maybe someday, but my inner Calvinist is worn out now. And I need another Hershey bar. And some Castile soap to tame this infernal unclean itch...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Good morning UFS. I have to get ready to vote.
I always vote to show the uniparty and the world that there are those out here who don't consent, which I do by voting for such "other" candidates as I can find, going back to the first election in which I was old enough to vote when I worked to get the Peace & Freedom Party on the ballot and to keep them there.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Yup.
I did much the same this time, and will continue that into the foreseeable future.
I could not vote for anyone from either major party, and the Green party (my preferred alternative) is profoundly dead here, with essentially nobody on the ballot. There was only one write-in Green in the whole state, and not in my district. Green party registration has fallen from its peak registration of 11.5k active voters in 2017 to barely 8.5k as of September 2022. They aren't even worth putting in the graphs... It was slim pickings indeed this time out.
But hey, maybe shrooms will make it. We can hope, anyway.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
This is what I think I posted as just for grins:
Talking Timbuktu - full album
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
What goes around comes around.
I can see the one sq. block of open property
owned by the local Southern Baptist Church.
Today, they are setting up play ground stuff for tonight. Of course, they want to use Halloween to bring in the kids to play with the preacher and deacons, eat candy after prayers, but they had to come up with a name for the Jesus celebration, to the exclusion of pagans. "Fall Festival" is the S.Baptist rename, or is it remake?
Hope everyone enjoys the day celebrating something you sincerely believes deserving. I celebrate a day I woke up!
Take care, one and all!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Indeed, and we are happy that you did.
I personally always check that I am on the proper side of the pavement, or dirt, grass, or what-have-you.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Lol!
Ok...this is funny.
Dear One has a vintage musical instrument. He ordered some parts for it, which arrived at my office. The return label read: "Elderly Instruments". Wtf?!
Anyway, they are setting up the system for a live band for the kiddies. The warm up is heavy metal. I am sure they will switch to gospel just about closing time for me.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Heh, Elderly instruments can, nonetheless,
be quite functional.
There is a genre called xtian rock which is, I presume, insufficiently enjoyable to compete with either metal or gospel.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I am a huge fan
of elderly instruments in good condition (of course), but not whatever the band next door is wailing about. It was so bad, I bugged out a little early. My assistant will no doubt take her kids to listen to the "Hey, you sinners! ba boom ba boom" drivel.
How are they going to avoid trick or treat Halloween candy? I will get the low down tomorrow.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Growing up in a small midwestern town
the only treats we got were popcorn balls, caramel or candied apples and other home made
treats, like fudge. Remember dressing up like a pixie and knocking on the door with the expected
gleeful 'trick or treat' and the elder woman announced : trick! Oh, oh, hadn't rehearsed that bit,
so we did a rendition of row, row, row your boat in 4 part disharmony. The old folks were enjoying
the show - a bit into the cups - but we did get a popcorn ball out of the deal. Where is the candy
corn now? Or tootsie rolls? We haven't had a trick-or-treater here for years. Maybe too spooky?
question everything
And Gawd Forbid
that you should hand out home-prepared treats these days. The local chapter of the local To
ProtectTerrify and ToServeTerrifyDepartmentcult put out a Public Service thing telling parents to trash anything not factory made and sealed, because It Might Have Needles Or Razorblades Baked In. Or weed, or fentanyl, or a jigger of the formaldehyde from that jar with Hitler's brain in it we keep in the back room. Or something. Anyway, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.They stopped short of saying that said parents should SWAT anyone who was giving out homemade treats, but there's a whole new probable cause for ya, amirite? Anyway, we go lights-out and stealth for the evening and avoid the whole damned thing.
I miss the fudge the lady down the street used to make back when the earth was still cooling and I was a smalltown kid. And I didn't mind the razorblades one bit...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.