History of the Day: 9/26

Today is the birthday of St. Francis of Assisi, born in 1181. He walked barefoot, talked to crucifixes, and preached to birds. And wrote poems and songs. Here is Sarah McLachlan singing the Prayer of St. Francis.

Another friend of birds and nature who put less dedicated Christians to shame by his life was Johnny Appleseed, born on this day in 1774. He would wander the American frontier, also barefoot, planting apple tree nurseries which would be sold (by barter) to families that would then sell the apples to cider mills. He received his seeds for free (from the mills, which wanted more apples), wore the worst of the clothes he received in barter (giving away the rest to the needy) and wouldn't demand payment if payment couldn't be made.

Towards the end of his career, he was present when an itinerant missionary was exhorting to an open-air congregation in Mansfield, Ohio. The sermon was long and quite severe on the topic of extravagance, because the pioneers were starting to buy such indulgences as calico and store-bought tea. "Where now is there a man who, like the primitive Christians, is traveling to heaven bare-footed and clad in coarse raiment?" the preacher repeatedly asked, until Johnny Appleseed, his endurance worn out, walked up to the preacher, put his bare foot on the stump which had served as a lectern, and said, "Here's your primitive Christian!" The flummoxed preacher dismissed the congregation.

The poet T. S. Eliot was born in 1888 in the U.S., but emigrated to the U.K. He and C.S. Lewis were literary sparring partners who, for some odd reason, thought their beginning initials were better than their first and middle names. Perhaps they were both enamored of another contemporary, J.R.R. Tolkein. Eliot was known for using quotes from other authors, and of this practice said:

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

Here are some excerpts from some of his poems.:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
- The Waste Land

This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang, but with a whisper.
- Hollow Men

A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments....
All shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
- The Four Quartets

Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher, was born one year later. He's often hard to understand, speaking of things like Dasein, "...the being for whom being is a question." Riiiiight. Here's some other jewels to ponder.

A giving which gives only its gift, but in the giving holds itself back and withdraws, such a giving we call sending.

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.

Eliot and Heidegger both seem a little depressed. Blue, even. George Gershwin, born on this day in 1898, was a composer of many, much more happy songs, although he did compose a Rhapsody in Blue, known for having the most complicated clarinet solo in all of orchestral history.

Daniel Boone died 188 years ago today. Known as a prodigious geographer with an infallible, internal GPS, he once said,

I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks.

Lesser known for his animosity towards war, he also said,

May the same Almighty Goodness banish the accursed monster, war, from all lands, with her hated associates, rapine and insatiable ambition!

Levi Strauss, composer of the Blue Jean Danube, died on this day in 1902. Oh ... wait ... I got that mixed up. I mean, creator of blue jeans. I suppose I could wear denim socks to commemorate his life?

Bessie Smith, singer of the blues, died today in 1934. I used to work at this company that brokered trains. One of the ones we sold was Bessie Smith's "Jim Crow Car." Not content to be relegated to the abysmal, segregated cars, Smith purchased her own car for traveling on the rails. Here's one of her songs, When It Rains, which is particularly appropriate for today.

Today is Bureflux, the the greyest of the Whollydays in Discordianism. On this day, Bureaucracy is at its peak. It is an excellent time to perform the Paper Clip Sacrifice.

And, finally, today is the European Day of Languages. Here's one you probably haven't heard of, Anglish. It's what would have been if William the Conqueror had never introduced Romance languages to England. No Greek, Latin, French, etc. For instance, here is Hamlet's To Be or Not To Be in Anglish:

To be, or not to be: that is the ask-thing:
is't higher-thinking in the brain to bear
the slings and arrows of outrageous dooming
or to take weapons 'gainst a sea of bothers
and by againstwork end them?...

Cool, huh? And here is an excerpt from a treatise in Anglish called "Uncleftish Beholding," on atomic theory:

The firststuffs have their being as motes called unclefts. These are mighty small: one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts. Most unclefts link together to make what are called bulkbits. Thus, the waterstuff bulkbit bestands of two waterstuff unclefts, the sourstuff bulkbit of two sourstuff unclefts, and so on. (Some kinds, such as sunstuff, keep alone; others, such as iron, cling together in chills when in the fast standing; and there are yet more yokeways.) When unlike unclefts link in a bulkbit, they make bindings. Thus, water is a binding of two waterstuff unclefts with one sourstuff uncleft, while a bulkbit of one of the forestuffs making up flesh may have a thousand or more unclefts of these two firststuffs together with coalstuff and chokestuff.

...