News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
Stories concerning holidays and seasons
Here is Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 written for the Christmas season of 1734 by J. S Bach.
It is performed by Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists.
Merry Christmas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFnW_CrPUlA
It is 6:03 p.m., EST, Dec. 21, which means winter has started for 2014.
Look at the bright side. The days are going to start getting longer.
The poem below, Landing Of The Pilgrim Fathers, was written by Felicia Hemans, an Englishwoman who lived from 1793 to 1835. Happy Thanksgiving 2014.
Landing Of The Pilgrim Fathers
The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed;
And the heavy night hung dark,
The hills and waters o’er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.
Not as the conqueror comes,
They, the true-hearted came;
Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
And the trumpet that sings of fame;
Not as the flying come,
In silence and in fear;
They shook the depths of the desert gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.
Amidst the storm they sang,
And the stars heard, and the sea;
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthem of the free.
The ocean eagle soared
From his nest by the white wave’s foam;
And the rocking pines of the forest roared–
This was their welcome home.
There were men with hoary hair
Amidst the pilgrim band:
Why had they come to wither there,
Away from their childhood’s land?
There was woman’s fearless eye,
Lit by her deep love’s truth;
There was manhood’s brow, serenely high,
And the fiery heart of youth.
What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faith’s pure shrine!
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found —
Freedom to worship God.
Today is Veterans Day.
The big event in Delaware County will be the 55th Annual Veterans Day Parade which will start in Media, the county seat, at 11 a.m.
Grand Marshal will be Andrew Schiavello of Springfield and the Honor Flight Philadelphia team.
Honor Flight Flight Philadelphia has been giving veterans all-expense paid trips to the memorials in Washington since 2011. The trips are followed by a banquet.
The Delaware County Patriots notes that WPHT 1210 AM Radio Host Dom Giordano will be broadcasting his show, which runs 9 a.m. to noon, live from the steps of the Media Court House.
The Patriots remind all to fly their flags today and to visit this moving tribute to our veterans from Ronald Reagan.
They have also provided this little bit of history:
Veterans Day as a federal holiday:
Originally called Armistice Day to commemorate the signing of the agreement that ended WWI at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918.
Armistice Day was changed to Veterans Day in 1954 which became a day to honor all the men and women who have served in the U.S. armed forces.
It’s 2 a.m., Sunday Nov. 2. Daylight saving time is over and Standard time has begun.
Hopefully, you remembered to turn your clocks back an hour.
Standard time starts and daylight saving ends at 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 2. This is the time of the year when clocks are turned back one hour.
Additionally, everyone is encouraged to check and/or change the batteries on smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.
An Evening With William Bradford, An Eye-witness Account of The Pilgrim Story 1620-21 will be held Saturday, 6-9 p.m., Nov. 1 at the Concord Senior Center, 817 Concord Road, Glen Mills, Pa. 19342.
Tickets are $30 for adults with limited number of $15 discounts for children 12 and under.
The night features Thanksgiving themed refreshments.
Step back into the 17th Century and hear William Bradford share
his eye-witness account of key events in Pilgrim history. You are sure to be entertained and challenged while receiving an accurate rendering of events and new appreciation for this band of Separatists – who they were, what they did and why.
Learn the:
· Real reasons the Pilgrims left England and came to the New World
· Record of the Mayflower journey
· Realities of surviving their first Winter
· Amazing relationship with the Native American Indians
· Power of the Mayflower Compact
· Facts concerning the “First Thanksgiving”
To register for visit the Eventbrite link on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/714805915223252/
The children’s discounts are not available at Eventbrite. For information on how to get one call 484.557.7655 or email AmericanLibertyTours@gmail.com
Hat tip Carris Kocher
Ignore Howard Zinn, Celebrate Columbus — Let us today, this Columbus Day — granted the official observation is Monday — ignore Howard Zinn, who was a very bad historian, and celebrate the guy who, for all intents and purposes, discovered America.
Vinland, after all, never really took.
Howard Zinn was a socialist who wrote a book call “A People’s History of the United States” which used to be able to be read for free at a site, appropriately enough regarding Zinn, called HistoryIsAWeapon.com. It no longer seems to be available there, however.
Zinn claims that America has always been ruled by oppressors — the 1 percenters who own a third of the wealth and keep control by fermenting dissent among the 99 percent who are the rest of us — and starts his claim with Columbus who he says committed genocide on the residents of the West Indies.
It seems to be the theme pushed by the hipster crowd this 2013.
Well, the truth is the Spanish were pretty rough on the native peoples of the Caribbean, something we know from Spanish sources, but the cruelty was obviously not done at the direction of Spanish authorities as steps were taken to stop it when complaints reached them. Further, the native peoples of the Caribbean were not without their flaws either. The name for the Caribbean comes from the Carib tribe, from whence we also get the word cannibal.
And while Columbus was far from perfect he does not appear to be the gratuitously cruel tyrant Zinn and our hipster friends claim him to be. In Columbus’ own words this is what he says about the Lucayan peoples of the Bahamas who Zinn et al alleges he mutilated and slaughtered: “They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor do they murder or steal… . Your Highness may believe that in all the world there can be no better people … they have the sweetest talk in the world, and are always laughing.”
It seems the revisionists are getting their signals crossed somewhere, which is understandable as Zinn is a bad historian.
America is a place that allowed tens of millions of Europeans and Asians to escape the feudalism that infected their homelands and her discovery only deserves to be celebrated. Even Africans should celebrate. Slavery existed in Africa — it wasn’t Europeans doing the slave catching — before the trans-Atlantic slave trade and it was only after the founding of the United States did the push begin to end it. Pennsylvania was one of the first recognized governments in in history, to ban slavery which happened in 1780 in the middle of the Revolutionary War.
Our hipster ironically wants a day named for Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas and there is a point to that as the Bishop is one of history’s good guys. On the other hand, he was the one who suggested that the labor lost due to the death of Indians be replaced by Africans and some credit him with the start of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
History is a bit more nuanced than Zinn and the hipster crowd make it out to be.
One more bit of irony: Zinn’s work was popularized by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck who grew up near Zinn and were family friends. Damon and Affleck are now part of the one-percenter crowd. They have yet to give most of their money to the rest of us, and certainly have not led any crusades to end the tax breaks for performing artists who receive mega millions per film.
The 2014 autumnal equinox is right now 10:29 p.m. EDT, Sept. 22, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac as the sun crosses the celestial equator. Fall has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere, and the days are now shorter than the nights and will continue to be so until the spring equinox.
The celestial equator is a circle concentric with the actual equator that extends infinitely to space. As the Earth has a 23 degree tilt the the northern half tilts towards the Sun during half its orbit and away the other half. The equinoxes occur when tilt switches.