j f l e c k : : a t : : i n k s t a i n http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/ en-us 2004-12-04T10:15:22-07:00 2004-12-04T17:07:34-07:00 St. Barbara Today we celebrate the feast day of Barbara of Nicomedia, patron saint of gunners.

If you're worried about being hit by lightning or burning up in a fire, Barbara's apparently also got your back. Versatile lass.

The story[1] is that Barbara was something of a beauty, but was uninterested in men, so her father did what apparently good Third Century dads did in such a situation - locked her up in a tower. (Today we try to amend the constitution, but those were simpler times.) I've found different versions of what eventually happened to her. Perhaps he handed her over to the Romans, who executed her. Perhaps it was her dad who lopped off her head. Whatever, apparently he got his comeuppance when he was struck dead by lightning.

In addition to being the patron saint of gunners, she appears to also offer the shelter of her piety to geologists, mathematicians and architects.

[1] Blackburn and Holford-Strevens, The Oxford Book of Days

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/001440.html days John Fleck 2004-12-04T10:15:22-07:00 Cinco de Mayo Years ago, we were visiting my friend David in Oxnard and we headed downtown for Mexican food. Oxnard is one of those Southern California towns where Latin American immigrations has created its own dominant culture, and Mexican food in downtown Oxnard back then was really Mexican food, a string of restaurants in a neighborhood dominated by immigrants.

Before we went, David offered this warning: there will be Mariachi musicians, but they only warm up. They never play.

As we sat down to eat, a Mariachi walked in to the restaurant with his guitar, sliding into a booth by the door. He was resplendent, green with white piping down the side of his pants and that magnificent hat. He plucked a bit at his guitar and chatted with the waitresses. Then another, with a trumpet, blowing quiet and low. It was like this during the whole meal, with the players drifting in and out, picking out a few bars, chatting. When we left, they were standing out by a car on the street.

They only warmed up. They never played.

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000998.html days John Fleck 2004-05-05T08:27:25-07:00 3.14159 Happy Pi Day. Do something special at 1:59 this afternoon (if you didn't already at 1:59 this morning).

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000896.html days John Fleck 2004-03-14T07:36:45-07:00 St. Agnes Today being the day of St. Agnes, we are apparently supposed to put pee in our shoes. Or something. I'm a little unclear on this one.

Agnes was just 13 years old back in the day when (as the Book of Days puts it) "she sang hymns while the executioner was hacking at her neck". Sweet girl, with some fortitude that apparently did not sit well with the Romans. As a result, she's the patron saint of girls, and here's where the pee comes in:


On St Agnes Day. Take a Sprigg of Rosemary, and another of Time, sprinkle them with Urine thrice; and in the Evening of this Day, put one into one Shooe, and the other into the other; place your Shooes on each side of your Beads-head, and going to Bed, say softly to your self: St. Agnes, that's to Lover's kind, Come ease the Troubles of my Mind. Then take your Rest, having said your Prayers; when you are asleep, you will dream of your Lover, and fancy you hear him talk to you of Love.

- Aristotle's Last Legacy

You go first. Really, I'll do it too, but you go first, OK?

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000725.html days John Fleck 2004-01-21T07:13:48-07:00 Resolutions At this time of the making of resolutions, let us remember the words of Samuel Pepys, who was smart enough on this day in 1664 to realize he was over-promising:

At my office til 12 at night, making my solemn vowes for the next year, which I trust in the Lord I shall keep. But I fear I have a little too severely bound myself in some things and in too many, for I fear I may forget some.

Methinks Pepys could have benefitted from a Palm. So home and to bed....

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000678.html days John Fleck 2004-01-05T07:19:37-07:00 St. Francis Xavier Day Interested to discover that India and Pakistan have the same patron saint, St. Francis Xavier, the "apostle of the east". Somehow I doubt that link is sufficient to calm the world's newest nuclear powers. Can't we all just get along?

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000609.html days John Fleck 2003-12-03T09:23:08-07:00 November Slaughter My Book of Days tells me that November is "Tachwedd" in Welsh, which translates as slaughter. "Similarly, the Dutch used to call this month slachtmaand, since beasts were slaughtered in it." Old English similar, though I despair of reproducing it here.

These early November hours
That crimson the creeper's leaf across
Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,
O'er a shield: else gold from rim to boss
And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped
Elf-needled mat of moss.

- Robert Browning

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000551.html days John Fleck 2003-11-01T15:46:54-07:00 Nut-crack night In addition to the more well-known holiday, today is, according to the Book of Days, "nut-crack night" (also known as the "oracle of the nuts"):

A lad and lass each place a nut in the fire; the course of their courtship is predicted by the behavior of the nuts, whether they burn quiety together or jump apart.

This evening also apparently offers the opportunity for divination by cabbage-pulling.

I love holidays.

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000549.html days John Fleck 2003-10-31T06:37:31-07:00 Juan de Capistrano Today is the day that, by tradition, the swallows leave Mission San Juan Capistrano, a day not much celebrated. The swallows' sprint return is a huge deal, but for some reason people don't much like to talk about their departure. Sad omen of coming winter or something, though frankly winter is no particular reason to fret on the coast of what we now call Southern California. Capistrano was a Franciscan who saw the light enough to leave the order and marry, then saw a second light of some sort and left the marriage to go back to the order. His Christian duties included raising an army against the Turks, who no doubt had not seen any of the appropriate light and were therefore worth killing. It's apparently what was done to non-Christians back in the day, though we're thankfully beyond that now - aren't we?

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000534.html days John Fleck 2003-10-23T09:02:56-07:00 Typing Today we celebrate the memory of Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky - scholar, typist and unofficial patron saint of the Internet. It is said that the Episcopalian bishop of Shanghai spent twenty years translating the Bible into the Wenli dialect, disabled by Parkinsons (or was it stroke?) and typing all the while with one finger.

Something far greater than Jonah is there.
Russian Jew American Christian Chinaman
Yoked twenty years and more to your chair.
Who can bear to hear that this is God's plan?

Robert M. Cooper

As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up."

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000519.html days John Fleck 2003-10-15T08:32:40-07:00 October It is now October, and the lofty windes make bare the trees of their leaues, while the hogs in the Woods grow fat with the falne Acorns; the forward Deere begin to boe to rut, and the barren Doe groweth good meat: the Basket-makers now gather their rods, and the fisheres lay their leapes in the deepe.
- Breton, 1626

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000500.html days John Fleck 2003-10-01T08:08:40-07:00 Michaelmas Today being Michaelmas, is the day we would pay our quarterly rent with a goose.

This is one of those marking points, coming on the heels of the equinox - fall harvest, perhaps, in a time when we were more directly attached to the seasons and their implications for our food supply.

We have no goose, alas, but Nora suggested we could throttle one over at the university Duck Pond and bring it home for dinner. The Michaelmas goose is said to be good luck, so this might be worth trying, though I am rather urban and apart from the goose-killing and -gutting skills of my genetic ancestors. Perhaps I'll just have a turkey sandwich for lunch and call it good.

I wonder if the mortgage company would accept a dead goose in lieu of our monthly check?

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000495.html days John Fleck 2003-09-29T07:06:06-07:00 Othello I hate to lose at board games, but there's a tension between that and parental pride when I play Nora.

Othello Game Board

In this case, Nora was playing black and I was playing white. She creamed me. I was very proud.

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000408.html days John Fleck 2003-08-03T18:50:34-07:00 July To my Canadian friends, happy Canada Day.

If the first of July it be rainy weather,
'twill rain more or less for four weeks together.

Looks like we're screwed here in the desert.

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000341.html days John Fleck 2003-07-01T06:08:57-07:00 Tears of Isis Copts, the Christian descendants of ancient Egyptians, celebrate today as the day the Nile rises with the tears of Isis. It's a great example of the linkage between religion and ancient science, as ritual codified and helped retain knowledge - in this case the vital calendrical information about the river's flow across the farmland, brining the vital rich soils that sustained Egypt for millennia.

Of course the gift of the Nile has been reposessed by the Aswan High Dam, though the conventional wisdom about the disaster of that project neglects the several floods and droughts that have been mitigated by its presence.

]]> http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/archives/000327.html days John Fleck 2003-06-18T07:31:31-07:00