Friday January 19, 2018

Welcome to the Wannaskan Almanac for Friday, the 19^th of January.

The new moon was born on Tuesday, the 16^th, but it’s almost impossible to find the crescent on its birthday. The photo above was taken in full daylight near Paris. It was made when the new moon was zero seconds old. The gaps in the curved line are caused by the craters and mountains of the moon.

According to Old Joe’s Almanac, it’s the best day for putting your affairs in order, renewing your placebo prescriptions, replying to unopened letters, and firing all  the minions you wish you had.

It’s the feast day of St. Fillan, a Scottish monk active in the eight century in the east of Scotland. He was abbot of a monastery there and worked many cures and miracles, most famous being the time a wolf killed the ox Fillan used for working around the monastery. Fillan put a curse on the wolf and it had to do the ox’s work for the rest of its life. According to folklore, Fillan was able to make his forearm glow, enabling him to study his manuscripts late into the night.

Fillan is the patron of the mentally ill. Up into the 19^th century, such people were dunked in St. Fillan's Pool, bound and left overnight tied to the font or possibly to a pew in the ruined chapel. If the bonds were loosed by morning it was taken as a sign that a cure had taken place.

It’s the birthday in 1736 of James Watt, not to be confused with James Watts, also born on this day, but in 1904. James Watt is the father of the Industrial Revolution, while James Watts is the father of lobotomy.

Also born today in 1807 was Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War. By an amazing coincidence, today is also Confederate Heroes Day. Workers in Texas get the day of if it coincides with Martin Luther King Day. Sorry folks, not this year.

On this day in 1770 the Battle of Golden Hill took place in Lower Manhattan. In the years before the Revolution, groups of citizens calling themselves Sons of Liberty, formed in all the colonial cities to protest the actions of the British government. They set up liberty poles which the British soldiers kept chopping down. Finally the Sons in New York put iron bands around the pole. The soldiers blew this one up and started posting handbills calling the Sons terrorists. A large group of Sons surrounded the handbill posters at Golden Hill and were leading the soldiers off to jail when reinforcements arrived. Bayonets were drawn and a scuffle took place, with bruises and contusions distributed on both sides. Eventually a group of officers arrived. The soldiers were released and everyone went home. In February a final liberty pole went up. It was not molested.

The battle took place just weeks before the Boston Massacre where a cobblestone circle in downtown Boston marks the spot. Golden Hill has been forgotten I would guess, because no one died and there was no trial afterwards. The city of New York put a plaque on a building commemorating the battle, but the building was later torn down and the plaque disappeared. I wonder if anyone has looked in the British Museum.

Today’s poem is by Chairman Joe:

In The Soul's Station

The neighboring train pulls out,
And my mind goes with it.
My body, with a jolt, is left behind.

The sun arises, says my mind.
My body feels the world's cyclonic wind.

Father John shares the body and the blood.
Bread, says my mind.
Wine says my body.
The soul, timid and shy,
Thinks nothing, feels nothing,
Absorbs everything.


Please check back on Sunday for Sunday Squibs: Aphorisms, Epigrams, and bon mots, selected from the Tweets of @jmcdonnell123