April 2015 archive

Apr 01 2015

On This Day In History April 1

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

April 1 is the 91st day of the year (92nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 274 days remaining until the end of the year. April 1 is most notable in the Western world for being April Fools’ Day.

On this day in 1700, English pranksters begin popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools’ Day by playing practical jokes on each other.

Although the day, also called All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery. Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1 and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes. These included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.

Historians have also linked April Fools’ Day to ancient festivals such as Hilaria, which was celebrated in Rome at the end of March and involved people dressing up in disguises. There’s also speculation that April Fools’ Day was tied to the vernal equinox, or first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, when Mother Nature fooled people with changing, unpredictable weather.

April Fools’ Day is celebrated all around the world on the April 1 of every year. Sometimes referred to as All Fools’ Day, April 1 is not a national holiday, but is widely recognized and celebrated as a day where everyone plays all kind of joke and foolishness. The day is marked by the commission of good humoured or funny jokes, hoaxes, and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, teachers, neighbors, work associates, etc.

Traditionally, in some countries such as New Zealand, Ireland, the UK, Australia, and South Africa, the jokes only last until noon, and someone who plays a trick after noon is called an “April Fool”.

Elsewhere, such as in France, Italy, South Korea, Japan, Russia, The Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Canada, and the U.S., the jokes last all day. The earliest recorded association between April 1 and foolishness can be found in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1392). Many writers suggest that the restoration of the January 1 as New Year’s Day in the 16th century was responsible for the creation of the holiday, but this theory does not explain earlier references.

Apr 01 2015

But I feel MUCH less rampagey now!

Those who know me well understand I’m a great green rage monster barely held in check-

My anger is mostly self directed at my failure to live up to my own expectations of personal performance.  I’m really quite easy to work with.  When I delegate I empower.  This is not a competition.

Besides I would lose.  My self assessment is that most of what I produce is crap I’d much rather forget than analyze.  Like the Impressionists I invite you to examine not the brush strokes but the big canvas.

This is my 10th anniversary as a writer on the Internet (I was born a writer) and earless or not I intend to continue until the gulfs drag me down.

It little profits that an idle king, by this still hearth, among these barren crags, matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race, that hoard and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees!

All times I have enjoyed greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those that loved me, and alone on shore, and when through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades vext the dim sea-  I am become a name for always roaming with a hungry heart.

Much have I seen and known.  Cities of men and manners, climates, councils, governments.  Myself not least, but honored of them all.

And drunk delight of battle with my peers far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met; yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use!  As though to breathe were life.

Life piled on life were all too little, and of one to me scant remains, but every hour is saved from that eternal silence something more, a bringer of new things.

And vile it were for some three suns to store and hoard myself and this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bounds of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle, well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill this labour, by slow prudence to make mild a rugged people, and through soft degrees subdue them to the useful and the good.  Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere of common duties, decent not to fail in offices of tenderness, and pay meet adoration to my household gods when I am gone.  He works his work, I mine.

…

There lies the port, the vessel puffs her sail.

There gloom the dark broad seas.

My mariners, souls that have toiled and wrought, and thought with me; that ever with a frolic welcome took the thunder and the sunshine, and opposed free hearts, free foreheads…

You and I are old.

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.

Death closes all- but something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks.

The long day wanes.

The slow moon climbs

The deep moans round with many voices.

Come, my friends!  ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world, push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds!

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down.

It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles, and see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides, and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth; that which we are, we are-

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses, Tennyson

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