Tuesday's child is full of grace

Tomorrow I will be 48 years old.

I cannot believe that, but it's true.

48

President Johnson's Great Society started the year which also witnessed the death of Winston Churchill; civil rights marches in Alabama; the first Marines sent into Vietnam; the Astrodome opened; NASA had Gemini and Mariner, as well as other projects running full blast; Maldives independence; Social Security Act of 1965; Watts; Jefferson Airplane; India and Pakistan go to war; Billion Dollar Betsy; Tom & Jerry; Thunderbirds; Gateway Arch; Norman Morrison; Rhodesia; Pillsbury Doughboy; Blackout; UNDP; Asterix-1; Race Relations Act; A Charlie Brown Christmas.

There were 3,334,874,000 people in the world in 1965 and now the population is estimated to be 7.072 billion - more than doubled in the last 48 years.  It is thought that the world population hit one billion in 1804 and two billion 123 years later, in 1927, and three billion 33 years later in 1960.  Current projections are that we will reach eight billion by 2030 and 10 billion by 2050.  That should make life interesting.  I'd be 85 if I lived that long.

It was a fascinating year of births and deaths - but I guess that's true each year.  I share my birth day with James Madison, John Butler Yeats, Henny Youngman, Patricia Nixon, Jerry Lewis, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Scott Simon.

Saturday will be the first day of Bacchanalia.  It's not how I'll be celebrating.  It will be a quiet day - the only thing planned right now is dinner with my sister.

March 12, 1939

Today Dad would have been 74.  I looked up the events of the day in the newspaper of record, the Syracuse Herald, as he was born in Syracuse, New York.  Fascinating reading.  Some things never change, just the names.  Notice the sub-head to the article "U.S. Marines in clash with Nippon [Japanese] police" is Hunting Terrorists.  A pope is crowned; the House republicans were a problem :); blizzards and dust storms and war and medical relief flights were all going on.

I find I am actually missing Dad more this year than last, which seems a bit strange, but that's the way it is.  With the help of Wiki, I've been looking at what happened each year he was alive.

On his first birthday, Finland signed the Moscow Peace Tready, ending the Winter War.

On his eighth birthday, President Harry Truman announced the Truman Doctrine.

On his 29th birthday, Mauritius gained its independence; on his 53rd birthday it became a republic within the British Commonwealth of Nations.

On his 54th birthday, the Storm of the Century began.  Janet Reno was also sworn in as the first female Attorney General of the United States.

On his 70th birthday, Bernard Madoff pled guilty to scamming 18 million dollars.  That made his whole day.

On his last birthday, the Fukushima disaster took place.

He shared his birth day with Julia Lennon, the mother of John; Jack Kerouac; Wally Schirra; Edward Albee; Liza Minnelli; Mitt Romney; James Taylor; Darryl Strawberry; and the Girl Scouts.

Odd, wandering thoughts day

Google has a new doodle which led me to the information that this is the 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescope.

400 hundred years. My mind started wandering down a path of thought about all that has happened in the past 400 years, all that human beings have accomplished - the good, the bad, the ugly. Take a look at wiki's list of events for this day in history.

I found a new place to live. Not a house, but it's a nice place. I'm probably moving the weekend of September 12. I've sicced a lawyer on the condo's owners to get out of the lease and get the security back. Nothing is ever simple, is it?

Interesting reading in the Atlantic

One World, Under God by Robert Wright:

There’s no denying that this view threatens the claim that Christians, in worshipping Jesus, recognize God’s one physical appearance on Earth and thus have special insight into divine purpose. Still, as debunkings of scripture go, this one is fairly congenial to religious belief, for it does leave open the prospect of divine purpose generically. In fact, it underscores that prospect. The story of early Christianity highlights a kind of moral direction in human history, a current that, however fitfully, has repeatedly expanded the circle of tolerance, even amity. And if history naturally produces moral insight—however mundane the machinery that mediates its articulation—then maybe some overarching purpose is built into the human endeavor after all.

In any event, whether or not history has a purpose, its moral direction is hard to deny. Since the Stone Age, the scope of social organization has expanded, from hunter-gatherer society through city-state through empire and beyond. And often this expansion has entailed the extension of mutual understanding across bounds of ethnicity, religion, or nationality. Indeed, it turns out that formative periods in both Islam and Judaism evince the same dynamic as early Christianity: an imperial, multiethnic milieu winds up fostering a tolerance of other ethnicities and faiths.

Now, as we approach the global level of social organization—and see the social order threatened by strife among these Abrahamic religions—another burst of moral progress is needed. Success is hardly guaranteed, but at least the early history of Christianity and indeed of all Abrahamic faiths gives cause for hope. However bleak a globalizing world may look at times, the story could still have a happy ending, an ending that brings out the best in religion as religion brings out the best in people.

Fractured History Tales

On this day in 1002... King Ethelred II, also known as Ethelred the Unready, ordered the murder of all Danish people living in England. He had been fighting with the Danes since 991, the beginning of his reign, and I guess he had just had enough. Seems a bit extreme to me. He ended up having to run away, to Normandy, in 1013, when Sweyn Haraldsson (yes, he was a Dane) whooped his ass in response to the massacre (and just because he could) and conquered England. But not for long. Ethelred returned to England in 1014 when Haraldsson died, only to die two years later in London.

Ethelred is also famous for taking a dump in the baptismal font when he was a baby. Most believe this is not a true story. But it's funny so I'm going to go right on believing it.

Ethelred married, thirdly, Emma of Normandy, whose big brother Robert helped him when Sweyn kicked his ass outta England. When the Bastard (no, not Ethelred, William) wanted to be King of England, he claimed his right by way of Ethelred being his great-Uncle.

Don't think I would have gone about bragging a familial connection to this guy. But then I've never wanted to be King of England. For what it's worth, I think William's military ability meant more in the long run, anyway.

Ethelred's reign is responsible for the foundations of the grand jury system we know today.

This is also the anniversary of the birth of an ex-boyfriend and current friend who is turning 50 today.