Ridley's Believe It Or Not—October 12,
2014: Trust your Weekend is a good oneyou’re your college teams
won on Saturday and that you enjoy the
holidays and factoids and quotes from Winston
Churchill and the pastor of the North Texas Church of Freethought, with a smile
on your sunscreened face, sharing a sausage pizza with friends and family,
blessed with a positive attitude, and secure in the knowledge that if you want
to find a gift for a memorable event or the coming Christmas, you know that the
Alaskanpoet can provide you with a unique customized poem tailored to the event
and the recipient. Sloppy win for the Cardinal against the Cougars yesterday
but a win and defense looked great and a real nail biter for the Trojans yesterday
removing Arizona from the ranks of the unbeaten.
1. Columbus
Day—celebrating the discovery of North America by Genoese born
Christopher Columbus on this day in 1493, some 500 years after Leif Erickson
and improved to the status of a federal holiday in 1937, but observed on the
second Monday which means no mail tomorrow.
2. Freethought Day-- celebrated by free thinkers and secularists
to mark the anniversary of the effective end of the Salem Witch Trials on this
day in 1692—sad period of religious hysteria in the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts.
3. UN Spanish
Language Day—created by UNESCO in 2010 to promote multilingualism and to
promote equal usage of the six official languages of the UN but not the seventh
endless babble.
4. Old
Farmers Day—celebrating the hard
work of farmers and the harvests they create which give us the food surplus to
allow the poets, artists, priests, warriors, craftsmen and sadly lawyers to
exist.
5. National
Gumbo Day—celebrating that great Cajun dish, especially when made with
copious amounts of Tabasco Sauce
On this day in
a. 1773 America’s first insane asylum
for “Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds opened in Virginia, reasonably
close to the future sight of Congress and the White House and all federal
buildings in between.
b. 1810 the first Oktoberfest was held
in Munich to celebrate the marriage of the Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to
Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen—still celebrated today and not just
in Munich.
c.
1928 an iron lung respirator was used for the first time at Children’s
Hospital in Boston—thank God Salk and Sabin removed the scourge of polio with
their respective vaccines thirty some years later.
d. 2000 the USS Cole was badly
damaged in Yemen by two suicide bombers, killing 19 crewmen and wounding 39
others.
Why the Salem Witch Trials finally
ran their course sadly not before taking 20 innocent victims and two dogs to
their deaths: “Winston Churchill once
remarked that 'What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.'
Churchill also said that 'You can always count on Americans to do the right
thing – after they’ve tried everything else!'
For, you see, eventually, at
some point, and to some degree, people simply have to act rationally. You
have to open doors before walking through doorways. You have to turn the key
in your ignition before you drive home today. No amount of faith and prayer
can allow anyone to do otherwise. And despite all the rhetorical flourishes
of the superstitious believers, that’s the way it’s always been and always
will be. Indeed, this truth is becoming more and more important every day.
It’s also the essence of the
role of the law: to hold people to a standard of dealing with one another
that’s based on reason. That’s the basis of every shall and shalt not that
there is, not some divine command of 'do it or else.” Dr. Tim Gorski, Pastor of the North Texas
Church of Freethought Amen to that!
Please enjoy the 140 character poems
on events of interest on my twitter account below (if you like them, retweet
and join almost 150 growing followers and please follow me) and
follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my
blogs--click on links below. Go to www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com for
Ridley’s Believe It Or Not—This Day In History, poems to inspire, touch, emote, elate and
enjoy and poems on breaking news items of importance. Go to Rhymes
On The Newsworthy Times for comments on important and breaking news
events that should be of interest.
© October
12, 2014 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
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