wildaspie

1. 1620: Peregrine White was the first child born in New England to English parents.
2. 1789: New Jersey became the first State to ratify the Bill of Rights.
3. 1889: Edwin Hubble, American astronomer, was born.
4. 1893: The US Supreme Court ruled that the Great Lakes and their connecting waters constitute ‘high seas.’
5. 1910: Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Russian novelist, died.
6. 1959: Ford stopped production of the unpopular Edsel.
7. 1966: The musical “Cabaret,” with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, opened on Broadway.
8. 1984: The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Project is founded.
9. 1985: Microsoft released Windows 1.0 for personal computers.
10. 2006: Nintendo’s Wii game system debuted to mobs of prospective buyers.
11. Great American Smokeout
12. Absurdity Day
13. Universal Children’s Day

In this season of remembrance and thanksgiving, a common but seldom noted tradition is the Dumb Feast.

A Dumb Feast is a way to show that those separate from the family due to distance, duty, or death are not forgotten.  Most often, their continued presence in the hearts and thoughts of those celebrating is shown by setting an extra place at the gathering’s table, just as if the missing party will arrive and partake of the meal with hir loved ones.

In some cultures, food is even portioned to the extra setting; this has old roots in sacrifice gestures, when, despite scarcity of food, it is still shared with the memory – spirit – of those who cannot attend in the flesh.  It also happens sometimes that at the end of the meal, the offering is burned, with the thought that the smoke will carry the thoughts of love and well-wishes to the absent, wherever they may be.

On September 23, 1518, the Royal College of Physicians was established in London to protect citizens from medical charlatans and quacks.

The term “quack” was not always used to denote a fraudulent physician. During the bubonic plague epidemics in Europe, doctors brave enough to treat the ailing used protective measures similar to those used today, even though they did not yet understand how the disease was spread.

Heavy boots, long coats and gauntlets (long heavy gloves) protected them from the fleas that transmitted plague from rats to people and from person to person. They also wore respirators: cones of leather or stiff linen to filter the air, stuffed with aromatic herbs like rosemary, which minimized their olfactory exposure to the unsavory side effects of the sickness.

These respirators looked like beaks, giving the doctors an avian appearance. Thus the term “quack” – like a duck – was born.