On This Day - January 30th

On this day in the year 1661 of the common era (CE), on the twelfth anniversary of the execution of King Charles I by forces under the command of Oliver Cromwell, which was intended to bring about the end of the Monarchy and the beginning of the short-lived Commonwealth of Free States (otherwise known as the Puritan Republic of England, Ireland and Scottland), the body of Cromwell was exhumed from Westminster Abbey. Cromwell, the onetime Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, was subjected to a mock trial and execution at Tyburn, where his corpse was beheaded and hung in chains outside of Westminster Hall, where it remained for over twenty years with his severed head on a pole...a symbol of the monarchy restored.

On this day in the year 1815 CE the United States Library of Congress is re-established after being destroyed by fire, with the donation of Thomas Jefferson's 6,500 volumes from his personal estate; twenty years later Richard Lawrence misfires while attempting to assassinate president Andrew Jackson in Washington, D.C.; it is the first attempted assassination of a United States president.

On this day in 1862 CE the U.S.S. Monitor is launched; it is the United States Navy's first ironclad warship.

In 1873 CE, Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne, is published in France by Pierre-Jules Hetzel; sixteen years later, according to written notes, the Archduke Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, kills his mistress, the Baroness Marie Vetsera, and then himself in a murder/suicide pact.

In 1894 CE the Pneumatic Hammer is patented by Charles King of Detroit, Michigan.

In 1933 CE President Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor of Germany who forms a government with Franz von Papen, after which, Hindenburg’s former colleague General Erich Ludendorff sends him a letter stating that Hitler, "this accursed man, will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery;" six year years later Hitler threatens Jews during his speech to the German Reichstag and the fire of the holocaust were list.

In 1956 CE the home of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. is bombed; five years later, I Fall to Pieces, is released by Patsy Cline, becoming Billboard’s “Song of the Year.” Fourteen years after that Ernő Rubik patents his Magic Cube, later to be marketed as the Rubik's Cube.

In 2025 CE, global planetary defense procedures were triggered for the first time after the 100-meter asteroid named: 2024 YR4 is found to have a 1.3% chance of hitting Earth in the year 2032 CE.

 

Martin Luther King Day - MLK...Hero and Prophet, an American Saint

Today we celebrate the life and work of the Reverend Doctor, Martin Luther King Jr., the sainted-prophet of our time; his was a voice of conscience, and like so many prophets before him, he was he was murdered for speaking the truth, assassinated in service to the good. 

Martin Luther King Jr. wore the mantle of a prophet, not in the sense that he saw the future (though he did foresee his assassination); prophecy is not prognostication, assessing likely probabilities may be a tool of the prophet, looking to the future and expressing one’s convictions with the certainty of hope…these may be a part of the prophets stock-in-trade, but a prophet is not a seer or an augur, a diviner, a fortuneteller or a soothsayer.

A person is a prophet who delivers the word of God, and Martin Luther King did just that; he was not a prophet in the sense that he had a unique channel to the creator of the universe, or because God spoke to him in a privileged way. The Reverend Doctor made no pretensions to being that sort of person. He was an ordinary man who answered and extraordinary call, and in so doing he became transformed. Through his transformation he pointed out the way for us to follow,  presenting a key for transformation of ourselves and thereby society-at-large, for taking Hobbesian world we have inherited, with nature red in tooth and claw, and making it into something new…the community of the beloved, as Martin Luther called it, though he was called away early and left the left the greater portion of that work for the rest of to do.

God speaks to all of us in the same way as God spoke to the Reverend Doctor, this is one of the things that the he spoke to us about, he clarified the responsibility we each bear, to listen to the demands of our conscience when we hear it speaking in our hearts; he called on us to do more than listen…the sainted-prophet called on us to act.

Martin Luther had no more and no less access to supernatural powers than any of us; he was not a medium nor a mediator, what made him different than most (human beings) was the choice he made to comply with the demands of his conscience, which was in fact the voice of God speaking in his heart, he clove to those demands even to the point at which it cost him his life…if he hesitated he did not show he it, he carried the grief of it with the strength of resolve.

Like Jesus whom he followed, the Reverend Doctor loved mercy, strove for justice, and walked humbly through the days of his life; he set an example for the rest of us to follow.

Today we are given countless opportunities to reflect on Martin Luther King Jr.’s likeness, to consider the wisdom of his words, carried in the baritone-tremulo of his golden-prose, to reflect on the life of an American Saint…and its meaning; we are wise to do so.

We are wise to remember the man, Martin Luther King Jr., a rare person, a man whose measure in our society exceeded the ordinary flaws that mark us all as human; he was flawed like the rest of us, and he lived with his flaws even while reaching beyond them.

The Reverend Doctor has transcended death; though he was taken by the assassin’s bullet he lives now in our collective consciousness, in our collective-conscience; he lives in the global psyche, speaking to us from the dimension of myth, a human being who was more than human, a child of God overflowing with grace and wisdom.

Today MLK calls us to service, to share his cup, so that upon drinking from it we may aspire to do the same as he did in our own small way, to live the same as he did and encourage others to do the same.

He spoke truth to power and offered hope to the powerless, and for that he was shot down. He was once considered by the director of the F.B.I. to be the most dangerous man in America and from that status he became our most beloved hero, the prime-exemplar of what it means to be an American, a radical-freedom-fighter, unparalleled and unforgotten.

He was beaten and arrested dozens of times for the crime of seeking justice; his life was threatened daily. His reputation was smeared without regard for the truth, or appreciation for his selfless works. He was killed for his efforts on behalf of the poor and the marginalized, but he was not destroyed…he was and continues to be an example to us all.

The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., our prophet; he still points the way, lighting the long journey along the arc-of-justice.

 

 

On this Day - January 16th

On this day in the year 27 before the common era (BCE), Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian is granted the title Augustus by the Senate and the people of Rome; five hundred and seventy-seven years, in the year 550 of the common era (CE), king Totila of the Ostrogoths conquers Rome after a long and deadly siege. Bribery was the means he used to achieve his end.

In the year 1412 CE the Medici family is appointed the official banker of the Papacy.

In 1547 CE, Ivan the Terrible, at the age seventeen, crowns himself the first Tsar (Caeser) of Russia.

In 1572 CE, Thomas Howard, the fourth Duke of Norfolk is tried and convicted of high treason for his part in the Ridolfi plot to restore Catholicism in England; nine years later the English Parliament passes laws restricting Catholicism.

In 1605 CE the first edition of El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (Part One of Don Quixote), by Miguel de Cervantes is published in Madrid, Spain.

In 1865 CE, General William T. Sherman issues Field Order #15, redistributing confiscated Southern land to newly freed Black families in forty-acre plots. This commitment to redistribution of Southern wealth to the families that generated it was only partially fulfilled before being mostly rescinded. The unfilled promise sometimes referred to as Forty Acres and a Mule, plank in the valid legal argument for restitution to be paid to the families of formerly enslaved people.

In 1919 CE the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution is ratified, authorizing the prohibition of alcohol.

In 1940 CE my mother was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In 1944 CE, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, future president of the United States, takes command of Allied Invasion Force in London; one year later Adolf Hitler moves into the Fuhrer-Bunker, his underground headquarters in Berlin where he lives until his suicide seventy-five day later, cowardly denying the world justice even while ridding it of a great evil...himself.

In 1962 CE shooting begins on Dr. No, the first film in the James Bond franchise based on books written by Ian Fleming, with Sean Connery in the starring role as Agent 007; three years later the Outer Limits airs its last episode on ABC.

In 2016 CE a zinnia is grown in space aboard the International Space Station, the first flower.

 

Observation - January 10th, 2025, Thursday

the Isley Brothers playing

slow jams and funk on the stereo

red beans in the crockpot cooking slow

with berbere spice and red-pepper-heat

 

the sound of shovels scraping cement

the twirling blue-cherries of the ambulance

parked across the street

 

the sun’s arc is lengthening

each and every day

incrementalism is progress

            in January