A Carpe Diem Snapshot:
Here it is at last- the much anticipated super blue moon of August! The girls were rather disappointed that it wasn't actually blue, which just goes to show how closely they have (not) been listening to our natural cycle lessons about this month's moon! I guess they haven't yet become true lunatics (unlike me), but they're young so there's still hope...
Liturgical: Readings for the Memorial of Saint Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church
"He who fears the LORD will do this;
he who is practiced in the law will come to wisdom.
Motherlike she will meet him,
like a young bride she will embrace him,
Nourish him with the bread of understanding,
and give him the water of learning to drink.
He will lean upon her and not fall,
he will trust in her and not be put to shame.
She will exalt him above his fellows;
and in the midst of the assembly she will open his mouth
and fill him with the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
and clothe him with the robe of glory.
Joy and gladness he will find,
an everlasting name he will inherit."
Bishop Barron's Gospel reflections today.
Sanctoral: The Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) today. Bernard was born near Dijon and died in Clairvaux, France. He was of a noble family and received a careful education in his youth. With his father, brother and thirty noblemen he entered the Benedictine monastery of Citeaux. Two years later he led a group of monks to establish a house at Clairvaux, and became its abbot. The monastic rule which he perfected at Clairvaux became the model for 163 monasteries of the Cistercian reform. He was a theologian, poet, orator, and writer. He is one of the last Church Fathers.
The Church also commemorates St. Bernard Tolomei (1272-1348), founder of the Olivetan Congregation of Benedictines.
Human: 1597 First Dutch East India Company ships return from the Far East; 1619 Slavery begins in America when the first known African Americans (approximately 20) land at Point Comfort, Virginia, before being sold or traded into servitude; 1741 Alaska is first sighted by a Russian expedition led by Danish explorer Vitus Bering; 1866 President Andrew Johnson formally declares the US Civil War over; 1968 During the night, 250,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia to put down the Prague Spring; 1993 Oslo Peace Accords are signed after secret negotiations in Norway, a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. is held the next month.
It's the birthday of the gothic horror author H.P. [Howard Philips] Lovecraft, born in Providence, Rhode Island (1890). As a young man, he became a recluse, sleeping during the day and reading and writing at night. And for a long time, Lovecraft had little contact with the outside world, until it occurred to him that he could support himself as a writer.
The Writer's Almanac edition today.
Roman history on this day: 2 AD – on the way to Spain, in Marseilles, Lucius Caesar, son of Marcus Agrippa, grandson of Augustus died. In 17 BC together with his older brother, Gaius, he was adopted by Augustus. In 2 BC he was recognized as an adult and became a youth leader (Princeps Iuventutis) just as his brother had previously. He was buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus.
Natural: 2015--After 108 years, a "message in a bottle" placed in the sea by the UK Marine Biological Association is announced to have been found in April on a beach on the island of Amrum, Germany. This year, Guinness World Records recognized it as the oldest message in a bottle ever found.
It was on this day in 1977 that Voyager 2 was launched by NASA to explore the planets of our solar system and to take the first up-close photographs of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Just before the Voyagers took off, a committee of scientists, led by Carl Sagan, decided to put on board each Voyager a message from Earth in case extraterrestrials ever found them. At the time, the Cold War was at its height, and some members of the committee considered that these spacecraft and their contents might be the last traces of the human race left in the universe after a nuclear war. The Voyagers were each equipped with a gold-plated phonograph containing a variety of earthly sounds, including a heartbeat, a mother's kiss, wind, rain, surf, a chimpanzee, footsteps, laughter, the music of Bach and Mozart, and the Chuck Berry song "Johnny Be Good." Carl Sagan said, "The launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet."
Today, the Voyagers have traveled farther from Earth than any other human-made objects in history. Both have gone well beyond Pluto, the farthest planet from the sun. Voyager 2, which launched on this day in 1977, is currently approaching the outer limits of our solar system, headed toward Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.
Italian: Rossetto (lipstick)
English: tempest
Shakespeare's The Tempest begins with one — a tempest, or a violent and windy storm. The meaning of tempest has expanded over time to include the idea of anger or fighting. A "tempest in a tea pot" means a passionate fight over something that is in fact fairly trivial. For example, a loud argument about whether to use cloth or paper napkins at Thanksgiving could be considered a "tempest in a tea pot" to some.
Quote: "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." --H.P. Lovecraft
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