Log24

Today is reportedly the dies natalis  of the above author.

Yesterday was the dies natalis , in the Catholic sense,
of the great cartoonist Jack Davis.

From an obituary —

From this journal yesterday afternoon and morning—

Yesterday was reportedly the dies natalis  (in the Catholic sense)
of a former president of New York University.

From the conclusion of The Chronicles of Narnia —

"The term is over:  the holidays have begun. 
The dream is ended:  this is the morning."

Linda Hamilton's related hymn in the 1984 film "Children of the Corn" —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpHeTcisyRo .

In Beijing, it is now 3 AM on March 6,
the dies natalis  of St. Pearl Buck.

(Click to enlarge.)

For this, the dies natalis  of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins,
it seems apt to cite a 1973 master's thesis on what the author
calls multiguity  in Hopkins. 

See also multispeech in this journal.

Related material:

• Hopkins and tic-tac-toe in the above thesis, p. 20.
• Gail Collins's column today
• TIC
• tacto

See, too, the online front page of The New York Times
from 1:54 PM ET today, and, as an example  of multispeech,
yesterday morning's post Rubric's Cuber.

Yesterday's noon post concerned a forthcoming novel
about poetry and intelligence services. Some related backstory:

Harvard Gazette , March 4th, 2013:

"Winfrey will speak on May 30 during Commencement day’s
Afternoon Exercises, which serve as the annual meeting of
the Harvard Alumni Association. The exercises will take place
in the Tercentenary Theatre of Harvard Yard,
between Memorial Church and Widener Library."

On the 1977 Octavia Butler novel Mind of My Mind :

"The first chapter in a history that Butler has already taken up
at a much later stage in Patternmaster  (1976).
Mind of My Mind  begins with Doro, a ruthless mutant
as old as the pyramids who has spent the last 4,000 years
trying to breed a race in his own image. The culminating
experiment is his daughter Mary. But, to Doro's astonishment,
Mary's first instinct on attaining her full powers is to begin
building a mental community— a Pattern— out of the
wretched thousands of Doro's half-telepathic failures
and partial successes. Despite some ragged moments,
Butler is clearly on to a promising vein— something like
Zenna Henderson's 'People' stories without their
saccharine silliness. There's a lot of intrinsic energy in the
Pattern idea, and one wants to see where this erratic, gifted
storyteller will pick it up next."

— Kirkus Reviews , Vol. XLV, No. 8 (1977), p. 453.

See this journal on Butler's dies natalis , the feast of St. Matthias, 2006.

Those who prefer Eastern approaches to religion may consult
Robert Thurman and his daughter Uma.

"Oprah, Uma. Uma, Oprah." — David Letterman

For Saint Irving

* For one interpretation of this phrase, see
  Sicilian Reflections (from this year's Feast
  of St. Irving Berlin on his dies natalis ).

Today's online New York Times on the conclusion of the Roman Catholic Church's "World Youth" week—

"At the end of Sunday’s Mass, the pope announced that the next such event would be in Rio de Janeiro in 2013. Until then, he told those at the service, in Portuguese, that they 'will be swimming against the tide in a society with a relativistic culture, which wishes neither to seek nor hold on to the truth.'*"

* Fact check— This agrees with the Vatican Radio version.

Related material: Relativity Blues and Portal to 1937…

Happy birthday to Mira Sorvino (Harvard '89).

Related material: June 9 and June 10, 2008.

A more dramatic presentation, also done on June 9-10, 2008—

Alicia Keys, "Superwoman" video.

Happy dies natalis  to Miles Davis—

"… nothing ever truly dies. The universe wastes nothing. Everything is simply… transformed."

— Keanu Reeves in the 2008 "Day the Earth Stood Still." (See today's 11:07 AM entry.)

"He who dies with the most toys, wins." –Folk saying

Happy dies natalis  to Jack Ryan.

See also "Space Cowboy."

* Cf. the Wikipedia article with this title—
  An evil art collector steals Data from the Enterprise.
  Alternate title for this post: "A Girlfriend for Data." Some background—

Transit Authority

In memory of
Stanley Kubrick
(overlooked in
yesterday's memorial)

"'Wherever you come near
the human race, there's layers
and layers of nonsense,'
says the Stage Manager in
Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town.'"

— Today's sermon
    from Frank Rich

For more layers, see
James A. Michener's
The Source.

Part I: The Pagan View

From The Fire, Katherine Neville’s sequel to her novel The Eight:

“‘Cat…. realized that we all need some kind of a chariot driver to pull our forces together, like those horses of Socrates, one pulling toward heaven, one toward the earth….’

… I asked, ‘Is that why you said my mother’s and my birthdays are important? Because April 4 and October 4 are opposite in the calendar?’

Rodo beamed a smile…. He said, ‘That’s how the process takes place….'”

Part II: The Christian View

“The Calendar of saints is a traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as that saint’s feast day. The system arose from the very early Christian custom of annual commemoration of martyrs on the dates of their deaths, or birth into heaven, and is thus referred to in Latin as dies natalis (‘day of birth’).” –Wikipedia

The October 4 date above, the birthday of Cat’s daughter, Xie, in The Fire, is also the liturgical Feast of St. Francis of Assisi (said by some to be also the date of his death).

The April 4 date above is Neville’s birthday and that of her alter ego Cat in The Eight and The Fire. Neville states that this is also the birth date of Charlemagne. It is, as well, the dies natalis (in the “birth into heaven” sense), of Dr. Martin Luther King.

For more about April 4, see Art Wars and 4/4/07.

For more about October 4, see “Revelation Game Continued: Short Story.”