May 29, 2024

THOUGHT OF THE DAY:

”How are we to live in an atomic age?” Lewis asks. “I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living…do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Death itself [is] not a chance at all, but a certainty…If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music…not huddled together like frightened sheep.”

― G.K. Chesterton

BIRTHDAYS:

1736 Patrick Henry, American politician, planter and orator who declared to the Second Virginia Convention (1775): “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

1741 Johann Gottfried Krebs, German composer. Prelude & Fugue in C, and Präludium in F, and Ach Herr mich armen Sünder, and Christ lag in Todesbanden (KrebsWV 503/2), and Trio in D-Dur, and Petit Prelude No.1

1781 John Walker, English inventor and chemist who invented the friction match.

1823 John H. Balsley, American carpenter and inventor (a practical folding wooden stepladder)

1826 Ebenezer Butterick, American inventor (tissue paper dress pattern).

1843 Émile Pessard, French pianist, concert and comic opera composer, and teacher. Confidence (Romance sans paroles), Op.4, and Andalouse

1860 Isaac Albéniz, Spanish pianist, conductor, and composer. Asturias.

1874 G. K. Chesterton, English writer.

1897 Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Austrian-American composer. Serenade

1914 Tenzing Norgay, Nepalese-Indian Sherpa mountaineer.

MISCELLANY:

INTERESTING. New Startup Brainbridge Wants to Perform Head Transplants

MAYBE THIS TIME AROUND THERE WON’T BE ANY LOCAL LOW CLOUDS AND FOG? That giant sunspot that supercharged auroras on Earth? It’s back and may amp up the northern lights with June solar storms.