.Good Friday

On this day:
33
Generally agreed-upon date for the historical crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth,
865
American Civil War: Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America.
1882
American Old West: Jesse James is killed by Robert Ford.
1885
Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his engine design.
1888
The first of 11 unsolved brutal murders of women committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London, occurs.
1948
President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
1996
Suspected “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski is arrested at his cabin in Montana, United States.

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History is a novel whose author is the people. -Alfred de Vigny, poet, playwright, and novelist

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A professional comedian has a routine ridiculing a young woman who was made a widow by a gruesome public murder. 

Indecency and cruelty are apparently not covered by the Constitution.

Does society have no option?

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The most intense tornado outbreak on record hit 13 states and southern Ontario in the opening days of April 1974, solidifying its spot in history as the 'Super Outbreak' against which all future outbreaks would be measured.

Experts confirmed nearly 150 twisters over the course of 24 hours

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Don't know this military site but the story is provocative. If true, it raises some questions about how the West should position itself here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-eKb0Mm4zs

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For most of the West, the story is about the individual, their actions, their decisions. However, for many in the non-Western world, the story is about things outside of their agency. 

Is there movement present? Which way?

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Good Friday


How the norms slide and slip, how the bell-shaped curve moves. Two poems about Good Friday that were outliers are now the norm.


Christina Rossetti's Good Friday


Am I a stone, and not a sheep,

That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,

To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,

And yet not weep?


Not so those women loved

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;


Not so the Sun and Moon

Which hid their faces in a starless sky,

A horror of great darkness at broad noon –

I, only I.


Yet give not o’er,

But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock.


And the atheist Housmann's Easter Sunday, taking the human-centric position of the thief:


If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,

You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,

Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright

Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night

The hate you died to quench and could but fan,

Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.


But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,

At the right hand of majesty on high

You sit, and sitting so remember yet

Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat,

Your cross and passion and the life you gave,

Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.