1792
Maximilien Robespierre presents the petition of the Commune of Paris to the Legislative Assembly, which demanded the formation of a revolutionary tribunal.
1793
French Revolution: a levée en masse is decreed by the National Convention.
1812
War of 1812: American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit without a fight to the British Army.
1819
Seventeen people die and over 600 are injured in cavalry charges at a public meeting at St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, England.
1841
U.S. President John Tyler vetoes a bill which called for the re-establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members riot outside the White House in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history.
1869
Battle of Acosta Ñu: A Paraguayan battalion made up of children is massacred by the Brazilian Army during the War of the Triple Alliance.
1896
Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in a tributary of the Klondike River in Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
1920
Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians is hit on the head by a fastball thrown by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees, and dies early the next day. Chapman was the second player to die from injuries sustained in a Major League Baseball game, the first being Doc Powers in 1909.
1929
The 1929 Palestine riots break out in the British Mandate of Palestine between Arabs and Jews and continue until the end of the month. In total, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs are killed.
1942
World War II: The two-person crew of the U.S. naval blimp L-8 disappears without a trace on a routine anti-submarine patrol over the Pacific Ocean. The blimp drifts without her crew and crash-lands in Daly City, California.
***
“Frank Conroy, who directed the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for almost twenty years, reportedly believed a workshop wasn’t a success if nobody cried..."--Iowa Writers’ Workshop professor and alumnus Garth Greenwell
***
All this and Karen Bass:
***
Germany’s broadband woes did not result from a lack of capital or engineering talent at Deutsche Telekom. Instead, government ownership produced a fundamental alteration of the company’s incentive structure. With state backing, Deutsche Telekom had fewer reasons to take risks, cannibalize its own infrastructure, or accept short-term losses in favor of long-term technological leadership and more reasons to cultivate political relationships that protected its existing revenue streams. This dynamic is reliably produced by partial government ownership of private companies.
***
Cardinals rookie Joshua Báez made MLB history by hitting a home run in each of his first three career plate appearances.
***
Sunday: the Canaanite
The gospel of the Canaanite woman: She is a Hellenistic Syro-Phoenician woman, a descendant of the ancient Canaanites, the bitter biblical enemies of Israel whose paganism had often led Israel into idolatry. Interestingly, Melchizedek is an old Canaanite name.
In the Bronze Age, between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago, a diverse group of people called the Canaanites lived in the Middle East. Despite their culture and influence — one of the only golden calf idols discovered was found in the Canaan seaport of Ashqelon — they left behind little information about themselves. Other civilizations made records of them, such as the Greeks, Egyptians and the authors of the Hebrew Bible. But, without Canaanite texts to cite, scholars view the ancient people as a bit of an enigma. The Hebrew Bible offers one explanation for the destiny of the Canaanites: annihilation. The Israelites, per Deuteronomy 20:16-18, were commanded to “utterly destroy” the cities of various tribes, including the Canaanites.
DNA was examined from five Canaanite people who lived 3,750 and 3,650 years ago. Though the skeletal remains were buried in a hot and humid region along the Mediterranean, the scientists were still able to extract genetic material. They mined the petrous bone, a region of skull behind the ear that's also the densest bone in the body. (The discovery that the tough petrous bone protects DNA like a bank vault has greatly advanced the study of ancient DNA in recent years.)
The geneticists sequenced the Canaanite genome and compared it to genomes of modern people, including Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and others from around the world. The comparison revealed that 90 percent of the genetic ancestry of people in Lebanon came from the Canaanites. (The other 10 percent was of a Eurasian steppe population.)
There was more genetic continuity in Lebanon than in a place like England.
In today's gospel, this woman from this ancient people pleads for the health of her daughter.
Christ ignores her- indeed, I can think of no other situation in the gospels where Christ does not respond to a direct appeal. Not only does He ignore her, but He also insults her; He states His mission was to the people of Israel (the "children") and not the Gentiles (the "dogs "). This is very local speech, the vernacular of the time. But it is surprising. The usual analysis is that of Christ demonstrating how His mission is really much larger; His mission is the world. (Indeed, the Canaanite is Phoenician, and Tyre is one of their ports, a portal to the world.) The provincial vision is over.
But it is a harsh lesson. Is Christ staging the scene so He can reverse it to make His larger point? Is He testing her? Can man make God change His mind?
No comments:
Post a Comment