history

February 3 in History

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Today is my mother’s birthday. Rena taught me to read, to write, and was my first audience … and she still is my first audience. Happy birthday, Mom!

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Unrelated to the above, today is “the Day the Music Died,” Don McLean’s memorable phrase for the day that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died with pilot Roger Peterson in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. Today is the 58th anniversary of an event that introduced an absence into the iconography of rock.
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James Joyce Celebrates His Birthday

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

February 2, 2017, is the 135th anniversary of the birth of James Joyce (above).

In his huge biography, Richard Ellmann notes in several places that Joyce found his own birthday to be a topic most fascinating (he made certain that his novel Ulysses was published on his 40th, in 1922) and he tells how this affected his relationship with another writer, James Stephens.
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February 2 in History

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Today is Candlemas, the day that commemorates the presentation of the infant Jesus at the Temple, 40 days after the birth of Jesus. It corresponds in date to many mid-winter celebrations including Lupercalia and Imbolc, many of which mark the middle of the season and look forward to the arrival of spring.

Above is a portion of a painting from around 1535 titled The Presentation of Christ and the Purification of the Virgin Mary in the Temple, which was painted by an anonymous follower of the Renaissance master Juan de Borgoña.
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