Duly Noted: Joan of Arc's (supposed) birthday

A late-15th century depiction of Joan
of Arc. (Wikimedia Commons)

January 6, 1412, is the date legend gives for Joan of Arc's birth. It probably wasn't, though: it would have been common knowledge in fifteenth century Europe that January 6th was the feast of the Epiphany, and as Joan interpreted the voices she heard as guidance on a divine mission, she would not have failed to make the connection had her birthday actually fallen on the traditional date.

Today, Joan of Arc is remembered more for her death at the stake in 1431 than she is for her earlier achievements: she led the campaign to raise the siege of Orléans and participated in enabling the Dauphin to his coronation in Reims in 1429.

Recommended reading:

Régine Pernoud, Joan of Arc: Her Story.

Marina Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism.

Links:

Article on Wikipedia
Short bio & link lists on About.com

Happy New Year!

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min’?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o’ lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!

Have a happy new year, good reader, and hopefully a more prosperous one for all of us than the last has been.

(Complete text of Robert Burns's poem can be found at Project Gutenberg.)

Photo: Accumulated

"Accumulated" (Flickr)

Unless you've been sleeping since Christmas Day, you'll have heard about the blizzard that dumped a whole bunch of snow on the northeastern United States last weekend. I had a snow day on Monday -- which was really a no-brainer since the nearest subway line wasn't running and there was no way in hell I was going to make it to the next-nearest. (Turned out there was no way in hell I would have made it even to the nonfunctional nearest line, but I didn't find that out until I went out for a few groceries.)

So, I took a picture of the snow that built up on the windowboxes out back. Just to give you a sense of scale, each of those boxes is about two feet long and maybe five inches high -- and the snow, as you can see, is taller than the boxes. And just to give you a sense of magnitude, behind those windowboxes is the only side that isn't sheltered.

Duly Noted: Jane Austen's birthday

Just a drive-by posting to say that novelist Jane Austen was born today in 1775.

(Links: Jane Austen on LibraryThing and Wikipedia)

Duly Noted: Plane Crash in Park Slope

If you also read Brownstoner, you might have seen that Green-Wood Cemetery will be unveiling a memorial today to the 134 people killed when two airplanes collided off of Staten Island. The wreckage of one, La Guardia-bound TWA Flight 266, landed on Staten Island (1) near where the collision occurred; the other plane, United Airlines Flight 826, bound for International Airport (now JFK), crashed at the intersection of 7th Avenue and Sterling Place in Park Slope.

Of the passengers and crew on those two flights, only one survived the initial crash. But that survivor -- an 11-year-old boy who had been thrown into a snowbank -- later died; half a dozen people on the ground were also killed.

Weather conditions at the time of the collision were what could be called, at best, sketchy: it had snowed earlier, and rain and fog still lingered (2). And while neither flight had reported any mechanical problems, but the United flight was apparently having trouble with its navigational receivers. Either way, it had strayed a dozen miles off course and into that of the TWA flight.

Witnesses speculated that the United flight's pilots were attempting an emergency landing in Prospect Park. On the face of it, it's not an unreasonable supposition, since the park is only a few blocks away from the crash site at Stirling Place and 7th Avenue, but it's uncertain whether the pilots still had control of the plane.

Further reading:
Wikipedia has an article about the crash; the "References" section contains a few sources not linked to here.

In addition, the New York Times has been running a series of articles about the anniversary.

• "A Collision in the Clouds" (December 12)
• "How It Happened" (December 14)
• "Scarred Roofs and Jet Parts" (December 15)
• "Sights and Sounds" (December 16)
• "50 Years Later, Traces of an Air Crash Linger in Rusty Metal, and Memories" (December 12)
• "The Neighborhood in 1960" (December 13)
• "The Boy Who Fell From the Sky" (December 16)
• "A Little Brother Remembers" (December 16)

The last two articles are about Stephen Baltz, the 11-year-old who survived the initial crash, but died a day later.

Additional stuff:
Brooklyn Public Library's "Brooklynology" blog had a post about the crash, as seen through one photographer's lens; it had not worked its way through my feed reader when I initially published this post.

... I mean it this time

Holy crap, has it been a year?

Well, at least now I have access to a working computer with working internet access while here at work. My ISP at home isn't playing too nice (which for them isn't exactly unexpected), and my browser is arguing with my system. At least there's something I can do about one of those problems.

And yes, I will be back soon! In fact, I have part of a Duly Noted typed which I expect to get out this week. If you don't see it by Thursday -- the anniversary in question -- you can probably assume that I've caught my third bug in under a month.

Getting my Act Together Again

It's been a while, mostly because:

1. I discovered FaceBook.
2. There were some slowness issues on one of the computers I used. (Note the use of the past tense.)
3. This was followed by total failures of both computers that I used a lot, including (perhaps fortunately so, in this case) the one that had been slow. Both have now been replaced.

More news is forthcoming, and I'll see if I can figure out how to schedule some Duly Noteds or something to keep this kind of thing from happening so dramatically again.

Duly Noted: Evacuation Day

On November 25, 1783, British troops left New York City, which they had occupied since 1776.

Links:
Entry for The Battle of Brooklyn in this blog's Duly Noted section
Wikipedia article about Evacuation Day
Wikipedia article describing the history of New York during this period (and section of the main article detailing the city's history)

Duly Noted: Accession of Elizabeth I

I realize I still haven't posted about Rhinebeck a month ago (long story), but I'll just note that November 17 is the anniversary of the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, 450 years ago today.

Links:
Elizabeth I on Who2
Elizabeth I on Wikipedia

A Long Day

I woke up very early this morning -- alarmingly so, even -- to make a 7AM bus. (When I left the house this morning, it was still as much dark as it was light. In October. In New York City.) The bus was heading up to the fiber festival up in Rhinebeck, a good two and a half hours from here. I got back at 8:30 or so, and if I was a little tired then, I'm that much more so now that I'm off my feet and am no longer running on excitement and fiber fumes.

I fully intend to write up a longer post tomorrow, but in the meantime, two photos. First, there's a picture of yarn (in small form to hide the vague blurriness):


And second, a much better picture of some of the foliage up there, which is beginning to seriously turn:

This one is better viewed large and on black.