Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Via White Crane Institute // Today's Gay Wisdom: Thanksgiving
Influenced by the campaigning of author Sarah Josepha Hale, who wrote letters to politicians for around 40 years trying to make it an official holiday, Lincoln proclaimed the date to be the final Thursday in November in an attempt to foster a sense of American unity between the Northern and Southern states. Because of the ongoing Civil War and the Confederate States of America's refusal to recognize Lincoln's authority, a nationwide roll-out of the Thanksgiving date was not realized until Reconstruction was completed in the 1870s. These things happen when you try something new, right?
Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving an official holiday by proclamation in 1863, designating it as the last Thursday of November. Many southern states weren’t supportive of Thanksgiving at first. They were not happy about the federal government telling them to celebrate and felt that it was a “New England” holiday. They were still a bit miffed about the whole Civil War thing.
Despite Lincoln’s proclamation, the date of Thanksgiving was not fixed until 1941, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a bill setting the holiday on the fourth Thursday of November. He moved it up a week to help the economy by lengthening the Christmas shopping season.
Republicans were not down with this change, and retaliated by calling it “Democrat Thanksgiving” (or “Franksgiving”). They celebrated the following Thursday, calling that “Republican Thanksgiving.” Many Republican governors defied the change of date and observed the holiday on the last Thursday of the month, anyway. Republicans have some experience of being childish pre-Obama, it seems.
Macy’s first Thanksgiving Day parade in 1924 was held with live animals from the Central Park Zoo and was billed as “The Christmas Parade.” This was the parade for the next three years.
In 1927, Goodyear sponsored a giant balloon of Felix the Cat, starting that tradition. Until 1933, the balloons were just released to float off into the sky at the end of the parade and $100 was given by Macy’s to whomever found a deflated balloon.
That stopped when a pilot trying to grab a loose balloon crashed his plane and died. Mickey Mouse made his debut seven years later. Kermit the Frog came along in 1985. Snoopy, who joined the parade in 1968, holds the record for most appearances in the parade with seven.
The parade route was moved to its present starting point at 77th and Central Park West in 1946. It was first televised nationally in 1947, drawing respectable viewership. Fifty years ago, the parade was almost cancelled due to the assassination of JFK. But it was felt that the nation needed it so the show went on. Each year, approximately 3.5 million people line the streets to watch the parade live while another 50 million or so watch it on TV.
Sources:
- Steelman
A Taste of Thanksgiving: Curious Facts About America’s Holiday by Christopher Forest
Ancient Ways: Reclaiming Pagan Traditions by Pauline Campanelli and Dan Campanelli
Hawaiian Mythology by Martha Warren Beckwith
The Everything Christmas Book: Stories, Songs, Food, Traditions, Revelry, and More by Brandon Toropov, Sharon Gapen Cook, Marian Gonsior and Susan Robinson
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Via Daily Dharma: Acknowledging What Is
Monday, November 22, 2021
Via Dhamma Wheel // Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering
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Via White Crane Institute // ANDRÉ GIDE
This Day in Gay History
November 22
ANDRÉ GIDE, French writer and Nobel laureate was born (d. 1951); French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947. Gide's career spanned from the symbolist movement to the advent of anti-colonialism in between the two World Wars.
Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposes to public view the conflict and eventual reconciliation between the two sides of his personality, split apart by a straight-laced education and a narrow social moralism.
Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritan constraints, and gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, even to the point of owning one's sexual nature, without at the same time betraying one's values. His political activity is informed by the same ethos, as suggested by his repudiation of communism after his 1936 voyage to the Soviet Union.
In 1908, Gide helped found the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Francaise (The New French Review). In 1916, Marc Allégret, 16, became his lover. He was the son of Elie Allegret, best man at Gide's wedding. Of Allegret's five children, Andre Gide adopted Marc. The two eloped to London, in retribution for which his wife burned all his correspondence, "the best part of myself," as he was later to comment. In 1918, he met Dorothy Bussy, who was his friend for over thirty years and who would translate many of his works into English.
In the 1920s, Gide became an inspiration for writers like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1923, he published a book on Fyodor Dostoyevski; however, when he defended homosexuality in the public edition of Corydon (1924) he received widespread condemnation. He later considered this his most important work.
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|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute "With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989! |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 | ||
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Via Tricycle // ood Is Very Important
Food Is Very Important
By Lewis Richmond
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Via Daily Dharma: Noble Silence
Sunday, November 21, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Walk Like a Buddha
Via Dhamma Wheel
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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - November 21, 2021 💌
When I wake up in the morning, I’m aware of the air, the fan on my ceiling, I’ve got to love them. I am loving awareness. But if I’m an ego, I’m judging everything as it relates to my own survival. The air might give me a cold that will turn into pneumonia. I’m always afraid of something in the world that I have to defend myself against. If I’m identified with my ego, the ego is frightened silly, because the ego knows that it’s going to end at death. But if I merge with love, there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Love neutralizes fear.
- Ram Dass -
Saturday, November 20, 2021
Via White Crane Institute // Do You Believe In God? By Quentin Crisp
Do You Believe In God?
By Quentin Crisp
Well, now, the last time You-Know-Who was mentioned, I began by saying I wouldn't like to say anything that gave offense. And someone in the audience said, "Why stop now?" But this is still something that worries me, so if at any moment anyone finds anything I say offensive, they have only to jump up and down, make a scene, and we will stop.
I believe, like most people, not that of which logic can convince me but what my nature inclines me to believe. This is so of nearly everybody. I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer as petition. It does not seem to me to be sufficiently humble to imagine that whatever force keeps the planets turning in the heavens is going to stop what it's doing to give me a bicycle with three speeds.
But if God is the universe that encloses the universe, or if God is the cell within the cell, or if God is the cause behind the cause, then this I accept absolutely. And if prayer is a way of aligning your body with the forces that flow through the universe, then prayer I accept. But there is a worrying aspect about the idea of God. Like witchcraft or the science of the zodiac or any of these other things, the burden is placed elsewhere. This is what I don't like.
You see, to me, you are the heroes of this hour. I do not think the earth was ever meant to be your home. I do not see the sky as a canopy held over your head by cherubs or see the earth as a carpet laid at your feet. You used to live an easy lying-down life in the sea. But your curiosity and your courage prompted you to lift your head out of the sea and gasp this fierce element in which we live. They are seated on Mars, with their little green arms folded, saying, "We can be reasonably certain there is no life on Earth because there the atmosphere is oxygen, which is so harsh that it corrupts metal." But you learned to breathe it. Furthermore, you crawled out of the sea, and you walked up and down the beach for centuries until your thighbones were thick enough to walk on land. It was a mistake, but you did it.
Once you have this view of your past — not that it was handed to you but that you did it — then your view of the future will change. This terror you have of the atom bomb will pass. Something will arise which will breathe radiation if you learned to breathe oxygen.
So you don't have to worry. Don't keep looking into the sky to see what is happening. Embrace the future. All you have to do about the future is what you did about the past. Rely on your curiosity and your courage and ride through the night.
"Do You Believe in God" is from The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp (1984), edited by Guy Kettelhack.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Effort: Developing Unarisen Healthy States
Reflection
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One week from today: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel
Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.
Via Daily Dharma: Let Your Mind Be
Via Dhamma Wheel
Reflection
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One week from today: Abstaining from Intoxication
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media
#DhammaWheel
Questions? Visit the Dhamma Wheel orientation page.
Via Love Serve Remember Foundation
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