July 8: Spoils of War in the Name of Caesar, Christ, and Percy Shelley(?)

In 52 B.C. on July 8th, before it was called "July" after Julius Caesar, July conquered a fishing village called Lutetia Parisiorum.  Under Roman rule this city became quite popular and was eventually renamed "Paris." As such, July 7th is still credited as the founding day of Paris.  To the victor goes the spoils. 

Speaking of the Spoils of War, on this day in 1853 Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, sails into Tokyo Bay, Japan, with a squadron of four vessels.  Under threat of attack, the Japanese accepted letters from President Millard Fillmore, making the United States the first Western nation to establish relations with Japan since the slaughter of the Christian Missionaries known worldwide as the Martyrdom of Nagasaki, when Japan turned the Missionaries away and avoided losing their beautiful culture which is still with us today (maybe that's why the U.S. dropped the unnecessary nuclear bomb on Nagasaki to end a war they had already won?). 

The Christian martyrs of Nagasaki. 16th/17th-century Japanese painting.

"So what is so esoteric about July 8,"you ask?  July 8th, 2022, is the date that Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister of Japan was shot over his beliefs in the Unification Church from South Korea. The Unification Church was founded on the standard Christian beliefs left in Korea by the Missionaries that Japan had turned away.  The young man, Tetsuya Yamagami, was pissed at the church he once belonged to because his mom gave away most of her earnings to the church, and in the mind of Yamagami, had little to show for it.  Yes, the circle was unbroken. 

All not bad on July 8th, on this day in 1918, Ernest Hemingway was shot in the ass driving an ambulance for the America Red Cross.  In the hospital he did like most wounded soldiers at war do: he fell in love with his nurse, and subsequently, used this experience in his great novel, A Farewell to Arms.  A novel I actually counted the word "hand" written over a hundred times.  Needless to say my professor wasn't impressed with my work and so gave me an "E" on the paper for "Excellent."  That's when I decided I would rather blog, that write.  It is a far, far, better thing I do now.... or as Hemingway opened his novel with:

"In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in the village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.  In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels.  Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees.  The trunks of trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves." 

 Is it any wonder July 8th just happens to be the day that Percy Bysshe Shelley died in 1822.  I'm not sure how many "hands" Percy used in his works, but he did have an interesting take on the Christian missionary saviors of yesterday:

 "Christianity indeed has equaled Judaism in the atrocities, and exceeded it in the extent of its desolation. Eleven millions of men, women, and children have been killed in battle, butchered in their sleep, burned to death at public festivals of sacrifice, poisoned, tortured, assassinated, and pillaged in the spirit of the Religion of Peace, and for the glory of the most merciful God."

"I'm not 'Peter the Hermit,' but I am in the Public Domain.  So, yes, I am the Hermit Man of which you speak."

And finally, on July 8, 1115, that great guy Peter the Hermit dies.  Peter the Hermit is fondly remembered in the Christian history books for killing Jews.  Yes, the Nazis Patron Saint.

No, no!  Not the Peter the Hermit story again!

 

You can't make this shit up.

 ~~ Eso Terry 

July 5th, The Day Churchill Gave Us The Bikini(?)

Despite having been loved for his strength during WWII, Winston Churchill is voted out of office on this day in 1945.  Seems all the returning war veterans knew that the Conservative Hard-Ass was good for war, but not good for workers.  They must have remembered all his union-busting, Tory activities before the war, more precisely his sending in armed soldiers anytime workers threatened to ask for better working conditions or wages.  The most notable was Churchill’s sending in soldiers to stop a strike by the Tonypandy minors in 1910.  This worked so well in defending the corporate elite, that Churchill used it again a year later in Liverpool where two strikers would be shot-down in cold blood simply for asking for better working conditions.  There are other reasons Churchill probably didn’t get re-elected in 1945, the world was becoming less racist and Churchill was definitely not.  This is obvious from such statements of his as, “I do not admit that a wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America...By the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race has come in and taken their place.”

Other racial slurs by Churchill include, “I cannot understand this squeamishness about the use of gas” — this was in regards to his use of nerve gas to beat back an Iraqi revolt in 1920.  Then who can forget Churchill’s distaste for one of the greatest men of the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi, who Churchill considered a “fake” and had hoped he would starve to death (Don’t believe me?  Google it).

Okay, Churchill did probably save the world as we know it.  I’ll give him that, but in a roundabout way, Churchill gave us something men would adore for years to come, because exactly one year later on July 5th, 1946, French designer Louis Reard unveils a daring two-piece swimsuit inspired by the U.S. atomic test that took place off a Bikini island, Reard dubbed the new fashion bikini.  However, this bikini was nothing knew for Churchill, for British women had already worn a bikini that consisted of a halter top and shorts in the 1930's when wartime rationing of fabric saw the removal of the skirt panel and other superfluous material.  

So, in a very strange way we have Churchill to thank for the bikini, now don't we?

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In ancient Egypt, July 5 is sacred to the goddess Maat, who presides over truth and wisdom.

The 4th of July, Hot Dogs, and that Liberal Document Called "We The People."

 

Happy 4th of July everybody!

July 4th, yes, time to play with fireworks.  So, here goes it:  no one, and yes I mean no one understands the Fourth Way, yet, they soon will.  For the times they are a changing, the Nazi emblem is spinning, and capitalism is going the road of other 'myth' religions.  The same aggressive right-to-be here attitude that gained America from the Native Americans is now claiming America from the claimers.   MAGA is a lunch bucket filled with baloney sandwiches and Capri-Sun drinks.   The USA is not a nationalistic movement.   Never has been, never will be.   Grow, Tonto,  grow.   For the lord of tomorrow is today.

And all the angels joined in to oppose the Christofascist in love with power. 


                                                                                                         -- heavenly angelic creature

Lady Liberty

Why is the hotdog one of America's favorite foods?  

Besides being associated with the esoteric "Dog Days of Summer," the term dog has been used as a synonym for sausage since the 1800s, with one thought being that it came from accusations that sausage makers used dog meat, starting in at least 1845.  In the early 20th century, consumption of dog meat in Germany was common. The suspicion that sausages contained dog meat was "occasionally justified."  Enjoy your meat this summer you ferocious meat eaters.


The Reason You Will Drink Too Much Beer This Day, eat Dog Meat, and possibly blow off your index finger with a firecracker?

The Declaration of Independence.   Yes, that liberal doctrine that provided the ideological foundations for the democratic government of the United States, promoting the idea that the government exists to serve the people, who elect representatives to express their will.  A "social contract" between people and their rulers, which can be dissolved if rulers fails to promote the people's welfare for a group of white supremacist -- I added the last part.

Least you forget, please read the following section out loud today and take a deep breath, it really is okay to be liberal boys-and-girls, it is the basis for the founding of this great country:

 “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

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Concordia

 In ancient times, the 4th of July was the date that Pax, the Roman goddess of peace and harmony, who was also identified with the Greek goddess Concordia, was honored with a considerable amount of feasting and revelry.

Happy 4th Everyone!

July 3: Dog Days of Summer, Yin and Yang, Rock Stars Die in Water.

We've all grown up hearing the words, "The Dog days of summer."  Well, they begin on July 3rd in Northern Tradition.  You see, the Pagans of old, long before they were forced to convert to a single god theory or lose their family, looked up at the sky and saw Sirius, the brightest star in the sky alongside the sun in the Northern hemisphere and knew this was no coinkidink, but a sign from the gods.

Nonetheless, here is where July 3 gets its Yin and Yang: 

In 1775, on a hot July 3, George Washington formally takes command of the Continental Army by drawing his sword; in 1957 on a July 3, Nikita Khrushchev takes control of the Soviet Union by orchestrating the ouster of his most serious opponents. 

In 1940, the legendary American comedy duo of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello debut with their radio show; in 1946 the comedy duo of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin meet for the first time in Atlantic City.

In 1969, the founder of the rock band, The Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, dies.  The guy who played sitar on the song Paint It Black, and the recorder on Ruby Tuesday, is found dead in a swimming pool; in 1971 on this day, Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors, a group whose name was a reference to breaking through the doors of perception, is found dead in a bathtub of water. 

According to the I Ching, "3" is defined as, "From difficulty there is a great development...." The Yin: "Weak people at the culmination of difficulty, in extreme danger, without any helpers...." The Yang: "If the leadership is correctly oriented, and has the assistance of wise people who are strong and clear minded, then it is possible to solve difficulties." 

As a Yin and Yang fresher: Yin and Yang is a Chinese philosophical concept that describes opposite but interconnected forces. In Chinese cosmology, the universe creates itself out of a primary chaos of material energy, organized into the cycles of yin and yang and formed into objects and lives.  In a nut shell, Yin and Yang is the Mystic Law esoteric and exoteric Buddhist obtain by chanting the words "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo."  

~~ Eso Terry 

July 1st: Day of Snakes, Rough Riders, and TV Ad Society.

July 1st, the beginning of the month of July, the seventh month of the current Gregorian calendar and derives its name from Julius Caesar.  

The traditional birthstone amulet of July is the ruby; and the larkspur and water lily are the month's traditional flowers.

July is shared by the astrological signs of Cancer the Crab and Leo the Lion, and is sacred to the following Pagan deities: Apt (or Apet), Athena, Sothis, Spider Woman, and Rosea. 

In Napal on July 1st people celebrate the festival of Naga Pachami, which is devoted to the snake gods called Nagas.  Sacred snake images are adorned with flower garlands and displayed on religious altars, and offerings are made at snake holes.  People line the streets for elaborate parades featuring beautifully costumed participants and live serpents. 

Roosevelt and His Rough Riders

In history, July 1st is known for, among other things, how in 1898 Theodore Roosevelt and his volunteer cavalry, the Rough Riders, won the Battle of San Juan Hill, the decisive battle in the Spanish-America War.  In his book "On This Day in History," Carl M. Cannon quotes Roosevelt's daughter when she said, "her father (Teddy Roosevelt) was someone who never attended a wedding without wishing he was the bride or a funeral without wishing he was the corpse." So history only tells the Roosevelt story; however, there is another important story we're missing: The Buffalo Soldier story.  That's right, alongside Roosevelt's fighting militia were the black army men of the 9th Calvary.  They were the first to take the hill to victory.  Of course, history doesn't show it this way, and Teddy Roosevelt never mentioned the fighting black men in his recounts of the battle.  Hmmmm, indeed, a day of snakes.  Is it any wonder that July 1st is also the day the television station NBC aired the first official TV commercial in America, creating our modern Orwellian reality of of lies, half-truths, exaggerations, and plain, outright, character assassinations of anyone speaking truth to power! 

Bob Marley "Buffalo Soldier" lyrics (Excerpted for the Esoteric)

 If you know your history
Then you would know where you're coming from
Then you wouldn't have to ask me
Who the heck do I think I am

I'm just a Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought to America
Said he was fighting on arrival, fighting for survival
Said he was a Buffalo Soldier, in the war for America

~~ Eso Terry

June 30, Busy Abraham Lincoln, and hello July!

June 30th, if you are like me you are busy as hell.  But get this, so what! On this day in 1864 Abraham Lincoln was busy as hell too accepting the nomination of his party for a second term, along with the resignation of his Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, and informed his general fighting the Civil War for him had just lost a gruesome battle at Cold Harbor.  

So what does busy Abraham Lincoln do on this day?  He reconfirms his call for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, as well as, signs legislation setting aside a track of land in California that couldn't be used for mining and hunting which gave us our first National Park, Yosemite National Park.  

So no matter how busy you may be fighting a war, do something great.  Abraham Lincoln wanted it that way.

 

July is a special month for special people for special reasons.

To begin with, July 4th is the day that the USA gained its independence from the British Empire.  Now if that isn't special, I don't know what is. 

 

Americans Revolt

 

Another special thing about July regarding my Nichiren faith, is that on July 3rd of 1945 a leader of the Soka Gakkai (Josei Toda) was released from prison after refusing to give up his Buddhist faith during the Japanese militarist authorities. 

And finally, it was in July of 1921 that Mao Zedong and a dozen other delegates gathered together in secret to form a new political party. That's right, the Chinese communist party...

 

oppsss, sorry, anytime I mention Mao Zedong my computer crashes and I get this message from the Republican Party asking for a donation?... Not sure what that means. 

That's it for today. 

June if gone and July is here.  

 

June 28, the Founding of the USA not on Jesus, and How I Escaped A Death Dream.

On June 28, 1787, while approving the new American Constitution, Benjamin Franklin suggested the delegates seek guidance from a higher authority.  This of course set off a shit storm because, well, none of these men were Christian, Catholic, or for that matter, Buddhist.  That's right, not one of them were bible thumbing believers as today's Christian Church would have you believe.  In fact, everyone one of the men at the convention were deist, if not atheist, and all part of the equivalent of today's "Woke" movement: the French Enightenment movement.  

 

Woke Frankly

Addressing the presiding officer, Franklin said, "Our prayers were heard, sir, and they were graciously answered... How has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our understandings?"

And on that note, they all agreed to bow their heads before every session in silence honoring a higher power.  Period!  No Jesus, no Deuteronomy, and most definitely, no Blasphemy!  

These men were followers of the "Age of Enlightenment," which the USA was to be a beacon, with beliefs like those of the French philosopher,  Denis Diderot, who once said "a Deist is someone who hasn't lived long enough to become an atheist." (Diderot was a close friend of our beloved Benjamin Franklin.)   

It is wrong for today's Extremist Christofascist to say the USA was founded on Jesus.  It wasn't.  Franklin's father was a Puritan priest, a practice Franklin left as a young man.  In his life, Franklin went from a Calvinist to a Deist.  "I believe," Frankly wrote at the age of twenty-two, " there is one Supreme, most perfect being."  Sixty-two years later, he wrote that although he harbored "some doubts" as to Jesus' divinity, he believed "in one God, the creator of the universe...who governs by his Providence. He further wrote: "the most acceptable service we render to Him is doing good to his other children."

Now, to this Buddhist who believes in the Mystic Law, anytime I hear the word "providence," I think of the universal Mystic Law that Nichiren Daishonin wrote about over 700 years ago in Japan.  The law of the universe.  Hmmmm, I guess the USA is a Buddhist country after all, founded on the law of "Light" and "Providence": The Mystic Law. 

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Now for my dream. 

So you all know about how I recently lost my best friend.  I wrote about it a few days ago in my Don MaClaren's Not Dead... post.  Well, he came to me in a dream the other night.  It was one of those dreams like I had the night my mother died and I dreamed she leaned over me and kissed me good bye. 

In my recent dream, Don and I were in the hotel room in Chelsea New York we once stayed in for a weekend of fun and drinking.  He said he was tired and wanted to go to sleep.  Before I could answer, I sensed there was someone on the front porch of the old house I lived in when I was around nine years old.  I left the room and there were two people snooping around the porch. 

Next thing I know, as dreams go, one of the people on my porch is in the room with me.  He's got long hair, well built, and he starts pitching a fancy imported beer I should try. He has samples with him. I questioned him about how he got in, he lies.  I know he is lying, but I am afraid of him, very afraid.  "Where is the other guy that was on the porch with?" I ask. 

"What guy," he answers, handing me a beer.  

"I no longer drink," I say, "thanks anyways. I'll pass."

Suddenly, I am back in the room where I left Don, he isn't there.  He has walked to the room across the hall.  It's my old bedroom where we lived when I was thirteen.  I open the door.  Don is there on the floor, and there are several Japanese futon's around him.  He motions for me to take one.  

"I not tired yet," I say.  

"It's here when you are ready," he says.

"I'm not ready!"

End of Dream.

Wow, I'll be analyzing this dream for a longtime, but it's obvious Don is on the other side with a room ready for me.  The man with the beer, death himself, enticing me to have a drink.  The drink I am not ready to take.  The drink of death. 

The Daishonin Has Risen

And the two people on the porch?  

As we see, one was death, and the other?  

I'm not sure, but the next evening, my neighbor showed me video footage from his security cameras of a man trying to break into my patio, which I had locked from the inside -- something I rarely do. I looked at the timestamp of the video footage, 1:15am, around the time I was dreaming of Don, Beer, and people on my porch. 

It's obvious death was at my door, and Don was there to greet me. And the man I couldn't see?  The living man trying to get into my house.  Maybe, the criminal who breaks in my house and kills me in another reality. The reality I have avoided to write another day.  

Esoteric.

~~ Eso Terry

"What am I doing here?... Heck, what are any of us doing here?"

June 27th: Nuclear Meltdowns and Thanks, Elvis.

So it is June 27th, a very special day.  On this day in 1968 Elvis Presley, the Sun King of Rock and Roll, made his comeback.  He had started the rock and roll craze by singing songs he grew up hearing the blacks sing in church.  Yes, like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the other white rockers, they made millions off the songs the original singers never saw a dime of.  God bless America, and Elvis. 

I was eight when Elvis did his live concert on television.  It was a family event.  I still remember the taste of the popcorn.  Little did I know I was feeding the beast. 

Imagine a world with free electric, no need for nukes, I did (Tesla)

Speaking of "Beast," in 1954 on this day the worlds first nuclear generator begins producing power in the Soviet Union.  Of course, like the other early nuclear power generators on Three Mile Island and in Fukushima Japan, they would destroy the earth underneath them with cleanup cost far exceeding their benefits.  But heck, it's hot as hell today and we need AC.  I'll admit it, I enjoyed Elvis in 1968, and I'm enjoying the nuclear powered AC  here in my Dallas home. 

On a brighter note, a centuries-old Native American Sun Dance ritual is performed annually on this day by many Plains Indian tribes in honor of the Summer Sun.  Unfortunately, due to censorship, it can only be seen from the hip up.  Thanks Elvis!

Yes, we were here first.  Get over it!

Nazis Sucks and The Origins of a May Marriage.

 

Rockwell with pipe.

From today's offering of the "Where Are They Now" collection, I present to you that laughable group formally known as the American Nazis Party led by George Lincoln Rockwell, who gave us such loving lies as, "The Holocaust Denial Movement," you remember that golden-oldie, it went something like this:  the Jews invented the story of the Holocaust to legitimize Israel and extract reparations from Germany, and that they perpetuate the myth by their control of the media and Hollywood."  This monster of hate is also credited with developing the word "White Power" in the sixties, as well as melding Nazism with a Christian Identity -- although he once said he could never worship a Jewish savior.

Deny This Ass-whole!!!

Unfortunately, if a lot of these right-wing nuts on the radio today could say the things Rockwell did without losing their sponsors, they would.  It is undoubtedly buried underneath their definition of the word "Liberal" in their daily mumbling.  And those of you who listen to that hate to blame another race or group of people for your problems in the world, are following that same evil that gave us the America Nazi Party of the 1960's.

So where are they today?

Rockwell Getting His Rocks off in Public.

They are now a religious church called "The New Order."   That's right, after the American Nazis Party was condemned by everyone, they became the National Socialist White People's Party and replaced "Sieg Heil" with "White Power."  Oddly enough, the NSWPP entered a number of candidates in elections in the 1970's and 80's and usually attracted about 5 percent of the vote.  In a Milwaukee school board race, it managed to garner one in every five voters.  In 1983 they changed the name to "The New Order" and their faith statement is "Living the Faith of Adolf Hitler."

That's it for today, I really need to go take a shower.
(Facts used in this posting from the book Hate, George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party by William H. Schmaltz)

Thank You For Reading!  Meow!!!

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Ever wonder why May and June are the wedding months?  Could be, that on June 25th in the Blekinge province of Sweden, the pagan Midsummer Bride is still chosen from among the young women as she was in pre-Christian times.  She then selects a Bridegroom.  Money is collected from the onlookers for the "happy couple."  At the end of the daylong festivities, the collected money is distributed among the local charities and churches.

Hmmmm, isn't marriage a Christian union?   Those damn pagans of old just keep popping back up and ruining the church myth!

Don Maclaren is dead, No, he's on the outside looking in.

On this day, June 22, in 1275, Nichiren Daishonin, the Japanese reformist monk who taught us that we are all Buddhas -- like it or not -- and that by chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo (pronounced Nam Me Yo Ho Ren Gay Key Oh) we've taken the first and most important step in actualizing our Buddha Nature in this lifetime.  So if you never have, please say Nam Myoho Renge Kyo out loud right now and see how your day unfolds; to really test it, chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo in the morning and night for one week, and see.  To really, really, test it make a wish before chanting the words and see what happens.  I've just given you the best advise you will ever receive in this lifetime. 

Getting back to my post, on June 22 in the year 1275, Nichiren Daishonin wrote "When a tree has been transplanted, though fierce winds may blow, it will not topple if it has a firm stake to hold it up.  But even a tree that has grown up in place may fall over if its roots are weak.  Even a feeble person will not stumble if those supporting him are strong, but a person of considerable strength, when alone, may fall down on an uneven path...therefore, the best way to attain Buddhahood is to encounter a good friend."

My Friend, Don

I chose to pontificate on this post to represent the Esoteric Depth of this day because I found out last Sunday that my best and oldest friend has died.  Yes, Don Maclaren is no longer with us.  I met Don in South Korea when we were both 19 and in the Navy on the USS Coral Sea.  Our ship had pulled into Busan for a few days.  I had gone out and drank with the guys and spent all my money and was headed back to the ship, broke, when I saw Don leaving the ship with a map in his hand.  

"Hey, Eso," he said. 

"Hey Don," I answered.  "Where are you off to?"

"I'm going to look at a Buddhist temple that is close to here."

"They have those here?" I asked.

"Yeah, come with me."

"Okay, can I borrow twenty bucks?..."

I spent the afternoon with Don discussing the history of Korea, the lyrics of the rock band The Doors, and of course, the books of Kurt Vonnegut.  Little did I know at that time that Don would be my friend for the next 43 years.  Funny, looking back I  now see that "43" was the number of our ship we were living on at the time: the USS Coral Sea, CV43. 

Don lived with me in Dallas after we got out of the Navy, but said it was too conservative and so moved to San Francisco.  He lived there to get his degree but then left because it was too liberal.  He moved to Japan where he made a life for 15 years before moving to New York where he lived for 5, and finally, the last 13 years in China.  I visited him in all the places but China.  China was suppose to be this year.  

In all my visits we talked about life, our past, our future, and of course, Kurt Vonnegut. 

He showed me the fashion district in Tokyo, the subway train shortcuts in Manhattan, and once boasted at a bar that the waitress just offered him a blowjob.  It was the happiest I would ever see him.  I was jealous, until she showed up with a drink in her mouth called, Blow Job.

Don respected my religion.  In Japan he took me to a Buddhist temple and showed me how to capture the incense smoke to heal my stiff shoulder.

Our relationship for the last several years has been long Skype conversations. 

I took them for granted.  

He died running in a park.  

Just dropped dead as they say.  

I have lost friends before, but losing a best, old friend like Don equals the loss I experienced when I lost my younger sister, and mother.  I see now some friends are family, and of course, some family are nothing more than friends.

I'll see Don again, this I know for certain in my Buddha heart.  He was my educator in this life. The stake that propped up my transplanted tree life on this Earth.  He taught me not to break the spine of a book, a habit I had when I read paperbacks.  I would selfishly crack the spine of a borrowed book so the pages wouldn't jump, then return the book as if nothing had happened.  

"Please don't break the spine of my books anymore, you ruined my 'Cats Cradle' paperback," he once said.

"Oh, I thought they were made to be cracked. Where is it at?  I'll buy you a new one." 

"That's okay," he said, "by the way, don't end your sentences with at."

Finally, Nichiren ask in his writing: "How far can our own wisdom take us?  If we have even enough wisdom to distinguish hot from cold, we should seek out a good friend."

Thank you Don, my best friend this life.  I can't believe you left before me. I did not expect that at all. 

~~ June 22, Eso Terry.  

 

June 20: Before OJ Got Away With Murder, Lizzie Borden did the Same.

Borden Home

On this day in 1863 a jury in New Bedford, Massachusett, found Lizzie Borden not guilty of the ax murders of her father and stepmother.  To all accounts, she was guilty, just as OJ Simpson was guilty if you follow the evidence.

 

Fall River, Massachusetts, was quiet, remarkably ordinary little mill town tottering on the brink of obscurity until the morning of August 4, 1892.  That’s when one of the town’s most upstanding citizens—a mousy, unmarried woman name Lizzie Andrew Borden—was arrested and thrown into jail for brutally murdering her father and stepmother with an axe.

By the time her trial was over, Lizzie Borden had become a household name across America.  To some she was a demigoddess who should be hanged for her crime.  To others, especially many in women’s right groups, she was an innocent “symbol of womanhood” who stood falsely accused.

Also leaping to her defense were upper-class citizens and fellow churchgoers who found it difficult to believe one of their own could do such a thing.

Even thought Lizzie Borden was eventually acquitted, she remained guilty in the minds of millions of Americas.  After her sensational trial, which lasted thirteen days and attracted worldwide publicity, she went back to a quiet life of modest affluence in the same gray frame house on Second Street where the grisly murders had taken place.

By then, however, the damage to the former socialite and Sunday school teacher’s spotless reputation had been wrought.  The press, fueled by rabid public interest in the case, continued to run banner headlines focusing on the gory murder for years after the event, while crime writers and their publishers made fortunes telling and retelling the story.  It seemed that, guilty or not, Lizzie’s Borden’s Once proud name would forever be linked to the gruesome events of August 2, 1892.

The question remains, more than a century after the fact: Was she guilty?  Or, as was suggested at the trial, did some unknown person slip into the house and slay the elderly parents while Lizzie ate pears upstairs and a servant woman worked in the kitchen less than twenty feet from one of the victims?

No motive for an outside murder has ever been clearly established, even though several robberies had been reported in the neighborhood in the days immediately prior to the crime.  According to police reports, the Borden’s house itself had been burglarized at least twice.

But because of several factors, Lizzie Borden remained the most likely suspect.  At her trial, she gave a bewildering array of conflicting stories about her whereabouts during the murder.  At first she said she was in the “backyard.”  Later, she said she was “in the loft getting a piece of iron for the sinkers.”  To another interrogator, she was in the barn eating pears.

More puzzling, however, was her neat appearance and calm composure when the police arrived.  Surely, they reasoned, her clothes and hands and hair would have been splattered with the victims’ blood.  That is, if she ere, in fact, guilty.

And the murder weapon?  Where was the murder weapon?

A few days later an inspector rummaging through the Borden tool shed out back found a freshly cleaned axe head.  Could this have been the cruel device that ended the lives of Abby and Andrew Borden?  The fact that the wooden handle, from which it would have been difficult to remove bloodstains, was missing convinced investigators that this was, indeed, the weapon.

Then new evidence surfaced that further damaged Lizzie’s defense.  Upon request, she had turned over to police a spotlessly clean, fancy blue bengaline dress she swore she had worn on the day of the murders.  That story seemed unlikely, however, no one wore party dresses of bengaline, a heavy corded cloth, around the house in the August heat.

Confounding the problem was a testimony provided by a neighbor, Alice Russell, who reluctantly admitted she had seen Lizzie burn a blue cotton dress in the kitchen stove three days after the murders.  The dress, Lizzie explained, had been soiled with brown paint—a color, noted the prosecutor, not unlike that of dried blood.

But an outraged press, supported by the public, rallied behind the frail, soft-spoken woman.  Editors wanted to know how anyone could accuse “this innocent and loving daughter” of such heinous crimes without feeling ashamed?  After all, this was the height of the late Victorian era, a time when the gentleness, physical frailty and docility of the well-bred American woman were cornerstones of society.

New Englanders were certain that well-brought-up Christian daughters like Lizzie Borden could not possibly commit murder with an axe on sunny summer mornings.  Women possessed more “natural refinements,” as one editorial put it, “diviner instincts” and stronger “spiritual sensibilities” than did men.

Overlooked in the public outcry against her arrest was the glaring fact that she stood to inherit a fortune of several hundred thousand dollars.  Also, nobody pointed out that Lizzie and Abby had feuded frequently, mainly over matters involving Andrew Borden’s money.

In the end, the jury returned with the only verdict possible under the circumstances—not guilty.  The judge, who had admonished the jury men to remember that such “a woman of refinement and gentle training...could not have conceived and executed so bloody a butchery,” seemed genuinely pleased at the decision.

A few years before her death, Lizzie Borden moved to Maplecroft, the neighborhood she had begged her father to move the family to years before.  In her final days, she undoubtedly had occasion to hear the nasty rhyme already being sung by schoolchildren to the tune of “Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay!”

          Lizzie Borden took an axe
          And gave her mother forty whacks;
          When she saw what she had done,
          She gave her father forty-one.

On June 1, 1927, she died at the age of sixty-six and was buried alongside her stepmother and father in Oak Grove Cemetery.  But the public fascination with her case lived on, a favorite of crime writers, movie producers and directors, and even choreographers and playwrights.  In 1965, an opera entitled Lizzie Borden: A Family Tragedy in Three Acts met favorable reviews.  In 1980 Blood Relations appeared, a play in which Lizzie kills for her parents’ money, then dies after being found guilty.

In her own time, Lizzie Borden had become a cause célèbre of the women’s movement and an example of Christian piety.  Her acquittal was seen as a tribute to the American justice system and its main tenet of innocent until proven guilty.

But uncertainty remained.  Quipped American wit Dorothy Parker:  “I will believe till eternity, or possibly beyond it, that Lizzie Borden did it with her little hatchet, and whoever says she didn’t commits the sin of sins, the violation of an idol.”

Some skeptics pointed to Mr. Borden’s bizarre relationship with his youngest daughter.  “Daddy’s little girl,” as he called her, almost always got her way.  When his mutilated corpse was found, Lizzie’s graduation ring was still on his little finger.  This happened several months after he beheaded all of Lizzie’s pigeons in their barn—the same barn in which Lizzie supposedly ate pears while the murders took place.

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June 19th and the Huddled Masses.

On June 19 1862 President Lincoln signs a bill prohibiting slavery in the territories of the United States.  Three years later on this same day in 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with the news that the Civil War was over, and that all remaining slaves in Texas were free, an event celebrated to this day as "Juneteenth."

In 1926 on this day twenty thousand Native Americans celebrated the 50th anniversary of the battle at Little Bighorn in which Colonel George Custer and his entire party were killed. 

In 1943 on this day, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi German minister of propaganda, announces that Berlin is now free of Jews. 

And finally, it was a cold June 19th in 1885 when the Stature of Liberty was delivered in New York,  to remind us all that the USA has a mission of inclusiveness.

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, 

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

 

June 17 Happens

So much I could write about that represents the Esoteric Side of a June 17th, for instance, long before the fictional Dracula was created by Bram Stroker, on a June 17 in the year 1462, Vlad Dracula emerged from his hideaway and attacked an Ottoman camp with his howling army behind him, and when the dust settled, there were 20,000 Turks stuck in the air on stakes; a ghastly sight of blood not seen before.  

Vlad Dracula's father was given the name "Dracul" for his membership in the Order of the Dragon, a secret society boys club some say is still with us today.  Of course, this gave his son the name of Dracula, "Son of the Dragon." Bram Stroker is believed to have drawn some of his inspiration for his famed Gothic horror novel from this spawn of the Dragon, the historical Vlad Dracula.

 

I was here first, deal with it.

Even more ghastly to some of us, on a June 17 in 1578, Sir Francis Drake landed his ship off the coast of northern California, what is close to the Bay Area today, and claimed it for the British empire. The Native Americans greeted him with gifts, he gave them clothes to cover their bodies because his little British pencil was tingling.  The rest is history.  What was a Native population of about 4 million, would dwindled to 800 thousand by the year 1800.

But, to put things in perspective, on this day in 1775 at the Battle of Bunker Hill, Colonel William Prescott told his soldiers, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes."

Interesting, that on June 17 in Nara Japan, an annual purification ritual to drive away evil spirits is blessed by seven white-robed priestesses with a traditional dance.  Which brings us to 1994 and the O.J. Simpson highway chase after he was accused of murdering his ex wife, Nicole Simpson, who's white dog was found walking the streets with bloody paws. Loosely connected?  Maybe.  Esoteric?  Definitely.