Born in 1955 – Zbigniew Preisner, Polish composer.
Above: “
Song for the Unification of Europe”, from Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film, Trois couleurs: Bleu.
Born in 1954 – Father Gregory Boyle, an American Jesuit priest and the founder and director of Homeboy Industries.
“The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And the idea is this: there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives.”
“The strategy of Jesus is not centered in taking the right stand on issues, but rather in standing in the right place—with the outcast and those relegated to the margins.”
In 1980 Mt. St. Helens erupted in Washington state.
Born in 1866 – Erik Satie, French pianist and composer.
Listen: Gymnopédie No. 1
Born in 1923 – Richard Avedon, American photographer.
Above: Ronald Fischer, Beekeeper, Davis, California, May 9, 1981. From Avedon’s collection, In the American West: 1979-1984.
Born in 1944 – George Lucas, American producer, screenwriter, and director.
In 1917–In Fatima, Portugal, three children had a vision of the Virgin Mary”. Nine year old Lúcia Santos described seeing a lady “brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal goblet filled with the most sparkling water and pierced by the burning rays of the sun”.
Above: Five months later, thousands gathered at the site, in hopes of catching a glimpse of the “Miracle of the Sun”.
Born in 1904 – Salvador Dalí, Spanish painter.
Above: “Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln–Homage to Rothko” (1976)
Arise, then, Christian women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, disarm!
-from Julia Ward Howe’s "Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World" (1870). It would later come to be known as the “Mother’s Day Proclamation".
Born in 1800 – John Brown, American abolitionist who believed armed insurrection was the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. Dissatisfied with the pacifism encouraged by the organized abolitionist movement, he said, “These men are all talk. What we need is action—action!”
Number 5 