Motley Moose – Archive

Last year the woman I loved was found murdered in the street where she lived. A week later on All Souls’ night I stood on the top step of a church and looked down at the people in the street holding candles for the “Take Back the Night” vigil. Wondering if her killer might be among them, I thought, “I’ll find you, whoever you are. However long it takes, I’ll find you.”

The summer solstice (known as “Litha” in Neopaganism) will occur on 21 June 2014 at 6:51 a.m. EDT. In Australia, however, the summer solstice occurs on or about 21 December.

Happy Shakespeare’s birthday, everyone! The future playwright made his first appearance on the stage called “life” on 23 April 1564 at Stratford-on-Avon in Merrie Olde England and was baptized three days later. Little did John and Mary Shakespeare think that in his lifetime their infant son William was destined to become the greatest playwright and poet in the English–or indeed, any other–language. Join me in celebrating the 450th anniversary of his birth-it’ll be fun for the whole family! We have cake (even though it’s, ah, cybercake), links, poems, a video clip, and lots of speculation.

Seventy-one years ago Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were arrested at the University of Munich for dropping leaflets protesting the evils of the Third Reich.

Sophie, Hans, their friend Christoph Probst, and several others were members of the White Rose, a group Hans and three fellow medical students founded to declare opposition to the Hitler regime and to rally the resistance movement.

Sophie, Hans, and Christoph knew they faced certain death if they were discovered. The story of these incredible young people (Sophie was only 21 at the time of her death) is not widely known in the United States, but in Germany their contribution to freedom is recognized and respected.

Robert Carter III, you may ask? Who in the world was he and why should we care?

Well, I’ll tell you why we should: February is black history month, the month during which we should all reflect on the contributions that black Americans have made to this nation of ours and on the suffering our black brothers and sisters have endured. Robert Carter III is part of that history, for by his Deed of Gift in 1791 Carter–the richest man in the colony of Virginia–made clear his intention to free more than 450 slaves, more than the total number of slaves owned by his neighbors George Washington and Thomas Jefferson combined.

People of a certain age may remember September 1957, when nine black students were escorted to the “whites only” Little Rock Central High School in compliance with the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education. The ensuing crisis filled the national and international news for weeks. Who can forget the iconic photograph of 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford, delicate as a summer blossom in her freshly ironed dress, clutching her schoolbooks as she walked past a crowd of bigots screaming at her?

But there’s another Little Rock story, one that was never told. To read it, please follow me below the fold.