A Day I Have Been Waiting to Celebrate

Luddites and their first cousins, Unite!

Today is officially our Day! (At least according to the exhaustive research I have done. Of course I have time for exhaustive research, ignore the snickering.)

For the uninitiated, Ned Ludd was what late 17th/early 18th century people would have called a feebleminded young man who worked in a factory. The story is that he broke a very expensive machine in the factory, but the owner refused to have him blamed or try to make him pay because it was obvious that he was mentally slow.

Then, early in the Industrial Revolution, his name began to be used by those who opposed machines taking over, as well as by factory workers who wanted better working conditions. They would often wear disguises and destroy machinery, or threaten to do so, by order of "General Ludd."

Since I have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the world of cyberspace and cell phones, I jokingly refer to myself as the first cousin to a Luddite. I use a cell phone for emergencies and only 1 1/2 years into a two year contract, figured out how to take a picture with it. I use the computer, but only for email, this journal/blog, and one website/forum. I wouldn't know how to do anything else on the computer, really. I rely on the nice guys down at RentANerd to keep it running right for me. I am the last to buy into new tech, the last lone holdout (or sometimes it seems that way) on the old.

So while I can't promise to smash a machine, I will promise to lift a glass of grog (or more likely a banana smoothie) in memory of Ned Ludd and all the old ways of doing things.


Today is:

Country Days

Independence Day, Latvia

Mother Goose Parade Day

National Community Education Day

National Day, Oman

National Educational Support Personnel Day

National French Vichyssoise Day

National Farm Joke Day

Ned Ludd Memorial Machine-Smashing Day

St. Odo of Cluny's Day

St. Romanus' Day

Vertieres Day, Haiti

Volkstrauertag, Germany (National Day of Mourning for all who died in war or violence.)

World Fellowship Day


Birthdays Today:

Elizabeth Perkins, 1960
Sinbad, 1956
Wilma Mankiller, 1945
Linda Evans, 1942
Brenda Vaccaro, 1939
Alan Shepard, Jr., 1923
Imogene Coca, 1908
George Gallup, 1901
Eugene Ormandy, 1899
Clarence Shepard Day, 1874
Dorothy Dix (Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer), 1861
Ignacy Jan {aderewski, 1860
William Gilbert, 1836
Louis-Jacques Daguerre, 1787
Sojourner Truth, 1787


Today in History:

The Japanese Emperor Kammy relocates the residence of Nara to Kioto, 794
William Tell shoots the apple off his son's head, 1307
The Holland/Zealand dikes break during a storm, resulting in thousands of deaths, 1421
The first English printed book, "Dictes & Sayengis of the Phylosophers", is published, 1477
Vasco da Gama reaches the Cape of Good Hope, 1497
The worst earthquake in Massachussetts Bay/Boston area, 1755
The first Unitarian Minister in the US is ordained in Boston, 1787
30 women meet at Mrs Silas Lee's home in Wiscasset Maine, to organize the Female Charitable Society, first woman's club in America, 1805
National Woman's Christian Temperance Union organizes in Cleveland, 1874
Standard time zones are formed by railroads in the US and Canada, 1883
The first newspaper Sunday color comic strip is printed, in the NY World, 1894
Britain flies its first sea plane, 1911
Lincoln Deachey performs the first airplane loop-the-loop, over San Diego, 1913
Sigma Alpha Rho, a Jewish high school fraternity, is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1917