Sunday
Jan. 17, 1999
Our Lady of the Snow
Poem: Robert Hass, "Our Lady of the Snows," from Sun Under Wood (Ecco Press).
The HOUSTON MARATHON is today, 26.2 miles in a loop from the George R. Brown Convention Center through downtown Houston, Hermann Park, Rice University, Memorial Park, and back to the Convention Center.
It's the feast day for SAINT ANTHONY THE ABBOT, the patron saint of domestic animals, observed especially in Mexico, where people will bring their pet dogs, cats, chickens, cows and other animals to the local church to be blessed.
It's the birthday of British poet and novelist ANNE BRONTË, born in 1820, Yorkshire, the youngest of six children, and the sister of Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Her novel, Agnes Grey, was published together with Emily's Wuthering Heights. Charlotte's novel, Jane Eyre, came out around the same time, and Anne quickly wrote her second book, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, though both of her books are pretty much overshadowed by her sisters' novels.
It was on this day in 1773 that JAMES COOK, aboard his ship Resolution, became the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle. The trip made him famous not just for discovering new territory, but for being one of the very first on which no sailor died from scurvy. Cook had learned that if citrus fruits were served to the men they didn't get scurvy, and when he returned to England in 1775 he was promoted to captain and awarded a prize for his work against the disease.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®