1869: Although He Was a Cow

Joseph Denovan Adam - Cattle (1878)

Curious Dreams

A writer in the “Argos” says: “I remember when a boy, sleeping in a strange house, in an old-fashioned room, with an oaken store cupboard over the bed. I dreamed that I was being murdered; the assassin struck me on the the head, and I awoke with a sense of pain in that region. Putting my hand to my forehead, I found it stickywith blood! I felt almost too ill to cry for help; but at length I alarmed the household, and, on procuring a light, it was discovered that some jam has leaked through the bottom of the cupboard, and fallen upon my head in a small sluggish stream.

“A few months ago, shortly before going to bed, a friend had been discussing with me the peculiar instincts of animals, and more particularly their sense of the coming on of storms. After this he dreamed he was a Worcestershire Short-horn, grazing in a pleasant meadow on the Herefordshire side of the Malvers Hills. He had a number of companions. Signs of a storm appeared in the sky; a misty vapor hung on the well-known beacon. He remembered distinctly, although he was a cow, watching, with a sense of great delight, the beauty of the preliminary tokens of the storm. With the other cows he quietly strolled toward the shelter of an adjacent tree, and waited until the storm should break. He distinctly remembered wagging his tail.”

One of the editors of this paper, while traveling some time since, dreamed that he was an advertisement, for which there was no room in the paper, and was made very uncomfortable by the effort to crowd him into a column. On awaking he found himself inconveniently crowded in the berth which he was sharing with his son.

American Agriculturist Vol XXVIII, No. 3 (March 1869)

Image:
Joseph Denovan Adam: Cattle (1878)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

1954: Morning on the Volga

Georgy Nissky - Morning on the Volga (1954)

Georgy Nissky: Morning on the Volga (1954)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

1885: Moonrise

86.6

Henri-Joseph Harpignies: Moonrise (1885)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

1967: The Flying Nun

The-Flying-Nun (1967)

Sally Field as Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun (1967)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

1895: Moonrise

William Trost Richards - [Moonrise over the Beach]

William Trost Richards: Moonrise over the Beach; I made up the date.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

2017: Untitled

Su Jian - untitled (c 2017)

Su Jian: Untitled (2017); artist’s website is here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

1972: Black Children Keep Your Spirits Free

Carolyn Lawrence - Black Children Keep Your Spirits Free (1972)

Carolyn Lawrence: Black Children Keep Your Spirits Free (1972)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

1559: Not Man, Not Woman, Not Androgyne

EPSON scanner image

This mysterious Latin inscription appears to be an epitaph composed in the 16th century by someone named or calling himself Lucio Agatho Priscius; the deceased was named Aelia Laelia Crispis.

DM
Aelia Laelia Crispis
Nec vir nec mulier nec androgyna
Nec puella nec iuvenis nec anus
Nec casta nec meretrix nec pudica
sed omnia
sublate neque fame neque ferro neque ueneno
Sed omnibus
Nec coelo nec aquis nec terris
Sed ubique iacet

Lucius Agatho Priscius
Nec maritus nec amator nec necessarius
Neque moerens neque gaudens neque flens
Hanc nec molem nec pyramidem nec sepulchrum
Sed omnia
Scit et nescit cui posuerit

Hoc est sepulchrum intus cadaver non habens
Hoc est cadaver sepulchrum extra non habens
Sed cadaver idem est et sepulchrum sibi

DM
Aelia Laelia Crispis
Not man, not woman, not androgyne
Not girl, not youth, not woman old
Not pure, not prostitute, not chaste,
But all of these.
Killed not by hunger, not by sword, not by poison,
But by all of these.
Not in heaven, not in water, not on earth,
But scattered everywhere.

Lucio Agatho Priscius
Not husband, not lover, not relative,
Not sad, not joyful, not weeping.
This is not a funeral pile, not a pyramid, not a tomb,
but all of these.
He knows and knows not what he has placed here.

In this tomb no body.
Around this body no tomb.
Yet body and tomb are one and the same.

The text originally appeared on another stone, which was discovered in the priory of the order of Santa Maria di Casaralta, near Bologna; an early reference to it is found in a letter from the Archbishop of Cagliari dated 1559. Over the years, the inscription on that stone became illegible, so the copy above was made in the 17th century at the direction of a senator, Achilles Volta. The last three lines were omitted in the copy, but survive in earlier transcriptions.

Dozens of solutions to the inscription have been proposed over the years; for some it is a riddle, for others it conceals alchemical truths. For others, it is meaningless or a joke meant to confound the ages.

Currently the stone is housed in a museum in Bologna; it was restored in 1988. Below it appears a smaller stone commemorating the reinscription:

Ænigma
Quod peperit gloria
Antiquitas
Ne periret inglorium
Ex antiquato marmore
Hic in novo reparavit
Achilles Volta Senator

So that this enigma
Birthed by glorious
Antiquity
Might not die ingloriously,
From ancient marble
It is here restored.
Senator Achilles Volta

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

1943: Mountain Landscape

Konstantin Bogaevsky - Mountain Landscape (before 1943)

Konstantin Bogaevsky: Mountain Landscape

The painting is undated; Bogaevsky died in 1943

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

1922: An Unusual Scheme

1922 Greek Banknote

In 1922, the Greek government concocted an unusual scheme for dealing with a large deficit in the country’s budget.  Largely caused by the expense of WWI, the deficit had soared exponentially, and the government could neither tax nor borrow itself out of the situation. Thus, on March 25, 1922, the government decreed that all citizens were to physically cut all banknotes in half. One half of each banknote would be kept by the owner and would be worth half the value of the original. The other half was to be surrendered to the governmentand the owner would receive in exchange a 20-year loan at 6.5 percent interest.

The plan may have worked. After peaking at 85% in 1923, inflation steadily declined until the end of the decade.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment