Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo was born in 1922 to mixed-race Peruvian parents. She chose a career in singing South American folk music and after limited success in that field she was discovered by an American impresario who marketed her as an Incan princess with a phenomenal vocal range. Her stage name Yma Sumac became synonymous with exotic sounds and backdrops. She appeared in film, on Broadway, and in night clubs with extensive foreign tours to her credit.
Sumac’s vocal range may have been 6 octaves and she was revered for her vocal athleticism as much as for her interpretation and glamorous appeal. The clip below demonstrates her virtuosic novelty.
November 1 is All Saints’ Day or Hallowmas and the night preceding is thus All Hallows’ Eve or Hallowe’en. Together with November 2, All Souls’ Day, it constitutes Allhallowtide, a period to commemorate the Christian dead.
Halloween has become a secular festival dedicated to the distribution of unhealthy food to costumed children and to the indulgence by their elders in thoughts of the macabre. October television is dedicated to films about chainsaw homicide, haunted mansions, and the grisly dispatch of teenagers who violate the prime directive of sticking together when threatened by serial killers. October marketing focuses on novel ways to sell pumpkin-, witch-, skeleton- and zombie-related foodstuffs and clothing. Halloween has become the holiday on which more discretionary income is expended than any other save Christmas.
What this says about North American culture in the twenty-first century is uncertain. Is it a healthy interest in human mortality or a morbid fascination with the unholy and forbidden? Are we mocking evil or temporarily embracing it? Here are some thoughts on the subject:
I think if human beings had genuine courage, they would wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn’t life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don’t they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you’d meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to, like talking to dogs. – Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief
It is as if French society were looking for a kind of civil religion capable of replacing Christian symbolism. At Halloween the dead are imitated and their ‘ghosts’ come back to frighten us and threaten us with death. On All Saints’ Day, in contrast, we affirm that the departed are alive and that we are promised to rejoin them in the City of God. – Hippolyte Simon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, Vers une France païenne? (Toward a Pagan France?)
Over time Halloween became an important night for customers, as well; for whereas children of the interwar years constructed their costumes from old clothes in the attic; for or closet and simply blackened their faces with burnt cork or soot, children in the more affluent 1950s and 1960s were more likely to buy Halloween masks and perhaps other articles of their costume from retail stores. By making Halloween consumer-oriented and infantile, civic and industrial promoters hoped to eliminate its anarchic features. – Nicholas Rogers, Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night
I would give nothing for that man’s religion whose very dog and cat are not the better for it. – Sir Rowland Hill
The Christian must be aware that he is moving towards a destination; and that the destination is not in this world. He must maintain a certain detachment from the things of this world; a chaste detachment; for where he is going cannot be here. Spectator and witness, perhaps actor in his turn, in some role for which he is or isn’t suited; bearing responsibilities to others in every single case. His suffering may be of more value than any achievement to which he may claim. He cannot vest his hopes in earthly things, knowing they will vanish. His finest possessions are not of this world, but from another: the phenomena of reciprocated love; of truth, goodness, and beauty apprehended, preciously kept in the purse of memory; of “news from a foreign country” received. This is all he will hold at the end of his journey, when his road through space and time lies behind him, and everything he once carried on his back has been used up, thrown or taken away, and even the old bag of his flesh is discarded. – David Warren, “Essays in Idleness”, 2014
Bishop Joseph Butler of Bristol in response to John Wesley’s conversion: “Enthusiasm, sir, is a horrid thing; a very horrid thing indeed.”
Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories. – Steven Wright
What strange math. There is nothing like the tally of a life. All of our accomplishments, ridiculous. All of our striving, unnecessary. Our lives are unfinished and unfinishable. We do too much, never enough and are done before we’ve even started. We can only pause for a minute, clutching our to-do lists, at the precipice of another bounded day. The ache for more — the desire for life itself — is the hardest truth of all. – Kate Bowler, “One Thing I Don’t Plan to Do Before I Die Is Make a Bucket List”, New York Times, 2021
Politics was a blood sport in early-modern England. Men and women paid with their lives for choosing the losing side in a dynastic or religious quarrel. Their posthumous reputations often depended on how they behaved in their last moments when they faced their public execution. No one forgot the stubborn refusal of the Countess of Salisbury to cooperate with the headsman, the last words of Bishop Latimer as he was burned alive, or courage of Walter Raleigh dealing with his unjust fate, the victims of spineless James I.
Raleigh died nobly. The bishop who attended him, and the lords about him, were astonished to witness his serenity of demeanour. He observed calmly: “I have a long journey to go, therefore must take leave!” He fingered the axe with a smile, and called it “a sharp medicine, a sound cure for all disease”. He laid his head on the block with these words in conclusion:
‘So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies.’
The following is Raleigh’s last poem, written the night before his death, and found in his Bible, in the Gate house, at Westminster:
Even such is time, which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us nought but age and dust; Which in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days! And from which grave, and earth, and dust, The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.’
To celebrate the centenary of American independence, and to mark their own contribution to that effort, the French were determined to make the USA a splendid gift. The anniversary present would prove to be La Liberté éclairant le monde, the gigantic Statue of Liberty (more properly “Liberty Enlightening the World”).
Work began on Liberty years before the centenary but the difficulty of the task and financing problems meant that by 1876 only the statue’s arm bearing the torch could be sent to Philadelphia for the festivities. It was designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and built by Gustave Eiffel. Made of copper, it depicted the Roman goddess Libertas carrying a torch and a law tablet inscribed with “1776”; at her feet is a broken chain signifying freedom from oppression. The statue was shipped in pieces to New York where it was erected on an island platform in the harbour, towering 305′ above the ground.
On this date in 1886 President Grover Cleveland dedicated the statue after a grand ticker-tape parade (the first ever) through the streets of New York.
No American contribution to religion has evoked as much turmoil, tragedy, and violence as the Church of Latter Day Saints, popularly called Mormonism. Its origins lie in the Burned-over district of upstate New York but the crises it precipitated occurred across the USA all the way to the Great Salt Lake of Utah.
Following the 1830 publication of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith’s new revelations attracted a large number of converts as well as hostile attention from their Christian neighbours. Particularly provocative were the approval of polygamy and numerous theological novelties such as the appearance of Jesus Christ in the Americas.
Settlements of Mormons were established in Ohio and then Missouri where Smith prophesied the Second Coming and the founding of a new capital city. Alarm at the growth of a Mormon presence led to the establishment in 1836 of Caldwell County in the northwest of Missouri where they could come together in safety, but that hope proved illusory. Small-scale violence broke out, especially after Mormons expanded their presence into neighbouring counties. In 1838 these skirmishes broke out into what is known as the Mormon War.
In the summer of 1838 a Mormon preacher warned that his people would respond to any further attacks with violence. Sidney Rigdon’s “July 4th Oration” stated:
We take God and all the holy angels to witness this day, that we warn all men in the name of Jesus Christ, to come on us no more forever. For from this hour, we will bear it no more, our rights shall no more be trampled on with impunity. The man or the set of men, who attempts it, does it at the expense of their lives. And that mob that comes on us to disturb us; it shall be between us and them a war of extermination; for we will follow them till the last drop of their blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us: for we will carry the seat of war to their own houses, and their own families, and one party or the other shall be utterly destroyed.—Remember it then all MEN.
A Mormon militia encountered forces of the Missouri state troops at the Battle of Crooked River on October 24 and though casualties on both sides were light, all thought of conciliation was abandoned. On October 27 Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issued Executive Order 44, known as the Extermination Order:
Headquarters of the Militia, City of Jefferson, Oct. 27, 1838.
Gen. John B. Clark:
Sir: Since the order of this morning to you, directing you to cause four hundred mounted men to be raised within your division, I have received by Amos Reese, Esq., of Ray county, and Wiley C. Williams, Esq., one of my aids [sic], information of the most appalling character, which entirely changes the face of things, and places the Mormons in the attitude of an open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made war upon the people of this state. Your orders are, therefore, to hasten your operation with all possible speed. The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description. If you can increase your force, you are authorized to do so to any extent you may consider necessary. I have just issued orders to Maj. Gen. Willock, of Marion county, to raise five hundred men, and to march them to the northern part of Daviess, and there unite with Gen. Doniphan, of Clay, who has been ordered with five hundred men to proceed to the same point for the purpose of intercepting the retreat of the Mormons to the north. They have been directed to communicate with you by express, you can also communicate with them if you find it necessary. Instead therefore of proceeding as at first directed to reinstate the citizens of Daviess in their homes, you will proceed immediately to Richmond and then operate against the Mormons. Brig. Gen. Parks of Ray, has been ordered to have four hundred of his brigade in readiness to join you at Richmond. The whole force will be placed under your command.
I am very respectfully, yr obt st [your obedient servant], L. W. Boggs, Commander-in-Chief.
This proclamation was swiftly followed by a massacre of 18 Mormon prisoners at Haun’s Mill, despoiling of Mormon settlers, and a decision by Joseph Smith to migrate out of Missouri. Further violence and hardship would ensue.
In the autumn of 1813 the United States launched a two-pronged attack on the city of Montreal, hoping to control the St Lawrence River valley and end the British military control of Lower Canada. On this date, one of those columns under Major General Wade Hampton met defeat at the Battle of the Chateauguay.
Hampton was an experienced officer, a veteran of battles in the Revolutionary War and against a slave uprising; by 1813 he was one of the most senior generals in the American army. His orders were to lead a force of about 4,000 regulars and militia men from Lake Champlain, strike into Quebec and rendezvous with another column outside of Montreal. This plan suffered number of setbacks, not the least of which was the refusal of 1,400 New York militia to cross the border. To add to the confusion, his orders were countermanded by the American Secretary of War after his troops had been committed to battle, and local guides (either deliberately or mistakenly) gave unreliable advice stranding hundreds of his men in a forest. On October 26 Hampton’s main force encountered British, Canadian, and Mohawk units at a ford on the Chateauguay River.
The troops facing the American invasion were a curious mixture of British regulars, Quebec volunteers, other locals drafted for a year’s military service, and Mohawk warriors from Kahnawake. They were commanded by a Canadian colonel, Charles de Salaberry, a seigneur who had seen long service with the British army in the West Indies and in the Netherlands in the wars against Napoleon. In 1803 he killed a fellow officer in a duel.
Salaberry’s men were greatly outnumbered and possessed no artillery to counter the 10 American cannon but they had better intelligence of their foe’s movements and were well-entrenched. Unable to outflank the Canadians and unwilling to risk heavier casualties in a frontal attack, Hampton decided to withdraw. His retreat, and the defeat of the other American column at the Battle of Crysler’s Farm, meant an end to that year’s threat to Montreal.
Hampton retired shortly after the battle and returned to his South Carolina plantations where he was an owner of thousands of slaves. Salaberry became a folk hero in Quebec and was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath by the British government.
Early in the twentieth century China was in political turmoil. The Qing (or Manchu) dynasty that had ruled the country since 1644 was on its last legs, rebels and warlords were making bids for power, and rival political theories were being tried on for size. Monarchist loyalists, reformed monarchists, Ming dynsty revivalists, republicans, ethnic nationalists, Muslims, socialists, regional separatists, etc., etc., all vied for influence – and even anarchism, usually associated with Europe, played a part.
One curious anarchist expression was the Chinese Assassination Corps. This small group of revolutionaries was fiercely anti-Qing and dedicated to the overthrow of the 2,000-year-old Chinese empire. Having been unsuccessful at building a mass movement, they adopted the tactic of “propaganda by deed”, individual terrorism, and murder. They aimed, and failed, to kill the Prince Regent, various Qing officials, and military officers but in October 1911 during an uprising in Guangdong, they finally brought down their target.
General Feng Shan had been sent to southern China to replace another assassinated Qing administrator and to suppress armed uprisings but his tenure was a very short one. Five members of the Assassination Corps devised a way to penetrate the heavy cordon of Manchu guards protecting the officer. As Feng Shan’s cavalcade moved down the street toward his headquarters on a palanquin, a bomb was slid from a window on a wooden plank, landing directly in front of his chair. The explosion killed the coolies carrying the general, a dozen of his guards, and Feng Shan himself.
The Assassination Corps would soon disband itself, burning most of its documents and membership lists.
The treaty (or rather treaties) of Westphalia brought a merciful finish to the worst conflicts in European history prior to the 20th-century, ending the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War. Historians often credit these agreements as the basis of the system of modern nation states. Significant aspects of the treaties include:
• A religious settlement which determined that the national religion of the signatory countries should be that of the ruler in place in 1624. Those not of that religion (Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist) were allowed to practise their own faiths in private.
• The independence of the Netherlands from Spain was recognized.
• The independence of Switzerland from the Holy Roman Empire was recognized.
• Territorial adjustments gave fortresses to France, Baltic territories to Sweden, and expanded Prussia.
Fry and Laurie explain the diplomatic difficulties:
From Butler’s Lives of the Saints we learn about a highly elastic martyr.
ABOUT the year 361, Julian, uncle to the emperor of that name, and like his nephew an apostate, was made Count of the East. He closed the Christian churches at Antioch, and when St. Theodoret assembled the Christians in private, he was summoned before the tribunal of the Count and most inhumanly tortured. His arms and feet were fastened by ropes to pulleys, and stretched until his body appeared nearly eight feet long, and the blood streamed from his sides. “O most wretched man,” he said to his judge, “you know well that at the day of judgment the crucified God Whom you blaspheme will send you and the tyrant whom you serve to hell.” Julian trembled at this awful prophecy, but he had the Saint despatched quickly by the sword, and in a little while the judge himself was arraigned before the judgment-seat of God.
Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo was born in 1922 to mixed-race Peruvian parents. She chose a career in singing South American folk music and after limited success in that field she was discovered by an American impresario who marketed her as an Incan princess with a phenomenal vocal range. Her stage name Yma Sumac became synonymous with exotic sounds and backdrops. She appeared in film, on Broadway, and in night clubs with extensive foreign tours to her credit.
