Quick followup to my Welcome March observations of yesterday. Something I did not mention about upcoming events and happenings to look forward to in March is that it features feast days in honor of Joseph (19th) and Mary (25th.)
St. Joe I have mentioned several times previously here on the Buzzyblog mostly because I am named after him in a way. (I was actually named after my Uncle Joe Norris, but we all know that it was the big Joe who started this naming trend. My country boy name of J. Scott has caused me a lifetime of having to explain how my J. stands for Joseph and hence I am not a very good Joe but instead am just a J.
As for Mary, I have also given her some love and attention thru the years here on the Buzzyblog. For example, just this past December I discussed her and John Lennon on 8 December the date when both of them took their leave of absence from here (click here.) Granted their departures differed greatly in that Mary got assumed and John got shot. Proves once again that God does work in some very mysterious ways doesn’t He/She? (Please note that I am really not trying to be politically correct here; I’m just covering all bases in case He is a She.) The following Annunciation painting was done by Henry Tanner (click here.) (Note that there it has an interesting back story that you can hear by clicking on link below it.)
Mary figures prominently in Maryland’s founding because the settlers landed on or around her Feast Day the Annunciation that we celebrate on 25 March. Easy way to remember this is that 9 months later, her Son made the scene on 25 December. Guess the Archangel Gabe knew what he was talking about back in March when he told Mary about her future and how she better start taking some Lamaze classes. (That Gabriel’s announcement hit around the occurrence of the March vernal equinox may, but probably was not, coincidental. Interesting fact here is that the date of the Annunciation, when determined, had more to do with Jesus’ death than it did with His birth (click here.)
Back to the Founding of Maryland and our celebrating it on the 25th of this month. This is from Wiki:
This too is from Wiki in their discussion of the History of Maryland:
As for how we got our name, you can take your pick between the Mother God or some Queen:
Music-wise, like so many of Bob’s tunes, this one gets a lot of attention as to who or what he was singing about re: some of his ex girlfriends. (Looking at you Joan.) However, think I prefer the interpretation that it is Bob’s testimony to getting off hard drugs and going back to just smoking some weed as in “Queen Mary she’s my friend, I believe I’ll go and see her again” (1:45 mark.) There are several great covers of this including Joe at Woodstock (click here.) But as always, Van’s the Man:
P.S. I once saw a bumper sticker on a car that passed me and it read “I Brake Just Like a Little Girl.” I tried to catch up with and flag down the driver of the car to let her know “Hey, I got that reference.” However, she kept moving too fast for me to do so. Not the first time that a woman was moving too fast for me.