GERMANTOWN, GERMAN PEOPLE EMIGRATE TO AMERICA

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Germantown, the area in Northwest Philadelphia, that was founded by immigrant families, in the first major immigration of German people to America, on a day like today in 1683.

Germantown, in Pennsylvania German Deitscheschteddel, is an area in Northwest Philadelphia. Founded by German, Quaker, and Mennonite families in 1683 as an independent borough, it was absorbed into Philadelphia in 1854.

The area, which is about six miles northwest from the city centre, now consists of two neighbourhoods: Germantown and East Germantown.

Germantown has played a significant role in American history; it was the birthplace of the American antislavery movement, the site of a Revolutionary War battle, the temporary residence of George Washington, the location of the first bank of the United States, and the residence of many notable politicians, scholars, artists, and social activists.

Today, the area remains rich in historic sites and buildings from the colonial era, some of which are open to the public.

More information: Visit Philly

Although the arrival by ship of the later founders of Germantown in Philadelphia on October 6, 1683 was later to provide the date for German-American Day, a holiday in the United States, historical research has shown that nearly all the first thirteen Quaker and Mennonite families were in fact Dutch rather than Germans.

These families, which were mainly Dutch but also included some Swiss, had relocated to Krefeld (near the Dutch border) and Kriegsheim (in Rhineland-Palatinate) some years prior to their emigration to America to avoid persecution of their Mennonite beliefs in the Dutch Republic and Swiss Confederacy.

The town was named Germantown by the group's leader Franz Pastorius, a German preacher from Sommerhausen.

The town's population remained largely Dutch-speaking until 1709, after which a number of the Dutch families set out west and a series of major German emigrations reached Germantown and Pennsylvania as a whole. Their initial leader, Pastorius, later aligned himself with newer German arrivals and, as the only university-trained and legal and literary man among the early settlers, chronicled and stressed the town's German origins.

Adding to the assimilating of Dutch culture was the fact that the direct vicinity of the settlement was already inhabited by fifty-four German families who had accompanied Johan Printz to the Swedish settlement on the Delaware several years before 1683 and had resettled themselves.

Francis Daniel Pastorius was the first bailiff. Jacob Telner, Derick Isacks op den Graeff and his brother Abraham Isacks op den Graeff, Reynier Tyson, and Tennis Coender were burgesses, besides six committeemen.

 

They had authority to hold the general court of the corporation of Germantowne, to make laws for the government of the settlement, and to hold a court of record. This court went into operation in 1690, and continued its services for sixteen years.

In 1688, five years after its founding, Germantown became the birthplace of the anti-slavery movement in America. Pastorius, Gerret Hendericks, Derick Updegraeff and Abraham Opdengraef gathered at Thones Kunders's house and wrote a two-page condemnation of slavery and sent it to the governing bodies of their Quaker church, the Society of Friends.

The petition was mainly based upon the Bible's Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Though the Quaker establishment took no immediate action, the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was a clear and forceful argument against slavery and initiated the process of banning slavery in the Society of Friends (1776) and Pennsylvania (1780).

In 1723, Germantown became the site of the first Church of the Brethren congregation in the New World.

When Philadelphia was occupied by the British during the American Revolutionary War, British units were housed in Germantown.

In the Battle of Germantown, on October 4, 1777, the Continental Army attacked the garrison. During the battle, a group of civilians fired on the British troops as they marched up the avenue, mortally wounding British officer James Agnew.

More information: Genealogy Trails

The Americans withdrew after firing on one another in the confusion of the battle, which resulted in the battle becoming a British victory. The American losses amounted to 673 men and the British losses consisted of 575 men, but along with the American victory at Saratoga on October 17 when John Burgoyne surrendered, the battle led to the official recognition of the Americans by France, which formed an alliance with the Americans afterward.

During his presidency, George Washington and his family lodged at the Deshler-Morris House in Germantown to escape the city and the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. The first bank of the United States was also located here during his administration.

Germantown proper, and the adjacent German Township, were incorporated into the City of Philadelphia in 1854 by the Act of Consolidation.

Italians began settling Germantown in 1880, and comprised an active and vibrant part of the community.

The significant changes that occurred in Philadelphia's demographics at the start of the 20th century caused major shifts in Germantown's ethnic makeup as well. 

When the first wave of the Great Migration brought more than 140,000 African Americans to the city from the South, long-established Philadelphians started to move to the outskirts.

During this time, many German, Scots-Irish, and Irish families moved to Germantown.

During the 1940s, a second mass migration of African Americans from the south to Philadelphia occurred. While the majority of middle-class African American newcomers first settled in North Philadelphia, the housing shortages in this area that followed the end of World War II caused later arrivals to move instead to the Northwest. 

This led to a wave of new housing construction. To meet the housing needs of the growing numbers of African American families moving into southern Germantown, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority allocated $10.6 million for the creation of public housing.

Between 1954 and 1956, Germantown experienced an influx of lower-income African Americans, resulting in a decline in property values and triggering a white flight of the majority of white residents to the suburbs.

The demographic shift caused a slow but steady decline in central Germantown's upscale shopping district, with the last department store, a J. C. Penney branch, closing in the early 1980s.

More information: Germantown History

The current demographics of Germantown reflects this shift. As of the 2010 US Census, Germantown proper is 77% black, 15% white, 3% non-white Hispanic, and 2% Asian, and East Germantown is 92% black, 3% white, 2% non-white Hispanic, and 2% Asian.

Eugene Stackhouse, a retired former president of the Germantown Historical Society, says that the demographic transition of Germantown into a predominantly black neighbourhood was the result of the now illegal practice of blockbusting. It was a great disgrace. Cheap houses would be sold to a black family, then the realtors would go around and tell the neighbours that the blacks are invading, said Stackhouse. The practice was used to trigger panic selling.

The first railroad in Philadelphia was the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad, which linked Germantown to a station at 9th and Green Streets in Center City. It opened in 1832, and was initially powered by horses. The inventor Matthias W. Baldwin built his first commissioned steam locomotive for the new railroad. Nicknamed Old Ironsides, it eventually reached a peak speed of 28 mph.

More information: US History

 I grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania,
where my parents raised German shepherds
-we had about 30 dogs at any given time.

Tory Burch

PETROLEUM IN TITUSVILLE, FIRST COMMERCIAL OIL WELL

The Grandma visited Titusville, Pennsylvania

Today, The Grandma has been updating her investments. COVID has changes a lot of things in our society and one of them are transports. Due to this, the price of petroleum has going down. If we join this fact woth the idea of implementing green policies in the closer future in transports, we can think that, perhaps, investing in petroleum is not as interesting as was before.

The Grandma has been reading about petroleum and about how, on a day like today in 1859, petroleum was discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania leading to the world's first commercially successful oil well.

Petroleum is a naturally occurring, yellowish-black liquid found in geological formations beneath the Earth's surface.

It is commonly refined into various types of fuels. Components of petroleum are separated using a technique called fractional distillation.

It consists of naturally occurring hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and may contain miscellaneous organic compounds. The name petroleum covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude oil and petroleum products that are made up of refined crude oil. A fossil fuel, petroleum is formed when large quantities of dead organisms, mostly zooplankton and algae, are buried underneath sedimentary rock and subjected to both intense heat and pressure.

More information: AAPG

Petroleum has mostly been recovered by oil drilling, natural petroleum springs are rare. Drilling is carried out after studies of structural geology at the reservoir scale, sedimentary basin analysis, and reservoir characterisation, mainly in terms of the porosity and permeability of geologic reservoir structures, have been completed.

It is refined and separated, most easily by distillation, into numerous consumer products, from gasoline (petrol) and kerosene to asphalt and chemical reagents (ethylene, propylene, butene, acrylic acid, para-xylene) used to make plastics, pesticides and pharmaceuticals.

Petroleum is used in manufacturing a wide variety of materials, and it is estimated that the world consumes about 95 million barrels each day.

The use of petroleum as fuel is a major cause of global warming and ocean acidification. According to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, without fossil fuel phase-out, including petroleum, there will be severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.

The Grandma visited Titusville, Pennsylvania

Petroleum, in one form or another, has been used since ancient times, and is now important across society, including in economy, politics and technology.

The rise in importance was due to the invention of the internal combustion engine, the rise in commercial aviation, and the importance of petroleum to industrial organic chemistry, particularly the synthesis of plastics, fertilisers, solvents, adhesives and pesticides.

More than 4000 years ago, according to Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, asphalt was used in the construction of the walls and towers of Babylon; there were oil pits near Ardericca, near Babylon, and a pitch spring on Zacynthus. 

Great quantities of it were found on the banks of the river Issus, one of the tributaries of the Euphrates. Ancient Persian tablets indicate the medicinal and lighting uses of petroleum in the upper levels of their society.

The use of petroleum in ancient China dates back to more than 2000 years ago. In I Ching, one of the earliest Chinese writings cites that oil in its raw state, without refining, was first discovered, extracted, and used in China in the first century BCE.

In addition, the Chinese were the first to record the use of petroleum as fuel as early as the fourth century BCE. By 347 CE, oil was produced from bamboo-drilled wells in China.

Crude oil was often distilled by Persian chemists, with clear descriptions given in Arabic handbooks such as those of Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes). The streets of Baghdad were paved with tar, derived from petroleum that became accessible from natural fields in the region.

More information: National Geographical

In the 9th century, oil fields were exploited in the area around modern Baku, Azerbaijan. These fields were described by the Arab geographer Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī in the 10th century, and by Marco Polo in the 13th century, who described the output of those wells as hundreds of shiploads. Arab and Persian chemists also distilled crude oil in order to produce flammable products for military purposes.

Through Islamic Spain, distillation became available in Western Europe by the 12th century. It has also been present in Romania since the 13th century, being recorded as păcură.

Early British explorers to Myanmar documented a flourishing oil extraction industry based in Yenangyaung that, in 1795, had hundreds of hand-dug wells under production.

Pechelbronn (Pitch fountain) is said to be the first European site where petroleum has been explored and used. The still active Erdpechquelle, a spring where petroleum appears mixed with water has been used since 1498, notably for medical purposes. Oil sands have been mined since the 18th century. In Wietze in lower Saxony, natural asphalt/bitumen has been explored since the 18th century. Both in Pechelbronn as in Wietze, the coal industry dominated the petroleum technologies.

Titusville, Pennsylvania

The word petroleum comes from Medieval Latin petroleum, literally rock oil, which comes from Latin petra, rock, from Ancient Greek: πέτρα, romanized: petra, rock and Latin oleum, oil, from Ancient Greek: ἔλαιον, romanized: élaion, oil.

Chemist James Young noticed a natural petroleum seepage in the Riddings colliery at Alfreton, Derbyshire from which he distilled a light thin oil suitable for use as lamp oil, at the same time obtaining a more viscous oil suitable for lubricating machinery.

In 1848, Young set up a small business refining the crude oil. Young eventually succeeded, by distilling cannel coal at a low heat, in creating a fluid resembling petroleum, which when treated in the same way as the seep oil gave similar products. Young found that by slow distillation he could obtain a number of useful liquids from it, one of which he named paraffine oil because at low temperatures it congealed into a substance resembling paraffin wax.

The production of these oils and solid paraffin wax from coal formed the subject of his patent dated 17 October 1850. In 1850 Young & Meldrum and Edward William Binney entered into partnership under the title of E.W. Binney & Co. at Bathgate in West Lothian and E. Meldrum & Co. at Glasgow; their works at Bathgate were completed in 1851 and became the first truly commercial oil-works in the world with the first modern oil refinery.

The world's first oil refinery was built in 1856 by Ignacy Łukasiewicz. His achievements also included the discovery of how to distill kerosene from seep oil, the invention of the modern kerosene lamp (1853), the introduction of the first modern street lamp in Europe (1853), and the construction of the world's first modern oil well (1854).

The demand for petroleum as a fuel for lighting in North America and around the world quickly grew. Edwin Drake's 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, is popularly considered the first modern well.

 More information: Science Direct

Titusville is a city in the far east corner of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, United States.

The population was 5,287 at the 2018 census. Titusville is known as the birthplace of the American oil industry and for a number of years, was the leading oil producing region in the world. Titusville was notable for its lumber industry, including 17 sawmills, as well as its plastic, and tool making industries.

The area was first settled in 1796 by Jonathan Titus. Within 14 years, others bought and improved land lying near his, along the banks of what is now Oil Creek. Titus named the village Edinburg(h), but as it grew, the settlers began to call the hamlet Titusville. The village was incorporated as a borough in 1849. It was a slow-growing community until the 1850s, when petroleum was discovered in the region.

Oil was known to exist there, but there was no practical way to extract it. Its main use at that time had been as a medicine for both animals and humans. In the late 1850s, Seneca Oil Company, formerly the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, sent Col. Edwin L. Drake, to start drilling on a piece of leased land just south of Titusville, near what is now Oil Creek State Park.

Then and now, Titusville

In the summer of 1859, Drake hired a salt well driller, William A. Smith. They had many difficulties but, on August 27, at the site of an oil spring just south of Titusville, they finally drilled a well that could be commercially successful.

Teamsters were needed immediately to transport the oil to markets. In 1862, the Oil Creek & Titusville Railroad was built between Titusville and Corry, where the product was transferred to larger east-west railroad lines.

In 1865, pipelines were laid directly to the line and the demand for teamsters practically ended. The next year the railroad line was extended south to Petroleum Centre and Oil City.

The Union & Titusville Railroad was built in 1865. That line became part of the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad in 1871. That fall, President Ulysses S. Grant visited Titusville to view the important region. Other oil-related businesses were quickly established. Eight refineries were built between 1862 and 1868. Drilling tools were needed and several iron works were built. Titusville grew from 250 residents to 10,000 almost overnight and in 1866, it incorporated as a city.

In 1871, the first oil exchange in the United States was established there. The exchange moved from the city, but returned in 1881 in a new, brick building, before being dissolved in 1897.

The first oil millionaire was Jonathan Watson, a resident of Titusville. He owned the land where Drake's well was drilled. He had been a partner in a lumber business prior to the success of the well. At one time it was said that Titusville had more millionaires per 1,000 population than anywhere else in the world.

One resident of note was Franklin S. Tarbell, whose large Italianate home still stands. He first moved a few miles south in Venango County and established a wooden stock tank business. About 16 km south-east of Titusville was another oil boom city, Pithole.

More information: City of Titusville

Oil was discovered in a rolling meadow there in January 1865 and, by September 1865, the population was 15,000. But the oil soon ran dry and within four years the city was nearly deserted. Tarbell moved to Titusville in 1870. His daughter, Ida Minerva Tarbell, grew up amidst the sounds and smells of the oil industry. She became an accomplished writer and published a series of articles about the business practices of the Standard Oil Company and its president, John D. Rockefeller, which sparked legislative action in Congress concerning monopolies.

Fire was always a significant concern around oil and one of the worst blazes was on June 11, 1880. It came to be known as Black Friday, when almost 300,000 barrels (48,000 m3) of oil burned after an oil tank was hit by lightning. The fire raged for three days until it finally was brought under control. The destroyed oil was valued at $2 million, but there was no loss of life.

Another fire occurred on June 5, 1892, when Oil Creek flooded and a tank of petroleum ether overturned. The petroleum ether ignited and, in the ensuing explosions, 60 men, women and children died. Another lightning strike in 1894 resulted in 27,000 barrels (4,300,000 liters) of oil being lost in a fire.

Oil production in Pennsylvania peaked in 1891, after which other industries became established in Titusville. The iron and steel industries dominated the town in the early twentieth century, with lumber eventually reclaiming its former pre-eminence.

Oil still has some relevance, however. Charter Plastics, now located in a building that once manufactured pressure vessels, stationary engines and boilers for the oil industry, uses oil in its production processes.

More information: Titusville Pennsylvania

 In the 1940s,

the petroleum business was an American game,

and it was enormously to our advantage

that the world ran on oil.

Robert Zubrin

ANDY WARHOL, VISUAL ART MOVEMENT A.K.A. POP ART

The Grandma & Claire arriving to the MACBA

After following the strike convened in a favour of civil and labour rights, The Grandma has returned to her activity. Today, she has gone to visit the MACBA, the Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona accompanied by Claire Fontaine.

Claire and The Grandma have wanted to homage Andy Warhol, who died on a day like today in 1987, and they have enjoyed the last trends in contemporary art.

Before visiting the museum, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 11).

More information: Reported Speech 1

Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928-February 22, 1987) was an American artist, director and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertising that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture.

Some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).

More information: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Warhol initially pursued a successful career as a commercial illustrator. After exhibiting his work in several galleries in the late 1950s, he began to receive recognition as an influential and controversial artist. His New York studio, The Factory, became a well-known gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy patrons.

Andy Warhol

He promoted a collection of personalities known as Warhol superstars, and is credited with coining the widely used expression 15 minutes of fame.

In the late 1960s, he managed and produced the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and founded Interview magazine.

He authored numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. He lived openly as a gay man before the gay liberation movement.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city of Pittsburgh, which holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist. Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$105 million for a 1963 canvas titled Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster); his works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. 

More information: The Andy Warhol Museum

Warhol was born on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the fourth child of Ondrej Warhola and Julia, whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their move to the U.S.

His parents were working-class Lemko emigrants from Mikó, Austria-Hungary, now called Miková, located in today's northeastern Slovakia. Warhol's father emigrated to the United States in 1914, and his mother joined him in 1921, after the death of Warhol's grandparents. Warhol's father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The family was Ruthenian Catholic and attended St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy Warhol had two older brothers—Pavol, the oldest, was born before the family emigrated; Ján was born in Pittsburgh. Pavol's son, James Warhola, became a successful children's book illustrator.

Warhol's early career was dedicated to commercial and advertising art, where his first commission had been to draw shoes for Glamour magazine in the late 1940s.

The Grandma Warhol

He began exhibiting his work during the 1950s. He held exhibitions at the Hugo Gallery and the Bodley Gallery in New York City; in California, his first West Coast gallery exhibition was on July 9, 1962, in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles with Campbell's Soup Cans. The exhibition marked his West Coast debut of pop art.

Andy Warhol's first New York solo pop art exhibition was hosted at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery November 6–24, 1962. The exhibit included the works Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles, and 100 Dollar Bills. At the Stable Gallery exhibit, the artist met for the first time poet John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, Sleep, in 1963.

It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American objects such as dollar bills, mushroom clouds, electric chairs, Campbell's Soup Cans, Coca-Cola bottles, celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, Troy Donahue, Muhammad Ali, and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as newspaper headlines or photographs of police dogs attacking African-American protesters during the Birmingham campaign in the civil rights movement. During these years, he founded his studio, The Factory and gathered about him a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. His work became popular and controversial.

More information: The Art Story

Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the 1980s, partially due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of prolific younger artists, who were dominating the bull market of 1980s New York art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, David Salle and other so-called Neo-Expressionists, as well as members of the Transavantgarde movement in Europe, including Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi.

Before the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, he teamed with 15 other artists, including David Hockney and Cy Twombly, and contributed a Speed Skater print to the Art and Sport collection. The Speed Skater was used for the official Sarajevo Winter Olympics poster.

Warhol died in Manhattan at 6:32 a.m. on February 22, 1987 at age 58. According to news reports, he had been making a good recovery from gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital before dying in his sleep from a sudden post-operative irregular heartbeat. Prior to his diagnosis and operation, Warhol delayed having his recurring gallbladder problems checked, as he was afraid to enter hospitals and see doctors. His family sued the hospital for inadequate care, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water intoxication. The malpractice case was quickly settled out of court; Warhol's family received an undisclosed sum of money.

More information: Tate

If you're not trying to be real, 

you don't have to get it right. That's art.

Andy Warhol

CANDLEMASS & THE GROUNDHOG DAY PREDICT WEATHER

Old memories at Candelaria Church, Tenerife

February, 2 is a special day for The Grandma because some different events in different points of the world happen to celebrate the Candlemass day. In Canary Islands, they celebrate the festivity of The Virgin of Candelaria, their the patron saint; in Mallorca, it is possible to contemplate an incredible phenomenon of light in the cathedral of Palma, and in Punxsutawney, they celebrate the Groundhog day, a festivity where a groundhog predicts the weather for the next months. The Grandma has visited Molins de Rei, a beautiful city near Barcelona, where The Virgin of Candelaria is also its patron.

Candlemas has got old origins and lots of European cultures celebrates it. A Catalan proverb says that if Candlemass cries, winter is finishing but if Candlemass smiles winter is going to be longer (Si la Candelera plora, l'hivern és fora; si la Candelera riu, l'hivern és viu).

One of the most popular an important Catalan poets of the 19th century, Jacint Verdaguer, wrote a beautiful poem about Candlemass that is remembered on a day like today in different events around the Catalan lands.

Before celebrating Candlemass day, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 14).

More information: Vocabulary 14-The World Around Us

Candlemas, also spelled Candlemass, also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus and the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a Christian Holy Day commemorating the presentation of Jesus at the Temple.

The Virgin of Candelaria or Our Lady of Candelaria, popularly called La Morenita, celebrates the Virgin Mary on the island of Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. The center of worship is located in the city of Candelaria in Tenerife. She is depicted as a Black Madonna. The Royal Basilica Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Candelaria is considered the main church dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the Canary Islands. She is the patron saint of the Canary Islands. Her feast is celebrated on February 2 and August 15, the patronal feast of the Canary Islands.

More information: Secret Tenerife

Twice a year, on February 2nd and November 11, this spectacular phenomenon appears in the Cathedral of Palma. But what is this?

The reasons for the massive interest in this event, has its roots in the Christian faith.

February 2nd: The day when Jesus was presented in the temple of Jerusalem and Mary was purified after childbirth, also known as the Calendria.

November 11: The day of Saint Martin of Tours, a saint that honoured in one of the chapels of La Seu.

At 8:30 in the morning, the sun rises over La Seu. The sun beams breaks through the greater of the two rosettes in the facade wall of the cathedral, and causes a reflection of playful colours just under the rosette on the opposite facade wall.

The Grandma contemplates the '8' in Palma Cathedral

The sensation lasts about 15 minutes, during which hundreds of excited guests adores the symphony of colours lighting up the majestic interior of one of Europe’s most spectacular constructions.

The reflection of lights and the rosette of the facade forms the number 8.

In Christian traditions, the number 8 has a symbolic value. Back in time, Christian writers found, that when an extra day was added to the natural seven day week, the gate to eternity (heaven) was opened. The number 8 represents a new start, to be born again and resurrected, just like Jesus showed himself eight times after his resurrection.

Also notice, that the 14 massive columns inside the cathedral are octagonal. The same coincide with the baptistery in many churches.

More information: Catedral de Mallorca

Groundhog Day is a popular tradition celebrated in Canada and the United States on February 2. It derives from the Pennsylvania Dutch superstition that if a groundhog emerging from its burrow on this day sees its shadow due to clear weather, it will retreat to its den and winter will persist for six more weeks, and if it does not see its shadow because of cloudiness, spring will arrive early. While the tradition remains popular in modern times, studies have found no consistent correlation between a groundhog seeing its shadow or not and the subsequent arrival time of spring-like weather.

The weather lore was brought from German-speaking areas where the badger is the forecasting animal. This appears to be an enhanced version of the lore that clear weather on the Christian Holy Day of Candlemas forebodes a prolonged winter.

The Groundhog Day ceremony held at Punxsutawney in western Pennsylvania, centering around a semi-mythical groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil, has become the most attended.

Grundsow Lodges in Pennsylvania Dutch Country in the southeastern part of the state celebrate them as well. Other cities in the United States and Canada have also adopted the event. The observance of Groundhog Day in the United States first occurred in German communities in Pennsylvania, according to known records.

Punxsutawney Phil

The earliest mention of Groundhog Day is an entry on February 2, 1840, in the diary of James L. Morris of Morgantown, in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, according to the book on the subject by Don Yoder. This was a Welsh enclave but the diarist was commenting on his neighbors who were of German stock.

The first reported news of a Groundhog Day observance was arguably made by the Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, in 1886: up to the time of going to press, the beast has not seen its shadow. However, it was not until the following year in 1887 that the first Groundhog Day considered official was commemorated here, with a group making a trip to the Gobbler's Knob part of town to consult the groundhog. People have gathered annually at the spot for the event ever since.

More information: The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club

Clymer Freas (1867–1942) who was city editor at the Punxsutawney Spirit is credited as the father who conceived the idea of Groundhog Day. It has also been suggested that Punxsutawney was where all the Groundhog Day events originated, from where it spread to other parts of the United States and Canada.

The Groundhog Day celebrations of the 1880s were carried out by the Punxsutawney Elks Lodge. The lodge members were the genesis of the Groundhog Club formed later, which continued the Groundhog Day tradition. But the lodge started out being interested in the groundhog as a game animal for food. It had started to serve groundhog at the lodge, and had been organizing a hunting party on a day each year in late summer.

The chronologies given are somewhat inconsistent in the literature. The first Groundhog Picnic was held in 1887 according to a book for popular reading by an academic, but given as post-circa-1889 by a local historian in a journal. The historian states that around 1889 the meat was served in the lodge's banquet, and the organized hunt started after that.

Celebrating Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney

Either way, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club was formed in 1899, and continued the hunt and Groundhog Feast, which took place annually in September.

The hunt portion of it became increasingly a ritualized formality, because the practical procurement of meat had to occur well ahead of time for marinating. A drink called the groundhog punch was also served. The flavor has been described as a cross between pork and chicken. The hunt and feast did not attract enough outside interest, and the practice discontinued.

The groundhog was not named Phil until 1961, possibly as an indirect reference to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

The largest Groundhog Day celebration is held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where crowds as large as 40,000 gather each year, nearly eight times the year-round population of the town. The average draw had been about 2,000 until the year after the movie screened in 1993, after which attendance rose to about 10,000.

The official Phil is pretended to be a supercentenarian, having been the same forecasting beast since 1887. In 2019, the 133rd year of the tradition, the groundhog was summoned to come out at 7:25 am on February 2, but did not see its shadow. Fans of Punxsutawney Phil awaited his arrival starting at 6:00 a.m., thanks to a live stream provided by Visit Pennsylvania. The live stream has been a tradition for the past several years, allowing more people than ever to watch the animal meteorologist.

More information: The Guardian

Blanca com un ciri, pura com un lliri,

la Verge divina al Temple Camina

duent en sos braços, com xaió de llet,

lo bon Jesuset.

Jacint Verdaguer

THE BEANS: WITNESSES OF THE AMISH COMMUNITY

Raquel Lapp waiting The Beans arrival

Anton Bean is a great fan of History. He loves reading books and reports about culture, traditions and anthropology. He stores lots and lots of information in his tablet and he likes knowing new things every day and checking them with old ones. 

Anton is excited today because The Beans have decided to visit Rachel Lapp and her family, members of the Amish Community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It’s near Philadelphia and in the way to Washington, DC and it is a good chance to visit them and discover how their life-style closer to 19 century full of old traditions and an ancient religion afect the new Amish generations.

More information: New York Times

The Amish are a group of traditionalist Christian church fellowships with Swiss Anabaptist origins. They are closely related to, but distinct from, Mennonite churches. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, and reluctance to adopt many conveniences of modern technology. The history of the Amish church began with a schism in Switzerland within a group of Swiss and Alsatian Anabaptists in 1693 led by Jakob Ammann. Those who followed Ammann became known as Amish.

Rachel Lapp and John Book in 1985

In the early 18th century, many Amish and Mennonites immigrated to Pennsylvania for a variety of reasons. Today, the most traditional descendants of the Amish continue to speak Pennsylvania German, also known as Pennsylvania Dutch, although a dialect of Swiss German is used by Old Order Amish in the Adams County, Indiana area.

Amish church membership begins with baptism, usually between the ages of 16 and 25. It is a requirement for marriage within the Amish church. Once a person is baptized with the church, he or she may marry only within the faith. Church districts average between 20 and 40 families, and worship services are held every other Sunday in a member's home. The district is led by a bishop and several ministers and deacons. 

More information: Lancaster, Pennsylvania

The rules of the church, the Ordnung, must be observed by every member and cover most aspects of day-to-day living, including prohibitions or limitations on the use of power-line electricity, telephones, and automobiles, as well as regulations on clothing. 

Anton Bean travelling in an Amish transport

Most Amish do not buy commercial insurance or participate in Social Security. As present-day Anabaptists, Amish church members practice nonresistance and will not perform any type of military service. The Amish value rural life, manual labor and humility, all under the auspices of living what they interpret to be God's word.

Members who do not conform to these community expectations and who cannot be convinced to repent are excommunicated. In addition to excommunication, members may be shunned, a practice that limits social contacts to shame the wayward member into returning to the church. Almost 90 percent of Amish teenagers choose to be baptized and join the church. 

More information: Discover Lancaster

During an adolescent period of rumspringa or running around in some communities, nonconforming behavior that would result in the shunning of an adult who had made the permanent commitment of baptism, may meet with a degree of forbearance. Amish church groups seek to maintain a degree of separation from the non-Amish world. Non-Amish people are generally referred to as 'English'. 

The Beans entering in an Amish shop

There is generally a heavy emphasis on church and family relationships. They typically operate their own one-room schools and discontinue formal education after grade eight, at age 13/14. Until the children turn 16, they have vocational training under the tutelage of their parents, community, and the school teacher. Higher education is generally discouraged as it can lead to social segregation and the unraveling of the community.

Amish lifestyle is regulated by the Ordnung  or order, which differs slightly from community to community, and, within a community, from district to district. What is acceptable in one community may not be acceptable in another. 

More information: Exploring Amish Country

It is agreed upon within the community by the elders prior to the annual Communion. These include matters such as dress, permissible uses of technology, religious duties, and rules regarding interaction with outsiders. These elders are generally men.

The Beans arriving to an Amish farm

Bearing children, raising them, and socializing with neighbors and relatives are the greatest functions of the Amish family. Amish typically believe large families are a blessing from God. Community is central to the Amish way of life.

Working hard is considered godly, and some technological advancements have been considered undesirable because they reduce the need for hard work. Machines such as automatic floor cleaners in barns have historically been rejected as this provides young farmhands with too much free time.

Download Colours in Old Amish Quilts

The Beans are very interested in knowing how this community can work together building great structures without any kind of occupational hazards rules.

There can be no assumption that today's majority is 'right' and the Amish and others like them are 'wrong.' A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no rights or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different.
 

Warren E. Burger