Articles In This Issue
S ERVING S OUTH T EXAS AND S URROUNDING A REAS F OR O VER 37 Y EARS Vol.XXXIX, No. 4
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Page 1: Pat Farrell Page 3: SABOR Page 7: The Way I See It Featuring: Cathey Meyer Page 13: Associate Spotlight Featuring: Esperanza Page 15: In The Know Featuring: Jose D’Craw Page 17: NARPM Article Featuring: Brenda Davila Page 22 - 23: News Flash
April 2021
April Showers Bring May Flowers
PRSRT STD U.S. Postage PAID San Antonio, Texas Permit #1416
Or is that so? From the title one would expect that April might just be the wettest month of the year to be able to set in motion the return of flowering but that may not be the case. According to climatological studies of rainfall in Texas, April would actually fall into fourth place behind October, June, and July. So, do we even know the source of that claim? The real quotation about April showers and May flowers probably is probably found in A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry, a book written by Thomas Tusser in 1557 in which he said, "Sweet April showers do spring May flowers." There are different viewpoints about April which include one from T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land, which says, "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain," and William Shakespeare commented, "April hath put a spirit of youth in everything." But Mark Twain said, "The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year," which is no doubt a reference to April Fools' Day. April Fool's Day, or All Fool's Day, is one in which folks enjoy the custom of playing harmless pranks on others like sending them on so called fool's errands or telling them, "Look, your shoes are untied, and when they
do look shouting "April Fool." There is a theory that Chaucer, in his Nun's Priest Tale (1390) may have made a reference to April Fools and that in France one can find books, starting as far back as 1507, that also may contain stories about April Fool's Day. Regardless of the numerous speculations the true origin of the day remains unknown. Prior to 700 BC, on the Roman Calendar, which was based on the phases of the moon, April was the second of the ten months of a year which lasted 304 days, and ignored the 61 days of Winter. Once the months of January and February had been added to precede March in the Julian Calendar, Winter's 61 days were accounted for in the year which now consisted of 365 days. Pope Gregory XIII further revised the calendar to one based on the solar system that just slightly adjusted leap years so the year would be in sync with the changing seasons. While the Julian Calendar is still followed in some parts of the world, most countries including the United States use the Gregorian Calendar. There are a few theories about how April got its name, some of which come from the Romans and others from the Greeks and/or the Anglo-Saxons. The Romans thought that the name Aprilis is a derivation of the Latin asperire which means "to open," which could be a reference to the common occurrence of flowers beginning to blossom and trees coming back to life as happens in Spring in our part of the world. The Greeks believed believed that Aprilis is a derivation Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. But since the fifth century AD the Anglo-Saxons have associated April with Eostre-monath which refers to the goddess Eostre whose celebration occurs during April. Additionally, the Venerable Bede equates Eostre with Easter which is sometimes celebrated in March but more frequently April. But like April Fool's Day the source of the name remains a mystery. April has seen a number of "firsts" and beneficial events that occurred in Aprils over the years start-
ing back in 753 BC when Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, founded Rome. In 1633 Galileo was convicted of heresy, for announcing that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and in 1635 the first public school in the Americas, the Boston Latin School, was founded. During the 1800s the Library of Congress was established, the General Electric Company was formed, and Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language. Also occurring in the 1800s, The Pony Express began service between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, the United States bought Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million and through the Louisiana Purchase added the states of Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The Mormon Church (now Known as The Church of Latter Day Saints) was founded in Fayette Township, New York by Joseph Smith, Woodville Latham and his sons demonstrated the "Panopticon" - the first movie projector developed in the United States, and the first Boston Marathon was run. In 1902 James C. Penney opened his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming while in 1955 Ray Croc opened McDonald's first franchised restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. Also, during that century, in New York, the first official "movie theater," the Mark Strand Theatre opened and Yankee Stadium, "The House that Ruth Built'1, opened too. Microsoft was founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Apple Computer Company was formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Simon & Schuster published the first crossword puzzle book, and insulin became available for use by people with diabetes. In 1961 Soviet Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to travel into space, while in the United States, in 1964 Gemini 1, an unmanned test flight, was launched, Space Shuttle Columbia made its first
launch in 1983 and in 1984 Space Shuttle Challenger made its maiden voyage into space. Also in 1954 the first practical solar cell was demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories, the first portable cell phone call was placed in New York City in 1973 and Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, was unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco in 1981, and finally, in 2003 the Human Genome Project was completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%. But, like everything else in life along with the good comes the bad. The volcano Tambora, erupted in Indonesia killing almost 100,000 people. In 1865, John Wilkes Booth fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., and in 1906 the volcano, Mount Vesuvius erupted devastating Naples. In the first half of the 1900s the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank killing 1514 people, the dirigible Akron crashed in New Jersey killing 73 people, and in Texas City 571 people died in an ammonium nitrate explosion. Later in the decade Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, 135,000 people died during a cyclone in Bangladesh, the Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred in the republic of China, the FBI launched a tear-gas assault on the Branch Davidian Compound and 13 students and teachers died and 23 were injured during the Columbine High School shooting. Though we may not know for sure how April got its name or how and why April Fool's Day got started or why it is celebrated by so people from many in so many different cultures around the world, we do know that during Aprils throughout the years many significant and life-changing events have occurred. And, whether April produces the most rain for the year or not, flowers still appear in the Spring and the month offers everyone a chance for a new beginning and a hope that the "good" will always outweigh the "bad."
- Pat Farrell / Contributing Writer