Happy Halloween

Some facts about Halloween:

The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows From the American Folklife Center

Jack Santino

Halloween had its beginnings in an ancient, pre-Christian Celtic festival of the dead. The Celtic peoples, who were once found all over Europe, divided the year by four major holidays. According to their calendar, the year began on a day corresponding to November 1st on our present calendar. The date marked the beginning of winter. Since they were pastoral people, it was a time when cattle and sheep had to be moved to closer pastures and all livestock had to be secured for the winter months. Crops were harvested and stored. The date marked both an ending and a beginning in an eternal cycle.

http://www.loc.gov/folklife/halloween.html

Message found in a bottle

A nice and light piece of news.


September 10, 2009

Bottle message found after 5 years

A British man who discovered a message in a bottle on a beach said he tracked down the U.S. teenager who dropped it from a cruise ship five years ago.

Tony Hoskings, a retired electrician, said he found the bottle in July while walking his dog in Goonhavern and discovered a message inside from cruise ship passenger Daniel Knopp.

"I noticed paper and could just see that it said Grandeur of the Seas, which I recognized as a cruise ship belonging to the company that my wife and I took a cruise with on their liner Song of America," Hoskings said.The message, which bore the date June 21, 2004, reads: "Hello, my name is Daniel Knopp. I am on a cruise ship. I hope whoever reads this finds great joy. God bless."

The note also identified Knopp's home as Baltimore, Md. Hoskings said his local paper, The West Briton, contacted the Baltimore Sun for help in locating Knopp. He was found after a seven-week search and discovered to be a 19-year-old political science student at the University of Maryland."

I was 14 when I threw the message off the ship in Freeport, in the Bahamas," Knopp said. "I thought it would be unreal if it were ever to be found, and I figured it would be destroyed by the ocean environment.""I was astounded by it not only being found, but the message still being legible -- it's almost story-like that it was located," he said.

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