Crackers and Chastity

*Giovannina is sitting on the windowsill,* Pavel Chistyakov (1864)

July 5th Birthdays

1794: Reverend Sylvester Graham, inventor of the cracker, diehard Puritan if ever there was. Let’s just say I don’t think he would approve of s’mores.

Prof. A. E. Douglass and the original Steward Observatory 36-inch Telescope (moved to Kitt Peak in 1963). Public Domain.

1810: Co-founder of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus P.T. Barnum.

1832: Russian painter Pavel Christyakov.

1849: Victorian era journalist William Stead. Considered to have paved the way for tabloid journalism, he died in the sinking of the Titanic.

1862: Microbiologist George Nuttall, who, along with William Welch, co-discovered Clostridium perfringens, the bacteria that causes gangrene.

1867: Astronomer A.E. Douglass Founded dendrochronology, the method of calculating the age of a tree by counting its rings.

1889: Poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau.

Movie poster for Jean Cocteau’s 1950 *Orpheus*

1996: Dolly the Cloned Sheep.

Today’s tarot card is the Hierophant, the fifth card in the Major Arcana, signifying tradition, dogma, and authority. However, 5’s in traditional tarot numerology mean change and instability. Also, the moon is in Mercury, bringing swift transmutation.

So should you change your mind or your outfit? Your outfit. The accuracy of my summary as they relate to your evening: call it the Barnum effect.