Today we honor Saint Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor (died 461). Also, today is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps and Sadie Hawkins Day,, and the birthday of my good friend Dago in Mississippi (1956).
Born about 400 at Tuscany, Italy, to the Italian nobility, today’s Saint and Pope was a strong student, especially in scripture and theology. As a priest, he was an eloquent writer and homilist. Elected Pope in 440, he was a significant contributor to the centralisation of spiritual authority within the Church and in reaffirming Papal authority. In 445 Leo disputed with Pope Dioscorus, St. Cyril’s successor as Pope of Alexandria, insisting that the ecclesiastical practice of his see should follow that of Rome on the basis that Mark the Evangelist, the disciple of Saint Peter and founder of the Alexandrian Church, could have had no other tradition than that of the prince of the apostles. This, of course, was not the position of the Copts, who saw the ancient patriarchates as equals. At the Second Council of Ephesus in 449, Leo’s representatives delivered his famous Tome, or statement of the faith of the Roman Church in the form of a letter addressed to Archbishop Flavian of Constantinople, which repeats, in close adherence to Augustine, the formulas of western Christology. In 451 at the Council of Chalcedon, after Leo’s Tome on the two natures of Christ was read out, the bishops participating in the Council cried out: “This is the faith of the fathers … Peter has spoken thus through Leo …” In 452, when the King of the Huns, Attila, invaded Italy and threatened Rome, Emperor Valentinian III sent three envoys to negotiate with him: the two high civil officers Gennadius Avienus and Trigetius, and Leo. The negotiation was successful, and Attila withdrew. The reasons for this choice have been debated among historians for centuries. Christian historians celebrated Leo’s actions, giving him all the credit for this successful embassy. Leo wrote letters and sermons encouraging and teaching his flock, many of which survive today; it is for these writings that Leo was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1574. Also, today is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps. On this date in 1775 the Second Continental Congress directed the Naval Committee to raise two marine battalions at the Continental expense. The Naval Committee established a network of appointments for offices such as paymaster, commissions, procurements, equipment, etc., for establishing a future national corps of marines. Tun Tavern, in Philadelphia, is regarded as the birthplace of the Corps, as it was the enlistment station for the first Marines to enlist under Commandant Samuel Nicholas. Since 1921 the Corps has celebrated this birthday with a cake cutting ceremony, the regulations for which have been in the Marine Drill Manual since 1956. Marines are reputed to celebrate the birthday, regardless of where they may be in the world, even in austere environments or combat; and my father (who had been a Marine in Korea) never failed to recall this date. And, since today is the Saturday on or after November 9, today is Sadie Hawkins Day. In the classic hillbilly comic strip Li’l Abner by Al Capp, Sadie Hawkins was the daughter of one of Dogpatch’s earliest settlers, Hekzebiah Hawkins. The “homeliest gal in all them hills”, she grew frantic waiting for suitors to come a-courtin’. When she reached the age of 35, still a spinster, her father was even more frantic about Sadie living at home for the rest of his life. In desperation, he called together all the unmarried men of Dogpatch and declared it “Sadie Hawkins Day”. Specifically, a foot race was decreed, with Sadie in hot pursuit of the town’s eligible bachelors, with matrimony as the consequence for the bachelor caught by Sadie. The town spinsters decided that this was a good idea and made Sadie Hawkins Day a mandatory yearly event, much to the chagrin of Dogpatch bachelors. In the satirical spirit that drove the strip, many sequences revolved around the dreaded Sadie Hawkins Day race. If a woman caught a bachelor and dragged him, kicking and screaming, across the finish line before sundown, by law he had to marry her! Sadie Hawkins Day was first mentioned in the November 13, 1937 Li’l Abner daily strip, with the race actually taking place between November 19th and November 30th in the continuity of the strip, and proved to be a popular annual feature in Li’l Abner and a cultural phenomenon outside the strip. By 1952 Sadie Hawkins Day was reportedly celebrated at 40,000 known venues, usually by a dance where the girls asked the boys out. It was a female-empowering rite long before the modern feminist movement gained prominence. Finally, today is the birthday of my good friend Dago in Mississippi (1956).
On Friday night while taking a bath I read the October 22, 2012 issue of my Jesuit America magazine. Also, our LSU Men’s Basketball team beat UC Santa Barbara in their first game by the score of 77 to 63.
I did my Devotional Reading on our way to work; once at work we signed the Early Out list. After the WIG Huddle Richard was the dealer on Macau Mini Baccarat, and I was the relief dealer for Macau Mini Baccarat, Mini Baccarat, and Pai Gow. We did not get out early; when they closed Richard’s table, they used him to send dealers to the shift office, then he was the Check Racker on Roulette for the rest of our shift. Before we left the casino we picked up our Thanksgiving $15 gift cards from the casino for Wal-Mart.
Once home I ate a bowl of cereal and read the morning paper. Richard then went to Wal-Mart, and I went to the Adoration Chapel to do my Weekly Hour of Eucharistic Adoration. While there I read the October 29, 2012 issue of my Jesuit America magazine. When I got home I took a nap until 5:30 pm.
When I woke up from my nap, I set up my medications for next week (3 prescriptions to renew on Friday). Richard and I made roast beef poboys, and ate while watching the college football game between our #9 LSU Tigers and the #22 Mississippi State Bulldogs. I went to bed before the end of the game, which our Tigers won by the score of 37 to 17. Our LSU Tigers are now 8 and 2 for the season thus far, and 4 and 2 in the Southeastern Conference.
Our Saturday Afternoon Parting Quote comes to us from Dino De Laurentiis, Italian film producer. Born as Agostino De Laurentiis in 1919 in Torre Annunziata, Campania, he grew up selling spaghetti produced by his father. His studies at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. Following his first movie, L’ultimo Combattimento (1940), he produced nearly 150 films during the next seven decades. In 1946 his company, the Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, moved into production. In the early years, De Laurentiis produced neorealist films such as Bitter Rice (1946) and the Fellini classics La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1956), often in collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti. In the 1960s De Laurentiis built his own studio facilities, although these financially collapsed during the 1970s. During this period, though, De Laurentiis produced such films as Barabbas (1961) a Christian religious epic; Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, an imitation James Bond film; Navajo Joe (1966), a spaghetti western; Anzio (1968), a World War II film; Barbarella (1968) and Danger: Diabolik (1968), both successful comic book adaptations; and The Valachi Papers (1972) made to coincide with the popularity of The Godfather. In 1976 De Laurentiis relocated to the United States where he set up studios, eventually creating his own studio De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG) based in Wilmington, North Carolina; the building of the studio quickly made Wilmington a busy center of film and television production. During this period De Laurentiis made a number of successful and acclaimed films, including The Scientific Cardplayer (1972), Serpico (1973), Death Wish (1974), Mandingo (1975), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Shootist (1976), Drum (1976), Ingmar Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg (1977), Ragtime (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Blue Velvet (1986). However, it is for his more infamous productions that De Laurentiis’s name has become known, films such as the legendary King Kong (1976) remake, which was a commercial hit, Lipstick (1976), the killer whale film Orca (1977); The White Buffalo (1977); the disaster movie Hurricane (1979); the remake of Flash Gordon (1980); Halloween II (the 1981 sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 classic horror film); David Lynch’s Dune (1984); and King Kong Lives (1986). De Laurentiis also made several adaptations of Stephen King’s works during this time, including The Dead Zone (1983), Cat’s Eye (1985), Silver Bullet (1985) and Maximum Overdrive (1986); Army of Darkness (1992) was produced jointly by De Laurentiis, Robert Tapert and the movie’s star Bruce Campbell. De Laurentiis also produced the first Hannibal Lecter film, Manhunter (1986). He passed on adapting Thomas Harris’ sequel, The Silence of the Lambs (1991), but produced the two follow-ups, Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002), a remake of Manhunter. He also produced Hannibal Rising (2007), which tells the story of how Hannibal becomes a serial killer. In his later choice of stories he displayed a strong preference for adaptations of successful books, especially sweeping classics like Barabbas (1961), The Bible: In the Beginning (1966), or Dune (1984). In the 1980s he owned and operated DDL Foodshow, a specialty retailer with two gourmet Italian markets in New York City and Los Angeles. In 2001 he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (died 2010): “To me the only real star of the movie is the writer. And I work with writers very closely, from outline to first draft and on to the seventh draft, whatever it takes. Then my job is to support the director to make the best movie we can. Some producers try to go past them, but my job is to support them.”
From The Recamier 
Thanks for the birthday greetings, Kathy.