12 March 12022

♄   12 March 12022 is the World Day Against Cyber Censorship. It’s also New Year (Aztecs), Arbor Day (China and Taiwan), National Day (Mauritius), and Youth Day (Zambia). It’s JD 2459651 (at least from four in the morning on in the part of the world I live; it may be JD 2459650 where you are). On the Western Calendar it is 27 February (O.S.) or 12 March (N.S.) 2022 CE. On the Jewish calendar it is 9 Veadar 5782 and on the Islamic it is 8 Sha’ban 1443. On the Persian calendar it’s 21 Esfand 1400. And it’s sf writer—I used to read his stories in the pages of Analog when I was young—Harry Harrison’s birthday.

The saint of the day is Theophanes the Confessor. The Byzantine chronographer (c. 10760–c. 10818) had a relatively uninteresting life—his father died when he was young and the emperor had him brought up at court until he was married at eighteen to live a celibate life with a woman until they split up to join separate religious institutions. He declined to join the Iconoclasts and when asked during an interrogation “Whilst Christ’s body was in the tomb, where was His divinity?” answered “The divinity is everywhere, Ο enemy of God, except in your heart.” According to his own account his friend George Syncellus asked him to complete his life’s work for him—a chronicle of world history from the beginning until close to his own time, a labor involving cross-checking and correlating the dates of various rulers and events and assigning them to a year given on a system beginning with the creation of the world. Theophanes confessed his inadequacy for the job—an assessment many historians would probably agree with—but undertook it anyway, noting that he had written nothing himself, but only excerpted material from those who had gone before him. And that makes his work invaluable—because it has survived when many of his sources have not. His excerpting material sometime leads to incongruous results, as when he has “the most gentle Constantine” ordering a “decapitation by the sword,” but it has the merit of preserving the original text for us of his sources, extant or not. (And thanks to Cyril Mango’s introduction to the Chronicle for this information.)

And in local news the mask mandate appears to be going away here where I live for most purposes—though not public transportation or medical facilities. I don’t know whether I personally will be demasking anytime soon; I feel rather comfortable in this brave new world. I’m in no hurry, anyway.