The Daily Agenda for Easter Sunday

Jim Burroway

April 8th, 2012

J.C. Leyendecker’s cover for the Saturday Evening Post, April 11, 1925 (Click to enlarge)

So here’s some trivia for you. In most of the world, Easter Sunday, which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus, typically goes by a name derived from the Greek (Paskha), which in turn comes from the Hebrew (Pesaḥ), which is Hebrew for Passover. Early Christianity replaced the Passover lamb with “the Lamb of God” and kept the name for their own commemoration of the Resurrection. The Greek Πάσχα was quickly transliterated into the Latin Pascha, and together those two languages gave rise to the modern Pashkë (Albanian,) Påske (Danish and Norwegian), Pasen (Dutch), Pääsiäinen (Finnish), Pâques (French), Pascua (Galician), Pak (Haitian Creole), Páskar (Icelandic), Pasqua (Italian), Páscoa (Portuguese), Paşti (Romanian), Πасха (Pascha, Russian), Påsk (Swedish), Paskalya (Turkish), Πаска (Paska, Ukrainian), Phục sinh (Vietnamese), and Pasg (Welsh). [Thanks, Google Translate!]

But in the good old King James English, we call it Easter, which has nothing to do with the Paschal sacrifice or Passover or any of that. The Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre refers to the month of the Germanic calendar which the Venerable Bede in the Eighth century said was named for the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre. (Easter in modern German is rendered as Ostern,) Which means that in the Lord’s Red-Letter English, we have long since taken the Paschal Lamb out of Pascha and replaced it with Easter eggs, bunnies, bonnets, and Peeps. Happy Easter everyone!

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Celebrations This Weekend: Spring Diversity, Eureka Springs, AR; Mr. Gay World, Johannesburg, South Africa; White Party, Palm Springs CA

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Sean Kennedy: 1987. He would have been twenty-five today if he hadn’t been killed on May 16, 2007 at about 3:45 a.m. as he left a local bar in Greenville, South Carolina. According to local news reports at the time, the sheriff’s department said that Stephen Andrew Moller got out his his car, walked up to Sean, shouted comments about Sean’s sexual orientation, and punched him hard enough to break several facial bones. When Sean fell, his head hit the pavement so hard that his brain separated from his brain stem. Fifteen minutes later, one of Sean’s friends received a voice mail from Moller:

Hey. (laughter) Whoa stop. (laughter) Hey, I was just wondering how your boyfriend’s feeling right about now. (laughter) (??) knocked the fuck out. (laughter). The fucking faggot. He ought to never stick his mother-fucking nose (??) Where are you going? Just a minute. (laughter). Yea boy, your boy is knocked out, man. The motherfucker. Tell him he owes me $500.00 for breaking my goddamn hand on his teeth that fucking bitch.

Greenville County sheriff’s office arrested Moller as part of a homicide investigation; his arrest warrant described the act as “a result of the defendant not liking the sexual identity of the victim.” But by the time the case reached the grand jury in October, the indictment was reduced to involuntary manslaughter, for which South Carolina law set the maximum penalty at five years. Moller’s attorney argued that Moller “had no idea (Sean) was gay until after the fact. It’s just a freak incident that should never have happened.”

As part of a plea deal, Moller was sentenced to three years, minus seven months for time served. After getting his GED, Moller’s sentenced was reduced again and he was released after just 13 months, his “goddamn hand” having healed quite nicely in the meantime.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

FergieSLC

April 8th, 2012

FYI…Dr. A. Dean Byrd’s obituary is in todays Salt Lake Tribune.

Jean-Luc

April 8th, 2012

Vietnamese “Phục sinh” is unrelated to the Greek “Paskha” — “Phục” is simply Vietnamese for “re-,” while “sinh” is “to be born.” Like a lot of Vietnamese vocabulary, both parts are of Chinese origin (the equivalent characters are 復 and 生).

Jim Burroway

April 8th, 2012

Jean-Luc, thanks for the explanation

StraightGrandmother

April 8th, 2012

How can it be true that Sean Kennedy’s killer only served 13 months? How can that be? 2007 wasn’t that long ago.

Kate

April 10th, 2012

I was going through my Netflix queue and decided to watch something I’d picked out a month or so ago – a documentary called “Fagbug”… about a college student named Erin who had her VW bug vandalized with the word “fag” across the driver’s window, and decided to drive it across the US to raise awareness about homophobia. 28 days after her car was vandalized, Sean Kennedy was killed, and she stopped in South Carolina at a vigil for him. When they interviewed his family, I kept thinking “I’ve heard about this. Like, today…” and realized I had seen this birthday notice here.

SG – part of the result of the trial may have had something to do with the fact that South Carolina had (and still has?) no hate crime laws.

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