NIGHT OF FIRE, by Colin Thubron.
It was a night of fire and flares, mobs and gunfire.
By the end of 1653, however, he had begun to feel religious scruples; and the "night of fire," an intense, perhaps mystical "conversion" that he experienced on November 23 , 1654 he believed to be the beginning of a new life.
And while "kidneys in red wine" certainly sounds tastier, was this really what plucky British families set themselves up with before a night of fire-watching in Bethnal Green?
As the story goes, the people in this utopian civilization enraged the gods so much with their moral corruption that the deities sent one terrible night of fire and earthquakes.
Pascal, for instance, was a preeminent mathematician with strong interests in natural theology, but ultimately concluded (during what he called a "night of fire" in November 1654) that unaided reason is more likely to lead us to the false god "of philosophers and scholars" than to the true "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob".
It's close to Sant Joan, a wild "Night of Fire" summer celebration, so little kids are lighting off bottle rockets and firecrackers at random in the plaza.
In the Night of Fire: Forging A School In Eastern Market starts at 6 p.m. and includes dinner as well as a silent auction of 40 works from Detroit and international artists, as well as two Muleshire hogs from Melo Farms, a farm based in Yale, Mich .that is partnering with the Eastern Market school.
Early that month, after three nights of fire-bombing, Chief Sardino declared that "citizens who feel their life and property are threatened by arsonists may use deadly force".
Mr. Rodríguez also sang "Sinuhé," a plaintive waltz that imagines legendary figures — Sinbad, Ali Baba, Aladdin — wandering Baghdad after the United States bombings: "1,001 nights of fire and greed/1,001 nights without God or forgiveness".
