Five Things to Know Today, May 9

Welcome to Wednesday. Here are some things to know today.

The weather: It'll be mostly cloudy and a little windy, with a high of only about 74 degrees today, the National Weather Service says. There's a 50 percent chance of more rain. The low tonight will be around 55.

Gas prices are headed in the right direction, at least for now. The lowest price reported for Lilburn to www.georgiagasprices.com was $3.43, six cents lower than yesterday (at Shell, 5414 Five Forks Trickum Road at Rockbridge Road). The highest price remained at $3.59 (at Shell, 4784 US-29 NW at Killian Hill, and at three other places).

Beans: Ancient Rome had many, many festivals throughout the year, honoring their gods and leaders, bestowing fertility, driving away the bad and sometimes just for the fun of it. May included the festival of Lemuria, which was all about making sure the dead didn’t stir up trouble in this world. The three-day observance started on May 9 and included a household rite in the dead of night to chase away angry or ill-tempered ancestral spirits. At midnight, the head of the household walked around the house nine times, throwing black beans over the shoulder and chanting a spell that told the ghosts the beans were meant to appease them. After the Roman conversion to Christianity, a 5th century pope consecrated the old Pantheon temple in Rome during Lemuria in the name of the new church and from then on observed an annual festival dedicated to Mary and the Christian saints in place of the old Lemuria.  

Occupy: Long before the Occupy movement there was the Poor People’s Campaign spearheaded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights leaders. When Dr. King was assassinated in April 1968, he was deep in planning for a march by the movement on Washington D.C. to demand jobs and income equality. Fellow civil rights leaders took on the plans and the six-week protest started in May. Thousands of people joined demonstrations and lived in an impromptu Resurrection City encampment on the National Mall. In Atlanta, on May 9, 1968, thousands of people, black and white, gathered at the new Civic Center to prepare for the trek to Washington.

Farewell: Wildly successful and imaginative children’s book author Maurice Sendak died this week at age 83. Best known for the romping and roaring “Where the Wild Things Are,” Sendak wrote and/or illustrated a host of other books as well as working on opera and theatre projects. For anybody who wants to catch up on Sendak’s life work, the Gwinnett County library has worked up an online list of all the books, DVDs and books-on-tape it has and where you can find them.