Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Walpurgis Night The last day of April has been a fraught time for millennia. This is a night when pranks are pulled, when spells are cast and wishes are granted, when the Good Folk pass through the veils to walk the woodlands, and when witches dance. The Beltaine fires were lit at midnight on May… Continue reading The Daily: 30 April 2023
It is officially spring now. The groundhog woke up. Or maybe she had her babies under my neighbor's porch and is now able to leave the den for foraging. She is not traveling far. No further than my neighbor's front yard and the adjacent small patch of grass around my cold frame. She seems uninterested… Continue reading The Daily: 29 April 2023
Floralia Cosiddetta Flora from the Villa di Arianna in Stabiae near Pompeii, 1st century Roman fresco The festival of Floralia is another very old holiday. It honors Flora, the Roman idea of fertility that is embodied in spring flowers. Flora is one of the oldest deities in the Roman pantheon. She is older than Rome,… Continue reading The Daily: 28 April 2023
A Red-Letter Day April 25th is a complicated date. It is St Mark’s Day, which is honored with a wide variety of celebrations; and it is Robigalia, an ancient Roman festival intended to propitiate the god — or demon — of wheat rust and thus ensure a good harvest. These disparate themes may actually be… Continue reading The Daily: 25 April 2023
It wasn't the most productive weekend. I got some weird flu bug that created the most painful immune response I've ever endured. That lasted from Wednesday to Saturday. I was out of bed on Saturday, but I wasn't doing much but reading and writing. I did get a lot of both done, so that was… Continue reading The Daily: 24 April 2023
April 23rd is St George's Feast Day (though in the Church of England it is moved until Monday when the 23rd falls between Palm Sunday and the Sunday after Easter). For the day, I've written a modernized tale of Andromeda, an old story of annual agricultural sacrifice. 'St George and the Dragon' is a version… Continue reading The Daily: 23 April 2023
Earth Day Earth Day was created in 1970 as a direct political challenge. Wisconsin's Senator Gaylord Nelson wanted the US government to do what government is supposed to do — protect its people and lands from rapacious business. He created Earth Day and organized the first demonstrations across the country to force the hand of… Continue reading The Daily: 22 April 2023
I'm in the last third of the National Poetry Month challenge. This is when haiku and other forms of brevity start creeping in. I used to write quite a lot of these spare cut gems, but they start to lose their luster when tossed into the rule bin. Being a merry anarchist, I don't go… Continue reading The Daily: 21 April 2023
When we learn of spinning galaxies filled with billions of stars, how can we believe that one country is more important than another? Why do we even have countries at all? We are riding a living planet through space, and we are all on the same ride together. — Akiva Silver, Trees of Power (2019,… Continue reading The Daily: 20 April 2023
If you leave a man on land which is someone else's property and tell him he is a completely free man and can work for himself, it's as if you drop him in the middle of the Atlantic and tell him he is free to go ashore. — Henry George in Tolstoy's Calendar of Wisdom… Continue reading The Daily: 19 April 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 