Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
The Old Farmer's Almanac says today is National Farmer's Day. I think this ought to be the bank holiday we celebrate in October, maybe in conjunction with Indigenous Peoples' Day — because farming for food is largely an indigenous project. (As opposed to farming for wealth, which is a colonizer project.) I have my differences… Continue reading The Daily: 12 October 2023
A Brief Literary Exhortation You will want to go find a copy of Starling House by Alix Harrow. You may want to buy this perfect rendition of the Southern Gothic because you will likely read it two or three times in quick succession and then come back to it several months hence, to savor such… Continue reading The Daily: 10 October 2023
Today is Indigenous Peoples's Day in my part of the world. It is actually a holiday in my office, so I'm in the garden rather than at my desk. I don't know how I feel about this holiday yet. I mean, yes, by all means honor the people who were here when the colonizers showed… Continue reading The Daily: 9 October 2023
St Francis of the Birdbath 4 October is the feast day of St Francis of Assisi. You might know him as the irreverent but apt moniker, St Francis of the Birdbath, because that is where many of us encounter him. Bare-headed with the monk's tonsure, dressed in rough robes and coarse rope belting, he stands… Continue reading The Daily: 4 October 2023
Why is it so hard to accept that we are part of a whole? Why do we suppose that there is no consciousness but ours? Or will? Or mind? Why can't we accept limits and death? Why do we impose human qualities on everything? If there are gods and spirits, why should they resemble humanity… Continue reading The Daily: 3 October 2023
My garden has a hummingbird! I'm fairly sure she's just passing through. I'm fairly sure she is a she, being a rather nondescript tiny greenish thing with feathers. Truthfully, she is very small, even for a hummingbird, so she may be a juvenile ruby-throat. I hope she's scouting out my yard for nesting possibilities next… Continue reading The Daily: 2 October 2023
The ancient world of the Mediterranean and Near East has a great number of interesting mythological beings. Some are related to old gods and tutelary spirits. Some are fairly accurate illustrations of the anxieties of humankind — or maybe mankind, since women didn't have much of a voice. Some are just ludicrous. One of my… Continue reading The Daily: 29 September 2023
The moonrise tonight is the closest to the Full Harvest Moon which happens at 5:58 tomorrow morning. In my part of the world, moonrise tonight is at 6:30pm, a few minutes before the sun sets. This ought to be one moonrise that most of New England can see, though thin clouds might dim the Full… Continue reading The Daily: 28 September 2023
Takes another break... I suppose it was inevitable. But going from full-tilt mold remediation straight back into my 40+ hour a week job sort of wiped me out. Then, already tired by all that, I was pulling foxtail grasses out of the back of the perennial bed over the weekend. There were swarms of biting… Continue reading The Daily
Happy Mabon? Is it possible to unselfconsciously use the Wiccan-derived names for the quarter days? Because I can’t seem to get there. For the third quarter day of the year, they chose a rather obscure deity as their name for the holiday. I couldn’t say what the Welsh Mabon, or Maponos, the perpetually young Son… Continue reading The Daily: 23 September 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 