Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Last week, someone I love dearly left this world in body. So I am grieving. As it happens, this person was so central in my life that most of the people I know are grieving also. We are a community of loss right now. Not much is happening beyond that loss and its immediate effects.… Continue reading The Daily: 8 August 2023
The break in summer heat continues this week, though there is still not much break in the rain. We have almost had the entire average August precipitation in the first week. We will undoubtedly pass average by the end of this week and probably blaze right on to the average for an entire summer. Given… Continue reading The Daily: 7 August 2023
Back in the in the last bits of the 20th century, I was involved in geology. I was basically a glorified volcanologist, but I used radiogenic isotopes to trace material movement in the mantle. So there was mathematical modeling in what I did. And there were isotopic analysis labs. Furthermore, I was in New Mexico… Continue reading The Daily: 3 August 2023
Lammas It's the probably not-terribly-ancient festival of bread, Lammas, Hlaf-mas, Loaf Mass. This holiday is possibly an English variant on the Irish first fruits and fair festival of Lughnasadh, but compacted into one day and generally lacking any ritual or narrative. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, churches in East Anglia constructed elaborate… Continue reading The Daily: 2 August 2023
Today at 2:31pm the Hay Moon is full. This ninth moon of the year is also called the Midsummer Moon, but in 2023 the lunations are so very late relative to the solar year and so very close to the end of their periods that it doesn't make sense to name this one for the… Continue reading The Daily: 1 August 2023
Lughnasadh It is nearly Lughnasadh. This is my favorite time of year. Some may love midwinter twinkle; others may love the summer sun. But I live for the autumn blaze. The cooling weather, the increasing darkness, the slowing pace and renewed time for reading and introspection. The color and pageantry of fall. The scents of… Continue reading The Daily: 31 July 2023
In many northern communities, July is a hungry month. The spring flush of greens and quick-growing roots like radishes and beets may still be trickling out of the garden, but most have bolted and run to seed. However, even those that remain are long on fiber and short on calories, and little of the spring… Continue reading The Daily: 30 July 2023
Jesus at the Home of Martha and Maryby Harold Copping (1927) July 29th is the feast day of St Martha. Martha was the sister of Mary of Bethany and Lazarus. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus visits the house of the two sisters. Mary sits and listens to the teachings of Jesus, but Martha 'was… Continue reading The Daily: 29 July 2023
The Romans had concerns about drought at this time of year. Three very old festivals were grouped together at the end of July to honor deities who presided over watery things. The first was the Lucaria, the clearing of the groves. This was an ancient observance even in Varro's time (116-27 BCE), and little is… Continue reading The Daily: 25 July 2023
I took large chunks of the weekend — in which I could not do much vigorous work outside for all the Canadian smoke and could not write much for all the bugs in this machine — to clean up my house. (I think it's actually not this machine but something iCloud-derived because it's affecting my… Continue reading The Daily: 24 July 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 