Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Distaff Day, or St. Distaff’s Day, is an obscure and faded custom that has rather a bit more weight behind it that one might expect. The day is observed most often on January 7th, the day after Epiphany, the last day of the winter holidays. Less commonly, Distaff Day falls on the first Tuesday after Epiphany, being known as Distaff Tuesday in keeping with Plough Monday.
A Thursday Friday Thoughts for reasons of timeliness. Also, tomorrow is Distaff Day and there shall be things said about that. Warning: This is me splutteringly angry. You may not want to read on... And here we are… it’s the first anniversary of the day a couple thousand desperate white guys attacked the Capitol Building,… Continue reading The Thing We Won’t Name
It is Twelfth Night, the last night of Christmas and the night before Epiphany, the festival of the Wise Men. This is the night when all the drummers show up along with a veritable cacophony of birds; a party of lords, ladies and colorful others; and quite a few cows. I'm not sure I would… Continue reading Wednesday Word: 5 January 2022
My epiphany I had an epiphany over the holidays. Or rather an epiphany that has been growing all year has finally blossomed into full brilliant light. I finally made a new religion. There are no gods. Nor priests. I did decide that ordination would be good if only to officiate at life celebrations and to… Continue reading EarthCraft
It’s been exactly one year since I started this online writing endeavor. I have written somewhere north of 300,000 words in over 220 posts. I have hundreds of regular readers between this blog and the several newsletters and aggregators who repost these essays and stories, a fact that just boggles. These are people who are… Continue reading Old and New
My writing calendar is done for 2021. I suppose I should take my own good advice and refrain from posting through the winter holidays. If for no other reason than I suspect there will be new books to read. May you have a delightful 12 Days and a joyous New Year! Much love from Eliza
https://thebaffler.com/latest/burdened-by-books-zaretsky This article has finally crystalized a growing idea of mine. We need to change how we teach. Fundamentally. We need to train people to read critically and enable them to engage with and reflect upon what they are reading. It is of utmost importance that people be able to determine the merit and reality… Continue reading A Very Short Response to Reading
The stockings are hung. There is a large balsam fir in the doorway that never gets used between the office and the dining room covered with all manner of sparkly flotsam and jetsam. It serves as a fairly decent record of where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing with much of my life. There… Continue reading Wednesday Word: 22 December
Green Man in the cold morning light Today, 20 December 2021, the sun appears to stand still at its most southern point. We call this period of slow change, where day length changes incrementally and then not at all, the solstice, the “sun pause”. In the Northern Hemisphere, this is the winter solstice, the time… Continue reading Sun Stands Still
The second moon cycle in my lunar year is the Midwinter Moon. It is new between 30 November and 27 December; it’s full between 14 December and 10 January. The winter solstice will usually fall in this month, and this moon will be full during the longest nights of the year. It is, therefore, the longest full moon. It… Continue reading Midwinter Moon
By My Solitary Hearth 