Enjoy your holiday! However you celebrate! Cheers! I'll be busy. There may be more here over the weekend, but it's not looking good...
Happy Thanksgiving!
Category: Calendar
The Daily
for 22 November 2022 If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it. — Shakespeare, Twelfth Night November 22nd is St Cecilia’s Day. Nothing of her story bears repeating, but through it she became the patron saint of musicians. And maybe there is more in that story of a feisty… Continue reading The Daily
The Daily
20 November 2022 Set garlike and pease saint Edmund to please 20 November is the Feast of St Edmund the Martyr. I'm not sure when this quip, found in the Oxford Book of Days (Blackburn & Holford-Strevens, Oxford, 2000), was current. From the spelling, I would guess 15th or 16th century. Perhaps earlier, as Edmund's… Continue reading The Daily
The Daily
19 November 2022 This weather is not doing things by half, I'll give it that. We went from the longest growing season on record — 181 days, theoretically long enough to grow even protracted growing season veg like okra — with the official first frost date ringing in at 28 October, to... well, there's a… Continue reading The Daily
Martinmas
On November 11th at 11 in the morning, we practice a moment of silence for two minutes to remember the day we reached an accord and agreed to lay down arms after the brutality of World War 1. A century ago we stopped fighting. Soldiers came home. It was a time very like this. A… Continue reading Martinmas
Blood Moon
The Hunter's Moon is full at 6:02am (EST) on November 8th, but that's not why this is the blood moon. That appellation is a recent attempt to glamorize a full lunar eclipse which, of course, also happens early tomorrow morning. The moon begins to slide into eclipse at 3:01am EST and is done by 8:58am… Continue reading Blood Moon
Wrong Question
'We ask the wrong question when we say, "What will happen after death?" When we speak about the future, we speak of time, but when we die, we leave time behind.' — Tolstoy, on November 7th, Calendar of Wisdom Thoughts?... ©Elizabeth Anker 2022
The Day of the Dead
In Tolstoy’s Calendar of Wisdom, he says that a “man” does not fear death. “Fear of death is our animal nature,” he claims. I don’t know that any part of that is accurate. To be sure, we have a very unhealthy relationship to death. We tell ourselves stories of our mastery of death, of death’s… Continue reading The Day of the Dead
All Hallows: An Entanglement
It is All Saints Day, All Hallows, the ancient new year festival called Samhaine, which is usually translated as “end of summer”. Last night was the All Hallow's Eve, Hallowe'en, a new year's eve in former days with all the sweet treats, riotous good fun, and debauchery that entails. This is one of the few… Continue reading All Hallows: An Entanglement
Cookies for Hallowe’en
Today is All Hallows' Eve, Hallowe'en, the first night in the ancient new year's festival that Celtic language speaking people called Samhaine. We hardly remember that it was once a sacred festival, celebrating endings and beginnings, nor that it was "converted" by the Catholic Church into a day for honoring the dead. It's possible that… Continue reading Cookies for Hallowe’en
By My Solitary Hearth 