This is just a short, mostly small news brief for the week. But first the headline... Hurricane Otis made landfall over Acapulco, Mexico, yesterday morning. A hurricane in the eastern Pacific, where the coldest ocean waters are constantly upwelling, is singular enough. This is the strongest storm to hit the coast of western Mexico on… Continue reading The Daily: 26 October 2023
Category: Nature & Weather
The Daily: 24 October 2023
Magic as Wisdom I am an odd witch. Most would not consider me one at all. This is just fine with me, because most witches in history have not named themselves in that manner either, and not merely because it was rather bad for one’s health to claim the title. Most simply had no use… Continue reading The Daily: 24 October 2023
The Daily: 23 October 23
A Happy Mistake This weekend I discovered that if you accidentally pick up a quart of buttermilk and use that to make yogurt, you get a delicious cottage cheese and lots of whey. The funny thing about this mistake is that the kid at the check-out spent a long time trying to figure out how… Continue reading The Daily: 23 October 23
The Daily: 18 October 2023
I will be making a few changes to this website again. Some are actual new things. Probably most will be resurrections of older things. Today, I'm bringing back the Wednesday Word. This is no longer a Twitter phenomenon because Twitter itself is not much of a phenomenon now. In fact, before the Musk Ox bought… Continue reading The Daily: 18 October 2023
The Daily: 17 October 2023
There is still no frost. In all the horrible news of the last ten days or so, this is what is troubling me right now. It is not that I am unaffected by the lurid headlines. I am sickened and disgusted and enraged and so very tired of idiots with large guns and larger egos… Continue reading The Daily: 17 October 2023
The Daily: 10 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
The Daily: 4 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
The Daily: 28 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
The Daily: 23 September 2023
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
The Daily: 22 September 2023
The sun passes the ecliptic tomorrow at 2:50am (EDT). This is the autumnal equinox. By now, those of you who tolerate my blathering know that this is not the true equinox since that day of equal length for night and day is dependent on latitude. Here where I live, day length is closest to 12… Continue reading The Daily: 22 September 2023
