Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
A Love Story for Bloomsday Thomas Bloom was a professor. Business. He was not remarkable looking, talking, feeling, or thinking. The only remarkableness about Tom was an enormous lack of remarkableness. Bored freshmen amused themselves by pretending this apparent unremarkability constituted a cover for a secret identity of intrigue. Only for amusement. Could they have… Continue reading The Daily: 16 June 2023
June 15th, the Ides of June, was the last day of Vestalia. With great ceremony, the sanctuary of Vesta was cleansed and closed to the public for another year, the sustaining Vestal hearth-flame hidden behind walls that no man was allowed to pass. This is a slack time, a time when heat is intolerable and… Continue reading The Daily: 15 June 2023
The seventh moon of the year is the Flower Moon. It is new between 23 April and 21 May. It is full between 7 May and 4 June. This year it is full right at the tail end of its period, at 11:42pm tonight. It will rise closest to full this evening as the sun is setting, at… Continue reading The Daily: 3 June 2023
The Greenleaf Moon is full at 1:34pm today. There is a penumbral eclipse with this full moon. In this type of eclipse the moon is in Earth's penumbra, so there is a dimming of the Moon, but no shape or color change like in a partial or total eclipse. This one is visible from large… Continue reading The Daily: 5 May 2023
Come, now a roundel by Arthur Rackham (1908) the thorn path she made her feathered nest in the tangled boughs of oak, ash, thorn and found mushroom echoes of moonbeams she delved for essence among the hawthorn roots and brought woven certainty to light she entered the ring where faeries are dancing and knew the… Continue reading The Daily: 4 May 2023
the thorn queen she waxes full in fertile grace queen of quick and fay, she reigns in mantle green and seemly face quelling fear and mortal pains eternal mother, ever maid undying wisdom in her glance deathless weird is on her laid to spin th' unceasing wheel of chance again, she comes in crown of… Continue reading The Daily: 1 May 2023
Floralia Cosiddetta Flora from the Villa di Arianna in Stabiae near Pompeii, 1st century Roman fresco The festival of Floralia is another very old holiday. It honors Flora, the Roman idea of fertility that is embodied in spring flowers. Flora is one of the oldest deities in the Roman pantheon. She is older than Rome,… Continue reading The Daily: 28 April 2023
A Red-Letter Day April 25th is a complicated date. It is St Mark’s Day, which is honored with a wide variety of celebrations; and it is Robigalia, an ancient Roman festival intended to propitiate the god — or demon — of wheat rust and thus ensure a good harvest. These disparate themes may actually be… Continue reading The Daily: 25 April 2023
It wasn't the most productive weekend. I got some weird flu bug that created the most painful immune response I've ever endured. That lasted from Wednesday to Saturday. I was out of bed on Saturday, but I wasn't doing much but reading and writing. I did get a lot of both done, so that was… Continue reading The Daily: 24 April 2023
April 23rd is St George's Feast Day (though in the Church of England it is moved until Monday when the 23rd falls between Palm Sunday and the Sunday after Easter). For the day, I've written a modernized tale of Andromeda, an old story of annual agricultural sacrifice. 'St George and the Dragon' is a version… Continue reading The Daily: 23 April 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 