Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
New Year's Day is definitely one of those holidays that feels out of joint. To me, this date, this point in the solar year, lacks ties to reality. It is historically wrong. When the Romans created these two new months, January and February, and set their state calendars to begin on 1 January, that date… Continue reading The Daily: 1 January 2024
Happy Christmas! Most of my friends and family celebrate Christmas today. It's a complicated day filled with way too much travel, a whirlwind of tearing paper off gifts — sometimes at several houses — and more meals than any human should have to deal with in one day. I'm worn out just listening to them… Continue reading The Daily: 25 December 2023
Saturnalia Saturnalia begins today. This year Saturn presides over the beginning of his holiday season. Look to the west at about 5:30pm. Saturn will be sitting just above the crescent Moon. In the north, this is also the beginning of the shortest nights of the year. For the next ten days, day length in my… Continue reading The Daily: 17 December 2023
I'm working my way through Rhyd Wildermuth. This was not a planned exercise, but I find his writing so compelling and original that I just keep picking up one book or essay after another. The most recent is All That Is Sacred Is Profaned: A Pagan Guide to Marxism, which is almost exactly as advertised… Continue reading The Daily: 14 December 2023
This weekend, Jupiter and the nearly full moon are together in the eastern sky. They will be high in the sky around midnight. If you're really lucky you might see the remnants of 2023's Andromedid meteor shower which peaked earlier in the month but will last until early December. This debris field is associated with… Continue reading The Daily: 24 November 2023
Last weekend, it was cold and wet outside, with blowing snow and ice. The porch wind chimes were never silent. So despite having a bit more garden work to do before winter really settles in, I did the only sensible thing and began the holiday cooking. The cranberry sauce is done. I baked my usual… Continue reading The Daily: 21 November 2023
I made the mistake of writing about the fragility of cities again. If there is way to rile everybody up, it’s saying that our settlement patterns don’t work very well now and won’t work at all in a lower energy system, one that can’t transport bulky materials long distances, and maybe can’t do refrigerated transport… Continue reading The Daily: 17 November 2023
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.… Continue reading The Daily: 11 November 2023
In my part of the world this is the first day with less than 10 hours of sunlight. In my garden, shaded as it is by mountains, trees and buildings, this translates into the last day with at least nine hours of sun shining on the plants that grow there. This is effectively the end… Continue reading The Daily: 10 November 2023
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… Continue reading The Daily: 2 November 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 