Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Neptunalia Today (or tomorrow, or both) is the ancient Roman (or Phoenician) holiday of Neptunalia, one of three obscure Roman festivals that honored watery deities in the last days of July. Neptune was the Roman god of both freshwater and the seas, but this festival, which shares many similarities with the Jewish Sukkot, is focused… Continue reading The Daily: 23 July 2024
The Old Farmer's Almanac says that it's time to start paying attention to the potatoes. In my garden you can hardly not pay attention to them. The potatoes are reaching out and grabbing attention. Passers-by are rubber-necking the veg. The potatoes are so prolific this year, I'm afraid there might be accidents. It's starting to… Continue reading The Daily: 22 July 2024
Today at 6:17am the Hay Moon was full, so tonight's moonrise is the closest to full. This ninth moon of the year is also called the Corn Moon. Though I have already written off summer and moved right on to fall, today the season of Midsummer shifts to Lughnasadh, fair season, gathering season, a time… Continue reading The Daily: 21 July 2024
Lessons from the Hurricane Houston before and after Beryl (Images were acquired on July 5 and 9, 2024, by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite instrument aboard the joint NASA/NOAA NOAA-20 satellite.) According to NASA EarthData, "2.3 million utility customers of CenterPoint Energy (out of 2.6 million total customers) lost power during the storm [Hurricane… Continue reading The Daily: 19 July 2024
Shortly after the Ides of July (Tacitus claims the date is July 18th), sometime around 390BCE (Plutarch says 387, Polybius says 393), a small (or medium, or large) force of the Gallic people known as the Senones (possibly intermingled with Etruscans), fought a battle at the River Allia where it flows into the Tiber and… Continue reading The Daily: 18 July 2024
Things to look forward to... working up a sweat Okay, maybe I don't look forward to working up a sweat. In fact, I don't particularly like sweating at all. But I do enjoy working up a sweat. More precisely, I love the loose-muscled calm that descends on my body after I've stopped working up a… Continue reading The Daily: 17 July 2024
It's the age old question: Why do bad things happen to good people? Or maybe, why do bad things happen at all? Though we would like for more of the people we consider bad to suffer the bad things... schadenfreude is a bitch... Most of the world's religions are attempts to grapple with the apparent… Continue reading The Daily: 16 July 2024
St Swithin's Day St Swithin's day, if thou dost rain, For forty days it will remain; St Swithin's day, if thou be fair, For forty days 'twill rain na mair. In the last week, my sister down in Phoenix has seen a long chain of daytime highs of over 115°F (46.1°C) with nighttime temperatures never… Continue reading The Daily: 15 July 2024
I'm feeling whiney. Do we have to keep going off to jobs that, for the vast majority of us, are actively harming us in an existentially threatening manner even while we are dealing with those existential threats? Do we have to endure yet another round of weather that shouldn't be possible except for all these… Continue reading The Daily: 12 July 2024
Flood Update... I am angry that I have to post this exact heading on July 11th, 2024, as on July 11th, 2023. Could we now possibly do something about NOT MAKING THINGS CONTINUALLY WORSE? My rain gauge had 6 inches in it this morning. Not completely full like last year, so maybe it stopped at… Continue reading The Daily: 11 July 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 