Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
The Blueberry Moon was new on Wednesday. I did not see it. I can't remember the last time I saw the moon. On Wednesday it was pouring again. We had 2.5 inches of rain, according to my gauge. For comparison, an average August, back when there were such things, saw 3.4 inches of rain in… Continue reading The Daily: 18 August 2023
The Feast of the Assumption It is the Feast of the Assumption. In the Church calendar, this is the day Mother Mary was taken bodily up to heaven without the inconvenience of dying first. But in the older calendar of Europe, this was the time when it was recognized that the heat of summer was… Continue reading The Daily: 15 August 2023
It’s getting to that point of the year when I would really like to have a four-day workweek, especially since I spend so much of my workday doing not much of anything productive. Okay, so maybe it’s all my workday that is not productive. I’m fairly sure that if everything I do all day would… Continue reading The Daily: 14 August 2023
The Perseids are falling in the late night sky again. Once again, there is little chance that I can see them. This year that might be true of most of the country — except those trapped under that heat dome. And you all might even want to be awake at that time of night, when… Continue reading The Daily: 12 August 2023
This is a repost that is equally valid today as a year or so ago when I wrote it. This depresses me... but it also allows me to share it again. I think there may be a new motif taking root in a certain class of writer. (How’s that for a vague beginning?) There is… Continue reading The Daily: 11 August 2023
Last week, someone I love dearly left this world in body. So I am grieving. As it happens, this person was so central in my life that most of the people I know are grieving also. We are a community of loss right now. Not much is happening beyond that loss and its immediate effects.… Continue reading The Daily: 8 August 2023
The break in summer heat continues this week, though there is still not much break in the rain. We have almost had the entire average August precipitation in the first week. We will undoubtedly pass average by the end of this week and probably blaze right on to the average for an entire summer. Given… Continue reading The Daily: 7 August 2023
Back in the in the last bits of the 20th century, I was involved in geology. I was basically a glorified volcanologist, but I used radiogenic isotopes to trace material movement in the mantle. So there was mathematical modeling in what I did. And there were isotopic analysis labs. Furthermore, I was in New Mexico… Continue reading The Daily: 3 August 2023
Lammas It's the probably not-terribly-ancient festival of bread, Lammas, Hlaf-mas, Loaf Mass. This holiday is possibly an English variant on the Irish first fruits and fair festival of Lughnasadh, but compacted into one day and generally lacking any ritual or narrative. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, churches in East Anglia constructed elaborate… Continue reading The Daily: 2 August 2023
Today at 2:31pm the Hay Moon is full. This ninth moon of the year is also called the Midsummer Moon, but in 2023 the lunations are so very late relative to the solar year and so very close to the end of their periods that it doesn't make sense to name this one for the… Continue reading The Daily: 1 August 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 