Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
All Hallows: An Entanglement It's the most wonderful time of the year... Tomorrow is All Hallow's Eve, Hallowe'en, a new year's eve in former days with all the sweet treats, riotous good fun, and debauchery that entails. Friday is All Saints Day, All Hallows, the ancient new year festival called Samhaine, which is usually translated… Continue reading The Daily: 30 October 2024
Here is something to consider. If you do a very brief survey of headlines, you will see that today, at this very instant, most of the world is actively engaged with recovery from an "historic natural disaster" of some form or another. That is, most of the world is cleaning up after a deadly mess… Continue reading The Daily: 22 October 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
Whose Independence... It is early July. In my country, we set fire to gunpowder and other explosives wrapped in paper — which are produced almost entirely in extremely hazardous conditions outside of this country — to mimic the actual gunpowder explosions that presumably were the background for the signing of a document that declared this… Continue reading The Daily: 4 July 2024
Every time Paul Bunyan Day rolls around I am struck anew by the realization that there are quite a large number of appallingly stupid heroes and male deities in EuroWestern traditions. This probably reflects our ideals in ways that we perhaps need to analyze. Or maybe develop another whole 'nother branch of psychology to deal… Continue reading The Daily: 29 June 2024
Juneteenth Today is Juneteenth. Specifically, today is the 159th anniversary of the reading of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger. This was the order which served as the Texas version of the Emancipation Proclamation, a full two years after President Lincoln and the federal government (such as it was) freed all slaves.… Continue reading The Daily: 19 June 2024
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 2024
The Flower Moon went dark yesterday morning. Now begins the Strawberry Moon and the shift to Midsummer. In the last few years I’ve seen a wide variety of people arrive at the conclusion that what we need as a society to avert self-destruction — self and everything else, that is — is a new religion.… Continue reading The Daily: 7 June 2024
Cinco de Mayo The problem? How do you mark this day? Most years, I don’t. I’m not Hispanic. My best friend growing up was from Chiapas, and there were complicated feelings about Mexico related to that. I never thought there was much to celebrate. We learned in grade school that it’s a commemoration of a… Continue reading The Daily: 5 May 2024
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 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 