Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Like many people, I find the American version of Valentine’s Day and the saccharine and monochromatic view of love it promotes to be repulsive. In my younger days I assumed the whole farce was invented by the greeting card and gifting industry, along with the rise of all manner of fake holidays intended to get… Continue reading Of Hearts and Wolves
February 1st is Imbolg or St Brigid’s Feast Day. Imbolg is an ancient and somewhat forgotten holiday that falls midway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. Hence it is the first of the four cross quarter days, the days marking the half way points between the solar quarter days (solstices and equinoctes). The… Continue reading Imbolg: Beginning of Beginning
Every religion needs its mythos. I wrote this one a while ago and posted it last year. It seems a good day to share it again. Eve Eve woke up with the birds each morning. The piping and burbling of thousands of little brown birds in the reeds, so numerous in kind they’d not even… Continue reading An EarthCraft Origin Story
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity David Graeber & David Wengrow Farrer, Straus & Giroux: 2021 The Dawn of Everything was a revelation. The “Everything” from the title may not exactly refer to our past, but it surely may refer to a sweeping revision of how we see ourselves. If so, it… Continue reading The Dawn of Everything: Review
Io, Saturnalia! Today we cast off the orders imposed on us from our parasitic overlords and do as we will. Well, we would if our overlords would allow it. Which doesn’t happen any more. That should be telling. Actual slaves in Rome had more freedom than we do. We don’t even get bathroom breaks, never… Continue reading Saturnalia
Before Pope Gregory tweaked the Julian calendar and caused a great deal of confusion, 13 December was celebrated as the winter solstice in Scandinavia. The poem by the late 16th century English writer, John Donne, “A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day” shows that Protestant countries were still celebrating Midwinter in the… Continue reading Santa Lucia
It is All Hallows’ Eve, Hallowe’en, the first day of the ancient new year festival called Samhaine, which is usually translated as “end of summer”. This is one of the few clear remnants from at least one of the cultures we now name “Celtic”. The word, Samhaine, shows up in the Late Roman Era luna-solar… Continue reading All Hallows: An Entanglement
I’ve been an armchair archeologist/anthropologist for most of my life. I’ve always had a fascination with deep history. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to tease out the Story of Us not mediated through the words of the privileged few; and deep history, pre-history, is where you find the story before it was broken. Further, when… Continue reading Gatherers
Again, a perfectly wonderful book raised my ire by throwing out a tired trope — the assertion that all our societal woes date to the "inception of agriculture" (which phrase is itself a red flag that raises my blood pressure; there is no such point in time or place). This time the claim that farming… Continue reading The Straight Story on Farming
Sunflowers & morning glories in August This is my favorite time of the year. There is the food, the cooling temperatures, and the lengthening night. But there are also the best flowers! This is the garden I wait for all year long. Sunflowers to asters, these are the flowers that speak to me. They are… Continue reading Language of Flowers for Ecologists — Autumnal Hues
By My Solitary Hearth 