In one of the more curious instances of holidays reclaimed from obscurity, Wales has resurrected St Dwynwen's Day on January 25th. St Dwynwen was a fifth century princess, the loveliest of King Brychan Brycheiniog’s twenty-four daughters, and the Welsh patron saint of lovers. Her day in the Welsh calendar has steadily grown in popularity since… Continue reading The Daily: 25 January 2023
Tag: January
The Daily: 23 January 2023
Just after sunset tonight, if you have a cloudless sky and a flat western horizon, look for the thin crescent of the New Wolf Moon in a grouping with very bright Venus and a warm fuzzy Saturn. Look for Venus first. At magnitude -4, it will be easiest to see in the twilight (which is… Continue reading The Daily: 23 January 2023
The Daily: 11 January 2023
When an arrow does not hit its target, the marksman blames himself, not another person. A wise man behaves in the same way. — Confucius (from Tolstoy's Calendar of Wisdom for 11 January) For those who have not yet cleared away Midwinter, even in my rather northerly part of the world, day length is now… Continue reading The Daily: 11 January 2023
The Full Wolf Moon
The third moon in my lunar year is the Wolf Moon. It is new between 28 December and 25 January and full between 11 January and 8 February. This is the coldest time of year in the North. It is when stores of food are running low and hunger is stalking every home. This inhospitable… Continue reading The Full Wolf Moon
Box People: Winifred Mumbles
It’s my week to tend to the box people. Don’t know why I signed up for a whole week in January. The Wolf Moon is the hardest time of year. But they were so grateful down in the valley when I did that I didn’t have the heart to change it. So now… forty-six years… Continue reading Box People: Winifred Mumbles
Old and New
It’s been exactly one year since I started this online writing endeavor. I have written somewhere north of 300,000 words in over 220 posts. I have hundreds of regular readers between this blog and the several newsletters and aggregators who repost these essays and stories, a fact that just boggles. These are people who are… Continue reading Old and New