Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
A Confusion of Grain Gods Our culture is confused about food and farming. We believe that we are in a power-over relationship with the world, and particularly with our food. We are so enamored with dominance that we've lost sight of the inherent partnership between plants and animals, between prey and predator, between the farmer… Continue reading The Daily: 30 March 2024
Things to look forward to... applause Once upon a time, I got up on the stage and played piano for people. I did not stand on a stage willingly. I am not a performer. I still don't like bearing the full attention of people, even after years of teaching science and speaking on books. To… Continue reading The Daily: 21 February 2024
Things to look forward to... hugs I made it another year in this body. Those years are running by increasingly fast these days — though a day can last forever. But each anniversary of my nativity feels like a triumph of sorts. I am still alive. I am still cognizant and in mostly functional health.… Continue reading The Daily: 30 January 2024
Saturnalia Saturnalia begins today. This year Saturn presides over the beginning of his holiday season. Look to the west at about 5:30pm. Saturn will be sitting just above the crescent Moon. In the north, this is also the beginning of the shortest nights of the year. For the next ten days, day length in my… Continue reading The Daily: 17 December 2023
The ancient world of the Mediterranean and Near East has a great number of interesting mythological beings. Some are related to old gods and tutelary spirits. Some are fairly accurate illustrations of the anxieties of humankind — or maybe mankind, since women didn't have much of a voice. Some are just ludicrous. One of my… Continue reading The Daily: 29 September 2023
Come, now a roundel by Arthur Rackham (1908) the thorn path she made her feathered nest in the tangled boughs of oak, ash, thorn and found mushroom echoes of moonbeams she delved for essence among the hawthorn roots and brought woven certainty to light she entered the ring where faeries are dancing and knew the… Continue reading The Daily: 4 May 2023
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 2023
Floralia Cosiddetta Flora from the Villa di Arianna in Stabiae near Pompeii, 1st century Roman fresco The festival of Floralia is another very old holiday. It honors Flora, the Roman idea of fertility that is embodied in spring flowers. Flora is one of the oldest deities in the Roman pantheon. She is older than Rome,… Continue reading The Daily: 28 April 2023
A Red-Letter Day April 25th is a complicated date. It is St Mark’s Day, which is honored with a wide variety of celebrations; and it is Robigalia, an ancient Roman festival intended to propitiate the god — or demon — of wheat rust and thus ensure a good harvest. These disparate themes may actually be… Continue reading The Daily: 25 April 2023
Earth Day Earth Day was created in 1970 as a direct political challenge. Wisconsin's Senator Gaylord Nelson wanted the US government to do what government is supposed to do — protect its people and lands from rapacious business. He created Earth Day and organized the first demonstrations across the country to force the hand of… Continue reading The Daily: 22 April 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 