Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
If you leave a man on land which is someone else's property and tell him he is a completely free man and can work for himself, it's as if you drop him in the middle of the Atlantic and tell him he is free to go ashore. — Henry George in Tolstoy's Calendar of Wisdom… Continue reading The Daily: 12 April 2026
Lion and Lamb March is upon us once again. An Old English name for March was Hlyda, meaning “loud”, presumably referring to the roaring March winds. This name survived as Lide in the West countries. Eat leeks in Lide and ramsons in May, And all the year after physicians may play. — proverb from western… Continue reading The Daily: 1 March 2026
Snow Moon The Wolf Moon went dark yesterday at 7:01am. Both Mardi Gras and Chinese New Year, with all their riotous color and spark, took place last night. Today, the Snow Moon, the fourth moon in my lunar year, is new. In my calendar, this is the season of Early Spring, the long wait of… Continue reading The Daily: 18 February 2026
February First Fruits & Quirinalia To highlight just how different the seasonal cycle is depending on latitude, mid-February, the last ides of the ritual year in Rome, was a festival of the first-fruit offerings. While here in Vermont we are barely thinking about the growing season, never mind able to see actual earth, during the… Continue reading The Daily: 16 February 2026
A Benediction for Lupercalia Today is Lupercalia. This is one of the oldest festivals in EuroWestern culture and, in fact, likely predates the Euro-bits. As with most ancient things, this holy time is a dense web of themes that don’t all mesh together well, but somehow make a lovely tapestry when viewed from a certain… Continue reading The Daily: 15 February 2026
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 The Daily: 14 February 2026
New Year's Day is misplaced. This date has no real significance. It is tied to nothing in the solar year nor in the cultural year. It is historically wrong. When the Romans created these two new months in their calendar, January and February, and set their state calendars to begin on 1 January, that date… Continue reading The Daily: 1 January 2026
All Hallows: An Entanglement Today is All Hallow's Eve, Hallowe'en, with all the sweet treats, riotous good fun, and spooky debauchery that entails. Tomorrow is All Saints Day, All Hallows, a reincarnation of the ancient Irish festival called Samhain, which means “end of summer”. Samhain is one of the few clear remnants from at least… Continue reading The Daily: 31 October 2025
Neptunalia Today (or tomorrow, or both) is the ancient Roman (or Phoenician) holiday of Neptunalia, one of three obscure Roman festivals that honored watery deities in the last days of July. Neptune was the Roman god of both freshwater and the seas, but this festival, which shares many similarities with the Jewish Sukkot, is focused… Continue reading The Daily: 23 July 2025
Herself is somewhat recovering from bug-derived chaos in the central nervous system... might even get dressed today. At least stop listening to Nils Frahm's Empty on repeat... Came a little too close to The End there, but we are now backing away slowly, hands up in surrender, no sudden movements... Late Modernity sucks... Here's an… Continue reading The Daily: 18 July 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 