Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

This is what it looked like at the September Equinox, at 4:19 Eastern Daylight Time:

[Image description: A Mercator projection map showing the land in grey and the oceans in white, minus Antarctica. Overlaid on this is a sine curve like silhouette that shows where light and shadow is falling on the Earth at that moment. The sides of this are almost perfectly vertical, showing equal daylight for all points on the map, no matter how far from the equator they are. Description ends]

This is what it looked like, yesterday, during the December Solstice, at 3:19 Eastern Standard Time (officially, the "same" minute):

[Image description: the same map, but this time, the sine curve indicating sunlight is steeply angled, being narrower in the Northern Hemisphere and wider in the Southern Hemisphere, showing the land in the arctic circle in complete shadow, and where the land in Antarctica would be in complete sunlight. Description ends.]

So now you know: the "Reason for the Season" is the Earth's axial tilt!

Glad Yule or Litha! Depending on which side of the equator you reside...

All hail to the days that merit more praise
Than all the rest of the year,
And welcome the nights that double delights
As well for the poor as the peer!
Good fortune attend each merry man's friend,
That doth but the best that he may;
Forgetting old wrongs, with carols and songs,
To drive the cold winter away.

Let Misery pack, with a whip at his back,
To the deep Tantalian flood;
In Lethe profound let envy be drown'd,
That pines at another man's good;
Let Sorrow's expense be banded from hence,
All payments have greater delay,
We'll spend the long nights in cheerful delights
To drive the cold winter away.

'Tis ill for a mind to anger inclined
To think of small injuries now;
If wrath be to seek do not lend her thy cheek
Nor let her inhabit thy brow.
Cross out of thy books malevolent looks,
Both beauty and youth's decay,
And wholly consort with mirth and with sport
To drive the cold winter away.

The court in all state now opens her gate
And gives a free welcome to most;
The city likewise, tho' somewhat precise,
Doth willingly part with her roast:
But yet by report from city and court
The country will e'er gain the day;
More liquor is spent and with better content
To drive the cold winter away.

Our good gentry there for costs do not spare,
The yeomanry fast not till Lent;1
The farmers and such think nothing too much,
If they keep but to pay for their rent.
The poorest of all now do merrily call,
When at a fit place they can stay,
For a song or a tale or a cup of good ale
To drive the cold winter away.

Thus none will allow of solitude now
But merrily greets the time,
To make it appear of all the whole year
That this is accounted the prime:
December is seen apparel's in green,
And January fresh as May
Comes dancing along with a cup and a song
To drive the cold winter away.

This time of the year is spent in good cheer,
And neighbours together do meet
To sit by the fire, with friendly desire,
Each other in love to greet;
Old grudges forgot are put in the pot,
All sorrows aside they lay;
The old and the young doth carol this song
To drive the cold winter away.

Sisley and Nanny, more jocund than any,
As blithe as the month of June,
Do carol and sing like birds of the spring,
No nightingale sweeter in tune;
To bring in content, when summer is spend,
In pleasant delight and play,
With mirth and good cheer to end the whole year,
And drive the cold winter away.

The shepherd, the swain do highly disdain
To waste out their time in care,
And Clim of the Clough hath plenty enough
If he but a penny can spare
To spend at the night, in joy and delight,
Now after his labour all day;
For better than lands is the help of his hands
To drive the cold winter away.

To mask and to mum kind neighbours will come
With wassails of nut-brown ale,
To drink and carouse to all in the house
As merry as bucks in the dale;
Where cake, bread, and cheese is brought for your fees
To make you the longer stay;
At the fire to warm 'twill do you no harm,
To drive the cold winter away.

When Christmas's tide come in like a bride
With holly and ivy clad,
Twelve days in the year much mirth and good cheer
In every household is had;
The country guise is then to devise
Some gambols of Christmas play,
Whereat the young men do best that they can
To drive the cold winter away.

When white-bearded frost hath threatened his worse,
And fallen from branch and briar,
Then time away calls from husbandry halls
And from the good countryman's fire,
Together to go, to plough and to sow
To get us both food and array,
And thus will content the time we have spend
To drive the cold winter away.

(A few of the verses sung by a choir, so you can hear what it sounds like)


(And if you're in the Southern Hemisphere, you can always change the lyrics around -- maybe to "To drive the old year(?) away."

The other day, I wrote something along the lines of: My favorite thing about Valentine's Day is the graphic design of the "valentines heart."

So today, I decided to act on that conviction, and made this:


Description: A primarily magenta "valentine heart" with highlights in yellow and green, featuring a stylized design of flowers and spirals that is symmetrical along the vertical axis.

Is to write some sort of Year-in-Review thing-a-ma-bob.

... But I'm just not feeling it.

So have another monster picture I drew back in January, 2014, with my compliments and thanks for your friendship (both collective and individual):


(Description: Ballpoint pen drawing of a round-bodied, bird-like, monster standing in profile, with a stubby wing, a single human leg and foot, a toothy beak with human-like nostrils, and a medium-length plumed tail. It is standing next to a flower whose blossom echoes the shape of the plume on its tail. Dated 01/11/14)

Today, is -- at least for the next four-ish hours -- the first day of Saturnalia (the last day is December 23). So I am once again posting about bafflement that this is the holiday that's become synonymous with wickedness in our Christian hegemony, while Lupercalia got turned in to Valentine's Day and is shoved down the throats of kids as soon as they enter preschool.

Quick review for the unenlightened -- the Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia

Note two points: First, the point of the gifts, and how the strength of the friendship was considered inversely proportional to the expense of the object -- gag gifts were especially prized, because their humor demonstrated that you understood the person you were giving them to. Second, note that they "celebrated" ancient rituals of human sacrifice by as a way to make the point that: "We don't do that anymore!" (Giving masks and candles instead of chopping people's heads off and throwing men into temple fires).

Sure -- it wasn't all sweetness and light. Saturnalia was also the season for gladiator battles. But, on balance, compared with the rest of Roman culture at the time, it was (apparently) pretty laid back and easy-going.

...And performed by Raymond Cooke.

I just heard this for the first time a few minutes ago. And considering my circles, I couldn't think of a better "Holiday Greeting Card" to share with you all:

1. Share my current earworm:



( Tradition of the song snagged from the description ) ...Which I think is rather sweet...

2. Also called Cousin Toni to wish her a happy New Year and reestablish contact. She was not at home... I think she may be on her annual extended vacation with Bob.

3. Now on to my third thing -- My main desire for 2014: writing with an eye for making it public / publishable, and published! ...Starting with that anthology constructed out of "Plato's Nightmare / Aesop's Dream."

I'll put off worry and sorrow for another day.

It struck me as intriguing that, in U.S. American vernacular, we only ever use "merry" for Christmas greetings, and "happy" for everything else. I've never come across the sentiment "Merry Birthday," for example.

So, of course, I had to go check out the word at

First. Cute overload of the day, or week, or month, or until the next time I squeal out loud at an image on my screen: Linked Tails (photo of three harvest mice siblings perched on a branch, holding tails the way humans hold hands)

Second. Re: Feeling ... not so much left out as pushed out of Valentine's Day (it's the only holiday I can think of that puts people in a second class based on relationship status, and for those of us who have been historically and culturally discouraged from thinking about having relationships, well... yeah. And being the sort who doesn't like feeling left out and bitter, I spent yesterday trying to think of a positive alternative way to frame it -- or a new one (my old fall back of it bringing a shot of bright color into the grey depths of winter doesn't work as well in Virginia as it did in New York).

This is what I came up with: For the Romans, it was a fertility fest celebrating the founding of Rome, and the suckling of Romulus and Remus by the she-wolf... According to the Christian story (aiui) Saint Valentine became associated with lovers because at one point, married men were exempt from the army, so the Saint would perform marriages as an act of civil disobedience. So I propose that we singletons of that bent use the day to celebrate conscientious objection and other "loving" acts of social change... (hey, "pinko" is already a color associated with it!)

Third. Working on a YouTube video of my "harvest" poem... which is why I haven't been talking here much (which is why I was researching mice to draw).

Fourth. Still need to schedule an inspection of my central heating/AC

Fifth. Need to schedule repairs to the van (may be the transmission). :-/

Sixth. After 30 or so years, This Old House is finally doing a series on wheelchair-accessible design. My feelings, they are mixed. On the one hand: yay! On the other hand, it's still being framed as "Something we should do for our elderly family members." (And again, disability = elderly, rather than disability = everybody). Also, it's a two-storey house and the downstairs is being converted into a self-contained, one-storey, living space with the upstairs being renovated for future live-in help if needed... And once again, I'm thinking that that would probably have been the better option for me to adapt my New York home instead of moving down here...

Seventh: OMG! Asteroids! Meteorite! Eek!

It had been ages since I'd truly written flash-fiction (though I used to write a-story-in-a-day fairly regularly when I was a teen), and then, at around 4 pm, Christmas afternoon, I got the idea for a "drabble" I could slip into gordon_r_d's inbox; 100 words would take an hour, tops (right, if you include all the edit and polish?). And it kept growing, and growing, and growing... And eventually, I realized I was creeping dangerously close to the 10,000 character limit (and over five hours later). But in the end, I succeeded in writing a complete story in more-or-less one sitting (don't worry--I took breaks for biological needs).

I also realized, as I was finding a way to resolve it, that, at least when it comes to "What the Holidays [trademark] mean to me..." that it was damned autobiographical. So, with gordon_r_d's kind permission, I present to you:

( Crinkleminkle's crushmess... crunchmuss... SOMETHING-yacallit )