My Latest Toy

I don't get to buy myself many toys - well, I don't count buying beads and findings and stones and crystals, although I probably should - but I am just really jazzed about this, so I'll share with you...

A FaceBook friend was sharing some photos he was calling his "Hipstamatic" prints - they were so colorful and vintage-looking - so I investigated and found out that there was an iPhone app called Hipstamatic for $1.99 and other cool add-on apps for $.99 - I learned how to redeem an iTunes gift card that my wonderful husband gave to me for our second anniversary (that was an adventure in itself) and eventually I was able to download the app plus one of the add-ons

I LOVE this app - it lets you play with the colors and the flash and the lens and - well, I only started taking pictures last night but already you can see how neat it is...

More about this in future posts - plus more about the cruise mentioned earlier when I get around to it - and more, I hope, about world events and creative attempts and life as we know it.

Love to you all, peace to the planet - TJBG

Happy 90th Birthday, Winnie

My mom was born on April 6, 1921 in Kentucky. She had two loving parents, two healthy children and two feisty husbands. Now here she is - an orphan and a widow with two kids in their fifties - celebrating her 90th year. How does one mark such a momentous occasion?

My husband and I decided to take my Mom and my brother on a four-night cruise on the Monarch of the Seas to the Bahamas. We didn't do as much as we could have (there were at least a thousand college kids on board, since it was the beginning of spring break - however, except for having a little too much to drink a couple of nights, these kids were exceptionally polite) but I think we did enough.

We took a tour of the island in a van with six other very nice people. We listened to music. We were waited on by a wonderful waitstaff. We bought souvenir t-shirts. We were yes-ma'am'd and yes-sir'd by everyone who works for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. Our cabin steward was one of the sweetest and helpful people I've ever met. We watched the beautiful blue ocean go by. We even sailed through a school of flying fish.

We celebrated my mom's birthday. The young people applauded her. We made sure she wanted for nothing. And I think she enjoyed being surrounded by the ocean, something that she was not able to experience during World War II, when she was young and patriotic and joined the U.S. Navy. Now she can say she has sailed the ocean blue.

Happy Birthday, Mom

Think Spring!

Ostara ~ Spring ~ Vernal Equinox

Hail, and welcome!
Green life returns to the earth
blooming and blossoming
once more from the soil.
We welcome you,
goddesses of spring,
Eostre, Persephone, Flora, Cybele,
in the trees,
in the soil,
in the flowers,
in the rains,
and we are grateful
for your presence.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ostara (1884) by Johannes Gehrts. The goddess flies through the heavens surrounded by Roman-inspired putti, beams of light, and animals. Germanic people look up at the goddess from the realm below.

Old English Ēostre (also Ēastre) and Old High German Ôstarâ are the names of a putative Germanic goddess whose Anglo-Saxon month, Ēostur-monath, has given its name to the festival of Easter. Eostre is attested only by Bede, in his 8th century work De temporum ratione, where he states that Ēostur-monath was the equivalent to the month of April, and that feasts held in her honour during Ēostur-monath had died out by the time of his writing, replaced by the "Paschal month". The possibility of a Common Germanic goddess called *Austrōn- was examined in detail in 19th century Germanic philology, by Jacob Grimm and others, without coming to a definite conclusion.

Linguists have identified the goddess as a Germanic form of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn, *Hausos, some scholars have debated whether or not Eostre is an invention of Bede's, and theories connecting Eostre with records of Germanic Easter customs (including hares and eggs) have been proposed.

Who is Bede, you may ask?

Bede (pronounced "Bead" ; Old English: Bǣda or Bēda; 672 / 673 – 26 May 735), also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede (Latin: Beda Venerabilis), was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow (see Wearmouth-Jarrow), both in the Kingdom of Northumbria. Bede's monastery had access to a superb library which included works by Eusebius and Orosius among many others.

He is well known as an author and scholar, and his most famous work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title "The Father of English History". In 1899, Bede was made a Doctor of the Church by Leo XIII, a position of theological significance; he is the only native of Great Britain to achieve this designation (Anselm of Canterbury, also a Doctor of the Church, was originally from Italy). Bede was moreover a skilled linguist and translator, and his work with the Latin and Greek writings of the early Church Fathers contributed significantly to English Christianity, making the writings much more accessible to his fellow Anglo-Saxons.

In Greek mythology, Persephone ( /pərˈsɛfəniː/) in modern English—also called Kore)^[1] is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest goddess Demeter, and became queen of the underworld when she was taken from her mother by Hades.^[2][3]

The myth of her rape represents her function as the personification of vegetation which shoots forth in spring and withdraws into the earth after harvest; hence she is also associated with spring and with the seeds of the fruits of the fields. Persephone as a vegetation goddess (Kore) and her mother Demeter were the central figures of the Eleusinian mysteries that predated the Olympian pantheon. In tablets dated 1400-1200 BC found at Pylos, the "two mistresses and the king" are mentioned; John Chadwick identifies these as Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon.^[4]

In Classical Greek art, Persephone is invariably portrayed robed. She may be carrying a sheaf of grain; in Latin, she is called Proserpina.

In Northern Europe, Easter imagery often involves hares and rabbits. Citing folk Easter customs in Leicestershire, England where "the profits of the land called Harecrop Leys were applied to providing a meal which was thrown on the ground at the 'Hare-pie Bank,' " late 19th century scholar Charles Isaac Elton theorizes a connection between these customs and the worship of Ēostre.^[12] In his late 19th century study of the hare in folk custom and mythology, Charles J. Billson cites numerous incidents of folk custom involving the hare around the period of Easter in Northern Europe. Billson says that "whether there was a goddess named Eostre, or not, and whatever connection the hare may have had with the ritual of Saxon or British worship, there are good grounds for believing that the sacredness of this animal reaches back into an age still more remote, where it is probably a very important part of the great Spring Festival of the prehistoric inhabitants of this island."^[7]

Some scholars have linked customs and imagery involving hares to Ēostre and the Norse goddess Freyja. Writing in 1972, John Andrew Boyle cites commentary contained within an etymology dictionary by A. Ernout and A. Meillet, where the authors write that "Little else [...] is known about [Ēostre], but it has been suggested that her lights, as goddess of the dawn, were carried by hares. And she certainly represented spring fecundity, and love and carnal pleasure that leads to fecundity." Boyle responds that nothing is known about Ēostre outside of Bede's single passage, that the authors had seemingly accepted the identification of Ēostre with the Norse goddess Freyja, yet that the hare is not associated with Freyja either. Boyle writes that "her carriage, we are told by Snorri, was drawn by a pair of cats — animals, it is true, which like hares were the familiars of witches, with whom Freyja seems to have much in common." However, Boyle adds that "on the other hand, when the authors speak of the hare as the 'companion of Aphrodite and of satyrs and cupids' and point out that 'in the Middle Ages it appears beside the figure of Luxuria', they are on much surer ground and can adduce the evidence of their illustrations."^[13]

This is exciting news - as you may recall, for my last blog post I used an image depicting a woman driving a cat-drawn chariot but I did not know the artist's intent - now I realize it must be Freyja!

Cybele ( /ˈkɪbəliː/; Phrygian: Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya "Kubeleyan Mother", perhaps "Mountain Mother"; Greek: Κυβέλη Kybele, Κυβήβη Kybebe, Κύβελις Kybelis), was the Phrygian deification of the Earth Mother. As with Greek Gaia (the "Earth"), or her Minoan equivalent Rhea, Cybele embodies the fertile Earth, a goddess of caverns and mountains, walls and fortresses, nature, wild animals (especially lions and bees). Phrygian Cybele is often identified with the Hittite-Hurrian goddess Hebat, though this latter deity might have been the origin of only Anatolian Kubaba. The Greeks frequently conflated the two names, the Anatolian "Kubaba" and the Phrygian "Kybele", to refer to the Phrygian deity. Her chariot is drawn by two lions (and Freyja has to rely on a few poor little kitties...)

My friend Jen discusses the mythical Flora in her WordPress blog, Random Acts of Writing + Art (with a name like Flora it's pretty obvious how she fits in this time of year!)

randomactsofwriting.wordpress.com

And so I wish you a Happy Spring/Ostara/Vernal Equinox - next time I will post something that I actually took time to write myself!

Celebrating Imbolc

This is the time of year, halfway between winter and spring, that I get a little antsy, especially this year after everyone's seen so much snow and "wintry mix" - this change-over is much more subtle in the southern half of the country - by February, new leaves can be seen on the trees and everything starts to wake up - up north, however, Nature often takes her sweet time sweeping winter out the door - I want to begin planting herbs and flowers, open windows, see green and blue instead of white and brown, but I must wait a little longer...

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about this midway point of Imbolc (or Imbolg) and Candlemas:

The holiday was, and for many still is, a festival of the hearth and home, and a celebration of the lengthening days and the early signs of spring. Celebrations often involved hearth fires, special foods (butter, milk, and bannocks, for example), divination or watching for omens, candles or a bonfire if the weather permits.

Imbolc is traditionally a time of weather prognostication, and the old tradition of watching to see if serpents or badgers came from their winter dens is perhaps a precursor to the North American Groundhog Day. A Scottish Gaelic proverb about the day is:

Thig an nathair as an toll
Là donn Brìde,
Ged robh trì troighean dhen t-sneachd
Air leac an làir.

"The serpent will come from the hole
On the brown Day of Bride,
Though there should be three feet of snow
On the flat surface of the ground."

Imbolc is the day the Cailleach — the hag of Gaelic tradition — gathers her firewood for the rest of the winter. Legend has it that if she intends to make the winter last a good while longer, she will make sure the weather on Imbolc is bright and sunny, so she can gather plenty of firewood. Therefore, people are generally relieved if Imbolc is a day of foul weather, as it means the Cailleach is asleep and winter is almost over.

On the Isle of Man, where she is known as Caillagh ny Groamagh, the Cailleach is said to have been seen on Imbolc in the form of a gigantic bird, carrying sticks in her beak.

Fire and purification are an important aspect of this festival. Brigid (also known as Brighid, Bríde, Brigit, Brìd) is the Gaelic goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft.

As both goddess and saint she is also associated with holy wells, sacred flames, and healing. The lighting of candles and fires represents the return of warmth and the increasing power of the Sun over the coming months.

Brigid is said to walk the earth on Imbolc eve. Before going to bed, each member of the household may leave a piece of clothing or strip of cloth outside for Brigid to bless. The head of the household will smother (or "smoor") the fire and rake the ashes smooth. In the morning, they look for some kind of mark on the ashes, a sign that Brigid has passed that way in the night or morning. The clothes or strips of cloth are brought inside, and believed to now have powers of healing and protection.

In the modern Irish Calendar, Imbolc is variously known as the Feast of Saint Brigid (Secondary Patron of Ireland), Lá Fhéile Bríde, and Lá Feabhra — the first day of Spring. Christians may call the day "Candlemas." Long celebrated as "the feast of the Purification of the Virgin." Since Brigid represents the light half of the year, and the power that will bring people from the dark season of winter into spring, her presence is very important at this time of year.

Okay, so this year on Feb. 2, I dutifully tied two long white ribbons outside as a signal to Brigid to bestow her healing blessings upon me & mine as she passed by on her journey - I also burned a red candle (to symbolize the hearth fire's eternal flame) and thought about how I would honor what Brigid represents (water, fire and, um, smithing?) and figured that I am really ready for spring to show up so I can water my struggling indoor plants and new ones I will be planting out-of-doors, and perhaps lighting a candle as I meditate or work on new projects (or even turn on the new paper star light I recently bought) or, even more ambitiously, light up my little corner of the world by creating new things and helping others by being a good person... the smith-craft will have to wait, though!

Still, it's all very comforting for me (in an ancient, instinctual sort of way) to think about these rituals reaching back thousands of years, when people had to rely on the natural world for everything - they had no grocery stores, no refrigerators, no microwaves ("no phone, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury...") just planting, harvesting and storing food, hunkering down to wait for winter to end so they could do it again, and making sure they gave thanks to their deities in the hopes of ensuring they could repeat it year after year - this must be how the world's religions began, with these rituals as the people's way of showing gratitude and hope and reverence for the way the natural world works and our roles in it...

And if you're curious about what a bannock is (see above) here's what Wikipedia says about it:

Bannock is any of a large variety of flat quick breads. The word can also be applied to any large, round article baked or cooked from grain. When a round bannock is cut into wedges, the wedges are often called scones. But in Scotland, the words bannock and scone are often used interchangeably.

Yum - talk about comfort food!

OH, and I wanted to clear up the confusion about Groundhog Day (mostly because I am very happy about this year's prediction!) so here's part of an article from The Washington Post:

By LEE POWELL

The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 2, 2011; 8:00 AM

PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. -- To the relief of the winter-weary, the world's most famous groundhog predicted an early spring Wednesday.

Punxsutawney Phil emerged just after dawn on Groundhog Day to make his 125th annual weather forecast in front of a smaller-than-usual crowd who braved muddy, icy conditions to hear his handlers reveal that he had not seen his shadow.

Including Wednesday's forecast, Phil has seen his shadow 98 times and hasn't seen it just 16 times since 1887. There are no records for the remaining years, though the group has never failed to issue a forecast.

The celebration took place on Gobbler's Knob, a tiny hill in Punxsutawney, a borough of about 6,100 residents some 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

The celebration is rooted in a German superstition that says if a hibernating animal casts a shadow on Feb. 2, the Christian holiday of Candlemas, winter will last another six weeks. If no shadow was seen, legend said spring would come early.

SO:

I wish you Happy Imbolc/Candlemas/Mid-Winter/Almost Spring

(and St. Valentine's Day is right around the corner - another good excuse to make bannock!)

P.S. I'm not sure what the illustration (by Donn P. Crane) is depicting - I just thought it was pretty - and I'm sure Brigid must have been a cat-lover...

E.T. Knows Best

have you ever noticed when you go on a road trip that the signs you see showing the names of towns would make great names for characters in a novel? here's what i mean:

Ayer Littleton

Webster Sturbridge

Preston Ledyard

Sterling Moosup

Jewett Griswold

and my favorite - Cudworth Shrewsbury

yeah, they just get weirder and weirder, don't they?

it has long been a secret fantasy of mine to write a short story that incorporates these strangely impossible names for its fictional characters - i suppose there is a remote chance that there are people somewhere who actually answer to names like these... very, very remote

i think it would be more difficult to come up with these random names in a region where there is an abundance of, say, Native American place names (tahopakaliga? econolockahatchee? penobscot? hammonnassett? it would be tough to make names out of those incredible words, right?) it would probably also work with Spanish- or German-sounding names, or even where other languages like French and Scandinavian were prominent - but for now i'll stick to English words that i am able to join together to make credible-sounding names...

yeah, this is what i do for fun when i'm looking out the window at road signs - even more fun than those silly South of the Border billboards!!

and that's my thought for today, the first day of february... happy FEB, everyone!

Winter With A Vengeance

Take a look at winter - the only thing that's missing are some mountains and a glacier!

While it's quite snowy and cold here, it's not nearly as crazy as it is in some other places in the country - so I salute all those Americans (and, well, all those Europeans and Scandinavians and Asians, etc., too) who get out there and shovel snow and take care of animals and help their neighbors and go to work and deliver the mail and make dinner and run errands and do all those things that still have to be taken care of even when there are several feet of snow to get through - THANK YOU!

so enough about snow this week - soon it will be a distant memory...

in the meantime, visit this web site to learn about Wilson Bentley (a.k.a. "The Snowflake Man" 1865 - 1931), who discovered that no two snowflakes are the same.

http://snowflakebentley.com/index.htm

Using his mother's microscope, this native Vermonter began studying snowflakes at a young age and learned the difficult art of photography just so he could photograph them. Here's some of what you'll read:

HE WAS KNOWN TO THOUSANDS around the world as the Snowflake Man. His researches into the mysteries of rain and snow were discussed in over 100 newspaper and magazine articles, in 10 technical articles in the Monthly Weather Review, and in his book 'Snow Crystals." His painstaking work, carried out entirely by himself on his small Jericho farm, was so thorough and gave such new insights into the formation of precipitation that he deserves the title of America's First Cloud Physicist.
The Bentley homestead was in a valley on the east end of Jericho snuggled up at the base of Bolton Mountain. The country winters were long and hard, and in those days attendance at the one-room schoolhouse was very infrequent. Perhaps it was because of this that Bentley obtained his lifelong passion to study and understand water in all of its forms-dew, frost, clouds, rain, and especially snow in the form of ice crystals. At the age of 60 he recalled those early days:
"I never went to school until I was fourteen years old. My mother taught me at home. She had been a school-teacher before she married my father, and she instilled in me her love of knowledge and of the finer things of life. She had books, including a set of encyclopedia. I read them all.
"And it was my mother that made it possible for me, at fifteen, to begin the work to which I have devoted my life. She had a small microscope which she had used in her school teaching. When the other boys of my age were playing with popguns and sling-shots, I was absorbed in studying things under this microscope: drops of water, tiny fragments of stone, a feather dropped from a bird's wing, a delicately veined petal from some flower.
"But always, from the very beginning, it was snowflakes that fascinated me most. The farm folks, up in this north country, dread the winter; but I was supremely happy, from the day of the first snowfall - which usually came in November - until the last one, which sometimes came as late as May."

Gauguin Defines Art

i came across a quote that i felt compelled to share today:
"Art is either plagiarism or revolution." ~ Paul Gauguin, 1848 - 1903
i don't happen to agree with PG that it's one or the other - whenever i create something i don't feel that i'm being derivative or that i'm rebelling against anything - i just play until something appears and then i tinker with it until i'm happy with it - but i don't think he was a very happy person, except perhaps when he was painting or having sex with anyone, so i guess that's just how he saw things back then...

pictured above are:
self-portrait of PG
where do we come from? what are we? where are we going?
the sorcerer of hiva oa


here's a little history of Gauguin, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Paul Gauguin was born in Paris, France to journalist Clovis Gauguin and Alina Maria Chazal, daughter of the half-Peruvian proto-socialist leader Flora Tristan, a feminist precursor. In 1851 the family left Paris for Peru, motivated by the political climate of the period. Clovis died on the voyage, leaving three-year old Paul, his mother and sister to fend for themselves. They lived for four years in Lima, Peru with Paul's uncle and his family. The imagery of Peru would later influence Gauguin in his art.

At the age of seven, Gauguin and his family returned to France. They moved to Orléans, France to live with his grandfather. He soon learned French and excelled in his studies. At seventeen, Gauguin signed on as a pilot's assistant in the merchant marine to fulfill his required military service. Three years later, he joined the French navy where he stayed for two years. In 1871, Gauguin returned to Paris where he secured a job as a stockbroker. In 1873, he married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad. They had five children over the next ten years.

I Raro te Oviri, 1891, Dallas Museum of Art

By 1884 Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he pursued a business career as a stockbroker. Driven to paint full-time, he returned to Paris in 1885, leaving his family in Denmark. Without adequate subsistence, his wife (Mette Sophie Gadd) and their five children returned to her family. Gauguin outlived two of his children. Like his friend Vincent van Gogh, with whom in 1888 he spent nine weeks painting in Arles, Paul Gauguin experienced bouts of depression and at one time attempted suicide. He made several attempts to find a tropical paradise where he could 'live on fish and fruit' and paint in his increasingly primitive style, including short stays in Martinique and as a labourer on the Panama Canal construction; however, he was dismissed from his job after only two weeks. In 1891, Gauguin, frustrated by lack of recognition at home and financially destitute, sailed to the tropics to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional".^[3] His time there, particularly in Tahiti and the Marquesas, was the subject of much interest both then and in modern times due to his alleged sexual exploits.^[4] He was known to have had trysts with several peripubescent native girls, some of whom appear as subjects of his paintings.^[5]

In 1903, due to a problem with the church and the government, he was sentenced to three months in prison and fined. At that time he was being supported by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard^[6] He died of syphilis before he could start the prison sentence. His body had been weakened by alcohol and a dissipated life. He was 54 years old.

Gauguin died on 8 May 1903 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery (Cimetière Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva ‘Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.

in other news: (newer edited version 2/01/11)
new england has turned into a bonafide winter wonderland, folks - my husband says this is the most snow he's seen here in 20 years - everyone's digging out today but there's a parking ban for the entire town until tomorrow afternoon to give the plows time to get things plowed - only there's no place to put the new snow except on top of all the old snow!

anyway, snow snow snow - what's all this talk about snow - we're warm-ish and dry and still have power, so i feel pretty good about all that

more soon - happy snow - i mean, happy january! TJ