Happy Winter solstice!

The longest night of the year is about to end this morning at 7:16 when the sun rises (it came at 12:30 last night)

Check out this year new ornament we added in our solstice tree

Happy Halcyon Days!

This year I have been so cool about it, I only remembered to blog it 5 days into it.

And since last year I did the whole work, I’ll just copy the post

Once upon a time, people were attuned to the signs of nature and adapting their lives to them. Instead of cutting mountain tops and digging holes in the oceans, they were paying attention and being inspired.

When they were seeing in the North that the daylight grew shorter, they knew to save their energy those shortest days of the year (except for the shortest one when they celebrated the return of the light)

When sailors this time of year were seeing the first Halcyons building nests on the sea (King Fisher), they knew the seas will be calm for the next 2 weeks, while they were hatching their eggs.

And when they were paying attention to these interesting goings on, they were inspired to make up stories to explain the strangeness.

Once upon a time there were a Queen and King who loved each other very much.

Alcyone was the daughter of Eolus (the winds God) and Ceyx was the son of Eosphorus (the Morning Star). And for some reason, they indulged in a little role playing pretending they were Zeus and Hera – although those two were hardly a couple to be emulated, why him with the cheating and her with the jealousy.

And imitation is not always flattery, not with the vengeful Hera. They decided to punish the blasphemers  – and a thunderbolt hit the ship Ceyx was sailing in (thrown by Zeus

who had much to make up for to Hera).

Alcyone’s grief moved them however so they commuted the death sentence into metamorphosis instead.

So,  both the dead husband and the grieving wife became very alive birds,

who immediately went on building nests on the sea (where all this was taking place), and started a family.

And since this was a moment of mercy from the gods, the waters calmed down for the duration.

I am sure that at the time the myth was considered a cautionary tale against hubris. But for me it’s still the triumph of love over death (and unreasonable godly wrath).

And how poetic that the daughter of the winds and the son of the Morning Star are Halcyons nesting on the sea during the mysteriously 2 weeks of calm during winter time?

So, for all those reasons, I like to turn to the mindset of these olden days and not allow the storms of life to touch my nest – at least for the following two weeks, until the sun comes back long enough to help us cope.

So, until that time comes, be cool!

Tabloids: Blame execs and White House Surprise

Among the usual ink blotter stuff, two important headlines in the Saturday news dump. From Long Island

and the NY Times chronicles how Obama further degrades his Federalist Society Healthcare bill before it even takes effect

Maybe now the R will vote for him? Please???? (Someone please explain this clown how political parties work)

And just because it fits the topic so well, an amusing find from Cannonfire. Not photoshop – he has video too at the link

It does work on so many levels, including Obama’s fantasies.

Cartoon of the day

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Bloomberg & recently arrested journalists mock OWS

In a scene of abject humiliation reminiscing of W serving fried chicken to the press corps by the pool in Crawdord – no indoor access allowed, Bloomberg yucked it up with the press over pizza squares

“I know only five of you in here have actual press credentials,” Bloomberg reportedly quipped, a reference to his office’s assertion that a mere five of the twenty-six journalists arrested overall displayed city-issued press passes.

“There were so many little jokes” about OWS over the course of the night, Nida Khan, a reporter/producer who attended told me. “You could see the awkward reaction from people in the room. Some laughed at these jokes, others were just uncomfortable.”

and here’s the explanation of the photo above

One of the gifts was a tarp that Seifman said “they picked up from the Sanitation Department on the West Side,” Khan recalled. This, of course, was a mocking reference to the NYPD’s forced seizure of tarps, tents, laptops, and many other items in Zuccotti Park, which were thrown into sanitation trucks and dumped in a massive pile at a warehouse-type facility on West 57th Street.

Bloomberg draped himself in the tarp and posed briefly with it, attendees said. Todd Maisel of the New York Daily news tweeted a photoof Bloomberg smiling from ear-to-ear.

I found it interesting that while his henchmen were worried about the “optics” of such photo, Bloomberg didn’t care. After all, he has an army, why should he?