Stepping Ahead into 1st Quarter of 21stCentury While Looking Back to the Goode Olde Days

STEPPING AHEAD INTO 1ST QUARTER OF 21ST CENTURY WHILE LOOKING BACK TO THE GOODE OLDE DAYS

BOOM! JAPAN EARTHQUAKE WAKES us CREATIVE-& not so INSECURE WRITERS as we EMERGE JANUARY 1st WEDNESDAY FROM our SUBTERRANEAN WRITERS‘ CAVE

Early 2024 Wake-up Call from Honshu Japan Mag.7.5 Earthquake

Western Hemisphere revellers had barely laid their weary firework-filled heads to rest in the early hours of New Year’s Day, (pix bottom rt. above) when BOOM! a mighty Mag.7.5 earthquake awoke the Pacific from Hawai’i &points West [over International Dateline] 2Honshu, Japan, heralding a New Year series of tsunami warnings unheard since Fukushima.

Another 21 quakes & aftershocks followed during subsequent 24 hours.

Almost 23 years to the date of Fukushima, March 11, 2011 nuclear plant explosion on Honshu’s Eastern shore 100mi N of capital Tokyo, at an equivalent distance W, the Shika nuclear power plant on the Noto peninsula of Ishikawa Prefecture (maps l. above) had received Pacific-wide quake warnings & shut the power off before first earthquake hit at 4:20. While fires broke out in nearby townships, thankfully no abnormalities were recorded on monitors. Water had spilled from a cooling pool for spent fuel rods, but officials had disconnected pumps used for cooling pools after the initial quake alarm, and power was restored less than an hour later, by 4:49 p.m. Japan is nine hours ahead of UHT/GMT.

While the Old World recovers from Hogmanay Antics…

New Year’s Eve, December 31st is celebrated everywhere round the world, but is especially marked in Scotland from ancient times: EVERYTHING allowed; anything goes—similar to Roman Saturnalia—with drinking, street parties & free-for-all visits between neighbors’ houses, especially in open countryside.

Hogmanay, aka Scots night before bringing in the New Year w/whisky, music & dance, is a festival celebrated December 31st from English Border thru ‘Central Belt’- towns of Glasgow & Edinburgh, to Stonehaven & ABD [#Fireballs swinging ceremony, left] to the Moray Coast [Burghead Burning Clavie on Jan.11th-11days later w/Julian calendar].

It even stretches to parts north, including Viking Orkney & polar Shetland [Ptolemy’s Ultima Thule].

Stonehaven pyrotechnics l. Hogmanay swinging fire-balls w/local Pipe Band & resident song/dance troupe

Celebrations throughout the North American continent encourage near-continuous feasting & festive events from Christmas Eve onward; through the (traditional) “Twelve Days of Christmas” of early Christian tradition—including multi-cultural events like Diwali, Hawai’ian Lantern-Lighting Ceremony—itself a Japanese spin-off subculture event in the Pacific Island chain; and including multiple strictly controlled city fireworks displays. But now there are legal limits.

Personal fireworks night parties are encouraged, but U.S. regulations have come down heavily on private firecracker & rocket-launch fun, with strict fines imposed on (often teenage) offenders; e.g. New Year’s Eve “celebrations” are only legal 5 p.m. on New Year’s Eve to 1 a.m. New Year’s Day!

Olde World ancestors are swinging while swilling chilled eggnogs in their waterlogged graves!

The Caledonian Connection to Olde Times

Many are familiar with Shakespeare’s play “Twelfth Night”, but fewer may be aware of its etymology.

The early Christian calendar-with focus on Christmas [birth of the Messiah] was Man’s ultimate aim for blessing from above in the ancient world. It came exactly 9 months after Annunciation March 25th/i.e. Mary’s pregnancy, aligned with [Julian calendar] Spring Equinox. December 25th in Roman calendar translates to winter solstice. 12 days thereafter calculates to Biblical “Epiphany”, January 6th [Gregorian].

A Puritan-led English Parliament in 1647 banned all celebration, pantomime, carol singing & feasting considering it “a popish festival with no biblical justification” and replaced it with a day of fasting. This ban was, e.g. Boston, Mass. 1659 to 1681, not recognized as a federal holiday again until reinstated 1870.

Pix rt. Caledonian festival in Moray, ABD Burning of the Clavie Jan.11th Pictish hillfort of Burghead where gifts of charred embers distributed to local dignitaries en route.

So it was not unusual on Hogmanay Olde World Scotland for neighbors to bravely tread through miles of snow to reach a friendly party upslope. I recall one year where my local GP, unphazed by Hogmanay snowdrifts, trudged five miles between his country town & my isolated hilltop abode to join the party!

First-footing & New Year Resolutions Get in Gear

As we step-“boldly go” courtesy Star Trek-into a year which will see us through one quarter of the 21st Century, we still make New Year Resolutions to try to keep ourselves true to our own nature—not under the influence of what society expects of us. Thus harkening back to Mediaeval festive rhymes still has a place in our hearts, if only to remind us that we were all once children & kids always have the most fun!

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave 2me: 12 pipers piping; 11 drummers drumming; 10 lords a-leaping; 9 ladies dancing; 8 maids a-milking; 7 swans a- swimming; 6 geese a-laying; 5g0-ld rings; 4 calling birds; 3 French hens, two turtle doves & a partridge in a pear tree

Alternatively, see Bulbasaur version here

January Lantern-floating ceremony prelude to Chinese Year of Dragon February 2024, l.

Looking Forward to 2024:Tall Ships Race, Wildlife/Forest & Nature Regeneration

Highlight of summer 2024 in Northern Europe will be the Baltic Tall Ships Race starting from Klaipeda, Lithuania June 27th, & racing via Helsinki, Finland[July], thru Baltic nations to Tallinn, Estonia, to Åland Is. port of Mariehamn, & end at Szczecin [Stetin] Poland on August 5th, 2024-total 1500 nautical miles.

Keeping Our Word & Heading Back Down to our Subterranean Writing Enclave, Clutching our Climate Change Notebook

Midsummer 2024’s Tall Ships Race is a legend in northern European nations since its beginnings 200 years ago in the quiet Northumbrian port of Blyth, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. From its unassuming N.England base, some of the world’s most famous wooden Baltic Trader vessels were built, sailing to deliver coal to Baltic ports, including Russian trade with St. Petersburg.

The wooden schooner Williams, out of Blyth discovered the continent of Antarctica.

Its replica, 100-year old Baltic trader ‘Williams II’, above top l., is used as a training ship to school young people in oceangoing crafts including, rigging, sailing, navigation, hawser work, knitwork & stitchcraft. Its history is integral part of 2024 Tall Ships race which will sail to traditional Baltic ports this summer; pix above l. middle:Tall Ships 2024 route; top l. prow; rt. Rival Aberdeen-built Tall Ship Thermopylae, among others [including Cutty Sark & Cleopas] also navigated the fierce Baltic run.

Happy New Year, all! With them in spirit, we continue to press this New Year for the Paris Agreement goal of limiting increase in global average temperature to -2°C above pre-industrial levels.

We also wish to send congratulations to other youth organizations which are this New Year following through on Climate Change goals of replanting, rewilding & regenerating inner city—and ancient former-wild spaces: WWF, Trees for Life, Rewilding Scotland; Rewilding Europe & Rewilding Britain; not to mention similar Pacific NW & SoCal rewilding initiatives following the lead of COP26.

New Year resolution? Let’s grow our own veggies & plant more trees together in 2024. @siderealview ©2024MarianC.Youngblood

Epiphany—the Twelfth Day of Christmas

EPHIPHANY—APPEARANCE TO THE MAGI OF THE CHRIST
Happy New Year to all Insecure Writers in the IWSG corner

The festival of Epiphany is a Christian holiday celebrated on January 6 in Western Churches. It marks the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas starting on Christmas Day. Protestants and Roman Catholics agree on the date as the time when the Magi, or ‘Three Wise Men’, followed the Star and brought gifts to Bethlehem to the babe.

Partridge in a Pear Tree

GreenMan, pagan ancestral tree spirit, is allowed to flourish from Christmastide to Epiphany

Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as: “Greek: manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1–12)”, the OED doesn’t give the whole picture.

Epiphany Eve—Twelfth Night—is the time when families across Britain and some Americans traditionally take down their festive lights, decorations and fir trees.

This follows a 19th-century Victorian tradition where it was considered unlucky to keep up Christmas greenery, like holly and ivy—associated with pagan ritual—beyond this day: the belief itself a pre-Christian relic of Saturnalia, which rivalled Christmastide until the Middle Ages.

Pre-Christian tradition believed that tree spirits sought protection from winter in the trees and must be freed before the start of Epiphany. Nowadays, many European peoples still follow the custom, to avoid bad luck.

Parturit in Aperte—
He appeared through the travails of labor [in the labor within giving birth]

But it took twelve days and nights for the Magi coming from the East, to ‘follow the star’ until they got there—late. Their ‘revelation’ or divine appearance came to them, but they arrived twelve days after the divine birth. Gk. Epi- = after the event, late; -phanos = vision, appearance. Implication is that the wise men were late to the party celebrated by the rest of the [early Christian] world.

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, My True Love sent to me. . .

Traditional rhymes to rival the Pokemon version, December blog below

Twelve drummers drumming
Eleven pipers piping
Ten lords a leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five Gold Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves and
A Partridge in a Pear Tree—parturit in aperte
—Frederic Austin, 1780 Festive song

May we IWSGers and our Cap’n Alex all agree, despite our theological and other differences

And may we enter 2018 with all our spirits protecting us through the maze, so that we emerge—where? when?— in one piece.
©2018 Marian Youngblood