THE PAGE TURNS

January 7, 2023January 8, 2023

Back in the Saddle in January

Trick rider Bea Kirnan, photo from Colorado.edu.

Pity the poor month, January. It has such a Big Act to follow and so much that needs to be accomplished!

We’re now just two weeks past Christmas. Twelfth Night has gone, and the holiday decorations are either put away or in transit. The stacks of treats have dwindled; the refrigerator is emptying itself of eggnog. Calendars are being recycled, doctor’s appointments being scheduled, performance reviews due. In my office days, end-of-year recaps and summaries were routine, but we don’t tend to do them for ourselves. We should. Newspaper articles publish their end-of-year advice too soon, before New Year’s, when we’re still making merry. Now is when we should pay attention.

January has a useful function: take stock and clean house. If you’re reading this, odds are you’re a writer. If you’re a blogger, you know what to clean! Spruce up the website, try a new theme, or just take down pages that you know people don’t read. Remove those plug-ins that seemed important two years ago. Update your Bio. You can change at least a word, can’t you?

If you’re not a writer, there’s still stuff to do. Schedule the re-roofing. It might not be until April, but you can look at the calendar. Sweep out a few cobwebs while you’re putting away the ornaments. Update your resume; it’s easier to do a little every year than to let the changes pile up over a decade.

It’s January; channel your inner Janus. He was the God of Doors, which seems perfectly appropriate as we close the door on 2022 and open the door on 2023.

December 29, 2022January 4, 2023

The Pierogi Mystique

Christmas pierogi at the kajmeister house.

My grandmother’s handwriting is still on the recipe, which we urged her to write down, before she passed away in 1978. It was written the way that grandmothers write recipes, without precision or exact steps, with unique spelling. She wasn’t a particularly great cook, according to my mother. Although perhaps that was about more about relationships between mother and mother-in-law than about food. I do remember finding her borscht disgusting, although what five-year-old likes beet soup with sour cream? We did, however, fight over her pierogis. More on that shortly.

The secret Chmaj recipe. Photo by kajmeister.

My brother gave me pierogi-making tools last Christmas, but we couldn’t fit in time to make them. They are a time-consuming task, as I imagine making tamales, won tons, or empanadas might be. I decided to make them this year on Christmas then enlisted the elves when it was taking more time than our stomachs could bear. When I posted a photo on Facebook, there were questions and comments, and my reply got so long, I thought: Ok, just do a blog. So here you go.

December 21, 2022December 21, 2022

Solstice: The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Newgrange Ireland at the Winter Solstice, newgrange.com

The sun never says to the earth, “You owe me.”
Look what happens with a love like that.
It lights up the whole sky.
Poem: “The Gift” @1350, by Hafez, tr. D. Ladinsky

‘Tis the season, quite literally. We are approaching the turning point of the season, the lever of our mini-universe, wherein the sun will be at its Most. Here in Northern California, it will be at the lowest point to our horizon and the furthest south, which means we’re at the Solstice, baby!

Even though other latitudes and longitudes will feel that dance of the sun differently, everywhere is going to feel the sun at its Most. Those at this latitude, the 90% of humans who live on the majority of the land masses on this side of the equator, will feel this as the shortest day of the year. Tomorrow holds promise because it will be longer (for 90% of us anyway). Folks on the south side of the equator will enjoy the longest day of the year, although they might revel in our revelry, too.

People long ago lived under a differently aged sun, but they also did this dance, and they also experienced the sense of cold/hot, shorter/longer, death/rebirth, and dark/light that we are experiencing. ‘Tis the season to get me thinking all about ancient celebrations of solstice. Fair warning: this is not just a laundry list of the top 12 pagan chants or a random set of ten holiday traditions… I’ve done some of that in previous blogs, and you can google plenty of other examples. This is not just about how Queen Victoria popularized Christmas trees or Good King Wenceslas or Saturnalia or even Stonehenge–let’s go a little broader and deeper than Northern Europe. How old and how omnipresent are celebrations of the solstice? How do we know?