'Auld Lang Syne' (Times Long Gone)

Today in the Book of Days: the folklore and customs of New Year's Eve. And free New Year's Eve e-cards. Also Happy New Year e-cards.

'Auld Lang Syne' ('Times Long Gone')
By Robert Burns

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?

Chorus
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes
And pu'd the gowans fine
But we've wander'd mony a weary foot
Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl't in the burn
Frae morning sun till dine
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint stoup
And surely I'll be mine
And we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

Robbie Burns in the Book of Days

Categories: calendar-customs, new-year, poetry, scotland, music

The murder of Rasputin

1916 (Old Style) Grigori Rasputin (b. 1869), mystic and favourite of the wife of Russia's last tsar (Nicholas II), was murdered by a group of conservatives who wished to rid the Russian court of his malignant influence.

He was served poisoned wine and cakes of which he partook, beaten, castrated, had his genitals flung across the room, and was subsequently shot several times and thrown into a frozen river before he expired ...

The rumours about Rasputin's mega-penis

Categories: russia, history, biography

Newcastle earthquake 20th anniversary

At 10:27 am on this day in 1989, Australia's first recorded deadly earthquake occurred in Newcastle, New South Wales. Thirteen people were killed (nine in the Newcastle Workers Club) and more than 100 injured in the 5.6 Richter quake. Fifty thousand buildings were damaged, approximately 40,000 of which were homes.

Your almanackist felt the earth move at Randwick, a suburb of Sydney about 290 km (180 mi) from Newcastle, at the very same moment he was writing a letter to a mate in San Francisco referring to the October 17 Loma Prieta earthquake in that friend’s neck of the woods.

Categories: earthquake, australia, disaster

Childermas, or Mass of the Holy Innocents

This feast commemorates Herod's massacre of the innocents – when the ruler of Israel heard that 'the King of the Jews' had been born in a manger in Bethlehem, he killed all the infant boys in that town, and Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus, warned by an angel, took flight to become refugees in Egypt.

The Greek Liturgy asserts that Herod killed 14,000 boys, while the Syrians speak of 64,000 and many medieval authors of 144,000. Modern writers reduce the number considerably, since Bethlehem was a rather small town.

Childermas is supposed to be a day of bad omen, and one should never marry on it, nor put on new clothes, pare the nails, nor begin anything important. It was once actually considered to be the unluckiest day of the year; the day of the week on which it falls is unlucky throughout the coming year. In Cornwall, housewives and cleaners refrained from scrubbing on this day, as late as the 1860s. The coronation of England's King Edward IV (1442 - '83) was postponed till the following Monday ...

Categories: christianity, calendar-customs, refugee

William Buckley heads for the bush

1803 At 9 pm, William Buckley (1780 - January 30, 1856), Cheshire, UK-born convict in Australia, escaped. Thus began his 32 years of living in the bush among Aboriginal tribespeople, the only European in what we now call the State of Victoria.

In 1799, the more than 2-metre-tall (6' 7") teenager had gone to Holland to fight, under the command of the Duke of York, against Napoleon. Later, while in London, he was convicted of stealing a bolt of cloth which he swore he had been carrying for a woman and didn't know was stolen. Despite his war service record, and the relative insignificance of his crime, William Buckley was sentenced to transportation to New South Wales for 14 years (this was in the days when the British still believed that sending people to Australia was a punishment) ...

Categories: australia, history, indigenous, biography

Using menu psychology to entice diners

"Pounded by the recession, [restaurants] are hoping that some magic combination of prices, adjectives, fonts, type sizes, ink colors and placement on the page can coax diners into spending a little more money ...

"The use of menu engineers and consultants is exploding in the casual dining arena and among national chains ...

"Some restaurants use what researchers call decoys. For example, they may place a really expensive item at the top of the menu, so that other dishes look more reasonably priced ..."
NY Times


Categories: food, cuisine, marketing

How to play Songs of Shame

On Xmas night we invented a YouTube game that we call 'Songs of Shame'. The idea is for each person to play songs that they like a lot, but which are so uncool that it hurts to confess. The more humiliation, the more points. What are your songs of shame?

Examples of the many songs we heard: 'Indian Lake' by The Cowsills; The US Marines Hymn; and 'Sadie the Cleaning Lady' by Johnny Farnham. You get the idea.

It's not enough just to name songs like 'Achey Breaky Heart', 'Two Little Boys' or anything by KISS - that's too easy. The player has to actually like the song and win points for pain.

Categories: music, youtube

The Rap Guide to Evolution

This whole show (can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/default.htm ) is excellent, but my favourite bit is the rap about evolution and crime, which starts a bit before halfway.

Categories: evolution, radio-national, science, music, humour, humor

Boxing Day

According to one theory, today is so named for the annual collection of Christmas boxes on St Stephen's Day by the less wealthy members of English society. Gift giving was practised in the Saturnalia. The early Christian fathers denounced it but had little effect, and it became a Christian tradition, these days more commemorated on Christmas Day.

Tradesmen exacted contributions from their masters' customers. "Christmas-boxes are still regularly expected by the postman, the lamplighter (and) the dustman ..." says 19th-Century British folklorist, Robert Chambers, dryly. In Scotland these gifts are called handsels (usually collected in the New Year; see Handsel Monday).

Boxing Day is also celebrated in some places where the English have settled, such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

There is much dispute over the true origins of Boxing Day, but one common story of the holiday's origins is that servants used to receive Christmas gifts from their employers on December 26, after the family celebrations. These were generally called their Christmas boxes. Another story is that this is the day that priests broke open the collection boxes and distributed the money to the poor ...

Categories: christmas, calendar-customs

Merry Christmas

I'd like to wish you all a very merry Christmas. I will be spending it with my daughter and my five grandchildren, so I'm looking forward to it. I hope that you all enjoy your day as much as I expect that I will.

As always, the page of Christmas folklore is here in the Scriptorium, and more here in the Book of Days. Enjoy.

Categories: christmas, calendar-customs

Modresnach – The Mothers' Night

This is a Germanic/Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon annual commemoration, an Odinist Midwinter festival held approximately on this date, many practices of which can still be found in our Christmas traditions.

We know about it from the Venerable Bede, (c. 672 - 735) a medieval monk, author and scholar, whose best-known work is Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. Writing about the customs of the pagan Anglo-Saxons, Bede mentions their practice of celebrating a holiday he called Modranicht or Modresnacht on the eve of Christmas. (Modresnach is another spelling and seems the most commonly used, at least on the Internet.) Bede, writing in 730, informs us that Modresnach was the most important pagan festival in 8th-Century Britain. Bede referred to this time of Yuletide celebration as 'Kilderdaag' -- the time of slaughtering (animals for the feast – often a pig) ...

Categories: christmas, calendar-customs

Happy Festivus!

Many Christmases ago, Frank Costanza went to buy a doll for his son, George. He went to reach for it because it was the last one, but so did another man and as Frank rained blows upon him, he thought there could be another way. The doll was destroyed, but out of that, a new holiday was born. It was called Festivus ...

Festivus is a fictional holiday created by Frank Costanza (played by Jerry Stiller) on the American television comedy Seinfeld. Some fans of the show now celebrate this fictional holiday in real life.

Festivus is a holiday held on December 23 of each year. It was created as a response to the commercialism of the other December holidays. Its motto is 'Festivus, a holiday for the rest of us'.



Categories: christmas, humor, humour, calendar-customs, video

Robyn Archer on composers in Australia

Regardless of one's interest in this subject, this audio is an example of a brilliant lecture, in my opinion. Archer completely drew me in to her subject. I enjoyed it, learned a lot, and was stimulated intellectually.

Categories: music, australia, abc, radio-national

Happy Yule

Yule is one of the eight solar holidays, or sabbats, of Neopaganism. Of course, it is a far older tradition than that, as it was the Winter Solstice celebration of Scandinavian Norse mythology and Germanic pagans. It is celebrated on the solstice, in the Northern Hemisphere, circa December 21 and in the Southern Hemisphere circa June 21. The name is of Germanic origin; it is also called Midwinter.

The holiday is, with Beltaine and Samhain, one of the most popular among Neopagans. In some traditions, it commemorates the death of the Holly King (symbolizing the old year and the shortened sun) at the hands of his son and successor, the Oak King (the new year and the new sun that begins to grow). In other traditions, it is seen as the birthday of the new sun god.

A traditional ritual is a vigil from dusk to dawn, the longest night of the year, to make sure that the sun will rise again.

Yule is a revival of a Germanic festival that was Christianized as Christmas; indeed, many traditional trappings of Christmas, such as the Yule Log, holly, and the Christmas tree are derived from pre-Christian Yule celebrations ...

Categories: pagan, neopagan, christmas, calendar-customs

Mumping Day, England

Old St Thomas's Day is called 'Mumping Day' in some parts of Britain, because on this day the poor used to go about begging, [Mump, to cheat or to sponge on others; probably from Dutch mompen, to cheat] or, as it was called, 'a-gooding', that is, getting gifts to procure good things for Christmas, or begging corn.

In Lincolnshire, the name used to be applied to Boxing Day; in Warwickshire, the term was 'going a-corning'. People would also be said to be going 'Thomasing' on this day.

Women going 'a-gooding' presented their donors with sprigs of palm and branches of primroses. It still was kept up in folklorist William Hone's time (1826) in the area of Maidstone, Kent ...

Categories: uk, calendar-customs, saint

Innocent man free after 35 years in prison

James Bain spent 35 years in prison for a kidnapping and rape that he didn't commit. DNA testing proved it, and he's been released, displaying remarkable forgiveness to the system and people who fucked him over. It's another nail in the coffin for capital punishment. Just imagine if Mr Bain had been executed, as many are despite their innocence - which is one thing the Innocence Project is waking people up to. State murder is still murder, often undeserved, and always too barbaric for good people to condone.

Categories: capital-punishment, crime, law, legal, death-penalty, usa

Presidential pardon for US free love advocate

1878 Ezra Heywood (1829 - 189?), North American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and feminist, imprisoned for 'obscenity' in the previous June for his advocacy of 'free love', was pardoned by US President Rutherford Hayes after popular agitation for his release.

After the Civil War, the abolitionist Heywood had turned his attention towards the labor movement and, eventually, towards free love.

The Heywoods' The Word, subtitled A Monthly Journal of Reform, was connected to radical individualism both through its editors and through its contributors, who included Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, and JK Ingalls ...

Categories: history, biography, radical-history

Heat Over a Leaked UN Warming Analysis

By ANDREW C. REVKIN--A document leaked during climate negotiations reveals lots of heat ahead.

COPENHAGEN — Late today, environmentalists monitoring the climate talks alerted reporters to the existence of a six-page document, dated December 15th, that is a compilation by the United Nations office managing the talks of all the major countries’ plans for curbing their emissions, along with a calculation of where that would take the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and eventual temperature of the planet. United Nations officials confirmed the document’s authenticity but declined to discuss it.

The analysis concluded that without much stronger action to cut emissions both before and after 2020, “global emissions will remain on an unsustainable pathway that could lead to concentrations equal or above 550 p.p.m. [parts per million of carbon dioxide in the air] with the related temperature” rising 3 degrees Celsius, or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. That is far above the thresholds for dangerous warming being debated at the meeting and accepted in recent statements by the major economies of the world.

The conclusion that current plans for greenhouse gases would lead to substantial warming is not new and largely based on recent analysis by Sir Nicholas Stern, a British economist, and in step with findings of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere.

But environmental campaigners said they were outraged that the document so clearly showed that countries involved in the negotiations are aware of the gap ...
Source

Categories: un, climate-change, global-warming, disinfo, disinformation

The Saturnalia of ancient Rome

Four major Roman festivals were held in December, including the Saturnalia, which celebrated the returning Sun-god. Saturnalia (from the god Saturn) was the name the Romans gave to their holiday marking the Winter Solstice, and many of our Christmas customs derive from it. Saturn was a Roman cognate of the Greek god Chronos (Time). He devoured all his children except Jupiter (air), Neptune (water), and Pluto (the underworld, or grave). These time cannot consume. Like the Grim Reaper, he carries a sickle, and we know him in our day as Father Time.

The reign of Saturn was celebrated by the poets as a 'golden age'. According to the old alchemists and astrologers Saturn typified lead, and was a very evil planet to be born under. He was the god of seedtime and harvest and his symbol was a scythe, and he was finally banished from his throne by his son, Jupiter.

Saturnalia was celebrated for seven days beginning on December 17. It honoured the corn-god Saturn and his consort, Ops, the goddess of plenty. Normal activities were suspended during this time period. Slaves and masters were temporarily on an equal footing, and the theme was goodwill to all ...

Categories: ancient-rome, festival, deity, calendar-customs, christmas

School of the Americas rebadged for comfort

2000 The School of the Americas (SOA), in Fort Benning, Georgia, a USA army facility that critics have labelled a school for dictators, torturers and assassins, closed under that name, to reopen on January 17, 2001 as the 'Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation'.

It is widely believed that much of the torture and humiliation of prisoners as documented in America's crusades in Afghanistan and the Middle East, came from techniques taught in School of the Americas (first tried out in Latin America) ...

Categories: usa, torture

The Halcyon Days

During the Halcyon Days, the Mediterranean was supposed to stay calm. Halcyon is Greek for a kingfisher ('sea-hound'). The ancient Sicilians believed that the kingfisher incubated its eggs for fourteen days on the surface of the sea, during which time, before the Winter Solstice, the waves were still ...

Categories: ancient-rome, mythology, calendar-customs

Aussie parrots

Aussie parrots
Originally uploaded by Pip_Wilson

In a pet shop in Coffs Harbour. "Want a cuddle?"

http://wilsonsalmanac.blogspot.com/2009/12/aussie-parrots.html

Unique car numberplate

Unique car numberplate
Originally uploaded by Pip_Wilson.

I think this is probably the coolest numberplate I've ever seen. The other good thing about the car was that the owner had removed all corporate badging.

See at McDonald's, Coffs Harbour.

http://wilsonsalmanac.blogspot.com/2009/12/unique-car-numberplate.html

Walk Against Warming

Walk Against Warming
Originally uploaded by Pip_Wilson.

At the Walk Against Warming rally, Bellingen, December 12, 2009.

Permalink http://wilsonsalmanac.blogspot.com/2009/12/walk-against-warming.html


Categories: bellingen, climate-change, activism, protest

Feast day of St Lucy of Syracuse

(Cypress arbor vitae, Thuja cupressoides, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

It's December 13 and we see that the solstice is close, whether we speak of the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, or the Winter Solstice in the Northern.

As today is one of the shortest days of the year in Sweden (and was, in fact, the Winter Solstice prior to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1753 – see Swedish calendar), the locals celebrate a festival of light (which is appropriate because the root for 'Lucy' in Latin, lux, means 'light'). On this day an elected girl in many households, dressed in white as 'Sankta Lucia', wearing a headdress of evergreen leaves and a crown of lit candles, wakes the rest of the family with coffee, rolls, and a special song. Swedes begin their Christmas celebrations with this day, and traditionally her patronal day marks the end of harvest.

St Lucy (283 - 304), with her associations with light, is the patron saint of people who are blind or have eye trouble ...

Categories: sweden, saint, calendar-customs, christmas, folklore, solstice

Yuletide Lads - Icelandic trolls

December 12 is the first day of arrival of the Jólasveinar trolls, gnome-like beings that come at the rate of one a day right up to Christmas Eve. It is said they like to eat bad girls and boys.

About 60 different names of Yuletide Lads are known, but the number varied in olden times from one region of Iceland to another. The number 13 is first seen in a poem on Grýla (the Lads' mother, an ogre; their dad is Leppalúði) in the 18th century, and their names were published by Jón Árnason in his folklore collection in 1862. Some of their names are Sausage Sniffer, Pot Scraper, and Window Peeper. They were once seen as cannibals, but the Yuletide Lads are now gift givers – although still mischievous.

The Jólasveinar start arriving in town this morning, one each day ... The first, today, is Stekkjarstaur (Sheepfold Stick), who would try to drink the milk from the farmers' ewes ...

Categories: iceland, christmas, calendar-customs, folklore

2bbb sign restored

In keeping with the post-flood refurbishment of the mudbrick studios and offices of Community Radio Bellinger, 2bbb-FM, volunteers have restored the station's much-admired carved sign.

"It is as much a Bellingen sculpture and significant work of art, as a sign," said 2bbb Program Co-ordinator, Misty Hanley. "However, Bellingen's climate had caused deterioration over decades and it badly needed restoration."

The sign was deeply carved out of Bellingen hardwood many years ago by local artist, Brian Keys, and presented unpainted as a generous gift to the station. Its dimensions are approximately 6 feet by one foot and 1.5 inches in depth. In later years, the sign, with its motif of Australian wildflowers, had been painted, but the colours had been ruined by weather and mould.

"When I brought the sign home for restoration, it even had borers and an ants' nest in it," said 2bbb broadcaster Pip Wilson. "Bellingen artist Julie Hutchinson and I spent many hours treating the timber and bringing the flowers and calligraphy to new life with Australian bush colours and gold, but nowhere near as many hours as Brian Keys must have spent carving this beautiful work of art."

The sign (pictured, before and after) may be seen at the radio's studios at 52 Wheatley St, Bellingen, along with other stunning works of local art.

(Press release.)

Categories: bellingen, art

Hellfire politician

1781 Death of Francis Dashwood, 15th Baron le Despencer (b. December, 1708), English rake and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer (1762 - '63) and founder of the notorious Hellfire Club sometimes attended by Benjamin Franklin. The radical writer, John Wilkes, and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, after whom the sandwich is named, are believed to have been members.

The club's meeting place and scene of its orgies was a cavern in the West Wycombe Caves, and also at Medmenham Abbey, with plenty of alcohol and prostitutes provided. According to Horace Walpole, the Hellfire Club members' "practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighbourhood of the complexion of those hermits".

Categories: uk, history, biography, occult

Lord Byron's brilliant daughter

1815 Augusta Ada Byron (Ada Lovelace or Ada Byron King, later Countess of Lovelace; d. November 27, 1852), mathematician, developer of one of the first mechanical computers; by her own account, an aspirant of being "an analyst and a metaphysician".

Ada Lovelace, as she is commonly known, was the daughter of Lord Byron (1788 - 1824), the great English poet, but when she was a month old he separated from Ada's mother, Anne Isabelle Milbanke, who raised her, and the poet never saw his daughter again.

Lady Byron herself had an aptitude for mathematics, and Lord Byron had called his future wife "the Princess of Parallelograms". One of Anne's aims was to ensure that the girl would not grow up to be a poet like her celebrated father. One of Ada's tutors was Augustus De Morgan (1806 - '71) the Indian-born British mathematician and logician. In 1834, when Ada was eighteen years old, she met Mary Somerville, who sent young Ada mathematics books and talked to her young protégée about the subject.

Ada suggested to her friend Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871), whom she had met in 1833 when she was just 17 years old, and been fascinated with his invention, that he should write a plan for how his analytical engine might calculate Johann Bernoulli numbers ...

Categories: uk, biography, science, poetry, computer, history

The Wilson's Almanac Book Review Page

Here's an easy way to keep up with the latest book reviews from around the world. The Wilson's Almanac Book Review Page.

Now there are literally hundreds of new book reviews there, renewing constantly. If you have Firefox, just refresh the page as often as you like, or if you have Internet Explorer, the page will auto-refresh every 30 minutes.

It's probably now one of the Internet's biggest one-page sources of book reviews from competing media sources.

Tagged: book, literature, book-review

Feast of the Immaculate Conception

The Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic doctrine that the Virgin Mary was preserved by God from the transmission of original sin at the time of her own conception. It is not, as is commonly believed, another name for the doctrine of the virgin birth – it refers to how Mary, not Jesus, was conceived ...

In her aspect of the Immaculate Conception, Mary may be depicted assuming an almost astrological figure, standing on the moon, crushing the serpent (Satan) under her foot, with the sun behind her, sometimes her head circled with the twelve stars of the Apocalypse ...

Alan Davidson (Oxford Companion to Food, Oxford University Press, 1999) tells us that on this day in Madeira, Portugal, women begin to bake the bolo de mel cake which is served at Christmas time. This cake, sweetened with honey or molasses, contains walnuts, almonds and candied peel. Traditionally, the Madeirans leaven the cake with a piece of dough from bread-baking; any honey cakes left from the previous year must be eaten up on this day ...

Categories: religion, christianity, saint, calendar-customs, portugal

The invasion of East Timor

1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor. With US, Australian and British complicity, the dictatorship of Indonesia invaded and annexed the small state just north of Australia, overthrowing the popularly elected government. Genocide occurred (200,000 probably killed, an estimated one-third of the East Timorese population) but almost no attention was paid in most Western media for many years ...

Categories: indonesia, east-timor, australia, usa, uk, genocide

Feast day of St Nicholas of Myra (Santa Claus)

Nicholas (Nikolaus) (c. 270 - 345/352) became a Bishop of Myra in Lycia, Asia Minor when quite young. From this fact arose the old European tradition of Boy Bishops, who reigned from December 6 to 28, in a parody of church officials. More of that later.

Among Christians, he is also known as the 'Wonderworker'. Several acts of kindness and miracles are attributed to him. Historical accounts often confuse him with the later Nicholas of Sion. He has always been a very popular saint: in England at least 372 churches are named in his honour ...

Enemy of the old religion
The destruction of several pagan temples is also attributed to him, among them one temple of Artemis (also known as Diana). Arguing that the celebration of Diana's birth is on December 6, some authors have speculated that this date was deliberately chosen for Nicholas's feast day to overshadow or replace the pagan celebrations ...

Legend of the 3 dowries
A nobleman of Patara had three daughters; he was so poor he couldn't provide their dowries and they were going to have to go into prostitution. St Nick had inherited a large fortune, and he resolved to help, but secretly. As he went to their house at night, wondering how to do this, the moon came out from behind a cloud and lit up a window through which he threw a bag of gold, which fell at the girls' father's feet. This enable him to provide a dowry for his first daughter. The next night, St Nicholas threw another in, and thus procured a dowry for the second daughter. The father wanted to see the benefactor, so on the third night he saw St Nick coming and grabbed his cloak, saying "O Nicholas! servant of God! why seek to hide thyself?" The saint made him promise not to tell any one. From this came the custom on St Nicholas's eve of putting out presents for children. For his helping the poor, St Nicholas is the patron saint of pawnbrokers; the three gold balls traditionally hung outside a pawnshop are symbolic of the three sacks of gold ...

Categories: saint, christmas, folklore, calendar-customs