Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

( In Memoriam (Ring out, Wild Bells) by Alfred Lord Tennyson )

And the other day (Yesterday? or was it the day before?) I got the idea in my head to write my own poem, following these sentiments-- but from a Humanist/Agnostic/Atheist perspective, instead of a Christian one.

Something about how, although, strictly speaking, picking one day as the New Year is arbitrary-- there's really little difference between one minute and the next, even if we give those minutes, days, years, different names.

But-- But -- BUT -- the very act of collectively, as a society, to agree to let go of the past and take a deep breath full of hope-- this is still and always be, a moment and an action of profound Grace. And, like anarchy, it has little meaning done alone, but a great deal of meaning when done as a society.

I don't think I will complete this poem before midnight, my time (little more than three hours from now). But maybe I'll complete it before the passing of Orthodox Christmas...

I haven't gotten around to writing a new holiday song, yet... but I did, just now, finish making a video of a song I wrote a while back, and recently tweaked.

Yes, I know that for the southern half of the planet New Year comes in the summer. I'm a northerner, and I originally wrote this as a Secret Santa present for another northerner back in '06. My antipodean friends are welcome to change those lines around to suit the circs.

Anyway, the image at 2:55 is of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm listening to a story from Dorothea Viehmann -- who was the actual source for a great many of the stories in their collection, and incidentally, the woman Wilhelm would eventually marry (he's the one leaning forward in his seat, hanging on her every word). ...I love the chickens wandering in and out... Anyway, I included that illustration specifically because this December is the 200th anniversary of the first edition of their first volume of "Children's and Household Tales," and figured they deserved a tip of the hat.

Here's a link to the Wikisource page that has the illustration and text of the article that went with it: http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Die_Br%C3%BCder_Grimm_bei_der_M%C3%A4rchenerz%C3%A4hlerin



Also: Achievement unlocked! I managed to get the closed captioning track done right in the first try. \o/ (It really is a lot easier if you don't bother counting the fractions of seconds).

As I said, in a recent, circle-locked post, Saturnalia is my favorite of the Publicly-celebrated Winter Bash festivals (or would be, if it were still publicly celebrated). So much so, I made a new icon to celebrate, just now :-)

I first learned about the holiday in high school Latin Class, and, one year, a combined Latin Class party (all the Latin students from fifth to twelfth grade -- 11-18 year-olds) was the one time in my life I got to actually celebrate it in an organized way.

This is what I learned way back in my personal Days of Yore:

Once upon a time, after Saturn was deposed from his kingship of the Gods, he came to Earth, and taught humans all about agriculture: how to plow the earth (pointing out how the wild boars did it, with their tusks... and it was based on that inspiration that humans figured out the plough).

During his reign on Earth, before civilization got too advanced, there were no social classes, and everyone lived as equals, and no one did any more work than was necessary (and since there was a God of Fertility on premises, very little work was needed to get things to grow). This was the Golden Age of Man, and there was peace, and no wars, etc. And then, as people acquired more wealth, they started to stratify into social classes, and develop slavery, and start coveting other clans' lands, and so forth, and they, too, banished Saturn, and began to worship Jove as the supreme god.

But for a week, around the winter solstice, Saturn was welcomed back to the world, and, to make him feel at home, we humans are asked to try our best to act like we did during the Golden Age, when social class is forgotten, and masters serve their slaves at dinner, and people spend more time playing than working, and official government bureaucracy stuff is put on hold... Basically:

"Grandpa is coming to stay for a week! Can we at least try to be extra nice to each other, to make him feel at home?"

Of course, it's make-believe. The slaves are not really free... and everything goes back to normal on the 24th, so even when they're given the "liberty" of voicing criticism of their masters, it can only go so far.

And yet, there's an acknowledged value in "acting as if" -- just to practice exercising those thought muscles.

In my high school Latin party, that one year, it started with the Seniors (or at least those who'd been studying Latin for the full seven years) reenacted the liberation of Saturn from bondage: one played the role of the God, himself, in a long yellow, robe/toga, and wearing a fake cotton wool beard. He came in wearing paper chain-and-shackles, which the the student acting as priest tore asunder. Then, "Saturn" gave a speech in Latin all about the values of human equality and peace, and freedom. And then, he went around and handed out (what would have been, in "Roman times") little cakes that were shaped like the god Saturn (only, those being unavailable, our Latin teacher went out and bought a couple dozen Santa-shaped, red-sugar-dusted, butter cookies from a local bakery).

Then, since we were excused from our other afternoon classes, we shared a meal of Italian food, and honey-glazed cakes for dessert, while each of the different aged students put on short skit parodies of Roman mythology.

Then, right before we left to get on our buses home, we sang Christmas carols in Latin.
---
Anyway, it's always kind of baffled me why Saturnalia, out of all the old Holy Days, is the one that has become the most demonized as Teh Evol by the Christian Evangelical types, while Lupercalia, was allowed to survive, be sanitized and prettified (That is: transformed into Valentine's Day), and pushed onto schoolchildren as a series of mandatory class activities (though my aide, who has been working for a young school boy at nursery school, kindergarten, and now first grade, tells me that Valentine's Day is no longer pushed in school... which I think is a healthy trend).

( Valentine's Day origins (content warning: discussion of animal sacrifice and D/s sex) )

So, on Monday and Tuesday, I was browsing through YouTube to see if I could find anyone reading excerpts from Martial's (Roman Poet) Saturnalia Epigrams (little comic verses about -- or sometimes in the voice of -- different Saturnalia presents). Sadly, I could not. I did, however, come across many Christian Evangelical videos espousing their hatred of the holiday, and by extension, all the jolly, fun, parts of Christmas.

And then it occurred to me (the proverbial light bulb, or considering the context, Saturnalia candle): Lupercalia may have been filled with sex and violence, while Saturnalia at least gave lip service to peace, equality, and freedom. But Lupercalia was turned into lovey-dovey day, and Saturnalia became equated with evil because it :::Drum Roll::: CELEBRATES ANARCHY!!!!

(Noooo-oooo-ooo-ooo!)

Now, a note on the shadow / dark side of the ancient worship of Saturn: it was acknowledged, in the ancient Roman myths, that while he ruled over the Earth, Saturn did demand human sacrifice as part of his cult, and to be presented with the heads of his victims as offerings. Over the course of several centuries of observing Saturnalia, contemporary Romans came up with varying ways to acknowledge this practice without actually performing it, including making offerings of masks of human faces or offering and burning candles shaped like people. For modern folks who want to observe Saturnalia, may I suggest offering the heads off a few of your gingerbread people? Just a thought.

Another clip from Old School Electric Company, this time, showing the influence of adult sketch comedy, like The Carol Burnett Show:



And really, I think: If this had been first released through some other (aka commercial) venue, rather than PBS children's programming, it would have been as popular a novelty song as "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas," or "I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus." For one thing, it tells the truth about Christmas that's rarely acknowledged in kids' music, especially.

I also really like the ending (how much do you want to bet he was hoping for a shot of bourbon?).

So, a year and a half ago, I got the idea of making a "Group Hug Snuggly" -- a physical stuffed animal to grab hold of and hug whenever I feel the urge to type *hugs* in reply to someone online, and also to grab and hold whenever someone sent that reply to me.

As an added boost of snuggly magic, it will have, slipped inside the stuffing, little tokens-- each one representing / dedicated to one of those friends (back in the day, they raised their [virtual] hands and asked to be included*).

The thing is, I always wanted to make an original design teddy -- either a "monster" teddy or an "alien" teddy. So I didn't want to use any of the sewing patterns available for download online.

And mathematical / geometrical thinking is one of my weakest intelligences, so translating the 3-D shape I imagine in my head into flat shapes I can cut out of paper has been making me flail for a total of 77 weeks.

Late last night, I realized I had paper towels, scissors and glue, so that I could experiment and see what sorts of flat shapes turn into what sort of round shapes. That's what helped me figure out how the whole thing works.

And now? I'm making it up on the fly. The main thing is: I figured out how to make sure critical seams match up. Anyway, I might actually have all the fabric pieces cut out and glued together by the time I go to sleep (I use temporary white glue instead of straight pins -- and then, stitch over it). And my next project may be a "how-to," because I can't be the only one who loves hands-on, but blanks at the figuring-out.

I don't celebrate Christmas. But spending the day before making a childhood symbol by hand seems oddly appropriate.

*It's not too late if you want in...

Writing up my old idea for a Mother Goose Costume, yesterday, prompted me to realize that I need a Mother Goose Journal icon (I'm thinking of using this image, which appears to be 19th C., and shows up everywhere via a Google search, but I can't find an attribution. Do any of you know, or dare to venture a guess?). And that brought up new information about the character that makes me feel quite chuffed and vindicated. So!

The Back-story:
One of my very first presents, ever, was The Mother Goose Treasury, illustrated by Raymond Briggs (of The Snowman fame), with the collection of rhymes taken from the research of Iona and Peter Opie. It was given to me for my second Christmas -- three weeks before I turned 3 years old. And I still have it (The end papers are covered with my beginning attempts to write my name and the number 3 [everywhere but the bookplate pasted to the inside front cover... heh])

This is the first rhyme/ballad/story in the tome -- taking up almost six pages ('cause every verse needs an illustration).

( Mother Goose and the Golden Egg (As I learned it) -- cut for length )

[footnote below]

For the 2000 Holiday/New Year season I wrote and illustrated a novella/chapter book based on this witchy version of M. Goose, and tied her in with Christmas, the Winter Solstice, and Santa Claus. My premise was that the laying of the golden egg was an annual event at the winter solstice, and inside the golden shell was magic that M. Goose shared with Santa, so his reindeer could fly in time for Christmas Eve. I finished it up in the nick of time, had a dozen copies printed and bound by Kinkos, and slipped it into my neighbors' mailboxes as a Surprise!present. Not one adult even acknowledged my efforts... one kid did, though, so I know it was read by at least one of them.

Well, according to Wikipedia, that story was first created as a Christmas/New Year's Pantomime by Thomas Dibdin for the 1806-'07 Yule season -- 17 years before "A Visit From St. Nicholas." And she's even witchier in that original story -- raising storms and summoning ghosts, and I'd really, really, like to see that play, now!

So I was hitting close to a well-established tradition when I imagined her as primarily a Winter Celebration character. Can I sing "I told you so!" now?


[Footnote]: A slightly different (and to my mind, less poetic and more clunky) version is reproduced here: Mother Goose and Her Son Jack, with the additional information that it was first published (and perhaps written by) T. Batchelor in 1815 (but it's completely missing the "odd fish," so imnsho, it's not nearly as good -- and, as a warning: that Web page has an annoying and goofy-looking animated .gif).

One: The cats are now in a mood to snuggle in my lap, rather than just sit in my general vicinity (and I'm now wearing long sleeves, so Beatrice [Trixie] can do kneading-paws without performing acupuncture).

Two: "Honey Crisp" apples are in season, and in my grocery store (they are sweet, and crisp -- and juicy enough you can almost slurp them like a peach).

Three: Barley is also in my grocery store ("Pearled" -- aka refined -- barley; still, refined barley has as much fiber as brown rice). So I could get some without resorting to buying it off the Internet.

Four: The sun rises later, so it better matches my practically-vampiric sleep schedule.

Five: Halloween's coming. I have no idea why this makes me cheerful; I haven't actually celebrated it in many, many years. And I deliberately avoid participating in giving out candy to trick-or-treaters (because the logistics of hurrying to the door every time the bell rings is a nightmare of stress, especially when you have no backup). But today, while having my breakfast coffee, I discovered I was talking aloud to myself about "How to think up Halloween costumes that work with crutches and wheelchairs." So there must be something about Halloween that makes me happy. Oh, wait. Maybe it's because it's the one and only holiday where it's socially acceptable to celebrate growling and UN-cutesy things.

First, here's the monster I started to draw, yesterday, in honor of MONSTER DAY (February 16th), 2011 (I only finished it a few minutes ago -- it, um, kept getting hairier and hairier >_>):



Second, thinking about the origin of the word "Monster" (from the Latin for 'omen' or 'sign,' specifically, an omen that the gods are about to wreak vengence for humanity's sin), and how that can still have meaning for me, as an atheist:

Omens, like life, can spring forth without a scheming architect scribbling away behind the scenes (Creationism is Intelligent Design; Evolution is Intelligent Improv.*). An organism born with a radically unexpected body form could very well be a sign that Something Big is Changing deep within the system, and soon, we will feel that Big Change.

Humans: a) Don't like Big Change, and b) take everything personally, and assume anything we don't like is a punishment. So.


Third, thinking about how this "holiday" (it may be on its way, but it hasn't yet reached self-sustaining meme power) can fit into my own year, and my own experience of the seasons:

If I understand monsters to be embodiments of big change, or signs that big change is coming, then maybe this can be my "Hooray! Winter is over holiday!"

Y/Y?

*Say "yes" to everything, just keep going, and see what happens.

So, yesterday, I got into a discussion with vilakins in kerravonsen's reaction post to the recent Doctor Who Christmas Special, especially the line: "Christmas is always in winter."

ORLY?! asked all those Who fans who watched the Christmas Special after a Summertime Christmas celebration, for reals, right here on Earth. And vilikins and I launched into a long, tangential, conversation about what sort of planetary factors go into what sorts of festivals the intelligent beings might celebrate, and what happens when you superimpose histories and politics on top of that.

And what about planets without any axial tilt?

---

And that's the reason I love the show, and the fans it attracts. The very premise and the format of the show prompts these sorts of questions, and gets all sort of juicy conversations going. My brain feeds on Juicy Conversations (and chocolate).

And late last night, that discussion reawakened a set of memories in my brain about two very real, nonfiction exoplanets that have been discovered just within the five years, both orbiting the same red dwarf star 20.5 lightyears from us: Gliese 581c and Gliese 581g (two wikipedia articles).

Both planets appear to be Earth-like, and to have conditions suitable to sustain the presence of liquid water and thick atmospheres that would moderate the extreme variations in the planets' surface temperatures. Therefore, these planets are more likely then not to support the presence of life as we'd recognize it.

Both planets are probably also without much, if any axial tilt. And both (like our own moon) are very likely tidally locked, so that the length of a day equals the length of a year. So: yeah -- right in our own galatic backyard, two planets that have both a "north" and a "south" but also planets where "north and south" probably wouldn't mean much, culturally speaking, if any cultures live there (but "Light, Dark and In-Between" would).

What I take away from all this:

Doods!! I mean Dooooods!!! We've only started our search for exoplanets fifteen years ago, and just four years in, we already found a planet that looks comfortable. And just three years after that, we find another one in the same system.

And our sample size is really small: just 420 out of the billions of stars in our galaxy. And we only picked those because they're close to us, and relatively easy for us to observe.

As Stephen Vogt, et alia (the authors of the paper in which discovery of Gliese 581g was announced) put it:

(Quote)
This detection, coupled with statistics of the incompleteness of present-day precision RV surveys for volume-limited samples of stars in the immediate solar neighborhood suggests that eta_Earth could well be on the order of a few tens of percent.
(unquote)

Dooods!!!eleventy!!!one!!

Eleventy!

(squee)

And also: If, in our own solar system, if Mars also fostered life at some point in our planets' mutual history (even if it no longer does), than maybe two life-supporting planets per star system is also relatively common.

What sort of implications would that have in science fiction stories?

An interview with Steve Vogt, about the (unconfirmed, yet) discovery of planet "Gliese 581g" on YouTube (in September of this year)

His conclusion: "Learn to wrap your mind around the incredibleness of the Universe, and it will make you happy if you do that."

All together now (with the hand motions & dance, if you want):

"Intellect and Romance over brute force and cynicism!"

(Yes -- "More." I suppose "Zat You, Santa Claus?" is not properly a carol, in most peoples' eyes, but it is to me [but "Santa Claus is coming to town" is sacreligious ;P])

I'm so happy I found this song on YouTube. I admit, I get teary-eyed whenever I hear it, and lumpy-throated, too. Because it spells out what I think of as the "reason for the season": Forgiving old wrongs and grudges, and creating a little bit of Peace on Earth, and thus, doing your best to start the new year off right.

According to the folks at Mudcat, the lyrics for this tune date back to somewhere around 1620. And the music is from about a century later.