Another pagan harvest festival.
I'm enjoying the fruits of the harvest -- the world's most pungent onions seem to grow in my garden. I can't get rhubarb to grow, but the chilis are doin' fine! And the grapes growing on my grape tree smell and taste wonderful. (Grape tree? Yes, the loon who planted things in my yard all those years ago planted a lemon tree and a grape vine very close together. So I have a lemon-vine-and-grape-tree combo in that corner.)
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Everybody else still sees a rock pile until someone gets the permits, files the environmental impact report, and actually gets the guys with the money to do more than say "What a great idea! It's too risky for us to finance."
Bershere's Formula for Failure:
There are only two kinds of people who fail: those who listen to nobody... and those who listen to everybody.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
~Benjamin Franklin, 1759
I originally had a long post on this. But Ben Franklin's statement really needs no additions. You either get it, or you'll get it far too late.
Thus the pronunciation of Lughnasadh. The Slavs and the Celts got extra consonants, while the Polynesians got extra vowels.
LooNaSa, or Lughnasadh, is a pagan holiday of harvest, the first harvest so say my notes. I suspect it is the celebration of the harvest of summer fruits and veggies, which anyone who has a veggie patch or fruit tree is fully aware. I have a friend with a plum tree. I now have a refrigerator with plums on every shelf and hoisin sauce coming soon. My friend thinks I'm great as I'm one of the few people who doesn't run when he walks up with a bag. He could bring me all the plums off the tree (that the birds hadn't nibbled already) and I would be happy. Plums freeze. Plums dry. Plums turn into hoisin sauce. Plums ferment. The downside to plums is that I can eat too many, at which point I spend long periods of time in the bathroom with a good book.
I used to live next door to an apricot tree and for two glorious weeks every year, I would gorge myself on fresh, golden, tree-ripened apricots. My family didn't appreciate it but short of chaining me inside, they couldn't stop me. You see, this house had four people . . . and only one bathroom. But it was only two weeks, two golden weeks before the fruit got too ripe and fell off the tree.
Summer also meant green apples. Now, we have all sorts of apples all year, but when I was young, the tart green apples would show up in early summer. My mother would bring some home and we all knew summer vacation wasn't far off. Even now, my preferred time to eat green apples is summertime. They don't seem right any other time.
Lughnasadh may be a pagan holiday, and in these days of evangelical Christian vocalization, mentioning it may annoy some, but the sentiments are worth sharing, worth remembering. Harvest of the first fruits of the season, the blessings of the gardens and orchards, remembering the bounty of the earth and of our hearts. There are many things that were . . . uncomfortable about my childhood, but those few short weeks of fruit were not among them.
Yes, the date is bogus. I don't like the official "About Me" Blogger page. I also didn't like the long, rambling discourse about me on the front page. So here you are.
Me.
Avogadro's Number and I go 'way back. When I first started writing in what might be considered a blog precursor, a fanzine, I called my stuff Avogadro's Number.
Named after Amedeo Avogadro, it has to do with how many atoms or molecules of a substance is in any given mass or volume. This number of atoms/molecules is called a "mole". Why am I boring you with all this? Because the origin of this blog's name is in the little cartoon mole I would draw on my high school chemistry papers, named, not surprisingly, Avogadro. My teacher was amused, but not any more inclined to give me an A than she had been before I started drawing my little friend.
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