Beltane

 

Beltane, the Eve of May, is when green life begins its return in the northern temperate zones – and how I miss it!  Six months in opposite, Samhain, aka Halloween, is when vegetation dies and when one must feed cattle from stored-up fodder for the following six months. 

Beltane is the Celtic “beginning of summer”, when cattle were driven out of their winter barns to the greening pastures.  After six months locked in winter stanchions, my father would let the cows out in the first week or two of May, when the grass was a-growin’ again.  The cows would buck and jump and run with wild excitement, and they would gorge themselves on new green grass.  Father’s favorite months of the year were always May and June. 

This holiday is also called Walpurgis Night in northern Europe.  One can consider it the Springtime Halloween.  Witches’ revel on that night, as in Goethe’s classic Faust as well as in certain Dracula stories. 

(Also, it is Camerone Day.  Vive La Legion!) 

-Zenwind. 

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Jefferson Day!

 

Happy Birthday, Tom Jefferson.  To me, you are the epitome of the American thinker, the American libertarian radical.  Wish I could have met you. 

-Zenwind. 

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Songkran, Early Rains, & Covid Third Wave

 

Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year, is tomorrow and the next few days, although it is a week-long holiday here.  Hottest time of the year, when throwing water is customary, yet with a huge Third Wave of Covid infections now raging in Thailand (especially in greater Bangkok) these celebrations will be canceled – just as they were last year.  Multitudes of Thai people are traveling out of the city to their ancestral provinces for the week-long holiday to reunite with family, and the Covid nightmare is only likely to spread and get worse. 

Bars and pubs in most provinces are now closed again for at least two weeks, although the cinemas are still open for now.  We hunker down.  And endure the heat. 

This year, the Rainy Season was predicted to come extra early and to be more intense than normal.  (It might be a La Nina thing.)  We certainly have been getting much more rain, much earlier than is customary, and I do appreciate the clouds that block the hellish sun.  The rain and accompanying wind are cool refreshment (although the humidity and oppressive heat always follow as soon as the storms pass by).  The government has instructed the relevant agencies to prepare for an extra heavy Rainy Season and thus take actions to avoid disastrous flooding (such as we had in 2011), but I somehow doubt that salaried government bureaucrats, with safe, appointed political jobs, will do anything that requires independent thought and initiative.  Sorry, but I’m a cynic. 

Tomorrow, I will celebrate Mr. Jefferson’s birthday.  Truest of American heroes. 

-Zenwind. 

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