Imagining The Solstice

 I think the word "Solstice"- and hear the breathy, hooty sound of rams horns in my head. They are being blown by white bearded chaps (like me, like me!) wearing white robes of and wreaths of oak leaves- no-  wrong time of year- wearing white robes and wreaths of holly and mistletoe- while the sun rises over a very special stone or between two very special stones and everybody who has gathered for the occasion makes tribal noises to welcome in the New Year.

(The Solstice is the proper New Year. Those who moved the New Year to January I were being ignorant or obtuse or deliberately destructive of tradition.)

Pour the mead, light the fires, roast the meats, bang and blow and pluck and shake whatever instruments are available.

Dance....

Then drink some mead and dance some more.....

Being Japanese

 We were at the oriental buffet yesterday because Mary is a fussy eater and the buffet serves up some of the few things she's willing to eat.

Mary is vegan but like most of the rest of us has chinks in her armour. Her chink is sweet stuff. My chink is seafood. My other chink is cheese. 

It's very trying to eat out and have to stick to the vegan options because they get to be awfully boring. At home one can do interesting things with vegetables, but few restaurants bother.

I find to my surprise- after a lifetime despising it- that I really like cabbage.

Mary wore the Japanese outfit we bought her for Christmas.  She had reservations about it but we assured her nothing could be more appropriate- and that the buffet woukld be full of people from the far east. It is sometimes, but yesterday it wasn't.....

Here's Mary being Japanese. Her genes are one quarter Chinese, but Japanese culture is way cooler....


According to Mary, you wear the fancy doodad on the left side of your sash if you're alive and on the right side if you're dead. She's probably right. She watches an awful lot of anime and has taught herself to read ideograms. Or some ideograms, anyway. Not bad for a 12 year old