Happy Diwali!

 Happy Diwali!  The Indian Festival of Lights lasts for five days.  The traditional origins of the holiday vary among regions of India.  Basically, it is a celebration of the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil.  Today, Nov. 14^th, is the third and most important day, dedicated to Lakshmi Pujan, goddess of wealth.  To do this day properly, you should clean your house, and paint the entrance floor with intricate designs in chalk, rice, or sand to bring good luck. Decorate with flowers and candles or small lamps.  Also, bathe in the water of the Ganges River if possible.  People eat elaborate sweets and even buy “crackers” (the noisemakers that are a traditional part of British Christmas).  There are also fireworks.

    Detailed information on the regional traditions and what each of the five days means is on the website of indiatvnews.com.   I see elements of Winter Solstice, New Year’s Eve, Candlemas, Easter, and other special days in Diwali.  Well, I am willing to do the sweets part, but I fear that if the goddess Lakshmi Pujan expects a clean house when she comes to call, I can look forward to another year of poverty.  :-(

 

Friday the 13th--bad luck for Sacramento

 Friday the 13^th!  Our second one this year.  (There’s only be one next year,, but—wait for it—there’ll be three in 2026.)  I hope nothing bad happened to you.  It is an unlucky Friday the 13^th for Sacramento.  Evidently, we have not been as healthy as we could have, and our rising number of CoVid cases has pushed us into Tier 1 – Purple, where we’ll be on restriction with the other bad kids.  I’m honestly surprised.  In the central area where I live, everyone appears to wear a mask and stay away from strangers; there are no concerts or other activities to draw a crowd.  But it’s really Sacramento County that is the culprit, I think.  I am told that in parts of the county people have been taking a loose approach to safety.

    Anyhow, starting at noon today, we are on restriction and will remain so for three weeks.  This means that bowling alleys, gyms, museums, and restaurants may remain open for outdoor-only activities and bars can’t stay open unless they are serving sit-down meals outside.  Malls, hair salons, libraries, and retail stores can allow people inside, up to 25% of capacity. 

  From what I have seen, downtown restaurants have only been serving outside or take-out, anyhow.  Restaurants with parking lots have used some of that space for tables set six feet apart.  Others have covered the sidewalk or even the bike lane with tables.  Two blocks near me that have several eating places (at 20^th & J and 18^th & Capitol) have been closed to traffic for months. 

   Almost all the library branches had opened a week ago, but the three that are near me (Central, McClatchy, McKinley) are not opening yet.  Why are libraries allowed to open when museums are not?  I’d just heard about a great exhibit at the California Auto Museum, and was figuring out how to get there (three miles is a bit farther than I normally bike, and there are no buses).

     A week ago, I found out that that Tower Theater is showing rerun films on the weekends.  I bought a ticket online and last Saturday I went to see a 12:15 showing of Orson Welles’s famous 1959 film, Touch of Evil.  The theater (built in 1938—you can read about it on Wikipedia) is divided into one large room and two small ones.  This film was in the large room….and I had it all to myself.  Imagine paying six dollars for a private screening of a classic film!  So I intended to post on Next Door and urge people to attend—but now the theater is closed for three more weeks, alas.

 

 

 

Guy Fawkes Day

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Although here in the U.S.A. if you hear fireworks or see a bonfire today, you’ll probably think it’s to do with the election results, not a centuries-old custom.

 “Remember, remember the fifth of November, Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder treason, Should ever be forgot.”

Guy Fawkes was born in 1570 into a well to do Yorkshire family.  He converted to Catholicism, which was illegal during the reign of Elizabeth I.  After marrying and selling the estate he’d inherited, he joined the Spanish Army, and fought with them in the Netherlands for twelve years.  He even went to Spain and asked the Spanish king to invade England (the request was denied). 

 A group of Catholics who wanted to assassinate the Protestant King James and replace him with him with a Catholic recruited Fawkes to help them, due to his military reputation.  The plan was to blow up the House of Lords on Nov. 5, 1605, because the king would be there for the opening day of Parliament.  (Note:  This was not the gorgeous building with the Big Ben clock that we all know.  That was built centuries later.)

Fawkes helped place explosives in a cellar underneath the building, rented by some of the conspirators, but he was caught.  He refused to divulge the names of the other plotters until tortured on the rack.  After that, he was condemned as a traitor to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.  (The “drawn” part means that your organs are cut out of your body, even though you may not quite be dead yet.)  But just as he was about to be hanged, on January 31, 1606, he either fell or jumped from the gallows and broke his neck.  Nevertheless, his body was quartered.

Hearing about the event, people made bonfires in celebration and within a few months, the government instituted the 5^th of November Act, a day of public thanks for the king’s escape.  It became known as Gunpowder Treason Day, and became linked not only with pro-government, but with anti-Catholic sentiment.  Effigies of the  Pope were burnt in bonfires, sometimes with living cats.  Gradually, however, the celebration grew more secular, as people started calling it Guy Fawkes Day and burning effigies of the plotter.  In the 18^th century, effigies of Guy Fawkes were carried by children begging “a penny for the Guy.”  The  Gunpowder Treason Act was repealed in 1859. 

Bonfire Night continued to be celebrated in Britain, and in the 20th century children still made Guy Fawkes effigies and collected donations, often for charity.  Furthermore, the American tradition of Halloween has encroached upon the U.K., and as the two holidays are so close in dates, they have started merging in the 21^st century.

 

A "Busy" Weekend for All

(I started this on Friday, October 30th, but have been under the weather and could not post it. So I have changed the future tenses to past tense....)

       I hope you are having a fun and not too stressful time on this smashingly busy weekend. Saturday, of course, was Halloween--the name is short for All Hallows Eve, as it is the eve before All Saints Day. There was so much discussion about whether children should go Trick or Treating during the pandemic. I read about clever ways to solve the problem of social distancing, such as rigging up a long tube through which the candy could be transmitted.                     

        This is a Full Moon weekend. The moon was at its fullest at 7:49 a.m. on Saturday (on the West Coast). A clear sky, such as we had in Sacramento, must have provided lots of moonlight, nice for the trick-or-treaters and for any Wiccans who may have planned special festivities…        

         A full moon on Halloween is quite rare: According to Joe Rao of MSN’s space news website, this is only the fourth Halloween full moon since 1900 (the others were 1906, 1925, and 1944). 

        If that is not special enough, it’s a Blue Moon as well. That’s a second full moon in one calendar month, which is uncommon. Thus we have the saying “once in a blue moon,” referring to something that occurs rarely. But the Blue Moon is not blue-colored, so where did this term originate? Some think it comes from the Old English word “belaewe,” which meant “betray,” as if the moon were wicked. However, “blue moon” may have just been an expression for something unbelievable: a 1528 anti-clerical pamphlet mocked, in verse, that if churchmen “say the moon is blue, we must believe it is true.” 

         As Sunday is November 1st, it’s the day to change all your desk and wall calendars. Every day you neglect to change a calendar means a day of bad luck. Okay, I made up that superstition--it’s the only one I follow—but it serves to urge me to flip the pages on my calendars every month. 

         As it happens, this is also the weekend that Americans “fall back” to Standard Time. Do you use your extra hour for more sleep, more movies on TV, or what? For me, it’s a sad day, as darkness will fall an hour earlier now. Ah well, it’s only seven weeks until Winter Solstice, when the days (daylight, that is) will start (very gradually) to lengthen again. 

        So I got my four wall calendars flipped to November, and changed my three battery clocks to an hour earlier. I don’t have a wristwatch right now, but normally I’d change that, too. My clock radio changed itself, it is so clever.  Now I feel very organized. It takes very little to pump up my spirits…. 

        Speaking of spirits, today, being November 1st, is All Souls Day, aka All Hallows Day, honoring all the Christian saints, as there are too many for each to have his or her own special day. This celebration was held on various dates in the early middle ages, usually in May, until a Pope (either Gregory IV or Gregory VII, there are varying histories) established the date to be in the autumn, perhaps because May involved a pagan holiday. Depending on the calendar you use, the date was either October 27th or November 1st. Anyhow, the feast day was established by the 8th century.   In some countries, November 1st is a national holiday.  National customs vary, and commemorations on All Saints’ Day often include what were formerly done on All Souls’ Day, November 2nd. They may include putting flowers on the graves of deceased relatives (Mexico), flying kites (Guatemala), cleaning graves and tombs (Phillippines). In Portugal, children go door to door asking for sweets, while in Austria, godparents hand out special sweet bread to their godchildren. 

         So then we come to November 2nd, which is All Souls’ Day. This date began at a monastery in the 11th century and spread throughout Europe. The aim of this special day was to pray for all the departed (especially, in the Catholic Church, of those who might be languishing in Purgatory).  Obviously, Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day always occur on the same successive dates. But you have to admit that having a “blue” Full Moon on these dates is special. However, if you’ve been feeling blue, remember that Mercury is still in retrograde through Tuesday, so try to muddle through until after Tuesday (when some of our stress will be alleviated, one way or another!).