Living In the World, Not on It

On 14 December I posted the Old Farmer's Almanac information and other fun tidbits for this month. If you read it, you may recall that I described the Ember Days that come up four times a year, predicated on specific Roman Catholic holy days. Today is the second Ember Day in December, and by folklore, determines the overall weather in February. Here is a reminder of the Ember Days and how they work: Ember Days: The four periods formerly observed by the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches for prayer, fasting, and the ordination of clergy are called Ember Days. Specifically, these are the Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays the follow in succession following (1) the First Sunday in Lent; (2) Whitsunday - Pentecost; (3) the Feast of the Holy Cross, September 14; and (4) the Feast of St. Lucia, December 13. The word ember is perhaps a corruption of the Latin quatuor tempora , "four times." Folklore has it that the weather on each of the three days foret...

On 1 December I posted the Old Farmer's Almanac information and other fun tidbits for this month. If you read it, you may recall that I described the Ember Days that come up four times a year, predicated on specific Roman Catholic holy days. Today is the first Ember Day in December, and by folklore, determines the overall weather in January. Here is a reminder of the Ember Days and how they work: Ember Days: The four periods formerly observed by the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches for prayer, fasting, and the ordination of clergy are called Ember Days. Specifically, these are the Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays the follow in succession following (1) the First Sunday in Lent; (2) Whitsunday - Pentecost; (3) the Feast of the Holy Cross, September 14; and (4) the Feast of St. Lucia, December 13. The word ember is perhaps a corruption of the Latin quatuor tempora , "four times." Folklore has it that the weather on each of the three days foretells th...

...the 2012 Old Farmer's Almanac! YAY! I always love getting the newest Old Farmer's Almanac, to get the astronomical outlook for the new year and read the articles. I love it. I rely heavily on the almanac for Moon times, astronomy, seasonal changes and other tidbits. I also collect them and have them going back to the early 1800s. This one did not disappoint. The main article this year for astronomy is The Sky is Falling (and this is a good year to catch it) . It covers a few things, not the least of which is the Mayan New Year, which occurs on the winter Solstice and is above all a positive thing. I just don't know where everyone gets this doom and gloom prediction of the world, but it is amusing, none-the-less. However, the Mayan calendar hasn't anything to do with the end of the world or Armageddon. I find people who believe in this crap rather stupid (and if you'd seen the number of posts that mentioned that following yesterday's earthquake, we...

"It can be a hard thing to know how to help a fellow being, even when you have the ability to do so and the best of intentions. Misunderstanding thwarts good will. Recently a blue jay became trapped in the dusty attic room above our woodshed. The roof soffits are open, and there is an open staircase from the ground floor. The jay simply flew up. It might have simply flown back down, as well--but no. It flapped and fluttered around up there, banging into the closed window, occasionally uttering a cluck of perplexity. I went to help. I found the bird perched on a rafter tie, out of reach. When I approached, it flew off and crashed into the window, after which it sat on the sill. I tried to catch it there to release it, but it flew back to the rafter. This went on for some time. The bird wouldn't help itself, and it wouldn't be helped. I didn't know what my part was in breaking the impasse. At last I realized that I didn't have a part. I opened the shut window and wen...

This was the last periodical prior to the United States Civil War. On page 3: 'HINTS AND HOME THOUGHTS FOR 1860. The matter of insurance against fire is so important, and so apt to be neglected, that I would ask if you have attended to it ? Is the policy all right, and at a responsible office ? --I suppose you are aware that the surest way to destroy your own health is to constantly be drinking of other people.-- The exercise of prudence, perseverance, and manly energy, will prevent you from having to read, as Jerrold says, "those hard words, want and poverty, in the iron book of daily life."-- Keep your soul open to the sunshine, for if your heart gets clouded with discontent and impatience, you will find the pleasantest place on earth dark and disagreeable.-- Never open the door to a small vice, lest a large one enter.' This goes on for quite sometime... As this was printed in 1859, James Buchanan was still in office from 1857. He didn't know at the time that Ab...

In the 2004 Old Farmer's Almanac, which I get the moment it comes out and read cover to cover, I read about the transit of Venus across Sol. This is an astronomical event that only comes around once every 105.5 to 121.5 years . It's a two-part event, however. The first return comes and then exactly two days short of eight years later, the second transit follows. And then comes the century plus wait. The Moon transits across the sun about once a year. Mercury transits across the sun 13 times each century. Venus, the last of the planets to do this, does it only 13 times every 1,000 years. (Outer planets from our point of view cannot transit across the sun - they need to have their orbits within ours. Imagine the number of transits we'd get to see from Pluto!) In December 1874 and 1882, Venus came to do its transit for the world and people (mostly astronomers) were treated to this rare sight. Venus missed the 20th century completely to revisit us in 20o4 and next year... and w...

I thought it would be fun and interesting to see what the Old Farmer's Almanac of 1911 had to say for the month of July. I regret that I haven't a copy of the 1811 Old Farmer's Almanac - the earliest I have is 1814. But this is still a work in progress... (I really, really, REALLY want to find them from the 1700s but not only have I not seen any - not even a replica - I suspect that for the worst-condition copy it will still be prohibitively expensive. That is just how this works!) OK, so here it is: Farmer's Calendar "Remember to continue the succession plantings in the garden. Carry out your plans to sow a cover crop as soon as possible after any field is cleared. Cover crops conserve or accumulate nitrogen, keep down weeds, prevent erosion and the humus supplied will help the lighter soils to retain moisture. Go about through your fields and commune with your crops. What makes the corn in this part of the field yellow? Why has it been found so difficult to keep ...

"Around midsummer, as the nights grow cooler and heavy dews begin to fall, meadows and lawns are the sites of mysterious nocturnal gatherings whose signs we find on starting our day in the morning. Scattered over the grass are small scraps or patches of material, gray or white fragments a few inches square. Did messy elvish picnickers leave behind their dirty napkins? No. The patches are evidence of little funnel-web spiders (family Agelenidae ). They are dime-sized creatures that live in the grasses and spin their flat, dense sheet-like webs close to the ground, like tiny carpets woven among the grass stems. The family includes more than 400 species in North America. Funnel-web spiders prey on insects caught in their webs. Examine a web closely and you'll find a small funnel in one corner or side, where the spider lies in wait. The webs are virtually invisible by day, except when the dew, falling in early morning, collects on them. By mid-morning, the webs will have disappear...

Saturday 9: Letting the Sparks Fly 1. Where would you go if you wanted to spark your creativity? I can do that anywhere. There is always something to write about, you know. 2. What would be one thing that would embarrass you a great deal? Um... showing up naked in a classroom? Haven't you ever had that nightmare? So weird and completely disconcerting. 3. What values did your parents instill in you? Many of them, but honesty and being true to yourself is high on the list. 4. What’s a fad of your teen years that you remember well? From the 1980s? Good gods... too many! Big hair is the worst. I did not go for that. 5. What is your favorite breakfast? Salt bagel, lightly buttered with hot Lady Grey or Ceylon tea. 6. What is the best birthday gift that you have received? Ooooohhh, I don't know... that is a tough one. Oh, wait! This laptop! This by and far gets the most use. 7. What gadget could you not live without? Well, that is too easy - my iPod! 8. Do you collect anything? Oh, w...

'No tree in the woods is a better friend to man than the common ash. It hasn't the maple's beauty or the oak's prestige, and it isn't a cabinetmaker's tree. But its wood has a straight, open grain and is easily worked for tool handles, sports equipment, baskets and many other utilitarian applications. The spears of Homer's warrior princes in the Iliad --the first superheroes--had their shafts made of ash. 'In the lore of woodburning, the ash has its unique place. It's supposed to make the best cordwood because it will burn as well green as it will seasoned. "Ashwood new or ashwood old / Is fit for a king with a crown of gold," went the old-timer's woodpile rhyme. Is it true? Ican't say, except in one way to testify to one way in which the excellence of ash as fuel is plain: in the splitting. This was borne in on me a couple of years back when a fine, tall, forest-grown ash came down near our place, leaving me with a straight, nearly...

'Sometime around the middle of this month, the hummingbirds will have departed, and, once again, I won't know it. At this place last year we had a pair. They turned up in mid-May, poised on blurred, invisible wings before the first garden flowers, dipping and sipping fastidiously at the red plastic hummingbird feeder at the window, zooming away. They loved the bee palm best, and the phlox, but they also loved the brightly colored feeder, Which I kept filled with a sugar-water solution. It holds about a cup. Early in the summer the little birds were at the feeder constantly, emptying the reservoir in a single day. By early August, their visits had dropped off, and I filled the feeder only every three to four days. Perhaps the pair was in training as the time of their southern migration approached. The frail and tiny hummingbird is among the hardiest of birds. It's a marathoner, an epic migrator, making its way from New England to Central America. 'That's a long haul,...

I'm not sure how brutalised ebay is - I'm putting someone's kid through college, at least collectively. I discovered ebay in late September while searching for Old Farmers Almanacs online. They had them and dating back considerably farther than I thought I'd find them. As it stands, I have an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of them. It was getting too confusing and I was getting repeats. I may need to part with a couple of those. The oldest one I have to date is 1814 - yowza! They are really interesting, especially those very early ones. I have not been at all successful in finding any from the late 1700s. If anyone has them, they are not parting with them. The Old Farmers Almanac started it but by no means does it end there. I briefly got into bidding on some of the crystal balls (that is an extraoridinarily broad term) and found a couple of montrously gorgeous flourites and one carnelian that is breath-taking. That was fairly short-lived, though - most come from the A...

Based on my posting of 21 September in the wee hours of the morning called "Ember Days", it was noted by me that Wednesday following the Feast of St. Lucia's Cross (this past Wednesday, for you pagans, who, like me, have zero concept of the lesser-known Roman Catholic/Anglican church feast days), that the weather was perfect this first Ember Day of September - sunny, a cloudless, clear cerulean blue sky, temperature of around 78 degrees, the slightest zephyr of a breeze. A perfectly delightful autumn day. This log will start on Monday, 1 October and will be faithfully maintained through Wednesday, 31 October. I will be curious to see how these days stack up individually and on an overall basis during the month (my absolute favourite month) against such a foretelling method. Of course, today is the Ember Day that portents November's weather... so far, at 0220, it is lovely. The temperature has not dropped to a frigid 40s temp, and the sky appears clear, although last...

In January, it reads: Crunch or squeaks, Is how cold snow speaks. No thaw, instead it is braw. Throw on an- other log for me and the dog. Warm winds with rain raises Cain. From Omaha to Salem, It's one big slalom. And on Friday, 26 January 1968, the sun rose at 0704 and set 1650. The Moon rose 0447 and set 1317. Venus and the Moon were in conjunction. It reads "Grissom, White and Chaffe, 1967". I have no idea what that means... so it is off to Wikipedia! Oh, that's depressing. "Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom ( April 3 , 1926 – January 27 , 1967 ) was a United States Air Force pilot and a NASA astronaut . A native of Mitchell, Indiana , he was the second American to fly in space. He was killed during a training exercise for the Apollo One mission on January 27 , 1967 , at Launch Complex 34 at Cape Kennedy, along with fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee . Grissom was a posthumous recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor ." 26 J...

I guess my impending 40th birthday has mad me think about my birthdate and year. 1968 is a foriegn time to me. People will tell me that it is cool that I was born in the 60s. As if I might have some shred of memory from it. Trust me, I don't. I can hardly recall what I'd done the day prior. Now you are hoping I can give you some insight to a decade that I existed in for 23 months? Good luck with that! In March, the Farmer's Calendar reads: "Herb and his pair of oxen are labouring through the deep wet snow of mid-March, the woodsled with the great sap tank bumping and sliding clumsily around and between and against the rough maples--a tedious, heart-thumping business. On every trunk of the steep sugarbush hang the wooden buckets. Down in the hollow the sap house is wreathed in steam. Uncle brushes the rotten snow off the flat rock that makes a natural seat under a young maple. Herb has carved his initials and date on it--HG 1911--and I put mine underneath his. Uncle wat...

I love, love, love the Old Farmer's Almanac, which I have been reading since I was a kid. Here is the right hand-most column of the October calendar pages: "Nobody knows for sure what accounts for the cycles in the lives of oak trees in which they make a huge crop of acorns every four or five years after several years of far lower production. Some baotanists say the superabundant years are due to ideal weather conditions when the trees are in flower. Some think the wide swings in production are adapted to foil insect parasites. In a big year (a "mast year", so called), the woods seem to be flooded with acorns. They're treacherous underfoot; going down a woods road in an acorn super-year is like walking on marbles. An acre of oak woods in a normal year may produce a quarter-million acorns. In a mast year that crop might be doubled or trebled. Whatever causes it, the extraordinary production of acorns is good news in the forest. Acorns are the bread of the woods. D...

Well, folks, the tallies are in - almost. When I return home from the Renaissance Faire today I will know for certain how December will look - so far, at 0907 this morning, it looks overcast. Wednesday - weather was mild, beautiful, clear skies, no humidity (in the low 30s, which for New Jersey is nothing); perfect. Friday - warmer, but still beautiful, clear skies, low humidity (in the mid-40s, still very low for New Jersey) Saturday - the weather at this moment is cool with dropping humidity, overcast skies. There is a 20% chance of showers today after 1400. We shall see. Right up until 2000 when I checked today's farecast, it showed clear skies and a high of 88 degrees. (I'm not showing temperatures here for the simple fact that those will not be accurate reflections of the latter months. Except Wednesday, which was closer to the norm for October... But temps in the 80s will assuredly not be the average for December, no matter how mild it is! OK. Well, I shall return tonigh...