Monthly archive: December, 2007

The Winter Solstice~

22/12/2007, by 2 comments

Call me a pagan or call me a true believer. Today is the winter solstice, the day to worship light in the northern hemisphere. December 22, 2007 is the shortest day of the year, the longest night.

My parents were married on the solstice 67 years ago and took a lot of ribbing from their friends for their choice of nights to marry.

On the winter solstice the sun begins its northern migration and brings with it that oh so precious commodity, light. The sun appears at its lowest point in the sky, and at midday its elevation appears to be the same for several days before and after the solstice. The ancients believed that on this date the sun and the moon stopped their flight across the heavens and the sun was reborn of the goddess.

It is the oldest winter celebration in the world. Ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun rebirth, and, over 4,000 years ago, the Irish built a tomb designed to allow light in only during the solstice. Christian religions have incorporated the rituals in the hopes of converting the Olde Believers and those traditions are still celebrated today as Christmas. The Yule log, wreathes, stars on the tops of Christmas tress, even the tree itself are all symbols of the former solstice celebration.

But I did not know, until recently, that this is where the Yin Yang symbol came from that is so often seen in the Buddhist traditions.

Ancient Chinese scholars discovered changes in the year associated with the sun (Yang) and the moon (Yin). They used an 8-foot pole and the shadow of the constellation The Big Dipper to establish the position of the sun in different seasons. They also established the number of days in a year, and through elaborate calendars established the vernal, and autumnal equinox, as well as the summer and winter solstice. Using a circular calendar and shading in the summer and winter months the yin yang sign emerges.It is often seen with a small dot in at the top and bottom of the symbol; this indicates the winter and summer solstice.

So, whether you are pagan, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, it is a day of celebration of the renewal of life, a circle of continued rebirth.

Enjoy!

Blog contents copyright © 2005-Present SC Morgan. All rights reserved..

Peace On Earth~

20/12/2007, by 2 comments

Peace.

What would it be like if, suddenly, the world was at peace instead of at war? Would we be able to solve our other problems if we quit spending money on the machines of conflict and bloodshed?

Imagine a world where billions upon billions of dollars were spent realizing our potential for a cleaner world, better healthcare, and higher education. Just imagine…

imagine prosperity.

Blog contents copyright © 2005-Present SC Morgan. All rights reserved..

The Thing on My Desk~

15/12/2007, by 4 comments

I love it when things like this happen to me. Alan and I went into town yesterday to run some errands and to phone our lawyer, out of the earshot of the hired help. Our neighbors– the ones we have land disputes with– pulled a pistol on our land surveyors the other day and we needed to plan the police visit here to address the issue, but never mind that.

When I got home there was this thing on my desk. I wasn’t exactly sure what to call it. It was a bit wilted so at first I thought it was a mushroom and then I thought it was an orchid. Today, after much searching on the Internet, I found this peculiar little plant our hired hand, José Domingo, left for me. He is always doing things like that. He knows I love the extraordinary, the weird, and the mysterious things we have all about us in this jungle– neighbors aside.

At first, once I got over thinking it was a mushroom or an orchid, I thought it was a pitcher plant, those creepy insect-eating plants like the one in Little Shop of Horrors. After much searching, I finally found my plant. Aristolochia.

This plant genus has over 500 species, and is also known as birthwort or pipevine, an allusion to the Meerschaum pipes once common in the Netherlands. They are clematis-like vines that like semi-shade and tend to cascade down the sides of trees at the jungle’s edge. The one José left for me yesterday looks exactly like this one. There were two more still hanging on the the vine.A bit more research reveals that this plant is not, in fact, an insectivore, but uses the same principal to pollinate itself. , Bees and butterflies are attracted to its highly aromatic scent. Once they alight to collect nectar, a sticky substance on the hairs of the trumpet-like flower entraps them. Unlike their insectivore relatives, however, the Aristolochia traps the insect for only a short time. Then the fine hairs that line the throat of the flower dissolve to free the insect, now covered in pollen.

According to the web sites I consulted, Aristolochia, or birthwort, was used as long ago as ancient Egyptian times to assist women in childbirth. Like a natural version of pitocin, it was used to help women expel the placenta after the birth of the baby. Other genuses were used to treat snakebite and worm infestations. It has ceased to be a widely used because it also contains toxic levels of aristolchic acid, which can be fatal to humans.

So, I won’t use it, but it certainly is interesting to know about, and I love it. I love it more than my neighbors, that’s for sure.

Blog contents copyright © 2005-Present SC Morgan. All rights reserved..

Into the Ears of Cleaning Ladies~

11/12/2007, by No comments yet


Our lawyer’s assistant, Eugenio, came yesterday to meet with a new topographer who came to measure the land and our boundaries… again. I swear to the real estate gods this property will be worn out before we ever get this case settled. Our lawyer is in Florida for the weekend talking to someone about another client and HER problems.

Eugenio arrived at about 9 AM. The topographer finally arrived at 2:30PM. To say we had some time to kill would be an understatement. The whole notion of time and whether you can kill it, waste it, bide it, or anything else was covered in a previous post. Suffice it to say that we had time and used it.

We started with café con leche, as that is what every good Costa Rican wife offers a guest, and proceeded on with small talk. Coincidentally our cleaning lady, Marta, was here that day and I think she put about four years of wear and tear on the front porch, cleaning it, so she could overhear the conversation.

One thing about Costa Ricans, they are not shy about talking in front of anyone, and those whose business it isn’t are not shy about listening. I have come to understand, in the twenty years of living here, that things are accomplished by the word in the street. Never tell anyone directly what you think, tell your neighbor or a friend who you know will tell someone who will tell someone who will tell the person you wanted to say something to. They don’t like confrontation.

I was aware that Marta was loitering about on the front porch, but it was when Eugenio told us about the Tortugas of Ostinal that she became blatantly apparent.

I asked Eugenio what kind of turtles they were as I had seen an article in the paper that showed thousands upon thousands of them on the beaches. It is that time of year.

“No lo recuerdo,” he said.

“I know they aren’t the same ones we have on this side of the country,” I said in my best Spanish, which isn’t very good but I get by.

Eugenio started in to answer, “No. Yo no se exactamente, pero yo lo pienso…

“LORA!” interrupted Marta from outside, but not out of earshot.

That wasn’t the only thing she got to hear during our six-hour conversation. She now knows as much and probably more–Spanish being her native language– about our current legal case, the Supreme Court decisions relating to the land issues here, and politics in general.

The topographer came after lunch, walked to boundaries and agreed to meet with Paola on Sunday and come back Monday, which will probably be Wednesday or Thursday or Friday.

Blog contents copyright © 2005-Present SC Morgan. All rights reserved..

Time for a Post~

09/12/2007, by 2 comments

I haven’t posted anything for weeks, it seems. It hasn’t been my fault. My government controlled Internet Company has kept me off line for some time now, which got me to thinking about time in general. How we perceive it.

According to the definition, time is a human perception defined as the length of an interval separating two points on a nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.

What does that mean anyway? And what is the nature of time? Can we really have it on our hands, as though we should give them a good washing afterwards? Can we waste it, fritter it away, or make good use of it for that matter?

And how can we possibly be ahead of time, or behind the time or have the time, as though it belonged to us, somehow.

In one’s own time is a misnomer and so is half the time, and giving someone the time of day. How vain we are to thing we can do that! Time after time cannot for a second be true, and time cannot be money, it cannot slip away, and what do we mean when we say: only time will tell.

As near as I can tell, time simply is and the only thing that can be said for sure is that when your time is up, you are, in fact, out of time.

Until then, it is a plane in which we are suspended that we have chosen to define categorize and divide into segments: minutes, seconds and milliseconds. It is we who perceive it as long or short or valuable. Time simply is.

Blog contents copyright © 2005-Present SC Morgan. All rights reserved..