la befana or bedknobs and broomsticks

One Italian Christmas time custom is that of La Befana, the good hostess and housekeeper from Umbria. She gave food and shelter to the Three Wisemens from the East on their way to Bethlehem. Grateful and somewhat off track, they invited La Befana to join them on their journey. Busy with housework to make her home ready for the New Year celebrations, however, being either an adherent of or the Sabine goddess herself of the New Year in disguise, called Strenua, she refused their invitation. Later, after her guests had departed and seeing the yonder star, La Befana had a change of heart and rushed to meet the Magi, riding her broomstick westward.

La Befana never managed to catch up and never found the child that they sought, and after all these centuries La Befana flies and searches from Christmas to Epiphany, and delivers gifts to any good child she comes across, hoping it might be the right one—and generally a swat and a garlic to ones that prove contemptible. It is said that La Befana will also sweep the homes of good families, so their house is tidy for the new year.

tschunk oder yerba mate

H and I tried the beverage that is apparently enjoying a big following among hacker-circles and their associates called Club Mate. Like many energy drinks, Club Mate includes an extract of the yerba mate plant from South American but is not adulterated with sugar and caffeine that make cola and energy drinks disarming and potentially harmful. It was not quite to our liking, tasting a bit like a mix between tea and tobacco. As a cocktail ingredient, as when combined with rum, lime and cane sugar and called a Tschunk, I do not know if it might be more palatable.
Maybe it is an acquired taste and no matter—this venerable drink, around since the 1920s, has its own admirers, plus I do quite like the mysterious logo—which reminded me of this arresting, unrelated image.

non-canon or holy terror

Columnist Candida Moss approaches the subject of the lack of a biography of Jesus during His K-12 years, childhood and adolescence into early adulthood, through an apocryphal gospel known as the ΠΑΙΔIΚΑ (the Book of Childhood Deeds) or the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (original link times out, so here is an alternate Wikipedia article on the subject) written sometime in the second century.

Whether this tract was published originally as a dissenting view of the Christian tenet of God manifest as a human—sort of a lampoon or spoof, or as more material to fill in the gaps for a Christian audience hungry for details and more miracles is unclear. Pre-teen Jesus seems to have the problems most children go through and seemed incapable at first of refraining from using his miraculous powers. Though non-canonical as well, there are plenty of other competing stories that place Jesus during his formative years as touring India, Tibet and Persia—and even placing Him in Britain and Japan, learning from other magi. Most scholars believe that as part of a family of carpenters, He would have spent this time as an apprentice, but the Bible is silent on these matters. What do you think? Was Jesus a disciple Himself or a bully with a halo, Who did learn restraint?

2014: déjà vu, jamais vu

Another year has passed and PfRC is taking a look back at some of the events, big and small, that can be filed under 2014.  What a banner one it was, marked in equal parts of remembrance and foreshadowing.  It was a year of reflection and despite what some pundits say as we are very much at risk in repeating ourselves, I think there was also quite a lot of soul-searching.  Let’s see what 2015 has in store for us.


January: Latvia joins the European Union. The Syrian civil war crosses into Lebanon, threatening to engulf the whole region. Pot shops open their doors to recreational smokers in Colorado and big business quickly descends to turn a profit. A tragic sinking occurs in the waters off Lampedusa with many migrants fleeing violence in northern Africa drowning. A Chinese rover on the Moon, dependent on solar power, survived another two-week long lunar night to explore some more. We sadly had to say good-bye to singer and freedom-fighter Pete Seeger.

February: The Olympic Winter Games are held in Sochi. Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych is deposed and in the aftermath of the Maidan Protests, civil unrest explodes. We had to bid adieu to actors Maximilian Schell, Shirley Temple, Sid Caesar and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

March: Russia annexes the Crimea at the urging of pro-Russian separatists. Sanctions against Russian interests ensue. The Chinese year of the Wood Horse begins. Researches discover the largest virus known in a sample of tundra ice. Territorial tensions mount in the Pacific, prompting America to focus its attention of Japan and China. A Malaysian airliner veers off course and disappears.

April: Former popes John Paul II and John XXIII are canonised. America throws its diminishing weight around in the international banking sector. Systemic discipline problems surface in the elite US Secret Service. Mickey Rooney, Bob Hoskins and writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez sadly departed.
May: The world at-large begins to recognise the severity of the Ebola outbreak in Africa. Poet Maya Angelou left us. Europe begins to solemnly commemorate the centennial of the start of the Great War. Former Soviet satellite states feel increasingly vulnerable as the situation in Ukraine deteriorates as Cold War tensions seem set to return. There is a military coup in Thailand.

June: A group of militants styled the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant aim to create a caliphate and begin attracting confederates from the West. A controversial and covert swap transpires between Guantanamo detainees in exchange for the release of an American prisoner-of-war. Germany wins the World Cup in football, and throws a minor hissy-fit over the National Security Agency’s spying practises when it is revealed that the chancellor’s phone was also tapped.

July: In response to kidnappings and killings, Israel launches a major offensive against the Gaza Strip, prompting the United Nations and others to condemn the reaction and declare solidarity with the Palestinians. The Drug-War in Mexico intensifies.  The former French president is taken into custody over corruption charges.

August: The US and cadets return to Iraq and Afghanistan, realising sadly that withdrawal was not only premature but that the whole venture misguided. Comedian Robin Williams exited along with Richard Attenborough and fellow-legend Bill Cosby was accused multiple times of rape, constituting one of the saddest episodes for fandom in recent times. Children from Central and South AmErica cross the deserts of Mexico to cross the border into the United States.

September: America embarks on a campaign against Islamist militants in Syria but every overture, violent or peaceful, are in the main ineffective. Personality—if ever one deserved to wear that mantel, Joan Rivers left us.

October: India and Pakistan exchange fire over Kashmir. Protests break out in Hong Kong over reforms that would remove some of the special treatment afforded the autonomous administrative district, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Tianmen Square massacre. Germany observes the twenty-fifth anniversary also of the collapse of the Berlin Wall.  

November: The successor to the Kyoto Protocols forecast dire and irreversible changes at human hands to the environment. The European Space Agency successfully piggy-backs on a comet. China surpasses the US as the world’s biggest economy ahead of schedule. The Duchess of Alba and author PD James also left before their time.

December: Massive protests erupt in several urban-centres in the United States over the slaying deaths of unarmed African American males at the hands of white officers while keeping to their beats of broken-window policing.
Inhuman terrorist act occur in Sydney, Yemen and Pakistan.  The Central Intelligence Agency hinted at some of its suspected depravity by releasing a fraction of the files that documented the agency’s efforts to keep us all safe in a post 9/11 world.
Summed up in a rhetorical parallel: did the US condone and carry out torture, yes—and whether or not it could be justified in the minds of these perverse and duplicitous individuals, did it produce any actionable intelligence, no.  The US moves to normalising relations with Cuba. 

pot to kettle or the dutch disease

In the face of the precipitous downfall of the Russian rouble (₽) over a constellation of sanctions, perceived weaknesses, an alleged slack in demand for petroleum over weakened industrial demand, which is at the same time being offset by increased American production(which does smack as a bit suspicious, given the overall climate and charged accusations of conspiracy to undermine that seems like burning one’s wick at both ends), some economists are diagnosing Russia with the so-called Dutch Disease—which turns out to be a relatively recent market characterisation, describing the misguided attempts that the Netherlands committed in the 1970s when, after the discovery of off-shore oil reserves, began cultivating that natural resource at the expense of all other export sectors, whereas I would have guessed it to have had much more historic roots, like in the Dutch founding a stock-market based on tulips or an empire based on exotic spices.
By extension, they claim that Russia has no economy per se but rather is an oil company accorded the membership of statehood, but that is more than a little bit dangerous and near-sighted as the same could be said of most national marketplaces that call themselves post-industrial. America is hardly a competitive oil company—more a captive consumer—and is more akin to a name-brand that licenses its economic activity out to franchisees. This collective Schadenfreude over the fate of the rouble is woefully premature, too—I think, considering the range that the single currency has. Though by population and other measures of wealth, the rouble sphere of influence is not as great as the Euroraum, covering a large portion of Eurasia and extending from Norway to Alaska, the long way around and fully one eighth of the habitable land on Earth, I imagine that the internal needs of the country could still be met and indeed thrive without regard for external scalars. Moreover, if hostile voices insist on countering with the same poisonous rhetoric, I imagine that the foreign debt that Russia was formerly welcomed to both finance and borrow could be easily turned to tactical purposes. What do you think? Of course, there is real cause for concern, but there also might be old Cold War fears and prejudices pushing agendas as well—and not just the well-oiled oligarchs.