orchestra baobab

We have a venerable old Affenbrot-baumchen (Monkey Bread Tree, Baobab or Adansonia) growing against the window pane for support. Without a prop, the young clones grow sort of crooked and ratty, like another one of my ugly plants, also an old Baobab, gnarled and twisted like a genie forced back into the bottle, growing slowly inside a honey jar.

Having found it abandoned in a vacated office, I am not sure how old the less-manicured plant is--the bits of leaves, however, that fall off of that one when they become too unbalanced have produced some mighty sprouts that have become plants in their own right. The tree in the window, we noticed, is beginning to blossom, an occurrence that's never happened with this one before and does not, apparently, happen until the plant is at least eight to ten years old. In India and Madagascar, there are groves of the trees that are over five-thousand years old. Next comes bread-fruit (Gongalis) but I am not sure just when that crop comes.

There are a lot of traditional uses for the plant's seeds and produce, but the fruit apparently has an acquired taste and even local lore has it that the gods were so revolted by the taste that they cursed the tree to grow topsy-turvy, crooked and ratty.

six geese a-laying

Der Speigel (auf Deutsch) is reporting how the island nation of Samoa is realigning its time-zones, straddling the international date-line, to no longer be the land where the sun sets last, but to be among those where it rises first, in order to strengthen economic ties with relatively nearby China, Australia and New Zealand. The meridians of the high Pacific are a bit of a jig-saw anyway, cutting this way or that to keep island groups synchronized and not bulldozed again by European geographical standards. The Samoan government is executing a divisive transition, not slowly winding the clocks back or introducing the operating hours by phases, but rather they are just striking a day from the calendar: for no one on the islands--businesses, birthday boys and girls, St Felix, sixth day of Christmas—will on 30 December 2011 occur. Thursday will slide into Saturday, the last day of the year. No one is wrestling the down sun but I am sure there are those in Samoa who are not sure about the idea of leaving off a day, the archivists, the calendar makers, those wont to worship and keep the sabbath on a certain day of the week, and the New Year’s revelers who are, I guess, now planning for different kinds of celebrations.

oh tidings of comfort and joy

Seasons greetings to all, with health and happiness for the coming year, and many thanks for visiting. I was thinking the other day that although we have a lot of Christmas decorations, we don’t have a crèche. A few days ago, Neatorama featured a clever collection of Nativity scenes comprised of action figures.

I thought I could pull off a similar diorama, with Bib Fortuna and the Bounty Hunters 4-LOM and Zuckuss representing the Three Wise Men, the Rancor Keeper and a Sand Person the shepherds of ewoks and droids. We have more traditional figures and could have managed something more festive, of course--with Marian statues, saints, angels and über-dimensional sheeps and goats, but nothing that might make a whole joyful gathering with matching proportions. Have a holly, jolly Christmas. Frohe Weihnachten!

cool yule or psychopomp

Just in time for the passing of Yule, the Winter Solstice, a package arrived from my parents in the States with a lot of Christmas goodies we’ll be unwrapping in a few days besides, with this resplendent and very Bavarian woven table runner (Tischläufer), which I think is a modern depiction of the mythological motif of the Wilde Jagd (the Wild Hunt), associated with Yuletide and the superimposition of Christmas traditions.

Like Ghost Riders in the Sky, the Wild Hunt is a tapestry of ethereal huntsmen under the leadership of Nordic gods or sometimes Krampus (Santa's bizarro-world opposite who punishes the naughty) and was foreboding of different things: a psychopomp is such a parade of spirit guides, like astral reindeer.

In any case, the passing of Yule, where ever we might try to find meaning, symbolism or reconstruct traditions, means that the nights retreat a little bit and the sunset and the dawn creeps in earlier and earlier each day.  We'll certainly have a place to display this gift on the sideboard.