Jan 2 2024 - East and Be "Prosperity"

 

Food to bring in a new year - what would it be? One could choose a dish to bring good luck.  That's one of the New Year's Traditions:  in Germany and Eastern Europe it is some form of cabbage - such as sauerkraut - supposedly the strands of cabbage in sauerkraut symbolize long life, and can represent money.  No one in my German family ever mentioned these reasons to eat sauerkraut. If one is in the American South, it is eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day.  Supposedly during the Civil War when Union soldiers raided the Confederate army's food supply, they left behind only these beans.  How is that part of New Year's?  Another story is that a when newly-freed enslaved people celebrated the January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation this was one of the few foods available to them.  And then other theories say it is Ancient Egypt was a way to show humility to the gods.   Supposedly, though, one serves black-eyed peas and collard greens.  Collard greens symbolize money and prosperity - being green.  Black-eyed peas are round so represent coins. And add cornbread to that.  Why?  Because it is the colour of gold.  Rich dinner all around. That's why lentils are part of the Italian household tradition - the round legumes look like coins.  And in China, Japan and other Asian countries - noodles are the thing to serve - their length symbolizes longevity.  Oranges are served in various countries- because they are gold.  Dumplings are served because they resemble money bags.  Scandinavian countries consider silver-scaled fish to resemble money - hence herring is considered good fortune.  Bring in a New Year by eating your way to prosperity.

Yesterday's Globe cartoons had a cartoon about a dog's New Year's resolution.  This perfectly describes our Millie, so here it is.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Movement Onwards to Resolutions

Of course we make New Year's Resolutions - consciously and unconsciously. Why do I think we do this?  We inhabit a constantly turning earth at 460 metres per second (that's 1,000 miles an hour).  Then it is travelling around the sun at 30 kilometres per second or 67,000 miles per hour.  The sun is orbiting - and at what speed?  At 200 - 220 km/second. Don't forget the galaxy.  All that mass means that everything is moving, drifting and flowing in the direction of the greatest gravitational attraction. Not only our galaxy, but all the nearby galaxies are going to experience a bulk flow due to gravitational force.  Everywhere we look in space we see the 2.725 K radiation background that's left over from the Big Bang.  And with analysis of that, we know that we are moving through space.  We're going somewhere. So make those New Year's Resolutions to move forward with your life - be at one with a moving existence. Don't let the internet drag you down with the stories of failure in just 17 days, or statistics of an 80 percent failure rate.  Perhaps popular Resolutions aren't for you. But what about the rest? I went searching and came up with two funny ones.  From Good Housekeeping:  Become a plant owner.  From the New York Times:  Clean your phone!  It's filthy! Do you wonder if someone made a New Year's Resolution to do something in order to get in the Guinness World Records?  James C. Rees has the record for the longest ownership of a vehicle from new - 61 years, 7 months and 4 days.  Did James decide on Friday May 23rd 1958 that he would own this car as his 'forever car'? I found a site to calculate the day of decision. Who can guess what New Year's Resolutions were made at Nelles Manor in Grimsby in the 1800s.  We don't seem to have kept any record of New Year's Resolutions through the ages. Here are two of the actors from the summer re-enactment event at Nelles Manor.

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Weird Week Activities

This is the weird week between Christmas and New Year's.  We might reflect on the last year and the last decade with the passing of 2019.  I looked through the photos of the year from the Associated Press.  I recommend not doing that -  disasters are the prime topic - political, social, and environmental.  So enough said on reflecting and reviewing the events of 2019. Instead, I looked for weird things to do on this weird week.  I found them.   1. Babyfoot treatment.   "Dry skin in the winter is one of the top three worst things about winter (static cling being number two, obviously), but a good food treatment like Babyfoot can keep your soles as baby soft as the name promises. It's an ideal thing to do over the course of several days, because it takes a few days for all of the dead skin to flake off after you put on the treatment.  Get it from Amazon for $22.99." 2. Start a Habit like Jade rolling "Jade rolling is soothing, helps with lymphatic drainage, and might just make your skin look even better, so why not get into the habit of doing it now? If that's not your thing, maybe an acupressure mat or meditating is more your style."  Find out about it HERE.  Our picture today was taken a few weeks ago during the ice storm. These are the delicate branches of Fallopia or Japanese Knotweed (the variegated variety).

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Jan 1 2019 - If It's a New Year it's Nostradamus Time

There was fireworks everywhere to celebrate the New Year - Dubai's was the world's record-setting show - illuminating the world's tallest building and having the largest LED illuminated facade. It is amazing - see the video HERE.  Or watch the NBC News around the world HERE.  Our own Toronto show is HERE. We Canadians want to make sure that people know this is Toronto so have the 3D TORONTO Sign.  It was installed in July 2015 for the Toronto Pan American/Parapan American Games. The letters are 10 feet tall and the LED lights can transition to 228 million different colours.       And what predictions are there this year?  Let's turn to Nostradamus, or should we? He was born in 1503, and initially an apothecary. He 'latinized' his name from Nostredame to Nostradamus when he moved away from apothecary towards the occult.  His 'Les Propheties' was published in 1555. He attracted supporters at the time who were looking for predictions through astrology.  He was rejected by the academic community at the time and since then, but remains popular with the press and public.  This is the repeated reason throughout the internet: the persistence in popular culture seems to be partly because their vagueness and lack of dating make it easy to quote them selectively after every major dramatic event and retrospectively claim them as "hits". This is demonstrated by the Nostradamus predictions from the UK Express. "EXCLUSIVE: Nostradamus’ eerie predictions have baffled people for centuries – but did Nostradamus have any visions of what will happen in 2019? One psychic expert believes 2019 could be an incredibly turbulent year for the US, the UK and the rest of the world.   According to the psychic expert, Nostradamus warned of an assassination attempt on Mr Trump, armed conflict in the Middle East and renewed relations with his Russian counterpart between 2019 and 2020. Mr Hamilton-Parker told Express.co.uk: "I feel Trump will have a second term but Nostradamus's predicted an assassination attempt will be in the second term. One thing Nostradamus did not predict, however, is the result or the effects of the Brexit vote.  Mr Hamilton-Parker himself foresaw a no-deal hard Brexit in the pipeline which is why he said he was surprised to see Brexit omitted from Nostradamus’s prophecies". With stories like this, it is easy to side with the academics in their skepticism that Nostradamus' predictions could, should or even would be taken seriously. Today's image is a Japanese Maple fiery abstract.

It's New Years All Day Long...Somewhere

The New Year's Eve of our lifetime occurred in the year 2000.  We likely all remember the celebration that year, and enjoyed fireworks from around the world.  Of course, we think of Sydney with its spectacular opera house and bridge.  There's a live feed at the Guardian with greetings from each country as it heads into 2019.  You can check out the feed HERE. Fireworks are underway in Sydney where the time is 10:39pm.  Samoa and Christmas Island are the first places on the planet to enter into 2019.  Chatham Islands, New Zealand has joined them, and shortly a small part of Russia will be there at 7:00am our time.    The New Year finally ends Tuesday at 7:00am when US Minor Outlying Islands - Baker & Howland Islands bring in the new year.  Samoa and American Samoa are a day apart in time with only 64 km of ocean distance between them.  At the Guardian feed, New Year's Resolutions are flowing in, and a month by month look ahead is included.  Canada has its own entry in October - we have Canadian elections. You can read the fast-forward of 2019 HERE.  And what about resolutions   There's a chart of what American's think Trump's resolutions should be - at the top of the list 22.8% of respondents think he should resign, 10.4% think he should tweet less, and so on. In keeping with these woefully out of touch resolutions of what Trump would consider doing, I found a series of  sad and useless resolutions from the creative and funny sadanduseless.com website: 1. Take a walk every day or at least briefly consider it 2. Don't spend too much time wearing pants 3. Maybe gain 5 lbs 4. Take every disappointment as a reason to give up 5.  Don't let anything get in the way of eating an entire pint of ice cream in one sitting 6. Something something saving money 7. Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and just focus on butts 8. This year I will live up to my full potent..oh look a shiny object 9. Don't waste time learning 10. Spend time doing what really matters:  watching Netflix 11. Forget a foreign language you only vaguely learned in high school 12. Read more book...takeout menus 13. See the world through the magic of internet 14. Maybe try to be nicer to other people but only if you feel like it 15. Hold someone's hand at sunset... just kidding, that's dumb 16. Avoid adulthood by spending more money on videogames 17. Forget past mistakes and press on to greater mistakes 18. Stop making resolutions, just get out there and start eating cheese This is a funny website - you can check out another of their posts of a Dad who turns his 6-year-old son's drawings into reality  - HERE. These are line drawings that are then turned into hilarious photo images. I've included the first one to encourage you to jump over - they are all very funny and make up for the useless resolutions. Have a Happy New Year's Celebration!

Resolutions

This is the day when we wish each other all the best for the new year ahead.  

It is the day when improvement goals are set in our North American culture.  New Year's Resolutions are a secular tradition, but an ancient one. The Babylonians made promises to return borrowed objects and pay their debts. There seems to be lots of advice from everyone including Harvard economists on the best goals and how to achieve them.  This is followed by all sorts of studies that show that things don't actually turn out.

May your goals and dreams for 2015 all be fulfilled.

It's Almost a New Year

A New Year

In order to realign the Roman calendar with the sun, Julius Caesar had to add 90 extra days to the year 46 B.C. when he introduced his new Julian calendar. The Julian calendar closely resembles the more modern Gregorian calendar that most (!) countries around the world use today. As part of his reform, Caesar instituted January 1 as the first day of the year, partly to honour the month’s namesake: Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look back into the past and forward into the future.  The move to the Gregorian Calendar took place starting in 1582 and was adopted country by country.  There's a schedule here: 

http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/gregorian.php

What are the unusual New Year's traditions - Spain's 12 grapes seems to make the top of the list for many. In Spain they eat 12 grapes at midnight - one for each stroke of the clock and for the coming 12 months ahead.  They have to be eaten in 12 seconds for the new year to have good luck.

There are six common profiles of those who've been (mostly) successful achieving this feat:

1. Zen Master – Neatly lines up the grapes and methodically eats them one by one, while meditating on the sound of the 12 chimes. Starts the New Year fully in the moment.
2. Full Frontal – Embraces the New Year with gusto by shoving all of the grapes in their mouth at once. Worries about swallowing them later.
3. False Starter – Anxious about getting all 12 grapes down, starts eating the first one before midnight strikes, which doesn’t count and is said to bring bad luck.
4. Reina Isabel – Prepares grapes in advance by cutting them in half. Eats them with a fork from a plate. Eating the grapes by halves may be less authentic, but it is the best method for small children, and for anyone worried about looking like a slob.
5. Exhibitionist – Also known as “el chulo.” Sees grape eating as another extreme sport, or just a chance to show off. Starts the New Year with an ego boost, by throwing the grapes in the air and catching them in their mouth. Requires secret pre-New Years’ Eve practice.
6. Drunken Style – Makes an effort to eat the grapes but cracks up, starts talking, drinking, hugging or otherwise gets distracted midway through the 12 grapes. This is, needless to say, what happens most often. Happy New Year

The most famous ritual in the U.S. is the dropping of a giant ball in New York City's Times Square. Dillsburg Pennsylvania drops a pickle in celebration of the stroke of midnight.