Family fun

Today was a great family day. My folks came over to visit and they brought these really cool springy lawn chairs that will be great for sky watching, satellite hunting, and meteor showers. When you lay back in them, they bounce a bit and it feels like you are floating. My daughter and granddaughter also came over and we went to a local recreational area known as The Pocket. It is(DUH)a pocket gap on Horn Mountain, just over the ridge to the north of my house. It is located about 10 miles away by road, yet only a bit over a mile as the crow flies. The Forest service has created a campground and a day use picnic park around the creek and springs area. The creek is cold and the spring water is freezing. At any rate, I'm sure that this rec area was created by the CCC back in the 1930's as the rock work has that CCC character to it. The creek has been artificially widened to about 15 feet, and there is a mortared stone wall as the bank wall. There are steps down into the creeks at various places, and in no area is the water deeper than one foot. The water is clear and cold, the creek bed is small pebbles. All of this makes for a wonderful playground for kids, and adults can sit on the side and soak their achy feet in the ice cold water or even sit down in the creek if the day is hot enough. A lot of hikers come through this area, and the creek is a popular place for them, too. Older kids run around with nets looking for chub and minnows, the younger ones just splash around. It is a cool and relaxing place to be in summer. I just did a websearch looking for pictures, and I found this page, with one picture of the creek where we sat and played; it seems my CCC assumption was correct.

http://www.forestcamping.com/dow/suzi/articles/notable/pocket.htm

Jordan had a good time, I think, although at first I think she was a bit unsure of the icy spring water. After a few minutes, I realized that the creek was a lot warmer than the spring, and after we moved over to the creek to play, she relaxed and started jabbering with the other kids. Later, after we returned home, I took more than a few pictures of her in her new pajamas playing on the new deck chairs.

To top off the night, after everyone left, my son called. I had not heard from him in a couple of months, so it was really good to hear his voice.

All in all, today was one of those days that will stand out in my memory.

Happy Birthday, Good Friday

Today is my son's birthday. My 'baby' is now 22 years old. It is so hard to believe that he hasn't lived here in almost 5 years. It is harder to believe that it will be 5 more before he gets out of the Navy. Due to the educational time involved, submariners enlist for 6 years at a time, not 2 or 4 like other Navy rates or other military personnel. Re-enlistments are for four additional years. I talked to him on the phone a couple of weeks ago, and he told me that he has worked 18-20 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day in 2009, so I doubt he will have the day off. What good is it to be stationed in Hawaii if you spent that much time on a submarine? Anyway, Happy Birthday SubmarineSon, I hope you can at least grab an extra hour of sleep.

This week's been rather busy in spite of the intermittent rain. I had an ad go into the state market bulletin for selling chickens, so today and yesterday I've been fielding calls from that. A guy was supposed to come out this morning, but due to the thunderstorms, we postponed it until tomorrow. I'm hoping he will buy the whole lot of them. Purebred pullets are going for $15-$20 each around here, and the mutts get at least $10, $15 if they are laying already. When I first bought chickens over ten years ago, I thought $5 a bird was outrageous. Now, with the state laws tightening on transporting birds, and with people worried about the future, the price has increased.

Today, Good Friday, is the day I've long awaited for to garden. It is THE day to plant the summer garden crops like corn, beans, tomatoes, etc. I need to cultivate one more time before I can plant, and it is simply too wet to even walk in the garden, let alone till or plant. For anyone who is wondering why people don't plant when the soil is wet, well, the first reason, and the most important reason, is soil compaction. Water displaces the air and instead of the soil being fluffy, it is clumpy or muddy. After you plant in those kinds of conditions, the soil surface will harden and cake over, and future moisture will run off instead of soak in. Also, if you walk across wet ground, you compact it and it becomes like cement, harder to work and till. If you transplant when it is wet, you risk exposing the plant to harmful fungi and diseases.

Yesterday, I was able to cultivate a flower bed in the front yard and scratch up the soil surface in a few other places around the yard, so today, I'm planting flowers. I planted a few bulbs like glads and freesias earlier in the week. There are a few places in the yard where I can plant things like basils, so I'll transplant those today.

I can only do so much due to the wet soils, so I am going to be behind on my planting schedule for the summer garden. I should have already had corn in tubes ready to transplant today, but I never planted them because I was watching the weather and I knew it was going to freeze again. Our last freeze was Tuesday.

For the Love of...Mythology

Paraskevidekatriaphobia or friggatriskaidekaphobia. (easier-to-pronounce) Both mean 'fear of Friday the 13th'. Frigga-Friday, comes from Norse mythology. Compare those words with
triskadeckaphobia which is just a fear of the number 13.

I am a Friday the 13th person. I like the day and it is usually lucky for me. I was born on the 13th of the month, adopted at 13 days old, so I have always felt a connection to the number 13 that most of the world doesn't. No one really knows why people have this superstition, but most authorities will tell you that the fear of Friday the 13th has it roots in either Norse mythology, Templar history, or is just a combination of two separate 'unlucky' things most from a Christian ideology: Friday is unlucky because it was the day of the crucifixion, and 13 is unlucky because it is one past twelve, the number of disciples or Israeli tribes, yada yada yada. All typical explanations aside, since there is at least one and maybe as many as three Friday the 13ths in a year (2009 is such a year), it seems very likely that over time, some disaster or calamity has occurred on this date and that further feeds the fear. It also seems that the idea of 13 dinner guests is unlucky, perhaps stemming from Loki's presence and Balder's death in mythology, or perhaps from Judas's presence and Jesus' death after the Last Supper. The 13th hour of the (13th) day would certainly be close to meal time, whether you started counting at midnight or sunrise.

Another of the superstitions has to do with sailing, leaving port on Friday, for example. For Christians, there is usually a penitence aspect to the day, penitence related to secularism and selfish endeavours. Some Christians, especially Catholics, faithfully eat fish on Friday. It seems that the number 13 represents death in many ancient cultures, but death is both an end and a beginning, a transformation of the survival of existence. Perhaps we have lost the survival and transformation aspect of that idea?

None of the above reasons, stories, or myths by themselves pique my imagination, but the following does:

I recall hearing a theory on talk radio about the origins of friggatriskaidekaphobia. I wish I could find some reference on the idea, but despite a fairly thorough web search, I cannot find anything
on it. I fear that I have forgotten key details, but I will relate what I can recall, because I love stuff like this, ideas from the edge of reason, so to speak. The radio guest linked Friday the 13th as the day that the mythical civilization of Atlantis was lost forever to the ocean. The survivors of that fateful day allegedly set sail and spread throughout the world and eventually attempted to memorialize their dead. Friday the 13th became somewhat of an anniversary of the tragedy that transformed the remaining civilizations of the world, Indus, Egyptian, Greek, etc. There are ancestor and hero worshipping cults and sects throughout the world. There are holidays that honor the dead in many countries and cultures. If I recall correctly the guest's main evidence for this theory came from the writings of the Greeks. Of course, he referred to Plato's description of Atlantis, but he also had a lot of information about certain Greek mystery cults. Some of these cults are well known for their hero worship or ancestor worship. Orphic and Dionysian cults gave importance to the life and death cycle.

When you think of the common lore of Atlantean culture, you can draw even more parallels. The Atlanteans were allegedly destroyed for their wicked ways, their corruption, secularism and selfishness. Perhaps the sign of disaster began during meal time, during dinner. As they set sail into the unknown, they watched their world disappear. Was the demise of Atlantis the impetus for the rise of the Indus, Sumerian, Green, Persian, and Egyptian and MesoAmerican civilizations? If Atlantis existed, and it was destroyed by some natural disaster, the Mother of All Disasters, then of all days, it probably happened on a Friday the 13th, a happenstance that was unlucky for the Atlanteans, but lucky for the rest of the world. It was the end, the death of a great civilization, and yet, it was a transformation as it became the 'semen, the seed of all seeds' (literally, Dionysus) for many civilizations.
Mythology is so cool. It is always right out there on the edge of science. Oh, and in case you were unaware, the statue pictured is in Copenhagen, of the Greek God of the Sea, Poseidon, (Roman Neptune) whose dominion includes Atlantis as well as Naval submariners. My SubmarinerSon is also a friggatriskaidekaphile.