“When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even”

‘Good King Wenceslas’ is a rather odd carol. Who was Wenceslas, and why do we sing about him at Christmas?

#thread
⛪St Andrew's, Wood Walton, Cambridgeshire

Wenceslas was a 10thC Duke of Bohemia (his name in his native Czech was Vaclav). When he was a teenager, his mother sent assassins to murder his grandmother, and then set herself up as Regent.

When Wenceslas turned 18 he banished his mother and took control, giving half of the country to his younger brother, Boleslaus. But on 28 Sept 935, his brother invited him to a feast, and then murdered him. 😱
It was all very Game of Thrones!

Wenceslas was a devout Christian and was passionate about giving alms to the poor - widows, orphans, even prisoners. After his assassination by ‘Boleslaus the Cruel’, ‘Vaklav the Good’ was immediately venerated as a martyr. He was canonised, and posthumously made a King.

📷 Enfo

Fast forward to 1853, when prolific hymn writer John Mason Neale was looking for a carol for St Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day), a day of charity.

🚨🚨okay fine here what I got 🚨
You wait for a big drop from .@CodeMonkeyZ but if you want something serious to focus on, check this out. Who owns qalerts? Who develops it? Not 8kun. They have a role but not nearly as big as you think. How does Q relay intel? Have a gander...

If you know me IRL, you know that my (male) partner is our household's primary cook and launderer. We share parenting more equally, but we have each been the primary parent at various times. I have a few thoughts about this.

One of my BFFs asked me one time, when she was a new mom, how it was that my kid was so close to their dad? Her baby only wanted her, and her husband was quick to hand the crying baby off to mom and admit defeat.

My answer: You've got. To leave. Them alone together.

Nobody can develop a close, trusting relationship if that relationship is always being observed and mediated by a third party.

We had the same barriers to this as every family. I was the breastfeeding parent, and I was home more in the first couple years.

But leaving the kid alone with their dad meant that they developed their own way of dealing with each other. He didn't comfort the baby the same way I did. He had a different sleep routine (with some similarities, of course.)

This was good for all three of us!

But what if I was constantly there, so the baby knew that the comfort of breastfeeding was just on the other side of that door? It would have been harder for the two of them to work things out without me.

We couldn’t leave 2020 behind without naming our 10 calls that “missed the mark” this year.

Follow along with #ReasonsNotToCall911 to see the top 10 calls of 2020.

Call 1: Suspicious activity – A 9-1-1 caller advised he’d seen the same moose standing in the same spot in a field for two days straight. The caller thought this was a little suspicious and RCMP officers should check it out. #ReasonsNotToCall911

Call 2: Locked up – One concerned animal parent was wondering if her cat was in custody with the local RCMP as the cat went out two days prior and had not returned home. #ReasonsNotToCall911

Call 3: Better programming – A concerned parent called 9-1-1 requesting RCMP officers speak to a popular video streaming service to request they provide better programming for their kids to watch. #ReasonsNotToCall911

Call 4: Directions? – 9-1-1 dispatchers received a call asking for directions to travel from Yorkton, Saskatchewan, to Winnipeg, Manitoba. #ReasonsNotToCall911

I've been skimming MAGA forums of late, partly, I admit, from schadenfreude, but also partly out of dark fascination / how-to-write-villains research. I've noticed an interesting thing about their nature of their beliefs, I think.

For what it's worth, a THREAD on Gary Player, my dad, and redemption.

My father was politicized by sport. His experiences as a young, sport-obsessed Indian boy gave him his first real sense of the inequities of apartheid...

...seeing white kids playing cricket on perfect greens, in their crisp whites - a world away from what he had.

And because he developed such a strong sense of how sport and politics were intertwined, he loathed sportsmen who used their platform to support apartheid...

...who played a fair and gentlemanly game on the pitch, but off the pitch were cheerleaders for such extreme unfairness and injustice. None drew the ire of my dad more than Player.

It infuriated him that Player could thrive, despite being so publicly unrepentant, "in a democracy that he once did all he could to thwart".

This might be called: The Little Elegy-Manifesto for the Last Friday of Everything (which we thought was only one more calendar Friday but turned out to be the last of something)

Had we known what was coming, on that last crowded subway ride on a certain Friday, we’d have saluted every passenger with an anthem or signal, right as they stepped off the train car at their final stop.

We’d have devoted a slightly longer gaze to the stranger sitting across from us during that last, boisterous dinner table we were not even sure we wanted to attend, but did.

We’d have read a poem by Góngora, HD or Dickinson, out loud, in that real classroom full of present students. (And the room would have smelled of pencil, sweat, mochila, and weak coffee.)

We'd have clapped our hearts out and our palms got all red when that airplane we flew on finally fucking landed, not quite on time but smoothly-enough.

Freezing as you hear the faint noise of one of the latex panthers.
As the creaking noises from around the corner get louder and closer you grit your teeth and turn, breaking into a sprint for the door at the end of the hallway...
You don't even get ten steps before you're caught.

The predator jump into your back, sending the both of you crashing to the floor, rolling slightly before you end up pinned beneath it, stomach down.
"You thought you could outrun me?" You hear her purr, the gentle creaks of her body sending a shiver down your spine.
"Poor prey."

You grunt, lifting and turning your head for just a moment before one of her paws presses down on your cheek, forcing the side of your face against the cool linoleum. She cranes her neck down, grinning as she purrs deeper,
"Look at you~. So indignant. So defiant." She grins.

You feel her paw slip a bit down your face, and suddenly you're made hyperaware of the thick scent of her body - like that of a pool, of synthetic chemicals. You had smelled it before, of course - it was impossible not to, with the number of them in the city.

But this was the first time you'd been so close. Your adrenaline fuelled body taking deep breaths, your nose dragging in more of those fumes...
"Aw, that's cute," she giggles, and you're broken out of your stupor. "That heat in your pants, just from my paw~?"
You suppress a moan.

(Angst tw, idk if happy ending??)
Hizashi has always wanted to be a catastrophe.
Because maybe if he's spiraling out of control, someone will at least go through the motions of caring about him.
But it never works that way.

Present Mic is loud and fun and flashy, and you'd think he would have drawn at least a couple of people in like moths to a strobe light. And, sure, he's got fans. Lots of them.
But the second he shows any of them *Hizashi*, they lose interest.

He starts wondering if he can even connect to people as himself, or if only his fake face, the mask he puts on, is human enough.
Eventually, he stops trying to ever take that mask off, even with people he considers friends.

And he's loud on the outside, but that's a celebration. The disaster is quiet.
It's just him, taking care of himself like putting coins in a jukebox to make it keep playing.

When he doesn't, when the marionette falls down, he's too ashamed to let anyone see. Nobody ever comes knocking on his door to see where he's gone.
If Shouta or Nemuri calls, he says he's sick and leaves it at that.
And they leave him alone.

1)
As promised the teachings of Thoth the Atlantean regarding age regression.

2)
List ye, O man, hear ye the wisdom.
Hear ye the Word that shall fill thee with Life.
Hear ye the Word that shall banish the darkness.
Hear ye the voice that shall banish the night.
Knowledge and power descended from old.

3)
Know ye not that all shall be opened when ye shall find the oneness of all?
One shall ye be with the Masters of Mystery, Conquerors of Death and Masters of Life.

Aye, ye shall learn of the flower of Amenti the blossom of life that shines in the Halls.

4)
In Spirit shall ye reach that halls of Amenti and bring back the wisdom that liveth in Light.
Know ye the gateway to power is secret.
Know ye the gateway to Life is through death.

Aye, through death but not as ye know death,

5)
But a death that is life and is fire and is Light.
Desireth though to know the deep, hidden secret?
Look in thy heart where the knowledge is bound.
Know that in thee the secret is hidden,
The source of all life and the source of all death.