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Happy New Year!

Today is the day of the Vernal Equinox, which actually happened this morning at 7:44 am Eastern Time.

It is also Nowruz (sometimes Nouruz), or Persian New Year's Day, the beginning of the year 1388 (modern day Persia is, of course, Iran).

Although the year number of 1388 indicates an origin in the seventh century CE, the holiday's origins go much farther back, to Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of Persia, and the Achaemenid empire in at least the fifth century BCE. Zoroastrianism, named for the prophet Zoroaster, is generally regarded as the first religion with a revealed statement of religious beliefs, or "creed", in recorded history. Some religious experts think that the Jewish festival of Purim stems from the Persian New Year.

Interesting little factoid: Zoroaster is the Latin version of the name Zarathustra, as in Also sprach Zarathustra, the Richard Strauss music used as the theme for the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Nowruz is a significant holiday, a time of renewal and rebirth. Preparations including spring cleaning the house (called Khoune Takouni) and buying a new set of clothes. Houses are bedecked with flowers, especially the hyacinth and tulip.

On the last Tuesday night of the year there is a festival of fire (Chahârshanbe Sûrî). This ritual stems from Zoroastrian beliefs and symbolism, wherein light conquers darkness. Bonfires are lit in the streets, and the young and limber leap over them, singing a traditional song to cast out the paleness and weakness of the old year and invite the robustness of the new.

On the day of Nowruz, families seat themselves around the table awaiting the moment of spring's arrival; on the table, or on a side table, are arrayed the haft sin - seven items beginning with the letter S in Farsi, the language of Iran. These items include wheat, barley or lentil sprouts (sabzeh) to symbolize rebirth; a sweetened pudding made from wheat germ (samanu) to symbolize prosperity; the dried fruit of the Oleaster or Russian Olive tree (senjed) to symbolize love; garlic (sir) symbolizing medicine; apples (sib) to symbolize health and beauty; sumac berries (somaq) symbolizing the sun's colorful rising; and vinegar (serkeh) symbolizing the patience of aging. When spring officially arrives, the family exchanges gifts.

It is important that the haft sin display is as beautiful as the family can make it, both for its spritual and traditional value as well as for the pleasure of visiting guests.

After the gift exchange, everyone puts on their new clothes, and family and close friends and neighbors visit back and forth for twelve days. Visits are not long (about a half hour) so that everyone can reciprocate, but lots of food is served, because frequently people will run into other families and friends at a house visit. Among the foods that can be found at a Nowruz celebration are baklava, other pastries and cookies, nuts, fresh and dried fruits, served with tea or sherbet.

Sometimes large centralized Nowruz parties are thrown, to minimize traveling between far-flung families.

It is believed that the behavior of celebrants during the holiday will indicate what kind of a year it will be; genial and pleasant visits bode well, but fights and disagreements augur a troublesome year.

On the thirteenth day an outdoor picnic or festival is held, with music and dancing; it is considered to be infelicitous to stay indoors on this day.

Nowruz is celebrated in many countries that once were part of the Persian empire or were influenced by Persian culture, including Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan; in Balkan countries; by the Kurds in Turkey; by modern day adherents of Zoroastrianism; and Iranians worldwide.

Even for those of us who do not celebrate Nowruz, the first day of Spring is always welcome, and a good time to celebrate. Happy spring!

Foothoosleblank

It is amazing what interesting bits of useful information can be found on the Internet while one is avoiding one's responsibilities.

I just happened to catch a little gem in the New York Times magazine from last Sunday about the sales phenomenon of the Snuggie, aka the blanket with sleeves.

Everyone who owns a television has seen this commercial. People who sit around in houses that are apparently kept at igloo temperatures desperately try to cover themselves with blankets so that they don't suffer from hypothermia, but the blankets slip off, and force them to uncover their hands to use the remote or answer the phone or eat.

But with the Snuggie, the blanket with sleeves, they sit there as happy as clams (if the clams were wearing blankets with sleeves). They talk on the phone, eat popcorn, use the remote, roast marshmallows outside, and go to athletic events, all while wearing the Snuggie.

Of course, the Snuggie is not the only, or even the first, blanket with sleeves. There have also been the Slanket, the Freedom Blanket, and a few other pretenders to the sleeved-blanket throne. But the Snuggie is the king.

Hmmmm.

Well, I say, why stop at sleeves? Why not add feet to the thing - don't feet get cold, too, especially when contemplating marriage to someone who owns a Snuggie?

Picture it - people sitting at an outdoor event, like a football game, wearing blankets with sleeves and feet. Maybe with a zipper up the back. And little rubber grippies on the bottom of the feet, so that they don't slip on shiny floors.

Oh, that's right - such a thing already exists. It's called a blanket sleeper. Babies and small children wear them.

Well, why can't adults wear them?

Think how practical this would be in the winter. They could come in four fetching colors - red, blue, green or yellow - and no one would have to worry about what to wear to work anymore. Not that anyone does worry about what to wear to work anymore, in the land of the perpetually casual.

All buildings could have thermostats set to forty-five degrees F. In fact, there would not really need to be heat at all, unless the temperature gets below forty. Think of the energy savings!

And the Fleevket, or Slebleet, or whatever catchy name the marketers can think up for this item could also have a hood on it, to keep the head warm.

Hoofeesleeket? Blahoofeeve? Sleefeehoodie? Whatever.

I think that I will immediately give up my lucrative day job, and go into business making these things. After all, if Snuggies can sell to the tune of sixty million dollars a year, and they only have sleeves, my idea could really catch on.

Of course, everyone would immediately resemble the characters from a certain children's program (minus the big hips, one would hope).

But perhaps that would be the price we would pay for real comfort. That, plus $19.95.

Yours 'Til Niagara Falls

This past weekend, your obedient scribe and her men visited the land of the maple leaf.

We decided to go to Toronto, intrepid travelers that we are, to visit our friends Jan and Michael. I was last in Toronto as a bridesmaid at their wedding in 1990. Jan and Michael have visited us many times (Michael is originally from the U.S.) and we have often threatened to return the favor, but never quite managed the trip.

This time, however, Jan was celebrating a significant birthday, and of course no distance is too far for us to go to attend a party. The route we decided to follow took us up through New York State to Niagara Falls.

Niagara Falls....slowly I turn...

Spencer had never been to Canada, although he has visited England twice. Norm and I thought it was time he met our neighbors to the north. We also wanted him to see one of the great icons of tourism and North American natural phenomena.

Norm and I had both experienced the falls before, I as a child of about nine, and Norm during his college days. I remembered them as being impressive, especially at night with colored lights playing on them, but was anxious to see them again as an adult, because pretty much everything impresses a nine-year-old.

Michael and Jan were to meet up with us, since the falls are only an hour and a half from Toronto. Repeated cell phone calls were necessary for us to find each other, because for a while we were looking for them on the American side of the border (makes you wonder how we learned to tie our shoes, doesn't it?) It turns out that there is a town called Niagara Falls in Canada as well as in the US.

Finally we crossed the border, where we found the fabulously tacky town of Niagara Falls, Ontario and our fabulous, un-tacky Canadian pals. Then, it was off to the falls themselves.

Which did not disappoint. They are, in a word, magnificent.

Niagara Falls is the most powerful waterfall in North America; 4 million cubic feet of water goes over the falls every minute, on average. They are a great source of hydroelectric power.

We were especially lucky to see them in March, when the spray from the thundering torrent turns to snow, covering the huge rocks in front of the American falls. The Niagara River was partially frozen, with large floes of ice slowly breaking and moving in the deep blue-green water. Ice from the perpetual mist glistened on everything around us on the promenade that faces the falls - every bush, every tree, all of the iron railings and benches (it was quite cold, perhaps 30° F at most).

We walked down the promenade, past the American falls to the Canadian Horseshoe Falls (shaped like a horseshoe, don'tcha know.) These falls are much larger than their American counterpart, and you can get very close to the falls themselves, where ten feet of clear green water pours over the crest at 20 miles per hour.

As we approached Horseshoe Falls, we could clearly see the stunning half-circle rainbow created by the spray, stretching between and linking the two waterfalls, American and Canadian. It was a scene of almost unimaginable beauty.

Spencer and Michael seemed to be in a competition to see who could take the most pictures.

As we contemplated the immensity of water and foam, it was hard to believe that someone went over the falls just last week - and survived. Without a barrel. Or clothes, apparently.

After our visit to the falls, we went back to the town of Niagara Falls, and had a late lunch at another Canadian icon, Tim Horton's. Then we dragged ourselves away from the splendor of the Movieland Wax Museum and made haste for Toronto, just around Lake Ontario from the falls.

We settled in to our bed and breakfast, and had a late dinner at the Keg Mansion, a steakhouse located in a stunning 1867 townhouse built by Arthur McMaster, and later owned by the Massey family (Raymond Massey, the actor, spent time there). Apparently some of the Masseys still haunt the mansion, but the only spirits we encountered were Jim Beam and Jack Daniels.

Saturday we walked through Greek Town, and helped Jan turn fifty at her favorite Italian restaurant, Casa DiGiorgio.

Toronto is too big a city to see in a weekend, but it is a lively and multicultural place, with great ethnic cuisine, and friendly people. Now that we have ventured north, we plan to return and spend more time.

What's not to like, eh?

The Unicorn in the Attic

Many, many years ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I was a young, single girl living in a sparsely furnished yet fabulous apartment with my best friend and roommate Jenny.

It was winter, a snowy one, and we were both casting about for something to do in front of the TV in the evenings that did not involve hard physical exercise, or food. I was looking through a catalog, and happened to notice kits for hooked rugs.

"These look kind of easy to do," I said, and Jenny agreed. We each chose one as a project.

I do not remember what Jenny's looked like, but I remember that the finished project was to be about one foot by two feet - perhaps the area of a doormat. A nice, reasonable project.

My eye was caught by a replica of the famous tapestry The Unicorn in Captivity. The original is one of a series called The Hunt of the Unicorn; there are seven tapestries in the series and they were created between 1495 and 1505, perhaps in Brussels.

Their original purpose is unclear, but it is thought that they were woven to celebrate a wedding; the letters "A" and "E" are intertwined throughout. The tapestries are full of symbolic objects both Christian and pagan, most notably the unicorn itself. This mythical beastie symbolized many things to the medieval mind, among them wisdom, purity and love; some experts believe that the pursuit, capture and bloodying of the unicorn represents the passion of Christ. The original tapestries are now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The hooked rug, like the tapestry, had a lot of vines and leaves on a black background, and of course the unicorn sitting in a fenced area in the middle. I knew a little about the famous tapestries, and thought the hooked rug would be pretty, plus the symbolic unicorn thing would lend a bit of middle-ages chic to our charming urban hovel.

It also reminded me of one of my favorite James Thurber fables.

What I did not realize was that the completed rug would be seven feet long by four feet wide.

When the kit arrived and I unfolded the monster of a canvas, I realized that this was more than a little project for a few evenings. But, undaunted, I started working away at it.

It took more than two years to complete.

When it was finished, two apartments and several roommates later, a testament to my folly and perseveration, I could not bring myself to put it on the floor and walk on it. So, I took it to a framer, and had it clapped between two endposts of wood, to hang it on the wall. A very large wall.

And hang it I did, in my single-girl townhouse that I liked to call "Eclecticon."

Not everyone shared my enthusiasm for the piece. One soon-to-be-erstwhile suitor took a look at it and laughed, "Where did you get that? A medieval garage sale?"

Heh, heh.

Eventually, after Norm and I married and I left my single, bohemian lifestyle behind (for a married, bohemian lifestyle) I retired the unicorn, and it has been in captivity, rolled-up in the attic ever since, a mythical symbol of my carefree and foolish youth.

It had a brief moment in the sun two years ago, when it graced the set of Spencer's seventh-grade play about Eleanor of Aquitaine.

This year it will turn thirty years old, and is becoming an actual antique (not unlike its owner). Lately, I have been thinking about getting it out and hanging it once again, fifteenth-century kitsch or not.

I am sure James Thurber would approve.

The Pleasures of Peas

This morning, Norm realized with a start that Spring is here. Well, almost, considering that it was 20 degrees three days ago, and the Vernal Equinox is two weeks away.

But today it is going up into the sixties here in Pennsylvania, and Norm's immediate thoughts upon awaking were of the garden, at the east end of the house. "When is Saint Patrick's day?" he asked. I told him that it was in about a week, give or take, and he said, "That's when the peas should go in!"

There is a lot of work to do to prepare the garden. It is a raised bed, a twelve by twelve square, and the snow has finally melted on it. Currently, it is a lumpy tangle of dried, flattened tomato stalks, heaved earth, and blown leaves.

Peas, or pisum sativum, are a very old cultivar. They are an annual, cool-season plant, and are quite frost-hardy. Varieties include snap peas, sugar peas, shelling or garden (also known as English) peas, and snow peas.

When I was a child, during the Lincoln administration (well, maybe it just seems that way) you used to be able to buy garden peas in the pod from the market, and then shell them at home. It was enjoyable and very satisfying to open the pod and find the peas within, like little green pearls. You could slide them out into a bowl, pop pop pop off of their tiny stems.

Fresh garden or shelling peas are no longer sold in supermarkets, for some reason, although you can get snow peas or sugar snap peas. So, it seems that if you want fresh peas, and don't belong to a Community Supported Agriculture or CSA where you can go pick the peas yourself, you must grow them.

They need to be planted when the soil is at least 45° and is dry enough not to stick to gardening tools; tradition does say that Saint Patrick's Day, March 17, is a good guideline. They should be planted 1 - 1 ½ inches deep and one inch apart in single or double rows; rows should be 18 to 24 inches apart. Tall varieties need to be staked, but there are many dwarf varieties that do not require staking.

Garden peas are an interesting vegetable to eat. For some reason, etiquette demands that they be eaten with a fork, even though a spoon would suit them much better. They roll around your plate, and playing the game "how do I get these darn peas onto a fork and into my mouth without dropping them all over the floor, where they will roll around and get squished" is a family favorite. If there are mashed potatoes, you can imbed the unruly peas in that vegetable, and contol them that way.

If you could get them onto your knife in a row, you could eat them the way the Three Stooges did, but then you would find yourself eating alone quite often.

Sometimes I try to line them up on the tines of my fork, although I have noticed that if I spend too much time doing this to my satisfaction, other diners at the table will be staring at me with gape-mouthed wonder. And stabbing peas with a fork is a risky exercise at best.

But I digress.

Garden peas contain iron, protein and vitamin C, so they are really good for you. They can be used in everything from soups to salads, but I like them best just steamed with a little butter. Homemade pea soup, made with dried peas and some ham, is a comfort on a cold day.

There is a product out there called Pea Butter, which is essentially smashed peas in a jar, but the idea strikes me as strangely unappetizing.

Nut butter, yes. Peas in a jar, no. That's just wrong.

So, it's off to the feed and farm store for some pea packets. Time's a wastin'.

The Beauty And The Imperfection

Years ago, I used to listen to a Joni Mitchell song that contained the lyric "...you turn your gaze to me...weighing the beauty and the imperfection to see if I'm worthy."

A few years back, Norm, Spence and I went to England with the Valley Forge Choir of Men and Boys, a traditional Anglican choir. Spence and Norm both sing in the choir.

Choirs in this tradition perform a choral service called Evensong, which takes place in the late afternoon, at 4 or 5pm. Many churches in England have resident men-and-boys choirs; some even have choir boarding schools for the boys. During the trip, which took place in July, the Valley Forge choir became the choir in-residence at two ancient English cathedrals - Ripon Cathedral, in Ripon, England, and Carlisle Cathedral in the city of that name.

The group of us who traveled together included the boys and men of the choir, the director and organists, and family members. During the week that the choir sang in Ripon, we all stayed in the choir school, located about a mile outside of town. The men and boys of the choir would go into town each morning for rehearsal, have the afternoon off, and reconvene at the cathedral in the afternoon each day for Evensong.

We family members and choir hangers-on would sightsee in the town, and then take our places in the pews each afternoon, usually about a half-hour before Evensong. This means that we spent a great deal of time in each of the two cathedrals, sitting in quiet contemplation of these spaces both before and during the services.

Ripon Cathedral is very old, especially by American standards - underneath the church are the excavated remains of a church built by Saint Wilfred in 672. It is one of the first stone churches built in England. The current cathedral is the fourth incarnation of that early church; much of it dates to the 13th century.

When you sit and stare at a space for hours, day after day, you get to know it in a different way than when you pass through it in tourist mode. You really get to see what is there. In the case of Ripon cathedral, the church has been rebuilt several times, and when you look upward at the vaulted stone arches and windows of this beautiful space, you can see places where original design was replaced with later design; parts of the church nave collapsed and were rebuilt, but never finished (due to the appropriation of all church funds by Henry VIII).

As a result, the inside of the church is hardly symmetrical. Columns do not match; arches are cut in half; windows partially obscured. You look at these things and you think about the designers of the various renovations, and the stonemasons who did the work. You think about the fact that eight hundred years ago, people sat where you are sitting and looked at these things exactly as you are doing now, and talked about how to finish off this part, or that part, or what exactly to do here or there to merge into the existing work.

You see the design imperfections in the church, and they reveal the humanity of the people who worked on it. You can see their desire to do something wonderful, something lasting, to honor God. You can see the hard work, and the sweat, and the patience that went into creating this space, wherein stone is transformed into something of worth. A thing does not have to be perfect to be beautiful.

The choir enters and takes its place in the carved choir stalls. It sings psalms and gorgeous choral anthems, some of which were written by Palestrina or Thomas Tallis almost five hundred years ago. They are intricate and multilayered, much like the walls of the cathedral.

You look at this space for hours, and it becomes a part of you. You listen to the music of the choir, sung in a place that was built for such sounds, and you lose the sense of time, and consciousness of self. If there are any imperfections in the music, you can't hear them, because the space and its echo transform the music into something beyond mere song.

And the music and the space transform you.

Canine Chess

How many reasonably intelligent adults does it take to fool a dog?

Apparently, more than two.

As I sit here, typing away, I am holding two syringes filled with allergy serum. Our Irish Water Spaniel Joey, a rarefied creature from a small gene pool, is allergic to just about everything. Grasses, trees, mold, fungus, dust mites, you name it.

We discovered this several years ago, when Joey attempted to remove all of his hair by scratching it off. He also chewed incessantly at his feet, and rubbed his itchy snout on any rough surface that was handy, including my corduroy slacks.

Nothing makes your day like being used as a tissue by an animal.

So, doting pet owners that we are, we took Joey to the vet to have our wallets vacuumed, er, to have him allergy tested. Several hundred dollars later, the blood tests came back, and he was indeed allergic to pretty much every surface with which he could conceivably come in contact.

This is a creature for whom we had already shelled out an embarrassing amount of money to have cataract surgery. But he was suffering, in a way, and I was tired of being his personal hankie.

The solution to this latest malady was to administer allergy shots to Joey, starting out with a weak serum administered as frequently as every other day, and months later ending up with a stronger monthly dose.

Not surprisingly, Joey did not much like this regimen. Something about the concept of humans coming at him with sharp implements to impale him did not sit well with him. It took two of us to complete the job, one to distract him and one to shoot him up. I, of course, became the designated dog stabber, a role that I did not relish. But the shots did help, so we persevered.

And so it has gone, for about two years.

Dogs, however, have several advantages over humans, among them incredibly acute senses of hearing and smell. Add to that the fact that Joey is pretty smart even for a canine, and you have trouble.

He began to recognize the subtle signs that I was going to stick him, even though a month would go by between shots. The serum must be kept in the refrigerator; I use the butter bin on the door for this purpose. Somehow, even though I go to the refrigerator dozens of times a day, hundreds of times a month, something about my movements - a certain look I give him, the sound of the butter bin door opening, whatever - sends him right into his crate, where he hunkers down, sphynx-like, and looks at me as if to say, "Okay. Your move." And thus the delicate game of injection chess begins.

Norm and I have resorted to ever more intricate subterfuges to get the shots into him. I circle the downstairs with the syringes so that Joey doesn't see me; Norm, my pawn, gets out the lettuce and waves it around the kitchen (did I mention that Joey is a vegan?); I, the queen, stroll with elaborate casualness to the computer, saying the code words "Norm, I am at the computer checking my email." We wait for a half-hour, and still Joey is in the crate, the king in his castle, with that smug "Just how stupid do you think I am, humans?" look on his muzzle.

It has now been an hour since I took out the serum and filled the syringes. Joey is asleep in his crate, or at least pretending to be. I am about to admit defeat, for now, and refrigerate the syringes. It would seem Joey has me in a stalemate.

But I can be patient, too. The chess game continues.