New Year's Resolutions

I know it's a little late to be listing my resolutions, but I wanted to make sure I was on a good path to keeping them. So, here they are:

Jog at least 3 times per week (I'm running my first ever 5K on February 7. I've had asthma all my life so this is huge.)

Take at least one picture every day and post it in my calendar. (I've been mostly successful with this one)

Keep track of how much money I'm spending in January and set up a budget for the rest of the year. (This is a little challenging because of all the travel I do, but I've kept the first part of the resolution.)

So far, so good.

Feast of All Saints

As part of a class assignment, I created an altar for Dia de los Muertos. For those not familiar with Dia de los Muertos, you can get some basic information here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead.

What a wonderful introspective venture. My altar included some of the traditional elements but also some very personal touches. I created the altar as a tribute to my Aunt Jenny. We called her Honey. She was my maternal grandfather’s sister and died on All Saints Day in 1986. The timing of her death has always been very meaningful for my family. Before I explain the items on the altar, I’d like to give you a little background on Honey. She was born in 1911 in Gardner, MA. Shortly after her birth, her parents took Honey and her older brother, my grandfather, to Lebanon where she lived with her grandparents and brother until 1923. That year, she and my grandfather rejoined her parents and siblings after going through Ellis Island. In her early 20s she was diagnosed with a disease similar to MS. She wasn’t expected to live for many more years. The doctor’s, however, did not count on the excellent care she received from my family. Her sister, my Aunt Rosie, took care of her from her diagnosis until she died over 50 years later. Additionally, various members of my family would go to their house daily to take care of Honey while Aunt Rosie was at work. Honey was rarely alone. As the years went by, the disease caused great changes that even I could see. I remember as a very young child, Honey using a walker. Then, one day, the walker was retired and only the wheel chair was used. During my childhood, Honey would get out to family functions quite often. I have vivid memories of my Uncle Rocky carrying my aunt up stairs at my grandparent’s house for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving or when we had relatives visiting from Lebanon. Anyone who helped Honey was always gentle – she was so fragile and it was often obvious the slightest movement could cause her pain or general discomfort. As her health deteriorated, she left the house less and less. I remember spending many summer afternoons with her watching soap operas. I wasn’t really interested in them – I much preferred books, but it was time spent with a wonderful woman. She once told me that she was dating someone when she found out how sick she was. She told him to move on with his life and forget about her. She never spoke of it again and I always wondered how involved they were and if he realized how much he missed. Of course, his life would have been difficult, but I believe it would have been much enriched by growing old with my aunt.
Honey was the center of our family. She was the first one anyone called when a family member found out she was pregnant and certainly the first one called when the baby was born. She knew more about what was going on in our family than most of the rest of us did.
While deciding what to add to my altar beyond the traditional aspects, memories swirled in my head. It’s difficult to express how much of an impact Honey had on my life. I don’t know why red roses remind me of Honey. I don’t have any specific memory of her liking any flower in particular over another – it just seems appropriate. The bell beside the picture was the one she used to call whoever was at the house taking care of her. My grandmother (Sittue) would go over every afternoon for years so Honey could take a nap. She couldn’t move by herself so Sittue would help her lie down on her side. When she woke, she’d ring the bell so that Sittue could help her back up.
The glass of water is traditional for a Dia de los Muertos altar. However, my aunt was very particular about her water. She preferred it room temperature or warmer and always had a folded napkin covering it. For food, I placed pistachios and hard candies on the altar. While these are not specifically related to Honey, they are a staple from my childhood – whenever the family was together there were hard candies and pistachios around. I remember my aunt taking a slice of tomato and covering it with more salt than I could imagine using in whole day much less on one tomato slice so I added a tomato and salt cellar to my altar. The doll has no specific relationship to Honey except that when I saw it, it reminded me of her – maybe it’s how I imagined she would have looked in her 20s.











Honey’s rosary and funeral were attended by an amazing number of people for someone who spent most of her life isolated in a small bedroom. At the funeral during the eulogy, my cousin Phil said he knew that Honey was in heaven dancing with God. That’s the picture I hold as my final memory of my wonderful aunt.

Irish Folk Tales

(1)Write your personal response to each of the Irish Fairytales for this lesson’s reading. (2) What do the Irish fairytales tell you about the Irish view of space and time?

I’d like to begin by saying I really enjoy reading folk tales from any culture. I found several wonderful websites with additional Celtic folk tales as well as tales from many other cultures. If you have any interest in the subject, I recommend visiting:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/index.htm (this website is truly amazing)
http://www.pantheon.org/areas/mythology/europe/celtic/
http://www.luminarium.org/mythology/ireland/ (this website is more like a portal linking you to many other websites as well as internal information.

The folk story “The King of Ireland’s Son” was a typical journey story with a moral at the end. There were several repetitious phrases coming from the oral tradition that surrounds most folk traditions. Journey stories are fairly typical in popular culture fantasy novels - one of my favorite genres. Journeys are usually undertaken by a reluctant hero, often someone who doesn’t realize he’s a hero. All journey tales include tests of some sort. In this folktale, the King’s son takes this journey to find the perfect woman who will become his wife. He is accompanied and supported by several individuals he meets on the road and is ultimately rewarded for being a good person. This was my second favorite of the stories probably because it was a forerunner for the fantasy novels I enjoy.
“Dreams of Gold” was a series of mini-stories (2-3 sentences each) about finding a pot of gold.
My favorite tale was “The Birth of Finn MacCumhail”. I enjoyed this tale so much that I found many other tales of Finn MacCumhail and his forces called the Fenians. This group of tales, known as the Fenian Cycle or the Ossian Cycle, reminded me of the Athurian legends. (please see http://www.shadowdrake.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=37 for an interesting code of behavior and tests for membership into the Fianna.) Both are filled with battles and journeys. Additionally, both sets of legends have mystical components with stories replete with witches and humans with supernatural powers. Many of the tales in the Fenian Cycle repeat phrases and story lines – again illustrating how oral traditions functioned so effectively. For example, the tale “Fin MacCumhail and the Fenians of Erin in the Castle of Fear Dubh” repeats the story line of a hag with three sons with a few modifications. Also, the battle description, “Water sprang out of gray rocks, cows cast their calves even when they had none, and hard rushes grew soft in the remotest corner of Erin.” (Henry Glassie. “Irish Folktales,” p243) was the same in both tales. Personally, I love the reference to non-pregnant cows giving birth and was thrilled to see it used more than once.
Another tale from the Fenian Cycle, “Usheen’s Return to Ireland,” is possibly a forerunner of the Rip Van Winkle tale from the 19th century. This story best demonstrated a concept of time that is quite amazing. In this story, Usheen is carried underground to Tir-Nan-Oge where time moves very slowly – a few days equate to a thousand years. When he finally returns to his home, everything is overgrown and broken. He is so overcome with grief, he allows his emotions to lead him to his own destruction. This theme is also found all throughout science fiction usually when an author is trying to make a point about how long space travel will really take and the sacrifices people will be making when they undertake their journey.
Finally, “The Man Who Had No Story” started as a political statement against the English but quickly moved to a supernatural tale of a common man experiencing life. I found this tale particularly intriguing as it implies that having a story to tell is important. This makes sense in a culture of oral traditions and folk tales. If you run out of stories, your tradition dies. Stories are a cultural currency in a way.