occasional posts by risa aratyr
On New Year’s Eve, 999 A.D., it was widely believed that the world would end the next morning. Arguably, it did, with the adoption of Christianity in Scandinavia and Hungary and the invention of gunpowder in China. But the drastic change most dreaded and others perhaps hoped the year 1000 would bring — the … Read more All Hallow’s
So. Another week, divvying up another passel of things-that-gotta-get-done among the greedy minutes, and all in a rush, it’s Sunday again. That lead-in sentence up there? I tried out “zig-zagging through another week” and “plowing through another week.” I finally found the word that nailed it, but it didn’t scan. Spiralling. Spiralling through another … Read more Home Comfort
A lousy, little knot has been tightening in my belly since I got that email this morning. The missive provided me a link to a site called “Watchdog” and promised that if I fed the site my address, it would regurgitate the data as a map of my home and neighborhood; a “house” icon … Read more Feeding the Beast
Gosh, look at all this amazing new stuff we taxpayers own since we started saving the economy! Manchester United Football Club, Bear Stears, Fannie & Freddie… What? You mean… we’re not following Dennis Kucinich’s sensible-sounding proposal to give Americans partial ownership of institutions receiving bailout money? Hmph! So, I can’t spend my tax dollars … Read more Sea-Change
Three weddings and three funerals in three weeks. You don’t have to be a mystic to note the numeric significance. On my calendar, this synchronous cascade of life-and-death events has been tumbling through the waning Hazel Moon and into the waxing Vine, bridging the dark transition between the two and spanning the Equinox-tide. In my lexicon, … Read more The Reckoning