moon phases

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]

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(and my Wish List)

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www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/boxing.asp Deals well with the much-disputed origin of the name "Boxing Day"

It even got into Parliamentary debate in Australia:
www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Prod/Parlment/HansTrans.nsf/ all/CA256D110020B6CD4A2564350022CDCE
Mr ZAMMIT (Strathfield) [3.53]: The Minister for State Development, and Minister for Arts spoke about Australia and New South Wales being part of a global economy. Nothing brought that home to me as much as when I visited China about 10 months ago with the former Premier. When we visited a very large factory the first question I was going to ask the factory manager was what he paid his staff, but instead I asked him , "Do you give your staff holidays?" He replied, "Holidays, yes, every Sunday." This is part of the working world and the global economy against which we have to compete ...
[Page 5689]
... I have a definition by Rabbi Brasch of how Boxing Day began. He says:

The custom originated with the Romans and their feast of Saturn, during which they gave each other presents as an expression of the merry spirit of the celebration of the winter solstice.

[This I see more as one of the existing customs Christmas is based on. Remember, Christmas is not Jesus' birthday, it's the celebration of this birth. This was more familiar to people in older times, when people had name-days rather than birthdays. I have an adopted friend whose parents picked a day for his birthday, not knowing the actual one.]
... The definition of Boxing Day in The All-Australian Calendar Book says:
Boxing Day probably takes its name from the fact that on the day after Christmas in Britain, the alms boxes which had been placed in the churches over the Christmas period were opened. The contents were distributed to the poor. On the same day, apprentices and servants broke open small earthenware boxes in which their masters had deposited small sums of money. In large households, the family may have used this day to distribute Christmas boxes to their staff.
[permalink] posted by Mez at 10:41 am