Cailleach and Groundhog Agree: Winter Is Ending Sooner Rather Than Later

2011.02.02 Imbolc/Candlemas
117 Days Remaining

01. First off, happy birthday to my brother, Decius, who turned 29 today. I hope he and his wife had a chance to celebrate, given the weather conditions now regnant.

02. Second, I'm annoyed. I realized that I had three or four drafts the contents of which were never actually posted, and I went through, copied and pasted them all into this post, and then promptly deleted them unintentionally. Nothing was particularly pressing or so lyrical that its loss is cause for weeping, but it was a substantial amount of text and musings, and now all is gone. Damn it. I'm trying to remember what fragments were contained therein, but I only browsed it as I was collecting them, and nothing is sticking out to me to reconstruct.

03. Baskerville College was closed today (which impacted me not at all, as I don't teach on Wednesdays) in preparation for the monumental blizzard that smote a large portion of the country. New Aldwych, however, got icy sleet in the early morning, followed by temperatures in the mid- to upper-40s and rain for the rest of the day. I hear that driving conditions, due to the early morning sleet, were hazardous, but I went out to shovel further (with the higher temperatures and rain making some of the more entrenched snow drifts amenable to being moved) and had very little difficulty. Momula told me that conditions in Wilmington were similar to those here. My exing-wife sent me a photo of Herman, the best dog in the world, playing in the snow that fell at their house in Tulsa, OK:
He really likes the snow, so I'm happy that he finally got some to play in.

04. Weather is important today, it being of course Groundhog Day, and overcast. This means, of course, a shorter winter, if one believes in the prognosticatory capabilities of largish ground-dwelling rodents (especially in western PA). Interestingly, it isn't only German groundhog-watchers who think that today's weather is oracular: in Ireland and parts of (Gaelic-speaking) Scotland (which are Gaelic speaking because they were settled/conquered by Irish pirates called the Scotti in the Dark Ages) today is Imbolc, and today is the day that the Cailleach (literally: "old woman" - she's kind of a semi-divine legendary figure) goes out to gather firewood for the remainder of the winter. According to traditional lore, if it's going to be a long winter she makes the sun shine on Imbolc to allow her to see farther, so if it's cloudy she isn't worried about winter going on much longer. So, as far as I'm concerned, that pretty much settles it: a legendary Irish hag and a Pennsylvanian rodent agree that winter is due to end sooner rather than later this year. And there is much rejoicing, I'm sure, as many people with whom I've communicated recently have said that this winter in particular is weighing on them.

05. Speaking of weather, and on a much sadder note, today I read a striking article about a polar bear who swam for nine days trying to find an ice floe on which to climb and rest (she was being tracked via radio implant). She lost 100 pounds in the process, and tragically the cub who accompanied her died en route. In related news, the Republican governor of Alaska is trying to gain access to various restricted wildlife areas in order to allow for more oil drilling.

06. To balance out that story, here is a very charming song and video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeZMTOSeHVw&feature=branded . It's called "Be My Honeypie" and is by the Weepies (who, despite their lacrimose name are not depressing).

07. In the midst of other things the past few days I've been doing some fun academic reading, and came across a very interesting essay by Richard C. Miller entitled "Mark's Empty Tomb and Other Translation Fables In Classical Antiquity." Basically, he's addressing an interesting manuscript problem: in the earliest manuscripts (and in attestations by early readers) the Gospel According to Mark ends with the discovery of Jesus' empty tomb, and the women fleeing in fear (for anyone keeping track, that means that Mark 16.8 is the likely original ending, and that Mark 16.9-20 are later additions). Though the young man they meet in the tomb tells them that they will see Jesus in Galilee, if Mark ends at verse 8, there is no narrated encounter with Jesus after his burial. Now, this is a problem, because it leaves open the possibility that the author (and the community for/to whom he was writing) of Mark didn't intend that Jesus was physically resurrected, or (even worse) that he didn't know that story, or any range of possibilities. Biblical scholars, often working from faith positions, have tended to interpret the resurrection narratives in light of 2nd Temple Judaic resurrection beliefs, and to insist that Jesus is best understood either as sui generis (i.e., totally new) or best understood in terms of Jewish prophecy, etc. Miller says, essentially, this is bollocks. There are plenty of similar stories (even down to empty tombs and the announcement that those looking for the disappeared deceased would see them elsewhere) both earlier than, contemporaneous with, and later than Mark, but they're all Greek or Latin and about demi-gods, heroes, or related folks. This is not exactly news to me, but Miller's essay lists a lot of them, more than I had been aware of, and statistically makes it much more difficult to claim that the original Mark was only coincidentally like those other stories. This comports with something that I have been convinced of for a while, following the work of Graham Burridge, that the Gospels really make sense primarily in terms of Hellenic literary traditions (specifically biographies) rather than in Judaic literary traditions. This is sensible, given that 1st and 2nd century Palestine, Egypt, and Anatolia (modern Turkey) had large Judean populations, were Hellenophonic (Greek speaking), and that educated Judeans were educated in Greek. But it does also strongly point out that the expectations and interpretations of Mark's original audience were profoundly shaped by Greek (and Roman) culture, thus distancing them from a solely rural Palestinian cultural background (which some people try to assert in order to keep Christianity pure and far away from "pagan" traditions). Miller goes so far as to argue that, taken to its logical conclusion, his argument suggests that Mark was written for non-Judeans (i.e., "Gentile" Christians). I'm less confident about that conclusion, mostly because we know so little about the ethnic backgrounds of early followers of Jesus (both during and after his lifetime), and what we do know strongly suggests a majority Judean group. If Mark was written for non-Judean Christians, it became popular with Judean Christians very quickly. Anyway, Miller's essay is a good one, and though I'm not teaching New Testament this semester, this is the sort of stuff that I use to make these texts less familiar to my students, who often come to the class already "knowing" lots of stuff about what the New Testament is and contains.

08. Anyway, on another topic entirely, Junia has been diagnosed with Scarlet Fever, something that in earlier times would have been cause for serious alarm (Helen Keller, for instance, may have become deaf and blind due to contracting Scarlet Fever, although the diagnosis is disputed - some medical historians think she had a form of meningitis). Regardless, in this era of antibiotics, Junia is already back at school and, according to Selena and Momula, was never even in poor spirits, let alone bedridden. Still, she has scarlet fever, so I say, "Get well soon, kiddo!"

09. In my Medieval Philosophy course we're doing historical and cultural background/context work to figure out why medieval European philosophy is both like and unlike modern Western philosophy, and why it tends to get short shrift nowadays (at least outside of academic areas like Philosophy of Religion, where Thomas Aquinas is still read frequently). Yesterday we read the autobiographical text Historia Calamitatum ("history of my sufferings") by Peter Abelard, my favorite medieval philosopher, who was the Elvis of medieval European philosophy, though less gracious in person than the King is said to have been. Abelard was, according to himself and most of his contemporaries, the smartest man in Europe. He had a tendency to go to study with someone and, after a ridiculously short time, begin to publicly surpass his teacher, and then to challenge them to public disputes/debates. Unfortunately, he pretty much always won the debates, except where no one could understand what he was talking about. He is also famous for being the Abelard of "Abelard and Heloise" (one of the most famous couples in European history - before Romeo and Juliet they were the preeminent example of romantic love in the Western tradition). Given his intellectual achievements, the most astonishing part of their story is that Heloise (his student, lover, and eventual secret wife) was apparently his match. Reading their letters (those that have survived, anyway) is profoundly unsettling, because he's an egomaniacal genius who, incidentally, spends as much of his time with Heloise as is humanly possible and she is incredibly smart but says, basically, "I'd give it all up for you." We read their story in my Love, Death and Desire course last semester, and the students could not agree on whether Heloise was Abelard's doormat, equal, emotional and moral superior, or some complicated mixture of all three. Even though he was an arrogant jerk, I like the fact that in their later life (they became a monk and a nun, respectively, after Abelard was castrated - you read that right - by Heloise's uncle, who was furious about the secret marriage) Abelard basically neglected all of his official duties to visit Heloise's convent, even though by that time physical passion was kind of a no-go. Their relationship was certainly not ideal, but I've never been able to shake the strong sense that they were actively devoted to one another, and wanted to be nowhere else than together. On the down side, they named their son Astrolabe, after the astronomical device.

10. And that's about it.