The skies and our ancestors

 Let's start with Skywatch Friday!

Some dawns give interesting features...heavy frost (which I had to scrape off my car windows before going to an appointment that morning - but Barry our maintenance man helped!). And the fog rises from the river valley between my hill and the mountains to the south.

The mist changes second by second!

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Our connections to the past:

 "Long ago, in shamanic cultures, we knew how to communicate with the Life of the Earth: with the spirits of the plants, the water, the mountains, the animals, and with the Life of the Cosmos — the sun, the moon and the stars in the night sky. We also knew how to communicate with the ancestors and their wisdom. Today, we have lost those skills and are increasingly losing the skill of communicating with each other, listening to each other, respecting each other.

All this has come about because, over centuries and millennia, the visible, material world has become separated from the invisible one. We have lost the thread of Ariadne that once connected us to our cosmic Source. Belief, directed by powerful priesthoods, became a substitute for direct shamanic experience of the Source. We have lost touch with our soul — even the awareness that we have a soul. Cut off from soul, our mind has become impoverished, rigid, dogmatic, and inflated. In compensation for the loss of relationship with soul, it has become driven by the need for ever more power and control, which is why we find ourselves in the extraordinary situation we are in today when millions are suffering the effects of wars and from physical and mental illness, and we are threatened with becoming inducted into a technology that could replace our species with a transhumanist one created by AI, which could bring our species to an end. We need urgently to find our way back the way we have come, towards nature and the ground of our own nature."

-Anne Baring, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.

Posted in Girl God Books from Norway on FB

Art by Jakki Moore

Sharing with Sepia Saturday - a week late on the needlework! Sorry, no musicians this week!

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Today's goddess:

In the unique ancient art of Cyprus, the female form of the Goddess is often associated with prayer and birth. It seems to be the birth of the world, the birth of trees and nature. Before Bronze Chalcolithic Limestone Praying Goddess, Cyprus, 3000-2500 BC.

The goddess smiles.

Thanks Jenny Mendez FB site

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Winter Solstice is in 9 days

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New header (for phone reading where headers are cut!)

A bit of blurry Santa's sleigh, with the various cars to give juxtaposition across the street further in the distance. Taken through the Peri Social house window.

Continuous gratitude

 

3 long tables with boxes of food available from Bounty and Soul. The manager of the apartments is standing facing us right under the wreath. Several people also volunteer to help distribute the food. Lots of produce, eggs, and bread. I was number 16 in the line last week. We are certainly blessed!

So grateful for Bounty and Soul, our local food bank distributors…who come right to my senior apartment complex weekly. I don’t go there often, but I have so much food from this week, it will take lots of home cooking for me to use it all up. They also distribute in a few other locations, all of which are open to anyone to pick up their choices of food. Of course there are limitations, usually just 2 tomatoes, but this week we got 3.

Sharing with Thankful Thursday.

These people have always decorated to the hilt, though their trees were taken out by a tornado several years before the hurricane, and they were already repairing their house when that happened. So glad to see they're again putting out cheerful lights to share.

Not my photo, but it says beauty to me.

Think of all the good reading material these women promoted!

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Today's goddess:

Nayarit Figure 100CB-250AD, Mexico

Thanks Jenny Mendes Ceramics on FaceBook

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10 days until Winter Solstice, the longest night of the  year.

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Inspiration for the day:

A wonderful article by Maria Popova in Marginalian Newsletter/E-zine...

The Indissoluble Filament Connecting Us All: Patti Smith on What It Means to Be an Artist

Entertainment:

"The Lost King," 2022. Available streaming on PBS Masterpiece, and Acorn TV. About Phillipa Langley, the woman behind finding the remains of King Richard III in a car park.

Wikipedia says: "Sally Hawkins as Philippa Langley; who suffers from a disabling chronic fatigue syndrome and whose marriage is broken, becomes obsessed with Richard III, joins the local Richard III Society, and embarks on a quest to find and exhume his body."

This movie also brings attention to disabilities, and especially to how misinformation is passed on through generations. Richard's scoliosis was defined as a hunchback, and associated with evil doers. The Two Young Princes in the Tower were never historically murdered by King Richard III, but his detractors changed history by many innuendoes to discredit Richard. Thomas Moore was one who wrote of his life in the promotion of Tudor Myths, also inferring that Richard was a usurper to the throne. All of this is repeated in Shakespeare's plays several hundred years later, and is still being taught today in many history classes.

So pay attention to finding out facts! It was the message underlying the main story in this film of the archaeological efforts that were promoted by a woman without any archaeological background. It has a strong message against misogynists also, to the extent that in real life, the one portrayed in the film took the producers to court...and is given an introductory message  in the film saying he's fictionized! 

In my opinion!

Back home looking around

 How about wordless Wednesday?

Heavy frost at dawn, but the moisture from the river is rising into the air.

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The Black Mountain Christmas Parade was December 6, 2025. here's the Black Mountain News coverage of it.

Yes we have a great Ukulele Band!

Sharing with My Corner of the World

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Today's goddess:

The Venus of Hohle Fels is probably one of the most famous goddess figurines. carved of mammoth ivory about 35,000-40,000 years ago. She was found during excavations at Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, and is just 5.9 cm high. There's a loop for hanging her as perhaps a pendant rather than her head.

Remember craftsmen and women only had bones and rocks like flint to make carvings with at that time.

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11 days till Winter Solstice

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Today's quote (do you want these again anyway?)

We often don’t ask people what matters to them. We ask how they are doing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It may be perfect for getting a conversation going.

Maybe the better question is what engages you? And what do you know enough about that you know you need to learn more?

I don’t love putting people in boxes. I’d rather be there when they opened up.

Keith Kron "What Really Matters" newsletter

Frank Gehry's work

 Architecture today - in honor of  Frank Gehry who recently died 

It felt, for quite some time there, like the age of Frank Gehry would never end. But now that the latest defining figure of American architecture — or technically, Canadian-American architecture — has died at the age of 96, the time has come to ask when, exactly, his age began. Or rather, with which building: Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles? The Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris? The radical renovation of his own humble Santa Monica home often cited at the origin point of the metallic, deliberately incongruous, often nearly alien aesthetic now recognized around the world? According to the B1M video above, it is to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao we must look to if we wish to understand the architecture of Frank Gehry — and much else besides.

And, like most architects, Gehry is survived by not just his built legacy, but also a series of projects not yet complete — including the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, scheduled to open its doors next year.

Thanks Open Culture newsletter 

Sharing with Tom's Tuesday Treasures 

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Incidentally, I recently read Dan Brown's book "Origin" as an audio book (read by Tom Hanks.) It took place at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao as well as other Spanish places. As fiction it was another Brown page turner, but not what I'd give 5 stars...maybe 3-1/2.

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Today's Goddess:

Venus of Parabita is a goddess figurine dated ca 17,000 BP. It is 9cm high and made ​​from a splinter of bone from an aurochs or horse. Found in the Grotta delle Veneri (cave of Venus) in Puglia, Italy.

Thanks The Mother Goddess on FaceBook

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12 days till Winter Solstice - the returning light following the longest night.

Brú na Bóinne - Newgrange and Knowth - year unknown

More photos of Newgrange can be found on my blog.

Speaking of architecture! 

Newgrange Ireland,  5,200-year-old passage tomb

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A short hop and skip in Georgetown

 As you may have heard (since I might have remembered to say so) I take a break from driving every hour. To mainly walk around and make sure my legs are feeling good...but also to slow down and enjoy the areas I drive through.

So my last day of my recent trip to visit Ohio relatives, I was driving along with that sign of doom "check engine" light on the dashboard. I could cover it up with my hand on the steering wheel much of the time, and keep it out of my mind.

Not many people on the sidewalks in mid-afternoon on a cold Sunday. The restaurant shown above probably was attracting most of them.

It had appeared the day before, when I stopped over night in Lexington, KY. I was still 300 miles from home in North Carolina. So I texted or called 2 of my sons, who agreed that I should just keep driving till I could get to my trusty mechanic at home. If it started flashing, or other things happened, they advised me to stay on the interstate highways, where hopefully help could be obtained (I've got road side insurance) if needed. 

I was willing to go through a long slow construction area on I-40 at the Tennessee-North Carolina border. I prepared by stopping before I got to it and taking care of necessities, so I wouldn't have that need plaguing me if it was an hour to go through that area. (Note, Hurricane Helene was the cause of washed out roads, and this area continues to have floods, though construction is actively rebuilding the highway.)

But the evening before, I stopped my ride to Lexington with a short visit to Georgetown KY.

Sadly this shop where I parked was closed on Sundays. You know I'd have loved a treat from there!

It felt like a typical tourist "old towne" with so many cute shops.

Being in Blue Grass country of Kentucky, there was a great mural in an alley of some horses.

I knew my friends who like to go visit places would have loved this shop (though being more than 300 miles from home might make it a bit difficult to schedule!) Miss Behaven, Gifts for the Southern Heart.

Sharing with Monday Murals. 

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Today's goddesss:

Gold signate rings...depicting women in the Minoan attire of flounced skirts... from the Griffin Warrior tomb in Pylos, Greece. The tomb was that of a Mycenaean warrior, who died in his mid-30s around 1500 BCE. 

The Minoan culture flourished from 3100 to 1100 BCE. The more warlike Mycenean culture was active from 1750 to 1050 BCE. So there was overlap whereby a soldier could have worn images of Minoan women, in one view perhaps as a servant. But the important find (for me) is the bull jumper on the bottom ring image. Both men and women practiced this sport as early as Minoan times, as seen in various murals and pottery decorations on Crete.

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13 days till Winter Solstice

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And for phone readers, here's the new header photo!

 I was surrounded by my beautiful granddaughters at Thanksgiving 2025!