Walpurgis Night is celebrated every year on the night of April 30th into May 1st. Historically, it marks the transition from spring to summer and is associated with bonfires, dancing, and old seasonal traditions.
The name comes from Saint Walpurga, an English nun from the 8th century who traveled to Germany as a Christian missionary. She was known for caring for the sick, promoting education, and founding religious communities. Her feast day became associated with May 1st after her relics were moved in 870 AD.
The connection to witches comes mainly from German folklore. During the Middle Ages, people believed that witches gathered on mountaintops—especially at Brocken in Germany—for rituals, dancing, and spiritual gatherings. Villagers lit large fires to protect themselves from evil spirits and to welcome the warmer season.
Walpurgis Night also has pagan roots because it overlaps with ancient spring fertility festivals such as Beltane. Over time, older folk traditions blended with the Christian celebration of Saint Walpurga.
Today, Walpurgis Night is still celebrated in parts of Northern and Central Europe with bonfires, music, costumes, and spring festivals.
The is the night of fertility celebration, welcoming spring and all the wonders of animal and plant life that regenerate at this time of the annual cycle of life on our planet. I wrote about Beltane and bonfires a bit in the past on Alchemy of Clay.
A May Day tradition was for children to pick flowers and then distribute them throughout the town. Of course the gardeners were not always happy to have kids trampling through their roses!
Wear some artificial flowers in a crown, it does make one feel like a girl for May Day!
Of course many traditions start with bonfires on May Day Eve. I haven't ever taken part in those, but have read about them! With droughts so prevalent in the US, I hope there are very few bonfires this year.
Tomorrow is called May Day. Historically this was a day workers would have marches until the Communists made big parades with military equipment which stopped the holiday celebrations in the US.
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Health care update.
No news from the insurance debacle, except late Tuesday I got a call from that Dr.’s office from a new person (Bonnie) who said they would make sure I could keep my appointment with my PCP (primary care provider) and have the certification meeting the insurance requirement by next week.
I’m not holding my breath! But they did send me a confirmation this morning that I have the appointment.
As of 1:30 pm Wednesday…
Nobody had called me back and I looked at my trembling hands and realized I could not put a needle into an IV line to save me as the nurse practitioner had told me I needed to do.
So I called the infectious disease (ID) office and left a message for the nurse to that effect,and mentioned that the nurse practitioner (Amy) hadn’t called me back yesterday afternoon.
So another nurse called within an hour to explain that the lab results that Amy had looked at were from the hospital before I was discharged and then took antibiotics orally for 2 weeks. So I didn’t need any more antibiotics.
At the same time the lab results from my bloodwork at ID were on my patient portal, with normal range of white blood cells! You all probably know when they’re elevated, it means you have an infection.
I sighed with such relief. And I said how worried I’d been that I needed all this treatment still.
I remembered telling Amy the sputum test which showed the fungus had been taken the 7th and not reported till the 20th, but she didn’t hear that as meaning I was still in the hospital. Glad she conferred with the Dr. before any more mistakes were made.
The best part was then being able to look at the results of ID’s bloodwork and talk with this nurse about other things that weren’t normal! So since I don’t drink alcohol, we figured my high liver enzymes are due to taking Tylenol for pain. Fortunately now I can switch to ibuprofen. Nothing that needs treatment showed as of first tests, but there may be more results and this nurse said she’d call me and let me know when they come in. I’ll also be checking the patient portal!
And I’m feeling better day by day. Didn’t make it to exercise, but I joined friends for lunch at least!
I opened the windows again this morning. One door also, but it was covered on the outside surface with condensation from the damp outside. Fog is the predicted way weather people talk about it. I figure we're just inside a low lying cloud.
Loved hearing a long skein of geese fly over, the Canadian kind of course. They not only honk, but their wings creak as they move them. I didn't try to see them because I'm sitting in the treetops here. About 3-4 huge old maples are above my views out the living room and bedroom windows.
It's actually still Labor Day as I write this.
A preview clip about an interesting sounding movie. About (and narrated by) Mother Jones. A labor advocate and activist.
We were never supposed to know her name. She was a poor Irish immigrant who survived famine and war, fire and plague. Unable to save her husband or their four small children, she dedicated her life to saving working families everywhere. The robber barons called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” but workers called her “Mother Jones.”
Upton Sinclair said of her, “she had force, she had wit, she had the fire of indignation; she was the walking wrath of god.” Mother Jones said of herself “I’m not a humanitarian, I’m a hellraiser.” Most famously, she told her followers to, “pray for the Dead and fight like hell for the living.” She educated, agitated, and organized the dispossessed and showed America what it could be.
With the gap between the rich and poor growing wider by the day, the just and democratic society Mother Jones fought for is under attack. Her hour has come again. It is time that her story and the fierce struggles of working families are brought back to life.
Drawn from her autobiography, letters, speeches, and interviews, FIGHT LIKE HELL is as bold and forceful as Mother Jones herself. Adapted from Obie Award-winning Actress Kaiulani Lee’s one-woman play “Can’t Scare Me,” FIGHT LIKE HELL was written and performed by Lee and directed by Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Ian Cheney.
I just saw a reference to the Battle of Blair Mountain. So I wanted to make sure someone talked about it today.
For five days from late August to early September 1921, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers (called the Logan Defenders) who were backed by coal mine operators during the miners' attempt to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields when tensions rose between workers and mine management.
Since the founding of the United Mine Workers union in 1890, coal mines in Mingo County, West Virginia and its surrounds hired only non-union workers, and strictly enforced employment contracts that included union membership as grounds for immediate termination.[11] As miners in the area lived almost exclusively in company towns, termination also meant eviction. In 1920, the UMW's new president John L. Lewis sought to finally end the three-decade resistance to unionization in the area. He was under increased pressure to do so from both miners elsewhere participating in the United Mine Workers coal strike of 1919, and from affected mine operators who were now being undercut by nonunion mines in West Virginia.
This unionization push included efforts from Mother Jones, who gave fiery speeches at the age of 83, and Frank Keeney, president of the local union district. Over 3,000 Mingo County miners joined the union—and were summarily fired. The coal companies then hired agents of the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency to evict the families of their former employees.
Wikipedia gives details leading up to this battle, including how Detective Agents shot a union-sympathetic sheriff and how many skirmishes happened between miners and the mine owners' forces. The US army was finally brought in after several days of fighting on Blair Mountain.
The miners, many of whom were veterans themselves, were unwilling to fire on U.S. troops.
After the battle, 985 miners were indicted for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, and treason against the State of West Virginia. Though the majority were acquitted by sympathetic juries, others were imprisoned for up to four years, with the last being paroled in 1925.
In the short term the battle was an overwhelming victory for coal industry owners and management.United Mine Workers of America (UMWA or UMW) membership plummeted from more than 50,000 miners to approximately 10,000 over the next several years, and it was not until 1935—following the Great Depression and the beginning of the New Deal under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt—that the UMW fully organized in southern West Virginia.
In the long term, the battle raised awareness of the appalling conditions miners faced in the dangerous West Virginia coalfields. It also led to a change in union tactics in political battles to get the law on labor's side, by confronting recalcitrant and abusive management.
Today a historic marker onWest Virginia 17, about 8 miles (13 km) east of Logan, betweenEthelandBlair states:
BATTLE OF BLAIR MT. In August of 1921, 7000 striking miners led byBill Blizzardmet atMarmetfor a march onLoganto organize the southern coalfields for theUMWA. Reaching Blair Mt. on August 31, they were repelled by deputies and mine guards, under SheriffDon Chafin, waiting in fortified positions. The five day battle ended with the arrival of U.S. Army and Air Corps. UMWA organizing efforts in southern WV were halted until 1933.
There was much controversy about any marker memorializing this battle. By 2009 it had gained a Historic site recognition, but within the next year several coal companies gave out plans to strip mine it based on clerical errors in the historic registration process. In court (after many lawyers made a lot of money,) the decision of a federal judge sent the decision back to...
"...the Keeper of the National Register. On June 27, 2018, the Keeper's Office decided that the 2009 decision to remove the site from its listings was "erroneous" and issued a statement confirming that as of that date the site was again on the National Register.
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And these historic issues aren't even quite so difficult to digest as that of all the miners who have lost jobs due to the coal industry having finally been outpaced by...wait for it...the environmentally friendly wind and solar power industries. Several sources have recently shown that wind and solar power will outpace energy production of coal for the year 2024. It already had by July.
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And the hospital which is closest and has provided my care at times, does have a nurses' union (the only one in the state) and they have voted to strike for the issues they've presented to the hospital management. Here's the full article detailing this, but it is interesting to see how a medium size city like Asheville can have things like this happening. Many of my friends just go to nearby Hendersonville's hospital to avoid issues. I've never experienced lack of care when I needed it. But I do know the ER is often crowded.
Mission nurses have voted to strike for one day after HCA Healthcare and the Asheville hospital refused to meet their contract demands, two union nurses who tallied the ballots told Asheville Watchdog, which also obtained a union email Monday announcing the outcome of the vote.
Mission Health spokesperson Nancy Lindell said the outcome was not surprising and a strike is unnecessary.
“If the union decides to move forward with a strike, Mission Hospital is fully prepared to remain open and provide care for our patients. We have plans in place allowing us to be confident that it will be safe for our patients and for any nurse who makes the personal decision to cross the picket line.”
The nurses also would not say when a potential strike might occur. The strike against Mission would be a first in North Carolina history as Mission Nurses United is the state’s first and only nurses union at a private hospital.
Despite the vote, a strike is still not a certainty. The union and hospital management could reach a deal between now and the strike’s date. If a strike were to become imminent, the union would notify the hospital at least 10 days before the walkout, a spokesperson for National Nurses United (NNU) previously told The Watchdog.
Nurses will return to the bargaining table Sept. 9, according to the email obtained by The Watchdog.
The union represents more than 1,600 registered nurses at the hospital, with just more than half of those due-paying members.
The union’s previous contract expired July 3 amid bargaining between the nurses and the hospital. Nurses and management have negotiated since spring, with the union demanding changes in staffing, work conditions and pay. HCA has held out on most of these demands.
Nashville-based HCA is the largest hospital company in the U.S., with more than 180 hospitals and hundreds of other care facilities. It operates six hospitals in western North Carolina, but Mission in Asheville is the only one to have unionized nurses and only Mission nurses would stop working.
The union formed almost immediately after HCA purchased the Mission Health system. Between 2022 and 2023, at least 660 registered nurses left Mission, a Watchdog investigation found.
North Carolina is the second-least-unionized state in the U.S., behind South Carolina, with only 2.7 percent of workers belonging to a labor union. Because Mission’s is the first nurses’ union in the state, a strike action would be historic.
Where I was, before this happened. My stay in Mission Hospital in Asheville, NC started Fri. May 15, in ICU. See my personal experience following this news that just came out.
The following was posted to Mountain Express on Fri. May 29 at noon:
"Six staff members at Asheville's Mission Hospital have tested positive for COVID-19. The employees all worked together in the same unit on one of the hospital's pulmonary floors.
“This cluster of cases occurred in some of our most dedicated and talented staff, staff who have put themselves on the front line of this illness and who take pride and privilege in caring for these patients,” said Dr. William Hathaway, Mission Health's chief medical officer. “They are among the most skilled in regards to their knowledge of isolation techniques and of their use of personal protective equipment.”
The cases were first identified on May 22. Contact tracing of staff members and patients was conducted before Mission determined it necessary to test the remainder of staff on the unit. As of May 27, no additional cases related to the staff cases had been identified.
As of May 27, Mission was caring for eight COVID-19 patients, a number higher than the hospital’s previous two- to six-patient average. The hospital’s peak caseload to date, reached last week, was 12 COVID-19 patients, linked to an outbreak of the disease at a skilled nursing facility.
Hospital leaders say they are monitoring supplies closely and have ample supplies for patient care at this time. Hathaway noted that those hospitalized were nursing staff members, not residents."
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I'm pretty sure "Residents" just means doctors, rather than patients.
To continue a brief version of my hospital visit...
In the early hours of Saturday, (May 16) I went to the cardiac wing, then to an ICU for possible pulmonary problems/cardiac also - in a negative atmosphere room where nothing I breathed could go outside the room. And there was an "ante-chamber" where the staff would go suit up or discard their PPE clothes. I was taken out of that negative atmosphere room after my COVID-19 test was negative, then suddenly I got the stent procedure around 10 am on Sat. and then I was in a C-ICU (for cardiac patients), May 16 (after having a CT scan which didn't show anything.) After having the stent inserted through my right arm artery, back to the same C-ICU for at least 2 days, cause I saw the same day nurse over 2 days. Then finally I got a bed on the cardiac wing again. And just 2 nights there and home I went on Tues. May 19 around noon.
So I'm wishing all those front line personnel - from nurses to housekeeping, from dieticians to clerks...that they may all be well. For those who caught the virus, I hope your fortitude and strength will help you heal quickly. You were such fabulous caring individuals who paid real attention to my every need...and shared a bit of yourselves with me also.
