Eliza Daley is a fiction. She is the part of me that is confident and wise, knowledgable and skilled. She is the voice that wants to be heard in this old woman who more often prefers her solitary and silent hearth. She has all my experience — as mother, musician, geologist and logician; book-seller, business-woman, and home-maker; baker, gardener, and chief bottle-washer; historian, anthropologist, philosopher, and over it all, writer. But she has not lived, is not encumbered with all the mess and emotion, and therefore she has a wonderfully fresh perspective on my life. I rather like knowing her. I do think you will as well.
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Ice Breaking and Orchard Thoughts
Keep records. Learn the new patterns — if there are any. Because the challenge we will be facing for decades to come is a seeming lack of pattern, and we humans don’t do well in random time.
February 24, 2026
Joyful hedonism
But if form is all there is, there is never justification for ever harming another body. And that is the light that will lead us out of this rotten, brain-damaged culture…Into a life of joyful hedonism…
February 18, 2026
What’s with this cold?
These temperatures used to be normal. This winter is similar to an average winter in the 1980s, but the reason for this once-average cold is entirely new — and, paradoxically, it is completely because of global warming,
February 12, 2026
Groundhog Day
I can only imagine how wonderfully restorative it would be if I could always get home before dark… and be asleep through all the long hours of darkness. Then, by Imbolg, I would truly be ready for spring!
February 5, 2026
The center cannot hold…
And while the center burns itself to ash, life goes on. Pretty much as it always has. With bad and good, joy and grief, pain and beauty and such wonder. Give attention to that, to the reality of your life, because that’s the best medicine for bewilderment. And it’s also… just life…
January 16, 2026
Winter Solstice 2025
I have seen many people, usually those under the influence of a belief in modern exceptionalism, claim that our ancestors were frightened of this time of darkness, that sacrifices were offered to sky gods so that the sun would rise again after the longest night of the year. To that I say: Nonsense!
December 22, 2025
