Another Ancient Eqyptian Queen Discovered, Another "History" as "Wife" Blown Up

Hola darlings!

Here is an article forwarded from Michelle, daughter of Georgia, my cohort here at Goddesschess, about the unmasking of yet another historical myth about the role a female played in the ancient Egyptian hierarchy of rulers.  When Mr. Don was alive he fondly referred to us as "his" three Goddesses :)

Georgia, Michelle and Yours Truly, New York en route to Statue of Liberty, 2009.
Chess Goddesses :)

Yet another one down (historic myth accepted as fact) and another one down, another one bites the dust...

Early Egyptian Queen Revealed in 5,000 Year Old Hieroglyphs
from Yahoo, as reported at Live Science by Owen Jarus

January 21, 2016:

About 60 drawings and hieroglyphic inscriptions, dating back around 5,000 years, have been discovered at a site called Wadi Ameyra in Egypt’s Sinai Desert. Carved in stone, they were created by mining expeditions sent out by early Egyptian pharaohs, archaeologists say.

They reveal new information on the early pharaohs. For instance, one inscription the researchers found tells of a queen named Neith-Hotep who ruled Egypt 5,000 years ago as regent to a young pharaoh named Djer.

Archaeologists estimate that the earliest carvings at Wadi Ameyra date back around 5,200 years, while the most recent date to the reign of a pharaoh named Nebre, who ruled about 4,800 years ago.

The "inscriptions are probably a way to proclaim that the Egyptian state owned the area," team leader Pierre Tallet, a professor at Université Paris-Sorbonne, told Live Science.

He explained that south of Wadi Ameyra, the ancient expeditions would have mined turquoise and copper. Sometime after Nebre's rule, the route of the expeditions changed, bypassing Wadi Ameyra, he said.

Early female ruler

The inscriptions carved by a mining expedition show that queen Neith-Hotep stepped up as ruler about 5,000 years ago, millennia before Hatshepsut or Cleopatra VII ruled the country.

While Egyptologists knew that Neith-Hotep existed, they believed she was married to a pharaoh named Narmer. "The inscriptions demonstrate that she [Neith-Hotep] was not [emphasis added] the wife of Narmer, but a regent queen at the beginning of the reign of Djer," Tallet said.

 'The White Walls'

An inscription found at Wadi Ameyra shows that Memphis, an ancient capital of Egypt that was also called "the White Walls," is older than originally believed.

Ancient Greek and Roman writers claimed that Memphis was constructed by a mythical king named Menes, whom Egyptologists often consider to be a real-life pharaoh named Narmer, Tallet explained.

The new inscription shows that Memphis actually existed before Narmer was even born.

"We have in Wadi Ameyra an inscription giving for the first time the name of this city, the White Walls,and it is associated to the name of Iry-Hor, a king who ruled Egypt two generations before Narmer," Tallet said. The inscription shows that the ancient capital was around during the time of Iry-Hor and could have been built before even he was pharaoh. [Could "The White Walls" be a reference to the prehistoric White Goddess, who later cropped up in culture after culture, in many different forms?]

Board Game Pieces Found in Ancient Roman Settlement in Germany

By ​LAURA GEGGEL LIVESCIENCE.COM September 21, 2015, 10:56 AM

Board game pieces found in ancient Roman settlement

The remnants of ancient water wells, pearls and hairpins are proof that a group of villagers set up a settlement on top of a military fort in ancient Roman times.

About 1,900 years ago, a group of Roman soldiers lived in a fort in what is now Gernsheim, a German town located on the Rhine River about 31 miles (50 kilometers) south of Frankfurt. Shortly after the soldiers left the fort in about A.D. 120, another group of people moved in and built a village literally on top of the settlement, researchers found.

Archaeologists have known about the site itself since the 1800s, but the new finding sheds light on its inhabitants and what they did for fun. (An ancient die and game piece were among the discoveries.) 

Image credit: Thomas Maurer

[See Photos of the Dice and Artifacts Found in the Roman Village]

Chess, Gambling, and Cards: Tudor Indoor Pasttimes

Maybe the Saudi Mufti read this article before he issued his condemnation of chess as "gambling" (typical silly male religious nonsense -- see post below).

From BBC History Magazine online:

Chess, gambling and cards: Tudor games and indoor pastimes

Thursday 14th January 2016
Submitted by: Emma Mason

Hundreds of years before the invention of radio or television, how did the Tudors occupy themselves of an evening, or during long, winter nights? Melita Thomas, the editor of Tudor Times, investigates…

Wandering around a Tudor house or garden on a sunny day is a delightful experience. We can imagine the lady of the house in her velvets and French hood picking flowers and herbs, or the maid turning those herbs into cooking ingredients or medicine. Visiting during the day, we seldom think of what the evenings must have been like – long hours, with no entertainment other than what the household could provide. How did they while away the evenings? The answer is board games – some of which we still play to similar rules today, and some that have been adapted over time. 

Chess

The most enduring game of all is chess, which has been played in western Europe since the early Middle Ages – witness the beautiful Lewis Chessmen (chess pieces of walrus ivory, found on Lewis in 1831, but likely made in Norway in around AD 1150–1200). The rules of chess, however, underwent a significant change in the mid-to-late 15th century when the queen, originally a weak piece, became the most dominant figure on the board. 

From The Book of Chess and Games commissioned by
King Alphonso X of Castile, c. 1283.  Two ladies playing.
Hand/finger positions indicate clues to moves.  Source.

The romantic among us might date the change to the emergence of powerful  female rulers, such as Isabella I of Castile or Anne of Beaujeu, regent of France from 1483-91.

Chess-playing was an essential social skill for the upper classes in the Tudor period. The inventory of goods belonging to Catherine of Aragon, taken after she had been banished from court in 1531, revealed two ivory chess-boards with pieces; a set of red and ivory chess men; and a further box of ivory chessmen. These were all commandeered by Henry VIII.

Katherine Parr, Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I are also known to have played chess. The game was so much a part of court life that Henry VIII’s accounts show a payment made to a cook for creating two chessboards and men of sugar, decorated with gold, for a banquet. 

Again? Islam Prohibits Playing Chess

Let's see, how many times, over the course of Herstory have males in their long flowy feminine robes from various "religions" attempted to outlaw/ban chess as somehow "sinful?"  Need you any further proof that chess is, indeed, The Game of the Goddess?  But try as they might, the religious patriarchs have not succeeded in abolishing Her, and they never will.

Checkmate: Saudi grand mufti makes move against chess

By Don Melvin, CNN

January 22, 2016

(CNN)   So does everyone need to roll up their rooks and box up their bishops?  Maybe not, but some people in Saudi Arabia might be wondering.

Saudi's grand mufti, the kingdom's top cleric, was appearing on a religious TV channel, taking questions about faith and sin and that sort of thing.  And he got one about chess.

Not one to hesitate, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin-Abdullah al-Sheikh said chess and similar games are "forbidden" in Islam because they're a form of gambling.  He supported his statement with a verse from the Quran: "Indeed wine, gambling, idols and the divining arrows are abominations of Satan's doing, so avoid them, so that you may be felicitous." [But dressing pre-puberty boys like girls and making them dance for adult males and then sexually assaulting them with anal intercourse is just fine.]

The grand mufti called chess "a waste of time, money and a reason for the enmity between players."

The clip was posted on YouTube last month. It is unclear when it aired on TV; CNN was trying to reach the channel, Saudi station Al-Majd, for comment.

A member of the Saudi Chess Association said the group was surprised by the video but had received no formal notification, and the group is hoping for clarification.  The chess association began a two-day championship in Mecca on Friday. Another two-day tournament, the Riyadh Chess Championship, is scheduled for early June.

Twitter users reacted to the comments with humor and sarcasm. [Comments omitted.]

CNN's Hamdi Alkhshali and Melissa Gray contributed to this report.

Was Eve Created From Adam's Penis? Or - The Origin Of Knight Moves

How could I possibly resist posting this article - well, I couldn't, and here it is.  Perhaps this hypothesis holds the key as to why ALL human embryos start out as females and then some morph into males in a later phase of development.

From Discovery online:

Eve Was Created From Adam's Penis: Bible Scholar

DEC 30, 2015 03:59 PM ET // BY ROSSELLA LORENZI

Eve was not made from one of Adam’s ribs, but was instead created using a bone in his penis, a Biblical scholar has claimed, causing much stir.

The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 says God made Adam from of the dust of the ground, then created Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs.

Ziony Zevit, distinguished professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages at the American Jewish University in California, argues that the Biblical story has been wrongly interpreted since a mistranslation confused rib with baculum, or penis bone.

First presented in the 2013 book “What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?” Zevit’s shocking claim has recently resurfaced in a paper published in Biblical Archaeology Review [Bravo to Hershel Shanks], causing heated controversy among outraged Christian readers.

According to Zevit, the bone of contention — literally — centers around the Hebrew word “tsela,” used in the Old Testament to indicate the bone taken from Adam to create Eve.

“This Hebrew word occurs some 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, where it refers to the side of a building or of an altar or ark, a side-chamber, or a branch of a mountain. In each of these instances, it refers to something off-center, lateral to a main structure,” Zevit wrote.

Tsela was first translated as rib in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible dating to the mid-third century B.C.

It would have then lost its original meaning, which according to Zevit relates to “limbs lateral to the vertical axis of an erect human body: hands, feet, or, in the case of males, the penis.”

“Of these appendages, the only one lacking a bone is the penis,” Zevit wrote.

This would explain why the human penis has no “os baculum,” or bone, unlike most mammals, including primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees.

It would also clear up why men don’t have an uneven number of ribs compared to women.

In this view, the part in Genesis 2:21, in which God closes the flesh beneath the “tsela,” should be interpreted as to God closing up the flesh that exists on the underside of the penis.

Not surprisingly, Zevit’s phallic interpretation of the Biblical story has come under fire, with several readers of Biblical Archaeology threatening to cancel their subscription.

Israel’s daily Haaretz also entered the debate, arguing that ancient linguistics provide no support for the theory.

“Ziony Zevit’s theory is even more unlikely than the original story,” journalist Elon Gilad wrote.

He remarked that ribs generated life in stories predating the Hebrew bible, such as the Sumerian myth Enki and Nihursag.

He noted that tsela is still used in post-biblical Hebrew to mean rib, and has cognates meaning rib in other Semitic languages.

“That powerfully indicates that tzela meant rib thousands and thousands of years before proto-Semitic split up into the different Semitic language,” Gilad concluded.

**********************************************************************

I am fascinated with the root meanings of words.  Could it be possible that tsela, a word of Semitic origin, might be demonstrated by the ancient Egyptian god Min (ancient Egyptian is closely related to Semitic languages), a pre-dynastic god of male fertility and power and also, perhaps, the original inspiration for "knight moves" (pun intended) - see image below - from the Tour Egypt article referenced below (no attribution of the image was given in the article):

Check out this information from touregypt dot com, under "Min":

Min was always a god of fertility and sexuality. He was shown as a human male with an erect penis. In Egyptian times, he was usually an ithyphallic bearded mummiform man, standing with both legs together, an arm raised holding his symbol or a flail and wearing the same low crown with twin plumes as Amen. (The way he holds his flail might be symbolic of sexual intercourse - the flail forms the V while his upraised forearm seems to thrust inside the V.) The Egyptian paintings and reliefs on tomb walls and temples didn't show Min's other arm, but the statues of the god show him with his hand encircling the base of his penis. During New Kingdom times he was sometimes shown as a white bull, an animal sacred to the fertility god.

Notice the "L" shape made by Min's bent arm upthrust (a 90 degree angle) into the "V" formed by the flail he is holding (actually, sort of balancing on his fingertips).  Notice also the "L" formed by Min's erect penis 90 degrees angled outward from his legs.

Perhaps the Creator was "killing two birds with one stone," as the old saying goes: demonstrating sexual intercourse (Min's upright arm thrusting into the inverted "V" for vagina formed by the flail), and in case you missed that allusion it is difficult to miss Min's "stiff as a bone" erect penis, the 90 degree angle that incorporates the knight's move -- and hey - could those possibly be boardgame pieces to the right of Min at approximately thigh level (located underneath Min's erect penis, reminding us, perhaps, of the origins of the slang term "boner").  

Just as a reminder, here is a graph of potential moves a knight could possibly make on the chessboard - covering eight potential target squares (don't they make a lovely rosette in honor of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna):

From Reddit.com

Now darlings, lest you think I am completely insane, please read this very interesting article on why there are so many different words for "penis" in Hebrew, and then you tell me why tsela should NOT be included with, for instance, the Hebrew word zayin, as just another euphenism for penis:  Why Hebrew Has So Many Words for Penis, July 15, 2015, Haaretz.  Also informative was Strong's Concordance on the word tsela.

Ancient "Go" Board Excavated as Part of Marquis of Haihun's Tomb

I'll just get right to it!  Here's the pic of the game board -- I'm so glad they actually photographed it and included that photo in the article released to the general public about some of the magnificent items uncovered in the excavation of this tomb:

Chessboard found at the excavation site of royal tombs of Marquis of Haihun State, inNanchang, capital of East China's Jiangxi province. [Photo/jxnews.com]

A chessboard was also found in the "Haihunhou" tomb, according to Jiangnan City Daily. 
The chessboard is not complete, but was apparently used for playing games. According to
experts, it resembles the modern game "go", but has yet to be fully identified. If the 
chessboard was for "go", it would be the earliest "go" chessboard unearthed in China.

Link to full article at The Daily Mail (December 27, 2015), with link to article and photographs at China Daily article that was updated on November 19, 2015.

While the article refers to this as a "chessboard" it is far too large to have anything to do with Xiangqi, which was played on a 9 by 9 square board. [While the chessboard of the West is 8 by 8 squares, Xiangqi pieces were placed on the intersections of the squares and thus the board playing surface was reduced to the equivalent of an 8 by 8 board.]  My guess if that this is probably a board on which "Go" was played, but appears to be less than one-half of the board, assuming it was a square board.  It is unclear from the description quoted above whether the rest of the board is missing or if it is still underneath what appears to be layers of mineral deposits that have yet to be chipped away???

The tomb is that of the Marquis of Haihun, who briefly sat as Emperor of the Western Han Dynasty in China (206 BCE - 24 CE) before being deposed.  This is what the article said about him:

It is thought the main tomb at the site in Jiangxi, an eastern Chinese province where archaeologists were digging at Christmas, belongs to Liu He, who was the grandson of Emperor Wu.

Liu was given the title Haihunhou, or Marquis of Haihun after he was dethroned after 27 days as emperor.  It is believed he was deposed because he lacked both talent and morals.

Evidently he wasn't killed or forced to commit suicide immediately -- which I find extremely unusual.  Why wasn't he killed?  That was the usual modus operandi for the Chinese (of course, not only for them, when disposing of some inconvenient heir to a throne) back in the day.  In any event, he was some years after his "impeachment" in 74 BCE given the title of Marquis of Haihun and given a marvelous royal burial when he died, in 59 BCE.

I find reading about Chinese successions to emperor, etc. confusing at best, but Wikipedia tries to put it into plain English here.

2015 Montreal Open Chess Championship - Final Results for the Chess Femmes

Hola!

I am very late publishing the final report on the number of female players who registered for the 2015 Montreal Championnat and the female prize winners.

This event took place in September, 2015.  It was a tournament that Mr. Don liked very much, particularly the playing venue, and he got to know some of the players and had a great deal of respect for them.

This year Goddesschess provided close to $2,000 cash sponsorship for top level female players to cover travel and lodging costs plus a stipend, as well as providing $650 in class prizes for female players.   In addition, the entry fees of ALL female players were refunded to them at the conclusion of the Championnat.

Of the 200 registered players, 16 were chess femmes -- 8%. Not too bad but publicity was lacking and I expected a higher percentage of female players.  The turn-out of chess femmes was disappointing.

I was not provided with the ELOs of the female players, and since this post has been delayed for several months because I intended to - but never did find the time to - check for ELOs, I decided to just publish it.  Please forgive the wonky typefaces -- I copied everything below from an email and our fonts were incompatible.  I did the best I could to clean things up, but I'm no techy!

I was not provided with final standings of how the ladies did overall in the competition.  Since Goddesschess provided cash sponsorship for the event I would have expected a more complete report from the hosts, rather than having to dig around in Canadian records for such information myself.  As you can see, I declined to waste my valuable time doing that.  Considering the amount of money that Goddesschess committed to this event, based upon previous cooperation and excellent communications and cooperation, which was totally lacking this time, I (for one) am not very happy.

So, below follows the information the hosts of the Championnat provided me with after the end of the tournament:

List of Female Registrants:

KHOUDGARIAN  Natalia    MF              LI  Yilin                                               OUELLET  Maïli-Jade    CMF                XU  Ruoying CUI  Cynthia                                                  DEMCHENKO  Svitlana                       KANESHALINGAM   Mathanhe            PRETELL DIAZ  Carol                         TSYPIN  AllisonUTEPOVA  AlikaKULESHOVA  Julia    WCMSTOYANOVA  StelaWANG  IsabelleMICHEL  AndiePOULIN  RoxaneXU  Yihan


Section Prizes:

Khoudgarian Natalia      A 200 $Ouellet Maili-Jade       A 200 $Demchenko Svitlana       B 125 $Kuleshova Iulia          C  75 $Michel Andie             D  50 $                 Total     650 $

Board Games Studies Journals Online

Hola, darlings!

It has been awhile since I looked up what was going on with Board Games Studies, those dudes (and a few femmes) primarily out of the Netherlands, who do such excellent work in publishing the latest in articles on research into ancient (and not quite so ancient) board games.

So I am pleased to report that today when I checked in again, I found a brand new website and Volumes 8 (2014) and 9 (2015) of Board Games Studies are now available online for FREE!  BOARD GAMES STUDIES JOURNAL ONLINE.

According to DIGRA (Digital Games Research Association), where I found the news, plans are afoot to also publish online versions of Volumes 1 through 7, running from 1998 through 2003.  Sadly, no compilations were made between 2004 and 2013, but that is not to say that excellent articles may not be out there online -- you just will have to hunt them down.

I haven't read this one - yet - but I sure will, because how could I possibly resist an article about the Birth of the Chess Queen, by Arie van der Stoep?

That title reminded me of Marilyn Yalom's EXCELLENT history of the development of the queen in chess, Birth of the Chess Queen: A History.  It is on my list of re-reads to do.  Like an excellent movie whenever you watch it, you pick up something new every time you read a favorite book -- and Yalom's is one of my favorite chess histories.

You can learn more about Yalom here, and the many books she has written over the years.

Has the Key to Translating the Phaistos Disk Been Discovered?

Story at Greek Reporter:
Archaeologist Claims to Have Unlocked Phaistos Disk Mystery

By Philip Chrysopoulos -

 

Dec 16, 2015

The goddess of love, the Minoan Astarte, is the key figure that unlocks the mystery of the Phaistos Disk, according to linguist, archaeologist and coordinator of the program Erasmus of Crete Technological Institute; Gareth Owens.

Image from Crystalinks.com.

Speaking to the ANA – MPA news agency, Owens said that after new data found in his research, his theory has changed slightly compared to the position he had expressed about a year ago. The focus is no longer the “pregnant mother”, as originally estimated, but a “pregnant goddess” that takes shape in the face of Astarte, the goddess of love.

“There is no doubt that we are talking about a religious text. This is clear from a comparison made with other religious words from other inscriptions from the holy mountains of Crete. We have words that are exactly the same,” Owens said and added, “I suspect that the Phaistos Disc is a hymn before Astarte, the goddess of love. Words such as those mentioned on the disk have been found on Minoan offerings and as with today’s offerings, people pray when they are troubled, because of health problems or personal reasons. Man doesn’t change, after all.”

The archaeologist said he believes, moreover, that one side of the Phaistos Disk is dedicated to the pregnant mother goddess and the other to Minoan goddess Astarte. [Emphasis added.]

On the importance of the figure, Owens noted that Minoan Astarte was the goddess of love, war and the mountains and her origin lies in the east. “From ancient Mesopotamia, located in today’s Turkey, Astarte went to Cyprus and became Venus,” he said. [Um, Mesopotomia was never located in Turkey, today's Turkey or yesterday's Turkey.  It is to the south of modern Turkey's southern-most border.]

***************************************************************

I found article interesting because of the goddess angle, of course, but even more fascinating was some information in the comments written by a Peter Aleff about the Phaistos Disk being a board game.  I clicked on a link and voila, I was taken to an advertisement page for a book, Solomon's Sky: The Religious Board Game on the Phaistos Disk, explaining the Phaistos Disk as related to ancient astronomical alignments and detailing the board game.

Well, after reading a few paragraphs I'll be honest - my eyes started crossing.  I'll leave the research and inquiry as to the origins of board games and continuing the argument about whether the Phaistos Disk is or is not a board game to others!  But it's out there if you are interested in reading Aleff's articles available online and purchasing his book.

Virgin Mary Sighting

It wouldn't be Christmas without a story about the Virgin Mary.

Has she appeared, miraculously first noticed on December 12th, the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe - or is it just an optical illusion - at a church in Marietta, Georgia USA? Check it out and see what you think.

CBS NEWS December 24, 2015, 1:46 PM

Virgin Mary image seen on Ga. church window

MARIETTA, Ga. -- What some are chalking up as simply a "faulty coating" has others believing that a divine phenomenon has touched the window of one local church, reports CBS Atlanta.

That's because an image that bears a striking resemblance to the Virgin Mary seems to have appeared on a portion of glass at the Transfiguration Catholic Church, bringing throngs of onlookers eager to see what some are calling a Christmas miracle.

Father Fernando Molina-Restrepo posted a photograph of the window on Facebook this week and explained that image appeared on December 12, which is also the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He wrote that many are offering their own interpretations of how the foggy figure formed, perhaps the pane's coating reacting to a mixture of the outside elements, though there are plenty of spectators who are happy to point to their faith as the true cause.

Parishioner Victor Jose Alvarado was at the church when the image appeared on the window inside Bishop Hall. He wrote on Facebook: "We started praying and singing songs to the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, and immediately started feeling peace and the smell of roses!!! We just finished having lunch when someone noticed a very bright sun ray and in front of our eyes her image starting to appear in the window."

Source - article.

Wrote the pastor: "We may never agree on why or how this image appeared on the window. The true gift to us will be in how we are inspired to be MORE: more forgiving, more accepting, more loving to those with whom we share our lives."

© 2015 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Hola on Christmas Day from Milwaukee

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas/Yule/Winter Solstice or whatever rings your bells, darlings!

I was up just before dawn and first thing I did was plug in the tree.  In the darkness it lights up the entire front and dining rooms!  Then I got the food ready to feed my tribe of fat squirrels and birds and opened up the patio door.  In the sky to the east/southeast was a large bright shining star (I learned later it is probably Jupiter or possibly a comet that is passing by Earth right now).  It was so beautiful I ran for my camera.

I didn't get any good photos - this one is the best and that is not saying much:

You can see dawn on the horizon and the bright star is up near the top of the tree branches just to center right.

And then I ran around to the front of the house to snap a quick picture of my Christmas tree from the outside, the sun was coming up quickly by this point and the skies were clear and calm (and positively balmy for Wisconsin this time of year):

No snow, grass is still green and unfrozen and in sunny spots even still growing!  The weather is supposed to be much the same tomorrow so I may pull out the mower and do a final clean-up of the front yard, which is crazy considering it will be December 26th and I can still do yard work.  Oh goody, the sun is starting to peek out again (it clouded over about an hour after sunrise, so I was so happy to be up to see the sun first thing this morning).

Here's a picture of five of my very fat (and large) squirrels eating on my back patio. The tribe is probably a couple of dozen,  The squirrel who is closest to the patio steps is partially blind and old -- he can't crack open the hazelnuts anymore without difficulty so he gets unshelled peanuts.  Okay, so I spoil my wild "pets."  I was lucky to be able to get a shot of this many together at one time:

2016 is just around the corner.  What will it bring?  I've been retired 11 months now and am getting my energy and some of my ambition back.  We'll see...

Ho Ho Ho! Happy Holidays, Darlings!

This is going to be a rambling sort of post today, so if you've a mind to, get a glass of wine or cuppa of whatever turns you on and settle in for a read and pictures!

First up, the 2015 Christmas tree, TA DA!

2015 Christmas tree.

If you're at all familiar with me, you know that I'm a "more is more" type of gal, so this tree is an absolutely, positively restrained exercise in Christmas Tree Austerity, darlings.  Well, other than the white with sparkles feather boas I've used as garland.  But last year's tree was much gaudier, I swear!  This year, I only used about 20% of the usual ornaments and decorations I put on my tree.  It was put together in record time, and I only purchased twelve new ornaments this year -- all birds, in keeping with my "feather and friends," and I splurged on some faux pearl garland I've been wanting to add for years -- can you see them -- I'm in love!  Oh yeah, almost forgot - I also bought crystal branches to use as my tree topper this year, too.  Another splurge :)

You can see just how restrained (dignified and classy?  Nah) I was this year in comparison to last year's tree:

2014 Christmas tree.

You can see that 2014's version had a LOT more stuff on it -- hardly a bare green spot to be seen.  I'll probably go back to this kind of look next year, LOL.

This is my fourth Christmas without Mr. Don.  I miss him fiercely and it doesn't get any easier with the passage of time, but I'm still here and he's not, so I soldier on as best I can. It's just not as much fun as it used to be, that's the truth.

Mr. Don's trinkets go on the tree every year - the Nefertiti pin (which represents yours truly, a gift from Don -- he found it on a sidewalk outside his walk-up flat in Montreal, LOL) and his McLean clan kilt pin, which I place around the silver heart with the pretty organza ribbon.  Here is the 2015 arrangement:

I'm looking up at him.  I figured it's high time, since if there is a Heaven (which I don't believe in, at least, not the concept that is shoved down our throats by established religions), Don is probably there busy talking the ears off everyone around.  When he was alive, I always put my Nefertiti counterpart higher up so that she was looking down at him, like Juliet in her balcony :)

This year, as part of a much needed living room revamp, I cleaned out all of the cluttered knick-knacks and collectibles from my curio cabinet collected over the past 30 plus years or so (so proud of myself for sucking it up and finally doing that) and now it houses my small collection of chess sets/pieces:

A not very clear "before" picture, taken in October 2014, a few months
after I moved here to this smaller retirement home.

"After" photo, taken December 24, 2015, but the new
arrangement was done in early July.

The sets on the top two shelves were gifts:  a Thistle and Rose set of pieces (but no pawns) from a former co-worker who had collected them when travelling on a British airline back in the 1970's, and a replica of the Lewis chess pieces were a departing present from a colleague of mine when I left Officeworld in 2002.  The third set is a made in Mexico alabaster board and turned pieces that I played many a game on with one of my grand-nephews.  The bottom two shelves hold a set of pieces that I bought unfinished from Amazon and painted black and white (with the intention of someday pairing the pawns with my black and white Rose and Thistle set), and the bottom set is wood, made in Poland, that I purchased many years ago from Napoleon's that was an east side establishment for many years (unfortunately went out of business) -- it was a chess lover's delight.

My favorite set is the Thistle and Rose -- my close-ups never turn out so here is a nice clear pic I found on the internet:

From Bonhams auction catalog 2011.

I've written about the Thistle and Rose pieces that were gifted to me a couple of times here before; if you're interested in the details do a search to find the posts (too lazy to put them here for you).

I love how the sets are show-cased in the curio cabinet; none of them is particularly valuable, but they are all priceless to me :)

Caught myself in the mirror reflection of the curio -- hello, Jan - twins, eek!

This has been an extremely mild December, one of the warmest I remember in a long time -- here it is, Christmas Eve, and while we did NOT get the thunderstorms that were forecast for after midnight last night (yesterday hit a high of 56 degrees F), today at present it is 45 degrees F after a "cold front" came through and while it was sunny this morning (I walked last-minute errands, including a visit to the liquor store to stock up on wine -- one cannot have Christmas without a goodly supply of wine), right now it has clouded over, but the winds have died down (we had gusts of over 50 mph last night into the morning hours).

But despite the mildness of temperatures for this time of year in southeastern Wisconsin, I've turned into a positive freezy-cat since the last of my hot flashes disappeared earlier this year (although I still get night sweats) after menopause finally decided to wrap itself up (it started in 1998, for Holy Hathor's sake!)  I didn't notice it during the summer, but I sure do now.

Since retiring and not giving a fig how I dress when I'm home except to be comfortable, I've taken to wearing long sleeve turtlenecks underneath sweatshirts or sweaters underneath a thick cableknit cardigan, and I'm STILL cold!  So, today was delivered an "original Snuggie as seen on TV!"



Well, it isn't exactly what I was expecting.  I eagerly took it out of the box and it looks like it would fit a person 7 feet tall with arms down to his/her knees.  Hmmm...  No zipper either -- how the heck am I supposed to keep it closed?  I don't know why I ever thought the thing would have a zipper.  Not even a tie belt though, geez.  And while the picture on the box shows a lady wearing a Snuggie that appears to have cuffs, mine has no cuffs and the ends of the arms look like something Dumbledore would wear - at least 18 inches wide.  All that is missing is a pointy hat and I'd look like a midget version of him without the wand and long grey hair and beard.  Of course, Dumbledore would never be so gauche as to appear in a grey and black leopard print fleece.

A few days I saw an older story at Huffington Post, about a little girl who feeds crows and how the crows took to bringing her "gifts."  That reminded me of my own precious small collection of crow offerings from over the years:

Jan's crow offerings.  I also had a bone, but it was stolen right off my patio table at my former home,
probably by a squirrel on the same day I found it and the bracelet in my back yard near
water dishes I put out over a long hot dry summer in 2012.  

The beer bottle caps appeared this summer from my crop of new neighborhood crows -- they appear to be either poorer than my former neighborhood's crows or else they are just cheapskates, ha.  Although I should give them credit -- there were a lot of beer bottle caps all discovered on one day while I was out cutting the grass.  I kept three rather than fill up my crystal trinket box with them, LOL.  These new neighborhood crows don't appreciate that I have champagne taste, but maybe they figured since I dress like an old babba, beer bottle caps are good enough for moi.

All in all, my collection, while impressive in terms of rather large objects (the blingy bracelet for instance), is nothing compared to what the crows have brought to the little girl over the past four years or so:

Little Gabi's crow offerings.  Photo from story at Huffington Post.

Afterwards, Gabi's family was sued by neighbors pissing and moaning about all the birds she was feeding pooping and leaving peanut shells around their million dollar homes.  Talk about frigging Scrooges!

Which reminds me, my favorite rendering of that Charles Dickens story ("A Christmas Carol") is on Sling TV tonight at midnight -- it is the 1970s version starring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge.  I also have a video version starring Patrick Stuart (Captain Pickard) that was also extremely well done -- I'll pop that in for a viewing after it gets dark.

Speaking of which - darlings!  I totally MISSED the Winter Solstice, Holy Hathor!  What is this world coming to when I miss something like that?  I noticed just today it is getting lighter out earlier and the days are lasting longer, YIPPEE!  Then it hit me - SOLSTICE!  Since I keep my Christmas decorations up until the end of January so my house is filled with festive lights every night during the worst part of winter here, Winter Solstice is VERY important in my book -- and I missed it.  Perhaps I will ask my doctor to do a brain scan when I see her in the spring for my semi-annual visit, maybe I am in early stages of dementia or the dreaded Alzheimers.

I sure won't miss the Christmas Full Moon, though.  The last one was in 1977 -- I would like to say I remember it but I don't, and back then I would not have appreciated its significance anyway.  I was too busy working full time and going to college at night and dating dating dating, more boyfriends that I could count.

But that was then, and this is now, and I'm more a babba than a babe, alas.  Last evening, while we had a temporary clearing before the really strong winds hit later last night after a day of fog and pouring rains in dead stillness, I saw that gorgeous full moon as it rose in the east over Lake Michigan.  The skies are clouded over now, I may not see it tonight, but I will know it is there.

To those of you who celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas.  To those of you who don't celebrate Christmas but have other festivities around this Solstice time of year, happy Yuletide celebrations.  To everyone near this end of the year, may 2016 bring us all peace, love, happiness and prosperity.  May the Great Goddess make it so.  The sky is pink and purple in the west, time to sign off and celebrate my peaceful, quiet Christmas Eve.

Smooches, darlings!