Here’s all the best for your end-of-the-year celebrations, whichever shape they may take. Stay safe.
We’re vacationing for the rest of the year, very much enjoying not being bored at home. 🙂
Until 2026, Happy Merry!
Image: screencap from World of Warcraft
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Some modern holidays, including Halloween and Dia de los Muertos, are rooted in the idea that on certain special occasions the spirits of the dead can return and walk among the living. The living can join the celebrations by disguising themselves to mingle with the spirits.
The ancient Romans did not celebrate a holiday quite like our modern ones, but the idea that the dead could still be present in the living world, and that living people can use masks and costumes to blur the line between living and dead, is one that they would have recognized. Here is a detail of Roman funeral customs reported by the Greek historian Polybius:
After burying the body with the customary rites, they place an image of the deceased in the most prominent part of the house with a wooden shrine around it. This image is a mask of the deceased’s face, shaped and painted to be an extraordinary likeness of the dead person. They display these masks with great reverence on public occasions, and whenever some prominent member of the household dies, they are worn by participants in the funeral procession, whoever seems to best match the original’s appearance in shape and size. They also don appropriate clothing: if the ancestor was a consul or praetor, a toga with purple edges; if a censor, a wholly purple toga; if he had celebrated a triumph, a toga worked through with gold.
Polybius, History of Rome 6.53
(My own translation)
Our modern traditions are different (these Roman worthies weren’t going trick-or-treating), but there is something ancient about the feeling that, on certain special occasions, the line between living and dead may not be quite as clear as we think.
History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.
2024 was again a tough one, for me at least. I wasn’t the only one in my extended family dealing with unforeseen health issues. The situation is, fortunately, improving slowly but surely. And, at the very least, my circumstances allowed me to read a lot. 🙂
We’re vacationing for the rest of the year. Until 2025, Happy Merry and a Happy New Year! We hope your end-of-the-year celebrations bring you joy, whichever shape it may take. Stay safe.
Image by Eppu Jensen
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Midsummer will be upon us at the end of this week (or midwinter, depending on your hemisphere). In Finland, this is one of the most important holidays of the year, and we’ll be taking time out to relax and enjoy the long, light days. Whatever your midsummer plans may be, we wish you all a very happy one, whether you’re out reconnecting with nature, staying home to read a good book, or just going about your business as usual.
Image by Erik Jensen
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Happy end-of-the year holidays, everyone!
May 2024 both cheer up and challenge you—but in good ways only.
We two can still tell the effects of the pandemic in our daily lives, so we’re taking the rest of the year off, bloggingwise. Stay safe.
Image by Roger Ahlbrand via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
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While browsing for cosplay and Halloween inspiration, I’ve seen pictures of some inventive plant outfits, including dandelions and mushrooms. Sheila’s pine cone dress takes the cake, however.
The base layer is a black cotton dress, onto which she added about 300 individually painted felt scales. In addition to the paint job, Sheila stuffed about 200 scales with cotton balls for the skirt portion.
Tremendous, isn’t it? Apparently Sheila didn’t just decide to do a generic pine cone, she selected a pine variety local to her area. That meant sewing a citrine bead (to mimic the thorny bits) to the tip of each scale. That’s committing on an original design!
Visit Sheila’s blog for all the details.
Images by Sheila at Red Shoes. Red Wine.: In the park. On a dressform.
In Making Stuff we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.
Were you aware that tomorrow—April 18—is National Velociraptor Awareness Day? I wasn’t, but now I am. So, consider today National “National Velociraptor Awareness Day” Awareness Day.
In case you were worried that we would not be taking this important holiday with the seriousness it deserves, let us put those fears to rest.
And that’s all we have to say on the subject.
Cartoon by Erik Jensen
Some things are just too silly not to share!
It’s been a tough two years, and even now no-one can say with certainty that we’ve seen the end of the pandemic. I do hope it’s close, though.
Erik and I have settled into our new home. However, as we are still wrangling some fairly laborious paperwork, we’re scaling back our writing here at Co-Geeking after the new year. (We’ll see how many braincells are going to lose their will to live after dealing with international taxes, urgh…)
In the meanwhile: Merry Everything! We hope your end-of-the-year celebrations bring you joy, whichever shape it may take. See you again in 2022!
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Some awesome people’s skills include puzzling out how to have paper snowflakes come out gorgeous. You remember the ones we made in elementary school: fold a piece of paper in sixths or eights, go to town with scissors, unfold the paper, and Bob’s your uncle. Mine weren’t always that decorative, but the ones below sure are.
Sonia Harris designed five template patterns for free download (personal use only): Batman, Iron Man, Punisher, Storm from X-Men, and Wonder Woman.
Laughing Squid shared designs by Abby Bartels from Fun.com. (Note: My browser gives me a security warning about Fun.com, so proceed with discretion.) My favorites are Captain America and Iron Man; also included are Batman, Harley Quinn, Hulk, Joker, and Thor.
Thanks to these templates even I could do some scissor magic for this end-of-the-year season!
Images: mashup of Sonia Harris’s snowflakes from her photos by Eppu Jensen. Captain America and Iron Man by Abby Bartels via Laughing Squid.
In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.
With this awesome geeky Perler bead wreath, I wish our U.S. readers as restful and relaxing a Thanksgiving as possible under the circumstances.
May the writers’ room have an exceedingly boring 2020 season ender in store for all of us. The world sure could use a respite from the coronavirus.
Stay safe!
Image and tutorial by Aki at Minted Strawberry
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