Posts Tagged ‘hard working’
New Year:The Wheel Goes Round Slowly by Samuel E. Warren Jr.
New Year, Slow Beginnings
New Year:
The Wheel
Goes Round
Slowly
Burn The Calendar !
There is an old Ozarks superstition and wives’ tale that says, “Every January 1, you throw away the old year’s calendar.” Usually there was some kind of logic or type of explanation that suggested a common sense approach to Life.
I don’t remember my mother or grandmother’s explanation of the logic. They both were simply efficient about getting the calendar off the wall and outside into the trash.
January 15, 2013, my old calendar was still on the wall. I needed a photograph for this article, so off the wall and into the yard goes the old calendar. The Year 2012 was not one of my favorite years. Good Riddance, 2012 !
One flick of my trusty Zippo lighter and I got to watch 2012 go out in a blaze of glory. Nikon D 200 Photo by Samuel E. Warren Jr.
by Samuel E. Warren Jr.
After New Year’s Day, the theory is that the world is ready to pack away the holidays and get back to work.
Have you ever noticed how slowly the world at large usually seems to move ahead in the new year ?
You can blame The Twelve Days of Christmas from December 25 to January 5 and celebrate Christmastide and The Twelfth Night on the evening of January 5, but, that does not explain the slow take off for a New Year.
The Old Christmas Day is January 6. The Feast Of The Three Kings, which is the first Sunday of the New Year, can work out to January 6, 7,8, or 9, and depends on if you use a Julian or Gregorian Calendar.
However, The Old Christmas Day and The Feast Of The Three Kings observances are not sufficient reason to explain why the world at large takes a slow stride into the early days of January.
Wherever you are in the world, when a New Year starts you can run the celebrations and the observances period about as long as you like and can afford.
If you can afford the time off in The Real World of earning a living, you can even postpone getting back into “The Work World” until you observe Candlemas on February 2.
Humans throughout history obviously have not been in a hurry to get back to work in the New Year. The world’s major religions accommodate the reluctance by a host of various religious holidays to help the average human to ease into January.
Why are people slow to jump feet first into the New Year ?
We humans jump up and down for the New Year’s Eve celebration and are anxious for the New Year. Yet, at the stroke of midnight, we seem to ease off and step back.
Why is it after January 1, humanity seems slow to move bravely and confidently into January and the New Year ?
In my life time, I have noticed people may have to go back to work after January 1, but their heart is not in it.
Anyone can sit at a desk, keep the lights on and run the heating or air conditioning, but, to “do work” that accomplishes something requires the initiative to be willing to undertake tasks.
I have noticed that it seems to take about the first two weeks of January before people “get down to business” and “get back in the game” of earning a living.
It seems there is a cautious need to ease into a New Year like a hot bathtub of water by putting one toe in first.
Like an old steam engine, we seem to have a need to build up a head of steam to finally get rushing down the tracks into the present.
Perhaps, all of humanity is “A Bunch Of Lazy Bums.”
No doubt, everyone will have a theory or come up with a theory.
The best theory that I have come up with about the caution of a New Year is : Capricorn.
Salute The Goat
I applaud the ancient Western astrologers. Sometimes the ancient astrologers were “dead on” when they selected an animal to represent a cross section of humanity. They definitely got it right when they chose The Goat to represent Capricorn and the people born under that sign.
“Goats Are God’s Weed Eaters”
Capricorn is one of the most reserved signs of the Zodiac.
I grew up around livestock on a farm. My mother, the hog farmer, had hair goats to eat away the brush, sprouts and cedar tree saplings.
“Goats Are God’s Weed Eaters.” If a goat can nibble away at a half inch or inch thick sapling, then, they will eat it down to a stump. They, like their appetizers, which means they start with the the lush green leaves of a bush, vine or sprout first.
Goats can be curious. A kid might run up to you in the field and a billy goat might slowly saunter toward you to check you out in the pasture.
Ozark farmers in the 1960s took pride in their goats. Goats are not pretty creatures. They have a Minus Sign pupil in their eyeballs, which gives their faces a distinctive character.
All goats, billy goats, the kids and the female goats all have “chin whiskers”, which most people call, beards.
Wool goats have wavy or ringlet strands of hair that hangs down aound their body. In the winter time, poor old wool goats seem weighed down in a mink coat that seems bulky and heavy to carry and wear.
Don’t “kid”, (pun intended – on the farm, a child of a goat is called a, “kid.”) yourself, an old wool billy goat in the heavy wool coat can move and “charge” at you quickly.
You violate an old billy goat’s “personal space” and if he thinks you are a threat, head down and horns “locked” in your direction and he will come at you with the speed of an Olympic sprinter and the strength of a small bulldozer.
Ozarks farmers always claimed, “Goats will kill brush.” Goats will nibble saplings and vines down to stumps and roots, but, in time, Mother Nature will bring the brush back.
Goats Versus Sheep
Goats will eat grass down to the roots. Ozarks farmers never liked sheep because sheep would eat grass and the roots, which meant you always had to reseed and re-sod the pasture.
Grass seed is expensive when you have to buy several acres worth plus fresh topsoil and fertilizer.
Ozarks farmers know livestock can be “skiddish”, which means they frighten easy. A loud noise will send chickens and turkeys to the four winds. Horses, cattle and goats usually don’t frighten easy.
Early Bible writers obviously weren’t farmers or had a low opinion of humanity, every sheep I ever saw was stupid.
Sheep scare easy and you always have to watch them to make sure they don’t do something stupid like wander off a cliff or out of the field into the highway.
Wolves, coyotes or packs of wild stray dogs get in sheep, they run and get “mowed down” by the hungry predators. Goats initially run, but, then, some stop, turn and fight the predators. Battered, beaten and bloodied, sometimes an old billy goat will win and the predator is dinner for the buzzards.
Goats Are The Weather Warriors
Goats are “sure footed.” Their hooves are designed to allow them to stand and walk in the most challenging terrain.
In wintertime in southwest Missouri, horses, cattle and sheep can’t always stand up in the cold, ice and snow.
Horses, cattle and sheep have to lay down out in the pasture because they can’t walk in the terrain and weather. Goats can.
One winter in my childhood, I witnessed goats unable to stand for a couple of days in the winter.
However, Mother Nature had dropped hail and ice mixed with the snow for a couple of days, so that one to two layers or sheets of ice coated the earth underneath the picturesque blanket of snow.
Roads were closed. Snow plows with their weigh and chains on their tires were carefully trying to break through the sheet or sheets of ice that covered the asphalt under the snow.
When a ton-and-a half or two ton dump truck fitted with a blade to act as a snow plow finds it difficult to move along a road without slipping into a ditch, you have to give a goat in the field credit for trying to stand up.
For a couple of days, that winter, even a goat could not stand up. When the animal tried to rise the hooves slipped and slid on the sheet or sheets of ice beneath the snow.
The poor goat ended up spread eagle on the ground with his or her legs spread out to the sides.
The Dead Of Winter Remains Alive
In The Missouri Ozarks
I believe that the severe winter was either The Winter of 1967 or The Winter of 1968. It was an “Arctic Winter”, Heavy snowfall all winter long. Extreme cold temperatures. And power lines were down two or three times, during that winter. It was a Frozen Hell. It was masochistic winter that tortured man and beasts in the southwest Missouri Ozarks.
That severe childhood winter of the 1960s is why when “The Experts” talk “Global Warming”, I laugh.
In situations where “The Experts” talk and try to convince me of “Global Warming” and “Climate Change”, I challenge them to go spend a winter in the southwest Missouri Ozarks.
If “The Experts” still have all their fingers and toes free of “frostbite” and have not “froze to death” out in the woods or the countryside come Spring, then, I might listen.
It does seem that there is a “Climate Change” because the southwest Missouri Ozarks, now, can receive a tornado in January. However, where winter weather is concerned the temperatures are still bone-chilling and you get heavy snowfall.
Granted from the 1980s through the early 1990s, the winters in the southwest Missouri Ozarks did not seem as severe as in the 1960s.
Check with The Stone County Old Timers and they will tell you Mother Nature has a strange sense of humor about winter weather in the southwest Missouri Ozarks. There can be two, three or a few years were winter seems almost mild.
Just when people start to smile positive “Climate Change”, Mother Nature pulls out all the stops and you wonder if any person or animal can survive the cold and snow until spring.
The bright side of that devastating 1960s Winter in the southwest Missouri Ozarks was, in the spring and summer there were less ticks, chiggers and snakes because Mother Nature had “killed them off” with the severe winter.
The Naked Goat
Sheep farmers always claimed sheep wool was better than goat wool, but, in the 1960s in the Ozarks wool goat farmers had a market for the wool. Wool goats like young boys are not fond of “haircuts.”
Of course, in the wool goat’s case the annual “haircut” is more like a “bikini waxing” in that you have to remove all the hair, i.e., wool against the goat’s will. Electric shears are faster.
Uncle Richard DeLong only had the manual scissor shears, which meant the bawling, moving, fidgeting wool goats would sometimes get their skin nicked by the shears.
The end result is poor wool goats with their “nicked shaving cuts” looked comical.
Think of a close friend in full body Long Johns pink underwear that the worn and frayed arms and legs seem at least one size too short. Then, image the trap door in the back of the clothing,
The poor goat’s sheared backside would wave the trimmed tail as the sheared animal with the fresh haircut quickly exited the pen to the freedom of the pasture.
If you think the mental picture of a freshly sheared wool goat is funny, then, visit a farm and help a farmer at wool shearing time.
Hair goats have the same “work ethic” and eating habits of wool goats, but their hair is more like a windbreaker in the sense that while it keeps them insulated in the winter they can easily move around.
In the spring, a hair goat naturally sheds the hair like dogs and cats do at the right times of year.
Hair and wool goats were also used to provide milk, cheese and as a source of meat.
I am a “picky eater” country boy. I never drank goat milk, ate goat cheese or goat meat. I have put a big nipple on a bottle and fed baby goats from time to time.
Goats Adaptable Livestock
Goats are resourceful livestock. They seem to adapt well to almost any terrain, although I would not recommend trying to raise a “pet goat” in a Madison Avenue New York City apartment.
Goats love plants. They do not discriminate between briar bushes, orchids and prize roses, so you definitely have to fence goats off away from gardens and flower beds.
Goats don’t require gas, electricity or catalytic converters; sorry OPEC.
Goats are environmentally friendly and they provide biodegradable nutrient rich fertilizer for your lawn or pasture.
Capricorn Humans
Samuel E. Warren, my father, Uncle Richard, Uncle Hobert and Uncle Joe DeLong were all born under the sun sign of Capricorn. My Rising Sign is Capricorn and I have worked with many Capricorn natives in my life time.
The goat is not as pretty a mascot as a ram, bull or eagle. Yet, the goat is a steady, determined, industrious, hard working, resourceful creature that braves terrain and weather to carry out it’s life mission. Goats are curious and have a subtle sense of livestock humor.
Talk to a farmer or watch hair or wool goats in a zoo or petting zoo and you will wonder if God has a sly sense of humor because the noble characteristics of goats do seem to be ingrained into Capricorn humans.
In my experience Capricorn human are conservative, cautious, curious, deliberate, determined, resourceful, and hard working.
If there is a fish or sea aspect to Capricorn, then, I consider it the sense of humor. Capricorn humans have a subtle sense of humor that often flows past their fellow humans.
Saturn The Ultimate Foreman
A Capricorn human’s biggest challenge is always Saturn, which a person might call Fate. In ancient Roman mythology, Saturn ruled agriculture, liberation and time. In a early 21st Century sense, then, Saturn is “The Business God, who decides promotions, schedules and time off.” The ancient Romans identified Saturn as a “God Of Wealth.” The ancient Romans had Saturn pegged as “The Work God.”
As “The Boss Of Bosses”, the bottom line is the ancient Romans realized that Saturn was not going to “cut them any slack.” Saturn was not going to go out of his way to give anyone “time off” or “promote” a person if they didn’t “earn the promotion.” And, Saturn was “ A Grade A Rule Book Stickler,” who demanded “by the book, all the time, no exceptions.”
Obviously, Saturn had to be a pagan God, because no human would ever want to work for such “A Dictatorial Boss.”
Saturn ruled agriculture, which meant farming and food. In an early 21st Century perspective Saturn or Fate is the God Of Agribusiness.
As a God Of Wealth, Saturn signed the paychecks and As the God Of Agriculture, He got to say, who got to Eat and who went Hungry.
The only time, the ancient Romans ever “Got to Stick It To The Boss” was once a year at the annual festival of “Saturnalia,”
At Saturnalia, the ancient Romans had free speech, switched jobs, ate like pigs, partied like wild men, got drunk and gave gifts. Sound like an office Christmas party ?
Bingo !
Saturnalia was celebrated December 17. Today Saturnalia is celebrated December 25. The “get even with your boss” pagan god party became the Christian Christmas holiday
Historians have not discovered why the date moved from December 17 to December 25.
Crafty Christians
Early Christians however, when they “stole” or “ripped off” pagan ideas liked to “Christianize” them. For instance: Christian churches were often built on pagan worship sites.
If the move to December 25 was to “Christianize” the holiday, early Christians “outsmarted themselves” and did Saturn a favor by moving the holiday from Sagittarius right smack dab into “Capricorn” a Zodiac Sign ruled by Saturn.
The W Word : Work
Whatever mythological God rules a sign is considered the “ruler” of the sign, so since Saturn rules Capricorn, Capricorn humans are “the employees of Saturn.”
If you move the mythological religious god concept to a philosophical and psychological concept then you can swap the name, Saturn, for the word, Fate.
Look at your calendar, from December 22 until January 19, during the Zodiac Sign of Capricorn; haven’t tasks seem more time consuming?
Doesn’t it seem to take longer to get even the minor jobs done?
Even if you were able to take time off from work for Christmas and or New Year’s: doesn’t it seem that now your work has piled up and you are paying for the time off ?
Time is another trait that the ancient Romans attributed to Saturn. Saturn truly was an “Equal Opportunity God” because He didn’t discriminate. Saturn made “everyone work like a dog.”
Regardless, whether you call the ruler of the sign, Saturn or Fate,
Capricorn humans always seem to really have to earn their “pay” in Life. They work hard.
Capricorn humans don’t seem to get “the breaks” that people born under other sun signs seem to get on the job.
However, when a Capricorn human earns a promotion, award or honor; they “earned the recognition through hard work.”
Some sun signs can be a boss’ “pet”. In my life time, I have noticed, seldom, if ever, is a Capricorn a “bosses’ pet.”
Fate or Saturn keeps a Capricorn human’s “nose to the grind stone.”
When you look at the month of January and wonder, “Why does it seem the New Year always seems to get off to such a slow start ?”
Consider that Capricorn is the steady sign, which is conservative and steady; not fast and impulsive. Saturn or Fate demands due diligence, hard work, attention to detail, procedures by the book and hard work.
Short cuts usually just mean more hard work or going back and fixing the mistakes caused by short cuts. Saturn The Ultimate Foreman is looking over your shoulder.
Fate is in charge !
Saturn is in charge !
Aquarius En route
On the bright side, look at the calendar. A shift change is coming.
January 20,Aquarius The Water Bearer reports for duty. Aquarius is more laid back, more flexible, and tends to think “Outside The Box.”
While Capricorn demands rules, regulations, procedures and wants to “Do It The Way It Has Always Been Done”; Aquarius usually takes the risk of tossing or, at least, putting aside the rulebook.
Aquarius is an air sign, which means you can breeze back in to the daily responsibilities of Life.
Keep in mind, the ancient astrologers chose “Waves Of Water” as the glyph or logo for Aquarius, which should be a subtle reminder to let your emotions ripple along on the job.
In the Real World, when Mother Nature adds significant amounts of cold or hot water to air the result is an ice storm or thunderstorm that can grow violent.
Violent air creates hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones. Try to learn to heat up and cool down at regular intervals in your work day, so that you don’t let the stress of daily life cloud your judgment and send you thundering in the wrong direction.
Best Wishes for Clear Skies and Smooth Sailing !
Sam
Links
Twelve Days Of Christmas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Days_of_Christmas
Old Christmas Day
http://www.christmas-time.com/cp-old.html
Feast Of The Epiphany Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Epiphany
Candlemas Time and Date.Com
http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/common/candlemas
Capricorn Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_(astrology)
Capricorn Astrology Online
http://www.astrology-online.com/capricrn.htm
Capricorn Sun Sign Zodiac Signs Astrology.com
http://www.astrology.com/capricorn-sun-sign-zodiac-signs/2-d-d-66920
Saturn Mythology Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_(mythology)
Zodiac Sign Dates
http://www.whats-your-sign.com/zodiac-sign-dates.html
Star Cats Personal, Relationship, Family Astrology
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