Samhain

Halloween is a fun holiday, with its classic decorations, its vast treasury of images and traditions, and its socially-acceptable candy binges.  But for some of us it also has a much deeper significance.

Halloween's true and original name is Samhain, somewhat surprisingly pronounced "SOW-win" (first syllable rhymes with "cow"), with some variation in different times and places.  The word is Irish Gaelic for "summer's end".  Ancient Celtic cultures recognized just two seasons, summer and winter, and Samhain was actually the first of November -- but they also counted each night as being part of the following day, so the night of October 31st was the true beginning of Samhain.  On that night, it was believed, portals between the real world and the "spirit world" were opened, allowing supernatural beings and the souls of the dead to roam the land.  Some of the rituals and practices meant to ward off or propitiate these frightening manifestations have evolved, over the intervening twenty-plus centuries, into the Halloween traditions that we know today.

Chalice Centre (where I found the charming image above) has an overview of how Samhain was observed in pagan times.  Hearth fires were extinguished and re-lit from a sacred source, and people danced around great bonfires into which goods sacrificed to the gods were cast.  The bonfires starred the nighttime landscape not only of the British Isles but also of Gaul and the Iberian peninsula, which were also Celtic lands in pre-Roman times.  The reverence for fire dates back to the Indo-European conquests of more than five millennia ago, and is found in many cultures sharing the same origin.  Fire was similarly held divine in Zoroastrian Persia, for example, and many modern-day Iranians continue to observe the fire-festivals in open defiance of the mullahs' dour edicts of condemnation.

In the British Isles, similarly, Samhain rituals survived the coming of Christianity.  As it did with so many other traditional European sacred days, the new alien faith out of the Middle East sought to Christianize Samhain and co-opt it, rather than eradicate it entirely.  In the seventh century Pope Boniface IV declared the first day of November to be "All Saints' Day", and the preceding night became "All Hallows' Eve", from which the modern name "Halloween" is derived.  Still, the bonfire dances continued -- in some parts of the British Isles, as late as the early twentieth century.

Samhain was observed under different names in various Celtic lands.  The practice of "apple magic", mentioned in the sidebar of the Chalice Centre post linked above, survived in the Cornish festival of Calan Gwaf or Allantide, and in more diluted form in the game of apple-bobbing.  Halloween costumes and trick-or-treating, which play such a central role in our modern concept of Halloween, are foreshadowed in the festival of Hop-tu-Naa on the Isle of Man, a small island between Britain and Ireland.

Modern Christian fundamentalists remain profoundly suspicious of Halloween, and with good reason.  Unlike Christmas, Halloween has never been successfully infused with Christian significance; to this day it remains, in its rich symbolism and imagery, the most boldly pagan popular observance in the Celtic- and English-speaking world.  Modern neo-pagans refer to Halloween as Samhain, and the holiday's growing popularity certainly has the outward look of a pagan revival.

I do not, of course, believe that beings from a "spirit world" will roam the land this coming night.  It's not about beliefs, but about a treasured connection with the true culture of my ancestors, before the Christian darkness descended.

Halloween image round-up

Click any image for full size.

[For the link round-up, click here.]

I'm getting scared already..... but let's go in anyway.....

.....and see what the internet has to offer for Halloween.

There's only one thing that could scare these guys (made by Pliny).....

Fairly sure having bats flying around your kitchen is against the health code.  This witch is much better at keeping things sanitary:

But I think I'll just stay home and have some tea and cookies.

After all, there will be mysterious flyers out there.....

.....not to mention black cats.....

.....and the Devil knows what else.....

Hell, it might even rain!

Anyway, time to focus on decorating.....

We've gone from skeletons of things that don't have skeletons to skeletons of things that don't exist.....

Do demons have skeletons?  I guess it's a grey area.


These days the skeletons are more active than I am.....

.....so I'll stick with pumpkins, which should be less intimidating.....

Above all, embrace the spirit of the day, each in his or her own way.

Ghost: "Moann....."  Witch: "You ate too much candy again didn't you?"

See also these accidental spooky faces, Halloween with pets, Glow at the Gardens, National Black Cat Day, and Lady M's final round-up of skeleton craze posts, with a link to vote for the best display.

And of course the awesome Manitou Springs coffin race!

Link round-up for 27 October 2024

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

Monday update:  There have been several attacks on ballot drop boxes using incendiary devices, here in Portland as well as in Phoenix AZ and Vancouver WA.  So if you use one, be sure to check with the relevant county authority to make sure your ballot was received in good order.  (I've already confirmed that mine was, and the drop box I use is in the parking lot of a police station -- I doubt anybody's messing with that one.)

o o o o o

Which country's flag is this?

Watch my awesome bike stunt..... oops.

Sorry, I don't want the job.

Don't try this dance move unless you're very strong.

Crazy Eddie blog observes Squirrel Awareness Month with an obstacle course.

The toy plane flies directly back to its owner.

I can imagine this house existing, but not on this planet.

You'll pay a price for being so rude.

Want dark and scary?  Check out this tunnel.

At last, a vegetable slicer in my style.

What does a cat do when you're not looking?

Friendships can extend between species.

Halloween cartoons here.

This decoration will really scare people.

She almost became part of the Halloween display.

Yet more skeletons here from the Manitou Springs skeleton craze, plus a link to vote for a favorite.

See photos from Haunted Overload in New Hampshire.  More displays at Todd's Yard Haunt (Ohio) and Glow at the Gardens (Colorado).

More spooky pics here.

Peruse pumpkin patch poetry (found via Nan).

Heidi Klum goes all out on Halloween costumes.

When the trick-or-treaters don't come to Lady M, she goes to them.

Visit scenic Monsterville NJ -- it's only there in October.

There must be a better way -- but looking at the map, I can't find one.

She met an old-fashioned hero.  More here.

In old countries, the ancient is right there in the midst of the new.

Protons are tiny even compared to atoms, but their internal structure is stunningly complex.

After a century of work, Egypt has finally been declared free of malaria.

Sotwe is a site that enables you to view Twitter accounts normally even if you don't have an account yourself.  Just enter a username into the search box and you'll be able to see that account with posts in proper chronological order.

Tips here on getting rid of some of the spyware and junk that comes with Windows 11 (and may have downloaded to your computer if it's Windows 10).

Most people don't realize how precisely your smartphone tracks your location.

"You tax your billionaires?"

Check out these nine career options for gender-studies majors.

See Adam and Eve's baby pictures.

It's an epic battle -- Godzilla vs Trump.

The exposure of France's absurd exchange-rate manipulation scheme in post-World-War-II Indochina illustrates the importance of freedom of the press.

There's an E coli outbreak linked to McDonalds quarter-pounders, mostly in Colorado and Nebraska but reported in several other states too.

The media are hopelessly biased.

A Boeing-made satellite has mysteriously exploded in space.  I'm not gonna trust their planes until there's a real change in company culture and the engineers take back control from the MBAs.

Police and officials in several forced-birth states are using technology and sniffer dogs to interfere with postal delivery of abortion pills.  The problem will get a lot worse if the Republicans win and the federal government turns hostile to abortion rights.

"Burnout" from overwork is more serious than you think.

The cryptocurrencytardosphere is leaning heavily Republican.

Some political images here, plus links on abortion and cat ladies of earlier centuries.

"Dorm-style" apartments would enable empty office buildings to be converted into affordable housing.  The main obstacle is restrictive laws.

Trump's support among non-white voters is growing, but because of the Electoral College, it probably won't help him.

A UN official calls for women's sports to become women-only again, after a study shows that male interlopers have cost women athletes almost a thousand medals so far (and in reality it's probably more).

If the data don't tell you what you want to hear, hide the data.

Trump's behavior just keeps getting weirder.  The mainstream media have abandoned their objectivity about it.

"And as usual, they have chosen the Jews."

Here are some of the deaths that have already resulted from forced-birth laws.  A new ad highlights one victim who survived, but with a devastated life.

If you're an atheist living in an intolerant area, what have you done to make life easier?

These political threats are getting flat-out psychotic.

Nearly half of swing-state voters say the economy will not affect how they vote.

Arizona forced-birthers enacted a ban on abortion after fifteen weeks as a "compromise", but a strong majority of voters plan to support an initiative to strike it down in favor of broader rights.

We still haven't fixed all the damage Trump did to food safety when he was in office.

State governments are cracking down hard on local officials who are threatening to sabotage election certification.

The Boeing strike continues as workers overwhelmingly decide the latest contract offer isn't good enough.

The Biden administration is proposing a rule to make contraception more accessible, and in many cases free.

US Christians have created a monster and now they need to take it down.

After a male player was added to a university girls' volleyball team, university authorities went all-out to bully the girls who objected into silence.

The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times face eruptions of protests and resignations after their billionaire owners vetoed their planned endorsements of Harris.  Cancel, cancel, cancel oligarch-controlled junk journalism.

Doctors and nurses at several facilities in Portland have voted to strike.

Like much of the right-wing disinformation now circulating, sexual-assault claims against Tim Walz appear to be the work of Russian operatives (found via Reaganite Independent).

I've looked for election analyses by right-wing bloggers, but have found only a couple of examples.  This one is based on early-voting data, and this one is based on -- well, see if you can figure it out (also read the comments).  Regarding the former, even though nearly half of all early voters so far are Republicans, this survey of those who already voted shows that 63% of them voted for Harris.  If that's accurate, then a lot of Republicans must be voting for Harris (and there is some anecdotal support for this).  Too bad the survey evidently didn't ask about Senate, House, or state races.

This pre-election post provoked a debate in the comments.

Those who attack democracy are rightly punished.

Some Republicans have principles, some do not.

Harris is "an infernal monster who obeys Satan", according to Catholic ex-archbishop Viganò.

Here's how election integrity is being protected against any possible attempts to sabotage or overturn the result.  This is a long article, but worth reading if you're worried.

73% of California's likely voters support their state's tough-on-crime initiative, Proposition 36.

There are many referenda on various state ballots this year, including several to raise (or, in one case, lower) state minimum wages, and some on drug legalization.

It's better to engage with opponents than to seal yourself off from them and feel pure -- they can't be persuaded by the evidence for your views if they never hear about it.

Twenty-three Nobel-prize-winning economists have declared Harris's economic plans "vastly superior" to Trump's.

Here's why growing numbers of younger male voters find Trump to be appealing.

Even if Trump's support among black men is growing, most of them will still vote for Harris.

Harris supports federal marijuana legalization and a nationwide $15 minimum wage.  California's new higher minimum wage for fast-food workers led to higher pay and did not cost jobs.

Trump's plans would bankrupt Social Security in just six years.

The libertarian movement claims that it values individual freedom.  Its failure to oppose Trump exposes that as hypocrisy.

If Harris loses, it will push the Democratic party to the right, not to the left.

The overthrow of Roe forshadows further right-wing attacks on our fundamental freedoms.

Here's an example of how the right wing can convert leftists.  See also comment #1 for an interesting take on Harris's avoidance of obnoxious "virtue signaling".

Reminder:  in 2016 and 2020, it turned out polls were understating, not overstating, Trump's support, and historically they have slightly understated support for Republicans.  Never yield to overconfidence.

Even if abortion-rights ballot measures pass, red-state governments will continue to obstruct.  The only way to really protect freedom is to get Republicans out of office.

Instead of sneering at undecided voters (or endlessly repeating that tired metaphor about being offered chicken and shit and asking how the chicken is cooked), how about listening to them?  You might learn something, and win them over.

A massive explosion at a fuel station in Russia hurled a full-size tanker truck a thousand feet (do watch the video).  It is not yet established whether this is connected to the Ukraine war, but it seems likely.

This video of an Israeli missile strike reveals a lot.

Israel's retaliation against Iran was limited to military installations which directly threatened Israel.  Israel's main opposition leader says that Netanyahu was too restrained.

Iranians understand that their country's hated theocracy is at fault for the conflict with Israel.

This was Iran before 1979.  A brutal-enough bad government can drag a country a long way backward.

The tanker mafia problem illustrates South Africa's institutional decay.

More links at Red State Blues (Burr Deming's new site) and WAHF.

My posts this week:  an image round-up, and why I anticipate a blue wave.

o o o o o

Only 4 days until Halloween!

Got my covid and flu vaccine shots Friday, the first time I've ever had both at the same time.  I felt decidedly spaced-out for more than an hour afterwards.  Be aware that two vaccines together can affect you more than either one alone.

Why I anticipate a blue wave

Last week I posted on why the country needs a Democratic landslide.  This post is about the reasons why I think it's most likely there will actually be one.  Those reasons why are, of course, the meat of the matter -- anybody can claim to believe something, but the important thing is the supporting evidence that they can bring to back up their conclusion.

My main reason for expecting a very substantial Democratic win is straightforward.  Since the Dobbs decision, I have believed that this election will be dominated by the abortion-rights issue, and nothing that has happened since then has given me any reason to change that assessment.  The need to restore and protect abortion rights will lead some Republicans (mostly women) to vote for Democrats, and will motivate many people to vote who would not otherwise have bothered.  These effects will swamp and overwhelm all other factors and will determine the outcome.

My supporting evidence for this claim is the results of all the abortion referenda, and almost all the elections, held since the Dobbs decision.  Every time abortion rights have been put to a public vote, they have won overwhelmingly, even in very red states.  Moreover, turnout in these referenda has been high, suggesting both that many Republicans are voting for abortion rights, and that many new voters are being motivated to participate.  As for the elections, in case after case since Dobbs, Democratic candidates have done ten or fifteen points better than the historic norm for the state or district involved.  Sometimes that shift has been big enough to allow the Democrat to win in a "red" district, sometimes not, but the point is that the shift is almost always there.  This recent election in Alaska continued the pattern.  Voters are well aware that Democrats in office will uphold abortion rights, while Republicans will attack them.

Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.  This axiom applies to voting as much as to anything else.  I can't think of any reason why the abortion-rights factor would not dominate the federal election just as much as it has dominated other elections since Dobbs (if anything, it's increasing in importance).  Moreover, most of those surprising election and referendum results since Dobbs were not anticipated by polling, which predicted much closer, more "normal" outcomes.  This shows that the Dobbs effect is not being captured by polling.  That may be because many Republicans are telling pollsters they expect to vote Republican again and only changing their minds at the last moment, in the voting booth; it could also be that the pollsters' turnout models are not capturing the effect of so many new voters participating.  It's likely that the current polling we're seeing for the federal election is similarly missing the Dobbs effect, for the same reasons.

(I suspect there is another factor at work too -- most polling agencies are run by men, and view abortion rights as a mere "female issue", not to be taken quite as seriously as the "real" issues like the economy and immigration.)

Current polling suggests, for example, that Democrats will lose the Senate.  Assuming that the West Virginia seat is unwinnable without Manchin, a net loss of even one more seat would give the Repubicans the majority.  Polling suggests that Montana will be that one more seat.  However, it also shows Senate races in Texas, Florida, and even Nebraska surprisingly close -- close enough that the Dobbs effect could flip any or all of them, as well as perhaps saving the Montana seat.  Thus the Democrats could hold or even expand their majority.  The same effect, replicated in close House districts across the country, would certainly be enough to reclaim the House majority.  As for the presidency, most polling shows a close race, with Harris holding a small lead, perhaps too small to overcome the standard Republican advantage due to the Electoral College.  But the Dobbs effect should enable her to sweep the swing states and win at least as comfortably as Biden did in 2020.

Again, this is not just speculation or wishful thinking.  It requires only that the voters behave as they have done in every election since the Dobbs ruling, and that the polls fail to predict this effect just as they failed to predict it in all those earlier cases.  Imagine if this November every state and district votes ten percent more Democratic than it historically has, or even just five percent.  A swing of five percent would mean a landslide; ten percent would be an annihilating tsunami.  I'm not saying something like that definitely will happen, but it would be consistent with the pattern of the last two years.

Could some other factor cancel out the Dobbs effect?  I can't think of any factor that could do so.  The Republicans have become aware of the problem and many, including Trump, are frantically backing away from their former extreme forced-birth positions -- rhetorically, and in the party platform.  But the majority of voters are not being fooled by this.  Decades of Republican hostility to abortion rights are baked in to the party's identity.  Any claim that they are becoming more moderate on abortion has no credibility until they start actually repealing the forced-birth laws in the states they control.  And that isn't happening.  The rhetorical shift might mitigate the Dobbs effect a little, because some Republicans who only grudgingly vote Democratic to defend abortion will feel reassured enough to go back to voting Republican, but it certainly won't cancel out the entire effect.

If anything, most other factors likely to affect the outcome favor the Democrats.  They have raised far more money than the Republicans, and are using it to run an effective and professional GOTV operation, whereas the Republicans have largely outsourced GOTV to various ramshackle private-sector outfits (including one set up by arch-bungler Elon Musk), which are not up to the job (and some of their employees are even actively avoiding work).  Harris is fighting to expand the Democratic tent, appealing to moderate conservative voters by going on right-wing media like Fox and highlighting endorsements from anti-Trump Republicans, while Trump is making no effort to broaden his appeal beyond his cult base, and has even started calling his own voters "dumb" and "fat pigs".  Harris is energetic and articulate, while Trump seems to deteriorate mentally from one day to the next.  It doesn't hurt that she's been endorsed by the world's most popular celebrity -- an endorsement, one might say, taylored to produce swift results in terms of new voter registrations.

Republicans' rhetorical climb-down on abortion seems to be alienating a lot of the Christian Right vote; Muslim voters are similarly turning against the Democrats, but there are not enough of them to make a difference except in Michigan, and even there, many will eventually sober up to the fact that Trump is far more hostile to "Palestine" than the Democrats are.  (There are positive trends in Michigan too.)  There are a lot more fundamentalists and hard-line Catholics in this country than Muslims.  If the Republicans ultimately lose, say, 10% of that vote and the Democrats lose 10% of Muslims, the impact on Republicans will be much greater.

Some worriers fear the Republicans will steal the election by various legal shenanigans.  In fact, this would be close to impossible.  Trump tried like hell to steal the 2020 election and failed abjectly.  Further legal safeguards have been added to the system since then.  In 2020 Trump was in office, wielding the power of the presidency; this time he won't be.

Polling does create its own expectations, and people see what they want to see (on both sides, people routinely cite the polls that tell them what they want to hear as evidence of good news, while dismissing polls that say the opposite as worthless junk).  Many Republicans, like many Democrats, refuse to look at any source of information that doesn't support their existing views, and are incredulous that any sane person could even consider voting for the opposite party.  Here is a sober and rational right-wing assessment of the state of the race; it's generally optimistic (for their side).  The rank-and-file right wing is expecting to win this one.  If, as I believe, the actual result is a massive blue wave, only the smartest and best-informed of them will realize that abortion rights were the determining factor; those most deeply committed to their alternate-reality bubble will insist the election was rigged, stolen, swayed by millions of illegal aliens voting, etc, etc, etc.  There may even be sporadic outbreaks of violence, for which the authorities need to be prepared.  But I don't expect much of that.

Finally, nothing I say here should be taken as an excuse for inaction, complacency, or voting third party to "send a message".  I could, after all, be wrong.  It might be that the polls are correct and this election, for some reason, will not follow the pattern of the last two years.  We were confident of winning in 2016 and it led to votes being thrown away on third candidates, votes that turned out to be critical.  Every vote matters.  Even if we do win by a landslide, the bigger the better -- to drive home the strength of the Democrats' mandate, to swamp any efforts at vote suppression, and to crush the stolen-election drivel that Trump is sure to start spewing forth yet again.  To get Supreme Court enlargement or Puerto Rican statehood or a billionaire tax through the House, we'll need not just a majority, but a large enough one to work around the small-thinkers among the Democrats who balk at such steps as too radical.  To get rid of the filibuster, we'll need a Senate majority big enough to bypass one or two similarly timid souls there.  And sane Republicans will be less likely to obstruct Harris if she won the popular vote by fifteen million instead of two million, and carried some of "their" states, not just the blue ones.  Every vote is vital.

Update:  These reports about the experiences of actual voters are just anecdotal evidence, of course, but they're encouraging.

Image round-up for 22 October 2024

More pictures from my collection -- click any image for full size.

[For the link round-up, click here.]

When your cat attends your Zoom call with your boss

My God, imagine the smallness of the.....

It's just a door locked with a chain and padlock -- what did you think it was?

It's a computer-security reference -- what did you think they meant?

Why seatbelts are a good idea (don't worry, they're test dummies, not actual people)

Yeah, elephant seals are that big

The universe is a desert and the Earth is its oasis

The scale of the Eiffel Tower

Baccara roses

Navy Pier, Chicago

Uranus -- note the very faint rings

Hurricane Milton seen from space

A hammer-headed shark