March 21, 2008

They say you learn something new every day, if you work at it. I think I've stumbled upon my factoid for today. One of my favorite authors, Florence King, came out of retirement in 2006, bless her heart, and resumed writing a column for the National Review. I don't subscribe to that magazine - it's far too far to the right for me - but they do have an online presence, and through that (well, through a "free news" site) I can keep up with her most recent articles. Miss King (not "Ms.", mind you!) seems to enjoy bashing Hillary Clinton quite a bit.

Anyway, in one of them, she happened to mention that most of Emily Dickinson's poems could be sung to the tune of the old ditty "The Yellow Rose of Texas". Well! I couldn't quite believe that, so off I went to Google to find some of Miss Dickinson's poems online.

I found some, and damn me if you couldn't sing every one of 'em. And singing them to that tune turned Miss Dickinson's rather droll little verses into bouncy little ditties. Fun, even. Try it: "There is no Frigate like a Book/To take us Lands away/Nor any Coursers like a Page/of prancing Poetry --."

Now, some of you might've known this already, but to me it's the biggest news since I found out you can sing "Amazing Grace", "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", "The House of the Rising Sun", and the words of the Gilligan's Island theme song to each other's tunes. I believe I've mentioned before that it takes very little to amuse me.

Today, the phrase "the Gods must be crazy" comes true to life. It takes a bit of craziness from That-Guy-Up-There, and all the various forms of Him Down-Here to actually make religious holidays of four different religions fall on the same day.

Today's extraordinary confluence of the sun and the moon conjure up a rare religious confluence here on Earth, namely:

• Holi: The riotous festival of colours of the Hindus.
• Good Friday: The sombre day commemorating the crucification of Jesus Christ.
• Fateha Doaz Daham: The pious holiday of the Muslims which celebrates the Prophet's birthday.
• Navroz: The Parsi festival of New Year.
• According to Two Sheds, it is also the Jewish holiday of Purim

How? The calendar of all these religions is as with all calendars linked with the cycle of the sun and the moon. The Islamic calendar is related entirely with the lunar cycle meaning any festival related with the moon will fall back by roughly lunar cycle of 11 months. The Hindus add an entire month {Called Adhik Mas, literally meaning "extra month"} every three years to compensate for this 11-month effect, which is why their festivals fall back and overtake the Islamic festivals. The Zoroastrian calendar is about the same. The Christian calendar (i.e. The Gregorian Calendar) stays put (except on Leap Years) and watches this musical-chairs contest, amused.

What will happen? No, nothing bad will happen. Communal riots may be expected (Especially in a country like India - Too many communities), but that is just being pessimistic. Who knows... maybe today would be the day of World Peace. Or just another festival day.

And for the atheists: Today is Friday. Rejoice! Tomorrow is Saturday, and very likely a holiday for you.

So, this morning my son called me.

"Whatup, Granny?" says he.

This means that as of today I am a grandmother. The baby in question is a girl, quite a big one too, brought to this world by some nice and able doctors by an emergency Caesarian early this morning. The C-section came about as a result of the baby's heart rate slowing down while her oxygen levels dropped. My son and his fiancée decided that they would not take any chances - especially since fiancée had been in labour for a good 12 hours.

My son sounded tired but pleased when he called. They have a small family room at the hospital, which means that he would be able to sleep alongside the mother and the baby once all the "cleaning up" was done. Which made me a lot happier as it meant he didn't have to drive home after more than 24 hours without sleep!

Now I'm just wondering how I ended up in the third generation...