GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!

Welcome to the year of the Ox.....
(... is it just me that see a BIG hug and little kiss when I see the word Ox? ; )

Eitherway, whats say we just welcome the year we may hug and kiss an Ox how does that sound?

The Chinese Lunar New Year marks the end of winter and the possibility of there being a spring despite all bitter cold temperatures these day!

And what better way to ring in the Chinese New Year than with a solar eclipse that could be seen in
parts of the African continent, a wee bit of India, South East Asia, and a wee bit of Australia.

The first Lunar eclipse of the year will occur on February 9th. The eastern parts of Canada and the United States, will miss the eclipse because it begins after moonset. But people in the western parts of Canada and the USA will have the best views with moonset occurring sometime after the mid-eclipse. To catch the entire eclipse, one must be in places such as Alaska, Australia, eastern Asia, Hawaii or New Zealand.

But I get ahead of myself....

Have a prosperous and healthy New Year everyone!

Caledonia's Bard

The world's poet.

'k, if not the world's poet, then he was the Bruce Springsteen or the Bob Seger of the working mans rhyme and life, the Bob Marley of melody, love and music, the Bob Dylan of civil disobedience, humanitarian, libertarian, equalitarian and freewill living.

Robert Burns was born 250 years ago on January 25th 1759 in a wee Ayrshire single room cottage that housed hens, livestock, a dirt floor, and thatched roof.

The cottage stands to this day, though it is better maintained than it would've been in his own day.

He was dirt poor in material life, but rich beyond riches internally, despite serious strife.

Burns wrote and spoke of and for the working man, and wrote using the everyday truncated vernacular of the country chouchter (the hard working farmer) [pronounced chooook'ter], and spoke of every universal plight, sight, feeling, sensation, lament, love, life or fright....but he did so in a truly unique and remarkable way - it was from one of the most unfathomably deep hearts to have beat in a human body.

His passion for life, his love, his humanity, his compassion, his love of laughter and joy for everything that simply is or was, was a different ken [knowing] altogether. One that isn't long for this life, but lives on for centuries for having honoured his innate love and talent, however impractical, in a pragmatic world that is fixed on collecting rent money, and working people to premature deaths, as was his own fathers fate who died at 24yrs of age.

Robert Burns died when he was 37 without a shilling to his name - literally.
Nevertheless, he was recognized as the Bard throughout Caledonia, and beyond.
He was granted the largest funeral in the history of Scotland at that time.

So, although he died utterly penniless, he was loved and respected by countless people.

Scotland itself is flinging open the doors throughout 2009 and inviting all ex-pats to return to honour Burns' life
on his 250ieth anniversary.

So says I....

raise yer snifter glass and wee dram,
and say Slange Va to the man.

tho' you be gone, yer words live oan
and will move emb'dy
wi'' heart enough to read them.

Slange va! Robert Burns

Cheers wee man, cheers.

Painting of Tam O' Shanter
by: Alexander Grant - my grandfather

Inauguration For All

History was needing today to happen.

In Memoriam [Ring out, wild bells]

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring fuller minstrel music in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the New Year that is to be.

Lord Alfred Tennyson