Chaucer wrote The Parliament of Fowls in 1382 to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II to Anne of Bohemia (they were both 15 years old when they were married shortly thereafter), but it has become associated with the present day celebrated as Valentines Day over the centuries since it is the first time Valentines Day is found “packaged” in such a manner, and probably in error (evidence the mating of birds referred to in the poem doesn’t occur until spring). The saints day for a bishop of Genoa named Valentine is celebrated on May 2nd and this may be the saint’s day Chaucer was referring to in the poem. It makes so much more sense to associate love with the flowers and rebirth of May Day, doesn’t it?

The narrator seems confused by love and hits the books to try to understand the situation and ultimately fails. The poem is filled with historical allegory which is invisible to the modern reader who is unfamiliar with the court politics of the day, the major characters, and their motivations or relations to the King and his bride.

The following excerpt from eChaucer, a modern English translation online hosted by the University of Maine

And when this work was all brought to an end, Nature gave every bird his mate by just accord, and they went their way. Ah, Lord! The bliss and joy that they made! For each of them took the other in his wings, and wound their necks about each other, ever thanking the noble goddess of nature. But first were chosen birds to sing, as was always their custom year by year to sing a roundel at their departure, to honor Nature and give her pleasure. The tune, I believe, was made in France. The words were such as you may here find in these verses, as I remember them.

“Welcome, summer, with sunshine soft,
The winter’s tempest you will break,
And drive away the long nights black!

Saint Valentine, throned aloft,
Thus little birds sing for your sake:
Welcome, summer, with sunshine soft,
The winter’s tempest you will shake!

Good cause have they to glad them oft,
His own true-love each bird will take;
Blithe may they sing when they awake,
Welcome, summer, with sunshine soft,
The winter’s tempest you will break,
And drive away the long nights black!”

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine’s_Day
http://spotlight.ucla.edu/faculty/henry-kelly_valentine/
http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/chaucer/PF.html

I’ve been playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle (See my WFB Pics) lately and had a vague idea of adding in some roleplay aspects to the games (to flesh out the time between battles). The only roleplaying I’ve done recently has been some few D&D 3.5 games which have left me sort of flat and thinking back to some of the epic Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFR) games I’ve had in the past I wondered if maybe I should just go back to that. The WFB games would certainly dovetail better into the WFR milieu. The WFR I’ve played in the past was 2nd edition. Aspects of that system I loved included the career system and the use of percentile chance dice. The writing was great and the fantasy world was well fleshed out. That’s what led me to look into the new WFR 3rd edition recently rewritten and released by Fantasy Flight Games (FFG).
Read the rest of this entry »

So for those of you who aren’t using Buzz (yet?) and in an attempt to keep stuff I write about in one place, I gathered up some of the posts I’ve made on Buzz for this story. I don’t know if I’ll keep using Buzz or not, and if I don’t I’d like to have a copy of this stuff somewhere. I use my personal website much like a Doogie Houser electronic journal while I use Facebook for sharing links and videos I find interesting, but how I might use Buzz is still kind of in flux. Things I write on my personal blog are automatically included as “notes” on Facebook, so folks I am connected to over there will be able to see the kind of things I’ve been posting over there. Since Buzz is integrated into gmail (where I spend a lot of time) and a lot less bloated with ads and other stupid app clutter, it seems to lend itself much better to serious conversations than facebook does so its possible that I’ll want to figure out some kind of automated method to integrate those conversations happening on Buzz back into my own site (I like to archive stuff I write so I can reference it later). Sounds like RSS would be the perfect solution but of course Google doesn’t make an RSS feed for my Buzz posts available… neither does Facebook – even though they both will happily use the technology themselves to suck in outside content.

The following posts are just my side of the conversation for posts I’ve made on Buzz since I started using it, to participate in the conversation fully – sign up and follow me there!
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not quite sure why I became so interested in this particular case, but I did. I think it might have been because I have been to a lot of concerts and I never went to one with any thought that I wouldn’t make it home again. I followed the story on several websites including websleuths, findmorgan.com, and local Charlottesville newspaper websites and crime blogs. Dana Morgan Harrington, a Virginia Tech student had planned to attend the Oct 17th Metallica show for a long time – along with a few friends – and before Metallica had even made it on stage she had somehow ended up outside the John Paul Jones arena on the University of Virginia campus, in 40 degree weather without her car keys. Her purse and cell phone (with the battery removed) were found the next day in an overflow parking area.
Read the rest of this entry »

Several years ago I wrote a piece about my old GE portable radio. It was just a cheap portable AM/FM/cassette which got lugged around to keep me company while I was painting or doing chores. That radio eventually got relegated to the kitchen and was usually tuned (to the best of its ability) to the local NPR station during dinner prep. Cathy unplugged it yesterday, told me it was emitting a hum which made her nervous, handed it to me and I realized it was finally time to retire it.
Read the rest of this entry »