Arnold Zwicky's Blog

29 September: penultimate September, and also Michaelmas (the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael; the Feast of the Archangels; or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels). Brief notes about the day; and then, in the midst of very difficult times (during which I am failing at almost everything, and in great pain), a report on some moments of pleasure that help to get me from day to day.

St. Michael, come to me. From my 9/30/17 posting “The archangel Michael”:

Michaelmas, devoted to Saint Michael the Archangel, a figure of great power and terrible beauty, who among other things lent his name to the gorgeous autumn-blooming aster commonly known as the Michaelmas daisy (see my 10/5/13 posting).

… Angels and archangels are messengers of god, also protectors. As protectors, they can be either militant (usually masculine) or maternal (usually female);  Michael, wielding his sword against the serpent / Satan, is definitely one of the militant band — but he can be portrayed either as a muscled hero (an Achilles or Ares figure) or as an ethereally beautiful young man doing holy battle (so a hybrid of Apollo and Ares, but Christian).

The posting has much much more, with illustrations.

September 28th. (St.) Wencesla(u)s Day — see my 9/28/24 posting “Wencesla(u)s Day”. Celebrations in the Czech Republic. Here in Palo Alto it was a Sunday for Sacred Harp singing, using for the first time the new (2025) revision of the Denson Sacred Harp.

Now, I have been unable to sing for quite a long time, producing only a painful strangled croak. But every so often I test the waters hopefully, attempting to sing along with the wonderful (and beautifully produced) videos of the annual Ireland Sacred Harp Conventions. So yesterday I made another try in the morning, hoping to Zoom-sing at home along with the singers on-site from 2 to 4.

And it worked.  I coughed a lot at first, but eventually got my apparatus in tune and was able to sing one old favorite song after another, weeping like an idiot the whole time. Delirious pleasure. A form of rebirth.

I stopped when it began to tire me out, got some lunch, had friends come by with a loaner copy of the new book. And managed to sing for an hour and a half — old songs and new –until I ground down, tired but happy.

As for the rest, I will say nothing here. Let the good times rest.

This entry was posted on September 29, 2025 at 9:52 am and is filed under Events and occasions, Holidays, Language and religion, Music, My life, Signs and symbols, Singing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.