to court to sue over the right to provide Christian Christmas cards at
school. There was more to it than that, but the gist was that this
family felt that it was an issue of religious freedom.
And they won.
I'm okay with that. I do believe that religious freedom is a good thing.
Though I think that next year, I'm going to start sending out Samhain
cards. And I think a Saturnalia party would be an interesting addition
to the curriculum.
The winter solstice ritual was called Lenaea, the Festival of the
Wild Women. In very ancient times, a man representing the harvest god
Dionysos was torn to pieces and eaten by a gang of women on this day.
Later in the ritual, Dionysos would be reborn as a baby.
Now why do I expect that there would be resistance to such things?
I'm not having much of a Christmas celebration this year. Many reasons,
though the primary one is the whole breakup thing, and being very
family-poor. It just doesn't seem like a great time to be celebratory.
It is however a time for deep reflection and meditation, and I should
begin that cycle tonight.
Then again, it's not like I haven't already been doing my share of
navel-gazing.
I've had to make one of those executive decisions at work. It has to do
with the direction that I'm taking when developing code to an interface:
when we've had several meetings to define an interface and have
agreement on it down to the level of the code templates, I am
deciding to program to that interface even though it means that I have
to work with my own modified local copy of the code. I have chosen to do
this even though I know that it is going to be a significant problem
when it comes time for integration, because I have made it very clear
that this needs to be done, and if it is not done now, it will need to
be done later.
So it will be done later. Surprise, surprise.
I have a little sign up on the side of my cube. It says "Integration
will take a very long time". Now instead of saying it, I just point to
the sign.
It's going to be an interesting time.