Categories
Holidays Life in Lockdown

Neptune’s Lockdown Christmas

This sparkling bauble on the tree

Will hold a special memory for me

Our Special Olympics Swimming Club

The parents and athletes meeting hub

Had to close its doors for a while

As Lockdown took away our smile!

However, the Athletes brought much cheer

As they supported each other throughout the year

John and all our Athletes will agree

This bauble is perfect for the Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to ALL!

Neptune’s SOC is an affiliated club within Special Olympics Ireland (Ulster Region). The club was established in July 2012 by a group Special Olympics Volunteers who came together to start a new swimming club in Belfast to provide a year round programme of sports training and competition for children and adults with a learning disability regardless of their abilities.

Categories
Holidays Life in Lockdown

Remember December (or A Strange Sonnet to Remember)

By Femi Omotoyinbo, PhD candidate in Philosophy

Aye! It’s December

Soon the year will be over

But what is there to remember

That humanity is not so clever

Or that we’re each other’s member

While in your Christmas jumper

Note that the crisis is not over

Ah! It is never o’er until it’s over

Sure hope rests only in our Maker

To His GIFT never say never

New year may bring some turnover

But alone we will always wander

Bricks become building by bricklayer

Life without the Creator is less of wonder.

Categories
Analysis of Impact / Covid-19 Life in Lockdown

A new holiday tradition?

As is the case for many of us, this year’s holiday season will be a strange one for me. I won’t be able to go home to the US to see my family or have Christmas dinner with in-laws in Dublin or go to any of the usual holiday parties.

(FlickrLickr creative commons licence)

I was excited to see, however, that this year I will get to participate in a millennia-old December tradition that I’ve never been able to see before. Every year I enter into the lottery to spend a morning during the winter solstice in the chamber of Newgrange – a passage tomb in co. Meath dating to around 3300 BCE. I have never been successful, which is hardly surprising, since the chamber fits only 20 people or so and there were over 30,000 entries in the 2019 lottery.

This year the in-person event is cancelled, but the OPW (Office of Public Works) is planning to livestream from the chamber on the morning of the solstice on Monday 21st December: gov.ie – OPW announces closure of Newgrange for Winter Solstice Sunrise (www.gov.ie)

Provided there is sunshine that morning – never a sure thing in the Irish winter – light will travel through the roofbox (see below: the small opening above the entrance to the tomb), along the stone lined passage way into the interior of the tomb and illuminate the main chamber for about 17 minutes. The alignment of the rising sun and the roofbox only occurs at the solstice and a few days on either side of it. The astronomical and architectural sophistication of the tomb, almost 1000 years older than the pyramids at Giza, is remarkable and although I have visited and stood in the chamber several times, I’ve never seen it at the solstice when its purpose is fulfilled.


(Hofi0006
, Creative commons licence)

The first person to see this illumination in the modern period was archaeologist Michael O’Kelly in 1967. He returned to see it every year for the rest of his life and described it in 1969:

“Between the bright sky and the long glittering silver ribbon of the Boyne the land looks black and featureless. Great flocks of starlings are flying across the sky from their night time roosts to their day time feeding places. The effect is very dramatic as the direct light of the sun brightens and casts a glow of light all over the chamber. I can even see parts of the roof and a reflected light shines right back in to the back of the end chamber.”

(Professor Michael J. O’Kelly excavated and restored Newgrange)


(OPW creative commons licence)

I know that the livestream won’t be able to replicate the experience of physically being in the tomb itself, but I am grateful to have the chance to be part of this remarkable event this December. And maybe next year I’ll win the Newgrange lottery.

I hope everyone in HAPP, staff and students, has a safe and restorative holiday break with whatever new Covid-era holiday traditions you have planned.