~~Visiting Sharen, buying a new book, talking to Derrick, updating my daily entry files to 2014 and a lazy provider.~~ Yesterday I visited Sharen, to wish her that Happy New year for which she is waiting. I’d brought some chocolates and a Chinese Japanese mandarin orange, both of which were sampled without delay. In her room we counted eleven Christmas cards and I found mine and a present in the drawer, as David had emailed me, a nice box of gift food by Hickory USA. After about an hour I continued my journey to Indigo and found a book! One that matched my interests - ‘The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt’ by Toby Wilkinson - and the purchase power of my gift card, which I exceeded by twenty cents, within one percent (1%). This author is reputed to be a scholar in this subject, but writes in a narrative style, getting away from the scholarly style of Ian Shaw’s ‘The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt’, a fine reference none the less. After a coffee and looking over the store’s new layout, I made it home in time for supper preps, but enjoyed the last of my wine and a missed snooze first, making it seven (7) pm for supper. I tried my website upload, but could even get connected with the server this time, so I sent an email to this dis-service provider. Next, I emailed a thank you to David along with that nice photo of Sharen last November 28. Derrick called around that time for New Year’s wishes and we had a little chat. Derrick reminisced about the passing of several people in his life, including Angela just last fall and also about the peaceful brake that this season gives in our economic life. He is off to Salt Spring for a day and will start in earnest next week with work and studies. I also updated the Daily Entry folder and file group to the 2014 year. This involved the daily entry template for 2014, the yearlist for 2014 and several include files for the microdata breadcrumbs. The testing will have to wait for the server reaching an operational level. If that takes too long I’ll have to do the testing on my local server and look for an other provider. I’ll give it until Monday, before making a decision.<9:05am.

~~I explore some background aspects of yesterday’s conflict between the solar new year and the lunar calendar new moon, as perceived by this planet’s guardians of Islam.~~ Yesterday I mentioned that the Saudi state warned its citizens against following the ‘Western’ New Year’s celebrations and my newly hung calendar of Calgary indicated to me the reason for this. New Year’s day this year coincides with a New Moon. The call of the reappearance of the new moon - considered newly created by Allah, ‘the distributor of blessings’ - is a religious one in Sunni Islam, of which the Saudi nation considers itself the proper guardian. This potential conflict of when which starts - the new moon versus the new year - is an exponent of the conflict between husbanding and agricultural traditions and the corresponding lunar and solar calendars. This concern drew my attention to the prominence of time in the tradition of Sunni Islam, which can be noticed in the local mosque, where the clock or a modern time display is located next to the ‘pulpit’. And. in Makka itself, a gigantic clock tower rises to a height exceeding the Minarets’ by more than two, displaying a dial that can be seen from afar. This clock tower is part of the huge hotel complex next to the Central Mosque - to the west I presume -, has a dark colour in contrast to the white of the said mosque and its minarets. This is analogous to the use of colours of the gender based dress code, prevailing in that cultural tradition, but not shared by African Islam adherents. The white that is displayed there for all to see and notice, while the dark, though present and acknowledged, is kept subdued and out of sight so to speak. All this makes me wonder about the origins of this symbology. The word minaret means light tower or light house, but fire and candles are not part any ceremony in Islam and fire is prohibited in many cases. The prominence of time is not found in the teachings of Islam that I have read, but it is very much a part of the daily routine of the believers. It is as if time’s prominence is to be kept in the dark, so as not to be noticed and so made ‘ignorable’. This practice points to a possible rededication of older customs to a new purpose. For example the word minaret means light tower and these structures may have been a part of the Zoroastrian tradition in Ancient Persia. They also remind me of the ‘stylites’ who dominated public life in Christian Syria before Islam. Simon the Stylite was famous for his pronouncements at that time, representing authority and at time questioning new authority figures. Another consideration that come to mind is the worship of the time god ’Zurvan’ in the latter days of Zoroastrianism, maybe after the fall of the ‘final’ prophet Mani into disgrace. An other conundrum is to total disappearance of Manichaeism as a religion, while we have evidence that it reached from the western lands of the African continent all the way to China’s southern coast prior to Islam becoming dominant across that same region. All these consideration got triggered again by the obstinate insistence of some authorities that the time as regulated by the new lunar moon time should not be confused with the time of the new solar year time. And I add the word time here deliberately, emphasising that we may be talking about a systemic difference, rather than a so called coincidence. <10:17am~