Spring Fever 2
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Grey School of Wizardry Spring Equinox Newsletter Volume 1, Issue 2 Managing Editor: Lady Ravenweed March 20, 2005 Co-Editor: Moonwriter Published by the Grey School Press “All the quarterly joy that’s fit to print.” The Vernal Equinox takes place on Official weatherworking report: Sunday, March 20, at 4:33 AM (pacific Wrap up in a warm cloak, and don’t forget the umbrella! time, USA). Merry meet, everyone! It's been a wonderful winter here at the Grey School and we’re all looking forward to spring. In this edition we’re proud to feature a newsletter written almost completely by Grey School students. Enjoy! (Please send comments, submissions, or suggestions for future editions to [email protected].) What’s New at the Grey School? The Grey School Store—Magick Alley—is now operating under the leadership of volunteer shopkeeper Lion Bane (Flames Lodge). If you haven’t visited the store for a while, stop in and check out the new selections of books, wands, magickal journals, and more! The Prefect System is underway. All new Prefects will take a special class called “Leadership 101,” offered in the Department of Lifeways. Prefects also have their own e-forum, the “Prefect Lounge,” created by Aaran (Stones Lodge). Look for the Prefects to have an ever-increasing role in Grey School operations, and feel free to ask your favorite Prefect any questions you might have. The Prefects will soon be running a “Name the Newsletter” contest. Start thinking about this now, and stay tuned for updates. A Grey School Handbook is almost completed and will soon be made available to students. The Handbook details the operations and regulations of the Grey School of Wizardry. If you’d like to learn more about Runes, stop in at the Great Hall forum and check out the new Runes Study Group, organized by Stacy (Winds Lodge). Some great new classes recently uploaded: Year 1: Dragon Jewels: Crystal Divination (LeopardDancer) Conjury 101: Magic without the “K” (Jim Fish) Core Energy Practices (Lady Ravenweed) Year 2: Scrying 201: The Black Scrying Mirror (Skip Ellison) Meet the Moon 201: The Science (Moonwriter) Year 3: Technomagic (Elizabeth Barrette) Chiromancy/Palmistry (Crow Dragontree) Grey School of Wizardry Hall of Fame (Fall Equinox 2004 to Spring Equinox 2005) As of March 17, the school has 312 students and 33 faculty/staff members. Current Holder of the House Hat: The Sylphs Current Members of the Dean’s List: Enigmafae Kalla Karasu Moonwriter Student Houses and Prefects: Gnomes House, Prefect Aedammair Skye Salamanders House, Prefect Joseph Sylphs House, Prefect Amalthia Undines House (Prefect to be announced) Student Lodges and Prefects: Flames Lodge, Prefect Hannegal Skye Stones Lodge, Prefect Aaran Waters Lodge, Prefect Oakmyst Winds Lodge (Prefect to be announced) News from the Houses and Lodges The Sylphs! Sylph house is an interesting house, and is definitely more active than similar types of settings I have been in. At the moment we are currently in a read-off, where each student chooses a book and posts a short report on why the chose it. Once they finish the book, they post a book report on what they learned. The read-off is intended to create more posting on the boards, and it works fairly well. The last House project we did was to choose the totem animal for Sylph: we chose the Hawk. Although the forum gets quiet sometimes, the house is still fun. The members that post often have bonded into something that could be described as friends, housemates or even comrades. The future plans of the House are always changing, so there is no way to predict where things will go from here, but all I can say is that it should be interesting to find out. Amalthia, Prefect, Sylphs House ----- The Stones! About the Circle of the Standing Stones Motto: Firmitas, Integritas, Magnanimitas Totem: The Wolf Element: Earth We are an active lodge filled with very service-oriented and community-minded people not only in school, but also in our mundane lives, and our forum is usually full of lively discussions on any number of topics. You will always find the candy dish full of Chocolate Frogs, Jelly Slugs, Every Flavor Beans, and more in the Stones Common Room. Our Lodgemistress, Moonwriter, always presents us with educational and fun Challenges, and we Stones always rise to meet them! You may have noticed that our lodge has its own custom crest. I designed and created the crest as a gift to my fellow Stones to more accurately represent who we are as a lodge within the Grey School, and in life. What does our lodge crest say about us? The shield is broken up into quadrants of green and black-our lodge's colors. The wolf on the shield is our lodge totem-a symbol of many things including, but not limited to leadership, cunning, wisdom, intuition, death and rebirth, transformations, strong protection, spiritual guidance and meditations. The great Oak on our shield represents the earth element and stands for strength and protection. Our motto, Firmitas, Integritas, Magnanimitas means "Strength, Integrity, Greatness of Soul." Submitted by Aaran, Stones Prefect ----- The Waters! Hail Waterfolk! If your lodge is the Coterie of the Flowing Waters, you need to check in this week and in the weeks after as there are important decisions we need your opinion on. If you are not of Waters, but know someone who is, please pass word that we need the lodge members to raise their voices in the next month to get things moving! Namaste, Oakmyst, Prefect of the Coterie of the Flowing Waters ----- The Winds! Drop by the Winds’ Lodge page to see a picture of their mascot, Myrddin—Professor Dragontree’s slightly eccentric 3-year-old Quaker parrot. ----- Meanwhile, Back on Mother Earth…. The Powerful Sumatra-Andaman Islands Earthquake Credit: USGS Explanation: December's 9.0 earthquake has likely shortened Earth's day by about three microseconds and may also have tweaked Earth's rotational wobble. The megathrust earthquake occurred as the Indian tectonic plate slid further beneath the Burma tectonic plate. The earthquake was the fourth most powerful since the year 1900 and triggered tsunamis that tragically killed over 250,000 people in nearby coastal regions. In the above map, the yellow star indicates the location of the main earthquake, while circles show the locations of large aftershocks. The Sumatra-Andaman Islands earthquake's effect on the Earth's rotation was sudden but much smaller than the accumulated effects of other surface events such as an El Nino. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html ----- What is Spring Fever? (Inquiring minds want to know….) Spring Fever The term spring fever originated from the real illness scurvy back in the 17th and 18th centuries. During the winter, when there was a shortage of fruits and vegetables, people depleted their natural stores of Vitamin C and come spring, the depletion resulted in weakness with joint swelling, loose teeth and poor healing of wounds. This listlessness and weakness have probably continued into our time as the listless loss of ambition that accompanies the first few days of warm weather in the spring to be called “Spring Fever”. (Submitted by Aaran, Stones Prefect) ----- Dear Professor, This is in response to the Undines challenge #1. I really couldn't find anything about the history of Spring Fever, but it is defined in Webster’s dictionary as, "a listless, lazy feeling felt by some people at the beginning of spring weather." Others say it is a time for romance and love, and some say it is a time for renewal. Some doctors think it is caused by pollen. I think it is a time for your mother to say it is time to clean your room. This may be why the Undines forum is so quiet. Corey Glover, Undines ----- The Random House dictionary defines Spring Fever as "a listless, lazy or restless feeling commonly associated with the beginning of spring.” In poetry, it symbolizes prime time for hedonistic indulgence ("Come fill the cup, and in the fire of spring/The winter garment of repentance fling" - Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam). "Maybe there's something primal we're tapping into here, from back in the lower parts of the brain stem: ancestral memories of when we came out of the cave after winter and started looking for food - not stored-up nuts and berries but real meat - and mates. The sun is warm, the flowers are blooming, a lot of sensory things are going on . things that make it hard for people to do what they need to do,”-Welsh Back in the horse-and-buggy era, on farms and in small towns of central or southern Illinois and Indiana, "spring fever" was the name for a rundown physical condition naturally resulting from diet deficiencies during the winter months. In those days there were no fast freight deliveries, by refrigerated railroad cars or by airplane, of fresh fruits and green vegetables from Florida, Texas, California and other subtropical regions. We rarely saw an orange, for instance, except at Christmas. From autumn until spring we subsisted mostly on a diet of bread, meat, potatoes and gravy; supplemented by stuff our mothers had canned and by bins full of apples. There was legitimate reason for a tired listless feeling and no appetite in spring. We knew nothing about vitamins, then, but you can see that some important ones were missing in such a diet. It was commonly believed that, during winter, a person's blood became "thick", sluggish, and loaded with "impurities".