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Amy's avatar

Regarding kennings, it's true that we don't make many of them anymore, but we are living in a boom time for portmanteaus: biopic, brunch, soundscape, workaholic, bromance, hangry, snark, etc. etc. It seems like a lot of the desire to make new words out of existing words comes out in that form, although it sounds like they don't fill precisely the same artistic niche as kennings.

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Jenn's avatar

My first year out of college I had a period of despair when I realized, as you did, that work just goes on and on and on. Not only did I miss the rhythm of breaks between quarters, I REALLY missed the beginning, middle and end of each term, and going from knowing relatively little about the material covered in a class to wrestling with it, and then mastering it and moving on to something else that you know little about. That sense of having a beginning, a middle and an end keeps me anchored and interested.

The rhythm I pay attention to now is the growing season, which ties in beautifully with the liturgical calendar. Epiphany-the season between the feast itself and Ash Wednesday--also reveals the coming to life of plants, as bulbs and other overwintering plants start to wake up. Lent, with its fast, reminds me that the food we put by last summer in our freezer and Mason jars, is starting to run out. On a farm, pregnant animals aren't giving milk, and it's still cold so chickens aren't producing many eggs--so if you truly are eating local, protein gets a little scarce! Easter season has a lot of new life; the season after Pentecost is one of abundance but also hard work. Michaelmas to Advent is harvest--and the end of November is when everything shuts down. Nothing blooms in November! Then in Advent the whole cycle starts over again.

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