Ovi magazine; Saturday December 24th, 2022 – Christmas Eve

The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Saturday December 24th, 2022

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The Plunge Of Prometheus* by David Sparenberg

In an instant—fire! The fire surged unto eternity. Elementals perished amid flaming trees. The Keepers of Animals were consumed with the animals they could no longer protect. Insects with torched antennae and wingless butterflies stumbled, crumpled and died before tongues and mouths of voracious heat.

Even angels, with fiery wings resembling butterflies and feathered doves and dreams, felt terror and fled to the blackholes of oblivion in search of shelter. None but the Master of Fire remained to inherit absence and recolonize the burnt and lifeless land.

What too of the sea, not surging but sweating against the scorched rocks of shore? And what of God, dry-eyed in Heaven, who covered nostrils, lips and eyes, and torn his heart in half between titanic outrage and inconsolable pity?

Continue reading HERE!

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T’was the Flight before Christmas by Jan Sand

“I ride the wind at Christmas time
Across a black and wintry sea
Strapped to a chair
High in the air
Deep in the dark, no Moon to see.”

Continue reading HERE

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A Modest Proposal: Let’s Rename the Christmas Season The Winter Saturnalia by Dr. Emanuel Paparella

Christmas carols, children playing and eating cookies, adults playing Christmas games and exchanging gifts around a chimney, Santa Claus traveling by sled from the North Pole to bring gifts, adults exchanging expensive and not so expensive gifts, angels singing, kings traveling via camels to come and visit an important arrival, lights and more lights galore. It’s a wonderful picturesque world vying with Walt Disney, for sure. How can anyone criticize it? Who is the kill-joy who would like to eliminate it, besides a Puritan? But there is a problem: it’s a misnomer.

This world of relief from the dreariness and darkness of winter solstice has been around from time immemorial. It was a genial way of mitigating the darkness and dreariness with light and merriment and some alcohol, of course, to lubricate the festivities and add to the general merriment. The Romans  has a name for those festivities, they called them The Saturnalia.

I suppose today we call it “Christmas season” but could that be a misnomer? Why do people celebrate with worship, prayer and meditation, besides dancing and frolicking? Could there be a meaning to the whole celebration? Perhaps the meaning can be gathered by reading a very short passage from the passage of St. John, which is read to every Christian congregation on Christmas eve in every Christian Church.

Continue reading HERE

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Fika bonding! #51 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

For more Fika bonding! HERE!

For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Ovi magazine; Sunday December 11th, 2022 – International Mountain Day

The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Sunday December 11th, 2022 – International Mountain Day

The theme of this year’s International Mountain Day (IMD) on 11 December will be Women move mountains. Women play a key role in mountains’ environmental protection and social and economic development. They are often the primary managers of mountain resources, guardians of biodiversity, keepers of traditional knowledge, custodians of local culture, and experts in traditional medicine.

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DANCER and the DANCE – a Narrative by David Sparenberg

I have, or at least had, a fairly solid sense of who I am and what my life is about.  I am a dancer, disciplined and hard working.  For the most part, dancers have short careers.  It is all about the body and with injuries and aging; time shrinks the parameters of fully controlled and realizable movement; few of us of us are fortunate to go beyond two, or three at best, decades. I am also a choreographer. This adds dimension, respect, and duration to my work, and I have attained local recognition and a sizeable following.

Recently I created a dance which was to showcase who I am at my core, both as a, mmm, let me say it, both as an existential being, a thinking, feeling, artistic person, and as a performer.  I set about rehearsing. Like most other dancers, I am a neurotic perfectionist, so I rehearse and rehearse, and rehearsing, making changes, tweaking a gesture here, a movement or transition there, until the effect quality throughout is as right as right can be to me.  That is, as always, until this newest dance which was to have my name on it was as right and ready as could be. Accolades are important to us, to dancers, well, more than important. We are vain creatures, necessarily confident on the external image side, internally often insecure, easily feeling ashamed of what we do before an audience, a mistake can open a trap door dropping into depression if not obscurity.  I have seen enough of the circus wards of disillusioned wreckage and the graveyards of addiction and failure.

Continue reading HERE!

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An Ending #poem by Dr. Lawrence Nannery

“Mid-morning. Simple rowboat, the island in the middle of the lake.
Gently, they helped one another out of the boat.
Up through the scrubbrush, up to the top of the center hill,
where the big tree spread itself over all.
Graciously, they sat together under the great tree,
back to back, leaning on one another,
facing opposite ways, because what they were about to say
might be too strong for the eye of the listener to bear.”

Continue reading HERE

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Always something; the family edition #50 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

For more Always something; the family edition HERE!

For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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