Stonehenge II

Newsflash!  A second mystery sender, albeit probably just a flash in the pan.

Long time readers know I have been the lucky recipient of postcards from a Mystery Sender.  This Mystery Sender sent me postcards on an almost daily basis, at least through my year of posting daily, and has continued to do so intermittently since then, signing all postcards with the signature "Peace".  Very occasionally, the Mystery Sender will post a comment, always under "anonymous".  S/he is capable of encouragement, taunting, melancholy and humor, and I find myself missing the more frequent postcards.  [Note:  for new readers, you can find some of the Mystery Sender cards here (a Mystery Sender comment), here (an informational card in the "Food Series"), here  (the original Mystery Sender post), here (in which I attempt to decipher the Mystery Sender code and (as informed in a later postcard), failed miserably), and here (the taunting).  If you search "Mystery Sender" on my blog, you can  find several more.]

So, lo and behold, a couple of weeks ago the above postcard appears in the mail, with the message "A mysterious monument from a mystery sender!  I just came across your blog and thought you might like a postcard sent out of the blue......"   I'm pretty sure this is not the Mystery Sender in disguise.  I have no idea if this Mystery Sender II is aware of the original Mystery Sender or not. 

All I do know is I like it!

P.S.  Today is my cousin Locke's birthday.  Happy Birthday, cuz!

Stonehenge I

Gotta love the irregularly shaped postcards.  This one of Stonehenge comes from my son, during his stint at Oxford last summer.

Archaeologists have mostly determined that Stonehenge was used more as an ancient burial ground as opposed to serving as a astronomical calculator and/or observatory, although it may have had some significance to the winter solstice.

No matter the science, 20,000 people showed up for the summer solstice in 2005, and  it's much more romantic to think about this organized pile of rocks as a place of ancient worship and Druid ritual.   From the Wiki:

Throughout the twentieth century, Stonehenge began to be revived as a place of religious significance, this time by adherents of Neopagan and New Age beliefs, particularly the Neo-druids: the historian Ronald Hutton would later remark that "it was a great, and potentially uncomfortable, irony that modern Druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient Druids from it." The first such Neo-druidic group to make use of the megalithic monument was the Ancient Order of Druids, who performed a mass initiation ceremony there in August 1905, in which they admitted 259 new members into their organisation. This assembly was largely ridiculed in the press, who mocked the fact that the Neo-druids were dressed up in costumes comprising of white robes and fake beards.

From 1972 until 1984, Stonehenge was the setting for a free music festival, until the "Battle of the Beanfield" in 1985.  This infamous battle was "waged" between new age travelers and the local police.  I particularly like the headline from the BBC on that day about the incident:  Hippies clash with police at Stonehenge.  As always, one man's clash is another man's battle.