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Three Corners– Traditions

Posted on November 30, 2008

The word tra­di­tion comes from the Latin tra­di­tionem, acc. of tra­di­tio which means “a giv­ing up, deliv­er­ing up, sur­ren­der­ing“^[1], and is used in a num­ber of ways in the Eng­lish language:

1. Beliefs or cus­toms taught by one gen­er­a­tion to the next, often orally. For exam­ple, we can speak of the tra­di­tion of send­ing birth announcements.
2. A set of cus­toms or prac­tices. For exam­ple, we can speak of Christ­mas traditions.
3. A broad reli­gious move­ment made up of reli­gious denom­i­na­tions or church bod­ies that have a com­mon his­tory, cus­toms, cul­ture, and, to some extent, body of teach­ings. For exam­ple, one can speak of Islam’s Sufi tra­di­tion or Christianity’s Lutheran tradition.

How­ever, on a more basic the­o­ret­i­cal level, tradition(s) can be seen as infor­ma­tion or com­posed of infor­ma­tion. For that which is brought into the present from the past, in a par­tic­u­lar soci­etal con­text, is infor­ma­tion. This is even more fun­da­men­tal than par­tic­u­lar acts or prac­tices even if repeated over a long sequence of time.

This months theme was very dif­fi­cult for me.  I’ve felt like I’ve had a pretty tran­sient life over the past 10 years or so.  Tra­di­tions were few and far between.  Now that I have a fam­ily of my own and am pretty set­tled I’m slowly build­ing up lit­tle fam­ily traditions.

I absolutely love bak­ing w/ Squidge.  It is hands down one of the  best things about being a mom for me.  I’ve had to cut the bak­ing down to twice a month, my ass thanks me!

Wal and I also try to get out once a  month or so.  Noth­ing spe­cial, we usu­ally go out for a cou­ple of pints at our local pub.  Is this a tra­di­tion?  I don’t know for sure!

The thing that came to mind when Corey announced the theme was walk­ing.  We as a fam­ily walk a lot.  I love our walks.  I love to take pho­tos while Squidge explores, it’s a pretty good sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship!  Once she gets a bit tired she’ll sit back in her chair then Wal and I talk.   As a cou­ple we really need these walks. We’re away from the TV and the com­puter.  We chat about things we see.  If some­one odd/striking walks by we make up sto­ries about them.  We talk about every­thing, any­thing and noth­ing at all.

We also have our big hol­i­day tra­di­tions.  I’ll be post­ing some of those as the hol­i­day sea­son gets rolling.  Now I’m off to do some bak­ing with my daugh­ter– gin­ger cake for a Gin­ga­joy!  Today I’m off to a for­mer blog­gers house for a belated ex-pat Thanks­giv­ing din­ner.  I’m really excited about it.

Don’t for­get to check out the other Three Cor­ner posts.  Corey and Jenty

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on November 27, 2008

Posted on November 26, 2008

“Twenty years from now you will be more dis­ap­pointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow­lines. Sail away from the safe har­bor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Dis­cover.” Mark Twain

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