Lucius

She's buying a stair way to heaven.....
 
Lucius Alexander
 
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed, with a word she can get a palindromedary

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
--Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus"
 
"I've spoken of the Shining City all my political life. …In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here."
--the 40th president of the United States
 
"Why are we accepting all these people from shithole countries?"
--the 45th president of the United States
 
"Jesus wept"
-John 11:35
 
 
 

The days when it was inconceivable for the phrases "United States of America" and "secret military tribunals" to belong in the same sentence, except in a context like "The United States of America condemns the practice of secret military tribunals in certain nations that do not share our democratic values and our respect for human rights."
 
Lucius Alexander
 
Telling a palindromedary about the good old days....

If we elect produce, we can make America grape again!

Modesty Lane- Modesty is a firm believer that the true threat to the world is the undermining of sexual ethics and morals . this is hardly that off the wall or lonely, only, she believes there is one group behind this. One disgusting group of spiritaul corrupters and flesh peddlers. She refers to them as... "the Illumi-Naughty". Sexy coke commercial? they did it. casual hook ups on cw shows? they did it. Bronies!! They did it! The Illuminaughty take what is pure and twist it to sordid! And Modesty Lane sees herself as knowing the road to restoring our values.
 
No matter how many swimsuit models, pornographers, and comic book artists who keep drawing women with oversized endowments she has to kill!
 
She wears what appears to be steam punk puritan combination gear, including a gun that kills you with a mix of plasma and bleach.
 
 
 
 

"My name is Luke Skywalker. I'm here to rescue you."?
 
Lucius Alexander
 
My name is Lucius Alexander. I'm here to deliver your palindromedary tagline.  

My eyes swept over the devastation, watering, I told myself, from the reek of death and the acrid smoke still twisting from ruins. 
 
Every house had been torched; the streets were choked with the massacred townsfolk, even to the infant cloven in two lying beside the burned chunks that might have been its mother.  Broken and charred goods lay strewn about, with a few things doubtless carried off, but most merely wasted in these ruins.  The dogs had been killed and chopped up; what livestock the invaders could not capture they had shot and left dead in the pens.  Even the cats had been killed and left where they fell.  Barns had burned down, and those small conflagrations had spread to other buildings as wind and fortune had permitted and consumed what it would haphazardly.  The well had had a number of severed parts of multiple bodies dropped into it, with a child’s severed head floating face-up in the undrinkable water several yards down.  In the church a dozen or more townsfolk had been slain on the altar before the other parts of the shrine had been pulled down, and it seems that a dozen or more looters had defecated in strategic places to put further personal emphasis on the destruction.
 
Only the buzzing flies survived here.
 
My escort was silent, whether in reaction to the totality with which this village had been expunged, or out of fear of what I might do, I was unsure.  Perhaps they were unsure of that as well.
 
The Sight showed only the last sniggerings of the Fire That Consumes in some still-smoldering corners.  Everything was dead.  
 
The utterly warmthless breeze from between the stars blew through my soul as my Sight registered the path the invaders had taken on leaving.  I let its coldness possess me.
 
“The nature of this war has changed,” the coldness said with my voice into the silence.
 
“The task before us now is to exterminate their race.  Only after that will we mourn and rebuild.
 
“We must feast upon the tomorrows they will never have.”
 
The wind from the Void blew away from me, leaving the frozen bits of my humanity to rattle against each other in my heart.  On its own volition it consumed the tiny remnants of Fire as it swept over what had once been a village on its way back to the infinite emptiness from which it came.  The wind chilled my escorts’ hearts so they too saw only the starkness of the Nothing to which we had to consign our enemy.
 
“That way,” I pointed, and we set out.

That is part of why I'm doing it. At this point, careful checking and apologizing for inaccuracy almost feels like resistance.
 
Dean Shomshak

Q: If you didn't want to watch the whole Twilight marathon, why didn't you get up and leave?
 
A: I thought I could do something original with the idea.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
A game of palindromedaries

The Vandal and the Mosque: A New Chapter of Forgiveness in Arkansas

I must correct my previous post. Trump did not use the specific words, "Mine is bigger." In the hour between my hearing the news item and my posting, my erratic brain condensed and altered his words. I heard the exact words two hours later, to my mortification, but by then I was home and could not retract the post.
 
No matter how much I dislike Donald Trump, I do not want to condemn him for things he did not actually say or do. (His real, accurately reported words and actions are quite bad enough.)
 
I apologize for the inaccuracy.
 
Dean Shomshak

Much of the reduction in violent crime in general seems to be related to the removal of lead from gasoline. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/

Unfortunately, a bunch of scribble to my eyes

Telemarketer. Sooner or later, he's actually going to tell you what he's selling.
 
Guard vs Warder

Lucius Alexander's Yule Essay: 2017
An open letter to a number of interested parties.
(This is an essay I revise periodically)
 
 
You CAN Just Say No to Christmas. I do.
 
You do have a choice.
 
December is a time of traditions. I usually choose not to participate in most of them. But even so I have my onset-of-winter, end-of-calendar-year traditions, and digging out and updating this essay seems to have become one of them. It seems appropriate to quote from something Andrew Sullivan said in 2005 : “Since…most solstice festivals are ultimately about cyclical renewal and resurrection, I have no real qualms about just reiterating what I said last year around this time.” I honestly am not sure when I began this – I think perhaps in 2001. It started with a decision to be more articulate about why I feel the way I do about what I call the "butt-end of the year." Why I not only don’t celebrate Christmas, but in recent years have refrained even from my own religion’s solstice festival. Partly because I wanted to understand it better myself. And partly because it is not just some eccentric objection on my own part; there are issues involved that, in my opinion, everyone should think more about.
 
December, and especially the time around the 25th, is a very special time of year. All kinds of things happen more often: Auto accidents; Abuse of mind-altering substances, especially America’s "drug of choice," alcohol; Patients turning up in hospitals for depression and other mental problems. And all kinds of people who never (quite) attempt to harm themselves or others, who never check into a hospital or get themselves falling down drunk, or get fed-up and throw a vase or a turkey or a punch at a relative, nevertheless suffer from assorted degrees of stress, anger, bitterness, disappointment. Some of this is simply due to the facts of nature in these latitudes; long cold nights breed depression in a lot of people, miserable weather is more dangerous to drive in (or do anything else in) and creates not only accidents but its own quota of stress, and so forth. But I don’t think that’s the whole answer.
 
Let me repeat something I’ve been saying for years. Dickens and Dr. Suess both got it wrong. Scrooge never reformed into a Christmas-loving good guy. Scrooge ALWAYS loved Christmas. And the Grinch never gave Christmas back after stealing it. He fenced it to Scrooge, who sold it back to the Whos down in Whoville. That’s why Scrooge loves Christmas, because he loves profits. He probably paid Dickens to write the story. And Scrooge and the Grinch both pull the same scam, year after year.
 
I'll assume you're already familiar with "A Christmas Carol" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." That seems a safe assumption. Dickens' story is of course older. In fact, Dickens has been credited with having invented Christmas as we know it today. I think that's an exaggeration, but with some basis. And while I don't seriously think there was a "Scrooge" who paid him for it, there were plenty of real-life Scroogelike people who were glad he wrote it. To be fair, he wrote it in 1843 - about 3 years after Victoria married Prince Albert, a fact of interest in that it was Albert who introduced the Christmas Tree to the English speaking world - and the commercialization of the holiday did not take off for another 20 years, or at least, it's not until after the Civil War that a proliferation of Christmas oriented advertising in the newspapers is noticed. It was not until 1851 I think that, for example, an American named Mark Carr was the first to make a seasonal business of selling Christmas Trees.
 
Which is something to bear in mind: Christmas As We Know It is only 150 years old, a product of a time when our civilization was undergoing rapid changes, becoming more industrial and urban, and people were already nostolgically looking back not on the past as it had been, but on a past that never was. A nostalgia that was also immediately being co-opted by commercialization.
 
If Scrooge and his ilk ever hated Christmas, they got over it as soon as they saw there was money to be made. I can just hear the dialogue between Scrooge and the ghost of Marley his partner.....
 
"I was a failure, Scrooge!"
"But you were a successful man of business! Why, your assets were..."
"Were so much less than they could have been! The profits I could have made, if I'd only known the true meaning of Christmas! Don't make the same mistake I did Scrooge - cash in on Christmas!"
 
As for the Grinch - what is the Grinch really? How is it possible for him to "steal Christmas?" For the Grinch, Christmas is something he can steal because he thinks it resides in things like trees and lights, in "boxes and bags, packages and tags." Just as we are all in some sense the Whos down in Whoville, we can think of the Grinch in ourselves as being the part of us that is likely to make the same reductionist mistake, and the Grinch in others as being those people who ENCOURAGE that kind of mistake - what I think would in Christian terms be called the sin of simony, putting a finite monetary price tag on things of infinite spiritual value. This is how the Grinch manages to steal Christmas - and Hanukkah, Yule, and Kwanzaa and the rest - every year. By hoodwinking Whos into thinking he has it wrapped up in a box, a box they don't have. And every year, Scrooge turns around and sells it back to the Whos the Grinch stole it from.
 
They make it very hard not to be accomplices in the crime. My friend Amadan Na Briona has pointed out that winter gift-giving is an honorable old Pagan custom, but I don't think it is possible to practice it in this day and age without feeding into the Santa Claus myth - and Santa Claus (or is it just the disguised Grinch?) is fat enough and doesn't need any more feeding. It is especially hard for parents of children. Whether children have a naive belief in a literal Santa or not, they are like the littlest Who in the Dr. Seuss story - they look right at the disguised Grinch and think HE is Santa. So do most adults actually, but children fall for the scam even harder. That only makes the crime so much more insidious.
 
Now, I’ll admit part of my reaction IS idiosyncratic. Obviously, not everyone else has the kind of rebelliousness that automatically resists anything that is made mandatory, that resents not being free to choose to take something or leave it. And Christmas is mandatory. If I want to, I can remain blissfully unaware of Ramadan or the Chinese New Year. I have actually gotten quite good at evading and ignoring Christmas, but unless I go hide out in a cave, sooner or later those two hustlers, Grinch and Scrooge, are going to be in my face, trying to sell me Christmas. But this is one Who who isn’t buying it. And I know I'm not the only one who tries to stock up on groceries and provisions in late November just to avoid having to shop in December any more than can be helped.
 
It’s not just a question of the "commercialization" of Christmas. I find it ironic that Christians so often complain about the merchants stealing Christmas from them, when they stole it and filed the serial numbers off it themselves. And let me be clear about what I mean by "stealing." Religions and cultures share or borrow ideas all the time. By "steal" I don’t just mean adapting something for one’s own use, I mean deliberately trying to deprive someone else of it. A great many Gods at one time joyfully shared the 25th of December as their birthday. It was the Christians who decided that there was only room for ONE Birthday Boy at the party.
 
Which brings me a little closer to the point I want to make. What monotheistic religion, especially Christianity, has done, is to drain the "magick" or the "sacredness" out of the world, investing it into a transcendent abstract thing they call "God." I put the words magick and sacredness in quotation marks because I know I am not really expressing myself well here. Of course the magick and the sacredness are still there, despite the denials of Western monotheism. Perhaps the word I want is "meaning." Or possibly "value." Now, this was a long process, and never a completely successful one, that reached its peak in Puritanism and related movements that sought to "purify" Christianity of anything left over from primordial Paganism. Which if actually carried out thoroughly would purge Christianity of almost anything worth keeping, and a great deal that’s NOT worth keeping. But I digress. The next thing our Western Civilization did, after in so far as possible cramming all the (magick - spirituality - Ultimate Meaning - whatever we call it) into God, was to try to kill off God.
 
Humans can do, and refrain from doing, a lot of things, but we can’t refrain from meaning. We have to mean something. We have to value something. Or if there is nothing to mean, we just have to mean in the abstract; to paraphrase Terry Pratchett - "I don’t think it’s symbolic OF anything in particular. It’s just symbolic." From this point I could delve into some deep philosophical swamps, such as the question of whether Human Beings actually create meaning or are just compelled to find and recognize it in our experience somewhere. But find it or make it, we end up with it, and we have to PUT it somewhere.
 
The mystics say that all places are holy, all things are holy, all time is holy. Or at least, the pantheists say that. And I think in a very deep and true sense they are right. But for practical purposes, such as the purposes of religion and magick, there is a distinction between the sacred and the profane. After all, the physicists are also right when they say there is a tremendous amount of energy tied up in any given atom of ordinary matter, but they use uranium and not lead to fuel a nuclear power plant.
 
I want to start by discussing sacred space, hoping that will shed light on what I want to say about sacred time. To Pagans, especially Paleopagans, many sites are sacred. Whether or not a shrine was built, the people of an area might respect the holiness of a certain tree, a spring, a hill - anywhere that a numinous presence was recognized. I have said – nor is it an original thought - that monotheism "drained the sacredness out of the world." But never entirely - I suspect many Europeans and Americans hold their own homes sacred, although they would not use that word. And they would understand without ever thinking about it that someone else’s home is sacred to them, that "home" is always sacred, but is a different place for different people. But if you are told that there are no faeries under that hill, that there are no sacred groves but only unharvested lumber, that Stonehenge and the Pyramids are monuments to ignorance and superstition only - even if you hear that until you believe it, even so, there is one place that you can still call "Holy Land."
 
The conflicts among the three major Western Monotheisms are caused not so much by disagreement, as by agreement. All agree that on the whole enormous surface of the planet, only a very tiny fraction is "Holy Land." And while they don’t agree 100% (Islam has Mecca and Medina, for example) they do mostly agree on exactly where the Holy Land is.
 
Imagine a billion people deciding the same place is "home."
 
Some of the people I am writing this for have some experience of magick. The rest of you will have to take my word for it that you can get real, and sometimes quite surprising, results, by steadfastly focusing your attention and intention by means of symbol and ritual. Especially if a group of people unite their awareness and their will. Now – Imagine the power of millions of minds, perhaps billions, investing value and meaning in the same thing. The "Holy Land" suffers from toxic levels of mana.
 
There is a phenomenon called "The Jerusalem Effect" that strikes people in the so-called "Holy Land," especially visitors who are not acclimated to the psychic atmosphere. Now, it stands to reason that if a person is already unstable, an intense experience like a pilgrimage could trigger a psychotic episode; but the Jerusalem Effect strikes people who had no previous history of mental illness or disorder, who temporarily become deluded, usually into identifying with some Biblical character, and then recover and go on to lead perfectly normal lives afterwards.
 
"There will never be peace in the Middle East." This has been said many times by sane and reasonable people who despair of ever healing the plague of violence that is endemic to the Holy Land. This plague is yet another symptom of the same basic disease. You may think it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, but if you are trying to light a candle in an atmosphere of 99% oxygen, you’re wrong – dead wrong. Expecting peace under these conditions is like expecting a seed to sprout when you have a huge lens focusing a hectare’s worth of sunlight onto it all day
 
- and then at night you illuminate it with a laser.
 
Of course, I can (and do) choose to never go near that region of dangerously intense, uncontrolled, and conflicting psychic energies that is called "Holy Land." But I can’t choose to skip over the month of December. And just as more and more value and meaning has been focused over time on that unfortunate Sacred Space, so the same thing has happened to the Sacred Time that American culture usually refers to as "The Christmas Season." It has become a kind of black hole of significance, warping everything around it. Yes, many cultures of the Northern Hemisphere have had some variation of a festival of light around the time of the Solstice. There is nothing inherently "wrong" with holy days, any more than there is something wrong with sacred sites. But just as it’s possible to concentrate too much spiritual power in a given region, far too much power has been given to Christmas. And power, even spiritual power, corrupts if there is too much of it. Christmas wasn’t always so overwhelmingly important; at one time there were a lot of little feasts and festivals from late Autumn through Winter, that have now mostly been sucked into the maw of Christmas. St. Nicholas for example originally had his own day, before being identified with Father Christmas. Hanukkah has its distinctive customs, the dreidel and menorah, but even that "stiff-necked people" (to borrow the words of Moses, by the King James version) have surrendered to the gift wrapping compulsion, although such customs are "all made up and have no basis in tradition." (to borrow the words of Rabbi Tuvia Hoffman)
 
And even I have been a hypocrite. I participated in the "gimme-grabbee" gift exchange - because it was fun. It has nothing to do with Paganism, nothing to do with the spiritual uplift I get from the Yule ritual. It’s fun, and after all - everybody does it. Everybody. And I know that the Yule Rite is not only deeply fulfilling spiritually, but absolutely vital. I know that if it is not done, the Sun will not rise. So I, too, sometimes stand vigil on the Longest Night. Someone has to carry the torch. But maybe now you understand why I sometimes feel as if the torch I’m carrying is but "another faggot borne to flaming Troy." Why I am happy to give or get presents any other time of year, but give few in December and then on the Ides. Why I don’t send Christmas cards, and don’t display those sent to me. Why, if it’s at all possible, I prefer to be at work on the 25th of December. Why - even though I have come to respect Santa Claus as another form of Deity - I don’t want Him too prominent in how I celebrate Yule.
 
A few years ago I heard someone complaining about having to go shop for gifts - "But it has to be done." I couldn't let that pass. "Does it?" I asked. "Why? Do you really feel like you don't have a choice?" I've used a lot of words here, but this is one sentence I really hope comes through loud and clear - You CAN "just say no" to Christmas. I have. Whether or not you do really is up to you.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
Copyright Palindromedary Enterprises

I don't want all media controlled by a single company, no matter WHO founded it.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
I might be okay with all media controlled by palindromedaries, but how likely is that?

I don't want all media controlled by a single company, no matter WHO founded it.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
I might be okay with all media controlled by palindromedaries, but how likely is that?

I don't want all media controlled by a single company, no matter WHO founded it.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
I might be okay with all media controlled by palindromedaries, but how likely is that?

The mouse just ate a Fox:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42353545
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/business/media/disney-fox-espn-tv.html
 

Alright, who wished the giant albino penguins were REAL?
 

http://time.com/5062266/giant-penguin-fossil-new-zealand/
 
 
Lucius Alexander
 
Wishing for a herd of palindromedaries
 

Seamaster's seafood restaurant (original restaurant)
 
Seamaster was a notorious supervillain back in the 50s.  He was the on the government most wanted by the coast guard and navy and was responsible for a number of high profile robberies in the Atlantic Ocean.  In the 60s, he had caught the love interest of a superhero and in typical supervillain fashion, had her dine with him in his submarine in his palatial dining room.  The love interest, while upset at being kidnapped, was quite amazed at the quality of food he served in his dining room.  Being a spunky reporter, she found out that he was actually funding many "save the ocean" charities and was an advocate of sustainable seafood harvesting.  All the items on the table were sustainable seafood dishes that he himself cooked.  Alas, the superhero sank the submarine and saved the reporter before the conversation could proceed further.  Put in jail, Seamaster served 20+ years for his pirating ways.  While in jail he read about the article reporter wrote about her abduction and the wonderful food she had eaten.
 
In 80s, he was paroled for good behavior and found many people had taken to his cause of sustainable and ecological farming of the sea.  He attempted to join those groups, but his age and past prevented him from directly working with them.  Broke and dejected, he was working as a janitor for the local aquarium when he was found by the same reporter he had kidnapped earlier.  Her "boyfriend" superhero had dumped her for some amazon superhero and the newspaper had laid her off due to budget cuts.  Commiserating, two began a friendship, then a romantic relationship, and finally a business partnership.  Seamaster opened their first seafood restaurant to great reviews and the reporter(now wife) blogged the opening.  His villainy made him a cult ecological anti-hero and a draw at first to the restaurant. As news spread of the meals there,  people came for the food which actually gain a Michelin star.  In final coup d'etat, the amazon superheroine came to the restaurant with her new beau, a shadowy superhero who stalks the night while the reporter's ex allegedly stayed at his home of solitude.
 
Seamaster and wife still work the restaurants but at a very retired pace.  His son and daughter now run the business with 10% of the proceeds going to charities.

I don't post very often, but when I do people may have noticed over the years that I favour low fantasy and historical fantasy over the grandeur of high fantasy.
 
So let me tell you about Barwick-in-Elmet, the Yorkshire village where I grew up. This will explain my username, and probably my low-fantasy preferences.
 
Before I plough into it, I'll just note that this kind of history isn't unusual to most of us Europeans. Most of our villages date back about thousand years. Fantasy villages written by American designers seem more inspired by the Old West frontier settlements - Hommlet is a classic example. It doesn't look right, it doesn't feel right. It has no history in its design or landscape.
 
So here's some archaeology, a little history, and an unusual folk custom. I realise this thread is mostly inspirational pictures, but sometimes pictures want context.

The oldest obvious human 'building' in Barwick is a single-vallum, figure-8 shaped Iron Age hillfort known as Wendel Hill. It's never been dated, but the nearby Becca Banks earthworks have been dated to the 1st century AD, probably thrown up to stop the Roman general Agricola and his legion as they marched north (if so, it failed). I suspect the hillfort is up to a century older.

Within the hillfort lies the motte of a late-Norman motte and bailey castle, which we call Hall Tower Hill. The castle - its licence was granted by King Stephen, c. 1150AD, has long since vanished. The castle's bailey was the smaller part of the figure-8 of the hillfort; the larger part became part of peasant tofts (gardens).

Hillfort plan


 
Aerial view - the line of hedges marks the hillfort vallum (bank and ditch).
 

 
After the Romans left and the Saxons invaded, Barwick was part of the Cambric kingdom of Elmet, part of Hen Ogledd, the Old North (Hen Ogledd's most prominent king was Hen Cwl - Old King Cole of the English nursery rhyme). Along with Rheged, Elmet was one of the last surviving ancient British kingdoms. It finally fell to the Saxon Northumbrian king Edwin in 616. Barwick is sometimes erroneously considered the capital of Elmet, but in truth, no one knows where Elmet's capital was.
 
After the Saxons, the Vikings came. Barwick lies about 15 miles west of York, a prominent Viking trade town in the 9th and 10th centuries, and the centre of Erik Bloodaxe's 10th-century Kingdom of York. A pair of Viking carvings were incorporated into the 12th century foundations of the village church, All Saints' Church, probably dating from the 10th century. This is one of them.

 
Barwick is listed in Domesday Book as an outlying settlement of nearby Kippax. Its name, originally bere-wick, means 'beer village', and it's thought it was an outlying hamlet where barley was grown. By the mid-12th century its importance increased, and the de Lacy family of Pontefract moved the northern caput (head-place) of their barony there, and built the motte and bailey castle c. 1150.

All Saints has an unusual bell tower, constructed in two phases in the 15th century. The lower part is constructed of local magnesian limestone, a sought-after building material. The upper is finished in cheaper stone.The clock face is red because Barwick belonged to the Duchy of Lancaster (the current Duke is Queen Elizabeth II). While Yorkshire folk who still keep the rivalry with Lancashire like to commemorate the 1462 Yorkist victory at the Battle of Towton - about 6 miles from Barwick, the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil - it's likely that any Barwick folk there fought on the losing side. The Houseof Lancaster's lands were mostly in the North. The Yorkist lands were predominantly in the south.
 


The local lords in the later middle ages were the Gascoigne family. Sir William Gascoigne (1350-1405) was Chief Justice of England under King Henry IV. A probably apocryphal story has it that he is the judge who had Prince Hal (the future Henry V) imprisoned - read your Shakespeare and note young Hal's crimes with Falstaff.

A later Gascoigne, Sir Thomas Gascoigne, had a triumphal arch celebrating the American victory in the War of Independence built at his estate in Parlington, two miles south of Barwick. It's the only such monument in Britain celebrating the American victory. The inscription reads "Liberty in N. America MDCLXXXIII".
 

 
The Gascoignes have long since died out, but one of Barwick's four pubs is The Gascoigne Arms.

The Maypole
Barwick's prominence dwindled over the centuries. Its inhabitants farmed, and made caustic lime in limekilns around the village. Its claim to fame these days is the maypole in the middle of the village. 
 
Its uncertain when Barwick first erected its maypole. Some say it's an ancient tradition going back to pagan times, but it's far more likely its more recent - perhaps the 17th or 18th century. At 90 feet (26 metres), it's the tallest village maypole in England.
 

 
The maypole is made of two lengths of Norwegian pine, spliced together and mound with iron. It needs upkeep. Every three years, on Easter Monday, the maypole is taken down for repainting. When I was a kid, we took it down the old-fashioned way - a village man, the Maypole Climber, shinned up to the iron bands above the garlands and lowered a guy rope, which which he pulled up four heavier roles and attached them to the pole. One rope came towards Hall Tower Hill (towards the viewpoint in the image above), another down Main Street (to the right of the image), a third down towards the church, and the last one over the rooftops to the left to the courtyard behind the Black Swan pub.
 
As the whole village turned out to hold the ropes under the guidance of the village Pole Master, the ground at the base of the maypole was loosened and dug out with pickaxes and shovels, then, slowly, at the Pole Master's instructions, lowered onto waiting ladders, then onto the shoulders of scores of man,, then carried to Hall Tower Field for repainting.

These days, since The Day The Maypole Fell, it's done with a crane.


 
As well as repainting, the garlands were replaced. The garlands are made little ribbons with bells on - an old garland bell is a good luck charm, and I carried one as a key fob for many years. During the three weeks between Easter Monday and Whitsun, the new garlands are carried to every house in the village and touched for luck.
 

 
Several times, while it was down for repainting, lads from the neighbouring village of Aberford or the town of Garforth, stole the maypole in the middle of the night. Must have been a few of them - it takes a few score of people to carry the maypole. The most recent attempt was in 1966, when Aberford lads successfuly stole the top half 3 days before the maypole raising ceremony. Barwick had to quickly get a new top half and repaint it. The orginal was found the day before the ceremony - so for a few years, the village had a spare.
 
Maypole raising is done on Whitsunday, amid great celebrations at Hall Tower Hill, where crowds sit and watch the events. It's become something of a tourist attraction. Children from the village infant school dance around a smaller maypole (we practised for weeks when I did it). Older children from the junior school perform country dances (we practised for weeks when I did it). A village girl is chosen as May Queen and other children chosen as attendants (I was crown-bearer once). There's a fair. There is a lot of beer drunk. A lot of beer. There are marching bands, brass bands.

The maypole is raised in pretty much the reverse of how it's taken down. There's is one important difference - once the maypole is set in place, and the Maypole Climber ascends to remove the ropes, he must continue climbing to the very top of the maypole to spin the fox weathervane and bring luck to the village...
 

 
For many years, the maypole climber was my neighbour, Arthur Nicholls, who built a smaller maypole by his farmhouse to practice. I think that's him in the picture above.

The Day the Maypole Fell
 
Easter Monday, 1981, the maypole fell down Main Street while it was being lowered. I, aged 12, was on the Main Street rope with my sisters. I didn't quite realise what was happening at first - the rope went slack, the maypole seemed to be getting shorter, and then people started running. Fortunately, it landed in the street and everyone got clear. The tip hit the curb, and the top two feet broke off. A lad grabbed it (and the bent weathervane) and tried to make off with it, but one of my neighbours saw and brought him down in a rugby tackle a couple of hundred yards away.

These days, with much regret, the village uses a crane to raise and lower the maypole.

The next maypole raising will be at Whitsuntide, 2020, if you'd like to visit.