China's Lunar Calendar 2014 09-03

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Calendars and Almanacs"  

⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦
9/6.........................................................................  ...........................................8/30

This is one in a never-ending series—following the movements of the calendar—in Round and Square perpetuity. It is today's date in the Chinese lunar calendar, along with basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying lunar calendars (and Chinese culture) for many years, you will likely find yourself asking "what does that mean?" I would caution that "it" doesn't "mean" any one thing. There are clusters of meaning, and they require patience, reflection, careful reading, and, well, a little bit of ethnographic fieldwork. The best place to start is the introduction to "Calendars and Almanacs" on this blog. I teach a semester-long course on this topic and, trust me, it takes a little bit of time to get used to the lunar calendar. Some of the material is readily accessible; some of it is impenetrable, even after many years. 

As time goes on, I will link all of the sections to lengthy background essays. This will take a while. In the meantime, take a look, read the introduction, and think about all of the questions that emerge from even a quick look at the calendar.

Section One
Solar Calendar Date
(top to bottom; right to left
三
日

三期星

Ninth Month, Third Day

Astral Period Three
Wednesday, September 3

———————————————— 
Section Two
Beneficent Stars 

(top to bottom, right to left)

明母合月
堂倉日德

Lunar Virtue
Linked Days
 Maternal Granary
Luminous Hall

—————————————————

Section Three
Auspicious Hours
(top to bottom, right to left) 
申辰子
中中凶
酉己丑

吉吉中

戌午寅
中吉凶
亥未卯

吉凶凶

23:00-01:00 Inauspicious
01:00-03:00 In-Between
03:00-05:00 Inauspicious
05:00-07:00 Inauspicious

07:00-09:00 In-Between
09:00-11:00 Auspicious
11:00-13:00 Auspicious
13:00-15:00 Inauspicious

15:00-17:00 In-Between
17:00-19:00 Auspicious
19:00-21:00 In-Between
21:00-23:00 Auspicious

The hours above are for Hong Kong. It is up to you if you want to recalibrate or to assume that the cyclicality of the calendar "covers" the rest of the world. This is a greater interpretive challenge than you might think.

————————————————— 

Section Four 
Activities to Avoid  
(top-to-bottom; right to left) 

忌
田移整理
獵徙甲髮

Patterning Hair
 Trimming Nails
Moving Households
Field Venery

—————————————————  
 Section Five 
Cosmological Information 

初

十

丁

丑

水
軫
執

Tenth Day Day (Eighth Lunar Month)

Cyclical day: dingchou (14/60)

Phase (element): Water

Constellation: Running Board (28/28)

"Day Personality" Cycle: Grasp (6/12)

—————————————————  

Section Six
Appropriate Activities
(and Miscellaneous Information
(top-to-bottom; right to left)

宜
倉修婚祭
捕造納祀
捉動采祈
栽土嫁福
種豎娶會
納柱裁友
畜上衣出
安樑醫行
葬修病訂

俱歸小
將忌耗

————
Appropriate Activities

Venerating Ancestors
Inquiring-into Fortune
Meeting Friends
Going Out (and about)
Marriage Engagements
Grain Payments
Marriage Alliances
Cutting-out Clothing
Physician Visits
Repairing and Building
Moving Soil
Erecting Pillars
Putting-up Beams
Repairing Granaries
Seizing and Apprehending
Planting and Cultivating 
Livestock Payments
Positioning Graves

Baleful Astral Influences

Small Squander
Return Taboo
Everything General

————
  
Section Seven

Inauspicious Stars 
(right to left) 
人
Person
————

Section Eight

Miscellaneous Information

厠 庫 倉

Toilet, Storehouse, Granary

China's Lunar Calendar 2014 09-02

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Calendars and Almanacs"  

⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦
9/6.........................................................................  ...........................................8/30

This is one in a never-ending series—following the movements of the calendar—in Round and Square perpetuity. It is today's date in the Chinese lunar calendar, along with basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying lunar calendars (and Chinese culture) for many years, you will likely find yourself asking "what does that mean?" I would caution that "it" doesn't "mean" any one thing. There are clusters of meaning, and they require patience, reflection, careful reading, and, well, a little bit of ethnographic fieldwork. The best place to start is the introduction to "Calendars and Almanacs" on this blog. I teach a semester-long course on this topic and, trust me, it takes a little bit of time to get used to the lunar calendar. Some of the material is readily accessible; some of it is impenetrable, even after many years. 

As time goes on, I will link all of the sections to lengthy background essays. This will take a while. In the meantime, take a look, read the introduction, and think about all of the questions that emerge from even a quick look at the calendar.

Section One
Solar Calendar Date
(top to bottom; right to left
二
日

二期星

Ninth Month, Second Day

Astral Period Two
Tuesday, September 2

———————————————— 
Section Two
Beneficent Stars 

(top to bottom, right to left)

民時
日德

Timely Virtue
Peopled Days

—————————————————

Section Three
Auspicious Hours
(top to bottom, right to left) 
申辰子
中凶凶
酉己丑

吉吉吉

戌午寅
吉凶凶
亥未卯

吉中中

23:00-01:00 Inauspicious
01:00-03:00 Auspicious
03:00-05:00 Inauspicious
05:00-07:00 In-Between

07:00-09:00 Inauspicious
09:00-11:00 Auspicious
11:00-13:00 Inauspicious
13:00-15:00 In-Between

15:00-17:00 In-Between
17:00-19:00 Auspicious
19:00-21:00 Auspicious
21:00-23:00 Auspicious

The hours above are for Hong Kong. It is up to you if you want to recalibrate or to assume that the cyclicality of the calendar "covers" the rest of the world. This is a greater interpretive challenge than you might think.

————————————————— 

Section Four 
Activities to Avoid  
(top-to-bottom; right to left) 

忌
作修
灶廚

Repairing Kitchens
Stove Work

—————————————————  
 Section Five 
Cosmological Information 

初

九

丙

子

水
翌
定

Ninth Day Day (Eighth Lunar Month)

Cyclical day: bingzi (13/60)

Phase (element): Water

Constellation: Wings (27/28)

"Day Personality" Cycle: Decide (5/12)

—————————————————  

Section Six
Appropriate Activities
(and Miscellaneous Information
(top-to-bottom; right to left)

宜
拆
卸
伐
木
————
禾
乃
登
————

上歲
兀破

————
Appropriate Activities

Unhitching and Unloading
Felling Timber

Rice Ripens
(the forty-second of seventy-two five-day solar micro-periods on the agricultural calendar)

Baleful Astral Influences

Generational Destruction
Upper Amputee

————
  
Section Seven

Inauspicious Stars 
(right to left) 
人
Person
————

Section Eight

Miscellaneous Information

廚
碓 灶

Kitchen
Pestle, Stove

Reflexivity Seminar Letter (Autumn 2014)

On this date on Round and Square's History 

1 September 2013—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 09-01
1 September 2013—Syllabic Cycles: Attendance Policy 2013
1 September 2012—Just Do It Over: Soliloquy, With Chair
1 September 2011—Styling Culture: Revise, Revise, Revise

[a] Text and illustration RF

Mountains

HIST 310 / ANTH 375

Autumn 2014

Preliminary Writing Assignment 

Reflexivity: The Letter

By choosing the letter format for your first writing assignment, I am asking you to build upon the skills you have already begun to develop in analyzing (and providing examples for) reflexive practices (positive and negative) in history, anthropology, and beyond. You have already reached a point where you have some experience with thinking about "reflexivity," as well as several books that you may wish to use as examples. Your job will be to explain some of this to an intelligent non-specialist.

Teach it, really.

[b] Reaching, teaching RF

Letters from “the field” (or our modified “archive” of reflexivity texts) are a good way to refine your thoughts about ethnographic and historical study, and they are a useful medium for beginning the intellectual “framing process” that will accelerate as we move through the next two-thirds of the seminar. 

The letter writing exercise is especially useful while studying mountain materials. The nonfiction writer John McPhee explains to his students that a letter is often precisely the solution to problems of interpretation or clarity—when in doubt, write to mother, he says. In this case, it is not a plea of “send money” that the letter contains, but a reworking, rethinking, and contextualization of your work. You need not limit yourself to kinfolk, but you need to think about who the recipient will be (ideally someone who will welcome a letter about “studying reflexivity”).

You owe it to yourself to listen to this long interview with McPhee. At the very least, listen to the first two minutes. It is the very purpose behind this assignment.

John McPhee NPR 22:40

Now start writing. Toward that end, you should pay attention to the following issues.

1. The letter needs to be “long enough” to get you deeply into several issues regarding ethnography, history, and reflexivity. You will also want to provide your reader with some particular examples that are resonant for  you. There is no absolute upper limit, but I am going to make a lower limit of 3,000 words (about ten pages). Even if you are a very efficient writer, you will need this much “space” to give your reader a good picture of your work. Somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500 words (ten to twelve pages) is just about right. Include a word count at the end of your paper (e.g. “3,377 words” or Word Count: 3,377).

[c] I said, "start writing" RF

2. I am asking you to connect with a very specific reader, and to explain "reflexivity” in a level of detail that she will find satisfying.  You are the expert, and your “audience” is the person who will be reading your letter (I will, of course, be reading over her shoulder).  I have found that this kind of assignment helps students to explain even abstruse matters, because the personal relationship they have with their readers demands an attention to patient explanation that is often lacking in more “academic” forms of writing, in which they assume that a professor already knows what they are writing about.

3. You may approach your materials from any angle that you like, but you will need to “cover” at least the following items, no matter what order you choose.

          a. You must discuss the “what is reflexivity?"question—what is "it," anyway? 
               Provide your reader with at least a few ways of thinking about it, using examples 
               drawn from both your texts and your own experience.

          b. Give your reader a sense of what you have learned up to this point about 

              how to think about reflexivity. Again, use examples, either from the course or your 
              own experience.

          c. Finally, give your reader some sense of what it is like to “study reflexivity”

              by discussing the literary and historical dimensions of some of our texts.  It 

              might be useful to think of both the pragmatic ("I am part of the knowledge") 
              and "risky" (my peers might find me shallow) parts of the reflexive operation.

          d. You must include at least one illustration in your letter. Think of the rhetorical role
               of illustrations in the New York Review of Books.

[d] Evocation RF

4. The best way to approach the writing process is in three parts (this is a friendly suggestion). First, jot down some notes for each of the “sections” of your letter. Second, using those notes as a guide, write a rough draft of the whole letter. Third, revise, polish, and refine.  

Voilà you will have something not unlike what Alexis de Tocqueville might have written about understanding a complex, foreign culture that baffled and enticed him 180 years ago. While your letter won’t be as long as Democracy in America, it is likely—if it is done well—to be much like Tocqueville’s rich and evocative letters back to his family about encountering people, texts, and institutions in a strange land called the United States. 

You get the idea. If you don't, just raise your hand and ask me (or send me an e-mail message). I'll be happy to help.

Letters are due (in hard copy form) outside my door 

by 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 28.

Add the word count and your box number to all papers!

[e] And then you may rest RF

China's Lunar Calendar 2014 09-01

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Calendars and Almanacs"  

⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦
9/6.........................................................................  ...........................................8/30

This is one in a never-ending series—following the movements of the calendar—in Round and Square perpetuity. It is today's date in the Chinese lunar calendar, along with basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying lunar calendars (and Chinese culture) for many years, you will likely find yourself asking "what does that mean?" I would caution that "it" doesn't "mean" any one thing. There are clusters of meaning, and they require patience, reflection, careful reading, and, well, a little bit of ethnographic fieldwork. The best place to start is the introduction to "Calendars and Almanacs" on this blog. I teach a semester-long course on this topic and, trust me, it takes a little bit of time to get used to the lunar calendar. Some of the material is readily accessible; some of it is impenetrable, even after many years. 

As time goes on, I will link all of the sections to lengthy background essays. This will take a while. In the meantime, take a look, read the introduction, and think about all of the questions that emerge from even a quick look at the calendar.

Section One
Solar Calendar Date
(top to bottom; right to left
一九
日月

一期星

Ninth Month, First Day

Astral Period One
Monday, September 1

———————————————— 
Section Two
Beneficent Stars 

(top to bottom, right to left)

德歲
日支

Generational Branch
Virtuous Days

—————————————————

Section Three
Auspicious Hours
(top to bottom, right to left) 
申辰子
吉中凶
酉己丑

中凶吉

戌午寅
中中凶
亥未卯

中吉吉

23:00-01:00 Inauspicious
01:00-03:00 Auspicious
03:00-05:00 Inauspicious
05:00-07:00 Auspicious

07:00-09:00 In-Between
09:00-11:00 Inauspicious
11:00-13:00 In-Between
13:00-15:00 Auspicious

15:00-17:00 Auspicious
17:00-19:00 In-Between
19:00-21:00 In-Between
21:00-23:00 In-Between

The hours above are for Hong Kong. It is up to you if you want to recalibrate or to assume that the cyclicality of the calendar "covers" the rest of the world. This is a greater interpretive challenge than you might think.

————————————————— 

Section Four 
Activities to Avoid  
(top-to-bottom; right to left) 

忌
嫁栽
娶種

Planting and Cultivating
Marriage Alliances

—————————————————  
 Section Five 
Cosmological Information 

初

八

乙

亥

火
張
平

Eighth Day Day (Eighth Lunar Month)

Cyclical day: yihai (12/60)

Phase (element): Fire

Constellation: Drawn Bow (26/28)

"Day Personality" Cycle: Level (4/12)

—————————————————  

Section Six
Appropriate Activities
(and Miscellaneous Information
(top-to-bottom; right to left)

宜

平

治

道

塗

垣

墻

死猴
神口
陽重
將日

————
Appropriate Activities

Leveling and Painting Roadways
Repairing and Ornamenting Walls and Embankments

Baleful Astral Influences

Monkey Mouth
Doubled Days
Death Spirit
Yang General

  Section Seven

Inauspicious Stars 
(right to left) 
白 州
White, Landmass
————

Section Eight

Miscellaneous Information

碓
牀 磨

Pestle
Bed, Mortar