As I stand (metaphorically) on the hinge of the year…

Back in 46 BCE, when Julius Caesar still thought he was master of the
universe, he decided to reform the Roman lunar calendar. The ancient lunar
calendar year begins in the spring, but by 46 BCE, the Roman calendar was
ninety days out of joint. That’s why Caesar and his advisor, Sosigenes,
gave the calendar a solar base and fixed the mean length of the year at
365 ¼ days. To shove the spring equinox back where it belonged, they also
inserted two months between November and December. The year 46 BCE was
thus 445 days long. People called it the Year of Confusion. By the 16th
century, the Julian calendar was also slipping, so it was further reformed
by in 1582 by order of Pope Gregory XIII. It’s his calendar we still have
today.




Caesar’s reformed year began on the first day (the kalends) of January,
which is named for Janus, the Roman two-faced god of the doorway (
ianus). Janus looks both forward and backward, as does Cardea, the
Roman goddess who represents the hinges on the door. Because I see today
as the hinge of the new year, it’s time to review 2013 and see what I can
project into 2014.




So what did I accomplish last year? I edited books or parts of books for
thirty-five authors and one nonprofit organization. Ten of these authors
are still with me as we move into 2014. I’ve done five books for one of
them, three for another. One book I edited is one of my all-time favorites:
Jonah’s Belly by Tony Wittwer. It’s a nifty, Stephen-Kingish epic
of modern mythology. Tony’s a good writer with his own voice, though we
did have some “conversations” about punctuation. I told him he’d used up
his entire lifetime supply of colons and semicolons. Another favorite was
a book about country music back when the Grand Ole Opry was still in the
Ryman Auditorium. And the author of children’s books who lives in New York
flew to L.A. to visit his family and came to Long Beach to take me to lunch.
He may move to Long Beach, which means I’ll have another theater buddy.




Other books I’ve edited? Healing from childhood abuse. An adventure on
a Mississippi riverboat. What to do if you get arrested for driving DUI.
(Don’t talk. Get a lawyer.) The “real story” about cosmetic surgery. A
sf novel about the separation of the sexes, with the men banished underground.
Haunted hotels in SoCal. Metaphysical books and a doctoral dissertation
in education. While most of the books I edited have been published, as
some of the authors learned that writing a book is Really Hard Work—and
getting it edited injures tender feelings—they gave up. And a few projects
didn’t go very well. When an author rewrote his book after I’d finished
with it and put “partially edited by Barbara Ardinger” in the acknowledgments,
I explained that I never “partially” edit anything and asked him to remove
my name. Another author, a psychiatrist, wrote such nonsense about women
that I fired him.




I went to the theater forty-five times in 2013, which counts seeing a
magical production of
The Fantasticks three times and seeing Arlo Guthrie, Marin Mazzie
and Jason Danieley, and Rachel York in concert. Only two of the shows I
saw were not musicals. These were heart-shattering productions of
War Horse and
Death of a Salesman. I went to the movies maybe five times, including
two filmed stage productions (
Merrily We Roll Along and
Private Lives) from London and Joss Whedon’s wonderful
Much Ado About Nothing. Not being a Buffy fan, I had no idea who
the actors were, but they sure were good! I saw
Saving Mr. Banks because Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks can do almost
no wrong as actors, but I walked out on Llewyn Davies because I decided
there was nothing inside him. Besides, he abandons cats. Which is unforgivable.
(Remember, I live with two rescued cats.)

I also invented my very own conspiracy theory last year. The company that
manages this building (which is older than I am) installed a smoke detector
and a something-else detector in every apartment. Mine are in the hall
between my bedroom and the bathroom. When I get up in the middle of the
night to go to the bathroom, the something-else detector sometimes flashes.
Like a camera. That obviously means some guy is sitting somewhere watching
me walk around in my jammies. I shared this theory with my friend Steve,
who admitted he’s seen flashing detectors in hotels…but he didn’t agree
they were cameras. Well, I think conspiracy theories are interesting. I
used to review books published by Inner Traditions—you know, those wonderful
books that say the Templars are responsible for everything that has ever
happened, that aliens built the pyramids in Egypt and South America, that
the Nummo came from Sirius and gave the Dogon their religion (which, says
an author whose two books I edited a few years ago, is the basis for all
the religions in the world), that the
Iliad and the
Odyssey took place not in the Mediterranean but in the Baltic. And
so on. Ya gotta love 'em. I love to read ’em. I seldom believe ’em. Except
Velikovsky. Him I still believe, I do, I do, I do. I admit I was also a
captive—for a while—of
Holy Blood Holy Grail. Now that’s a conspiracy! My own theory? Not
so much…but I sure would like to know why that light flashes and what that
guy’s doing with those photos of me in my jammies.

What about the coming year? One of my authors already has ideas for two
more books, another author for book five in his private investigator series.
One book I’m editing is a huge and hugely interesting opus on Islam by
a Muslim author who was born in L.A. and lives in Pakistan. He says we’re
climbing a mountain together. If so, we’re just past the foothills. I’m
learning a lot from this book, but, then, I always learn something new
from my authors. I know there’s a lot in the news about Islamist extremists,
but the two Muslim authors I’ve worked with (the other one’s a retired
engineer who lives in Tehran) have been consistently courteous and respectful.
Unlike the Southern preacher who visited my website and promptly took every
one of my edits out of his screed. He was obviously removing the “satanic
vibes” I’d snuck in on him. If every man in the world were as courteous
as my two Muslim authors, the world would be much more peaceable.




I will also continue to write blogs for Feminism and Religion. My next
one will be posted on February 2. (I’m such a technological nincompoop
that one of the founders of the site posts my blogs for me.) My February
2 blog is about building an elemental, pagan-style altar as an aid to meditation.




Happy New Year. And thanks for reading what I write.