Taino Observe Winter Solstice in Miami

Miguel Sobaoko Koromo Sague, Mildrid Karaira Gandia, and Edgar Konuk Ceiba Rodriguez honor the winter solstice at a ceremonial gathering in Miami

Miami, Florida (UCTP Taino News) - Astronomically marking the beginning of shortening nights and lengthening days, many cultures link the Winter Solstice with the concept of rebirth. Honoring the significance of the occasion, over 40 Taino community members and friends gathered on December 27th at Women’s Park in Miami, Florida for ceremonial “celebration of life.”

The Miami ceremony called "Taino Winter Solstice celebration" is a tradition of the Caney Indigenous Spiritual Circle, organized and facilitated by the Circle’s founder Miguel Sobaoko Koromo Sague. A Taino from the island of Cuba, Sobaoko Koromo stated “like our ancestors we recognize the [solar] cycle as a powerful spiritual element of our belief system.” He continued noting that this particular social ceremony honored a “return to the divine womb” which heralds rebirth.

Taino community members representing Cuba, Kiskeia, and Boriken were in attendance as well as members of other indigenous Nations including the Apache, Cree, and Mayan. Among the Mayan community of Guatemala the winter solstice is known as Wayeb’ or Uayeb and it represents the days leading up to the end of their solar calendar cycle.

Mildred Karaira Gandia, a Boriken Taino representative of the United Confederation of Taino People in Florida also attended the ceremony with her son Justin and community elders Santos and Annette Irizarry. Karaira was honored to take a role in the ceremony as the representation of Attabey, the Earth Mother.

Remaking on the importance of the gathering Karaira stated “I am honored to be representing the UCTP at this ceremony in Miami as it is an opportunity to bring our people together as family as well as to honor this land area, which is a part of our ancestral homelands. Our ancestors - be they Taino from Cuba, Kiskeia, or Boriken - knew Florida as Bimini and many settled here. As descendants of those peoples we are not immigrants, this is also our home.”

The ceremony culminated with guaitiao (friendship) dance led by Edgar Konuk Ceiba Rodriguez and a feast featuring traditional Taino staples such as Yuka and Casabe bread.

The winter solstice occurs annually some time between December 20 and December 23 in the northern hemisphere, and between June 20 and June 23 in the southern hemisphere, during either the “shortest day” or “longest night of the year.”

UCTPTN 12.30.2008

Tropical storm flooding kills 9 in Caribbean

By Manuel Jimenez

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (Reuters) - Flash flooding from Tropical Storm Olga's torrential rains killed at least eight people in the Dominican Republic and forced tens of thousands out of their homes, government officials said on Wednesday.

The storm weakened on Wednesday to a tropical depression after it exited Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. But flooding remained a deadly threat as the remnants of Olga moved west across the Caribbean, forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

By late afternoon, Olga was just a broad mass of thunderstorms centered 65 miles north of Kingston, Jamaica. It was moving rapidly west on a course that would keep the center south of Cuba and take it over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula by Saturday.

Olga's top sustained winds dropped to 35 mph (55 kph), below the threshold to be called a tropical storm, and forecasters expected it to dissipate further on Thursday.

See full story at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071212/wl_nm/storm_olga_dc

Photo: Subtropical storm Olga is seen in the Caribbean in a satellite image taken December 11, 2007. (NOAA/Handout/Reuters)

A University of Miami project helps Cuban-Americans trace their family histories

By Madeline Baró Diaz,
Miami Bureau. Sun-sentinel.com

After Martha Ibañez Zervoudakis left Cuba as a child, her grandmother's stories connected her to an island she remembered mostly through photographs.

"Whenever my grandmother would start talking about family, I would just sit there and be hypnotized because I just loved it," said Zervoudakis, 47, a mother of four who lives in Southwest Ranches. Over the years, that interest turned into a genealogy hobby that led her to document about 2,400 relatives, with one family branch going back to the city of St. Augustine in the 17th century.

Like Zervoudakis, other Cuban-Americans have gotten hooked on tracing their family histories. Now, a year-old program at the University of Miami wants to add to their ranks. The Cuban Family History and Genealogy Project aims to turn more Cuban-Americans into amateur genealogists, giving them tips and tools for tracing their family histories.

"What happens with every migration is you bring with you your music, your food, and you pass it on to future generations ... but we lose our family history," said Jorge Piñón, a senior research associate at UM's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies who runs the project.

The goal of the project is to preserve the history of the Cuban-American community and the various ethnic groups that called Cuba home over the centuries, beginning with the Guanahatabey, Ciboney and Taino indigenous settlers. Christopher Columbus' discovery of Cuba in 1492 ushered in Spanish colonization and the decimation of the indigenous inhabitants by war, slavery and disease less than a century later.

Review full article:
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y07/jan07/18e7.htm

Planetary triple play on deck Sunday

Early Sunday, Mars, Jupiter and Mercury will give observers a rare treat.

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Fri Dec 8, 8:14 PM ET

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Stargazers will get a rare triple planetary treat this weekend with Jupiter, Mercury and Mars appearing to nestle together in the predawn skies. About 45 minutes before dawn on Sunday those three planets will be so close that the average person's thumb can obscure all three from view.

They will be almost as close together on Saturday and Monday, but Sunday they will be within one degree of each other in the sky. Three planets haven't been that close since 1925, said Miami Space Transit Planetarium director Jack Horkheimer.

And it won't happen again until 2053, he said.

"Jupiter will be very bright and it will look like it has two bright lights next to it, and they won't twinkle because they're planets," said Horkheimer, host of the television show "Star Gazer. "This is the kind of an event that turns young children into Carl Sagans."

The planets are actually hundreds of millions of miles apart, but the way the planets orbit the sun make it appear they are neighbors in the east-southeastern skies. They'll be visible in most parts of the world — in the Western Hemisphere, as far south as Buenos Aires and as far north as Juneau, Alaska, Horkheimer said.

The experts differ on just how to look at the planets. Horkheimer said naked-eye viewing is fine, but binoculars or a telescope are even better.

But if you are going to use a telescope, be careful because the planets are so close to where the sun will soon rise, if you linger you might gaze at the sun through the telescope and damage your eyesight, said Michelle Nichols, master educator at Chicago's Adler Planetarium.

Ed Krupp, director of Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory, cautioned it will be hard to see the event "with an unaided eye, particularly in an area that is highly urbanized."

The way to find the planets, which will be low on the east-southeast horizon, is to hold your arm straight out, with your hand in a fist and the pinky at the bottom. Halfway up your fist is how high the planets will appear above the horizon, Nichols said.

Jupiter will be white, Mercury pinkish and Mars butterscotch-colored.

"It is a lovely demonstration of the celestial ballet that goes on around us, day after day, year after year, millennium after millennium," said Horkheimer. "When I look at something like this, I realize that all the powers on Earth, all the emperors, all the money, cannot change it one iota. We are observers, but the wonderful part of that is that we are the only species on this planet that can observe it and understand it."

In ancient times, people thought the close groupings of planets had deep meaning, said Krupp. Now, he said, "it's absolutely something fun to look for."
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