“Heaven is like an egg– / And the Earth is like the yolk of the egg.” Chang Heng (A.D. 78-139) from Sources of Chinese Tradition, edited by William Theodore De Bary.
“they say we are / Almost as like as eggs.” Shakespeare from A Winter’s Tale.
Legend has it that Helen, the cause of the Trojan War, sprang from an egg , the result of the meeting between Leda and the swan who was, of course, Zeus is disguise.
In A Dictionary Of Greek And Roman Mythology by Michael Stapleton, published by Bell Publishing, a division of Crown it said: “The story of Helen’s birth from an egg does not appear in either the Iliad or The Odyssey.”
In The Goose With The Golden Eggs by Aesop, we were told that the man who spirited the goose away was later disappointed to discover that he had to be content with one egg at a time. He figured that if he served the goose for dinner, he would also be rewarded with all the eggs at once, and that, of course, was not the way with any of Aesop’s fables. There was always a moral to be learned by the folly of man. And this little piece of sage advice from Thomas Fuller from Holy and Profane State [1642] of Marriage: “Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married estate. Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs.”
So, in reality, what came first, the chicken or the egg? One source, quoted in The Globe and Mail’s Social Studies column on January 6th, 2006, said that reptiles laid the first eggs and apparently the chicken came long after the reptile.
I’ve always wondered about those huge eggs that Wilma served up for Fred Flintstone’s breakfast…
So now that we have that out of the way, is there any truth that an egg can be balanced on end today, the first day of spring? Apparently there is some truth to this. It is easier to attempt this today due to the gravitational pull being more equal, or some such thing. You might want to try it tonight.
“They can be salty / They can be sweet, / They’re usually beaten / But they can’t be beat, / They’re oval in shape / This well-rounded food, / A comfort, a treat / When you’re in a bad mood. / Coddled or scrambled, there’s nothing better, / An omelette holds anything / (Except hard-to-store sweaters). / In a quiche or a souffle, / Floating island or egg cup / They gently remind us / ‘Keep your sunny-side up.’” An Ode To Eggs that was featured in the April 2000 issue of Victoria magazine.
My children like those cream eggs that appear in the stores months before Easter. I must admit, I do, too…
“Love and eggs should be fresh to be enjoyed.” A Russian proverb.
“Russian Czar Alexander IIII commissioned the first of the elaborate eggs from craftsman Peter Carl Faberge as an Easter gift for his wife, Empress Maria Fedorovna. The empress was so enamored of that 1885 piece–an enamelled egg with a gold yolk, gold hen, miniature diamond crown and ruby egg inside–that the czar commissioned a new egg every Easter.
After the czar died in 1894, his son Nicholas continued the tradition until the Russian Revolution in 1917. Nicholas and his family were executed in 1918. Faberge created more than 50 eggs for Russia’s Imperial family, though not all survive.” Raphael G. Satter of The Associated Press, and featured in the Thursday November 29th, 2007 issue of the Toronto Sun.
Bryan Ferren president, Disney Imagineering R&D, Inc, from The New York Times Magazine and featured in the Points To Ponder column of the October 2000 Reader’s Digest wrote, “Art, story-telling and humor are wonderful things. In a future when intelligent machines will reason and do our donkeywork, human artists will become the most valued and irreplaceable of professionals - unique in an automated world. Painters, sculptors, writers, actors, architects, animators and even people who can decorate a decent Easter egg will achieve unprecedented fame and fortune.”
Let’s hope that what he says is true…
“Our lives are like fragile eggs…They are brittle…They crack and the substance escapes. Handle with care! Handle with exceeding, tender care for there are human beings there within. Human beings vulnerable as we are vulnerable; who feel as we feel, who hurt as we hurt.” An excerpt from an inspirational writing called Be Gentle, its author unknown.
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Don Jackson
