Ave, Sandum Citizens!
It has become so rare that this Office should address the State and its people through press. Indeed it is more common these days for this Office to focus, instead, on the building of culture and of the nation, especially in the times since Philia. This is the constant deepening of the importance of Winter, as we have seen with Philia and its objective of cultural nation building: each successive Winter in the State and since the first time we have celebrated the Armilustrium, our State has become more and more isolationist. Perhaps some see issue with this — and, indeed, at times I do too — but this is a mimicking of the real world. As Demeter sleeps, so too do the large amount of our work as a government.
In a few moments, the first of two preparations for the New Sancta Year will be done and, for the most part, Winter will be complete. With the New Sancta Year, each year, our State reawakens to Spring of both the seasons and of our work as a government participatory in the international world. In a few days, I will address our State once more through speech — in Sancta. The days of the Regifugia, when the Rex Sacrorum blessed the Comitium and then fled from it or when the last King of Rome fled the city, and the Matronalia, dedicated to mothers and Hera, mark the eve of and the day of the New Sancta Year, respectively.
Even now, for the New Year, we have various broad and sincere goals. The first is to read a guide on horticulture in small areas; the second is return our State to its warm-months’ business; the third is to continue Philia’s advance into the Spring, alongside the renewal of government business. As for Philia in the Spring, we already have several ideas for which we are planning to utilise for the benefit of our State and Nation, these are:
- a potential display of our State for Culture Day 2013 at Wilde Lake High School (27 March).
- a literary and poetic competition for our State for le Creatio (13 April).
- preparing for Remembrance Day (9 May).
- an exhibit of Sandum culture and history for Independence Day (26 May).
- a sacra publica, or ‘public ritual’, held on behalf of the Collegio Sacerdae for Independence Day by sworn Vestals.
- a performance of the play Lysistrata by Aristophanes on the new Second Life cultural embassy of our State for the Sandum LGBT Pride Week in commemoration of the Stonewall Revolution.
With the end of the New Sancta Year, our State will once more prepare to embrace the intermicronational community as a fully fledged member. Until then, however, we will continue to focus on the cultural building of our State. We have, at the moment, an essay which we are preparing to write and publish as it has to do with Realism and the use of programs such as Minecraft and Second Life.
Happy New Sancta Year!
— Sôgmô Sörgel.
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