The New Moon is coming.  Usually, each month at that time, I check all the counts for US and Coalition dead in Iraq and Afghanistan and update the prayer/counting beads on the monument at the center of the Labyrinth.  I clean the beads, make sure they are all there—since ravens and crows sometimes steal a small, light strand just for the sparkle.  December is the exception since family Yule keeps us busy.  So January is always a labor of love—but lots more labor than usual.

This year more than ever!  I examined the 5400 beads and brought them inside to wash them.  To my dismay the shell beads and the faux coral strands were deteriorating and fading very badly and I decided to replace them completely.  So, having heard of a super bead store called Shipwreck Beads, we drove down to see if we could afford the necessary thousand or more beads.

I am not a bead-crafter.  But if I was, I would have thought I died and went to a beader’s heaven!  I got beautiful and colorful glass and ceramic beads to replace and repair battered strands.

And I got little ceramic skeletons to use as the counters for each hundred–each “century” of dead troops.  So they are little prayer bead centurions, as in the days of the Roman Empire when a centurion commanded one hundred men.  Not totally unlike a modern day company commander.  So, this weekend, in preparation of next week’s New Moon, every strand was re-strung.  Every battered, stripped glass pearl was replaced and all the shell beads.  I strung the beads in groups of 200 so they would be too heavy for the corvids to steal; and there is a little skeleton counter for each one hundred.  Every tenth bead, like a squad leader on the strands, is bigger or a different kind—this made my keeping count far easier.

The new strands are beautiful and bright, for a beautiful and bright new year.  The older strands that were not replaced are clean and re-organized, but keep most of their original character.  All the beads that have been sent to me by friends have been retained in the strands, usually as that special tenth bead.  Now, I used up almost six pounds of new beads———let us all hope that I don’t need many more!  My hope for the New Year and a new President is an end to all this war!  The re-stringing was completed in time for the Inauguration of a new President and a new era!

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