(REUTERS/Beawiharta)

2009 is just finished, and as I did a year ago with 2008, I've prepared a gallery to describe the last 12 months with 30 pictures related to water. Many of them will remind you 2009 main news items, and, if you're usual readers of this blog you'll probably remember many previous posts too.


(Reuters)

(REUTERS/Thomas Krumenacker)

(REUTERS/Bob Strong)

(AP Photo/Steven Day, File)

(REUTERS/Jitendra Prakash)

(Scott Olson/Getty Images)

(REUTERS/Jianan Yu)

(© Caroline Smith)

(REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton)

(JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images)

(REUTERS/Calum Macauley/Handout)

(REUTERS/Maldives Government)

(REUTERS/Six Flags Great Adventure)

(AFP/Getty Images)

(JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images)

(AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

(AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

Eric Thayer/Reuters

Shiho Fukada/NYT
Rina Catelnuovo/NYT

Kin Cheung/NYT

Damon Winter/NYT

(REUTERS/Erik de Castro)

Moises Saman/NYT

Jehad Nga/Nyt

AFP/Getty

Tiffini M. Jones / U.S. Navy / ZUMA

Kate Westaway

Reuters

If you want to see more pictures about 2009 you can see these gallery:

TIME's The Year In Pictures
THE BIG PICTURE's 2009 In Photos
THE NEW YORK TIME's 2009: The Year In Pictures

©Sally and Doug Morrison via STUFF.CO.NZ

First of all, happy new year to all SeaWayBLOG readers. Unfortunately the first post of 2010 is quite sad: in just one day (December 29th) two different whale mass strandings had occurred in New Zealand causing the death of more than 120 pilot whales. This is just the last event of this kind in a 2009 that from this point of view has been a terrible year (take a look to this summarizing post). Let's hope that 2010 will be better.

The first stranding occured on a remote and exposed Farewell Spit beach, at the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand. The stranded pod was spotted by a tourist plane pilot on Saturday morning when people arrived just 30 of 105 long-finned pilot whales were still alive but their conditions were so bad that they had to be euthanized.
It went better in the other stranding that occurred at Colville Bay, north of Coromandel, in the eastern coast on North Island, New Zealand. There, volunteers managed to save 42 of 63 beached whales as you can see in the pictures. In the tragedy there has also been a little good news: one of the cows gave birth immediately after being rescued under the eyes of the moved volunteers, as you can read in this TIMESONLINE article


©Sally and Doug Morrison via STUFF.CO.NZ

©Sally and Doug Morrison via STUFF.CO.NZ

©Sally and Doug Morrison via STUFF.CO.NZ

©Sally and Doug Morrison via STUFF.CO.NZ

via scoop.co.nz

(Steven McNicholl/New Zealand Herald/AP)

(Ursula Walsh/EPA)

EPA

AP

(Alex Simpson/Project Jonah/AFP/Getty Images)

via scoop.co.nz

via scoop.co.nz

via scoop.co.nz

via scoop.co.nz

via scoop.co.nz

via scoop.co.nz

via scoop.co.nz

via scoop.co.nz

Santa Claus meets Chyskhaan, Lord of the Cold, in the village of Tomtor in the remote Sakhar region of Russia. Picture: WENN. via Telegraph

First of all merry merry Xmas to all of you. I really hope you've passed a nice day close to the people you love.
Talking about the picture you can see here above, for sure you've already identified the red-dressed oldman on the background as Santa Claus (Papa Noel, Babbo Natale ecc. ecc..) that is the reason why I've chosen the picture for this post. Probably however you might be wondering "who is the blue one?!?". No, it's not a psychedelic version of Santa Claus even if I have to say that his blue dress is much cooler than Santa's one!
Well, the blue oldman is Chyskhaan The lord of the Cold!



Chyskhaan, the lord of the cold, is a character from the folkore of Yakutia, a federal republic of Russia also known as Sakha Republic (well, if you've played at Risiko at least once in your life you do know what Yakutia is!). It is very difficult to find info on the web about this character because of the many different ways in which the name is translated and transliterated from the Sakha language (you can find him as Chyskhaan, Chyskhan but also Tshicxaan and described as Lord of the Cold, Lord of the Frost or Father of Cold) but also beacause Yakutia is a very remote region, where as you can imagine, an internet connection is not exactly an ordinary thing.

However I've found this description of the legend behind Chyskhaan:

The Lord of Cold has always existed! His responsibility is to keep the cold confined to specific latitudes, to specific heights, and to specific land masses. He keeps the Arctic and the Antarctic pristine with cold and snow. At Yule, the longest night and shortest day, people in the north gathered at shrines built in his name, and offered gifts to him to take away the cold and to allow the sun to return. The gifts were left at the shrine. Chyskhaan would gather up the gifts and redistribute them to those that were in need, keeping for himself what he needed to honour the magic he would work over the next several months. His magic would chase away the night and bring forth the sun. At the same time, he controlled how quickly the ice and snow would melt in order to avoid flooding out the villages and people that depended on him. He also buried sacred places beneath the snow so that they would be undetected by those that would seek to use the knowledge for personal goals and for power. As the people in the world are becoming more enlightened, he is relaxing his hold on the cold to allow discovery of new information at the appropriate time.

Photos by kristin