Dec 21, 2010 Winter Solstice

Yesterday the moon was full. So full and just hanging there, close enough that I felt I could reach up and pluck it from the sky, as though it were a prop. It is fun driving with a full moon. I love how it seems to follow me home, just a glance over to the right and there it is, looking coy, like it really isn’t really following me at all.

What is exceptional about the solstice this year is that it is accompanied by a full moon. According to the Farmer's Almanac, since 1793 through today, the winter solstice has fallen on a full moon only nine times. Just think how special this occasion is!  And I got to see it. The next time there will be a full moon on the solstice will be 2094. Eighty-four years from now.  The other interesting moon event is that there will also be a lunar eclipse tonight as well. 

The photo above shows the moon as I first stepped out of the building last night. And again, following me home, leaving a moon trail on a frozen pond.  When I got home she was just peeking over the roof of my house, winking at me through the trees.

 

The night was incredibly clear. No clouds, no haze and the moon through shadows from even the tiniest branches onto the snow. I was thrilled! I would be able to see the moon turn red during the eclipse. It would take 72 minutes for the eclipse to reach totality. All I could think of was a moon that good—you can’t eat it all at once. I set my alarm for near totality – 3 am my time. Jumped out of bed and ran outside to find the sky completely clouded over. No visibility at all.

There was nothing for it but to do a little solstice dance. May the pagan gods watch over me, I performed as joyous a dance as is possible without a moon. My slippers were filled with snow and my robe flapped icy air about me, but I danced as though bathed in the glow that was hidden on the other side of the clouds.

21 Dec.

Checked out the stats for today.  Sunrise was 7:59 am and sunset at 5:03 pm. Eight hours of light, kind of. It was a dark cloudy day, so even though sunset was at five, there was no lingering dusk, it was just plain dark at five. But we’ll be turning toward the morning from now on.

Slow day at work. Most of my customers are off this week, or not buying until next year. Found myself with solstice songs in my head all day. Not the kind that drive you crazy because the song gets in and won’t let you alone, but a random sampling of songs about winter, about solstice, about snow, almost like I had a radio with a DJ slinging out seasonal songs. It was odd. Odd, but interesting. And I was not surprised to make a mental note that almost all these songs were modal or in a minor key. Moody…my favorite.

Sometimes the melodies would show up and I’d find myself humming along. Then slowly the words would wend their way into my consciousness. The words to the Solstice Round came right away. I used to sing this with Kathy G. and Kathy W.

She who can love both sun and moon
Joyful in both seed and bloom
Sound and silence, dark and light

Has nothing to fear from the long winter's night.

Then, In the Bleak Midwinter showed up in my head as I was driving to work. The tune 

niggled around for a while and phrases stole in and out. Hours later I had the first verse.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone,

snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

The chorus of At the Turning of the Year was stuck in my head for quite a while. Could not come up with a single verse. Not a word, not a concept. But the chorus? It is quite nice.

And we will sing, we will sing at the turning of the year

Knowing, knowing ... We are a short time here

And so we'll sing, yes we'll sing at the turning of the year

At the dancing, spinning, turning of the year

About the time my head was dancing and spinning and turning with the year, I found myself reading an op/ed piece in the New York Times. It was an interesting article but this part really got me. Richard Cohen writes:

“Yet, for all these symbolisms, this time remains at heart an astronomical event, and quite a curious one. In summer, the sun is brighter and reaches higher into the sky, shortening the shadows that it casts; in winter it rises and sinks closer to the horizon, its light diffuses more and its shadows lengthen. As the winter hemisphere tilts steadily further away from the star, daylight becomes shorter and the sun arcs ever lower. Societies that were organized around agriculture intently studied the heavens, ensuring that the solstices were well charted.

Despite their best efforts, however, their priests and stargazers came to realize that it was exceptionally hard to pinpoint the moment of the sun’s turning by observation alone — even though they could define the successive seasons by the advancing and withdrawal of daylight and darkness.

The earth further complicates matters. Our globe tilts on its axis like a spinning top, going around the sun at an angle to its orbit of 23 and a half degrees. Yet the planet’s shape changes minutely and its axis wobbles, thus its orbit fluctuates. If its axis remained stable and if its orbit were a true circle, then the equinoxes and solstices would quarter the year into equal sections. As it is, the time between the spring and fall equinoxes in the Northern Hemisphere is slightly greater than that between fall and spring, the earth — being at that time closer to the sun — moving about 6 percent faster in January than in July.”

The idea of the earth’s axis wobbling and the planet’s shape changing was new to me. Stopping to contemplate this concept to various comic ends was an exercise that only strengthened my feelings that I could never be a scientist. Not that I wouldn’t want to be: a lab coat and a room full of equipment and chemicals has a certain appeal, but I don’t think in a logical manner.  I immediately go to the absurd. Imagine a sphere of jello wobbling about on a skewer for an axis. Such a shaky underpinning for our existence. My scientific leanings are more in line with the hokey pokey theory of existence.  There’s our ball of jello, shaking it all about. Shaken, not stirred. I can live with that.