...and Wednesday...

The lunar eclipse was impressive. We had excellent viewing conditions here, clear and still and not too cold. Not feeling I could stay up most of the night and still go to work the next day, I went to bed early - around 7 pm - and got up again a bit after midnight. When I went outside to look, a big chunk of the moon was already dark, so I gathered my stuff together and settled in a lawn chair next to the truck, where I could lean back against it. After a couple of attempts at photography (small blurred spots) I gave it up and just enjoyed watching the show with binoculars and naked eyes, occasionally going back inside to warm up. Although there was a reddish tinge to the disk during totality, I reminded me more of a tarnished silver coin - base silver, perhaps, with a bit of copper in it. The most exciting moment was when the moon finally began to emerge from the earth's shadow again: first a faint brightening along one edge, then a perceptible silver rim, and at last a bright and slowly growing silver crescent - half a month's phases in an hour. I finally got to be again around three, and slept with the curtains open and the silver moonlight streaming in.

Before the eclipse, I also held a private solstice celebration - but that's a story for another day.

Today's photo: St. Lythan's Burial Chamber in south Wales.



-GRG

...and Wednesday...

Some winter weather moving in today, with snow forecast for tonight and tomorrow. It's more than time, I suppose, but I'm not eager to drive in it tomorrow. Think I'll take the laptop home with me tonight so I can work from home tomorrow if necessary.

We'll be celebrating the Winter Solstice this weekend, even though it's not actually until Tuesday 21st. The length of the day doesn't change much at this point - here in Denver, for example, tomorrow's "length of visible light" will be only 22 seconds shorter than today, and in mid Wales (where Gwernin spent his winters) about 40 seconds shorter. So a couple of days early or late is no big thing. What I'm excited about, though, is the total lunar eclipse the night before - hope it stays clear!

Today's picture: Drom Beg again. If I remember right, the sunset now would be just about in the notch on the ridge line...



-GRG

Happy Solstice

Today is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere, at least), a subject on which I've blogged before. We will be celebrating tomorrow night for various reasons - Saturdays are generally more convenient that Fridays in regards to preparations, and doing it on Saturday evening allows a journey to the Saturday morning Farmers' Market for some of the feast ingredients. In our generic-reconstructed-British-pagan seasonal celebrations, we like to consider what foods would have been available to our ancestors, and this year our meat choice was "birds". So last night involved a hunting expedition to the local Safeway for some game hens. The hunt was successful, and the results are now thawing in my refrigerator. Tomorrow I get to cook them.

Other feast ingredients, assuming the Farmers' Market cooperates, will be new potatoes (yes, all right, I know they're New World...), asparagus, wheat bread, organic strawberries (the small local kind that actually taste like strawberries) and cream. Oh, and the first half dozen fava beans from my garden. Rowen, being the brewer, will provide the mead, and another friend her traditional deviled eggs (if you've done something that many years in a row, it's traditional). And weather permitting, we will have a small bonfire...

On other topics, I've finally finished another chapter of The Ash Spear (see the sidebar for the stats), and am beginning to have something like momentum in my writing again. This will of course be derailed (does momentum run on rails?) by our local Fourth of July camping event, followed all too soon by the Cymdeithas Madog Welsh Course (the poem is about as finished as it's going be, I think, though I'm sure there are still grammatical errors). In the meantime I'm hoping to get one or two more chapters done before July!

Happy Solstice, all!

-GRG

Happy Midsummer!

Today is the June solstice, the longest day of the year (or the shortest, if you're in the southern hemisphere). The word solstice comes from the latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still) - the day when perceived northern or southern movement of the sunrise/sunset points stops and reverses itself. This would have been the way most people noticed the date before the introduction of accurate timepieces. Because the difference from one day to the next is slight around the solstices, they may have been celebrated over a period of days in ancient times. Of course, if you wanted to be exact, you could always erect a few standing stones...

I think I'll close with a quote from Storyteller. "There are two points of balance in the turning year: midsummer and midwinter, when the sun reaches its highest and lowest points. As in the brightest, longest days we can foresee the decline into darkness, so in the pit of darkness we can look upwards and foresee the light. In hope and in despair are each the seeds of the other: in the year, and in the life of a man."

Happy solstice!