It's been two years since the last Winter Solstice celebration and this one was very windy and rainy, but, still, more than sixty people came together to share food, company, singing and yet another bonfire (though only about twenty people came outside into the tempest to stand around the fire).

The drums and other instruments stayed inside (though the bagpiper played under a distant porch and one (of two) basoonist(s) joined me in several pennywhistle duets at the fire).


The Fire Starts

( More pictures behind the cut )

I am (was?) the kid in the back row, third from right (i.e., including the teacher) wearing the geeky white shirt and suspenders (of course!)

I'm not sure, but our class just might have been the only class to go all the way from Kindergarten (Kinder Garden!) to graduating from High School at this one school in Gary, Indiana.

At any rate (dv/dt?), a lot of water has certainly gone under the bridge and over the dam since then, right?

Woke up around 4:30 am and it was zero degrees Fahrenheit outside. Uh, at the risk of seeming very weird, I have to admit here that I have yet to turn on my house furnace (mostly out of protest to the outrageous price of propane of late). A frantic check of various water taps proved that none had yet frozen up. I then did a rapid, stategic placement of the three space heaters that I own in an attempt to keep those pipes from freezing as this cold snap continues. As I sit here now typing, with many layers of long underwear, warm clothing and my L.L. Bean Maine Guide parka (damn! my hands are cold ... and I can only find one of my gloves with the removable fingers), the local thermometer in this room is 37 deg. F.

What a cheapskate fool, right? Well, yeah, but, still, I guess I'm in training for eventually going to live full-time in my old tipi (after I get my kids to torch the house so I can collect the insurance ducats (just a joke, Nate (aka Pyroman), JUST A JOKE! (let me first clean out all the memories that are still left up in the attic, ok? (grin)))).



( and now for the Shakespeare bit )

Usually my dreams are bizarrely disturbing, but this morning I had a dream where I used two pictures of myself (one at around age 25 (clean-shaven) and then a more recent bearded one (circa age 60+)), morphing the younger one into the older one.


(Quick and Dirty Try to Visualize This Dream)

( Details and Startling, But Obvious, Conclusion to Dream )

There's an old water tower about two blocks from my old Gary home (up at the end of Indian Boundary (a name that has another story in history)).



When you climb up to its top, you get the best view in the world of Lake Michigan, particularly on a warm, summer night.

( Are you wondering how to get to the top? )

I grew up in Gary, Indiana between 1944 and 1962. For all of my childhood, my home was a small white house at the corner of Vanderburg Street and Maple Avenue, lying only two blocks from Mighty Lake Michigan. Our Dad excavated the semblance of a back yard (two small, terraced patches of lawn) from the Omnipresent Sand that shaped almost every aspect of our Lives.



When I was a kid, there were only about 4-5 houses on the east side of Vanderburg, while the west side of our street was dominated by a towering sand dune next to a funky swamp (where we would pretend to smoke cigars by lighting up cat-tails ).


(painting by my father done about 50 years ago; this spot is now flat with houses)

Maple Avenue ended about 50 feet along the south side of our lot. Well, more accurately, it was buried by the skirts of another huge sand dune (these dunes were around 150 feet tall). It was a great place to grow up and, when I wasn’t soaking in Lake Michigan, you could probably find me atop one of the dunes, perched up in the limbs of some cottonwood or maple tree reading a book.

Recently, viewing an aerial photograph of this area (if you use the link, you might have to then click "Aerial Image" in the map's upper-right corner), made me cry out “Where are all the sand dunes?!” (though, hopefully, some might still remain under the extended canopy of trees pictured in the linked photo). Usually, we don’t realize what we lose because of overpopulation and greed, until it’s all gone.

( Click here to read the actual memory of John the Peddler )

We came together this morning in our new building. Having everyone in the same place at one time really was inspirational.



The new sanctuary

( More Pictures )

Well, yesterday was a day full of trips to various doctors and related errands. It was also a day busy with searching the web for ideas on how to conduct a local campaign to Save the Environment, along with trying to fix various plumbing problems (with mixed results - after 33 years of leaks in the basement, I'm almost to the point of thinking about considering calling in a plumber).

Last night, I was so tired that I fell asleep right after firing off one last strategy email to our New London Earth Day folks (see earlier post about latest protest), so I forgot to post here. Somehow, though, the World will still go on, even if I missed posting one day, right?

Anyhow, this morning I remembered that yesterday was December 4th. December 4, 1969 was the day that I started working at a job that I stayed with for 31 years, until retiring in 2000. Over my glass of pomegranite/cranberry juice, I got sort of nostalgic, remembering that back then I was a young 25 years old partnered with a good wife and several cats, recently indoctrinated in the fields of Mathematics and Biomedical Engineering, and my trusty slide-rule (no laptops back in 1969).



Relatively speaking, back then, I was full of Innocence and Optimism. I had yet to learn many, many tough lessons in Life about how things don't always go the way we (naively) plan and, more importantly, I've learned a few lessons about myself, too (I'm still learning).

Still, back on that day, Life was good.

In spite of all the bumps and wrinkles along the way, it still is (if we just stop for a second and experience it).

The last service in the (almost 100 year) old sanctuary of New London, CT's All Souls Unitarian Universalist Congregation was held this morning. The past few years have witnessed our growth to about 250 members and many more "friends," while our old sanctuary has an occupancy of around 75 or so.


(The last hymn)

Next Sunday will be the first service in our new building (just behind the old one) which can hold 300 (more or less) at one time.

Today was a day of very mixed feelings. The old place holds so many treasured memories, many happy, many sad, but, as almost all agree, "It's time!"

This was my first attempt at a time-lapse photo; it's kind of shaky and not quite in focus, but, well, I promise they'll get better.



My second attempt (only slightly better, still out of focus (bofus?), but frames at every 30 seconds instead of the earlier once a minute) is ( behind the cut ... )

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

(Robert Frost)

A nice view of my neighbor's garage:

About 50 to 60 folks gathered to celebrate the Winter Solstice on December 21st. After much good food and drink, we went outside to a bonfire (built by one of my sons and me - all three of us have a genetic predisposition towards pyrotheology) and witnessed yet another turning of the Celestial Wheel. After my son lit the fire (only one match, of course), everyone warmed themselves with good company, song, music, blue Celtic warpaint and general carrying on (along with tossing of various objects into the fire).

In the heart of the fire was the maypole that was last woven at the 2004 Summer Solstice celebration. This maypole was originally the top half of the the first (May, 2003) New London Earth Day maypole. It was subsequently reused at two large group campouts and one wedding.

( ... more Winter Solstice pictures )

Uh, let's try this one ...



Well, how about that (after several tries) - it worked!
( a few more photographs )

I've drawn labyinths since I was a kid, memorizing the classic design from a picture of a coin from Crete that was in my mother's High School Latin book. Since then, I've drawn them in sand at beaches or in the snow or one BIG one in the desert, I've mowed them into my neighbor's lawn and put them on name-tags, etc. and so forth...



You know, when you look at your Life from the front end, it seems that it is full of many, many choices and branches and roads to take or ignore - a true maze (multipath circuit with many, many dead-ends ("mistakes?") - as opposed to the labyrinth, which has only one path).

But, you know what? ... when you start to get towards the other end of Life and you look back, all you see is that One Path that you took and it's straight as an arrow. Who'd of thunk it, huh?! So, is that what it's all about? (?)