WINTER 2024

tulip top wntr

Arboretum Archive

E-pistles

North End Map

Calvert Vaux Park

View current page
...more recent posts

December 21, 2001

Solstice

Weird warm weather, and reverberations of war, have made the Holidays hard to focus on this year. But then, it’s always that way; always some distraction; something that seems important, taking precedence. That’s why the Holidays are enshrined in a specific time, even as they allude to something timeless. The calendar brings them to the fore, and, ready or not, we must celebrate, or else suffer alienation.

So here we are, in the very trough of the Year, yet turning towards the Sun once more. A little piece of Sun got caught in a cloud, like a fragment of rainbow; what my Dad used to call a sun dog. I put it up on the page as a sign for the Holidays; promising a Summer’s worth of Sun, even as Winter begins.

But first: the Time we’ve been prescribed. We’ll do the best we can with it, and hope today’s hearts can still conform to the Traditional message of hope and rebirth.

Step number one: send a Christmas card.

[link]