The Longest Day

I tried explaining the concept of the Summer Solstice to the C today on the phone. He's at his dad's house, for this is not only Father's Day weekend but his brother J's birthday, and these things are important.

"Today** is the longest day of the year!" I told him. "Oh, yah?", he replied, not really caring at all. I then went into detail about how today the sun would be "up" longer than on any other day, and that it's exactly opposite of wintertime, near his birthday, when the sun is up the shortest amount. We agreed this was very neat and moved on to the more important discussion of J's missing a blue coin in Lego Star Wars.

It occurs to me that time has a completely different reference from when you are six, to when you are 36 (almost). School's out for the summer, ten glorious weeks of break time before he goes back to daily sheets and teachers, and I think to myself how that is not long at all. And I'm sure he's thinking to himself how it is infinite... the prospect of school and supplies and back to school shopping and fall and winter clothing and all of that just interminably long from now. Me? I've preordered his school supplies (The PTA had a thing...).

I look around at all of the things to be done: I have gravel pathways to lay and weeding and transplanting and I could always properly catalog my library... and feel overwhelmed. He looks around at all the things to be done: summer camp and a trip to hawaii and a new house (dad is moving to Auburn, which is weirdly closer in terms of drive time than North Seattle) and a camping trip and a trip to grammie's... and feels blissfully overwhelmed.

It's time to live vicariously. I could use a little more bliss. In that vein, I'm headed to CC's to celebrate the summer solstice.

*OK, so modern concept is that the solstices are all perfectly neat on the 21st of the 6th and 12th months. But you see, this planet we live on is round, and the technical definition of the summer solstice is when the tilt of the earth's axis is most inclined toward the sun (and the winter is the inverse). Now, the earth has 360 degrees (being round, and while not technically a perfect sphere but an oblate spheroid, it works good enough for this example) and rotates around itself every 24 hours. Therefore, the axis is at that "most tilted point" for each 15 degrees of space for one hour. While it would be very neat indeed if that started at 12:01 GMT 06-21, it never quite works that way; probably because when they were calculating this stuff and GMT in the first place it came from the same group who was originally using sundials and stones. It still beats the hell out of a calendar that requires 5 "zero" days, though.

Therefore, Solstice for the Pacific Northwest, specifically Seattle, is *today*. Again, specifically at 10:45pm.

So it's not only a pretty long day, but it's a pretty long post (/babble).