Figure 1 – Sunset on the winter solstice, 2016. (c) AB Wolf 2017.

Happy New Year to all my friends and readers of Hati and Skoll. Thank you all for your continued support and interest!

It has become a tradition here at Hati and Skoll to speak in the New Year about two things: the tabula rasa (the blank slate) and paths. Reminded again, about world events it is hard to think this year about blank slates. There is just way too much excess baggage, just too much moral turpitude on the planet. As for paths, we continue to have them, there are a multitude of options. We can follow Michele Obama and choose the high road, you know, just as our mothers taught us. But …

Anyway, I do not mean to be so glum. I am sharing today a photograph taken on the winter solstice not by me but by my son. It shows the slippery path to light. I am one who hates the darkness of winter and it is important to me that I do not have to wait until the solstice for the light to increase at night. Here in Boston the earliest sunsets occur on December 15. Thereafter, the minutes of light are taken off in the morning. It is a quirk or vagary of celestial mechanics.

So astronomically we are on the ascendance. Let’s make that metaphoric and follow the admonition of Mark Twain to “Dream other dreams, and better,” my friends. It is ultimately in our power.

Happy New Year to you all.

David