Solstice 2015

To me, pagan/heathen that I am, the winter/summer solstice seems more real than the Hallmark holiday milestones that saturate our culture. I saw that the IMA was doing a solstice experience, but they had it on a more convenient Saturday night, the 19th. The point of the precise scientific moment of the solstice was completely missed.

Primitive people sitting by campfires in the same place were able to figure out that the days got shorter and then, miraculously, that the days were getting longer. What a pivotal event! Observation and record keeping combined to give the power to predict and unscramble a mystery of the Universe.

There are still plenty that have not been unscrambled, but this gave people the notion that it might be possible to unscramble other mysteries. They also discovered some weird residues leaking out of the fires.

This year has been full of challenges. I built a nine foot long walnut table from wood from a tree on an ancestral family farm in Wayne county, perhaps the best thing I have ever made and something I would have never dreamed I would have been able to do. I made some spalted maple benches from another tree from the same farm.

The people were very happy with the results and to me, that it what it is all about.

The end of the year causes me to reflect upon the best/worst of the year and to make plans to make the next year better. I spent the day sitting in front of my new wood stove trying to forsee the future.