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Different Times of the Year, my viewpoint
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Different Times of the Year, my viewpoint Now, in the autumn of 2017, my 58th birthday is coming up on September 30th. I have lived almost my entire life on Long Island, New York at 40 degrees, northern latitude. One thing that I have always noticed since my childhood are the constant seasonal changes that take place in the immediate outside environment where I live. I first became acutely aware of the temperate zone seasonal changes when my family moved to central Nassau county to the Village of Hempstead in late July 1972. That autumn of 1972, I had just turned 13 years old and noticed the shorter days and darkness of the autumn months. I used to rake leaves in the house lawn as it was getting dark from October to December. That winter of 1972/73, I kept eagerly looking forward to a big snowfall or blizzard of several feet of snow to arrive which to my great chagrin never came that year. The next year my favorite course in middle school which I walked back and forth 2 miles every school day was Earth Science. It was a very diverse course covering meteorology, geology and astronomy. I learned in the class how in the temperate zone where I live, the angle of the sun's path varies greatly throughout the 12 months of the year. Right now as I'm typing this, it is around the autumnal equinox, when the length of daylight and night are both equal at 12 hours each and the sun rises and sets at nearly a right angle to the horizon. Then in the course of the next 3 months until the winter solstice on December 22nd, I always notice that the day lengths gradually become shorter and the weather slowly becomes colder and more windy. I only became acutely aware of that when as a young adult, I was employed as a night watchman at Jones Beach State Park on the south shore of Long Island on the Atlantic Ocean from 1986 to 2008. I the summer months, I could easily get through the nighttime hours just wearing a shirt and jacket, but all of a sudden beginning in mid September, I immediately noticed that it started to get very chilly at night and I would have to put on a sweater under my jacket to keep warm. Then it gradually becomes colder in October and November and the first frost arrives around Thanksgiving Holiday. In December as the Christmas holiday approaches, the days are very short, only 8 hours long. I always distinctly notice that around noontime during the day, the sun only rises to an angle of only 23 degrees above the horizon in the southern sky while all the trees are by now completely bare, having shed their leaves. I usually can't stand the month of December which I perceive to be very dark, cold and gloomy. About the only thing I might enjoy are looking at the colorful Christmas decorations on house lawns which contrast greatly with the bleak winter cold weather and looking forward to the new year in January. Since my childhood, I have always thought of January as being the bleakest, coldest month of the year and the third week of January is usually the coldest part of the year. Then as February arrives, I notice that is slowly starts to get brighter in the late afternoon hours. I always can't stand the local television weather reports of snow accumulations taking place in January and February which seem to imply that the fact that it would be snowing is somewhat of a novelty like it has never snowed before in the history of the Earth and you very well know it most obviously has as every adult has remembered the snows of the past winters in their lives. I always look forward to the beginning of March which marks the end of the winter and heralds the beginning of spring. In the first week of March, I always look for the first small flowers of the spring to emerge, the crocus flowers in the backyard of my house. The angle of the daytime's sun's path gradually gets higher in the sky from the spring equinox of March 21st, through the months of April, May and June. My favorite time of the year is from mid April through May after the last frost of the season and the green foliage starts to emerge and the deciduous tree leaves finally emerge. I especially like the month of June as the weather becomes very balmy and the sun's angle extends well over the zenith of the sky. Then the hottest time of the year arrives in late July and August as it takes time for the accumulated light radiation from the sun to build up the temperature levels of the lower atmosphere. When I was employed as a night watchman at Jones Beach State Park on Long Island in the winters from 1986 to 1989, I always noticed that in December on clear nights, the path of the full moon in the nighttime sky is actually the same exact path as that of the sun in the daytime sky in June, 6 months later and it is in the same Zodiac constellation. Now, if you were to put together a model of a globe of the Earth and Moon and of the Sun in the solar system, you could clearly see why that was true. It is plainly evident that the position of the full moon in the night sky is always exactly where the sun will be in the daytime sky, 6 months later. Another aspect of the year I have always been very aware of, are the various holidays. In January at the beginning of the year, there is New Year's Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Then in February, we have Valentine's Day and President's Day. In March, there is St. Patrick's Day then later in April there is Easter and after that is May with Mother's Day and Memorial Day. In June, there is Flag Day and Father's Day, after that the 4th of July. I have always thought of the month of August as being very weird, having no holidays. In September, there is Labor Day and Rosh HaShanah. Then in October, there is Columbus Day and Halloween. In November, there is Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving. Finally in December, there is Hanukkah and Christmas. Now, back when I was a little in the 1960s and 1970s, I always thought of the time of December and the Christmas season as being quite a big deal as I always looked forward to receiving Christmas presents from other members of my family usually. Now, as a mature adult, I never look forward to the holiday season anymore and I spend the month of December just looking forward to New Year's Day which heralds the beginning of the new year and also signifies that the days will be gradually getting longer and brighter in the next 6 months until June. My other favorite holiday is probably Halloween. Since I was a , I have often wondered a great deal that the Halloween holiday on October 31st, is in the mid autumn when obviously the days are shorter and darker than the preceding summer months, so the general idea is that in the dark gloom of the autumn months, we will make a holiday celebrating the dead and the spirit world where the mood of that goes along with darker theme of the autumn. But then after that it most obviously gets even darker and gloomier in the months of November and December when the general mood of the Christmas holiday is much more cheerful. From my point of view, the whole thing doesn't make any logical sense at all. Another thing that I have noticed since I was a young adult in the 1980s is that the vast majority of adult people I have encountered in the northern hemisphere simply do not care or be aware at all of the nuances of the constant seasonal changes that take place in the northern hemisphere where I've lived all my life. The whole thing seems very insane. For one thing when I was and , I always thought of the months of July and August as being summer months, when everyone would always have the time off. But yet, as an adult, all of a sudden I will discover that in most employment situations and at this supposed mental health center in Hempstead, NY I attended for a while, there is in fact, no time off at all in the summer months, no, the work schedule is exactly the same as the rest of the year, the whole thing seems blatantly extremely moronic. Only when I was employed as a seasonal employee at Jones Beach State Park from 1986 to 2008 was that clearly true. When as a male adult, I have made several systematic efforts to try to meet women as in systematically answering newspaper advertisements and more recently being on internet social media sites, I have very well obviously noticed that virtually all the women I have tried to establish some sort of rapport with will blatantly and completely ignore any form of reference to any seasonal holiday like Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day. Halloween, Christmas, etc. as in sending stickers or downloaded visual internet images. It is as if no one else on the planet Earth really cares at all what holiday it is or what time of the year it is. It completely and simply cannot comprehend this total insanity in this small planet Earth I have found myself inhabiting.           |
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