The Common Ground Country Fair, in its ticket-pricing scheme, uses the term Elders instead of Seniors — which I like so much better, now that I see it written down somewhere. Suits the context, anyway: old hippies enacting the rituals of our tribe. #Maine#equinox#FlashbackFriday
If anyone wants a visual aid, you can graph the duration of daylight per day over the current year for the location of your choice on my website: https://johnrefior.com/daylight
This year's September equinox will occur at 2023-09-23 06:50 UTC. That timing creates a fun effect. For most of the world, the equinox will be this Saturday 9/23. But if your timezone is UTC-7 or earlier, the equinox will be on Friday 9/22. Here in Los Angeles (PDT = UTC-7), the equinox happens at 11:50 pm Friday night.
Few things drive home the weirdness of timekeeping more than having a single instantaneous event happen on different days depending on where you are. 🙂🕰️📅
Feeling deep gratitude for a beautiful, (mostly) clear, dry, and cool fall equinox that felt rather autumnal. Still too warm for what it should be, but it was finally coat weather when sitting outdoors.
Croxdale Viaduct spanning the River Wear just south of Durham in North East England.
Autumn will be knocking at the door soon and this is a favourite spot of mine to visit to see the season's golden hues.
The viaduct carries the East Coast Mainline between London's Kings Cross and Edinburgh's Waverley Stations.
The location is also passed by the old Great North Road that also linked the two capitals, albeit at a much slower pace.
Hey #NewOrleans! Join Crescent City Gaian Guild and Greater New Orleans Interfaith Climate Coalition for a fall #equinox celebration. We’ll welcome the harvest season and step into the dark half of the year together. This gathering will feature a brief science demo explaining the celestial mechanics of this seasonal moment. We’ll also have a breath-based meditation, a song, and a communal potluck feast. Saturday morning is City Park.
Just three more days of official summer left (the autumnal equinox occurs this weekend on Saturday).
I know some areas of the UK have enjoyed a fairly decent summer, but in North East England, where I live, it seems to have been cooler than recent years and much more unsettled.
The first tints of autumn are already evident in our local countryside.
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: The festival of the Corn-King was held at the #autumn #equinox on the 21st of September. The Corn-King offered himself on behalf of the noble sacrifice and due honour would be given to this hero, both here an in the #Otherworld. He would be buried under a cromleac. Each year people remembered the Corn-King and placed a stone on his tomb, in his memory. These became cairns. Five such cairns are found on Croagh Patrick.
Source: https://www.ballintubberabbey.ie/the-celtic-furrow/
The weather is "summer". But it's almost equinox now. The sun rises much later and sets much earlier than in June or July. And it doesn't rise up as high into the sky at midday. So the angles are different.
We have summer things and summer habits for hot weather. A few days ago I set up the table under a tree and an umbrella for lunch, just as I would in summer. But the shade from the tree was wrong. I had to put the umbrella in different place so the shade would fall on the people eating.
Now that I've noticed it, I see it all the time. In the morning, the sun is much lower than it should be in "summer". In the evening, it sets in an "autumny" way, but it's hot like a summer evening.
The plants that need a many hours of sunshine are starting to shut down, because there's only a bit more than 12 hours of daylight left, even if those hours are very bright and hot.
I guess this must be more obvious closer to the poles? Anyone else feeling this way?
(I'm at 48° N. We have about 16 hours day and 8 hours night at summer solstice, and 8 hours day and 16 hours night at winter solstice here.)
For the avoidance of doubt, in the Northern Hemisphere, today is not the last day of summer 2023 and autumn does not arrive tomorrow. The first day of September is the start of 'meteorological autumn', which is just an invented term and convenient way to mark the change of seasons as one month ends and another begins. In reality, autumn arrives at the equinox, which is another three weeks away on 23 Sep 2023 at 07:50am.
This is Chicagohenge, a twice-yearly event where the sun aligns with the axis created by our grid system of streets at the spring/autumn equinoxes. Instagram tip for tourists: plan to gather around 6:00p to get a good shot.