June 21, 2002
6/21/02 Okay, so I did
Okay, so I did the research, and it turns out I was right and wrong about "the longest day" thing. Today is the longest day of the year, but so was yesterday, and so will be the next two days after. The difference between them all is so slight as to be totally unnoticeable in New York, the sun sets at 8:29 pretty much all week. The cool thing is that the longest day of the year is even longer up here in Columbia County, where I write this: twelve whole minutes longer. Now, admittedly, I'll never see six of those minutes because they happen at 5:18 in the morning, but sometimes 6 minutes can make all difference in a tightly-contested hoops game that is desperately eking out the last visible photons of light as night approaches. I've been involved in countless unlit basketball games that carried on until someone got hit in the nose with the ball really hard.
The day today in Columbia County lasted 15 hours and 7 minutes; on December 20, it will last 9 hours and 4 minutes (click here to find out your town's stats). I find it almost excruciatingly hard to believe that from here on until Christmas the days will be getting shorter. Stuff like that would depress me if I weren't so busy and downing so much Celexa.
But for now, it's summer, and the gloaming lasts clear into the 9 o'clock hour, and days are sleepy, languid and forever. Our flowers have shot into the sky, and the grass in the pasture groans audibly into foot-long drifts. Chopin the dog, like an old Jewish retiree, sits on the hill by the barn and stares at the Catskills. My and Tessa's projects sling through the afternoon; every once in a while, we pass each other and sometimes she even shows me her boobs. Life is rich up here in Columbia County, I tellya what. I wish we could both dilly and dally here all the time.
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a storm passes us just northwest