Snow!

"Hurry Home", pastel painting, Karen Margulis

As I left town in the wee hours this morning for a brief trip, a quick-moving weather system blanketed Chicago in gorgeous cottony whiteness. Let's celebrate with a beautiful poem AND a video from Nifty's catalogue of favorite old movie songs!

London Snow

When men were all asleep the snow came flying, 

In large white flakes falling on the city brown,

Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,

Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;

Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;

Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:

Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;

Hiding difference, making unevenness even,

Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.

All night it fell, and when full inches seven

It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,

The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;

And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness

Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:

The eye marvelled-marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;

The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;

No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,       

And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.

Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,

They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze

Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;

Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;

Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,

'O look at the trees!' they cried, 'O look at the trees!'

With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,

Following along the white deserted way,

A country company long dispersed asunder:

When now already the sun, in pale display

Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below

His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.

For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;

And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,

Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:

But even for them awhile no cares encumber

Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,

The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber

At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken. 

--Robert Seymour Bridges

Snowy Evening...Frost

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

- Robert Frost

The December Solstice

At 6:11 GMT (11:11 am CST) the north pole reached it's furthest tilt away from the sun, and the planet has achieved it's southern solstice. In the northern hemisphere, we experience the shortest period of daylight of the year, while the southern hemisphere receives its longest day. This is the time of the midnight sun for the south polar region.

As in June, the exact date and time of the December solstice varies from year to year, but it is always on December 20, 21, 22 or 23. Interestingly, because the earth's orbit around the sun is an elliptical pattern, the seasons are not exactly uniform in length. Northerners who love the warmer months will be delighted to learn that spring and summer are slightly longer seasons than winter and fall!


The Shortest Day
by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!


For your Saturday Inspiration, here is the final violin concerto in Vivaldi's Four Seasons: Winter.
Performed by violinist Julia Fischer accompanied by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields at the National Botanical Gardens in Wales.