Summer Solstice 2022

Yesterday was the official summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The day lasted almost sixteen hours in New York and the sun never set in Murmansk, Russia. I woke well before the dawn and went to sleep far past sunset, as the Earth polar cap tipped toward the nearest star 93 million miles away from our home planet.

Five hundred year after the discovery of beer by the Celts the Druid priests gathered the tribes to erect this monolithic bluestone clock to record the rising and setting on the sun and the passage of the stars. To this day modern archaeologists will not attributed this great feat to the Celts, because the true tribe supposedly arrived in Britain in 600 BE before Caeser's reign over Rome.

Fucking Brits haven't even discovered its ancient name.

No one has come even close.

No one.

Not even us remaining Neanderthals.

The Avebury henges followed Stonehenge's creation. By whom no one knows.

Back in 1994 I drank in a good pub at the northern entrance.

I also climbed to the top of the Avesbury Mound.

div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">

Summer Solstice - June 21, 2024

Yesterday 4:52 PM marked the beginning of the summer solstice, the little best day of the year on the Northern hemisphere. People have celebrated this day since time immemorial across the globe. The word Solstice means “sun standing still” or “grianstad' in Celtic. This morning I awoke at first light. 5:14 AM.

Back in the last century my friend AJ and I went out to Stonehenge for a neolithic day trip. I hugged the monumental stones and cried as one with Celtic blood, even though the monolithic stones were erected by an unknown race many millennium before the Irish wandered northern Europe. Since that visit the Crown, which claims ownership of the ruins, has restricted entry to the ring of stones. Today thousands of pagans greeted the dawn at Stonehenge. New Yorkers for the most part ignored the yearly phenomena, even though Manhattan's East to West streets from 14th to 155th are aligned with sunrise and sunset during the three-day solstice period.

According to Wikipedia the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 arranged the street grid for most of Manhattan according to the azimuth at sunset to 299° (i.e., 29° north of due West), so he island's sunset aligns with the streets on that gird.

Tomorrow morning I will greet the sun naked in Montauk.

Enjoy the cosmos.

It's in our blood.

Survivor June 2009

In the course of my 57 years I've stayed in a hospital once. The week of my birth. My parents took me home to Jamaica Plain. Since that day my health has been unchallenged by illness other than colds, poison ivy, and hang-overs. The last year I had thrived in the unhealthy climates of New York. One year without a serious ailment and last week I bragged to a friend, "I haven't been ill this year."

Two days later a cough invaded my lungs. My body was wracked by a low-grade fever. My strength was depleted by minimal exertion. I stayed home one day from work. I would have been fine if I had said nothing. My doctor's diagnosis excluded 'swine flu'.

"A cold. A summer cold. Nothing more." He suggested rest, fluids, and cough syrup.

I followed his advice and slept like the dead thanks to the cough syrup. I drank hundreds of gallons of water and juice. Theraflu was my sole form of entertainment. No beer. No wine. No pizza. Life was meaningless. I don't do sick well. My bed became my empire. I watched all of STARGATE-ATLANTIS Seasons 2 and 3. It's been one week. I almost feel better. I survived being sick.

The weirdest thing was that everyone else in New York looked even sicker.

But then they eat crap.

Vagabonding In the City - 2017

My disaster stint in Alaska cost my apartment in Fort Greene.

Too many hours.

A horrible boss.

Too little money.

How little?

$100 for a thirteen hour day.

I wasn't cut out for selling silver trinkets to geriatric cruise line passengers and my boss fired me without notice. I was glad to go.

May was not the month to make sales in Juneau.

Six days a week.

I lasted a month and returned to New York with less than $600 in my pocket.

My apartment was sublet and I was $4500 in arrears to my landlord and good friend.

I worked everywhere throughout the summer.

On a house in Catskill, New York.

On a farm in Greenwich, New York.

Where a tree bloodied my skull.

My son Fenway was hurt in a motorcycle crash in Thailand.

Not bad and he remains handsome as ever.

On a house in Greenwich, New York.

My old job of selling diamonds was gone. I hated hard labor, but it was better than not working at all, which is what I've been doing the last week.

A vagabond without a place to live.

I used to fit right into this street.

And one day I will again.

Just not today.

HItchhiking Delaware 1970

In 1970 coming from a weekend in DC Peter Gore and I were arrested for hitchhiking by a Delaware state trooper on this stretch of I-95. We were fined $25 at the police station and put on a bus to New York. I never paid that ticket, which has probably ballooned with penalties and interest to $1100. That is why I fear Delaware.

Especially the Delaware Welcome Center.

A slice of pizza $7.99.

And no beer.

ps the following year Peter and I also were ticketed once more for hitchhiking in George, Washington by a zealous state trooper. He threw us off the highway and then off the onramp. Peter was standing on a tree stump and a car stopped for us. The trooper pulled over the vehicle and ticketed the three of us.

I never paid that ticket either.

June 29 1997 Fire Island Journal

June 29 1997 Fire Island

The waves from Africa 
Break on the Pines beach
The sea froth surging up the sand
With a lisping hiss
The final reach of the Atlantic
Swirling around my ankles
To retreat from
'Neath my feet___
Three seconds later
Another wave ripples around my feet
My soles sinking into the sand deep
My balance threatened 
By the tug
Of the sea___
Overhead a Westbound 747
Crew of nineteen
300 plus passengers
From Europe on the approach 
To JFK
I am invisible ___
This autumn I will be westbound 
Aboard a jetliner to Heathrow 
To Paris
To the South of France
And then Ireland
But I am here now
Fire Island
Haunted by the ghosts
Of boys of summer
Their names
Countless as the sand disappearing 
'Neath my toes___
I close my eyes
I see them all
The boys of the Sexual Revolution
Soldiers
I open my eyes
I see none__
I fight to remember 
All
The boys of summer
On this beach
Within reach
1978
Before
Before 
Before__
I see us all with my eyes open
Naked 
Young
Tanned
Laughing 
Naked
Alive___
Not  
Old Polaroids  Not in my hand
Of my mind
Oh the nakedness
Now
Today
I strip naked
No longer young
Alive
Naked___
Dive into the cold sea
This moment 
Like all those gone
And those to come
All of us
Together 
Never to flee
Our nakedness then
Or my nakedness now__
The smell of poppers in the air
Ah, the Pines__

Juneteenth 1900 Texas

The above photo was taken in Texas thirty-five years after the morning of June 19, 1865, when Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its enslaved population and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all enslaved people were free, although not in the border states until later.

Still free, but the fight for equality is not over by a long shot.

Happy ‘tenth.

Information from Wikipedia.