Make it be a Happy New Year whether it wants to or not!

Happy New Year!. Over the next week we’ll gain slightly more than a minute per day of daylight. By month’s end, we’ll have gained almost an hour. That’s the good news. Unfortunately, really  warmer temperatures will lag two or three months behind the increase in daylight, but  the trend is in a positive direction, unless you’re a skier or ice angler.

Tomorrow night brings a New Moon. Full Moon occurs on the 17th, Martin Luther King Day.

black-capped chickadee

Photo by J. Harrington

If you’re feeding birds, please keep the feeders full during these coldest days. Providing some suet would be nice too. Chickadees need to consume 35% to 60% of their body weight daily in these cold temperatures. We want them well fed and around so that soon we can enjoy their spring songs as well as their cheery company.

We’ve not learned what  caused it, but this morning about 5:30 or so we joined about 2,400 of our neighbors in a power outage. The temperature outside was -9℉. Fortunately, the outage lasted only an hour or so. As part of our effort to have a more positive attitude this year, we’re focusing on being grateful power was restored relatively quickly instead of fussing about why it went out in the first place. We’re also glad we weren’t among those working outside to restore power, if that’s what it took.

Since we now have a whole new year at our disposal, let’s not waste it with the same old, same old attitudes. In addition to working on restoring Mother Nature, how about if we work on restoring our own good nature, despite pandemics, climate breakdown and Republicans.

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

by Mary Oliver

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