Where I live, yesterday marked the earliest sunset. From now until summer, you’ll get more afternoon for your money. It’s cold and dark in New England. I always resent the sunlight when it goes vacationing in the southern hemisphere, but I am always happy to welcome it back. Nice Sun… make yourself comfortable. Shall I get you a towel and lounge chair?
I have come to think of this, along with Groundhog Day, as one of my favorite faux-holidays. It needs a name, though. Peak Dusk? Dark High Water Mark? Twilight of the Twilights? The Turn? I like the fact that it appears on different days in different places. If you lived in San Diego, you’d be celebrating on December 3rd.
Anyway, I was able to find a nifty iPhone application to feed my obsession with the sun’s progress: the Vela Design Group’s VelaClock. It provides a lot of information on the rising and setting of the sun and moon (including azimuth), and, charmingly, it works off your exact location based on the GPS unit.
The name for this should support a “…morning…” and “…evening…” version. I sort of like The Turn, because then you can talk about The Morning Turn and The Evening Turn. It feels like it still needs polishing though. Wish I could come up with something instead of just yammering.
–JYammer
I agree with you about the morning and evening aspect. It also needs to be simple and straightforward and not smack of Renaissance Faire wooden sword pseudo-pagan puffery. It’s the extremum of the evening flood tide of darkness. Peak eventide. Hmmm, that’s still not it…