Our Great Dark

STEM
Environmental and Science Education
Miscellaneous
Edward Hessler

I like the MPR Updraft Blog, written by Paul Huttner and others. The stories are great and thorough.

Today's entry by Mr. Huttner is a good time, one past due, to call attention to the blog in the event you don't look at it or are not familiar with it.

Huttner writes today about sunlight and daylength, a reasonable topic as we enter the dark days of the year. Huttner includes a sun graph with an arrow to show you just where we are and what is ahead, namely how many more dark days before the sun returns.  That return is barely noticeable at first and it will be a while before we feel it as heat.

Knud Rasmussen who was born and raised in Greenland (1879 - 1933) made many significant expeditions to the Arctic, drawing attention to those who know how to live there. Here is a comment by an Inuit on the coming darkness of winter. Here is one collection of poems he collected. You may feel the same way but to a much lesser extent. The Inuit knew and know darkness.

"Do you see that coming?" the old woman Arnaluaq asked.
"What?"
"That-out there over the sea. It is the Dark coming up, the great Dark!"

This quote is an epigraph from Chapter One of This Cold Heaven by Gretel Ehrlich, a book I've not read but should.