The word “solstice” comes from the Latin sol, sun, and sistere, to stand. It is the time when the sun appears to stand still for a day or two in its relentless pacing from north to south and back again, the time when it pauses before turning to retrace the path it has been following as long as there has been an earth.

At the two equinoxes, the sun’s rising and setting place moves very fast across the horizon. But for a day or two on either side of June 21st and December 21st, it’s hard to tell that the spot has moved at all.

I sometimes speculate on how our ancestors must have felt as they watched their one source of warmth and light moving inexorably away, as the days grew shorter and colder. According to the elders, it had always come back before; but what if this time it just kept on going? Small wonder that December 25th, the first day the keenest-eyed member of the group could say for sure the sun had decided to return, has long been associated with joy, celebration, hope, and light.

The winter solstice, of course, marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. It is the official beginning of winter. For those of you who, like me, enjoy geometry, I offer my favorite definition: The winter solstice is the time at which the angle between the earth’s axis of rotation and the line connecting the South Pole to the center of the sun reaches its greatest value and begins decreasing again.

However you commemorate (or define) the season of the winter solstice, I wish you joy, celebration, and warmth.

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It’s hot here.

It’s Kansas, it’s July, it’s hot.  Go figure.

Everyone around me is complaining about the heat.  Next February we will be complaining about the cold.  We complain when the wind blows, and when there is no breeze.  We complain when it rains, and when it’s too dry.  Anything but 72 degrees and sunny elicits howls of outrage.

Recently I listened to an item on the radio about some of our soldiers in the Middle East working in temperatures of 130 degrees Fahrenheit.  Outside.  Wearing body armour.  Carrying lots of equipment.

I listened to the item in my air-conditioned car driving from my air-conditioned office to my air-conditioned house.

I have decided, as a sacrifice of gratitude, to try my best never to complain about the weather again.  It’s a small gesture, and it probably won’t affect anyone but me.  But I think that’s the way sacrifices work.

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I am astonished at the uses some people come up with for the internet.  This is probably frivolous, but it’s such fun I can’t resist passing it on.  And there is no way this could have been done 30 years ago.

Recently I received in change a dollar bill with “Track this bill at www.WheresGeorge.com” stamped across the front.  I went to the web site and entered the denomonation, series, and serial number, and found out that that bill was last logged in in Wichita.  I left a note saying where I received it and where I plan to spend it.  From now on, anyone who logs that bill in will see what I wrote, and I will get an email notification.

What fun!

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Two profoundly disturbing items were aired on NPR earlier this week:

This one, in which the mayor of New Orleans wonders aloud how to keep his city from being overrun with Mexican workers, and a Latino construction company owner in New Orleans complains that African-Americans he hires don’t want to work very hard.

This one, in which the Italian government has authorized the fingerprinting of Roma citizens, whether there is evidence of wrongdoing or not. As always, loss of liberty is presented as necessary for the majority, and beneficial for the exploited minority.

I hereby give myself permission to stop feeling guilty over the overt bigotry evident in my own family two generations ago.

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In the summer of 1996 I applied for a mortgage and bought the condominium where I still live.

I was newly divorced, and not particularly knowledgeable about such things. But I’m smart and my math skills are good and my realtor was and still is a personal friend. So it was that, twelve years ago this coming October, I sat in the offices of a real estate company signing a small mountain of papers. I did not read them, nor would I have understood them if I had. They were presented to me as the standard contracts for this situation, and I have no doubt that was exactly the case.

My realtor recommended I buy insurance on the contents of my condo, which I proceeded to do. It costs me a pittance every year to ensure that, if one of our Kansas tornadoes takes away my computer, furniture, clothes, dishes, and appliances, I can replace them. The dues I pay to the homeowners’ association every month provide for lawn mowing and other common-area maintenance, snow removal, and an escrow account for painting and roof repair. And hazard insurance on the building itself.

Not once in the past twelve years have I regretted that decision. I love my home; it makes me happy to live here. I have had no trouble with my mortgage company, nor they with me.

Earlier this year I succumbed to a barrage of advertising from my mortgage company, and began to look at refinancing. The interest rate they were offering was substantially lower than what I was paying. After annoying the heck out of them with a whole bunch of questions for several weeks, I decided to go ahead with it. They emailed me the paperwork, and this time I decided to run it by my attorney before signing.

The attorney found nothing wrong, but he did see that they were charging me for hazard insurance on the building itself. The mortgage company requires that the property be insured, and that’s understandable. But since my homeowners’ dues buy that for me, I asked the mortgage company to take that charge out of the contract, and they did so. I asked the insurance agent to fax a copy of the policy to the mortgage company, and they did so. Dust off hands, project accomplished, case closed.

So here’s my question: Whose responsibility was it to have found, twelve years ago, that I was paying twice for the same coverage? Since I choose to accept responsibility for my life and my decisions, I can hardly blame anyone else for this. I will consider the extra money I have spent my penance for not being a little more circumspect.

But I am hardly the only person living in a condominium, and I find it strange that the “standard” mortgage contract is the same for both houses and condos when, in fact, they should differ in this one important aspect. I also find it strange that this may not be part of the training for real estate agents.

I don’t intend to pursue this any further. But if you know someone who’s planning on buying a condo, you might share this with them.

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I have a mystery. And, since it is self-evident that all readers of this blog are intelligent, well-read, perceptive, and helpful, I am betting that at least one of you can solve this.

Let me set the stage for you:

Outside my back door is a small patio, with several pots of flowers. To one side of the patio is a little landscaped area covered in crushed rock, with an ornamental pear tree, a birdbath, a hanging bird feeder, a good-sized ornamental rock, and some hostas. There is a downspout on the corner of the house between the patio and the landscaped area, and the splash block under the downspout lies atop the crushed rock. The bird feeder hangs directly above the splash block. The crushed rock is in the marble-to-golf-ball-size range.

I live in a condominium. (Or is it a town home? I don’t know the difference.) So, while the front of my house faces the street, the back opens into the “common area.” It is fenced.

This is a suburban residential area of a small city, so wildlife consists of birds, squirrels, a fair number of rabbits, and a couple of cats from across the street. And me, I guess.

More than once, I have found one or two of the pieces of crushed rock lying in the splash block under the downspout. I toss them out, and a few days later they’re back. There are four of them out there as I write. Now, these mystery rocks are not the marble-sized ones. Often they are as big as the palm of my hand, too heavy to be blown anywhere by the wind, and too large to be carried by any bird smaller than a raven or hawk.

Yesterday I was watering the pots of flowers, and there was a piece of lava rock in one. I KNOW it wasn’t there before, because I planted those flowers myself not very long ago, and I tend to them daily. Had it been there on Monday or Tuesday, I would have seen it. That particular rock, being porous lava rock, is light enough to have been carried by a smaller bird. Or a rabbit, or a squirrel.

But why?

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Grant Cushinberry has died at the age of 86.

Mr. Cushinberry was born in Nicodemus, an all-black town founded in 1877 in northwest Kansas by former slaves fleeing the south.  He came to Topeka after WW II to attend the Kansas Vocational School.  That means he was here during the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education turmoil and decision.

His nephew Dale is now the principal at Highland Park High School.

He owned a trash-hauling business, and the first I remember being aware of him was seeing the brightly-painted truck lumbering down the street.  It was a moving billboard, mobile graffiti.  Every message, every word painted there was positive.  It was his blog before there was an internet.  And splayed across the front was, “Here Comes Cush!”

He founded, and for almost 30 years spent most of each November organizing, the Topeka Community Thanksgiving Dinner.  The food is donated (with, I’m sure, some arm-twisting) by local businesses and is prepared by volunteers.  Anyone can come eat, no questions asked.  Most years, 3,000 people show up.

Mr. Cushinberry also operated what he called “God’s Little Half Acre.”  He grew vegetables there, and distributed food, clothing, furniture, and who-knows-what-else to those who needed them.  Again, the goods he gave away were donated, solicited from local businesses and individuals.

Mr. Cushinberry probably wouldn’t have called himself a libertarian, but on a fundamental level, that was exactly what he was.  I’m proud to have lived in the same town with him.

Mayor Bunten is quoted in this morning’s paper as saying, “I think there will be a little celebration in heaven tonight because a guy like Grant is coming home.”

I don’t doubt it for a minute.

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In the Book of Deuteronomy, among lots and lots and lots of other laws, is this one.  I find it touching.

When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow….

When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow.

When you gather the grapes of your vinyard, you shall not go over it again; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow.

A couple of books later, Ruth, who was an alien and a widow, manages to provide for herself and her mother-in-law by gleaning in Boaz’s field.  She ends up marrying him (he’s very rich), and becomes the great-grandmother of King David.  Not a bad deal.

Today, driving through part of east Topeka, I saw a scruffily-dressed and very dirty person pushing a battered grocery cart piled high with aluminum cans.  He had probably picked them up from the side of the road, maybe even searched through dumpsters for them.

Is there a parallel here?  An excuse for littering?

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Here’s a quiz. Which saves more gas: trading in a 16-mile-a-gallon gas guzzler for a slightly more efficient car that gets 20 mpg? Or going from a gas-sipping sedan of 34-mpg to a hybrid that gets 50 mpg?

If you guessed the second choice, you’re wrong.

This interesting broadcast on “All Things Considered” this afternoon explains why the way mileage is advertised in the US is not the best way to figure fuel efficiency. 

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I had first published this as the Chapman, Kansas tornado, because that’s how it was sent to me.  The comment I’ve received says otherwise.  At any rate, it’s a real tornado somewhere, and an impressive display.

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