It's About Time for a New Year
Happy New Year! We are experiencing a colder than usual winter in New England this year. I find it interesting that the calendar new year, the astronomical start of winter, and the meteorological start of winter do not match up. Sun Dec 21, was the winter solstice. It was the longest night of the year at around 15 hours of darkness and consequently the shortest day of the year with about 9 hours of sunlight. This was a more significant factor in people's lives in the past at a time when most people were involved in farming with less daylight to work. However as you can see in this painting, winter did provide snow covered roads with less friction to move logs for firewood. Here is a detail: FMI on this artwork follow this link here . Here is another artwork showing an empty sled and a pile of logs to the right. FMI on this artwork follow this link here . Here is a detail: On the left you can see a good example of marcescence. F...