Steadily, predictably, unlike the affairs of humans, winter nights with their cold clear skies, shorten. Neighbor and friend Rob Halpert has been watching this progress and has this to say:
“My new nightly ritual — sitting outside by a fire and losing myself in the night sky — brings comfort and certainty, even as life on Earth grows more fragile and unmoored. Each night Mars will rise high into the southern sky; Orion appears in the east, lying on his side, keeping a close watch on Rigel and Betelgeuse; Vega shines in the west. And later, Sirius, the brightest of all the stars we can see, will make a shimmering, showy entrance over the arbor in our yard. Fire and sky: the ancients were on to something with this ritual that I repeat a million years later. The stars, in their constancy reassure us that, somehow, things will be okay.”
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