Question: What do you call the period between the latest sunrise and the earliest sunset? Answer: I don’t know. If you said, “the shortest day of the year,” that is, paradoxically, not correct. Instead, the latest sunrise and the earliest sunset fall on separate days on either side of the winter solstice.

Tonight is the earliest sunset of the year.This morning was the latest sunrise of the year. Enjoyed it. It is also a new moon. mjh

[Thanks for the correction, NewMexiKen. mjh]

With the end of the old year, I need to get a few other odds n ends off my mind:

• Regarding the controversy over a UNM professor appearing in some S&M context. I agree the professor has some right to what we used to call privacy — we need another term for intimacy that we now casually flaunt in public. I’ll even allow that S&M may not be cruel, sadistic or violent but, in ways hard for me to imagine, an act of love. (Often, in other human contexts, when one person has power over another, love is not involved.) However, I’m disappointed that no one else has raised this question: Was a student involved? Though teachers and students have many rights, education ethics requires restraint — and not those made of leather. Teachers may love their students, but not fuck them. Teachers may discipline their students, but not physically.

• Regarding the UNM golf course controversy. I’m all for keeping it as open space. I’m also in favor of shutting down the golf course. Like all desert golf courses, it is a hideous waste of water. Turn it into a real park, saving water in the process and opening it to more visitors, as well.

• Regarding Darren White’s run for Congress. I hope people will recall that DW was Duhbya’s NM campaign manager in 2004 (& 2000?). That should be reason enough to deny him a seat in Congress. If anyone needs more, then recall that during peaceful demonstrations against the War Without End, White said, in effect, ‘let me at them’ concerning demonstrators.

• Regarding the 2008 Election in New Mexico. Thank god, Saint Pete is leaving. (Though I wish him well.) I hope the Republicans choose Pearce to run against Udall and I pray Udall crushes Pearce. In the meantime, accent on meanness, the duel between Pearce & Wilson is going to be fun to watch. mjh

PS: I’m clearing out my queue of drafts. If the next few entries (below this one, ie, earlier) seem random, they almost are; I meant to do more with them at one time.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

William Gaddis said, “There have never in history been so many opportunities to do so many things that aren’t worth doing.”

Two seasons pass in our world. The longest day starts the unraveling of all we have done. The stores groan with the harvest. Bellies are full and chores forgotten. Nature draws within itself, dropping all concerns but endurance. With the cold, we retreat to our dens for long conversations leavened with thick mead. The longest night is the end of our sloth. With each lengthening day, we weave new order and push the pegs back in line, as the poet sang. Life organizes out of nothing, surging towards the light and the longest day. The cycle is renewed, as we imagine it always was and always will be. mjh

The longest night of the year is the true New Year’s Eve. The seasons are never-ending — on a human scale, unless we’ve really wrecked the planet — so you can pick any point on the cycle to celebrate, as we all should. Tomorrow, the day will be a little longer as the pendulum starts to swing 47 degrees the other way again. Climatic inertia brings still colder days, just as the hottest days dog the summer solstice, but we see distant light at the end of the tunnel. This is the earth’s silent night, holy night. Tonight, we have hours in our dark nests. Dream of peace and wake to find a world in which peace is more than a dream. mjh

Stores opened today at 4am or earlier. Yesterday’s paper had more ads than any Sunday. Commercials on TV show everyone glowing with anticipation, ready to charge into the stores at the earliest opportunity, to fill their carts with bargains.

Don’t buy it. Literally: Don’t buy it. Stay home today. It’s not that I wish to shut down the economy. I wish to shut down the treatment of potential customers as sheep or Pavlov’s dogs. I wish for people to consider that maybe they don’t need all this crap and, if they do, maybe they should buy it when they want to, not when the marketers want them to.

Capitalism is just like patriotism: The louder and more insistent it is, the more we need to stop and wonder what we’re being driven to do. mjh