The Winter Solstice begins at 5:23PM, Brooklyn, New York time.

At the death and reincarnation of the natural year, I am happy to announce a return to regularly scheduled blogging!

I have been undergoing a couple of years of troubling issues that impacted my ability to spend much time writing and typing, and playing the guitar – the three things I can do well enough to earn some sort of living.

At the moment some of the various therapies I have undergone are allowing me to risk doing such things more often and, hopefully, henceforth and ever after, as much as time and tendons allow.

At this the darkest time for the northern hemisphere, and in many ways the darkest time that America and the entire planet have seen perhaps ever since humans walked here, I am wishing for a brighter, happier year ahead for all, and the ability to cherish peace, love, hope, healing, charity, and open-hearted, open-minded tolerance, while wishing for all the strength to resist, endure, and ultimately overcome the baser human weakness toward war, hate, despair, greed, pollution, and heartless close-minded bigotry.

Many of our secular Christmas traditions of gift giving and good will come from the joyous celebrations within the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which the historian Catullus called “the best of days.”

Here’s to hoping our best days still lie ahead, and will arrive sooner than we can yet imagine.