Winter Solstice 2021

Just watched a beautiful Solstice Eve sunset tonight, and there is hope we might even see the sun tomorrow, too.  It's seasonally cool, which is good news for our all day indoor wood fire, and we have a suitable stack of Philip Glass CDs ready to roll out.  We have to pop out tonight for some groceries, usually done on Tuesdays.  Otherwise we are all set for our big holiday!

On Saturday the weather was quite different.  I went to Kingsville with Deb, as I needed birdseed. While she visited her mom, I visited Lakeside park, mostly reading.  However, it was raining hard and 33 F.  Let me tell you, that was a cold rain!  And there was an ill wind blowing too, from onshore.  One or two degrees colder and we would have had a nasty ice storm on our hands.  I got out of the car at one point for a five minute stretch, managing to take three photos.  I took a quick walk to the garden area, searching for flowers.  I found one group of very tiny ones, still mysteriously blooming on one of the darkest, most miserable days of the year. There might be a message in there somewhere for us all.

A dreary and cold day at Lake Erie.  It was raining and 33 F.

A lonely and damp bench at Lakeside Par, Kingsville.
 

Four tiny flowers were blooming in the gardens at Lakeside Park.  Not your usual December in Canada, even if we are in the deep south. 

We watched Alois Nebel, a Czech film from 2011 that fits in well with our ongoing Czech New Wave film festival.  It's in b & w, with a theme that barely distinguishes in from some of its 1960s counterparts.  Only this film is animated in rotoscope, giving it a timeless beauty and sense of depth and perspective that regular films can seldom achieve.  An older railway employee, a station master at a small station, has a nervous breakdown and is put in an institution.  He loses his job, and when he is released he has to go to Prague headquarters to see about another job.  While there he meets a woman, and they seem to hit it off.  The animation allows for some fine special effects, and the quiet story has a dark undertone of the Nazi takeover during the war, as well as the Czech people who collaborated.  At the time of the present story, the Soviets are just leaving the country, and a new democratic president has just been sworn in.  Well worth watching.

Showing on Criterion until Dec. 31st. 

Deb's main weekend choice was Somewhere In The Night, from 1946 and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz.  Before we got the Criterion channel, I thought I had seen most of the great noir films.  I was wrong.  Everywhere you look, there is another great one that we haven't seen.  John Hodiak loses his memory after an act of bravery in Iwo Jima, and is sent home.  He becomes embroiled in finding another man who he thinks was his friend, who was involved in a docklands murder and a two million dollar heist.  With a great supporting cast and some fun lines, the atmosphere is thick and dark.

Now showing on Criterion, and worth catching. 

Deb's leaving Dec. 31st choice is East of Eden, and we should finish it up tonight. 

Happy Solstice to one and all; never fear, the sun is about to come back to us, after its long journey south of the equator.

Mapman Mike