Darkness at Four

Still a couple of weeks to go before darkness is complete at the same time the markets close. I watch Little Island (about 500 yards offshore) until it's invisible, at 4:25. There are no lights on in the house, except the diodes on the router, the clock on the Bose, a flickering flame behind the sooty glass of the wood stove's doors, and the computer screen in front of me, my window to the world's bad news.

Other than the thrilling triumph of the President-elect, there's only gloom in the world. It's gotten so that I will not look at any news site between 9:30 and 4:00. And now serious winter is coming on. Maine has hard ones. I've been reading Lobster Coast by Colin Woodard - the privations and depradations that the people of this state have gone through the last 400 years are humbling: European wars spilled over here; disputes with Massachusetts abounded; British nobles and Boston businessmen claimed vast acreages over and over again; taxes and tolls and fees bedeviled the populace; sickness and Indians and starvation wiped out whole towns; lumber and salmon and ice and herring and granite and and lobster and lime boomed and busted; and the winters were real winters, deep, dark, long, unremittingly cold. At least they're not so cold outside anymore, but many Mainers will take small comfort in that this year, with no way to heat the house.

We all look forward to the winter solstice, time of pagan and Christian worship, when the balance might start to shift again, away from greed, towards hope.