Saving Quarters

The days are lengthening through these cool spring months, and afternoons are warming up slowly in anticipation of summer's full force. Families up and down Henry Street and East Broadway have begun to hang their laundry out their windows to dry. Wire hangers clatter against the fire escapes and iron grates along the tenement facades, and the damp clothes flap like prayer flags in the breeze that whips across Lower Manhattan and the East River.

Greening

I could never live in a place where there is no autumn or winter. It makes springtime all the more miraculous. Do I have such a bad memory that new leaves are a delight for me year after year? Or is it truly amazing how, over the course of three days, a bright green parasol unfolds from nowhere over a drab streetscape? Even this place is beautiful.

"Paging spring. Please report to the customer service counter."

With each drearily passing day, I grow increasingly impatient with this bleak, grey, cold April. For a couple of weeks, it was odd — even funny. But now? Now it's just irritating. Add the rain up here in the Northeast, and I can hardly bear it. I felt almost human yesterday when the sun came out for about five minutes. Then it began to rain more. We had rugby training last night outdoors in a constant light, but cold, rain. Mud can be fun — and it was — but let's be reasonable with this temperature!

Frank Deford pointed out on NPR this morning that April is never a "seasonable" month. We always complain about April. But the problem this year is, rather than an unseasonable April, we're experiencing a 61-day March.

This might help to explain:


(Where can I get me a pair of those shoes? Mr. Snowmiser does not shop at Payless, I can tell you!)

Of course, when the spring does come (and go — quickly) I'll just be complaining about the heat and humidity.

Equinox

Today was the first full day of spring. It's the vernal equinox — in the northern hemisphere, at least.

The word "equinox" reminds me of two things. The first is my birthday, because it falls around, and sometimes smack dab on, the autumnal equinox, six months opposite the vernal.

Galileo was close. [nasa.gov]

The second is Matthew Modine, because he was in a movie called Equinox in the mid-'90s, which I never saw. I had a big crush on him as a lad. Oh, how I loved to watch him jump rope in Vision Quest. As a kid I found those one-piece wrestler get-ups to be pretty ... evocative.

Technically, the equinox is one of two times during the year when day and night are the same length all over because the sun is directly above the equator. You can read more about it and find head-aching terms like "ecliptic equator" and "celestial equator." All it really means is that we now have a reason to be impatient with the weather for every day we go lower than 60° F. It's spring, dammit!

I wonder what you would see at the poles on the equinox. Twenty-four hours of sunset?

Pretty close, according to what I read on Wikipedia, which I have no reason at present to doubt. As far as I can figure, we'd see 24 hours of just-before-sunset. These astro-mathematical models work for perfect spheres with no atmosphere in cold, empty space. But real life isn't so simple. Apparently, day is always longer than night. Because the sun is a huge ball of fire in space, not a single point, when it sinks halfway down past the horizon it's still day time. Also, because the atmosphere refracts light, it will actually bend the sun's rays around the curvature of the earth, which is why you can still see for a few minutes after the sun sets.

It's a good thing the poles aren't so hospitable to humans, or we'd have a heck of a time getting to work on time.