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Input interpretation:
summer solstice | 2009
Result:
1:46 am EDT | Sunday, June 21, 2009
Time difference from now (6:00 pm):
1 day 16 hours 14 minutes 52 seconds ago
Time until midnight (EDT):
22 hours 14 minutes
Time from sunrise near Albany, New York (June 21):
3 hours 32 minutes until sunrise (5:18 am)
=============
All Summer In A Day [excerpt]
By Ray Bradbury
"Ready ?"
"Ready."
"Now ?"
"Soon."
"Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it ?"
"Look, look; see for yourself !"
The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds,
intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.
It rained.
It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.
"It's stopping, it's stopping !"
"Yes, yes !"
Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could ever remember a time when there wasn't rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering gold or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.
All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays or poems about it:
I think the sun is a flower,
That blooms for just one hour.
That was Margot's poem, read in a quiet voice in the still classroom while the rain was falling outside.
"Aw, you didn't write that!" protested one of the boys.
"I did," said Margot. "I did."
"William!" said the teacher.
But that was yesterday. Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great thick windows.
Where's teacher ?"
"She'll be back."
"She'd better hurry, we'll miss it !"
They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes.
Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass.
"What're you looking at ?" said William.
Margot said nothing.
"Speak when you're spoken to."
He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself be moved only by him and nothing else. They edged away from her, they would not look at her. She felt them go away. And this was because she would play no games with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows. And then, of course, the biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she remembered the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was when she was four in Ohio. And they, they had been on Venus all their lives, and they had been only two years old when last the sun came out and had long since forgotten the color and heat of it and the way it really was.
But Margot remembered.
"It's like a penny," she said once, eyes closed.
"No it's not!" the children cried.
"It's like a fire," she said, "in the stove."
"You're lying, you don't remember !" cried the children.
But she remembered and stood quietly apart from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once, a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn't touch her head. So after that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different and they knew her difference and kept away. There was talk that her father and mother were taking her back to Earth next year; it seemed vital to her that they do so, though it would mean the loss of thousands of dollars to her family. And so, the children hated her for all these reasons of big and little consequence. They hated her pale snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her possible future.
"Get away !" The boy gave her another push. "What're you waiting for?"
Then, for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she was waiting for was in her eyes.
"Well, don't wait around here !" cried the boy savagely. "You won't see nothing!"
Her lips moved.
"Nothing !" he cried. "It was all a joke, wasn't it?" He turned to the other children.
"Nothing's happening today. Is it ?"
==============
All in a summer day
by Jan Galligan
06-21-2009
Albany, NY
Morning and early afternoon spent in celebration of Father's Day with Lillian's father, Don Rafael Mulero. First spanish mass at Iglesia la Familia on Central Avenue, then lunch (cena) at Restaurante Mr.Pio Pio [Preparamos comidas para toda ocasion]
Sabor Latino. 160 B Quail St. Albany, NY 518 463-2800.
Says Don Rafael, "Delicioso!"
After lunch, Lillian and I drove north to Valley Falls, NY to the Brick Elephant, Mary Jane Leach's home for avant garde music located in a beautiful turn of the century church where she has been living and hosting performances since 2004. Today her RE:SOUNDINGS project hosted The Downtown Ensemble, this time featuring Peter Zummo, Yvette Perez, William Hellermann and Brian Dewan. The program included compositions by each of them plus one by Paulien Oliveros. The night before, in Hudson, NY, at the Opera House they added Mary Jane and one of her compositions to the performance list. Today was rainy, the eighth consecutive day of rain in Albany this month. Here, the rain added an ambience of syncopation. Delayed by lunch, we arrived at the intermission of the concert, having missed performances of Hellermann and Oliveros' works, and sadly Yvette Perez's "I think I'm in the wrong department." But we were in time for "(The) Who Stole the Polka" by Zummo and "The Little Flowers of St. Francis" by Brian Dewan. According to Zummo, his polka work was originally scored for accordion (Dewan), keyboard (Perez), voice (Hellermann) and trombone (Zummo) and recently was extended to include marimba and clarinet. It is a short, delightful, funny but spare tone poem to the polka. You couldn't really dance, or sing to it, but the tune stays in your head long after it fades from view.
Brian Dewan's St. Francis piece was in three movements, one for each of three stories based on the "Fioretti" written in 1225. The first of the three "St. Francis, talking to Brother Leo" stories that Dewan set to music recounts St. Francis teaching Leo about Perfect Joy.
On the first song, Dewan played accordian and spoke/sang the part of St. Francis. Yvette Perez played keyboard and spoke the part of Brother Leo. William Hellermann narrated while Peter Zummo played trombone and spoke at one point.
[excerpt]
How St. Francis Taught Brother Leo about Perfect Joy
One winter day St. Francis was walking with Brother Leo, and the bitter
cold made them suffer keenly. St. Francis called to Brother Leo, who was walking
a bit ahead of him, "Brother Leo, even if a Friar gives sight to the blind,
heals the paralyzed, drives out devils, gives hearing back to the deaf, makes the
lame walk, and restores speech to the dumb, and brings back to life a man who has
been dead four days, write down and note carefully that therein there is not perfect joy."
And as they walked on, after a while St. Francis called again forcefully:
"Brother Leo, Little Lamb of God, even if a Friar could speak with
the voice of an angel, and knew the course of the stars and the powers of
herbs, and knew all about the treasures in the earth, and if be knew the
qualities of birds and fishes, animals, humans, roots, trees, rocks, and
waters, write down and note carefully that therein there is not perfect joy."
Now when they had been walking this way for a distance of two miles, Brother
Leo in great amazement asked Francis: "I beg you, in God's name, to tell
me where the perfect joy is."
====
For us, this first day of summer, Father's Day 2009 - perfect joy was
found in Valley Falls, NY at the Brick Elephant by way of these wonderful
performances presented by Mary Jane Leach and the Downtown Ensemble Upstate.
Kudos to them all.
More information about the Brick Elephant can be found here:
http://www.mjleach.com see in particular... PROJECTS - RE:SOUNDINGS
Sunday's performance information is here: http://resoundings.net
SAMPLE RECORDINGS | performed by the Downtown Ensemble, composed by:
Peter Zummo:
Yvette Perez :
Mary Jane Leach
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