Cinema will find a way. ??
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) December 6, 2025 at 10:42 AM
I’ve heard that saying finished in various increments of time. At the moment, we’re all desperately holding on, waiting for the wheel to turn. Winter solstice this year comes on Sunday, December 21st, at 10am EST (although my personal SAD marker has become Martin Luther King Day — that’s when I start to feel like the light will return). Take whatever comforts & diversions you can grasp, and keep holding!
War for Ukraine Day 1,383: Sumy Is Darkened
2liberal
Nominated as a rotating tag.
Gloria DryGarden
Winter solstice, such a day to look forward to. And then shortly after, the first day of spring, Groundhog Day/ st brigids day/ candlemas/imbolc. Two holidays devoutly anticipated
anyone who planted crocus or snowdrops close to the house foundation will have flowers very soon.
Gretchen
I like the idea of a personal SAD day. I have trouble with this time of year, and keep my Christmas tree up until, well, just about then! Well said, as always, Anne Laurie!
I have more trouble when visiting my daughter in New York. They have so many gloomy days. At least Kansas City has sunny days even in January, even if they’re short.
frosty
Thank you for these Late Nights, AL. They’re good for insomniacs and for people in different time zones. Both of which applied to me recently
sab
@Gretchen: I am Episcopaluan and we have rigid timelines on Church holidays. It drives my Catholic husband crazy.
Christmas season does not start the day after Turkey Day.
Instead advent. Our New Year. This year November 30.
Advent is not penitential but is thoughtful. 4 Sundays before Christmas. Rein your enthusiasm in and contemplate.
Don’t decorate yet.
Think about God sacrificing a son. For us.
frosty
I make sure to light a fire in the fireplace on the solstice. Cold is difficult but it’s the darkness that gets to me.
sab
@frosty: Husband and I have freckles and have had skin cancer, so we hope for winter, but winter sun (or lack of same) is depressing.
Housecats trapped as housecats are fine with it (warmth is always good) but the staffie pitbull is shocked: Outside is nasty cold!! Who knew!
ETA In my youth we had a German Shepherd Dog who was the best dog ever. She lived for snow. She crouched on the last little pocket of snow in the yard every Spring.
Gloria DryGarden
@sab: having time for quiet and contemplation/ reflection makes so much sense to me in winter. All this activity, parties, food, gatherings, dress ups, it feels like forced cheer. Although raised Episcopalian, I never felt held to the official times, but my mom may have, in some way. She created some quiet peace and contemplative decorations, this time of year.
Gloria DryGarden
@frosty: that is so on point.
if I had a fireplace…
JoyceH
@sab: It’s 25 degrees out there and my dogs are curled up on the porch perfectly happy. I thought when it started to get below freezing they’d cut short their porch naps, but they seem to like it. I have to bribe them with chicken jerky to bring them in for the night. I feel kinda snubbed. Thank goodness for cats, their native habitat comes with a roof and central heating. Liam is on my lap, thinking the porch is plenty good enough for those peasants.
Gloria DryGarden
Reposting from downstairs, where I wrote this to comfort someone, or as a prayer of sorts.
Your Body, The Forest, a Chorus
Forest Chorus
the human dissolved
in fog or pain
yet his soul pumped vivid colors
with every heart beat.
all the water molecules created a soft slide
the mitochondria hummed and
drank
sips of golden energy
shared with organelles
all sending out tendrils of communion,
of molecules and colors
rising in a soft whisper, a humming chorus.
no matter how ghostly, even in fog
the trees speak with each other
through vast delicate tendrils, netted
across impossible distances
bringing to each the nourishment and care
And protection
in unseen molecular colors.
your tube of light, like a tree trunk to the stars
receives the pulsing waves, or particles
in whichever form you can receive
your daily photons,
and your body converts it
to its own language.
and so may it be
VFX Lurker
Winter holidays were made to beat back SAD. Lights, food, gatherings of friends. It’s all a centuries-old plot to make people smile, I tell you.
Gloria DryGarden
@VFX Lurker: we sure need festive lights. I think everyone need a celebration of lights this time of year. I like all the lights, the pretty.
It’s just the pretending, I dislike, that used to be been required.
I just want to be an introvert. To stop all the push and deadlines, and rushing.
Pete Downunder
The holiday season here still feels strange even after 17 years. Today it was 30 degrees out – 30C – about 86F – and summer hasn’t really started. Christmas dinners aren’t roasts but platters of cold prawns (shrimps in the US) and lobsters or Morton Bay bugs (small claw-less crustaceans – like lobster meat but better). The young people go surfing rather than having snowball fights. Also the summer holiday is a serious holiday. The last day of work here will be Friday 19 December and many will not return until the last week of January. Essential services like air traffic control and the hospitals will stay open of course, but if you need a tradesman or a lawyer forget it. The reason is the trifecta of Christmas, summer and school holidays. I highly recommend it if you you don’t mind the heat.
sab
@JoyceH: We had a lab like that. Family was family to him but he liked winter better. All those people he loved toasting inside.
Gretchen
@sab: I grew up Catholic too. Advent was solemn. The Christmas tree went up on Christmas Eve and stayed up until The Epiphany. I hate it that the streaming services stop Christmas music at midnight Christmas night and as far as they’re concerned the season is over
Baud
If this is real, good job Richmond night crew.
Rachel Bakes
In our house the season starts day after Thanksgiving but with many December birthdays the tree doesn’t go up until mid month. Then stays up at least til 1/6. Tree date has been moving earlier. While our son is the latest birthday (14th) he also doesn’t understand why we don’t have it yet! Get it now after big sis gets home from college.
this year is making everything so damn hard that none of us have any desire to do anything Christmassy. Makes me sad
Rusty
I have to admit, this year is tough. We have done nothing for Christmas, no lights on the house yet. Every time I start to get going another diversion. This week, after three service visits, the furnace died. Sixteen thousand dollars later, heat in part of the house (they are back to hopefully finish tomorrow), it’s a balmy 2° outside. Trying to finish my final papers for the semester, work is stressful, I need to pull together a mountain of financial info for the divorce mediation, and so on and so on.
There is light, a reminder this is the season of Advent, the beginning of the liturgical year. After years of resistance my parents have agreed to assisted living near me. It will be a lot of work to get them here, and they still need to pass some assessments, but this will be so much better. We have been just waiting for the next crisis and this should avoid it. The best moment will be in just over a week getting to meet my grandson for the first time. My heart is already bursting. We will get back and have only a few days to whip up Christmas, we have done it before. Somehow it will be ok.
Baud
MagdaInBlack
Yesterday I could not make my 67 y/o self go out in the dark cold 6 am morning and clean off my car. And then drive 25 miles on shitty roads in the cold dark. And then do it again in reverse at 5 pm.
So I didn’t.
Today I will.
Quinerly
Love this! TY.
I’m usually long asleep by now but have been having problems sleeping for last 10 days. The world, Trump shit, Christmas time sadness (I usually prowl around AZ by this time in Dec but decided to save my scratch for big CA roadtrip that starts in Jan), my friend in St. Louis freak accident (life support until they finally figured out no brain activity then took her off life support. She lived 3 more days).
Rarely do this at 3AM mountain time….dipped into a small batch rye and opened up Balloon Juice (looking for a Cole thread)….Pendleton Rye. New to me but added to a Total Wines and More order several weeks back as something to try for a change. Forgot I even had it. Quite the packaging. JoJo las Orejas heard the noise when I was opening it. Thought I had new treats in the kitchen. Bolted out of bed. That gave me a laugh. Covid Times Puppy was treat trained. He’s the snack king. He hears plastic or foil….and he’s on it.
****
Very impressed with this small batch rye.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: I’m sorry about your friend. That’s a shock.
This time of year has so much potential for sadness, between darkness, old memories, cold, and national news that’s deeply upsetting.
will the rye help you sleep? Poor Jojo, thinking it was treat time.
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack:
I don’t miss that whole car and ice thing in St. Louis. I didn’t have a garage at my home of 30 years…city living, parallel parking on a narrow one way street. My old law office was in St. Louis County about 15 miles away. The good thing was the reverse drive for traffic. Living in the city, driving to county for work. Traffic generally went the other way.
Here we get snow too but it melts pretty quickly. Plus, that early retired thing. I had the luxury of not venturing out last week when we had our first snow. I feel for you. Hang in there.
MagdaInBlack
@Quinerly: Raising a wake ‘n’ bake toast to you. ☺️
Quinerly
@Gloria DryGarden:
Thanks.
Just terrible all the way around.
And, if that wasn’t enough, when she finally passed away in the hospice wing at Saint Louis University Hospital, “they” wouldn’t take her body per her written instructions/wishes. Don’t have all the details….nor do I really want them….daughter was told if over 72 years old “they” won’t take the body. Daughter was trying to honor Marsha’s wishes.
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack:
Thanks for the smile.
Bundle up!
Quinerly
@Gloria DryGarden:
I have an absolutely gorgeous Kiva style fireplace here that I have yet to use. Every July I say to myself that I need to get on this for the winter. The chimney really needs cleaning based on the house inspection when I bought at the end of 2021. Still haven’t gotten around to it.
Plus, I gasped this summer when pricing a cord of wood (delivered and stacked). $550-$600.
A world gone mad. Pinion.
Oak is even more.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: piñon wood would smell good, but it’s a slow growing smallish tree, is it not? Can you gather dead fall around your property or in the national forest, or the Blm, bring a friend and a rented gas chainsaw, go get some yourself?
your fireplace sounds amazing.
really sorry about your friend, them not taking her body. Was she trying to donate it to science? that’s just hard.
my dad wanted a sky burial, which seems to be mostly illegal. Odd, since it seems more a Zoroastrian thing, or an indigenous thing. The indigenous blood is on my mom’s side. Maybe he was thinking about returning to nature. Oh well, it wasn’t possible.
are your escalante pix online anywhere? I’ve never been, but I’ve heard. For awhile I saw your photos of travel elsewhere, but it seems to have stopped.
Quinerly
@Gloria DryGarden:
My pinions here on my land are rather tall. I suspect they were planted in the last 20 years. Beautiful. The birds love them.
As for gathering wood, I’m not really set up here for doing the permit thing and gathering wood. No truck. No chainsaw. I do cut limbs with my battery Makita reciprocating saw with really good pruning blades.
Probably will eventually sell my 2019 AWD Toyota van…the one JoJo and I basically lived in for those 2 months when we camped across CO and NM for 2 months. If I do that, will do the AWD/4WD truck thing. Although, I’m pretty sure I’m not hunting down stray wood.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: but you can gather wood on your own property, no? And have one or two fires?
I wonder if there aren’t some teenagers who do like to do wood gathering, and have use of a truck. Oh well. If it doesn’t come easy, it’s hardly worth it.
I’m used to Colorado, where there’s wood around, and unless it’s a national park, or signage, you can gather some. Usually just for a campfire though. I don’t know much about permits, etc.
Quinerly
@Gloria DryGarden:
I have no problems with things that don’t come easy.
It seems you really don’t understand how much somewhat good quality wood it would take for this fireplace to really use it for heating. Sorry I mentioned it. Not a matter of picking up sticks. (Although, I have used sticks and cholla skeletons picked up around here in the outside kiva)
MagdaInBlack
@Quinerly: Puff, puff, pass?
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: true, I’ve never had a wood burning heat situation. I was picturing a charming fire for cozy charm, since that’s all I’ve ever had. A cord of wood does sound like a lot of money.
snoey
@Quinerly: Get the chimney swept and get a certified tech to do it. Found out the hard way that not everybody who calls themselves a chimney sweep can do the job.
MagdaInBlack
jeeez. if she wanted a fire, she’d have a fire.
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
I’ve been unchurched for quite a while now, but I’ve been Episcopal more than anything else along the way. The way I think of this season is that it’s a secular season of lights that is neither here nor there with respect to the liturgical calendar, so there’s nothing wrong with decorating the shrubbery (Ni!) in front of the house with colorful lights. Besides, as one of the Advent hymns in my ancient 1940 hymnal begins, “Rejoice, rejoice, believers, and let your lights appear!” So I do.
Also, I recall the annual Festival of Lessons and Carols that the Episcopal chapel at my college had every year in early December. It would start with “O Come Emmanuel” which is an Advent hymn, but the rest of the hymns were Christmas hymns, from “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” to “O Come All Ye Faithful.” Seems that even the Episcopal Church can bend a little here and have occasions for Christmas carols during Advent.
RevRick
@2liberal: Hope is more than just holding on. It’s an act of resistance and defiance. Take whatever measures you can to resist and defy Trump’s fascist regime.
I can almost guarantee you will feel better for the doing.
Jeffg166
On sunny days I bundle up and sit on the south facing porch to read the current book. I get my light therapy doing that.
RevRick
@sab: @lowtechcyclist: As a pastor, it drove me a little nuts that parishioners wanted to bulldoze Advent with Christmas carols. After all the tree was already up and it fell to me to keep the damned thing watered. But I made a deal. The first Sunday of Advent, we’d sing only Advent hymns and every week thereafter we’d sing a Christmas carol, adding one each week.
My colleagues and I would joke about designing Advent cards: Who warned you, you brood of vipers?
The older I get the more I see the Bible as a struggle between the ways of God and the ways of empire and how often we humans confused the two. The story of Jesus is a story of anti-imperialism through and through. It’s not about me and my salvation (which often devolves into a personal escape hatch), but about us confronting the powers that warp us and following in his steps, however imperfectly, together to set things aright. Heaven, after all, isn’t up there, but is meant to be down here.
Due to the chaos of having new windows installed, we only have candles in our windows and a small lighted tree on our front porch which sits beneath a lighted Moravian star to greet the neighborhood. But if I have my way, once the tree does go up, I would keep it up until Candlemas (February 2nd), when Jesus was presented in the Temple. I love the lights warm glow.
satby
@MagdaInBlack: My car was nicely cleaned off when I went to bed last night. It snowed again. And by 2 pm, rain and snow combined. Which to me is the worst of all.
Gloria DryGarden
@RevRick: I love the idea of keeping the lights up til candlemas. We need a sense of light in the dark times of year. It doesn’t suddenly seem light at epiphany/ kings day.
Xavier
The sunset has already started to occur later (today about a minute later than a week ago). I find this hopeful.
Gloria DryGarden
@Xavier: I’ll take a minute.
like when one says, give me a minute.
you pointing this out gives me a tiny sense of relief.
the whole national situation, and our part in, or disengagement from international stuff, it’s all so pesado.
The direct translation of pesado, doesn’t do it Justice nor convey accurately what that means. Combination of heavy, annoying, and very disturbing and fucked.
Miss Bianca
@Gretchen: I keep thinking that there’s a PR campaign waiting out there to be hatched about bringing back the real 12 Days of Christmas – thinking of the STUFF marketing possibilities!
Miss Bianca
@Gloria DryGarden: My little LED tree gets ceremoniously “lighted” the first Sunday of Advent (or thereabouts) and stays lit through Imbolc. Or Candlemas. Or Groundhog Day, however you choose to swing with naming the holiday.
Cuz, y’know, light against the darkness.
sab
My Episcopal church always has multiple Christmas day services and I love how all the Lutheran pastors attend because their churches don’t have Christmas services.
@RevRick: I know your not Lutheran but I’ll think of you.
Gloria DryGarden
@Miss Bianca: imbolc, for sure.
Just translating for the normies and the muggles. ( is that a forbidden word?)
yes, a light against the darkness. Your mini tree sounds wonderful
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack:
Truth. I was mostly venting about the price of wood while drinking rye. I was kinda hoping it would spur a little discussion about the price of cord wood in other areas. I realize why it’s so expensive here….Hell, I live in a desert. Plus, I’m out a little ways….so delivery.
I’m usually not here that much in the winter. But if I get my act together, I must have the chimney looked at. Could heat in the winter with good wood. House is all electric with 7 minisplits. Very expensive to heat. The upside is I only need to heat the room I’m in.
Hope your drive to work was good. Take care.
Quinerly
@snoey:
Thanks! I know it’s bad because the building inspector mentioned it in 2021 when I closed.
I really have no excuse but laziness. There’s a licensed chimney sweep who lives out here on the 285 corridor. His wife rides with a good friend of mine. Have met her. The whole making an appt gets off my radar every fall.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: There are some good battery chain saws now. You have to keep them sharp and might need a second battery, or hand saw wood while recharging the battery from a car.
I want to get one becsuse gas power saws are a pain in the ass and I don’t cut a lot of wood.
Snarlymon
I’ve been having a winter solstice celebration for many years. In fact this year will be the 50th. I’ve always thought of them as celebrations of Hope, since we know that the longest night will surely be followed by longer days.
I’ve always had a fire on the solstice which was problematic when I didn’t have a fireplace. (It was really tough on the carpet)
Geminid
@Quinerly: You ought to get your wood stove functioning if only to tide you over if there’s a prolonged power outage. You might be able to pick up a “rack,” which is a quarter of a cord, at a source and haul it home yourself. I wonder if there are places north of Las Vegas where wood is cheaper.
Also, if your stove has a flat top they’re fun to cook with. Back when I had one I used to cook pork or beef roasts in a cast a cast iron chicken fryer, with carrots, onions and potatoes. Sometimes I’d put apples in with the pork roasts.
If the stove was burning too hot I’d set the pot on some cut nails, the kind people people use to nail wood to masonry. Those are flat, but common nails work too.
Quinerly
@Geminid: thanks for weighing in.
Not a wood burning stove set up here (although I had a really nice one in the second floor den in my Victorian in St. Louis). I think the last time I bought a full cord there it was around $150.00
Mine here is a large Santa Fe Kiva style fireplace. I’m sure you know “the look.” The adobe look with the raised hearth and plaster. The good thing about mine is it does have very nice glass doors that you can close, with vents and a fan. It would heat the living room, dining room, kitchen, hall, foyer.
As for wood, I have priced it every year. Pretty much everyone prices their wood what everyone else prices theirs. I would go ahead and do a full cord since delivery really adds to the cost on small loads. Yes, wood is a little cheaper in Rowe, Pecos, LV but the delivery to me adds to it and makes it really no cheaper in the long run.
The deals are if you want to go in with several people on a flatbed of mesquite out of Lubbock.
Like I said, my issue is just not getting on it in late summer. Laziness. By Oct, folks are out of wood.
Hope you are doing well.
Quinerly
@Geminid:
I researched and priced battery chain saws a couple of years ago. Tried out a couple. I found for my needs around here for pruning, cutting pretty good sized juniper limbs, my Makita reciprocating saw with 2 aftermarket batteries works great. Of course, gotta have the correct blades. I hired an arborist to work on a very old, sickly juniper. I watched him and that’s what he used. I had the saw already so just invested in the good blades.
Of course, I can’t cut down a tree with it. I don’t want to cut down a tree. I’m in my 3rd year of trimming up junipers, pinions, fruit trees, and cottonwoods. The big thing here is rodent control. If the juniper branches sweep the ground, it’s an invitation for pack rats to build tunnels under those trees.
Like I mentioned, I use cut up branches and sticks in the outside Kiva style fireplace on the lower patio and in the outside fire pit in the side yard
WTFGhost
@Gloria DryGarden: So the landmines I planted to keep off traveling salespeople, they won’t bloom? Damn.
(Seriously, folks, you wouldn’t believe the number of people who hatehatehate coming across an exhausted person who wants them to go away, and says so, plainly. “Actually, friend, I’d just like you to go, please.” I don’t blame them – my exhaustion mirrors the exhaustion of a new door-to-door fellow. But that’s not my problem! Do you think it’s because I used the word “friend” that they get confused, and hurt?)
I don’t really have any landmines. Not near any of the doors, and not near the foundation, for sure.
@Gloria DryGarden: The forced cheer is part of the season, after a fashion. Imagine a village, where 30% of the people don’t want to get into their bright, cheerful, holiday clothes, and do the emotional work of holday-ing. Well, the other 70% should *jolly* them into it, not *shame* or *pressure* them into it.
“Come on, let’s go out dancing! You know you’ll feel better once the music starts!”
Or, “come on, you know everyone loves your special winter holiday punch, and I know you don’t feel much like making it, so let’s watch Rudolph together this year, and I’ll help you!”
Or… you get the idea.
There should be enough pressure that you force yourself to break out of your winter doldrums, and think to check on other people who aren’t able to break out of their winter doldrums.
But it shouldn’t be a truly phony, politician-glad-handing party atmosphere, where you have to hug JD Vance to show fellowship, and not trying to squeeze the breathe out of him, because you’re so close to pure evil, and, and, and… I’m not wrong, am I?
One of my most meaningful childhood stories was about a Utah town, where a Jewish peddler settled down, and… died from neglect. See, none of the mormon’s checked in on him, he was a Jew, not a Mormon. None of the Catholics checked in on him, he was a Jew, not a Catholic. His tiny general store wasn’t earning enough money in a Mormon town for him to eat.
“We killed him, because he was Jewish,” was the message, and it was a chilling one, but I also recognized the truth of it. No one wanted the poor old guy to starve; if he’d been an old Mormon or Catholic, someone would have noticed he wasn’t taking meals at any of the restaurants or boarding houses, and they’d have thrown enough business his way to keep him going. But no one checked on him, and he starved to death.
Well, Christmas celebrations should be when you notice your friend who does farmwork is looking a little thin, and remember he got injured during the harvest, and you’ve decided you need help threshing some wheat. Or that Jewish peddler you dragged out of the woodwork is starving, because no one’s visiting his shop. Or the new family is looking like they need a maybe an extra bushel of turnips or potatoes to make it through winter.
It’s the time when the lord and protector of the old year, beset on all sides by the forces of evil and despair, says, “You want a piece of me? COME GET ME!” and fights like hell so the lord and protector of the new year gets a chance to find his footing, before all those forces descend upon him.
It sucks for them of us that’s exhausted, though.
WTFGhost
@Gloria DryGarden: Yes, you are forbidden to use the world “translate” or any of its verb forms! Naughty naughty!
@VFX Lurker: Yeah, but a once a year smile isn’t too much to ask. Just speak to my friend the Grinch, and my short friends at my peppermint-hot cocoa party. (No reindeer. My house is a bit… close, shall we say, for livestock.)
RevRick
@Miss Bianca: Christmas, and thus Candlemas, were reverse engineered from the Roman Catholic belief that Jesus was crucified and died on the same day as he was conceived = March 25th! That’s the Annunciation. Nine months later takes us to December 25th, and according to Jewish law, a woman who gave birth to a son was considered ritually unclean for forty days, which takes us to February 2nd. And so that was when Mary could again enter the Temple, presenting Jesus, who is the Light of the World (in Christian doctrine). And so, in the Middle Ages, it became the day for the blessing of the candles that would be used in homes and the churches.
Paul in KY
@Pete Downunder: Throw another shrimp on the barbie for me!
Paul in KY
@MagdaInBlack: It’s 420 somewhere :-)
Paul in KY
@Quinerly: Might have to get me a battery powered chain saw. I always assumed they were crap for cutting anything. I don’t need to cut down a tree.