Linwood Bench

I went out for a brisk morning walk at about ten this morning. The time and temperature matched - both about ten. It was sunny and clear, a real nice looking day. As usual on these morning exercise walks I took my camera. I dressed for the cold and I was pretty comfortable because I tried to walk at Elvecrog speed. This bench stands at the base of a large tree at Linwood, and in the summer it gets shaded and is a pleasant place to pass a few minutes. Today it sat unused, lonely and pining for summer.

I was musing on the midnight sun, probably because there is a shortage of sunlight this month, and I wondered what they called the opposite phenomenon. Polar night is a period of days when no twilight appears. There is also a thing called polar twilight when only a faint glow of light appears at local noon. This happens only above 72'33" north latitude in the northern hemisphere.  Svalbard, Norway has about two and a half months of this particular darkness. There is also nautical polar night when there is no trace of light all 24 hours. This only happens above 78'33". That happens for quite a while in the most northerly settlement in the world, Alert, Nunavut, Canada, from the middle of October until the end of February.  We, at 45' have much to learn about dark months.

Tennis went pretty well at Wooddale tonight.  We played two close sets, splitting the winning honors and called it a night.  It was a session of mixed doubles with the hard core girls and Jerry.  Again my timing was thrown off, partly because it's a different club than yesterday, and the obvious passage of time resulting in slower reaction time.  7-5, 4-6.  Getting old is not for sissies (GOINFS).

Then I went to Yang's for Singapore Rice Noodles, but this time I went with the mildest heat available, mostly so there was a chance I'd be able to sleep through the night.