Happy Solstice

What did your hippies do to celebrate the Summer Solstice? I'm guessing ours were dancing naked around Stonehenge.


No, not that busted old thing...



...This newer and more improved Northwest Stonehenge. See? Our Stonehenge has all the appropriate rocks and everything. Although from what I hear, it doesn't line up right with the celestial events due to the difference in latitude, but unless you're a druid trying to locate the moon or whatever, big deal.

From Maryhill Museum, who now cares for it:

Built by Sam Hill as a tribute to the soldiers of Klickitat County who lost their lives, Maryhill's Stonehenge is the first monument in our nation to honor the dead of World War I. The structure is a full-scale replica of England's famous neolithic Stonehenge. A Quaker pacifist, Hill was mistakenly informed that the original Stonehenge had been used as a sacrificial site, and thus constructed the replica to remind us that ''humanity is still being sacrificed to the god of war.'' The location now also includes monuments to the soldiers of Klickitat County who died in World War II, Korea, and Viet Nam.

Just for fun, here's a Google Maps view of it. This has now cemented for me that Google Maps are currently better than Yahoo! Maps, at least for looking at satellite pictures anyway. The best Yahoo! could do was half the size and blurry. Google is much quicker too. I haven't compared directions yet, but Google does say "Do no evil," so how bad could they be?

For more fun, see this somewhat related spectacle.

With the longer days, I got to looking at Portland's location and what that means relative to sunlight. The sun was officially up here at 5:22 am, which of course means so was the son. Not so thrilled about that. However, the fact that the sun didn't set until 9:03 pm is pretty cool. That means it was light until almost 9:30. (I got these times from the Old Farmer's Almanac. It still amuses me that this publication has been in continuous production since 1792, 215 years ago. George Washington was president. How many other institutions can say that?)

The long days got me thinking about our latitude. We are north of most of the major cities in the county, Seattle being the noted exception. We are completely north of 39 states, and north of at least part of 8 others, including Oregon. We're even north of four of the Great Lakes and part of Canada. Which makes it all the more fun watching all of you freezing your butts off all Winter while we notice that it's a little chilly when our drizzle dips down to 40 degrees. Suckaz!