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This is your annual reminder that the term “summer solstice” means “the solstice that occurs during summer”, not “the start of summer”.

It is an astronomical term having to do with the position of the sun relative to the earth, and while it does affect the seasons, it is incorrect to assign June 21 as the start of summer.

It has felt like summer for a few weeks already. What is summer? What is any season? A season is a grouping of days with similar weather features. For example, winter: temperatures are low, plants are dormant. And fall: temperatures decrease, plants lose their foliage. And spring: temperatures increase, plants grow their foliage. And summer: temperatures are high, plants are fruiting/seeding.

From the viewpoint of an observer with no calendar, how would he know when spring ends and summer begins? It’s a fairly slow transition with no defined border, so people have tried to assign that border. But the summer solstice is the wrong border.

The summer solstice has historically had a weather-related association. Think back to the time of Shakespeare. I would hope that you, dear reader, would recall the title of one of his plays (no expectation that you’ll know the plot or characters, just the title): A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When, historically, was the day of the year that was called “midsummer”? The day with the most daylight, of course. A lot of European countries still celebrate Midsummer in late June.

Anyway, my preferred time for summer is the 3-month block of June, July, and August. An acceptable alternative answer is Memorial Day to Labor Day, or perhaps from the first 80-degree day to the first 40-degree day after that, or perhaps from when the first rose bloom appears to when the chrysanthemums start blooming.

Since our local schools have a couple of spring breaks, I had the opportunity to do some early spring (or late winter) reading.

I’m going in order of when I read them.

First up: Dune by Frank Herbert

Maybe this was a case of too much hype setting my expectations too high, but I didn’t care for this book. Parts of it moved slowly, the morality was not something I’d want my kids exposed to, and other parts were fine. Some books I want to keep reading, but this one I had to kind of force myself to finish it. It wasn’t awful, but I’m not signing up to read any more of the Dune series.

Next up: The Beirut Protocol by Joel C. Rosenberg

This book is a continuation of the Marcus Ryker story, which started with The Kremlin Conspiracy. I liked it, and I liked the other books in the series. If you are a fan of Joel C. Rosenberg’s fiction books, then you should like this one.

Next up: Masterminds 2 by Gordon Korman

This book is a continuation of the first Masterminds book, which was just waiting for the other two books to make a full story. If you liked the first Masterminds story you should like this one too – it’s a continuation of the story. If you haven’t read the first story then do that before reading this one.

Normally I like to read books before the kids do, so I know what’s going on. Delta checked these out of the library and read them, then he gave them to me and said I should read them. So that was backwards, but I had read the first one, and it’s Gordon Korman, so I wasn’t worried.

Finally: Masterminds 3 by Gordon Korman

Ditto, whatever I said about book 2 applies to book 3. It was a fun book, a fun series – no regrets from reading this like I had with Dune.

That’s it for this review. More book reviews coming up later this year.

I read some books this winter. Here they are, along with what I thought of them.

First up: The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase by Wendy Mass

This is, of course, the next book after The Candymakers. If you liked The Candymakers, you’ll like this book too. More of the same characters, as they continue with their lives. The ending was decent enough, but left plenty of room for another book to follow. If you didn’t read The Candymakers, then do not read this book – it won’t make much sense. Good book.

Next up: The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

I read the Secret Keepers book first, so my expectations were high. Plus my wife really liked Mysterious Benedict Socety, so my expectations were high. It was a good book, appropriate for all ages. A nice mixture of suspense and intrigue. But I still like Secret Keepers better.

Next up: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart

I liked this one better than the original book. A little more adventure and action. Two thumbs up.

Finally: Lost and Found by Orson Scott Card

This could have been a good book. But Card always seems to put just enough inappropriateness in his books that I can’t just recommend them outright. In this case, the activities of the bad guys are bad enough that I don’t want to describe it in this website. As usual, OSC is a good writer and the premise is interesting and the story is gripping. But overall the content is not for kids. Or teens. Or some adults either.

That’s it for the winter reading. Spring reading will be coming soon.

Somewhere along the way, the idea caught on (whether via romance novels or Hollywood or other) that there is one person in this world whom you were meant to marry. It does make for a good romance story – finding your one true love.

But I disagree that’s how the world works.

And I think that idea is bad for marriage.

First of all, if your chance of finding the right spouse was really 1 in a few billion, just about no one would ever have a good marriage. Those are horrible odds.

Second of all, throughout 99.2% of history, people have not had the luxury of searching the world for their one true love. So their search for love was confined to their local area. Again, what are the odds that your one true love would happen to be from your town, or the next town over? Yet people have successful marriages in this situation.

You may say “well, they had to make those marriages work, because they didn’t really have much of a choice.” And that’s the point, whether you have much of a choice or not, you have to make your marriage work. The problem with spouse-finding today is that people are not so much contrained by geography, so the wider-cast net brings so many choices, and that brings anxiety about making the right choice, and easy regret about making the wrong choice. Look up “the paradox of choice” for more on that effect.

And lastly, the reason it is bad – it puts people in the wrong mindset about marriage. If someone is looking for his one true love, let’s assume he finds someone and marries her. Then, because they are two different people and nothing is ever perfect, they start to have a disagreement after a little while. Things get rocky, and because he is of the understanding that his soulmate is supposed to be out there, he gets to thinking that this woman he married must not really be his soulmate. Therefore, he thinks he must have married the wrong person, and then the marriage really falls apart.

If he’s expecting there is one person meant for him, what will he do when the relationship starts to get rocky? Lament that “I thought she was the one…” Well, if you married her, then she was the one. Is the one. Make it work.

Successful marriage isn’t about finding the perfect match, but about being a good spouse. Most people throughout history didn’t get too much of a choice of a spouse, but still had good marriages because they got out of it what they put into it. And they didn’t expect to be a perfect match.

Don’t get me wrong – I still think you could make a wrong choice about someone. Just because there is not a 1:1 soulmate ratio out there doesn’t mean that just anyone would be a good spouse for you.

Think of it like the lesson from Ratatouille: not that everyone can be a good spouse for you, but that a good spouse can be from anywhere. Or maybe not exactly like that, but you get the idea.

Due to some recent snowfalls, we have nice wintry scenery around here. I wandered around the yard and took some photos to share with everyone. No commentary, just photos.

Since we’re in the dead of winter with snow covering everything, it’s a good time to think about flowers. I’ve already started receiving seed catalogs, but I’m not sure how much ordering I’m going to do this year. I seem to be on track with my seed saving, so we’ll see.

I wanted to see when all the perennials we have here start blooming. Mainly to see what needs some help from annuals, but also maybe moving something around or adding something.

Blooms by Month (when the flowers first appear):

March
First to bloom every year are the snowdrops.

Next is something I’ve been calling Siberian iris but I think that’s wrong.

And the yellow crocus arrives before …

… the purple crocus.

And then come the species tulips.
(more…)

I’m calling these things albums, but Amazon calls them playlists. Close enough. Amazon also has things they call stations, which are just playlists but you can’t see the list of songs in it.

First up: Christmas Hymns

Good stuff. The songs were sung in a manner that was faithful to the way they were written, and the way everyone expects them to be. It was also a good length for an album, just over an hour.

Second up: Christian Christmas Favorites

Some good stuff, some not-so-good stuff. I suppose it depends on what you’re looking for, but the title of this album was not quite representative. It starts off with a mix of classic Christmas carols and newer songs about Christmas. I wouldn’t classify some of those newer songs as “favorites”, but they were about Christmas and they were from a Christian perspective, so I did appreciate them.

What I didn’t appreciate was some of the songs mixed in: Winter Wonderland, All I Want for Christmas is You, and some others that I think were included because they were performed by Christian artists. But that doesn’t make them Christian Favorites. Plus, this album clocked in at 3 hours and 14 minutes, so they certainly could have done without those songs. And I didn’t need 3 different versions of Breath of Heaven. The curators could have picked their favorite version, or maybe they couldn’t agree on the best version and so they each put their favorite version in and hoped no one would notice the redundancy.

I had to mark this one down also due to Jordan Smith’s song “O Come (Let Us Adore)” because it took a standard Christmas carol and added a new section.

Last up: Caroling at Christmas

This one was okay. It had Christmas carols, plus some other popular Christmas songs such as Feliz Navidad that I wouldn’t classify as carols. Can you picture a group of people walking up to a house and serenading them with “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”? No. Therefore, it is not a Christmas carol, and it should not be in this collection.

Anyway, this album has most of the staples, and they’re the type you’d catch on a radio station this time of year – Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, etc.

Fine background music.

And that’s about it for Christmas albums that interested me. I then switched to Handel’s Messiah and listened to that while I finished our Christmas card layout.