Today is June 21, 2023, the first day of summer and the summer solstice which marks the longest day and shortest night in the Northern Hemisphere. There is an online article marking this yearly phenomenon on CNN by Forrest Brown entitled “Summer solstice: Everything you need to know about the longest day of the year,” and I thought I would briefly encapsulate it for you on my blog tonight.

To mark the day, ancient civilizations took note of the occasion by taking part in various celebrations. Such events will take place today in England’s Stonehenge where people will gather and usher in the longest day in the calendar. There is also a Midsummer Eve celebration in Sweden and Ivan Kupala Night in parts of Eastern Europe.

“The solstice is historically linked to fertility – both the plant and human variety – in destinations worldwide.”

The summer solstice does not appear all over the world; it’s only observed in the Northern Hemisphere, where almost 90 percent of the world’s population lives. People south of the equator in places such as Chile, South Africa, and Australia are having their winter solstice and the shortest day of the year there.

Who gets the most sunlight? That depends on how close you get to the poles and farther from the equator. In Ecuador’s capital of Quito, for example, barely north of the equator, people barely notice the difference. They get a measly extra six and a half minutes of daylight.

But residents of Helsinki, Finland, will get a 3:54 a.m. sunrise and almost 19 hours of daylight. The night there doesn’t even get that dark. The denizens of Fairbanks, Alaska, in central interior Alaska, will get almost 22 hours of daylight, where blackout curtains might be in order.

As for the celebrations being held in various places around the world, let’s start with the first one mentioned – the one at Stonehenge. It so happens that the ancient stones of the monument in Southwest England dating to around 2500 BC were aligned by its makers astronomically. (By the way, I went to Stonehenge many, many years ago during my first trip to England in the summer of 1980 – I was a baby then!)

Here the English Heritage society organizes gatherings at Stonehenge for the summer solstice and produces a livestream of the sunrise.

In Sweden where the Midsummer Celebration is held, maypoles, folk dancing, and romantic rituals are the order of the day. I would hazard to predict that many babies are created on this day then.

The other celebration is what is called Ivan Kupala Night which is held in Ukraine and some other places in Eastern Europe which is a holiday that has romantic connotations for many Slavs. People dance, place flowered wreaths on the water, and gather around bonfires.

In India, the birthplace of the ancient practice of yoga, the summer solstice is traditionally celebrated with mass yoga sessions throughout the nation.

In other news today, the House of Representatives shamelessly voted to censure Rep. Adam Schiff, a kay lawmaker in Democrats’ congressional investigations into former arrogant Donald Dumpf during his disastrous presidency. This move in my mind symbolizes the darkening of the halls of Congress and how Kevin McCarthy, the House Speaker, is just being led around by the neck by the extreme MAGA sect of his party, the Party of Dumpf. It’s a fucking partisan measure that holds no water and is another example of the party’s subservience to the former twice-impeached, twice-indicted president.

The shameful vote was 213-209 along straight party lines. Some Republican members of the House Ethics Committee voted present. They were Michael Guest of Mississippi, Dave Joyce of Ohio, Andrew Garbarino of New York, John Rutherford of Florida, and Michelle Fischbach of Minnesota.

As part of the censure procedure, Schiff stood in the well of the House floor, while House Speaker Kevin McCarthy repeatedly tried to read a brief rule about censure. His attack dogs from the MAGA cult interrupted him many times, I’m sure of that. Schiff was joined by his Democratic colleagues on the House floor who loudly cheered him on and repeatedly interrupted the spineless McCarthy.

On Tuesday, ahead of the vote, Schiff called the move “a badge of honor” and said, “They wouldn’t go after me if they didn’t think I was effective.” He continued to say the resolution was a false and defamatory measure and is a disservice to the country.

The reason why repugnicans got their horrible way today is that while serving as a chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff announced a sweeping investigation in February 2019 into then-president Dumpf’s finances and Russia.

Schiff also served as the lead House impeachment manager during Dumpf’s first impeachment. In that prominent role, Schiff and the other impeachment managers detailed the House’s case for removing Dumpf from office at the Senate trial. We all know the pusillanimous Senate ultimately voted to acquit. Boy, are they probably wishing they had voted to impeach the bastard at this moment in our history.

Let repugnicans continue their road down the rabbit hole of retribution against Democrats and pursue an agenda of spite against their Democratic colleagues, it will be apparent that they will surely lose mightily at the ballot box in 2024 and beyond! The American people should be massively outraged over this empty stunt taken by McCarthy and his repugnican hacks. The public wants bills passed, not censure motions against a representative for doing the right thing. This is totally disgusting and accomplishes nothing except satisfying the master puppeteer behind the repugnican base, Donald J. Dumpf.

Echoing my sentiments about the repugnican party being manipulated by a master puppeteer called Donald Dumpf, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) mocked Republicans for looking “miserable” in their effort today to censure Schiff for his leading role in Democrats’ lawful investigations into Dumpf.

Pelosi sneered, “Today we are on the floor of the House, where the other side has turned this chamber – where slavery was abolished, where Medicare and Social Security and everything else were instituted – they’ve turned it into a puppet show. And you know what? The puppeteer, Donald Trump, is shining a light on the strings.”

Then Pelosi turned to the GOP side of the chamber, smiled, and said, “You look miserable.” And for the edification of the whole country, they surely did look miserable and small minded in their extreme pettiness.

So as I said yesterday, we are driving up to Massachusetts to visit Elliot’s daughter and her family for three days. We return on Sunday, June 25, which is the date of New York’s Pride March. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend this year’s celebration since we will first be returning to the city sometime in the afternoon. I did attend this event last year, though.

In advance, I’ll say have a good weekend. I hope the weather does get more summery as we proceed into late June. Unfortunately, my smartphone weather app is predicting several days of rain starting tomorrow and lasting through next Wednesday. Egad!

Stay safe and be well.

Here is the Playbill from Monday’s show of Love + Science.