Happy Summer Solstice

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Today in Seattle the sunrise was at 5:11am and the sunset at 9:11pm. That’s a lot of light! Contrast this the winter solstice on December 22 when the sunrise and sunset will be at 7:55am and 4:21pm, respectively. What I find fascinating is that today is not necessairly the day with the latest sunset and Dec 22 is not necessairly the day with the earliest sunset. Here’s an explaination of why.

In honour of the solstice I attended the Fremont Solstice Parade last Saturday. Fremont is the neighbourhood just to the west of where I live in Wallingford. It’s a fun area. They have a statue of Lenin and a giant troll living under the freeway. The parade is something else. It started with about 200 naked cyclists (they were covered with body paint) and then followed by lots of different groups including anti-Bush groups, pro medical marijuana groups, a unicycle club, a huge group of belly dancers and of course a few musical groups and dance groups. If you want to see pictures (I repeat, there were naked cyclists so don’t follow the link if that makes you uncomfortable) here’s a link to photos on flickr tagged with “solstice parade.”