Because the Night

This is what 1:47 a.m. looks like in late June in Oulu, Finland, when, finally, it isn't raining:

And this is 1:03 a.m.:
And here is one more tiny bit of evidence that fear and loathing of feminism is universal (we think, though, of course, we couldn't actually read the article in the magazine, it being in Finnish and all):
(Photo Credits: Moose, though Goose threatened to take her wine away if she didn't get up off her duff and take the sunset shots.)

This brief post was inspired by the bright young Digital Museologist who said over dinner, "I miss the night." The moms know just what she means. The endless evenings of the near-Arctic summer are surreal and beautiful, but they are jarring, too. Time is impossible to judge, which partly explains why the moms slept past 11 a.m. yesterday. You realize in a place like this how much your sense of time depends upon the shifting of the light, the movement into darkness. Without it, dinners (happily!) go on and on, and energies that usually flag with the fading of the light get revved back up -- and so you find yourself strolling the streets of an unfamiliar city at nearly midnight taking silly photographs and laughing with strangers. You have a nightcap, but the night still hasn't come, and your body still doesn't feel ready for rest. You close the curtains to shut out the twilight, but you sense its presence anyway. Even in sleep, it hovers on the edges of consciousness. You miss the night, because without it you cannot recognize the day.

Dickinson wrote, "I see thee better -- in the Dark." I bet she would have missed the night, too.

(With pride in and affection for the Digital Terps who made the journey and performed so well. See y'all back in the 'hood soon.)