Some reflections on the winter solstice 2024, the shortest day of the year.
Winter Solstice 2024
I grew up in St. Louis, and at this time of year, I miss the “rude wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather” of a Midwest winter. Winter in San Jose is 30 degrees cooler than summer, not the 60 to 90-degree swing St. Louis can accomplish. I have become accustomed to wearing the same clothing year-round, which was not a viable strategy in a “four season climate.”
No, you can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometime you’ll find
You get what you need
Rolling Stones “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
It’s been a good year for me personally: I remain above ground and moving around. My family remains healthy. My grandson was a passenger in a car that was involved in an accident, but because he is still young and immortal, he recovered after they screwed a metal rod into his arm. He made a complete recovery after some physical therapy and a quarter off from college, another routine miracle courtesy of the Valley Medical trauma center and no small amount of sleepless prayer.
It takes dynamite to get me up
Too much of everything is just enough
One more thing that I gotta say
I need a miracle every day
John Perry Barlow “I Need a Miracle Every Day“
At SKMurphy, we continue to see new and returning entrepreneurs at the Bootstrappers Breakfasts® who are serious in their approach and working to make the world a better place with new products and services. The founders in our Mastermind Groups have all made progress this year. We have added several new clients this year. Our typical client remains a team of two to five engineers or scientists with working technology they use to deliver professional services or hardware or software products. We continue to be guided by Margaret Mead’s encouragement to “ever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
“I’m old enough to remember when the polio vaccine was still new. Also, it hadn’t been that long since most people who caught pneumonia died from it. These medical breakthroughs were practically miracles.”
we Pat Cadigan in “On The Future” (2007)
I think it’s human nature to become accustomed quickly to breakthroughs. I believe small miracles are routinely accomplished by listening to and encouraging people. William Hazlitt suggested, “A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles.” Sometimes, all it takes for a miracle is to turn your head slightly at the right moment and catch sight of your future spouse for the first time or dodge an assassin’s bullet.
The Bayonet-Poker
As I sit by my Christmas fire I now and then give it a poke with a bayonet. It is an old-fashioned British bayonet which has seen worse days. I picked it up in a little shop in Birmingham for two shillings. I was attracted to it as I am to all reformed characters. The hardened old sinner, having had enough of war, was a candidate for a peaceful position. I was glad to have a hand in his reformation.
To transform a sword into a pruning hook is a matter for a skilled smith, but to change a bayonet into a poker is within the capacity of the least mechanical. All that is needed is to cause the bayonet to forsake the murderous rifle barrel and cleave to a short wooden handle. Henceforth its function is not to thrust itself into the vitals of men, but to encourage combustion on winter nights.
The bayonet-poker fits into the philosophy of Christmas, at least into the way I find it easy to philosophize. It seems a better symbol of what is happening than the harps of gold and the other beautiful things of which the hymn-writers sing, but which ordinary people have never seen. The golden harps were made for no other purpose than to produce celestial harmony. They suggest a scene in which peace and good-will come magically and reign undisturbed. Everything is exquisitely fitted for high uses. It is not so with the bayonet that was, and the poker that is. For it peace and good-will are afterthoughts. They are not even remotely suggested in its original constitution. And yet, for all that, it serves excellently as an instrument of domestic felicity.
[..]
Here is my bayonet. A scientific gentleman, seeing it lying on my hearth, might construct a very pretty theory about its owner. A bayonet is made to stab with. It evidently implies a stabber. To this I could only answer, “My dear sir, do not look at the bayonet, look at me. Do I strike you as a person who would be likely to run you through, just because I happen to have the conveniences to do it with? Sit down by the fire and we will talk it over, and you will see that you have nothing to fear. What the Birmingham manufacturer designed this bit of steel for was his affair, not mine. When it comes to design, two can play at that game. What I use this for, you shall presently see.”
Now, here we have the gist of the matter. Most of the gloomy prognostications which distress us arise from the habit of attributing to the thing a power for good or evil which belongs only to the person. It is one of the earliest forms of superstition.
Samuel McChord Crothers in By the Christmas Fire (1908)
Today is the Winter Solstice 2024, the shortest day of the year and the depth of winter. Or at least what passes for winter in Silicon Valley. It’s an appropriate day to count our blessings, get a good night’s sleep, and bring 2024 to a strong finish.
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