Starting on Friday, the days begin getting longer, a process that will continue until June 20 when we will celebrate the Summer Solstice. I love the long twilight evenings of summer.
Friday is also the day when the planet begins giving a helping hand to all who suffer seasonal affective disorder (S.A.D.). SAD is depression associated with lack of sunshine.
In the late 1980s I remember spending the evening of June 21 in Fairbanks, Alaska. On a whim I went outside at 1 a.m. with a newspaper, and could read it without artificial light. Of course I had younger eyes then.
More recently I've been as far north as Jasper, Alberta, Canada, in July and seen the twilight that goes on until near midnight. And I've seen the "white nights" in St. Petersburg, Russia, with people strolling the less-than-dark sidewalks after 11 p.m.
There is a real tendency for those who live where winter nights are long to stay up and keep going when summer nights are short. It makes sense.
The farther north (or south) of the equator you live the more you notice this swing of the seasons. The year we spent on Guam we hardly felt it at all.
