The meteorologist on the television news tonight reported that this has been one of the warmest Novembers on record. Certainly, it was the sunniest. I suffer from SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder – and it keeps getting worse as we slouch toward the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice when, according to how far north you live, you - - not you, I – yearn for light. It wasn’t too bad this year because there were so many sunny days. Even as good as it was, by early evening I get antsy because it’s so dark and I think I’m late for something, not sure what.

After the solstice, and when we enter the New Year, the minuscule lengthening of each day in January changes my perspective and I lighten up too. Oh dear, if I go on (and on and on, Safari willing) with this blog, you are going to know all my secrets, well, not secrets exactly, but foibles. As a few of you know, the precious few who read my blog, you know that I have been less voluble in the past week or so than is my wont. That’s because Safari has been cutting me off and erasing what I’ve written. So I started writing in Word and transferring but even then I had trouble. I have a lot of writing to do these days, even more than usual, so other media have had my attention.

Oh, and I joined Twitter, thanks to a technologically advanced granddaughter. One hundred and forty characters constitute a very brief blog. Years ago I had a radio “show”, if you can all it that, comprising 900 words, or a minute and a half, a thought for the day that I titled “Happy Homilies”, coming from your Big Sponsor in the Sky, aka the United Church of Canada. I used to write about two dozen of them and go into a studio and record them, allowing for ones that didn’t work, three weeks’ worth (15) at a time. My producer preferred that I record in the afternoon. Then as now I swam every morning and he said my pipes gurgled too much if I tried to sustain level speech too soon after swimming.

I used to say I had developed a 900-word mind. Now, I have to work toward a 140-character mind. My blog is somewhere between.

When it’s there.

The World Is Too Much With Us

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

That's how I feel. Hang in there.