Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Auld Lang Syne

It's time again to revisit what is certainly one of the most sentimental holiday songs, second only to Silent Night, I think. Despite the sentimentality, I think this is a very nice version to help us mark New Year's Eve and the start of 2008.

And here is my new year's wish for you - may you receive everything you need and most of what you want in the coming year!

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Bonnie Raitt

Wherever you're going this holiday week, whatever gifts are exchanged, and however you've come to define "home," I hope you enjoy this beautiful song by Bonnie Raitt.

Diversions for Insomniacs #2

Here's a fun little game that should provide at least a few minutes of diversion. Fly Guy reminds me of flying dreams I've had, especially the ones where I'm not that high off the ground, but am moving forward without walking. Flying is so much easier - it's like it doesn't take any energy at all. I'm just gliding along. Smooth!

As for Fly Guy, be aware that because the ending is slightly risque, it may not be completely suitable for the office. Enjoy your fly time!

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - The Freed Unit

This week we have a seasonal video - the song Winter Solstice (the Snowman Came Inside) by a UK band called the Freed Unit. A little strange but mostly charming, it tells the story of a snowman who comes into the house for a drink of sloe gin. (Spoiler - it doesn't end well for him.) My favorite part is Jack Frost's dance.

The Darkest Evening of the Year

© Photographer:Javarman Agency: Dreamstime.com

We're quickly approaching the winter solstice, the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. There are, of course, many ways that this time is celebrated in various cultures. Most of them involve light or fire somehow, a way to keep the energy of the sun burning until it can be coaxed out of its hiding place to provide longer, warmer days ahead. Even celebrations that are not specifically about reviving the sun can trace the roots of their traditions back to this belief.

Anthropologists think that prehistoric humans observed rituals related to the winter solstice out of fear that the sun would gradually go away completely, leaving them in eternal cold and darkness. Only human intervention could prevent this catastrophe. The fear of abandonment by the sun, the life-giving force, seems so primitive to us, yet gives a glimpse at how precarious life must have been at that time.

Even now, some people struggle with the darkness this time of year. One of the saving graces of January in northern climates is that at least the days are getting longer.

While I wrote earlier that I wouldn't post a lot of poetry here, I did find a video of Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, with its reference to the solstice. If you're inclined, you can watch it by following this link. I like this video not just for the recitation, but for the music and imagery as well. This poem remains an American classic, with the narrator torn between contemplating the beauty of the woods and the duties he must tend to. Think of him as you run your after-work errands in the dark in this run-up to the holidays.

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - John Mayer

Since we're on the subject of insomnia, I thought I'd post this video, based on John Mayer's song Quiet. The video's creator, Michael Dyck, writes that he wanted to make "the video I saw in my mind every time I heard this song." I think he did a masterful job capturing the frustration and resignation of a sleepless night.

Maybe this video will act as a kind of inoculant and that by watching it, we'll all sleep soundly tonight. (Here's hoping...)

Insomnia is My Baby

How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack.
- Dorothy Parker

Does this sound familiar? After having fallen asleep easily at bedtime, I open my eyes at 3 a.m. ("the soul's midnight") and can only hope to fall back asleep within a few minutes. Otherwise, I'm up for an hour or two, thinking too hard about things, then realizing that if I just stopped thinking, maybe I'd get back to sleep.

Or you may have the same issue as Dorothy Parker - trouble getting to sleep in the first place, lying awake 'til midnight or later, counting how many hours you have until the alarm clock goes off ("If I fall asleep now, I can still get five good hours"). Either way, insomnia is a pitiless companion. What we need the most eludes us, providing a cruel metaphor that only the most ardent pessimist extends into waking life.

There are ways to deal with recurring insomnia. Some people have home remedies they rely on (hot milk, chamomile tea, a boring book). Others use over-the-counter or prescription help. And some people make the best of it by jotting down their night thoughts in a bedside journal or even using the time to take care of bill paying or other low-key household tasks.

If you have a tendency to go online during your night wanderings, you can, of course, come here and watch some of the Lullabies for Grown-Ups to soothe you back to sleep. But for those who might be looking for something more interactive, I'm starting a new feature, Diversions for Insomniacs. The diversions will include games and other fun activities to keep you occupied until you feel ready to try that sleep thing again. I'll feature the diversions about once a month and I hope you find them fun and helpful.

The first one relates to the title of this post. That's the start of a story by the writer Roger Angell called Ainmosni, in which the main character is advised by a friend to write palindromes as a way to cure his insomnia. Palindromes are words, phrases, sentences or even paragraphs that read the same forward as backward. The usual examples include the name Otto and the sentence, Madam, I'm Adam. It can be fun to find words that can be reversed (like devil and lived). But actually writing a palindrome takes a love of word play and a great deal of perserverance. Often, the completed work makes no sense, because, as Angell notes, it's the only literary form "in which the story line is controlled by the words rather than the author."

In the case of Angell's story, the narrator becomes obsessed. It's a danger - I've written a few palindromes myself and it can be hard to stop. But if you'd like to try it, follow this link for some useful tips. I also recommend the use of a rhyming dictionary, which arranges words by the sound of their final syllable. This can help you find the right words to link threads of a paragraph together.

Give it a try and stay tuned for more Diversions for Insomniacs!

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Canadian Brass

This week's lullaby is a beautiful video from the Canadian Brass. I love the warm, rich tones of a brass ensemble. The composition is Quintet by Michael Kamen.

Dancing Celestial Lights

© Photographer:Roman Krochuk | Agency: Dreamstime.com

The first time I saw the northern lights, I was in college, walking home from the library late one night. I noticed the sky was glowing to the north, but just wrote it off as city glow, even though it was green and not orange. The next day, I heard on the news that the aurora had been visible the night before. I looked right at it and didn't realize what it was! Chalk it up to fatigue and a cold night, with me hurrying to get back to the dorm.

The second time I saw the aurora was when I lived in the Twin Cities. Even though I was in the brightly lit suburbs, I was able to watch the faint green lights from my balcony. It was a mostly clear night with just a few wispy clouds passing by. But I really couldn't see the lights unless there was a cloud there to act as a reflector. Not a spectacular display, but had I been away from city lights, it would have been.

The northern lights have fascinated and troubled people for centuries. Often the lights were considered omens of coming wars or famines. Elsewhere, they were thought to be the souls of ancestors or dead warriors. But my favorite explanation is that the lights were the reflection of a great treasure: either huge swarms of herring (a belief from Scandanavia) or the ultimate motherlode of gold (believed by prospectors during the Klondike gold rush).

In fact, the aurora originates with the sun and its solar winds, which impinge on the Earth's atmosphere. The beauty of this arrangement is that scientists now can predict, fairly accurately, when the aurora will occur. Check out the link to spaceweather.com. You can sign up for alerts so you don't miss the next great aurora display.

And from NASA, we have this extraordinary image:


It's the aurora borealis from space, taken by the crew of the shuttle Atlantis during a mission this past summer. Somehow it's comforting to know that the northern lights are just as beautiful and ethereal from above as from below.

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Jacob Miller

The lullaby this week is a song by Jacob Miller (not the deceased reggae singer, another Jacob Miller) called Who We Are. The video is from the BBC documentary Planet Earth and features some stunning nature images. I hope you enjoy this addition to the growing collection of Lullabies for Grown-Ups.

What the Evening Reveals

© Photographer:Mark Ross | Agency: Dreamstime.com

I won't make it a habit to post poetry here, but I was going through a new book of poetry I got - a collection by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke - and his poem Evening was so exquisite, I wanted to share it with you. The translator is Stephen Mitchell.

Evening

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Hem

This week's lullaby is the song Red Wing by the group Hem. They have a bit of a country feel to them. I think this song is so pretty and I love the lyrics. Settle back and enjoy this great song as we head into the holiday week.

Birds Fly to the Stars, I Guess

Well, I had hoped to go out and try to find Comet Holmes so I could give you a report. This comet surprised everyone recently by suddenly becoming very bright, bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye. No one knows why this happened, so it's very mysterious.

But my timing is bad, because we have partly or mostly cloudy skies forecast for about the next week. That's November in Wisconsin. Instead, I put up a link in the links section to spaceweather.com. This is a great site that offers information on auroras, meteor showers, eclipses and other interesting astronomical events. They have a sky map that shows where to look for the comet, so you can go find it for yourself if the skies will cooperate. Good luck!

Besides clouds, I've got Canada geese in the sky over my neighborhood. They're hanging out until the ponds and lakes freeze over and they head south. Sometimes they fly at night, moving from one field to another. I hear their honking as they fly overhead.

Many song birds migrate at night, using the cover of dark to avoid predators. I remember when I first learned that fact about the natural world. It made the night seem more interesting. I had just assumed that most birds slept at night, except the noctural ones like owls. I wondered what other phenomena the night was concealing that had escaped my notice.

Of course, some birds are famous for singing at night, like nightingales. That can be either charming if you're out for a night walk or annoying if you're trying to sleep. Someone I know once threw a pot of water at a nightingale that wouldn't shut up. The bird did not appreciate it. It flew out of the tree, found a nearby tree and resumed singing.

Bird activity at night made me think of the Beatles song Blackbird, so enjoy the video. And as for the title of this post, do you remember where it's from? The movie Moonstruck, with Cher and Nicholas Cage, which is a great movie beyond that fact that it's in keeping with the night theme. "Bring me the big knife!" "It's Cosmo's moon!" Time to update the Netflix queue...

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - LED Throwies

What is an LED throwie? It's simply an LED light, battery and magnet. They'll stick to any surface that has a sufficient amount of iron, such as the building facade in this video. Young people like to use these inexpensive lights to brighten up their neighborhoods, creating their own artistic statements with light.

Technically, LED throwies are considered a form of graffiti. But I have to say, if someone put these up in my neighborhood, I'd be all right with that. I might even help pick them off after they burned out.

Relax and enjoy this video. The song is Heartbeats, performed by Jose Gonzalez.

Good Night, Moon

I don't want us to suffer from moon fatigue, so I'll be moving on to other topics. But don't worry, we'll revisit the moon from time to time.

Before we go, though, one more thing: this very easy synopsis of how you can tell when the moon will rise: The new moon always rises at sunrise, the first quarter moon rises at noon, the full moon rises at sunset and the last quarter moon at midnight. I've always been confused by this, because sometimes you see the moon during the day and sometimes you don't. This is the kind of information you might come across in old novels, when someone has to make an escape at night and waits for the moon to set so it's completely dark. See how handy this stuff is?