A time for reflection S-N solstice :: equinox

Analemma image: Anthony Ayiomamitis

Ever since we first took note of the passing Seasons, and what is left of them today, we have marvelled and come to recognise the extremes of the calendar in the sky.

For humanity in the North and the South. 

The emergence of culture, societies, and civilization has been  dependent upon the calendar - whether recorded in customs and rites, giant blocks of stone, papyrus, or binary code.

As the solstice fast approaches - Sunday, 21 December 2025 15:03-4 - and the Sun touches its lowest, southernmost point, I think of (former) family and friends 'way down' south, and the distance between the hemispheres, represented in the analemma. Of course then there is the solstitial experience of humanity in the south as the sun crests the highest point in their sky.

It must be amazing to see the nightsky from the far south(?). 

How might we explain this culturally, with the benefit of foresight? This apparent celestial 'opposition' of Earth's path around the Sun, is reflected N-S in who bears the impact of climate change and the need attend to planetary health.

But, then look at the equinox, the north and south are seemingly united? 

Is there a baton passed in March and September?

Perhaps, this can be a celebration of global health, for both hemispheres. With a simultaneous 'nod' to planetary health and the search for social and climate justice.
 

What Complex Threads We Weave

Recovery, Rehabilitation, Reablement by Van Gogh

Individual

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC =========================  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

Group

The Asylum Garden at Arles, 1889 by Vincent Van Gogh

My source: Van Gogh exhibitions (at least two); and Robin Lane Fox. Two years in Provence, House&Home, FTWeekend, 11/12 January 2025. p.10. 

Image source: https://www.vincentvangogh.org/the-asylum-garden-at-arles.jsp

Book: SNÖ

'Snow. A single word, for an infinite variety of water formulations, frozen in air. The study of snow is physics, chemistry, meteorology, anthropology, geography, poetry and art. It is hope – annually renewed. And it is history, too.

Earth saw its first snowfall 2.4 billion years ago. The world's oldest skis, made by hand five thousand four hundred years old, pre-date the pyramids of ancient Egypt. To humanity, snow has variously been an ally and an adversary; an inspiration to countless artists and a place of breathtaking tragedy and survival. But it’s always been there. And now it is melting. 

In 1927, the snow was already more than nine metres deep on Japan's Mount Ibuki when a remarkable 230cm fell in 24 hours, bringing about the greatest depth of snow - 11.82m - ever recorded. Yet it is a fact today that, ironically not only has this mountain's resort been forced to close due to lack of snow, most people in the world have never been near snow: never felt the soft crunch of snow underfoot, never held snow to see it melt in their hands, let alone stood on a pair of skis.'  continued ...

Individual

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

Group

compass defined compass unified mental expanse beauty memory lived experience signature of change sadness signifier	SNÖ by Sverker Sörlin
culture poetry - arts social history shared loss recreation - leisure Two kids. Uncles! In car, drenching us driving through slush in the gutter 😎

Sverker Sörlin, Elizabeth DeNoma (Translator) (2025). SNÖ - A History. London: Doubleday.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/467833/sno-by-sorlin-sverker/9781529947878

Previously: Grief, mourning and commemoration in the North

My source: Clark, P. A gear shift to adapt to a warming world. Books. Genre Round-Up, Environment.  Life&Arts. FT Weekend. 23/24 August 2025. p.10.

John Denver - Season Suite (Full) The Suite is in this order:

1. Summer
2. Fall
3. Winter
4. Late Winter, Early Spring (When Everybody Goes to Mexico)
5. Spring

Post Tokyo Olympics 2021: Yes 'Shun' fits, Gaia knows ...

MOST individual

   patient / client  PERSON student / practitioner
|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

MOST humanistic ------------------------------------- MOST mechanistic  

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

society - community of practice - profession

 MOST group

"There's this wonderful Japanese word shun, which is when something is full of its life force," says Pearson. "In that peak, when the meadows are flourishing, everything is reaching for the solstice, and you can feel the energy pouring from it. It's quite overwhelming - you're aware of this special time slipping through your fingers and you can't take it all in because it's so alive."p.36.

On second reading, maybe not? And, not for the fact that the next solstice is mid-winter here in the Northern hemisphere.

'Glances'

Visiting McDonalds for a coffee (only) at the end of 2020, I noticed one of the merchandising screens was displaying an error message. The message referred to glances, which I read as the content that changes after several seconds in succession. I meant to take a photo for a post such as this, and back in the area, I'll take my chance if spied again. [Success!]  I did speak to a member of staff but they couldn't help. The take away (you could say!) is of a 'glance' as the content of a single care domain. This isn't very accessible, emphasizing the visual nature of Hodges' model, but I'm kicking ideas around...

Media - marketing screen

Reading the above I thought of 'holistic bandwidth' in Hodges' model. If the model was fully populated with care concepts and, no doubt, some annotations, key relationships then I thought shun might be appropriate. By holistic bandwidth I mean the semantic distance between care concepts. This is what 'MOST' suggests above. Beyond these concepts we are in the realm of the spiritual: do they join up in some way? Obviously, 'complete' in fulfilling the purpose of assessment, care planning, intervention, evaluation whether clinical or learning activity. But then shun as a celebration of nature seems inappropriate in many clinical contexts, especially palliative and end-of-life care. Yes, time for second thoughts here too.

The role of nature in healthcare, the value of green spaces, for recovery or a peaceful ending is well documented. Then again, the shun as experienced in 2021 by a person, do they really see how it is diminished, how it has changed, is changing? The point was made recently, of the different experiences of the Seasons, the weather, now across generations: diminishing 'norms' birds, bees ...?

Perhaps, after all, shun can signify a complete care matrix. If we carry on as we are then Nature will act, is acting now. Gaia knows.

Coulson, C. Double Act, Work, rest and weed: Dan Pearson and his partner Huw Morgan share their garden vision, HTSI, FTWeekend, April 2021,  pp.36-39. 

https://www.ft.com/content/74061538-d1ef-4922-a821-09ed5484e7ec

Photos added 8/9/21.

 

Four Fields

On my wish list:

In his first book since the acclaimed The Running Sky Tim Dee tells the story of four green fields. Four fields spread around the world: their grasses, their hedges, their birds, their skies, and their natural and human histories. Four real fields - walkable, mappable, man-made, mowable and knowable, but also secretive, mysterious, wild, contested and changing. Four fields - the oldest and simplest and truest measure of what a man needs in life - looked at, thought about, worked in, lived with, written.

Dee's four fields, which he has known for more than twenty years, are the fen field at the bottom of his Cambridgeshire garden, a field in southern Zambia, a prairie field in Little Bighorn, Montana, USA, and a grass meadow in the exclusion zone at Chernobyl, Ukraine. Meditating on these four fields, Dee makes us look anew at where we live and how. He argues that we must attend to what we have made of the wild, to look at and think about the way we have messed things up but also to notice how we have kept going alongside nature, to listen to the conversation we have had with grass and fields.

Four Fields is a profound, lyrical book by one of Britain's very best writers about nature.

Source image and text: Amazon

Missing the sun....

Rivington - July 2007

Really miss you Mr Sunshine
at least you are on your way back again
with your showers
just one or two -
in toe.

Photo copyright Peter Jones

What Complex Threads We Weave

Two thoughts spring to mind when I look at h2cm's axes - INDIVIDUAL-GROUP and HUMANISTIC-MECHANISTIC. I wonder where they end and what does where mean exactly?

These questions prompted the combination of the model's axes and the care domains into a 5th domain: the spiritual. Could there be another view of this? Is it sensible to consider that a care concept lies at certain point on the individual axis for example? How does this relate to the mechanistic axis? Maybe this asks too much of what is a model to simplify complexity? Do these axes run-off forever? Do they join up at infinity?

When we think of 'where' we tend to think in concrete (literally) terms. But where are you on this image?

Although this marvellous picture of the analemma helps extend our (physical) notions of where, this photo has its limits in that it captures the view from a certain latitude (a specific context). There are others. Our Earth bound sense of place takes on S-N-E-W, but if we travel far enough ....?

The mobius strip is an object of delight.

Perhaps unknowingly we are all topologists...

Happy equinox! WherEVER you are.

(Holistic care 2 will follow - time wise having to rely on draft post bank)
Analemma image credit: Anthony Ayiomamitis