Periheliowhat?

 Ah, New Years. That man-made construct when we get to reset everything that needs resetting. This year (2021) we need a lot of resetting in the wake of 2020's mayhem and misery.

Resolutions are a form of resetting I guess. My only resolution is to not have any. Kudos to those who have them and actually keep them but that's not me. 

I wondered briefly as the midnight hour came and went what any of this resetting really means for us. Do we reset the count of Covid deaths back to zero now that its January 1st, 2021 or do we just keep adding to the 346,000 Americans who died  from the virus in 2020? Now that we've passed a third of a million deaths does the counting even matter? 

Astronomically, New Year's roughly corresponds to when our home planet is closest in its orbit to the Sun, something they call Perihelion. The exact time and date through 2025 will vary from January 2nd this year to January 4th in 2023 and 2025. Tomorrow, if you're up and at 'em at 6:50 a.m. Denver time you can stop for a moment and think "Hmmm, I'm only 91,399,454 miles from the Sun!" You'll have to wait until July 25th at 4:27 p.m. (what is referred to as Aphelion) for the opposite to occur when we are at our furthest from old Sol at 94,510,886 miles. 

Times Square January 2020

I suppose we don't need all that astronomical mumbo jumbo to remind us that time keeps moving on. We've got a giant ball in Times Square in New York to tell us that. There's no clock I'm aware of ticking off the time and miles between Perihelion and Aphelion but we could all count down from 10 as the ball dropped last night over an eerily quiet Times Square. 

Last year at this time my wife and I were setting out on a bucket list trip from New York to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. A month later upon arriving in San Francisco we were one of the last cruise ships to dock before they started quarantining passengers and crew on vessels with outbreaks of the then-new virus. As we walked through the San Francisco airport to catch our flight home we were oblivious as to why people in the terminal were already starting to wear face masks. 

Dawn arrival in San Francisco

Lots of folks in our neighborhood were up with us last night to catch the passing of the years. There were a lot of fireworks too, partly I'm guessing, to make up for the cancellation of downtown Denver's New Years Eve celebration. We had ordered takeout from the Cheesecake Factory, invited my mother-in-law over to join us, and watched competing T.V. channels try to outdo one another in year-end merriment. This year the Planet Fitness hats (borrowed from Dr. Seuss?) on the heads of the small crowd of people in Times Square seemed more bizarre than festive given that many, if not most, gyms are still unable to open. But kudos for trying. Ditto for the entertainers who gave it their all. You're efforts were appreciated. Maybe this time NEXT year we'll all be more in the mood for a celebration. One announcer proclaimed that we should work on turning twenty-twenty-one into twenty-twenty-Fun! Good luck with that; me, I'm just looking to make it to Aphelion...