Signs Of The Times

When I was little, my grandfather – Spaghetti – a practical, hard working man of few words, gorilla forearms and large knuckles, who I could barely understand through his Tyronian brogue, would sometimes look at the summer sky and say “Red sun at night, sailors delight, red sun in the morning, sailors take warning.”

Having so few days and nights under my belt during those halcyon times, and still undiagnosed at being color challenged, I took him at his word.

But the saying has come back into my consciousness recently. Especially though this latest solar hot streak.

We’ve had some really weird weather this summer in NoCo. Lots of high temperatures followed by late day thunderstorms and lately, a lot of red(?) suns struggling to shine through the overcast.

I call that Monday night photo, “The Lamppost dropping the ball.”

So, I couldn’t help thinking about Spaghetti’s stoic observation, which proprietarily inserted “sun” for “sky” and is now described as an Old Wives Tale by the Intelligentsia – (why are there no old husbands tales?) – https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/meteorology-climatology/item/is-the-old-adage-red-sky-at-night-sailors-delight-red-sky-in-morning-sailors-warning-true-or-is-it-just-an-old-wives-tale/

It seems that modern day meteorologists have condescendingly explained away the phenomenon using color spectrums and wavelengths. Nothing is more comforting than a pat answer.

I’ve never had much use for pat answers or intelligentsia. Or intelligence if I’m being honest.

You see, the origins of the saying goes way back to Biblical times. To the Gospel of Matthew, to be exact – Matthew 16:2b–3. Where he describes Jesus’s response to the demand by the Pharisees and Sadducees for a sign from heaven.

“When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather; for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”

So, according to Jesus, it seems that modern day interpreters have missed the forest for the trees.

It’s not about the sun. That’s the knee jerk, easy part. It’s everything else around you.

I interpret that biblical reference as my opening to look beyond the pat answers and those comforting bromides. I’m taking a page from Shakespeare:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5.

So instead I lean into the Quantum, the invisible, the mystical, the unexplainable, the unpredictable magic in daily life – the signs of my times – and leave the observable hues of the sunrise and sunset to those whose eyes can fully appreciate its full color spectrum and find comfort there, especially the sailors.

But what I can observe without challenge – unless you live one day in the future on the far side of the world – is that today is hump day. And we must all get over it, if only to get one day closer to the Friday’s portal to the weekend, and all of the magical things that await us there.

So, finish that last cuppa and launch yourselves forward towards that goal.

And no matter what the sun has predicted for us, let us make today a great one.