Quote of the Day (Gerard Manley Hopkins, on Winter and ‘A World Undone’)

“The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less; 
The times are winter, watch, a world undone: 
They waste, they wither worse; they as they run 
Or bring more or more blazon man's distress. 
And I not help. Nor word now of success:      
All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one—"—English Jesuit and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), “The Times Are Nightfall, Look, Their Light Grows Less," in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by Robert Bridges (1918)

I took the image accompanying this post—of a snow-covered Overpeck Park near nightfall in Bergen County, NJ—in December 2020.

Photo of the Day: World Trade Center Memorial, Overpeck Park, Bergen County NJ

Not just in New York City, but in its surroundings, many victims of the attacks at the World Trade Center resided, and a number of these towns have held annual ceremonies in the last 20 years honoring the fallen. In New Jersey alone, there are estimated to be more than 150 such memorials.

One of these areas was Bergen County in Northern New Jersey, where I live. This morning one of these commemorations occurred there, in Overpeck Park. I came by later in the day, when signs of the ceremony were still evident, and took this photograph.

I like the heart design around the "Towers" where the victims' names are inscribed. They indicate where those people will always remain.

Photo of the Day: Fall Twilight

When I took this photo the other day looking out on the creek at Overpeck Park, a couple of miles from where I live in Bergen County, NJ, it seemed that I was not merely making a visual record of a typical twilight in autumn, but even a goodbye to the season this year.

Almanacs had predicted that sunset was still a way off, but you’d never know it from the headlights on in cars negotiating their way under uncertain gray skies. There's so much darkness in the atmosphere in the attached image that I feel like I could be looking at a J.M.W. Turner landscape painting.

Temperatures haven’t been regularly frigid this year, as they had in past late Novembers. In fact, periodic upswings in the mercury have been enough to bring people out in sizable amounts, if not the droves of spring and summer.

But on a day like the one this weekend, it depressed the spirits to have sunset slip away, even if only until tomorrow. A walk is an activity that anyone can relish, no matter your job status or income level. To have a contracted afternoon felt in keeping with a year in which so much we once took for granted could no longer be enjoyed.