Opinions

By Susan Harper

In days of old, the winter solstice was a pivotal time. It was the entrance to the long tunnel of winter: the “starvation months,” when those who had not had a good harvest or saved enough food faced serious trouble.

But it also marked the beginning of the return or rebirth of the sun: the lengthening of the days. So the ancient festivals of the sun were important as a celebration of light and life in the midst of darkness, but also as a promise of better days ahead. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

In the same way that I remember where I was when I heard that JFK had been shot, I know that I will always remember standing in my bare feet on the cold kitchen floor last Saturday morning, gripping the phone and hearing the impossible news that Joanne Legg had been killed in an auto collision – on her way, of course, to do something kind for someone. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

The words to “Silent Night” were written in 1816 by an Austrian priest, Father Joseph Mohr, while he was serving a pilgrimage church in a small village in Salzburg. Transferred to the church of St. Nicholas in Oberndorf, Father Mohr brought the words with him, and on the day of Christmas Eve in 1918, he took them to the church’s choir director, Franz Gruber, who worked as a teacher in a nearby village and was living above the schoolhouse there.

Could he set the words to music, Father Mohr asked, and write a guitar accompaniment? He may have asked the question urgently; there is some thought that the church’s organ had stopped working – for why else would Herr Gruber be asked to compose the music on such short notice, and notate it for guitar? The answer is lost. Even the church is lost, where otherwise it might be possible to do a little forensic work. The Church of St. Nicholas was badly damaged by flooding and was demolished in the early 1900s. [Full Story »]