A New Season…!

It’s September already (can you believe it??!), and it’s the season for new seasons!

NEW SEASON SEASON

First, Autumn, or Fall, starts this month. Astronomically speaking, the autumnal equinox (in the Northern Hemisphere–I believe it’s the vernal equinox in the Southern Hemisphere) falls on September 23rd–that’s when the plane of the Earth’s equator passes through the center of the Sun. The two equinoxes are the only times in the year when the center of the Sun is directly over the Earth’s equator. (A solstice is when the sun is at its highest or lowest point on the celestial equator–hence either the longest or shortest day, depending on whether it’s the summer or winter solstice.)

Here’s a picture to paint a thousand words:

The earth on the right is in the summer solstice position, then to the left of that you have the autumnal equinox, then the winter solstice, then the vernal equinox–from the perspective of us Northern Hemispherians, anyway. I suppose if you’re in the South, you just flip the picture.

Now that I’ve confused you, let me confuse you further by saying most of us here in the US don’t care a diddly about all that since we consider Fall as starting on Labor Day (next Monday), or about mid-to-late August when the public schools start their Fall semester, or whenever they start showing Halloween commercials on TV (about the middle of July). 🙂

Two other seasons begin this month, and I mention these because they directly affect this blog:

NEW SUNDAY SCHOOL SEASON

Our church will begin it’s new Sunday School season this coming Sunday (September 6th). This means the following Tuesday will see the return of my “Sunday School Notes” series, picking up with Revelation chapter 8. Much of the first class will be review and overview, so next week’s notes might be a little light. But there’s a lot of good stuff to come, so stay tuned!

NEW DOCTOR WHO SEASON

Season (or “Series” in the UK) Nine of “Nu-Who”–the Doctor Who re-boot–starts on September 19th, so that following week I’ll start posting reviews of each new episode, beginning with the series opener, “The Magician’s Apprentice.” I hope all my Whovian friends will join in the discussion and dissection of each episode on the blog. Show-runner Steven Moffat is promising us more multi-part stories, so we can expect bigger plots, more character and story development, and cliff-hangers! Lots for us to get our teeth into, I’m sure.

Oh, and have you seen the Twelfth Doctor’s latest look?:

Long hair and maroon crushed velvet coat? Remind you of anyone…?

Not saying or speculating anything… just… well… interesting. 🙂

Be sure to check in over the coming weeks–and comment! Let me know you’re out there and interested. 🙂