Pssst! You! Yeah, you... are a passenger on a planet... on a blue-green planet that's orbiting a golden star. And right now we are traveling through a part of our yearly orbit that we call mid-June. And this is when I always remember a Hawaiian elder who told me something about the demi-god Maui, something that he was told by his elders. You may know Maui (the namesake of our island) from the Polynesian myths about him - or from the enormous, naked statue of him snaring the sun in the Kahului airport. If we want to de-code the myths about Maui, we should remember that he is an "Everyman." Hawaiian elders say that he is all Polynesians wrapped up into one. But why am I remembering this at this time of year?

Our planet is tilted over to the plane of its path around the sun. So our hemisphere points toward the sun during part of the year (summer), and points away from the sun during part of the year (winter.) June 20th to the 22nd is when we get maximum sunlight - our longest possible days. This, the summer solstice, is a treat if you live in a cold, grey part of the world. But, here in the Tropics, maximum sunlight means maximum danger of skin cancer. If you want to stay alive, you clothe your skin.

Maui's mother, Hina, makes cloth for clothing, but she has a problem: the fibers in Hawaii's cotton plant are too short to weave into cloth. So the fibers of tree-bark have to be dried and then pounded into "tapa cloth." But these thick, sticky, gooey fibers take so long to dry that for much of the year the days are too short for them to dry. So they rot before they can be made into clothing. Mother Hina, worried about this, begs Maui for help.

He responds by zipping over to Haleakala, the House of the Sun - a world-class sun-watching site and summit of the volcanic island that now bears his name. He sees that the sun can kill us as easily as it can give us life, and he engages in a long battle with it. In the end, he triumphs. The sun has no choice now but to work with Maui. They agree that from now on the sun's motion will be regular. Maui, to help his mother, makes the days longer. But making the days longer doesn't mean adding hours to the clock. It means getting more out of the day. And you do get more out of the day when you understand the sun's annual cycle of long and short days. Then you can schedule your work more efficiently.

Today, I'm celebrating the summer solstice by remembering Maui (our collective Polynesian ancestors) for their heroic struggle. Maui flexed his mental muscles and snared the sun; he grasped its pattern, he "got" its cycle. He also "got" that any cycle is predictable, so we can count on it and we can plan around it. The cycle of our sun can sustain us or destroy us, depending on whether we synchronize our activities with it. When we are in synch with the sun, we get more done with less effort - and in less time. This gives us free time for surfing or dancing or singing or...

This is Harriet Witt, your guide for this little ride on our passenger planet.


If you have any questions, drop Harriet an email: harriet@passengerplanet.com


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