Summer Solstice is the day in a year when the Sun reaches its northernmost point in the planet Earth’s sky.

June 21, 2011 – the date this year traditionally marks a change of seasons – from spring to summer in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere and from fall to winter in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere.

Summer solstice occurs on the longest day and the shortest night of the year in the northern hemisphere

Winter solstice occurs on the shortest day and longest night of the year. December 22 is the date for Winter solstice this year.

A Simple Summer Solstice Ceremony, Here is one way to ritually experience it:

• Get up at dawn.
• Watch the sun rise.
• Greet it.
• Bless it.
• Put a circular mirror outside in a sunny place.
• Fill a container with cold water and several tea bags and place it on top of the mirror.
• Go about your business for the day.
• The mirror reflects the longest, strongest sun of the year.
• The tea steeps in it until dusk.
• Watch the sun set.
• Drink the tea.
• Look into the solar-powered mirror.
• Bless yourself with the warmth and energy of the sun.
• Bless the world with your warmth and energy.

Palm Sunday

the traditions of Palm Sunday are largely based on the description from the Gospel of John. By waving him with palm branches and using them to cover his path as he rode into the city on a donkey, the crowd indicated that he was revered and respected on the level of royalty.

To celebrate the occasion, many Christian churches, both Catholic and Protestant as well as the Eastern churches, distribute palm leaves to congregation members who then carry them in a procession either inside or outside of the church.

Often the palm fronds are knotted or woven into small crosses that can be kept by individuals in their homes as a reminder of the lessons of Holy Week.

For Christians, Palm Sunday marks the beginning of the final week of Lent and the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter. It is also connected to the following year’s liturgical calendar as the palm leaves are often returned to the church to be burned in the next year’s Ash Wednesday rituals.

FORT SUMTER NATIONAL MONUMENT

From Fort Sumter, the gun’s target out in the harbor, and from points ashore, people watched the shell arc overhead, the path marked by its burning fuse. It was a fateful moment, one of the most profound in U.S. history.

April 12, 1861. Capt. George S. James of the South Carolina battalion of artillery, standing by his stubby gun on the beach, holding his pocket watch, waiting to open fire

In town, on Meeting Street, the bells of white-steepled St. Michael’s church strike 4 a.m. The minutes pass. At 4:30, there is the distant flash of James’s gun. A delayed boom, like a firework on the Fourth of July.

And the single shell fired by the fledgling Confederacy is lofted toward the Union garrison holed up in the brick fort. The last few seconds of the old America seem suspended for an instant before the shell explodes, changing the nation forever.

Some sensed it would bring war. Many did not. They still believed the South would be permitted to peacefully separate from the Union.

Only a handful realized it might mean freedom for the slaves. The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass was one.

There was, indeed, more at stake than the “momentous issue of civil war,” as Abraham Lincoln had said in his inaugural address six weeks earlier.

Would the United States be one country or two?

How would the outcome affect history 50 years hence, a hundred years hence?

What would be the fate of the 4 million enslaved African Americans and their descendants?

The name “equinox” is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because around the equinox, the night and day have approximately equal length.

Although the word equinox is often understood to mean “equal day and night,” this is not strictly true. For most locations on earth, there are two distinct identifiable days per year when the length of day and night are closest to being equal; those days are referred to as the “equiluxes” to distinguish them from the equinoxes.

Equinoxes are points in time, but equiluxes are days. By convention, equiluxes are the days where sunrise and sunset are closest to being exactly 12 hours apart.

An equinox occurs twice a year, in March and September, when the center of the Sun crosses directly over the Earth’s equator, as the Earth is tilted neither away nor toward the Sun. Many cultures around the world celebrate the equinoxes as special occasions.

While some herald the vernal equinox as the first day of spring, many around the world consider it to actually be the mid-point of spring. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the first day of climatological spring was on March 1, 2011.

Rodney King, 20 years ago Thursday, when George Holliday awoke to the sounds of police sirens outside his Lake View Terrace apartment. Grabbing his clunky Sony Handycam, he stepped out on his balcony and changed the Los Angeles Police Department forever.

The nine minutes of grainy video footage he captured of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King helped to spur dramatic reforms in a department that many felt operated with impunity.

The video played a central role in the criminal trial of four officers, whose not-guilty verdicts in 1992 triggered days of rioting in Los Angeles in which more than 50 people died.

The simple existence of the video was something unusual in itself. Relatively few people then had video cameras, Holliday did and had the wherewithal to turn it on.

“It was just coincidence,” Holliday reflected in an interview a decade ago. “Or luck.”

The ubiquitous use of cameras by the public has helped serve as a deterrent to police abuse, said Geoff Alpert, a leading expert on police misconduct.

“At the time of King it was just fortuitous that someone had a camera,” Alpert said. “Things are a whole lot more transparent now and if you’re going to do something stupid, then you’re going to pay for your stupidity.”