June! Not the shortest month, no, but for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere June 21, the summer solstice, gives us the year’s earliest sunrise, latest sunset. And the next day the earth’s axis begins its tilt towards winter.

Every year on the solstice my dad would intone, “Won’t be long ’til frost.” Some years he’d say instead, “Won’t be long until time to shovel snow.” These days, with climate change affecting the earth so dramatically, it can be wintry one day in May, positively scorching a day later.

Alzheimer’s Disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the in the U.S., seventh in the world.

For a number of years the whole of June has been known as Alzheimer’s Month, with the summer solstice date highlighted. On June 21, “…people from across the world will fight the darkness of  Alzheimer’s through a fundraising activity of their choice.”

This year the Alzheimer’s Association closed registration June 5, but it isn’t too late to organize an activity in your community, your neighborhood, your work cohort to raise money to help fund research for the sixth most deadly disease in this country, the seventh most deadly in the world

Although I’m fascinated by the stories and the mystique of the summer solstice, the winter solstice too for that matter, I’m almost never awake at sunrise and I often go to bed not long after sunset even in summer! But in 2004 when Peter and I traveled to Norway, The Land of the Midnight Sun—my trip- pick because I’d always wanted to see the midnight sun on June 21—we actually weren’t able to book our trip to include the exact date. Nevertheless, I sat up most nights just because I wanted to experience the bright sky at midnight.

This year sunrise on July 21 is at 6:00:09 a.m., sunset at 8:45:46 p.m. I’ll try to be awake at sunset.