Kept in the Dark
I think one of the most depressing parts of winter is that we spend it cloaked in darkness. It's dark when you wake up to get ready for work. The afternoons are often overcast and everyone has to drive with their headlights on. It's dark when you drive home from work. You can go days without seeing any serious sunlight. In Michigan, you can pretty much put your sunglasses in the drawer in October and not pull them out again until April---if you're lucky. It's like in wintertime, we've all forgotten to pay the light bill. That's why, when you get a day of sunshine in the winter, your eyes hurt. You spend the day squinting. Everyone looks like Robert De Niro in every movie in which he's ever appeared. But there's something called the Winter Solstice, and we actually passed it a few weeks ago---December 21 to be exact. And when you pass the solstice, you're in for longer days, slowly but surely. When I was a kid, I remember folks talking abo...