equinox 
EQ takes the Earth Day idea – and doubles it.
Equinoxes are Earth Days, and come around every spring and autumn
By pledging twice a year to SPRING INTO ACTION and TURN OVER A NEW LEAF at equinox, we will accelerate towards a sustainable post-carbon future.
Equinoxes are universally and uniquely suited to be Earth Action Days:
1) Equinoxes are true planet events
Fixed events in Earth’s orbit around the sun.
2) At equinox we are equal under the sun*
Equal day and night – 12 hours – wherever you are on the planet
How will you Spring into action and Turn over a new leaf? Make your Pledge Card and share your ideas here
Beneath and beyond two good slogans and these pledges lie the unique qualities of equinoxes*; these can activate Earth Days anew, helping us rise to the challenge of the biosphere/climate crisis: Continue reading
This is No 3 in a sequence of 6 prepared for EQ a while back by Jonny Biggins, CEO of The Book of Everyone. They will show in rotation at the top of the site. Can’t wait for the next instalment? Click here
Our climate and biosphere are now universally recognised to be in crisis, as this chart* of 1000 years of ice core and 50 years of atmospheric data starkly shows, and as we all experience the exponential realities of pandemic infection. Humanity’s influence is causal in both instances – again, beyond reasonable doubt. Continue reading
EQ doubles up Earth Day by coupling Spring and Autumn Equinoxes and making twinned Earth Days each year. But equinoxes, being actual Earth Days rather than arbitrary calendar events, are also excellent prompts for clear, rational and logical thinking. Hence a post about this great book, published in 1930. Continue reading
26-10-19, 09.17 UTC (Earthtime). Many humanoids will “fall back”* to a logically correct time tonight, when they set their clocks to approximate to the solar noon of their slice of planet Earth’s surface. This is wise, for they have been getting up increasingly in the dark, Continue reading
The Autumn equinox coincides with my last day with the Royal Opera on tour in Japan. We will have just performed the thrilling opening sequence of Verdi’s Otello in Tokyo at the moment of equinox – UK readers will be having breakfast (08.50 BST). Whatever, wherever, whenever… Happy Equinox! Continue reading
Note: March 2020. A YouTube video about the EQ logo, the Golden Ratio – Phi – and the Fibonacci series is delayed by lockdown. Meanwhile, enjoy a 2017 memoir and excursion into time, space and music…
Stephen Hawking is 75! Indomitable doesn’t come close to describing his life.
He became a research fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge shortly before I joined as an undergraduate. Continue reading
Equinoxes are the ideal time to exercise the habit of zooming out into space and back in our imaginations. It’s a good, humbling way of sensing our interdependence, of our equality-under-the-sun. This is from a reading given at St Clement Danes Church, London, in the 2018 Christmas Concert of the young choir Coro.
Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to leave Earth’s orbit and head up and out into deeper space. The astronauts were Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders and they orbited the moon ten times during December 24, 1968. Continue reading
These words of the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead – who with others 50 years ago in 1969 chose this fixed event in the calendar to be the first Earth Day – apply precisely to the equinox.
The Spring Equinox is a natural Earth Day, with a host of advantages built in. Not only that, it has a twin on the other side of the year: the Autumnal Equinox (September 23). Continue reading
Happy Summer Solstice (not summer equinox, as Justin Webb had it this morning on @BBCR4Today). The Swedes get the equinoxes and the solstices – as do all high latitude peoples – and today these ancient rocks will be hosting al fresco parties, for they are at the end of the island of Smögen, a popular and picturesque shrimping port, and party venue. Continue reading
” ..but, eternally having sunshine in equal nights and in equal days, the good receive a less toilsome life, not vexing the earth or the water of the sea with the strength of their hands to achieve a meagre sustenance; instead, in the presence of the honoured Gods, those who delighted in keeping their oaths pass a tearless existence…”*
So recited Pindar, in his Olympian Ode 2 Continue reading
This mugshot¹ displays one of many slogans that attach naturally and convincingly to EQ. On the other side: Spring into Action.
The autumn equinox is a time for renewal even while leaf-fall reminds us of the natural cycle of decay. Continue reading