Festival and Games

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Help Titania!

Titania, queen of the fairies, is enchanted to fall in love with the first living thing that she sees - which happens to be Bottom, now sporting the head of a donkey due to the mischief of Puck. To release Titania from enchantment Oberon must drop the juice of a certain flower on Titania's eyes. Puck is sent to gather the flowers.

Please help Puck in his quest! There are six flowers of the right kind hidden on this site - and a few weedy imposters as well. Click on the flowers as you find them. The flowers each lead to a letter of the alphabet - when you've found them all, arrange the letters to make a word. That's the filename of the page where you will release Titania from the spell and receive your award! The award is a graphic for your site.

For example, if the letters were "eflorw," (they aren't) the word would be "flower" and the page would be "flower.html."

More Geogames!

Checkers Challenge - still underway at Holiday Inn

How to Celebrate Midsummer

Build a huge bonfire. Ancient peoples welcomed the sun to his highest ascendance with great bonfires, which some kept burning for days. In Finland, the bonfire is called a "kokko" and wood for it is collected through the year. Traditionally Finnish maidens go naked into the fields at midsummer, collecting wildflowers. In Finland and in Sweden, if you pick seven different flowers, you will dream of your future love.

In Sweden, the symbol of Midsummer is the "midsommarstoeng", a giant cross, clad in birch-leaves and decorated with flowers. Everyone young and old dances around the cross all afternoon and into the night.

Treasure the Earth - As the fiery sun begins his descent towards darkness, our attention turns to the now fertile "goddess" Earth. Crops are growing and we look forward to an abundant harvest.

Read a poem at midnight - by natural light, if you are fortunate to live in a city of the far north.

Attend a concert or ballet - as do the people of St. Petersburg, Russia, where the summer solstice is celebrated during the last 10 days of June with art, performance, and music in the famous White Nights Festival. Check the midnight sky over St. Petersburg via Live Cam which looks down the Moika River towards Nevsky Prospekt.

In the United States, wait two weeks for Independence Day, the 4th of July, when Americans celebrate summer with parades, picnics, and fireworks.

Just For Fun

The Shakespeare Sonnet Quiz -Rhyme with the Bard

Oh Damn! Must I Refrigerate? - "The Marriage of True Minds" - an anagram

Lost Scrim, Sue Me - "Summer Solstice" in the anagram generator

Shakespearean Insult - When your foe is too scurrilous for ordinary words.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Charles and Mary Lamb

Midsummer / Summer Solstice - on this site