Just Delicate Needles
It’s so delicate, the light.
And there’s so little of it. The dark
is huge.
Just delicate needles, the light,
in an endless night.
And it has such a long way to go
through such desolate space.
So let’s be gentle with it.
Cherish it.
So it will come again in the morning.
We hope.
— Rolf Jacobsen
Translated from the Norwegian by Robert Hedin
December Birthdays
December 4 Arthur Prior (New Zealand, born 1914)
December 7 Gabriel Marcel (French, born 1889), Noam Chomsky (American, born 1928), and Lady Anne Conway (British, born 1631)
December 9 Ernest Gellner (Czech, born 1925)
December 11 Michael Oakeshott (British, born 1901)
December 12 Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (Polish, born 1890)
December 16 George Santayana (Spanish, born 1863)
December 20 Suzanne Langer (American, born 1895)
December 21 Peter Kropotkin (Russian, born 1842)
December 30 Charlie Dunbar Broad (British, born 1887)
Jana Mohr Lone is the director and founder of the University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children, an academic research center dedicated to research and practice in philosophy for children and philosophy of childhood, and she is an Affiliate Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington. Jana is the author of Seen and Not Heard (2021) and The Philosophical Child (2012). She co-authored the textbook Philosophy in Education: Questioning and Dialogue in Schools (2016) and co-edited the collection of essays Philosophy and Education: Introducing Philosophy to Young People (2012). Since 1995 she has taught philosophy in classrooms from preschool to college and beyond. A frequent writer and speaker about precollege philosophy, Jana is the founding president of PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization) and the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Questions: Philosophy for Young People. Follow her on Twitter: @JanaMohrLone