Figure 1 – The Year of the Horse, 2004 celebration in Belmore Park, Sydney, Australia. Picture by J Bar from the Wikimedia Commons and published under  GNU Free Documentation License.

I want to wish all of our friends and readers who celebrate Chinese New Year, Happy Year of the Horse.  If you have the opportunity to visit a Chinese New Year celebration, I recommend that you bring camera in hand.  These are exciting, color, and motion filled events.  A number of places on the web are offering up stunning photoessays of New Year celebrations around the world, see for instance this one from the BBC.  I am particularly taken by an AP image of the underwater festivities at Singapore’s South East Asia Aquarium.

Back in the sixties my father was a popular science teacher at Charles Sumner Junior Hight School (JHS 65) in New York City, which served New York’s Chinatown area.  On Chinese New Year, we would go down and watch the parades and dancing dragons.  It was insane.  Firecrackers were everywhere, and a particular sport was exploding them within inches of Mr. Wolf’s face.  Ah, those were the days.  I always think of that on the Fourth of July during our local parade, when the staff of our neighborhood restaurant “Lotus Blossom” come by dressed as a giant dragon.

So Happy New Year everyone!