You could color me red when I read of the linking of that Colorado nutjob, James Holmes, to "Aurora." The latter should bring to mind instead the sun-forced and lovely aurora borealis and the St. Paul Winter Carnival and Ex Septentrione Lux which shed light on the military campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus and the Minnesota campus of Gustavus Adolphus.

 

With respect to the Russian cruiser, Aurora, we had the USS St. Paul during the Spainish-American War and our Nordic tradition of personal autonomy has long fostered  gay "cruising" in the Loring Park of Minneapolis. Many of our winter nights are far colder than "the coldest night of the year" during which some KBO behaviour in Hyde Park made Winston Churchill "proud to be British." 

 

While Vladimir Nabokov famously claimed that he was "as American as April in Arizona" (see also the shooting of former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords) and that "The flora, the fauna, the air of the western states, are my links with Asiatic and Arctic Russia," it is the flora and fauna of Minnesota and its often wintry days and nights in April which more closely resemble those of Siberia.

 

I'd like to be able to say (as one might say to Spock in the throes of pon farr) to Mr. Holmes, "You must be out of your vulcan mind!"

 

So Far From The Sun

& So Close To Canada,

King Boreas,

St. Paul, Minnesota

cc Aurora, Queen of the Snows,

Vulcanus Rex & His Vulcan Krewe

 

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(astronomy)