elainegrey

Faced with the removal of the Yuletide fire hazard from the house and its array of lights, i bought some LED candles.  These will join the branch i wrapped with LED lights last year as all year glowing cheer. The lengthening days are wonderful, but it's still very dark in the mornings. This morning i was greeted by a crescent moon low to the south and the big dipper overhead -- and probably a Starlink satellite from a new train of them zipping overhead.  There's still patches of icy snow on the back deck, around the house in the pines' shade, but much melted by the time i walked Carrie down the hill after work yesterday. The creek still has big areas of ice.

One of those seven commitments was to be aware of my creating power, with the prompt claiming that by creating we can see ourselves as actors and not passive consumers. In the last week i created

• scientific data with CoCoRhas contribution
• requirements at work which translates into keeping libraries effective.
• a sketch as part of emotional care at work (and possibly some other sketches)
• a lovely dinner on Sunday with orange butter sauce over seared bay scallops
• a loaf of my breakfast bread
• a meditation for motivation to try to help me get moving

The eclipse was not late, as eclipses go. Christine was able to get up a couple years ago to watch one in California. I'm not up for disturbing my sleep in the middle of the night, but this wasn't *that* late. Later than i normally stay up, but i'm sure i had six solid hours of sleep.


On a large enough screen you might be able to see Orion towards the right. The fully eclipsed moon left the sky dark and didn't blow out this image.

It was a cold night, but Christine struck on the idea of sitting in the car and getting the car toasty, so that worked admirably with the small exception that only one of us was able to sit in a relaxed position to watch. Oh, for a moon roof. Still, rather amazing to watch the night grow darker, the stars pop out of a moon blue sky, and eventually the moon turn red. (The shadow was in too much contrast to pick up color for quite a while.)



A hand held shot with lots of blur, but the red shows up.

The shots are nothing like the naked eye experience. We have a 200° x 150° visual field, per wikipedia, and the moon is just 1° wide. Yet we can focus on the detail within that 1° and (in my case) be aware there is more detail on the surface. (I can barely resolve stars in the seven sisters, so I know other people have sharper naked eye vision.) It takes the 10x magnification on the phone camera to begin to get the sense of visual size, yet that cuts off so much of the view. And when the phone widens out to the greatest field, the moon becomes a tiny dot.

In my memory, the last ten minutes before totality were striking as the bright penumbral light was still overwhelming the rest of the moon lost in the umbra. Then, at totality, the moon took on such a strange quality: how could something brighter than night black seem like a hole in the sky?

The most remarkable part of the experience for me was the change of light in the landscape. The full moon light, even in the penumbra, had been so bright i was able to get a sense of color in the yard. The sky was glowing and one could hardly see stars. As the umbra crossed the face of the moon the sense of an illuminated landscape faded, the stars became brighter, and neightbors' lights cast shadows through the trees.

This morning, Venus and Jupiter were bright, but i woke too late to see if they cast shadows. They are also low enough in the sky that they are lost in the trees. Tomorrow is their conjunction.

Went to bed early; woke on time. Christine worked late into the night, so hopefully she's escaped the migraine pattern.

I went out after making tea to look at the predawn sky and listen. Stars! It's clear! I look forward to the sun rise and some daylight. I think the creek that runs behind our house creates a marshy or pond-like area in the large wood lot beside us because i hear frogs from that direction and not from the closer larger branch of the creek.

I fantasize about buying the 75 acre wood lot next to us from the hunting folks. I'd get a nice southern exposure going down to the creek and a long stretch of creek (with wherever the frogs sing) and could eradicate the additional invasive species (vinca, sigh)....

Speaking of invasive species, i found more tree of heaven in the back. I'm hoping pulling saplings out of the soaked ground will be effective -- those seem to have been starting from blown seeds, not an underground network of roots. The first tick from last year was March 10th. Going back in the woods will rapidly become less attractive once those things are about.

I am apparently scared of doing the thing i need to do to create the demo for the presentation, leading to a bit of procrastination. I'll need to get around that shortly.