It's been a while since I posted end of the month photos. It has been an interesting month with fires and light, and not much opportunity for getting out and taking a good long look around. This is what things looked like in September.
 |
| Reflective Birds at the Marsh |
 |
| Iridescent Clouds |
 | ||
| Hints of a Cloud Shadow |
 |
| Corona Skies |
 |
| The biggest spider web in our yard |
 |
| Smoky skies of 9/29 morning |
 |
| A screenshot of air quality here on 9/28-- Ugh |
We are overwhelmed with dread and fear about the future. So... what do we do? We find things that take our minds off such heartbreaking things. A dear friend posted this image on Facebook:
What an interesting thing to consider. Is it possible that Stonehenge and Easter Island are truly at opposite ends of the earth like this? How would we find out. Roger set out to discover the truth of such an idea. He spent some time getting the coordinates and trying to place them on an imaginary globe in his mind. Then he discovered a website called Antipodes Map. Oh what fun that is. If you go to the link it will show you two maps. You enter the information about a place, like Stonehenge or the city where you live, and it will show you what is directly on the other side of the earth from you.
The answer to the question is it true that
Stonehenge and Easter Island are directly opposite each other is NO.
Now, go and see what's on the other side of of earth from where you are
sitting. See how much fun that is? And for five minutes we didn't think
about you know who or our future or anything else!
Today would've been my mother's 95th birthday. It's only been 2 1/2 years since she left us, and my siblings and I miss her everyday. I wrote my sibs and told them that I wanted to post a song for mom for my Friday Music posts. I asked them what song I should pick. And so a wonderful loving discussion ensued about all the music she and our dad loved. I was leaning towards something by Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman. My sister recalled how much our mother loved Neil Diamond and how she fantasized about seeing him in concert. My twin brother recalled that she loved Barbra Streisand. My older brother and I remembered all the albums of Broadway show tunes we had in the house and grew up listening to. Which song? Which song? It was hard to choose until the phone rang. It was my brother calling from Virginia. I picked it up, "Hello Marc, what's up..." He started singing this song.
So a loving happy 95th birthday wish to our mom, we shout out to the universe.
The air started to clear a bit a few days ago, so we went for our early morning walks. It's interesting to look back at these photos and see what we considered clearer air.
 |
| Sunrise September 15 |
 |
| Sunrise September 16 |
 |
| Radiation Fog Sunrise September 16 |
 |
| Ah really clear air September 18 |
 |
| Moon, looking west September 19 |
The few days of clear skies have been so good and uplifting in every way. We may be getting more smoke in the next few days, but we're hoping it won't be as bad as it's been.
I am purposefully avoiding writing about politics here. It's really all too much, and you all know how we feel about all of it.
I had never heard this song before a dear friend posted it on Facebook. It is so beautiful and especially in these times when the forests are burning. It is a love song to our ancient redwoods.
... from a satellite view.
I annotated this photo with an arrow to show where we are in relation to the smoky coast and the surrounding fires. On Monday we actually had some sunshine, although the air was still an unhealthy mess. We went for a walk for the first time since last Wednesday morning when the skies were dark red all day. It felt so good to get out of the house. I wore two masks, one to protect me from Covid and one to protect me from all the smoke. I figured that the double protection would make me feel less crazy about being out there. We'll see how that works out. The news reports are saying that we may get rain some time later in the week which may clear up the air here. We're hoping. Not much in the way of photographic opportunities, but believe me, it's been gray in every direction for as far as the eyes can see. Dark enough to make us turn on the lights during the day. If you've ever wondered what a dystopian future looks like, wonder no more... it's happening right here right now.
Before I publish this post I'll share this story with you. I
mentioned last week that old friends of Roger's lost their home in one
of the fires in the mountains north east of us. We heard the details of
it the other day. The wife got out and traveled the back roads into
Oregon while her husband stayed to quickly gather things before he fled.
The house caught on fire and was incinerated in 15 minutes. He wisely
got out fast enough and drove his car into an open green meadow on their
property and kept the engine and air conditioning running. He was there
for three hours. He was rescued by his two sons-in-law, both forest
service workers, who made their way to him. He suffered some burns but
survived. The fire he was in is the one that is burning on the
California/Oregon border. Just one of the millions of acres burning in
our western states.
I thought about not posting any music today. With all that is going on in California and the west coast with fires; Roger's daughter Indigo under evacuation orders and fleeing with her daughter Luna, her doggie Lulu, and a trailer full of horses and pigs; friends whose house in the mountains burned down; major highways that connects us to the rest of the state closed for four days; with all of that it seemed a bit silly to post music.
I did photograph the unbelievably crazy skies here
on Wednesday. It was truly a sight all day that astonished us. From
Santa Cruz to Oregon the skies were a sunset red orange all day. All
day. I know there have been photos all over the news about, and truly it
was an amazing thing to behold. I tried to photograph it, but I could
never tell if I was capturing the intensity of it.
I
did post the above photo on Facebook. I took that at 8:15 in the
morning, two hours past sunrise. I tried for the rest of the day to get a
true sense of it all. Here's a screenshot of some of the photos. I
included three shots of the rising sun from the day before. Certainly a
harbinger of what was coming.
I could do a whole lengthy post about the nightmare of my new
MacBook Air, which as I type this is at Fed-Ex awaiting its journey back
to Apple. The battery broke within 4 days of its arrival. To say I am
exhausted by this computer BS would be an understatement. I actually started wondering why I even buy these ridiculously
expensive pieces of computing machinery to just be able to remotely
socialize with people and read the heartbreaking news. I'm pretty sure
this latest computing adventure has me questioning our entire modern
world. It's insane. (I'm still using my eleven year old Mac, and it works!)
So here instead are a few photos of something we saw on our early morning walk last week. People often leave things out on the sidewalk for others to take. This was a whole new level of thing.
And this is why I have a computer... to show you things you'll never see anywhere else.
I didn't have a song in mind for today. I've been sidetracked by my brand new MacBook Air that arrived Wednesday evening. I decided not to download any stuff from my old computers or even our very reliable backup drive. I chose to rebuild from scratch. It's challenging and time consuming and ridiculous, but I did not want to in any way reintroduce any files that were bad. I have a long story I'll tell you about how long this computer issue has been going on. Let's just say I was on the Apple website in mid July when I decided to try something new. Since that day I've been using a ten-year old Mac. Here we are. So, when I didn't have a song to post, I was going to just write I don't have a song. Then I remembered this.
I looked out the window early in the morning and noticed this
vulture. It was preening and striking some interesting poses that made
me laugh and wonder if it was doing vulture yoga. I wish I had gotten
clearer photos, but lately they've all been a bit blurry.
