Spring At Last

March Madness has nothing to do with basketball in this household. While I relish the beginning of spring and enjoy a brief respite between frigid cold and oppressive heat, my work-life becomes a morass of grading and preparation marked by an even briefer "break" between quarters.

Things are worse this year, because winter's "gift" of snow days has left me with two classes for which I had to arrange an alternative meeting date, and for which some material couldn't be made up. My poor Intro to Humanities class was good humored (especially when I forgot that I'd arranged to meet them at the Dallas Museum of Art last Sunday to make up for the extra snow day), but a bit dazed by our last meeting. I tried to smooth things over with sushi and other nibbles as we performed a modified Popul Vuh and they showed off their projects for the quarter. But now I have to revise the next version of the class to avoid any potential confusion, especially since it's an eight o'clocker on Monday mornings. At least this next class will begin when we're well into Spring's promise, and (barring really weird conditions) won't have to worry about snow.

The universe is helping. Once again we got a spectacular heavenly display, this time at the equinox when we enjoyed a "super" perigee moon. Beloved Spouse and I snapped on the telephoto lens and set the tripod up in several locations, hoping to get a decent shot. The next morning (on the equinox itself) the moon was still visible, but it had gone cloudy so I couldn't get a dawn version. The opening shot for this post was one of the first I took, hand-held, and thus rather fuzzy. But I liked the effect of the tree "cradling" the rising moon. By the time we got the one below, the clouds were gone and we had the camera on a tripod. I'm pretty sure the Beloved Spouse took this one.

And then, of course, the House Clock performed on schedule, as the sun rose for the first time this year through the east window of the dining room, spilling sun on everything. A couple of days later I noticed another potential feature tied to the equinox: the possibility that the sun reaches from the front (glass) door to the back of the house for the first time on the first day of Spring. I'll have to wait a year to test it, but on the 22nd I noticed a straight line of sunlight. It may have appeared earlier, but I just didn't notice.

At any rate, the photos provided me with my first Skywatch Friday entry in weeks. And since I'll undoubtedly be out of commission next week, this may be it for another fortnight. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Skywatch Friday: Fall Has Fell

The various heavenly activities occurring over the last few days have made the night sky pretty interesting. Even so, I've only managed cheap shots with no tripod (I'm now thinking of setting it up and keeping it ready) that do a lousy job of capturing the conjunction of Jupiter and the Harvest Moon. Nonetheless, I had to try, and of the dozen or so shots I took, these are the best--this one from last night just as the moon was rising above the house and Jupiter peeked through the leaves (the same leaves I'll be raking in another week if the weather folk are correct).

I got it in the back yard--after standing in the middle of the street in front, risking my very life to try and get a cleaner view, to no avail.

This morning I looked out the upstairs window at about 6 am to see if the moon were still up, and since it was still well above the trees I took my time--made the bed, opened the shades--before going downstairs, grabbing the camera, and heading back out. By then, however, the clouds had started interfering, and this is what I got. Fuzzy and weird, but kind of interesting. It's pretty hard to tell that it's the moon, but again, no tripod.

And finally, a word about the House Clock. I actually remembered to shoot the last appearance of the rising sun in my dining room window on Wednesday morning, on the last day of summer. Some of you may remember that it first appears in that window on the first day of spring. I love this odd seasonal reminder, and it only took me about two years of living in the house to notice it. The almost indiscernible object in the lower half of the photo is my telescope, which languishes in that corner for most of the year.

Like my distant Celtic ancestors, I've always been conscious of phenological signs and celestial markers that point me through the year. So living in a house aimed in the right direction (facing east) and blessed with a serendipitous architectural feature suits me just fine.

I'm hoping to put the telescope to better use now that I've got a nifty app for the iPad, Star Walk, that tells me what's going on overhead. It really works, and its super cool. I need a more powerful (and digital) telescope to do any serious capturing of heavenly bodies, but that's something to look forward to.

Happy autumn, happy Friday, Folks.

Home Fires

Friday, after the previous night's lovely Thanksgiving meal at our daughter's loft, we celebrated my night off (I usually teach my Visual Anthropology class from 6-10 pm) by building a fire and enjoying the balmy evening.

I had been out with the camera taking shots of frolicking squirrels (to be posted next Friday for Skywatch) and when the Beloved Spouse came out bearing my evening adult beverage, he suggested that we just enjoy the weather and use up some of the brush pile while we were at it.

This fire pit (the successor to the one our neighbor's tree demolished) has been the centerpiece of several enjoyable moments when the weather's been cool enough. But we don't burn things frequently because as peaceful and primal as they are, wood fires pollute. The only thing that justifies the occasional pit or hearth fire is the fact that we try so hard to reduce our particulate emission elsewhere. In addition, all of the wood we burn comes from this property: mostly fallen pecan branches, but other trees contribute as well.

So we sat sipping wine, and later I brought out a plate of Grandma's dinner rolls, cheese, and apples. Despite the three huge streetlights in the neighborhood, the main illumination came from the waxing gibbous moon, and quite a few stars were visible. They were the usual culprits, but at one point we noticed a star-like object moving across the sky rather quickly. I remembered the satellites my Grandmother and I used to watch from her porch in Lone Pine, and wondered if that's what we were watching. Then it struck me: this was the International Space Station, which a bulletin from Space Weather had noted was going to be visible in our area over the next few days.

After it was gone, I went in to check, and sure enough, according to the Flybys page, we had been treated to something I hadn't seen before, and will be looking forward to spotting more frequently. Too bad we missed the double-flyby when Atlantis was still in the vicinity of the Station. But this was good enough for now. It'll be clear again tonight, so we may get another chance--but the temperature has dropped significantly, and the evening won't exactly be as amenable to sitting out.

I think that what strikes me about noticing tiny details in the sky is the rather poetical connection with our distant ancestors. Hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists all over the world were far more aware of the night sky than we (who can't often even see much of it), and relied on it, surely wondered about it, and were probably quite a bit more amazed by it than folks are in so-called civilized modern times.

Never mind that the object I was watching is a product of our highest levels of technology: it's still a wonder, and it still amazes me. When I can get out where there aren't three gi-normouse mercury vapor street lamps generating another kind of pollution (light), I have a hard time not gazing for hours at the heavens.

The low-tech pleasure of sitting next to a wood fire ties me to our primal past. But I'm also reminded of Jack London's melancholy tale (To Build a Fire) of a man in the wild, realizing the enormous value of fire to human survival. And I can't help but cheer for the dog at the end of the story, who doesn't need the fire and who knows instinctively how to make it through the cold.

As comforted as I was as I sat enjoying the company of my husband and my own dogs, I also knew that the following day I'd be reading about political squabbling and human misery, and would undoubtedly wonder (as I'm doing now) about whether or not we really know any more of real use than we did when we were still few, fragile, and much more mindful of the environment in which we lived.

The fire pit itself points to another irony. We bought it from Smith & Hawken, which was originally focused on craftsmanship and sustainability, but was sold to the Miracle-Gro people a few years back. By then it had gone through several owners and ended up a kind of cartoon version of itself. It's now being closed, which it richly deserves, and so if another tree falls on this one, I guess I'll have to just bang it back into shape and make do. Had I realized that the original owners of the company had urged a boycott after it was acquired by an outfit that espouses chemical pollution on a grand scale, I probably would never have replaced the first one.

Still, there's something unmistakably pleasant and reassuring about enjoying a fire, even when it's burned down to the coals and is getting ready to go out. The warmth abides, and follows us back into the house. I'm pretty sure I sleep better afterwards, too. And there are still a few Sunday-morning fireplace moments to look forward to over the winter--even though we limit those as well.