The moon doesn't make its appearance over our neighbors' rooftop until about 35 minutes after moonrise.
Tonight's full moon fits the modern definition of a "blue moon." It's the second full moon of the month. An older definition of "blue moon" notes that it is the third full moon out of four within a season.
Is it possible to have only two full moons within three months? Go to earthsky.org for questions and answers about "blue moons" and full moons.
I could have announced a real tricentennial if only I had started to read this book (for the ... tenth? time) in July of last year.
"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below. ... The bridge seemed to be among the things that last forever; it was unthinkable that it should break. The moment a Peruvian heard of the accident he signed himself and made a mental calculation as to how recently he had crossed by it and how soon he had intended crossing by it again."
Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
This well-thumbed paperback has a very early review of the book on it first page noting that "THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY has its setting in Lima, Peru, two centuries ago."
It's time for another "unofficial" holiday. Today, March 30th, is National Pencil Day. I can't tell you who or what is responsible for the origin of this day, but it interests me as I try to fill in a part of my education. I've been learning about and experimenting with different grades of pencils for drawing. When thinking about pencils, most of us imagine the bright yellow, wood-encased instrument with a graphite tip and an eraser on the opposite end. We call these 'lead' pencils even though they do not contain lead. The 'lead' is really graphite that is mixed with varying amounts of clay to produce grades of hardness and blackness. In pencil grading a 6H is harder than a 4H which is harder than a 2H. The blackness grading scale is similar. My 8B pencil produces a blacker line than the 6B. There is also an F grade and this refers to a pencil that can be sharpened to a very fine point.
The image shown here gives you some idea of pencil gradations. If you look closely you may be able to see the paw prints of an inquisitive cat.
Pencils are great. You don't need electricity or a battery. Pencils will work even when held upside down. They won't freeze and they work under water (so I'm told).
You can find some notable pencil users in an internet search. Over 300 pencils were used in the writing of John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Vladimir Nabokov wrote and rewrote everything in pencil. In his 1957 novel Pnin (which I haven't read) there is a descriptive and well-imagined reference to the use of a pencil sharpener.
"With the help of the janitor he screwed onto the side of the desk a pencil sharpener -- that highly satisfying, highly philosophical implement that goes ticonderoga-ticonderoga, feeding on the yellow finish and sweet wood, and ends up in a kind of soundlessly spinning ethereal void as we all must."
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin [1957]
The calendar says that spring will be here tomorrow. The weather forecast doesn't encourage thoughts of vernal growth and greenery. Another snowstorm is headed our way.
"Spring is coming, didn't you know? Oh yes, it's up to ten below."
Anita McLean Washington
Saturday, March 14, 2015 will be a special day for pastry lovers and math fans. On 3/14/15 at 9:26:53 a.m. (and p.m.) the time and date will mirror the first ten numerals of the "transcendental" number, and mathematical constant, pi. This happens only once in a century. Pi represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. No matter how many times I read about transcendental numbers, I can't really understand what they are. I simply know that the term appeals to me. That's π.
Even if you loathed geometry class you might enjoy taking advantage of the specials at pastry and pizza shops on Pi Day.
Mr. Groundhog, you know there's another day in the bleak month of February that's even more widely observed than Groundhog Day. While you were snoozing away in your warm little den the world celebrated Valentine's Day. Wake up, Mr. Groundhog, you've got mail!
Oh, by the way, you were right about six more weeks of winter.
Once again Punxsutawney Phil, "prognosticator of all prognosticators," saw his shadow on Groundhog Day. So we're in for six more weeks of winter.
Saint Cecilia with an Angel
Orazio Gentileschi, around 1618 - 1621
.....but there's a problem. "I was expecting muffin crumbs or soft and chewy white bread crumbs and you brought me INSECTS for breakfast"?!!!
A juvenile House Sparrow or English Sparrow is begging to be fed. Their chirps are heard all over city streets at this time of year.
In 1936 Robert Frost published his poem "Two Tramps in Mud Time." Here is stanza 3 of that poem.
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off the frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.
Robert Frost, 1936
Rosa Bonheur was born on March 16, 1822. Her parents were followers of a movement that favored the education of girls alongside boys. Rosa's father was a painter and her mother taught piano. Rosa was taught to paint by her father and by the age of 14 she was making copies of paintings in the Louvre; this was a traditional way of study for artists over the centuries. Before setting out on her path as an artist and sculptor she copied the works of many artists she admired including Nicolas Poussin and Peter Paul Rubens.
Today Rosa Bonheur is regarded as an 'animalière,' an artist whose primary vision is the representation of animal forms in paintings and sculpture. Critics of her work complain that she did nothing to expand the boundaries of art; essayists seem more interested in her non-conformist clothing than in her painting.
I see in her work a a traditional and sensitive understanding of the intertwined lives of animals and humans; she represented animals as she saw them in the surrounding countryside. her work is skillfully executed and approaches an understanding of the animals themselves. Her representation of beauty lives on in the twenty-first century.
"Noonday Rest" by Rosa Bonheur
In 1921 Robert Frost published his poem "A Drumlin Woodchuck."
A Drumlin Woodchuck
One thing has a shelving bank,
Another a rotting plank,
To give it cosier skies
And make up for its lack of size.
My own strategic retreat
Is where two rocks meet,
And still more secure and snug,
A two-door burrow I dug.
With those in mind at my back
I can sit forth exposed to attack
As one who shrewdly pretends
That he and the world are friends.
All we who prefer to live,
Have a little whistle to give,
And flash, at the least alarm
We dive down under the farm.
We allow some time for guile
And don't come out for a while
Either to eat or drink
We take occasion to think.
And if after the hunt goes past
And the double-barreled blast
(Like war and pestilence
And the loss of common sense),
If I can with confidence say
That still for another day,
Or even another year,
I will be there for you, my dear,
t will be because though small
As measured against All,
I have been so instinctively thorough
About my crevice and burrow.
Robert Frost 1874 - 1963
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A winter landscape can look bleak and barren but it may contain the promise of plenty in the year to come.
Much has been written (and refuted) about the benefits of talking to your plants, singing to them, and even playing music to promote their healthy growth.
An old English custom involved wassailing the apple trees on the Eve of Epiphany. Workmen went from farm to farm with pitchers of cider. Following the farmer into the fields and orchards, they encircled the apple trees and sang toasts to them.
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"Here's to thee, old apple tree,
Whence thou mays't bud, and whence thou mays't blow!
And whence thou mays't bear apples enow!"
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"So well they might bloom, so well they might bear
That we may have apples and cider this year!"
A new field of scientific study is called 'plant neurobiology.' It seeks to answer questions of plant intelligence. Are plants capable of cognition, learning, communication with other plants, memory, response to environmental input, and information processing? The wassailers would answer with a definitive 'yes!'
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
"Pipe a song about a Lamb."
So I piped with merry cheer;
"Piper, pipe that song again."
So I piped; he wept to hear.
Songs of Innocence, [1789 - 1790]
Introduction, st. 1, 2
William Blake 1757 - 1827
To all my classmates, teachers, friends, and family who were together on that Friday afternoon and the days that followed: fifty years on and I still see you as though it were now.
We know that three hundred years before that day Shakespeare expressed our thoughts most clearly.
When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no heed to the garish sun.
Romeo and Juliet, III, ii, 21
Today, October 15th, is celebrated as the feast day of Saint Teresa of Avila. This portrait of her was painted by Peter Paul Rubens many years after her death.
Teresa died at Alba de Tormes in 1582. She died either shortly before midnight on October 4th or very early in the morning of October 15th. This was the time when much of Europe was switching from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and the transition required the removal of October 5 - 14 for that year.
In the twentieth century many women of intellect, including Beauvoir, tried to place Teresa in a pantheon of postmodern "subversives" within patriarchal power structures. For her daughters in Carmel, and her thousands of followers over nearly five centuries, Teresa's wit, courage, tenacity, and lively intelligence can't be confined or defined by academic theories.
It's almost Halloween and so it's time for the annual "guess how much this pumpkin weighs" contests. You find them all over the country - in stores and farmers' markets and parking lots. Sometimes it's just a large pumpkin sitting in the back of a pickup truck. This one, like so many enormous pumpkins, seems to have almost collapsed under its own weight. I wonder if this is the one that cartoon character Charlie Brown is always waiting for - The Great Pumpkin! Wait a minute! I think that Cinderella didn't make it home on time and the glitzy golden coach was turned back into a splendid and real orange pumpkin. A pumpkin like this one will make many pies and custards and make many people happy.
