This freefall thing sort of sucks. I know who I blame, and it’s not even an individual, but a whole cadre of evil MFers who are destroying the country and the society that I grew up loving and respecting and believing in.
So 2016 sucked, 2017 was bad, 2018 was really bad, 2019 just was a nightmare, and then January was horrible, February was worse, March felt like it was ten years of bad road, and now April…
It’s not you, April, it’s us. Truly. I’m sure you’re a perfectly good month that just happened to get corrupted and infected by a particularly bad case of MAGAts. You’ll get a chance to make up for it next year as we try to rebuild.
In the meantime, your more or less every other day reminder that there is beauty in the world, even if the news doesn’t show it, and that the bees and flowers and everything non-human are doing just fine.
Most of the roses just grow one at time – this one’s a three-fer!
Love this shade of red-orange-something.
It’s always surprising to me that two roses on the same plant can have such different subtle color variations.
Something about the depth of field and composition on this one grabbed my fancy!
April 29, 2013, first post. I think this year more than any other since then I can relate to how and why I started this site as my world was turning upside down and the foundations of my zeitgeist was crumbling. Only now it’s not just me.
Since then…
A couple of cancer surgeries in the family, both successful. My mother passing away.
Many, many, many trips. New York. Vermont. Virginia. Kansas City. Shanghai. Seoul. Kyoto.
Five NASA Socials. One total solar eclipse. Several lunar eclipses. Many pretty pictures of conjunctions and ISS passes.
Two new jobs and many new friends and challenges.
Many concerts and sporting events.
2,649 posts in 2,557 days. Some profound. Most not.
Thousands and thousands of pictures. A few videos, audio files, and supposedly clever Tweets.
And all of the folks who read and comment and have come along for the ride.
I try not to be boring. I’ll try harder next year.
Is everyone a little scattered, a little unfocused, a little off kilter?
The economy’s going into the toilet? Tens of thousands dead, headed toward hundreds of thousands, and it was 90% preventable if we didn’t have an evil, corrupt, ignorant cult in charge of our country? And we’re in our fifth (sixth?) week of working from home and sheltering in place?
Remember, this guy doesn’t give a shit. He’s giving me the side eye because I have that whole “much bigger than you and a potential predator” thing going for me and he would be just as happy to not be eaten, but COVID-19 and the GOP? Nada. Zip. Zilch.
However, on a more upbeat note, especially regarding lizards…
First of all, if you’re on Twitter and you like lizards, you should be following @Afro_Herper, who tweets out a ton of interesting things about lizards. She’s delightful! Even better, every Wednesday afternoon she posts a picture on Twitter and we play #FindThatLizard, sort of a “Where’s Waldo?” with scales and a tail.
After watching a bunch of lizards running around the yard yesterday, we had this exchange:
@Afro_Herper A question from this afternoon’s lizard watching time (there were four of them running around the back yard) – why do they do “push ups?” They’re fence lizards in Los Angeles – I always see them pausing to pump up and down like they’re doing push ups. Why?
It’s how they communicate with one another to defend territory and attract mates!
— Dr. Earyn McGee, Lizard lassoer 🦎 (@Afro_Herper) April 28, 2020
They love to communicate "It's MY rock!" If territorial enough, they will even challenge non lizards doing the same motion.
— Dr. Sarah, Lizard Lassoer (@SauroloSarah) April 28, 2020
I truly never expected to be motivated to go out on the porch and do push ups in order to provoke an eight-inch long fence lizard into a dance off for territorial superiority.
For the next few days, the moon will be gorgeous and getting closer to Venus and then moving past it. If you didn’t see it tonight, look tomorrow, or Monday, or Tuesday…
Even early after sunset, way before it’s dark, you’ll spot the moon in the blue sky. It’s almost ludicrous how bright Venus is as well. I spotted it in the blue sky just a few minutes after sunset, when it was till plenty bright enough to read outside.
Tomorrow the moon will be a little more illuminated and will appear closer to where Venus is.
As it gets darker you’ll see other stars coming out. Just off to the left in this view is Orion, and just a bit higher than Venus you’ll see Castor and Pollux in the constellation Gemini.
To the left of the moon (on the left side of that palm tree) is Aldebaran. Once it gets a little bit more dark, you should be able to easily spot the Pleiades. (Remember?)
Thirty years ago today the space shuttle Discovery launched with the Hubble Space Telescope onboard. It was placed into low Earth orbit the next day. Despite the problems that were discovered when the first pictures came down, Hubble became an astonishing success. Not only has it given us over 1,400,000 observations which have revolutionized astronomy, the crewed space shuttle missions to repair and later repeatedly upgrade the instruments on Hubble have been a truly amazing example of what a trained crew can accomplish in space.
In honor of that 30-year anniversary, NASA, ESA, and STSci have released this image of “the Cosmic Reef.” In it we see NGC 2020 (the large, red nebula) and NGC 2014 (the smaller, blue nebula).
(Image from NASA, ESA, and STSci)
These star-forming regions are part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of ours that is 163,000 light years away.
In addition, a video about the image has been released by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
This means a lot to me, for so many reasons. Among them is the fact that for the 25th anniversary of Hubble’s launch, I attended my fifth NASA Social, this one in Washington, D.C. For that event, NASA released this image of Westerlund 2.
(NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team)
(Here, here, here, here, here, here, and here are my posts from that NASA Social – other posts from around that time show pictures from my amazing sightseeing expeditions around Washington.)
When this picture was first revealed to the world, it was displayed on a huge video screen right over my head in the lobby of the Newseum,
I was sitting in the second row, behind three astronauts, one of whom was the head of NASA at the time.
(Astronaut and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden was seated in front of me – he was a crew member on STS-31 which launched Hubble thirty years ago. Loren Shriver was seated at right – he commanded STS-31. Scott Altman is the one on the left who was walking toward us – he was the mission commander for STS-109 and STS-125, the fourth and fifth Hubble servicing missions.)
That afternoon was spent at Goddard where, among other über cool activities, I got to hold and play with one of the actual tools that was used in space to do perform one of the instrument upgrades.
Oh, and we got to see the Hubble’s successor, the Webb Space Telescope, which should launch next year.
Yeah. That was a pretty great day.
So, Happy Birthday, Hubble! Here’s to a few more years of service, and maybe even more if us clever little apes can figure out a way to service you again even without the Space Shuttle!
Week Number Four? Five? Five, I think, but it might be four. Didn’t we have this discussion last night? Or was it the night before?
Time is not what it was. I’m thinking of Tom Hanks’ character on that island with the volleyball after being so clock driven and time obsessed while working for FedEx. This might not be quite that extreme. But there are days…
And yet, the flowers don’t care. All they know is the days are longer, warmer, there’s water, there are bees. It’s time.
Quarantine Day #26? Maybe? I should check and see when this started here…
Anyway, people online have been complaining about needing haircuts, including the subhuman cretins out “protesting” (by which I mean they’re following the right-wing cult leaders who lead them around by the short hairs) about “opening up” the states. Sorry, that got away from me…
Anyway, people online have been complaining about needing haircuts and I know the feeling. I normally keep my hair short and it was about time for a haircut when everything got shut down, so four weeks down the road I’m even shaggier. It’s not that I don’t like how I look – geez, have you people every actually met me? No, it’s that it gets to be a pain in the ass to take care of, it tickles, it just starts to bug me.
Fortunately, I don’t have a complex haircut requirement. Buzz cut, all over. I’ve said for years, if I could see the back to trim it up a little I wouldn’t even bother going to SuperCuts or Great Clips or Fantastic Sam’s or wherever it’s fastest and cheapest.
Time to test that theory.
The clippers came today, the instructions were scanned enough to verify that they could be ignored, the light was fading, and I went out into the back yard to cut my own hair!
Of course, I did it live on Facebook. Because a little bit of harmless insanity goes a long way these days.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 