Space cadet | Family dude | Photographer | Music lover | Traveler | Science fiction fan | Hugo Award nominee | Writer | 5x NASA Social participant | KC Chiefs fan | LA Kings fan | Senior Director of Finance & Administration for ALS Network | Member & former staff Finance Officer at the Commemorative Air Force SoCal Wing | Hard core left-wing liberal | Looking for whatever other shenanigans I can get into
Back in the 1970’s, Mount Ascutney in Vermont was a leading location for those experimenting with hang gliders. To this day, there are side trails off of the four primary trails up and down the mountain that lead to launch sites.
From the observation tower at the top of the mountain, I spotted the tiniest dot in the big sky, a rainbow wing of a paraglider.
(To Pat, the nice park ranger I met up there, who was asking about the difference betweeen a paraglider and a parasail, I apologize for getting it backwards. This is a paraglider, a parasail is typically towed behind a boat. My bad!)
Click on it. Blow it up, I’m giving everyone the full-sized file.
We’re looking east, across the Connecticut River into New Hampshire. I believe that’s Mount Monadanock in southern New Hampshire.
As good as this view was, I’ll bet that our flyer had a better one.
Last Friday was the solstice, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the start of astronomical summer. It also happened to be a full moon, the “Strawberry Moon.”
Here it is, rising in the east over Encino in the distance and Griffith Park beyond that. Not the Sun, but orange for the same reason as sunset or sunrise is so orange – the passage of that white light through miles and miles of thick atmosphere.
There are a ton of truly spectacular professional photographs out there with the rising, full, Strawberry Moon and mountains, landmarks, and spectacular scenery captured as well. I’m just amazed that anyone with a recent model cell phone can do something like this with little to no planning or skill.
We have hawks all the time overhead, ususally red-tail hawks soaring overhead and sometimes getting closer, plus red-shouldered hawks in the pine trees on the hill below us, and the occasional Cooper’s hawk. Plus both great horned owls and barn owls.
The red-shouldered hawks seem to have taken over for the moment. There’s the one that can be seen or heard pretty much daily for the last several months. But since we got back home from our Vermont trip, the screeching of the red-shoulder hawks has been almost constant from before sunrise until after sunset. I do love the hawks, but it would be nice if they would shut up for a while every now and then.
There also seem to be more than just the one. Every day this week I’ve been able to hear at least two of them screeching from different directions, and once I could hear two while watching a third. I suspect there’s at least one nest being constructed somewhere in the neighborhood.
Tonight I saw one of them sitting in a tree just off of the edge of the hill, so I went to take pictures.
It was sitting in the shade (not stupid – it was HOT out there today) and about the time I started zooming in, I was surprised to see a second hawk sitting with it. Do you see it?
After making more racket, the one on the left, in the deep shadows near the tree trunk, flew off to perch on the other side of the canyon. This one stayed here as sunset progressed and its perch spot moved into the sunlight.
I don’t know if there are distinguishing features or patterns that might tell me if one is male and another female.
Given that there are at least three in the area, there may be some competition for a single female and that could explain some of the noise levels.
We also have our annual infestation of gophers or moles chewing the crap out of the hillside and lawn. All of the hawks are cordially invited to keep well fed on that particular food source!
Bringing the trash bins in this morning, I found the Italian cypress trees covered in these little pockets of spider webs, one above the other.
They went all the way up and down all of the trees, pockets of white, still covered in dew.
They stood out from the dark green trees and the way that they each just hung there, row after row, up and down, reminded me of those iconic, round towers next to the river in Downtown Chicago.
I don’t know what kind of spiders are building these, but this is their high-rise condo building along those same design lines.
Somewhere in thee is the little spider equivilent of Dr. Bob Hartley!
Back in LA, it’s clear as a bell during the day and cloudy, gloomy, and foggy every morning (“May Gray” has turned into “June Gloom” – IYKYK) but last weekend in Vermont there were some wonderful clouds almost every day.
I just wish that it had been a little bit more cloudless at night. Those stars the first night were spectacular!
On the one hand, it was incredibly special and SPECTACULAR for me to see fireflies again for the first time in probably 55-60 years.
Out in back of the Hartness House is this lovely area surrounded by trees and a couple of fountains and a gazebo. When we first pulled in it was after midnight, and the sky overhead was crystal clear, filled with more stars than I’ve seen in years and years. Some of them were blinking and moving, and the trees were also filled with blinking, yellow stars.
Click on it to blow it up and you can see a couple of them. I tried every night to get better pictures but this was as good as it got. I’ll just have to settle for the memories. Which, as I said, were SPECTACULAR!
I truly love having a window seat on an airplane when traveling. It’s a complete mystery to me why every single person on the plane has their window shade down every second. How can you NOTbe looking out the window?
But I’m always in the middle seat these days, for reasons. Except for today.
We didn’t know it at the time, but there was an accident on the freeway leading to Logan International in Boston, causing a HUGE traffic jam and causing several folks on our flight to miss the flight. So some folks back in economy seats got the option to upgrade to Business or First Class, and took it. One of them was the guy who had the window seat in our aisle, so he boogied up front to luxury, while I got to shift over to the window and The Long-Suffering Wife and I got some elbow and leg room with the empty middle seat there.
I might have taken a lot of pictures.
There were some impressive thunderhead storm cells building up over the upper Midwest, so the views were great, even if the turbulence was not appreciated by everyone.
But c’mon folks! If we’re that jaded about these kinds of views right outside our windows that we can’t be bothered with, maybe we don’t deserve to make it when all is said and done.
I love binging “Ted Lasso” reruns as much as the next guy, but I can watch them any other time, without all of the lagging and breakups. Look at the reality that’s waiting for you if you care to look!!!
It was a lovely day, clear, sunny, not too hot. Our final full day in Vermont for this trip, and I once again wanted to get to the top of the observation tower on top of Mount Ascutney. Not hiking one of the base-to-summit trails of three or four miles and about 3,000 feet in elevation gain, I did the trail from the upper parking lot, 0.7 miles and about 300 feet in elevation.
So 1:19 after leaving the parking lot, with the nice park ranger asking if I would like her to take my picture and did I need oxygen, I was there!
It was clear enough to glimpse Mount Washington, 115 miles away.
It then took me 35 minutes to get down, taking care to not shatter a leg, twist an ankle, or go ass over teakettle over the side of a ravine. I survived!
Who knows if I’ll be able to do this again in five or ten years, but on THIS day I was triumphant!
Here’s your parade, specifically the Class of ‘74 “float” for our 50th anniversary reunion.
Yes, I walked the two-mile parade and pelted small children and grandmothers with soft, gooey Tootsie Rolls that had been sitting out in the sun too long. It was fun! (Not sure what the Vegas odds are for us being able to do it again in ten years for the 60th. Or for me being able to walk tomorrow morning.)
Our reunion tonight was relaxed, calm, loud, and full of hugs and catch-up conversations with classmates whom I generally haven’t seen in 5, 10, 15, 20, or 50 years. It was wonderful! ❤️
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 