Blue Moon Rising

Sky watchers the world over have the chance to watch the blue moon rise along the eastern horizon tonight.

So, grab a lawn-chair and plop yourself down because the next blue moon doesn’t occur until 2015. 

For those of us unlucky enough to have cloudy skies, there's a Slooh Space Camera web feed streaming a special broadcast of the blue moon on Friday that will begin at 22:00 UTC.

Avoca School House

Morning Fiddling Sessions

The Avoca Schoolhouse (N with Debby Greenblatt)

Summer Saturday Habit

We Highly Recommend the Experience!

Short Stories

I collect stories. Short ones. Small bits about peoples' lives, the places they've traveled, the things they know. I fell asleep last night and mulling over a bouquet of short stories I collected this week.

• D who has researched his mountaineering trip to Tibet. He knows the road conditions to the base-camp of Mt Everest. He has a plan for how to avoid spreading bedbugs upon his return. 

• The B family who just got a government backed refinance for their home after four years of living under the threat of foreclosure. 

• M who had to cancel this weekend's road-trip due to treacherous life conditions.

• TJ who tells me that singing out-loud acts as a mild antidepressant.

• My friend who found out: sometimes, with relationships, you need to give a little. Your husband's bathroom can have the Star Wars theme. It just isn't that big of a deal.

• The distinction, from S years and years ago, that there are friends and there are friends that will help you hide a body. 

• The idea, from T, that we do our best work when we're slightly distracted. The outside influence makes everything richer.

• C who braces physically and financially for her second emergency surgery without health insurance this year.

• My GG who insisted on teaching me to drink black coffee in case of an emergency. To this day I prefer my coffee with cream. But, in a pinch, I can drink it black.

• The oldest woman in the world who attributes her long and good life to minding her own business and not eating junk food.

• My physics guru, K, said he spent twenty years hiding behind the mathematics of his field. Mathematically he was good to go, conceptually...well...he didn't go there. K has a phD in Physics. He's been an instructor for more than a decade and told me that story as he watched me struggle with my latest physics homework assignment. Conceptually I got it, but I just could not get the numbers to hammer out correctly.   It isn't often that someone so accomplished in his field would extend himself with that kind of intellectual generosity.

Wishful Thinking

Sigh. And yet, it was almost 100 degrees again today...

Ribbons & Bows

When I was a kid there was a gift wrapping counter in the basement of every department store. The women staffing this area would admire whatever gift you had purchased and ask after the occasion the package belonged to. Was this a baby shower gift? Somebody's birthday? Something from the wedding registries, perhaps?

In an age of gift bags and slapdashery it was hard to describe the full effect of careful wrapping. The cooing that fluttered around a room at the sight these packages. I was feeling nostalgic for gift wrapping, I suppose, as N prepared for her best friend's birthday party last weekend. I seized the occasion as a teachable moment to school my kid on how you neatly wrap presents. 

N sighed and rolled her eyes as we smoothed out the wrinkles of the paper so the edges fit together just so. She slumped and muttered as she placed each piece scotch tape on the underside of the seams. 

The complaining got so thick that I broke into giggles at one point. N snapped her chin up from her chest.  She glared at me and begged:

          "What?"

"Oh, honey, I was just remembering the time Grandma Mel taught me this same thing." 


          "And?" 

"And I was about as excited about learning to wrap a nice present as you feel right now."

Then I older. I hosted bridal showers, my friends had babies, or we wandered over to console someone who was sick or sad.  My hands weren't empty as I arrived to those occasions. Rightfully so, I was careful with the edges and seams.

N finished up her packaging job. She decorated the gift with ribbons and bows. Delivered it to the birthday girl who, as if on cue, visibly swooned.

True Story

I rolled over in bed this morning and said, “So we have that flying robot meeting at work today.”

And I meant it.

The meeting is to go over a proposed project which marries the University’s robotics and electrical engineering team, some wildlife groups, and wind turbine operators. It's a group of us interested in filling the data gaps when it comes to the interaction between wind turbines and bat behavior.

I suppose we’ll see where following the path of these flying robots leads.  

Unsupervised Recording

Dwyer

Phoenix Convention Center

Andy's Shoe Shine

If you don't already watch Amy Poehler's Parks and Recreation, allow me bluntly say...you should, you should, you shhhhhhhould! 

Obviously, I'm an avid fan of the show. 

Andy Dwyer is among my favorite characters on Parks and Recreation. He serves as the goofy and sincerely lovable slacker who works as a shoeshiner at Pawnee city hall.  So you can imagine my fan-inspired glee at finding a real-life Andy's shoe shine station on a recent trip to Phoenix. Heh.

Night Noises

'Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'    (Mary Oliver)

_________________________

My mother spends the next two weeks teaching in Cambodia.

I get a vicarious thrill from her sense adventure. Her sense of purpose. I'll catch myself, in the middle of the day, wondering about the view outside her window. The smell that hangs in the air, the chatter of places and people.  

An email from mom landed in my inbox on Sunday afternoon, the middle of the night in Phnom Penh. The night noises so loud she couldn't sleep.

Ever since my brain has been crowded with jungle noises and the sound of a rainstorm from the other side of the world.

Morning Kayak

Lake Wanahoo/Sand Creek Project

I spent Saturday morning on a kayak excursion. 

Slipped the skin of the boat into the water, and remembered the summer habit I used to make of these things. Sometimes I like to lean into the expanse of water.  The funny acoustics you'll find when you're afloat. The far off sounds that seem nearby. The way your noisy lungs seem distant. The splosh of the paddle blade as it disappears beneath the surface.

I spent Saturday morning loving the watery edge and dribbling wet face of anything that came up for air.  

Academics

1st Day of 5th Grade, 2012

1st Day Kindergarten, 2007

Rainstorm

After months and months of drought. After acclimating to the scratch at my ankles of brown and dead grass blades. After the soil shrinks away from the sidewalk and the City has watering restrictions. 

It rained. Small, sharp droplets. A heavy, wet wind.  

I went outside. Sat down. Closed my eyes to have a more tactile sense of what was happening.