Friday, February 29, 2008
Leap Day Surprise
It's the last day of the extended February, and spring is supposed to seem possible now: not here yet, not even coming soon, but it's supposed to seem possible. Seeing this on the back porch is, frankly, discouraging.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
We don't believe in planetary portents, anymore...
but if we did, today would be a day for it. Big planetary doings:
Magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Indonesia - just a couple of hundred miles offshore from Banda Aceh, which suffered so much in the 2004 tsunami. No tsunami this time, and amazingly only 3 dead, although of course for those 3 and their families, "only" probably rings a little false.
And then there's the total lunar eclipse, which I couldn't figure out how to photograph, but it's going on right now and it's pretty spectacular here. There's thin broken clouds over Boston, so we are watching the moon disappear through a luminescent scrim of clouds.
Back in the day, we took this kind of thing pretty seriously here. The New England earthquake of 1727 set Cotton Mather off on a sermonizing tear replete with calls for public fasting. (Estimated at a 5.6 magnitude - definitely non-trivial, though amazingly there were no fatalities, a fact that was not lost on the sermonizers, who clearly saw this to be a divine shot across the bows of a potentially redeemable people.)
Magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Indonesia - just a couple of hundred miles offshore from Banda Aceh, which suffered so much in the 2004 tsunami. No tsunami this time, and amazingly only 3 dead, although of course for those 3 and their families, "only" probably rings a little false.
And then there's the total lunar eclipse, which I couldn't figure out how to photograph, but it's going on right now and it's pretty spectacular here. There's thin broken clouds over Boston, so we are watching the moon disappear through a luminescent scrim of clouds.
Back in the day, we took this kind of thing pretty seriously here. The New England earthquake of 1727 set Cotton Mather off on a sermonizing tear replete with calls for public fasting. (Estimated at a 5.6 magnitude - definitely non-trivial, though amazingly there were no fatalities, a fact that was not lost on the sermonizers, who clearly saw this to be a divine shot across the bows of a potentially redeemable people.)
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Cardinal morning
When I opened the front shade this cold morning, who should be there but Pa Cardinal. Who thoughtfully stayed around while I went back upstairs for the camera. They're not enormously rare, of course, and spotting this one is not exactly like seeing the ivory-billed woodpecker. Still, it's a reminder that there is a nature out there, that may or may not come when it's called.
