Winter Light

With yesterday’s sunny weather, the buildings across the street at work were showing off some beautiful crisp lines and shadows.

This is the view down the street – it’s not so much the buildings you should enjoy, but that lovely low golden light. About as bright as it gets.
©rq, all rights reserved.

And here’s the view across the street – you can see the years these two were built, and also compare and contrast the degree to which they’ve been taken care of.
©rq, all rights reserved.

Detail of 1912, it’s got a funky little piece of identifying art at the top: judging from the implements, someone in the building industry (engineer or architest) was the initial owner of the building.
©rq, all rights reserved.

Here’s 1900 next door with no such identifying marks, but it has a certain respectability to it.
©rq, all rights reserved.

Snow-clad rooftops against that pale, delicate sky…
©rq, all rights reserved.

An hour later, the sun had moved enough to cast significant shadow and all the impressive lighting was on the other side of the building.
©rq, all rights reserved.

Indeed, nothing compares to the magic of a sunny winter’s day. Who knows how many we shall have this year?

Winter Has Come

And nobody knows for how long!

This morning I left home about a half hour later than usual because I had to take the car in for pre-winter-season servicing, which is always a fun time of year, but that’s not the point.

The point is the wonderful clear winter morning light – compare the darkness with the photos from the train station a few weeks ago. I’m determined to get that same shot tomorrow, though I have no idea if it will be overcast darkness, or the wondrous pearly dawn we had today. In any case, here’s the backyard all snowy, and the subtly dramatic colouring of the sky, heralding a sunny winter’s day:

©rq, all rights reserved.

There’s a bright light in the sky!
©rq, all rights reserved.

This isn’t a theme with the moon again – but it’s interesting to see the same half moon at a different angle.
©rq, all rights reserved.

And the song I wanted by this band, Fight the Feeling, could not be found by me on youtube, but here’s something appropriate in theme by The Music.

Jack’s Walk

Jack and I took our walk at 6:30 this morning when it was still dark because Jack is having Larry™ the fatty lump removed from his shoulder girdle this morning. Larry™ has been quietly growing in Jack’s armpit for the past 5 years, but this summer he reached baseball size and started to track down the arm (leg?) so it’s time to go. Jack is very healthy going into this. His bloodwork is all normal, he’s lost weight and he’s ready for to say goodbye to Larry™ himself. Imagine a baseball in your armpit! Anyway, our photo for the day is Jack, with Larry™ front and center. I’ll let everyone know in TNET later today how he makes out.

Jack and Lumpy Larry, ©voyager, all rights reserved

 

Wednesday Wings: The Story of the Kinglet

©Giliell, all rights reserved. Click for full size

In German, a wren or kinglet is known as a “Zaunkönig”, the king of the hedges, and this is how he got his name.

One day, the birds decided to crown a king. They wanted the strongest bird to be their king so he could protect them, and they decided to hold a competition. They would all fly towards the sun, and the bird who could fly the highest would be their king. They all flew as high as they could. First, the small birds needed to return to earth. Then the geese and swans. the falcon flew very high, but finally he had to give up. The eagle flew higher and higher until the sun burned his light plumage to a dark brown. Finally, he was at the end of his tether and turned around. But the small king of hedges, who was still called by a different name back then, had hidden himself between the feathers of the mighty eagle. He had waited for just that moment, and when the eagle turned around, he came out, flew a bit higher and sang his triumphant song, declaring himself king.

The eagle was very angry at the cheating little bird and swore to kill him. The little king of hedges flew into the thick hedges to hide from the eagle, who was named king by the other birds. He keeps hiding there to this very day, but he still sings his song about beating the eagle in a flying competition.

Frozen Bubbles

I was cleaning out some files recently when I came across an email I’d saved from 2015. It isn’t hard to see why I saved it. The photos are gorgeous and it’s hard to believe these are ordinary, transient soap bubbles. Since we have so many talented photographers on this site I thought I’d see if anyone else is interested in this art medium. Story via Backyard Neighbour,

Soap bubbles blown in freezing temperatures turn into stunning ice crystals

  • Hope Thurston Carter captured the images after blowing bubbles on several freezing days in Michigan
  • Temperatures between -9 and -12C are ideal for creating the ice bubbles

In the midst of one of the most severe winters in modern American history, the 52-year-old, of Martin, Michigan, got the idea after seeing similar pictures on the Internet.

‘I was instantly curious and ran out and bought some bubble solution so I could try this myself,’ she told HotSpot Media.  ‘I found out very quickly that blowing bubbles in the winter and trying to photograph them is not as simple and easy as it looks!’

Still weather with temperatures between -9 and -12 degrees Celsius is ideal for creating the ice bubbles.  On such a day, Hope ventures into her back garden with a bottle of bubble mixture, blows a flurry and, when one lands intact, runs to her camera to photograph it as crystals spread.

[Read more…]

Imaginary Experiments in Transgenics

I have a colleague who has a pet horse and also a pet spider.

This is the card she got for her birthday:

I haven’t worked out the internal anatomy. That’s an issue for an actual geneticist, I’m just the conceptual artist!
©rq, all rights reserved.

It’s a bit rushed because I totally forgot that I had to have it done for that day, but I had the idea all set up in my head. And mostly got it right.

La Luna

Rq just posted some wonderful shots of the moon and the skies, and coincidentally, I’ve got some waiting as well.

full moon

©Giliell, all rights reserved, click for full size

full moon.

©Giliell, all rights reserved, click for full size
Of course I could either get the trees in focus, or the moon…

full moon behind trees

©Giliell, all rights reserved, click for full size
The last two are a bit older

full moon

©Giliell, all rights reserved, click for full size

 

 

As for the musical interlude:

Hijo de la Luna

What a very 90s video. For those who don’t speak Spanish: A woman prays to the Moon for help, who wants her firstborn child in return. The child is born pale as the Moon, as the swarthy father kills the woman for feeling betrayed. The Moon now has the child and she makes a cradle when it cries.

Roses

DavidinOz has sent us photos from the Renmark Rose Festival and Oh My but they’re gorgeous. Filled with light and colour they’re a real burst of  happy on these cold and dim November days. We’ll be featuring David’s photos over the next couple of weeks as a tonic to help fight winter gloom. Spring roses from Down Under, what luxury!

There are roses in this set, but the main feature is the Harry Clark fountain commemorating the 1956 floods. The main fountain structures represent wine glasses as this is a major wine growing region.

It was quite breezy that morning, so the water plays well. You can see the Murray River in the background.

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

[Read more…]

Tree Tuesday

This week we have a story tree from Nightjar and it’s a wonderful story of hope.

I was driving through an area that was badly affected by wildfires last year and stopped the car to quickly take this shot, because it shows the concept of “fire-adapted species” so well. Everything still looks horribly devastated. In the foreground there is a completely destroyed orchard, in the background a completely destroyed pine plantation. Trees are still standing, but they are dead. Except… there is a survivor! The cork oak tree is resprouting all over and will regenerate soon! That’s what cork is for, to insulate the trunk from high temperatures protecting its core during a fire. It’s one thing to know this in theory, but to see the advantage of this strategy so clearly was quite enlightening.

Cork tree, ©Nightjar, all rights reserved

Thanks so much for sharing, Nightjar. I think it’s amazing that any living thing can survive a forest fire. Nature is so endlessly fascinating.

Kosmoss

As somebody famous once said, we are the pale blue dot. From far enough away, invisible. Insignificant. Tiny. An isolated speck in an isolationist universe. In the cold mountain air, I found the stars had an extra sharpness at night. Humans can go so far in that darkness, but it is laughably close on the grand scale of galaxies. Here’s a peek into the great universe, as taken by me in Austria:

Our satellite, our companion.
©rq, all rights reserved.

My favourite constellation, Orion. We call it the Hunter here, and I wonder if its variety of names is as diverse as that of the Big Dipper?
©rq, all rights reserved.

But as much as I want to be just excited about another scientific and technological achievement, it’s hard to disconnect from the news today. Humans can be so selfish, and inconsiderate, and greedy, and destructive. Anyway, here’s Muriel Rukeyser back in 1968:

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.
I lived in the first century of these wars.

It appears to be the second century of these wars. And the universe goes on and will go on without us, because humans are just that important. I just wish we could be selfish enough to consider mutual survival.

Teacher’s Corner: Burn the whole fucking system to the ground

Some days you just can’t even. You realise that the so called “free world” is so utterly cruel that you want to cry. Instead, you try to mitigate the harm it is causing.

One of the most marginalised groups in Europe are probably the Roma people. Even though they were just as prosecuted by the Nazis as the Jews were, this is apparently no reason to protect them today. The are still prosecuted, suffer pogroms and basically nobody cares. They have no future in their “home countries” and when they migrate, they suffer even more discrimination. For example, they cannot seek asylum in Germany, because, well, reasons I guess, and since they are often from non European Union countries, they cannot simply settle either, or get any welfare payments, except for the basic child subsidy.

We have a couple of Roma kids, and many of them live in absolute poverty. They live in homeless shelters, they live in run down houses. It is often difficult to talk to the parents, because we need an interpreter (thankfully there is a charity that works with us). therefore we often don’t even know what the problem is. One kid only came to school sporadically. She’s 11 years old, has lived in at least three different countries, can hardly read or write and is often sick.

Well, it’s not that the family didn’t want to send her to school, they send her whenever they have money for the bus. Oh, and they don’t have health insurance, so they cannot send her to the doctor, but if she feels ill it’s probably, because they have no food left. But if she fails in school, leaves without any qualification, marries young and has many children, it will of course be blamed on their culture. You know, because “those people” are like that.

Now that we know we can try to mitigate the effects. Get her a bus ticket, ask her if she’s had breakfast. The bus ticket is paid by a charity, the breakfast is something we just do among us teachers. Even if we can help her, what a poverty of humanism does this reveal in one of the richest countries on earth?