Moon, Saturn, Venus and Jupiter

 The Friday after Thanksgiving, I managed to get some photographs of the Moon, Saturn, Venus and Jupiter.


We had some computer problems shortly afterward which prevented a proper download of the photos from my camera.  (The camera can do some wireless transfers to a mobile device, but I noticed the image quality was vastly inferior to using a cable to directly copy image files to a hard drive.)


At the end of a day of decorating my folks' Christmas tree, I excused myself and went out to the southern slope of the hill where they live.


The crescent moon was out, but none of the other planets was visible.  I was glad that I got out a little early, because it allowed me to find a good spot to set up the tripod.   Then I waited and tried not to fiddle around with the zoom too much (which requires re-focusing).


I did wish that I'd managed to have a clear sky several nights prior when the Moon would have been much closer to Venus and Jupiter, but the Moon that Friday made it easier to find Saturn.






Writing: I got out of the house Monday and edited a long non-fiction piece that's been rattling around.  It needs some cleaning up, and I should decide if I'm going to post it in installments to this blog or if I'm just going to push it out to Amazon or something.


Gym report:  went to the gym Monday and did the new routine.  I allowed myself a ten day break; the last time I was at the gym was Friday, December 20.  I got some earbuds over the break and tried them out; I have to say that not hearing nihilistic music about some dude's co-dependent relationship and general mess of a life was kind of nice.

Photographing Raptors In December

 Last Friday I went to the Raptor Center.  Clouds hid the sun and turned everything grey, which made photographing the hawks, owls, and vultures difficult because the mesh of their mews popped out.  I played with the ISO of the camera a bit, which improved the shots a little.   The best shots were when the handlers came out and displayed the birds.


I think the trick to photographing animals in cages is to get close to the bars or mesh and only photograph animals that are far away from the barrier and zooming in as much as possible; this will blur the barrier, especially if you make sure to manually focus on the animal's eyes, feathers, or fur (yes, this works a lot better on subjects who are staying mostly still).   Shorter lens-to-subject distance, shorter depth of field.

Arg, and I had set the aperture to an 8 f-stop, so I had a really wide depth of field for the photos; if I had used an 1 f-stop, the aperture would have been wider, I could have used a shorter exposure time, the depth of field would have been narrower, and I would have been able to blur the bars out more.  Oh well; on the plus side, the grid in some of my photos is useful for studies of the birds' symmetries.


If the sun had been out (it had been the day before) there would have been more light on the birds.  And it would have been warmer.  There were quite a few folks there:  families and possibly a group of home-schoolers.  I was slightly surprised because it was Friday after Christmas (i.e. the Third Day), and I thought folks would be out of town or shopping, but I'm sure it was good business for the Center.


The birds seemed interested in me, which was charming and also made me worried that I was agitating them.  I was wearing my grey/green wool cloak to stay warm and to also have something to cover the camera with, and in the back of my mind I worried the birds might think I was a Really Large Bird.


Luckily none of them seemed to freak out.  I don't know if it was the cloak, or the camera, or the tripod, or my voice, but they all seemed to follow my movements as I aimed the camera at them and took photos (the vulture seemed very curious about my singing).  The exception were the birds on the wrists of handlers; then they were mostly interested in eating rats and mice.


It's rewarding to see the raptors and photograph them.  The hawks always remind me of Egyptian art, and I could look at the feather patterns (on their wings especially) all day.  Next time, I'm going to have to go on a more pleasant day and bring my Book of Art so I can try sketching them.

Near the end of my visit, I ran into an old acquaintance from my madrigal days with Pearwood, and we spent about five minutes catching up.

Looking For Whales

 Yesterday, we went to the coast to look for whales.  Grey whales usually migrate from Alaska to go and calve in the warmer waters off of Mexico.

At the Sea Lion Caves, we didn't see any whales.  The Child and I descended into the rocky depths to see the interior of the caves.  It was smelly.  The aroma of Stellar sea lions is not lovely, and I can only guess it's the combination of sea lion effluvia and dead fish remains of sea lion meals.  We could smell it along the ridge above the cave's entrance.  It was worse when we stepped off of the elevator and into the subterranean shadows.  Sea lion calls and crashing waves echoed within the dim confines of the grotto.  Red, blue, and green LED lights provided some light.

The sea lions rested--as well as they could--among the tumble of rocks lining the edge of a pool of pulsing sea water.  Foamy waves from the nearly high tide crashed in through the main opening of the cave and misted everything with spray.   There are three openings to the caves, a large one to the north, where people can enter (before 1962 by a now removed wooden tower of stairs), a small one to the south that typically looks like a rocky stairway to heaven (and is flooded during high tide), and a large oceanic entrance to the northwest which the sea lions swim in and out of.   There's probably certain days and hours when the sun can actually penetrate the cave, but we must not have been visiting then.  (The day, which had started out sunny, grew progressively cloudy and foggy.)

There were many sea lions in the cave.  One was perched like a ballerina on the highest rock; the majority rested along the edge of the pool and up the cave walls.  There was a baby parked right next to the concrete wall we stood behind, which was an exciting discovery--you had to stand right next to the low wall, press your head against the metal cable bars preventing humans from entering the grotto proper, and look down and over the wall as best you could to see the

I'm sure I'm projecting, but the Stellar sea lions looked like miserable wet things flung about the rocks--like a whole village of Gollums, or possibly the wretchedly muddy peasant village from the "Bring Out Your Dead" scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."   The sea lions frolicking outside the cave in the Pacific waves looked much happier.  We looked for whales but didn't see any.

We did notice a spiky plant that looked like a cross between a succulent and rosemary.

We left the cave and continued our quest for whales.  We spent some time at Mary Hill Beach.  The Child stayed in the car while Mark and I went onto the thin strip of rocky beach, looked vaguely for agates and other interesting rocks, and were on our guard against sneaker waves.   We didn't find any agates because it was high tide, but there were some banded igneous rocks.  We also didn't see any whales.  The day became more overcast.

Then it was off to the Spouting Horn and Thor's Well.  I don't know why it's called Thor's Well.  The recently high tide crashed against the basalt plateau.  We walked along the bridge over Cook's Chasm and looked at the Spouting Horn from the south (which I'd never done before).  We looked for whales.

We watched some guy photograph his (presumably) girlfriend doing yoga poses over the chasm.  Mark offered critique of poses, and I made up pose names like, "Preening Mountain Slide Into the Ocean."  (I'm pretty sure this was a casebook example of taking one's main squeeze somewhere exhilarating because the physiological reaction to danger transfers to feelings of lustful arousal-- and they made out in the underbrush after their photoshoot.  Okay, they were practically making out on the trail above the crashing waves before the photoshoot.)

Spouting Horn spouted.  There was little wind, so the mist afterward hovered over the feature for an extended amount of time.  The waves beat themselves into a froth at the narrow end of Cook's Chasm, but weren't a thick blanket of dirty yellow foam (as they sometimes are) in the channel before the spout.   We didn't spot any whales.

We did see the light of a boat, far off to sea, and Mark remarked that crabbing season had just started, so we assumed it was a fisher-boat setting its crab-pots.

It wasn't safe to go down to Thor's Well for photographs, but that didn't stop someone with a tripod from approaching it.  They got a little wet, but stayed far enough away from the well to be in any great danger of being sucked into a basalt hole that is twenty feet deep and lined with sea anemones, and then pounded to death by tons ocean surge.  We looked and looked but we didn't see any whales.  Neither did the nice couple from Nebraska who said they'd come from farther north along the coast.

The cats were happy that we arrived home before Dinner Time instead of an hour afterward.

Maybe we'll see the whales some other day.

The Tree of History

My folks have more traditional ornaments than we do.

Since about 1972, they've always gotten a twelve to fourteen foot tall tree.  It used to be a tree that we'd cut down from a local tree farm.  One year, we didn't measure correctly, and after we got the tree up we realized that it was too tall and my Dad fired up a chainsaw inside the house and trimmed the trunk.  Another year, Mark got an infinite number of Good Boyfriend Points by throwing himself between a falling tree and my Dad's piano.

About about twelve years ago, they got an artificial tree.  Don't ask me where.  The thing is huge, and comes in five parts.  Only recently have to bottom two parts--the heaviest--been separated from each other after fusing together about nine years ago.  My folks are getting to the point where it's becoming more of a pain to set up than it's worth and this year the talk about trashing it and replacing it with a more manageable tree was louder.   (The tree has to be cinched into its storage boxes with multiple ropes, and it takes at least three people to haul the boxes out of the garage and upstairs to the parlor.)

I think they might get more Holiday Milage by setting up cones of chickenwire as a frame for fir boughs and pinecones.  They used to do that in the eighties, complete with wrapping the little crafty-trees with gold-colored glass bead chains.  One tree would be the cat ornament tree, another the music tree, and another a Santa tree.

For a while, we'd get ornaments as stocking stuffers for each other; so there'd be a set of banners, or musical instruments, or insects, or whatever.  This stopped happening when my Sister and I stopped spending the night December 24 and also when we realized the ornaments were piling up.

In the seventies, we developed a system for decorating the tree:  Stars, angels and birds went on the top branches.  Snowflakes went under the top tier, as did flower fairies.  Santas and snowmen were middle of the tree.  Mice, elves, and figures without strings should go into any "caves" in the tree.  Plastic, fabric, wooden, or crafted-ornaments made out of greeting cards and canning jar rims were "pet and child proof," so they went along the bottom of the tree.  Glass globes and plastic icicles went all over the tree.  Various ornaments were assigned to individuals as "theirs," which meant that it was sacrilegious for anyone else to hang them.  The idea is to remember the story behind each ornament:  "This is the mouse we got in 1973," "This is the bell for John and the goose girl for Julie that Aunt Margot gave."

Decorating The Tree was a big deal -- maybe less so now that my folks don't have the same stamina for five-hours-of -decorating (with holiday snacks).  Also climbing on top of eight-foot tall cabinetry now that I'm in my mid-fifteies doesn't have the same appeal as it did when I was in my teens.  And we need to do a better job of pulling our spouses into the family narrative (this year was extra haphazard).

Nowadays, I like to photograph various ornaments.  I suppose I should be more routine about it, because I'm pretty sure I have photographed the Twelve Days of Christmas ornaments multiple times.

Christmas Sharp Shinned Hawk.

Christmas Day, I managed to snap some photos of what I think is a sharp-shinned hawk.  Originally, I planned to try to photograph some deer, but when I stepped out onto my folks' deck, a bird swooped out of the underbrush and onto an oak.  It was a smallish bird, and at first I wasn't sure it was a raptor.

I took a few shots, then it glided over to a fence post, and it changed color from brown to blue.  I'm not sure if this was from a different angel of view or if the feather were picking up the blue color of the sky (surprisingly relatively cloud-free).  I almost thought I was looking at a bluejay.

Signs of the Season

Just a few days ago, the hellebore in our front garden box bloomed.  It's looking much better and flowery than it did this time last year, when it was just a sprig of something we weren't quite sure was alive.

We've been decorating the house.  The mantel is crowded with candles and celestial objects.  I particularly like the angels, which are over the top.  The last few years, they've held up some LED candles that I created paper star-grilles for.


For the last week or so, partially because it's been so dark and partially because of wanting the light to come back, and partially to observe the solstice time of the year, we've been lighting candle in our fireplace.  Mark is super-paranoid that the cats are going to knock a candle over and burn the house down, so this is a good compromise.  We just lit one candle around December 14, and each following evening, we'd light more candles.

I'm not sure where the Solstice Deer has gotten to.  I guess we'll have to bring it out this June or wait until next year.

Mark's Cereal Craft Christmas

This year, Mark worked very hard, without any help from either myself nor The Child, and created a series of Christmas Tree Decorations.  Out of single-serving cereal boxes.



The Child's Mother has, over the last several years, sent The Child a carton of small cereal boxes for special occasions, like birthdays and Christmas.  I think Mark has been wanting to do some sort of craft project with them for some time, because he had saved about thirty of the boxes.


From about St. Nicolaus day forward, he's been gluing ribbons to boxes, or cutting out cartoon mascots, and otherwise altering boxes to make them more seasonally festive.  He even got some clear plastic spheres and filled them with various cereals (which was tricky, and in the end, "Fruity Pebbles," was the cereal that best fit through the narrow bottle-neck opening).  


I like the Tony the Tiger star topper the best.

Solstice Spiral Walk

 Last Saturday (Dec 21), I presided over a Solstice Meditation Spiral Walk.  It was Wicca-flavored, and I invoked the four powers of the four cardinal directions.  My friend, C.N. did a majority of the back-stage management, I mostly just showed up, arranged fir boughs into a spiral, and said the words.

We turned down and lights and played some Tibetan Tone Bowl music.  Mark suggested this, and it was better than the Enya compilation I'd put together because it was less intrusive.  Folks walked the spiral with an unlit candle, lit it at the center of the spiral from flames at a wrought-iron tree, and then walked out of the spiral with a lit candle.  At some point on the outward journey, they placed their lit candle along the spiral -- a spiral of shadows became a spiral of light as the nigh progressed.

I sat in the east and thought about keeping the space open to the realm of spirit while simultaneously keeping an eye out for any candles setting the boughs on fire.  None did, although there was one moment where I thought one had.  There was also another moment where one celebrant raised her candle over her head and a part of me wondered if she was going to set a banner over her ablaze.  In between those times, I sat and thought about the returning light (and how I hoped it would bring renewed energy and motivation).

About ninety minutes and about one-hundred-twenty folks later, it was time to open the circle and end the event.  It's always a little sad and strange to blow out the candles after everyone has left.

Reindeer and Firs

 Every year, we drive a short distance to a local tree farm and murder a tree so we can take it back home for holiday decorating.  We've been going here (mostly) for the last ten years.  There used to be Very Large Horses who would pull the hay wagon full of folks and their trees along the acreage, but I think they got old (or expensive) and now a tractor pulls the wagon.


Recently, Mark purchased Moose Outfits.  I believe they are supposed to be pajamas.  Or something.  The Child loved the first Moose Outfit so much Mark found a second one.  There was an attempt to get a Yeti Outfit for me, and an old Jack Skellington onsie... but I'm pretty sure that if we're getting something warm for me to wear in a cold winter house, I'd rather have a very large, hooded blanket covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs.


So... Mark and The Child suited up.  I declined to dress as a Yeti.  So The Child suggested that I grab a Nerf Gun and go as a hunter.  Mark found a kind of hunter's cap, and I put on my old brown coat.  I also put on my leopard print scarf, which Mark said didn't work for the hunter-look, but I pointed out that it was something I could have bagged.


We climbed into the car and drove past the Fern Ridge Reservoir.  The water was very low; I think they emptied the basin in preparation for the rains we'll be getting later.


At the tree farm, we got out.  Not more than twenty paces from the car, a woman asked Mark and The Child if she could take their picture together.   Then we got a hand saw, and hunted for The Perfect Tree.

 I'd say it took something like forty minutes, and we eventually settled on (another) Grand Fir (this seems to be our go-to tree to murder).  As we were tromping over the acreage, we'd occassionally hear families with small children.  Mark and The Child would then "antler up" and run through the trees.  There was at least two sets of children (and one skeptical mom) who saw the exclaimed with wonder in their voices that they saw reindeer!


Mark said (and I thought) they looked a little bit more like Sasquatches than reindeer....

After we got the tree cut, wrapped, and paid for, I took out the Nerf Gun and we got a few "hunter" shots in.  It was sort of fun, but I'm ambitious about the final results, which seem like candidates for Awkward Family Photos.

We got the tree back home, and will decorate it (or at least put it up) on Solstice.  Decorations are an interesting subject at our house -- this year Mark decided to make a bunch of decorations out of small cereal boxes, and I'm pretty sure Tony the Tiger will be the tree topper.