A few more notes from November…

As November is ending - there are a few more items I want to post about….

My 90-year-old mother still enjoys making breakfast herself and my dad. I photographed one of her more elaborate breakfasts when I was visiting: microwaved sausage patty, sauteed peppers, mushrooms and onions + cheesy eggs from a skillet, and a freezer biscuit heated in a toaster oven. I’m glad that modern conveniences (microwave ovens, precooked sausage patties, frozen biscuits) make it easier for her to prepare meals.

A brown-headed cowbird visited out deck on a cold morning….alone, looking very round scrunched down in the cold. It stayed around for a bit. I wondered if it had become separated from a flock or was just enjoying the sunshine and relative safety of our deck.

The sun backlighting oak leaves gives their color more definition. This was a morning that the grass was frosty; by the time I took the picture the frost was beginning to melt but it still added a sparkle around the leaves.

My husband was out at a county park/astronomy site for the lunar eclipse in the early morning hours of the 19th. It was cold but he was prepared for that and stayed until the clouds obscured the moon about 5 AM. He took lots of photos!

Finally – I enjoy finding ways to reuse single use plastic. I’m not sure whether this was a bowl or a dome from a food purchase….but it makes an excellent stand for my laptop when I am using an external keyboard! It allows for plenty of air circulation around the laptop, raises it off the surface of the desk (in case I spill something), and the light shining through it is appealing too!

Lunar Eclipse 2019

I went to bed early and set an alarm on my phone to wake me up at 11:45 PM to photograph the total lunar eclipse last night. The time for totality in our area was 11:50 PM – 1 AM. My first plan to was photograph it through a window…but my husband told me before I went to bed that it was likely going to be too high in the sky to see from a window. He was right. I bundled up and went out to the driveway with my camera on a monopod. I knew I would not want to stay outside long.

It was very cold and windy too. My eyes started watering almost immediately. I set my camera to ‘handheld night scene’ and let it do its best. In that setting it takes multiple pictures and stitches them together in the camera. It worked reasonably well and within 10 minutes I was back in the house and heading back to bed.

My husband – who had his camera on a tripod and stayed out a lot longer than I did – got a better shot.

When I got up the next morning the moon was descending into the trees behind our house – back to its normal full-moon color. This time I could take pictures through a window. The temperature outside was in the low teens.

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Gleanings of the Week Ending January 12, 2019

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

I have a growing list of gleanings from sites that are not operational because of the partial government shutdown; they’ll come out in the list for the Saturday after the sites are operational again.

Climate, life and the movement of continents: New connections -- ScienceDaily – Sediment, which often includes pieces of dead organisms, may create a lubricating effect between plates, accelerating subduction and increasing plate velocity!

BBC - Future - Six reasons your memory is stranger than you think – Timelines are hard (many times inaccurate) from memory…I’m glad I keep a running list of important family travel and events.

Regenerative Cities: An Urban Concept Whose Time Has Come! | CleanTechnica – Re-thinking what cities of the future could be.

Scientists call for eight steps to increase soil carbon for climate action and food security: International coordination and financing essential -- ScienceDaily – Big benefits…but hard to come by the collective push to obtain them.

Earthquake Damage Detected in Machu Picchu - Archaeology Magazine – Evidence of an AD 1450 earthquake that damaged Machu Picchu is seen in cracks and stone damage of the buildings. The Inca’s modified their construction techniques after the event too.

Shrinking of Utah National Monument May Threaten Bee Biodiversity | Smart News | Smithsonian – Grand Staircase-Escalante is home to 660 bee species, 84 of which live outside of protected land under changes. At a time when we know pollinators are under stress…one more reason why our Federal lands are needed as refuges from human activities that damage the environment.

Scientists Don't Stay for Long in Their Jobs Anymore: Study | The Scientist Magazine® - About half of scientists who enter a scientific discipline drop out after 5 years; in the 1960s, it was 35 years. We are probably training more people in science fields but many don’t stay in academia. This study used publishing records to determine if a person stayed ‘in the discipline.’ I’d prefer to see numbers of people that had careers in a STEM related field rather than just the one they trained in and find another metric than published papers to make the determination. There are a lot more jobs today where people use their science training that do not use ‘publication’ as a measure of success.

BBC - Future - Can we cheat ageing? – Some areas of active research to help us stay healthy longer (may or may not help us live longer).

Corn Domestication May Have Taken Thousands of Years - Archaeology Magazine – It all started 9,000 years ago in southern Mexico. The process continued in Mexico and the southwestern Amazon for several thousand years. It was a slow process.

Ring in the New Year With Dazzling Total Lunar Eclipse of a Supermoon | Smart News | Smithsonian – Hope we have good weather on January 20-21….since it should be visible from our house!