Lunar Eclipse Early Tomorrow Morning

December 21st, the longest night of the year is rolling in faster than ever. The Christmas Tree is up, with all it's pointy little lights and seasonal fragrance putting us all finally into that once-a-year-Christmas spirit! Jessye Norman's "The Holly and the Ivy" is serenading the living room, the dogs are stretched out on the carpet by the gleaming coals of a fire in need of another log, but it's cold outside, and we are knitting, and sorting Christmas cards and ornaments in some cases and blogging and others, and mutually too cozy to get up to get one.

The sky is is blanketed in the deepest navy blue cloak which I would like to say is the Gown that Our Lady wears to Evening Vespers. But her pureness of heart radiates so perfectly that pinpoints of light poke through the velvet and shine all the way down from heaven!

Last night I woke up to find myself starring at a rusty orange orb, not bright enough to be the sun, but too strange to be the moon. An orange moon? But it was the moon. I slipped out from under my warm blankets into the annoyingly chilly air of my room to look more closely from the window. There it was, very low in the western sky, shinning a persistent, abnormal orange.

Unfortunately, it was 6:15 in the morning, and I was still bleary eyed, and foggy minded, and I could not remember where I had placed the battery of my camera, so I do not have any photographs to document the strange spectacle.

As I stared at the moon, with black twigs breaking it up like it was a gold disc with its paint cracking all over the place, it began to disappear below the horizon. I literally watched the moon set! In a matter of 90 seconds, the odd sight had left its small occupation of the night sky to be filled by a rising of a gradient of water-colors from an all blue paint set.

What makes the moon orange? I wondered, as I crawled back into bed. In bed, I did a little research. The answer is really quite simple and logical. Look at the diagram below, (which I obtained from

http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonorange/).

When the moon is directly above the surface of Earth, you and I only have to look through a little bit of Earth's atmosphere, as the red line shows. But when the Moon is at an angle, you can see from the blue line that there is more than three times the amount of atmosphere (gasses and natural and artificial pollution) for light to pass through. This "shadow" of Earth's atmosphere that the sun shines through before it gets to the moon determines the color that the moon appears to be.

Coincidentally, tonight there will be a full Lunar Eclipse which NASA has reported to be the first since 1638 to occur on the Winter Solstice (the longest day of the year). The next time this will happen will be in 2093. (I will be 102 then.)

For all of you moon-oglers, here is the program for tonight's theatrical production starring Earth and Moon (and perhaps cloud if he is grouchy enough to intrude):

• 1:32 AM Moon enters Umbra (the shadow of Earth)
• 2:41 Totality (Moon is Completely Covered by Earth's Shadow and May look orange for exactly the same reasons I just explained)
• 3:17 Mid Eclipse (The Moon is at its darkest and hard to find in the Western sky)
• 3:55 Totality Ends
• 5:00 Moon Leaves Umbra

I hope all of you will be able to watch this remarkable sight, and have many pictures and stories to share. If you haven't been able to tell, I am crazily excited for this rare natural show and second only to the Northern Lights, this is something I have always wanted to see! (Big green check on my things to see before I die list).

The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See

Everyone's tired of hearing about climate change and global warming. It's one of those ceaseless arguments with indisputable facts on both sides. But before you leave all of this for the tree-huggers and weirdos who think the end of the world is coming, watch this video to see how this man's logic can a) actually save the world as we know it if it proves to be necessary and b) make all the arguments irrelevant to the decision.

Rising in the East- A little poem I wrote myself

The sun is low in the west
Red and yellow
Purple, gold
Fog bending colors
I lie down to get some rest
On the moist green grass
With drops of water
Refreshing on my hot brow
The day is over

The night cool and blue
But the sun shines still beneath me
Soon it will rise in the East
And that will be tomorrow.

A Particularly Interesting Prairie Home Companion Guest

Today I went to the Prairie Home Companion Radio Show at the Town Hall in NYC with Tio. He's a huge fan of PHC, and practically adores Garrison Keillor for his ingenuity and creativity as he spins out show after show each week, each as creative as the previous one. Today, one of the special guests was Billy Collins, the former Poet Laureate of the United States. He had some pretty funny poems. Here were two of my favourites.

(Before you jump to conclusions about the title of the first poem, read it!)

OH, MY GOD

Not only in church
and nightly by their bedsides
do young girls pray these days

Wherever they go,
prayer is woven into their talk
like a bright thread of awe

Even at the pedestrian mall
outbursts of praise
spring unbidden from their glossy lips.

When Mr. Collins read in a poetry book that that one should never use the word suddenly to create tension in writing, he decided, since, after all, he was a poet, he would ignore the rules. As a result of being a total nonconformist, he intentionally weaved the word 'suddenly' at least once into every stanza and of course had to call the poem "Tension".

Tension
By Billy Collins

Never use the word suddenly just to create tension.
-Writing Fiction

Suddenly, you were planting some yellow petunias
outside in the garden,
and suddenly I was in the study
looking up the word oligarchy for the thirty-seventh time.

When suddenly, without warning,
you planted the last petunia in the flat,
and I suddenly closed the dictionary
now that I was reminded of that vile form of governance.

A moment later, we found ourselves
standing suddenly in the kitchen
where you suddenly opened a can of cat food
and I just as suddenly watched you doing that.

I observed a window of leafy activity
and beyond that, a bird perched on the edge
of the stone birdbath
when suddenly you announced you were leaving

to pick up a few things at the market
and I stunned you by impulsively
pointing out that we were getting low on butter
and another case of wine would not be a bad idea.

Who could tell what the next moment would hold?
another drip from the faucet?
another little spasm of the second hand?
Would the painting of a bowl of pears continue

to hang on the wall from that nail?
Would the heavy anthologies remain on the shelves?
Would the stove hold its position?
Suddenly, it was anyone’s guess.

The sun rose ever higher in the sky.
The state capitals remained motionless on the wall map
when suddenly I found myself lying on a couch
where I closed my eyes and without any warning

began to picture the Andes, of all places,
and a path that led over the mountains to another country
with strange customs and eye-catching hats,
each one suddenly fringed with colorful little tassels.

Unusual Cookies

At school, near Christmas, we have a Cookie exchange, where each grade trades homemade cookies amongst each-other. Tired of the all too mundane chocolate chip, peanut butter, and deformed sugar cookies, I decided to spent a little extra time to make something truly unique. If you google 'unusual cookies', the first website that comes up is The British Larder. I decided it would be safe to use a recipe featured on the front page: Double Chocolate Crackle Sandwich Cookies. My batch of cookies turned out particularly unique since all the measurements were in grams, not cups and teaspoons etc. Something I didn't take into consideration at the time was that 100 grams of flour is not measured in the same way as 100 grams of butter. All and all, though, the recipe turned out surprisingly well, and the cookies were amazing!

The cookies turned out very soft, almost like little cakes. They were supposed to be crispy, but clearly some ingredients were not included in their correct proportions. Next, I made a meringue, by heating up egg whites and confectioner's sugar in a pot to pasteurize the egg, and then vigorously beating the mixture until it was light and fluffy. Then, I put this into a plastic bag with a whole cut in the corner, and squeezed it out into a pan into little wafers. Can you believe it took 45 minutes in a 150 F oven for the meringues to dry?!

To assemble the cookies, I took two cookies, spread raspberry jam on each side, and then put a meringue wafer between the two. This combination is very different, but very delicious. Here is the link to the British Larder site. The pastries and such look so good, I want to make them all...tonight!

http://www.britishlarder.co.uk/#axzz17TvmSY61

With so much extra eggs whites and sugar, I made a batch of delicious meringues as well.

Oh, and did I mention that I caught an ent doing pushups at the park the other day?

Owl Butterfly

An Interesting fact about Owl Butterflies is that when they bask in the sun, the scales on their wings act as a solar panel of sorts to raise the animal's body temperature.

Here is a picture of an Owl Butterfly that I found in Costa Rica.

Anika as a Puppy

I just can't resist posting some of her puppy pictures. Anika is a very sensitive dog, and often her facial expressions look very human. Take a look at these pictures from when she was a puppy:

Anika

I don't think I have posted any pictures of Anika, my one year old Hovawart dog yet! Hovawarts (hovies) are pretty rare, so I'll tell you a little about them. They originated as a mix between the Newfoundland (a massive, droopy-eyed, black and white fir-ball) the Leonberger (these look rather like german shepherds) and possibly the Hungarian Kuvasz (Looks most like a giant, white golden retriever.) They were originally bread in Sweden or Germany as an estate dog, because they make extremely loyal companions and dutiful guard dogs. They have a loud, piercing bark, and are very elegant. But above all, they are very sweet and extremely smart. Usually, they form an especially strong bond to one person in the family, and remain friendly to everybody else. However, since Mom and I are pretty equal in taking care of her, she is rather torn between us! Some times she chooses to be the world's most loyal dog to mom, and other times she decides that I am her new best friend. Anyway, she's a ton of fun, and a bundle of muscles and energy. Shirley and she get along very well, and as far as chewing goes, carved pumpkins and rocks seem to be the only things they like...well..besides the trash can in the garage...oh yeah...and my shoes...but other than that, they are pretty good! (By the way, her name is pronounced the European way, AH-neeka)

Here are some pictures:

This is Shirley:

Without Rain there would be no Rainbow

Inception

This was definitely one of THE most creative and unique movies I have ever seen. To be honest however, there was a bit too much blowing things up and shooting people down, and destruction to make it a movie "for everyone", but aside from the (very realistic) special effects (that are meant to hold the attention of the audience that cannot think of anything else) the movie was a presentation of an extremely amazing, creepy, and fascination idea: to be able to manipulate your life, or another's by connecting yourself to either your dream or their dream and reliving, or fixing things that should have, or never did happen. The only way to get yourself out of the dream is to kill somebody who is sharing the dream with you, or the kick, which is that sense of falling that everybody gets occasionally when they are sleeping (The kick has to be so strong that the characters essentially use explosives to blow their surroundings up to give them enough force to fall with enough gravity to wake themselves up...and it would be allot to assume they could still be alive after this....) But, as it is, you cannot die in a dream, because a dream is not the real world...or is it? Mal, the wife of the main character, Dorn Cobb, was taken into one of Dorn's dreams by inception long ago. When the couple got stuck there for nearly all their life (50 years in a dream is only a nighttime of sleep in the real world), and they grow up together and grow old together in a dream world that they build for themselves out of memories, Mal can no longer distinguish which world is real. Is the world she made for herself the real one, or the world that Dorn is convinced is the real one, real? She becomes insane in her confusion, and wants to back to the dream life, because she thinks this one is the real one, even though it is not. Unfortunately, since dyeing is the only way to "wake up", she kills herself thinking that she will wake up in the real world. Dorn feels eternally guilty for even having planted the idea of inception into is beloved wife's head, and feels responsible for her death. Mal haunts Dorn's dreams because of the guilt, and wrecks the plans that the characters mean to accomplish while they are inside the dreams. What i found very interesting, is that Mal is not really in the dream. She is only a projection of Dorn's mind, who is the one responsible for populating the dream (an architect is brought along to design the atmosphere of the dream). Because the guilt of Mal's death is so present in Dorn's mind, this feeling of ugliness will show in the projection of Mal.

Another interesting point is that the dreamer's surroundings in the dream are directly in touch with and effected by the environment of the dreamer him or herself. For example, if a character has fallen asleep in a van, and the van is falling off a bridge, which does indeed happen, the characters that are living in their own dreams will be thrown about wildly and effected by gravity in the same way that their bodies are being effected outside of the dream in the van. When the van tips over, their whole dream world tips over, and an avalanche occurs (yes, this certainly does make for more opportunity for drama...but it was very well done).

All in all, this was a wonderful, refreshing movie. I say refreshing, because it had nothing disgusting or boring in it, that most movies nowadays have. It was creative, and the dialogue and humor was appropriate and enjoyable. I recommend this movie to EVERYONE!!!!!!! I absolutely loved it and would see it a million more times!

Gandalf, the Magic-Wand Wolf

Did you know that the name Gandalf isa German noun latinized as Gandolfus, and comes from the German words, Gand (magic wand) and Wulfa (wolf, obviously)! I just read this and thought it was so cool! It is also a real German last name. The Pope goes to Castel Gandolfo, named after the family that lived there for a couple hundred years, every summer! I wonder if Tolkien had the meaning of Gand and wulfus in mind when he chose the name for Gandalf in LOTR!?!?

If you think about it, Gandalf is a Wizard, so of course he is magic. But the symbolism of the wolf is even more interesting. One website I looked at for the symbolism of a wolf taken from a whole jumble of religions and cultures says: Wolf - Loyalty, success, perseverance, stability, thought, pathfinder, teacher, intuition, learning, the shadow. (http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/animals2.htm) I think this just about sums Gandalf up!

And then Just for fun:

Mystery Bird

I saw this bird near Bar Harbor in Maine. If you know what it is please tell me! Thanks!

**UPDATE** Thanks to Monica, this bird now has ID! It's a Yellow Rumped Warbler.

Hello From Cornell!

Hello everybody!

Well, right now I am at Cornell University. I am doing a three week Veterinary Medicine Program. It is really cool, because I am actually experiencing what college life is like. I am in a dorm, (Mary Donalan Hall, to be specific), with a roommate named Angela, and taking a college course! I can't wait for Classes to start on Monday. We just had an ice cream spree, with ice cream that is made here from the cows. It was very delicious. The only thing is that I felt supremely awkward with a bunch of boisterous teenage boys lumbering by, their heads twelve feet above mine, and tight clumps of chit-chatty girls blocking the exit and the entrance...so that I was caught between, being shoved about and utterly ignored. But...some life-long-freind-to-be is sure to come into my sometime between now and three weeks from now, so I am not worried...yet. All in all, this is a big and intimidating place...it's ACTUALLY college...and I'm just a small highschooller...and so...here i am, in my dorm, with my roommate sleeping, and me writing. I wish my roommate would be more sociable. But, that's what tommorow's for, I suppose. I'll keep writing about my experiences here, and I hope to post some pictures as well. THough...I have now idea whatsoever how busy I will be until I actually start with the classes, so, I will try.

Saint Louis Botanical Gardens

Last week I went to Saint Louis to Visit Nancy Podger and Irena. We went to the botanical gardens, which were absolutely beautiful. They were having an orchid exhibit, and they added two species of birds which really added to the whole display. I took TONS of pictures...but that's not exactly new. Here are some of the good one:

Silver-Beaked Tanager

Blue Gray Tanager