Winter Cold Moon
Category Archives: Science
Orion Over Black Mountain
Samain Thanksgiving Moon
Earlier in the fall when I got up to feed the dogs Orion stood over our fence between the house and the garage, in the southern sky. Still in the southern sky he has moved on since then until he now resides over Black Mountain, several degrees further west. As he moves, he serves, as many constellations do, as a celestial clock of the Great Wheel. The further west he goes, the deeper into winter we are. Weather doesn’t always synch up with his movement any more, but that’s our fault, not his.
Orion and the mountains are permanent (well, on a human life scale anyhow) reminders of the brevity and true context of any human life. Some might not find that reassuring, but I do. Rabbi Tarfon’s succinct injunction: “It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.” fits. During the lifetime of any of us we may not see an important work to completion, say, in our generation, the curtailing of carbon emissions; but, if we see as ourselves as participants in a relay race, we don’t have to run the final lap. We just have to run as hard as we can while on our lap, then hand off the baton.
Deer Creek Canyon and Orion will continue as the race is run. They represent, and are, the material context in which we live out our life, the larger frame within which our individual efforts come to rest.
To put this reassurance to work is to remember that on a geologic or cosmic time frame Donald Trump will come and go like the flicker of a flame. This does not mean that what he does while here is unimportant or insignificant. It is neither; but, it is fleeting. We have time to counter him if we act, if we don’t cripple ourselves by despair. As the famous English conservative Edmund Burke said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
From Way Out There
Fall Hunter Moon
Friend Tom Crane found this. And friend Bill Schmidt nailed it as, “Good music for Halloween.” A literal symphony of the Planets.
Do You Know Any Stars?
Fall Hunter Moon
Looked at Orion on the way up here this morning. He warms my heart like a familiar friend, a friend who comes for the season. I have greeted his return each autumn for 48 years. We first became acquainted during the 11-7 shift at Magnetic Cookware in Muncie, Indiana. I worked there as a security guard. When I see him in the southern sky, I smile.
Hokusai, the great Japanese ukiyo-e printmaker, followed the Northstar sect of Buddhism. In one sense we obviously project our sensibilities on these celestial objects. That’s clear when we look at the different names various cultures have given to the same identifiable stars or constellations.
In another sense, and more important to me, we see the Drinking Gourd, or the Big Dipper, or the Great Bear, or Orion as distant reminders of the changing seasons here on earth and we use them as sailors and caravans in the Rub al Khali, as farmers and hunters have used them, as guides. They are not, therefore, far away from us in the collaborative sense. The vast distances that separate us from these solar engines are irrelevant to their purpose as way finders and markers of seasonal transitions.
No wonder, in a world lit only by fire, that the stars were the work of gods. We might think we know them better now, now that we can identify their chemistry, understand their age and locate them in a 3-D universe, but that’s only a material, physical way of knowing. Important in its way, yes. Perhaps even key to the future of human existence. Still, very different from that night beacon lighting the way to freedom for escaping slaves. And, very different from Orion as my friend and companion for 48 autumns and winters.
In these latter uses the stars are important parts of our life right here on this planet, giving us direction and even emotional sustenance, clueing us to the coming of spring or the dog days of summer or the fall harvest.
As the squat Welshman asked me at St. Winifred’s Holy Well in Holywell, “Do you know any stars?”
photo credit: Orion Head to Toe, by Rogelio Bernal Andreo, creative commons license at Orion
Soul Renewal
Fall New (Hunter) Moon
Last night was a black moon, defined as the second new moon in a month. This is relatively rare, the last one occurring on March 30, 2014 and the next one on August 30, 2019. (earthsky news) This black moon precedes the rising, tomorrow night, of a sickle moon that will mark the start of the Jewish New Year on Rosh Hashanah. It’s also the beginning of the Muslim New Year.
Autumn is upon us now. Cooler nights. The possibility of snow next week. The Chinese, again according to earthsky news, say weeping is the sound of autumn, a part of its essential sadness. Not something to be avoided, but embraced, a regular part of the Great Wheel as it turns and turns again. My own response to this season used to be so pronounced that Kate and I had a phrase for her to say, “You seem to be slipping into melancholy.” That way I would know that my inner atmosphere had begun to mirror the outer, gray clouds and a wet chill had crept into my bones.
This conforms to Michaelmas as the springtime of the soul. Sadness is a way we consolidate past experiences and sort them out, learning from them and choosing which aspects of the past to embrace and which to let go. When our tears are over, we are cleansed and renewed, ready for the next phase of life. Autumn gives us an annual opportunity for self-renewal. This Great Wheel, natural cycle phenomena matches up exactly with Rosh Hashanah and its climax, Yom Kippur.
This is the time of soul renewal. And I’m ready for it. Bring on the gray skies, the inner turn. My favorite time of the year.
Tractor Beams!
Lugnasa Harvest Moon
Friend Tom Crane found this. Those of us who were Buck Rogers fans, or read Asimov and Heinlen early on, those of us who followed Star Trek in its many permutations have been so damned lucky: computers, satellites, walks on the moon, mars exploration, a human-made object leaving the solar system, discoveries of exoplanets and gravity waves and the Higgs Boson, quantum computers and now. Ta-dah. Tractor beams.
Tractor beams? Honestly, this one always seemed a long step beyond possible, so it amazes me as much or more than all the other wonders we’ve seen. This stuff keeps the 13-year-old nerd alive in me. And I like that.
“To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original Star Trek series premiere, NYU physics professor (and sci-fi fan) David Grier leads a tour of his lab—the birthplace of the real-life tractor beam. In this video, Grier explains how the technology works and how it could find practical use in everything from environmental science to—yes—space exploration.” Published on Aug 31, 2016
This Just In
Lughnasa Superior Wolf Moon
Scientists Trace Heat Wave To Massive Star At Center Of Solar System
“PASADENA, CA—Groundbreaking new findings announced Monday suggest the record-setting heat wave plaguing much of the United States may be due to radiation emitted from an enormous star located in the center of the solar system.” read more at Onion.com
Not Quite Yet
Summer Park County Fair Moon
“We’re in grave danger”
“The lineup of speakers presented a United States in danger, threatened from abroad and from within, a once-proud nation on the very brink of chaos and dystopia.” NYT, GOP Convention, Day 1
My post about Mutual Homicide might give you the impression that I agree with this analysis of the immediate future. Nope. Standard and Poor’s and the DOW have both reached record highs in the last couple of days. There are signs that the climate change movement has begun to get traction. The Cubs are winning. Von Miller finally signed with the Broncos. US demographics portend an increasingly diverse nation, with contributions from many cultures strengthening our common life. We’ve just had two full terms of an African-American president and are probably near our first woman president. LGBT rights have increased as has an understanding of transgender individuals. Women have entered more and more careers, have more real power. We are not spiraling into the earth. Not yet.
My mutual homicide conclusion, a dark one, possibly too dark, comes not from the near term, but from a very long term view of the way we humans are acting. We have in place an economic system that does not account for externals, the costs to the public good of private profit seeking. This fact, by itself, is enough to explain the dire distant future I imagine. When the engines of our ingenuity (to borrow the title of an NPR feature) rely on diminishing natural resources and cost-free toxification of the air, the land and our water, then economic advance (like the records for the DOW and Standard and Poor’s) is really a blinking red light. A stop sign. But together we choose, over and over again, to run the light imagining that there is no truck marked CO2 concentration barreling through the intersection.
Can we agree to change course? In theory, yes. In practice, with the state of anarchy that exists among nation-states, it will be very difficult. We need not just one but many statesmen and stateswomen to move into leadership. And unfortunately this is not the trend around the world. No, the world has begun to move toward more and more nativist politics. The Han chinese. The Hindu nationalists. Brexit. The increasing strength of far-right parties in Europe, especially Austria, France and Germany. Donald Trump.
I know, after writing this and the mutual homicide post, that I owe you all a strategy, a path to a future where we do learn to live sustainably on our planet. I’m thinking. I’m thinking.
Getting Back To Work
Summer Park County Fair Moon
Summer has come in full glory and I’m still not back to work. Getting frustrated with myself, need to get a discipline underway. Back to the work in the morning pattern that has seen me through several novels and lots of Ovid.
It is now a year and a day since my cancer surgery, a real spade turner in the soil of my psyche. Are my old goals still appropriate? Does the divorce and the engagement with Jon and the grandkids override them? Doesn’t feel that way. My ability to give correlates with the care I take of myself. Taking care of myself means continuing creative and scholarly tasks. That work plus exercise are central to my life and cannot be avoided without damaging my Self.
Right now the days float by. This meeting with Jon. That power washing of the solar array. Mow the fuel. Reorganize the loft. Work in the garage. Read the NYT. Keep up with the presidential campaign. All of these things are important, even necessary, but I’m doing them and not creating the daily discipline that longer projects require. I know how to do it. I have done it. But not now.
This morning I have my first class in a Native Plant class that focuses on the montane ecosystem, the one in which we live. It’s a start in the discipline. What I need is to protect my mornings again. Get up here in the loft, write a thousand words a day, translate at 5 verses of Ovid.
I need encouragement to get this routine started again.
Vat Brewed
Summer Park County Fair Moon
Following on the last post, this very futuristic, sci-fi idea. What else will be grown in vats using a chemputer?