Lunar-ticks for the eclipse and a hack

Note: This post is shared between naturenimbus.blogspot.ca and lunar-winds.blogspot.ca.

Plot twist: as much as lunar eclipses are loved, this post is actually photos from the recent solar eclipse that happened on August 21, 2017. Sorry, Lunar-tick.

Hopefully you had the chance to enjoy it last Monday, though if you were not able to watch it's not too late to experience through the beautiful, non-eye-burning lens of NASA.

Seeing as we didn't have any solar-eclipse-viewing glasses, on Monday we started by making our own viewboxes for the eclipse. The longer the box, the larger the projection of the. I used a cereal box.

Here is a very not-to-scale diagram:

This image was made using Fireworks. Sorry Paint, we still love you.

It took me a moment to find the little bright smudge of the sun's image on the wall of the box and orient it so that it was in line, but soon enough lo and behold there was a little dot with a tiny bite out of it. Optics was never my strong suit, but as I peered in through the peekhole and tried to understand how this worked, it finally occurred to me that if we just poked more holes in the aluminum foil, there would be more projections in the box.

In addition to just adding a fun and potentially creative element, it also made it easier to "find" the eclipse, or aim the projected image of the sun when it was in distinct clusters.

Before, simple version (right) >

Below, decorated versions:

What happened when 3 relatively distant holes were poked in the aluminum foil.

It was much easier to aim the projection with a distinct cluster

It pays to think outside the box ;) (Pun intended)

There's a moth on the ceiling and it's *bugging* me.

Update (4hrs later): I captured it then set it free outside.

Exhibited

I think I got pimples just from walking through the food pavilion. Everything was fried, the air was fried.

Yet the air was also sweet with new friends, colourful lights, and the carnival which reminded me of the Fire Boy's chapter of a dear story I nearly forgot. Indistinguishable sounds and laughs and conversations and scraping of equipment and sound effects came from every direction. You could feel the excitement without even touching any of the games, and imagine the quiet of the people on the Ferris wheel and lift. I imagined putting out the streams of foggy white night that cut into the dark sky, and watched birds fly by just to know they made it through safely.

The Cirque D'Opera show felt like a more intimate Cirque Du Soleil with a love story atop a valet black background sprinkled with stars that faded in and out in different patterns. The piano music twinkled like a music box with all the dreamy depth of an illuminated sea bed, and the opera singer sang his heart out to the audience at side stage as the acrobatic lovers acted out their small story.

A best friend and I felt the fold of intricate popup cards and examined stones and minerals with all the wonder we had as children. Her eyes were wide and energetic like a squirrel, but she was far more composed.

Now home, my hands are warm and crickets chirp in a choir of their own out the window on this cool summer night.

Curiosity both killed Schrödinger's cat, and didn't.

It seems to be the way of the world where the initiator of a good cause begins and conceives an idea acting in principle, but then we all jump on te bandwagon, and society -not fully acting in principle- takes it to a point where it violates another principle.

Live your life the way the French say "to brush teeth." "Brosser les dents" sounds so much more vivacious.

Certain things might be 'you', but remember that you are not things.

Introducing 'Shorts'

Today I'd like to introduce 'Shorts'. Shorts is a tag that can be found in the word cloud/tags list for lunar-winds, and as of most posts dated on or before today with that tag, was actually posted today. Most of them were just dated on or around the day I actually wrote them down (as opposed to posted them) to get a sense of flow and so that the August 2017 archive isn't bursting with over 30 pieces that are more at home in another month.

A little bit about Shorts:
- Thinks before speaking
- Habitually repeats self, especially when it doesn't seem like anyone heard the first time
- Gets embarrassed when people say "yeah I heard you" after
- Under 5'
- Doesn't have a twitter account
- Favourite quotation: "Brevity is the soul of wit" - Hamlet, William Shakespeare

- Takes water-conscious showers
- Undecided feelings on the nickname "Pants"

Hope you like Shorts


... Maybe Shorts has a best friend named Puns.

He was cold. When he walked in you could feel the temperature of the room drop.

She walked in like a windstorm; started off soft as a whisper then swept you off your feet.

She was not the near, warm sun he thought; she was a distant star that glittered but not the light of his life he thought she would be.

And so that life taught him to be both the sun and the moon. To not look for the person who held his missing pieces, but to be whole on his own.

Don't cheat on him with death.

Photos from the Pier - August 2017

I wonder if it is a symptom of depression or pride that one might on occasion consciously work towards an unhappy ending. If it is an excuse for failure and calling it a tragedy, a pretense of something worthy.

My Tree

'Like a tree planted by streams of water'

Please help my roots hold fast

Let the wind and storm become

Replenishment so it lasts

Please turn my tears into a stream

To encircle my dear tree

My heart is soothed and I feel stronger

As your love encircles me

Immune to the raging wildfire

That threatens these dear leaves

Though not the the fall of the fall

It will bloom again after I grieve.

Thank you for helping me learn how to speak again after the unspeakable.

Insight

You don't know who you're speaking to, so speak kindly.

You don't know

What they've had to do to sleep at night or maybe they don't,

To learn to speak again after the unspeakable or maybe they can't;

Don't make it harder for them

You don't know what happened to them yesterday and you don't know what going to happen to them tomorrow

Or in an hour

You could be the last person they ever speak to

So for their sake speak kindly

You don't know who you're talking to and you don't know who is doing the talking.

Maybe somebody once told you be careful talking to strangers because you don't know who you're talking to.

It's because we don't want to get hurt, but when we talk to strangers, could we be the ones doing the hurting?

x number or people are raped

x number are dying right now

The statistics are walking around you 

The numbers are sitting on the seats

Nobody gets letters after their name for surviving what people survive

And the ones who don't survive might leave behind letters you wish you could respond to

Don't wait until it's to late to appreciate

Don't wait until you hear about what happened later.

Create kindness, please, for all our sakes.

#poetry #spokenword #lunarwinds

"If you had known what was happening to me, I know you wouldn't have treated me the way you did. Only a bad person would do that."

Flower photos

Note: posted Oct 12, 2017