Wed. 01.01.20 – Welcome to the first day of 2020 and the first late sunset / deep twilight photo of 2020 with the additional delight of the planet Venus shining bright in the evening sky.
Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a 50mm lens.
Sat. 12.21.19 – Photo of two American Goldfinches at a water faucet taken at Irvine Regional Park by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a Nikon 70-200mm f/4 lens.
It is Friday. Here is some reading and other tidbits for your weekend, if you are so inclined.
High Plains Farmers Race to Save the Ogallala Aquifer
By restoring soils and grasslands, farmers in the Texas Panhandle are conserving the last water beneath their feet.
What If We Called It the ‘Flax Age’ Instead of the ‘Iron Age’?
Rituals of Childhood
“The United States has chosen, and continues to choose, to enact ritual compliance to an ideal of freedom in a way that results in a steady flow of blood sacrifice. T”
What if All That Flying Is Good for the Planet?
Open Mike: Sharp Is Another Way Photographs Can Be
Planting Native Prairie Could Be a Secret Weapon for Farmers
In Iowa, researchers and farmers are discovering that planting strips of native prairie amidst farmland benefits soil, water, biodiversity, and more.
Meet the scientist who’s been counting California butterflies for 47 years and has no plans to stop
The Survivors of the Woolsey Fire One Year Later
How Natural Wine Became a Symbol of Virtuous Consumption
The Instant Pot Understands The History Of Women’s Labor In The Kitchen
Thurs. 11.07.19 – With the autumn SoCal Fire Season in full swing, I am off to non-asthma indicing fresh air.
Photo taken on Sun. 11.03.19, aka yesterday, at Chiriaco Summit where the fabulous shrine to La Virgen stands next to the post office and diner.
Usually the Virgen’s shrine is bedecked in flowers, flags, and offerings of candles and other devotional items. But yesterday, the shrine and it’s general locale was the most cleaned up / cleared out I have ever seen it in years of stopping by to visit. It was practically minimalist, as far as a Virgin Mary shrine goes.
If you are driving between LA / Palm Springs and Arizona on the Interstate 10, make sure you stop at the Chiriaco Summit, not just to pee or get a Diary Queen iced something, but also to say hello to one of the most delightful shrines in California.
Sun. 11.03.19 – Driving back from Arizona along Rice Road / CA Hwy 62 westbound through the desert just a bit after sunset and the first quarter moon was high up in the southern sky. It was beautiful.
Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Samsung Note 9.
Hedgehogs, UK Politics, and general understated Amusement in this Metafilter post: “1566 seems very recent, but the hedgehog was around before then”
Transcript of MP Rory Stewart’s hedgehog defense in Parliament in 2017.
Of all the possible Tory MPs possible to be the next Prime Minister, one can only hope that the Conservatives will vote for Mr. Stewart and not Mr. Johnson.
Black, Hot Ice May Be Nature’s Most Common Form of Water
This Evangelical Prayer-Coin Grift Is What the Age of Trump Is All About
“The Wall Street financiers and C-suite lords-of-the-universe have made a Faustian bargain of their own, simply accepting that the President of the United States will have regular bouts of public insanity and upend the post-World War II geopolitical order because the Dow is up and taxes are down. This will not end well for them or for the Evangelicals, because everyone who gets in bed with Donald Trump ends up debased and disgraced. Often, he convinces them to do it to themselves. “
Men Have No Friends and Women Bear the Burden
Toxic masculinity—and the persistent idea that feelings are a “female thing”—has left a generation of straight men stranded on emotionally-stunted island. Unable to forge intimate relationships with other men, it’s women who are paying the price.
A landmark malaria vaccine has been rolled out in Malawi
This Graphic Shows the Best Air-Cleaning Plants, According to NASA
Trees of deep time are a portal to the past : The vanishing groves
A chronicle of climates past and a portent of climates to come – the telling rings of the bristlecone pine
02.26.19 – Testing posting to this blog from my phone’s browser, as the official Android WordPress app will not save a post, it just throws error messages. Also, I am testing out an Android app, Photo Exif Editor Pro, that allows one to add exif artist/author data to a photo.
How are we at 2019 and I can’t set my name and preferred copyright into my camera phone’s camera settings to automatically write the data to the exif metadata? Adobe Lightroom for Android does not allow you to make a watermark, although they allegedly do for iOS.
Photo above taken on 01.13.19 at Huntington Cliffs, aka Dog Beach, California, by Ms. Jen with her Ssmsung Note 9.