I am awake in the middle of the night for a nature break and remembered there was supposed to be a celestial show in this morning.
The best time to view these meteor showers is between 8/11 and 8/12 before dawn and look to the northeast from my position down south.
So I laid down in a chaise lounge on the lanai and thankfully the sky was clear. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness and soaked in all the stars and planets. Okay, it’s time for the light show and I didn’t have to wait long because a few streaks of burning rock burned up in our atmosphere.
Jupiter and Mars looking NETaurus constellation in SkyView app
Okay, I am tired, but I’ll snap a photo of the glowing planets of Jupiter and Mars. Excuse the crude image. It’s early, my hands are shakily extended over my head and I had to do that for 5 seconds to get a decent exposure in low light.
I’ll be better prepared in December for the Geminids meteor showers. Back to bed for now knowing I caught yet another astronomical event and I am happy.
Lately, I have been keen on sending out handwritten letters to loved ones after relocating to Coral del Cabo. It is a way to make correspondence personal and meaningful. I enjoy it.
Well, to my surprise, I received a postcard from Cuba sent from my significant other three months ago to the day that she visited and sent the card.
International mail is the best
In the past I have received post from my friends in the Dominican Republic and the Netherlands. They were full of love and encouragement. Sadly, and to my shame, I have not kept it up over the years.
This gets rectified immediately, because I would be thrilled to have long-term pen pals to reach out to and share life with again. Eventually I will re-acquire personalized stationary.
Electronic mail is rare to receive but no less welcome. If interested in either digital or analog correspondence, you can first reach out via e-mail by clicking here: hello@
Frequency illusion pops up like…rabbits everywhere. While enjoying the 1927 film Metropolis, I saw a reference to Yoshiwara district in the huge fictional megacity. Now, why was a um, ahem, red light district from ancient Japan featured in a German film?
Scene from Metropolis. The club was an allegory for the sins of Babylon in the book of Revelations.
A few months ago, before watching the new series on Hulu, I re-read the novel Shogun, about feudal Japan where there was a reference to Yoshiwara. To this day, Yoshiwara red light district is in the city of Edo, the exact location that Toranaga-san had allowed to be built (next to the despised Catholic church.)
Revelations, Babylon, the Tower of Babel and the seven deadly sins were the pillars of the Metropolis movie. As it happens, I’ve been doing some background research on the Babel Tower so of course I would find it referenced elsewhere. I swear I don’t go looking for coincidences but they do happen in unsuspecting places.
Side note: Isn’t it interesting that we in America can speak and listen in the same language as our neighbors but no one understands each other? Babel indeed.
Hoopla– want to stream audiobooks, or movies? Read books and magazines? A perfect companion courtesy of your local library. I was able to find obscure movie titles to stream when everywhere else failed or charged $$ for such as: Metropolis (finally!), Hundreds of Beavers, Nosferatu (finally!) so far. All were silent movies and in the public domain but other streamers wanted a minimum of $6 to rent. Nope!
More frequency illusion, or Rabbits, was a re-occurring theme from the Metropolis movie:
Kleon had the same theme in one of his newsletters last week but it was regarding art. In that if you want to create good art, you need a combination of head, heart and hands.
Rosetta Stone– another service courtesy of the local library. The renowned language learning program is available. I need to polish up my Spanish and maybe take up Italian. They are similar so it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
Hemingway– As if I didn’t have enough to consume lately, I’ve rented a 3-disc video series on E.H. By Ken Burns, as well as downloaded a few of E.H.’s novels courtesy of Gutenberg Press. Thank goodness I opted to get the larger memory chip for my Kindle.
Classical music– Masses, litanies, vespers, psalms, oratorios, cantatas, requiems, operas, concertos, sonata, symphony, string quartets, chamber music, Masonic, divertimentos, serenade, dances, marches, etc etc. Why do the composers have “k” or “v” in their music titles? 173dA? Okay, sure. I’ve always enjoyed classical but never understood the details. Too much to learn and I regret never have taken a class on music theory or appreciation. I am rectifying this now, slowly.
Reading– Adding to my infinite tower of books to devour will be a study of Dante’s Inferno. That’ll take a year, easily. Throw in some Don Quixote, mix it with Hunter S. Thompson as well as C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. Then, read up on how well those last two worked and inspired each other for their fantasies from Middle Earth and Narnia.
I’d like to experiment with a new, unique cocktail as soon as possible. We have a nice bar area in the dining room that needs to be filled. Okay, let’s try this:
Blue Dolphin Cocktail
Ingredients:
1.5 oz Blue Curacao
1 oz Vodka
1 oz Coconut Cream
2 oz Pineapple Juice
Ice
Pineapple slice or a cherry for garnish
If vodka doesn’t work out, maybe substitute with clear rum.
For digital documents you want to keep for a long time, I suggest the Three P’s:
Plain text
PDFs
Printouts
While in college in the mid 1990’s, and prior to purchasing my first computer, I utilized a word processor. Think manual typewriter but with a 3.5″ floppy disk for storage. I wish I had known enough to preserve all of my writings. The floppy disks were formatted for the word processor but not the computer. It wiped everything off the disk to make room for the Windows formatting. The lesson here is to preserve your work and prepare by future-proofing formats. It was a hard learned lesson. All of my personal writing, studies and papers gone.
I was reminded of all of this when I read about how Hemingway’s early notes and the beginning of a novel disappeared. His wife had gathered his works and left Paris by train to Switzerland to meet him and a publisher and somehow, the suitcase went missing from the train platform and they were devastated.
My loss was due to ignorance and in no way as significant as Hemingway’s loss. But the pain was there.
My revamped workflow process is:
Write and edit drafts in Ulysses (saved to cloud, backed up onto my file server)
Publish from Ulysses to my website (saved to cloud)
Copy/Paste to my own database in plain text format (cloud, file server)
Migrate all of my work into the database in plain text, organize.
Print to .pdf by year (saved to cloud and file server)
Print to paper by year (saved to a dedicated yearly file folder or binder)
Interesting enough, while walking through the library’s “read and return” section, the word “Hemingway” ended up in my peripheral vision.
I usually don’t give them a glance but the paper spine was attractive. The fiction novel title is “The Hemingway Thief” and how the aforementioned luggage was lost. I haven’t read it yet, but it seems to be a good yarn with a few secrets and twists. Looking forward to reading it as soon as possible.
I’ve found a palm frond that fell after some heavy winds today and plan to clean it up then whittle it down into a palm tree bookmark with an engraving.
Sure, I can buy a bookmark or stick a note in between the pages, but this will palm will stay with me longer.
