Sun tracks

Until I started taking a walk at around sunset, I had never given much thought to where the sun sets each day. In the west, of course, but streets are often built along lines other than north/south or east/west, so exactly where due west in my neighborhood lies is I couldn’t say.

After I took a really nice photo of sunset several months ago, however, I started trying to get more photos of sunset. I knew that the time of sunset changes each day, so at first I thought the reason I couldn’t get the same shot again was due to timing. But before long it became clear that the sun was no longer setting behind the same tree (and it was the tree, hiding the brightest part of the setting sun, that had made the picture so good).

Now when I take a walk at sunset, the sun is in quite a different part of the sky. Still to the west, of course, but considerably north of where it was in January. I had not realized there would be that big a difference in where the sun met the horizon.

I suppose I may have learned about this in eighth grade Earth Science – but if I did, the knowledge faded along with how to interpret weather maps and understand how the high and low pressure systems shape our weather. Most of my life, I simply didn’t live somewhere that I could easily get to a point where the horizon was visible, either to the east or west. I enjoyed sunrises and sunsets when I saw them, but by the time the sun got over the surrounding houses and trees, any sense of the point where it rose or set was lost.

Even now that I live in a relatively flat bit of Iowa (though even in my neighborhood, within a one-mile walk the elevation varies from a low of 688 feet to a high of 716 feet, more than I would have expected prior to using MapMyWalk to track my route), I have to walk a couple of blocks to get to an open field to the west. (To see the horizon to the east I’d have to go to the Mississippi, an easy bike road going, but a bit harder coming back uphill from its lower elevation of about 550 feet.) And I never bothered going out there to see the sunset until that day in January, when working from home made it easy to take a walk at sunset.

Even knowing that the tilt of the earth on its axis is responsible for the changes in the temperature as well as how many hours of daylight we get, I’m having trouble getting a picture in my mind of how this moves sunset in January, behind the trees to the south of the open field, to sunset in June behind trees to the north of that field. To help understand it, this article shows how to build a model to track the sun’s movement across the sky at different times of the year. I like making stuff, so I plan on giving this a try.

Pictures of joy

I had what seemed like a great idea sometime last night. Starting today, I would find something each day that gives me joy to look at, take a picture, and post it on my blog. I tend to think of nature when I think of things that give me joy to look at – though there are certainly plenty of works of art, as well as people themselves, that give me joy – so I thought that would be a motivation to get outside every day and spend some time looking at God’s creation, which would at the same time give me a bit of exercise. (I can see some great sunsets while I am driving, but taking pictures has to be done on foot.) It also would help me practice being more observant of beauty around me, including in little things that are easy to overlook, and also practice finding joy in everyday life. I don’t even have to have a camera with me now that I have a phone that takes good pictures (and I just figured out how to email them to myself).

I knew it was going to snow today – the forecast had said four to seven inches. No problem, I could go out and enjoy seeing the first real accumulation of snow this year, and find something snow-covered and lovely to photograph. I didn’t feel quite so eager to head out into the snow this morning, though. I had made a point of doing the weekly shopping yesterday so I wouldn’t have to go out today (or tomorrow, when it’s supposed to be very cold – between the snow and the cold, our church cancelled tomorrow’s service). Staying in where it was warm seemed much more appealing, and frankly I didn’t see anything, looking out the windows, that I wanted to take a picture of.

I did finally go outside, late afternoon, once it had (at least temporarily) stopped snowing. Officially the town has had four inches of snow so far, but it was definitely higher than that on our back walk (I estimated six inches, maybe seven, based on where it came up on my boots). I had my camera in my pocket, just in case, but it was getting dark, and by the time I had shoveled the walk and a path to the end of the driveway, my fingers were too cold to consider taking pictures.

But I was determined to find something to take a picture of, and there it was, sitting on the dining room table. I made about a dozen of these, some for our family (one each for the boys to take home with them), and the others were gifts for my co-workers. I had been accumulating these jars in the basement for years – they’re from Koeze nuts, which the high school Band Boosters sells as a fundraiser every year. They’re great nuts, so we still buy them even though we don’t know anyone in the band anymore. When I found I could get these short strings of Christmas lights at the dollar store, I finally figured out how to repurpose these jars. I enjoyed making them, and I enjoy seeing them with their sparkly lights and bright colors.

Thinking about Thanking

Recently I have been meeting weekly with an ESL student to give her practice speaking conversational English and increase her understanding of American culture. Naturally the subject of Thanksgiving has come up more than once.

The first time, she asked me what the word “thankful” meant. That surprised me, since this is not her first year in this country and her English vocabulary seems pretty good. I explained it meant “grateful,” which she did understand. (Which seems odd to me – I would have thought that the word thankful is used more often than grateful.)

(A Google search shows me that some people do distinguish between thankful and grateful, but there does not seem to be any consistency in how the two are distinguished, and other people use them interchangeably. It may be that, to some people, “thank you” is overused to the point of conveying less sense of genuine gratitude. Personally, I consider the two to be synonyms.)

First day of the week

This morning in (adult) Sunday School, someone asked me to clarify the sequence of events from the evening of the Last Supper to the resurrection. I know that not everyone agrees with the traditional view that Jesus was betrayed on Thursday evening and rose early Sunday morning. But disputes over the timeline were not pertinent to the lesson (and I’m not the teacher, though as pastor’s wife I am frequently asked questions not covered in the quarterly), so I explained briefly that what I set forth was the traditional view.

I remember from Bible school that some people think Jesus died on a Wednesday, in order to have him in the tomb for “three days and three nights.” From what I have read, however, I am inclined toward the traditional view that he died on a Friday. (Not that I think it is an essential matter. Why he died is far more important.) What I did not realize until I did some web surfing today, however, is that not everyone agrees that he rose from the dead on Sunday.

Leprechaun trap

For Toastmasters this evening, members had been invited to bring stories, jokes, etc. related to St. Patrick’s Day or Ireland in general. Pam, the director of the library where our club meets, brought in this unusually decorated cake.

She explained that it was a leprechaun trap. I’d never heard of this tradition, but apparently it has become very popular in recent years. (I can’t help suspecting that, like most of our St. Patrick’s Day traditions, it is far more American than Irish. But so what?)

Leprechaun traps, she explained, can take any number of forms. Hers is a cake decorated to look like a tree stump, with a hidden hole in the middle for the leprechaun to fall into when he follows the trail of the gold coins.

It makes me wish my boys were young enough to want to try to make one. I’ve always loved arts and crafts, and I was always glad when Al showed an interest in making stuff because I could work on it with him. (Our older son rarely did crafts except when a school project required it.)

Leprechaun traps can be virtual too – i.e. computer programs. I’m sure Al would like it if I could create a computer game to trap a leprechaun, but my programming skills do not include the expertise in graphics that are integral to today’s computer games.

I enjoy looking at some of the ideas other people have come up with, though. Another cute cake idea – similar in concept but quite different in appearance – has a rainbow hidden inside.

I suppose someday I’ll probably have grandchildren. Maybe one of them will inherit my love of crafts and want to trap leprechauns with me.

Moonwatching

I was driving home from work a day or two ago, and I noticed the newly risen moon in my rear-view mirror.  I was trying to decide how close it was to being full, and also trying to stop paying attention to the (beautiful) moon in my mirror and look at the (boring) traffic on the highway in front of me.

I’m used to enjoying the beauty of the sunset during my drive home (only during some times of year, of course), but I don’t often see the moon rising. For a moment it threw me that I was seeing it, then I reminded myself that I was driving west but seeing the eastern sky in my rearview mirror.

That got me thinking about how to figure out when to look for the moon and where in the sky, and about the phases of the moon in general. I have a fairly long commute (at least forty-five to fifty minutes, depending on traffic), so I had plenty of time trying to construct diagrams in my head.

I understand how the different phases work in terms of the relative positions of earth, moon, and sun, in terms of how much and which part of the moon is illuminated, but I never remember how to factor in time of day. And the one thing I just couldn’t make sense of, in my mental diagrams, was the new moon.

Poetry after Christmas

When I looked at Christmas poetry on Christmas day, I came across this poem by W.H. Auden. Since it belongs to the period after Christmas, I delayed writing this post until now.

I can certainly relate to a lot of it – the Christmas tree waiting to be taken down, our sons back in school, and the holiday celebration already a fading memory. I certainly stayed up late during Christmas break, and had a lot of leftovers to finish up. We didn’t get together with relatives, but I can relate to that also from past holidays.

And now here I am in the Time Being. Going back to the office was kind of depressing – and my excitement at getting two days off from school (i.e.the college where I work) this week due to the extreme cold seemed more appropriate to a schoolchild than a 50-something member of the staff.

More than that, I can relate to “craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,” looking for something to inhibit self-reflection (FreeCell works well), wanting to redeem the Time Being from insignificance, and enduring “silence that is neither for nor against [my] faith.”

This poem reminds me that W. H. Auden is one of the modern poets I appreciate. I don’t know that it would be accurate to say I “like” his poems, because they are often reminders of how indifferently brutal people can be. But they are thought-provoking, and their language captures my interest in a way many poems do not.

One of Auden’s poems I had not read before is “The Shield of Achilles.” Even before I read some background information explaining about Thetis and Hephaestos (details from the Iliad that I no doubt rushed through in ninth grade), I got a sense of what Auden is saying about the modern world. But it is even more poignant in light of the contrast Auden draws with Homer’s depiction.

Books: The Story of the Christian Year

The Wee Kirk conference we attended in October had a book swap. I took a book which I had not found particularly interesting, and came home with The Story of the Christian Year by George Gibson. I enjoy reading history, particularly when it relates to something else I have a strong interest in (in this case, the Christian church), and the origins of the church year is a topic I had read very little about.

I grew up familiar with at least some seasons of the church year. Lighting Advent candles was the natural lead-in to Christmas, and our Advent calendars always started with the first Sunday of Advent, not with December 1 as I see so many of them today. Lent I considered something for grownups to be concerned with, not children, but I knew when it was and that it ended with Holy Week, which included Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and then of course Easter.

When I began to attend a fundamentalist church as a teenager, I was surprised to find that people there not only did not celebrate these days and seasons, they did not even know what some of them were. Those who did know about them considered them unbiblical, remnants of the Roman Catholic church that mainline Protestant churches had retained because of their own low regard for Scriptural truth.

For the years that I considered myself a fundamentalist, I adopted that attitude myself. After all, the church I had grown up in had never preached the Gospel clearly. It wasn’t until I went to a fundamentalist church that I learned that I needed to admit that I was a sinner, that Jesus had died for my sins, and that I trusted him for salvation. The church I had grown up in was seen as “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” (2 Tim. 3:5 KJV), focusing on the outward forms rather than the truth.

Poetry for Christmas

I spent much of yesterday and today reading a book written by an English professor, and thinking that I ought to act on some vague intentions to read more of what would generally be considered “literature” rather than just books. I’m not sure how far I’ll get in this project, both due to time constraints and the thought that having other people to read and discuss literature with would be beneficial.

But for today, I decided a reasonable goal would be to find a good poem about Christmas. Google found me a great many, of course, but I easily settled on a favorite, “Moonless darkness stands between” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I haven’t read a great many of Hopkins’ poems, but I like the ones I have read, both for the way he writes and for the things he says.

I enjoy much of the traditional activity associated with Christmas – the decorations, the food, the exchange of gifts, and especially the singing. But the significance of Christmas to me is expressed in this poem by Hopkins as well as by anything else I can think of. It is about the birth of “Him Who freed me / From the self that I have been.” Not that it is by any means a finished project, but one that is “Now beginning, and alway: / Now begin, on Christmas day.”

Working at a college doesn’t always mean getting an education myself (though I am seriously considered taking a class in German next year, since my 8th grade son says that’s the language he wants to study in high school). But now and then I do learn something new in the course of my work – quite aside from the constant process of learning how the software works that is the focus of my job.

With Thanksgiving approaching, a colleague forwarded an article about turkeys and Big Bird. I really had never thought either about what happens to a turkey’s feathers when it is slaughtered to become Thanksgiving dinner (or any other time of the year), or about where in the world those bright yellow feathers come from that make up Big Bird’s costume. But apparently the two are connected.

While Big Bird is not a turkey (according to Muppet Wiki, Oscar has claimed Big Bird is a turkey, Big Bird has claimed to be lark), his costume is made from turkey feathers. Approximately 4,000 of them – unless you want to take the Count’s word for it that there are over 5,961.

This article, written during the 2012 presidential campaign, when Mitt Romney said he wanted to cut funding for PBS, describes how feathers are prepared for Big Bird’s costumes. This introduces a whole new subject to learn about, which gets into the challenging topics of economics and politics. (I’m inclined to agree with this article.)

I doubt that any feathers from the turkey we ate on Thursday (and yesterday, and today, and probably tomorrow) will ever find their way to Sesame Street. Most poultry feathers are either used in low-grade animal feedstock or thrown out (incinerated or consigned to landfill). But scientists have been working on ways to recycle the feathers into useful products.