How I spent my day

I refinished the eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) box a woman ordered for her 25th anniversary present for her husband. Due to fact that there is a hurricane on I drove over to her town to deliver it so she would have it before the actual anniversary. She was very pleased with it and is certain her husband will like it too. Here is what the sky looked like over there:

On my way home I drove past a friend's house and saw her tending her garden. I stopped and we had a great talk. We usually walk together but the heat has prevented that since June so it was good to see her. I took pictures of the flowers in her garden - she does great work:

Barber is too obvious a choice.

It must be summer

The sky just prior to sunset. That storm blew over us and when I took that picture it was way east of here.

Our beloved native son, who has a bridge named after him - he used to live under it.

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Here's a suggested study for climate change scientists:  Forget CO₂ for a moment. It seems reasonable (if not axiomatic) that global cloud coverage should track global temperature rises. More heat = more water vapor = more clouds. Is this testable?

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Good morning, sunshine!

Photo by Sixty Grit

What's the over and under for cloud cover in your neck of the words?

clouds and rain

Nice blue band of sky in the center where the darkest clouds of all form independently.

Barry didn't always appreciate being the leader of me. Our situation was happenstance. He could have used a better subject. Nevertheless from the very beginning of existence Barry was never without an answer. For some reason it was impossible for Barry to say, "I don't know." And I thought that was awesome.

"Barry," I asked this sage of five, "what makes the clouds move through the sky?"

nothing but clouds

It was a lousy day for this sort of thing. The worst sky ever for photography. Just gray. All day. The wide angle was snapped on and the thing left to run with no expectation except the expectation of tossing out the result.

Every time you look up at the sky you see nothing but gray just sitting there and what appears to be dead nothing when you're living in it, then when run speeded up turns out to be an impressively dynamic massive exchange of water through the sky from Montana and Wyoming right through Colorado to New Mexico.

How's that, eh? 

This bit is technical. 

To show this the few hundred pictures had to be shrunken from billboard to postage stamp size, the change in shades of gray, the only sky color, cannot be handled this way so the gradients are divided into bars that look like isobars and nothing like clouds. To correct the bars that occur by saving in gif form, or mess up the bars, noise is sprinkled in made of random dots to blur the dividing bars.

It's crazy. That extreme optimization did get the file size down from 17M to 7M. 

You notice when these run that it's choppy at first. That's your computer collecting all the frames. Once your computer has them all then they can run smoothly the second time on. 

I love this. It made me realize the day is a lot more dynamic gorgeous and powerful than I am giving it credit. 

Sunset blanket for Sarah Palin

Take a tour of River Styx, let Charon be your guide and go where Dante went.

clouds

How about some idle cloud gazing?

I see a rabbit and hounds and a hippopotamus and snakes and another rabbit and a giraffe baboons and fish and a shark race cars geckos and birds mostly geese and a crane.

I would like a song to go with it. The one by Judy Collins is tired. What else is there?

[cloud song] 5,000 Sing Zach Sobiech's 'Clouds' at Mall of America.

In his memory. This song is well liked because it is a testament to Zach's Christian faith. Zach Sobiech is a teenager diagnosed with cancer that settled in his pelvis and his lungs and who died following a run of treatment until they all failed and nothing more could be done.

The story of Zach and the video here at  Twin Cities.

A bit twee a cynic might say.That makes it perfect for translation. [Yep]

Jesus pictures

The pictures given us at Sunday School depicted Jesus teaching people often children in rustic setting and with clouds in the sky streaked with heavenly light. It was a feature peculiar to this style of religious art. The impulse for streaks irresistible. We were all given poster size pictures each week along with tiny pocket size New Testament Bibles. Five kids, five posters and five pocket New Testament Bibles. Each week. All the American children in church received these things. Through years of this steady influx of unusable Jesus posters and pocket New Testament Bibles  I concluded they're flown in by the planeload.

Just for us. To keep us on the straight and narrow by all means necessary. I resented being heavily propagandized and brainwashed and resisted early.

Nothing could be done with these pictures. We have no good idea why they were given in such ridiculous overabundance. When I think of my dad's family car loaded with these rolled Jesus posters left behind by us careless children, folded Jesus posters, torn Jesus posters, repurposed fly swatter Jesus posters, tease the dog Jesus posters, milkshake bib Jesus posters, foot wipe Jesus posters, leaking baby diaper Jesus posters and New Testament Bibles falling into every crease, fold and pocket of the automobile, I shudder for the sanity of my parents back there and then.

GO CLEAN OUT THE CAR!

Those streaky clouds get me every time. I look up from doing regular things today and pow there's another Jesus picture right there in the window.

Then it rains lightly but steadily, heavenly refreshing you can say, then abruptly stops, and this, the quiet of satisfied refreshment and peace:

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Celebrity Lament

Boobs and rows of pubic hair and I scream hassles on the air
and feathered boas everywhere, I've looked that way on Cloud.
But now they only block the fun, they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things I could have done but Clouds got in my way.

I've looked at Clouds from both sides now,
from give and take, and still somehow
it's Cloud's intrusions I recall.
I really don't know Cloud at all.

Original: