It Was a Dark and (Clear, Cold) Night

It was a perfect total-eclipse-of-the Moon-viewing night last night. Temps in the mid-40s, no clouds. Orion hanging up there along with Canis Major and Taurus. Jupiter off in the distance. I went out about 1:30 as the eclipse was just starting and watched the crescent shadow slide slowly across the lunar face. After about 20 minutes I went back inside and came out again with my brother at 3:00 for the totality. I could hear some neighbors down the street talking quietly on their front lawn. The Moon was almost black with deep ocher undertones and a lighter golden tinge only around the edges. In the shading I got the sense of the Moon as a three dimensional world and not merely a disk. The deep darkness of totality brought out a slew of lesser stars that had been hidden by the full moon light: Pleiades and such as.

The silence, the darkness, the slow inexorability of the event itself put me in one of those states where I can feel and sense the Universe. I can see the relative positions of the Sun, Moon and Earth. I can feel the orbital motions and trace their paths. I can feel the curves of space-time holding me to the planet, the planet within the solar system and that within the galaxy. And I know, within me, inexpressibly, the grand laws and structures that underlie the whole beautiful assemblage.

And everything is right, for a while.

Lucidity!! I'm Ho-o-ome!!

One of the more depressing things about Mom's Alzheimer's is realizing just how aware she can be about what she is missing/losing. Yesterday she opened her date book to look for her sister's address and realized she had written her sister's name but our address.

"Why did I do that?" she asked. "I must be losing my mind."

Well, yes Mom, you are.

She knows she can't find the words she intends. She knows she has to be told things over and over--and they still won't stick. I am, quite frankly, amazed she does not get more frustrated than she does, but then one of the advantages of a shortening attention span is that this, too, shall pass. Fairly quickly.

Last night she tried looking up my middle brother's phone number in her calculator and then attempted to dial him on the TV remote. She was very accepting when I pointed out to her why she was having problems getting through.

She sighed and said, "I wish I still had a brain."

So do I, Mom. So do I.

Mom-Sequiturs

MOM (While reading a National Geographic article on Alaska): "Can you imagine all the natural wealth up there? If you had a million dollars you could become rich in Alaska."

Rime Time

In the 30s at walk time this morning. I noticed, all along the way, in the north facing, shadowed, low-lying patches of grass a light white dusting, like confectioner's sugar on spinach*. All the birds were sensibly hidden away as well, except for a few mourning doves huddled hopefully high above the empty cracked corn container.

*Yes, it's supposed to be a disgusting, inappropriate image. Just like frost in south Florida.

Hawks and Doves

Out walking in the 43 degree pale dawn sunlight and realized the local hawk was standing not more than ten feet away from me in the burrowing owl "enclosure." (The staked out area that tells the city maintenance crews were not to mow.) We stared at each other for a couple of moments before it came to me:

"You're not. . .hunting . . . OWLS!? Are you?"

He looked at me, then one of the burrows, then back at me and slowly took off to land on a telephone pole across the street. So, that was my answer, I guess.

I backtracked a little from my walk, later, to see if he had gone back to the owl site but there was no sign of him.

I mean, for crying out loud, there are two to three dozen mourning doves just down the street hanging out on the telephone lines overlooking the bin of cracked corn the elderly couple put out for the Muscovy ducks every morning. Go have some pigeon for breakfast!

A Chilling Dose of Reality

The weather has turned cold--for here. About 20 degrees below normal for this time of year: mid 40s at night high 60s during the day. My brother has this thing about not turning on the heat--reasonably enough as it never gets this cold in southern Florida and the house is not properly insulated for these temperatures, and it's (extremely expensive) electric heat, and (since the heat was never intended to be used) the house was designed with the heating/cooling vents high up on the walls. Because cool air descends the air conditioning in the summer works just fine. But since hot air rises everything goes right up to the peak of the cathedral ceiling and then seeps out of the house. Last year he got a bill for one month for $300.

Mom, of course, put on a sweater when the temps dropped below 80 back in October. Now she wears multiple layers, uses an electric blanket at night (when I remind her she has one and point it out to her) and sits in front of a quartz heater during the day. She claims to be comfortable and by afternoon the house has warmed up to the point where she discards most of layers.

This particular "cold" spell should last another week or so.

The trade-off is crystal clear cloudless deep skies, soft dry breezes and sunlight in the trees. Yeah, worth it.

Where the Rotting Things Are

So, this morning a vulture landed in the neighbor's back yard gliding in on its four/four-and-a-half foot wingspan exactly as if it was still a thousand feet up right until it was its own height above the ground and then dropping as gentle as could be and walking over behind some bushes so I couldn't see what had attracted it in the first place. It immediately took off again, from a standing start, which is impressive for a creature that large, circled, came in again, disappeared behind the bush and took off a second time. It's shadow as passing over the yard was worthy of a Nazgul.

The vultures are back in force all around the neighborhood and are flying quite low as a rule. I can't imagine there are that many dead things just lying around (opossum and cat were the last two I saw and that was weeks ago) but they sure seem attracted to a number of sites.