I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Astronomy Tuesday



Comet C/2022E3 (ZTF), which was lighting up the northern skies last month, is now on its way out of the neighborhood, possibly never to return.

Image Credit and Copyright: Rolando Ligustri

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Sunday bird blogging

I saw this titmouse in January; the park isn't quite so brown now as spring approaches.

That seed in the beak, held so delicately, made me think of a joke my stepfather used to make about my mother—She eats like a bird, a peck at a time. I'm sure I was taught in some dreary lesson in elementary school that peck refers to a unit of measure, as well as the more common usage describing what birds do with their beaks, but I doubt that most people would even get that pun anymore. (Unless they're old enough to also remember the song my grandmother used to sing to me. I love you a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.)

My students love idioms, and I usually start my class with one, explaining the meaning and showing how it's used. Yesterday I did a whole lesson on idioms about food: I've got bigger fish to fry, don't cry over spilled milk, not my cup of tea. It was really fun, but unexpectedly exhausting. The last half hour of the class was fairly lackluster as the students were basically struggling to stay awake.

Saturday, March 18, 2023

Saturday reflections




I took this picture from the window of the Uber after the surgery a few weeks ago; looking for things to photograph is one of the ways I deal with stress.

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Astronomy Tuesday




I know I posed a Cassini image of Saturn just a few weeks ago, but I can't resist this one: Saturn's moon Hyperion. This small (approximately 250 kilometers across—small for a moon) strange object looks to me like something I might pick up on the beach, and so I suppose in a way, it's not strange at all. Unlike so much of what we're able to see in the universe now, it looks almost familiar.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team

Sunday, March 12, 2023

Sunday bird blogging




It's been another one of those weeks. Here's a handsome Northern Shoveler in the Central Park Reservoir by way of compensation.

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Astronomy Tuesday


Evening on Mars.

The Curiosity rover took this picture last month. That fan effect is called crepuscular rays; they're seen when the sun's rays shine through clouds near sunrise or sunset. They're very familiar to those of us on Earth, but this is the first time they have been seen so clearly on Mars.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/SSI

Sunday, March 5, 2023

Sunday bird blogging




One belated titmouse for your viewing pleasure.

A minor surgical procedure to remove a tiny, but unfortunately malignant, wart above my eyebrow left me with a black eye, a two-inch incision, and no energy for anything beyond minimum prep for yesterday's class and reading mysteries on my Kindle.

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