Civic Center Park

This is adjacent to the State Capitol in downtown Denver.

As you can see, the skyline in the business district is not very inspiring; the glass towers are as generic as they come. More interesting is the view through the columns on the right: the skewed angles of the Denver Art Museum, which if not completely original was at least something fun and different.

Mostly what I remember is what a slog it was walking across that huge concrete plaza on a hot, hot day. Once I'd taken the pictures, I headed for the trees.

Urban poetry

I have nothing against cows, but I don't think of them as art, especially when Mama Cow is the size of a Manhattan apartment. Obviously they feel differently in Denver.

I have a raging sinus infection that presented as a toothache so bad I went to the dentist. Advil keeps the pain at a low throb, but I'm giving fair warning to anyone who approaches me today -- think very carefully about how stupid your question or request is before you ask it.

Because I might have a cow. And it would be a big one.

Astronomy Tuesday

This image reminds me of the Eye of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings movies. On the other hand, it also looks a lot like a flower. I think I prefer the flower -- let's go with that, shall we?

The Ring Nebula, M57, is about 2000 light years away. The image is a composite of deep exposures from three different large telescopes, which is why there's so much beautiful detail.

Image Credit: Hubble, Large Binocular Telescope, Subaru Telescope; Composition and Copyright: Robert Gendler

Denver in (mostly) black and white

And welcome to the working week.

I'll post more of the art and architecture in Denver this week; in the meantime, here are some random shots I just liked in black and white.

Sunday bird blogging

It was early in the morning in Riverfront Park in Denver, and I heard birds rustling in the bushes so I wandered around trying to get a look at them, and then this guy flew out and paused to say hello.

And it was just a robin, of course. I'd been hoping for something a bit more unusual, but in birding, as in life, you get what you get.

Bonus reflections

Another, closeup view of the reflected windows.

Saturday reflections

These charming windows in downtown Denver created equally charming reflections.

And speaking of ghosts...

Last stop on the way back to Denver was the Overlook, uh, Stanley Hotel, made famous by The Shining. I was not disappointed that there were no rivers of blood pouring out of the elevators, but these scraggly bushes  guarding the front of the hotel are a different story.

It's supposed to be a maze, but it seems to me that if you can see over the top of the hedges -- not to mention through them and between them -- it's not much of a puzzle.

Nor would it provide much of a hiding place if you were being chased by an ax-wielding failed writer driven mad by the evil spirits haunting the building, but presumably that's not one of the featured excursions on offer.

Lawn Lake

One last picture from Rocky Mountain National Park.

You're probably thinking Where's the lake? The original Lawn Lake died in a catastrophic dam failure in 1982, and this is its ghost, a jumble of rock and water fanning out over the valley. 

There is still an actual lake, in a much smaller form, up the mountain.

Urban poetry

These elaborate pipes outside a building in downtown Denver look surprisingly glamorous.

Astronomy Tuesday

This is M24, but unlike most of the items in M. Messier's catalog, it's not a nebula or a galaxy.

Instead it's a gap in the dark interstellar dust, through which the stars in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way are visible. So it appears to be a star cluster, but it's actually a window to something much larger -- thousands of stars, ten thousand light years away.

Image Credit and Copyright: Roberto Colombari

Pine beetle

Millions of acres of forest in Colorado have been ravaged by beetles -- it was dispiriting, to put it mildly, to see so many dead trees.

The beetles have no natural predators, but previously they've been held in check by prolonged cold weather. Now the winters aren't as cold as they used to be, and the beetles have been infesting the national park since 1996 -- one more consequence of climate change.