Tower Truths

I owe much to this tower, this Empire State Building. If not for it, I would not be in New Gondolin. So here's to you, the Original Tower (OT):

LADEE to space. To the moon, in fact.

White Forest

I worry about the birds out in the forest. What do they do? How do they stay warm? Poor little birds.

All the poor little creatures out in the snow.

Of Interest Perhaps Only To Me

Click for big! My discovery, simple minded as it is, was that the Sun moves all over the sky.

Having lived in cities for many years, I never saw the path of the Sun through the seasons. But now, high up in New Gondolin, I see the Sun go from Winter left to Summer Right, booking across the sky. Of course it is we - The Earth - that is moving, not the Sun, but hard to deny the illusion.

So you see above half my year. That is the Winter Sun, 2011. The dates above the other mountains cover the sunsets to come/gone. Spring/Fall is a magical spot there in the hollow of the closest mountain.

 Seeing the rhythms of our planet play out every night, every year, is awesome. Man.

Stuff in the Sky

Moonrise! Bright as a star. Fun fact to ponder - the light from the Moon is reflected light from the Sun. This light was created in the center of the Sun millions of years ago, finally escaped, streamed across space, hit the moon and bounced off, right into your eye. Where it bounces off again, but the energy is translated by your brain as... Moonlight.

The ISS, racing across the sky. There's six people up in there! Also, that sure looks like the Northern Lights, but I didn't see it with my eyes. So that's either a trick of light and clouds, or the Northern Lights can appear below my vision's threshold, but can show up on a longer exposure.

Moonset, an hour after an August Sunset. Fun project if you have a view of the Western horizon and some time - note how Moonset shifts over the year. You might be surprised!

All photos, once again, Redshirt Inc. Click for big! Prints available! I also can DJ weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.

Stone Age Future

Wind and Moon and Star is all I need to power my crystal - what about you?

All the jazz you need is straight above.

All these photos are mine, by the by. But I offer them up to you, tonight.

What if?

There's not enough words in the world to describe all the fucked up shit that has and will go down.

Keep Ur fires burning. Know that I burn with you, and am taking pictures.

Smile!

Life is the prize, you fool.

Another's Newscaster

Flat Stanley is giving the sports from a stump in the middle of my frozen stream. Here's the rest of the winter news to come:

Both pics redshirt originals, unlike most pictures posted here.

Chaos is hip for the childless

Sure, when you're 27, chaos might seem pretty cool. Nihilism might be awesome at 25. Anarchy is your goal at 21. But, I observe in my gathering dotage, once you have children, these and similar philosophies lose all appeal. I mean, who wants their child to grow up in a Dystopian Thunderdome? Libertarians, maybe. Though I doubt that too.

Also, what the hell is a fox? Dog? Cat? Dogcat? Also too, in New Gondolin news, I had found a rabbit friend who would come up to me in the woods and watch what I was doing. I'd talk to her - "Hi, Mrs. Rabbit. How's life? How are the kids? Hope you're eating well - the grass looks tasty." Etc. She wasn't much of a conversationalist, but she'd twitch her nose and listen. Great listener. Anyways, the other day I came upon an odd looking scat on a trail the rabbit frequently frequented, and consulting my "Big Book o' Scat", I narrowed it down to some type of fox. And I've not seen Mrs. Rabbit since - 6 days! I fear the worst, and I doubt my reward for information will bring any clarity onto this distressing situation.

If you were taken, Mrs. Rabbit, well, I hope your calories help the fox's kids. Cycle of life and all that. RIP.

Where's your Global Warming now?

Snow Demon

Of course, as soon as it gets cold or snows in the Winter, your witty Wingnut will mockingly ask "What happened to Global Warming"? I tell them that Snow Demon is unpredictable and easily offended. And boy has he been offended this Winter!

Portland ME after 30 plus inches in early February.

Skiing to work! Up here in Gondolin it started snowing in early December and hasn't really stopped. Producing scenes like:

Redshirt photos. So yeah, funny story - Global Warming can cause all kinds of different weather conditions, including increased snowfall amounts. Warming temperatures worldwide will cause more extreme variations of weather in different locales, but yes, there could be far more snow in certain areas because of GW. Good luck trying to explain this to Mr. Wingnut. But then, maybe I will. Tomorrow.

Until then, pray with me to the Snow Demon to accept our offerings and mercifully stop sending snow. My back beseeches you!

Venus and Luna

Another redshirt shot of Venus and The Pleiades, with a very special guest "Ring around the Moon (w/ cloud)"! Not a shop in any way, just some funky clouds making it all spectral and astral n' stuff. Word. Click for big. Bonus ring pic:

I'm ashamed to admit I don't have a big enough lens to capture phenomena like Ye Olde Moon Ring in their entirety. This was the best I could do to fit it all in one pic - no dice. It was a huge ring around the Moon, and striking to behold, especially with the bright planets to the lower right. The night sky is amazing when you can finally see it, free of interference.

The source of myth in fact - consider, even ancient pre-humans understood the movement of stars and planets. They understood this "cage" we live in - with the stars far, far away, disappearing during the day when a giant fireball awakened. Which some figured out, way, way back when, was just another star, like all the lights of night. That will blow even an Erectus mind.

Also too: As I've said before, we need to call our moon a name, not "The Moon". The word "moon" refers to any natural satellite in orbit around a planet. Our moon is but one of hundreds (millions really when you consider Saturn's rings are made up of pieces of ice and each piece is technically a moon) of moons in our Solar System, and one of hundreds of billions in our galaxy, and mayhaps of trillions across the Universe. As you see, referring to the awesome object orbiting Earth as "The Moon" is no descriptor anymore.

I propose Luna, which is a cheat, sure, but Latin is classy. I am open to suggestions, though of course I will have no role whatsoever in naming our moon. Thank you for your support.

The Wanderers

From the front porch of Gondolin, late March 2012 - a cool occurrence where Venus is higher in the sky than Jupiter, the two bright lights you see here. The tight star group above Venus is the Pleiades, or, The Seven Sisters. The best constellation. But I'm not here to wax rhapsodic about the Pleiades, not tonight at least. Rather, I give you artsy shaky pictures of Venus and Jupiter, with Venus at the top:

All pictures about 90 second exposures, on a tripod, and I moved the tripod in the observed patterns to produce the triptastic trails.

Try it yourself! It's fun. I imagine you could get quite good at it, and draw a picture with the points of light. I shall endeavor to try again.

For Gondolin!

Ancient Greek war mask, with form fitting face behind. War has led to a good percentage of human evolution - both in body and technology. Death is the ultimate motivator. For Gondolin! For your dreams!

The 3rd leg of the grand stream, draining Gondolin of stagnant waters and all possibility of flooding. Little round rocks collected for weeks, piled in stacks, laid across the established channel. Erosion prevention is the aim. Beauty a secondary concern.

But it is a concern. Beautiful, is it not?

The water must flow.

Springs Falls

More redshirt originals. The spot on the horizon where Spring and Fall are defined - by the setting sun. It's been a remarkable experience - I was vaguely aware the Sun "moved" throughout the year, but I now see it defined every day on a line of mountains stretching from the North through the West to the South. I've been watching the Sun move back and forth across this mountain range like a pendulum, and I'll tell you the experience has been nigh holy. Once you see the pattern in nature, you tap into this "divinity". Worship here, Northerners:

Look see in the center of this picture, at the unmoving star - Polaris, the North Star. The center of our existence, since we spin around this point and spinning is everything, seriously. Everything is spinning around something else which in turn is spinning around something else, so on and such to infinity. It provides a clear definition as to the structure of reality: Spinning. So feel no shame in dizziness.

Under a Midnight Sky

All the photos in this post were taken by me, redshirt, on a full Moon night in mid August, 2012, around Midnight. I used a tripod and a remote shutter release, which allows you to take steady shots for as long as you want. Most of these pics were either 15 or 30 seconds. I've got tons, but here's the best. Not Instagrammed, btw. Enjoy, I hope. That's Mt. Washington far off in the center of this picture.

The Big Dipper! The best Northern Constellation, yes? Two fun facts - to find the North star, trace a line straight up from the two stars forming the right side of the dipper. You can't see Polaris in this picture though. Also, get some binoculars sometime and take a look at the second star from the left, in the handle of the Big Dipper. This is actually two stars - Mizar and Alcor. You'll see them both through binoculars, and also in this picture.  Click for big, as always.

Headin' down the mountain. Midnight, remember. And here's a good point to remind you why the Moon shines - because of sunlight bouncing off it and then hitting our eyes. Literally. A photon is created in the center of the Sun millions of years ago, spends a long time trying to escape, and when it finally does it joins many gazillions of its fellows racing towards Earth in 8 minutes. Anything that reflects (pretty much everything) then bounces these photons elsewhere, where in turn they bounce of something else, so on until there's just no energy to bounce anymore. This is light, this is sight, and color - the materials of the reflector change the photon's "color", and thus we see blue, or red, or green, and all the colors in between.

A bit back up. And in this little valley I created a stream over the past year, and now it is truly a thing of beauty, though no picture seems able to do it justice. Created is the wrong word, however. Channeled is a better idea, though does not do justice to the tons of rocks I moved to make it so. But still, it is thus, and aptly describes all our human endeavors - channeling existing materials, in some manner or other. We cannot possibly create or destroy; it is only our place to rearrange.

Gondolin, occluded. Solar lights provide the ethereal glow. I work by obsesion, I've come to realize. Not sure if this is normal or healthy or good at all, but when I obsess on something, by gum it shall be done. My latest obsession has been in manicuring a natural wall of pine trees, as a fence of sorts. I've cleared all the forest around Gondolin of dead wood and leaves (tons of work), cut down many leaf trees, and carefully nurtured every little baby pine tree that pokes its head above ground. Soon (10-20 years), I will be surrounded by lovely, sweet smelling Balsams, and these damn leaf trees can go fly a kite. Raking! It sucks! And in the Winter, where are you then, oh Oak? That's right, bare assed and creepy.

Red Shirt Is

Green where there was only brown before, forever. It's magical. For comparison:

The harsh light of construction. Does it ever look good? Better always to see the final product than the steps along the way. If consumer you be, rather than producer. Me?

I love the nitty gritty in the production and am often bored with the results. To my detriment!

Ardaphile

The best map of Arda - Earth - I've ever seen. It's lovely. I've long loved maps of all kinds, fascinated by the perspective - so high up. Of course, as with all things, some are more beautiful than others.

Can you find Gondolin? Morgoth couldn't for the longest time, but then, he's got plenty of it. All it takes is a mistake, a small slip, and evil comes marching in.

Find out more by reading the fantasy bible, The Silmarillion.

A memory of a dream remembered

Shamelessly stolen from l.e.s.t.e.r. Ex post facto OK, brah?

This was the dream I lived, twice. On a lake with a canoe and a keyboard, a hoe and boots for working and hiking. A dog - Kennedy (above) - by my side through the woods deep and wide, over beaver dam into the Wastelands, no where was off limits to a boy and his dog in the Summer of 99. Good times. But just a dream, and in that dream fashioned another dream, far off into the future, one day to build a castle of stone and wood high on a mountaintop. Lo! And so it has come to be, a sizable financial commitment to an idea birthed in the heat of fantasy lived, for a season or 4.

Check it: I used to canoe way out to the other side of the lake (a mile or so) where there was this sweet little island of cliff and pine. I made a soft seat of the fallen pine needles and spongy ground between three pines overlooking the lake and mountains, and read Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces". From late spring to early fall almost every other weekday afternoon, weather permitting, of course. It was magic, and I reminded myself then to remember it, now. And so here it is. Thanks for the pics, l.e.s.t.e.r.

House on the Lake

For reals: Floating islands of Lake Titicaca. Titicaca might be the best word ever invented, by the way. These folk weave floating islands of local reeds and keep on weaving, the islands floating along for hundreds of years. Check it.    

And as with all lake houses, if you're stopping by it's considered polite to bring a 30 cube of Bud Light and some Funyons.

Gondolin Water Works

Here's Gondolin, as of May 5, 2012.

That wall with the pine shadow is about 10 feet tall. Protecting against the natural inclination of the mountain, which is to drain right there, and to other side. When I found Gondolin some years back, there was a bog to the back and right of the garage shown above, all due to a drainage pipe further up the hill passing on water from still yet further up the mountain. This bog was relatively new and had just killed most of the pine trees in the vicinity, to my chagrin, for it opened up a gap in my fence of pine and wood. And so with all long term considerations given, this must be addressed by draining the bog. And so I dug (and dug, and dug, and dug...) a stream:

You can see a portion of it in the upper left. Here's a closeup of that stretch:

Not the best picture, and for that I am further chagrined. But you get the drift, I hope? A small channel dug into the ground corralling a previously creeping, spreading flow of water that soaked a large area. Another shot, of the newly dug lower stretch:

I also just cleared the deciduous trees and shrubs to the right, as I am truly gardening the forest, pruning deciduous where I can in favor of conifers. You can see the new leafy trees directly ahead, probably 10-15 years old and grown in since this land was first clear. They claim any new land first, and I wonder how the conifers ever gained a foot hold at all. Fun fact to know and share - the entire conifer family is only approximately 300 million years old.

Anywho, the bog is gone, and the stream is now some 400 feet long, all dug out and waiting to be prettified. The amount of water channeled through this system is incredible, and even more so, I've got projects here in Gondolin to last a lifetime. I envy myself.

As a goodbye, here's an artistic blurry photo of a deciduous bloom, in honor of all its fallen sisters: