Flower pix Spring 2024

I made some flower collages, from pix I took during my afternoon walks

 

Snow shoeing April 7 & 9, before & after the eclipse

Snow shoeing outfit

Flicker in a tree

My snow shoes

Video of the flicker

 

Video of the spring snow

Another video of the spring snow

Combined videos from April 9

Eclipse 4/8/2024

I saw the eclipse on a hilltop called Bly Hill in Charleston, VT.  This hilltop was a superb location for eclipse viewing.  It's mostly mowed and offered 360 degree views of the sky.  It also features an old cemetery with interesting graves.  Charleston, VT is mostly an intersection with a church -- not much to it.  The hilltop is fabulous for visual astronomy, tho.

We had the most amazing good fortune with the weather in Vermont & NH.  Texas, where eclipse experts headed ended up having a lot of clouds.  Those of us who went to northern New England had a great view.

Scanning the scenery during the eclipse

Unfortunately, the corona didn't come out well in the above video.  It was, in fact, quite ghostly, like moonlight & not so large as what this video looks like.  I have to upgrade my cell phone to get better pix. That seems so frivolous, but I really would like better pix of illuminated objects.

Traffic jam on I 93 at 10:30pm

Just before exit 40

Horizon during eclipse

Eclipse (not too clear with Cell phone)

Again, the above picture exaggerates the size and brightness of the corona.  It was really ghostly, like moonlight.

My eclipse viewing outfit

Parking near the Bly Hill Cemetery on route 105

To me, the amazing thing here was that I could stop in a random place on the eclipse path and have the eclipse arrive just exactly as scheduled.  For those who are so doubting of science in recent times, please remember this.

journaling about art

 I finished this piece during an online meeting for worship (Quaker) today.

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A post shared by Anne Barschall (@barschall)

I started to wonder if in fact God was trying to tell me something with this drawing. I journaled quite a bit about it. The following is the start of what I journaled.

can drawing be a ministry?  Am I drawing something important?

big bang

fwo Jupiters in a binary emitting radio waves

Could there be meaningful signals in those waves?

Did the universe begin in a big bang, or is this just an illusory part of something else?

are we inside the event horizon of a black hole?

What expands from the center?

Lies?  Gossip? Rumors?

The truth? Love?  Charity?

Hamas is surprisingly resilient?  

Why are you surprised when they have no place to go?

Their backs are against the wall.

Gang leaders trying to form a government?

Could they do a good job?

Any job would be better than what’s going on now.

We cannot impose nation building from the outside.

It has to come from them.

Are there such voices from inside this drawing?

Are there voices trying to come out?

Can truth come out of the maze of disinformation? 

From the overload of any information?

Can there come order?

Can there come peace?

 

Forward Party -- e-mail from Andrew Yang

 I am interested in the Forward Party, currently being spear-headed by Dean Phillips and Andrew Yang, two dynamic, idealistic entrepreneurs.

Andrew Yang recently sent me an e-mail asking me to focus on 3 candidates that the Forward Party is supporting currently: John Avlon, John Curtis, and Dave Min.  

This was my response.  NB the letter started out by thanking me for reading.

I hope *you* will read my response.

I feel we need to focus on eliminating plurality takes all elections.  In 2016, Trump won by 70k votes in swing states.  Out of 13 states that I looked at that year that were designated as swing states, there was no majority winner in 12 of them.  It seems very likely that if there were a runoff between the two top candidates Hillary would have won at least some of the states that she lost.

The plurality takes all system is what has ossified the two party system. Intelligent people are afraid to vote for 3rd party candidates out of fear of throwing the election to the person they most fear.  It is also possible that, without that fear, a third party candidate might have won some of those swing states.

The fact that the current election will be between two white men who are both too old to be president, one of whom is a dangerous criminal and totalitarian and the other of whom is a dangerous hawk, is a clear indication that the major parties have become dysfunctional.  The main path to eliminating these dysfunctional, ossified parties is to eliminate plurality takes all voting.

There are two main avenues that have been attempted to avoid electing someone who has not been voted for by a majority of voters.  One is the jungle primary and the other is ranked choice voting.  I personally favor the jungle primary.  I think ranked choice voting is confusing for many voters -- so that they don't trust it.  Also, the jungle primary allows an election where voters are really focusing on the 2 remaining candidates, without other distractions. 

Focusing on individual races, rather than the overall problem, is, imho, not the best policy.

#ForwardParty #DeanPhillips #AndrewYang #WinnerTakesAll #PluralityTakesAll #Runoff #JunglePrimary #RankedChoice #ThirdParti

My name in letters to the editor

Well, this is cool!  I suddenly found my name in the letters to the editor of a recent issue of Science News.  They hadn't told me that my question got published.  I decided to go back & search for recent mentions of my name in letters to the editor.  I found the following

NY Times

Jan 22, 2022 -- about end of life care

Sept 10, 2022 -- about use of boxes for grocery delivery at my local CTown

Science News

May 2, 2005 -- about solar cookers being superior to cooking with petroleum

March 20, 2022 -- How do we know that kunga were the result of human breeding?

March 17, 2024 -- about cause and effect v correlation in marijuana/depression studies

I know I got published a number of times in The Journal News, but I haven't subscribed for a while, so I don't know if I can go back & find those.

FB & X comments regarding Biden, the Ukraine, and Haiti 3/18/24

Comment I wrote on FB 3/18/24

 Trump is so awful that most Democratic voters have been willing to ignore that Biden is a dangerous hawk.  This has allowed the military industrial complex to keep issues focused on domestic policies rather than our international military behavior.  Both parties continue to vote larger budgets to the Pentagon every year -- larger even than the Pentagon requests.  Pence had a platform item that that budget should be increased even more.  Hillary was also a hawk.  

I notice that Niger is kicking us out.  Countries in Africa are listening to Russia.

Even the New York Times, generally supportive of Biden, has recently run an article indicating that, prior to the latest conflict, the CIA had been cooperating with Ukraine to spy on Russia -- confirming Putin's opinion that control of Ukraine is critical to his national security.  

While I don't necessarily buy into the Republican concern that Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine were indicative of direct corruption, the whole thing is odd. Why was the junior Biden in Ukraine in the first place?  Prior to the recent war, this was a rather obscure place from the USA perspective.  Where did the Republican concern come from? Russian manipulation of social media was likely involved, but there is something definitely peculiar about the whole picture there.

African countries see that and remember that the USA has been a bad actor in the past.   

#Biden #HunterBiden #BidenUkraine #Ukraine #Niger #BidenHawk

Comment I wrote on twitter/X  3/18/24

Is anyone noticing that Biden and the media are hyper-focused on white wars? Has anyone noticed that genocides going on in Africa are actually larger than what's going on in Gaza?

— AnneBarschall (@AnneBarschall) March 18, 2024

Another twitter/X post 3/18/24

crew, not grew