A Visit to the Planetarium

Today, I visited the John C. Wells Planetarium at James Madison University where they offer two free shows most months. This month they are showing A Part of the Sky Called Orion and To Space and Back.  JMU students give an informative and entertaining star talk after each film.  I saw both films and heard two star talks today.  The first show was suited more to families with younger kids.  The second show was suitable for general audiences, but it was more of a feature for adults and older kids. Such is the show pattern on Saturdays at the planetarium.

The show on Orion told how three historic cultures interpreted the constellation Orion.  The folklore was pretty cool.  After the film the song I'm Coming Out played while the GOTO Chronos opto-mechanical star projector dramatically rose from its casing. Since I am internally seven years old, I thought this was THE BEST THING EVER!!!

Just look at that big purple bad boy!

We got to photograph it after the family star talk.

And check out this meteorite and its little push-pin pal (front) in their meteorite exhibit!

The To Space and Back show was especially interesting and well presented.  It gives a short overview of how space based and space influenced technology makes our lives better on Earth.  I really liked how this film made good use of the planetarium's shape to show enormous striking images.  I have been to a few planetarium shows that felt like watching a filmstrip under a dome- not this one though.  This one was a visual treat.

The star talks are fun as well.  Viewers learn how to find seasonal constellations.  This planetarium is also a great advocate for dark sky and less light pollution.

It was a great free thing for a dreary Saturday.  On some clear Saturdays, they set up the solar telescope; looking at the sun is also a great opportunity!  JMU also offers nighttime star observation parties.  While I have heard a good review of these, sadly, I have not yet attended one of their star parties.

Old Nature Reading for a New Year

This year, I am reading an 1848 translation and reprint of Christoph Christian Sturm's 18th century daily devotional, Reflections on the Works of God, and His Providence Throughout All Nature.  Here is the Goodreads author's page for the Rev. Sturm.  Clicky

As may be deduced by the title, Sturm writes a brief segment for each day on the natural world in the corresponding time of year and how God may be seen through seasonal events. Yesterday, for New Year's Day, we were reminded that God has watched over us from birth and will continue to care for us in the new year even if it has bad parts.  Today's reading notes that winter is bleak, but we have all that is needed for our comfort in winter and should be thankful.

I read ahead a bit after buying the book and opened up to a warm day on which Sturm was amazed at the vast multitude of gnats that God made.  Sturm got pretty giddy about all the gnats; that's my kind of guy!

Although my edition came with a rather puritanical introduction, Sturm himself seems contemporary, positive and broadminded in his theology thus far.  So hopefully this will translate across the years and distance and be a nice devotional tool. I also enjoy the grand language used by Sturm and the translator; my favorite word so far was "sublunar".

I first learned of this book when working with regionally published copies at the library.  My own imprint is from a local book dealer and was a personal copy.  The woman who checked me out  when I bought it noticed a relative's signature and the date 1956 inside.  How cool is that?!  It is a small world here in the Shenandoah Valley.
Sadly, my copy isn't in such good condition.

I wanted to invest in a hard copy, but you can also join in the nature devotions for free online.  Sturm, once very popular, has been digitized!

So, Happy New Year, and as the Rev. Sturm wrote for January 2 back in the 1700s, "Let us only bestow more attention to the works of nature, and we shall never find occasion to arraign the wisdom of God...all tends to one grand point, the glory of God, and the happiness of man." p. 12

Critters On My Frontier

Since moving to my small Frontier (acre in the suburban countryside), I have been able to host several critters.

There were already bluebird houses here.  Seven bluebirds auspiciously flew over the house when I first visited in the winter.  Sadly, there have been few bluebird since then.  Perhaps they are afraid of the outdoor cat, although I have never seen the outdoor cat hunt.  He much prefers to instead lounge all day, visit with his cat friends, and receive cat food.  

Anyway, some other birds moved in this spring, including a lovely swallow couple.  They are always nice to watch and can be very approachable when they are not nesting.  When they are nesting, they are territorial and engage in scary bluff attacks on the people who are trying to mow the lawn.

My second attempt to attract birds was purchasing a screech owl house. The house is cedar.  It faces East.  It is lined with cedar chips.  An owl has not yet moved there.  European Starlings nested in the house earlier this year.  I understand another owl nesting window of time is now here, so fingers crossed on attracting an owl.  Here is a

 selfie picture with the owl house.  I climbed the tree to install it.

Then, there are the cats.  I understand  that they are non-native bird eaters, but I am also a non-native bird eater, as are many of us.  Here is Dandelion inside and feral Bucher outside.  Bucher was a member of a feral cat colony, but he joined my cats and me and became very attached to us at the last place where we lived.  He stopped using the feral colony's resources in favor of sitting in my yard all day and night.  I was able to trap and move him here with permission and help from the feral cat colony's manager. Although he has some mannerisms of a pet, like his goofy pose shown below, he is very skittish and avoids direct contact.

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My latest venture is housing mason bees.  Several mason bees visited the flowers here in the spring and summer.  I read that hosting these native bees is now a "thing."  It is good to help our declining pollinators.  Next spring, I would like to plant a small pollinators garden for the pollinators.  A few companies also now sell mason bee houses, and the bees themselves!  I went with cute and inexpensive.  

I am not sure about this, though.  What if something goes wrong and instead of helping out the mason bees, I end up hurting them?   For example, I read not to use bamboo tubing because it will degrade.  Maybe the bees here are doing just fine without their new little house.  One thing that appealed to me about the mason bees is that they are solitary nesters.  Every female mason bee is queen of her own tube.  They are also said to be non-aggressive. The mason bees also need mud for their nests.  I don't mulch so they may be picking up mud from the flowerbed.

By the way, companies are also selling leafcutter bees, which can also be non-aggressive and are native, but bringing in leafcutter bees would be an ugly thing to do to the neighborhood.

I would like a bat house although I am uncertain how the neighbors would feel about a bat colony.  They were not too thrilled about the skunks that were living  under my enclosed  porch.

Free Nature Books for Kids

Kelloggs and Scholastic are teaming up to give away books for kids.  The promotion is done by signing up for their Kellogg's Family Share Program and entering codes from specially marked boxes of products.  Information is here: http://www.scholastic.com/kelloggs/
It says you can enter up to 30 codes.

It looks like at least three of the books from which people may select are nature books for young readers!  The first listed book appears to be a sensational one about deadly animals, but there is one on animal camouflage and what looks to be a nice story about a bat.

I ordered the one on animal camouflage to give to a charity that my mother works with that provides supplies for disadvantaged families.  Next on my wish list is the bat book.

Signing up for the promotions program was not all that bad.  My preference is for locally sourced foods, but there were some Kelloggs products with codes in the pantry.  I am 100 points away from being able to cash out to plant a tree through Treecycler.

Corporations working with charities is A-OK in my book.

Book Review and Little Outing

I finished neurologist Oliver Sacks' book, Hallucinations. See it here at Amazon.  It was an interesting and surprisingly quick read.  Sacks seems kind, very intelligent, and patient-centered. He also proves false the commonly held idea that having a hallucination means that a person is psychotic, although psychotic people do also hallucinate.  Apparently people hallucinate fairly readily under several circumstances that distort perception.  Dr. Sacks writes about people who hallucinate due to blindness, deafness, certain diseases, intoxication, migraines, grief, sensory deprivation, mortal danger, and isolation.

The chapter in which Sacks recalls hallucinations that he had after trying various mind altering substances was especially interesting.  I couldn't tell if Sacks was bragging about his adventures opening the doors of perception or if he was admitting a youthful addiction, or both.

The chapter on grief hallucinations was sad.  I have heard of people who had such experiences of seeing, hearing or smelling lost loved ones.  Some people thought they were grief induced mental tricks and others thought they were visitations from the spirit world.  What is kind of creepy to me, but not addressed in the book, is that some people have apparently experienced these grief hallucinations before they knew of their loss.

Sacks briefly wrote about the Third Man Factor.  I finished another book specifically about it this summer. Amazon info.  That is when a presence, usually helpful, appears to a person who is isolated and/or in deep trouble.  The Third Man is especially associated with mountain climbers, those working in the Arctic, astronauts, and people sailing alone on the ocean.

Sacks tells all kinds of stories. Some are sad and some are humorous or inspiring. I liked the sweet one about the woman who had a comforting visit from her cat that died the previous day.

You may know of the author as the doctor from "Awakenings."




Also, I visited my favorite agritourism destination over the weekend.  It is White Oak Lavender Farm in Harrisonburg, VA.  It is a beautiful place and the lavender is so relaxing.  My favorite part is their friendly farm animals.  Here are some pictures I made there.

I like this one because it looks like the one hen is saying, "That's some awesome highlighting on your feathers there, girlfriend!"

The Post of Human Origins

PBS aired two episodes of the amazing First Peoples program last night.  These were episodes about the first peoples of America and Africa.  How very interesting!  I was hoping for some good archaic humans information, and PBS did not disappoint. There were also theories of modern human migration that turned on their heads the old ones that I had been taught.

One very interesting theme of both episodes was that the first peoples who settled America and Africa did not come out of solely one gene pool, such as in a Garden of Eden theory.  They told how remains have been found of people in the Americas who were dated as being here before the previously supposed first people who crossed the famous Bering Straight Land Bridge and who  hunted the great mammoths. This means there must have been at least one different route of human migration into the Americas other than the Land Bridge that we all learned about in elementary school? Interestingly, one of these ancients has been linked genetically to modern Native Americans. That is fascinating.

When we got to the Africa episode, they told of archaic humans!  These were the humans who lived before and with us, the modern humans.  There was a very cool story about an African-American family with an enslaved ancestor who may have been carrying DNA from an archaic human group in Africa.  The family learned this after doing some commercial DNA ancestry testing.

I am also interested in archaic humans due to DNA ancestry testing.  After many years of speculation of Asian or Native American genes in my mother's family, I forked over some money to  a company to test my genetic makeup and report for certain what is there.  Well, the results came back very heavily Southwest Virginia mountaineer by way of England, Ireland, Normandy and Germany.  That is what I had expected.  There was a tiny amount of Subsaharian Africian DNA, which also did not surprise me.  What did surprise me was a little Finnish ancestry.  Where did that come from?  Vikings?  And, the supposed Asian or Native American DNA?  Only teeny amounts showed up, like .001 percent.

The big surprise is that the company said I carry 3.2 percent Neanderthal genome DNA. Apparently this is high normal for a modern human of European ancestry.  Now I am a big Neanderthal fan and sometimes like to type like a Neanderthal, ugh. :)

Mom, whose maternal halogroup we now know, and I visited the Hall of Human Origins in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum this spring. We saw casts of Lucy and the hobbit and facial reconstruction of archaic humans.  When there was an opportunity for a photo shoot that merged my features with the Neanderthal reconstruction, I did it, with this result.  I think you could only be a male Neanderthal.

Thanks, Smithsonian!

Spider web Photos

Here are some spider webs early this morning, all wet from last night's rain.  Those dewy spider webs reminded me of autumn, but today was hot and humid and certainly did not feel like autumn.

I also like how the morning light was captured in the first two photographs.

A side note:

I love to drink bottled teas with natural ingredients and am currently having McCutcheon's Real Brewed Peach Iced Tea.  It is from Frederick, Maryland.