Monday, April 26, 2021 (Tomorrow’s April Pink Moon will be nearest earth and at its brightest.)

Tonight’s rising of April’s long-anticipated Pink Moon might not become apparent over Central Oregon. This area is experiencing weather very cool and rainy, with forecasts of probable snow. Regardless, later today, I’ll go out and search for that rising moon. If I’m lucky, my camera will make worthwhile captures that tomorrow will appear here. If my tale is an unlucky one about trying and losing, well, failure isn’t fun. But if one tries very hard to succeed failure isn’t simply awful, for good learning is a worthwhile outcome.

Yesterday day felt too cold, but a welcome light rain seemed good. While in a supermarket, I received an alert from my phone about a lightening strike only fifteen miles away. I hurried home for lightening and thunder make my dogs desperate to get into the house. In my occasional absences through heavy, noisy rainstorms, I’ve arrived home to find that dogs have ripped out window screens by trying to reach safety inside.

I drove home without hearing thunder or seeing lightening and in a light rain. The weather was causing lots of interesting atmosphere. The sky was cloudless with a heaviness that altered how familiar things looked. I stopped occasionally so my camera could record the damp atmosphere.

These images of gloom don’t represent a Central Oregon norm. Usually, we get too little rain, and generally, have lots of sunshine.

Bright sunshine appeared early on the morning before today’s story. Then, this cute critter busily was collecting mouthfuls for its new babies in a nearby nest.

Dear Friends: Wishing for good luck later today, for catching sights of that rising full moon. Diana

Sunday, April 25, 2021 (In two days April’s Pink Moon will appear at its fullest.)

A few weeks ago I quit my part-time job after years of preferring the society of some outside work. That brought an unexpected shock of readjusting my well-set brain-calendar. To offset, I had to focus on recognizing and expanding my full-time at home responsibilities.

Today is different socially and economically from anytime past. In my career days, I had a welcoming and creative home environment. In retirement I brought and nurtured that attitude which tends to be expensive. Looking back, it’s difficult to pinpoint when my thinking began changing. Maybe it’s mostly from the past year-and-a-half of pandemic worries. That period has altered much that many of us once took for granted.

These days, I’m in less in a hurry and have less spending power, so I calculate waste. The many throwaways in my kitchen, like paper towels and plastic wrap, impact grocery purchases. Recently, journalists focusing on environmental concerns are writing that wildlife are becoming trapped and bounded by discarded face masks. Throwaway masks are plastic-impregnated, not recyclable.

I’ve begun to try and reduce consumptions of typical throwaways. I’m trying to replace grabs at paper towels by grabbing cloth towels and then laundering and reusing. It’s a less easy a solution for some messy situations, but does work. Another issue is plastic wrap, a tear-off and discard kitchen helper. Instead of grabbing at plastic, I’m saving refrigerator-destined items by using pre-made and reusable coverings.

All that primes me for a brand-new consideration, wasted food. A new book, by Lindsay-Jean Hard, who focuses on sustainability in garden, home, and community, who is a commercial baker and also blogs, argues that most of the unwanted fresh food parts we discard are usable and nutritious. She’s found ways to cook with the skins of onions, potatoes, asparagus, and carrots. She cooks with most flowering vegetable tops and their tougher outside leaves.

It seems the art of French cuisine is what’s taught the world about the importance of peeling and trimming what’s to be cooked. Today’s world isn’t the same old world. It’s wider-viewed, better-informed, and very concerned about the impact on the environment of common waste.

I like the ideas behind this book along with my own small contributions to sustainability. Little steps, if adopted by a majority of consumers, will have the power to influence a worldwide economy.

Dear Friends: It’s said that a feather floating can be the source that initiates a hurricane. Diana

Saturday, April 24, 2021 (4 days before April’s full Pink Moon comes nearest to earth)

In this coming Monday’s early evening, my friend Susie and I will head east into the desert with cameras. We want to see in real time and capture in photos the Pink Moon rising. We’ve been “getting into” super moon appearances, and have begun planning ahead. We’ll try to capture May’s Super “Flower Moon”, which in exactly one month rises nearest to earth.

Susie has named our team, we’re “Moon Chasers”.

A name to act-to intensifies preparations. Susie, an avid cycler and hiker, knows the community’s east side. She has information suggesting that Monday’s sky might be very cloudy and has been exploring where best to go for a view of Pink Moon’s majesty.

I, too, am spurred on, taking a camera everywhere and trying to remember to use it. Well, not just “use it”, but to practice applying the holy grail: framing, focusing, and lighting.

So, yesterday, a couple of photos taken from my vehicle while waiting in line to dump unneeded stuff at the Landfill.

Beside the mountains in today’s header photo, here’s another that satisfies.

Yesterday’s light came from a bland sky and emphasized subject features in interesting ways. After leaving the Landfill, I paused here and there to take random photos. These didn’t need touching-up and each speaks for itself.

This one, intended to be a throw-away, instead became an instant favorite.

For obvious reasons, here’s my most favorite of all.

Dear Friends: Setting large goals forces us to prepare by handling the small related elements. Diana

Friday, April 23, 2021 (5 days before April’s full Pink Moon rises nearest to earth)

The sky’s contents are on my mind in anticipation of next week’s fullest rise of a nearing Pink Moon. I’m wondering how to rise to the challenge of capturing the anticipated moon majesty with my woefully inadequate cameras.

Yesterday afternoon, on seeing the moon’s early rise in a still-light sky, I decided to experiment. What a pleasant surprise, to discover that my zoom camera could capture decently a moon bathed in natural light.

Very early this morning while letting the dogs outside, I felt a beckoning from that same three-quarter moon, now setting and beautifully so over in the west. I didn’t go for a camera, because my past shots of moons setting in dark skies never have captured adequately all I yearn to see.

Good photos from a camera, aside from effective composition, are one-hundred percent about light. Take the photo of yesterday’s afternoon moon in daylight. Its details yesterday exactly are what my naked eye saw early this morning.

To illustrate here’s that afternoon capture, after computer software has darkened the surrounding sky. This version reflects much I’d have wished to capture in a photo of this morning’s setting moon.

These thoughts move my impressions beyond the moon and to sky-gazing in general. In thinking about watching the sky, I’m recognizing that this activity is and always has been never-ending. Aside from specific pursuits like the moon, the sky is an amazing streamer of much that fascinates.

There are general activities:

There are specific topics:

Acquiescing to being addicted to sky-watching lets me shift away, to return to that specific, fascinating, coming Pink Moon. Can’t help myself, must stay tuned.

Dear Friends: This calls for re-reading Shakespeare, who clearly and best articulated “sky matters”. Diana

Thursday, April 22, 2021 (In 5 days, April’s full Pink Moon will rise at its nearest to earth.)

This time of year brings the “squeeze weeks”, the few almost too chilly/windy that separate the coldest weather from summer’s warm days. It’s a waiting period before I start working with my horses. It gets me tackling around-the-home filler-activities. Last year, I spent these weeks trimming trees, and cutting and hauling wood to the dump. This year, I’ve begun a different project.

I’m transforming my RV garage from years-long of storing hay and creating a workshop. The area will hold tools that having accumulated clog nearly very space in my attached garage. The shop is a cool idea, but raises a question, “What’ll I do with the hay?”

For the time being. That’s a set-aside for answering later.

Most of us remain somewhat in a pandemic mode. We keep near home and try to stay busy and productive. We navigated the worst shutdown period with reading, streaming, knitting, painting and drawing, zooming, Amazoning, and sometimes venturing out to shop.

I still enjoy reading a whole book every week. I still fiddle with artsy stuff, it’s fun though I’ve little talent. These are great weeks of having time to think about and to grow a shop. Another question: “What’ll I do with this shop?”

That’s another set-aside for later.

This morning while perusing newspapers, I ran across an article about someone clever. Fighting boredom in her most confined pandemic period, she played around, scratching with a penknife on unpeeled bananas. She was able to turn those scratchings into little art pieces, took photos, and posted them on line. That has made her wildly popular, gained her a following. She’s begun teaching on line, the art of scratching onto banana skins.

Here’s her unique combat against shut-in boredom, and images of her clever art: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/04/21/banana-art-sketch/

Dear Friends: Creativity often just falls-out, as a by-product of just playing around. Diana

Wednesday, April 21, 2021 (Six days before its nearest-to-earth rise of April’s full Pink Moon)

The world has avoided street riots following a jury’s decision that Derrick Chauvin is guilty on all counts of murder. Most everyone immediately breathed normally again.

Achieving that difficult victory has been the easiest part of achieving social needs versus institutional practices. Ahead, America faces the challenge of reforming a long-standing key organization. Worst, it stretches coast to coast with a highly entrenched workplace culture.

Huge changes must start with top management. It requires muscle to redesign, readjust, and effectively monitor revised institutional policies, practices, and procedures. America’s leaders publicly recognize these needs. They’re promising to alter the entrenched and complex processes of policing.

Changing a long-standing institution means revising its top vision and the missions to support that vision. From those come goals for line personnel to embrace and adhere to. They must work with new hiring agreements, new methods to assess job candidates, and support clear work guidelines by ably assessing and rewarding performance.

An effective culture is circular. Goals from the top are directed to line managers. Those understand how to lead, support policies and procedures, oversee training processes, and measure and document performance fairly. Plus line managers must communicate well and negotiate actively with subordinates. Fulfilling the circle is reporting accurately up through the chain and back to top management.

Modifying America’s police work is a challenge that equals our leadership’s long-time attempts to modify another entrenched, but related, culture: America’s too-little control over sales of lethal weapons.

Dear Friends: Drawing on experience, we look forward with an abundance of hope and caution. Diana

Tuesday, April 20, 2021 (Seven days before the full rising of April’s Pink Moon)

While my brain tried to find something about which to write today, ideas rose but not interesting and motivating There were scatters of doings here at home that feel like big deals but wouldn’t sail in my mind’s breezes. Something illusive was preventing my charging forth with an idea.

That changed after I began seeing in today’s leading newspapers articles about the Chauvin trial, and its possible aftermath. Today, Minneapolis is poised for riots. An increasing majority is gathering around the courthouse, most believing Chauvin guilty of murder. They’re insisting and praying for justice in a guilty verdict.

It struck me that I, too, am worrying about that jury’s decision. A surprise, here in my home a couple thousand miles from Minneapolis and its street-threating massive rebellion. I’ve witnessed on television some of the trial, and yesterday’s closing arguments by the attorneys.

I’m aware of storing such information in a brain chamber, to await an official verdict. After that, I’d mix and match my impressions to the real outcome.

Or so, I assume, that’s me, how I feel and what I’ll do.

This morning, I recognize that I’m really very involved, have an opinion, and now see that that for years everybody’s been building toward the outcomes that may follow this jury decision. It’s been accumulating over time, “it’s all got to us”: gun violence, Black Lives Matter, police brutality, #metoo.

In this year’s brief beginning, we’ve witnessed random mass killings, one after another. The Chauvin trial is tapping an iceberg that tops the illnesses among huge populations. Social pressures have outstripped the once-commonly accepted social norms that for long managed to manage most of us.

Recently I’ve become more aware of America’s history, parts that school didn’t teach. The Constitution built on ideology and promises couldn’t have predicted great explosions of population and wealth that have altered national and world balances.

Today beyond our borders, Russia is ramped up and poised to attack Ukraine. North Korea is doing who knows what, and preparing to do who knows what. And here in the United States, we’ll likely witness pro and con outcries on Minneapolis’s streets, regardless of the jury’s verdict.

All that’s on my mind. Much reaches far away and gathers input from Minneapolis and Ukraine. Much is local, too, for nearby Portland is experiencing street riots and they’re increasing.

All this means that regardless of what that Minneapolis jury decides, the unrest will continue. What to do about policing? About wealth distribution? About economies after a year of shutdown. About Ukraine and North Korea?

Dear Friends: An awakening, to recognize how greatly world issues may affect personal anxieties. Diana

Monday, April 19, 2021 (Eight days before Pink Moon rises nearest to earth)

My last surviving hen, Welsummer, has outlived all others in my chicken flock. On impulse, in 2010, I brought home a dozen day-old chicks from a feed store. In those days, as a recent transplant from Los Angeles to Central Oregon, I found a country-like environment highly enjoyable. Eager to immerse myself in new adventures, I couldn’t bypass cute tiny chicks.

The growing babies were fun, offered lots of learning and provided too many eggs. Observing hens encouraged me to start identifying wild birds by sight and sound. Eventually, my bird life gained some inside talking-types, Quaker Parrots.

About my hens, unlike the common knowledge, each was smart and had an individual personality. Their behaviors singularly and as a group were fascinating. In five or six years, they aged, laid fewer eggs, and eventually began wilting before soon passing away.

I fought losing each hen, sought veterinary help, tried to prevent each from failing but couldn’t. Modern domestic chickens aren’t bred to live much past their laying years when generally they become unwanted.

Bird people know that birds well-cared-for can live for many years.

Now, I’ve only Welsummer who’s well beyond her egg-laying days. She appears healthy, shares space with my twin goats, looks terrific, is excited when I show up, eats well and behaves normally.

Well, almost. Here’s what I discovered yesterday in the goat house:

Actually, a few weeks previously she had laid an egg. Our friend, Susie, and I were offering treats to Welsummer who ignored us–very unusual. She looked stressed and worried me greatly. Suddenly, from her an egg dropped. It was unformed, she eagerly devoured it, and Susie snapped pictures.

• 

• 

As Kathrine Hepburn tended to remark, “Who can say, who can say?” I will remark that today for breakfast, I’ll enjoy a beautiful fresh blue egg.

Dear Friends: May this hen keep outliving the average survival years for domestic chickens! Diana

Sunday, April 18, 2021 (Nine days before April’s full “Pink Moon” rises nearest to earth.)

Early today, one-quarter of the coming full Pink Moon descended in the western sky and reflected brightly in my bedroom window, awakening me. The bright quarter moved quickly, and before my head, feet, and camera were in gear, its light had skidded north, becoming hidden in a location where trees obscured my view of the horizon. Shucks, an easy shot missed.

Around midnight, few suddenly-awakened humans are at peak performance. I decided to read, and while preparing instant coffee nodded to a happy basil plant beside the sink. That plant had given me a little learning journey.

Maybe because my mind had been dwelling on moon travels or on seventeen-year appearances of the cicadas, I recalled my history with the basil plant. Weeks ago, I picked it up in a supermarket. Alive, tall and leafy, it rose from a bit of damp soil in a tiny container. The instructions, to set its container in water, seemed easy, I did and the plant lived.

In time, after I forgot to keep the basil wet, it drooped. I enjoyed having occasional fresh basil and wondered if the plant might thrive by a replanting in a bigger pot. I popped the sad basil into another container with lots of soil and plenty of water. The plant regenerated and bloomed.

This plant-keeper forgets, and sure enough, before long I again focused on the plant and it looked completely dead. Oh well, I shrugged, who needs a live basil plant anyway?

My inner person tugged against my impulse simply to pull and toss that basil. A better self nudged to me that death by neglect could have been avoided. Having nothing more to lose, why not water the plant before tossing it, just see what might happen?

The next morning, the plant surprised me, its lower leaves slightly lifted. The larger top leaves still were dead. I wondered if cutting away the heavy top leaves and reducing stems might better help the lower part regrow, but decided to let the plant be. Next morning, the entire basil was alive and even its highest leaves regenerating.

A renewed lesson to my better self: I love the moon’s various appearances, the cicada events, the intelligences of bees and octopuses, and also now, a simple basil plant. That almost-easy toss-away has reinforced an always-human need to keep working toward understanding, caring, and nurturing.

Dear Friends: A salute to rigid cycles: those of astronomic movements and of life itself. Diana

Saturday, April 17, 2021 (10 days before the fullest appearance of April’s “Pink Moon”)

During this pandemic era I’ve searched for ways to encourage my creative side, hoping to expand my usual ways of imagining and dreaming. I’ve been helped by carrying a camera and photographing whatever seems interesting. I don’t do much with my pictures beyond producing and sharing them on this blog, and occasionally on Facebook.

While looking through past photos, it seems some might have been worthy of a painting on canvas. One afternoon I tried to recreate in oils a photo of a bird perched in a tree with multiple interesting branches. My first version was a total flop. So were second and third attempts. Finally, I realized that the picture’s elements were too complicated for decent reproducing by a novice painter.

I considered art lessons. I’ll mention that watching online paints being mixed and applied is as boring as watching grass grow. These days, in-person learning opportunities are rare, and besides, I’m among those now tending to avoid gatherings.

Suddenly, a light dawned. I’d find things simple to photograph. Say, an item alone or a scene containing simple components. For painting, I could recreate a whole picture or isolate one of its components.

That’s why I focused on a lizard and a rock. I planned for the Western Fence Lizard in today’s header photo to become a painting.

The potential shot was at a distance and its background too isolated for real interest. Here’s a longer look.

It turns out that these pictures actually are pretty good, but maybe too complicated to paint. Closing-in more captured the creature looking straight through distance and back at me.

I’ll not try to create a painting. While there’s a simplicity of subject, there’s also a complexity of mood. Recreating mood challenges mightily a novice painter.

Dear Friends: Visualizing differently and adjusting camera-handling heightens creativity. Diana