The International Doll Museum blog: Feer, eller vi er alle en smule Fey når det kommer...

The International Doll Museum blog: Feer, eller vi er alle en smule Fey når det kommer...: Feer, eller vi er alle en smule Fey når det kommer til dukker!  ? I dag er midsommer, eller Midsommer. Du kan se midsommer mordene på P...

Solstice

Blessed summer solstice

Death of a Centipede

Death of a Centipede

It seems I am destined to be a hospice hostess to disabled, aged insects and small animals.  The centipede that was retired in the sink of my new offices’ bathroom expired today.  Memorial Day, I fostered a monarch that had hit a car but survived, only to die later in the box room I fixed it, complete with fruit nectar and butterfly flowers.

When I taught at a community college years ago, a box elder bug lived on my console; it seemed like the same but kept me company for more than a year.  Twenty years later, I’m tempted to go find it.

About ten years ago, I saved a Polyphemus moth and returned it to its trees behind my school.  About the same time, tiny fruit bats found their way into my classroom, and hung upside down from the sprinklers.  One slept this way on the sprinkler outside my office.  My students said I channeled them with my Anne Rice books and my vampires.  Oh well.

I’ve tried to return and save baby birds to their nest, and once save a rabbit.  Another time, it was an ungrateful baby mouse that bared its nasty little teeth at me as I lowered it gently to the other side of our fence, into a field full of its own kind.

Two weeks ago, almost, a was holding a tiny kitten, a little stray that tried scratching its way into a house.  We all thought she would be fine, adorable cuddled on her little blanket, but she quietly stopped breathing.  This was the hardest to take.

Jeopardy James by Dr. David Levy, Guest Blogger

Once again, it is with great pleasure that we share Skyward, by Dr. David Levy.

Skyward for June 2019.

On April 23, 2019 I took this picture of a bright
Lyrid meteor falling in the sky north of our Jarnac Observatory.  It
is not often I can actually capture meteors using a camera.

Jeopardy James.

Of all the programs that Wendee and I enjoy on our television set,  the game show Jeopardy is one of our favorites.  For a half hour each day, Wendee and I play along as the three contestants try to respond correctly to host Alex Trebek’s clues.  In our tradition, if Wendee or I get a question answered, we applaud each other.  It’s fun.  We were saddened to learn of Trebek’s cancer diagnosis and we hope he will continue to enjoy a long life. Last month the show has been unforgettable.  In his first 31 days as a contestant, James Holzhauer has earned an astonishing $2,462,216 in winnings.  On the show that aired Friday, May 31, Holzhauer won $79,633.

          Wendee and I particularly enjoy the astronomy clues that come up on shows like Jeopardy.  Here is a clue from last Friday:  “On November 12, 1833, these meteor showers were seen across all of North America, sparking the serious study of meteor showers.”  Jeopardy James got it right:  “What are the Leonids?!”

          The Leonids are a meteor shower which occurs whenever the Earth punches its way through the sand grain sized debris left by a comet.  The debris spreads out across the comet’s entire orbit about the Sun.  In the case of the Leonids, when the parent comet Temple-Tuttle itself appears in the sky once every 33 years, a meteor storm, rather than a shower, sometimes occurs when meteors, or shooting stars, can fall at rates of a meteor per second.  It happened in 1833, the year of the Jeopardy clue, in 1966, and somewhat less intensely over the period from 1996 to 2002.

          As I watched this program, my mind harked back to our visit to Australia in 2001 where we saw 2,406 meteors scratch the sky over the course of a few hours. The display that night began as our group was relaxing on a dry lakebed.  A bright shooting star appeared in the east, brightened rapidly as it soared across the sky, then disappeared in the west.  Before the cheering ended a second meteor repeated the event.  At the height of the show, I witnessed nine meteors appearing simultaneously.  We continued to see meteors well into the morning twilight.

          I have observed meteors on more than two hundred nights that began with a night at the original Jarnac cottage north of Montreal.  I saw a magnificent, brilliant shooting star low in the southwest.  The picture the accompanies this article is of a brilliant Lyrid that appeared to wave at me from the northern sky in late April of this year.  Even though I have and use telescopes each night, perhaps my favorite observing session happens when I sit down outside, lookup, and watch the sky for these always welcome messages from space that we call meteors.  Maybe someday, James Holzhauer will get to enjoy the shooting stars as well.

American Doll and Toy Museum: World Doll Day 2019 – The State of the Doll House

American Doll and Toy Museum: World Doll Day 2019 – The State of the Doll House: World Doll Day 2019 – The State of the Doll House World Doll Day is fast approaching; do you know where your dolls are?   LOL!   Serio...