Megabytes

I’ve done my share of complaining of late. Well, I’m not really a complainer by character. But I sure have noticed the weather being cooler and rainier than usual. My friends have commented on this too.

Well, here’s the silver lining - great sky! The clouds have been full of texture and shape. Even the rain has added a glistening sheen to the sidewalks, flowers, trees, and streets.

And so, the header of my blog for June is a photo of a recent stormy sky. Yes, it has been modified a bit in Photoshop. I used a Hot Tip from Lynda.com that I read about just this morning. The tip was all about how to adjust skin tones using the Lab Color mode, but I thought I could as easily use the Lab Color mode to adjust the sky tones.

Here’s a before and after:

Can you see that the AFTER image has some more depth by darkening the different channels in Lab Mode? In the original tip, the subject was a man’s face which was adjusted to give him a bit of a tan.

I’m learning to enjoy the energetic skies that the wet weather brings.

Yesterday, the weather was all over the place. It felt as if it would rain from midday on, but held off until near sunset. I took an exuberant long walk up and around Mt. Tabor while on the phone to my parents. We spoke for over an hour, during most of which I was walking. Well, that felt great in my body; stretching and using muscles and breathing deep. all while connecting with my parents.

For dinner, I fixed some swiss chard and rice while A brought home a couple of pieces of baked chicken. delightful. Then she and I took a walk around the neighborhood, a more relaxing stroll than my earlier exercise. We have new neighbors moving into the house behind us and we stopped there to welcome them. They invited us in to see the work they were doing; scraping off wallpaper, pruning shrubs, removing carpet. Our 10 minute walk became an hour!

When we returned from our walk, I noticed the sky was doing remarkable things. I got my camera, turned right around and went out again. Forty-two shots later, I returned home amidst the heavy drops of rain that were just beginning to fall. The air was warm and the sun was just setting and the rain felt good. like a release.

I took this image yesterday mid-day from my backyard, and did a little image editing in Photoshop to create this month’s masthead image. The last 12 images for the masthead have all come from photos taken of plants in my backyard (except one image from the beach). It’s the start of a new 12-month cycle and my eye is turned towards the sky.

Clouds fascinate me with their constantly changing structure and type.

• Heavy cumulus.
• Wispy cirrus.
• Stormy nimbus.
• Mushroom-shaped cumulonimbus.

In yesterday’s image, you see fair weather cumulus with their sharply defined edges and bases at the bottom left, and some wispy high-level cirrus clouds in the top right. Watch for more sky and cloud images from me this year.

This month, my masthead reflects the return of the light. The days are getting longer; since the Winter Solstice on December 22, 2007. This time of the month, we are getting one more minute of daylight each day through about the third week of January. Then two minutes are added to each day for the remainder of the month. We are enjoying an 8 hour, 46 minute day here - 30 miles north of the 45th Parallel North. By the end of January, we’ll have a 9 hour and 42 minute day. Yeeha!
I have a string of lights on my blog, to welcome back the light.

Fifty years ago today, The former Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite, known as Sputnik. This Russian word translates as ‘traveling companion’ or ’satellite.’

Many writers describe this event as the beginning of The Space Race, as well as an embarassment to the United States, because American rockets were not large or reliable enough in 1957 to put a satellite in orbit. It’s too bad people put in that context - comparing ‘them’ to ‘us.’ How about saying, ‘it was a great achievement for humanity.” and leave it at that?

Now, Mike Griffin, NASA Administrator in charge of President Bush’s Moon-Mars Project, describes the motivation to go into space as “the drive to extend our reach, human destiny…” The focus is not on competing against another nation for a prize. How refreshing to hear!
However, Griffin is not above using this a motivating factor to get monies into the United States space program. He points out that China has a growing space program, having put three astronauts into orbit on two separate occasions; 2003 and 2005. Further, China would like a space station of its own and is eyeing the moon for a colony.

Rather than fuel a new space race between China and the US, I would prefer to hear talk describing the Earth as a united planet; one that will go to the stars together. When Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn became the first humans to view Earth from space, they viewed one planet, without borders, without lines drawn between nations. They spoke of the beauty of the planet, not countries.

This image of the Earth from space gives me hope for a united global effort to continue the exploration of space.