The Moon

Moon Phase: Waxing crescent
Weather: Warm (and the snow is finally all melted)

The moon looks so cool tonight, it reminded me that I have several moon photos I haven't posted. The first one is (I think) from December 2003, based on the lack of leaves and the fact that that's the only time I was in DC. You can't really see the moon very well, but it's the tiny white dot on the left side of the trees. That one I took with my old film camera and scanned.

The second is from this past January, when I was in DC. My parents and I were walking back from the movie theater (Sideways, a great movie) and the gibbous moon was just floating up there the whole way back, looking so cool, so when we got home my dad helped me set up his tripod so I could take pictures, and of the dozen or so I took, this is my favorite.

The third photo was taken from my dorm room window exactly a lunar month ago. I really like the way the clouds look in that one; I always see such amazing clouds from my window because it faces Lake Superior, which somehow causes interesting cloud formations above it. I can't actually see the lake from my window because there are too many buildings and trees in the way, but I can always see the effect it's having on the atmosphere.

As you may have gathered, I'm quite obsessed with the moon. I love taking photos of it, and my digital camera is proving much better for that than my film camera. My film one can't zoom nearly as much, and can't seem to focus correctly for the moon's brightness, unless it's evening and the sky is partially lit. My digital camera also can't get a clear shot of the full moon, but other phases come out relatively well.

Pope

Moon Phase: Waning crescent
Weather: Warm & clear

The pope became pope four years before I was born, and despite the fact that I knew that popes change all the time, it seemed like he was always pope. So it seems weird to me that soon someone else will be pope. I heard today that this pope has been seen in person by more people than any pope in history. Well, I'm one of them. In ninth grade, I went to Europe with my French class, and we spent a few days in Rome. We went to Vatican City a couple of times, one of which was on Palm Sunday, and the pope came out and blessed everyone. I always thought that was funny, since I was an atheist at the time. (I'm still an atheist, I suppose, depending on your definition.) So that's my pope story.

I'm hoping that the next pope will be a little more liberal. I agreed with this one on a few things (evolution, the death penalty, helping the poor, consumerism). But I disagreed with him on a lot of things (abortion, euthanasia, women's rights, queer rights, birth control, etc., not to mention basic theological differences). I just don't understand how anyone can oppose birth control in this day and age, with such a huge population problem. And they really need to get rid of the celibacy rule for priests--it was originally done to keep priests from giving church land to their sons, and now it's just attracting pedophiles to the priesthood. The problem with the church--with most organized religions, actually--is that they don't want to adapt to a changing society. But they're going to have to, if they want to survive.

white pines

Moon Phase: Waxing crescent
Weather: Warm and mostly clear

I took these a couple of weeks ago when I went to core some trees for a class. The first one is some eastern white pines with an understory of balsam fir, and the second one is another big pine. White pines used to be a major tree in northern Wisconsin, but they were the first to go when the logging started out here, and nowadays there aren't too many seedlings popping up to replace the ones dying out. Anyway, I really love white pines—they've always felt very sacred to me for some reason. I think at least part of it is that in high school I started teaching myself to build fires, and I quickly learned that white pine needles are a great way to get them going, so the trees came to symbolize fire for me. Pines are pretty rare in the DC area, at least in the wild—we have plenty of planted ones, but in the woods you only find the occasional Virginia pine, and they're dying out.

Speaking of sacred trees, I just finished reading Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia, which is just an amazing book. I always love reading utopian (and distopian) novels, and this one is really the best I've ever read. It takes place 20 years after Washington state, Oregon, and northern California have seceded from the US to create an ecologically and socially sound nation. It sounds like paradise to me—I just wish it were possible. I can't see that many people actually agreeing to make that kind of society. But it's nice to dream, isn't it? And anyway, a lot of the technologies they employ to reduce their ecological impact are really possible, and some of them have actually begun to be used since the book was published in 1975. I suppose some aspects of their society could be employed, if enough people were dedicated to it.