A Brilliant Young Man!

This is Mak, and his mom Valerie.  They first came to ASLI in January of 2025.  He was interested in astronomy and of seeing galaxies.  So he learned some things about astronomy from many of the people in the club and decided he wanted to be able to photograph faint galaxies and nebulae.  So his mom went to an astronomy store and bought him a semi-automated telescope which finds objects in the sky and then it starts taking long exposures of them.  It "stacks" one image on top of another and then another until a faint objects is captured, and you can do this for an hour or 3 hours or 6 hours, or for a number of different nights until you have a good photograph.  That's because some objects are so faint.  Then you have to use some sophisticated software to work on the photograph to make it better.  Mak did that, gathering 14 hours of exposures on something called the "Eagle Nebula."  He worked on it for days and days in an image program like Photoshop, but more complicated and only used for night sky images.  In the end he got a stunning photograph and at the urging of one of our members, he entered it in a contest called the "Youth Imaging Award" from "The Astronomical League" and he won Second Place!  This included amateur astronomers and imagers from all over the United States!  His mom asked me to present him with his plaque at the meeting tonight, which is what I did.  What an astounding compliment this was to his skill and determination and patience to create his prize winning image!  We are all so proud of him!

 

The Power Grid

I stop at a number of places on my bikeride.  I have checkpoints along the way that I stop and write down my times to see how I am performing as I ride.  The last place I stop is near the old power plant.  This time I just happened to look up toward the sun and saw all this electrical infrastructure.  I am not sure what is in here but it is definitely still in use, with lines leaving there and going up to a tower where they are connected to really high voltage lines.  I think there may be transformers behind the wall.  But I loved seeing all the high voltage wires and ceramic insulators everywhere within this framework. So this is all part of what brings electricity to our homes.

 

Vivian Lost Her First Tooth!

Today was Vivian's birthday!  She is six years old!  So we had a Facetime today with Vivian and Amy and Gus.  We knew that she had a tooth that was hanging for a day or two, and it finally came out about two days ago, and so today we see it for the first time.  How could I forget that Liz and Amy went through this, with one by one their baby teeth came out and were replaced with permanent adult teeth.  So it is fun to see this again with Vivian!

 

Rainstorm

At the beginning of last week, we had two days of good rain.  I was standing on the front porch looking out when it started raining hard for a bit, so I took my toy camera and made this photograph.  I love the atmospheric effect of so much rain that it almost looks foggy as you look further into the distance.  And I like the feeling of this photograph as well, whatever that is.   Please click on this to examine it in a larger size and you can see the streaks of raindrops throughout the picture.

 

Lucia and I

It was time for a haircut today, so I called Lucia to see if she had a spot this afternoon, and fortunately she did.  Kathy and I have been coming to Lucia for haircuts I am thinking, for about 30 years plus. Kathy asked a friend who suggested Lucia and originally she had her salon in the basement of her house. I think neighbors complained about the cars parking there, so she rented a salon and we have been coming here ever since.  I love coming here for the life that goes on here. There are several hairdressers that have been with her for years, and Janet who does the shampooing,  who we have known for as as long as Lucia has been in this location.  She has a lot of Italian customers and the shop is usually full and there is so much conversation back and forth in Italian and Spanish and the shop always feels so alive with conversation.  There is always the offer of an espresso when I arrive.  So at the end of my haircut I asked if I could do a portrait of the both of us and she said "yes."  So here we are, friends after so many years.

 

Standing Woman 1, at the Getty Center

In my first post of the Giacometti sculptures at the Temple of Dendur, I mentioned how, every time  I entered this gallery at the Getty Center, I was stunned by the presence of one of his figures so striking, up against a white wall.  The other thing is, that this sculpture is nearly nine feet tall!  So you are actually looking up at it when you stand in front of it.  I thought I would take the time to show this "Standing Woman 1" in more detail so that you could appreciate how it is made.  Please click on each image to see it larger.

So this is a medium view and you can begin to see how little dabs of clay were put together to form the rough structure of this woman. When the clay figure was finished, a mold was put around it and then molten bronze was poured into the mold, to form this bronze figure.

And here is even more datail from a closer view.  So here is what is wonderful - I looked up this photo in my collection and then went to the Getty Center website to to look up the information.  Along with all that, there is a wonderful description by one of the Getty curators.  So I hope it will offer some insights if I reproduce just part of the description.

"Nearly nine feet tall, this larger-than-life, extremely slender figure towers over the viewer.  Despite her emaciated frame, she commands the surrounding space.  Her rail-thin arms appear almost fused to her torso, hightening a palpable sense of empty space around the figure.  The relatrively large base emphasizes her fragility.  The deeply kneaded, distressed bronze surface suggests a morbid, decomposing form."

OK but I find I have a problem with that.  I have never had a feeling when seeing these different Giacometti statues of woman that they were decomposing figures at all!  Never a hint of that so I disagree with the curator on this note.

 

Cloud Watching Again

We went to the beach again today, so Kathy could do some of the walking she needs to as part of her recovery.  The minute I got out of the car I saw this scene.  So many different kinds of clouds visible, both low level cumulus which you see closer to us and then higher clouds further away.  I was not sure, but at first right in the center of the photo, over the dark trees, I thought that might be a rain shower, but I don't think it is.  It was a showery day today.  After walking for a bit, I looked to the north across the sound and there was a similar rain shower as I photographed yesterday.  When we left the parking lot, there was another huge rain shower just across the harbor that obscured the whole horizon to the north.  Just beautiful gray clouds everywhere today.  And a single person down by the water, watching the clouds as we were.