Almost Famous (Again)

I was thrilled to get a text from my friend who is the head of multimedia at the newspaper I used to work for.  He wanted to know if I was going to shoot the "Blue Super Moon" on Wednesday night.  I wasn't planning to do that because it was our meeting night, but I said I would shoot it for him, because it would be fun.  It is a "blue moon" because it is the second full moon this month, and it is a "super moon" because the moon is closer to us at this time.  The moon's orbit is not circular, but rather elliptical, so sometimes it is closer  to us and other times it is further away.  These new popular names like "super moon" and "blue moon" are not astronomical terms.  We call the close moon a perigee moon, for instance.  So to get this shot I needed to be on a beach of an exclusive area on Long Island, and I called the police department and they told me where to park and gave me permission.  Only thing was, I had to walk for a mile and a half to get to the place on the beach where the moon would show up in the same picture as the power plant stacks.  So carrying all my cameras and lenses and tripod the walk took me about 30 minutes in the sand.  The other thing was that it was cloudy and I was worried I wouldn't see the moon at all.  Well, I didn't see it rise but about 10 minutes later I finally saw the moon through the clouds for a short while.  Whew!  But now, since I was on deadline I had to race back to my car - I decided to cross some private property (at night!) to get to the road so I could walk faster and then drive to my friend's house.  We decided that was the quickest way to edit the photos and prepare one and caption and send it to the paper.  Our deadline was 9:00 PM.  He sent the image from his home at 8:59 and we made the deadline!  Whew!

So this is what the page looked like in the newspaper that was delivered to our door!  This is a copy of the online version of the paper.  I have to tell you, it is still a thrill to see my work in print! I guess when it is in your blood, it never goes away!

As I was driving home, which took about 45 minutes, the moon kept rising and it was in a clear sky.  So I stopped at a baseball field in town and set up again to do this photograph of the full moon not obscured by clouds.  What a beautiful thing this moon of ours is, isn't it?  It was such a satisfying evening to plan everything and have the plan work in spite of weather.  A really rewarding feeling.

 

No-Fly Day

Today is Wednesday, so it was off to the airport as usual.  Although, seeing these clouds as I drove out east, made me think I was probably not going to fly today because of low cloud ceilings and rain.  Actually, back in the day when I was actively flying on instruments, an day like this would be really fun - rolling down the runway, and then pulling back on the yoke as the plane lifted off the runway, and within 30 seconds I would be in the clouds for the duration of my trip!  That was exciting and fun, but I have not been current on instruments for years.

Here is the airplane I am flying now, tied down on the ramp while a light rain falls.  So there was no flying, but to pass my flight review and become current in the airplane I need several hours of "ground school" and that's what we did today, inside where it was warm and dry.

 

America's Dog?

I am sorry but this tee shirt is so bizarre that I had to photograph it!  It's Tuesday so I was standing in line at Dunkin' behind this woman and so I had to read what was on her tee shirt.  I mean, where do I begin?  "America's dog"  I don't think so.  There must be a dozen breeds that would better fit that title.  And then I don't get the "four legged freedom lover."  What?  One dotted line points to the dog's nose and it says "To sniff out the lack of American spirit"  Huh?  And then a dotted line pointing to the dog's ears says "To enjoy the sounds of American freedom."  This is just way too bizarre.  Sorry if I ruined your day with this, but this is just beyond comprehension.

 

Waiting for the Roller Coaster

This installation is called "Brake Run Helix" by EJ Hill. This is a "a rideable sculptural installation inspired by the form and function of roller coasters."  This device is built in the largest gallery at Mass MoCA.  There are some other structures in this gallery but this is the most interesting - a pink roller coaster track.  There were about 25 people seated and standing around waiting for the single green car to make a trip over the structure.  The rider was late but we all stayed out of curiosity.  So I walked all around looking for the best angle to photograph the structure when the rider in the car was going to ride by.  I found a really good spot, and then when it was time for the rider, they moved everyone out to where I am standing here, which is not the most photogenic view of the coaster, unfortunately.  

This view of the coaster would have been the best and this view is more interesting, but you can't stand here when the coaster is running. But you get a better idea of the structure here, and of course the sun shining through the windows leaving bright window shapes on the floor adds interest.  I have to report that when the young woman in the small green car took her ride, it was definitely anti-climatic.  The car didn't move all that fast and it was hard to see the rider from where we were all viewing.  Oh well...  The artist did say this about roller coasters: "For Hill, roller coasters are public monuments to the possibility of attaining joy—which, as he notes, is “a critical component of social equity."

 

The Buildings at Mass MoCA

I have talked so many times about how much I love Mass MoCA.  And in addition to all the exhibitions I have seen over the years, I love the buildings here.  It is an old fashioned New England factory way of building things, where the original company started with one building and then they keep adding and adding other buildings, which are all connected together.  It is a remarkable collection of parts all connected together.  The buildings that MASS MoCA now occupies were originally built between 1870 and 1900 by the company Arnold Print Works.  In 1860 the Arnold brothers arrived at this site and set up their company with the latest equipment for printing cloth. They began operating in 1862 and quickly took off. Aiding their success were large government contracts during the Civil War to supply cloth for the Union Army.

This is one of my favorite views of the facility with all its buildings.  The Hoosic river splits here and goes on either side of the museum.  Sprague Electric Company was a local North Adams company, and it purchased the Marshall Street complex to produce capacitors. During World War II Sprague operated around the clock and employed a large female workforce but also because it took small hands and manual dexterity to construct the small, hand-rolled capacitors. In addition to manufacturing electrical components, Sprague had a large research and development department. This department was responsible for research, design, and manufacturing of the trigger for the atomic bomb and components used in the launch systems for the Gemini space missions.  In the 1980s, Sprague began to face difficulties with global changes in the electronics industry. Cheaper electronic components were being produced in Asia combined with changes in high-tech electronics forced Sprague to sell and shutdown its factory in 1985.  The buildings lay empty for years until the idea of a museum came to mind.  It took a number of years of fund-raising and organization to develop MASS MoCA. During this process the project evolved to create not only new museum/gallery space but also a performing arts venue.  In 1999 MASS MoCA opened its doors.

 

"Between the Walls and Me"

"Between the Walls and Me" is another work by the artist Joseph Grigely.  It is stunning to come across these damaged walls and broken plaster and a plaster head on the floor!  I couldn't figure out what happened here.  Then I realized that it was an artwork.

Joseph Griegly had an accident at age 10 that made him deaf, and this is what he says about this work: "Between the Walls and Me is a cast stone copy of my head that was smashed into the MoCA gallery wall, damaging both the wall and my head. It lies on the floor, nose, chin, and ears broken and scarred, with the detritus of the contact littering the space: the busted bits of both of us. You can’t get around the reality of this experience. A person's disability does not exit solely in the present, as one kind of impairment or another; it is instead an individual's entire history with that impairment, and the accumulation of trauma that never really goes away. I use the term accretive anxiety to describe this phenomenon. Accretive anxiety involves the accretion of ableist-related experiences over a period of years, or even decades, and how this is assimilated by the body and mind, and how it gets reshaped into something else--even, sometimes, if you're lucky, art."

Mass MoCA

As is my custom each year, I spent the day at Mass MoCA and this museum never disappoints!  When you leave the lobby for the various galleries, usually you see an exhibit just beyond these columns.  But not on this day.  Instead you see part of two giant cylinders in the first gallery.

This exhibit is called "White Noise" by the artist Joseph Grigely.  His work focuses on deafness and disability and the perception of sound as visual media.  He has been deaf since the age of 10.  On the walls inside these two cylinders are thousands of handwritten notes passed to him by people who do not know sign language.  When you enter the installation, you are immersed in thousands of notes representing fragments of conversations from thirty years of the artist's life.  I can't seem to put into words the feelings I had entering the cylinders.  It was a lovely feeling and impossible to describe, but I found myself just wanting to stay inside for quite a while.  I wish I knew what that was all about, but it just felt wonderful to be inside these cylinders.

 

Here is a close up of some of the notes fastened to the wall inside the first structure.

And this is the second cylinder and it has a completely different look and feel to it, but I wanted to, and did, stand inside this one for quite a while.  These structures seem so simple at first glance, but there is something really wonderful going on once you get inside them.

I thought this was an interesting photograph because of its shapes, but also to show that the two cylinders nearly fill the width of the gallery.

And I loved the look of this young woman museum guard, but I am not sure they are called that.  She has such a great look, all in black and then that wonderful hat, and she has two pigtails as well!  I didn't want to disturb her, so I grabbed this candid shot, unnoticed.    This is only one of the galleries filled with Joseph Grigley's art.  More on his work in tomorrow's post.

 

Skydiving!

I always arrive early for my flights with my instructor.  Usually we fly out of Long Island MacArthur airport but because of some construction there, we have been flying out of Brookhaven airport, a smaller "uncontrolled" field about 12 miles east of MacArthur.  There is a very busy skydiving operation there and what is strange sometimes is that when we are flying around the airport "traffic pattern" we are at 1,100 feet in altitude, the skydivers are floating down from about 8,000 where they left the "jump plane," which you can see here, where someone has just left the aircraft.  A little white drogue chute is visible as are the jumpers, a small black dot.  I happened to have one of my cameras with me (always!) with an equivalent 400mm lens.  I was listening to my portable aircraft radio and heard the pilot of the jump plane say they were overhead the airport would be dropping jumpers in 4 minutes, so I grabbed the camera and lens and walked over to where I could see the landing zone, and then looked up with my long lens and found the jump aircraft as it passed over, dropping the skydivers.  Even with the 400mm lens, I still cropped in close to show you the jump airplane, a single engine turboprop which can really climb with six jumpers and their 6 passengers aboard.

So this is called tandem jumping.  A seasoned skydiver connects himself to the person who wants to experience skydiving with a harness, and they both jump out of the aircraft together.  Here are two skydivers in the same frame, the larger chute is below the smaller one in altitude.

As they get closer to the ground you can see the jumpers in more detail.  And there are two sets of jumpers in the same photograph.

As they got closer to the ground I was able to get a close up of the pair.  I cropped into the telephoto show so you can see them in more detail.  I was stunned that I could come up with a photograph this close to the jumpers!

And here are a pair of jumpers a second before they touch down.  Most jumping pairs land standing up, believe it or not!  Also notice the runway in the background with a Cessna just taking off.  The skydivers land on the grass and not very far from the runway. But the divers are really good and always land within a few feet from their target on the grass!  What a cool thing to get to watch, just before I went flying Wednesday!

 

Two Awesome Pilots!

It has been three weeks since I have flown.  Amy and Gus and Miss Vivian were in town, and then I went to Vermont for the telescope maker's conference.  So today was my first flight in a while.  It went really well.  I mean, why not?  You are looking at two awesome pilots at work in their "office" - a Cessna 172R.  OK, OK, so you have one awesome pilot, which is my instructor Michael, at left, and one wanna' be awesome pilot, which would be me!   :-)  I really missed not flying for such a long time, and actually my landings were much better than they have been since I started flying again and Michael complimented me on them which made me feel really good!  There is hope for this old guy!

 

Going, Going, Gone!

So the guys came today to pump out the old fuel oil from the tank and then disconnect the tank and cut it up in order to get it out of the basement.

Here the worker who cut up the tank, as he used a Sawzall to cut a large piece out of the nearly empty tank.  Then he used an old plastic gallon jug as a bailing tool to get the last of the fuel oil out.  

When the last bit of oil was out, he used the saw to cut the tank into two pieces.  Those pieces were lighter and would fit through the door of the old darkroom.

Here is one piece of the tank being taken down the driveway on a hand truck by one worker.  I was surprised that half a tank was light enough to move in this way.  So what is amazing is that draining the tank and cutting it up and removing it, and cleaning up afterwards only took two hours!  In my head, I kept thinking that removing the tank was a huge deal, but to these workers it was not a big deal.  And the room was spotless with no oil spilled at all when they were done.  I was so impressed!

And here we are!  Done, and done!  So here's something I hadn't thought about.  That far well looks ugly because it has had a steel oil tank up against it probably since the 1950's.  So I want to make that wall look nicer.  So guess what the concrete wall has covering it?  It's not paint, but believe it or not, it is "whitewash."  So now I have to read about that process and how to go about making whitewash and how to coat the wall with it.  Always another project!

 

The Pond

When I am in Vermont for the Stellafane Convention, I stay at the Franklyn Farm Inn, in Chester, a short drive to the convention.  This bed & Breakfast has new owners in the last few years, and they are working hard and making improvements.  Nate, one of the owners mentioned last year that he was working to clean up the pond on the property.  Well, I am so busy with the convention, I never took a walk to see it, but this year I did, and it is beautiful.  He has removed a lot of brush around the edges and removed some trees along the edge to open the pond up and it is just beautiful!  I managed to walk up to the pond at the end of the day, the day I arrived.  I think the solitary rock is what makes this photograph interesting.

As I walked around part of the pond, I saw these grasses and managed a viewpoint where they are seen with the sky and some clouds reflected in the water behind them.  Wow, two entirely different photographs taken within 15 minutes and 20 feet from each other!

 

The Mount I Built, At Stellafane

                               

So here is the cute little Alt-Az mount I built out of wood and brought to Stellafane for judging.  I did not place in the judging because there were so many incredibly clever devices up for judging this year.  The heart and soul of Stellafane is all the telescopes and accessories and mirrors and lenses that amateurs have built and which are on display at each convention.  You can get an idea of the number of telescopes and other devices on the field which you can see behind me.  It felt like telescopes as far as the eye could see!  So the best part is not winning, and I mean that, the best part this year was all the people who came around and admired my little telescope mount and had questions about how it was built, and even a couple of people who loved it and took photographs and said they were going to build something like it.  THAT is the best thing, when someone is inspired by your work.  And the conversations all afternoon about telescope making are just wonderful.  That is what Stellafane is all about!

The Milky Way

What a joy to be under a sky that is dark enough to allow us to see the Milky Way.  I can't seen the Milky Way from my side yard of course.  A drive of an hour and a half to Custer Institute used to be enough, but add 15 minutes to that to get me to Orient, which is further east, and I can see this magnificent scene from there.  It is darker in Vermont, but the weather needs to be clear.  It was clear on Friday night, for most of the night up until midnight, so I managed to get this.  Some clouds were on the horizon so I was hurrying to get a photo before it clouded over.  In my haste I missed the fact that a power line was running through my photo.  Oh well, I didn't get such a great photograph, but I got to spend several hours cruising up and down the Milky with my telescope.

 

An End to All That

This is a mirror making stand for fabricating mirrors for telescopes which I built back in 1992.  I have made three mirrors for astronomical telescopes using this.  I had watched lectures and slideshows on how to do that, but I really couldn't understand the process even after reading three different books.  So out of curiosity I decided to make my first mirror, a 6" diameter one, which I used for a custom telescope that folded flat and went in the overhead of a 747, to take to Australia for stargazing.  It was a really good mirror in the end!  Then I made two others.  Another 6" one and then an 8" one which goes in a telescope that is now my most used scope because it is smaller and lighter and has a larger aperture which lets in more light.  It is a joy to use.  So, while cleaning out the basement I knew it was time for this stand to go.  Then I remembered that I was coming to Stellafane, and I realized that would be the perfect place to find a new owner for my mirror making stand.  So I drove over to where they will have a swap fest tomorrow morning and dropped is off this evening.  I hated to leave it all alone, but I am sure it will find a good home.

 

An Amazing Group of People!

Today was the Hartness House Workshop, a part of the Stellafane Convention.  It was a day long program that included a dinner and a featured speaker.  This year many of the talks were about the history of astronomy, and in particular, the work of Russell Porter, a native son of Springfield, Vermont and a legend in amateur astronomy.  I realized after about the third talk today I was feeling really happy to be here. Because I was in a room of people passionate about astronomy and history and telescope making, among other things. There were professional astronomers, and amateurs and students who had all come to learn more about their hobby, and everyone was happy to share their knowledge with others.  I was happy because sometimes the world these days seems so negative with politics and people forgetting about being kind to others and behaving badly.  But here was a room of really smart people whose energy was directed to science and astronomy, and sharing with each other.  It really brightened my day!

One of our speakers was from Cal Tech and he spoke of the ideas Russell Porter had on the design of the Palomar Observatory having to do with his work as both an architect, and of the design of the 200 inch telescope.

This gentleman came from Washington, DC and he told the story of the U.S. Naval Observatory and the importance of the work done with the 26" Clark "Great Equatorial" telescope which was used to discover Phobos and Deimos, two of the moons of Mars.  That telescope was installed 150 years ago and is still in use today!

 

Welcome to Vermont

This is right by the front door of the Vermont Welcome Center, on Route 91, just a few miles north of the Massachusetts, Vermont state line.  Every year they have something different on this wall, which is nice.  These chairs are there for people to relax, so I was lucky that no one was using them.  I love the sense that they are located right by what first appears to be a  giant picture window!  And I love all the colors of the chairs!

I stop here every year and take a walk around the property, looking at you will remember, all the rusted farm equipment like ploughs and sickle bar mowers and a disc harrow.  But I have never showed you the exterior of the building.  It is built like an old fashioned barn with post and beam construction.  It is absolutely gorgeous inside and it is in a lovely setting with wildflowers all around.

 

Happiness Is...

Happiness is...  Here is Amy, trying out Kathy's electric tricycle by coming down the driveway and then she turned up Laurel avenue to the top - a really steep road.  The electric trike didn't bat an eyelash.   Our street is a killer because of it's grade.  I have measured the grade and it equals some of the grades in the Alps in the Tour de France!  They are not a problem for me because I am a gorilla man on my bike, but they are very difficult for others, who may have to stop and walk their bikes.  The electric trike gets you up the steep grades to the level part of Sea Cliff, and then Kathy can just pedal to her heart's content without the electric assist.  Amy really enjoyed her ride as you can see from her grin!

Happiness is...  When you can hold your granddaughter on your lap and she is content to sit there and be happy.  And of course for Kathy, having Vivian here is an absolute joy.  When we would see Vivian, it always took her some time for her to warm up to both of us.  But much less so this trip, which was wonderful.  Viv took to Kathy more than she did to me on other visits, but now she is very comfortable with me as well.  After dinner when she was told she could have some ice cream, she said "I want to have my ice cream while sitting on Boppa's lap!  Wow!  That was a first and made my day!

 

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Amy said that she was going out running today!  I had no idea that she was running.  Turns out that she has signed up to do a 5 K race with Liz and so she is slowly and gently getting in shape.  So she is running gently, which is a great thing. If someone has not been running for a while it is really important not to go out and be sprinting or running hard, which can lead to injuries.  So it's great she is doing this in the right way.  She does look like she is having fun, which is the best part.

 

Miss Vivian the Wolf

Amy and Miss Vivian have returned from Montauk and will be with us for a week.  Vivian was really taken by the wolf mask that Kathy made and which was sitting on the chest of drawers in the dining room.  She took it down and held it up to her face and was really enjoying wearing it.  You will remember from the blog that when we were in Los Angeles in July, Kathy brought with her the wolf mask she had started, and she and Liz both worked on their masks together.  I thought they did a fantastic job painting the finished masks.  We love the look of the Wolf, so that's why he sits in the dining room.  The second I saw Vivien holding the mask to her face, I thought "That's a photograph!"

And here it is!

 

A Thin Crescent Moon

I photographed this very thin crescent Moon about three weeks ago and just let it sit on my desktop.  So I decided to post it tonight. I am not sure what it is about a thin crescent Moon, but they never fail to cause me to stop and look, and to grab a pair of binoculars, if not a telescope, and just spend a few minutes just staring at it.  I think it has to do with the delicacy of it.  A beautiful thin crescent that will have set in the next half hour or so, and then the next day it will be thicker and different and the moment will have passed.  The universe is constantly changing and I guess that also adds to the transitory nature of this crescent.

 

Cleaning Out the Darkroom

This is my darkroom that I built about 50 years ago back in the days of film.  You remember film, don't you?  I used this darkroom for my black and white work, especially with my medium format Hasselblad camera and with my 4x5 cameras.  I developed the film here and I had a really nice enlarger for making prints.  I also did some color printing here, for a large exhibit I had years ago in a gallery in Sea Cliff.  What's also cool is that when Kathy went back to college, she took a photo course and used the darkroom to process her film and make prints.  And when Liz was in High School, she learned how to develop her film and make prints.  So this darkroom has been well used.  Well, about 10 years ago, we switched to natural gas for heat.  We were supposed to have the oil tank which is behind me in this photograph, drained of fuel and cut up and removed.  But I would have had to completely clean out the darkroom before the tank could be removed.  So I never got around to it.  Until now.  That beautiful "varnished" sink is something I built from birch plywood and then covered it with two coats of marine epoxy and it has lasted all this time, and it was beautiful!  I cut it into three pieces to make removing it easier, which killed me, because of what a beautiful thing it was!

So as you can imagine, the cleanup was a monumental job!  I built a temporary table in the garage  with a piece of 3/4" plywood, 4 by 8 feet in size.  So I took everything out of the darkroom in a hurry and put it on the table in the garage, and after the tank is gone, I will go through everything when I have time, and only put back important things in the darkroom, like telescopes and astronomical imaging gear and so on.  What a job, but what a relief to have it empty!

 

Dean a. Ketelsen - December 16, 1953 - August 9, 2023

I've just lost a friend.  His name is Dean Ketelsen.  He apparently died of a heart condition.  I met him through my friend Mike Terenzoni in Tucson some years ago.  Dean was a prince of a man and generous beyond belief.  He worked at the Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona, making 8 meter mirrors for giant telescopes around the world.  But he was a dedicated amateur astronomer and loved to both photograph the night sky, and to show others the beauties of the heavens through his telescopes.  And he was also an accomplished photographer of both the sky and of nature.  One time he said that I should try shooting infrared photographs of nature, and I didn't seem too excited about it.  Two weeks later a box arrived in the mail with an infrared converted camera he owned so that I could try it out.  I was hooked and he let me use the camera for nearly a year!  Back when this photograph was taken in 2016 I traveled with Stan Honda to visit Dean and Mike in Tucson, to do some observing and to tour two observatories.  We could do this because Dean knew everyone and we got permission to visit the Large Binocular Telescope on Mt. Graham, while it was in use one night, and also to the McMath-Pierce Solar telescope on Kitt Peak.  He also got us some observing time on a 24" telescope on Kitt Peak!  I always enjoyed talking to him by email about both photography and astronomy.  And now I can't do that any more, and that is such a loss.  He had such energy for both his astronomical photography and outreach, and for his nature photography, which was exceptional.  He was an inspiration to me because of that commitment to his photographic work.  Dean had a tragedy in his life.  In this photograph, I don't remember the woman on the left, but the woman in pink was his wife Melinda and she battled cancer with chemotherapy and radiation for three years, but lost the battle in the end.  Dean has the orange shirt on.  Mike Terenzoni is to the right of dean in the photograph, and then there is Stan Honda, and then Me.  This was an wonderfully rich visit, where we spent a week doing things in Tucson with Mike and Dean, and I treasure that time we spent together.

 

The Luminous Supernova Remnant in a Nearby Galaxy

We had an absolutely wonderful speaker at our astronomy meeting tonight.  Her name is Dr. Lacey and she is the Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at a nearby university.  Her talk was about an unusual supernova remnant in a nearby galaxy.  The topic was complex, but her explanation of the subject and detailed information about her research was easy to understand for the most part and fascinating.  She was so generous with her time - her formal presentation was longer than an hour, and then she stood there answering questions from our members for another half-hour!  Then she continued to stay and visit informally with everyone after the meeting was over!  What a treat for us!

This is to give you a sense of where the lecture is held, in the lobby of the Vanderbilt Planetarium.  We had a good turnout in person, in addition to those at home watching on Zoom.

 One of the observatories she uses for her research, is the giant radio telescope near Socorro, New Mexico, called the "Very Large Array."  The radio telescope comprises 27 independent antennas in use at a given time, each of which has a dish diameter of 25 meters (82 feet) and weighs 209 metric tons!  The antennas are distributed along the three arms of a track, shaped in a "Y" configuration, each arm of which measures 13 miles long!  Dr. Lacey has 25 years of experience using the data from this astounding radio telescope.  There is a photograph of the array on the screen.